Not good enough

Kriston Capps responds to my defense responding to his his highly flawed and deceptive article on the 100 Washington Artists book and I. He writes:

Seventh-generation Texan, in fact. There are many Mexican Americans in my family, but I don't have much Latino blood in me. And I'm a fanboy for Star Trek and Marvel Comics.

Okay, a couple of points:

On Fraser: In my article I write, "As a curator and a dealer, he’s shown 100 Washington Artists selections Lida Moser, Andrew Wodzianski, Tim Tate, Michael Janis, Joseph Barbaccia, and many others," which is correct. I note that in D.C., he's primarily shown these artists through Fraser--also true. But I did not write that Fraser represents these artists. Somewhere in the editorial process, "Lida Moser" became "Linda Moser," a typo that was either my fault or editorial's.

No way did I fabricate any quote or bend the context to fit the narrative.

More broadly, I think it is a misreading to say that I've fingered Campello in a conspiracy or scheme to profit. I speculate that that opportunity is probably not even there. Rather, I say that Campello has conflicts of interest with regard to artists he works with and artists he is covering in this book. I cited the Alida Anderson/art fair example because it was recent and clear (and because Campello told me that). It doesn't destroy my argument that he skipped last year's Affordable Art Fair. His financial relationships with specific artists continues and will continue in the future.

Again, I acknowledge that Campello has kept nothing hidden. I don't say that it's a scheme to make money. The takeaway is that a conflict of interest doesn't bother him and isn't keeping him from writing a survey of D.C. artists.

Campello writes, "He does shoot himself in the foot by later acknowledging that I did tell him that I have current commercial interests in some artists." I do not see how reporting that constitutes shooting myself in the foot.

Campello says I "strangle the truth" by saying he blogs about artists he admires (and represents), but that is correct. I don't say they are one and the same.

No more hairsplitting from me. I would refer back to my story on all the other points.

Let's examine this response in detail.

Capps writes that: "No way did I fabricate any quote or bend the context to fit the narrative." But he did bend the context. The quote in question is: "I have zero commercial relationship with them."

This quote is in the context of our discussion on the past and former Fraser Gallery artists in general that we were discussing in our telephone conversation. He even listed a few artists by name at one point and that quote was in response to that context. I then immediately followed that by listing the very few artists that I do have a relationship with - which Kriston admits in his response "I acknowledge that Campello has kept nothing hidden" - but in the article he follows the "I have zero commercial relationship with them" quote with "That’s not wholly true." He then details all the facts that I revealed to him without telling his readers that it was I who revealed that information to him.

If you follow the thread of the writing, the implication is that I lied to him, unless someone knows of another meaning for "not wholly true." Had he written in the article what he wrote in his response ("Campello has kept nothing hidden") then this part of my argument would have been a moot point. But to make that clear in his article would have seriously undermined his goal to make this project seem full of conflicts of interest.

I also told Capps of the safety valves that I had implemented to minimize the potential conflicts of interest with the artists in question. I'll repeat myself: Every artist in the book who is represented by a gallery or dealer is referred back to that gallery or dealer. In the case of artists associated with me, every single contact info points back to another dealer who represents that artist. Not a single artist in this book is associated in the book with me. In fact, if any "business" is to be derived from this book, I am sending the business to everyone but me. Capps knows this, but conveniently avoided discussing that. The reason is simple: it demolishes his implied undercurrent about my ethical transgressions in having artists in the book that I'm associated with.

He shoots himself in the foot because first he implies that "That's not wholly true" as in a lie, but then later reveals that I did tell him that I have a relationship with a tiny percentage of the artists in the book. So he has told you that I told him that I have zero relationships with any artists and I also told him that I do have a relationship with some artists. It is the flow of the sentences that don't follow a logical path other than to imply to that I tried to hide my relationship from him.

And he does strangle the truth when he writes in the article: "As much can be ascertained from his blog, D.C. Art News, where he has written for years about artists he admires (and represents)." Clearly this was meant to incorrectly suggest that I only write and admire artists that I represent. In his response he says: "I don't say they're one and the same." See how a dishonest employment of English to convey one meaning - the one the author wants to convey - works?

