Nicole Caruth is a freelance writer and curator living in New York and frequent contributor to the Art21 blog. ArtPrize hired Nicole to chronicle the 2009 event. Nicole’s thoughts and opinions are her own and in no way represent an endorsement or objection from ArtPrize toward an individual artist or venue.
When I last contributed to this blog, the ten finalists of the first ArtPrize competition had just been announced. I left Grand Rapids almost certain that a painting could never speak to voting crowds as loudly as the table on chairs on the Blue Bridge or a seven-foot moose made out of nails. But here I find myself six months later looking at painted ocean waves in the studio of grand prize winner, and fellow Brooklyn resident, Ran Ortner. His three-panel painting, Open Water No. 24, now has a temporary home at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, where attendance has reportedly risen fifty percent since the piece went on view. Crowds to hear Ortner speak there in January were double normal capacity, too. It seems that Ortner has become something of a celebrity in Grand Rapids and beyond. While stardom and a whopping $250,000 of course have their benefits, it is clear that Ortner’s artwork is still what drives him. In New York, where art stars seem to pop up and disappear over night, losing their way in the limelight, Ortner’s unwavering thirty-year devotion to painting is as refreshing as the ocean itself. Below, the artist discusses the impact of ArtPrize on his life and work and why, after all these years and his latest success, he still thinks of himself as an “emerging” artist.
Ran Ortner and assistant in studio. Photo courtesy of Ran Ortner.
Nicole J. Caruth: So, enquiring minds want to know, how has the ArtPrize award impacted your life? Read More »
We brought in Nicole Caruth, frequent contributor to the Art21 blog, to come, observe and respond to ArtPrize. While here, she interviewed four guests from the art world to give their thoughts and help shape the conversation around ArtPrize. Her own thoughts she collected in her “Eyes on the Prize” series.
See excerpts of Nicole’s interviews with:
Peter Murray, Founding Director of Yorkshire Sculpture Park
West Bretton, Wakefield (UK)
Adam D. Weinberg, Director, Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, NY (USA)
Michael M. Kaiser, President, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, D.C. (USA)
Mary Jane Jacob, Professor and Executive Director of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, IL (USA)
Read Nicole’s observations in her “Eyes on the Prize” series: Read More »
Nicole Caruth is a freelance writer and curator living in New York and frequent contributor to the Art21 blog. She’ll walk around ArtPrize, observe, listen and write about her experience here. Nicole’s thoughts and opinions are her own and in no way represent an endorsement or objection from ArtPrize toward an individual artist or venue.
In less than 12 hours in Grand Rapids, I saw more artwork than I usually do in a month’s time in New York City. It’s not that there’s more to see here, but that I’m making an effort to see everything—all 1,262 artists at 159 venues spread across 3-square miles.
As I wandered the streets of downtown and crept around Twitter on opening night, people were buzzing with excitement about ArtPrize. One comment struck me as being spot on: “Unless bad art wins, this will prove to be a monumental event for years to come.” At the risk of sounding like an art snob, I arrived expecting that the majority of ArtPrize entries would fall under the umbrella of “bad art.” And indeed some works are so poorly executed that even calling them art is a stretch. (It’s probably good that I’m not voting.) The blessing and the curse of this open call is that every artist, regardless of the quality or content of their work, is given a chance. Good, brilliant, fair, kitsch and downright atrocious share the same context and sometimes hang side-by-side. Without experts to weed out the good from the bad, it seems to me, that in many cases the better objects suffer. That said, my opinion will not go far in this competition.
At the time of this writing, over 10,000 people have registered for ArtPrize and cast more than 5,700 votes. Voter registration sites are still receiving excited constituents. Though reports have stated that artists in the community were displeased with the idea of a popular vote, the heap of promotional materials that filled my purse last night suggest that they have come to terms with the idea and figured out how to work it. Every artist is a salesman. Street campaigns range from a painter quietly distributing postcards from her garden wagon to the spectacle of moving balloon sculpture accompanied by cries of “Vote for me!” (Given all that there is to do and see, the latter actually seems like a smart move.) Still, there is one lingering concern about voting that I’ve heard on several occasions: the option to vote down. “Playing favorites [voting up] is fine, but voting down is kind of telling people they’re not good enough,” said a volunteer at the West Michigan Center for Arts & Technology (WMCAT). Artist Andrea Misch, whose silicone dolls are on display at Tanaz Hair Boutique Downtown, also worried about voters being “mean.” But as viewers circled us and gushed over her dolls, Misch expressed that she’s no longer concerned.
While I might sound something like the grumbling Simon Cowell of American Idol, there’s a lot of Paula and Randy in me too: even I had a moment of uneasiness about down votes. How is that fair? These votes, I’ve learned, are not included in the final tally, but used to show which artists are creating the most discussion or controversy. Coincidentally, many of these artists are also having their moment in the top 50. I might be jumping the gun, but judging from the list of top ranking works after day one, I’m inclined to believe that the collective public might be just as discerning an audience as a group of so-called experts. (This is in fact James Surowiecki’s theory in The Wisdom of Crowds, a book that inspired the Brooklyn Museum exhibition Click!: A Crowd Curated Exhibition.) With any luck, the Grand Rapids crowd will, as they say on American Idol, “get it right.”
As we anticipated, the ArtPrize team is scrambling around like a bunch of ants to take care of anything and everything that pops up (or drops out, like the servers for our website did temporarily at 4PM Wednesday). There is so much going on. Inevitably, I’m going to miss some of it while I’m busy explaining something like text voting. Enter Nicole Caruth.
Nicole is a freelance writer and curator living in New York and a frequent contributor to the Art21 blog. She’s agreed to be our hired gun for this blog. For the next week, she’ll walk around, observe, listen and write about her experience here. It’s not been 24 hours since Nicole arrived in Grand Rapids, but she’s determined to get oriented and see everything offered this first week of ArtPrize.
Nicole’s thoughts and opinions are her own and in no way represent an endorsement or objection from ArtPrize toward an individual artist or venue.
Look for Nicole’s posts about ArtPrize here on the blog.
Nicole’s bio:
Nicole J. Caruth is a freelance writer and curator based in Brooklyn. She frequently contributes to the Art21 blog, where she writes a monthly column about the intersections of art and food; and …might be good, a contemporary art e-journal produced by Fluent~Collaborative. Her writing has been published by the Studio Museum in Harlem; Taipei Fine Arts Museum; CUE Art Foundation; the Center for Book Arts; NYFA Current, and Gastronomica among others. Recent curatorial projects include Near Sighted—Far Out, a video art festival for Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center; and Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection at the Brooklyn Museum. Visit her personal blog, www.sweetcontemporary.com.
