Mission Statement for a Men's Gallery
Mission For a Men's Gallery
It always starts in the Facebook comments. That's when I get the real rumblings from the street. We were talking about Women's Galleries when Conrad A Lawrence said,
This discussion has made me want to start a gallery called "The Disensegmented" for an often overlooked group of underserved artists which is White Middle Aged Male Artists No Longer Sexy Enough for River North Galleries since there is no minority niche for that group to turn to for support. I think our credo would have to be, "we don't care if you call us chauvinists, we just want to show our art" and do our best to maximize the criticism we are sure to get for purposes of our own marketing exposure."
And I thought: that would be totally awesome.
Because on behalf of non-male America, I think what we'd all like to see is everyone becoming equally pigeonholed into the quagmire that "representational art" has become. ("Representation Art", for the purposes of this post, being an art category in which the artist represents an entire demographic, and your art can be viewed as "the art" that speaks for everyone in that particular segment. Kerry James Marshall says it best in 1:33 seconds on YouTube here)
So, I'm putting as an open call and artists will be sending in their proposed mission statments and examples of the art they would show. But in the meantime, I'm going to get into lots of trouble by proposing some prototypes of possible piece for a "Men's Gallery".
What does .. let's not say Men's art, or even White Men's Art. What does White Hetereosexual Male Protestant Art look like. What does it represent? What art speaks for this group.
Again, the images below are just concepts. But here are some ideas along the lines of "turnaround is fair play"
Art that shows men's special abilities:
"Lifting Heavy Boxes"
"Special Talents #2 (series of 2)
"Appreciation of All Varieties of Beauty"
Diagrams of Big and Important Things!
Ok, I've gotten in enough trouble for one night. We'll see what positive images of masculinity the guys bring to the table next week, and let them have their turn. Anyone may submit a mission statement to chicagoartmagazine -at - gmail.com
Note/Update: My friend Conrad commented on these reductionist stereotypes of men - and I do want to clarify that that was the intention - that when we're asked to represent the position of a group of people in our artwork, and/or asked to create "positive imagery" we're asked to produce stereotypical work and propoganda; as opposed to real art, which is complex, conflicted and doesn't fit an agenda.
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