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this just in - painting nixed
Post #447 • January 6, 2005, 2:39 PM • 58 Comments
Artblog.net wishes to congratulate the South Florida Cultural Consortium on eliminating every painter in Miami-Dade and Broward counties from its competition for the 2005 Visual & Media Artists Fellowships.
I was just saying something about shirking responsibility to play ball with everyone, wasn't I?
2.
January 7, 2005, 12:57 AM
I'm glad I didn't apply for this. How was the application process? There is nothing that beats the feeling of a well written rejection letter. I wish they would just come out and say:
"Thanks for wasting your time producing this carefully packaged application. We are not really into paintings on canvas anymore. But If you perchance could make an amateurish video of yourself kicking yourself in the ass and reapply next year, a little birdie told me we might just throw you the little moldy crumb that it refused to eat. Have a nice day, and thanks again"
3.
January 7, 2005, 3:10 AM
I made a amateurish video of me kicking myself in the ass and did not win,,, maybe I should have been painting while kicking myself in the ass,,,, maybe if you showed some balls at one point in any of your lives,,, you might change something,,,, bunch of whiners
4.
January 7, 2005, 3:30 AM
It takes balls to be a painter right now, wise guy.
And if you are the one who wrote that inane "Mission Statement" in your web site you ought to be kicking yourself in the ass.
5.
January 7, 2005, 4:33 AM
I can't imagine how anyone could think painting is nixed! Painting gets more airtime then any other art form today - it's difficult to deny. Regardless, how could you even give money to artists based on work? Who is capable of deciding this anyway? It's horrible, all Miami artists should get $100. Done.
6.
January 7, 2005, 6:14 AM
suppose . . . maybe all the painting entries sucked?
7.
January 7, 2005, 6:16 AM
. . . would it then be responsible to say "painting nixed" ?
or would it just be sour grapes? Oh I know - the panels awarding the prize wern't connoiseur enough?
8.
January 7, 2005, 6:29 AM
Oldpro: True, a lot of people felt compelled to deny Munson's points. Myself, I took it to mean she bothered them, she got through to such an extent they became animated. A similar thing happened when Franklin posted his remarks about not thinking as part of the response to wonderful art. A lot of meat scares some folks. The opposition in both these cases seemed to be running as scared as they were running hard.
9.
January 7, 2005, 6:34 AM
(Oldpro - He may have been referring to Rodney Graham's City Self/ Country Self [video of the artist "kicking himself in the ass"] and Bruce Nauman's Black Balls [video of the artist ... uh ... never mind].)
10.
January 7, 2005, 7:18 AM
i hear you Hovig
11.
January 7, 2005, 7:48 AM
I know the work of Oquet and Rifas, but who are Lisandro Perez-Rey and Matthew Schreiber, or rather, what sort of work do they do? Also, are these grants for artists within a certain age range or at a certain stage in their career?
12.
January 7, 2005, 7:57 AM
Lisandro does documentaries. Schreiber's a hologram / baseball card artist type ala Kovin. google produces some priceless imagery. Make sure your sitting down when looking at this stuff Jack it's pretty intense, and bring a sick bag with you, a large stainless steel bowl would also suffice.
13.
January 7, 2005, 8:03 AM
I'm am curious to know why "it takes balls to be a painter". For the record, I'm purely interested in the meaning of that statement and am not "breaking your balls".
14.
January 7, 2005, 8:18 AM
Franklin's inference is that painting was diregarded on unstated ideological grounds. Based on my own experience (not sour grapes, not whining, just a judgement from observation) this is quite possible in the present climate.
Lets look at the facts. The competition is open to all "professional" artists, meaning just about anyone who calls him or herself professional. We don't know how many artists submitted, but for $15K we have to assume it is substantial, certainly at least 200 and i would guess more like 500 or a thousand. Or more? Let's take a conservative 300.
