It occurs to me I have to write a follow-up to my elevator statement. Something short, but with some elaboration:
What happens when constraints are placed on eligibility of works for show is akin to hegemony. It’s a prevailing norm, dictating (well, let’s say guiding or rewarding) participation. At best from this we can hope for mannerism, that is work that quacks like contemporary art. The offenders are manny- those who ask for works of a particular style, or theme, or of a certain subject matter are the elephants in the room, second to them are the craftspeople who make works that resemble ‘relevance’ as they reinforce the norm.
What I’m ready to continue harping about, and what this elaboration is about, is about student work- the work that’s being done here at art school. What this college, is good at, known for, is foundations studies. By weight, works made here is academic in nature; yet how many shows have offered an outlet for such work?
I suppose that’s it.
Well, I’ll say, cards on the table, it would be good to paint ‘out of fashion’, because we’ve seen what it does in historical waves- it brings glory: glory to the rejected! Glory to the misunderstood!, which again, playing a hand would be to make work that was whatever was not going on en mass. Thing is, our options are the same as they’ve always been; the ‘old’, or the ‘new’, except it’s apparent the the ‘new’ is largely old.
Is a skillset out because it’s irrelevant, or because you can’t do it; asking for a friend. Look at the appreciation for Late Guston, Katz, Hockney. . So the thing to paint is the unfashionable, which would mean in investing terms, buy skills, short style, because one’s going for a bumpy ride, and the other can participate in the latter. Why am I making public my complaints? It’s at least one part giving voice to vulnerabilities- if I’m painting the unfashionable, then that’s the secret fashionable- do it too and run the market!, another part is to be vulnerable- it’s very possible I don’t ‘get’ the art I’m making polemics of, and I hope you would be proactive in either making work more legible or enlightening me to my ignorances- please don’t outcast me.
Yet another, other reason I’m reaching out, is that we both (if polemics, then your side, my side) have my opinions regarding power. I seek to empower us, that we not repeat the past (the past say hundred years in particular, and with nesting eddies therein approaching the present, as fashion goes)- that we recognize zombies for what they are (read on ‘zombie formalism’ from Jerry Saltz, or just reckon what it means and you might be close too). So, my best bet it would seem would be to learn academic painting, at a good school, because it’s one of the most particular educations to be had, and to sit pretty on a bed with unfashionable paintings under the mattress and no show history, like Lucien Freud, like Hopper.
I’m getting way ahead of myself- and cynical. Really, what’s wrong is that the student work has no stage, and the mannerist works, often illegible to the population for whom they are intended (or militant on the behalf of), continue to pump out of art institutes, adding to the overall noise of a culture characterized by waste and overabundance. It doesn’t need to be a figure painting, I’m no purist, it just needs to be self-aware, and in the meantime, well done.
