Invitation card and small poster by Nan Goldin for Scopophilia at Matthew Marks in 2011.

Donald Kuspit in “Nan Goldin. Tradition Envy“: “Writing about her series “Scopophilia,” which “pairs her own autobiographical images with new photographs of paintings and sculptures from the Louvre’s collection,” Nan Golding states that “desire awoken by images is the project’s true starting point. It is about the idea of taking a picture of a sculpture or a painting in an attempt to bring it to life.” That’s all very well and nice, but the Old Master sculptures and paintings she photographs don’t need to be photographed by her — or anyone else — to be brought to life, having already lived for centuries, not just in cultural memory, but in emotional memory, for they bring enduring meanings to life, which is why they will continue to live, long after Goldin’s photographs have died, along with the people she photographs, all emotionally shallow and undesirable and unlovable — the young unlovables of the youth culture (that is, of those arrested in their emotional and cognitive development, however physically developed and sexually active they may be) — rather than imaginatively reconfigured into mythical personae.”