Congrats!

Congratulations to all the new MFA-ers out there! Lisa and I really enjoyed seeing everyone's work and catching up with everyone. Sorry if we didn't get around to everyone.

Happy holidays to everyone!

Lee & Lisa Millard

Winter crit and Thesis Weekend...

Every year, I ask people to write in about their crits and every year I'm met by deafening silence. But it won't stop me from asking again.

I'll just decorate my request with some photos from the Public Presentaitons of Thesis, which I found very interesting. I had been leery of the graduating class' emphasis on keeping the presentions short, but I should have trusted their collective wisdom. Even with the presentions held to such short spans, it was exhausting. But I hope instructive for those preparing for thesis next year.

Just a reminder, you can download copies of the complete thesis papers art the UARTS MFA Thesis website. Hope everyone enjoys a happy and restful holiday. See you in summer (but I'll still bother you with posts on HyperCriticalWriting now and then...)

Theses Online

What a great idea to post the exiting grads theses online! Now I won't have to pester them to send me a copy! Brilliant!

Lisa and I cannot wait to see everyone's work and really everyone in general. We'll see you all in a few weeks!!

I will post the full text version of my article shortly. Thanx Gerard for posting a preview.

Ciao!

Alumni News...from Lee Millard

The following is excerpted from an article in the November 13 Press Enterprise:

BERWICK:Lee Millard has come clean: He's the man who erected the memorial to a dead deer along Route 11 two years ago.

And that¹s only a sliver of what he¹s been up to.

In 2003, Millard came up with a campaign sign urging voters to support a fictional ape who hates humans. Then he planted it on a roadside among genuine campaign placards.

He has put Bambi on targets. He has staged a protest against nothing.

"I want people to question their own surroundings the way I do," said Millard, 27, a Bloomsburg University graduate who works as an art director, teacher and waiter.

Some people don't share Millard's enthusiasm. His own mother and grandmother asked, "Why can't you draw something nice, like a covered bridge?"

But Millard says he wants people to ask themselves, "Is this serious, or is this a joke?" He thinks his art is both.

As many of you know, Lee is a graduate of the MFA Program in Painting (he presented his thesis exhibit in 2005). Everyone should check out Lee's work at Lee Millard's Website. Search for "Millard" from that page and you'll see his work. Hoefully, we'll be able to post the full text of the artcicle soon.

Good work, Lee.

2006 MFA Thesis are online

Candidates for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics, Painting, and Sculpture are in the final stages of completing their Thesis Exhibitions. Cards have begun to go out, and Thesis Papers are being recieved. You are invited to review the thesis papers by visiting the class website.

The receptions for the Thesis Exhibitions will take place Friday, December 8 from 6-8pm at the University of the Arts Galleries and Saturday from 5-8pm at Highwire Gallery, 1315 Cherry Street in Center City Philadelphia.

www.artinphilly.com

www.artgiz......com has been changed to http://www.artinphilly.com

Recruiting adventures

Carol and I will be in San Francisco at a National Portfolio day this weekend and we'll be takling questions from prospective students and showing them work that comes form the program. Any hints for what we should say?

Hello.... Anybody there?....

Does anybody have any thoughts on an on-line art calendar for Philly? My breakdown of what's available right now is that you have inLiquids email flyer (which I think is hard to read and favors inLiquid members), PhillyFunGuide.com and GoPhilly.org (they don't focus on the arts, their's too much info, and it's not geared towards a calendar), the Artblog is just reviews... what else is out there?
How about a site whos homepage is a calendar for the arts in Philly; Receptions, openings, lectures, workshops all show up immediately. Another button could link you to an "on-going events" page and all of the events would be accompanied by links to reviews (reviews by site contributors and links to the Artblog for example). This site could be known for its reviews... that's easy, because reviewers tend to be boring... like I'm boring right now – are you still reading! Well, God bless you – you're a believer! Together you and I will take on the art-info-void of this fair city and lead its' art patrons to the light of the now! What's happening now?! what did I almost miss! No! what did I not miss because I went to... let me see... www.ArtGizmoOnTheNetThatKnowsEverythingInAWayThatsAlmostCreepy.com! I need a job and I'm not getting one because I have a bad attitude about people who would call themselves my boss! I find intimidation tactics during an interview gaurantee success that I will control the interview but unfortunately not be employed. And who would employ me?! Employed to what. I'm unemployed – no one has set me out on a task! So here I am setting out on my own venture – my own journey to monetary gain. I'm in the hands of yours truelly now. As of this moment I officially declare myself: Self-employed! I'm a busy, busy man so if you'd like to contact me about any of your own ideas regarding www.ArtGiz......com I'll need to pencil you in for an appointment. Let's do lunch people!

