The Weaponization of Juried Art Shows

Americans are well-aware of a concept developed by our rival global antagonists of using American freedoms, social norms and expectations against us.  For example, extremism can effectively hide behind religious freedom of expression against criticism or legal remedy.

The curation of Art has been under political attack for decades usually by politicians who extort concessions by withholding funding and claiming to be guardians of a public constituency needing protection from the indecency of the latest art sensation.  The soft fascism of threatening public funding of the offending institution was often enough to discourage another such sensation getting exposed *there*.

And though the Art World would be loathe to admit it, art in America has been self-constrained for decades.  Art curators, like dogs trained not to break their way across and electronic fence, are rarely suicidal enough to promote anything too risque for fear of their jobs and a tarnished CV.

However, the object of the contention was always the quality of art and not something else.

Today, we see disruptive mutations of this idea being played out nationally, and to some degree internationally. The variation is a logical one.

First, the exposure of certain kinds of art can be constrained is well-established.  One way [using copiously by government] is to threaten or deny funding.  Soooo... one way to exercise control over what gets shown is to seize control of the agency of what gets funded. And so, under the special interest banner of "diversity" - [as defined by minority status, geographic origin, and cultural [no matter how dubious] background] - the micromanagement of art funding is being controlled.  This is the first form of the Identity Politics effect that eliminates the quality of art as a metric of artistic merit and elevates the individual nuances [no matter how contrived] of the artist and their constituency.

The second mutation is cultural vigilantism. To understand the ease in which juried art shows can be fixed I need to briefly explain the game pieces.

Art has no formal definition.  It has a number of categories, all of them fair but soft. In other words, no one can authoritatively claim something isn't art.  Within the working artist community, there's a trust relationship that what is submitted as art is intended to be worthy of consideration.

The second gaming piece is that jurors of art shows are also trusted to use their best judgment in evaluating the body of submissions and to honor the subject to which the work was addressed. The juror is rarely held accountable for the selections they make.  As an artist, you take your chances and it always costs money - you are subsidizing the show this juror selects as a matter of trust that its curation is trustworthy.

So these two gaming pieces offer plausible deniability for the eventual selection of art for juried shows.  Artists trust each other to submit authentic art and they trust [implicitly biased] jurors to put their biases to one side and objectively curate *the art*. And everyone in the art community is aware that the final selection is used to always be an aesthetic sausage for better or worse.

But all of these trust presumptions cannot be taken for granted any longer.  Any simple arithmetic applied to juried art shows in the United States going back years exposes an alarming fact. Juried art shows are more often than not juried by women who ore often than not favor female artists with statistically improbable regularity.

It is empirically obvious that the quality of art, the metrics by which art is judged, and the veracity of prestige associated with curators and their politically endorsed art beneficiaries is the equivalent of artistic malware - a denial of service attack on gallery institutions.  And its being performed by presumably well educated, credentialed individuals who seem to believe they are being asked to punish contemporary innocents for the crimes of historical ancestors.

By being disingenuous as to their intent and by taking money from individuals they have no intention of judging objectively, they are committing fraud on a class action scale. They and their educational mentors need an intervention.

In the meantime, choose your juried shows carefully AND publish the scorecards of local jurors so we can all triangulate this kind of information.

Key pieces of information;

How many entries to a show, then by gender.

How many accepted pieces, then by gender of artist.

Note that the names of male sounding names are often deceptions. 

How to Submit Art to a Show in the Era of Identity Politics and Curatorial Scorecards

The cost of showing work as an artist consists of many things

• the cost of the materials to make the artwork with
• the time to make it
• the cost of entering art shows both open and juried
• joining the gallery usually discounts the entry fee for shows
• not joining the gallery usually adds $5 to $10 per entry piece for the show
• the cost of transporting/shipping the piece to and from the show
• satisfying the show obligations
• gallery sitting or a $5-ish buyout
• Show opening contribution in helping to set up or food contribution
• manufacture or distribution of show/personal marketing artifacts
• repair of damaged work/frames (its all on you)

As if all of this wasn't enough, all galleries require a commission fee on anything sold.  This can range usually not more than 50%.  Thirty percent is more common. So, the artist must factor in that discount to their final remuneration.

A common complaint about the commission structure is that frames (an expensive cosmetic value add) are included in the commission even though the artist's final take is less AND in order to even out that double-jeopardy these pieces must be adjusted cost even more thus making them less likely affordable.

So far so good.  But the subliminal message here is that art is not cheap to make nor show.

Okay. So the next consideration has to be what shows are worth submitting work to.

