arguments of the bourgeoisie, on behalf of artists, for their own justification of consuming (part 1)

I read a recent article by William Deresiewicz called "The Death of the Artist--and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur" and was floored.  It seems like a simple statement: the myth of the artist as genius is dead, and "real" artists are creating their own businesses (adjusting to the market).  This, though, might be the article that lights a thousand fires; I think that there are undeniable problems with the thinking in this article which makes it all the more dangerous, particularly to those of us who are artists.

I won't be able to address everything at once, but I hope to develop this into further writing about this and send it further than the readership of this blog.

Very simply put:  the myth of "artist as genius" is one placed on artists by non-artists, and has never had anything to do with the market.  An artist that claimed genius themselves would undoubtedly be scoffed at and ridiculed.  Its death then, is merely a fiction created by non-artists to eradicate a class and type of people.  Though this may seem extreme, the purpose of getting rid of this class of people will become clear shortly.

There are a number of other problems with the myth of "artist as genius" including the patriarchy within the tradition of art (still prevalent), the predominance of Westernized art traditions (and the Orientalization of other geographic locations by the Western traditions).  Assessment of one's ability in art is problematic and is not easily supported by numbers or testing (in which the typical genius assessment is based), and as someone confident in their place in the world of contemporary art, I have no need or want to be labeled as a genius, it serves no purpose.

What I believe is happening here--purposely and rhetorically--forms a smokescreen to keep people from acknowledging what artists most often are: defenders of counterculture.  Artists--and yes, I'm going to start making dogmatic statements and issue membership cards--think and live outside of mainstream culture.  This includes elements of rebellion, disobedience, and other forms of thinking outside of the normative structures that any place and group of people hold dear.

Not all of what we call artists do this; some are so far within the normative structures as to be ironically conformative, others exploit the system for monetary gain.

This concept of the death of genius--as tired as death of anything is to anyone who has read about painting in the last 20 years--is thusly a way to prevent creative thinking outside the system.  This is a way to commodify creativity and silence the non-conformists.  This article proposes that if artists are not geniuses, then they should be (or are) entrepreneurs.  

Deresiewicz's article could hide behind the guise of observation, and as the author he could claim to only be observing culture.  Even if this is the case, he has oversimplified hundreds of years of culture and is not thinking critically about culture to boot.  To write this article acknowledges a number of difficult assumptions that I will continue to discuss in conjunction with some other writings.  

input systems

I'm going to write a bit today about a concept that has to do with larger cultural concerns but plays into the art world, particularly with art fairs, commodification, and other issues that many people are discussing within and outside of the art world.

I honestly don't know if I can justify this beyond being a hunch, but I feel strongly that individuals in many historical and current cultures have relied on other individuals to form their identity and morals.  Different cultures have different levels of individuality--some have had a much higher need for communal function than others; the United States seems to be one that is frequently pegged as an individualistic society that favors the individual over any community.  I don't know if this is exactly true, but I do feel that this is the case, and I often think about self-sufficiency as "good", though self-sufficiency does not preclude community-based thinking.  Regardless, an individual gets input somehow--older cultures, I believe, received input from story telling, advice, conversation, discussion, with other individuals to form a network of thinking that, in part, creates the individual's identity (and helps them tend towards certain decisions, encourages individuals to pass along information for others' input, etc).  If I had a bad experience planting a certain vegetable or learned of a new pest, I could pass it along to a neighbor or friend who was trying to grow the same crop.  If I knew that there was a predator near a fishing spot, I could pass that information along so that others didn't run the risk of being pursued by a predator.  If I ate at a restaurant and got food poisoning, I would tell others (and probably alert the Health Department) that I was sick so they would not have the same experience.  All of these inputs have a tremendous affect on others.

One important note today, particularly in the United States but in other cultures as well, is the overwhelming influence of media and the vastness of its affect on us.  It takes up such a large portion of our input that it is, in my thinking, forming the majority of our identity.  There are so many facets of media that it is hard to address them all here, but living in a smaller Midwestern city, many of our friends have smart phones that profoundly influence people's identity.  Where I grew up there are far fewer smart phones, but many of those people are influenced by television or newspapers.  I might even go so far as to speculate that input of a sensory nature (that is non-media based) makes up less of our input than media-based input, that is to say that the looking that I do with my eyes to determine my path of travel, to avoid obstacles, to learn something new is less than the input that I get from media.  One example of this is, of course, from food--I had never cooked rabbit before, and have tried to expand the types of meat that we eat, particularly for more sustainable animals, and when it came time to butcher the rabbit I watched a video on butchering instead of trusting instincts (gained from butchering other animals) and looking at the animal for obvious butchering points.  I will not say that I should have just looked--I appreciate the resources available to me--but it is interesting to think about other options.  If I had not watched the video, what is worst case scenario?

