On Edgy Art Thoughts In Hartford and Other Things On Our Mind.

When we read these words we knew that this blog had to respond:

“We know that it’s been a snowy winter but why do art panels in Hartford have to be so WHITE? Oh Hartford what is the matter with you? Folks bring your snow shovels and dig out from the whitewashing of the arts in Hartford. How fast will the liberal race to fix this or to cover it over? What is the matter with them to begin with?”..Avery Jones

Our response Part 1.

We still shake our heads and wonder, WHY don’t they get it by now? What is wrong? There was a panel last week called Edgy Arts Hartford which was sponsored by Hartford Young Professionals and Entrepreneurs (HYPE) and the Hartford Courant that consisted of what they think are edgy artists working in this city. Well, we all differ on that as much as we differ on what is art and who is an artist and what our goals are as persons in the arts in these times. Age old questions that still beg to be answered. One thing we do know is many people who say I am an artist tend to in their art say the same old thing over and over and try so damn hard to make it sound like it is something new. We must remember artists, regardless of race, gender, sexuality or ethnicity, regardless of political or social agendas, have more in common than not. Whereas the dealers, curators, historians, the millionaires and billionaires who purchase art within the art world do not. We have the power to set the agenda to say yes or no. If we do not use our power and our united strength then we lose, and our,yes I will sound old fashion here, our brothers and sisters in the art world, the artists lose but worse is that the people will lose. All keys to unlock those doors of injustice must be used and sometimes a good kick and a smash the door is what is needed. Nothing is petty and insignificant in this process of unlocking for if we do not take care of the small the small will grow until it becomes so large we can not do very much about it.

Let’s first argue about the rich, about corporate sponsorship of art.

Our readers know most of our opinions on art and if anyone needs a refresher course they can look over some of the works in the PAGES section of this blog. Let us be up front and clear on this one point. We support no art that is for the rich,therefore we stand against the current art world as is and see it as a problem along with the so called 1%. This art is nothing more than a tool of the ruling class. We also stand against corporate sponsorship of art. Once there was an argument back in the early days of RAW which went something like this. A show was sponsored by UTC. Yes they manufacture war machines? Why do we want to have their name up in lights. One of the curators of the exhibition had this to say, “Well at least this money that we got won’t be used for the war machine.” Our answer to that then was, “Honey this money is the profit from the war machine. This show is because of some dead kids.” We once knew someone who made her money by being a part of the DOW family. You know the killers who produced napalm during the Vietnam war days. The folks who brought good things to life while bubbling and burning the skin off of innocent children, women and men. Yea, but she was good. What a nice lady. Old money bags was very friendly to the people at the museum. Lots of money dropping here and there. As good as good could be because she supported art with her money. Blood money if we ever saw it before. So let’s stop and think about corporate sponsorship who the corporate folks are, and what they bring to life. Let’s stop and think about the role that the rich play in this.It is not enough that they bring good things to our lives here in americkkka as we can not be only concerned with our well being but the well being of all the world. We all live with what these folks do on and to the planet and the people living here and what they do is not very nice.

Comrade Addie Vuitton outside  the opening of the Marina Abramoic exhibit at MOCA. “We couldn’t care less if you have found fame and respect among the villains of the earth. Fuck the whores that cozy with the rich.”

How does this concern us as artists. One of the Guerrilla Girls who goes by the name of Frida Kahlo has this to say:

Kahlo argues that as museums have become more corporatized, the situation facing women has become increasingly fraught. “Museums have become venues of investment that produce unbelievable profits,” she continues. “Trustees are collectors. They influence what museums do and they manipulate the art market. There’s a direct connection. Art collectors who sit on museum boards know what is being shown and buy it. They can also get museums to show art they already own, that they bought years ago for very little. If they donate it, they get millions in tax deductions. The more corporate museums become, the more they serve as a vehicle for the one percent.”

