Just received a notice for another ‘national juried art competition,’ this time presented by a fine old municipal ‘art club,’ just to the north.They care about art, right? They’re experts on accomplishment, originality and vision, and they’re ready to finally recognize the precocious student, the earnest retired banker, the dedicated driven garrett artist selling plasma and stacking boxes just so they can paint. All it takes is $50 for the first entry, $25 for entries 2-3, and the fourth is free. Sounds legitimate, right, maybe just a little oily, a tinge of late night infomercial slime, but this is a high-brow hustle with unassailable prestige. They have an art gallery. Sad to say, these self-proclaimed arbiters of the public’s aesthetic consciousness just want to maintain an aloof inscrutability, money for nothing and social standing on a stick. Oh yes, they’ll take your non-refundable entry fee, but there’s absolutely no chance going in they’ll accept your sincere, accessible picture of anything, no matter how you frame it.
Here’s a magazine publisher promising wide distribution for your art and all that’s required is for the artist to verify their dedication, their commitment and talent, by sending money. In this case only $25 for entry, but $40 to also be ‘shared on our blog and social media sites,’ the car salesman’s classic upgrade. There’s online instruction, conference room workshops, and self-help books galore all promising to help artists sell their art, without ever actually mentioning the product, medium or content, nothing about the art at all, seems weird. In fact there’s a stink. So all you 501c nonprofits, how many hundred dollar entries do you intend to keep from the desperate yearnings of artists working outside your contemporary, issue-humping, gender-diverse, high-fashion sensibility? Why all of it, of course, and then they’ll say ‘try again, next time a different juror, and who knows?’ -- maybe we can take some more of your money.
Let’s talk gigantic numbers, astronomical ratios, like the amount spent each year on professional grade art supplies to the money received nation-wide for finished art at all levels, just as a measure of aspiration. Try to imagine the total cash value of entry fees to national and local competitions compared to the prize money given out, or to sales from the resulting exhibitions. Give up attempting to estimate the stadium full of art bureaucrats, benefits and parking provided, and supported by just about all of us, to the on-the-field team of skinny artists, in hometowns everywhere, treading water at the bottom of the job market. For art to flourish there are only two essential groups, the artists who create it and a public that looks, buys, and lives with their art, but they’re last in line and kept apart, pressing their noses against the glass, out in the cold.
It’s all a vast exploitation, a racket, based on an artificial scarcity, in this case of personally empowering visual art up on the wall. We’ve seen this happen before. An old, old fundamentally corrupt institution tortured, humiliated, and deprived the western world for fifteen hundred years by severely restricting sexuality, dungeon sadisms and burning at the stake, all for their own advantage, grand outfits and the mindless adoration of threadbare, unschooled peasants. No need to mention names, but someone has been sampling their franchise. The creative instincts of humanity are built-in, a part of our makeup and our charm as a species, as essential and not entirely apart from sexuality. This inherent artistic nature can be stomped on by industrial revolutions, ground down by rote learning in repressive educational systems, and perverted by science-powered all-pervasive advertising, but they still squirt out, somewhere.
The irrepressible desire of artists to have their pictures seen, and the residual hunger of an entire culture for something more substantial and inspirational than half-time entertainment, have been lassoed, corralled, and monetized by people who think of art as a meal ticket, and there are bunches. We don’t need reform, we’re ready for cultural revolution. Send those museum directors, arts administrators, and agency bureaucrats, et al, back to the studio, give them brushes and canvas, and let them toil without reward or recognition for a couple of decades. We could call it ‘reeducation.’ Abolish the notion of art as a charity, plug up its tax loopholes, and eliminate those ‘for-profit’ art schools hiding out on college campuses.
Instead -- just look at any original art available. Come to know regional artists by their work, and anyone working within fifty miles of your house would be a good start. Visit a museum to see what the great painters were capable of, and then compare back and forth, doesn’t cost a thing. Discount, actually just disregard, anything said by an expert who doesn’t paint, essentially the difference between a sportscaster and an athlete. Sometime, when no one’s looking, give it a try yourself, the talent is in there, but if you’re too busy, no time for practice, not enough room for a studio, go out and buy something. Just like it was your own art, someday you’ll see yourself in it, hang it where you can see it everyday. Participate in art yourself by bypassing the tired old church-of-modern-art dogma, with its minimalist saints, its circular theologies and intellectual larcenies, and enjoy being a realized citizen in a civilized and humane society, one in which art is discussed, bought, sold, and lived with.
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