A few business items

I've been wanting to revamp the course evaluations this summer in response to concerns about how they don't encourage feedback appropriate to students studing off-campus. Erin has stepped in to help with this, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, please comment here or pass them on to Erin.

Another thing I've wanted to do (and this is the right place for it) is start a conversation about how one sets up a studio far from home for a short time, and also how the second and third years students' studio practice has (or has not) evolved after working with the facilities here. I think generating a student-authored guide to studio practice would be a very beneficial thing with which to welcome new students in the summer. Any thoughts?

This week's visitors

This week, the MFA in Ceramics, Painting and Sculptrue program at the University of the Arts welcomes Ellen Harvey to its Food for Thought series. A 1998 graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Harvey took part in the PS1 Institute for Contemporary Art’s National Studio Program. Her recent awards include a Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Grant for her exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy; Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant; and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2002. Her most recent solo exhibitions include “Bad Mirror,” Galerie Gebruder Lehmanin, Dresden (Germany); “Mirror,” Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia; “New is Old,” Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (Poland); “Context is Everything,” Mullerdechiara Gallery, Berlin (Germany); and “A Whitney for the Whitney,” Philip Morris, New York. Selected group exhibitions include Gwangju Art Museum (Korea); Museum for Photography, Braunschweig (Germany); Wyspa Institute, Gdansk (Poland); Austrian Cultural Forum, New York; Studio Museum, New York; Prague Biennale (Turkey); Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art; and PS1 Museum, New York. Her 2,000- square-foot mosaic “Look Up, Not Down” commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit for the Queens Plaza subway station was installed in 2005.


The painting department is also playing host to artist and Tyler instructor Frank Bramblett . The photo above is of paintings from his exhibit at the Levy Gallery in Philadelphia, and more information can be found on his website.


Sculptors will have a chance to meet with Michael Grothusen, whose 2001 steel and wood sculpture, The Two of Us appears above.

As always, students and other interested parties are encouraged to use this blog to comment on the lectures and critiques.

Visitors for the week of July 24

This week, the MFA in Ceramics, Painting and Sculptrue program at the University of the Arts welcomes Ellen Harvey to its Food for Thought series. A 1998 graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program, Harvey took part in the PS1 Institute for Contemporary Art’s National Studio Program. Her recent awards include a Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative Grant for her exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy; Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant; and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2002. Her most recent solo exhibitions include “Bad Mirror,” Galerie Gebruder Lehmanin, Dresden (Germany); “Mirror,” Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia; “New is Old,” Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (Poland); “Context is Everything,” Mullerdechiara Gallery, Berlin (Germany); and “A Whitney for the Whitney,” Philip Morris, New York. Selected group exhibitions include Gwangju Art Museum (Korea); Museum for Photography, Braunschweig (Germany); Wyspa Institute, Gdansk (Poland); Austrian Cultural Forum, New York; Studio Museum, New York; Prague Biennale (Turkey); Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art; and PS1 Museum, New York. Her 2,000- square-foot mosaic “Look Up, Not Down” commissioned by MTA Arts for Transit for the Queens Plaza subway station was installed in 2005.

The painting department is also playing host to artist and Tyler instructor Frank Bramblett .

Sculptors will have a chance to meet with Michael Grothusen.

As always, students and other interested parties are encouraged to use this blog to comment on the lectures and critiques.

