Proper nowadays artists - day 146: Vincent Desiderio (USA)

Vincent Desiderio (USA, 1955)

Desiderio’s career speaks for itself, massively successful, hugely influential, he did the painting in the Kanye West video, etc. But what he has to say can be interesting too:

“we come out of school or we go into our undergraduate training instructed by people who are just toeing the line…when they’re not talking about forcing the artists into conceptual agendas, they’re telling them stuff about figuration and representation that I think is anachronistic and meaningless”

He pinpoints the beginning of the preference for colour over the illuminated form to a very specific date:“

and it’s Delacroix who enacts that change in the journal May 5th 1852. The painting should be constructed on a grey day - the passage begins. …that’s the moment when the ultra-subjective is born.” It’s the kind of basic knowledge and understanding that most of our current critics and tertiary art educators currently not only lack but aren’t even curious about.