Albert Oehlen Paintings: Assuming the Mantle

You might have noticed that here at Art & Argument we like old fashioned things like oil painting and saxophone solos. The newest New Yorker has a good article on the German painter Albert Oehlen, who gives us a sense of what a De Kooning or Rauschenberg might look like in the early 21st century. Writer Peter Schjeldahl asked Oehlen what music he likes, and he said, without a doubt Ornette Coleman. The article was written before Ornette died, so that's pretty good timing for that response, and resonances with "free jazz" are readily apparent: Cacophonous, yes, but beautiful too. At any rate, this is the kind of thing I like.