Friday 20 June 2008

NOT: Cy Twombly, Tate Modern

sca·tol·o·gy –noun 1. the study of or preoccupation with excrement or obscenity. There are many references to scatology in the fawning exhibition pamphlet for this retrospective of 'one of the greatest living artists'; all I can say is that it was the most scatological nonsense I have ever had the misfortune to waste half an hour of my life. It involved room after endless room of infantile pencil scratchings ('ascetic traces of undulant pencil line') on white butcher's paper ('blanched light'), sometimes broken up with smears of fingerpainting resembling excrement and/or flacid penises ('heightened erotism'). One of the few exhibitions I've seen which had me storming out muttering expletives and feeling violent towards the art world for valuing and exhibiting this ridiculous, childish and self-indulgent crap.

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