Decades back, she adds, collectors thought of themselves as philanthropists. Now, though, the trend is to buy art as an investment. “In Europe museums are owned by the government and staffed by civil servants. Here in the US, directors and curators are extremely well paid. In 2008, the director of MOMA made $2.25 million,” Kahlo reports. Not surprisingly, museum boards are top heavy with business executives, socialites and speculators who expect their acquisitions to increase in value.” (1)

EmmaO Furbird Sr. in a lecture that she gave at the Hot Art One Spot Cafe put it this way, “Isn’t it nice that rich folks spend their money on art and art museums. If they didn’t so many artists would starve and die. So many creative souls who lift us up, make us think and give us beauty would not be on the scene.  Isn’t it nice to hear artists say, “Hey, look I am in so and so’s collection.” Isn’t it nice that the wealthy can help decide who should be in the history books for future generations to say, “art” over. Isn’t it interesting that it has always been that way, the wealthy calling the shots within the arts, giving some a name, a place on their wall. The nice rich give money so we the poor can enjoy their art museums. We here shake our heads and laugh out loud each time we hear that there are nice good wealthy people among all the fuck you over  ones. But in all seriousness we will have to say these folks are just another tool that the BIG boy ruling class uses to keep us all under their thumb. When will all of us draw the line. We have to somewhere and somehow.

Panels, Panels, we got art panels. On Edgy Art In Hartford

We had to wonder about the make up of the panel in Hartford. For anyone out there who doesn’t know the make up of the city here is it in a nutshell. Whites are 27.72 %, Blacks are 38.05% and Hispanics are 40.52% and Filipino 0.009%. The panel did not represent the the people who live here. It was top heavy with white people, with the privileged class who have been and continue to be top heavy over anyone who isn’t. (We are not saying here that folks on the panel are top heavy over anyone else but of their privilege) The saving grace and one highlight was the young Black RapOet who this blog has the highest respect for.  For years and years this has been the case, one of white privilege in the arts, and anything we can do to bust this up and break it down is a welcomed gesture. Unwelcome is silence, unwelcome is not speaking out, unwelcome is condemning those who have the balls to speak out against this no matter how small it seems to some. This thing we call injustice is real. A friend of mine who I have worked with for many years told me, “Well what else is new, they do it to us Black folks everyday of our lives.”

Big deal some would say but we say yes it is a big deal. It is the same big deal as when the racist oppressor keeps people of color down. It is a big deal and becomes a bigger deal when folks of good will do not speak out. Now some would say, hey this is a small city, this little panel doesn’t mean one piece of rat shit compared to the larger world out there. But this is the city that we who live here have at this time and if we can not or will not speak up to correct wrongs even if they seem small then we are no better than those who do the oppressing, omitting, or erasing. It probably is more important that we do it here in a small city as we can hopefully make some advances quicker than in a larger place. I want to see Black and Brown faces on the panels. I want to hear their voices, I want to hear about their art. What we need is not another mutual masturbation forum but  a forum with full inclusion of all,  a forum on white privilege in the arts a discussion on who controls the art and the message, the man or us? This is what is needed. Not another feel good attempt at more nothing.  Not more talking from self at the center. Not all that many people here in Hartford or around the great big world really care what these select artist are doing but might prick up their ears if we really become edgy and talk about real issues.

Some want to blame the powers that be. We Do Too But Take It One Step Further.

We can not always blame the powers that be. It is our responsibility to keep them in check as they couldn’t exist without us. White folks have to understand that no matter how groovy or hip they think they are that the world does not revolve around them and that they are not the only ones who make art. I checked this with some of my old friends in art who have been at it for years and the conclusion is that we would be embarrassed to have been on that panel and that is not even including the title of EDGY art. We all had a good laugh on that and Goosey Bell had to question, “are these artists in this town so needy for attention that they will jump at any ring that is presented to them?” “Damn Mary don’t fall off your horsey.”

You know many of us have been fighting this battle for a long time and yes many of the same issues of race, class and gender remain unresolved and as close to the surface today as they were back in the day. (see art thought note # 9) I don’t understand it, did we not fight hard enough, did we not write the lessons so everyone could understand? Yes there was as someone said a elephant in the room that night. Edgy artists on edge that someone may take them to task. But who is brave enough in this provincial capital city? Who would want to be off the short list of invites? Who would want to be snubbed or thought of as out there and not a part of art? Oh heavens if I say something out of the way no one will like me and I won’t get to eat all the good food at dinner parties around the city.  Writers won’t write about this, art critics won’t write about this, people won’t speak up about this but give empty promises by acting groovy and hip. With not a person to speak things remain the same. We hated it when someone said, this is a start in talking about art and race when no one really said all that much.