Jack Risley (and a slew of others)

Jack Risley visited the MFA program in Ceramics, Painting & Sculpture on Wednesday, July 12, discussing his work and performing exclamatory titles. The talented Mr. Risley played his cards close to his vest throughout the talk, often eschewing interpretation for deadpan description, only occasionally dropping tidbits of information that were not illustrated on the screen before us. Others must talk, and for their thoughts about Risley's forms (coincidently framed in a discourse of hybridity), you can look at this piece Nancy Princenthal banged out for Art in America

With some many artists' lectures in two days (Robert Goodman and Gerry Nichols spoke to painters, Dick Torchia to seminar students, Matt Courtney talked to Ceramic Sculptors...I figure that's about five hours of lectures between 9am Tuesday and 11am Thursday) there's a lot to chew on. Who will comment first?

Camera obscura Image is Reversed

As an artist who still has a foot stuck in the mud of skills, techniques and high-craft, I believe that there is merit in painting or constructing something "well;" that is having an ability to control one's medium. Though I do not believe it is integral to producing a successful work, I often wonder if, in our intensely stimulated culture, we overlook skill in favor of novelty or "originality." This idea came from the point in Dick Torchia's talk when he mentioned that the use of the camera obscura during the Renaissance was seen as cheating, and had the capability of discrediting one's work. This comes as a rather fresh thought today, in the age of Light Boxes, Digital Cameras, Projectors, and Photoshop, where artists are almost expected to use something extra to push their work beyond paint on canvas, or clay on a pedestal. If I were to paint two landscapes tomorrow, one plein-air, and one using a camera obscura, which would be the talk of the town? I doubt that it would be the standard landscape even if it was a "better" painting. I am not trying to say we should go back to the Academy model, I truly believe we should use any means necessary to develop our ideas most successfully, indeed whatever it takes. However I couldn't help noticing the discrepancy between eras, those previously scorned for innovation would be exalted in today's art world.

Painter Robert Goodman, July 11

Painter Robert Goodman will visit the University of the Arts Painting MFA program on Tuesday, July 11, to conduct short crits with students. Mr. Goodman earned his MFA from Tyler School of Art and his BFA from Cleveland Institute. His work was recently featured in New American Paintings, an exhibit in print curated by Alex Baker, and he has shown at the Fleisher Art Memorial (where he was a 2006 Fleisher Challenge Artist), and at the Seraphin Gallery in Philadelphia.

More information on his work and links can be found on his web site.

Syd Carpenter

Ceramic Sculptor Syd Carpenter visits the MFA Program in Ceramics, Painting, & Sculpture on Wednesday July 5, 2006. Information about her work can be found here, at Swathmore University's site, here, at the Pew Fellowships in the Arts page, and at her page on Sande Webster Gallery's website.

Her current one-person exhibit at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, Menagerie, is on view through August 13. You can follow this link to DCCA's homepage for more information and directions.

Movie Nights

An informal series of four screenings kicks off running through July kicks off Thursday, July 6 at 7pm at the University of the Arts.

Recognizing that art comes not only from art but also from other area of visual experience, this series of screenings explores the relationship between films and artworks in four artists’ practice. Artists will show films they found influential as a way to indirectly address the subjects that inform their work. (Some further thought on what it might mean to be influenced by something are here.)

Each event will take place in at the University of the Arts, 320 S. Broad St., Anderson Hall Room 212. All screenings are free.

Thursday, July 6 – Painter Jane Irish begins the series by introducing Different Sons (56 minutes). In the late summer of 1970, the VVAW organized Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal) a four day march by 100 Vietnam veterans from Morristown, N.J. to Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. This documentary records that event and the personal reminiscences of the participants. During the march, the veterans described their experiences in Vietnam to spectators and re-enacted scenes of civilian mistreatment which they had witnessed during the war. On the last day of the march the veterans were welcomed to Valley Forge by friends and relatives. In the closing ceremonies honoring those killed and wounded in Vietnam, the participants crush their plastic M-16 rifles and chant for peace. Ms. Irish's work has been involved with history - specifically the Viet Nam war - for some time, and she has exhibited widely. For more information about her recent show at the PA Academy, follow this link. To learn about Operation RAW, go here.

Thursday, July 13 – Filmmaker Joe Nanashe screens Even Dwarves Started Small (Werner Herzog, 1970). Information about Mr. Nanashe's work can be found here here.


Tuesday, July 18 – Isaac Resnikoff screens Alone in the Wilderness (Dick Proenneke, 2004). Mr. Resnikoff's work is represented by Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadlephia, and information about him can be found here.


