Art-o-Matic and Criticism

I am still avoiding a thorough discussion of the art until I can spend more time with the show. However, I want to talk about the uproar that has come from Blake's bashing and other's.

Is Art-o-Matic a serious art show or is it a festival/flea market for art? If the intent is for this to be a serious art show then how can people get so upset when it is criticized. Isn't that part of putting on an art show? We're comfortable with critiquing a gallery show at Numark Gallery. We're comfortable with critiquing the Dan Flavin show at the National Gallery of Art. What makes Art-o-Matic any different?

The organizers and proponents of Art-o-Matic can't have it both ways. You can't put on a serious art show and expect critics or some members of the public to hold their tongues. You either step fully into the fire or you stay far, far away from it. Critics know that art festivals are generally off limits for criticism. Festivals are nice community events. But serious art shows are held to higher standards. It's similar to the DCCAH's Panda and Party Animal art projects. If they are being positioned as serious art (which is implied by the DCCAH's support), then expect criticism and deal with it. If they are positioned as public art/touristy decorations, then no one will speak badly about the project.

Organizers and supporters of Art-o-Matic need to make a decision: is this a serious art show or not? If it is, be prepared to deal with criticism. Figure out how to combat the criticism and improve the show. If it is not a serious art show, then tell the public that the show is a lovefest. Say that it's a community festival. If you say that, and it is positioned as such, I would guess that Gopnik will back off.

The best way to get Gopnik to shut up, if that's what you want, is to improve the show to the point that he has nothing to complain about. Either that or tell him it's a community lovefest for the arts and that it doesn't fall under the art shows Gopnik should be critiquing. Maybe Art-o-Matic should be reported on in the Metro section of the Washington Post instead of the Style section.

Surely no one believes that Art-o-Matic is the best it can be.

Comments

[Joseph Barbaccia]

If Blake Gopnik wrote a piece about the show and he doesn't write about non-serious art, then I guess Art-O-Matic is a "serious' show. Of course, it's more than that. It's both and all and something else. Labeling it won't make it any better or worse. It's not easily pigeon holed and open to all kinds of interpretations. That's what i like about it.

I believe that most artists expected (even wanted) criticism, I certainly did. And by expressing themselves in return they are dealing with it. Did you think they would agree with Mr. Gopnik, accept the trashing and keep quiet? Would you?

[wwc]

My problem with Gopnik isn't that he dared to criticise the show - if I had reviewed it I too would have ripped into the tons of crap in there. He didn't actually review the show though - he dismissed the whole IDEA of a show like this, and did so without any real compelling argument. AOM is certainly not above any criticism, but it isnt below any either.

You hit it on the head - it's either a "serious" show or some kind of festival. Gopnik should have said what you just wrote and not put out a snobby dismissal.

[Jame W. Bailey]

Is Blake Gopnick possibly sending the art world a coded message about Artomatic 2004?

Anterograde Amnesia

Anterograde amnesia is a selective memory deficit, resulting from brain injury, in which the individual is severely impaired in learning new information. Memories for events that occurred before the injury may be largely spared, but events that occurred since the injury may be lost. In practice, this means that an individual with amnesia may have good memory for childhood and for the years before the injury, but may remember little or nothing from the years since. Short-term memory is generally spared, which means that the individual may be able to carry on a conversation; but as soon as he is distracted, the memory of the conversation fades.

It is now becoming apparent that while anterograde amnesia devastates memory for facts or events, it may spare memory for skills or habits. Thus, an individual with amnesia can be taught a new skill, such as how to play a game or how to write backwards. The next day, the amnesic individual will claim to have no memory of the prior session, but when asked to try executing the skill, can often perform quite well - indicating that some memories have been formed. It is an important area of current research to document exactly which kinds of memory can be formed in amnesia, and how this may be used to help rehabilitate amnesic individuals.

Is it possible that Mr. Gopnick suffered a severe trauma incident at Artomatic 2002 that has resulted in him being unable to form post Artomatic 2002 memories?

Is it also possible that Mr. Gopnick has formed the new ability to write backward and that his review on Artomatic 2004 was thus written backward?