That is a relatively inconsequential example, but I use it to illustrate my ideas to think about the broader implications in this.  What is determined to be valuable in our culture is undeniable influenced (and I might even argue totally and solely influenced) by media because we are using the media as our input in a manner that prevents us from relying on our own, non-media input.

There has been a tremendous amount written about art fairs--I feel like it bubbles up every December during Basel and during other art fairs around the U.S.  Many of these articles are against art fairs and some are supportive of them, but I think it is good to think about your own input systems while reading these articles and honestly contemplate what the fair means to you as an artist and as an artist connected to the art community of the United States or the greater art world.  Will you refuse to participate in an art fair?  If so, why?  How are you being influenced in this?  Who are fairs for, and what purpose do they serve?  I don't think there are easy answers to this question--but I can say, for sure, that if I lived near Basel I would attend to see things.  I've attended Expo Chicago (or whatever it has been called over the years) multiple times, and have never purchased a thing nor gone with the intention of participating in the money side of these fairs.  I honestly find it an amazing place to see what a large number of galleries are presenting--even if its shit--and love to attend them.  Without fairs, the art market doesn't magically become un-commodified, so I don't know if my time is best spent trying to eradicate art fairs or criticize the attendees or artists that participate.

I do know for sure that art is, even if it is influenced by the media, a pristine input that offers solace from the overwhelming amount of media that we encounter.  This is probably one reason that I think of, over and over again, for me being invested in painting and abstract painting: media has very little influence on the images that I create, or, probably the more truthful statement would be that my images would still exist even if media did not.

What remains after media might be the kernel of this that I am thinking about in a broader sense.   After the end of media, what survives, and how do we go on?  I doubt it will ever end in my lifetime, but I'd much rather continue to seek out non-media inputs and experiences because I feel that they contribute to my life in a richer way than media inputs.

artist and consumer

I've been working on new theories of the relationship between the artist and the consumer.  These will only be working ideas--probably impossible ideas--that may never get resolved; but that, to me, is a sign of a productive line of thinking in something that is organic and will change over time.  

Simply, historical models of artist/consumer or artist/benefactor or patron relationship are: 

1) artist working for and/or selling to a larger organization (government, museum, church, etc)

2) artist selling to individual/group consumers, with "collecting" consumers

3) artist selling to individual/group consumers, non-"collecting"

4) artist producing work for ritual, religion*, socio-culture practice** where the consumer's role is perhaps not qualified by exchange of money.  

What we commonly call a "commission" could fall under any of these, though I feel that commission is often a relationship that has a high probability of exploiting the artist.  This is not to say a commission is good or bad, but practically is up to each individual artist to determine and agree to the arrangement of a commission and often ends with an artist sacrificing many aspects of her or his work to make the commission.  

Not included, because it is a different list/relationship: 

artist producing work without selling (no consumer)

Consumer purchasing a mass produced piece without an artist (no artist***)

Organization purchasing from a corporation****

  

More on this soon.

*I intend religion here to have more social implications as opposed to "church", in 1), which implies a governing body that commissions a work.  Religion, here, is meant to stand for relics, paintings, statues, etc made for religious purposes but are not paid for by the church to further the church's or patron's agenda.  The most obvious example of this would be patronage in Italian Renaissance painting.  

**I do not mean social practice as a buzzword as it is used too often in contemporary art, but rather attempting to define producing work that has a broader purpose (from the artist's perspective) within society and culture.  

***Contrary to any political statements or any other theories, corporations are not artists.  Some artists should be considered corporations as they employ many workers and function, organizationally, very much like a corporation in terms of production and their relationship to the consumer (Koons), and I am against this form of artistic production

****These theories are not based on Sotheby's selling to the Met, for example, as both the artists--who will only receive negligible profits from a sale like this in the best case--and consumer are confused, complicated, and frankly have little influence on individual artists.  

call for artists (of a different kind)

Within the last week or so, a few things have led me to deep and critical thought about the art world and the market that is attached.  Steven Zevitas' article in the Huffington Post is one, and Tony Tasset's Artists Memorial at the Whitney Biennial is another.  The artists withdrawing from the Sydney Biennale (and the subsequent resignation of the Biennale chairperson) due to funding from a company called Transfield Holdings and Transfield Services, a company that is contracted for immigrant detention centers in Australia is also on my mind as I work through living and working as a professional artist here and now.