Here we have to triangulate the cost of showing as calculated from the show-based costs identified previously against show duration, anticipated show attendance, and opportunity cost.

IMO, shows that last fewer than a full month must be inexpensive to submit to or incredibly attractive in terms of sales potential or prestige.  And every show ties up the works involved for the duration of the show. That can be an opportunity cost in certain situations.  The other opportunity cost is limited arts funds being dedicated to *this* opportunity.

As far as all of this is concerned, there is nothing discriminatory in terms of identity politics.  You, the artist, whoever you are or think you are or have been told who you are play by these rules.

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Things that are out of our control as artists are the conventions and practices of the gallery owners/organizers. Somebody ALWAYS has an upper hand in what they deem acceptable.
Raging on about that is a different blog entry.

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Generally speaking, open gallery shows will accept as much work as they can show within wall/floor space constraints.

And in deciding whether or not to enter a show all candidate entrants need to study the aesthetic bias of the juror involved.  Representationally opinionated jurors are generally less likely to select abstract or contemporary work and vice versa.  You want to pick a juror at least sympathetic to your practice.

The Identity Politic Tax kicks in for juried and blatantly discriminatory shows that sell themselves as oppressed, special interest group promotional vehicles.

In recent years the number of woman only gallery shows has become a floodwater.  In browsing open calls for artists its rare that a month goes by without at least one of these advertised close by.

This is the first erosion of art shows evolving from being quality-of-object specific to identity politic specific. Its unclear who this truly benefits.  Its anti-democratic nature removes a degree of prestige from the work involved and the self-imposed autonomy of the enterprise is as likely to generate animosity as promotion of anything more than hate politics.

Maybe the intended by-product of these tactics is to simply reduce the exposure of anyone who doesn't qualify and hope the public's taste is socially-engineered to believe the quality of art has an artistic identity preference.

The more pernicious effects of juried shows comes into play when the juror or the gallery put their thumb on the scale so that, as previously mentioned the show is no longer about the quality of the art being juried and instead some kind of socially engineered conclusion. The rationalizations are endless to justify this stuff so let the recriminations make their way into the comments section.

But to be more specific, in recent years,  juried art shows increasingly reflect disproportionate female representation.  Furthermore the remaining entries often favor tightly-coupled gallery members, supporters, or associated figures.  Some of this is to be expected.  But that leaves but a small fraction of eligible entry spots.

For men, there's an economic consequence.  Their work is less likely to be selected, they are more likely to be subsidizing an unspecified and unwelcome discriminatory practice, and contributing to the deterioration of the community's artistic reputation.

The sober reality is that the Identity Politic war has deeply polluted the art community worldwide amounting to nothing less than cultural appropriation not only of the present but the past.  This is an unregulated affirmative action program - aesthetic vigilante-ism in the professional ranks.  Its by-product is an archaeology of myopic mediocrity elevated to a seat of importance not even the village idiot artist can salute.

The most obvious personal solution is for male artists to simply be far more awoke about who the jurors are, what their agenda is, and what the track record of the galleries are.

To the degree a more general solution must be a scorecard for jurors that includes the Political Identity arithmetic involved  in their jury practice. This must include all the politically motivated algorithms being used to bludgeon the artistic community into yet another polarized political institution.

It shouldn't be long before, on a scale of one to five vaginas, any gallery or museum ranks or how genital friendly any gallery call for art will be.

The Identity Politics of the Real Art Awards and the Art of Art as Politics As Usual

Real Art Ways posted the following to Facebook on July 16, 2018

"Real Art Ways announces the first Real Art Awards. Six visual artists will receive a $2,500 cash prize, and each will have their work presented by Real Art Ways in a solo exhibition in 2018-19.

“Real Art Ways has a 42-year history of supporting artists and innovation. These awards are intended to give artists a boost of recognition and opportunity, and to highlight the importance of art and creativity in shaping our shared culture.” - Executive Director, Will K. Wilkins 

The six recipients are:
Keith Clougherty: Braintree, Massachusetts
Kylie Ford: Portland, Maine
Niki Kriese: Croton, New York
Mateo Nava: New York, New York
Liona Nyariri: Brooklyn, New York
Sofia Plater: Newton, Massachusetts
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. To learn more about the Real Art Awards and this year's recipients, visit the "Artist Submissions" section of our website. #realartways #realartawards #contemporaryart#emergingartists #massachusetts #maine #newyork #connecticut #hartford #parkville#visualart #sculpture #painting #installation #mixedmedia "

I know the Guerrilla Girls are holding their breath so here is the math.

