<\/p>\n
It\u2019s obvious that anyone criticizing the National Gallery of Canada or their current crop of curators and artists would look unreasonable. Objections seem absurd when an entire profession agreed on peer-reviewed norms, and we\u2019d rightly be skeptical of claims the art world\u2019s gone down the drain. \u2026who said that? But only nine years ago the banking industry lost it over sub-prime loans; that global catastrophe reminds us that even conservative bankers can make bad choices\u2026 and artists do love to wear the emperor\u2019s new clothes.<\/p>\n
What I do ask\u2026 is my reader\u2019s patience as I trash the status quo\u2026 in order to question well-known artists and curators praised nationwide, but this note is credible, logical, and deserves a hearing. A glance from the panopticon suggests some curators and artists in influential positions are insider-trading and wrecking havoc. Have they risen high because they\u2019re the best or the most aggressive? Derek Guthrie, publisher of London\/Chicago\u2019s New Art Examiner, writes that art writers must keep a vigilant eye, otherwise insider trading will determine success in this troubled art world.<\/p>\n
To make sense of this, consider that science tells us art is very specific, it\u2019s genetic, it\u2019s biology. Art is not<\/em> anything you can get away with, and aesthetics is tracked by a science that says art\u2019s complex differentiations are crucial for mental health. In the 1970s Abraham Moles and Frieder Nake analyzed links between beauty, information processing and information theory. Physicist Paul Dirac is quoted saying \u201cif one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one’s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress\u201d<\/em>. Denis Dutton was a philosophy professor and editor of Arts & Letters Daily. In The Art Instinct<\/em> he suggested that humans are hard-wired to seek beauty. \u201cThere is evidence that perceptions of beauty are evolutionarily determined, that things, aspects of people and landscapes that are considered beautiful are typically found in situations likely to give enhanced survival of the perceiving human’s genes.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n Postmodern in a Potemkin village<\/strong><\/p>\n In Canada, unfortunately, beauty is scorned by the academic-curatorial complex and that\u2019s why we can\u2019t have nice things. Our curators instead promote artists cutting out paper dolls. This being the art world, their assistants cut out the paper dolls for them; the optics are terrible. Surely not everyone\u2019s assistants are allowed to sit on marble benches in the National Gallery of Canada lobby, cutting pictures from art books purchased minutes ago at the National Gallery bookstore. They\u2019re probably dripping glue on the marble floors that visitor\u2019s footprints will later track to exhibition rooms.<\/p>\n Nor can any artist then take the elevator upstairs to sells those very same cut-out dolls back to the National Gallery for the price of prime real estate in downtown Toronto. In Geoffrey Farmer\u2019s Blades Of Grass<\/em> we see exceptional people-skills; this artist gets along fabulously with curators, he\u2019s in their comfort zone. Except that\u2019s not art, its just pictures from art books glued to sticks. There is really nothing philosophical, nor creative, nor of any depth. The work at first is impressive; it is long and there are many pictures glued to sticks. But after a moment of looking at this picture on a stick or at another, soon we lose interest because unless you\u2019re carrying an illustrated art dictionary and look up each image to correlate the meaning with another, then it\u2019s just a bunch of pictures glued to sticks. Now it is true that making art that cannot be understood is a post modern strategy; combined with the fact that we don\u2019t really spend much time looking at this installation before we get bored, this is a perfect example of superficial art. Why are Canadians and the National Gallery and the artist run centers praising the fake instead of rejecting it? <\/p>\n The National Gallery of Canada\u2019s press release of Farmer\u2019s Trailer<\/em> <\/sup>proudly says that it is a fake. If they spend all that money on a fake trailer, that\u2019s how you know it\u2019s real art. For who would pay that much money for a fake trailer if it was fake art?<\/p>\n \u201cFaking depends on a measure of complicity between the perpetrator and the victim, who together conspire to believe what they don\u2019t believe and to feel what they are incapable of feeling\u2026\u201d so Roger Scrutton writes in aeon: \u201cAnyone can lie. Faking, by contrast, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included. The liar can pretend to be shocked when his lies are exposed, but the fake really is<\/em> shocked when he is exposed, since he had created around himself a community of trust, of which he himself was a member. Understanding this phenomenon is, it seems to me, integral to understanding how a high culture works, and how it can become corrupted.