Facebook, Curator of Culture: Salon des Refusés

EDITOR'S NOTE
After the Academy posted a response on this blog to facebook's removal of Steven Assael's artwork (Jan 31, 2011, 5:22pm), The New York Times, Gawker, MSNBC, The Cornell Daily Sun, The Register, ARTINFO, and other news sources have covered this story. Please see below for photos facebook has removed from the Academy and Academy Alum's accounts.

Where do you draw the line?

Steven Assael, "Simone" ink on paper.

Artwork image removed by facebook, 1/31/2011
from the Academy's "Uncovered" exhibition on facebook.

Alyssa Monks, (MFA 2001) "Press" oil on canvas, 2008.
Artwork image removed by facebook, 9/2010.
Alyssa's original facebook account was disabled.

Richard T. Scott (MFA 2007) "Hermetica" oil on canvas.
Artwork removed by facebook, 1/30/2011

John Wellington (MFA 1990) "Break Clean From the Past" oil on aluminum.
Artwork removed by facebook, 2/13/2011
(John has since posted "facebook-is-keeping-you-safe"
censored images on his facebook page.)

Judy Fox, "Venus" 2004. Filled Resin, Casien 67 x 21 x 17
Artwork removed by facebook, 2/22/2011
from the album of the Put Up or Shut Up exhibition
by outstanding faculty of prestigious MFA programs
in the greater NYC area. Also included in the exhibition
were artists Vito Acconci, Jesse Bransford, Maureen Connor,
Patricia Cronin, Vincent Desiderio, Julie Heffernan, Edgar Jerins,
Sharon Horvath, Keith Mayerson, and John Torreano.
________
NB: This image was removed from the Academy's facebook page
after this article was published in The New York Times.

Gary Schneider, "Young Man, 1908, 2008" pigmented ink
on paper, 52.5 x 38.5 in.
Artwork removed by facebook, 2/22/2011
from the album of the Put Up or Shut Up exhibition. 
________
NB: This image was removed from the Academy's facebook page
after this article was published in The New York Times.

Patricia Cronin "Canto VI: Circle Three, The Gluttons"
watercolor on paper, 60 x 40 in.

Artwork removed by facebook, 3/1/2011

from the album of the Put Up or Shut Up exhibition.
________
NB: This image was removed from the Academy's facebook page

after the story was published in The New York Times
and also by many other news sources. 

Artwork: Judy Fox, "Venus" 2004. Filled Resin, Casien 67 x 21 x 17
Article: The New York Times

Removed by facebook, 3/10/2011 

from the Has Your Artwork Been Removed By Facebook? album. 

This album has been created to track artworks that have been 

removed from the Academy's page. The "offending" artworks appear 

with text from articles posted by news sources reporting on 

facebook's censorship of artwork on the Academy's page.

---

JUNE 13, 2011, 3 months later...

After three email messages of "photo removed" received today (in these instances, facebook does not tell you which photo has been removed, so now we're on the hunt for them...), facebook - in an unexpected turn - sent us this "Please Review" notice upon login: 

"We've received one or more reports that content you posted violates Facebook policies.
We have not yet taken any action. If this content threatens or harasses anyone,
or contains nudity or excessive violence, please remove it immediately to avoid
your account being warned, blocked, or disabled.

If you don't think this content violates our policies, you don't need to do anything.
If you choose not to remove this content, please keep in mind that
Facebook may still take action on the content and your account."

Of course we don't think this content violates facebook's policies. The images that the New York Academy of Art (an internationally-respected graduate school teaching traditional skills and techniques in the service of vital contemporary art with an emphasis on the human figure) has posted are of student, faculty and alumni artwork. The Academy was founded by Andy Warhol, has been visited by President Clinton, and even enjoyed patronage conferred by HRH Prince of Wales.  

Where facebook has become an entity that can affect real cultural ripples, as in the "toppling" of Hosni Mubarak, how does the perception of artwork weigh in? The question remains: how and who shall evaluate what - in a public forum - the public may see?

Art has always asked and responded to this question. If the name of the game is communication and the spread of ideas, should a social network use different criteria to evaluate (art) content than an art history book or a museum? 

Well, folks, what do you think?

And on the same day, current student Aleah Chapin's facebook profile photo was removed as well.
She reposted it, as seen here.  

---

August 12, 2011: 
"The needs of many outweigh the needs of few..."

Artwork: John Jacobsmeyer, "Planet New Hampshire" 2007. Oil on Canvas 36 x 36 in. 

Removed by facebook, 8/12/2011
John Jacobsmeyer was Chair of Faculty at the New York Academy of Art. 

Facebook, Curator of Culture

As the Academy makes its first bold forays into the expanding worlds of social media, we find ourselves reeling from a recent exchange with facebook, and on the edge of an interesting debate. 