I have taken the liberty, inspired by William S. Burroughs’ Word Cut-Ups method, and repositioned Mr. Gopnick’s paragraphs in what I believe to be their proper sequence: I have reversed the order from last paragraph first all the way through the document.

I believe Mr. Gopnick may be trying to send us all a coded message.

Hanging Artomatic 2004 Is Good for It, Too

By Blake Gopnik
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 11, 2004

Artomatic costs more than $100,000 to put on, drawing funds from the artists themselves as well as from the public and private sectors; it absorbs major gifts in kind and vast amounts of volunteer time; it gets plenty of media coverage and pulls in tens of thousands of visitors. And all the money and resources and attention that go Artomatic's way are, by definition, not going to serious art that needs a boost, and deserves a higher public profile. Artomatic isn't only good for nothing. It's bad for art that matters.

It's not as though we are a society that fiercely discourages the making of art, one that needs an Artomatic just to make sure anything gets made at all. More art schools turn out more trained artists every year, and they all have to compete for a slice of the same meager pie of patronage, funding and public attention.

What the District truly needs is more displays of carefully selected, quality contemporary art, so that local emerging artists -- and, just as importantly, their public -- would have more and better examples of how serious creativity can work. As things stand, too many local artists, as well as a few of our dealers, get attention they wouldn't get in any city where they faced some decent, savvy competition. The region needs its artistic bar raised another notch or two. Whereas Artomatic, of course, removes the bar entirely and invites anyone and everyone to stroll on in and strut their stuff.

Despite public perceptions, the art world isn't anything like a closed shop: Curators, dealers and critics are always on a desperate hunt for new makers of new kinds of art, and they'll take it absolutely anywhere they can get it. Well-known mid-career artists are the ones who tend to face neglect; the hot young things that no one's seen before are where the action is. I guarantee that anyone with talent who might be discovered at a show like Artomatic would have had a fine chance of being discovered anyway.

After all, there are already lots of institutions dedicated to finding and displaying novel talent in the arts. Several alternative and artist-run spaces in the Washington area -- DCAC, Flashpoint, Transformer and others -- consider almost anything that comes over the transom. Their organizers tell me that the problem isn't a surplus of submissions; programming tends to suffer because they have too few options to choose among.

There may be a remote chance that such a person has been laboring unrecognized in a garret somewhere in Washington and that only Artomatic could have coaxed him out of hiding. But it's about as likely as finding a genius cavity-filler lurking in our dental open house.

Real, worthwhile art, the kind that says something that hasn't been said a million times before, requires carefully honed, hard-to-acquire skills -- sometimes manual, always visual and intellectual. Almost all artists worth the time of day know what's come before them, understand what's being made around them, and then -- against the odds and with terrifically hard work -- manage, every now and then, to make an art object that can contribute to the larger cultural conversation.

But somehow, over several decades now, we've bought into the nutty idea that fine art matters so very little, and is such easy stuff, that everyone and anyone can make it. (Actually, the idea has disappeared almost entirely among the kind of art professionals and intellectuals who suggested it in the first place, around the turn of the last century. The idea of art-by-anyone at first met with stiff public opposition, even ridicule; I'm only sorry it finally managed to catch on.)

For almost the entire history of Western culture, art was not conceived as something just anyone could or should make. Imagine living in Renaissance Florence and telling one of your Medici pals that you were going to have the family altarpiece painted by Joe Blow the baker, who felt like giving it a try. It would have seemed a joke. An Artomatic would have seemed sheer lunacy. Ditto if you had lived in Rembrandt's Amsterdam, Gainsborough's London or the Paris of Monet. For most of the last 500 years, dentists have been seen as less professional a bunch than artists.

Or worse. A show like Artomatic, in theory organized and stocked by lovers and supporters of fine art, is actively insulting to all the genuinely talented artists who have managed the long slog to a professional career.