I've heard a number of people mention that if artists in the U.S. started boycotting exhibitions funded by ethically questionable companies, there would be very few art exhibitions and events.  Zevitas' article is much needed to increase the dialogue between artists, curators, collectors, and museums and questions the high price tags of art works as of late.  The most difficult thing in all of this is, though, is that the art market is inflated and large amounts of money are exchanged for artwork, the money is almost certainly coming from less than ideal sources.  Even if we take the money's origin out of the equation, income inequality is a difficult hurdle to overcome when it comes to the amount of money that is being paid for works of art.

I'm not sure that I can solve these problems in this post, but I want to take issue with a part of Zevitas' article, in particular his call to how artists should deal the problems prevalent in the art world:

                To artists I say: Keep making art and make it because you have a deep NEED to, not     
                because you WANT to. Follow your own unique visions and not current consensus. You 
                are the bedrock (Zevitas, "The Things We Think and Do Not Say").

I understand and appreciate Zevitas' sentiment here, but it is incredibly problematic.  It presupposes that artists are actually not working (in the sense that workers get paid for the work that they do) and rather doing what they do purely out of "need", which is a misnomer.  I have, absolutely, said that I NEED to make work in the past but in reality could also, absolutely, sacrifice studio time to help a friend, spend time with family, etc.  I'm not even convinced, on a biological level, that it is a core need of human beings--I do believe some sort of aesthetic output or beautification of objects to be a part of most cultures, but this is far from an individual artists toiling away in the studio (which, I might argue, is a highly privileged and Western view of what art is and can be).  I digress, though--my biggest issue with this call is that the need for artists to make a living off what they do trumps any vague, lyrical claims for an artists to "keep doing what you are doing" (and things will work themselves out the implication).  We cannot keep doing what we are doing unless we get paid to do it, and can make some kind of living off of doing it.  Let us be honest about all of this.

Secondly, I think artists should do what they want to.  Zevitas' statement takes away artists' will, and implies that artists WANT to follow current consensus, but NEED to "Follow our own unique visions".

Thirdly, this statement reinforces the hierarchical nature of the art world and the art market.  Simply replace "bedrock" with proletariat and we are workers supporting a market that Zevitas is rightly calling out.  Bedrock is demeaning, too, as it implies that artists do not know the cultural value of their work--leave that to the other people in the market (that are the subject of Zevitas' critique).

I could go on...there are many things I take issue with in this article.  I am happy that it is being shared on social networking sites and many people are reading it.  The implication of the article title, though, is that no one is talking about these things, and I know a number of artists that have conversations about this frequently, and I've given talks at conferences on this precise topic.  I am an artist that does what I WANT, talking about how screwed up the market of my profession is.  We are all talking about it.  The people that matter are talking about it and have been talking about it for some time.  Artists deal with this every time they sell a work of art, either through a gallery or not.  Any artist that has assessed their career goals has thought about these issues and worked towards developing their own outlook on how to navigate the art world.

Tasset's work at the Whitney Biennial, then, is something of an unintentional answer to Zevitas' article for me.  The Artists Memorial, listing over 390,000 working artists and dead artists names on site of the future Whitney Museum of Art is something of a memorial to what IS the art market--not the bedrock, but the essence.  Without artists everything else just becomes a commodity game of wealthy adults.

There are many other content-related issues to discuss with Tasset's memorial, but for such a great gesture to artists who often feel under appreciated in their field, the memorial is a key into a world that many of us will never see.  This is one great example of artists taking responsibility for other artists and continuing the profession in a way that is sustainable.

I often feel fortunate to be a professor of art--one of the reasons is that I have the ability to teach about the issues of the artist in the art world (and market).  I have had the opportunity to work with a number of incredibly talented, driven, and interesting students that I hope continue to find ways to make work--but, perhaps most importantly, find ways to contribute to society as artists.  I'm not talking about socially-based art work, but rather being responsible citizens and artists.  I will always be a part of working with younger artists, as I think it is my answer to the commodification of art and the discontent I feel about the market side of my profession.

