Art Fairs, Signatures, And Christmas Trees

The title of today’s abstract illustration is “Perpetual Conundrums Of Daily Machinations”.

Over the weekend I was reading through a few art posts on Facebook and Instagram. I happened by a post by art critic Jerry Saltz which ripped apart artists who frequent their artwork at art fairs. Jerry took a very pompous stance and said that in essence those who display artwork there are making the art seems cheesy and pandering to a low brow crowd. In the comments people were melding Art Basel size fairs and local fairs together as one thing. I don’t think we as artists get the right to judge anyone on how and where they choose to display and sell their art. The gallery system is a very closed and self important realm where if you are not in the favor of the owners or the critics you are not accepted. Not every artist wants to go through that garbage to be seen and validated as artists.

The second thing that bugged me on social media was this belief that signing your artwork is an antiquated notion and somehow ego driven. As an illustrator I say that is a load of nonsense. Artists have signed their artwork for centuries. To not sign your work is to put the copyright of the piece in jeopardy. We can be proud of what we have created and should put our name on it. The reasons are both for recognition and for copyright.

And lastly we put our tree up this weekend. Sometimes the tides are against you when the holidays approach and this year that has literally been the case. We all spent hours putting the basement back together and bringing all the items back downstairs freeing up the living room for the tree. It is one of our more subdued trees but it is beautiful none the less.