What an honest journalist would have written should have been: "As much can be ascertained from his blog, D.C. Art News, where he has written for years about artists he admires (and some of whom he represents)."

You see the difference between the truth and unethical journalism designed to carry the author's agenda forward?

In another response in reference to my anger at being called a "fanboy", Capps tells me that:

But to say that I kicked my story with a slur to insult you personally -- or that City Paper would publish that kind of attack -- is not true. As another commenter says, it's a word that comes from comic-book and nerd culture that suggests extreme enthusiasm for a subject.

Fair enough, but I'll say it again: regardless of the actual meaning of "fanboy", the intent was the same: to diminish and reduce. He could have written "fan" and accomplish the same point without the denigration to a juvenile status that "fanboy" brings to those readers not in tune with the arcane meanings of the sci-fi and comic book culture.

Capps doesn't respond of his denigration of the publisher. In the article he picked as examples some weird titles from a selection of 100s of art books that this respected publisher has offered in the 50-plus years that they've been publishing art books. This is a highly respected publisher that is taking a huge chance financing this book, its marketing and exposure at zero cost to the artists or anyone.

It all comes down to choice of words and the intended meaning that the author wants to accomplish.

What bugs me the most out this whole episode is that I really tried so fucking hard to bust my ass to cover every possible angle dealing with conflicts of interest; that I've spent some many hundreds of hours putting together this volume with the real Pollyanna goal of doing something good for the DC art scene; that I tried so hard to focus all possible future "financial rewards" to other art dealers or to the artists themselves... and still, after all that, in the end a piece of shoddy attack journalism still tries to focus most of the attention on conflicts of interest without pointing out the steps that I took to remove them.

For that there's no semantic excuse other than a flaw of character and a scary disregard for ethics. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander, right? and one lesson that Capps will learn from this episode is that you reap what you sow.

Critique the critics

On Tuesday, August 3rd, the Arlington Arts Center and The Pink Line Project are turning the tables on writers who cover the DC area arts and culture beat.

For Critique the critics, "eight authorities on all things stylish will compete head to head, attempting to create works of art on the spot and exposing themselves to the scrutiny of a horde of artists, patrons, and other curious onlookers who will judge their artistic abilities (or possible lack thereof).

These eight brave writers will use familiar kids’ toys and craft materials—from play-doh, to finger paints, to duplo blocks—to battle in a humorous tourney filled with unlikely aesthetic challenges. By competition’s end, one writer will emerge victorious."

The roster of warrior critics includes:

Maura Judkis (tbd.com), Stephanie Kaye (WAMU), Svetlana Legetic (Brightest Young Things), Danielle O’Steen (Washington Post Express), Holly Thomas (Washington Post), Ben Eisler (WJLA), Annie Groer (Politics Daily), Peter Abrahams (DC Modern Luxury).

Music provided by DJ Anish. Tickets are $5, and are available on the AAC website.

Tuesday, August 3, 6 – 8 pm at the Gibson Guitar Showroom (above Indebleu), 709 F St NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC.

Worth noting

Back when the WaPo announced the Real Art D.C. thing where the WaPo's Galleries critic Jessica Dawson reviews online entries and selects work that she liked, there was a good discussion about the rules of the entries, which seemed particularly one-WaPo-sided towards image copyright issues.

Not sure if that was a lot of wasted words worrying about copyright. I think.

Jessica's first pick was Joel D'Orazio, and she really liked his chairs but didn't seem so hot on his paintings. By the way, I'm the opposite: I like his paintings better.

Anyway, score is Jessica one, Lenny zip as Joel's chairs are featured in Dwell Magazine.

And by the way, all of Jessica Dawson's picks will be automatically invited for the next volume of 100 Washington Artists, tentatively titled 100 More Washington Artists.

Congrats!

To 18 year old Bethesda artist Carolyn Becker, who just won the grand prize in the Plein Air Easton, The Next Generation painting competition.

