MR. WARD CREATES DEBATE

WARD OF THE STATE: TONY WARD ARTIST MUSE
has created quiet a buzz...
here's a little back & forth on the huffington post-

'Ward Of The State: Tony Ward, Artists' Muse' At Rivera & Rivera Gallery In West Hollywood

'Ward of the State: Tony Ward, Artists' Muse' is a group exhibition of Greg Gorman, Steven Klein, Patrick Hoelck, Patrick Martinez, Herb Ritts, Estevan Oriol, RETNA, Tony Ward, Paul Rusconi, Bruce Weber, Robert Standish, Michael Gregg Michaud, Jules Muck, Rick Castro, Christoph Schmidberger, Ray Turner, Maya Mercer and Tony Ward. These works all capture their shared muse, Tony Ward. For the artists, Ward, a supermodel, embodies their ideals of masculinity, beauty, brutality, fashion, and sexual ambiguity. He becomes a blank canvas to rework and reinterpret his personal for their artistic agenda.

See it at Rivera & Rivera, 454 North Robertson Blvd, West Hollywood,CA until June 28th.

reader comments-

artprof-
@artbot, I checked out this show and bought a catalogue. Roughly 30% of the work in the show included other mediums besides photograph y. Paintings, video, collage etc. The hyper realistic paintings created in oils by Christoph Schmidberg er and Robert Standish are easy to mistake for photograph y. The paintings by Jules Muck and Patrick Martinez are subversive and very much addressing your comments as did the painting titled Buy, Sell, Loan by Robert Standish ). There was even a
TONY WARD TOILET and TONY WARD TEA SET. I also believe that the things you are unsettled by for better or worse are no less valid subject matter for creating art than whatever you deem " real art". One wonderful thing that has occurred here from the show is your comments further create the dialogue that the show on many levels is addressing . Be sure to check out the photos from the show by Maya Mercer dealing with alcoholism and gender identity or Tony Ward's self portrait which boldly and courageous ly rips in half the beautiful and sexy commercial and fashion image that Mr. Ward has become so marketed as.

artbot-
please huffpost.. .. real art. not something attached to fame, marketing, glamor, movie stars, rap, narcissist ic, vanity, attention starved, histrionic , pop-ish, street.... really!
this is fashion photograph y. grrr.... just art. good pure art.

robjh1-
Just an example of what drugs and alcohol abuse will do to a perfect body of work.

americancolonyinhell-
Isn't that the guy from the Belinda Carlisle video back in the Paleozoic era?

Hardyman1966
The big one was the "Justify My Love" black and white Madonna video that caused such a fuss

crayola 08b-
at 48 he's still one hot dude.