International Deadline: August 11, 2022 – The Photographers’ Gallery, UK’s leading centre for the presentation and exploration of photography, is seeking an exceptional candidate to join us as our Director…
International Deadline: September 8, 2022 – Global creative company, M&C Saatchi Group and London’s iconic Saatchi Gallery have launched a new international art initiative – the annual Art for Change Prize…
May I speak plainly?
I hate that stupid pickle.
Pickle, Comedian, every “Bored Ape”, and all of the other decidedly hollow pieces that ring of the same artless ventures. It makes me so vehemently, existentially bored with the art world.
For those unaware, Pickle is a currently on-view creation by Australian artist Matthew Griffin that consists of a pickle from a McDonald’s cheeseburger he threw at the ceiling of the Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand. It is now going for NZ$10,000. Discussions of the piece circle around the idea of it stoking ideas of how we create value in objects and one another.
A readily-available connection to draw is to that of Maurizio Cattelan’s $120,000 Comedian—a banana duct-taped to a wall. Cattelan, a facetious creator of sculpture and installations, has been abuzz in the art news world almost constantly since the piece went up in 2019, and was similarly omnipresent in conversation with his solid gold toilet America.
But when we have had Duchamp’s Fountain for over a century, what makes these artists think they are saying anything?
Let me state for the record that I do not in any way hold any aspect of the art industry sacred. I am the first in a room to defend against a naysayers belief that modern art is “lazy.” My tastes are of the obtuse, the strange, the brutal, the flippant, and the surprising. Which is perhaps why these works fall so flat for me. With all of their purported intent of creating conversation in the art world, poking fun at the system, and challenging paradigms, they feel decades behind on the discussion and add little to nothing to it.
There are certain ideas that have been executed so perfectly in seminal explorations that future derivatives are doomed to be nothing but. Take two examples of early modern performance art showcasing human action without accountability: Cut Piece and Rhythm 0. A decade apart but both rich with significance for participatory art, Yoko Ono and Marina Abramović tapped into important ideas of audience and artist, freedom from consequence, and humanity’s capability for violence. These works are icons of performance art, so much so that their approach are a standard of replication to extremely watered down degrees. The methodology might change, but it is hard to wring a new message out of those scenarios, and knowing what the result tends to be, it is a troubling concept to return to.
Similarly one can look at Yves Klein’s Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle and Andy Warhol’s Invisible Sculpture. Klein’s playful yet ritualistic approach to Zone from 1959 to 1962 was a brilliant piece of early conceptual art steeped in the immaterial and ephemeral aspects of life and exchange. Warhol’s Invisible Sculpture in the front of the Manhattan nightclub Area (which itself can also be likened to Klein’s 1958 piece La spécialisation de la sensibilité à l’état matière première en sensibilité picturale stabilisée: Le Vide) was a clever exploration of fame and value, and a notably vulnerable position for the elusive pop-artist. It is an idea that has been replicated verbatim, most recently by Salvatore Garau, and it puzzles what is unique about this venture in the modern context.
And of course, Warhol taught us that context is everything. It is not simply the work or the artist or the place or the time—it is all of these and more that create what is cherished in art.
And so I can’t help but ask: in what context are these works meaningful? These pieces of produce laid bare until some wealthy collector chooses to buy that certificate of authenticity; these DeviantArt calibre cartoons serving as status symbols for crypto-playboys; these varying quantities of literally nothing. In a world where so many of us have so little and those creating and trading in the art world have far too much, what is clever about this stale cycle of currency?
It’s a joke. And I get it.
But it’s a bad one.
International Deadline: August 31, 2022 – The Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen awards 40 fellowships each year in the fields of visual art, literature and composition. The fellowships are linked to a residency…
Well somehow I didn’t manage to get a single picture of our Flower Towers from the Oregon Country Fair, but luckily @photosquier did! Thanks to my awesome crew and all the Xavanadu crew who gave us great support! See you all next year! #tylerfuquacreations #oregoncountryfair2022 #oregoncountryfair #xavanadu #flowertowers
About to roll into Horning’s Hideout for the very last Northwest String Summit. 😢 But don’t worry, we are going to end this with a bang! Make sure to check out all of our art installations around the venue as well as our Saturday Night Spectacular during Umphree’s on Saturday night!!
Submitted by Jaime Sharp on July 28, 2022
From Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors: “International Resource for Impact and Storytelling (IRIS) is a new donor collaborative focused on strengthening civil society through narrative strategies and creative storytelling for impact. A sponsored project of RPA, IRIS supports donor partners and field-led efforts to deepen integration between storytellers, movements, and civil society leaders with narrative analysis, with the aim to promote advancement on social justice issues.”
“This first year was used to launch and operationalize a new way of working and undertaking several initiatives with our donor partners, like the Circle of Us visual storytelling fellowship with Purposeful in Sierra Leone and Kenya/Tanzania,” said Cara Mertes (IRIS). “In the next phase, we are seeing ways to connect our donor partners with field leaders and offer learning and convening opportunities across networks, as well as continuing to launch initiatives and finding our place in the emerging international eco-system of storytelling and narrative change.”
Submitted by Jaime Sharp on July 28, 2022
“There is no denying that over the last three years our world has been fundamentally reshaped by a worldwide pandemic, urgent climate collapse, widening inequality, rising authoritarian threats, and increasingly violent reactionary culture backlash,” said Richael Faithful for Peak Grantmaking. “The peril of this moment is defined by precarity of many of the systems, norms, and order that we have known. It is an inherently stressful time. The fact is that as our world has been reshaped, we—as people—have been, too.”
“Philanthropy, as well as other service-based work, place even more demands on our strained capacity. Plenty of data reveal increased stress levels on nonprofits since the pandemic. Yet, we have to assume high stress levels, compassion fatigue, and burnout are mirrored for funders as well. A 2019 UK survey found that 80 percent of charity workers experienced workplace stress, and a staggering 42 percent reported that their job was not good for their mental health.”
“Sharp shifts in funding priorities is one key source of this heightened stress because it entails major changes: updating policies, systems, and other apparatuses to make these shifts, gaining staff and board consensus to make changes within traditionally slow-moving institutions, administering funds so that grantees quickly receive funds in response to urgent, evolving needs. Some philanthropic staff have felt a two-sided squeeze—internally and externally—on one end, pressure to support grantees in crisis during twin pandemics, and on the other end, lethargic or bureaucratic responses to quickly deliver necessary changes.”
International Deadline: October 1, 2022 – The Annual Raymond James Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, one of America’s most respected art shows, is now accepting applications. Attended by up to 30,000 patrons. Awards…
Submitted by Jaime Sharp on July 27, 2022
“There’s never been a more important time to claim your full power in philanthropy. We need you – your authentic and most daring selves during these times. This is the moment to relinquish power and exercise deep trust in the field. This is the moment to recognize the important role we need you to play as a catalyst for transformative and progressive social change,” said author Kelly Bates for the Interaction Institute for Social Change.
“Remove and redefine the boundaries of what a funder or program officer should be.”
“Resist rolling out long applications and grant reports again. The field is working and we can’t be overtaxed as we fight the many battles that have been placed upon us. We need you working alongside us, not reading proposals and reports.”
“Avoid reverting back to prioritizing program grants. We need unrestricted general operating funds to apply what we are learning each day to what must be done.”
“Fund movement organizing and capacity building organizations so that we can work together to unlock profound social change during this period.”
“Make strategy with us, not for us. Together we must be emergent and adaptable to our challenges and opportunities. Change is not always linear. Like COVID-19, further attacks on social and racial justice will be unpredictable and hate and greed will produce new variants.”