Grayson Perry vs Jonathan Jones

I read an article today which  was just plain weird.

It's is a massive snipe by Jonathan Jones who is feeling rather aggrieved with Grayson Perry. A classic case of "dealing it out but not being able to take it". READ Quote me on this, Grayson: you're not a true artist at all by

Grayson Perry has quoted my dismissal of him as ‘suburban popular culture’ on a new pot of his. But I’m no snob – and this is typical snark from an artist who makes dry jokes instead of feeling anything

This followed two things

First an announcement by Victoria Miro (his gallery) that the Serpentine Gallery has invited Grayson Perry to present The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! next year (between 8 June - 7 September 2017 to be precise) - and the release of an image of a new pot for this exhibition. This quotes remarks made in the past by Jonathan Jones (who is also somewhat irate about the fact Grayson Perry spelt his name wrong!) who has something of a history when it comes to "not being nice" about Grayson.

Those offended by Anglo Saxon should not read the words!

Sketch of two pots for the exhibition

What the Gallery says

Perry's exhibition will tackle one of his central concerns: how contemporary art can best address a diverse cross section of society, confronting subjects that are universally human. 

What Grayson Perry says

The new works I am making for this show all have ideas about popularity hovering around them: What kind of art do people like? What subjects? Why do people like going to art galleries these days? What is the relationship of traditional art to social media?"

What Jonathan Jones says

He really is not an artist at all. No true artist can be so calculating, so stagey, so conscious of playing to the gallery. There’s a rational dryness to his art that makes it dead on arrival. His incorporation of my criticism is exactly the kind of oh-so-knowing gesture that he offers instead of any true creative fire.

Methinks the man does protest too much!

The next article I read was by ArtNet - commenting on the Guardian article READ Grayson Perry and Critic Jonathan Jones Embroiled In a Heated War of Words by Caroline Elbaor, October 12, 2016

For the record - the tweets on this article by Jonathan are gathering tweets and retweets.  Here are some of the best

This is Murial Gray, who is the first female chair of the board of governors at Glasgow School of Art as well as being a a Scottish author, broadcaster and journalist.

Jonathan Jones being egotistical, embarrassing and wrong

Quote me on this, Grayson: you're not a true artist at all https://t.co/Yx0Ci24LYz

— Muriel Gray (@ArtyBagger) October 11, 2016

She was retweeted by critic and broadcaster Waldemar Januszczck

@victoriamiro @Philippa_Perry @SerpentineUK Appalling! Quoting the arriviste, Jonathan Jones, instead of ME! Have you no shame Perry!

— WALDEMAR JANUSZCZAK (@JANUSZCZAK) October 8, 2016

also who in turn was retweeted by Jonathan Yeo, the artist - which is where I picked it up!

What a prize idiot Jonathan Jones has turned out to be. https://t.co/ZXemYvyiHh

— George Szirtes (@george_szirtes) October 10, 2016

Then there was the poet and prizewinner George Szirtes's comment

What a prize idiot Jonathan Jones has turned out to be. https://t.co/ZXemYvyiHh

— George Szirtes (@george_szirtes) October 10, 2016

I think the general consensus is that Jonathan Jones hasn't got a clue!  I've been noticing his articles have been very variable in recent times. This was something of a nadir!

The second thing that happened was that Grayson Perry met the Queen last night at a major celebration of the arts at the Royal Academy of Arts Queen honours Grayson Perry and other leaders in fields of visual arts and architecture (although I think the Telegraph writer misunderstood what was going on!) - which of course made for a spendid visual anachronism!

The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh listen as Grayson Perry RA introduces Martin Parr, his nominee for a @royalacademy award pic.twitter.com/dyRluQ1iH2

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) October 11, 2016

I wonder why Jonathan wasn't covering that?

For the record - my view on the article is as follows (as posted on my Facebook Page earlier today)

Let me be very clear - if I ever had to choose between Jonathan Jones and Grayson Perry, I'd choose Grayson every time for bringing some genuine original thought into commentary on contemporary art and society.

Royal Society of Marine Artists Annual Exhibition 2016

This year it's the 50th anniversary of the royal status of the Royal Society of Marine Artists.

some stunning paintings of sea, waves, skies and vessels
this all includes three prizewinners

They've "pushed the boat out" - their annual exhibition can be found in all three galleries of the Mall Galleries (open 10am to 5pm and finishes 1pm on Saturday 8th October).

Below you can find images of the exhibition and a list of the prizewinners (and associated pic if I spotted it).

RSMA exhibition in the Threadneedle Gallery

There are over 400 works of art on display and there's a fair few large ones

One of the main walls in the West Gallery

as well as walls of smaller ones.

a wall of small works

small works are often by non-members

It looks good and, as per usual, there's an awful lot of sea, sand and boats. In fact I tend to think of this as "the boating exhibition"!

American Masters at the Salmagundi

You can see paintings by all the artists in the American Masters Exhibition at the Salmagundi Club on the exhibition website.

