Competitions and fine print

[Peggy Baumgaertner]

Check out www.greenhousegallery.com and see the Salon 2002, Hundreds of entries from around the world and one of Greenhouse gallery's artists won with a 10x13" painting. In 2001 the OPA national show the judge gave her husband one of the major awards. This happens because artists let it, ignore it and continue to fund it. Art Talk is the only art pulication that will even mention such things in print.

Competitions are always subjective. Sometimes, the jurors could be in a conflict of interest. However, having viewed the winning entries in the Greenhouse Gallery, I think the Best of Show - "Amsterdam" by Kevin Macpherson, should have been given the Best in Show. I think it was the best of the six or seven paintings I saw.

I am careful about attributing prize winners to insider conflict or interests or nepotism. I have certainly seen jurors who pick paintings very different from what they produce, and others who pick paintings which are exactly like what they produced. I also think jurors actually bend over backwards to be fair. (Having been the juror at several national level competitions, I know how difficult it is to honestly evaluate the works, and then have your selections questioned because you knew several of the prize winners.) There is no way for it to be totally "double blind". Even if the titles and names on the slides are blanked out, most of the top artists in my field produce works which are so identifiable, that I can tell who the artist is without a signature.

Peggy

[Cynthia Daniel]

Tim, you wrote:

Doesn't it seem that once in a while the "peoples choice" and "artists' choice" could be the same as the judges choices...this rarely ever happens and it's not because the judge has better taste.

Your comment prompted me to go back over the years of portrait competitions for both ASOPA and PSOA. I pulled the following from their sites. If I get any of the missing years, I will fill it in.

American Society of Portrait Artists:
2002 - People's Choice also won 1st Prize.
2001 People's Choice won only that prize.
2000 - People's Choice also won President's Award.
1999 - No competition held.
1998 - People's Choice also won Best of Show.
1997 - People's Choice also won Grand Prize.
1996 - People's Choice also won Best of Show.

Prior to that, it seems there was no People's Choice award in the first two years.

Portrait Society of America:
2002 - I attended the show and I'm not positive, but I believe People's Choice also won Grand Prize.
2001 - Info missing from site.
2000 - People's Choice also won 2nd Prize.
1999 - People's Choice also won Grand Prize.

[Timothy C. Tyler]

5 judges are better than one and 15 are better than 5. The judges on these are very good judges too. I still would like to know who actually sees the 600 original slides.

[Timothy C. Tyler]

Greenhouse just announce that the PEOPLES CHOICE: Salon 2002 went to a painting that had been given no award by the honored judge of the show. The more things change...

[Karin Wells]

Sometimes judges can be blind....and here's a story that really bugged me once...

Several years ago I was in a juried show. I was ignored by the judges when they handed out the prizes. However, at the end of the show, I did win the "People's Choice" award by an overwhelming majority. Also, my painting was the only one out of the entire show that sold!

The next year, they used my "People's Choice" painting for the cover of the invitation to the show...BUT the jury rejected my work and I couldn't even get into the show that year. Rats.

I had entered the painting "Zabie" and two weeks after my failure to get into the show, I won First Prize at the 1999 PSOA Competition with that same painting...go figure.

I recall that some of the pieces of "art" that were in that show (that I couldn't get into) was a 6 foot plastic moose in a red fireman's suit.

Another "work of art" was a bird's nest made out of fuzzy fabric scraps with 3 large spray painted plastic eggs (from l'eggs pantyhose) in it. The "eggs" were broken open to reveal little magazine cutouts of old movie stars in them. Clever, eh? That silly dang thing won a prize.

These things are to "art" like the eyechart is to "literature."

Life isn't fair and I doubt that I will ever see the current standards of art change much in my lifetime...drat it all.