“Conservative, but still appreciated by people”

Via Sarah Douglas at ArtInfo: At the booth of Antwerp gallery Office Baroque is a small, highly realistic painting of New York Times op ed columnist David Brooks, by young American artist Matthew Cerletty, priced at $14,000. Ask gallerist Wim Peeters why on earth Cerletty would want to depict Brooks, who is as well-known for his right-leaning views as he is for his highly readable 2000 book Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There, and you’ll get a curious, yet strangely astute answer: “He wanted subject matter that is in line with the act of painting itself � conservative, but still appreciated by people.”