They Got A Name For the Winners In the World ... I Want a Name When I Lose

So you brought your art out to Lawndale (i.e., the Man!), paid your entry fee, and the Man said "ummmm... No." What do you do next? Well, any number of self-destructive acts come to mind, but might I suggest Gallery 1724's Salon Des Refusés?

Here are the rules (even an exhibit of rejects must have some rules):

*must be an artwork rejected from Lawndale Art Center’s The Big Show 2010 (present The Big Show entry label)

*one entry per artist

*Location: Gallery 1724, 1724 Bissonnet (between Dunlavy and Woodhead), Houston, TX 77005 (www.gallery1724.blogspot.com).

*Delivery times and dates: Monday, June 28, 4pm-9pm and Tuesday, June 29, 4pm-6pm.

*Exhibition dates: Friday, July 9 through Saturday, August 7, 2010

*Note: Artwork may be turned away due to size and available space.

*No juror

*No prizes

*Free to enter!

For additional information, contact Emily Sloan at 713-582-1198 or emily@emilysloan.com

I liked last year's Big Show, and one thing I like about the concept in particular is that an outsider looks at these representatives of Houston's art scene (those that bother to enter, at least) and without preconceptions decides who has done good work.

When I saw last year's show, I was just at the beginning of relearning Houston's art scene. So I saw the show with virgin eyes. It will be fascinating to see the show now, after having seen a lot of Houston's best (and worst) in galleries and other exhibits. Who gets included? Who is unaccountably excluded?

Having a "Salon Des Refusés" will make the experience even better. Indeed, if a city has a juried show, I think it almost must also have a Salon Des Refusés to make it work. Between the two, one can probably get a pretty good idea of what is going on as far as visual arts goes in a given city.

(Of course, there is something misleading about calling it the Salon Des Refusés. We don't have a powerful institution like the Academie des Beaux-arts in the U.S.--much less Houston. The Big Show is, indeed, a big show, but it's not the same as the annual national contest that France had.)


James MacNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, 1862

This is one of the paintings in the original Salon Des Refusés.