Having been a guest speaker in this competition in the past, I know that it is very difficult and an amazing art experience.

Carolyn also won the Alma Thomas award for painting this past year at American University for her work in the undergraduate show there. She is a painting major at American University.

Keep an eye on this young talented painter.

Curioser and curioser...

Someone just pointed out to me that this earlier blog post in the City Paper about the 100 Washington Artists book has so far drawn 49 comments. But what is very curious is that it seems that someone has caught the key "negative" poster(s) as being a sockpuppet!

It is also very curious to read the chain of comments as the various flamers are made up and subsequently destroyed by the other commenters. But someone is really trying hard to make a good story smell fishy here, and the comments have been strangely quiet since the sockpuppet got called out.

Check this online drama here.

Who would have thought that a book still to be published could have stirred so much interest, debate and chicanery.

At 87FLORIDA

Ceci Cole McInturff, hard-working and talented owner of 87FLORIDA has put together a sculpture show to coincide with the Bloomingdale Artwalk on August 7th. The venue is located at the intersection of Florida Avenue and First Street NW, caddy corner to the Big Bear Cafe in DC.

Saturday, August 7th, 12-4 during the Bloomingdale Artwalk (sponsored by the Pinkline Project and North Capitol Main Street). The show is titled "Mafia Swimwear and Other Narrative Objects" and the participating artists are:

Cindy Milans-Brown
Andrew Christenberry
Lisa Dillin
Dianne Stermann
John Simpkins-Camp
Ceci Cole McInturff

There's also a wall exhibit titled "White Works" by Lisa K. Rosenstein. There will be a sneak preview of new work by Afaf Zurayk's "Drawn Poems." Live Music by Thad Wilson from 1-4 and a special outdoor showing of a kinetic sculpture, "Eureka" by the late Phyliss Mark whose work is in the Hirshhorn and several outdoor venues in New York City.

Opportunity for DMV Artists

Deadline: October 30, 2010

The BlackRock Center for the Arts has a huge gorgeous gallery space and their call for artists for the 2011 art season is now up.

The 2011 Call to Artists is open to all artists residing in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC over the age of 18 for original artwork only. This call will cover exhibits in the gallery from October 2011 through August 2012. An exhibit may include on applicant or a combination of applicants, based on the judgement of jurors. The jury panel is comprised of Kathleen Moran, Jack Rasmussen and yours truly.

Details here.

When facts get in the way

There are so many disturbing issues with Kriston Capps snarky report on my 100 Washington Artists book that I don't know where to start other than by thanking the CP for giving this book, which is yet to be published, some advance publicity. As Warhol once said, "publicity, even bad publicity is better than no publicity." You can read that article here.

If you follow the DMV art scene, then you know that Capps' past includes some journalistic issues, and so when he expressed interest in doing a piece for the CP, I was fully prepared for the worst. I knew in advance that the piece would try to find the negative angle to the story, the "what's my angle?" the "what's in it for Campello?." This is because unfortunately the formation of some people is so ethically flawed, that they suspect all those around them as being like them.

That I'm doing these series of books because I think it would be good for the DC art scene must be a lie. There's got to be something wrong here; if not they can try to make something up or selectively highlight some issues while ignoring the ones which damage the focus that they're trying to achieve: a negative portrayal.

The first hint is the title: The C List: Will Lenny Campello’s 100 Washington Artists Serve Its Subjects or Its Author? The seed has been planted for "there's something smelly here."

By paragraph four he's already referring to my "ethical tics." The second negative seed has been planted.

Later he lists artists with whom I've had/have a commercial relationship and used to show at the Fraser Gallery, in the process he gets one name wrong but drops an end of sentence that implies that many others in the 100 list are artists that we represented at Fraser. This is a spectacular stretch of his imagination, but designed to leave the impression that I've stacked the list with Fraser Gallery artists. Technically, as of today, there are three artists out of the 100 that are represented by the Fraser Gallery today.

