Even though i was stressed out of my head during the version festival and the art fair madness i have to say that i am still on the path of believing that the city is the right place to live and work. NEXT was better than I thought it would be, and yeah, the whole Artropolis was overwhelming, but we had a great time.. Especially at Version. This year Version was really well attended and i was surprised to hear the comments from lots of people, especially this not big enough gay community, that the art shows rocked. Even our little NFO XPO project had awesome work in it and a few visiting spaces from overseas actually sold stuff. Launching our mag this past April also was a nice contribution to the horror. We loved how freaked out people were when they got a copy.

I think we need to spread the hopes of the city over the course of the year and not just one weekend in April. Tom and Michael and many of you guys had some nice observations and advice. I am going to absorb and claim them as my own…

We all have some nice ideas in front of us that might add some volume to the Chicago stereo system. I am excited to see what will happen next. I do know that there are some great models out there that i have experienced that can truly showcase what happens in this city during art fair time… I think i am going to organize these models and propose something to the larger communities. I just hope that the “powers” that be might want to hold hands with us when they get hatched.

anyways buy a copy of proximity magazine.
we are going to help.

Such lip service given to these programs, and I’m sure some are functioning to foster ‘emerging’ artists. White Columns is not one of them.

We are organizing a discussion show and it is to be one of the topics. But we are a week or two away from it.

d.

same with all this ikea stuff folks are willing to drop $50 on a printed canvas at the flat pack mega mall why not drop that $100 on something that might still be worth the same money 5 years later. i dunno, i’m not trying to skew this conversation squarely in the direction of art as investment coz as we all know it’s not easy to flip in any market…. and u should always buy what u like…

BUT

the condo owners do present an opportunity for a young start up gallery / artists to do a couple of things….

1. direct mail to new home owners….. i just bought a house in sunny OP. u wouldn’t believe how much mail i get for home owners insurance, decorations, linens, auto insurance, etc etc, it’s all junk mail of course…AND i welcome it (of course), and will make it into art, ha ha ha ha ha…..but the info is part of the public record galleries / artists can presumably access this and send info to new home owners who might still have some money set aside to make their homes look pretty…..

2. tours. i used to work for a gallery that organized tours of galleries in river north and west loop. it was a great way to bring new buyers into the market p;lace. again a younger gallery could probably do quite well at this… some of the established ones would probably view it beneath them, who’s to say?

3. partner with developers. i know condo developers and real estate guys are satan. but grudges about gentrification aside, i would love to open a project space in the ground floor of a new condo building or even in one of the units (if any developers are reading this pls email me,) and sell to the residents…. could be a total failure but so what….

anyhow…..

There were some great programs though. Art Form was an art history class tought by Art Institute instructors. We would draw what was projected on the screen while discussing the work and artists. I loved it. My first “major” show was of sketches from that class as they took the best and had a traveling exhibit at the Sun-Times building and at Northwestern University. The AP art classes in high school were also very good.

Unfortunately, the ratio of gym class to art was about 10:1. Plus with the constant threat of art programs being canceled, the idea of art as a burden to society seems to be perpetuated. It always requires funding that is taken away from important things like paying teachers.

RAT, that’s very disheartening news about midwest collectors. I would argue, however that it’s not the intellectual elite which deems art ed inferior, but a midwestern ethos that is distrustful of the arts because they’re deemed elitist. There’s a deep anti-intellectualism that pervades most of the country between the coasts in general (did you know that if you read even one book a year -not a magazine or a newspaper,- but just a plain old book, and book as defined to include Harlequin romances or self-help books – you’re in a highly select demographic -something like 6% of all Americans.) Ironically, art’s OK as long as it’s decorative. But as long as it’s only valued for being decorative, it won’t be taken seriously. We’re digging our own grave. I can’t tell you how many kids I know in Chicago Public Schools who have no arts education at all. My own children are lucky to attend a Chicago Public School which values art and music education, but is beginning to intense feel pressure to convert rooms devoted to art, music, and even the lunch room (!!), to academic classrooms so as to fulfill enrollment requirements that allow for more funding.