It’s not “Contemporary vs. Traditional” or “Disegno vs. Colore.”  It’s much more universal and it drives to the heart of the age-old dialogue in visual culture: What is Art?

Just today, facebook alerted me that an image which violates their Terms of Use was removed from the New York Academy of Art’s facebook page. This image – a drawing by Steven Assael (see below) – is in an exhibition curated by the Academy and shown at the Eden Rock Gallery in St. Barth’s. 

And this isn’t the first time...  Alyssa Monks (MFA 2001) was censored by facebook, too. (Also read Huffington Post’s comments.) How does the de-facebooking of other works of fine art connect to the recent decision by the Smithsonian to remove David Wojnarowicz’s artwork from the National Portrait Gallery’s online and on-site exhibition?

As an institution of higher learning with a long tradition of upholding the art world’s “traditional values and skills,” we, the Graduate School of Figurative Art, find it difficult to allow facebook to be the final arbiter – and online curator – of the artwork we share with the world.

Steven Assael, "Simone" ink on paper.
Artwork image removed by facebook from the 
Academy's display of an exhibition on facebook. 

If it begins with Steven Assael, a modern master, who's next? Is it Kurt Kauper? (His drawing is still on facebook.) And then… must we censor artworks by our own MFA graduates? In this online kingdom in which facebook seems to rule, allegedly as a tool of universal communication and equal opportunity advancement, how shall the New York Academy of Art continue to impartially promote its under-recognized artists?  

If facebook is a new online Salon de Paris, where a faceless group of “curators” determine what artwork the public should see, well then please consider our website the Salon des Refusés!  

And so we now ask: How is FACEBOOK controlling ART?

Lightning Rod: Hilary Harkness

Hilary Harkness is a painter represented by Mary Boone Gallery in NYC. She draws inspiration from multi-disciplinary sources - history (including WWII), literature (such as the work of Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein), and women's studies (focused on issues of inclusion and historical representation). One strategy she has employed to interrogate the historical narrative has been re-casting WWII events with all-female characters, allowing her to explore universals (e.g., power struggles, chains of command, the sheer exertion of will and desire) without the distraction of gender-biases. Her upcoming show at Mary Boone Gallery opens May 5th, 2011.

What was your greatest artistic "eureka moment," and what were you doing just prior to having it?

Lightning Rod - Saya Woolfalk

Saya Woolfalk is a New York artist who re-imagines the world in multiple dimensions (sculpture, installation, painting, performance and video). She has exhibited at PS1/MoMA; Deitch Projects; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Momenta Art; Performa09; and has been written about on Art21's blog. With funding from the NEA, her solo exhibition The Institute of Empathy, will open at Real Art Ways in the fall of 2010.

What can we achieve by representing the body in art today?

Lightning Rod - David Humphrey

David Humphrey is a New York artist represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co. An anthology of his art writing, Blind Handshake, was released this year by Periscope Publishing. He is a senior critic at Yale and was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome last year. He currently has a collaborative exhibition with Adam Cvijanovic at Postmasters gallery called Defrosted, a Life of Walt Disney. 

Does reproducibility contribute to a work's vitality in our increasingly wired culture? How might this effect our thinking about painting and sculpture?

Lightning Rod - Martha Mayer Erlebacher

Martha Mayer Erlebacher was trained originally in Abstract Expressionism, but (along with her husband Walter) broke from this school in the late 60’s and quickly became recognized as one of the leading representational figurative and still-life artists in America. As a faculty member at the New York Academy of Art for several years, she has served as Faculty Chair and directed the anatomy program. She regularly shows her work nationally and internationally and her work has been featured in many books and periodicals. Erlebacher’s work examines the deep metaphorical and social themes of contemporary culture through her painterly and aesthetic images.


In January, New York gallerist Jeffrey Deitch was chosen as Director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. This is the most recent example of the close and interconnected relationship between museums, their boards of directors, collectors, gallerists, auction houses and artists. How or will the further tightening of relationships among these groups impact on the world of representational or figurative painting or of the creation of visual art in general?

Lightning Rod - Will Cotton

Will Cotton's sumptuous oil paintings are in the soft focus, soft-core tradition of 18th-century masters Broc, Gerard, Franque and Fragonard. Like his predecessors, Cotton (born in Massachusetts in 1965 and studied art at New York's Cooper Union and the New York Academy of Art) paints beautiful, creamy skinned nudes amidst luscious surroundings. But while Cotton's paintings recall the sensuality and delight of his forefathers, Cotton updates his opulent source material by replacing pastoral love scenes with mountains of sweets and erotic treats. Cotton is now a Senior Critic at the Academy.


What are the criteria that make a work of art contemporary/relevant?