But what is even more shoddy journalism is that Capps knew well that I had put some ethical safety valves in the book to cover the ethical angle of artists with whom I've had or have a commercial relationship. The key one is that every artist in the book who is represented by a gallery or dealer is referred back to that gallery or dealer. In the case of artists associated with me, every single contact points back to another dealer who represents that artist. Not a single artist in this book is associated in the book with me. In fact, if any "business" is to be derived from this book, I am sending the business to everyone but me. Capps knows this, but conveniently avoids discussing that. The reason is simple: it demolishes his implied undercurrent about my ethical transgressions in having artists in the book that I'm associated with.

Then he errs and makes up a quote that I never said in the context that he puts it in the article. The "I have zero commercial relationship with them" quote was in the context of zero commercial relationship with the Fraser Gallery and the artists that they represent or represented when I was a co-owner. I then qualified that by listing for Kriston the artists that I do currently have a commercial relationship with, but instead of Capps writing: "I have zero commercial relationship with them, except for..." he starts a new paragraph with: "That’s not wholly true" and details facts that I told him about my current dealer relationships and my online art dealer enterprise (Alida Anderson Art Projects, which I've discussed here many times), but he writes it as if he "discovered" this and has caught me in a lie.

He then writes that "Through Alida Anderson Art Projects, he has taken work by Janis and Tate to a number of art fairs." It was me who told him about the art fairs, but I also told him that the last time that I took those guys to an art fair under Alida Anderson Art Projects was in 2008 and explained my current business relationships with them and others. This of course, is never mentioned. It would destroy his argument.

He does shoot himself in the foot by later acknowledging that I did tell him that I have current commercial interests in some artists. So the issue here is a quote which put out of place, as he does, serves a purpose best suited to sickening Republican political blogs that publish out-of-context video scenes or some of the garbage-spewing misinformation talking heads of MSNBC. Whereas those extreme right and extreme left wingers are rabid junkyard dogs for their extreme political dogmas, and their goal is to divide us, I am not sure what the goal of this Capps article is, other than to try to make something that I hope will be good for the DC art scene into a smelly conspiracy for me to gain... what?

He strangles the truth once more when he refers to the artists that I write about and "admire" in this blog. He writes: "As much can be ascertained from his blog, D.C. Art News, where he has written for years about artists he admires (and represents)."

What's the condemnation you ask?

That all artists that I write about and admire are only those that I represent. That is of course, completely wrong, and in fact probably numerically the opposite of the truth. But don't let facts get in the way... even though people like Amy Lin and many others, of whom I have gushed about in the past in my blog (get it, my blog) are represented by other galleries and have never been represented by me. But that little poison pill is now also a seed dropped in the article: "In Campello's blog he only gushes about artists that he represents." A damned lie.

See what the undercurrent here is?

Words count and are chosen for a purpose. Capps writes that "Not every Washington-based artist jumped at the opportunity. Artists Jim Sanborn and Sam Gilliam refused to participate." When we discussed this, I told him that Gilliam and Sanborn had "declined" to be in the book, and explained the reasons given to me as to why they didn't want to be in the book - both have private commercial flavors of other issues - but Capps instead uses the word "refused" with the implication offering a harsher reason for them not being in the book.

He then takes a swipe at the publisher, picking some weird titles from a selection of 100s of art books that this respected publisher has offered in the 50-plus years that they've been publishing art books. You see? everyone gets a little dose of negativity here.

At the end he almost closes with: "For this unflagging fanboy of Capital City artists, the fight for visibility trumps profit, or interests, or ethics." Even the snarky choice of words (I'm now a "fanboy") are picked to diminish and reduce and put me into "my place" - how dare this crab try to take 100 crabs out of the basket?

As a man I am nobody's "boy" of anything, and in fact I find this adjective not only offensive and insulting, but also insensitive in this era when we're so well aware of the sins of the past. Because he has failed to find the facts to back up a flawed and dishonest argument questioning my ethics, he attempts to reduce me at the end to a "boy."

And in the end what comes out is a snarky, dishonest, pick-out-of-context art scribe best suited for political blog poison-writing than someone with a pulpit to write about the Washington, DC art scene for anyone, much less the same paper which let him go earlier for whatever reasons.

