From: Bernard Roddy (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Feb 16 2004 - 13:10:21 PST
A-fucking-men! I want to add to these remarks.
Silver writes:
From the curating I've done, I find that the more conscious
one is of imbalances of all kinds, the more one can address this question in
an interesting way, usually to the benefit of the artists, the community and
the show.
<unquote>
The way a job applicant might not qualify for the job has to do with both the way he or she has been prepared for it, and the kinds of qualifications that have been built into what it means to be qualified. Once we reflect on what excellence amounts to, whose sensibilities it appeals to, and how the criteria are perpetuated by the way the system is run, we can at least take some risks and move beyond what goes by the name "aesthetics."
Silver writes:
This is complicated by the fact that many
first generation women curators and dealers had the tendency to also select
only male artists. Certainly we are in a different situation today,
although I would still hold, not one of equality.
<unquote>
What is rather pathetic is that this is even a debate today. I mean, I am torn between a desire to respond with anger in support of a shift toward Rainer and a desire to ignore the men as reactionary. Here in Dallas when I teach moral problems I feel like I am in some kind of time warp. That's no criticism of the students, given the environment they live in, but what we end up debating could be so much more!
Silver writes:
The mathematics question - I assume you would not say that there have been
historically fewer women in mathematics because we're just no good at it, so
the solution must be found elsewhere.
<unquote>
Teichman's request raises more questions about the question than about its answer. I was glad to see James K's data, but the issue is less one of truth than one of politics. That it, I see less point in engaging in some kind of argument, like this is research into whether sexism really was (and is) a problem, than in taking a stand for a set of values, choosing against the status quo.
Silver writes:
I would still hold very strongly to my statement on invisibility. It is
very difficult to recognize that such a thing as bias exists, even for those
that are negatively impacted by it. Discrimination is most often seen as
natural, the air we breathe, the workings of the world, just the way things
are.
<unquote>
And it is not as if perceptual experience or its aesthetics is some kind of ideology-less common ground. If you film the American flag for its colors, the selection was also driven by other factors. This reminds me of the lionizing of Jackson Pollock to the point of institutionalizing his style as the Imperial style. While Pollock's work certainly merits some kind of criticism, we are making a choice about what kind of criticism and what kind of work we want to see. This is particularly important for artists, who are always confronted with tough decisions between vogue and . . something I will call "significance."
Bernie Roddy
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