Jim Shaw Morphs Entrepreneurs to a Porno Hedge

Jim Shaw is finally getting hometown attention at the Marciano Art Foundation. Across town, the UCLA Hammer Museum is showing a delirious Shaw as part of "Living Apart Together."

The title of the Hammer's 2001 ink, pencil, and pen drawing-assemblage (a gift of David Teiger) pretty much says it: Dream Object (I was looking at drawings of successful business men which became increasingly distorted and became a pornographic hedge…)

Shaw uses draughtmanship to subvert vernacular photography, cubism, Weegee distortions, process art, and the spiders-on-LSD school of propaganda. Dream Object is also about pornography, the Saul Goodman to art's Jimmy McGill, ending up in a rude classical/Renaissance frieze that is also a Klimt park.