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It's a long article and is clearly written with a simple agenda but that agenda is not to educate the readers about official portraiture today or even the state of traditional painting today. Gopnik is simply a fan of another area of the art world and wishes "his guys" could get in on the official portrait business.
What has evolved to be called art in the last hundred years is so diverse that the term "art" becomes pretty meaningless unless qualified. Even "apples and oranges" falls one complete produce section of the grocery store short of describing the current options within this "big basket" of what could be termed some form of art.
I personally have found some "installations" and video loop and other types of art that are very different from our own to at times be fascinating. I have never felt threatened by the fact that they are made or questioned the validity of the artists who did them or their right to do so.
Most artists working hard at their craft in whatever media it is will recognize honest effort and creativity in others even when the tools and materials and even the goals are different from their own,
It seems that sometimes the champions of what is broadly referred to as "contemporary art" that aren't actually in the arena, aren't actually artists, are the ones most guilty of bashing those artists who do not conform to their vision of what an artist is and should be doing.
I would not encourage my fellow traditional painters to waste their time talking about what they "don't' do" or "don't like". This seems to be a common theme among much of so called "contemporary" art. The descriptions ones reads of why an artist did something often begin, "I didn't want to do------- or "i wasn't' interested in merely........... . The better contemporary artists have more of a reason to get up in the morning than simple " to NOT do something.
At the root of this is a fear (and a mistaken one) that somehow life is "a zero sum game". That is, that someone has to lose in order for someone to win and that there is "only so much to go around", so if you are not getting everything that you want, it must be because someone else got it instead.
Blake Gopnik clearly feels that if only those stodgy old congressmen were as enlightened as he was, that they would all run right out and commission video installations or manipulated photos for the walls of the Capitol rather than painted portraits. His strategy to achieve that is to belittle the traditional work and those that would patronize it. He is very lacking when it comes to explaining the reasons that his "product" would serve anyone any better.
No one lives or dies by whether or not they get a commission for a high profile public portrait. These are plums and we consider ourselves lucky when one falls our way. In thirty five years I have one painting in the U.S. Capitol. Gopnik knows that even if the official world of portraiture were to take a whole different view and suddenly hire his guys, the number of pieces commissioned would not feed all those that practice that art. The irony is that what he is really begging for is "acceptance" and recognition within the very world he is attacking.
Since I spend my time focusing mostly on my specialty, I was not familiar with Gopnik or the "experts" he brought in to help him write his article. Unfortunately for him and them both, today with a simple Google, we can get up to speed and easily expose what their personal agendas and biases actually are.
Kerry Brougher from the Hirshhorn is clearly just another photo as art enthusiast if you see the books he has for sale under his name. Had Gopnik had a sincere desire to write an informative article on the good, bad and ugly in official portraiture today (and it could be written) he would have turned to someone who could help shore up his own considerable shortcomings when it comes to knowledge of traditional painting.
There is much more that could be said on this article and this subject. I'll be back!.
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