Scopophilia

Desire is so subjective, how do you convey its potency? How do you even document it? Enter Nan Goldin. For her, desire is so foundational, it's everywhere, functioning like an involuntary scrim. Her tonalities, the color saturation - the Weltschmerz - are all symptoms of the spell Goldin's longings cast over her. Within her haze, we feel what she feels, and after all, isn't that what art is all about? Apparently The Louvre thought so when they gave Goldin the keys to the museum and allowed her free rein to photograph their collection for her suite on display at Matthew Marks, Scopophilia. The entire history of art is re-read through her lens, as intimate, immediate and flawed. She takes us inside each work. We smell the paint, we taste the marble dust. She shows us, in deeply human terms, why these works matter. And while no one would characterize Goldin as obsessive-compulsive, we are grouped, she tells us, by gesture or expression, and through our loss and our yearning. Hats off to the Louvre for their smarts, if they knew how vital she would make their collection seem, or their boldness, if they knew how seditious.