By Jon Petro

I've been fortunate enough to fulfill one of my dreams while only took a couple jabs to the jaw from writers who actually get paid to write about art. The "Big Bang Abstract Painting for the 21st Century" exhibit has been written about in every major publication of any real interest. At the very least, my work has been introduced to an entirely new class of viewers. I have always been careful not to claim that the premise of my painting was based in any type of 21st century concept or technology. I just assumed that because I am making abstract paintings in the 21st century, they belong to the 21st century. I've made reference to some issues that concern the 21st century in my titles, but my analysis of title objectivity isn't included in this diatribe; that's another story.

At the end of the day, painting is still just painting; it's moving liquid emulsion around on a canvas, and for me, it's done with a very small brush over and over again. That's what I do. I have maintained the position that my current expedition into abstract painting is a process-oriented endeavor. Now whether that's an important thing historically or not isn't really any of my concern. That type of egotism is usually better left up to the people who don't make art, but just try to categorize it.

In the fall of 2005, when I was first contacted by Nick Capasso, curator from the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, about making a studio visit, I had a hard time containing my emotions. The one thing that still bewilders me about the process is just how alien it really is; there isn't any class you can take that explains it. I had to rely on the generous advice from a few of my contemporaries; who are further along in their careers than I. It was a weird, strange trip based on a handful of qualities that I couldn't define or articulate in a sentence. The real joke is that Nick stood me up on our first scheduled studio visit. After a year of emails, voice mails and studio visits, what I thought to be only a dream had, in fact, become a reality. In the end it was my fate to be included with 14 other artists, from New England, to represent what Nick believed to be a loosely-connected thematic trend in art that defined abstract painting for the 21st century.

Email from Xxxxx Xxxxxx, features editor, ArtScope Magazine 11/17/2007

"Hi Jon,

Unfortunately, ArtScope's overdosed [my italics] on DeCordova coverage over our first five issues - they've gotten more than any other institution up to this point - so it's fairly unlikely I'd be able to do anything on your show. Has your Clark show opened yet? I haven't heard anything from them about it.

Thanks,

Xxxxx Xxxxxx, features editor"

Looking back now, I really should have found out more about this features editor and bought him a bottle of something or took him out for dinner; you just never know in this business. What I find absurd about this correspondence is just how narrow-minded this publication is in its own sense of importance. I can't comprehend how any publication could pass on any major museum exhibition, let alone one in your back yard. In the interest of full disclosure, I had approached Artscope with the idea of doing a profile of myself, more than once. So is this email response reflecting the features editor's personal feelings or that of the greater good of the magazine? Finally, the magazine ended up writing a well-deserved feature about Stephen DiRado, whose exhibition "Jump" is also running during the same time period as "The Big Bang" at the DeCordova. The magazine also did a feeble preview of "The Big Bang". So much for being "overdosed [once again, my italics] on DeCordova coverage".

Big Bang! Abstract Painting for the 21st Century. The DeCordova Explodes with Cosmic Sci-fi Stoner Art

Jason Feifer, the DIG Issue 9.4, 01/24/2007

"There are Jon Petro's large canvases, overrun with palm-sized swirls, naked in their tediousness." This quote reflects the state of art criticism today, in only the most jejune sense. So what does "… naked in their tediousness." really mean? I understand what it implies, but I don't know if the adverb tediousness is a quality of genuine art criticism. This is yet another preview, not an authentic analysis of art. Every thing in Jason Feifer's article comes off as retribution for when Feifer made a bad choice to take a class taught by "Two excitable professors…", "…I found their enthusiasm a little sickening…" These quotes should give you an assessment of Feifer's integrity. "…It sounded sweeping and pretentious, but I figured that, at the very least, the workload would be low." (once again my italics) Judging from this article it isn't really based in an argot of art history, which is all too often symptomatic of this type of publication.

Email from Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx, Curatorial Fellow, DeCordova Museum, 01/25/2007

"Dear Big Bang Artists:

A lot of interest with the press. I'm including a link to the article published in the Boston Phoenix, plus the show was selected as a critics' pick by Ken Johnson in Sunday's Boston Globe with an image in the calendar section.

Best,

Xxxx"

Ah, Painting! At the DeCordova, Abstraction is New Again,

By Greg Cook, the Boston Phoenix 01/29/2007

Cook's review reads like a sophomoric attempt at art criticism; I really expected more from him. I've read his other reviews, which I found more interesting than this one. Cook doesn't really say anything new about abstract painting, in any century, which is why I believe that most viewers are uninformed about this faction of painting. By grouping the Big Bang artists to a Jackson Pollock model "painting also inevitably calls up associations to its long history. The most pervasive - and surprising - correspondence in these artists is to Jackson Pollock's famous drip paintings." Cook offers very little more in terms of critical analysis about this exhibition. Perhaps I'm the only artist in the group with any real self-indulgence in the Pollock vain; not just in his sense of consumption. Pollock's essence is about the fact that he becomes the trees, he isn't painting them, and that's the point of a Pollock. Keep in mind that artists, unlike humans, aren't create equal and the individual artists in this exhibition weren't chosen for their similarities, but for their differences within the realm of abstract painting, a point that is grossly overlooked by everyone that wrote about the exhibition.

Seeing a Pattern: From Cosmology to Geology, Science Inspires Abstract Art at DeCordova

By Ken Johnson, the Boston Globe, 02/02/2007

"Making art appear more meaningful and relevant by relating it to some other field of study is a strategy that's become all too common among artists and curators of the postmodern era." Although factual in its concept, it leaves out one major group from its list of participants. That would be the group that includes Johnson, the critics. If I've learned anything in the past few years in this business, it is that without art to write about Johnson would be out of a job. Critics by nature are somewhat parasitic. He does refer to my work as "routinized additive process" so he's not far off the mark. I've read other reviews by Johnson, when he was still in his zenith writing for the New York Times; he doesn't seem to have any real interest in abstract painting. His genuine sense of disgruntlement seems to come from being your basic New Yorker. I do come away from reading this review with an idea that it's more of a rebuke to Nick Capasso, and the concept of the show, than of any individual artist in the group.

I'm left feeling suspicious about the written media experience. I don't, for one moment, believe that anything that was printed about the show is honest, or sincere in its sense of criticism. All of the comments about the show seem unusually similar to me, so what are the odds that everyone has correctly criticized the show? I believe that the most articulate in the group of writers is Ken Johnson, and I do think he is correct in his assumption that this exhibition is "... a snapshot of a certain kind of generic present-day abstraction." I wouldn't use the term "generic", but it's not my quote. I'm fairly confident that this train of thought has more to do with Boston not being a principal art market, but instead is one saturated in its own sense of academia, rather than the cutting edge. More importantly, it's almost impossible to write a history in the present tense, which if you are familiar with the history art you'd understand that abstract painting is still in its infancy. As my 15 minutes of Museum status fades, I'm still left in marvel by the whole experience. Regardless of what anyone thinks about me, or my work there is one thing that remain a fact, that I was invite to exhibit at the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, and everyone wrote about it, even me!

Published in Blank Canvas Magazine, Issue # 8; April 2007 P.O. Box 70587 Worcester, MA 01607