I was born in New York and went to NYU; so there was never a decision to move there––a choice which, until recently, was something everyone desiring to work in art had to consider seriously. The path of least resistance was to stay put in New York, so I did. I was always traveling around the country and lecturing. I found interesting things happening wherever I went, but I was always aware that ambitious artists had their eyes on the main prize, and that meant getting a show in New York. That was clearly going to be an easier task if one had a studio within the five boroughs.
I even found myself being thought of as a representative for New York, and having to answer for whatever it was people found reprehensible about its myopic vision of culture. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago once made a poster for a lecture I was doing which said “Come hear Bill Arning Explain the New York art world for you!” (The poster was the creation of an old friend who had, herself, made the move out of New York and thought I would find it amusing; which I did, until the crowd got ugly!)
The questions were always based on the fundamental problem of why it was so difficult to get ahead as an artist elsewhere - meaning getting significant attention, best typified by the cover of Artforum. Your chances of success dropped from poor to abysmal if you decided to live in place you liked or had family ties to, or merely a place where one could live affordably and devote enough time to one’s studio so as to produce quality work. Acknowledging the harsh Darwinian logic of the art world never made the seeming unfairness of good artists being ignored any easier to take.
Perhaps my spending a lot of time today with the Boston artists’ community has softened my view, but I believe things have gotten better. The flood of Los Angeles artists who have gotten significant attention over the last twenty years made it clear there was at least one other obvious viable option, and Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco all have vibrant, big scenes. The fact that curators are now open to new talent from all over the globe has helped, and between Fed-Ex, Faxes and the Internet, artists, collectors, curators, and critics can learn about what is happening anywhere. That new, efficient information system forces an ongoing process of decentralization in the minds of the powers that be.
When I have received past issues of New American Paintings I have always checked first to find out where the artists are from, and then scanned the images - like touring galleries or studios to find a few things I like, many others which leave no discernable impression, and a couple I actively dislike. That is as it should be. The visions of the earlier judges is theirs alone, and if I met another curator with exactly my sensibility, I would be frightened and have to have them rubbed out, at least in my fantasies. I look forward to seeing this issue in print so that I can have an issue in which I can honestly say I like everything.
I was happy to get the Midwest, and thought for sure I would know
everything in the slide carousel, because I am in Chicago once a year and
always make sure to check out the street level alternative spaces with broad
Midwestern names like Standard, The Suburban, and The Optimistic. I was
wrong, forgetting what a big area of the country it is, and how much goes on
there that I never get to see.
It was also interesting because Chicago, with its funky figurative painters,
was one of the last viable “regional” styles. The same combo of Fed-Ex,
Faxes and the Internet that has made staying put in a beloved place possible
has also made a sense of a regional style obsolete. That seems a sort of
loss to me, but one cannot imagine any artist wishing to devote their lives
to embodying a provincial esthetic when today the whole world is their
potential oyster.
New York will remain the market center for the foreseeable future, for the circulation of both art-objects and ideas, and pilgrimages to the Mecca will still be required to keep current. The decentralization has occurred at the level of production, and artists working to make new culture can, and in many cases must, be where they can do their best work. A little ingenuity will be required to plug into larger distribution systems. This volume is a part of that process of finding new systems to distribute artwork produced in a myriad of alternative locales, and it was a pleasure to be a part of it.
Bill Arning
Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center
Massachusetts Institute of Technology