I bitch a lot in emails and letters about the stuff I routinely see hanging in lobbies and boardrooms. Much of it is there because somebody ran into somebody else at a party or ball-game and the deal was closed before a moderately educated person could get in on it.

Everybody has seen this kind of thing. Duck prints are popular in Richmond, which is the city I most identify with unfortunate and summary decisions regarding interior decoration. (Not that it's alone in this. Some of the worst stuff I've ever seen was in New York City, cosmopolitan capitol of the known world. It should be remembered, however, that New York contains seven boroughs and what you often see in places is strictly out of Astoria, if you know what I
mean.)

At any rate, why is it that you can't walk into a corporate headquarters, say, and not see paintings, etchings, drawings, and sculpture that resonate with powerful feeling, super-accomplished draftsmanship, and aesthetic sophistication? Well, sometimes they get it right. A well-known financial conglomerate in Richmond has a pretty good art collection that is, however, controlled largely by two people with overlapping prejudices that should be tempered with overlapping prejudices from the outside. However, they get it right half of the time, with the result that the corporate campus is fairly enriched with examples of the best art Virginia has to offer. Not all the best art, but some of it. And in a culture that dismisses art except as a means to project its image to the world, that ain't too bad. I'd rather it be mostly good, but nodoby there listens to me and I can't tell the chain of command anything except "Okay, I'm going!"

Generally, however, the work you find in such places is wretched and should not have ever gotten in the door, let alone into the boardroom.

Why does this happen? Well, it comes out of a fairly complex dynamic, but, from my vast and dismal experience in the art world, I'd posit this reason:

one group (the producers, or "artists") relinquishes control while another group(the curators, dealers, and other "cool" sorts who can't make an honest living) takes control. It's prettyy darn simple, really.

Parallel situtations exist in almost any government.

When a dictator or demagogue rises to power, he or she does so through a complicated series of small victories and compromises in which other people willingly participate. No monopoly (or dictator) gets to be a one overnight; he (or it) gets there partly because we let it and partly because anybody who wants something that badly is willing to work twice as hard getting it as you work to oppose it.

In the past, it was fairly difficult, as an artist, to be independent. The culture of the marketplace was too entrenched and largely immovable. Now, however, things are more fluid and an artist doesn't necessarily have to depend on a dealer or curator to do his or her business. A website can lead a potential client to artwork that had never been available before. Printed matter is cheap now, so an artist can easily send the mailer that was once the responsibility of the dealer exclusively. An artist may just up and call a business him(or her)self and make an appointment. This is not often possible because curators and dealers often have interested businesspeople staked out already and don't like it when an artist attempts to encroach on territory they consider their own. But this is a belief, not a reality in most cases, and if a dealer connives to exclude an artist not only from a collection, but from the corporate ear, as it were, the artist should have every legal right to prosecute that dealer. Nobody owns anyone else the last time I looked and this sort of profiling should not be tolerated - particularly if the dealer has shown no interest in the artist's work to begin with. It's not unlike killing an ex-lover because you don't want anybody else to have her - even if you're not necessarily interested yourself!

I realize I haven't connected this ugly boardroom thing to the political culture of the art world. Yet.

Let me first say that dealers and curators could be quite useful if they wanted to be. Most, however, search for the main chance and stick with it. I rarely see a great deal of passion or curiosity on the part of most arts professionals; they have their little roster of people who are in - as well as their aesthetic do's and dont's - and pretty much stick with them. There is a certain social and academic pressure to do so and they mostly cave into it. If the world were swarming with dealers and curators of provocatively independent mind, the situation would be much different. But I only know of one art dealer who doesn't give a damn about credentials (Did said artist graduate from Yale? Know anybody from there perhaps?) or pedigree (So you haven't shown in New York? And the Pollock-Krasner turned you down how many times?.) What would an artistic Shakespeare - who only made it through middle school - do today?

Probably get on the phone and stay on it till something happened.

As I maybe didn't say, however, dealers and curators are in a certain way necessary. They don't make bad judgments all the time. In fact, whenever I'm looking for interesting artwork, where do I go? I check out the ads in ArtNews and American Art Review - even Southwest Art. I don't necessarily believe I'm getting everything from these sources, but I don't omit them because you always find something worthwhile, even if it does have to come from an art gallery.

Am I down on art dealers and curators? Yes. I think the vast majority do their jobs only by half.

Knowing this, however, the talented, but unpopular, artist who has not found favor with them must go his or her own way and make the existing system work - or create a new one.

Now: let's go back to the lousy art you mostly see in boardrooms and lobbies and pizza parlors and other public places that might just as well have good art.

How do you change that? For one, you should contact these places and tell whoever is in charge that they could possibly do better - in a nice way, of course.
Generally, you will end up talking to a dealer or curator, which is often a dead end. Best to speak to someone for whom the corporate (or pizza parlor) image is paramount. Preferably, you should meet this person, or a friend of this person, socially. In other words, you should try to do what the in-folk have already done. And be twice as gracious as you ever were with your grandmother. If you're selling a new concept, you are the embodiment of that concept.
It does no good to rough it up from the git-go.
There'll be plenty of time for you to put your personal stamp on things.

Ultimately, it is the artist who is the trailblazer in this regard. And while the search for the boardroom is hardly tantamount to the dignity of man, it has some redeemming social significance. Most civil rights pioneers were also its victims, alas. Luckily, an artist/entrepreneur is not necessarily trying to crack police department and other govermmental infrastructures. He or she is just trying to get the message out: I'M HERE is the content of that message and it's - compared to the strident rhetoric of the civil rights movement - fairly innocuous. But it is a necessary, and often painful, step to make that annoncement and to experience its repercussions. When I was in Richmond, I couldn't get a reviewer to come and see any exhibit at my gallery for love or money.
So rather than flog that dead horse, I contacted other writers, some of whom responded, some of whom did not.

But by the time I left, I was not unknown - and, in many cases, unliked. I've made a living at painting and selling pictures for many years now and I attribute that to getting my message out in a small way to the sort of people who would welcome it. I'd also attribute it, in equal measure, to the luck of the draw. It is fallacious and even arrogant to believe you are the sole agent of your life's accomplishments. Being the master of your own fate disappeared with hunting and gathering societies which compelled a gritty self-reliance past anything we socially dependent organisms can understand. In our life, salvation depends on knowing other people, not being able to go out and clobber a mastodon and drag it back to your cave - although the solitary nature of an artist's life is sometimes reminiscent of that dankish place.

There will always always be ugly pictures in boardrooms, but we who don't care to see them must do something about it except bitch to our friends, lovers, and bartenders about it. And we have to start by believing we can do something ourselves rather than allow this precious opportunity to be frittered away by others who can't possibly care about it as much as
we should.