One of the things that I want to do with this BLOG is to encourage people who want to say something about our area's visual arts, our artists and everything else associated with that and the visual arts in general, to email me and I'll put it here (editing rights reserved) whenever possible.

And photographer and video artist Darin Boville (and also one of the nine finalists on this year's Trawick Prize) breaks the ice with some very interesting comments and thoughts fueled by the current issue of Art in America magazine. Darin's point is about substance in the current state of writing in these magazines. He notes that:

"[In the current issue] you can find an article on the work of [Mark] Lombardi which I might suggest was an Alan Sokal-style hoax if I wasn't convinced that it is impossible to pull off a Sokal-style hoax in the art world.

Art world writing is already so obviously void of substance that a hoax would be pointless.

In this case, we learn in a pull quote from the article that "With their large scale and epic cast of characters, Lombardi's drawings can call to mind the grand, turbulent history paintings of the 19th century."

Jaw dropping stupidity of a quote.

Even the editors where embarrassed by that one -- in the text itself that line does not appear but has been instead changed to "With their marriage of branching patterns and mechanical flowcharts, Lombardi's drawings call to mind a host of visual forms, including maps, mandalas, and genealogical charts."

Have artists figured out yet why no one outside the art world takes them seriously?

And then there are the grade school errors. The article says that Bush made "100% profit" on the sale of his stock which is another way of saying that he doubled his money. That certainly is the wrong number!

Then there is the art writer WAY out of her depth. While discussing the Bush work she seem oblivious of the fact that Bush was the CEO of Spectrum 7 when Harken bought it and when Bahrain granted the little company offshore drilling rights (during Daddy's presidency). It only takes five minutes on the Internet.

And then the faults in art scholarship. Here we have an artist who is interested in political and business scandals and who maps them out in semi-scientific charts linking the previously unseen participants together.

This artist came of age in the early 1970's and graduated with an MFA in 1974. It seems to me that Hans Haacke's pieces detailing the connections in the real estate market in NYC should have at least been mentioned, if not cited as the dominant art precedent and direct influence.

On and on and on.

Alas... "

Comments on Darin's thoughts welcomed.

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