Even when the issue of inclusion of Hispanic people was brought up by a well respected elder in the arts community (thank you a hundred times Carlos) folks seemed to skirt around the issue without stopping and asking why? With out assuming that they had any role or responsibility in making sure that a panel that they appear on would be a diverse panel. Some folks want to place the blame on the organizers and we say yes someone really needs to get in there and give a good push to these young white folks who belong to HYPE and not allow them ever to control the agenda when it involves  art. This is the job of artists and the arts community. It is our responsibility.  When we are asked to be on a panel it is very simple to ask the people who are setting it up, “who else is going to be on this panel?” Then the push back should start. It is not right to wait to the night of the event and then make 5 minute sound bites against racism as no one will believe you or it will turn into a short session of “I go out to the neighborhoods and do my art.” or this one, “I only look at the art not the make up of the artist.” No when the panel is first brought to the attention of artists we should make damn sure that we don’t participate in the whitewashing of art in Hartford or anywhere else for that matter. You want to be really edgy take this on and you will really attract artists to this neck of the woods.

Oh Where OH Where Were The Young at A key Issues Forum.?

Painter Diana Brass of Hartford paints a wall at ‘Heaven”. Photo Hartford Courant.

We have to wonder also where were the young people. A lot of press has been given lately to the skate park known in these parts as Heaven and some of the beautiful art work that young graffiti artists are doing there. Why wasn’t  a young artist from that group or one of the young men who have been working so hard to make this park a success not invited to be on the panel. It is probably the most “edgy” art things this town has seen in a long time and these folks deserve to be represented on a panel of this nature. We suppose leaving ones comfort zone and taking on the real issues here is not where HYPE is at or wants to be. They know which side their bread is buttered on. It is on the side of the corporate world and those who for this moment in time are the controlling forces in power but those whom we should be with our every breath figuring out ways to remove their dangerous asses from power. A big fuck you has to be given to the person who said that if we invited these young people they wouldn’t say anything profound. Well we will have to say we listen to the video and nothing was said that was profound by any of the people on the panel. furbirdsqueerly says, Bring on the young, perhaps things wouldn’t be so damn dusty around here!

One of our favorite art works

We need to talk about the privilege class who controls the art world, (yes even if they are not the $$$$class,  the folks who sponsored this panel  are the privileged class. The forum that night the “edgy art” world of Hartford was controlled by those who should not be controlling. This panel and this set up brings up questions about white racism in art against people of color, about comfort zones, about people who perhaps don’t have a clue on where they live and who lives beside them,  about “in crowd” control of the arts. These questions are a concern in every city where there are any artists working today. No no one really wanted to talk about the elephant in the room that night just as they always don’t and won’t. No one wants to scare the gate keepers away and siege the city. It easier being groovy. It nicer being hip. Its so nice to be invited to be on panels so we can spit out all that we do. Oh I am so famous.

Give Them A Star.Okay Just for You.

One thing this panel had going for it was there were more women on the panel which can be a rarity as according to the Guerrilla Girls there still is quite a bit of discrimination in the art world towards women artists. So at least they got something right. By this does it mean they are catching up, catching up on injustice?

“A 2011 Guerrilla Girls survey investigated New York museums and found just four percent of the artists in the Metropolitan Museum’s contemporary section were female. MOMA and the Guggenheim fared somewhat better with 26 and 23 percent respectively. Before you cheer, however, take heed: Women of color produced two percent of MOMA’s art and five percent of the Guggenheim.” (1 )

So Hartford you are not alone in this mess. Not  alone at all. In response to the Guerrilla Girls and the movie WAR, this blog reviewed the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and found just as shocking figures. Only 13% of the artists on view at that time were women artists. The  Fleet Gallery of African American art did a much better job where as 11works by men were on display and 5 works by women. (2)

Take heed things are really getting no better. At the 2014  Whitney Biennial. 9 artists out of 103 are Black and 38 are women. For more on this turn to The Depressing States of The 2014 Whitney Biennial  written by Jillian Steinhauer over on Hyperallergic. (check out art thought number 6. We say the same here. You need folks for a panel go out and find some. Don’t be so lazy.)

