Open Submission Art Exhibits in London and Houston

Robert Boyd

When the Salon exhibits began in France, the only artists who could enter them were members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. No amateurs need apply. The rules were loosened up over time, but the juries were notoriously conservative. Because of the complaints of many artists, in 1863, French emperor Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte established a second salon, the Salon des Refusés, which anyone who couldn't get into the official Salon could enter. That first Salon des Refusés featured Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet.


Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Manet, 1863

In 1768, England decided it needed it's own official art body and established the Royal Academy. It started an annual exhibit in 1769 that has run continuously until today. And unlike its French counterpart, it is open for every artist to enter. The Times Literary Supplement's podcast, Freedom, Books, Flowers & the Moon, had a very interesting segment on the latest exhibit, which just opened. The exhibit is displayed salon style in a series of rooms. Each room is "presented" by an invited artist and tend to be somewhat thematic. Each work goes through three layers of judging--one to get selected for the exhibit, one to be hung (work can be "selected but not hung," which doesn't sound any better than being not selected at all), and where in the room you are hung (near the ceiling, for instance, is not as desirable as eye-level.)

Each year they have a different coordinator, so that changes the flavor of the show each year. The show is commercial--most of the works are for sale and the big catalog lists the price. Half the money goes to the artist and half to the Royal Academy schools. This is a big fundraiser for them, and apparently for many attendees, the one time each year that they may buy a piece of art (which can be as cheap as £90 to hundreds of thousands of pounds for big name blue chip artists). You could amazingly get a Cornelia Parker for £330 (it appears to have sold already). Many of the cheaper pieces looked absolutely great--I know I'd be buying if I were there.


Cornelia Parker, Stolen Thunder (Once Removed), Digital print on hahnemühle photo rag 300gsm paper

They get about 12,000 entries and there is a submission fee of £25, so before they sell a single piece, they've made £300,000 in revenue. The process of judging that many works, even if you have a committee involved, must be intensely grueling. It used to be that artists brought in their work to be judged, but now it is done electronically.

I don't know if there are any other open call exhibits with this kind of lineage in the world. But according to the TLS reporter, the Royal Academy Summer Show is very popular, and it is my experience that similar shows elsewhere are popular, too.  The first time I entered one was in the early 90s in Seattle. I had an idea for a cube-shaped painting on wood that would have a grid of nails protruding in all six directions. I was influenced by nail-fetishes, but thought it would be interesting if the nails face out instead of in. I made this very dangerous object and then heard about an open call exhibit in town. This was before the widespread use of jpegs, so works had to be submitted in person. There was a huge line of artists to get into the display space, including me gingerly holding my piece. (I didn't make the cut. Ironically, my friend Jim Blanchard later asked if he could have it, hung it over his breakfast table, whence it fell and punctured the palm of a friend of his.)

This is all a lead-in to discuss Lawndale's Big Show, which opens July 7. This is a juried exhibit that has been held almost every year since 1984. The rules state that "The Big Show is an annual juried exhibition showcasing new work in all media by artists living within a 100-mile radius of Lawndale Art Center." If you draw a 100-mile circle around Houston, it encompasses a huge area--Lufkin, Victoria and Orange all fall well within the circle, which extends into Louisiana to the east and almost to Austin in the west. Of course, driving to those places is further than 100 miles, but as the crow flies, they all fall within the radius. Consequently, every year Lawndale gets some work from the extreme hinterlands. This pays off in spades sometimes--like in 2013 when Port Arthur teenager Avril Falgout made Black Veil Brides and won a best-in-show award.


Avril Falgout, Black Veil Brides, 2013, paper maché, 75 x 50 x 105 inches

The jurors have been pretty great over the years. Among them have been Walter Hopps (1985), Luis Jimenez (1987), Paul Schimmel (1995), Lane Relyea (1999), Michael Ray Charles (2004), and Duncan MacKenzie (2103), who was the one who awarded Falgout the 2013 award.

For the past few years, the juror has always been from out of town. The last Houston juror they had was Don Bacigalupi in 1997, who was the director of the Blaffer Gallery at the time. One reason to use out-of-towners is to get fresh eyes on the art--to have jurors who are completely unbiased, who won't feel any social pressure to pick art by their friends and acquaintances.

But this year, that has changed. The juror is Toby Kamps, a curator at the Menil and soon to be director of the Blaffer Gallery. He has long been an active participant on the Houston art scene, including his curation of No Zoning: Artists Engage Houston in 2009 at the CAMH. He sent out an email to many in Houston's local art community (including me) announcing that he would be the juror. My first thought was that the impartiality of the previous years would be out the window. Kamps knows a lot of local artists, and even if the judging is name-blind, he can tell the style and approach of artists he likes by sight.

