SF Art Fair Triple Header Post Mortem

May 20 – 22 was the big troika art fair weekend here in SF, and we were eager participants in ArtPadSF, the smaller “boutique” fair at the Phoenix Hotel organized by local hotelier Chip Conley and managed/curated/vetted by local art maven Maria Jenson.

Much has been written, opined, egested and digested about what it all meant for the City, for its art scene, for the Bay Area “art market” (or “artMRKT” if you prefer – as if the phrase had been transliterated into Czech) - reviews, blog posts by the dozen, plus all the dishy stories about the turf war/family feud/lawsuits between the two, formerly partnered New York-based organizers of the other fairs taking place at the same time – the S.F. Fine Art Fair and, yes, artMRKT San Francisco. One week on, here is a brief distillation of our thoughts and impressions.

We confess we didn’t make it to the Ft. Mason fair. Too far from the Tenderloin, and no free shuttle. We did, however, get over to artMRKT, at the Concourse Design Center. Organized by a New York gallery scion who is staging similar fairs in the Hamptons, Houston, and elsewhere, here was an honest-to-God mainstream contemporary art fair, just like what you get in Chicago, New York, Toronto, and LA (Miami in December is, of course, in a class by itself). Many of our favorite galleries in SF and beyond had booths at artMRKT. We loved what they were showing, and we left with the earnest hope that this enterprise was a success for all of them.

That said, Thank God for ArtPadSF. In our view, the importance of having a truly home-grown art fair taking place in tandem with the two "blue chip" fairs that parachuted in from NY cannot be overstated. The fact that ArtPad was masterminded by a local hotel impresario in a decidedly downmarket venue in the Tenderloin (with heavy Burning Man overtones), rather than art world cognoscenti, underscores its significance as an indigenous expression of San Francisco’s unique visual culture.

You see, when it comes to technology, social networking websites, food, or locally sourced, community based activism, the Bay Area has an ample supply of that solipsistic swagger that comes with being the true innovator, the authentic cultural leader. Such confidence is lacking when it comes to the visual arts, where New York, London, Hong Kong, even LA, are where the cultural leadership has opted to roost. Perhaps understandably, the SF art world seems often to be glancing Eastward for validation. Sure, a SECA award is great, so is a Kenneth Baker review, but we still look to ArtForum, to the Whitney Biennial, to MOMA, to Art Basel as the grand anointing powers of our art world.

We appreciate this reality, and certainly recognize the inherent and necessary cosmopolitanism of contemporary art. But we also see a real risk to SF of losing an opportunity to evolve into a truly innovative force in the production of visual culture, just as it has been in the production of technology-based culture. Art that is created, curated, exhibited, and/or marketed with a supplicant eye toward New York, LA, or the global art market is necessarily infected by an impurity of purpose.

So we salute the artists, galleries, and performers – most of them wonderful, some of them genuinely brilliant, a few unabashedly mediocre – who came together in the Tenderloin for those three wonderful days in a chilly San Francisco May. Here’s to keeping it local. See you at ArtPadSF 2012.

Closing Reception for Winter Group Exhibition

Please join us for a Closing Reception:

Friday, January 28, 2011
5 - 7 pm

1 Sutter Street, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94104

Last chance to view our Winter Group Exhibition, Curated by Ryan Martin

Featuring works by:
Elizabeth Dorbad
Ramiro Hernandez
Sarah Hirneisen
Jane Kim
Jeannine Scarboro
Jake Ziemann

View more works and information about the show here.

What's Missing From The Discussion Of What's Missing From Contemporary Art

Roberta Smith's recent dig at concept-based art has triggered much debate in the blogs, much of it thoughtful. Here's the key nugget from her essay, in case you missed it:

“What’s missing [from the currently prevailing curatorial visions of major art institutions] is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand. A lot but not all of this kind of work is painting, which seems to be becoming the art medium that dare not speak its name where museums are concerned."

We think she got part if it right. Art made out of "intense personal necessity" is certainly more likely to be experienced as authentic and not contrived, publicity-seeking or market-reactive.

But every time we read or hear critical debate on what is or is not "art," or what does or does not make art "good," we always come back to this:

"The feelings excited by improper art are kinetic: desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess, to go to something; loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I used the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing."

-- James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

In other words, if the initial, primary emotional response triggered by the work of art you're looking at - regardless of medium - originates in your gut or your groin, if it provokes anger, pity, outrage, lust, sorrow, repulsion, etc., then that's a clue the artwork may actually have fallen short. This may seem counter-intuitive, since we often prize art based on its power to provoke emotional responses within the viewer.

By contrast, if the primary emotional response to an artwork originates from behind your eyes, proceeding thence to the lower regions in waves, much like an earthquake rippling outward from its epicenter, then that's a clue the art has at least approached the sublime.

Anselm Kiefer, (die Milchstrasse) The Milky Way, 1985-87
Emulsion paint, oil, acrylic, and shellac on canvas with applied wires and lead, 12 1/2 x 18 1/2"
Image courtesy Albright-Knox Art Gallery

T.S. Eliot vs. Nature: Art and "Understanding"

A friend was in the gallery recently and, upon seeing Jacob Tillman’s paintings, commented that they were “just bad art.” He said they showed no “technique,” no “craft,” no “sensitivity,” and simply were not “beautiful.”

I of course sprung into action, mounting a forceful academic defense of the paintings, positioning them in the arc of art history, pointing out the choices of color and line, underscoring the brilliant craziness of Tillman’s compositions, et cetera. Predictably, my friend was not swayed. He said that for him art had to be beautiful, and if it wasn’t he had no time for it. There are countless reasonable people who feel the same way about art, and I’m guessing many of them would respond similarly to Tillman. Too bad. They just don’t understand the paintings.

But here’s the thing: We read T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, listen to the dissonant works Schönberg, or watch experimental theatrical works by Artaud or Beckett, and we either “understand” them or we don’t. If we feel we understand them, we may very well perceive them as beautiful works of art. If we do not understand them, we my perceive them as ugly or, worse, not perceive them as art at all.


Yet do we need to “understand” a view of the Grand Canyon, a sunset over the ocean, or a giant sequoia tree to perceive beauty (or ugliness) in them? Of course not. While “understanding” seems to be a necessary first step to a complete aesthetic experience of art, it clearly is no such prerequisite to a complete aesthetic experience of nature.

For this reason, it is said, an artwork is not so much an object of sensory experience, but an instrument of conveying knowledge or information. Once the information is conveyed, it can create an aesthetic experience that feels strikingly similar to the feeling we get when we perceive beauty or ugliness in the natural world. And that’s what’s so wonderfully, frustratingly, exhiliratingly confusing.


Images: Jacob Tillman, "2 x 2" (2009), oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in; "Sitting Room" (2009), oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in; "Stage is Set" (2009), oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in.