You'd think that the purpose of a public exhibition would be to give the public a fair chance of seeing interesting art. Or you might think that it could serve emerging artists, too, by giving them a chance to learn from the best work that's out there. But what useful purpose is served in showing work by anyone who wants to have it seen, however awful it may be? How can an art exhibition be counted as anything other than a dismal failure when it's so bad overall?

I don't blame the people who made this work, bad as it mostly is. This is, as they say, a free country, and if someone wants to mess around with art supplies at home, then only their nearest and dearest have the right to complain. It's the basic premise of this show that is so badly at fault.

There may just be a few decent things hidden in the mix -- with so many thousands of objects on display, the law of averages says there must be. But three hours' worth of looking didn't spot too many. Some of the glasswork looked all right. (Glass is such a gorgeous medium it's hard to screw it up, and you need some basic training even to begin to work in it.) There were a few political one-liners that had some heft. But with works hung pell-mell and cheek-by-jowl in every corner of five floors of shabby rooms and corridors -- lighted by fluorescent tubes and the cheapest clip-on floods -- anything good was bound to get obscured by mediocrity. There's not even an attempt to keep like works together, or to craft oases of somewhat more polished art.

I won't dwell on the art. And I certainly won't name names. No one needs to know who made the wallfuls of amateur watercolors, yards of incompetent oil paintings, acres of trite street photography and square miles of naive installation art that will be polluting this innocent old building for the next three weeks. There's something for everyone to hate. The rest are works only a mother could love.

The result is the second-worst display of art I've ever seen. The only one to beat it out, by the thinnest of split hairs, was the 2002 Artomatic, which was worse only by virtue of being even bigger and in an even more atrocious space, down by the waterfront in a vacant modern office building.

After all, it could hardly be more excruciating than this year's Artomatic, the fourth edition of the District's creative free-for-all, which opens tomorrow. Organizers have gotten about 600 local "artists" -- anyone who could ante up the $60 fee and 15 hours of his or her time, in fact -- to display their creations. They're on show in the sprawling, scruffy building in north Capitol Hill that once housed the Capital Children's Museum and several charter schools.

I'll be at the front of the line.

Here's a fine idea. Let's find an abandoned school and then invite local dentists to ply their trade, free of charge, in its crumbling classrooms, peeling corridors and dripping toilets. Okay, so maybe we won't get practicing dentists to come, but we might get some dental students, hygienists and retirees to join in our Happy Tooth festival. What the heck, let's not be elitists here: Why don't we just invite anyone with a yen for tooth work or some skill with drills to give it a go. Then we can all line up, open wide and see what happens.

MY WORDS:

Let’s not be too rough on Mr. Gopnick. Antereograde Amnesia can be terribly debilitating and frequently leads to a great deal of confusion when communicating with a person who has lost the ability to form new memories.

Sincerely,

James W. Bailey

[J.T. Kirkland]

Hi Joseph,

I am so glad that AOM proponents have raised such an uproar. I think that shows a real passion and that means something. However, the general response to Gopnik that I've heard thus far has been like Victoria's at DCArtNews:

"Blake Gopnik's review of Artomatic was so sensitive and insightful.

I'm looking forward to more.

What is he planning to take on next? - handicapped greeting card art? Nursing home poetry collections?"

Is she really connecting AOM artists to the handicapped and nursing homes? It comes off as, "Hey, we're doing the best we can. Please be nice to us!!"

What I want to hear is "I completely disagree with Gopnik's attack. However, we have room for improvement. What we have learned is ____, and we plan on addressing this next time by ____."

I think by aligning the AOM artists to the handicapped and nursing home residents does no one any good. It's as if the proponents feel that for some reason they should be excluded from the fire that every other serious art show has to deal with. More than likely I am generalizing here, but this is the impression I've gotten so far.

I also agree that I think AOM is in a tough position because it does fall in the middle. It's part serious art show and it's part lovefest. So my advice to all of those who have had their feelings hurt is to buck up cowboy. Stand tall and proud. Don't whine about Blake's harsh words. Instead defend this event with fact, figures, ideas and future plans!

I want to make clear that while I have problems with the management of the event and the way it is positioned, I think it IS the most important art-related event to take place in this city.