Six shows are being shown.  Two are by men, four are by women.

Five of the artists are in their mid-twenties. One is forty-ish.

MFAs abound.  No outsiders.  The smell of entitlement and Identity politics is not an illusion.
Make of it what you will.


In this case allow me to -cough- *offer* some opinionated criticism.

As simple background information, Connecticut has been mired in a one-political-union-party hostage situation for decades.  The State is reeling from decades of corrupt double-dealing, insider, and self-serving gluttony at the trough of future taxpayer debt.  The pigs have largely left the farm burping up tens of millions in pension benefits that third-world dictators dream of someday amassing such wealth.  

I know.  I'm being too kind.

To the point.

Real Art Ways is one of a handful of largely urban Connecticut Arts organizations that  manage to get funded from whomever is willing to support them. I'm sure that is neither easy nor fun.

However, I think its disingenuous for Real Art Ways to make the claim that the shows awarded will somehow be innovative in some special way.  As far as I can tell the six shows represent academic rebates on expensive MFA program degrees.  This is not the Art of innovation, this is business as usual - insider, academic, state sponsored, political system art - obligatory, liberal fist-waving, happy parade art.

It also reinforces artistic tropes that belong to the last century. The cult of youth being an important criteria to make innovative art for instance.  Or that expensive academic degrees earned by studying with Modernist trained artists and political activists make for superior art.

The cult of personality has been replaced by the practice of perseverance yet it is nowhere in evidence in these awarded shows.

In the 21st century cyberspace is far more important than geography but as a longtime Connecticut artist this is a familiar slap in the face.  I have a hard time believing that NO Connecticut artists submitted their work for a show.

Its not that these cash awards are so much.  But they are money that leaves the State. Poof. Connecticut is no richer for the showing. Real Art Ways hasn't nurtured a single Connecticut artist in this cycle.  Shouldn't it?

It seems to me that a geographically important gallery that presumably bestows some prestige on the artists selected would, if Connecticut artists don't come to them, go out and find the artists.  There are dozens of Connecticut gallery shows all over the State to mingle with.

The unfortunate message Real Art Ways is sending is:

CT artists are NOT innovative - don't come here, don't stay here.

Don't own an Ivy League-ish degree - Fuck You, don't bother

An artist of color, and outsider, or an edge artist - Fuck You too - we cater to those inside the box not the outside

CT patrons are in need of artistic carpet-baggers to educate them about art - Connecticut artists are too damned stupid to do that

The taxes Connecticut artists pay should subsidize the entitlement class - Connecticut artists don't need the money or recognition - they're losers anyway

Old is unwelcome

The 48th Nor'Easter Juried Exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art

Out of curiosity I went to see and review the show.  I was in town early for an open drawing session at the Art League of New Britain so... what the hell?

I don't always submit my work to this show.  Sometimes finances get in the way.  But this year I saw who the juror was going to be - Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the  Norman Rockwell Museum - and decided right then and there that submitting my work was a fool's errand.  My work is light years away from Norman Rockwell and in choosing such a juror my gut instinct was that the result would be predictable.

My other concern in not submitting was whether or not this was yet another of the parade of identity politic shows I've observed in recent years in which female jurors favor (justly or unjustly) female work.

I know the Guerrilla Girls are holding their breath so here is the math.

Seventy pieces are being shown.  Nineteen are by men, Fifty-one are by fifty-three women.

And although there are plenty of differences in the work here are some dollar figures.

I averaged the prices of the work for both men and women strictly on the number of pieces that were for sale.  NFS were excluded as was a piece with a $1,000,000 price tag by a male artist because it absurdly skewed the more typical price ranges.

The total asking price for fifteen pieces by men came out to $91,650, an average of $6,110 per piece.
The asking price for forty-eight pieces by women came out to $185,896, an average of $3,872.83.
Make of it what you will.

Now that we know who has what in their pants, let me review the show.

My worst fears were realized  after walking the show carefully to ensure I wasn't just rushing  through.  What struck me most was the obvious volume of representational work. A handful of something other than representational work was scattered her and there and of that lot, mostly derivative pieces.

Curatorially, this stream content is typical of local gallery shows that are curated by landscape and portrait painters who have yet to understand or acquire an understanding of Modernism let alone Contemporary Art.   Shows such as these are to Art what Trump's administration is to America - dross served up as aesthetic caviar.

There is nothing to think about here.  The stuff on pedestals and on the walls is a simulacra of an imagined aesthetic in which the patron is expected to only use their eyes and their familiarity with nostalgic memories.  The work as Art is breathlessly empty.