Thursday, July 27 – Paul Falzone screens The Five Obstructions (Jorgen Leth, 2003). Directed by Lars von Trier, the film documents an experiment/interaction/game between him and his mentor, noted Danish experimental filmmaker Jorgen Leth based on art/film school assignments in which students are given limitations that they must work within. If you haven't seen it, the film is a fascinating exploration of the tensions between form and content, between mentor and student, and between documentary and nondocumentary formats. It's also a really fun movie to watch

Charles Long

I'm sure you're all reading up on Charles Long and looking forward to his talk this Thursday, June 29. In case you're looking for a preview, there are some two-dozen images at Tonya Bonakdar Gallery's website, including this 1997rubber and wood sculpture called (what else?) Andy Warhol.

If you're feeling super industrious, you can go to the library and unearth articles about him from ARTNews in March, 2006, and - this is the one I'm all over - ArtForum's May, 1995, piece on Long's collaboration with Stereolab (some images can be clicked toward here).

New York Minutes

A day late (and several dollars poorer, thanks to the book stores, restaurants, and museums of Gotham) I've finally returned, and I can say, unequivocally, that if you missed the Dada show and Against The Grain: Contemporary Art from the Edward Broida Collection at MoMA, you must return to NY now.

Architect (and evidently MoMA Trustee) Edward Broida was the collector of which one can only dream...or so I would have believed. His collection began with a bang when he acquired two (not one, two) Philip Guston paintings on his first visit to McKee Gallery in 1978. From there, he went on to amass a collection whose highlights, represented in this overwhelming show, are numerous and dazzling...but not because everyone in it is so friggin' famous, but because everyone it is so friggin' good and everything makes everything else look better. Take Jake Berthot. A fine abstract painter, whose large painting, The Room, hangs across the room from John Walker's Green Alba-Kingston. That Mr. Broida invested deeply in the artists he collected is all the more admirable when you walk along the wall gasping in quiet delight at the Vija Celmins drawings or Ken Price's sculptures, some recent enough to have been shown only last year. One wants to take everyone who has aspirations to "collecting" art by the hand and lead them through this show, which is a master class in how to select tough, thoughtful art.

But the Dada show...I had dreaded this. Were we doomed to another episode in MoMA's ongoing effort to enhance the standing of the Modern project by presenting its pioneering moments as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy…but no. The first thing you see when you arrive on the museum's sixth floor is a monitor showing footage of atrocities and aftermaths of World War I, arguably the defining moment of global Modernism. It is gruesome, and riveting. One watches clouds of mustard gas waft toward helpless soldiers outfitted with pathetic, primitive protective gear that looks more ritual than reliable. We see a man whose face had been blown off trying on prosthetic eyeglasses...complete with an artificial nose to make him look last ghastly. And then one is ready to see some art.

I could go on and on about the works, but what was really compelling was the installation. Loosely grouped into sections centered around the various cities in which Dada flourished (Berlin, Cologne, Paris, New York, etc.), the show was at once regional - it allowed the viewer to see how politically radical and profoundly local Dada was in the work of artists like Heartfield and Grosz - and global - encouraging sudden, almost imperceptible boarder crossings (when did I wind up in Paris?).

Sadly, and by virtue of architecture’s need to direct traffic flow more than any thing else, the show ended with NY Dada and the work of Marcel Duchamp, whose arguably revolutionary works seemed more concerned with petty squabbles with art than grand statements of disgust with culture at large.

Indeed, the show’s greatest contribution was the opportunity – however brief – to regard Dada as something more than just a precursor to Surrealism. When one goes back and reads the documents of the Surrealists, one finds in them the same sort of anger that propelled the Dada artists, but Surrealism was handily overtaken by fashion and commerce where Dada resisted these forces.

New York Goings on

We're working on the itinerary for the New York Trip and should have it distributed late Wednesday (or - really, on the bus Thursday). But you may be interested in bookmarking this site, which lists events. Douglas Kelly Showlist is startlingly comprehensive and amusingly editorial. It's also sent out as an email to subcribers. Enjoy!