<\/p>\n Potemkin was a Russian general who built fa\u00e7ades of villages, fake fronts, cut out pictures of wealthy peasant houses to fool Catherine the Great as she toured the country to see the nation\u2019s wealth\u2026 while he pocketed great sums. Some Canadians are now waltzing the Potemkin, their cut out snipped by assistants paid minimum wage while the brand names pocket handfuls of tax dollars; their fa\u00e7ades then \u2018enrich\u2019 Canada\u2019s status, or so it seems to the simple-minded, while earning us scorn from the global illuminati. The cloth woven on the Emperor\u2019s loom unravels a confidence game. Is deception art? Or is it Dr. Oz fakery that we assent to self-serving marketing for lack of courage and a failure of responsible scholarship?<\/p>\n A potlatch can raise a curator\u2019s brand at institutional expense but it doesn\u2019t do much for Canada even though, as Dario Gamboni wrote in The Death of Art<\/em>, \u201cthe trash had been declared art by experts\u201d.(5) <\/sup><\/strong>It\u2019s a comfortable thing for any curator to declare trash to be art, for who dares question them? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes<\/em>? is a Latin phrase found in the work of the Roman poet Juvenal from his Satires (Satire VI, lines 347<\/sup>, <\/sup>8).<\/sup> It is literally translated as \u201cWho will guard the guards themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n It certainly will not be those Canadian art magazine editors who rejected this article as unsuitable and of no interest to their readers\u2026 many only print what drops from the psittacine cage. H.G. Wells\u2019 A Short History of the World<\/em> described the papacy of Innocent III (1160-1216), as if it were Canadian art mags today. \u201cAnd it was just because many of them doubted secretly of the entire soundness of their vast and elaborate doctrinal fabric that they would brook no discussion of it. They were intolerant of questions or dissent, not because they were sure of their faith, but because they were not.\u201d <\/p>\n In Michel\u2019s Foucault\u2019s view, all discourse gains acceptance by expressing, fortifying and concealing the power of those who maintain it; and those who, from time to time, perceive this fact are invariably dismissed as fools or locked away as mad \u2014 a fate Foucault himself unaccountably avoided. Danielle S. McLaughlin of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association says that when we can no longer explore and express ideas that are troubling and even transgressive, we are limited to approved doses of information in community-sanctioned packets.<\/p>\n Another Canadian art magazine seems desperate to signal virtue, even to drown in virtue on a coy note; they print biased and unverified tales, evidently false and arguably nonsense, believing it helps their brand to look politically correct (as if). With a highly educated crop of editors (and their risk-takers, art historians, popular voices, and truth-seekers) blinded by peer pressure and tunnel vision, most Canadian art magazines are irrelevant in spite or because of their academic argot. Again, exceptions prove the rule; some like Hamilton Arts and Letters actually break the mold and inform the community, Blackflash keeps an open mind and YYZ Artists\u2019 Outlet is courting controversy in their review Decenter Redux<\/em>. Disclosure; it includes an essay of mine.<\/p>\n Margaret Heffernan in \u201cDare to disagree\u201d<\/em> insists on the importance of speaking out. \u201cThe fact is that most of our biggest catastrophes rarely come from information that is secret or hidden. It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to, because we don\u2019t want to handle the conflict that it provokes. But when we dare to break that silence, or when we dare to see, and we create conflict, we enable ourselves and the people around us to do our very best thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n Nor am I heartless, indeed I\u2019m moved to tears of pity by Contemporary Calgary\u2019s (predictable) cry for help; \u201cwhat (else) can art writing do?\u201d Obviously if you\u2019re reading this you\u2019re on the right track. There are voices out there other than the same old, same old. You\u2019ve just refused to listen till now for a cognitive dissonance is unpleasant.<\/p>\n In Toronto, Luis Jacob\u2019s assistants also cut pictures from art books to frame them and hang them without further explanation. This is done first to destabilize your viewing conventions, later to sell them to the A.G.O. or the National Gallery for an obscene sum. Destabilizing is a big word at the National Gallery of Canada; they use it a lot, it\u2019s a clich\u00e9. Jacob has a budget for writers to explain why you were destabilized once again (yawn) \u2026 as if 40 years of destabilizing weren\u2019t enough\u2026 please\u2026 can\u2019t you just give it up, let it go? These strategies provide Jacob with a now unstable and wobbly public who are fed their own ignorance as humble pie, followed by a hefty dinner bill.<\/p>\n Luis is a high-earning artist and a salaried professor at U. of T; he\u2019s also a well paid curator at the National Gallery of Canada\u2026 so none would dare question his OCADU lecture fee for an evening titled \u201cWhat\u2019s Your Disruption?