Jeff Wall’s Influence

Since Hurricane Katrina, refuse and squalor have inspired a popular aesthetic in the art world. There’s a laissez-faire decadence in a work like Peter Garfied‘s “One: Number 31, 1950” (2008) sculpture at Pierogi Brooklyn (below).

Peter Garfield at Pierogi in Williamsburg

These artworks of devastation all seem to reference (even if unwittingly) Jeff Wall’s stunning and prescient photograph from 1978, “The Destroyed Room” (below).

Jeff Wall has said:

My first pictures like “The Destroyed Room” emerged from a re-encounter with nineteenth-century art.

One response to “Jeff Wall’s Influence”

  1. […] already commented on the aesthetics of squalor that has permeated the art world recently and attributed it to […]

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