In the spirit of discussion, I want to formulate my own call to arms for artists, in which I would propose is a better song to sing as we toil in our studios:

       To Artists, I say: make work and fight for acknowledgement of our profession in ways beyond the
       art market, because it will not last as it exists now.  Contribute to intelligent discourse about our
       profession--we are responsible for our ideas and thusly must be able to communicate them in some
       form.  Any person other than ourselves that speaks for us has motives separate from that in which
       the art work was made, and can offer interpretations, which are not the same thing as our ideas and
       intentions.  We are the essence of the art world.

section of Tasset's Artists Memorial, 2014
photo credit: Kendra Paitz

  

Regionalism, Commodification, and the Aesthetics of Use

Hello everyone--sorry for the infrequency of posts--I have no excuse other than exploring other pursuits (and successfully completing them).  Writing time is at a premium these days.  I did, however, participate in a really great conference and panel this weekend at the Society for Utopian Studies Annual Conference in Charleston, South Carolina.  I wanted to publish the transcript for everyone, and it follows.  The panel was called Utopia, Place, and Image and also included a talk by Dawn Roe of Rollins College and Erik Waterkotte of University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and some really interesting questions and discussions came from the panel, even though we were, in some ways, the oddballs at the conference as visual artists.  In tandem with the panel, Erik oversaw and printed three different prints (each in an addition of 50) which were distributed to people attending the panel.  The prints, printed on old survey maps, incorporated text and images from the three of us, and turned out quite stunning!  I'm also including a video that Erik shot to document the narrative structure of the prints, down below the transcript.  I did also show examples of my work along with this presentation, but it was supplementary and I think the text is meaningful without the images--and, if you are looking at this--more than likely know how to navigate your web portal display to my website with infinitely more images--feel free to read this text on one web portal display and cycle through images from the website on another to recreate this affect.  

As a studio artist, I've thought a lot about Grant Wood’s 1935 book Revolt Against the City and developed some ideas that arise with contemporary art. After considering it in terms of my own studio practice, of which I'll show many different examples of through the presentation, Wood's idea of place has been an important aspect of my visual art making and research.  Imbedded within this is my relationship to the art market and art's usefulness to a larger part of society. 

I would not necessarily consider myself a Regionalist for a number of reasons, but it bears stating the concept of Regionalism in Wood's own words for the sake of this presentation.  And I quote:

"Let me state the basic idea of the regional movement.  Each section has a personality of its own, in physiography, industry, and psychology.  Thinking painters and writers who have passed their formative years in these regions, will, by care-taking analysis, work out and interpret in their productions these varying personalities.  When the different regions develop characteristics of their own, they will come into competition with each other; and out of this competition a rich American culture will grow." (Wood)

I do see my own work as referencing the geographic, social, cultural, and cosmologic location as the subject matter for my work—be it rural culture in general, or more specifically Appalachia (where my father is from) or Midwestern culture.  Regionalism, as it has manifested in my education of the history of art, is somewhere oddly situated between an ideology of a group of artists working during the Great Depression and an aesthetic and formal tradition of realist painting of rural culture.  I see my work more in line with Wood's attention to his surroundings observing culture but do not take any visual reference from the romantic realist paintings of Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, or other Regionalists.    

Grant Wood’s book interested me, though, as its utopic hints at an alternative to what has now manifested as the art market.  Some of Wood’s ideas talk about an expansion of programs like the PWA and regional schools of art run by the government.  He saw the possibility with regionally developed art as making the nation a stronger cultural player, in the sense that when different regions have art programs they will likely compete with one another, and the success and product of each of those regional programs will continually grow and get better with competition.  In other sections of the book, Wood discusses the economic deterioration of the Depression as being an "opportunity" for demonstration of the "artistic possibilities" of the provincial Midwest. 

While there are community supported art programs, non-profits, and even charter schools specializing in arts education, the predominant popular view of art is dominated by the art market, separating those artists that are a part of it from the more localized agents of contemporary art and practicing artists.  It is not out of the question for a “local artist” to become famous and nationally or internationally recognized in some form, but the majority of your local artists are stuck between establishing meaningful representation on a local level and making the means to live as an artist.   

Just Wednesday Roberta Smith published an article in the New York Times about the record-setting sale of a Francis Bacon triptych from 1969 at auction for $142 million dollars, topping 2012’s auction record of $119 million for Munch’s The Scream.  How does one resolve this in terms of Wood’s call for the flourishing of local art practices?  I do not believe that it can be resolved.  And what has transpired since Wood's book seems even bleaker.  Smith states:

“Auctions have become the leading indicator of ultra-conspicuous consumption, pieces of public, male-dominated theater in which collectors, art dealers and auction houses flex their monetary clout, mostly for one another. The spectacle of watching these privileged few (mostly hedge fund managers and investment-hungry consortiums, it seems) tossing around huge amounts of money has become a rarefied spectator sport. These events are painful to watch yet impossible to ignore and deeply alienating if you actually love art for its own sake.

