http://niucvpa.blogspot.com/2012/01/cvpa-to-host-new-art-examiner-symposium.html

We hope several of you will be able to join us for a spirited day!

Thanks for your well articulated insight. If you want to get in touch with me about some future events along the track of this discussion, including a panel discussion with myself, Derek Guthrie, Terri Griffith, and Andrew Falkowski at the Evanston Art Center on Friday Jan. 20th starting at 6:30, get in touch with me at dthodos@ameritech.net. The Occupy movements are starting with few resources but their own will, and regarding the status quo I think that’s where we are too, (no matter that those who use – or should I say misuse – theory claim to, falsely, co- opt this position). As you can see from all the debate above there are quite a few voices that are fed up with what has been 30 years of the same kind of repetitious codes for art and their accompanying arguments. It is a good time – for those who can perceive the issues at stake – to show a willingness to speak up for them.

First, a quotation from Diane Thodos’ article at the top of the page:

“For all of the contemporary art world’s claim to being ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ it is deeply conservative at heart,”

Second, a quotation from your (# 41, December 18th, 2011) comment:

“Speaking of ‘historical awareness’, Chicago has a long history of alternative spaces. We were doing it here long before it was hip. What is more maverick than that?”

In answer to the “maverick” question which you’ve posed within the citation above: There is nothing “maverick” about opening an alternative art space within Chicago; “alternative” is itself a misnomer. You’ve stipulated to a “long history” of such spaces. And maintenance of tradition is, per Thodos, a core principle of conservatism.

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I’m struck by the fact that, in my viewing experience, the contemporary “maverick” galleries which you’ve listed:

Alderman Exhibitions
Slow
65Grand
Peregrine Program
CoProsperity Sphere
New Capital
Julius Ceasar
Adds Donna
Lloyd Dobbler
EbersMoore
Roots and Culture
Western Exhibitions
Happy Collaborationists
Whot It Is
Antenna
Cobalt Studio
Defibul8tr

(a) offer remarkably similar programming; and,

(b) offer programming which would not have been out of place in any of the venues which were lumped together as “alternative” spaces in the 80s, e.g.:

NAME
Randolph Street
ARC
Artemisia
SAIC’s Gallery 2
Hyde Park Art Center

Really, aside from those few artworks dependent upon some technological innovation, within Chicago’s “alternative” art world (and maybe within Chicago’s art world, period) there’s been almost no forward progress in a formal and/or ideological sense in the past 30 years.

Broadly, a consensus about the “rightness” of ideologies associated with the Left, e.g., Marxism, Feminism, multiculturalism, has come to inform a hybrid of Conceptualism and Poor Art which usually manifests in installation, performance and direct political action.

There’s very little left for the viewing audience to ponder about the theoretical ground which underpins most work. The targets are regular: masculinity, Capitalism, religion, etc. The revolutionary political action of the 1960s has been institutionalized.

+ + +

Thank you for the time and effort which you’ve invested in your response. Such resources as our energies are finite–and likely to come to naught if frivolously divided between too many projects. God help us if everyone needs to create their own publication in order to “participate in the dialogue.”

Germanos.