Busy day, but I'd be remiss if I didn't point out two pieces of must reading in the Globe this morning. On Page 1 - and kudos for that decision - Geoff Edgers outlines what may be the final act in the drama between MassMoCA and Swiss artist Christoph Buchel. Disappointingly, most of us will never get to see Buchel's massive but unfinished exhibit in Building 5. There's bad blood here; MoCA's website report on the court decision avoids using Buchel's name entirely. I think you can make a case for either side on the philosophical questions, but what's clear is that Buchel comes off as a stereotypically pretentious, obnoxious Euro-blowhard. Witness these lines from the Globe story: "Buchel, who has rarely spoken to the press, sent an e-mail to the Globe last night in response to the museum's move. Alluding to his dispute with Mass MoCA over the project's budget, he offered to donate a permanent installation that would not cost anything to mount. He concluded the e-mail with an image of the plan, a tweak of the museum's rooftop signs to spell out 'Mass CoMA.' " In Euro-speak: Oh, piss off.
Of course, the worst problem with artists like Buchel is that they provide fodder for the Jeff Jacoby faction that looks at modern art and sees only garbage. Somehow Buchel escapes mention in Jacoby's column today, which considers two other high-profile works, Martin Creed's Turner Prize-winning "Work 227: The Lights Going On And Off" and MIT student Star Simpson's Mooninite-like bodywear that almost got her shot at Logan Airport last week. Jacoby puts some well-aimed darts in some soft underbellies, then reaches this ginormously broad-brushed conclusion: "Someday the art world will rediscover the standards it has abandoned. It will blush when it remembers the way it honored quacks like Creed and treated silly stunts as works of genius. In the meantime, 'Work 227' makes a fine metaphor for what that world has become: The lights may be on (or off), but nobody's home." Which rather deserves the same retort as Buchel.
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