Lecture at the Hammer

I went to the Stephen Shore lecture at the Hammer last Thursday. It was a discussion with Michael Fried (Art & Objecthood) and moderated by James Welling. While they were all very articulate I couldn't help but think how dated the discussion was. On top of that the depth of the talk hovered around the size of the prints and negatives. Michael Fried finally got excited when he could talk about Menzel, yes the 19th century German Painter, yet he couldn't give installation art a moment of consideration. The discussion briefly hit on digital photography where they, (james and Stephen) tiptoed around the subject and only the most obvious and safe comments were made, (its a tool), Oh, and a pathetic one like, "it gives you too much control, too much color".......omg. It's like that line in Amadeus where Mozarts' critics say he plays too many notes. I like Shores' work and the discussion was genuinely interesting, just not quite as relevant to contemporary art practice as I would have liked. By the way, james and stephen work with digital photography.