[J.T. Kirkland]

Warren -

Thanks for commenting. AOM is an all-volunteer event. It is bound to struggle at times with these types of things. And every participant feels entitled to speak for AOM. So, you get 600 different opinions about what the event really is. It's tough. I just believe that clarification is needed.

On another note, I viewed the show yesterday with two good friends of mine, both professional artists. One, who shall remain nameless, has been very successful lately with her art. I wanted to let you know that of the 600 artists in the show, she picked your drawings as her clear favorite in the entire show. I think being singled out like that is very special, especially when it is by this friend of mine whose opinion I value very much. I thought you'd like to know that!! Congrats!!

[wwc]

WOW! thanks! That does mean a lot - it's easy to get buried in there.

My opinion - I think the event is a love-fest festival and needs to be treated by the organizers, press and visitors as such - this ain't the NGA, that's for sure.

[Kriston Capps]

I think that Gopnik's point in dismissing the show, a correct point, is that there can't be a serious art show that is entirely democratic, i.e., open to any presenters who can muster the minimal registration fee. The art at Art-O-Matic is defeated by the presentation (or lackthereof), and I don't understand why people in DC who are seriously committed to aesthetics accept this show.

Much of the art indeed deserves serious comment—I think Amy Wilber Martin's work does not disappoint, for instance—but who cares? Art-O-Matic so thoroughly fails to provide a clear and demonstrative presentation of artwork that any and all the messages of the artists are buried. My screaming at you won't help you to understand my point; certainly 600 people screaming at you simultaneously doesn't help, either.

[Joseph Barbaccia]

Hey JT,

Artists put much of themselves into their product, as you know. More than an accountant or a facotry worker, I daresay. This makes questioning their work or profession in general, a bit more difficult to swallow. I am at fault with this aspect of the artists life as well, if you recall my posts concerning the OPTIONS show. (Remember that?) So that vitrolic that Victoria wrote is both understandable and lamentable. I hope she's feeling better after venting, I know I do.

Signed:

Sitting Here Waiting for My Word

[Kriston Capps]

Also, though, there is such enormous sentiment and frustration on behalf of DC artists for the DC media to treat local non-NGA/Hirshhorn/Corcoran events with respect that I doubt most AOM artists would agree to describe it as a lovefest. I imagine it was this outpouring that lead Gopnik to review it in the first place, in which case he was absolutely right to treat it to actual criticism.

[J.T. Kirkland]

Kriston,

I enjoy reading your posts a great deal. Please don't stop commenting here!

[J.T. Kirkland]

Joseph,

I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to come up with a great word for you. It'll come... I promise!

[Joseph Barbaccia]

OT

Art Joke

A CHAP walks into a pub and orders himself a beer.

He notices that Vincent Van Gogh is sitting on the next stall, and asks him if he wants a beer.

"No thanks," replied Vincent, "I've got one ear."

~J

[Jame W. Bailey]

Dear J.T.,

I'm starting to get a little nervous about you taking on these AOM artists! Please cool it down a bit until after Wednesday's opening reception for the League of Reston Artists Annual Juried Theme Exhibition: All About People...it would really put me in a pickle of a fix to explain to my board and membership, after I recommended you so highly as juror for this show, why you're not there because the FBI is canvassing the metro D.C. region looking for your missing person after you've been taken hostage by a bunch of rapid angry AOM artists and are being held in the basement of the AOM Compound being tortured for the purpose of forcing you to retract all of your perceived anti-AOM rants and proposals!

I'm really starting to think that a lot of artists have just plain lost their sense of humor! It reminds me of the conversations I've had before with some fundamentalist Baptist relatives of mine in Mississippi about whether the King James Version of the Bible is the inerrant word of God that contains every literal English word God meant to be in it or not.

Trying to get some of my relatives to intellectually recognize that English didn't exist in the 1st century A.D., and therefore, since the original Biblical language must have been translated by someone, a fallible person no doubt, there may just exist a slim possibility that there might be just one or two errors in the King James English version of the scared text.