We do know that 9 artists won grants. Now, as Chad, above, pointed out, there is no shortage of painting being done. Most visual artists are painters. I think we can assume that most of the submissions were painting. I think half would be conservative. That is, 150 painting submissions. There will also be sculpture, video and other types of art as well of course, but I think I can safely assume that painting will be by far the largest category.
If my figures are even close, this means that the panels were unable to find, out of nine awards to be given, any worthwhile entries in a category which comprised ca. 150 objects and half the submissions.
it may be, as someone suggested, that all the painting was rotten. But judging from the numerical disbalance and very trivial nature of some of the work of the winners I would say that this is quite unlikely. Therefore the supposition that the categorical rejection is ideological in nature is hardly far-fetched.
Of course my estimates may be completely off, and I would be pleased to hear from someone who knows the precise figures. In the meantime I am inclined to agree with Franklin. If it is true it is scandalous and would require an immediate reform of the awards system
15.
January 7, 2005, 8:22 AM
Candy:
i think the meaning is clear from the nature of the discussion.
Why don't you ask Carlos what he means by "show some balls"?
16.
January 7, 2005, 8:41 AM
Chad - beats me, man. I thought we were undergoing a painting resurgence as well, but go tell it to the panels. This kind of supports my idea about institutions tending to get it wrong...
Use your head, SSM. Do all the examples of any medium down here between Dade and Broward counties suck?
Alesh - "wern't connoiseur enough"? Are we having a bad day? And wouldn't a few sour, grape-flavored thoughts occur to you if they gave out nine $15,000 awards between Dade and Broward counties and none of them went to photographers?
Catfish - yep.
Hovig - I'm working up a theory that you can't parody sufficiently bad art. I have to file those as examples.
Jack, Guy - to be fair, Mark Koven does lenticular photographs, not holograms, and Schreiber's work didn't look sick-making so much as banal.
Oldpro - the letter reports "nearly 300" applications from five counties, and gives no other numbers. Your analysis ought to answer Candy's question at least in part, and I would suggest whoever thinks this is mere sour grapes on the part of the painters to think about this situation like a statistician for a minute. We're talking 0/9 for the big counties and 1/11 overall. You don't have to consult NASA to see something wrong with those numbers.
17.
January 7, 2005, 3:35 PM
Oldpro~
I think your calculations should factor in this: 90%-99% of the painters in florida are Bob Ross style sunday landscape/still life painters. Not crap per se, but irrelevant in terms of contemporary art.
Franklin~
A bit, yes. But "shirking responsibility to play ball with everyone", and "Artblog.net wishes to congratulate the South Florida Cultural Consortium on eliminating every painter" it sounds . . . accusatory.
You Guys make it sound like there should be reserved spots for painting in the grant. By the way, I don't think there ARE any photographers in the list of winners. But I don't think this is about painters vs. photographers vs. sculptors.
18.
January 7, 2005, 4:31 PM
alesh: I don't believe Franklin is accusing anyone --it's about representation of media. And with ratio of painting to other media in South Florida the results seem odd.
OP: Let's call it nerve instead of balls.
Imagine, for fifteen thousand dollars Karen Rifas can buy a top-of-the-line rake and a lifetime supply of lawn bags!
19.
January 7, 2005, 4:31 PM
True, a lot of people felt compelled to deny Munson's points. Myself, I took it to mean she bothered them, she got through to such an extent they became animated. A similar thing happened when Franklin posted his remarks about not thinking as part of the response to wonderful art. A lot of meat scares some folks. The opposition in both these cases seemed to be running as scared as they were running hard.
You trying to bait me, oldpro? : ] Shoot, I'm here. As for the quote, I don't have much comment on it. She professes to like the 1960s NEA better than the 1990s NEA. For one thing, she wasn't there—and it's easy to discount the controversies of the previous generation. (Minimalism certainly stuck in lots of folks' craws.) But more importantly, Munson can't distinguish her own preferences from what she identifies as objective criteria for the "best" artists. As she has herself indicated, she disapproves of Mapplethorpe et al. for their content and ascribes their receiving grants to a pervasive, liberal, PC agenda. But the NEA remained a consistent body throughout: If the NEA had not chosen the artists that they chose, they would have had to choose someone else, and if Munson's criteria were observed—keep choosing someone else until you select an artist that Munson likes—they would have skipped over a great number of the best artists of the 90s.
