Some of this, like the 98% vs. 2% figures pulled from the ether, puts me in mind of a situation that took place during my employment at a contemporary art museum, if from the opposite direction. A reporter from a women artists' newspaper came to do a story on the museum. Her POV was that women were discriminated against by the art world and, as part of that art world, the museum must have regularly failed to give women artists their due.

I researched the museum's exhibition history before the interview and was pleased to tell the reporter that, in fact, over the years women artists represented almost exactly 50% of the artists shown in the museum's signature annual "emerging talents" exhibitions. And three of the four directors had been women. And one of the first feminist art exhibitions had been at the museum. These facts, however, did nothing to alter the reporter's firmly held belief that museums discriminate against women, we were a museum, ergo we discriminated against women.

The same could have been said about realism. While the museum exhibited plenty of realist art, as a contemporary art museum we were tagged as being all about the wild and wacky, the abstract and conceptual. Efforts to convince those who, for whatever reason, feel slighted or ignored by THE ART WORLD, that their concerns are without much basis fall on deaf ears, facts be damned.

One final point, in architecture what fault lies with the architectural elite versus the clients who choose given architects and building designs? If clients seek out certain architects and regularly green light modernist designs how does that mesh with the idea that the vast majority of the populace supposedly hate all things modernist? If the built world has become increasingly modernist isn't this the fault/function of the marketplace more than it is of some conspiracy of entrenched elitists?

Chuckle away there, Bob.

Posted by: Chris White on January 1, 2009 12:58 PM

What I just wrote in comments at the "New Statesman" site:

"Despite what he himself claimed, he was not a utilitarian, not a functionalist, not a rationalist, not an anti-Romantic. The prescription that form should be determined by function is a nonsense that he toyed with in his writing but didn't practise..."

How blessed is M. Jeanneret that, after all this time, Mr. Meades is available to tell us what he *really* meant. And how blessed is Mr. Meades that Jeanneret was so bad at writing, and so hypocritical in failing to do himself what he *said* should be done, that Meades could bravely, modestly step up and explain to us all -- Jeanneret included -- what was *really* meant.

Either that, or Meades is pompous enough to believe that without his help, Jeanneret's reputation would suffer immeasurably, and isn't it a good thing Meades is around to help him out.

I'm so glad the "New Statesman" has given us this humor column. It has given me enough laughter regarding Meades' stated folly and vanity to make a gloomy day pleasant.

Posted by: Hal O'Brien on January 5, 2009 7:05 PM






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