No competition

You may have first heard about the work of Steve Mumford via something or other in relation to Steven Vincent's murder, on Daily Kos.  Later, n+1 online hosted a nice engagement with Mumford's work – final installment and links to the preceeding three may be found here:

Grad programs train artists in political response, yet few responded to our new war. This summer’s Greater New York show contained more painting about fake wood paneling than about the situation in Iraq. Ironic retrospection was the wrong strategy for the new historical situation, but most artists continued knitting and referencing video games anyway. In this context, Steve Mumford’s Iraqi watercolors stood out. The intimacy, both of the situations he painted and of his brush on the paper, gave us something we hadn’t seen from this war. As the publication of his Baghdad Journal approaches, some have begun to question the attention he’s received. Such questions would be more interesting if he had any competition. His work alone has dared to confront the war where it happens, as it happens. If he deserves anything, it is precisely our attention.

Today, Mumford was interviewed by NPR on the occasion of his book's publication.  Worth a look, read and listen, all

Comments

[PB]

eh . . . Mumford's take on the whole situation--support for the occupation dressed in humanitarianism and a romanticization of ordinary Iraqis and American soldiers against 'the American intelligentsia'(see the n+1 interview)--comes across in his art. See here: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jun2005/mumf-j13.shtml

[CDB]

Oy, thanks.

[tw]

I don't understand why Mumford is said to have "no competition." Within that trainwreck of a show at PS1, perhaps, but that show wasn't representative of anything beyond the tastes of a few curators and the warped nature of the NYC art market. In Mumford's generation, Hirschhorn (to take just one prominent example) has been doing pieces about Iraq since the first Gulf War, with more critical engagement than Mumford's ridiculous Winslow Homer reference.

That the editors at n+1 seem to have fallen for Mumford's figurative schtick is a little disheartening.

[CAP]

Mumford sucks bigtime.

You want happy snaps for rampant fascism, an embedded slave to the sick and corrupt lie/dream of Amerikan Imperialism - take this thrid rate commercial illustrator to heart.

You will regret it.