And I'm much more of an ethical man, not boy, than he'll ever be.

And now that I'm finished with volume one, time to start volume two.

Ideas that make sense

Whatever is left out of ranking, jurying, selection, among the unnoticed strengths of Washington artists, is probably of greater interest to anyone attuned to risk-taking artists, the 'outliers' who actually define "what's going on," the "transgressors," who are pushing art. A bimodal curve, or 'distribution' lies within an assured 67% of a normal distribution. You are dealing with the norms expresssed in a highly politicized area. Rather than continuing to pursue a range that will not challenge the arts or challenge any other city, you might hesitate, for once, and think about a book that values the marginal, the peripheral, the seekers and transgressors to any book 'already written' and highly predictable.

That was an anonymous comment left in my earlier post about lists. And the Lenster thinks that this is a fucking brilliant idea and one that I should have thought of myself.

"Challenge the arts or challenge other cities" is the key and most brilliant part of this terrific suggestion. And while this suggestion makes things 1000% harder (and putting together this first volume was incredibly hard and took at least 10 times more time than I had originally planned for (thus my lack of really decent posting for the last few months), it also makes this future book a true one man's informed perspective on what he (he being me) thinks is the folks who are "pushing art."

Consider it done sir or madam!

And if I may, in reviewing the (much debated) list for the first volume, I see several artists, quite a few in fact, whose artwork is already doing what Anon. suggests: the 'outliers' who actually define "what's going on," the "transgressors," who are pushing art.

Suggestions welcomed. And O yeah... power just came back.

Powerless

No electricity since Sunday, cell phone almost dead, many trees down in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Montgomery, no Internet, cough, cough...

Another list

And now that I am essentially finished with 100 Washington Artists, one of the main lessons learned is that the futile job of putting together a "fair" list of 100 artists in such an area so full of talent and creativity is full of landmines.

Like I told you readers when I first announced the book: I was about to make 100 friends and piss off a few thousand artists.

Since announcing the list a while back, I've recognized that I probably fucked up the list by around 5-6 artists who should have been there, but are not. I take the blame for that, which is a nice way of saying that the folks who unofficially helped me to put the list together... ahhh... also never mentioned those artists.

But the flood of emails (and even some phone calls) telling me how I should have had this artist or that artist in the list has identified a significant number of blue chip artists that will ensure that volume two of the book series is not the "second 100 DC artists" - In an odd way, by the time I am done with volume two, I think that the danger of having a tiered set of artists (where the first volume is the "best" 100 and the second volume the "second best 100") will be minimized significantly.

Now I know about some really big name artists who live in the DMV but for whatever reason don't show here and are truly blue chip international artists. Now I know about at least another dozen brilliant artists who are second to none in the DC area.

So I've got a good start to the list for volume two; thanks to all of you.

Because I have been and am an art dealer, in compiling the first list I had to deal with the issue of including artists in the list with whom I've had/have a dealer relationship now, in the past and perhaps even in the future (if I ever get to open an art gallery again). In doing list one, I thought that it would be grossly unfair to exclude them from the list, because then the list would be truly flawed and it would be a huge hole in anyone's list and immensely unfair to the artists in question. But I was attentive and harder on some of the candidates that fit that bill, and I'd say that only a tiny percentage of the final list represents that category, and yet I can think about another half a dozen artists who could have been in the first list and will now be in the second volume.

Like I told John Anderson in the Pink Line interview, nepotism is part of making any list and I challenge anyone in the DMV who fantasizes about doing an objective list of any sort. I addressed that in the first volume by putting a disclaimer in the introduction which identifies the issue. Also, every single artist in the list has a website listed as a contact point. Where an artist is represented by a gallery, the contact info is for that gallery. For unrepresented artists, the contact info is the artist's own website. Not a single contact info for a single artist points back to me. I stress this here, because the usual cowardly anonymous flame throwing commenting about me "pumping my bank account" has already started in the comments section of the CP blog post about my list. Check that out here.