I have long personally believed that God intended the Bible to be a comedic joke on humanity. In the right wing Christian circle, if they would stop trying to figure the truth of it out, and looked for the jokes in it instead, they might actually discover a deeper truth about it.

Blake Gopnick must be sitting in his Washington Post expense account paid room in Paris, waiting for a taxi to take him to the airport to fly to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, to celebrate yet another international art exhibit in print that the common folk back home will never get or understand, laughing his ass off about all this foaming at the mouth concerning his AOM review.

If his review was meant as a joke, which is a possibility, why aren't more artists getting it and laughing their asses off about it, too?

I am...I think it's one of his funniest pieces ever!

Sincerely,

James W. Bailey

[J.T. Kirkland]

James,

I'll do my best to stay safe!!

You bring up an interesting point about torture though. Did anyone else go through that building and feel scared? Exactly what was the purpose of some of those rooms in the building's past life? I'm not talking about art at all, people, so relax. Some of those rooms reminded me of the torture chambers you see on TV. Some were so small that you have to wonder what they could have been good for.

Just what went on in that place decades ago?

[wwc]

It was a convent and a children's museum and I agree it is scary. I went in a secret bathroom with a boxed up tub.

[J.T. Kirkland]

Holy crap! A convent? Built like that?

I too found that bathroom... truly scary. But the scariest was one room that was completely tiled. Nothing else of note in the 10' x 10' room except for a single drain in the middle of the floor! And I also found some old, very old freezers. At least that's what I think they were. AOM should have been a haunted house this year!!

[wwc]

I'm glad it didnt open on Halloween like
I heard the one did a couple years ago.

[michael batz]

i actually miss the halloween opening because it's hard to get annoyed
with all the bad art when you're walking around dressed up like an
eviscerated zombie.

in my opinion, gopnick was right on and unfair all at once. sure, most of
the art sucks, and sure since it's one of the biggest art shows in the city
it deserves a serious review, but why not instead focus on the buried treasures?
with 600 pay-to-play artists, who can possibly expect anything less than
torture when they step into art-o-graib? just because it isn't a serious
show doesn't mean there isn't any serious art in it - it's pretty obvious
that gopnick simply couldn't be bothered to seek it out.

[James W. Bailey]

Art-O-Matic, Inc. - A not for profit 501 (c) 3 idea.

Dear Mr. Batz,

I think you made some good points in your post and would like to follow up with some ideas of mine that I think intersect with yours in a certain respect.

In a previous post I have suggested that perhaps the time has come to organize Artomatic (AOM) as a separate not for profit 501(c) 3 organization.

The present organizational structure makes very little sense to me. For example, the AOM web site provides information on contributing to AOM, however, there is no information provided the AOM web site concerning the applicable tax deductibility of such contributions.

If financial contributions to AOM are not tax deductible, then that reality would be problematic in my professional opinion to building a stable base of financial support for AOM during its fiscal year.

I also think that by AOM incorporating as a 501(c) 3 it would allow for the organization to move toward greater independence through the solicitation of artist members who would provide a source of operational funding through artist membership fees. It would seem to me that the present bulk of the operational budget for AOM is already being provided by the participating artists, either in fees paid to exhibit, or by virtue of various in-kind contributions of time and materials.

If AOM were incorporated as a 501(c) 3, the Board of Directors of AOM might structure the next AOM as a judged or juried event featuring the artist members of AOM. With close to 1,000 artists participating in AOM 2002, and with over 600 artists participating in AOM 2004, it is quite obvious to me that there is a tremendous artist membership base of support for a not for profit 501(c) 3 version of AOM. I do not believe that a $60 membership fee to such a version of AOM would pose much of a bar to a potential artist member of AOM. It’s quite simple: If you are an artist who wants to participate in the organization AOM, as well as showing in the next AOM super event, pay a $60 membership fee and welcome aboard.

The AOM 2004 charged each artist $60 to be in the event. The $60 fee is just for the privilege of being in the AOM compound. After the event is over, it’s unlikely that most of the AOM participating artists are going to hear from AOM until the next incarnation of the event.