\u201d Actually a bourgeois grasp at street credibility, a real disruption would be unwelcome unless he was disrupting others, and yet Jacob as a curator should appreciate my article; it\u2019s one hot disruption in Canadian art history right here on the Akimbo cultural platform. But I\u2019m humane, I don\u2019t want to hurt his feelings; at OCADU or TWP I didn\u2019t disturb his evening, I didn\u2019t rain on his parade, nor did I make him cry at his party even if he wanted to, but enough!<\/p>\n Since Jacob vacuums up artist and speaker fees, we are grateful his own time is not wasted even as he wastes ours. Has Hans Haacke\u2019s ghost returned to map out this art system? To expose a postmodern insider-art trading strategy is a real disruption, an example to learn from and to conjure with; what\u2019s good for the goose is good for the gander and chickens come home to roost. When artists and curators call for disruption they admire exactly this level of scholarly activism that\u2019s a real paradigm-shift, so any touchiness at my words is obviously misconstrued and surely inappropriate.<\/p>\n If you read anything he\u2019s written you\u2019ll know that Luis Jacob is a literary genius. I\u2019m astonished how well he weaves ideas, themes, and metaphors in a beautiful tapestry of thoughts. His writing puts mine to shame and if he restricted himself to writing books I would buy every one to enjoy late at night by the fireplace. Unfortunately Luis Jacob writes exhibition proposals.<\/p>\n Of course these proposals are so well writ they persuade juries his work is something special when regretfully it is not; it\u2019s his writing that\u2019s special whereas Jacob\u2019s art is juvenilia. As a teacher, theorist, curator, lecturer, networker, he is too busy to be a practicing artist when art is anything you can get away with, and if anyone gets away with it, it\u2019s Jacob.<\/p>\n Surely if he was to devote a year to studio discipline like performance artist Tehching Hsieh he\u2019d do amazing work; we\u2019re deeply troubled he doesn\u2019t have the time, like so many contemporary artists too busy for the required hours of studio practice. Professional musicians don\u2019t have that luxury. Canadian art is post-truth, postmodern, and post mortem\u2026 but technically once you\u2019re outed you can\u2019t go back into the closet.<\/p>\n So where is the art? It\u2019s about denying our expectations of art, a seemingly brilliant repudiation of ethics. These cutout pictures and broken sticks will never be art; to claim them as such is then an extreme postmodern strategy, or would be if everyone wasn\u2019t following the same trend. Conceptualists forget that when deceits are normalized it destabilizes the system and when the system\u2019s destabilized it is dysfunctional, and then \u201cnobody knows what art is anymore\u201d as our curator wrote from the rabbit hole\u2026 so the public should believe what we\u2019re told. This curating by low self-esteem must stop.<\/p>\n When pictures are cut from art books it\u2019s not a viewing convention that\u2019s destabilized but the public\u2019s faith in whoever jerks their leash. Conceptual art is about the idea, and the idea here to turn the tables on an audience expecting something sublime; the idea is to shame them as a gullible public for their old-fashioned expectations. Subtly insulting your audience earns their respect, along with lectures on how important this work would be if you knew what it meant. Is this what we want of art? Luis belongs to literature; he should write books and following Lucian Freud\u2019s dictum, act like a gentleman and leave art alone.<\/p>\n Lacking checks and balances to the Canadian curatorial system, this small flock of the fake who are monopolizing the reigns will entrench themselves, prosper financially, and influence art\u2019s narrative for a long time. We\u2019re looking at Fake Art dominating the Canadian landscape for decades to come, as if Trump ran the arts in Canada, while Peter Doigts are squeezed out of the country. Bite your tongue, Cassandra!<\/p>\n Marcel Duchamp said the Readymade was never art. In Duchamp\u2019s words the Readymade was a mirage; people were foolish to think it was the real deal.(13) <\/sup><\/strong>This suggests Farmer\u2019s and Jacob\u2019s projects lack legitimacy, based on misunderstanding and historical illiteracy, making no sense except as predation in a field where those two could not compete for lack of talent or skill. They don\u2019t know what art is but they are clever and game the system. Everyone loses when scarce resources are thrown at tedious attempts to be clever, boring to all but the players themselves who of necessity insist it\u2019s exciting.<\/p>\n Our critique of postmodernity now looks at a suburban university gallery curator rubbernecking her artistic side when she teams with a South American artist for a joint show at her own gallery; such ethics raise eyebrows. No word how artist fees were allocated (eyebrows again) but the budget had a carpenter build shelves inside the gallery and then\u2026 wait for it\u2026. they had the exact same carpenter build the exact same shelves in the hallway outside the gallery! (At the same height too!) What\u2019s not to love? I\u2019m hysterical! Honest! Blake Gopnik\u2019s blog mentions a better known Hispanic artist who did that exact same show in New York a few years ago and it was just as boring. How exciting! Who copied whom? Some curators fancy being an artist needs no talent or skill, no effort or vision; to have an idea is all\u2026 forgetting we all have ideas but few have the talent or the ability to make it real; and lacking both you can cause some serious harm.