Steve Gianakos

Michael Mont

2/15/12

Art critic Steve Gianakos

           I read the article about Steve Gianakos in the New York Times called, “Steve Gianakos’s ‘New Paintings’ at Fredericks & Freiser.” It was written by art critic Ken Johnson. The article is shorter than most other art articles in the times, but it is for a reason.  Steve Gianakos is an artist whose main themes are quite disturbing.
           Steve Gianakos is known for his themes of sex, drugs, and violence. He mostly draws things in a cartoon style. The cartoons figures have a very 50s 60s style drawing to them. They kind of look like comics in the newspaper. The images are very graphic and even, disturbing in certain drawings. There is nothing censored in his paintings. Doing an image search, out of curiosity, lead me to find a bunch of obscure disturbing paintings; so disturbing that I would feel uncomfortable attaching a picture of his works in this essay.
           Ken Johnson does a really go job describing Steve Gianakos’ work. Johnson first gives background information on the artist. He says that his themes are very adult and contain sex, drugs, and violence. Then Johnson does give him some credit, “It is just as well that we don’t know what most people think about in the privacy of their own dirty little minds. But in Steve Gianakos, …, we have an exception.” Then Johnson gives the title of a painting then describes what is in them, in just one descriptive sentence; In “She Decided to Throw the Party Anyway,” a curious kitten paws the water of an aquarium in which a girl’s severed head is submerged.
           Ken Johnson does a good job of being an art critic. He described this artist with just enough details to get the point across and not freak out the readers. I think the artist is brave for drawing all those weird obscure paintings; he doesn’t write off any ideas that come to mind.  Overall it was an interesting article and a more interesting artist.