Populist art
I got back this week from doing the GRACE show in Reston, VA. It’s billed as one of the top shows in the country, and I was impressed with the overall quality of the show, and the friendly nature of the staff. It’s an easy show for set-up and take-down, but we were warned that there was a real possibility for bad weather, and to bring extra weights or rent a 55 gallon drum filled with water. While the weather was never horrible for me over the weekend some other exhibitors were not as fortunate, and one even left early after sustaining significant wind damage on Saturday night.
We stayed an extra day on Monday, and went into DC to do a little museum hopping at the National Gallery and the Hirshhorn. The contrast between the work of art fair artists and the work shown at these Smithsonian galleries rather dramatically demonstrates the deep divide between “Art Fair” art, and what I’ll call (for lack of a better term) ART art. Much of the 20th and 21st century post impressionist painting and sculpture is unapproachable for many people in a way that art fair art is generally not. Much of the work shown at art fairs is, perhaps by necessity, much more populist in nature than what you would find represented in most of the leading fine arts museum’s contemporary exhibits. As I toured the museums over the weekend I heard a variety of disparaging comments from a member of our group when looking at the work of Barnett Newman, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock and many other contemporary or near contemporary painters. The sculptures of John Chamberlain, Marcel Duchamp and others would likely be regarded similarly, I certainly don’t think that this discussion would be limited to 2D art. I believe that the fine arts community and the general public have very differing views on quality and value.
I’m not trying to take a shot at either group, but only to observe that a separation exists. I think that there is much less of a gap in contemporary fine crafts, and that the clay, glass, and wood (among others) that shows up in the best arts fairs would be equally well regarded in their respective craft communities. In any case, this is a subject that intrigues me, and I’m sure I’ll come back to it in future posts.