And in the end, it is my list, and everyone hates making lists, but I was the one who busted his ass with 100s of hours in the preparation of this volume, which I believe is great start to document 300 or so deserving artists in the cultural tapestry of the DMV.

The list for volume two has started; suggestions welcomed.

Airborne

Heading back to the DMV today via USAirways; while I was gone Stephen "Thor" Strasburg won another game for the Nats.

The book cover

Now that the 100 Washington Artists book is nearly done and almost shipped to the publisher, I am going to try to convince them to use just one image on the cover, instead of a set of handpicked thumbnails of images, as they'd prefer to do.

My idea is that a super strong, interesting representational image with an eye-catching subject would make the book stand out and attract a little more attention in passing. Layout designers tell me that color is always better than B&W, so sorry to all the grayscale artists. I am also told that titles with numbers in them attract more attention (who knew?) and that the title should be centered on the top of the book cover with the number "100" larger than the "Washington Artists" line underneath the "100."

So I've selected 3-4 images (from the 700+ images that are to be submitted to the layout gurus) which I will send to the publisher to see if I can convince them to pick one of the images for the cover of the book.

And if you think that the list of 100 artists was controversial, imagine now trying to whittle down the 732 images to one.

Selecting the 3-4 images was a difficult process. I started by eliminating all the artists with whom I've had/have a commercial art dealer relationship, now or in the past or future. It is unfair to them, but too bad. Then I eliminated all the abstract artists; this is also unfair, but layout gods tell me that a strong, interesting representational image is what is needed. And let's face it, we're trying to hawk some books here.

Then I nixed all the black and white artists, screwing Ben Tolman's powerful imagery ("sorry, no B&W," said the layout gurus) and several photographers in the process. Then I had to nix all the nudes.

That really pissed me off, but the layout gurus tell me that some bookstores and libraries would not carry the book if it has a nude on the cover; welcome to 21st century America.

That still left a significant number of images, and now I looked for the images that were interesting enough; that had something unusual and eye catching... something that would raise an eye-brow and make a person pick up the book.

That was still hard. In the end I had 3-4 images. Three are by three of the DMV's best-known artists; one is by an emerging artist who is making a lot of waves in the artsphere already. Let's see what the publisher let's me do.

DC area art dealer murdered

Details here.

Campello & KRUE

My daughter Elise just cut a song with rapper KRUE. Check it out below...

The long, dry summer

The Gazette's Jordan Edwards has an excellent report on the tough times being faced by Bethesda's art galleries. Read it here.

Gallery moves

Morton Fine Art (MFA)'s "a pop up project" had to move from its initial location at the old Numark Gallery space on 7th Street downtown. And Amy Morton has found a new location in DC. MFA’s innovative art lab will serve as part studio, part art consulting space and part gallery. As part of the unveiling, MFA will showcase an inaugural art exhibition, “Small Works on Paper.” The work featured in this exhibit includes watercolor, gouache pieces, wood engravings and mixed media paintings.

Featured Artists:

* Vonn Sumner – An LA based artist whose fanciful and eccentric characters invite the viewer into a parallel world. His work was honored with a solo museum exhibition, ‘The Other Side of Here’, at the Riverside Art Museum in California.
* Rosemary Feit Covey – A local preeminent wood engraver whose prints are held in permanent museum and library collections around the world. Featured work will include pieces from the ‘Strip’ series (including a unique artist’s proof) and the ‘Peep Show’ series.
* Laurel Hausler – A Washington, DC native who is inspired by her love for literature, antiquity and the absurd. Working in a subtractive process, she first covers the surface of her paper with multiple layers of paint, and then removes the layers to reveal the subject.

WHAT: MFA debuts new art lab with grand opening exhibit, “Small Works on Paper”

WHEN: Friday, July 30th 2010, 6-9 PM

WHERE: MFA’s Innovative Curators’ Studio, 1781 Florida Avenue NW (at 18th and U St.), Washington D.C., 20009

Wollheim

"Painters make paintings, but it takes a representative of the art world to make a work of art."

