1st annual?
written by samsanford on June 10, 2008, 11:40 am

We hope to do this several times a year, eventually as often as once a month.

hooray for Sanford
written by David O on June 11, 2008, 6:11 am

Great idea, good luck with it.

I'm no lady but I love Toulouse Lautrec posters. Where can I go to take some jaded lessons so I can be cool and hate people for liking stuff that I have deemed unoutstanding?

Class scheduling conflict
written by Ivan L on June 11, 2008, 7:44 am

I think there's a scheduling conflict between that class and your seminar on defensiveness and selective misunderstanding.

You completely missed the point, David O.
The reference to Toulouse Lautrec posters and the people who love them was a swipe at "artsy" people who are not artists and who do not understand that art is not just something you put in your foyer and gaze on while you sip your Starbucks espresso, in other words, the target demographic (or maybe only the type of people they attract) for Art City Austin.
Art posters by famous dead masters do not in fact help out artists economically.The expectation that any interest in pretty pictures will become a trickle-down affair for actual contemporary living artists is dreadfully naive. It takes much more than that. It's like saying that if someone likes Chef Boyardee they will frequent 5-star restaurants. But I'm drifting from my own point: this event is not for those people because they will not be interested in it.
Furthermore, you are confusing my negative remark about "people with a fondness for Toulouse Lautrec posters" with your feelings of inferiority as felt in your estimation of Toulouse Lautrec as outstanding.
Let me clear some things up:
- I think TL is pretty great, but he's dead and his art is old. He already made that in the past so I don't think it needs to be made again. The potential for finding artistic greatness on a path that has been as well tread as TL's are pretty damn slim. The eye and the brain become accustomed to that style and it consequently stops being interesting on a purely experiential level. It's not that I think we need to reinvent the wheel every single time, but that sometimes wheels aren't the most interesting things.
- I don't "hate people for liking stuff that I have deemed outstanding" but I certainly would not be interested in engaging them in a conversation about art. This does not make me jaded, it makes me aware of my own interests.
- You seem to resist the idea that contemporary art is inherently elitist and hierarchical, like almost everything else. If you like your art scene to be totally feel good and everyone gets a prize just for showing up then you're certainly reading the wrong websites and looking in the wrong places.

Every time someone buys a Toulouse Lautrec poster God kills a kitten.
written by David O on June 11, 2008, 8:54 am

You oversimplify the people you disdain.

I worked the Art After Dark thing and actually spoke with some of those icky people from the demographic you hate. Some of them know a lot about art. Some don't but are very interested. some are as arrogant and carelessly dismissive as you.

And for the record, art is definitely something I put in my foyer (the foyer of my horse barn) and gaze at while I sip a 2-11. I do Chef Boy R Dee and the nice restaurants. It's ok to like both. And I sure don't feel inferior to you because I still like Toulouse Lautrec. I even like a lot of the coffee sipping ladies who buy those posters. Even though they're apparently not worthy of being afforded dignity by people as cool as you. I can't imagaine what would motivate them to want to engage in a conversation about art with you since you consider them to be a joke, and yourself to be vastly superior. read: Church Lady.

The prizes at my little populist art scene come in the form of sales, and your superior taste can't control those. And you can't stop me from reading this pompous litte website either. Celebrate my diversity, baby.

all in good fun
written by Montgomery on June 11, 2008, 5:24 pm

for context, Gavin Brown/Rob Pruitt's flea markets were a blast!

Disdain
written by LionTigerBear on June 12, 2008, 4:24 pm

Like the way you celebrate diversity, David? By belittling the art community and hard working artists who don't share your conservative views about culture on every art blog you frequent? Is this some sort of passive-aggressive retaliation technique for all the perceived slights you've felt for not being included in their community?

messy
written by samsanford on June 12, 2008, 4:48 pm

Making essentially the same thing over

arrgh! what happened
written by samsanford on June 12, 2008, 4:50 pm

second time that's happened - I wrote a long post and when I clicked the 'add comment' button only the first few words showed up - the rest all gone.
starting over...

messy - take 2
written by samsanford on June 12, 2008, 5:23 pm

Making the essentially the same thing over and over because it's easy to sell (bluebonnet landscapes) vs. always pushing your ideas farther, experimenting, growing and changing.
Art as 'mere decoration' vs. something more - philosophical or political statement, instrument for social change.
Egalitarian, anarchic institutions vs. top-down, hierarchical ones.
The Mercado is designed to explore these issues experimentally.
None of these seeming dichotomies is unambiguous or simple. In my own art-making, collecting, and interactions with social networks and institutions, the two sides of each question seem to mix freely.
Some preliminary unorganized observations:
Institutionalized taste seems to deliver us from the responsibility of forming our own judgments. We all naturally crave an authoritative voice to tell us what to think because we each fear that our judgment is different from everyone else's and will cause us to be rejected. When a group of people submits to the same institutions of taste, its members all feel safer and more accepted when talking to one another, and they join together in defending their defining institutions. This dynamic leads to some problems, like the emperor's-new-clothes phenomenon and the fact that the general public perceives contemporary art as confusing, boring, and not very 'artistic.' It also gives rise to groups that define themselves by their opposition to the institutions, which in turn can become institutions giving rise to their own opposiiton, and so on.
The fear of rejection drives these dynamics. This fear is the reason 'bad art' is so unacceptable to us. When we see bad art we are reminded of our fear that our own art or taste will be labeled 'bad' - we see what we fear others see when they look at us, so we are repulsed. But if we see something that seems bad to us in a museum or gallery we are much more willing to give the artist and the institution the benefit of the doubt - we are open to reconsidering our initial judgment. We would rather be a confused member of a consensus-group than a lone outsider. And if we see something that looks like good art in a place defined as low-art, this causes anxiety too. One alternative reaction to this situation is to proclaim that all art is good, that art shouldn't or can't be judged according to any common standards - this is another way to avoid sticking one's neck out by forming an independent judgment.
[continued...]

