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.