HARMONY KORINE / The Bad Son

Harmony Korine
The Bad Son 1998
Softcover, unpaginated
30 x 22cm
Taka Ishii Gallery
1st edition of 1000

Condition: Very good

The pictures’ casual approach and repetitiveness echo Clark, as does the fixation on a loaded young male pop icon. But where Clark’s objectives vis-à-vis River Phoenix, Matt Dillon, and Kartheiser involve endangering their natural eroticism with his patented mixture of identification and repressed lust, Korine’s intentions regarding Culkin seem rather a consensual, even shy attempt to locate the former child star’s current cultural value. If these fuzzy, low-key, poetic photographs cast Culkin as unwitting jailbait, they’re nonetheless respectful of the studied goofiness and mild dis-interest with which Culkin strikes Korine’s mock-candid poses. An accompanying “autobiographical” prose poem, ostensibly written by Culkin, reveals him to be a far weirder cat than the images allow. The result, as in Korine’s more complicated films, is less a voyeuristic exercise than a benign and resonant standoff between an artist who has an original feel for where meaning lies and a subject whose meaning leaves a lot to be desired. Dennis Cooper (Art Forum, 2000).