A few things have gotten me thinking lately. Sunday morning I heard this thought provoking interview on the radio and then opened my email to find a series of questions from Mark about my steps and missteps in making art sort of inside/sort of outside the art market. As I answered his questions, I took a break to dig around in my random files for a photocopy from a 1970 Art Journal.

I'll explain. I found a manifesto in maybe 1993 or 4 when I was a skinny little art history undergrad trying to figure out what the hell was up with performance art in the 1970s. Encouraged by my teacher I was trying to get my head around Gina Pane . I spent a mess of time sitting in dusty library stacks reading old art mags. I had recently become a student member of the College Art Association because I thought that might help me figure out and be a part of the big-bad art world.
That's when I found this editorial ARISE YOU PRISONERS OF ART HISTORY on page 35 (I think it was November 1970). I reprint it with full credit to give to the writers but only a faded photocopy to work from...

The College Art Association is the professional club for professional art historians in America. It guards and attempts to perfect the standards and disciplines of this comparatively new field; publishes a bulletin devoted to scholarly researches and reviews of the literature; holds meetings to discuss issues of common interest among its membership (also known as the “slave-market” because universities often recruit new staff at these events); and in general functions as a respected, respectful part of our increasingly specialized culture.

Recently a group of younger members of the C.A.A. have begun to attack the trend to professionalism and specialization which has led so often to pompous formalism and pedantry. Calling themselves the New Art Association, they have made their stand in the C.A.A meetings and also in three newsletters, the last of which includes the following manifesto:

We are against the myth of the neutrality of art.

We deny that esthetic experiences flow only into further esthetic experiences, for we believe there is a firm tie between the artistic imagination and social imagination.

We object to the study of art as an activity separated from other human concerns.

We are against the confinement of the esthetic experience to isolated, heavily guarded, disinfected objects contemplated under conditions of benign satisfaction.

We are against the reduction of art to an object of speculation and an ornament for exploiters. We are against the complicity of professors who act as hirelings to investors, publishing houses and galleries by masking with scholarly dignity wheeling and dealing in art.

We are against the commercial interests which deform the careers and choices of young artists.

We oppose the pitiful tasks which teachers assume as conveyer belts of stupid, isolated facts and dead data.

We oppose the abuse of the teacher’s power over the student to make him regard his ignorance as a crippling defect rather than an opportunity for knowledge.

We are against the degradation of teaching as inferior to publishing and the treachery of graduate programs which certify students for teaching jobs they are not prepared to do.

We are against the fetish of the doctorate, geared to the academic market rather than to the values of the field or the individual. We oppose as a crime against the human mind the exhaustion of immature students in specialized research before they have a wide grasp of human culture and a chance to probe the philosophical foundations of their field.

We are against the production by the graduate education industry of technocrats of art history — of inefficient, archaic human data hacks.

We are against the artificial segregation of the study of art from other disciplines — anthropology, history, etc— and its careful production from social issues. We are against the fragmentation of knowledge which suppresses the real implication of our cultural heritage by providing an ideology which upholds the racist, patriarchal, and class structure of society and justifies the power of the strong over the weak.

We are against the use of museums by self-interested wealth for its own prestige and financial aggrandizement, and the subservience of museum directors and curators to those interests. We are against self-perpetuating boards of trustees in museums, and the lack of representation on such boards of artists and other groups in the community.

We deplore the failure of all but a few art museums to represent and serve living artists in their community, and their failure to regard the museum's province the esthetic destiny of the communities outside their walls.

We are against pretentious, intellectually condescending exhibitions that are accompanied by catalogues swollen with mystifying verbiage.

We are against the patriarchal system pervading higher education and the museum world, in which adult students are treated as children and women are relagated to underpaid and subservient positions.

We want art and its study to exist in the center of life and not in its margins. We want art to reveal the value of human imagination and its role in reality.

The statement was written by Edward Fry, a curator at the Guggenheim Museum and president of the N.A.A.; Carol Duncan, a vice-president; Bruce Barton, it's treasurer; as well as by Arlene Corkery, Hunter Ingalls, Paula Gerson, Avram Kampf, S. Stephen Pepper, Lenore Street, Allan Wallach and Carol Zemel.

We applaud them all and their sentiments, even if three minor negative comments do come to mind... (the piece goes on with three notes and the initals T.B.H.).

One of the signers was my very own art history prof! There could be passion, there could be energy, there could be ethics in the art world and even a kid like me could participate in a new kind of art world. I was pretty damn impressed then, and well, I still am. This kind of passion is still around, but we do need an art world of ethics.