20.
January 7, 2005, 4:57 PM
Gee Kriston, you accuse oldpro of baiting you, but you quote me. Just who is the demon here? Me or him or you?
21.
January 7, 2005, 5:10 PM
AFAIC, Charo and Nolan are painters. Get your facts right. Some of these are multi-media artists, not painting advocates.
22.
January 7, 2005, 5:18 PM
Alesh:
99% of the painters who apply for consortium grants are not Bob Ross types. I say this with certainty based on jurying hundreds of local art shows all over the country for many years. For some reason the Ross/Kinkade thing is much less in evidence than work by artists who are using some method or style they think is advanced and usually comes out of the art mags or art school, and that will be more true for the Consortium, which calls for "proferssionals". I wish I had the evidence at hand, or first-hand experience to back it up. Maybe someone out there does.
Barbi:
Carlos is the one who brought up balls. And I meant more courage and determination than nerve.
Kriston:
Yes, as catfish points out, that creates confusion. So does the rest of your post.
Bait you? I have no interest in that. I merely said what I tconsider to be true. Did you think I was kidding?
Your discussion of Munson is muddled. Whether you agree with her or not she is citing facts to support a premise. No doubt she would not have liked some of the artists the Geldzahler panels picked, but that is beside the point. She was not comparing artists, she was comparing procedures.
"The NEA remained a consistent body throughout" is misleading; it is nominally true, of course, but the difference betweeen the Hanks NEA and succeeding incarnations has been the subject of all kinds of discussion and panels and interagency fuss for a generation now.
I was on a number of these panels in the late 70s, and I was very familiar with their operation in the late 60s. The degradation and politicization that was taking place even then was palpable. This is what happens to political process when leadership is weak. It has little to do with art per se.
23.
January 7, 2005, 5:27 PM
AFAIC, anyone who characterizes this and this (scroll to bottom) as painting needs to get his head checked. My facts are straight.
24.
January 7, 2005, 5:33 PM
Oquet does photography, among other things, though I don't know what work she submitted for consideration. From what Back Row Guy said, I take it Schreiber does a version of photography also.
I'm sure few if any of the painting submissions consisted of "traditional" landscapes and still lifes, Alesh, but be that as it may, to say that such subject matter is "irrelevant in terms of contemporary art" is a reflection of your personal views, to which you are entitled. I can assure you that such a view, however, is irrelevant to me.
25.
January 7, 2005, 5:34 PM
Elvis:
Get your own facts straight. I don't know what AFAIC is, but the other two make 3D or installation work.
If you want to post here, please be clear and accurate. Otherwise everyone runs around making corrections and the discussion bogs down.
26.
January 7, 2005, 6:01 PM
The work linked by Tommy Nolan is a sculpture, but most of his work falls between drawing and painting. And is pretty damned great, I might add.
27.
January 7, 2005, 6:16 PM
catfish: You're right, I mistook you for oldpro. Apologies all around. But I did take your comment to be a leading one, catfish. "[A] lot of people felt compelled to deny Munson's points"--really? Introduce me to them. . . .
oldpro: AFAIC = "as far as I'm concerned"
I don't want to spend so much more time debunking LM--I'm interested in the larger questions about what I perceive to be anti-academic/intellectual backlash pervasive among certain art communities. I'm no expert on the nuts and bolts of each NEA/NEH administration, and if the point is to determine the greatest arts facilitative organization, I may not be of much help. But on the censorship and aesthetics tip: I'm reading a book on the 90s NEA kerfuffle called The Scandal of Pleasure by Wendy Steiner that I recommend (so far). If I get a moment to post some thoughts on it, I'll let you know--I emphatically endorse her take.
28.
