Yesterday I came across an article written by Mat Gleason (via The Huffington Post) entitled
Twelve Art World Habits to Ditch in 2012. I hesitated whether or not it was something I wanted to share on my blog. Afterall, what do I know about the art world?
I am merely a tourist. Nevertheless, it piqued my interest and my funny bone and even though it is heavily coated in sarcasm and cynicism, I thought it was contraversial and a
good starting point for an interesting dialogue. It is with this goal in mind I share it with you today. Do you share any of his opinions? I hope you'll find the time to read and consider it and share your thoughts here.
"It is 2012, but in the art world it is often still 1966. Some of the
"traditions" underlying the business side of the gallery and museum
world date back decades. Don't let 'em fool you that they are hip. The
art world is a bunch of stubborn ninnies who learn to do things one way
and insist that things never be done a different way. Everyone has great
career advice for you that is current for 1979, or 1985 or 1994,
whatever year they broke into the art world -- that is the master plan
they insist everyone must follow; they assert you will not succeed
unless you, too, do things like they did back then. Understand two
things: The art world doesn't replace its dinosaurs, it gives them
retrospectives, and two, the first caveman who left the cave was the
first performance artist and nobody has topped him since. Here are 12
things about the art world that need to disappear for good.
Consignment
Painter Mark Kostabi's slogan sums it up "Ending Lending is Beginning
Winning". Artists have traditionally consigned artwork to galleries.
When the artwork sells, the gallery and the artist splits the sale
50/50. When the work does not sell, the artist gets the art back. This
is the way the game is played and it is ludicrous. In this scenario, the
artist literally loans the gallery collateral at no risk to the gallery
and with no interest on the loan. An alternate way of doing things
might be to imitate, oh I dunno, how about... the way every other
business on earth operates: The gallery should just buy the art from the
artist. How hard is that? If the gallery cannot afford it, either they
should find an artist who will sell them work for what they can afford
or they should get out of the gallery business, which they are not in if
they cannot afford to purchase inventory. Of course, this works in the
benefit of the gallery too -- you can mark up the work 200 percent if
you like. Buy 10 paintings for $100 each. Sell them for 20 grand each.
Academic Curators
The realm of the visual is inherently non-verbal. Academia is a
lecture-based system of auditory and linguistic learning. Pretty much
the polar opposite of art. And yet here come the pinheads with their
Ph.D. theses (rhymes with feces) getting every damn thing wrong about
the art and making sure none of their presentation is enjoyable nor
accessible to people outside their peer group. Their ruse is the
implication that art is intellectual. Art is sensual. Academics are not.
Sleep with a few (your grad school professor is almost always willing)
and tell me I am wrong.
Marketers
Who gets paid first in the art world these days? Promotional idiots with
tired gimmicks and antiquated postcard mailing lists. The marketers are
taking the cream off the top of the art world latte. Marketers are
people who know nothing abut the creative process and feel happier
watching an episode of Friends than they do looking at new and exciting
work or having an interesting gallery space experience. Art is the
antidote to culture, not another client of the machine.
Paid Writers
Think about it. A painter struggles in his or her studio with a stack of
canvasses, tubes of oil paints and nothing but time. It is a romantic
vision we can all accept. It is also pretty much the only way that great
painting takes place. But ask an art writer to write about your art and
they want $3 a word. Where is the romance and pursuit of pure artistic
vision for the writer? Suddenly the slob at your opening is quoting
prices like your 401K advisor. Writers have become sharks because, like
the academics, people who are good with words either manipulate you with
them or exclude you from the discussion. Verbosity is often used as a
weapon to seize power in the arts, populated as they are by visual
learners and masters of non-verbal expression. Beware of the writer
whose desk has blank invoices in the drawer.
Charity Auctions
I ranted about this on the Huffington Post last year. Bottom line is the
price your art goes for at a charity event is the golden "what the
market will bear" amount. Do you want the world to know that in a
roomful of millionaires eager to support a good cause your donated
painting could not get a minimum bid of $50? And of course, if your
piece did not sell, don't expect the non-art non-profit hacks to know
how to handle and return it to you.
China
I can make a lousy painting today of George Bush performing a sexual act
with Barack Obama. Nobody is going to like it or buy it but nobody is
going to knock on my door tonight and take me away for painting it. Call
me when you have two billionaire army general art collectors bid up the
price on your painting of Hu Jintao having a threesome with Confucius
and Mao Tse Tung. Until then, you can let a thousand sub-par Thomas
Kinkades bloom -- it is the only way to stay out of jail.
Diploma Mills
Tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt used to at least get
you a diploma that led to a decent job. Those jobs are gone now. Long
gone. They are not coming back. No matter how prestigious the school and
how fantastic the program, MFA art programs are just a summer camp
experience with pretense and attitude. The art they produce is not
demonstrably better than art produced outside of academic dialogues.
Many people enjoy MFA programs. Cut-throat capitalist bankers at student
loan portfolio departments love them more than any student or faculty
member would ever realize, until it is too late...
Rules
There are too many of them. You do whatever you want. You can even be so
great that you actually achieve a complete and total failure. Then you
can make art. But you never have to follow any of the rules and anyone
who says you do... well he or she just hasn't failed enough to realize
this.
Experts
Art is subjective. There inherently cannot be experts.
Series
Artists are told to work in series. It is one way of doing things. To
posit that it is the only way or the best way is as dumb as saying every
painting should be 40 percent earth tones. Huh? Yeah, that dumb.
Reading Graffiti Art
Street art is the best abstract painting of the past 60 years.
Rationalizing one wall as somehow better because of individual
authorship (instead of innovative composition) misses the whole point.
Let's not take the people's medium against the power of property and
make it into another celebrity manufacturing game. Enjoy abstract
vandalism at its most beautiful without obsessing over who authored the
specific letters on the wall. And what is closer to the bottom of the
barrel: Street art gallerists, street art curators or street art
academics? On what sad date did aerosol spray paint become synonymous
with cotton candy?
Artists As Their Own Manager
You gotta do this, and you gotta do that, and most of all you have to
buy the art advice book on how you can make it on your own as an artist
by doing all of this stuff on your own. Advice is now an industry. Just
make the art and sell it for whatever it takes to get it out of the
studio and make more. Don't buy the book. It is probably rehashed if not
flat-out plagiarized from the other books. There is no blueprint for a
masterpiece and there is no blueprint for a successful art career. Like
Gandhi said, "What you do will not be important but it is important that
you do it." he didn't add "...so buy the overpriced book and DVD series
on how to succeed at doing that unimportant important thing."
Happy New Year to all the artists and art appreciators. Let's hope 2012
is a masterpiece in which all can exalt the fruit of the creative
process and ignore the pretense and hype."
by Mat Gleason - original article
here
Brave enough to respond? Hope so!
Sincerely,
Your not so politically-correct Canadian art tourist, (heh, I just copied and pasted it) aka don't crucify the messenger.
2
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On another note -
I came across these this morning as I sat down with my morning coffee to
approach a much avoided task of organizing and filing the hundred plus
images I have accumulated which all get plopped hastily into one generic
file. They share some similarities (pastel, filtered, tulle) but are
otherwise disparate in mood (celebratory versus sombre) To my eye they create an
amusing contrast to each other when placed side by side.
Mail Order Bride - 8 x 8 digital collage
Copyright 2012 TwoDressesStudio
All Rights Reserved
Image Credits in part with thanks to Holliewood Studios
Into the Light - digital collage
Copyright 2012 TwoDressesStudio
All Rights Reserved
