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Is the cultural totem a "critical" experiment, an artifact for the semiologic theology of art? Or is the cultural totem merely the container that smuggles painting through the door, under an assumed Visa stamp of criticality? A MacGuffin driving the plot of Press Release? Are these merely formalist exercises posing as some grand statement about the content? i.e. just paintings? These are all questions that the PR is happy to lead up to asking, but which of course, does no answers. No, as always, these answers are left for you to parse dear viewer. (Art writing's "questions" is the death-in-life life support of art afterall - this art's true meaning, providing the ritual of questions.) All I can think of is George Condo and how pastiche excuses a painting strikingly associable to Picasso pricing. Pastiche permits mediocrity to pass, as "critical," until eventually it normalizes as "greatness" as "painting" or at least prices that denote it.
