Artist profile: Spencer Tunick

When I first saw this article title, my first thought was: Who the hell is Spencer Tunick? I’ve studied art history for years, from cave drawings to Andy Warhol, and this guy’s name never came up in any list of prominent artists I’ve ever read. He must have done something recently, and maybe spectacularly.

Then I remembered where I had seen this guy’s name, hopefully for the first and only time. All the newspapers and online news sites featured the idiotic performance he perpetrated in Mexico City a couple of weeks ago. He lined up 18,000 Mexicans in a town square and photographed them all together in the all-together … naked as uncooked tacos. Wow, I’ll bet Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Leonardo would be proud of this great artist’s work. I believe the same guy took his camera to England and did the same a year or so ago.

Why does this guy make a career of photographing large numbers of naked people? Maybe because his name is Tunick, he has some mental compulsion to take pictures of people who aren’t wearing any tunics? Anyhow, why do people get excited about this kind of crap art?

Tunick’s so-called art reminds of the stuff a guy named Christo does. He wanders around the world with bolts of yellow cloth and drapes huge amounts of them on buildings, waterfronts, trees and whatever else suits his fancy. He did Central Park recently, and the project looked less like a work of art than an explosion in a toilet-paper factory.

I never could get excited about the 100-year-trend for charlatans who pose as artists. As a retired artist myself, I believe in the old traditions of competent, realistic sculpture, drawing and painting. Sometimes when I want to get a good seat in a restaurant, I can truthfully put BFA, MFA after my name on the waiting list. It rarely helps, but it makes me feel as important as the guys who do get choice tables because they put MD or PhD after their names.