However, what fails as Art succeeds as Fine Craft.  Everything here is meticulously crafted and well made.  Everything here is functional like all good craft.  This work is antiseptic enough to display anywhere.  And, thankfully, it is devoid of the identity politics that the show itself cannot shed.

If you like pleasing, stylized landscapes, portraits, linen, and fruit or colorful pseudo-abstractions, this show is for you.  The warmth of familiar subject matter divorced from any of the messy PostModern, Modern, and Contemporary influences will either totally relax you or put you into a coma.

And, as one of those cosmic coincidences, I need to leave you with one final anomaly. Of the twenty or so artists who attended the nude drawing session only one was a woman.  Go figure.

Farewell, Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison is dead. 

Harlan has been a lifelong inspiration and will continue to be. When I was reading science fiction voraciously in the mid-seventies, Russ Souchek and I were sharing a rented home in Seward, Nebraska and trading recommendations. Ellison's 'Dangerous Visions' was a must-read compilation.

Ellison regularly showed up on late-night television talk shows promoting the return of Star Trek and himself.  The interview that stuck in my head was one in which he talked about exchanging stories with other authors that were only as long as could fit on a postcard.  I fell in love with the idea - my first exposure to micro-fiction.

In the early eighties, when Peter Karp, Howard Koster and I were creating the Computer Graphics Cafe (maybe the grand-father of all meet-ups), we experimented with copy art in the form of a self-published magazine for and about the state of the coming digital age.

There we published single 'page' and small footprint fiction and opinion pieces. The Silicon Daze, too, was a very early art magazine featuring bite-sized fiction in the spirit of Harlan Ellison's vision.

I won't miss him.  He's stuck in my head. I hope is journey out is as fascinating as ours was taking his in.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Art in Connecticut

Jon Lender of the Courant recently ran the following news piece under the auspices of consumer protection but its something altogether different, IMO.

Jon Lender: $480K For Blocks Of Color On UConn Lobby's Wall

Jon explains:

The late Connecticut artist Sol LeWitt's "Wall Drawing #867" blares its bright blocks of color at passersby from the glass lobby of UConn's new Innovation Partnership Building.

-snip- 

Moreover, the $480,000 artwork was installed amid the flames of the state government’s final descent into budget hell last year. Great timing, right?
Why an expense like this at a time like that?
The explanation dates back 40 years to 1978 when the state legislature passed a law creating Connecticut’s Art In Public Spaces (AIPS) program — with a requirement that at least 1 percent of the state-bonded cost for construction or renovation of a publicly accessible state building be spent on artwork to be located there.
That requirement — intended “to provide the citizens of Connecticut with an improved public environment by investing in creative works of high quality” — applied to this project “because funding for construction … was approved by the State Bond Commission,” university spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz told Government Watch.
But is this the kind of thing you can afford when you’re in hell?

 Here let me simply interject a few thoughts.  First, the State is not "in hell" because of its arts community.  Along this line of thought, it also occurs to me that true investments in arts in fact are exactly what the State needs more of.

Also timing is irrelevant.  This is both law and a legitimate business practice (assuming its legitimately exercised).

Secondly, I want to revisit the quality of the acquisition as we further explore the story points.


Lender goes on to point out that:

It turns out that the General Assembly has recently decided the answer is no — at least for two years. In the throes of their protracted deliberations of 2017, lawmakers put language in their budget bill saying that the bond commission “shall not allocate any percentage” of funds that it approves for such projects “commenced on or after Jan. 1, 2018, until Jan. 1, 2020” for works of art.

Wait.  WHAT!

The General Assembly did what!

Yeah.  They did.  They cut out one of the Arts funds in the State  WOW!  That must have upset the CT Arts community!

You're not going to believe what Lender reports next.

The need for the Innovation Partnership Building to still comply with the AIPS program has caused mixed feelings at UConn, Reitz said.
“UConn is a -snip blah, blah, blah - "
“At the same time,” Reitz said, “the university is relieved that this provision was removed from state law, as it arbitrarily mandated that substantial funds had to be diverted from projects such as this one to satisfy the requirement. Whether it was this specific [LeWitt] work, another individual piece, or a dozen smaller works, spending 1 percent of the overall construction cost on public art … was a mandate, rather than a choice."

A few more thoughts come to mind here.

UConn does not speak for the Arts community. Why UCONN administrators ever had control over this money or its proper award is a very big question given their seedy history.

