Art In America

JW Mahoney wrote a Report From Washington DC, subtitled To a Different Drummer, for the May 2008 issue of Art In America (page 95). The piece presents a fairly thorough overview of the Washington art scene and considers whether and how we've evolved since the Color School drew some notice back in the 60s. I can't find a link to it on-line to share with you but here is a section that I found interesting:

So is the contemporary art of the Washington area a distinctly specialized, “alternative”—or even “outsider”—art? Few Washingtonians think so, except, perhaps, its artists. The artists, however, may have a point. Undaunted in their ongoing investigations into whatever seems visually meaningful to them, Washington artists radiate a culturally wired but unapologetically visionary attitude that features an almost patronizing relation to the larger world of contemporary art. D.C. artists still go to New York (or London, Venice or Miami) to process international trends, and whatever they don’t reject they take back home for personal use. Information is power; accordingly, Washington artists tend to make art that is information-rich. This is a conservative radical art—the kind Washington might be presumed to produce—and it is a hothouse for autonomous, unregulated, undefined imaginative activity.

The DC art scene needs to figure out its identity without reference to another city's identity. It really bugs me when people say, and I hear this too often, "Well it's not New York." Well duh it's not New York. It can not and never will be New York. And why would it want to be NY anyway? We have a vibrant and thriving group of artists, galleries, and collectors that is unique and creative in its own right. Problem is: our art scene seems a little disconnected from each other. Here's a comment from an artist friend in response to my recent blog post:

As an artist I have the same complaint about the 'art world', I find it mystifying and unwelcoming too! I have no idea how to find exhibition opportunities or even approach galleries. I can be a complete extrovert except when it comes to the self-promotion of my art. What little exposure I have is directly from my website and networking. So I literally just have stacks and stacks (seriously, this is what happens when you make prints) of art and no idea what to do with them, except to buy myself a nice big set of flat files to store them in! Anyway I thought it was just interesting that people that want to buy art feel the same way.

More importantly and more detrimentally, our art scene feels disconnected from non art people, especially those who would like to participate but have told me they feel it is inaccessible and unwelcoming. That may be true of any art scene, but why? This makes no sense to me and I won't stand for it. :)

Mahoney also mentioned me in his article. Thanks Jim! Wait until you see what I've got in store for you later this year. [wink]

The other notable website is that of local collector and blogger, Phillipa Hughes (pinkline.org), who seeks to address three important shortcomings of the D.C. art scene. First, Washington’s educated young professionals remain generally undeveloped as a resource for the local art market. Second, the city’s older, more established artists are often hard to find on gallery walls. And finally, much of D.C.’s recent art history exists only orally or on the pages of older, often defunct art magazines. What pinkline.org offers is Hughes’s own, accurately sourced events calendar of Washington’s contemporary art life, including projects she sponsors herself—a night of graffiti art at the AAC, for example, or her occasional “salons” at a local bar.

Corrections to the article:

It's always lucky whenever the DC arts community gets any major art magazine coverage, and, with only a few exceptions, noted below, I stand by the edit of the text of this article. My image selection for the piece, however, was largely ignored by the editors. There are images I consider redundant by some Color School artists – the art world knows all these people by now – and, without any disrespect implied to the artists themselves, any images by artists unmentioned in the text were selected by my editors. The piece looks good, but it's not as I designed it to look.

Some textual corrections: Philippa Hughes' name is spelled that way. The gallery representing Tom Downing's estate is the Addison-Ripley Gallery, even as Leigh Conner has often featured Tom's work. And Michael O'Sullivan is noted as "the only DC art critic to be taken seriously by local artists," when the original text was, specifically, "the only Washington Post art critic to be," etc. And the original piece was longer, and included more artists, from Jae Ko to Borf, to Yoko Ono.

What's important is that our arts community continue to wake up to two significant conditions: first, that we're radically, originally, rich aesthetically, however slim or quixotic the validation feels from our greater social community and its media - and its museums. Second, that we have to validate (or keep validating) ourselves and each other first, before and whether or not an art world of 2008 or 2009 ever does.

J.W. Mahoney