Sarah McEneaney, Visiting Artists for Painting

Sarah McEneaney will be visiting painters for critiques on Monday, June 26. Her narrative work, much of it selfportaiture, is widely exhibited: she has had major exhibits at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Institiute of Contemporary Art, and other venues. She has been awarded prestigious grants for her work, including a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, in and has worked with the Mural Arts Program on a number of public projects throughout the city. Sarah frequently travels on residency or fellowship opportunities to paint, and those interested in such programs may wish to speak to her You can learn more about her by visting the library and seeing the catalog for her ICA show, or by going here or here. She is also seen on the missioncreep site.
Crit appointments will be assigned. If you have a special interest in seeing her, speak to Gerry or Eileen to arrange an appointment.

Ire, continued from an earlier post

Okay. I didn't get the post about visiting a certain MFA show up when I said...or even where I said I would. I've been a little unwell. It's actually over here, and you can add your thoughts if you wish. See y'all in a few days.

Let's do the numbers...

I've been poking around a little on the subject of art careers and thought some readers might be interested in looking at art as a career in the way that the federal government looks at art as a career. To that end, here's a link to U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook. I'll quote a few choice passages (with occasional emphasis)...

Fine artists typically display their work in museums, commercial art galleries, corporate collections, and private homes. Some of their artwork may be commissioned (done on request from clients), but most is sold by the artist or through private art galleries or dealers. The gallery and the artist predetermine how much each will earn from the sale. Only the most successful fine artists are able to support themselves solely through the sale of their works. Most fine artists have at least one other job to support their art careers. Some work in museums or art galleries as fine-arts directors or as curators, planning and setting up art exhibits. A few artists work as art critics for newspapers or magazines or as consultants to foundations or institutional collectors. Other artists teach art classes or conduct workshops in schools or in their own studios. Some artists also hold full-time or part-time jobs unrelated to the art field and pursue fine art as a hobby or second career.

Usually, fine artists specialize in one or two art forms, such as painting, illustrating, sketching, sculpting, printmaking, and restoring. Painters, illustrators, cartoonists, and sketch artists work with two-dimensional art forms, using shading, perspective, and color to produce realistic scenes or abstractions.

It goes on to talk about working conditions, but this passage from a chapter called "Training, Other Qualifications and Advancement" is noteworthy:

Postsecondary training is recommended for all artist specialties. Although formal training is not strictly required, it is very difficult to become skilled enough to make a living without some training. Many colleges and universities offer programs leading to the bachelor’s or master’s degree in fine arts. Courses usually include core subjects such as English, social science, and natural science, in addition to art history and studio art.

The site notes that 63% of artists are self-employed and that the "median earnings for fine artists, including painters, sculptors, and illustrators, were $38,060 in May 2004". The passage goes on to note that "Many [artists] find it difficult to rely solely on income earned from selling paintings or other works of art. Like other self-employed workers, freelance artists must provide their own benefits."

If you get further into the Bureau of Labor Statistics' site, you can find a National Compensation survey that tracks painters, sculptors, craft artists and artists printmakers' earnings since 1997. In that time, they have risen and astonishing 15%, from an hourly rate of $18.70 to just over $21.50. That works out to almost $45,000 per year. Not bad, but factor in adjustments to the comsumer price index, medical insurance, materials costs, rent or mortgage payments on a studio over and above housing and it starts to look a little less comfortable. And let's not even talk about how far $45,000 goes in a market like New York, Los Angeles, or Chicago relative to other, less expensive areas with less well-developed art markets.

This is not meant to be another whining protest against how artists are undervalued in society or a form of rallying cry for a living wage for cultural workers. It is meant to suggest that, as a profession requiring significant educational investment, art is risky and uncertain, but when risk and uncertainty are discussed, it's only in relation to aesthetics. It has been suggested that if other professional preparation institutions performed as poor in purely statistical terms, Congress would be obliged to investigate. All of this is the upshot of a culture in which access to art is seen as basic right when in fact it remains an elite privilege. But even that statement is fraught – it’s not access to art, it’s access to the right to make art as if it were a job like any other.

Perhaps my ire about this is so greatly inflamed because I recently visited the studios of a certain MFA program and have been scratching my head since then. Curious? You'll have to come back and visit HyperCritical tomorrow for more.

Warhols of Tomorrow

...that's just how I think of my students. Not!