It also occurs to me that positions such as Reitz's ARE THE FIRST PLACE TO CUT FUNDS.  In an institution that - let's pretend - values knowledge cannot possibly seriously complain that Art is a MANDATE.

I cannot begin to tell you how angry this rhetoric makes me.  There are no words for this moronic response.

And it just doesn't end...  they claim there's an upside!  No not what you think, just spending it on anything other than art...

With the requirement now gone, UConn and other state agencies can save money or devote part of projects' costs to “other aspects of the facilities,” Reitz said. For example, she said, the new UConn building “is a major research facility that is home to important partnerships between UConn and the private sector. In this case, a portion of these funds could have been used to fund laboratory space and research equipment, in addition to public art.”Under the AIPS program, the choice of an artist is made by a committee including the project architect, building users and arts professionals. In this case, Reitz said, “the specific piece was selected both because of its creator’s Connecticut roots, and because it was in keeping with the design of the [building] and its prominent location as one of the first features that many see on campus as they enter on Discovery Drive.”

SO.  You're telling me that they spent 98% of the money on space that ISN"T laboratory space? Furthermore, building funds would get used like a pizza party stash to buy esoteric "research" equipment.  Gee, fuck art.

Where Lender's article also fails is in pointing out that the committee that authorized the Lewitt buy should not only be named but held accountable to Connecticut artists.  Lender's article goes on to explain Lewitt the artist.
IMO, Lewitt's work is not representative of 21st century Contemporary Art and, in fact, is antithetical to the expressed purpose of the buildings program.  Lewitt's wall drawings that amount to spirograph-like drawing specifications are both an artifact of the 1960s AND their shelf-life has expired.  These drawings have been way over-exposed and there's an artistic fatigue that sets in with museums that over-expose his work (think MASS MOCA).

A space dedicated to Innovation Partnerships should have had art that IS innovative and not was innovative say 70 years ago.  This purchase has the smell of money laundering and insider trading.  The money is not supporting CT artists (who need both the money and the exposure), it is going to NY gallerists, holding companies, lawyers, and likely special interests having to do with the building in the first place.

Misappropriated funds cannot be an excuse to extinguish an arts funding stream in CT. Rather it needs to be restored and its administration given to an independent body outside of UCONN and outside of the current, miserable State administration.

Fundamental, to its distribution must be that practicing CT resident artists - who pay taxes, who suffer under this worthless State government, and who contribute far more to the economy than superfluous administrators should be nurtured, NOT IGNORED.

Ironic Note:  UCONN just held a STEAM forum in April:

Building Up STEAM 

Looks more like they are not only losing STEAM but pissing on the 'A' as they go.

Review of Paul Baylock, New/Now, Museum of American Art

As a matter of disclosure, Paul is the President of the Art League of New Britain where we both show and share friendly and respectful,  peer and professional friendships.  We both grew up in New Britain, CT and Paul's uncle relative was my Jr High School Gym instructor - so our roots run deep.

- updated 05/15/2024

Paul is a consummate craftsman.  His paintings and sculpture are highly refined and pristine.

The artwork that is represented in the New/Now show is tightly coupled to Paul's experience as a lifelong New Britain native, high school art teacher, and boyhood imprints.  Much of his work employs both stencil and collage/assemblage techniques. The subject is often the effect of the industrial revolution on a town synonymous with manufactured hardware.

While the gallery narrative suggests the work has a relationship to the ubiquitous artistic trope of memory, I disagree.  These pieces individually and as a whole are a super-fiction kitsch - a manufactured nostalgia. Less memory than a narrative of longing for an alternative history. One in which the trappings of the industrial revolution were still in play.

Contrast Paul's snapshot of industrial Americana with Thomas Hart Benton a few galleries over.  Benton's America is about people, Paul's about location and things. Its a stark contrast. And Paul's work is most meaningful to the few individuals who similarly lament the passing of the twentieth century.

Many of Paul's sculptures and paintings invite us to peer through factory windows that obfuscate the reality that exited outside the window and the reality that existed inside the factory window.

As the son of a factory worker, I know first-hand the missing context.  Yes, making hardware was honest work and grew a middle-class - good work for those whose calling in life  was working with their hands, or back, or providing unquestioning compliance. And they made great tools and hardware components.  This is what Paul's work celebrates.

What is missing are the worker's strikes that families suffered through, when stress resulted in physical violence at home, or scenes of workers in winter minding a warming fire while striking at street corners.

Nor does his work speak to workers who would sacrifice a finger to the machinery to pay a bill, feed a hungry child, or provide a down-payment on a better home.

