Anthony Haden-Guest
ARTIST STATEMENT 2019
Cartoonery is not art and I am not being self-deprecating here, just objective. During the recent show of Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim, her two work principles were hung on the wall. The second read: Understand Only In Part. There’s mystery in the art process. Picasso said “If your painting doesn’t go wrong it will be no good”. Every strong painting needs “a little bit of poison” noted Lucian Freud. Artists mostly agree that chance, mistakes play a part and that something can get into a work they didn’t knowingly put there.
Cartoonery is quite other. A cartoon can express a thought, channel a feeling, embody a fantasy, whatever, but it must do so efficiently or the humor dies. The cartoonist is not ambiguous and doesn’t play waiting games unless, of course – loophole alert – that is the point of the cartoon. What’s more cartoonery is becoming an extremely timely practice. The art world, like every segment of the economy, has been thinking through the impact of AI and robotics, but with specific unease, as algorhithms grow increasingly capable of replicating just about any art style.
But AI doesn’t do humor. Robots can’t get jokes!
So, cartoonery is not art, but can a cartoon hold a page or a wall as well as art can? Of course! But I would say that, wouldn’t I? You’ll be seeing some of mine. WM
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ILON ART GALLERY EXHIBITIONS |US & EUROPE
2025 Millennium Gallerie, Prague, Czechia
2025 If Museum in Hostka, Czechia
2024 10: 10th Anniversary show, NYC
2024 Off the Grid, Anthony Haden-Guest & Todd
2022 Abstracted, Todd, Al Diaz, Linus Coraggio, Judith Kaufman Weiner, & Anthony Haden-Guest
ARTSY ONLINE-ONLY EXHIBITIONS
2024 87 works celebrating Anthony Haden-Guest 87th Birthday Year
BIO, Born in Paris in 1937
Anthony Haden-Guest is an English-American writer, reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet, and socialite who lives in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to major magazines. Anthony Haden-Guest is a performer of his own material. He exhibits his cartoons and prose at ilon Art Gallery.
He was born in Paris, grew up in London, has lived in Rome, San Francisco and Los Angeles but has long been settled in New York. He won a New York Emmy for writing and narrating a program about the coming of Eurotrash to Manhattan. His books include Bad Dreams, True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World (Grove Atlantic) and The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night (Morrow). His collections of cartoons and rhymes include The Chronicles of Now (Allworth), In The Mean Time (Freight & Volume) and Fun Times.
