As if there weren’t already enough reasons to come to the Art F City Roast (Feb 17th at Postmasters), we’ve found another one: famed Village Voice Critic Christian Viveros-Faune will be the evening’s Roast Master! Look forward to a speech of epic proportions. This, after all, is the man who, when writing of the political correctness of PS1’s Greater New York, declared that a “black Jesus floating down from on high with a strap-on would not improve this disaster of an assembly one iota.” He didn’t mince words on the sale of The Scream, either. “At a solid nine figures, who the hell cares what that crazy worm depicts anyway?”, he wrote. Perhaps our favorite writing, though, comes from his unsparing words in a fake Damien Hirst obituary, written on the occasion of Hirst’s worldwide dot painting show. In reference to his best-known work, a shark in phenol-based fluid, Faune imagines the following quip. “It was bound to happen. Call it the physical impossibility of living in the mind of someone brain-dead. There’s absolutely nothing formaldehyde can do about that.”
We don’t think much of Hirst’s career either, but this year there are bigger and better targets. Marina Abramovic’s building a bizarre multimillion dollar cult that will teach an art audience to better appreciate her art. Celebrities who see art as a brand they can “collaborate” with are taking over of Chelsea. And lets not forget the regular headlines about hedge fund collectors driving record breaking prices at the top of the contemporary art market.
Only the art world could be this fucked up, and only Viveros-Faune can deliver a burn deep enough to scorch it. We’ve got one hell of night in front of us. Get your tickets now.
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