The workers inside those windowed factories were men AND women whose hands and backs were sometimes deformed by the work.  There is no identity politic literature that cares to speak of the conditions.  Paul's work leaves it to your imagination.  Maybe too much so.

I highly recommend seeing Paul's show.  Its authentic and wholly contemporary - a pseudo-narrative by a New-Britain-as-every-industrial-town native who, like all of us, wonders where it all went to.

The Danforth "Juried" Art Show Problem

I haven't submitted any work to the Danforth Museum in Massachusetts for a number of years now. They have an annual "juried" show that is local enough that it caught my interest and so, a few years ago, I submitted a piece and waited for the selection sheet.  My work wasn't chosen - fair enough.

But what caught my attention was the incredible volume disparity of women's work to men's work. The difference was staggering - something like 2 to 1 in favor of women's pieces.  And to put that number in perspective, at around that time I was doing a contract in Pittsfield, MA and had attended an artist talk at the Leslie Ferrin Gallery.  The artist was a woman who taught Fine Art at one of the local Universities and was represented in a New York gallery.

The talk involved women's representation in galleries.  The speaker said she had had few problems in her career with outright discrimination and really had little trouble finding gallery representation. Leslie Ferrin added that while she made every effort to promote women's work, two factors affected the proportion of exhibited women's work in her experience.

First, most of the artists walking through the door were men.

Second, women's art, despite the quality, simply didn't sell as well. Selling is what keeps the doors open.

That talk provided a much needed context a few years later in reading The Gorilla Girls criticism of women's representation in "the Art World".  The implicit reasoning might be that a 50 - 50 representation would be fair based on population estimates.

But would galleries be unfair if 70% (an arbitrary guesstimate) of the artists walking through the door were men and they dedicated 50% of their space to women?  Maybe not.  But it would be equally understandable if the split was, in fact 70% men over time - all things being equal.  And yes, there would be exceptions in all kinds of ways for any given event... but over time who walks through the door and who sells would likely be representative of the cohort.

Arithmetic and not statistics (per se) is all that's required to make sense of these things.

This then brings us back to the astonishing disproportion of women's art being "juried" into a museum show in 2016.  That's right, 2016.  While I didn't submit work to Danforth, I do get their emails and they wisely advertise who got into the juried show - great advertising. So who got in?

Yet again, two thirds of the accepted work was by women (70% to be more precise).  So I looked up a few more catalogs.  In 2011, almost exactly 67% were women.  In 2013, approximately 65%. In these cases I just grouped obvious men an women's names and put dubious gender under men.  The number is close enough for scrutiny.  My guess is that the arithmetic will hold throughout the run of shows.

Going back to an earlier point, that percentage would legitimize itself if 70% of the Danforth entries every year were consistently from women.  But that is hard to imagine.


Furthermore you may be thinking there's a feminist purity principle involved.  Of the men's work juried into the show, many ran galleries or had prestigious local credentials.  No one obviously important had their toes stepped on.

So the net effect is that of the 33% men's representation, far less than that was representative of new, young, or unknown men.

It's not unfair to say that this subverts the intent of juried exhibitions in aesthetic, political, legal, and social ways - none of the consequences good.

Every artist has a tight budget so submitting work to shows costs money, time, and alternative opportunity cost. The (maybe worse than) reverse discriminatory empirical evidence means that artists who apply in goodwill with an assumption that their work will be judged fairly wasn't and isn't. Any artist can tell you that they can live with rejection but not with suspicion of a rigged system.

As for the definition of "juried" show, I don't think anyone imagines a situation where every year men's art and women's art is separated into two unequal groups - cherry picked for influence on the men's side and another criteria applied to the women's group.


As I look at this, I wonder how widespread this practice is and will become - it's not healthy at all.
IMO, such shows should provide some easy numbers; how many applied and how many of each gender. It's not an absolute metric and all art shows will have wild deviations.  But over time these deviations will balance themselves far differently than those at the Danforth.

The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, the Graydon Parrish Gallery Talk

The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy, the Graydon Parrish Gallery Talk

Thursday evening, Sept 10,2015, New Britain Museum of American Art

Considering that I had written a preview review of the newly reconstructed NBMAA galleries, I wanted to visit them first hand and also attend the Graydon Parrish gallery talk to attempt to understand what he might be referring to when he labels his work Post Contemporary.

His large canvas called The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy is something I had encountered in previous visits. It's a memorial piece eulogizing the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and it was commissioned by the NBMAA and the parents of someone who lost their life in the events of that day.