January 7, 2005, 6:18 PM
Links, Alesh, I need links. Let me add here that my feelings about the work of the recipients are a side issue - the main one is this 0/9 business.
29.
January 7, 2005, 6:45 PM
Let me add here that my feelings about the work of the recipients are a side issue - the main one is this 0/9 business.
But isn't the work of the recipients the only issue? If these are 9 awful video installations, you have a case for complaint. But that they're 9 non-paintings does not strike me as compelling. There is no reason why painting ought to be promoted if there are 9 better works under consideration.
30.
January 7, 2005, 7:23 PM
You're absolutely right, Kriston, if there are 9 better works under consideration. We'll never know, but again, the math doesn't look good. Let's say that Oldpro's right that half of the applicants are painters. Let's say that the two big counties represent 3/4 of "nearly 300" applicants: 275. Let's say for the sake of argument that a third of the best 10% are painters - 9 out of 27 (which sounds low to me), and that the top 10% is fairly homogenous in quality. Now you have to pick 9 of them to receive awards. All things being equal you'd expect 3 painters, maybe 2, not one guy (Tommy Nolan) who seems to identify with sculpture but may have also applied with work that "falls between drawing and painting" (while I have no reason to doubt Alesh's assessment of it as pretty great, panels generally refuse artists on reflex when they see a lot of variation in the work), and really not zero.
If winners were selected out of the top 10% at random, you could say that painting just had a bad day at the races. But people in New York sat down and culled the list. If it were the Olympics, the commission would be all over this.
31.
January 7, 2005, 10:50 PM
I don't think any commission would be all over this. If you had either accurate numbers or an indication that the winning submissions are of low quality, you might have reason to make what strikes me as a very inflammatory accusation. As it stands, neither of your assumptions (the candidate set was heavily weighted toward painting/drawing submissions; the selected candidates are likely undeserving) have any a priori basis and indicate confirmation bias on your part.
32.
January 7, 2005, 10:52 PM
Would be interesting to know just what Nolan submitted. A lot of people slant a submission (or whore it completely) toward what they think the jurors want. So much game-playing. God, these competitions are so stupid. You go to the shows and they're so predictable and herd-like.
33.
January 7, 2005, 10:56 PM
Thanks, guys for setting elvis straight.
If I am to understand correctly, from year to year these things can take different bends depending on who sits as jurors as well as other factors.
If For example the year before, the concentration of recipients were painting or sculpture, then the next years concentration of awardees may be video. The only way to tell for sure is to go back and look through the years of past recipients and see if it all evens out. Anyway I wouldn't get my panties all in a bunch just yet. I'm sure there will be more painting awards in the future.
34.
January 7, 2005, 11:12 PM
If For example the year before, the concentration of recipients were painting or sculpture, then the next years concentration of awardees may be video.
I definitely think this is a criticism that applies to many facets of the art world—galleries, juries, curators.
35.
January 7, 2005, 11:57 PM
Criminy, 3/4 of 300 is 225, not 275. You know you're reading an artblog when you make a gaffe like that and no one catches it.
Did somebody say "inflammatory accusation"? Good. I want somebody to think really goddamn hard about their tastes in light of the fact that Dade and Broward doled out $135,000 to artists and just happened to exclude everyone who is solely committed to painting. Confirmation bias, my ass.
36.
January 8, 2005, 12:21 AM
Kriston:
Let's be accurate about suppositions. Neither I nor Franklin ever said that we had all the facts and figures. All we have is a political climate and a suspicious circumstance. if we made a habit of using every excuse in the world to explain away suspicious curcumstances we would be in for deep trouble is every area of life.
If there is deliberate exclusion of a traditional art form on that basis alone then the panels are deliberately corrupting the process and should be reformed. Maybe it is not possible to determine this, but if i were managing this competition I would certainly at least look into it. It is too unusual not to, whatever the outcome.
37.
