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.

The Tea Bag Protest: What Went Good, What Went Wrong

Today is Tax Day.

To some people, it is a day of dread and fear, one when American's are afraid of making sure they file their taxes on time. For others, it's just another day since they already filed them, or they are so poor they don't have to.

But this year, a portion of our American public has decided that enough is enough. Are we Taxed Enough Already? Apparently so. Today the TEA Parties were held at cities around the country.

Now, the best thing I can do is explain what this protest was originally about and go form there.

ORIGINS:

The idea for the protest, depending on who you ask, basically boils down to opposition to the Federal Reserve. At it's core, people are sick and tired of paying a yearly income tax. The solution to this varies, but plans have gone to taking more from your pay check to creating a national sales tax. I'm not in favor of either move, but another reason for the protest was anger over the stimulus bill and passing, and that is something I agree with to some degree.

So, let's get this straight: The protests were meant to go against the Federal Reserve.

Now, who organized this movement? Again, it differs on who you ask, but it was largely Libertarians. The Libertarian party is a mixture of conservatives and liberals, a group of people who strictly believe in the US Constitution. Ron Paul, who ran as a Republican for President last year, was a member of the party not too long ago.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MOVEMENT:

What happened is that, over a period of time, the protests were hijacked... sort of.

Around the end of March, more and more members of the Republican Party started to latch on and use the protests as a sort of "rallying point", a way to restore the Republican Party brand. Conservatives began to latch onto it as well, and soon, Fox News began to muscle itself in as a sort of "sponsor". In response, liberal media reporters such as Keith Olbermann and the Huffington Post began to label the event as nothing more than an "anti-Obama event", "A conservative rallying point", among other things.

Other media outlets began to take some sides, namely showing the event as a group of fringe extremists on the Right taking their anger and frustrations out on the Obama Administration.

In return, the movement was virtually eaten away from the inside out. What could, and to a degree, should have been an event to simply protest the federal reserve became a rallying point for conservatives, basically aimless, and muddled with things that it did not need.

But did it entirely fail?

THE RESULT:

While it is frustrating and angry as a supporter of this to see it corrupted, it didn't fail. It made national headlines without the derogatory "tea bagging" jokes, and President Obama himself stated that, starting now, that there would be changes to the US Tax Code to make the tax system more fair. In my opinion, the protests helped to push that along a littler faster and made it more of an issue, which means that, to some degree, it did succeed.

MY 2 CENTS:

It's a shame that the protests were so heavily marginalized. A movement that started organically, a movement to protests what citizens thought was wrong with the US Banking and Federal Reserve was , instead, turned into a rallying point for a political party that did not represent their ideals, or, at the very least, may have begun to re-embrace those ideals. I was going to one here in Philadelphia at Love Park at noon, but found out that the organizers pushed it, foolishly enough, to Saturday at noon instead.

People still attended. And Philberity decided to play a dirty, dirty angel:

1) It’s on, with a cast of perhaps 200-all-whites.
2) Not a lot of anti-Obama setiment on the signage, but man oh man, what did European Socialists do to these people?
3) Biggest applause for…the mention of Glen Beck

Nuff said.

To their credit, they are quoting a reader, but still, a dirty thing to print. I would have attended but, like I said, I thought it was postponed.

A little more on my robot

So it made the Philadelphia City Paper! Cool! It was published and blogged about on The Clog! SWEET!

I just want to address something, though, about the robot and it's about the robot itself.

I've had friends and people online send me a slew of suggestions about what to do with him and other concepts for him. It's quite amazing, really, and it makes me feel good!

This is the first time in my life that I created a piece of art, not just to make myself happy, but to make others happy around the world. Normally I just draw something to make myself happy and piss people off... not entirely not the case here, but hey, I've gotta be me, right? I wanted people to look at this robot and smile and think. I wanted them to smile because he is a cute little robot and because I wanted people to think because of the little sign he's holding.

And, of course, I still haven't said "why" I've done all this, have I?

Like I keep saying, the answer is really obvious and right in front of you.

But back to people's ideas and suggestions: Thanks, but no thanks. If your inspired by what I did, if you liked the cute little guy and thought of something awesome you would like him to do yourself, please... do it yourself. Spread the joy. :)