Backstory- Here in DC there’s an exhibition called Art-o-Matic where a large number of local artists display their works in a large building for 3 weeks a year. Free admission, live bands, performance art, tattooing on premises, poetry slams, dog-on-cat action, it’s all there. And anyone who’s interested can put up an exhibit as long as they can donate $60 and time and energy. But apparantly this was too proletarian for Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik who proceeded to shit all over it a few weeks back in an article called “Artomatic 2004: Hanging Is Too Good for It”. Some choice quotes:
“The result is the second-worst display of art I’ve ever seen.”
“No one needs to know who made the wallfuls of amateur watercolors, yards of incompetent oil paintings, acres of trite street photography and square miles of naive installation art that will be polluting this innocent old building for the next three weeks.”
"There’s something for everyone to hate. The rest are works only a mother could love. "
“A show like Artomatic, in theory organized and stocked by lovers and supporters of fine art, is actively insulting to all the genuinely talented artists who have managed the long slog to a professional career.”
“Artomatic isn’t only good for nothing. It’s bad for art that matters.”
So after reading this reaming of Art-o-Matic you’d think that this was crude fingerpainting and macaroni shells glued to construction paper, right? I checked it out on Friday night and was blown away. Art-o-Matic kicks ass and is well worth the 4+ hours it takes to see everything. The glasswork (“hard to screw up”) is amazing. At least two dozen paintings should be on display somewhere full-time. And the talking mannequin head on wheels that follows and compliments you…well, it drew a crowd and plenty of smiles.
But this is the Pit and this is a rant. Fuck you Blake Gopnik and yer hoity-toity idea of what art should be. Art-o-Matic is art by the masses, is enjoyed by the masses, and is a fuckload more interesting than your gelato reviews. You liked some of the art there? How about telling us what the gems are instead of dropping a load all over the whole show.
DC needs more Art-o-Matics and less Blake Gopniks.
What rock is this guy livng under? TONS of art shows and displays are just that. TONS. I’d say the majority of art shows I participated in when I was a youth were exactly that sort of show. You paid your fee, you got to display your work. It was great. I didn’t have to go through a jury system, which often were not looking for my style of work (I did realistic oil paintings and drawings, and no, I didn’t suck that bad). I didn’t have to explain to anthing to anyone. I didn’t have to pay a fee to submit slides and hope I didn’t get rejected. I just showed my work, sold stuff, and got valuable feedback. What is so terrible about this?
This kind of show has been going on for ages and it’s not hurting anyone, and it helps a whole lot of us artists who want to get our feet wet.
I could go on about other parts of this jerks article, but I’ll stop here. He’s an asshole.
In my opinion, the best way to demonstrate the cattle like mentality and pretentiousness of the art world - (including its crtics and its historians) - is to give examples of what works were deemed noteworthy and important in the past.
But does it logically follow that **noone ** who has sixty bucks and too much free time has art worth seeing? I think not. But this critic plainly had blinders on and didn’t go in with anything like an open mind. He could have discovered the next Rembrant, and instead chose to use his forum to display his ignorance and elitism. (I’m not saying he *would * have, just that he *could * have. I haven’t seen the show. The OP did and liked some of the works. That’s all.)
Well let me take back the part of my rant where I said that…
Wait, can’t find it. Mind pointing it out for me?
There were plenty of pieces there that elicited a “meh” or derogatory comments. But you know what? I KEPT WALKING AND SAW OTHER STUFF. Like this. Or this.
If you want to claim that a lot of the stuff there wasn’t up to par, fine. But to claim that it somehow detracts from the “true” artists and that Art-o-Matic should be shut down puts you beyond “hoity-toity elitist” and into full-blown wanker category.
His article actually had some good points. It’s too bad they were obscured by his zealous glee in ripping the show.
Almost by its definition, Art-o-Matic is by people who aren’t in school or galleries or otherwise professional. That doesn’t stand as a criticism on its own, but it will correlate with people who haven’t put in a ton of labor, haven’t been through a lot of criticism, haven’t learned from their mistakes.
Suprisingly, I think you find these amateur “outsiders” (if you will) are often much more derivative of things that are already out there than people who tend to be more a part of the system. If there’s one thing that trained artists tend to be very conscious of, it’s falling into group-think, whereas an amateur might tend to think, “that’s something I’d like to try.” They haven’t really had the time/experience to expand beyond the initial ideas which can be limited intellectually and technically.
One doubts that, as-a-rule, the people in “Art-o-Matic” have a basement filled with pieces that they wouldn’t dream of hanging in a show, and have selected only the ones that they know are best. Now, I’m SURE there are plenty of exceptions, those people are hardly served by being hung with a bunch of amateurs.
So, is he justified in so harshly critcizing such a show? Well, you’d like to think not because, “no harm, no foul” right? But IF his last paragraph is valid, that’s a substantial criticism of Artomatic. Perhaps he should have expounded on it and tried to actually make an argument out of it.