On the positive side: I made many contacts and friends. I personally did not find the artist to be snobs, quite the contrary. Exceptionally talented artists were located near me, it was an honor meeting them and we all bonded. I shared my cookies with them – that always puts a smile on a face. Security was #1 at the Merchandise Mart. Staff was careful in handling art. I loved the Windy City of Chicago. I sold a painting (last hour of the last day) and will be returning next year to one of the local Galleries. Yes I’ve been guaranteed a solo exhibition. There was an abundance of breathtaking art to be sold at decent prices. People did not realize how many cutting edge talented artists were in that room. It was an honor just to be among them.

I give credit to the fact at least Chicago is making an effort of bringing art to the forefront!!! As someone new to the Windy City (and yes it was extremely windy), I enjoyed Chicago’s art in the city streets. Everywhere I looked I saw sculptures, paintings, moving art, statues and musicians. I’ve lived in and around Montreal and New York, and Chicago beats them by leaps and bounds as far as “ART” is concerned.

As to all the critics of The Artist Project – I believe there was something appealing available to evey art lover in almost every style. One mans junk might be someone else’s treasure. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I just got the notice about The Artist Project in December. I haven’t decided if I will participate.

It’s funny to me and I agree that the most successful work here is decorative. SOFA will continue to be the dominant show here until the clouds part for the Second Coming. The majority of Chicago’s collector interests have a lot in common with Dubai that way. Equally unsophisticated.

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article.asp?id=7892

(yea, pretty much outside the gates).
But don’t despair, most of us would gladly sell our creation, product, for a good deal less than what Jeff Koons gets. And therein is the rub. The less you ask, the less you’re likely to receive.
Bottom line, if you’re a Chicago artist, the likelihood of you selling to a “collector” is about as great as getting hit by a CTA Bus. You are selling to people who are DECORATING their home. They are collectors only in their own mind, the the flattery lauded upon them by ingratiating art dealers like myself.
Yea, what you guys do is decoration. It’s basically aesthetics. That is, if you intend to sell it. (By the way if your aesthetics don’t sell try politics, Adolf did.
Or you can just become cranky, old and bitter like a lot of Tribune critics.

(& Oh, I’d like the person who says her eyes sparkle when she sees money traded for art see me after class for a private showing!)

Bottom line, the Chicago arts community has to make the best of a not too good situation. What we have to do is the hard thing: We have to build a clientel. It’s not easy, I’ve been trying for 30 years. We need to start art education early and keep it funded through high-school. We have to remove the stigma that arts education has among a so-called intellectual elites that such education is intellectually inferior to “solid” courses. We have to literally change a values system that rewards cultural ignorance. –and after lunch, we can tackle the hierarchic oppression of the creative classes in post-apocalyptic america. ok, you get my drift: be the change you want to see in others.

BAS-thanks for the opportunity.

Nice comments MsKitty too. You DO know I hope that the real original of that Latin phrase is the opposite: De gustibus est disputadum. Meaning taste is to be argued about. The “non” was added in France in Modern times.

Steve if its a girl — Pepper Potts? Or Kirby for a boy (the artist who created Iron Man and whose family is getting zilch out of the production) or Roz for a girl (the wonderful wife of the artist who created Iron Man)

I’m not sure Bridge would ever come back, honestly. It has a life of its own now, and I find myself being led by what’s best for the show rather than guiding it based on my own intellectual or artistic interests.

In response to Norbert, I’m not sure why I’m going here,- (I was being slightly hyperbolic, I guess) but…..No I do not believe that things or events that perpetuate bad art are a good idea. On the other hand, I don’t think any show sets out to promote bad art. I don’t participate in the Chicago Art Open and I haven’t been to see it in like 12 years and so I can’t judge the quality; but I will say it’s unfair to assume that there isn’t a single good piece of art in it just because it’s self-selecting. Unfortunately, even the best intentioned curated or juried event is capable of promoting bad art. In fact I saw a bit of it last weekend outside of the Artist Project. De gustibus not est disputadum. Right? I suppose I like the idea of it (more than the reality) because it is so completely, honestly what it is in contrast to the who-you-know, behind the scenes stuff that drives most everything else. And being an idealist I’d like to think that in a perfect world, merit wins out no matter how much of a hipster the artist is, or how classically trained or how ironic or whatever fashionable or unfashionably fashionable criteria they’re using at the moment.