- Richard Wollheim

Airborne


Heading to the Left Coast for some unexpected last minute work and also a possible meeting with the Campello daughters in LA. Meanwhile, the comments about the list of 100 Washington Artists book is still fast and furious here.

So predictable, so predictable...

Way back, when I first announced the Rockwell exhibition now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum I wrote:

Now for some easy predictions: the high brow elitist critics will all unite in one front and all hate this show. The public, being far more progressive and democratic in their acceptance of what is art (without silly obsolete notions of "high" art and all other art, and without ingrained notions of "illustration" versus "high art") will line up to see the exhibition and continue to love Rockwell as they have for decades.

Boom! Then the first shot came across the bow of the exhibition a few weeks later when the Washington Post's chief art critic, Blake Gopnik wrote in an otherwise quite good and interesting article on the future of photography that "It's not that art museums never show "low" painting. The Corcoran has shown Norman Rockwell..."

Gopnik exposed his hand way back in that piece about how he (and most other art critics, I think) feel about the work of Norman Rockwell. It is the classic and antiquated and uniquely American traditional cliche-ridden critical view of Rockwell and his work; it's their key example as offerings of a critical perspective of high art and low art.

Separate everything; label everything, put everything and everyone in a box with a label: high art, low art, fine art, illustration, Hispanics, Latinos, Scots-Irish, Jewish-American, Cuban-American...

The problem is that the world has moved on since that critical perspective of Rockwell was a mandatory regulation to be obeyed by art critics in years past. And thanks to other sources of information, and thanks to the spectacular popularity of the Rockwellian legacy, that dog doesn't hunt anymore, and people like Blake Gopnik just don't get it that when they write in such "traditional" party line ways; it doesn't stick anymore.

Today, anything and everything can be art, and to the horror of the old-fashioned critical cabal, Rockwell has managed to sneak in museums as a key "fine art" figure, perhaps one of the most important, historical fine arts figures in 20th century American art.

And so it was no surprise that on July 4, Blake Gopnik, in his WaPo review of the show wrote that:

Norman Rockwell is often championed as the great painter of American virtues. Yet the one virtue most nearly absent from his work is courage. He doesn't challenge any of us, or himself, to think new thoughts or try new acts or look with fresh eyes. From the docile realism of his style to the received ideas of his subjects, Rockwell reliably keeps us right in the middle of our comfort zone.

That's what made him one of the most important painters in U.S. history, and the most popular. He had almost preternatural social intuitions, along with brilliant skills as a visual salesman. Over his seven-decade career, that coupling let him figure out what middle-class white Americans most wanted to feel about themselves, then sell it back to them in paint.

Gopnik then goes back to an antiquated anti-Rockwell weapon: that he painted a "homogenized vision of the country," in other words, Rockwell is a white bread painter who only painted... ahhh white America.


Norman Rockwell. The Problem We All Live With. 1963.
But there's a huge fly in that old ointment; in fact a lot of flies. Because Rockwell's popularity continued to grow after his death, countless documentaries about his life, coupled with mega retrospective exhibitions, showed us that Rockwell, along with the many in rest of the country, discovered his social activism and conscience in the early 1960s. In fact, historians point to his marriage to Molly Punderson (a retired school teacher) in 1961 as the key event that lit his social conscience on fire. Punderson's influence on Rockwell's painting activism has been well-documented and had a huge influence on what the painter painted over the next 17 years. Together with Rockwell's close friends Erik Erickson and Robert Coles, both of whom were strong advocates of the civil rights movement, Punderson's profound influence over Rockwell's artistic involvement in the Civil Rights movement yielded Rockwellian paintings that don't fit the mold that Gopnik wants us to believe, because it would destroy his entire flawed argument.

Gopnik does a drive-by shooting of this subject (he has to) when he erroneously reports that "toward the end of his career, Rockwell got Look magazine to publish a few heroic scenes from the civil rights movement -- at just the moment when such subjects had moved into the mainstream of American thought." Note the way in which the above is written to minimize this huge contribution by Rockwell to American art history.

I say huge because Rockwell didn't do this "towards the end of his career" (he painted for another 15 years) but in 1963, just precisely at the moment when the civil rights movement needed it and the same year that Dr. King's march on Washington took place (not years later).

