SCHOOLED

Gentle, Gentile Genitalia no.6, Spark Boon '09

Before I came to the terrifying realization that I had neither the talent nor the stamina to become a full-time visual artist I followed the standard post-graduate protocol and crawled up every anus within spitting distance of a gallery. I showed up at every opening (why don't they serve food at these things anymore?), attended every workshop (my favorite was called How To Be Noticed and Find Representation Without Geting Dirty presided over by two lovely women painters, neither of whom had any gallery affiliation), contributed to every silent auction (does anyone remember Artists Against ADHD?), sat through countless lectures (where else could I hope to make a dent in my sleep deficit?) and endured every humiliating studio visit no matter how visually opaque and culturally illiterate my guests happened to be (can you imagine asking an author after reading their novel 'so, what's your book about'?).

Gentle, Gentile Genitalia no.11, Spark Boon '09

By far, the most mortifying experience I ever had was being selected as a finalist for the Joseph Choynski Memorial Fellowship for Emerging New York Painters and Sculptors. The Choynski is terribly hard to get and the politics are notoriously brutal. The jurors rotate from year to year and their identity is supposed to remain secret. (Finding out who the Choynski jurors are is something of a blood sport and is only marginally easier than being awarded the actual grant).

from right to left: Chimay and Boudouin (photo courtesy of Galerie Gaufre)

The year I made it to the finals the nameless, faceless adjudicators turned out to be the famous Belgian conceptual art team Baudouin & Chimay.

The fact that I had gotten as far as I did in the vetting process had little to do with my work and more to do with the fact that I was dating Boudouin's mistress who parenthetically was Chimay's sister and who in turn was the estranged wife of the CFO of Côte d'Or chocolates - (the Flemish, it seems, have an even greater taste for les Liasons Dangereuses than the French).

Gentle, Gentile Genitalia no.29, Spark Boon '09

 When the two of them came to my studio to see my work in person they weren't simply nonplussed but were violently and vociferously repelled. Who, they asked me, did I think I was churning out stir-fried neo-neoexpressionism while the world was collapsing under the weight of American neo-neocolonialism. Could I possibly be, they wondered with what seemed like genuine concern, unaware of contemporary art's ironic imperatives? Was I somehow trying to be both apolitical and sincere?

Was I, they kept asking over and over again, serious?!

The fellowship went to some young gal from Long Island who did colorful portraits of farm animals wearing clown suits. 

It turned out that Boudouin and Chimay had secretly taped my studio visit and featured it in their 2011 Whitney video installation Cowering Yet Creative: A Discourse on Artistic Behavior.

They received a MacArthur last year.

The identities of the jurors remains a secret.