If the objective is to stimulate productive discussion on art, art writing and art education, it would have been helpful to state clearly what is (are) the standard(s) against which to judge Victoria's situation. Then folks could either agree/disagree with the standards, or whether the facts about Victoria are correct.
My understand the author thinks there is something called "good art," whose exercise is possible only in a few cultural centres, and which can only be fully understood by artists or persons with degrees in art history. Victoria is provincial, and so by definition its "artists" are unsophisticated amateurs who make art for pleasure, even if some also sell some pictures to other provincials. Art writers and art schools cater to this provincial clientele.
But wait. What is "good art?" And who says? and why? and when? (Consider the pompiers. Or the socialist realists. Or, more controversially, the group of 7. Were they "good?" Who said so? Why? Do we still say so?)
By all means, let's discuss the Victoria art scene. But to do so, we need a starting point which, unlike this article, is more than a potpourri of pejorative remarks, interlarded with name dropping.
Frank Mitchell
1 comments:
- Philip Willey said...
- I don’t think any one person can tell you what is good and what is bad in art. It’s too subjective. It’s a historical process arrived at by selection and consensus that decides what is forgettable and what is great. With contemporary art it’s more a question of getting work into certain galleries Gagosian, White Cube, Sonnabend, being written about in certain magazines, or bought by certain collectors i.e. Charles Saatchi. Achieving this is difficult for artists living far from certain urban art centers. I do think there is a difference between major and minor art. This can be a question of subject matter, theme, originality or eye-catching technique. Or it can depend on things like promotion or the level of an individual artist’s ambition. Victoria attracts people who just want to live somewhere nice and paint pictures. Nothing wrong with that but that’s what makes it provincial. Mediocre? Maybe but there is plenty of mediocre work in New York and London too. I thought Brian said a lot of things that needed saying in his article. I doubt if it will result in any major changes but perhaps he’ll write another one pointing a way forward.
Speaking as a diletante artist born in Victoria, I note that virtually all of the most serious art criticism done here in the last quarter century has been done by immigrant artists or 'new Victorians'.
ReplyDeleteThat was very evident to me when I edited the original print version of La Rosa in the late eighties and early nineties.
Robert Amos, Phillip Whilley and Yvonne Owens wrote articles on art for La Rosa. All came here from afar, as I believe does Brian Grison.
I appreciate the courage it took Brian Grison to write his opening salvo.
If younger Victoria artists don't like what these immigrant artist-critic oldsters like Amos, Grison, Owens or Whilley have been saying in this period of Victoria's nascent art history, perhaps it is time they discovered the courage of their own convictions, and took them on.
Gregory Hartnell ('Goyo de la Rosa')