January 8, 2005, 1:26 AM
Just as an interesting sidelight to this discussion, I have been told that when the Art Dapartment at the University of Miami was offered gallery space during Art Basel to show a large number of works by faculty, ex-faculty, students, alums and anyone else involved with the department over the years, that out of approxiamtely 20 artists represented, one, an alumnus, was a painter. This means that all student and faculty painters and all but one alumnae/alumni painters, dozens of whom, (including the proprietor of this blog), are living, working and showing in Miami, were overlooked.
This simply could not have been accidental.
38.
January 8, 2005, 3:39 AM
Why do schools even bother to teach painting any more if no galleries ever show it, museums want it, competitions judge it? Has it just become a moneymaking scam? Think of all the figure painting workshops many of us have taken. Why? Why?
Seems strange if a show supposedly for southern florida couldn't find any painter from 2 of the most populous areas (assuming my geography lesson from the elections has not yet faded). I'm assuming you're not all a bunch of retiree watercolor cat painters.
Perhaps someone should ask for a recount...
39.
January 8, 2005, 4:26 AM
Fresh paint:
i assume by your moniker & message that you are a painter.
It is more complex than it seems. there are, in fact, more painters than anything else. The market favors painters, partly, of course, because you can put a painting on the wall. The people who are "against" painting do so to encourage what in their view are more vital, new and progressive art forms. These people have graduated from art schools and PhD programs which are heavily under the influence of a previous generation of 60s radicals who are in turn heavily influenced by their own backgrounds, by Marxist ideologies and by postmodernist philosophy. Like all radical Marxist/postmodernist thinkers they have little patience with anything they feel stands in their way. For them, everything is political, and if they can influence a process to get what they want - such as a distribution of public money for art - they will do so any way they can. These people are no more representative of our customary system of values than are the extreme religious right at the other end of the political spectrum whom they so closely, and ironically, resemble.
I know this is very general and I know it sounds "conservative". I was a flaming iconoclast when I was a kid too, but I learned from watching the ones who dd not choose to grow up that, as the song says: the fundamental things apply, as time goes by.
Keep on painting.
40.
January 8, 2005, 6:05 AM
i'm not up on the conversation, so this may be irrelevant. but the Tommy Nolan links:
http://www.msg-inc.org/tnolan/Chair%20painting.html
http://www.msg-inc.org/tnolan/school%20desks.html
you'll just have to take my word for the fact that this is some of the stuff that really really suffers from the move to web. it's pretty spectacular in person.
41.
January 8, 2005, 6:37 AM
the desks are not half bad but he chairs should be rethought.
42.
January 8, 2005, 9:26 AM
Here's something interesting reguarding the grant - a lesson perhapes? On Thursday Jan. the 6th when I went to the govmt. center to pick up a painting I also decided to pick up my application packet for the Cultural Consortium Grant. This packet included a disk of images which where submitted in replacement of the slides which I have used as visual support the other two times I've applied. The light haired guy at the desk on the fifth floor, (nice guy), dug through piles of return envelopes and boxes of slides and disks, ( they asked for them as a replacement for slides this year, and to accomodate multi-media art). My stuff was found accept for the disk - I was number D14. When he found the box which should have contained my disk of paintings, ( all j-peg files with the 620 x 480 consistant size requirement ), the numbers jumped from D13 to D15. He loked through stacks of rejections for close to ten minutes, then went into another room and brought back a small box with my image disk. He grabed it, looked at it, and read to me the text written in blue pen on a small white sticker pasted to the translucent disk cover, ' COULD NOT OPEN. ' The guy at the desk on the sixth floor of the govmt. center looked at me as I seathed in bewildered amazement and said, " oh well, you live and you learn - better luck next year
! " I left the buiding and walked to the car with my stuff that had been sitting in a separate box since October ! What was wrong?
The disk images were shrunk to format as j-pegs using photoshop eight, formated at MIU, reviewed on a C.O.W. in front of an audience and opened in three different computers !
Oh well, I most-likely would'nt have recieved a grant even if the images of my paintings were viewable. LESSON: send slides !
