Writing helps me organize my thoughts.
100 Art Ideas Yours for Free! Spoof of contemporary art.
Commentary on the Arts Today The Need for a Realistic Focus: brief discussion of the need for truth-oriented legitimacy in contemporary art, using the differences between art at the Clark Art Institute and MASS MoCA. What kinds and types of reality can or should art deal with? Why? Note that a realistic focus does not mean artists must create realist paintings. A version of this was published in the Bray Arts Journal-newsletter.
Questioning Classical Realism: Traditional, representational and illusionistic methods for painting and drawing, borne out of academy traditions, can be wonderful ways to make art. As a realist painter, I find many realist’s ongoing negations and diatribes against non-realist types of artmaking to be misleading at best, extremely narrow at worst, and often art historically incompetent. I wrote the bulk of this article in 2005, in response to some of the deeper problems associated with classical realist painting as espoused in various articles by leaders of the Art Renewal Center. Where do Classical Realist ideas and ideals come from? (Mainly from the writings of Ives-Gammell, who was an irate, disenfranchised artist.) What are the problems with these ideologies? (False grouping, category error, red herring, ad hominem — you name it, the fallacies are prevalent.) Why aren’t there more classical realists teaching at the college level? (Because classical realism has a history of being anti-science and a-historical.) Why don’t we see more classical realist paintings in contemporary art shows? (Realists who work as portrait painters are making art for private clients, not museums — but there are a great many in contemporary museums too!) Is it really true that academic or realist or figurative painters were constantly under attack during the 20th Century? (Sometimes they were, nevertheless, there were thousands of successful realist art shows throughout the time period.) Does fine art today need a renewal against a suspicious, abstract Modernism? (No, in fact the arts today are vastly varied, dynamic, and rich with many new forms, styles, media — all of which shows the flexibility and beauty of the human imagination.) The fact is that the best college, university, academy and atelier programs have a largely positive outlook and a great deal in common, not least of which is an abiding love of and practice of visual art. Lengthy file (14+ pages, with endnotes).
