The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funds an Office of Research and Analysis that claims to keep and report statistics about the arts ecosystem. It becomes increasingly apparent that arts ecosystem refers to a slew of government agencies that suck the soul and funding intended to advocate arts and artists for themselves.
The agency heavily relies on the usual suspects - "the design and conduct
of studies addressing priority research topics through the social and behavioral sciences" - in other words academia unrelated to, well, the arts.
This paper cites concerns about
health and
wellness for individuals; cognition and learning; and U.S. economic growth and
innovation
healing and revitalization of communities
diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the arts
adapting and responding to social, economic,
and technological changes and challenges to the sector
These agendas come and go, nothing more than academic ATMs that finance NEA junkets and worthless, disposable research papers, one after another. Burp (cha-ching)!
The research started over a decade ago and this latest batch of DEI infused wisdom is only in its second year of the latest "5 Year Plan".
As usual, my interest is piqued when the discussion has to do with education of artists, MFAs, and the visual arts in general.
Here Joanna Woronkowicz talks about her book, Being an Artist in America: How Artists Build Careers and What Society Can Do to Support Them.
I couldn't help but look her up on Rate My Professor. She apparently is paid to instruct a course on Statistics that she - based on the ratings - doesn't show up to teach and whose teaching assistants are clueless to act as proxies. She also accused some students (who plead innocence) of plagiarism.
Putting that into context already raises suspicions about the quality and veracity of the book (unpublished to date).
In the YouTube documentation of the NEA Meet the Authors event she talks about the unintended consequences of Arts policies over time. Assuming this observation is true and based on fact, why has it taken over twenty years for the NEA to continue to fund and practice the creation and administration of these policies. Why aren't these people being fired and why aren't corrections being made?
When it comes to the mass production of students graduating with MFA degrees and life altering debt, she has this to say, Art School Loans. This is all well known material and if her concern about bang for the educational buck were sincere she might consider performing her own teaching duties - just because $$$.
Most disturbingly are her policy recommendations that include this; Cost and Benefit. I suspect that art students are not the only ones straining government welfare programs.
Given this research, it seems to me that an easy and obvious recommendation might be to fine each and every current employee of the NEA immediately and start fresh.
And part of starting anew must include independent studies of arts and artists in America. Enough of the self-serving academic community whose quality of work is manufactured to be ignored by everyone aside from tenure committees.
This part of the review will examine the art as if it were any other ALNB juried art show.
The ALNB, has previously hosted all women shows that were sponsored by one group or another. In that case the group were private advocates who seemed to think the distinction was important.
When I arrived to view this show, I was greeted by Niles Dookie who was gallery sitting. I asked what the show was intended to represent and he explained that the ALNB simply wanted to expand its footprint in greater New Britain to invite and encourage broader participation from neighborhood clusters that had not yet realized the opportunity art shows represent to everyone.
In fact the show is not [so much] about skin color as a targeted, open membership drive. This is not a typical juried gallery show at all. It includes student art, newbie art, and "Howdy neighbor!" invitational pieces. Nobody should mistake *this* as an affront to professional art practice. Having said that, the title of the show is unfortunate in that it is easily confused with the fraudulent, cash cow, anti-racist vernacular of Kendi and others. It also presumes that New Britain's white neighborhoods are any more aware than anybody else [but okay].
A Survey
This show may feature skin color but the majority of artists seem to have a broad-spectrum of personal cultural heritage. In other words there is no way to assume that the art projects a specific influence unless the piece self-identifies that inspirational source of aesthetic truth. Moving from one artist to another is as eclectic an experience as any other ALNB gallery show.
Almost all of the work submitted to this show is representational with some varying degree of abstraction.
And the largest group of work is represented by portraits. These in some cases are celebrity graphite drawings from photographs and in others paintings or collages of more personal, family individuals. The craftwork is pristine. Spike Lee, Tupac, and numerous jazz luminaries and others are wonderfully rendered.
A few colorful, life-experience landscapes from Africa and India offer variety.
Esmeilyn Tejeda
I was lucky enough to attend the show when Esmeilyn was also sitting the show. Her painting is one of the most striking in the show and I asked how, as a critic, I should interpret what I'm looking at. I asked her what her cultural heritage consisted of and she quickly listed a dozen different and quite unique family roots. It would be impossible to attribute a single or even primary source of cultural projection.
Her explanation of the piece is much more interesting than I could have guessed at. She said that the piece was in fact *about* skin and how skin comes in any color and any color can be applied to skin. The portrait is a human, nothing more, nothing less with color applied.
A very impressive and compelling piece.
Maurice Livingston
The sheer simplicity of work like this (ink/crayon) is so refreshing. Comparisons to the German Expressionists and Edvard Munch are inevitable. Livingston has a ways to go before joining that heady company but his pieces really hit the spot. Noticeably he does not color within the lines.