messy - take 2, part 2
written by samsanford on June 12, 2008, 5:24 pm

[continued from previous comment]
Speaking personally:
I don't like a lot of the art I see in galleries and museums. I don't usually talk about these judgments very openly because I fear being rejected. But also because I don't really take my own judgments (or anybody else's) that seriously. I just don't care that much whether something I see is 'good' or 'bad.' Occasionally something really excites me or interests me, occasionally something strikes me as really boring or misguided, but most times there is no real judgment - I'm just looking at what someone has done, trying to see it.
I suspect that much of the art that I would be most excited by is not in a gallery or museum right now, and a lot of it never will be.
I don't pretend I don't want to show my work in galleries and museums and sell it for lots of money, but that hasn't happened, and meanwhile I've derived a lot of happiness from selling my work at low prices to people like me who don't have a lot of money. I would never want to get into a situation where I would be unable to make things that my friends could afford to by. I also care about my friends' tastes and judgments a lot more than those of wealthy collectors and of the arbiters of institutional taste (or at least I think I do). I resent the general view that the success of an artist should be measured by the price tag on his painting, that the prescribed path for a successful artist necessarily involves excluding the people I'm connected to and catering to a group I'm excluded from. I just want to be able to make a living working for myself and making stuff.

1st Post on Shakey Ground
written by RippleFlatLife on June 15, 2008, 8:52 am

Back in April I posted a little blurb on my blog that read "Everytime I read Glasstire I get depressed... I think I might stop reading it..."

I've been an intermittent reader of Glasstire for a few years, but on this day in April, I finally verbalized what had been gnawing at me... that the elitist perspective I sensed on the wasn't just my imagination... it was real... and this made me sad...

it was sort of an sos bottle of a post...

When doing a little research on Mercado as prep for my participation in the event, I came across this post, and I've decided to engage a bit in the discussions that up to this point I barely had the courage to read, let alone respond to.

Ivan's point to David O, "- You seem to resist the idea that contemporary art is inherently elitist and hierarchical, like almost everything else. If you like your art scene to be totally feel good and everyone gets a prize just for showing up then you're certainly reading the wrong websites and looking in the wrong places." perfectly illustrates the pervasive philosophy that consistently bums me out on the site. However, this statement isn't a strike against Ivan's assertion.

competition abounds... I won't disagree... and it's a fine way of thinking if you can handle it... Personally, I'm forever trying to undermine the thought or thoughts that reinforce such a position in the hope that decentralizing will help to create a broader base/stronger more varied, productive and accepting community... mostly however, realizing like Ivan that "contemporary art is inherently elitist and hierarchial like almost everything else" I sidestep and am cut off from any true sense of community. Call me naive or ridiculously idealistic, but I think it's possible to have a rapport between various art camps though undoubtedly, tastes and philosophies will come into conflict... I think it is possible because art-makers are a community of interest, however loosely bound... doesn't have to be feel good... just has to be non-separatist in practice... why not go hang out at the Fine Arts Festival/Art City Austin and swim in the things that rile you? Really why not... is it so bad that there are people who share a similar interest (but whose perspectives and output are divergent in "fundamental ways") that the only escape is to deride because of differences in taste and ability? Leave the politics and religion in politics and religion to politics and religion... ask more from art's politics and religion...

I think Sam's last post and the whole idea of the mercado is a step in a more unified direction... funny to me that some of the sentiments expressed in the comments in relation to this main post are a little contrary to what I sense Mercado is trying start...

As an aside, some six months ago I visited an exhibit at Pump Projects and came across some paintings by a woman named Angela that immediately struck as "bad" in terms of both subject and technique. However, a few moments later I was converted by the thought of someone seeing my work how I was seeing her work. This maudlin self-centered/self-preserving thought melted my critical view, and I saw Angela's work as something beautiful... not naive beauty or kitsch beauty... I was moved by it like I've been moved by Lautrec and Schiele and Ronay and Guston and Warhol and Duchamp and Lucas and Pfieffer and Alys and Burden and Basquiat and Rauschenberg and Sze and Clowes and Rios and Posey and Piwonka and Zimmerman and Rodriguez and Neckface and Rhode and Manet and Paperrad and Byrne and Nauman and Jeffery Wright and Lewitt and Goldsworth and Puryear and McHargue and Fletcher and Johanson and Johnson and the lady that painted her cats on the streets of new york and and and and and and.... the list goes on....


too feel good/utopian... sure

seriously?
written by pfffffffft on June 16, 2008, 11:21 am

"Now you might be concerned that this will become Fine Arts Festival/Art City Austin 2.0, but those fears are unwarranted since this is an artist run venture to encourage collecting and direct contact with patrons and/or potential buyers, and not a hobby project for future ladies-who-lunch hopefuls and people with a fondness for Toulouse Lautrec posters."

not smug, not smug at all

ass

RippleFlatLife is classier than I am
written by pfffffffft on June 16, 2008, 11:27 am

"I think Sam's last post and the whole idea of the mercado is a step in a more unified direction... funny to me that some of the sentiments expressed in the comments in relation to this main post are a little contrary to what I sense Mercado is trying start..."

is a more diplomatic response

but my thoughts are the same