On Curating

I'm telling you it really sucks sometimes in the art business, when you apply for certain shows and then get rejected.

I had a flurry of being accepted there for awhile and it was nice while it lasted but now it's back to rejection.

This last one though was tuff, because it really seemed unfair. One of the curators (out of three)was this professor at the University of Washington....aw the heck with it gosh dang it I guess I just have to get over it. I really thought that certain artistic endeavors would be free from politics, but I guess not. At least I know it now.

The trouble is, people spend a lot of time and money to get things ready for a particular application and to have it already decided in advance is hard to take. There were 147 applicants, of which 135 had no chance because they weren't 1) graduates of the UW 2) personal friends of the curators.

Oops, ignore that last part, it seems like it's sour grapes.

I continue to stuggle on mightily at the studio, hoping to get a break sooner or later. Probably the best way though would be to go out and meet EVERYBODY in the Seattle art scene and be nice to all of them. Forget the actual painting part, that's for hacks.

There's this magazine that I read from time to time called Modern Painters. It really isn't that good of a magazine but I don't think there's any art magazine that's any good. They all have a good article about once a year, otherwise you could probably just put out the same version each month that went out the last month and nobody would ever notice.

Modern Painters for some reason doesn't have that many articles about painting, they tend to get lost in photography and stuff like that which to me is B-o-r-i-n-g. And talk about bad articles, the ones about videos...I mean these shots from videos make no sense, have no real meaning yet they pepper their pages with them.

Anyway, there's this dweeb in Modern Painters, I think his name is Matthew Collins, who thinks he's hard wired to what's good in the world of art. Him. Nobody else.

That must be nice to feel so certain about things, I know I don't.

But Matthew tends to get behind things that go down my street so to speak. He doesn't like paintings that were done from photographs which even the big guys seem to be doing a lot of these days. Like Damien Hurst and Eric Fischl and that german guy, can't think of his name. Elizabeth Peyton who is as hot as hot hot can be right now apparently works from photographs. Mr Collins thinks that sucks and has called for an international boycott (or somepin) about making paintings from pics.

He also says that a lot of painting in a generation such as the generation we're in right now are going to stay in this generation, they don't have a link to the past. They have no history, they're spontaneously generated.

I sorta agree with these two points even though I still think he's a dweeb.

When some artists submit slides to apply for a show, it's hard for them to convey the general feeling you would get if you saw a painting in situ, in the studio amongst all their friends, all the other paintings that helped the painting become what it is. A general feeling of connectedness.

It's also hard to convey the feeling you'd get if you were to spend a little time with a painting, and some paintings you really need to spend some time with before you get to the real heart of them.

I think that the stuff that stands out in an application for a show is the stuff like Collins was talking about, the art that is spontaneously generated in a generation and which won't last past that generation. It appeals to the curators, because it's different and because it's witty. There's this guy in Seattle, Todd Karam, who I think falls into this category. http://www.toddkaram.com/
It's pretty dang good stuff...you can see why he's successful. You DON'T have to spend a lot of time with any of these paintings to like them. You DON'T need to see the paintings together with his other paintings to like them. It's art that captures the youthful spark of a generation and it's a beautiful thing. But will the next generation like them? And the next?

Sometimes you see art that's different AND it connects to the past, it's built from those that went before. I think the artwork of Katy Stone, a Seattle artist, is in that category.
http://www.gregkucera.com/stone.htm
Her artwork has that youthful spark but it seems to have a little bit more, a weight to it that some art does not have. It's funny to say the artwork has weight, because it's made of mylar, very flimsy material and airy.

Sometimes you see art that IS spontaneously generated that IS NOT going to make it partly because it has absolutely no connection to anything. This guy I used to talk to came up with an idea that really was pretty good, and he executed it fairly well. He thought he was going to go to the moon alice with this art, but I didn't think so, he didn't have enough presence somehow.

So I guess even art that's spontaneously generated needs some base somehow, it needs to grow from something.

All in all, it's probably a very difficult job curating an art show and getting the best stuff based on slides and jpeg images. I've probably gone about applying for shows the wrong way, I really should try to do it differently. And I will. Starting now.