The background is interesting in that it emulates the phenomenon art critic Walter Benjamin identified as "aura". To a lesser extent, Tejeda's piece also employs that mysterious effect and so these pieces hung in such proximity to each other really gives a visitor an opportunity to compare and contrast with lots of other portraits in the galleries.
Also worth examination are the gaze each of the portraits evoke.
Black-Flat-Time Artists
Two pieces - one in the show and one that I was privileged to view because the artist was there, also sitting the show. One branch of Black Aesthetic Time is called Flat Time. And Flat Time refers to black artists and writers whose work is suspended in a social assumption that "nothing has changed". In other words, the definition of lived experience [for blacks] starts and ends with the slavery narrative. Feminists have their own, sometimes overlapping, corollary version of Flat Time having to do with women's social conditions.
By definition, the artistic by-products of artists exercising this state of navigating reality produce works that *can be* thought provoking but often are indistinguishable from political campaign material.
Cecil Gresham
This piece is a digital print that illustrates a person of color juxtaposed against a screw lodged in his brain. The eyes expose a vacant human container devoid of personal agency. The imagery is straight out of George Orwell's 1984.
"The voice from the telescreen was still pouring forth its tale of prisoners and booty and slaughter, but the shouting outside had died down a little. The waiters were turning back to their work. One of them approached with the gin bottle. Winston, sitting in a blissful dream, paid no attention as his glass was filled up. He was not running or cheering any longer. He was back in the Ministry of Love, with everything forgiven, his soul white as snow. He was in the public dock, confessing everything, implicating everybody. He was walking down the white-tiled corridor, with the feeling of walking in sunlight, and an armed guard at his back. The long-hoped-for bullet was entering his brain.
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."
Tho the piece is a digital print, the imagery closely imitates Gerhard Richter's photo paintings of the Holocaust and German political action groups.
AndeJa Johnson
This photograph is a cropped and not very good presentation of this piece. My apologies.
Decades after WWII was over, Japanese soldiers were still being discovered in the South Pacific who had no idea the war was over. Our popular culture and subverted public school history lessons are creating generations of young artists who are imprinted with a worldview that corresponds to Flat Time (e.g. victimhood).
Slavery and social deviants are still abundantly active in the world but its a rare edge condition in the United States. Work such as this has a literal dependency - a cluster of platitudes or virtuous declarations that leave no doubt what the artist is for and what they are against. Entering work like this into local gallery shows is important but what becomes obvious is that every artist participating in the ALNB or any other gallery is on your side. It's important information. Work like this sings to the choir.
Which brings me to the problem with the Flat Time paradigm. The weight of the world over time doesn't belong to any artist. You can't have it and you can't solve it. And, it is nothing more than a personally constructed speculative fiction. There's nothing wrong with that but there's nothing compelling either.
In terms of style and technique, this is a complex, interesting imagery.
AndeJa and I shared a long discussion about art and artists and she is deeply intelligent, more articulate about art than many ALNB members, and she gets after it - teaching art to youngsters.
When I asked whether it was wise to waste time with teaching art to at risk children who need to read, write and do arithmetic she smiled and said none of them could do the art without some wholesome reading and personalized instruction. Say WHAT!
Just like that some faith in the future of humanity glimmered in the corners of the gallery.
The Afropolitans
There is a growing class of writers and artists who no longer identify themselves with national borders. the term Afropolitan refers to individuals who, in a very postModern sense, create art from a broad spectrum of cultural sources with no particular desire to be pigeon-holed as AfroAmerican, black, this, that, or another thing. I don't know if this is true of the following artists but their submissions sure look that way.
Frankie Baez
Baez's work is brightly colored and contemporary. The patterns are high African fashion and the ground borrows from Kehinde Wiley - floral patterns. The female figure has agency and a plentiful self-confidence. Compare and contrast his work to these Senegalese Afripedia artists. The similarities are stunning.
Gwendolyn Quezaire-Presutti
GQP's collage piece closely emulates Nigerian tunic designs (Yoruba Atlantic art). The title of this piece, IMO, is a distraction from the imagery and even spirituality that the work can convey viewed through a more cultural lens. In Flash of the Spirit, there is a chapter called "Black Saints Go Marching In" and this piece is uncannily similar to a number of the traditional African designs exhibited there.
In Conclusion
There is a wealth of very nice artwork in this show. I recommend taking advantage of the opportunity to see it. My review simply covers a sampling of work that caught my eye. There's lots more, all of it good.
I cannot imagine that any of the artwork, aside from student work, would not be taken seriously in any given juried art show. This show consisting of only non-white artists is no less diverse than one which was not segregated this way. The organizers need to recalibrate 'calls' like this.
