Paean to Lois Mailou Jones

It’s really a pleasure installing an exhibition of an artist I admire and who held tightly to a set of academic and intellectual principles during her working life. Loïs Mailou Jones maintains a special position in the Washington, DC arts scene as an artist’s artist. She taught at Howard University for over four decades, influencing budding artists and developing a wide circle of supporters. Born in Boston, she had the advantages of sophisticated art schools and mentorships that encouraged her to become a professional. If I had to highlight any part of a “back” story, I would say that Jones was a master at navigating her way through challenges that might have thrown obstacles into her plans to become a professional or reduce the quality of her work--and therefore her reputation as an artist. As an African-American woman she was called on to represent her race at various times in her life, first as a recruit to establish an art department at Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, NC. The Institute itself has a fascinating history, the brainchild of Dr. Charlotte Hawkins Brown and supported by a benefactor, a former president of Wellesley College, Alice Freeman Palmer. After moving to DC to teach at Howard, Jones’s art began to take flight from the strict Western European canon from which she was taught, to incorporate influences from Africa and the African diaspora art. The fascinating thing about Jones is that she consistently returns to her foundations in her work. She incorporates Haitian Voudou symbols and African masks, but always with an eye to composition, pattern, and beauty. Always involved in the fight against racism, she never fully gave over her art to become cause-based propaganda for any single movement. In this way, she maintained her trajectory to become established in the canon of American art history, someone to be reckoned with, an artist to be seen in great museums and purchased in galleries, not a nameless entity pushing along a political or social agenda.

In Search of the Elusive Popular Exhibiion

Scholarship AND popularity? Real Clear Arts observes that Mount Holyoke's exhibition exploring the history of wine's functions through art (Wine and Spirit: rituals, Remedies, and Revelry) is a groundbreaking concept. Visitors to college art galleries like wine and will find this exhibition captivating because the art historian who has organized the exhibition focuses on ...wine and all its related accoutrements and ritual. Real Clear Arts likes this exhibition because it "marries scholarship with popular appeal in a way that many so-called populist shows, conceived to draw crowds, do not." In other words, if we turn back the clocks a few decades and try as art historians to unpack a work's iconography and interpret the subject matter accordingly, we are at the forefront of populism because we explain what the viewer is actually seeing. I am still trying to wrap my brain around this idea that old fashioned interpretation of subject matter a la Panofsky, might be the key we threw away in our haste to stay au courant with literary criticism. All I can say is, it's about time and let me go pull out those platform shoes that seem to have back into fashion!

Death of the Exhibition Catalogue?

No more exhibition catalogues? Those weighty tomes of knowledge and color reproductions that are as costly and time intensive to produce as exhibitions themselves? NOOOO! How will we prop open our doors and impress our friends with our coffee table decor (of course I caught the Cezanne exhibition at the Musee d'Orsay!) But seriously folks, the entire publishing industry is transitioning through a period of crisis. Educational publishing has been virtually obliterated; the newspaper industry limps along looking for ways to stay viable. I am surprised that luxury productions such as $60 catalogues haven't already disappeared but according to Real Clear Arts museums are now indeed questioning the point of catalogues in the digital age: http://www.artsjournal.com/realcleararts/2010/09/exhibition-catalogues.html
Catalogues are not published to produce revenue but to become the legacy of an exhibition. They are loss leaders; expectations the museum-going crowd has that a museum is meant to fulfill (this also includes a cafe). The shop at my museum makes virtually no money from the sale of books (can you say AMAZON?) and our institution will not be able to rest easy on the royalties rolling in.

True as well that lenders to an exhibition expect to see their works reproduced in a catalogue and not to do so can be a deal-breaker. As a curator I have lived through the production of many a catalogue that exhausted me as much as organizing the exhibition. In the end, though, I knew that the catalogue would have lasting value as a comprehensive document of the show. Not a connoisseur of the e-book, I admit I have not been informed of their great advantages. One respondant to the blog post points out that the reproduction of images is not high resolution on e-books. I am sure this will change as technology in that area improves and becomes more popular. Until that time, I am fairly sure the vast majority of museum supporters comprise an audience that is likely still attached to paper. At least, this I believe to be true.

What is American anyway?

