This has been rolling around in my head for weeks, it's Monday and I'm looking at what seems to be a huge mess of red tape of things that I have to do and un-do. So what better than to air out my thoughts on a subject that has perplexed and annoyed me for years right?
Okay, so my issue. When I was going to college, I was in the Fine Art Department and quickly learned the professors there were snobs. So much so, they deemed photography NOT a fine art and put it into the Visual and Communications Department. While taking that class, the professor let two senior students teach the class most of the time. On one of our "lessons" was how to mount, matt, frame and sign our work. These things came easy to me being as I had worked for Dad and Connie for years, but it was interesting to hear it coming from someone else.
So the girl who was teaching the class that day, was telling us that we were to sign our prints on the BACK of the photographs....NEVER on the front and don't EVER sign in ink. I wanted clarification. Was she talking about the actual prints or the matting? She had been speaking of the prints. I waited patiently until they were done and asked how someone was suppose to know who the artist was if the photograph was signed on the back of the print and it was mounted. She said that was just what you do. Then I asked what happens if the photograph is slip matted because then the artists signature needs to be on the photograph if the customer chooses to frame it a different way. Again, that was a no-no. I asked according to whom and her response was, " That's what the purists do." I said, "Well, that's how my Dad and/or most of the artists I've seen at the art fairs sign them." Her response? "That's why they're in art fairs."
I wanted to punch her.
My point was, who cares how you sign your work, number it (unless you're in art fairs and it's required) or what you use to sign it with. And who the hell decides what's considered "fine art", what's not and that's the end of it, period. I found this to be extremely irritating and cruel to the person creating, well anything they consider art.
Now don't get me wrong, I realize that some things are really not cool to put in art fairs. For example, the things that are all bought in pieces from China or Japan and glued together to be sold whilst sitting in a booth next to an artist that's been making say, sculptures from metal, by hand, for their entire career. However, as far as I'm concerned, most, if not all art is subjective. A topic I brought up in a critique in ceramics class. One persons pile of dog crap might be another persons piece of art they've been looking for their whole lives!
My whole point ( and this ended up being a point reiterated over and over again in school) was that the "Purists" attitude sucked and as far as I've read, most of them died poor.
I remember when I was going to school, my Dad and I had taken a day trip over to a train show going on in Toledo. While we were in the car, I told him about that day I was in photography class. My Dad is not one for long conversations or answers unless you make an extra effort on the question. Then you might illicit more than a "yes" or "no" answer. But I wanted to know his response being as he's been a photographer since he was 13...he's now 75. His answer? "This has been discussed forever. It's a moot point."
There ya go.
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These folks end up on juries b/c they have 'qualifications' like art school masters degrees, work as curators, own galleries... but to me this doesn't qualify them to judge my work.
As an urban-based, outsider painter, working with paints and other materials in new ways, I do trust the judgments of the people who view my work at events. I take comfort in knowing that 75% of my working output has sold...
But again, it's the judgments of these experts which determines whether I get into many of these shows
Wow Robert! I can relate to that very much and you wrote the words right out of my head. The way I figure it now, when you're the one doing the art fairs, you're getting paid 'cash in hand'. You put your work in galleries and you get 50-60% taken off the top, if you sell anything. That's not to say if the gallery manages to sell your work to someone rich, it pops that greed vein and then it becomes like hotcakes! Take Dale Chihuly for example: he doesn't even do his own work anymore, he has a team do it. He does the ideas for the glass by painting them on boards on the floor with paint in ketchup and mustard bottles he squirts to make a design. THOSE even sell for hundreds of thousands.
When I look at the entire picture, what I see is a numbers game. Or you could say the "luck" card. Right place at the right time. But then ultimately, I believe "it's about doing what you love and hoping your patrons love it as much as you do." It's a strange balance sometimes, but it works.
I was told that last quotation after watching my Dad work so hard at his photography and listening to him when he talked about his work. He told me that once and after listening, watching and continuing my own work, I've come to appreciate that statement. It's all about the truth......your own truth, that is.
I ran into the art snobbery thing a long time ago. I had already been working as a wedding photographer for close to 25 years, and was largely self-taught (in academic terms; an auto-didact), and had taught studio lighting classes and a host of beginning and intermediate level photo courses for a continuuing education adult interest school for a good 8 years. I had been doing art fairs for about three years or so when I decided to start formal education in art and photography.
I took a couple of years of photo classes at Herron Art School/IU in Indianapolis as a graduate non-degree student. The bias against art festival artists was obvious there right off the bat. I had a couple of semesters with the department head and no matter what I did, it was never enough for an A. Even her favorites noticed the disparity ;-) I was told to get out of the studio and shoot looser, so I did. I had a session one time with a model on the banks of a stream where I had to hold on to a branch with one hand and the camera in the other at arm's length. I took two shots, and one was off a bit, and the other was dead on for what I wanted. I was told it was "too perfect". I about lost it ;-) Not long after that I decided it was time to go for a real master's program and went to Ball State University. Another piece that I had done that was probably the best piece I have ever done even to this day, was ripped in the class critique. The same piece was accepted into a local gallery. I had the pleasure of being in the gallery on the First Friday gallery walk when the department head walks in with a gaggle of students discussing the work in the gallery, how the quality, aesthetics, and so on are top notch, and pointing out the attributes of the work. She turns the corner and my piece that she had ripped was face level right in front of her ;-) She stops and doesn't say a word, looking a little perturbed. She moves on, and one of the students asks her about that piece, but she ignored it.
