DIY and taking risks to achieve great things

I've been thinking a lot lately about scrappy artists who don't have gallery representation so they find alternative venues for showing their work, like in "pop up" galleries in raw spaces or sleekly finished condominiums. I am starting to think that this method of showing art isn't all that non-traditional after all! I just finished reading a book called "Lives of the Artists" by Calvin Tomkins, which included an essay about Damien Hirst. Hirst helped launch several major art careers of young British artists, including his own, by organizing exhibitions in raw spaces in the late 1980s; his first now legendary exhibition was in an abandoned warehouse in the Docklands of London for his art school's year-end show.  In "Just Kids," Patti Smith describes how Robert Mapplethorpe mounted his first show in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel when the two of them lived there in the early 1970s. This practice of showing art work despite the denial of the established art world has a long history dating back to the Salon des Refusés, when artists rejected by the Paris Salons formed their own exhibition.  Paintings such as Édouard Manet's "Luncheon on the Grass" and James McNeill Whistler's "Girl In White" were shown at the refusés and roundly criticized in their day but now hang in the Musée d'Orsay and the National Gallery of Art.

A great example of a DIY art show coming up soon in DC: "No Kings Collective" will transform a newly renovated, 4-story Columbia Heights row house into a temporary gallery for a show called “Activation 2719”, which they say "reflects both the address of the location at 13th and Girard Streets and also an attempt to create life in an unoccupied historic location." “Activation 2719” will run from February 20 through March 12. Some of my favorite DC artists will be participating: Tim “Con” Conlon, DECOY, James Walker, Emily Green Liddle, Bryan Rojsuontikul, Aniekan Udofia, Drew Graham and Diana Cruz, as well as No Kings Collective themselves, Brandon Hill Francisco Esteban, and Peter Chang.

An example of going against the grain in the art world: the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art caused a huge stink in early January when its board announced in early January that it had appointed art dealer Jeffrey Deitch to be the new director of MOCA. This decision was widely and thoroughly criticized in the art world. To be sure, there are important conflict of interest issues that will always exist even in the non-profit realm and that will need to be rigourously vetted and managed. Modern Art Notes parsed through these issues in a three-part interview with Deitch and remains skeptical along with many others. I think that having someone with good business sense who also understands the art world can only be good for the museum which suffers from financial woes but not a shortage of great art in its collection. Deitch takes his post this summer having run the gauntlet of his critics who may prove to have had a positive hand in ensuring that the conflicts were adequately addressed.

I'll leave you with some good advice about art collecting from best-selling author and screenwriter, film director and producer, Michael Crichton who died recently leaving an amazing art collection, including a Jasper Johns flag painting

Crichton was modest about his role as collector, and only his close friends and family were fully aware of the quality and comprehensive range of his collection. “I never really cared whether a particular piece was major or minor, typical or atypical of the artist’s work, or whether the artist was fully or thinly represented in my collection,” Crichton wrote. “I just bought images that I enjoyed looking at, and in the end, that is the only significance that I attach to them. I feel fortunate to have been able to live with the works.” (ArtDaily.org)

Pretty darn good advice for an emerging art collector!