But some folks think of your ambition that way, and in case you missed it, here's a link to Carol Vogel's April 15th story in the New York Times about MFA students thinking about careers.

There's a story like this in the Times just about every spring (who knew the graduating-from-art-school beat was so good?) though none have ever touched Deborah Solomon's Times' Magazine story of a few years ago. The subtext in all of them remains the same - there's something desperately wrong with art students these days. Or rather, with art schools who are leading the geniuses of tomorrow down the wrong path with professional practices courses, classes in theory and criticism, and open studios that invite collectors' and dealers' participation in the discourse of contemporary practice. This is a path that can only lead to ruin (hilarious ruin if the film is one half as insightfully wicked as the comic, and afterall, if we can't laugh at ourselves, what good are we? But ruin nonetheless...)

Are we really failing y'all with this stuff? Would it be better for western civilization as a whole to return to the French Academy model, or some other utopian memory of what art school is supposed to be like? Or - as this post from the Gotham Gazette suggests, are young artists frankly unrealistic about what a career in the arts might mean relative to other, more stable professions?

Is everyone a critic?

The unfortunate few who've been reading the blog for my classes have been subjected to a long tirade about Radical Craft, so I thought I'd bother the rest of you with some other ruminations that are not entirely unrelated. Here goes:

I have been teaching a research class at Art Center this semester and I have included a lot of critiques in the class because I think one of its covert reasons for being is that crits are so deadly. Artists tend to have a very narrow concept of what influences them and relatively little specific vocabulary for relating their interests to the work or idea of others. To that end, I've been using very rigidly formulated crits to get at different aspects of the work.

The results have been disappointing. In part because the work is too rooted in intuition and pleasure to stand up for a critique in the first place, but in part because everyone is really good at evaluating but not that good at trying to figure out who they envy and why (here I paraphrase Keith Gruber's thoughtful post on the other blog ). This I find funny. At Art Center, the faculty is especially proud of what's called "critique culture" and its influence on learning. But even here, "criticism" is often a code word for justifying preference, but it shouldn't be that (or at least that's not what i was interested in practicing when I wrote criticism...) I watch Iron Chef and see people who can talk about why one plate is better than another, or Project Runway and see people who can talk about fashion and I wonder how to get that conversation - thoughtful, evaluative but also engaged - into my classes.

So I wonder where people see criticism in action? What are its models? Not its manners, with which we're all too familiar, but its models, best practices, exemplars, etc.? As a society, we've grown fond of saying that 'everyone's a critic', but we're not too willing to accept criticism form some people...why? And from whom are we going to seek it out? (Need some more grist for the mill? visit here and scan the headlines for interesting tidbits, or visit this blogand take a look...a)

HyperCriticalWriting: THE LAST FAVOUR

HyperCriticalWriting: THE LAST FAVOUR Hi Folks, Click on this link for info about the Teresa Jaynes' reading at the Rosenbach Museum and Library. There will be a spirited reading from Jaynes' new book, The Last Favour, "a primer for young men on how to woo women." The event takes place Wed., March 1-5:30 pm. 2008-2010 DeLancey Place. Check out www.rosenbach.org. for more info and RSVP!