After a semester or two at Ball State, I had a pretty interesting independent study class where I came up with some multi-level humor images of GI Joe and Barbie that were biting social satire and broad humor at the same time. I got lucky and was accepted into a major regional gallery exhibit in Louisville. The other artists were the usual gallery work; dark and filled with angst, and nothing I would hang on my walls. Regardless, I'm there at opening night and the other artists are gathered around discussing their work, their exhibitions, and the typical name dropping and quiet genteel understated boasting of what they've done or planning to do. So eventually someone asks me where I exhibit at, so I say art festivals. There was a pause in the conversations, sort of like I had just committed a gaffe on the level of dropping a piece of dog excrement into the punch bowl, and the others perceptably moved away from me as though I had a nasty social disease.
An interesting observation I had was that the longer I was in art school, the further down my sales went. Eventually I figured out that the world of academic art and gallery art was not what moved people at the fairs. What was also interesting was that the people I had gone to school with at Herron rarely made a living as an artist. An appalling number wound up as clerks in frame shops, selling art supplies, or doing little if anything with their own art. What was droll was these were frequently the snootiest bunch.
I never did finish the program at Ball State, although I did wind up with about 45 hours for a 36 hour program, I didn't finish the thesis project. I had to pick up another Master's program in education in order to keep my teaching job. The year off for that one was just enough to start my art hours aging out, and it would have been almost impossible to replace them fast enough to finally graduate.
It was intriguing that there were only a couple of classes where decent critiques were given. The ones at Herron were worthless, and most of them at Ball State were likewise. Only one teacher gave decent crits, and his approach was to have the students write the crit out after inspection of the work, and he had a panel of faculty from across the university sit in, only half of whom were actually from the art faculty. It was an interesting cross spectrum. The classes that were the most valuable to me personally were the art history classes, rather than the studio classes.
Wow. I wasn't expecting many responses from anyone actually. This seems to be a touchy subject for a lot of people but I just felt I needed to air it out. I do believe that if most can get past the "lines" being drawn as Mr. Gilmore has been pointed out as doing, art as a whole, will become more of a growing interest among our communities at art fairs, galleries or wherever by whomever.
I know there will always be "academic snobs" but I also realize that there's a lot to learn from formal training in some areas. That being said, I do recognize the fact that learning by teaching yourself is sometimes the best training available. The people who do art fairs get their critiques by their patrons. That's a huge learning experience in itself...and a better one in my opinion.
Not to mention, no student loans. :)
Not sure if any of you listened to the podcast I did about jurying. One of the panelists is an artist who has been very active jurying fine art fairs, Jerry Gilmore. His attitude was so affirming. He praised the artists he saw and said how eagerly he looked forward to jurying and how thrilling it was to see the growth of the work, often from between the time he participated in the image jury and then seeing the work at the shows. He was drawing no lines.
I for one think that good art is good art-it doesn't need to be qualified.We all know it when we see it whether it's at an Art Fair or in a gallery or museum. Some is more conceptual, some more skill driven. It is a bit sad sometimes that there seems to be a line in the sand that has been drawn by one side or another. I do know academic snobs, I also know art fair snobs. Some people will always push their own agenda and make others fell less than. But I also know helpful,knowledgeable and kind people in both arenas. I just gravitate towards those types and and try to stay away from the negativity.
Richard,
As a physical geographer who morphed into an environmental geologist and karst hydrologist who took up art as a stress reliever and morphed into an artist , I am in agreement... What a long strange trip it's being....
And to the original topic of the thread.... perhaps the New York art scene wannabees shouldn't be judging anything but juried shows in NYC. At best, these folks might be qualified to sell art out of a gallery or perhaps pick art for a gallery.... but they have no clue what self-taught/urban outsider art is about and they seem to lack a clue on what the average person who buys an original piece of art is looking for at an outdoor or indoor 'summer' juried art show.
They somehow confuse Art with a big A and art with the small A are in their individual contexts. Has Ai Wei Wei ever done an outdoor summer show? My point exactly
Also, how does the American outdoor summer show scene compare to the European one??
My wife just got back from Germany and says that modified high contrast colors from the 60's and 70's are back in over there... which means we might see them in use here in five to ten years. But those pop art colors from that time were never a hit with art school profs anyway... And how Lichtenstein and Warhol went from Small A art to Big A Art still eludes me
I believe that! When I sat in one of my (few) college classes trying to make a pencil drawing of a hard-boiled egg and a bottle of india ink look exactly like a black and white photograph I knew it was not for me. Where was David Bjorstrom when I needed him? LOL. I thought I had done the assignment so well until I saw what the other students had done. It was about then that I heard the road calling my name... :) I am saying that I respect those with the educations that are able to bend or break or follow for that matter the rules to make the art that they dream of making.
I get snubbed for painting on glass sometimes too. People think it's "crafty", until they see it. Then they go, "oooh, I get it..." I really do try to keep it "fine art".
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