The $60 participation fee for AOM 2004 is slightly higher than most visual arts organizations in the region request as a fee from an artist to be an artist member of the organization. For example, I serve on the Board of a regional visual arts organization called the League of Reston Artists (LRA). Our membership fee is a ridiculously low $20! This $20 fee allows every artist member of the LRA who wants to take advantage of it a FREE web site page with an artist statement, image and hyperlinks to artist’s email address and web sites. In addition, the LRA this past year staged 14 exhibitions, half of which were members-only judged and juried events. The point that I am making is that our artist members are deeply involved in the LRA as an organization throughout the entire year. We don’t just communicate with them once a year to advise them of one major exhibition opportunity. We are involved in communicating with our members about opportunities and needs throughout the year.

An artist membership in a visual artist organization as the LRA usually lasts for one year. During that year of membership, the artist is invited to exhibitions and special events such as lectures, workshops, etc, notified of exhibition opportunities within the organization, as well as outside of the organization, solicited for financial support, and most importantly, asked to volunteer for ongoing projects. Perhaps the most important thing we do by staying constantly in touch with our artist members is to make them feel throughout the year that they are an important part of the success of the organization they belong to.

I think the current structure of AOM bars it from aggressively capitalizing on its greatest potential strength: the power, energy and enthusiasm among the past and present participating artists who are obviously passionate about being part of the AOM event.

I hope that the organizing partners of AOM will think this suggestion through after the close of AOM 2004. AOM is a terrific concept that has involved artists in this community in expressing themselves in an exciting way.

I do believe, however, that the time has come for AOM to mature and to structure itself as a truly independent organization. I believe that by becoming a not for profit 501(c) 3, that AOM would have unlimited potential to become bigger and better with its future events. I also think that a separate not for profit 501(c) 3 status would allow the organization to developed critically needed resources to sustain its operations on yearly basis.

AOM is already a super event. But, it needs a dedicated Board and staff functioning on a full-time year round basis to take it to the next level of its potential.

Sincerely,

James W. Bailey

[Ian Jehle]

In his review, Blake complains, "with works hung pell-mell and cheek-by-jowl in every corner of five floors of shabby rooms and corridors -- lighted by fluorescent tubes and the cheapest clip-on floods -- anything good was bound to get obscured by mediocrity."

I'm not sure if this is general knowledge, but Blake's tour of Artomatic took place on one of the installation days. I was on duty when he snuck in, believe it or not, wearing a trench coat and a fedora.

If Blake Gopnik had any intention of giving the artists a fair shake, he would have shown them enough respect not to critque their work before it had been fully installed.

[Elyse Harrison]

Hi JT,
Since it has taken until today for me to finally visit AOM, I was keeping up with all the commentary both here, on Lenny's blog and the Post's online commentary.

I think it's GREAT that we have so much dialogue going on.I think it represents the passion of our artistic community, however estranged we all feel at times.

Having visited all the past AOM's and having participated at AOM 2 (Hechinger's)I knew exactly what to expect and was excited to make the visit.

This is what happened when I reached the courtyard of the old Children's Museum: Happiness.

I could underscore much of what has already been said (which I strongly agree with)but instead I'm going to add something new. As an artist, some of my income comes from selling my work, and much of it has come from exploring the process of making art with young minds, children who are pulled towards their own creativity like a magnet. Exploring the creative spirit is intoxicating and potent.
In an event like Art O Matic,we see mirror images of who we are as creative people, how we imagine,how we declare our views. There is a freedom in place at Art O Matic which really magnifies that original urge to create. I looked around at the voices of my fellow creative comrades and felt Happiness. Felt Beauty. Felt Freedom. Felt Rage. Felt the permission we give to ourselves to be artistic. This is something many of us did as children too.

I know you may find this interesting, as I remember you telling me that art was basically absent from your own childhood. You may not be making any of these connections like I am.

I plan to visit several more times.

Best,
Elyse

[J.T. Kirkland]

Hi Elyse!

