The majority of works on show at Gagosian’s Ballard show – apart from the few specifically relating to JGB –seemed to be chosen on the spurious merit of being ‘violent enough’ or ‘dystopian enough’, as if this would be reason enough to hang them together. It was as though the curators thought diverse artworks could present intellectual arguments to each other. In fact, almost every piece spoke (or more often screamed) in a different language. But Gagosian’s show, tawdry as it was, did raise one interesting question. Artworks don’t reason. Can an art gallery ever be a museum of recent cultural history (ie of writers et al), and not just a display case? And if not, what space exists for such things?
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