Critical Abstraction and Radical Transcendence:(Michel Luc Bellemare)

“Critical Abstraction and Radical Transcendence: (Transcending systemic collusion in Canada’s and
Ottawa’s Art World)”.
New Critical Abstraction Paintings by Michel Luc Bellemare.
Description:
This exhibition examines systemic collusion in the art world, while demonstrating that by being
flexible, creative and personable, an artist can survive and possibly thrive on the outskirts of the reified
cronyist networks of the national and local art world. Networking, which is a buzz word thrown around
by the dominant art institutions and its state-personnel as a means succeeding in the art world, is but an
honorable and politically correct term for cronyism.
To succeed in Canada’s state-governed art-world, whether locally and/or nationally, requires the
creation of an alliance between art associates, colleagues and/or friends, who share similar aims, in
order to control, manipulate and/or artificially construct a closed-system, where decisions,
appointments and monies, which appear democratically allocated, are in fact highly limited and
predetermined by a select few for the benefit of a select few, namely those of the alliance. Those whom
the state financially supports and has deemed artistically benign, ideologically inconsequential and thus
acceptable for the masses. Whether it is faculty members, who nominate each other for art awards,
while other faculty members sit conveniently on the deciding jury. Whether it is siblings, strategically
positioned along important Gallery nodes, by a shadowy unit of state and former state-art-personnel
that peddle their influence in order to control artistic tastes. Or whether it is a series of seemingly
private galleries, who have virtually no viewership and/or public art sales, but who are nevertheless
capable of corralling the lion share of public state funds for art purchases, i.e. empty galleries who
supply a false-front in order to sustain the illusion of democracy when it comes to funneling public funds
to state-ideologically approved artists, networking, or more appropriately cronyism, is the cornerstone
of the contemporary art world.
From art magazines to major newspapers, from corporate bank art gimmicks to grocery store
conglomerate art awards, cronyism, a small unit of well-connected art-personnel, is that thing which is
championing and inflating the latest state-approved art fads and/or state-approved naïve, wet behind
the ears, set of M.F.A. patsies, beyond their actual value and worth. Network cronyism is what inflates
the M.F.A. balloon and bursts independent grassroots artistic manifestations. Network cronyism is what
permits the celebration of the senior citizen artist, today, whose artistic practice could not sustain a
living throughout his or her life and whose art was uninspiring and bland at best, but whose dedication
and unquestioning obedience to the dominant state-ideology was bar-none. Network cronyism is what
makes the art world and art markets go around, excluding and ostracizing outside artistic
manifestations, while inflating and aggrandizing their own banal art productions.
So what is the point of this money-go-round 1. It is to sustain the state, that is to sustain
state-sponsored art-institutions, state-art-personnel and more importantly state-ideology, 2. It is to
keep radical stimulating meaningful art from infecting the masses from inciting genuine social change, 3.
It is a means for the state to simultaneously say it is supporting the arts, while controlling artistic
practices and public taste, in addition to keeping public funds from falling into the hands of artistic
movements and meaningful art practices that are not state-approved and may not be state-ideologysupporting entities.