>…Having another date that evening, a birthday party for a queer revolutionary (yeah I love queer revolutionaries more than art panels) I couldn’t attend the panel but listened and watched it on a video produced by CT-N Network which is found  in our notes.  If any of our readers from here and there are interested we publish the link. (3 )

UPDATE: We have heard from some very reliable sources, and one panelists that indeed there were meetings to plan the event with the panelists and the sponsors. The subject of the title EDGY ART was brought up. What we want to get at here is there and then in those meetings the folks who had been invited to be on the panel should have made attempts to change the face of the panel. As we stated that is part of our responsibility to lead not follow. We are the arts not the corporate sponsors or some young professional group. Without us they could not do what they want.

Notes

(1) Women Artists Still Face Discrimination, Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout.

(2 ) Women, Art and the Wadsworth, July 25, 2011, furbirdsqueerly

(3 ) http://t.co/uWzHszd03U

CT-N Connecticut Network: The Hartford Courant & FOX CT Key Issues Forum: Hartford’s Edgy Arts

ct-n.com

The photo on the left is the original photo. The photo on the right is the cropped and republished.

*****For a very interesting article please see on Hyperallergic’s site, The Art World’s Casual Racism (updated). Here is the beginning of the article: “Yesterday (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in America), the Russian magazine Buro 24/7published a story about heiress, Artsy investor, and Garage Center for Contemporary Culture founder Dasha Zhukova. In a photo accompanying the article, Zhukova was sitting on a chair held up by a mannequin of a black woman lying on her back,

Art Thoughts

1. ” We were trained by the same people who trained the Warhols, the Lichtensteins, and the Raushenbergs. We had the same teachers; we were at school with them, we know how good they are-we know how good we are.” Jeff Donaldson of AfriCobra.

2. Another art thought: “It is also nice to think that yes like many many things in this society that art is also yearning to be free. Art is yearning to be free from artists who want to be famous, who love the man and suck up to him. Art is yearning to be free of the rich who blood suck all of us daily, who are to blame for the mess of this world and whose wickedness we see in front of us daily. Art is yearning to be free of perhaps the chance to be put in a straight jacket, museumized and having “talking down the nose” all around it. It’s the 21st century and art needs to be free of its constraints and its locked in the 20th century ideas.”

3. How about reading this and giving it some thought. Some Art Thoughts We Like Passing The Time Until The End Comes Around-Part 1.

4. Why oh why do they think that art can save them? It can’t. It never has. Old Clara use to say, If everyone were an artist there would be no war.” Well dear heart take a look around, we have more people now-a-days making the claim I am artist, then the total population of Florence during the Renaissance.” AND we have never been in worse shape. It just might be that art is just another tool of the ruling class and unless we rescue it from their clutches and rethink, yes rethink lay bare all that we believe in art it will continue to be just passing the time until the end comes and hits us right in the nose. Once we used the example of the Gurenica. One of the most profound anti-war paintings of the 20th century. We would gather that after viewing this picture, after understanding what inspired this picture that there would be no more war. Well a funny thing happened on the way to no more war there was more war and is more war and war after war after more war.

5. Traditionally, the idea of Fine Arts is Eurocentric. It is based on the idea that painting and sculpture were the noblest manifestation of a nations soul, the nation of course being white, western European. They were assumed to be the highest achievement of culture, the expression of its greatest artists.

6. “The issue of diversity came up recently in the discussion surrounding another post I wrote about art world lists, so let me reiterate here: the goal is not tokenism or quotas. It is inclusion, imagination, creativity, and some legwork. If curators aren’t familiar with the work of many black artists they deem worth including, then they should go out and find some.” Jillian Steinhauer writing in The Depressing States of the 2014 Whitney  Biennial, Hyperallergic, November 15, 2013.