Art takes on significance in many ways and memorial works acquire emotional and sentimental value for those who express their grief and orphaned love through them. It's important to respect those emotions as projected into the symbol such a memorial represents.  That said, I want to offer a wholly artistic critique of the work.  This critique is not a critique of those who are emotionally coupled to the piece.

In my previous visits, I simply disliked the piece because it failed to connect with me.  I didn't like the scale, the painting style, nor could I decipher the obvious narrative elements it contained. I had hoped the gallery talk by Parrish might change my mind.

Graydon Parrish looks very much like a prima donna and his demeanor is punctuated by humorous quips that have been vetted in previous talks.  A search of YouTube produces a near identical monologue delivered some years ago in the same venue. During his talk, I warmed up to him a bit. He's forever saddled with a beast of his own making and there's a real burden in that.

A lot of his gallery talk sounds very patronizing to his bread and butter audience - the true believers. They refer to the piece as a masterpiece and to Graydon as a genius.  Graydon is more than happy to milk that sentiment and compares aspects of his painting to Picasso and Michelangelo.  In both cases, the similarity is wholly wishful thinking but hey, you have to kill time somehow in these gallery talks.

As I listened to him explain the painting I found that I disliked it even more after the explanations than when the thing merely confused me.  Parrish uses the painting as a blunt instrument. He claims (and promtional material echoes) the idea that the painting is "allegorical" - representing a historical snapshot.  He also claims it is complex. And he has a cultist fervor for its realism, "beauty", and old-fashioned aesthetics (I'm guessing this is what he calls Post Contemporary).

Parrish is a fine, skilled technical painter and his painting is filled with dozens of examples of academic virtuosity.  Young and old human figures, flowing cloth, atmospheric effects are all abundantly represented. It is the kind of realist illusionism that was common hundreds of years ago when Western Art's central theme was Christian scenes and more Christian scenes. In the context of a memorial painting about an event that often used Christianity and the Muslim religion as counterpoints and given the cultural diversity of the victims, the theological implications of the work are dubious.

And Parrish is correct in feeling uncomfortable as a Contemporary artist. Both his narrative layers and his black and white religious kitsch are difficult to logically reconcile.  Unlike well curated PostModern appropriations of symbol, icon, and metaphor, Parrish's piece is a mishmash of self-promotion ("postContemporary" advocacy), misunderstanding allegory for fabulism, and in his fabulism he conflates the cycle of life with the political invention of a "cycle of terror and tragedy". This reduces the piece to little more than a monumental visual gravestone whose sentiments are not universal but slapped together to satisfy a grieving audience.

The narrative of the piece, rather than representing a natural cycle of life interrupted by a sudden tragic event asserts that the cycle of life is little more than a sequence of innocence, terror, tragedy, then wisdom and a reincarnation of the cycle yet again.  This is a philosophical Stockholm syndrome in which victims embrace victimhood as an explanation for all of life.  Parrish claims the scene of three grieving women (likely lifted from just about any illustrated crucifixion painting from the golden age of crucifixion paintings) in fact represent the three Greek fates (destiny's beginning, middle, end). His audience finds this profound to one degree or another but the conClation of Christianity and pre-destiny is little more than oxymoron.  To make matters worse these destiny symbols are grieving (instead of just observing and saying "that's what I'm talking about"). To add insult to philosophical injury, Parrish points to the woman with the handkerchief to her mouth and says that has to do with the chemical/biologic attack.

The narrative is a victim-hood fiction, start to finish and it contains flourishes of Disney-like fable. To the very right in the painting is a yellow smudge that stands out of the chaos like a Tinkerbell, "That", Parrish asserts, "is the glimmer of hope!" as he rolls his eyes and twists away for dramatic effect. Just below is a ribbon that shapes the infinity symbol ("Infinity AND Beyond!"). The color palette is red, white, and blue. There's a black woman and white women. The men are the towers and the women (in classic realist glory) are supporting props. There's an hour or more of Parrish explaining all this and its jaw-dropping in many more cases.

The ultimate failure of the piece however lies in the choice of choosing Grayson Parrish as the artist. Parrish is an evangelist for a return to realist painting and claims to allegorical painting in his own work.  The attack of September 11 was not an attack on individuals or even the United States, the attack was an attack on Modernity - technological progress, Contemporary Art, religious differences, human dignity that transcends class of birth, and so on.