43.
January 8, 2005, 11:44 AM
Thanks Jordan.
I've been seething about this since I found out how this works. I'm too emotional to be coherent, so let me number my thoughts; this way I'll be as clear as i'm able to be on this topic:
1) This grant is not free money. It's OUR money. The panelists i suppose are volunteers (?), and should be thanked, but there are STAFF people who are in charge of setting the rules and taking care of the technical requirements. Those STAFF people are people who's salaries YOU pay, to fairly distribute YOUR money.
2) At one time (maybe), slides were the best way to show your artwork to someone in a neutral way. In the days of computers, that is no longer true. Digital images are ten times easier to look at then slides, a hundred times easier to create, and some number X more accurate then slides. For certain applications maybe slides are still better then digital files, but i couldn't tell you what those are... for something like evaluating artwork for grant purposes it seems obvious that a digital file is better.
3) The CC grant application claims that the decision process is neutral re. slides/digital images.
4) The CC grant decision process SHOULD BE neutral re. slides/digital images. That's fair to both new media/young artists and traditional old-school artists.
5) There is no reason NOT to be neutral re slides/gigital images.
6) The CC grant decision is not, not, NOT neutral. I've heard this from all sorts of people, and Jordan's anecdote is just the umpteenth confirmation. Mostly the word is that CD's either did not get looked at at all, or that they were looked at under inferior circumstances, and with some degree of contempt.
7) The STAFF failed to have a technologically competent person around to look at images that caused problems. I believe that was in a large number of cases, and, as with Jordan's example, had more to do with county equipment issues than with the artist's CD's. Any reasonable competent quasi-computer geek could open 99% of the CD's they got. The STAFF in charge of administering the grant FAILED to have such a person around.
8) And most of all . . .what the FUCK is up with 720 x 480?!? Are they looking at images on a fucking TV set?? The crapiest, cheapest, digital projector in the WORLD works at 800 x 600, and most of them are higher resolution then that, and ANY image projection program can downsample. They should be fired, or at the very least ASHAMED for daring to put in print the suggestion that artists submit a 35mm slide (approximately 12 megapixels of data) OR a 720x480 file ( . . . what, a quarter of a megapixel?).
9) "If you were a serious artist you would make slides." I'm not buying this argument for the reasons above. Slides are an outdated technology. The gallery system can hold on to the outdated technology if it wants to , and it may be able to force artists to conform. But OUR government, in awarding TAXPAYER money, does not have the right to boss us around like that for capricious reason. Especially not when they claim that they do not require slides.
Sour grapes? Maybe. Look . . . i didn't expect to win the CC grant this year. I'm new to the game, my work is not at it's peak, it's my first time applying; whatever. But I DID expect to be given a fair shot. I could have afforded to make slides of my work; I DIDN'T because the grant application led me to believe I didn't need to, and I honestly felt I could produce digital files that more closely represented my work then a 35mm slide could have. There are technical issues that make a good slide more difficult to create then a good digital file. But consider also the cost of a 35mm camera, slide film (enough to bracket!!), developing (not cheap!), mounts, the mounting, etc. Compared with the cost of shooting digital this is asking poor artists to jump through hoops before they can beg for money. Franklin touched on the cost of slides awhile back:
http://www.artblog.net/?name=2004-02-27-08-18-meatmarket
44.
January 8, 2005, 5:22 PM
Alesh, When the application said that the CC would allow slides in lieu of prints, I first thought, excellent, they've joined the millenium. Then I saw the 720x480 format and thought, uh oh, they don't know what they're doing yet. That size, of course, is monitor resolution, which won't compete with slide quality unless they forget to put the shades down in the projection room. So I sent slides and got rejected because I just paint on flat rectangles of canvas fair and square.
I thought I had a shot this year because they selected me as a finalist last year, but I shouldn't have entertained that thought - the system has no memory. Those images of Tommy's work qualify as painting in my book; again, we don't know if he applied with them, but if so it does imply that the only way to get painting through this year was to do it on a sculptural object.
