Critic: Agnes Scott’s ‘My Sweet, Sweet’ Exhibition “Icky” & “Outstanding”
Decatur Metro | February 26, 2011
Felicia Feaster writes on Arts Critic ATL…
The sad fact is that when group art shows are bad, they are often very, very bad, forcing non-sequitur work into a curator’s sardine-can theme. The bad group art show smacks of curatorial vanity and hubris and an obsession with an idea that trumps the best representation of the artists involved.
And when a group art show is good? Well, that is a harder, more alchemic achievement. And a thing of beauty when it happens. Though its title could induce a toothache and suggests some lilting, affected feminine thing, the group show “My sweet, sweet,” at Agnes Scott College’s Dalton Gallery through March 13, is imbued with just enough uneasiness and ickiness to make its exploration of love and sex feel ballsy and intense instead of coy and precious, precious.
Read the full review of “My Sweet, Sweet” HERE. And see it at ASC’s Dalton Gallery until March 13th.
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Is this art, love, the true relationship between mother and child or deeply disturbing images of how far we have slid towards immorality? This exhibit may be suitable for New York City and maybe Atlanta but not Decatur. As a private institution, Agnes Scott is free to promote any view of motherhood it chooses but in my opinion, no state or local tax dollars should be used to to support this exhibit.
Just a few descriptions from the article: “… Few acts of sexual and romantic love are as oppressive and shocking as Kretz’s triumphantly perverse sewn tributes to maternal overinvestment. In “Stay,” she has aggressively, even violently, sewn a set of baby booties onto cloth with blood-red thread.
…Jackhammer,” in which a small baby, only her fat legs visible, drenched in white sunlight and glimpsed through the slats of a crib, has her gentle coos and rising cries contrasted with the sounds of a distant jackhammer.”
I would be interested in knowing what the response will be from members of the Agnes Scott alumni from the 1930s through the 50s. Would they agree that an image of a woman and man, dressed in bondage attire, is what their great institution should be promoting?
Chris Billingsley: I agree completely. I would much rather my taxes be spent on what I think they should be spent on. Just think if the federal government had spent the money they spent on their illegal wars on a National Health Service! They’d probably have money left over to fund billions of photographs of people having kinky sex.
Congratulations to Dalton Gallery for the rave review. I wonder who curated the show?