This panel got all riled up and that is a good thing, barbs were traded and the audience was often willing to go for the throat. I wish the audience at CAA would do this more often. It is a crime that we can sit through often confusing, jargon laden presentations only to abscond for coffee. At one point in the L.A. panel, Shana Nys Dambrot just threw it out there — Hockney is phoning it in, he is a bad painter, she never got it. I don’t agree and neither did Betty Ann Brown of Cal Sate Northridge, but it was refreshing to see Shana launch it. I admired the candor of this panel, I loved that Peter Frank said, “The worst thing a critic can do is ignore a show.” It’s true. It’s good to hear things that are true.

In the panel, there was a great deal of talk about writing ethics, about the distinction between magazine people and academics, and how a critic takes their individual approach.  I liked what Andrew Berardini said when he mentioned that he is looking for something larger than himself and that he has to deal with the fact that he wants certain work to live on and inform the future and other things to go away — actually he quoted an artist that said that when we judge a show, we should bascially think about the show as if it were found by a civilization in the distant future. Is this us, is this what we want to leave the world? True again.

Another theme that emerged was the time honored idea, usually by people from other places, is that L.A. is not a major art center, that only now is it becoming one. The panelists, of course knowing that L.A. is a major place and has been for thirty years, said exactly that. I would add, though, that the people holding such thoughts need to take a long look at their assumptions and what they hold to be true about art and the people that make it. It’s all around you, CAA visitors. We have hundreds of galleries, some of the top galleries in the world — they are great, you should visit, I’ll drive you.