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Retrospection, Refreshed

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The Daily Pic: Aaron Curry looks back at vintage art, and makes something of it

A detail from "Buzz Kill", by Aaron Curry

A detail from "Buzz Kill", by Aaron Curry, born in Texas in 1972 (Photo by Blake Gopnik)

In a room-filling installation called “Buzz Kill,” at Michael Werner Gallery on New York’s Upper East Side, Aaron Curry has cross-bred the vintage styles of Alexander Calder and Isamu Noguchi. I’m not usually a fan of all the Mad Men retrospecting that’s going on in our culture these days, but in Curry’s hands it has a mild lunacy that I respect. Somehow, it feels as though he does to the art of the past what Jeff Koons does to toys and pornography – that is, misunderstand the principles behind what’s been borrowed, and so make it new.

For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.

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Blake Gopnik is a contributing critic to Newsweek and The Daily Beast and writes on art and design for a wide range of publications. He previously spent a decade as chief art critic of The Washington Post and before that was an arts editor and critic in Canada. He has a doctorate in art history from Oxford University, and has written on aesthetic topics ranging from Facebook to gastronomy.

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