Re: The Current State of Art and its Writing in Victoria by Brian Grison-comment on John's Luna comment

Hi John,

Thank you for your response to my post.  I don’t think that I’m advocating that all art (historical and contemporary) be re-evaluated according to firmly defined categories of amateur or professional – I hoped to suggest that amateur and professional may be useful terms when attempting to add rigor to the discussion of the local Victoria art scene.  Professionalism in art is a murky concept to be sure – I am certainly not entirely comfortable with it.  However, I am equally uncomfortable with the notion of a ‘seriousness of practice’ becoming the defining criteria for legitimacy or worthiness of critical appraisal.  I also worry that (given the local climate) ‘serious practice’ could suggest a vague inappropriate egalitarianism (ie. the artist claiming “I am a serious artist because I say I am” or the critic “this is a serious artist because I say they are”) or perhaps promote a kind of clubhouse elitism (ie. only artists who are shown here, written about here, educated here, work in this medium or are discussed on this blog are the ‘real’ serious artists).  Since Brian has begun a discussion which (amongst other things) strongly suggests that current writing about art in Victoria needs serious re-evaluation, I would like to propose that part of the reason for this need arises from a lack of rigor when discussing the nature of our local art practice.  ‘Professional’ and ‘amateur’ or ‘serious’ and ‘not serious,’ might not be entirely acceptable as methods of categorization.  Perhaps categorization itself is ultimately an unacceptable approach.  However, if Brian is correct and a climate of mediocrity and amateurism exists in the local arts scene, perhaps these concepts should be re-evaluated, analysed and teased-apart for their potential usefulness.

Andre Gogol