I expressed this worry in the Facebook thread, and several artists (as well as Kamps himself) responded. One suggestion was that many of Houston's finest artists don't often apply to the Big Show. Why? I don't know exactly. It used to be that you had to physically bring the art to Lawndale, and that's a pain in the ass (especially if your art is big). But now it's electronic. Part of it is that you get rejected a lot, which sucks and seems especially like an unnecessary insult if you already have venues for your work. And I think another factor is that the Big Show has come to have a reputation for amateur work (in the best sense of the word) and showcasing emerging artists, which for an older, more established artist, may make the Big Show seem less attractive. In the Facebook thread, Kamps seemed to be specifically working against that. He sent out his Facebook post to a large selection of Houston's best-known artists. He seemed to want the Big Show to be a showcase for the best of Houston, like the old Blaffer Area Exhibits, which the Blaffer put on until 2008.

One artist contacted me expressing a worry that this change might make the Big Show seem less welcoming for emerging artists. The Big Show has been important in years past for giving emerging artists the boost they needed.

But Kamps addressed that concern. He wrote in the Facebook thread, "I want the Big Show to be really big. There'll be room for older, established artists, rising stars, and lots of new talent. I want EVERYONE to apply, whether I know them or not."

Other rule changes this year have been that artists can only submit one work (in the past, you could submit multiple works, which sometimes meant one might have several works in one show--such as the little suites of work by Matt Messinger and John Sturtevant in the 2011 Big Show). Director of Lawndale Stephanie Mitchell told me that she wanted to "challenge artists to hone in on one work made in the last year."

To encourage amateurs and emerging artists, Lawndale has reached out to schools for entries. And unlike the Royal Academy, there is no admission fee, so that is one obstacle that formerly existed removed.

Mitchell added, "Toby's line of thinking--which I very much agree with and I think is very much in the spirit of Lawndale--is that by showing a wide, diverse range of artists working across different media and at different stages of their career, everyone is elevated."

I wonder if in future Big Shows, they could sell the work as the Royal Academy does. Or would that be a bridge too far?

Pan y Circos

by Robert Boyd

No more teasing--here's the story. I am co-curating a group exhibit later on this month called Pan y Circos. The show will open Friday evening on October 21, with a reception from 6 pm to 9 pm. It runs through November 5. The location is the PG Contemporary Temporary Annex, 3225 Milam Street. You can respond to my official Facebook invite here. Or you can just show up. It's all good.


Brian Piana, design for Overlord, 2011

A couple of weeks ago, Zoya Tommy, owner of PG Contemporary, called me up and asked if I wanted to curate a show for her. My immediate thought was that she was thinking of a show in her gallery (which is very compact) and was thinking some time off in the future, like, I dunno, January or February.

But no--she wanted to do the show in late October, in a 2500 square foot space a few doors down from her gallery. It had been the site of a yoga studio, but now it was available. Tommy had asked her landlord if she could have it for a one-off exhibit. So the time frame was short. I told Tommy I wasn't sure if I could get an exhibit together so quickly and suggested we collaborate. I said she should make a list of artists she would like, and I'll do the same.


John Sturtevant, untitled, paint on canvas, 2011

I chose artists who either weren't represented by local galleries or whose work I hadn't seen in a local solo show recently. Tommy had her own criteria. Once we each had a list, we met and started winnowing it down, first by vetoing artists on each other's list, then by removing artists whose work didn't quite fit in. Some themes appeared--artists whose work toyed with our ideas of realism (or redefined them), artists who dealt with notions of "the border" and collision of Hispanic and Anglo cultures. But these thematic links were serrendipitous--we didn't try to design the show around them. They emerged as the we thought about which artists to include.


Santiago Forero, Sorority Bid Day, C-Print, 2008

Some artists we really wanted just couldn't participate, but in the end we have 10 outstanding artists. The work is sculptural, photographic, and painted. All the artists live in Houston except Santiago Forero, who lives on Colombia but recently lived in Austin. They collectively represent several generations of Houston art--some are established, some are emerging.

The artists in the show are Brett Hollis, Brian Piana, Britt Ragsdale, Delilah Montoya, Dennis Harper, John Sturtevant, Jorge Galvan, Paul Kittelson, Santiago Forero and Sharon Engelstein.

I hope Pan readers will come out to see it. I consider curating exhibits to be a part of the whole Great God Pan Is Dead project. This blog has largely been a discussion of art in Houston, and Pan y Circos continues that discussion in another format.

Pan y Circos

More information coming soon! Keep checking this blog and P.G. Contemporary Gallery.

