Avant-tout-glitter-gardism: Dog Shows, Art Shows and the "Death of ____ [fill in the blank]"

Two years ago, when I realized that I needed to have a dog in my life, it was for reasons outside of such things as "Best in Breed" or "Best in discipline."  I needed a dog for much more personal reasons, like companionship, all the known and unequaled joys of having a dog as a pet.  

Léda, a whippet, a mongrel breed until about 100 years ago

Then came the unexpected request of the breeder -- she wanted my dog, Léda, to be shown in the conformation show ring.  Not wanting to be impolite, I accepted, curious more than anything, as to the whole thing, this notion that there is ONE standardized physical beauty that can be captured by a particular dog (or bitch).  Of course, after a few of these events, one gets a sense that judges are not always singularly objective nor infallible, and worst, breed standards do not take into account most of the essential characteristics of what makes a good pet nor what is simply a healthy dog.  In fact, the conformation show ring can be like a humorless beauty pageant.  Its discourse is jarringly 19th century, extremely so, and this jumbled cauldron of eugenics, purity of race and bloodlines, perpetuates an idea of perfection that is superfluous at best and fatally dangerous at worst.

This was confirmed in my mind a few days ago, while walking my dog in the Bois de Vincennes, when we ran into a German Shepherd who was a guide dog for the blind trainee.  She was, in fact, rehabbing from a hip joint replacement, at 16 months of age, because of hip dysplasia, and so, "on vacation" from training.  The foster-mom of this guide-dog-to-be told me that she had raised three other German Shepherds for guide dog training, and one of the three had also gone through hip surgery as well.  One only needs to do a quick search on the internet to see that the conformation show ring standard of the German Shepherds may be the culprit of the breed's genetic demise.  

Below is a video on Youtube which summarizes the problems of breeding for the conformational show ring.  The exaggeration of particular "sought after" characteristics that breeders desire often harm the dog breeds' health and well-being:

How 100 Years of Breeding Changed These Popular Dog Breeds

One wonders if these deformations and genetic malformations, bred and rebred over the past 100 years, do not have some resemblance to the discourse that has created the mutant that is what we call Contemporary Art.  

As in the need to breed very specific breed traits and standards in the world of dog shows, the discourse that has been used for the past 100+ years by art historians, critics, curators, gallerists, advisors and their ilk, on what is "acceptable" and "valid," that unfathomable "je ne sais quoi" that defines who or what is accepted into the discourse that is Contemporary Art, has created the conditions in which we live, this strange parallel land of inegalitarian looniness that is the art industry of today.  

The sentiment is captured in a dramatic way in a letter by Jimi Dams of The Envoy Enterprises, a gallery in the Lower East Side of New York, this week, explaining why he was closing the gallery after ten years of activity:

"I have no interest in mimicking innovation.  I have no interest in any kind of short-termism and I do not wish to be a part of an art industry in which a four leaf clover gets stripped of its extra leaf to make it fit into the standard idea of a clover.

"I have no interest in being part of an art industry where eyes have been replaced by dollar signs; an eagerness to experience and learn replaced by hiring personal shoppers; and ambition, which once used to push the quality of art, reduced to a hunger for being listed in whatever top ten du jour."  

Perhaps all the talk about the "Death of Painting" or for that matter, the "Death of Art" is really then neither of those things, but simply the fitting and clear ending, a cancerous demise, but a very real one nonetheless, of the Discourse that has created the contemporary art industry.  The implosion of this once romantic idea of avant-gardism, now completely usurped and incredibly and unbearably defanged by the upper-reaches of the  0.1% into some sort of pseudo-elite club of avant-tout-glitter-gardism is not too far from how a good working dog like the German Shepherd, still the most popular breed of dog in the world, has been reduced to a genetic mutant requiring hip replacement surgery at 16 months of age.

The final point though is this: the demise of a particular breed does not equal the death of all dogs.  As such, the death of the discourse that has sustained the art industry for the past century does not equal the death of painting, or the death of art for that matter.

We are at the end of a particular moment, but that does not preclude all other moments.