The following is not a critique, but rather a running commentary about an ongoing show that pools artwork curated by Pauline de Carmo, George Spencer, and Tom McGill, which can be viewed on their Arte4A website. The images will be posted and refreshed, so these comments and thoughts will be edited and augmented as opportunity permits.
In Fall of 2019, ARTE 4A held a Protest Art show at Time and Space Limited in Hudson. It was a vital exhibit, funky, and diverse. Now, in 2020, there are, you can believe it, even more reasons to protest--greater systematic inequality, more violence, more social and political insanity and its berserk explainers. What's not to rage about? No need to elaborate here the long list of issues--NY Times regularly ticks off Trump's crimes, Congress's egregious and craven behaviors, and the stink of modern American culture.
And then there's COVID !9. How is one to work as an artist in the face of all this? For artists, if one has the means and time, art making can take the edge off isolation and the stripping away of social contact. It may be a way to make some sense / meaning of these times. Where and how to share the work, though--that's a harder problem.
Novel solutions are emerging for exhibiting art--e.g. drive by exhibits, Re institute (buried art), web exhibits. Web showing is nothing new--many artists document their work as soon as the paint or clay dries, and then upload it to a broad audience. However, the virtual images cannot have the tactile presence of real artwork. Arte4A is "place-holding" selected submitted artworks on the Art4A website, under the headings Black Lives Matter and Protest Art Show. Some of the artists presently exhibiting on the Arte4A website include:
--Christine Heller: Black Lives Matter. Orange letters on a black backgound This is a placard made for a protest march, direct, no frills. There is no point in debating whether it is art or not.
--Daniel Baxter: Native American faces drawn on a map of North America. Skilled illustrative images of well known blacks (Malcolm, AOC etc) against North American map backgrounds. There is a dialectic, a call-and-response between the maps and faces.
--Owen Greathead: Peculiar image of dark skinned woman raising an elongated arm, confronting a white cop in gas-mask, also with elongated arms.
--Mary Breneman: A crying Statue of Liberty, partially submerged, ink on paper. This reminds of the sentiment of the film Escape from NY.
--Sandy Moore: Khashoggi's Last 5. This is my work, so briefly-- I made 5 paintings of Khashoggi as news became available about his dismemberment/ murder in the Istanbul Turkish Embassy. Barging into this torture space are POTUS with a long sword, Jared, and Mohamed Bin Salmon, toting a heavy garbage bag. More notes are available on sandymooreartist.com
--A collage by Sher Stevens, 2020, shows Trump as a long nosed puppet- king sitting on a throne, with documentation of his misbehaviors and crimes strewn around him, including a painting of Lady Liberty listing, partially submerged.
--Leonard Sideri. In Sideri's recent crisply executed works there is a recurring icon--X (x=man); in this case the X is partially submerged, in rising tides. Is this abstract art or direct political commentary?
--Leon Axel makes striking and at times jarring caricatures of the current political scene, frequently focussed on Trump. Here Trump, as a macabre dominatrix with whip, is spilling out of a bikini. "For a couple of years In response to the current administration, I have been making a series of political cartoons, using watercolor and ink, following a satirical tradition going back to Rowlandson and Cruickshank. While using exaggeration and humor, the topics depicted in these cartoons are real and tragic; I hope that the humor will help to bring the underlying message of protest across." Axel's Trump figure was originally avuncular, grinning like a drunk uncle, but the evil of his machinations grows clearer in Axel's recent works.
--Sandra Kaponen :" I had already started this work and had done another painting of the McCloskey's (couple in their yard in St Louis pointing guns at marchers) before learning that they had been invited to speak at the Republican National Convention. In this painting, the woman is holding the gun with mouth agape, rage and stunned incomprehension on her face.
--Wayne Coe "Trump Virus" makes (I think) an odd equivalence between Trump's bouffant hairdo, and vomitus.
--Some of Eva Melas' work is about gun violence. There is a "Make art not bullets" paper coffee cup. I would love to see these cups mass-produced and disseminated. Another piece--a porcelain white pistol on a pillow questionably with a tiny cherubic figure near the hammer of the pistol.
Artists who make protest art have so many "ancestors" to emulate: John Hertzfeld, George Grosz, Goya, The Guerilla girls, and Pasolini come to mind (that's an incomplete ultra-short list). Political art can be many things-- sentimental, personal, humorous or dead serious. It doesn't have to be polemical. The common theme in this show is outrage (and possibly submersion--but let's hope, not drowning); these are shouts, and cries of people pushed past their limits. Compared to last year's show, these artists are not so engaged in any witty pleasantry or the art marketplace. They acknowledge the stench, and look about for the source of the smell. We all have a lot of work to do.