The world doesn't need to keep racism alive and the arts professions are, generally speaking, not a cohort of bigots tho special interest groups do their damnedest to corrupt them. The video in this footer is a cautionary tale. White boys are committing suicide at alarming rates. The next such show needs to solicit newcomers of all kinds.
It's 2024 and an art show called "Artists of Color" juried exhibit is being hosted at the Art League of New Britain in New Britain, CT. it is juried by Andre Rochester. The shows duration is July 7,2024 to July 28, 2024. It is described as a show of African, Asian, Latin, and other artists of color.
Usually, art show criticisms focus exclusively on the artwork or artist(s). But the unusual framework of this show deserves to be unpacked independently and I think its important to do so.
Part one will examine the conceptual basis for the show and a critique of the art in the show will follow. And right up front I want to uncouple any criticism of part one from part two. These will be separate ruminations on separate topics - the participating artists are not responsible for the foibles of the show's architecture.
The Show's Pretense
The call for art for this show was constrained to "Artists of Color". In other words, artists whose skin tone isn't 'white' were asked to submit work and they did. This eliminated individuals who were the birth offspring of a white father and mother but not necessarily adopted children of two white parents. It's unclear to me if white artists who are burn victims qualify as artists of color but i'm assuming the messaging implies no.
As a longtime, sometime member - always supporter of the ALNB, this is just another experimental show. As such, in the sandbox of curatorial speculation, let's break down the logic and consequences, and aesthetic shrapnel any show based on these premises needs to resolve.
The Difference With a Muddled Distinction
Given the skin color constraint, what is gained and what is lost? As far as I can tell the only difference between this ALNB juried show and any other show is that artists with white skin did not have the opportunity to submit their work to this particular show which is little more than a trivial inconvenience, so not much loss for white-skinned artists - area juried art shows and opportunities abound.
For the "artists of color" the skin color constraint simply offers a smaller juried pool from which art work will get selected - woo hoo! And while this has its advantages, it can also be seen as an infantilizing of the artists-of-color cohort.
When the profession of art qualifies any artist as assuming an identity different from, say, "a creator of art", the art becomes unimportant or secondary to the role of the artists as an actor in a social narrative.
In this case, skin color has nothing to do with the creation of art at all. All artists live in this Judeo-Christian nation, participate in capitalistic commerce, consume and get consumed by volumes of Western Civilization's comforts, and so on. For practical intents and purposes, we all share and incubate "WHITE" culture. Its impossible to wiggle out of that self-evident truth.
So what was the point of not inviting people with white skin? After all, what do African, Asian, Latin, and other artists of color have any more in common showing together that artists with white skin don't? The answer is 'nothing'. It is magical thinking to believe that an Asian and a Jamaican and an Eskimo share an aesthetic narrative exclusive to their skin color.
In other words, to understand any given piece of artwork that is exclusive to the identity profile of the artist requires an a priori familiarity with the nuances of that identity's aesthetic ecosystem. Art is a door to perception, not personal or tribal allegiance.
Shows such as this, by definition, will be every bit as eclectic as any other juried show. They will also straddle a Schrodinger's Cat enigma of either being either a Utopia or Dystopia where white skinned people no longer exist. Can the entries live up to that challenge? Or will the pieces subliminally reference white skinned people?
The Value of Color
I think another presumption that shows such as these can test is the idea that with any two pieces of art, one piece may be more 'privileged' than another. Bluntly, will a art piece by an artist with one skin color be more desirable than an art piece by somebody with a different skin color?
When I'm performing art criticism, all I'm interested in is the work. Buyers and curators have different considerations. And all of this *should be* implicit about enjoying an art show.
Galleries such as ALNB, to the best of my knowledge, have never discriminated against any artist submitting their work (and I know of no other gallery that has either) so I was a bit surprised by this show. I look forward to seeing it in person. That review will follow shortly.
Artistic practice in the Zenthetic are not the same as aesthetic practice. In other words, the concept of defining *beauty* and beauty itself are co-incidental by-products of the practice and not a primary or motivating factor in the creation of the art.
In my study of MetaModernism, it has become obvious to me that the duality and incestuous relationship of illusionism and abstraction is insufficient both conceptually and in terms of their limited vernacular in rationalizing their existential artistic hegemony. The territory of illusionism illustrates the agreed upon world and the projections of mankind's dreams, myths, and man's imagination of existence itself into conversational consciousness. Illusionism is, by definition and by craft, abstract. And (formal) Abstraction is the recognition that in a creative composing and decomposing of the elementary aspects of illusionism, an aesthetically pleasing or conceptually plausible argument can be made that these objects define a push-and-pull/binary aesthetic canon.
