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Maureen Mullarkey: Studio Matters

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CAA & The Death of Art

INFLATION IN THE ARTS IS OF A PIECE WITH INFLATION IN ACADEMIA. The upcoming College Art Association, in New York this year, has just mailed out its conference information. Scheduled for the first day of the conference are workshops on the important things: finding a job, keeping it, and getting grants. One of them aims at all the newly minted MFA’s: Job Hunt 101: Essential Steps in Securing a Job in the Arts. As night follows day, the next morning brings: Grant Writing for Artists. Continue Reading

A Tea Party in the Arts?

‘WHAT MIGHT A TEA PARTY IN ART LOOK LIKE?” That was the question asked by a reader in his response to yesterday’s aprés-election post. It is a delicious question. Poignantly quixotic, to be sure, but no less delightful for that. It deserves quoting in full for those of you who do not click through to comments:
Today we face the wasteland of a nihilistic official art world, daily on display at such sites as Art Forum or vernissage.tv, ruled by an Academy far more oppressive than any of the past owing to its belief in nothing more than the recitation of Soros/Code Pink politics and the exercise of its own arbitrary power.
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Degas On The Phone

FINALLY, THE HUMBLE PHONE BOOK is getting its due. Ammon Shea is quite likely the only person on the planet to take an interest in the one text we all rely on without ever giving it a second’s thought. He has just published The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads. In the great scheme of things, it is a small subject. But not as small as first thought would have it. At the end of the road from the first telephone directory is Facebook. Continue Reading

Welfare for Art?

NPR’S FIRING OF JUAN WILLIAMS has reignited examination of the larger issue of taxpaper funding for the arts. It was John Sloan, I believe, who welcomed public money, official award committees and the whole apparatus of state largess on the grounds that, by following the money, artists would know who their enemies are. With the country over $13 trillion—trillion—in debt, suddenly talk of defunding the arts does not seem like the mean-spirited, philistine, conservative plot it has traditionally been considered. Both the artists’ listserve to which I belong and AICA, the critic’s association to which I belong, howl at the thought. Continue Reading

Art the Destroyer

THIS PRESS RELEASE CAME IN THE MORNING MAIL. It is a shining example of academic/museum culture. An initial cue to the tenor of things is the windy title of John Russell’s untitled painting. [Scroll down.] If you see only two glowing suns, not three as announced, do not fret. The third will show up sooner or later in another replicate. It is an inkjet print—quite a huge one—on polyester. Russel exhibited the identical central image in a group show at the Royal Academy, London, in 2008.buy Continue Reading
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