“It’s an exciting time in the art
world – nobody owns the 21st century.”
Personally, I haven’t had this much
fun laughing at pretentiousness and the dogged pursuit of false values since
Alex Guinness adapted Joyce Carey’s story about an old rascal of a painter,
Gulley Jimson, in The Horse’s Mouth.
Jonathan Parker’s art spoof
(co-written with Catherine DiNapoli) is witty, sharply observed and makes good
use of its talented leads. Unlike Guinness’s Jimson, who realizes that the art
world has passed him by and lives by his wits, Adam Goldberg’s atonal musician
is both disgruntled and delusional.
Marley Shelton totally steals the
movie as a manipulative, overreaching but oddly idealistic gallery owner who
convinces herself that she’s providing a huge public service by presenting the
extravagantly eccentric works of her pet artists: one is an egomaniacal
womanizer whose art consists of dead animal corpses displayed like road
kill.
There’s a bit of cheeky foreplay
between Goldberg and Shelton when he demands she remove her noisy plastic
leatherette pants so he can sample their rustling for his next collage. Goldberg,
who has amusingly deadpanned his way through several cerebral satires,
especially Julie Delpy’s Two Days in Paris, should shed his thick beard
before he totally morphs into a Jules Feiffer caricature.
A great metaphor for today’s ruined
financial markets, as a jaded young collector remarks, as he’s putting his
penis head mannequins in a closet, “Art doesn’t look as good when it goes down
in value.” By the second viewing I was actually enjoying Goldberg’s “kick the
can” atonal compositions.