Why The Philadelphia Art Scene Sucks: A Short Essay

I've been saying it for years, and frankly, I never really had an answer to why. "The Philadelphia Art Scene Sucks!" I've said it to friends, co-workers, class mates, teachers... frankly, anyone who had 5 minutes to kill heard this from me. But I never had a reason.

Until now.

Why does the Philadelphia Art Scene suck? Easy: Because we celebrate mediocrity.

For years, I've harped on style and subject matter. Yes, these are subjective things, and modern art is subjective in and of itself. When Duchamp came to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and brought in a urinal and called it "art", art became nothing more than a subjective term, a seemingly meaningless phrase used not to describe what you saw but, rather, describe what you couldn't explain.

In contemporary art, namely in Philadelphia, you see a trend where only mediocrity reigns supreme while actual talent and vision is crushed. Yet, oddly enough, talent and vision actually sells while mediocrity does not.

In a world of supply and demand, especially in such an economic climate, one would wonder why gallery owners in Philadelphia, as well as certain blogs catering to a "young and hip" audience would, in tern, steer their crowds and patrons away from what they actually do want and, instead, simply spoon feed them contrived works of art that is, in essence, pseudo-intellectual.

There we go. The art scene in Philadelphia is, in essence, nothing more than pseudo-intellectual.

What do I mean? The caliber for "Fine art" is this: If you paint something on canvas, it's "Fine art". If it makes sense and looks like it was done by something who knows what they're doing, it's not.

I am an illustrator, both by nature and by training. I am not a realist by any means, nor do I mean to push my perception of the 120+ year old question of "What is art?" onto anyone else. But, at the very least, I would wish the decorum of those in Philadelphia would at least hail the work of contemporary art to higher degrees than the same form of modern-abstraction it seems has dominated the world of art for the last 100 years and more towards different style and takes, even from more "urban artists" or "Stuckists" or those in the Pop-Art movement!

To an even further extent, in terms of graphic design we celebrate it to extremes! Local designers who are celebrated and given work tend to work in a style more reminiscent of what you may see in a high school art class than on a professional level! I've seen t-shirt designers praised who make little, if any sense while talented people are forced to toil in obscurity. I've seen designers work for companies using no design skill at all work for companies while those with degrees who know what they're doing are forced to fend for food, rejected by those same companies.

To a larger extent, I've seen blogs praise designers who did nothing more than steal an image by somebody else, not even modify it more than a hair, and praise it for being great by virtual of being "a clever take"!

Philadelphia celebrates mediocrity. It hails it on high as being "Brilliant" while the concept is weak! That is why this art scene is failing, why so many talented people here either leave or give up, and why Philadelphia is scene as a cultural wasteland.