Writers of the Purple Prose

Michael Lundgren takes a nice pic. His silver-gel landscapes offer unadorned depictions of our lovely, denuded desert. Odds are, you’ll like ’em.

So God forbid the works should be allowed to speak for themselves. No, their meanings must be spelled out, tediously, in terms you have no hope of understanding. Well, we’re taking a stand, right here, right now, against artspeak and its unholy offspring, the “artist statement.” To wit, an excerpt from Lundgren’s personal manifesto: “[The] images are an atavistic contemplation of the origin, drawing out the mythological potential of the desert. The landscape is only discernible because of the presence of what is fundamentally absent. Myth and metaphor remain unfixed, open.”

Say freakin’ what?!