The irony of the piece is that Parrish's evangelism is the same cultural attack on Modernity and in many ways his audience are philosophically more coupled to the terrorists than they imagine themselves to be. It is noteworthy that in Parrish's painting the narrative concludes with a survivor whose lesson from the event bestows wisdom.  This fiction conveniently ignores the fact that the terror of 9/11 was followed by a decade or more of random and directed vengeance and retribution, not wisdom.

21st Century Art, contemporary yes, Contemporary no

The New Britain Museum of American Art (NBMAA) has added a new wing to its facilities that includes the McKernan 21st century Art gallery. Susan Dunne, the Hartford Courant's art reviewer wrote a sneak-preview piece about this additional space in the August 23, 2015 Arts section of the paper.

I grew up in New Britain and I'm familiar with the museum and its many incarnations. But for decades the museum has operated with a discomfort and disdain for non-representational, (let's generally call it) abstract art. Yet the art that made American Art globally recognized is difficult to find and when you find the trace material, it is usually unrepresentative of the best or iconic work of the artist.  The one Jackson Pollock painting is a tiny seascape.  Even Pollock is reduced to the scenery painting that is near ubiquitously collected and curated by the museum ad nausea.

Susan Dunne writes that finally, "There are now dedicated spaces for surrealism, abstract expressionism, conceptualism, photorealism, pop art, photography, even 'bad art'. The museum has owned Warhol, Wyeth, Man Ray, Nevelson, Indiana, Gottlieb, Sage, Avery, Tooker, LeWitt, and more. Dunne writes, "while it is invigorating to see the work of time-honored masters - many of the artworks haven't been exhibited in a long time" without the slightest hint of irony. The masters have been in mothballs and the museum instead served up decade after decade of kitsch and geographically provincial absurdity and the museum has the gall to dedicate a gallery to presumably even worse art. Hopefully they're only recycling what's been on the walls too many years. If that's the case you can be sure it will be carefully guarded for the inevitable retrospective of the good old days when the masters were in mothballs.

The true subject of this essay is not the lack of vision that has plagued the museum in the past, it is the lack of vision described by Dunne in the Contemporary Art category. I know. You can see it coming already, can't you.

The McKernan Gallery is dedicated to 21st century art 2000 - present. The idea of categorizing Fine Art by year is absurd at face value. Historicity is a very outdated way to even think about past art, so we are already in troubling waters. A gallery dedicated to the Contemporary and PostModern is no more evident than the masters in mothballs pieces were all these years.

Dunne describes what will be in the history-biased gallery and it is little more than a litany of political commentary, "The exhibit offers an energetic array of styles and media, and the 40 works, installed side-by-side, point out a common thread in the NEW/NOW series that might not have been obvious in each artist's individual show; its longtime dedication to presenting art that makes a social statement". If your eyes aren't rolling yet they will be soon.

Some of the pieces Dunne describes, "Hung Liu's 'Relic 12' shows a bored woman with bound feet, a commentary on the limited role of women in traditional Chinese society". Dunne understandably misses the point just as the museum does. The bound feet are not about lack of opportunity, an American feminist meme - the bound feet are more likely about China's birth control issues (the last thing American feminists might complain about).  Not all Chinese women lounge around.  Visit on a search engine a high-tech manufacturing plant in China and take a look at their deformed hands sometime. There's no lack of opportunity in the sweat shops. But that American angle to the work isn't there.

Dunne goes on to list a litany of politically charged subjects, feminist statements, over-saturation of commercial imagery, immigrants trying to navigate the United States, post-911-ism, internment, pop-Christianity, guns and video game statements.  Taken as a whole, its a show of over-sized political bumper stickers collected as "statement art". FIFTEEN YEARS (or more) of statement art! Its enough to make a grown artist cry. And it explains why the art is categorized as it is by the politics du jour.

The most American thing about this state of affairs is that the museum has become a collection of stuff, lost causes, causes that never were, causes that bored us into inaction like a cluttered basement of a political activist with an obsessive love of kitsch.

American Art is more than this and the museum needs to re-evaluate the myopic obsession with representation, politics, and intellectual intolerance for Modern and Contemporary Art. I'm not optimistic. Graydon Parrish whose Cycle of Terror and Tragedy (yet-another-911-memorial-commission) is holding a discussion about his piece with a group of other artists who paint in similar style.  They call themselves PostContemporary artists.  What are PostContemporary artists? Well the work is an awful lot like pre-Renaissance, Cartesian-subject matter. You can't make stuff like this up but never confuse the label with the thing.

- Frank Krasicki, 082715

Peter Karp Photo

This is a Peter Karp photo of me in front of my two entries into the Williamsburg Art & Historical Society's Bridges Self show in May of 2015.