Very oddly, there is only one photograph of the exhibition on the related Facebook Page (which is still dominated by the 2015 exhibition; the feature image on the website is of the 2015 exhibition, the URK of the artists' page indicates 2015 and there is no video.

I think some updating online needs to happen sooner rather than later! Maybe somebody could some photographs and/or upload them to the website and Facebook Page? I did find some images of what the exhibition looks like on the Facebook Page of Tim Newton - and the exhibition and gallery look amazing!

Most paintings are very traditional in terms of subject matter and painting style compared to the UK. That said there's some very fine examples of painting on display.

The majority of paintings are in oil. It's a great pity there are no watercolour paintings as some of the most impressive American painters I know work in watercolour. There's one artist who works exclusively in graphite and one who does woodcuts so it's obviously not exclusively an oil painting exhibition.

Obviously I can't visit the exhibition, so I've done the next best thing and have included links to the websites of artists whose work I liked - you'll find them embedded in their name.

The selected artists are:

• Douglas Allen
• Kathy Anderson - I like some but not all of her floral paintings. Some are a tad overbright which seems to be an American convention.
• Del-Bouree Bach, 
• Garin Baker
• Cindy Baron - I like the atmospheric effects in the landscapes she paints
• D. Elienne Basa - good to see somebody challenging the conventional format for landscape paintings
• Zufar Bikbov, 
• Christopher Blossom, 
• Eric Bowman
• Roger Dale Brown, 
• Kelly Carmody
• Scott Christenson - I'm a fan of big vistas
• Nicholas Coleman
• Carole Cooke
• Nancy Seamons Crookston
• Stephen C. Datz
• William R. Davis
• Don Demers
• David Dornan
• Kathleen Dunphy - I've seen a number of her paintings over the years and she seems to be good at capturing the way in which colour palettes need to vary with the light. She also has a useful blog. Incidentally this is one of the best designed and easuy to navigate websites.
• Ron Elstad
• Mary Erickson
• Andy Evansen
• West Fraser
• George Gallo
• Max Ginsburg
• James Gurney - I guess many of us are familiar with James work and books. This is the site on which he posts his original art.  That's a very impressive landscape (below)

James Gurney and his wife at the exhibition. His two paintings are on the left.

• George Hallmark
• Quang Ho - an impressive impressionist painter. It's great to see somebody whose work is not overly refined.
• Charlie Hunter - you can see more of his paintings on Flickr
• Joel Carson Jones - somebody who is a fan of Trompe l'oeil paintings
• Michelle Jung
• Thomas Kegler
• Tim Kelley
• Michael Klein - one of the very few who has a contemporary website in terms of design and responsiveness. Visually impressive paintings (although his images take a while to load).
• Joshua LaRock
• David A. Leffel
• Joseph Larusso
• Leon Loughridge -an artist who produces woodblock prints. You can see how his work is produced on his website
• Antonio Masi
• William Matthews
• Sherrie McGraw, 
• Joseph McGurl, 
• Terry Miller - drawings in graphite. This is his blog
• James Morgan
• Ned Mueller
• C.W. Mundy - his website declares him to be an American Impressionist (but is a bit slow) 
• Billyo O'Donnell
• Joseph Paquet - interestingly he has an ongoing project to record the buildings and landscape of industrial and roadside America that he grew up with - which is recorded in a website titled Rust/Roadsides. I suspect this will become more and more important over time.
• Robert Pillsbury
• Sergio Roffo
• Jason Sacran
• Patrick Saunders
• Claudia Seymour
• Burton Silverman
• Matt Smith
• Kate Starling
• John Stobart
• Nancy Tankersley - one of the few with a more impressionist treatment of her subjects
• John C. Traynor
• Thomas Valenti
• Curt Walters
• Jeff Weaver
• Charles Yoder

Click the image to find out more about the artist and to see other paintings by them in the exhibition.

Another thing that is very odd is that very few of the painters have included their website address with their details. However some have so it's obviously allowed. 

Exhibition details

This is the 8th exhibition of the American Masters.

Venue: The 1853 brownstone mansion. of the Salmagundi Club, 47 Fifth Avenue. New York City

Dates: September 29 through October 21st 2016

The event will help celebrate the recent $1.5 million renovation and restoration of the Club’s Upper Gallery space in their landmarked 19th of Greenwich Village. This fine art exhibition and sale will feature works by nationally recognized artists not often exhibited in New York City.

Paintings are not sold as in a normal exhibition. There is a Gala evening when a ballot will be used to determine who gets the opportunity to buy a painting. You can find details about the Sale Event on 14th October

Retirement

Today I'm changing my life - and this blog.

I've been mulling over the future for some time. You may have noticed I posted much less frequently over the summer months.

I've decided that as I get older I want to spend more time being where I want to be, doing what I want to do, seeing what I want to see and being with the person I value the most.

In other words, two years past my very big birthday I want to retire and enjoy all the very many benefits of being a pensioner!  I've been one for ages but have not really made the most of the change in status. Instead I created another 'job' for myself - and that's what going to change.