The Fair

I had to clear out of Boston early - before a lot of what I wanted to see. But I couldn't leave without stopping into the book fair part of the conference, which is usually my favorite thing anyway. But at this one, I noticed something that I hadn't really seen before. Of course there was the usual mix of tables - from the printers of barely readable theoretical texts to the people who make erasers and want you to get as excited about them as the vendors were. (Guess which group had better freebies?) But I hadn't noticed the extent to which the two appear not to meet.
I spent a goodly chunk of time talking to a rep from Art Boards who was able to answer detailed questions about the composition of the gesso panels and products he was showing. He seemed knowledgeable and generally unhurried. And he had a ton of samples. Other vendors of materials - the huge booth from Golden Acrylics were also similarly helpful and interesting to chat with. One felt a renewed sense of excitement about experimenting with materials after seeing what was out there to use, refreshed and reinvigorated at the possibility that we might not just be making images that were ultimately destined only for slide lectures of websites, but objects that had character and physicality of their own - traits that would contribute to their meaning as much as what they depicted might contribute.
On the other end of the spectrum, there were the book vendors, who generally had the larger adn flashier booths and who appeared to be attracting the most visitors. One of the busiest was the booth for Prentice-Hall publishers, who were going all out to pitch for the new edition of Janson's History of Art. (They had refrigerator magnets...) A plasma screen showed videos or webstuff related to the book, and hoards of art history teachers (readily identifiable by their sensible shoes) milled around.
Other presses had books piled high. Most of them offered discounts for purchases ordered at the conference (some as generous as 50% off). But the communication in those booths – if there was any – was between browsers, who would notice you were looking at something and tell you what they felt about the book. The notable exception was Yale University Press , where I actually got into a conversation with a sales person knowledgeable enough to not only know about the show whose catalog I was browsing, but excited enough about art to know where and when it would be traveling to the east coast.
But by and large, the crowds looking over books were quiet and diliegent about looking through the torrent of titles, as if trying to find something that they might be able to use for next semester without letting on that most of the stuff there was little more than a tempting but obscure reminder of life's brevity (I had the feeeling I was the only person who thought I should have brought my librarian to the conference). I mean, who could read all that? The idea that the editors of these presses had plowed through all that materialwas at once inspiring and enviable, and simultaneously horrible. It's as if each and every moment in the chronology of art (mostly in New York, but in other western cities as well) now had about 5-7 pages to speak for it in that room.
And what of making things - the occasion for which criticism exists? It seemed that there was little discourse between those who stopped at the art supply tables and those who stopped at the bookstalls. I felt rather alone (and after a while, like the subject of some suspicion) crossing back and forth between the two camps. But the whole thing struck me as a metaphoric map of higher education in art – a lot of books many people felt obliged to read, a few books a few people felt excited about, and a general distrust of the materials of art (which – it should be noted, were exclusively related to drawing and painting, though those two disciplines did not enjoy any such majority among the topics of books on view).

CAA Today

I was glad to see Tom Wagner and Tim Murphy toward the end of the day. I'm hopeful that we can convene a UArts caucus at the Pour House tomorrow. I was especially happy to see them because the panel today was such a surreal experience. The speakers were engaged with the subject of ruins in the age of global violence in a number of ways, but when the Q&A started, a number of people in the audience (some of whom admitted they hadn't been present for all the presentations!) expressed disappointment that the panel wasn't "political" enough -that it hadn't spoken to their specific concerns, be they with the Falun Gong or opposition to the war in Iraq or what have you.
It was very strange, and reminded me of a class in which students expect to be taught something which is not really on the agenda. I found myself wondering - as some complained that we'd focused exclusively on "objects" instead of the phenomenon of global violence - what it is that one expects to learn in any situation and how that meshes (or fails to mesh) with what others have to teach.
I don't know. I have avoided CAA for a while out of apprehension about its academic credibility. At one point, a panelist expressed the belief that artists are the the conscience of the world, a view with which I couldn't agree as I can only see artits as opportunists whose ideas reach or fail to reach a public based on circumstances beyond our control. Many of the comments would have made sense had this been a public policy meeting - but art is not public policy. In fact, the best way to devalue a work of aggressively political art is to emphasize its status as "art".
I ramble. Often. But more later...after tomorrow's panels

Greetings from CAA!

It's great to be here in Boston. It's at least half as warm as it is in Southern California.

This is the first of what may bea few updats from the College Art Assiociation 94th Annual Conference. Right now I'm holed up in a fried's office at Boston University finishing the paper I'll be presenting tomorrow morning on the panel "Ruins in the Age of Global Violence". Since we're convening at 9:30 on the first day of the conference, I expect a light turnout. Most of the folks I've talked to aren't coming until later tomorrow or Thursday. There's a lot on the docket and at the same time, not a lot. Walter Plotnick told me there was a cool digital to darkroom discussion that sounded good. I'm bummed I've got to fly home before "New Media Futures: The Artist as Researcher and Research as Art in the 21st Century" meets on Friday at 5:30. But hey, I've got a month-old baby to see, right?

Hopefully we'll have regular (and flippant) posts from the conference for all you who couldn't attend. I'm using the Pour House as my east coast office for the meeting (it's right across the street from the convention center!) so look for me there.