In a Gallery Near You

Darby is unequivocally their favorite person in the Universe

I never used to give much thought to promotional materials. For one thing, I know I'm not getting an unbiased account of things. Take movie advertisements: short, decontextualized words of praise, set to theme music, where they play up adjectives and skip the part where the quote came from the intern at the Montana Sun-Rifle. It seems that if you look hard enough, you can find someone that likes every movie*.

Besides, a lot of the quotes don't make any sense. A personal favorite was when a movie was described as "the biggest laugh generator since There's Something About Mary."**

Movies have big budgets, and a comparatively wide audience. They hire design teams to carefully tailor and craft these promos, right down to what kind of movie they want their movie to seem like so that we, the audience, won't be confused as to why there is no wrestling in Kramer vs. Kramer. Movies are enormous financial investments, and a lot more money gets dumped into trying to get people to go, all before anyone has even seen it. Of course they're going to say it's great. They are trying to sell it to us.

Something I have become keenly aware of since starting my weekly column is the promotional material describing art exhibitions, which are produced without all the financial backing of Hollywood. Indeed, artists are not usually known for their abilities in other areas—areas such as proper grammar, or humility. I can tell you from experience that so-called artist statements are some of the worst examples of writing a person could ever hope to encounter. Many of them are like Vogon poetry. Really, the only time I read them is when:

1. I like the work and hope to learn more about the artist's thought process.

2. I am sort of offended by the work and I want to ascertain what the artist was thinking so I can hate them more completely.

Sadly, these two circumstances are few and far between. Usually the work is very bland or familiar, and there is really nothing to be gained by reading how the interplay of light and shadow gives rise to notions of the abstract, impregnating the works with the duality of the mind/body split when all I see are some stripes. By skipping the artist statement, I can qualify the artist as untalented instead of completely deluded, which is much more depressing.

Since I travel to Santa Fe only once each week, and am at the mercy of the train schedule, I have a finite amount of time to see a given show. I try to be thorough, but this isn't always possible. I am a little ashamed to admit that I base a lot of the stops in my circuit on the promotional blurbs that are published in the very paper for which I write. (It feels a bit cannibalistic).

All of a sudden, abbreviated artist statements are part of my routine. Every Friday I sit with my coffee and read through the listings to see what new shows will be opening, and to see if I have missed any that sound interesting. And herein lies the problem—most art shows do not sound interesting. They usually sound extremely boring:

"[The artist] presents egg tempera landscape painting."

(She is the lucky 1 millionth person to do so!)

Or pretentious:

"[The artist] showcases oil and watercolor paintings that bespeak the stillness of canyons, lakes, gardens, barns, and everything in between."

"A connoisseur of skies, [the artist] brings his refined perspective to New Mexico."

(Nobody who believes they're good at something refers to themselves as a connoisseur, or refined, and they don't showcase. These are words born out of insecurity.)

Or both:

"[The artist] infuses the mundane with the sacred as she paints everyday settings, including empty streets, balconies, decks, chairs, and cityscapes."

And some of the blurbs don't seem to communicate anything at all:

"[The artist] works with ink and pastels on a layered surface to achieve novelty in his abstract figurative pieces."

(So, to clarify, the artist makes things for you to look at. They are also hung vertically on walls in order to aid you in this endeavor.)

Sometimes I am surprised. Just last week I visited a show described only as "Polish Posters," as in posters designed by Poles, for Poles. It was fantastic. I try to keep an open mind and visit as many shows as possible. I guess I just never realized how atonal and off-putting a few words about one's life's work could sound.

It is always painfully obvious that these blurbs were written by the artist in the third person, as though this will lend it some credibility. Having become something of a connoisseur of these blurbs, my advice would be to just go for clarity and honesty:

"John Photos takes lots of pictures, mostly of his wife and dogs. He loves them. The best ones are on view through...

And don't try to bespeak or infuse anything. You're probably doing it wrong.

* I have been accused of this in the past. It's complicated. Suffice it to say that I like movies on a variety of levels, and so a terrible plot and laughable dialog doesn't always ruin it for me. After a while I start to imagine what it must have been like to actually work on, or be in, said movie, and what a nightmarish experience it would be, standing there across from other amateurs in a cloak, wondering if I should have finished college. I sort of start to empathize...

** That movie was Trekkies, a documentary about Star Trek Cons, possibly the only place on earth where they might plausibly have a giant laugh generator. (A google search attributes the quote to Bonnie Britton, Indianapolis Star & News).