Library of Congress Bicentennial Celebration Presentation - Page 19

The Critics

After the two near disastrous P.F.D.A. efforts at introducing wildlife art into the San Jose area in 1988 and 1989, an exhibitor at the final show wrote a critique in a local crafts journal, dismissing the club as... "a group of real amateurs," who should "stay with what they do well - have little get togethers, copy each other's work, and take turns giving each other ribbons." In Show-biz, one must expect the morning-after critics but reviewing this appraisal, ten years later, it is hard to sustain any hope that  was meant to be constructive. That "little get togethers" is too patronizing, while the charge of "copying each other's work" is the most serious that can be leveled in art circles. For our purposes here however, this critique shall be made constructive, for it contains elements of the sort of criticisms heard in the art form for the past 40 years, and is almost a legacy in itself.

The little get togethers have already been described. They inspired similar efforts to bring wildlife art and carving into the Pacific northwest, Idaho, and other regions of California. Whether amateurish or professional, successful or not, any such effort to elevate the culture and advance the arts, hardly rates contempt. As to the charge of copying, it must be explained that among artists and sculptors of every stripe, there exist the few with full blown paranoia about copying and plagiarism, who must find it at every opportunity - and who make the Letters section in the art journals such a bore. Here, however, the critic may have had no knowledge of that Davenport Manifesto of 1974.

When the detailed accuracy and realism of the Living Bird became the standard for the artform, the resultant striving for lifelike perfection could only result in a kind of universal conformity and a "cloned" look. By the mid '80's, the show visitors drifting along the rows of entries, could be heard mildly complaining, "You used to be able to tell who made 'em. Now they all look alike." There can hardly be a veteran carver from that period who has not heard a variant of this, nodded sympathetically - and didn't turn a hair. The good news was that he was now getting higher prices for this kind of work. The bad news was that either everybody was copying him, or he was copying everybody else.

This cloned look was given an even greater boost by the new national interest in club sponsored carving seminars. These had the dual purpose of encouraging newcomers into the artform, and increasing the competitive skills of club members. With paychecks in hand, many well known masters of the competition style demonstrated their techniques at these seminars, usually with the aid of slide shows. This led to the production of videos, How - to, and pattern books, the popularity and availability of which we have already mentioned.

<< PREV  |  NEXT >>