‘He’s a Psycho. He’s a Monster’: A New Documentary on Jordan Wolfson Paints a Dark Portrait of the Art World’s Enfant Terrible

Whether you adore him or abhor
him, see him as a prescient genius or a privileged dirtbag, there’s
virtually no middle ground when it comes to artist Jordan
Wolfson.

“He just struck me as such a
great character study,” says James Crump, director of the new
documentary “Spit Earth: Who is Jordan
Wolfson?” on why he
chose the polarizing artist as his latest subject.

The hour-long film, which will
make its streaming debut this Friday on Vimeo, doesn’t offer a
clear answer, but it does feature some notable names willing to
weigh in with their own two cents on the artist, including critic
and curator Jack Bankowsky, art historian Andrianna
Campbell-LaFleur, and Fear of Flying author Eric Jong, who also happens to be
Wolfson’s aunt-in-law.

“He’s a psycho. He’s a monster,”
says Stefan Kalmár, director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts,
London, while recalling a fund-raising video Wolfson once made.
“It’s like a short YouTube movie someone posts before he goes on a
shooting rampage. It’s
scary.”

“He’s a lost person, I think,”
says Emma Fernberger, a director at Galerie Eva Presenhuber and an
ex of Wolfson’s.

Produced by art historian and
collector Ronnie Sassoon, with whom Crump had previously
collaborated on a 2017 film about fashion illustrator Antonio
Lopez, Spit Earth charts the trajectory of Wolfson’s work,
from the attention-grabbing videos of his early career to the
animatronic sculptures of the mid-2010s that propelled him to art
world infamy, and beyond.

The film aims to unpack the
psychology of the artist whose own output—with its distinct melange
of Freudian themes (repressed trauma, psychosexual expression, and
gender identity, to name a few)—makes armchair analysts of us all.
It positions Wolfson as an enfant terrible of the
Trump-era art world, an artist who very easily could be—but so far
hasn’t been—”canceled,” and who embodies a nagging intellectual
question of our day: Can you separate the artist from his
work?

“I felt that Jordan was a
perfect foil to the contemporary art world at this particular
moment,” says Crump. “To me, he’s both a product and a symptom of
the conditions of today’s out-of-control, hyper-speculative art
market.” In Wolfson’s work, Crump adds, “the elements of spectacle
and celebrity and conspicuous consumption all converge in a way to
put up a mirror to this money-driven field.” 

Though the film is not shy in
its praise of the artist, it’s also not an especially flattering
portrait either. Campbell-LaFleur recalls punching Wolfson after he
made a pass at her; Fernberger tells a story of Wolfson using
revenge porn disguised as art to get back at her after a breakup.
(That story also appears in another recent portrayal of Wolfson,
Dana Goodyear’s profile on the artist in last month’s New
Yorker.)

And through direct
juxtapositions of footage, Wolfson is compared, at various points,
to both Jeff Koons at his most narcissistic and Patrick Bateman
from American Psycho. 

“All I’ve ever wanted is to make
great art and bring awareness,” Wolfson told Artnet News in a
statement. “I’ve not seen the final cut of the film so I don’t know
if the director has accurately portrayed that. I wish the filmmaker
the best of luck.”

Wolfson’s candid interviews may
do little to assuage his critics as well. “I sense that Jordan himself may regret some of
the things he said to us on camera,” Crump says when asked how
Wolfson responded to seeing a rough draft of the film for the first
time. “Looking into that mirror is a real shock to anyone. I think
it was a particular shock to Jordan.”

“Though Jordan signed off on the
project before filming began and fully participated in its
making—to the extent that his parents and ex-girlfriend have major
roles—he has since repudiated the searing psychological portrait
that resulted,” Kenny
Schachter, one of the talking heads in the film, wrote in a recent
column.

“I still believe he’s a
brilliant person,” says Crump. “He’s incredibly complex. There are
things that have been said about him that are very damning but
true.” He adds: “I
still think he’s among the leading artists of our
day.” 

Spit Earth: Who is Jordan
Wolfson? will be
available to stream on Vimeo Friday, May 1, and on Amazon Prime in
the coming months. 

The post ‘He’s a Psycho. He’s a Monster’: A New Documentary
on Jordan Wolfson Paints a Dark Portrait of the Art World’s Enfant
Terrible appeared first on artnet News.