Opening of Your History Is Not Our History

There's another artist-curated show in town of blue-chip work from (primarily) private collections. Richard Phillips and David Salle's confrontationally titled show is "a response, literally, to the way in which the 80s have been distilled since that time," says the first artist. That's a distilled history of the 80s as divided into camps—"Pictures" artists and critique artists, Neo-Geos or Neo-Expressionists. "I was here," says Phillips, who lived in the East Village since 1986, "and those are not the camps as I remember them." It is a history of winners (alhough Schnabel, Fischl, and Basquiat weren't always such winners, reminds Phillips), but misunderstood ones whose work doesn't necessarily represent cultural hegemony. "There are no surprises in the show, in terms of the artists, and it's not about bringing up diamonds in the rough and showing obscure situations," Phillips says. Indeed, Mary Boone, a pivotal player in this history and a challenge to Leo Castelli, wouldn't have her diamonds rough.