How Galleries Falsify Subversive Art

Two of the art world’s most famous and polarizing male provocateurs—the American artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney and the Italian conceptual artist and “prankster” Maurizio Cattelan—are showing new work right next door from one another. Head to West 21st Street, and you’ll be able to see Barney’s new video and sculptures at Gladstone Gallery, and Cattelan’s new sculptural installation is at the Gagosian space just down the block. Both of these exhibitions evoked in me interesting, acerbic, dark, and even reactionary thoughts about the modern world.