Artists anticipate art, not reality or abstractions. Yet everything is shoe-horned into the insatiable black hole of the philosophy of aesthetics.
So the question is, can art exist outside of aesthetic consideration and absorption. This being a quantum existential space that successfully repels the aesthetic appetite for the next want-to-be exception to the rule? I think it can.
Just as chaos theory informs us that multiple infinities exist - opportunity cracks in mathematics - so too are there artistic orphans whose intellectual parents have no aesthetic DNA, they slip the ties that bind. The art material defined by Propositional Zenthetics are construction of an artistic proposition, this AND that, this OR that - not yet in time, not yet formed, just maybe -may BE. They are instantiated as worldly objects, yes - but in substance a suspended, wrapping material for a dance of cosmic possibility like a vision of universal dust so far away in time and space that the image is not real - a snapshot of unformed vision - so what is it?
These are not pictures nor objects but a gaze into a visually transcendent abyss, a desolation angel's scribble. The abyss does not gaze back, it has swallowed a fraction of your existence for its own. The agency of Proposition Zenthetic material is to flush the mind's attention of aesthetic considerations and pose a memory hole of ambiguity for *what if* . When someone sees or observes such material, it is the unrecognizable, zen stillness of thought - peering into artistic desolation - a trajectory without beginning or end - a suspended fall away from traditional aesthetic notions of craft or importance that is a glimpse of god's proximate tinkering with a view of eternity.
I recently saw this Facebook posting that i found interesting.
"Art Access: New Britain
CALL FOR ART
[Link in bio]
One of the primary means emerging artists have to build their exhibition resume and gain the attention of curators is to participate in juried art shows. Not only is substantial time and effort involved in the process of creating art and applying for juried shows, but most require a fee for application. For many artists with extraordinary work, their opportunity for significant exposure is limited by their financial ability to apply for more publicized shows involving known jurors. An application fee can be a significant amount to artists with lower incomes and often many cannot take the chance that a juror may not even select their work for display.
Most juried shows charge these entry fees to support the organizations they are part of and those fees are often integral to their budgets and operations; however these fees are keeping out a subset of the artist population. With generous support from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, Art Access: New Britain is a juried art show focusing on artists living in households with income at or below the approximate state definition of “lower income” ($80,000). This juried show will collect no fee for application, involves a well established juror connected to a prominent museum, offers assistance to those who cannot afford to transport their artwork to the show, and involves juried prize awards.
This exhibition will be held at Gallery 66 in New Britain from August 12 to October 11, featuring an opening event and artist discussion, in addition to regularly held events at Gallery 66 such as monthly artist discussions and regular open mics."
What caught my eye here is the fact that that the Connecticut Office of the Arts has read the premise for this show and has decided its worth sponsoring. It's worth unpacking the assumptions being asserted here because nobody seems to have put an ounce of critical thinking into what problem this is going to solve or whether there are better ways of staging juried art shows.
Presumably the intent of constraining the household income of the artist to less than or equal to $80,000 will somehow limit participation to lower income artists. But this makes little sense. A single person and a married artist or an artist with kids or legal obligations makes hard capping an income profoundly unfair and could preclude true need and include individuals with no real hardship. In other words, its pointless.
And need isn't always an absolute condition. For the immediate few months I may be dead broke but in a few months that fiscal condition will change. Opportunity cost is often conditional.
The logical argument being made about juried shows is also flawed. Income has nothing to do with getting accepted or rejected from a juried art show. Ideally, the quality of the work is what gets a piece accepted or rejected. And the quality of the juror (e.g. de facto curator) is key. In either case, the artist's work IS "exposed" to the juror.
Any show that decides the identity of the artist is more compelling than the quality of that artist's work is playing with fire. The criteria of judging this show becomes the evaluation of the financial status of the individual rather than the work itself. Is the curation of the show intended to lower expectations based on something other than artistic merit? The point of juried shows to begin with is the assumption that your best work belongs in a show of selected best works.
And because the framing of shows like these emphasize identity politics, the chances of the work being taken seriously is eroded. It's one thing for a patron or juror to find a diamond in the rough at any gallery show and its completely another to find that unique talent in a blizzard of artwork from an identified class of "victims". Do the prizes go to the most needy, the most politically compelling or sympathetic, or to the identity artist of the month? Its unclear if participation will elevate or stigmatize the participating artists.
A far better way to help artists in need is for the CT Office on the Arts to support local Art Galleries all over the State by subsidizing gallery memberships for needy local artists - full stop. They all sponsor juried member shows. Such sponsorship might involve the basic membership fee and an additional group stipend for occasional transportation assistance. This promotes fiscally sound galleries, community goodwill, and transparent artistic participation.