I haven't been a member in years, and I won't be in Atlanta when they convene the next "slave market" but I did find these guidelines for curatorial training programsand artist resumes and part time art employmentand professional practices for artists and ethics for art historiansand mfa ethics . It makes me think the shouting (but more importantly the teaching) had an impact.
We all can have a greater impact by simply continuing to make, continuing to communicate, continue to connect...

Arisen I is, and now off to draw...

Take care,
Rachael

I almost forgot that it has been a full year since I started this blog. Here's a treat in the form of a short essay I wrote recently about art and bugs and process. Comments are welcome (it was recently rejected, but I'm OK about it) and the Nancy is this one. Should you be in Atlanta, check out her show at Fernbank . I'm off to draw for real now.
take care and thanks for reading, this has been a treat this year and I'll keep it up for another at least, Rachael

Today I talked to a woman who moved from Houston to Rochester, but also, today as I trudged through messy piles ofsnow, I thought about all the hoopla art schtuff going on in Atlanta. Miss it, sure, but I love being here and I was encouraged to read that we (my husband, my cat, and me) weren't alone in moving to this town.

So I'm about to turn the computer off and draw my way through my day, I need to scribble away some of the frustrations and see if I can't curl together some shapes that keep popping up in my head. I also need to write some letters (you know who you are, my long lost friends and family, yer not fergot).

I still don't get the buying of art as investment, but that's OK, it's not my story. I make art because I need to, help others make art because they are driven to, and make endless efforts to de-mystify the artist as genius (sure, we're smart, but it's work not mystery), orginal work of art as precious object/commodity (yes it's a thing but it doesn't need to cost more than a car, does it? And if it does, who gets that $$?).

take care,
Rachael

Forgive me my absence, friends, I've been snuggled under blankets, barricaded in my house, thinking colorful thoughts in response to white drifts of endless snow. It's enough to make me dream of Atlanta (where there will soon be more art, merci!).

So much snow, so much change, I keep finding ways to forget to blog. But the truth of it is that sitting down and writing is important. I can therefore share the site that helped me rethink Victor Vasarely (thank you Deb), the ridiculous idea that you should follow anything but your heart into buying art(wait, I haven't changed my mind about that. Mr. Investor might not see the mystery, history, joy, pain, and vitality of good art but only money, honey, and that's a little sad from my point of view. Even a slick chart can be misguided and I think this one is.)

My painting class didn't happen tonight but I hijacked a space and painted speedily, sloppily, passionately. I ended up using much more blue than I needed and a gleeful amount of nickel azo and plenty of red lines. Painting is often cheaper than therapy, more exciting than the movies, and my own space. Plus I do think art makes me warmer (all that moving around, all that thinking about anything but being cold).

And maybe, if I am lucky and work hard, the stuff I make will be more important than a profit to somebody other than me...
see ya,
Rachael

Earlville needs art! This is why I like living in New York state again. An active and progressive foundation for the arts posts opportunities for artists like this one:

Earlville Opera House Art Gallery Call for Artists
Earlville Opera House
(Earlville NY)

The Earlville Opera House Art Gallery invites artists to submit slides of recent work for review for 2006 exhibition schedule. The EOH Art Gallery presents 7 exhibitions annually of regional and national contemporary visual artists in all media.

High quality work by professional and emerging artists who live part-time or full-time in the Central New York region is given priority. Artists from greater New York or outside New York State are also considered. All media and styles are considered, as are installations and proposals by curators.

For gallery guidelines, email: earlopra@dreamscape.com or visit our website at www.earlvilleoperahouse.com under Gallery.

Earlville Opera House Multi-Arts Center
PO Box 111
Earlville, New York 13332

Application Date: N/A

email: earlopra@dreamscape.com or visit our website at www.earlvilleoperahouse.com under Gallery.

So now, you know and I know and anyone who makes art can know that there's an opportunity. I see this kind of info sharinmg much more here in NY state than I did in Georgia, although Georgia has an artists registry that rocks.

The way little old me sees it, there are things working artists in this country can do to support a more vibrant, more important, more interesting level of arts production and distribution in this country.

We can:
make more friends with more artists
share information
make great art
speak about our work whenever, wherever, however we can
ask questions about others' artwork
learn more
teach more
refuse to be exploited by galleries
take responsibility for the work you make and the ways it gets seen

Once upon a time, artists formed unions. The John Reed Clubs weren't exactly unions and a little too doctrinaire for Bernarda Bryson Shahn (who recently passed). I'm still amazed by, fascinated with, and influenced by the history, the work and the audacity to be honest I see in the lives and work of artists like Shahn (and her husband, too).

Another thing I know is that Earlville needs good art. Send it on!
take care,
Rachael