Ever feel like you don’t “get” the art hanging in museums and selling for millions in auction houses? Watch Robert Hughes’s The Mona Lisa Curse, an excellently crafted documentary about the folly of the contemporary art world (free in 12 installments on YouTube!), and you’ll know you’re not alone.
Once Time magazine’s super-sexy art critic, Hughes, now in his seventies, plays the eloquent but curmudgeonly polemicist in his tightly orchestrated film-essay. With footage of the critic in his 1960s prime sprinkled throughout, the documentary takes us on a journey through art scenes past and present, visiting museums, galleries, art collectors, dealers and “art advisers.” Some of these our narrator clearly despises—his thesis being that the art world is shaped by the world’s largest unregulated market, and not by the quality or content of the art itself. In general, Hughes’s critiques are well posed and thoughtful, and though he doesn’t have many answers, it is nice to know there’s someone on the inside who doesn’t get it either.
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