Finally, museums are catching up to their peers in academia on the subject of "what does it mean to be an American?" Two articles in this past Sunday's New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/arts/design/12johnson.html and http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/arts/design/12loos.html bring to light efforts by the MFA, Boston and the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery to address this subject through curatorial action. Mind you, these are not spry and nimble institutions but behomoths that don't take chances with their publics. We know that a seachange has occurred when the curatorial staff has secured the approval of the director and major stakeholders in the institution to take a new inclusive approach to exhibitions and collections.

The MFA's new American wing now embraces art of the Americas. Think NAFTA: America includes all of North America, Central America, and South America. How cool is that? At first I thought this was a question of semantics. Museums call their non-North American collections "Art of the Americas" encoding the idea that what you will see will not be from North America. The MFA has moved beyond that to suggest that North American art should not be viewed in a vacuum but in the context of other art in its hemisphere. I did not necessarily get the sense from the article that the curators were going to stage interventions by mixing the arts--comparing a silver piece by Paul Revere to a silver works from post-Colonial Brazil--but maybe we will be in for a surprise. This may just be the beginning of a new vision for that institution.

Hide/Seek at the Portrait Gallery is a step way out on a limb for the Smithsonian. Never mind that Queer Studies has been a legitimate program of study in many universities. One of the organizers of the exhibition expressed his frustration with New York museums to address straighforwardly the issue of sexuality in art exhibitions. Let's be clear: I think museums (contemporary, primarily) have candidly taken on straight sexuality. Homosexuality has followed the military vein of "don't ask, don't tell" figuring that most visitors can guess. The Francis Bacon exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art featured a photographic essay of Bacon's lovers and explicit discussion of the influence these relationships had on Bacon and his work. Hide/Seek takes as its premise homosexuality and homoeroticism as providing a different view on life from those who are not gay. Such an exhibition can be fraught: is there such thing as a gay gaze (pun intended) and does gay also incorporate lesbian. Not sure because the article only mentions male artists. Looking forward to hearing what the critics and audience have to say about this one. Stay tuned....

Ode to Corinne Day

Corinne Day died last week of a brain tumor at age 48. Her work as a fashion photographer spanned the last two decades and even if you didn’t know her by name, you may be familiar with some of her so-called “grunge” photographs. See http://www.corinneday.co.uk/home.php.

You certainly have heard of her most famous subject: Kate Moss. A photographer with British Vogue, Day first captured the ethereal Moss as a teenager. Her unremitting lens revealed the flaws that other photographers airbrushed and her choice of unglamorous venues reflect the jagged existence of those who work in the fashion industry. Her work for Vogue embraces the other-world existence that models are meant to occupy: some spear completely at home in their haute couture while others seem like lost, awkward waifs. I am sure commercial photography became Day’s bread-and-butter but she pulled away from that world to document the lives of friends in a book called Diary. I have not read the book but her obituary in the New York Times describes her photographs telling visual stories, including that of a single mother’s struggles for survival.

I have commented before in this blog on the challenges commercial photographers face when trying to move in the direction of fine art. Why? Day said “I think fashion magazines are horrible. They’re stale and they say the same thing year in and year out.” Those of us who read fashion magazines on either voraciously on a daily basis or desultorily when on the checkout line at the grocery store might agree that the articles seem canned and featuring new cosmetic and hair tips on a monthly basis must present a challenge. Audience composition generates some of these polarities of perception in the art world. For whom and for what purpose am I creating these works? Artists have always asked themselves these questions—questions that can drive the feasibility of turning professional as an artist. The museum community has cast a skeptical eye on artists who produce work that operates in a non-art realm. Museum directors and curators have influenced and been influenced by the world of commerce for years. As boundaries among commercial and artistic, artist and audience, curator and artist, curator and audience, director and collector crumble, strains of the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” waft through my head: “You may ask yourself, well how did I get here?”