My 'proper' retirement will continue to be active but with a change in priorities.

That means:

• "Less is more": still writing but less time blogging - on Making a Mark. I'll certainly continue to cover the art competitions and the open exhibitions of the national art societies in the UK which I enjoy hugely. However there's likely to be much less coverage of other exhibitions - except those I'm particularly interested in and want to share.  I gave up trying to do daily posts some time ago and now make more use of Facebook. There will be fewer blog posts going forward. Hopefully I'll get better at translating what I highlight on Facebook into a weekly post on Making A Mark - and also get back to featuring individual artists more. I'd like to write more articles for magazines - if they'll have me! 
• more time on the websites I do want to develop - that includes 
• the two published to date for Art Business Info for Artists and Botanical Art and Artists. There's still loads of content that needs to go on both those sites. These have their own blogs as well - with shorter blog posts!
• the two new websites I want to create relating to Fine Art Materials (currently a work in progress) and another site for resources for artists covering the basics e.g. drawing, composition, colour etc. The main reasons for doing this is educational - to highlight and make more accessible the resources that already exist on this blog and other great sites.
• more time on making my own art. Having cataracts, writing a book and various injuries etc all  took their toll on the ability and time for making art and I got out of the habit. I now need to get back into good habits! Maybe even selling some - you never know!
• more time visiting places I want to go and see - lots more gardens and galleries! I'd like to get back into regular sketching which took a severe knockback this year due to problems with walking and balance and needing to keep what I was carrying to a minimum.

a birthday trip seven years ago
the sort of place I want to be - visiting gardens and places where painters painted

He who must not be bored
while I sketch
- in another garden!

• more time on going out with "he who must not be bored while I sketch". He complains a lot about me always being on the computer so I'm going to do something about that! We're neither of us getting any younger and we need to make the most of our time together. 
• more time walking - to reduce weight and make life much more bearable as my bones and cartilage degenerates and soft tissue keeps tearing (I've been diagnosed with osteoarthritis on top of other joint problems). Getting the right balance between walking enough and yet actually remaining mobile continues to be a really major challenge (I seize up!). Achieving tolerable levels of pain would be great. 
• plus much more time on an absolute essential which is leaving my current home and finding a new one - without stairs - which will be more suitable for the very significant problems I have with mobility from time to time.  There's nothing quite like being unable to move up and down stairs easily due to injury to get you focused on what are the real priorities in life!

Once I've got myself settled in a new place I'll be able to reappraise and change my life again.

What do you think? Have I got my priorities right?

The Big Draw 2016 communication underwhelms

The STEAM Powered Big Draw Festival 2016 takes place this month - between 1-31st October 2016.

October is traditionally the month of The Big Draw with a different theme each year.  It's about:

•  promoting visual literacy - which is seen as important to our lives as other forms of education such as numeracy and literacy (in the reading and writing sense).
• aiming to give the arts parity with other subjects

This year the theme is an acronym 'STEAM'

Bringing together Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths. STEAM fuses creative innovation, enterprise, digital technologies and the arts.

logo of the Big Draw Steam Festival 2016

Peter Heslip, director of visual arts and London at Arts Council England commented:

The charity’s work around the STEAM agenda will play an important role in raising awareness of how visual literacy is an essential part of the cultural education that children and young people should have access to.”

More about the Big Draw 2016

For me - the big emphasis of the BIG draw going forward needs to be on communication online.

The Symposium took place last month at the Baltic Exchange but the website is still in prospect mode and reports absolutely nothing about what happened.

The Big Draw Festival was also launched last month at The Whitworth Gallery at The University of Manchester on 22 September, 2016. Again the page is about what will happen despite the event having taken place 10 days ago (and sadly too few images) and absolutely no pointers to what did happen.

Events this month can be found on the website - but I won't be highlighting any due to the horrible functionality of the website (which I have highlighted before in previous years - to no avail)

• You can find Events via this map. Personally I find this terribly uninformative compared to the information that used be supplied on the Big Draw website (before the current website incarnation). It used to be possible to filter (eg by age rangel type of event etc) and scan lists to identify and spot events that would suit you and that you wouldn't mind travelling to. I used to go to a number - but no longer do so. The current information assumes a willingness to click every link (TWICE!!!) and is just plainly dysfunctional - in terms of communication - to my mind.   
• These are images from the Gallery of events in 2016
• My own view is that:
• in 2016, there seems to be rather too much emphasis on some big events 
• compared to rather too little emphasis on the smaller events which are much more accessible to a wider number of people of all ages - as used to be the case when I first started covering the big draw some 10 years ago (eg see Big Draw events around the UK in October in 2007)
• there seem to be much fewer events compared to just two years ago.

This the map of events in the UK 2016

and below is the same map in 2014

An organisational re-launch is currently planned for early 2017. 

Hopefully somebody is also planning a new way of displaying and communicating events on the website in 2017 - and making them happen.

Otherwise this might be my very last Big Draw post.......