He’s assuming that all that money, gifts in kind, and time would go to “serious art” if it did not go to Artomatic. I doubt that’s a safe assumption. If serious art is where these folks wanted their money, gifts, and time to go, it would already be going there.
I wasn’t really trying to say it’s valid, just IF it is. As it is, basically the article is just a rant against people who don’t really deserve it.
I went to the artomatic.org site. FWIW, the small sample of stuff I looked at, I thought was pretty good. Of course, most of that was people who had their own web sites, presumably those who take it a little more seriously.
In my experience, most people who pay to display their work in art shows are serious about it. Some are mediocre, sure. Some could use some more training, sure. But I’ve seen plenty of people who’d finished art school who were also mediocre and had poor basic skills.
I mean, an art education is great and I am extremely grateful for my own art education, but getting an art education doesn’t automatically mean you’re any good. Oh boy, have I seen plenty of examples of that first hand. It’s gotten to the point that when someone tells me that they have an art degree, my internal response is, “So? Until I see your artwork, I have absolutely no idea whether you are a good artist or not.”
Sometimes the “unschooled” artists are better, because they have more real enthusiasm.
In my opinion, Trunk, his premise is faulty. First, he assumes that all (or at least, most) of the money and attention going to Artomatic would otherwise go to the more “serious” art…which is anything but a given; and two, he assumes equality of purchasing power between the patrons of the Artomatic show and those of more serious art.
I’ve gotten into arguments before with musicians who resent the likes of Madonna and/or Ashlee Simpson and claim they’re siphoning off money that could otherwise go to more deserving musicians who have spent their lives honing their musicianship and are still struggling to make ends meet.
Different types of art have different audiences. There is a different demographic for the fans of Ashlee Simpson and her music than there is for more accomplished musicians…and there’s a different demographic for the types of art to be found at Artomatic than there is for the art of more accomplished artists.
In other words, there’s an audience for almost every type of art or music, and there’s nothing wrong with either a relative amateur like Ashlee Simpson or a virtuoso like Ray Charles capitalizing on their respective audiences’ desire for what they have to offer. It’s not as if Ashlee Simpson is taking sales away from someone like Ray Charles…and it’s not as if the patrons of Artomatic are taking things away from more accomplished artists (whose work is probably too expensive and esoteric for the Artomatic crowd anyway).
And another factor is that many people are put off by the perceived snobbery of the higher level art world. Many people would attend something like Artomatic that would be too intimidated to go to museums or art galleries. In this sense I think Artomatic actually accomplishes something good for the art world in general because it provides a foot in the door for less knowledgeable people to be exposed to art and to learn to appreciate it…and therefore to possibly become patrons of higher level art at some point in the future.
As it is, many of these people would read a review like that of Gopnik’s and it would not only further reinforce their perception of the art world as snobby and exclusive, but it would be insulting to them as well if they happened to like what they saw at the Artomatic show…and neither of these responses would bode well for the cultivation of a potential future patron of the arts.
I agree completely. I’m not claiming that every piece at AoM is a diamond-in-the-rough or that there isn’t any crap there; But the truth is that there’s a lot of really great stuff as well as some unpolished but good art. There’s no reason to shit all over the whole thing because Joey the homeless snot-based finger-painter doesn’t have the art-school credentials of Thomas Kincaide. Hell, one of my favorite museums is the American Visionary in Baltimore and that’s filled with artists with no formal training whatsoever.
I don’t need to see the artist’s resume to know if I like the piece I’m looking at. And I liked a lot of the pieces I saw at AoM. YMMV, but you’ll never know what is and isn’t good if Gopnik has his way.
I’ve been to Artomatic for two years and I loved it. The art fucking kickes ass, and it’s just plain fun (music, performances, etc.) I’m definitely going again this year. That critic is a fucking asshole.
Nice collection of false analogies in that review.
I’ve seen exponents of the “creative arts” try this argument before - suggesting that having rank amateurs dabbling in a given segment of the arts is comparable to getting an amateur electrician to wire your home, or in this case someone without credentials to do dentistry. Guess what - no one gets electrocuted, disfigured or dies if amateur art is hung. It is not something that should elicit critical wails of hysteria.
And this: “Imagine living in Renaissance Florence and telling one of your Medici pals that you were going to have the family altarpiece painted by Joe Blow the baker, who felt like giving it a try. It would have seemed a joke.”
Hate to tell you this, but the differences between professional Renaissance painting and sculpture and what a totally unschooled amateur might have turned out would have been painfully obvious to the public at large. Similar differences today would be much more difficult to spot. And obvious as this might seem, I think it would be a challenge to that critic if you lined up Artomatic works along with efforts by “discovered” artists and asked him to identify which was which.
My kid just did his first public display of art. You know what? He’s not that good yet. I don’t know if he’ll ever be. But he’s found a creative outlet that he enjoys. His work was the most interesting of all the work there. It makes him happy. There’s plenty of room for the stick-up-the-ass artists. Fuck that critic for trying to squelch the creative expression of anyone.