Only Nixon could have gone to China and only Rockwell could have convinced America's leading magazine at the time, Look, to carry his artwork about the Civil Rights movement. And indeed it was Rockwell who convinced Look magazine (not the other way around) to publish his historical paintings celebrating the emerging civil rights movement in America. It was Rockwell who put a painting of a little black girl being escorted to school in a magazine laying on the breakfast tables of millions of American homes, and it was Rockwell who painted lynchings in the South, and "New Kids in the Neighborhood". He did this while no other major white painter that I know of, even remotely addressed the civil rights movement in such depth and historical candor as early as he did.

Gopnik also selects words carefully and tells us that "The Saturday Evening Post, for instance, for which Rockwell painted 323 covers, forbade him to depict blacks except in subservient roles." That was true, and a gross sign of the times. But what Gopnik doesn't tell you, is that Rockwell quit the Saturday Evening Post and moved over to Look precisely because of artistic freedom issues and his desire to paint the events in America which interested him, such as the emerging Civil Rights movement.


Norman Rockwell. Southern Justice. 1963.
This powerful painting depicts the murder of three Civil Rights workers who were killed for their work to register African American voters in the South.

But to admit that would seriously undermine the main critical argument against Rockwell. You see... Gopnik's greatest sin as a critic is simple: His is a critical perspective of unending clichés. The reason we so easily recognize the flawed points of anti-Rockwellism in his writing is because they reflect the standard critical image we already know from countless other critics' reports. His negative viewpoints are so familiar because they are the stories that we've been told by art critics a thousand times before.

But now they fail to stick with all of us. On Saturday, July 10th, David Apatoff, from McLean, VA responded to Gopnik's article and writes in the Post:

Norman Rockwell's work is no longer a cliché ["Afraid to make waves," Arts & Style, July 4]. He has been replaced by a new cliché: dogmatic, postmodernist art critics who believe that anything may qualify as legitimate art (including a belch or scribble) as long as it is not a painting by Norman Rockwell. When Blake Gopnik dismissed technical skill and traditional technique in his quest for "new acts," he failed to realize just how much of a tired stereotype he has become.

The taint of Rockwell's commercial sponsors has dissipated over the years, so the artist can now be viewed more objectively by those with an open mind to do so. If Gopnik had some of the "courage" that he claims Rockwell lacked, he would see beyond his personal grudges with Rockwell's content and recognize a contemporary art scene that is self-indulgent, decadent and listing toward irrelevance. Time for "new acts," indeed.

And he's not alone, as Carl Eifert of Alexandria adds:

Those days of the late '30s and early '40s were times that Blake Gopnik obviously does not understand. His America is about "equal room for Latino socialists, disgruntled lesbian spinsters, foul-mouthed Jewish comics" and, we are to understand, critics like him.

Eifert's point is a good one, Gopnik is judging Rockwell's earlier work with the sensibilities of 2010, and failing to put it in the context of the harsh realities of the 30's, 40's and 50's.


Norman Rockwell. New Kids in the Neighborhood. 1967.
And what is also clear to me, is that if Rockwell were alive today, he would be probably painting Latino socialists (whatever that is, is he talking about the Castro brothers or Hugo Chavez?), disgruntled (and happy) lesbian spinsters, foul-mouthed Jewish comics, but probably not Blake.

And what is also clear, given the mounting evidence of growing Rockwell intrusion into the sacred and forbidden halls of fine art museums, and even his tiny advancements in being grudgingly accepted by the artcriticsphere as one of the key American artists of the 20th century, is that decades and centuries from now, when Gopnik's and this post and most other critics' writings will be a dusty memory in the archives of the Internets, the Rockwellian Empire will continue to rock and the Jetsons and their kids will continue to line up outside museums to see Rockwell's artwork.

Read 163 comments on Blake's article here.

Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell From the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg is on through Jan. 2 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, at Eighth and G streets NW. Call 202-633-7970 or visit http://www.americanart.si.edu.