More than ever, the glittery auction-house/blue-chip gallery sphere is spinning out of control far above the regular workaday sphere where artists, dealers and everyone else struggle to get by. It is a kind of fiction that has almost nothing to do with anything real — not new art, museums or historical importance. It is becoming almost as irrelevant as the work, reputation and market of the kitsch painter Thomas Kinkade” (Smith)

I want to state critically that Smith's writing reaffirms her own criticism simply by the vast majority of the work she chooses to write about:  there is art for its own sake, it just won’t be shown in commercial galleries, especially not in New York.  The largest part of Smith's writing involves contemporary art in museums and galleries in New York.  If there are these mythic lovers of art for its own sake it is incredibly hard to find amidst all of the grime of the art market.  Galleries are businesses, and relatively lucrative generators of revenue, and taste is determined by what they are profiting from.  Of course there are a few exceptions--predominantly, I would argue, within the non-profit organizations and smaller artist run spaces throughout the art world--but their budget relies on donations and is often emulating aspects of the artwork involved in the art market. 

Grant Wood, then, is not off base to write about the possibilities of visual art after financial ruin.  The art market saw its own burst in the late 80's--and I still constantly hear comments about how difficult the market is for my friends involved in galleries and other for-profit ventures.  Indeed in the New York Times article written by Smith about the Bacon painting quotes Christie's Auction House curator for postwar and contemporary art Brett Gorvy as saying "This isn't a bubble--it’s the beginning of something new," (Smith) inferring that auction prices are going to continue to rise (and the market is going to continue to be inflated).  After the record Bacon sale, I came upon a photo essay in the Wall Street Journal written by Geoff Foster comparing, dollar for dollar, an artwork sold at Christie's recent auction to a baseball player's multiyear contract for a professional baseball team.  Roughly 1% of the population has the money to participate in the skyrocketing art auctions or donate money to the museums to buy and exhibit artwork; few regions can see a use for art in its contemporary manifestation of an inflated market commodity.  And it is exactly a commodity--look at Detroit's bankruptcy and the rationale to sell DIA's collection.  I may be verging on territory here that I have little theoretical experience with; I’m no economist, but can only talk from my direct experiences with the market. 

To give some context with my situation, I’ve made around $5,000 from sales of artwork since 2001, approximately seven tenths of a percent of what the Bacon painting sold for.  I’m not asking for pity nor am I claiming starving artist status.  I am productive and have a healthy studio practice without monetary gain.  I bring all of this up because my view is that the art market, a hulking locomotive I can't help but try to understand, is simply unsustainable and benefits a microscopic portion of the population.  I don't anticipate the art market going away anytime soon, but I am building towards an idea that we need an alternative for the betterment of art in society, for artists and the public alike.     

Now there are little revolts everywhere, one that most people might be familiar with is the recent Residency on the Streets of New York by the “street artist” Banksy—but Banksy’s work is commodified as quickly as someone can put plexiglass on it.  What is happening with these revolts, though, in a profession so often interested in a false sense of the avante garde, is that galleries and the market are commodifying things beyond fine art.  I’m not trying to make a qualitative statement of Banksy, but simply state the fact that he (and Jeff Koons, Sherri Levine, Andy Warhol, and even Marcel Broodthaers before him) have attempted to discount and discredit the art market by exploiting it, but the machine keeps going and increasing their prices.  While Banksy is also making interesting statements about authorship, particularly with his film Exit Through the Gift Shop, he is still a part of the money generating segments of the art world.    

While this is neither my subject matter nor my object matter, the art market is an aspect of making contemporary art that is inescapable.  Smith would have us on a relentless search for art for its own sake—but this has traditionally been applied to works that only refer to other works of art, and have little to do with research—both visual and theoretical—and its application in a studio practice. 