The Big Show 2011, part 2--Brainiacs

by Robert Boyd

In part 1 of this review, I discussed what seemed to me to be the dominant theme of the exhibit--big colorful paintings. But as I said, given the size of the show and the range of work submitted, it was inevitable that there would be variety. But this isn't a thesis-antithesis sort of situation. The work in the show that is not big colorful paintings goes out in all directions. There is sculpture, video, drawing, and mixed media work. There is a lot of quieter work, work in monochromatic shades, work where there is little if any chiaroscuro. This work generally has less of a visual punch (with a few exceptions, as you will see). In general, it's less visceral and more cerebral. In a way, it's almost as if there are three shows happening simultaneously, each with its own merits.

The first piece in the show that really struck me was Casualty in Formality by Britt Ragsdale.


Britt Ragsdale, Casualty in Formality, suits and dress shirts, 2011

This bodiless suit(s) made me think of Charles Ledray's great exhibit at the MFAH. Now here's a weird thing. When I first saw this piece, I thought Britt Ragsdale was a man. I had jumped to this conclusion months earlier because I knew a guy named Britt when I was in high school. It didn't occur to me for a second that "Britt" could be short for, say,  "Britney." This incorrect assumption makes a difference. When I saw Ragsdale's sculptures made of women's underwear at the U.H. MFA thesis show, I thought that is was a pretty interesting choice for a man. It seemed highly sexual--like he was saying that this is something he's into. Except "he" wasn't saying that at all. Later I attended a performance by Ragsdale at Skydive--but she was silent and behind a wall, so my illusions were maintained. It was only in a conversation with Sasha Dela a few days ago that I learned the truth.

Does it make a difference whether Ragsdale is a man or a woman? Well, yes. She is making sculptures out of clothing that is defined as "women's clothes" or "men's clothes." One's relationship to these clothes is likely to be different for men than for women.

A simple reading of Casualty in Formality is that it is a visualization of the old cliche "clothes make the man." But the position--prone and bisected--makes us think about that word "casualty" more. Men rarely wear suits anymore, except in certain professions. My dad put on a suit and tie every morning to go work in an office very similar to the one I now work in. If I showed up in a suit and tie, my coworkers would think I had a job interview. In my company of several thousand workers (hundreds of whom work in our offices), only the CEO regularly wears a suit to work, and his sartorial choices are considered a sign of eccentricity. So she might be talking about the death of that kind of everyday formality.

But what I like about it is that it is a mysterious object (or pair of objects). It's set low to the ground; it's made of cloth--in short, it is quite unlike traditional sculpture. Furthermore, it is made out of the thing it depicts! I like that self-referentiality.

Ragsdale also had a video in the show (one of two videos). You can see it below.


DUET from Britt Ragsdale on Vimeo. 2010

I liked Duet as well. The man appears to be whispering something into the woman's ear. She seems to like what she hears (based on her happy expression), but her expression never changes. Their eyes blink and we can see small bodily motions, but otherwise the pair seem frozen.It's almost like they are posing for a double portrait. And this video is, in fact, a double-portrait. I'm sure some people walking by on opening night didn't even notice that it was a video. So it plays with the tension between video (a medium that implies time and motion) and still portraiture.

Another recent UH MFA who had good work in the Big Show is Emily Peacock. Her pieces were among the relatively few photographs in the exhibit.


Emily Peacock, Family Portrait, C-print, 2010

When I look at Peacock's work, I feel like I am looking at a snapshot with at least one very weird thing going on. With Family Portrait, we have the blurred falling cat (or dog?). I won't say these strange features undermine the quotidian nature of the snapshots as much as they force us to concentrate on the usually invisible qualities of casual family snapshots. It's easy for our eyes to pass over a snapshot like this lightly. But add a blurred falling cat to the photo, and we're forced to linger.

 
Brain Campbell, I can't believe I'm doing this, digital photograph, 2011

Brian Campbell's photos in the Big Show also have an underlying strangeness to them.What exactly are we looking at here? Is this a photo of a person or a doll--or is a doll's face superimposed onto a woman's body? The title implies an emotional response to a situation--regret, possibly, or shame--that is belied by the wide-eyed expressionlessness of the face.

Like Britt Ragsdale, J.E. Theriot has two pieces in the show in two different media, sculpture and photography. The sculpture, Spraying Hands, is an image painted on a concrete block. the photo, Concrete The, is a photo of a word painted on a concrete block.


