BWW Reviews: Jay-Z's Performance Dance-a-Thon at PACE Gallery

Michael Jordan is arguable one of the best basketball players of all time. His foray into baseball hardly puts him in the list of the top 10,000 baseball players of the past decade. Jay-Z is one of the greatest rappers of our time. Is he gonna play basketball too?

No, but he has a found a loophole into the art world.

Ever wonder what performance art really is? It is a great art world term and could be called short theatre without financial backers, chairs and a roof. Indeed the successful ones get a high ceiling like at MOMA to sleep or stare under without watching a Starry Night. Performance art is really a word best suited for broadway, music and dance and originally was stolen by the art world.

Artists have appropriated some of the English language for their benefits. Musicians like to call themselves artists, but us artists know they are barking up the ladder and borrowing our terms. However if you ever read some old dead guys theories on the philosophy of art you will see the older the dead guy the more general the word artist is used.

Richard Bulter's paintings are more than pretty in pink

Everybody wants to be like Mickey and cross over to another side, to brake on through. Few do with success. I have seen a few exhibits of musician's artistic side and have the eye to know this is not their show. Richard Butler of the Psychedelic furs may be an exception and indeed there are others; however we are talking about the norm- the bunch of folks hanging out at the big bump in the bell curve and not the tail followers.

Jay-Z is definitely a tail player. He is a unique smart guy and has entered the art world front and center stage at PACE gallery- The House of Glimcher.

He is the consummate concert performer

No plain soup Jack who can't tag back

He's a bright-eyed leader of a generation

Probably use to stay home with his play-station.

Jay-Z's rap has meaning and has the poignancy of clarity- something we all fight for. What of his performance in one of the top Synagogues of the gallery world- at PACE?

Jerry Saltz one of the most beloved art critic by the masses contemplates what? Marina Abramovic doing the staring thing- she is a pro at it and practiced at MOMA.

Jay-Z sang "Picasso Baby" over and over and over and over again at Pace Gallery to a different art world senator throughout the day. This raises some serious questions about the art world. Okay, he is a multi talented musician and performer, a creative businessman a valuable art collector and from what I hear actually an all-around good, but is Pace the place for an MTV moment?

Is he Today's Picasso as he claims or has his head gotten a bit too swollen under that tight cap?

Jay z ain't no Picasso

I don't have to say so

It's for you to know no

He is just a showman

A seller of the vinyl blow man

Owning all the art world

Gatherin all the compressed press

Wouldn't even make a half wit

Doesn't that B on see?

Saltz spread dance-less peppered on the floor

Staring at Marina's boat-y barely gone bare

He got the other kiddies on silly scooters

A great use of important aesthetic polluters

A gathering of the art minds

For a silly silly time

Wasting of some good minds

Maybe already wasted

He is a mind blower and away their minds went.

A boom boom boom

A boom boom boom

You ain't no Jean-Michel either you are a Jay-ZZZ

All these Z's make me sleepy

Vincent was double Bugatiless

Less mess for the real to impress

A boom boom boom

A boom boom boom

Actually who am I kidding? Jay-Z has a free ride into the art world. He is wealthy, good looking and a successful musician. Free tickets get you in the door but not on Pace's center stage for too long.

Is Jay-Z playing with us, is he critiquing the art world and did he set up the performance of his song to catch the art world run amuck? Sometimes you fish for flounder and catch a shark. I'm not sure if he is the culprit or the catcher. There is no doubt he performs artful music and makes good comments on the art world in his wordy rappinghood while the band bang bangs on the Tom-Toms. However, he does not belong in Pace's Payton Place.

Donald Van Gogh

Will the Donald be next?

And buy a Brooklyn building.

Owning the artists and their art?

Trumping Koons a trick or two

A boom boom boom

A boom boom boom

It would go with his ego

A regular art world thingo

Heavens no, The Don's too slow

Now its time for me to go

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