As an artist I have started thinking about materials and how they fit into this commodification of artwork.  Part of my practice involves setting up situations that are then documented with a camera—in some ways, though, I don’t even consider these photographs, but pure documentation of something that was arranged in my studio and is now gone.  I occasionally use software to double the image, or create a visually abnormal image.  My materials are often basic building supplies, scraps of paper and wood, and plants harvested from my yard.  Most of my installations are for a specific location and only exist for a short period of time in reality, and then in photographed documentation.  Recent pieces have been as informal as painting on a downed branches and leaning them against a fence, arranging construction supplies on a log, or spray painting weeds that I pull from our garden--not many curators or collectors are willing to come to Iowa, let alone to see what some crazy guy is doing in his yard.   

I am trained as a painter and still hold dear the tradition of abstract painting—but the goal of my practice, to a certain extent, is to make paintings based in visual and theoretical research that is not determined by the art market.  This aim is a bit premature in the sense that I am just now, in my career, working with an art consultant and have never worked (or been offered to work with) a gallery; but part of the mission of my studio practice is to continue to make work that resists the commodification that the art market relies on so heavily to determine the value and use of art.  I am not exactly sure what my limits are or where I would draw the line, but my parameters are to prioritize working with individuals and organizations that have motives beyond monetary gain.    

This last year I was selected for two large-scale exhibitions that were also site-specific in the sense that they will probably never manifest themselves again in another venue.  The Soothsayer was my first exhibition in a building of artists studios called Box 13 in Houston, Texas.  I drove some of the materials down to Houston to install, but I also spent time around the gallery, in a lower Middle class neighborhood where the light rail will go through after its construction in 2016, collecting pieces, scraps, plants, and other objects within a few blocks radius to make these installations.  This amalgam of components from my yard and the area of Houston around the gallery created an interesting dialogue between two places.  In the end, I'm not sure that anyone could tell you exactly which parts where from where, adding to the complexity of common statements like "where I am from" and "where this is."    

My most recent exhibition was at DEMO Project, one of two contemporary art spaces in Springfield, Illinois.  DEMO, as its name implies, is a small bungalow owned by the Springfield Art Association slated for destruction in three years so that the SAA can build a new building in a working class neighborhood just north of downtown. Run by young and energetic artists and recent graduates from University of Illinois at Springfield, the gallery is temporary but an incredible contribution to a community that has not prioritized contemporary art spaces.  I was happy to be offered the exhibition purely for the location of the house, history of the architecture (not unlike thousands of other bungalows built in the 40’s in the Midwest), and the foreseeable end to it as a structure.  Evensong 15 (caudex) took the form of a branching tree emanating from the fireplace and stretched throughout the entire gallery/room.  Though my work is rooted in abstraction, my research deals with our relationship to place and how this manifests itself in plants, building materials, and a connection to the physiography of my location, including how all of these relate to deterioration and the break down of materials.  The ephemeral nature of materials (and art galleries, in this sense) is incredibly important to my work and thinking.  

To conclude, I believe that to truly support the visual arts and contemporary art making practice we need to revisit it's usefulness in society.  What seems to be the most common answer to these problems (created in part by the art market) is buying work from local artists, and this is partially true.  Just like with food, buying locally has its advantages.  I believe there are ways to be advocates without having to spend money, too—for one, we can all actively participate in exhibitions, critically looking and thinking about the art that is presented.  Read press about contemporary art and take advantage of the vast networks of alternative art venues and publications--some of the most exciting things in contemporary art are insensitive and are born out of absence or necessity.  Dealing directly with artists is a good method of interaction with their studio practice and their research.  While some artists are less willing to talk about their work with any depth, most artists do have something to communicate about their work, whether they are comfortable with it or not.   

Grant Wood states, in regards to his proposed Government art schools throughout sections of the country, that:

"…Annual exhibits of the work of schools of this character would arouse general interest and greatly enlarge our American art public.  A local pride would be excited that might rival that which even hard-headed business men feel for home football teams and such enterprises.  There is nothing ridiculous about such support; it would be only a by-product of a form of public art education which, when extended over a long period of time would make us a great art-loving nation." (Wood)  

To think of contemporary art on equal footing as high school or collegiate football is pretty far fetched, but for the possibility of a broader acceptance of art in the United States, on a regional level, I believe we need as dramatic of a shift away from the art market as possible towards a more sustainable relationship between artists and society, prioritizing thinking and making over the commodification of its product.      

Sources:
Grant Wood, Revolt Agains the City, Clio Press, Iowa City, Iowa.  1935
Roberta Smith, "Art is Hard to See Through the Clutter of Drawing Signs" New York Times, 11/13/2013

Click Here to see the video of the prints via Facebook.