The Feminist Art Show

I have not seen the Feminist Art show at the Brooklyn Museum. Just the title makes me not want to go. It's as if you invited me to a Soviet Realism show. Similar shit. Similar tendentious propagandistic statements. For the most part, I don't like art that functions mainly as a calculated political gesture. I don't like art that works as a manifesto. One of the main images of the show, is a photograph of a fat, tattooed feminist suckling a fat baby. Why is this photograph worthy of a museum exhibit? It is not particularly accomplished. The easy answer: it's supposed to subvert and update the traditional figure of the Madonna, yada yada. But that is just a gimmick. It could be one of those postcards they sell in tacky souvenir shops in St. Mark's Place in the Village. So why bother? It's not that it isn't art. It's that it is bad art.