Principal Juror - Charlotta Kotik, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

Introduction - The publication of this edition of New American Paintings, our eighth to focus on artists from the Northeast, coincides with the tenth anniversary of The Open Studios Press. Charlotta Kotik, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, was the principal juror, which is fitting, as she first worked with us when the publication was in its infancy and has been extremely supportive throughout its existence. Charlotta noted that this selection may be our most mature to date, and I tend to agree. The forty featured artists cover an incredible range of aesthetic territory, and among them can be found some of the international art world’s most heralded emerging talent.

New American Paintings’ beginnings were not terribly auspicious. In May of 1993, I accepted a loosely defined job as assistant publisher for a yet-to-be-titled contemporary art publication—despite the fact that I knew little about contemporary art and less about publishing. On my first day of work, my boss, Herb Gliick, the then publisher of a regional boating magazine and founder of The Open Studios Press, produced a folded and coffee stained sheet of yellow paper from his breast pocket that contained several columns of hastily written text with queries such as “How do we find artists?” “Where do we produce color separations?” and “What are our distributor options?” In effect, that sheet of paper outlined the business plan for a publication that would become New American Paintings. Herb gingerly handed me the sheet, wished me good luck, and left me to figure things out. I remember sitting at my empty desk and staring out the window for a long time before finally calling my girlfriend to tell her that I was in over my head and to ask her what the hell a color separation was.

I have held on to that yellow sheet of paper and I still marvel at the things that have come from it. Ten years and forty-four editions later, New American Paintings is a successful periodical that has “exhibited” the work of nearly two thousand artists. In a way, it is a publication that should not work. After all, the majority of periodicals fail within five years, and unlike ours, most rely on advertising, not circulation, to survive.

New American Paintings has succeeded primarily because the art world is an imperfect place. Museums exhibit artwork; art periodicals critique it; collectors collect it; critics criticize it; auction houses provide a secondary market for it; and commercial galleries supply a retail mechanism. It is an arcane and elitist system of interlocking patronage that has changed remarkably little in the past one hundred years. And, it is a system that poorly serves the majority of working artists today. Of the thousands of practicing artists residing in North America, only a handful are able to support themselves solely by making art. There has never been an efficient mechanism to bring the work of up-and-coming artists to the attention of so many potentially interested individuals. While the Internet has provided an intriguing new platform with which to bridge the gap between creator and consumer, its promise has been much greater than its effect. Such connections are still, more often than not, due to relationships and happenstance.

New American Paintings was created to satisfy the needs of two groups of people: artists and art enthusiasts. While featured artists receive international exposure, those with an interest in contemporary painting are provided with an invaluable resource for discovering new artistic talent. Some things have changed in the past ten years, yet our mission has remained remarkably intact.

I am looking forward to New American Paintings’ second decade. As editor, my goal is to continuously push the quality and quantity of artists participating in our competitions so that New American Paintings becomes an ever more relevant statement about the art of our time. As publisher, my goal is to get the publication in the hands of thousands more art lovers so that appearing in New American Paintings will have an even more dramatic effect on the careers of the artists we feature. I hope that you continue to enjoy the publication. Thank you for your support.

Steven T. Zevitas

Preview the Northeastern Edition