7. Furbirdsqueerly defended the painting of a guillotine at Heaven Skate Park. Some interesting exchange went on. We also published an exclusive written by Dr. Bernardo Proletariat on the reasons the guillotine was painted. We copy from our Greatest Hits Piece the following. “Punkpink wrote in defense of the painting of a Guillotine in the skate park in downtown Hartford. The young anarchist artist was arrested. Pink wrote, Art for the Revolution. An art review of “dangerous” art in Hartford. Later in August we learned that the artists work had been altered and pink wrote, A Little Dab Will Do YA!! Or Make That A Bunch. Dangerous  Alterated. But the real deal shit hit the fan when the artist wrote his reasoning and why he painted what he did and again we stood behind him 100%. The piece written by Dr. Bernardo Proletariat titled, We Got The Guillotine, Graffiti and Class War, we thought was an excellent work.

8. See: Hartford Proposes Restricting Graffiti At ‘Heaven” Skate Park, Hartford Courant 7.8.2013.

9. 1970: Ad Hoc Women’s Art Committee

In 1970 the Ad Hoc Women’s Art Committee, which included artists Poppy Johnson, Brenda Miller, and Faith Ringgold as well as critic Lucy Lippard, led a protest against the predominantly male Whitney Annual. The protesters sent a letter to the Museum demanding that fifty percent of the artists in the exhibition should be women with the additional stipulation that half of those women be black. They also staged artist demonstrations and sit-ins during the two and a half months leading up to the exhibition opening. Protesters went so far as to place tampons and uncooked eggs bearing the “fifty percent” message in the galleries and staircases.

In her memoir, Faith Ringgold describes some of the events of the campaign: “The WhitneyMuseum became the focus of our attention. We went there often to deposit eggs. Unsuspecting male curatorial staff would pick up the eggs and experience the shock of having raw egg slide down the pants of their fine tailor-made suits. Sanitary napkins followed… Generally, everywhere the staff went they found loud and clear messages that women artists were on the Whitney’s case.” (Faith Ringgold, We Flew Over the Bridge: The Memoirs of Faith Ringgold, Duke University Press: 2005, pp 175-178.)

When the 1970 Sculpture Annual opened at the end of the year, it featured twenty women out of one hundred total artists. While this certainly didn’t meet the fifty percent demand, it was a step in the right direction: the 1969 Annual only included eight women out of 151 artists.

10. Some thoughts from old uncle Karl Marx on art and artists. Sort of then there would be no need for panels only discussions of equals. The following was published in response to the Grasshopper and the Ant, section of Nightfall.

Karl Marx had something very interesting to say on this subject Let’s take a look at it and then think about what he is implying here. We read from a well recommended essay, Marx’s Vision of Communism, by Bertell Ollman found at Dialectical Marxism these words:

“Besides contributing to production, each individual also participates in cultural and scientific life, and not just as a consumer of other people’s products but as a creator. We have met communist men and women as workers, farmers, hunters and critics, and Marx now introduces us to the same persons as artists: “The exclusive concentration of artistic talent in some individuals and its suppression in the grand mass which springs from this, is a consequence of the division of labor…In a communist society, there are no painters, but men who among other things do painting. Being a painter is to be subjected to the division of labor as much as it one only did weaving. every person in communist society is relieved of the burden of narrowness which plagued his or her ancestors, weavers and painters alike, and given the opportunity to express him or herself in all possible ways.”

“We read further on these thoughts: Marx not only ascribes a world of activities to the communist person, but believes they will be proficient in their performance.To achieve this is the aim of communist education. At the same time, Marx recognizes that not all people will b equally good in everything they try. As regards painting for example, he admits that only a few will rise to the level of Raphael. On the other hand, the quality of other people’s work will be extremely high; and he maintains all paintings will be original. By original means that each person’s creative efforts will be a true expression of his/her unique qualities. Marx would probably be willing to make a similar distinction between average and exceptional ability in science, farming, material production, etc., always with the proviso that those who lag behind are still extraordinarily good.”

Where Do We Go From Here

So where do we go from here? Our hope is that folks will start talking and really start talking about these issues. This blog does not bring up these issues to put anyone down but to move us all from here to there. We get a little tired when folks say, “What we are doing is a start.” Well these idea have been started many years ago and it seems that not that many folks really want to hear the message.  May Day just said, “This is a small city and folks really don’t want to be too honest about what they are really feeling.” Alone is not very nice, and moving can be so damn expensive.”