J.E. Theriot, Concrete The, photographic print on PVC, 2009

The "the" is cut off. It looks like it was typed with a manual typewriter, and we can see some ghost type underneath it. The word "concrete" in this context makes me think of "concrete poetry," poetry where the lines varied in length to create an image. It was a merging of visual art and poetry. (It had its heyday in the 1950s and 60s.) Aside from this, though, I see it as an interesting, enigmatic image.

There are plenty of painters in this "other" Big Show, but they distinguish themselves by their restraint, eschewing bright colors and aggressive compositions. Matt Messinger does have one similarity with some of the other painters I discussed in the previous Big Show post--he draws from the world of comics and cartoons.


Matt Messinger, 1928 (Popeye), found linen, gesso, black gesso, 1928 receipt and charcoal, 2011

His drawings remind me of model sheets--drawings of a cartoon character in different poses from different angles that were used by animators to make sure the character looked right as they were animating him.One could imagine this as the blotter of a Fleischer Studios animator--receipts, little drawings, notes to himself.


Matt Messinger, Whitestar Line (Heckle and Jeckle), Found linen, gesso, black gesso, pencil and charcoal, 2011

Messinger had three pieces in the show, each excellent. As I have said before about his work, his use of old cartoon/comic strip characters doesn't feel forced. I feel like he is evoking a working class nostalgia. Even his damaged, roughly gessoed canvases play into this--they look like whitewashed billboards and bleached-out hand-bills. The nostalgia evoked is not that of the nostalgia industry--the slick, licensed Betty Boop merchandise, for example. No, I would compare it to Cy Twombly, whose work likewise evokes old walls that have been covered repeatedly with graffiti. It is Twombly (and Paul Terry and E.C. Segar and Max Fleischer) I think of when I see Matt Messinger's work.


John Sturtevant, Almost There, acrylic on canvas, 2011


I want to apologize for this photo. The problem here is that the work is very subtle--parallel wavy yellow lines, with an extremely narrow range of values. It's an inherently difficult painting to photograph, and when you combine that fact with my terrible photography skills and cheap camera, this is what you get. I especially want to beg your indulgence here because I thought Sturtevant's paintings were two of the most interesting in the show.


John Sturtevant, Almost There (detail), acrylic on canvas, 2011

I'm afraid I'm quite fond of pale, difficult to photograph paintings and drawings.


Loli Fernandez, Zu Lang (Too Long)...,  silverpoint on board quadtych, 2011

This pale drawing by Loli Fernandez looks like a biological illustration form the 19th century--perhaps one that has faded over time. It has a squishy, haunting beauty. My photo does it little justice--go see it in person. It is part of a four-drawing suite.


Dran Alessi, Pieces, pencil on paper/board, 2011

Dran Alessi is (as far as I can determine) a physician. That's one thing I like about the Big Show--it brings out the Sunday painters, artists who do something as their profession and also do art. I can relate--I work for and energy company and do this blog in my spare time. I love amateurs, especially when they produce work this good.  I like the spare drawing style, and the details left out. Her broken lines remind me of those of the cartoonist R.O. Blechman. The empty space inside the outline of the figure is a an intriguing emptiness, and the marks below the figure look as if they could be all the details that would particularize the figure, fallen out and piled on the floor.


Jimmy Houston, Whimper, acrylic on panel, 2011

Jimmy Houston's two pieces in this show are monochrome stumblebum robots--very unlike the sleek robots of most science fiction. Houston has a great illustrational style and real humor in his work. But what is really weird is that he wasn't the only guy drawing monochromatic robots in the show.


Rodney Flores, Safe Place, pen and ink and colored pencil on butcher paper, 2011

If Houston's robot is post-bender, Rodney Flores is mid-bender. (I suppose both these guys are cousins to Bender, the alcoholic robot from Futurama.) The title is accurate and ironic--for some, booze is a refuge. I like Flores' use of the colored ground (the butcher paper) with the dark pencil and white pencil to add value, form and texture.


Catherine Winkler Rayroud, The Master of the Universe, papercutting made with scissors and scalpel, 2011

Another artist who uses humor in her work is Catherine Winkler Rayroud. She was also in last year's show.In those pieces, she cut silhouettes of lace underwear (a bra and panties) where the lace formed ironic images. With Master of the Universe, she is more straightforward. I saw this piece and thought of my brother-in-law, an avid motorcyclist. He's a successful upper-middle-class executive who likes to ride on the weekend with his buddies.This guy, as depicted by Winkler, in no way makes you think of someone powerful or rich. But the title reflects how he feels when he gets on his bike.

Britt Ragsdale's Casualty in Formalitywasn't the only sculpture in the show. In part three of this review, I'll discuss a few more sculptural objects. Whew--the Big Show is really demanding on a writer.