What’s your Art? I am too sexy for GR…
Categories: Artist Opinions
http://www.whatsyourartgr.com/news/
I was recently asked the question …What is your Art? which is a campaign aimed at helping non-profit organizations and local artists. I was very excited to participate and I applaud the Grand Rapids Arts Council for their effort to help. When I tried to to link the post to my Facebook page a picture appeared with the Logo of Artsite. It was a little disapointing but not that big of a deal, the article was well written, I thought. But I also wondered how many people thought it was an article about Artsite. People wanting to read the article could eventually find the article if they followed they link..More recently I also participated in the Avenue of the Arts Pop up shop, but out of eighteen different images I provided only two were used for showing on display… and just this past weekend I also participated in a group show called Superheros. Of seven images I provided only three made it on the wall.. I was told that children came to that coffee shop and somebody would eventually complain.. the picture in question featured an exposed breast… last year I participated in an Artpeers art walk and displayed my work at Rowsters coffee shop. When I came to pick up the art I discovered that one of my paintings was removed from the wall because it featured some very cartoonish female figures on skates in the nude. It is diffcult enough for artists in this town to have their art displayed publicly but when things like this keep ocurring I am wondering wether it is even worth the effort to continue showing in Grand Rapids. I thought we were moving swimingly towards a new enviroment of cool and progressive mentality but I keep finding myself going back in time and finding we are very much still in the fifties in so many ways. I suppose this has been a learning experience for myself as well. When you are about to engage in programs like these , you should ask what the guidelines for showing and if censorship will rear its ugly and retro face. I spent a lot of money making those prints with the idea I would sell some work not have it hidden away in a corner.
Bitchingly yours.. H R Claudin
I empathize with Hugo’s frustration. My gut tells me we will get “there”, but there is a lot of provincial religiosity (there seems to be a lot of body shame in the CRC culture) to overcome so it will take time. It may not even happen until after Hugo and I are fertilizing tulips. But I remain confident that it will, in fact, happen. In the meantime, it’s as important as it is frustrating that people like Hugo continue to bump up against the wall of “morality” (quote marks of sarcasm).
I helped hang Hugo’s show at Rowster; I found the work to be so far from the morality line that I was really confused as to what was even being censored. And when I saw what the material in question, just shook my head in disbelief (except that I could totally believe it).
The Art Institute of Chicago, which draws a largely suburban and elderly crowd, has hundreds of nudes. Nudes that are far and away more anatomically correct than Hugo’s women. No problem. I think part of it is that when art is displayed in a venue that is not a “white pedestal” venue (Art Institute, GRAM, UICA, The Whitney, etc.) the viewer’s experience is somehow more personal. Had Hugo’s paintings been in the GRAM, I feel there would have been no objection. Much like the difference between seeing a band at Van Andel vs. Pyramid Scheme. At Pyramid Scheme, the musicians cease being the exhulted “other” and might become the person next to you in line for a beer. In which case, you’d have to their human-ness. In Rowster, patrons (for reasons that must be purely psychological because it doesn’t make much sense) are experiencing the art on a much more personal level. It shouldn’t make a difference, but suddenly in these smaller venues the humanity of the artist (whether they are present or not) is palpable. Which leads the scaredy-cat crowd to ask “what is the morality of this (now very real and possibly a neighbor) person who would paint these larger-than-life women with their unmentionables showing?”
Anyway, keep up the good work Hugo. And continue to call attention to the puritanical nonsense surrounding the body this region so badly needs to rid itself of.
hugo, i appreciate your comments here, and understand the sentiment. in terms of the superhero show, i did mention that up to 2 smaller pieces or 1 large piece would be hung (which accounts, on one hand, for why i didn’t hang all of them). and i did hang 3 up, which is more than most artists got in.
i apologize for not having the clarity to inform the artists about the content with which I and/or Sparrows is comfortable hanging at that space. this has been a lesson for me, certainly.
another thing to mention is that, as a curator, i did choose between a handful of works you submitted, and chose the ones i liked. so yes, i did censor. but even if it would have been at a venue that would have been more comfortable with the subject matter, i just didn’t really care for the other works.
Hugo expresses a real concern which I think can also be expressed when it comes to ArtPrize. Since the venues are the jurors of their own exhibitions, and we never really know who it is who is doing that jurying, we never know if there is some type of parochial censorship taking place.
Censorship can take many forms. I recently asked a pointed question to Paul Moore who was giving a panel presentation a couple weeks ago at ART CHICAGO. This week my Facebook Note on ArtPrize and the Devos Foundations political connections written in Oct of 2010 was banned because someone had complained that it was “abusive or spam” ( FB’s language). Coincidence? Maybe, Maybe not.
You can still read the Note http://www.facebook.com/kooyman, I just can’t share it with other Facebook friends.