Although my childhood was largely, if not completely, without art, I made these same connections. While I have big complaints about the management and positioning of AOM, I really admire what it is for the artists who participate. It's a lovefest... a celebration. Although I quickly bored of looking at the art, I respected the energy and creative spirit that filled the halls and scary rooms.

I'm the type of person who is never satisfied. With that in mind, you can see why I think AOM could be so much more.

[Estefan Gargost]

When I as an Artist decide to make my Art public, I am also opening the door for criticism to flow in and out. The Artists in Art-O-Matic should have no complaints from Mr. Gopnik's criticism. If you are to take offense at what others have to say about your Art, then don't share it. Criticism allows us to grow. This criticism doesn't always come from outside but from within. Trust me, we all have a great many number of friends that in an attempt to maintain us in friendly terms they will tell us whatever it is we want to hear. If your friends tell you that they love everything you have, then they are not being honest. Personally, I do not enjoy all of Matisse’s work, or Picasso’s, or Rembrandt’s. When I visited Art-O-Matic I was unimpressed by a great deal of the work, and was pleasantly attracted to some of the work. Likewise, I don’t expect to have individuals love all that I create.

The question you should ask yourself as an Artist is this one: Do I paint for the sake of expression or to make a dollar? If your main, if not sole, interest is to strike it rich and gain recognition with your Art, then you’re touring the wrong sea, and criticism will leave a bitter taste in your mouth. If you create under the influence of creativity with your hands being guided by emotions, then criticism should never affect you.

Don’t get me wrong, you will not always create simply when creativity urges you. Oftentimes when commissioned to create artwork we will need to summon creativity when she hasn’t yet visited us. This is when technique and quality are most dire. And I believe that is where a great number of Artists seem to err most, for technique and quality should never be placed at a lower priority than inspiration and subject. When I look at art that is created utilizing media that are not compatible something in my chest sinks into a void. Just this past Summer (2004) I visited an exhibit on 14th Street, NW DC. The Artist had collaged magazine clippings unto a painting. I was consumed by the thought of the acid from the magazine photos seeping into the acrylic paint, or the fact that those images will fade long before the rest of the painting will (and I mean at least hundreds of years of difference). This made me wonder how much the artist knew about the media she chose. Was she intending to have her artwork transcend her mortal life, or was it expression with the intent of being temporary. And then I start wondering if the buyer who just spent a great deal of money on one of these pieces will know that in 10 years or less there will be significant, and obvious, deterioration on the color and quality of the images.

Art doesn’t always have to say something, nor does it have to last forever. Art does not need to be attractive or pleasant to all. Yet the art we create should allow the viewers, whether a connoisseurs or not, to feel that we respect that which we create. They must be able to see that we understand the media we choose. They must feel that we are being honest in the product we present, and that they will not be disappointed with its quality as time goes by.

While Art-O-Matic was not teeming with art that met even the minimum standards of a curator or an art critic, such as Mr. Gopnik, it did have art worth seeing again, and even following the artists as they evolve. We should always respect others’ understanding of art as well as their criticism.

[James W. Bailey]

Dear Mr. Gargost,

I offer the following comments with great respect, sir:

Must – Should – Should Always – Should Never - Never – Does – Does not – Don’t: Whenever I hear an artist using such words when talking about art, artists, art critics, art lovers and the meaning of art, I always find myself squirming in an uncomfortable reaction to the implicit written and unwritten rules and regulations about art that underwrite any admonition involving the use of such words.

For the record I am an old-school anarchist (mid to late 1970’s) - politically, culturally, spiritually and artistically. I have no regard for rules and regulations about anything. I see laws (written and unwritten) for what they are: false mechanisms of repression and control dictated by hierarchical elements, managed by scribes, enforced by sycophants and worshipped by the masses on their knees.

I believe in the concept of Freedom of Artistic Expression. I recognize the legitimacy of no authority or individual that attempts to regulate or control artistic expression.

You say the following: We should always respect others’ understanding of art as well as their criticism.

