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!