Jordan, if you haven't already, go over to school and see if you can open that disk on a Mac. If not, you may have burned it as PC-only instead of universal. Send a bill for $15,000 to Bill Gates.
But regarding your lesson, the CC can forget about my ever sending them slides again. They can reject me on the basis of a 35-cent disk that I can prep and burn myself in 15 minutes instead of ten slides that I have to, well, you all know what you have to do to make slides and how much it costs. And if that reduces my chances, well, my chances don't seem to be all that great right now, do they?
45.
January 8, 2005, 6:27 PM
Jordan, I'm hardly a computer whiz (not even close), but if it can be established with reasonable certainty that your CD was not somehow defective or misprogrammed, and that the Consortium people SHOULD have been able to open it, what happened is absolutely unacceptable. At the very least, if they simply couldn't figure out how to do it, they should have e-mailed you immediately so you could address the problem in time to be duly considered by them. This seems to have "Formal Complaint" written all over it. You don't have to call them inept and insensitive assholes; just be very cool and professional about it, like you're just bringing a problem to their attention so it doesn't happen again. Still, I feel really badly for you and anybody else in the same boat, as I expect yours was not the only such case.
46.
January 8, 2005, 6:53 PM
dang it! I missed the post where you really did the math:
http://www.artblog.net/index.php?name=2003-09-21-21-40
nice one, there.
I said the same thing when i saw their "suggested resolution", as i think it was put. I sent them 6 meg tiffs. In case they're wondering, that would be what I would suggest if I was in charge of the technical side of this - small enough to load pretty fast, large enough to zoom in a bit if you want a closer look at something, and accurate.
One caveat to my rant above is that . . . . . . I think the high-res projectors have a resolution of 1024x786 or something, which is still pretty crappy compared to a good slide-projector setup. Since it's 10 people in a room looking at stuff together (apparently they go VERY fast), they have some sort of a case to make for the slides. But the application should be clear on that.
There's a word I like to use here: capricious.
47.
January 8, 2005, 8:36 PM
There is another word which applies here: Action, as I mention on the next page. Do something about it!
48.
January 8, 2005, 8:49 PM
This is how jurying from slides happens:
1) Phase one. Take out of package and hold up to light while still in sleeve. Reject if doesn't look like preconceived idea for show else place in pile 1
2) Load into projector backwards and view in well-lighted room so you can make those big black marks across the reject box on the application or word "reject" in indelible sharpie on border while placing giant thumbprint on face of slide itself
3) Did I mention that the projector itself was purchased from Sears in 1972 and has never had dust removed from any part of it?
4) Did I mention that the screen is actually a wall covered with pinholes and what appear to be rodent gnawings some bright student has played connect the dots with in black sharpie?
5) Send rejected slides back in 3 months, guaranteeing they can't get be reused for The Big Competion in time, so you are forced to spend more $$ and time to get bad dupes.
etc. etc.
So spare me piousness about exellence of emulsion film resolution. A CD costs 3 cents plus cost of mailer.
49.
January 8, 2005, 10:25 PM
This is amusing, Fresh Paint, and maybe true, but you guys got to stop bitching and take action. It should not be that difficult, First step: get a list of the applicants. There may well be some other pissed off people there.
50.
January 9, 2005, 9:39 AM
yeah, lets take action! lets find other pissed off people and wallow in our sorrows. that'll fuel future art-blog discussions; thanx for showing what art does best: preach to the choir! in any case, some paintings to fawn over are those of claudia's, on view at dorsch gallery. FUCK just making something beautiful and expecting viewers to understand the process through which it was made! nice work claudia, especially in respect to the exclusion/separation of the subject matter. not much else to talk about concerning the wynwood saturday openings, except for maybe seeing the paris hilton video for the first time at locust...more of that preaching to the choir but still entertaining for about 4 minutes.
do more.......make art and talk to strangers.
p.s. old pro seems more old than pro. not a personal attack just an observation based on your comments on our artist statement at msg-inc.org; that statement is a lot of things and i don't think you even really read it. if you did, read it again & leave the judgmental crap to the side, maybe you'll hate it or love it more. unlikely but constructive, right? maybe.
anyway, where can i see your work?