Who knows, eventually they’ll maybe ditch the rest and go blue-chip Modern. That seems the most logical solution, and smart. Yeah, but so what? There are living artists to care about, and that’s the crime here, right? Fuck the Mart, that’s what I should have said before. That’s what I meant inside somewhere, but couldn’t hear the sentiment clearly enough to articulate correctly.

But not Chicago. Nope, Chicago has promise. For everybody who says–as I’m sometimes compelled to do–that the future is elsewhere, there’s a history lesson to learn. When America was behind the times, after the fairs circled and came to define the countries of northern Europe, starting in 1967 in Germany where the first-ever art fair took place in Koln and then into Basel two years later, and stretching on for the next nearly ten years, Chicago was the place where the States found its future. It was right here in the city by the lake that the art market that would come to define the last thirty years in the States–starting in the early eighties with the Chicago International Art Expo–that New York was left blinkingly behind. Armory show took almost another fifteen years to happen in 1994 and Miami–well, Miami–only managed a toe-hold (that quickly became a body blow) six years ago. But that was the beginning of the end for Chicago, which was resting too long on its laurels and deserved to have its throat cut. But Chicago brought America into a present tense reality that the United States back then was already behind the Europeans by ten years, and it deserves all the credit for having done that for this country’s art world and, subsequently, its market.

I think we can expect more from this city, and eventually it’ll come, just not from where you’d expect.

I completely agree with Rare Art Trade that your success or failure as an artist is entirely dependant upon the effort you make. This is all a learning experience and all experiences are good in that regard, so I ultimatey have no regrets- my only real complaint is that it was something other than what it was adverstised as.

As for Chicago, the inimitable Dave Hickey once told me,“get the hell out; it’s a black hole.” I told him I loved Chicago, had kids in school, a husband who liked his job, etc., he said, ”dump the kids, leave the family; Chicago doesn’t have a big enough gay community to support the arts.” (I so thoroughly enjoy what comes out of that man’s mouth.) So until I decide to “SELL THE HOUSE, SELL THE CAR, SELL THE KIDS,” ………

Interesting essay/review concerning The Artist Project by Bill Dolan

check it out – - -

Can you write to me off-BaS? I have a request for you. You can get my “real” email address at my website (www.markstaffbrandl.com/). I had your email address but seem to have lost it when I switched to my new computer with Vista, wwhich imported all sorts of stuff wrong. Thanks!

Now my opinion:
NEXT-? If you’ve seen one grad school thesis project in the last 30 years, you’ve seen ‘em all. Or and my 7 year old niece said about the show: “A who lotta pencil drawings!” yea, I replied, this show has all media, from A to B.”
I can’t think of anything more deadly to commerce than one or two people playing god for the aesthetic tastes of the country. I can’t think of anything more deadly to aesthetics either. Juried shows only work when you have a jury of fairly catholic taste, where the judges respect each other’s opinion, even if they don’t agree. That almost never happens in the art world, does it.
But if you think the self-promoting artists show is on the ropes because there was TOO MUCH VARIETY (?)( an oxymoron in our culture) , NEXT is over before it started because it suffocated true variety. Unfortunately, Chicago has had this problem for a long long time. Starting with sanctified opines of Cathrine Kuhe in the 40’s & 50’s, trailing along to the rants and belligerence of ArtForum,
(truly a form if intellectual thuggery) in the 70’s & 80’s to our own now reigning king of aesthetic correctness,mr. GK, less is just plain less.
-I have to wonder how hard mr. GK worked to eliminate possible competitors, also, was it mandatory for the booth applications to be written in English, and if so, why not the booth displays. I think I missed a lot of the subtleties of booths that had their artwork described in other than English languages, my limitation, not being fluent in the language of Kazakstan (or Polish, or Russian or Korean or Chinese) my loss.

We do get to vote on the primaries but not in the main election, we are a colony.

Thanks!

Shame on the Mart for killing this off without ever trying to do it right. The artist project could be a really cool thing. Bring in a jury and listen to them.

More sad M-artropolis news, particularly as relates to sales, size of the show, etc., all the things we’ve been discussing here. It’s significant fallout for the show’s reputation.