Keeping It Real Art Critics – KIRAC (4) The Psychology of Jon Rafman

19 april 2021Businessplan, Home, Interview, Locatie, Media, Portretten, Ridderboek, Video0

And they all come marching and he dreams of conttrolling these puppets (foto makeagif.com)

The Psychology of Jon Rafman (foto Vimeo)

KIRAC (4) The Psychology of Jon Rafman

We take apart and review the Morality and Psychology in the work of artists Jon Rafman and Anna Uddenberg, who are exhibiting in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

It’s a critical psychological portrait of a certain artistic and ideological tendency. This tendency is an example of how people generalise in order to see meaning, drama, depth and to be interesting. We talk about Karl Marx and alienation and the idea that the world needs to be saved from this. It’s about how people, ideologies, art movements make themselves ‘relevant‘ by identifying root causes for problems in society. Notwithstanding that these ideas are just fantasies.

We also suggest that contemporary artists are more regressive and conservative then ever. Pointing at sex, freedom and unbounded individualism as the source of our problems, they behave like a kind of Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who is concerned with how to manipulate and discipline a horrible, irresponsible, weak mass of people.

In a next chapter we will go into this state of regression even more.

By me and Kate Sinha. Thanks to 114, Mondriaan Fonds and the people at the Stedelijk Museum.

Thanks to Gerda Jonkerman, Hedwig Lohmann, the people at Mondriaan Fonds, the people at Stedelijk Museum, Annematt Ruseler, Josephine Glazener, Tarik Sadouma, Wouter Post, Tijm Lanjouw.