I could not disagree with you more on this statement as both an artist and as a human being. The Taliban had an understanding and criticism of priceless historic Buddhist statues in Afghanistan that compelled them to blow them up! Flash back: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0301-04.htm

Many artists, art critics, art collectors, as well as many non art-sensitive people and governments in this world, hold opinions about matters, including art, that are absolutely sick, vicious, stupid, insane, racist, tyrannical, ignorant, baseless and vile.

People of conscience within the anarchist milieu understand that politically correct theories about life that advance a definition of cultural, spiritual and political harmony at all costs, even at the expense of enduring acts of violence against other people, including even the bombing of works of so-called controversial art, is a dead-end philosophy that ultimately leads to destruction, not creation.

I absolutely reject the notion that I as a human being and as an artist am under some ethical and moral constraint to not speak my mind through my actions, words and art to challenge the stupidity that exists in this world; especially the stupidity that exists within the cloistered world of art, specifically including what I might regard as the racist, stupid, uninformed, or even boring and banal, art criticism by nationally and internationally published art critics.

I don’t believe in the theory of the open non-judgmental mind in more than I believe in the theory of the closed judgmental mind. I believe in the theory of the evaluative critical mind.

I subject everything I come into contact with, including art, to a critical examination of its place, purpose, message, intent and truth.

I reject that that needs to be rejected (many times without any further comment), I accept and use that which makes sense, and I scream to the high heavens about those things that need to be called out and held publicly accountable (Witness my public stand regarding the WPA/Corcoran Association/The Board of Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in the matter of the firing of OPTIONS 05 curator, Philip Barlow – you can read my ANTI-OPTIONS 05 Littoral Art Project at http://www.antioptions05.blogspot.com to see how strongly I feel about this issue of corruption within the art world).

As a human being and as an artist I strive to stay true unto myself and my art and I let the chips fall where they may no matter whose feelings get hurt.

What I don’t believe in doing (Moral Rule and Regulation) is blowing-up others people’s works of art that I hate, despise and loath; I don’t engage in these actions, not because there’s a law that tells me it’s illegal, but because I have no fundamental respect whatsoever for any person, persons, group, government, artist or artist collective who would do such a thing.

Blake Gopnick is certainly entitled to his critical opinion about Art-O-Matic. His critical opinion is also subject to an intense, intellectual and thoughtful analysis, as well as disrespectful, satirical and distasteful parody. In short, art criticism is a perfect target for artists to attack and address in their art. Nobody, least of all an artist despised by Mr. Gopnick, is obliged to respect Mr. Gopnick’s opinions about art anymore than Mr. Gopnick is obliged to respect the art and ideas of every artist who approaches him for his imprimatur.

Artists need to stand up for higher principles than the false immediacy of politically correct doctrines that seem to be so highly valued in the insulated world of those who pose no risk, and dare not to pose a risk, to the established order.

Theo van Gogh was recently slaughtered on the streets in Amsterdam by a bunch of radical conspiring religious assholes that hated him and his art and who believe they have the perfect right to kill anybody they target to advance their sick agenda. I have no respect for the cowards who committed this crime and have no desire to understand and respect their view of art and art criticism.

I am deeply troubled that the art world has yet to rise up and demonstrate its collective outrage over what happened to Theo van Gogh. But the deafening sound of silence over this matter is not a mystery to me – the art world establishment has boxed itself into a corner with its politically correct doctrines and now finds it almost impossible to defend controversial artists such as Theo van Gogh and what should have been his basic right under the concept of Freedom of Artistic Expression to express himself, even if some of his views were indeed intended to be insulting to certain people.

The reasoning among the politically correct art elite goes something like this: “Well, it’s a real shame about van Gogh, but he really brought it all on himself with his outrageous words and art and should have been more sensitive about offending the deeply and sincerely held religious views of some people. If his art had just been more culturally sensitive, this horrible crime probably would have never taken place.”

Respect is something that is earned: “Never respect anybody that doesn’t respect you back.” – Tre’s father to his son in John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood.

Some comments within your essay have opened the door to this response. I think it extremely important that an alternative view of an artist who respectfully disagrees with your more salient points be placed into the public record.

Sincerely,

James W. Bailey