What is the San Diego Art Prize and what are its goals, here is a brief summary from its organizers:

Recognize and celebrate existing visual art accomplishments by spotlighting local artists. Create an exciting event that facilitates cross-pollination between cultural organizations and strengthens and invigorates the San Diego Visual Art Scene.

Broaden the audience of the visual arts in San Diego by gaining national attention to the competition through a dedicated media campaign.

Promote the vision of the future role that the visual arts will play in the San Diego community as lively, thriving, positive and empowering.

Expand the infrastructure of spokespeople/art celebrities who can bring awareness to San Diego and perform as role models for our student artists.

When you're young and you maybe can't see art, you're interested in the story.
Clement Greenberg


I chose the above quote by Clement Greenberg, undoubtedly and for some arguably, the most iconic and revered or despised art critic the art world has seen in order to make my point. Certainly no implied associations being made here between his writings and my struggling attempts at the same, no just the idea of being young and/or an emerging artist not being able to see “art” or to make art which in several ways, sums up a reasonable amount of the artwork that was on display in the “New Contemporaries” aka SD Art Prize exhibit. It was difficult not only to see the art but also to feel it or feel something period. Instead there were plenty of good stories to be told, repeated over and over again, nuanced from time to time depending upon the audience they were being told to. Fortunately, everybody likes a good story but only if it is told right.



Roman De Salvo - Liquid Ballistic




Lael Corbin - Peculiar Velocity


Was I surprised by the choices ERRE, De Salvo and Antin made as in “wow, how did that happen?” then I believe that I was. The “why” intrigues me the most and my surprise is rooted in it. My cynical side begs me to ask how hard of a selection was it for them, my logical self tells me that the choices they made weren’t too dissimilar from works they have done already and/or continue to explore in their own private works – even if that work goes back several years. But why do that? Does the selection make any sense at all? Could there have been better suited artists chosen or at least better equipped? i.e. less story and more art? Even more challenging works? My answer is a resounding yes. Why did they not explore the possibility of selecting someone who runs counter to their tastes even someone that they potentially disliked immensely – aesthetically speaking of course?

The exception as there is one to every rule is Lael Corbin. If out of the three artists, Wiese, Corbin and Jaeger, there is one who has the most potential to shine it’s going to be Corbin. A pretty lofty, dangerous and presumptuous pronunciation being made here I’m fully aware, but one that is a segue into the next quote by Greenberg, and also because I believe Corbin has that potential. I could of course be wrong – or not.


We have differences but we're not made different. If you don't agree with me, you're wrong.
Clement Greenberg



Marcos Ramirez ERRE - Crossroads





Allison Wiese - Industry Need Not Want, Root Hog or Die


I don’t think that ERRE, De Salvo and Antin need anyone to agree with them nor do I think (maybe) that they care if anyone does – they’re beyond storytelling and have all the faculties to make art. As they should. ERRE has notably been invited to participate twice, once in ’94 and again in ’97, for inSite, was part of the Whitney Biennial in 2000 and most recently is exhibiting at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in the exposition Strange New World - Art and Design from Tijuana/Extraño. He was also commissioned by the MCASD in 1999 to produce an outdoor sculpture entitled “Acorazado”. De Salvo notably has a sculpture titled “Liquid Ballistic” on permanent display in the sculpture garden of the MCASD La Jolla and recently installed last year in the building of the new Caltrans District 11 offices in Old Town, a public sculpture “Nexus Eucalyptus”. A detailed account about this work and on the artist can be found here by the San Diego Union Tribune’s art critic Robert Pincus. Eleanor Antin is by far the most critically and widely acclaimed artist of the three. She has done filmmaking, worked in installation, performance, writing, drawing, photography and video. She has had one-woman exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. Antin received her first retrospective exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1999. She teaches visual art at UCSD and was recently included in WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution exhibit recently on view at the Geffen Contemporary Los Angeles with one of her more renowned works entitled “Carving: A Traditional Sculpture”. A more informative discourse on Antin’s retrospective can be found here.

So, am I right to think that Wiese and Jaeger are not deserving of this nod from up above? – if you don’t agree with me, you’re wrong. But more importantly, shouldn’t we be discussing why they were chosen in the first place, under what auspices, under what criteria, under what gage of quality, under what significance or importance, or of how their works hold the promises of a new vision, a new contemporanéité? Or does it matter – don’t we always end up choosing what we like anyway? Is there meaning behind the selection or is it just an opportunity? Does Jaeger even know who Antin is and how she has paved the way, opened the doors and made it easier for a whole new generation of women artists like herself, to try and carry that same mantle as an artist? Who can make that call, predict the future of an artist or make judgements about the work (I, we, you can try) but it’s certainly an impossible task - but the artwork can. How? Because it cannot lie. Infuse the work with all the hyperbole and storytelling you want from the artist’s mind or mouth, but there is no substitute for experience and feeling and knowledge.

Larry Rivers and Frank O’Hara wrote back in the early sixties a guide on how to proceed in the arts as an artist, a requiem on the steps to becoming successful. It was part farce, part actuality, part belief in the system of making art but more importantly about the sincerity, the integrity of being an artist and always in sync with the work you’re making – being in control and putting it out there to be seen not because you like it or because it’s pretty but because you believe it can make a difference. Taking risks. One of the more memorable suggestions was to introduce yourself as Delacroix and then hand them your wet paint brushes. It’s about consistency and not about what’s next. Another painting made does not guarantee a good one.



Eleanor Antin - 100 Boots




Pamela Jaeger - Untitled


Is it fair to judge a younger artist’s work to that of her predecessors? If it is indeed a mentorship or apprenticeship then there is no comparison, let them grind pigment and mix paint, or stretch canvases for the next 10 years before cutting them lose, let them earn the craft and not the University degree. If we are allowed to compare, then Wiese might want to look to Jean-Pierre Raynaud, a French artist for an example of “détournement” and specifically to a piece of his entitled “La Maison” started in 1969 and completed in 1993. Jaeger on the other hand might want to consult any of the Chicago Imagists and in particular the works of Ed Paschke – a good lesson in how to handle the figure in a phantasmagorical world. So does this prove that I am right or wrong? You know what Greenberg was quoted as saying, and now you know what I think, but then why the no confidence vote in Wiese and Jaeger you ask – it’s because they haven’t found that one voice unique to them, that one language that makes us sit up straight and pay attention to them, that one vision that stirs a feeling deep within our gut because it is the (art) that is missing and it is as foreign to them as it is to us. If ERRE, De Salvo and Antin are as good at choosing as they are at making their art, then I will be wrong.

Kevin Freitas