Ode to

Corinne Day died last week of a brain tumor at age 48. Her work as a fashion photographer spanned the last two decades and even if you didn’t know her by name, you may be familiar with some of her so-called “grunge” photographs. See: http://www.corinneday.co.uk/home.php. You certainly have heard of her most famous subject: Kate Moss. A photographer with British Vogue, Day first captured the ethereal Moss as a teenager. Her unremitting lens revealed the flaws that other photographers airbrushed and her choice of unglamorous venues reflect the jagged existence of those who work in the fashion industry. Her work for Vogue embraces the other-world existence that models are meant to occupy: some spear completely at home in their haute couture while others seem like lost, awkward waifs. I am sure commercial photography became Day’s bread-and-butter but she pulled away from that world to document the lives of friends in a book called Diary. I have not read the book but her obituary in the New York Times describes her photographs telling visual stories, including that of a single mother’s struggles for survival. I have commented before in this blog on the challenges commercial photographers face when trying to move in the direction of fine art. Why? Day said “I think fashion magazines are horrible. They’re stale and they say the same thing year in and year out.” Those of us who read fashion magazines on either voraciously on a daily basis or desultorily when on the checkout line at the grocery store might agree that the articles seem canned and featuring new cosmetic and hair tips on a monthly basis must present a challenge. Audience composition generates some of these polarities of perception in the art world. For whom and for what purpose am I creating these works? Artists have always asked themselves these questions—questions that can drive the feasibility of turning professional as an artist. The museum community has cast a skeptical eye on artists who produce work that operates in a non-art realm. Museum directors and curators have influenced and been influenced by the world of commerce for years. As boundaries among commercial and artistic, artist and audience, curator and artist, curator and audience, director and collector crumble, strains of the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” waft through my head: “You may ask yourself, well how did I get here?”

Authorities 'R Us

I am enjoying my Georgetown AMUS students' blogs posted this week and have observed a particular interest in questioning authority. The Academy encourages this mode of thought and the history of art is built upon questioning authority, history, and tradition. Where would we be if Western artists were not provided the intellectual and financial capital to probe innovative techniques and ideas? We would have a history of art that looks rather like the history of Russian icon production: an enduring and beloved art form that deviates only slightly region to region.

How does a curator decide between good and mediocre art? Why is Banksy so revered for his anti-establishment approach to exhibiting? Rob Pruitt assimilates his love for the Hollywood glamor into his conceptual work First Annual Art Awards, questioning the validity of the museum's imprimateur on artists and works of art.

Question away, artists, I say. Some will approach the past with a healthy skepticism, taking, quoting, throwing away their artistic predecessors' ideas. Others will rebel against the perceived system of acceptance and will be remembered as part of a brilliant Salon des Refusees. Not having been an art student myself, I can only speculate that part of growing into the role of artist is learning how to deal with criticism and figuring out how to navigate a profession in a very untidy context of dealers, buyers, museums, curators, and critics. Banksy has created his own exhibition environment literally working outside the museum walls and remaining anonymous to most of his viewers because of his past indiscretions. Pruitt assigns a new context of superficiality to art by using the Oscars framework to comment on the authority of museums to make and break an artist's career. While the awards are real enough, they are undermined by Pruitt's general disdain (the Guggenheim site calls it "playful critique") of art world structures.

Curators are editors of the art world. As such they are trained in art history and learn through experiential practice. There are not absolute scales of quality but I would bet that most good curators if asked to rate a group of artists, would present compelling arguments for their qualitative hierarchy, for that is what curators are ultimately hired to do. If visitors do not want to feel completely ignorant when they walk around a museum, it is likely that they also want to feel secure in the knowledge that they have entered a vetted environment. Thus the most comfortable of visitors can take umbrage with the works on display by arguing remotely with the curator or the artist. Gallery spaces present even more conflict because price tags provide the works of art with quantitative meaning in a way that museums do not. A dealer wants to make a sale; a curator wants to buy visitor engagement and engender conviction.

Is there bad and good art? Absolutely. Derivativeness, lack of originality, repetitiveness, and just plan amateurishness are evident to those who have been in the business a while and have the broad perspective to recognize a standout artist. Technical competence without much thought comprises its own category of "may be nice to decorate a corporate office or living room but not to feature in a museum." This category can be tricky, as is what I call the "one-trick pony" category of artist who manages to stir up the art world and use the same ingredients over and over.

The brain informs the gut and the gut informs the brain. The relentless linearity and reductiveness of Piero della Francesco and Mondrian compell me; Delacroix and Courbet's dynamic brushwork and shots of red paint take my breath away; David Smith's delicate use of hardcore industrial materials defies logic. I won't use this as a platform to dun contemporary art as one thing is for sure--the worst of it will self-destruct with or without curatorial assistance.