51.
January 9, 2005, 3:26 PM
Personally, I came the conclusion that for all the effort that I could put into reforming the appearance of bias out of the CC grant, I could probably make and sell $15,000 worth of art and do more for my career in the process. Screw it - my Lotto ticket didn't win this week either. Means nothing. (But I'm still not making slides for the CC again.)
I second Doing More's praise of Claudia Scalise's work. (And I rather like some of those Isabel Moros-Rigau photos at the link. Is that you?)
52.
January 9, 2005, 6:11 PM
Franklin:
I disagree.
Registering a formal complaint against an apparently inequitable process in which you and others you feel close to have been treated badly would not take that much time. Having made what appears to be a legitimate complaint in such a public way seems to me to almost obligate you.
Furthermore, blogs are coming into their own in every sphere if huma activity. You have what I consider the best art blog going or I would not waste my time on it. Being instrumental in righting a wrong would be a big feather in your cap.
Doing more:
I don't understand your response. Obviuosly I am not suggesting further wallowing but just the opposite: doing something about it. Weren't you the one talking about "having balls"?
53.
January 10, 2005, 4:27 AM
Fresh Paint: Schools still teach painting for subcultural reasons that began when advanced thinking was neo-capitalist, but nonetheless remain valid in these postsemantic times. It is a paradox of narrativity in which narrativity can at one and the same time be expressed and surpressed; painting "means" by "not meaning". There was a blog recently here on artblog that explored that very phenomenon, except the discourse was about "thinking" and "not thinking". Neodialectic narrative is entirely consistent with mythopoetical totality, or the "clicking" that Catfish talked about. Painting embodies mythopoetical totality in a gender neutral, culturally positive fashion. So it is worth teaching. And it is taught.
54.
January 10, 2005, 4:57 AM
Here is simpler way to look at painting, Fresh Paint. In my studio, painting rules; on the blog, anything goes.
55.
January 10, 2005, 5:52 AM
young flatboy: Neodialectic narrative is entirely consistent with mythopoetical totality, or the "clicking" that Catfish talked about.
Somehow I feel my name has been taken in vain, even though I can't really disagree with anything you said, flatboy.
56.
January 10, 2005, 6:14 AM
Yeah, I'm glad you decided in favor of painting after all of that incoherent gibberish, Flat Boy. It usually works the other way around.
57.
January 10, 2005, 8:17 AM
Yeah flatboy, I couldn't disagree because I didn't understand what you were getting at. But you did seem to get what I had said about getting ones clicker clicked, though.
58.
January 10, 2005, 7:05 PM
FYI: Charo Oquet, one of the winners from Dade, won on the basis of installation work.
1.
oldpro
January 6, 2005, 11:15 PM
Yeah. Makes me feel warm all over.
Everyone has been on Lynne Munson's case about her "old-fashioned values" and "conservatism". But please read this excerpt, taken from a transcript of a lecture she gave as part of the Bradley Lecture Series at the American Enterprise Institute in November, 2000, as reprinted in the "Plain Talk" page of newcrit.org, and considerably expanded in her book "Art in an Age of Intolerance".
Please judge for yourself.
"It is worth pointing out that stylistically, the NEA's 1967 visual arts grantees had little in common. Grants went to artists working in a wide range of styles: second generation abstract expressionist painters, budding minimalist sculptors, artists reintegrating the figure into painting, and assemblage sculptors making art from junk. Art historian Irving Sandler, who served on a panel the following year, observes that "the heads of the NEA seemed to make sure that no single artist and no single tendency would control these panels." Even though some panelists would be more familiar with some communities of artists than others, no one was gunning for a particular style of work, or for a particular constituency--just for the best artists."