<\/p>\n Charles Desmarais was an influential curator during the 1990s at New York\u2019s ICP, the International Centre of Photography. Later on, the San Francisco Art Institute Board of Trustees appointed Charles Desmarais school President, proof that while incompetence does gets promoted upward, the worst cases rise directly to the top. Charles Desmarais\u2019 clinical scorn for creativity and his frigid disdain for aesthetics meant that over thirty years under his watch, photography was degraded to a tool whose main purpose is documentation. When postmodernity denies the prime value of aesthetics, photography is no longer art but a lens-based practice. We lost a lot of beautiful photographs, so many Grand Central Terminal<\/em> 1930<\/em> by Hal Morey that were never born.<\/p>\n Another curator writes \u201csince no one knows what art is anymore, it makes a curator\u2019s job so much harder\u201d. A fortuitous confession, I was, like\u2026 Facepalm! If you don\u2019t know what art is, why don\u2019t you just ask<\/em>? You\u2019re a top curator at a top institution; someone there should know\u2026 oh\u2026 unless you\u2019re right\u2026 maybe no one does. Such laxity isn\u2019t amusing; it\u2019s an irresponsible failure, a crack running through the entire academic-curatorial network, badly in need of a fix. In every other profession they know what they are doing. <\/p>\n Oxford\u2019s professor A.J. Ayers writes in Language, Truth, and Logic<\/em> \u201cthe criterion we use to test the genuineness of statements is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person if, and only if, they know how to verify the proposition it purports to express\u201d.(16)<\/sup><\/strong> Verifiability; without it a curator\u2019s job is harder, you\u2019re supposed to know what art is. All the money you spent on cut-out pictures and broken sticks, it used to be trash, now it\u2019s art, only the experts know what\u2019s what\u2026 curating by pretence and low self-esteem, good money thrown after bad\u2026 is that what we want from art? Meanwhile others paint on cardboard lacking canvas, they eat cake for lack of bread.<\/p>\n Heed the call for change when peasants gather with pitchforks and torches, with deadly art critique, or mustard and mayo. Once upon a time art meant a succulent roast chicken with salad, a French baguette, a glass of red wine. The Emperor\u2019s new clothiers replaced that with cutout pictures, Styrofoam, and a glass of disruption. It saves money they said; you\u2019d be surprised how few notice they said. People noticed. When a pinch of cayenne is added to food the zest is unmistakable but when cayenne is the main course the cook has clearly gone insane. There are no checks to abuse of power on the high seas of Canadian art. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve been asked why an artist would speak ill of others in our line of work, but a polite silence over time bred invisible pink elephants crowding reality out the door. Our art stinks like a dead whale but as everyone feeds off the carcass so no one dares to rock the boat. Few dare provoke the powerful but in a corrupt scenario a person who desires nothing is literally invincible. Now you can see how the waters around you have grown, so you better start swimming or you\u2019ll sink like a stone, for the times they are a changing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Canadian Postmodern is a Cognitive Dissonance:\u00a0
\n
\nWith that in mind Contemporary Calgary hosted a community-sanctioned packet titled \u201cNever the Same: what (else) can art writing do?\u201d The panelists, as expected, were the usual suspects predictably saying what\u2019s expected of them (what else?), those pious and safe editors who abhor controversy while claiming the mantle. Their writers, we\u2019re told, are \u201crisk-takers, art historians, popular voices, and truth-seekers\u201d. They\u2019re pretending to be me? Not a chance! Give me a break; what they really do is abuse academic jargon in exchange for a horse\u2019s feedbag! One celestial journal speaks Mumble, that obtuse language with lotsa big words; it\u2019s good for avoiding ruffled feathers by saying very little in a grand political manner while praising the hand that feeds you.<\/p>\n
\nLike salt in your coffee, the #metoo of art.<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s obvious that anyone criticizing the National Gallery of Canada or their current crop of curators and artists would look unreasonable. Objections seem absurd when an entire profession agreed on peer-reviewed norms, and we\u2019d rightly be skeptical of claims the art world\u2019s gone down the drain. \u2026who said that? But only nine years ago the banking industry lost it over sub-prime loans; that global catastrophe reminds us that even conservative bankers can make bad choices\u2026 and artists do love to wear the emperor\u2019s new clothes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3142,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions\/3142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue23\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}