Jeff Wall, Mimic, 1982
Unbelievably the Globe and Mail actually has an art story online unrelated to a theft or auction. Jeff Wall speaks to Marsha Lederman about five major photographs, describing Dead Troops Talk as blatant artifice. It is of course, though he uses the term merely as a starting point for more interesting ideas. The title of the article suggests this term might be applied to the other works he speaks about, which obviously isn’t the case.
Speaking of Jeff Wall, some time ago I started a post on a lecture he gave now reproduced in Afterall titled Depiction, Object, Event that remains unfinished. One of Wall’s points is that the fusion of art and non-art is an illusion leaving institutional art fully intact, since as artists and curators we never leave the professional circles. He also speaks of the canonical structures still at work despite efforts by artists to subvert them from within (hello new media). LINK
The Master of Blatant Artifice Speaks originally via Conscientious
