Continuing with some questions about Karen Archey's Frieze review of Ryder Ripps' Postmasters show [sign-in required]. The magazine may or may not have fact checkers, but here is a list of items that probably should have been vetted prior to publication:
1. "In an online slideshow hosted on Tumblr that Ripps created for the show..." Ripps created a Keynote presentation, hosted on Tumblr, six months prior to the Postmasters exhibit, for an Instagram Mini-Marathon in Los Angeles; it was not made for the Postmasters show.
2. Paragraph Two of the review takes several quotes from Ripps' Tumblr out of context. The original is self-mocking humor, channeling an archetypally masculine response to a fashion model's slick-but-tacky Instagram. Archey treats his male panic as if it were real.
3. "[Ripps'] term ['corny-core'] clearly rides on the coat-tails of K-Hole’s neologism 'norm core,' [sic] shortlisted for the Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year in 2014." Corny isn't the same as norm-y. This is a gratuitous dig and should be removed.
4. "'I decided to hire Jeff Koons’s assistants to paint the pieces.'" Archey quotes Ripps here. A fact-checker call to Koons' studio would probably determine this to be a joke that Archey missed.
5. Ripps also cites Thomas Hart Benton (a notorious homophobe) and the abstract expressionists, but none of these grab-bag references seem evident in the work itself." Why mention Benton's "homophobia" if the subject is misogyny? This dig should be removed.
5. "It’s impossible to write about this show without mentioning the hullabaloo surrounding it." Frieze often reviews shows without discussing previous work by the artist. The "hullabaloo" originated with a smear campaign against the artist by the website Art F City, not really worth repeating.
6. "Ripps is internet hipster royalty, having created the image-sharing messageboard dump.fm and founded the advertising agency OKFocus." Some more examples establishing royalty would be helpful.
7. "Ripps posted images of these sex workers and an artist statement, claiming that their sexual exploitation was symbolic of his own, considering himself underpaid by the Ace." This refers to the earlier "hullabaloo." Ripps' documentation doesn't use the words "exploit" or "exploitation."
8. "Ripps writes in his online slide show, 'as Adrianne Ho is the real winner, with more followers than me.' As if the artist’s actions were null because Ho has more Instagram followers, because that’s what really matters." Again, this takes a joking statement literally, changing its meaning.