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I blame it all on Holland Cotter.

Sure, some of the cause may have originated further back in time — from Karl Marx, say, or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and their silly, untenable notions about the “implicit contract” that supposedly “exists” between members of “society” to govern through the “general will.” But, this is 2009, my friends, and those dudes are old, so Holland Cotter seems much more suitable a scapegoat for the recent burr that had got itself lodged under my critical saddle.

Or so were my thoughts when I heard about “Threads from There to Here,” a show of work by a group of artists who call themselves the Burning Artist Co-op that is running through January 22 at the Umber Studios in Minneapolis. To be honest, I was plain skeptical about this show. This was partially because, having met members of the nascent group in 2003, I had seen the work they were doing back in the day. In the spring of that year, while minding my own business in the Soo Visual Art Center’s gift shop, I was approached by two young artists who pointed out that I was holding one of their works. They explained they had just moved to Minnesota after finishing art degrees in Wisconsin, and one of the artists, whose name was Marq, had a grand plan for artistic success. Through their website, and via small local exhibitions, the group would sell small, inexpensive art multiples all over the Twin Cities and region, and this would earn them enough money to support their more ambitious work. Marq then told me the group had an upcoming show at the Rogue Buddha gallery, so that I could, if I were interested, see more of their efforts — which I did do, but only to my disappointment. The group’s art — big and sloppy paintings, muddy and inexpert wood block prints — was on the whole mishmashy and unfocused, unpracticed and scarcely advanced past undergraduate self-indulgence into more mature expression. I never saw another show by the group, and I learned, a few years later, that members started moving away from the Twin Cities — in pursuit of new lives and opportunities — not long after that show.

Another, more immediate reason I had my doubts about this show — and this is where Holland Cotter figures in — is I’d had, thanks to Cotter, my fill of art made by collectives of late. Cotter was the author, in January of 2003, of an influential piece in the New York Times called “Doing Their Own Thing, Making Art Together," wherein he described the reemergence, in the art world, of a certain kind of hippy-dippy idealism. “The collective itself, as a social unit, was an important element in the 60's utopian equation,” Cotter wrote. “Whatever form the concept took — the commune, the band, the cult — its implications of shared resources, dynamic interchange and egos put on hold made it a model for change…. The collective impulse has never died out in American art; and now it is surfacing again, for the most part outside New York. In cities like Milwaukee, Providence, R. I., St. Louis and Philadelphia, as well as several in Canada, an old countercultural model, often much changed, is being revived, in some cases by artists barely out of their teens.” Cotter went on to describe some of the more prominent groups at that time, and he defined their general characteristics: They might exist primarily online, or they could be more brick-and-mortar; they might be politically activist and militant, or they might be more Fluxus-oriented, producing an ephemeral, give-away kind of art. Most of the groups’ members were young (i.e., in their twenties); most were not interested, at least not openly, in breaking into the mainstream art world; most of the groups were closed-off and tightly-knit, composed of social circles of friends getting together to support the mutual creation of art.

Not such bad ideas on the surface, really, which is likely why Cotter himself gushed about the potential of these collectives — even writing a follow-up to his original story three years afterward. However, based on what I’ve seen of local artist collectives since 2003 I’m not so sure he’s right. Artist collectives have proliferated in Minnesota in recent years like WMDs in the Hindu Kush, taking such vague action-committee names as GroundUP, the Spunk Art Collective, the Shitizens, the Belfry, the Nomadic Art Collective, Rosalux, Form + Content, Hardland/Heartland, the Rain Collective — not to mention the Burning Artist Co-op itself — and so on and so forth. While the idea of artists banding together to pool resources and provide mutual support was admirable — perhaps even, in this day and age, necessary — unfortunately, all too often the result of these groups’ efforts (i.e., the art that eventually made its way into the public) was rather lacking.

At the risk of overgeneralizing all of this artistic production, I’ve found local collectivist-produced art as a rule to be characterized by a lack of panache and inspiration and by a spirit of bland creation-by-committee. Most often, these groups seem to eschew notions of individual accomplishment, eccentric vision, personal inspiration, connection to the viewer, and singular artistic excellence, favoring instead watered-down work that fails to inspire. The best example of my reaction to the art of collectivist groups can be found right here on this blog, but one could take any given collectivist mash-up over the past few years — such as this, this, this, or this — and find the same stream of artistic sloppiness. As a broad rule, these groups seemed to function less as a means to create vibrant, lively, individualistic art than as a way for artists to circumvent the ideal that artistic excellence demands care, the application of hard labor, careful practice, constant revision, and a willingness to keep at it. And what’s worse than this, in their interactions with the community many of the groups (though not all) tended to exhibit a spirit of insularity, self-congratulation, entitlement, and belligerence toward non-members.

Ironically, it is as though the accolades and support bandied about within each closed circle of friends has given artists the idea that there is the need to consider what an outside viewer might think of them and their work. And while cliques and clubs have always been part-and-parcel of any arts community, the phenomenon of online social networking has, in the Age of Holland Cotter, rapidly broadened and universalized the circle-jerk impulse. Just in case you’re not currently tapped into the local art networks operating via Facebook, rest assured that they’re replete with insidery joking, wry mutual back patting, stuck-in-my-own-head status-updating, and mutual shilling for each others’ art events. It’s passing strange that while the ease of connection via the internet has made it easier-than-ever to link up to widening circles of artist buddies (hint: there’s even a group on Facebook called “1,000,000 Facebook Artists"), this has ironically reduced the chance for artists to reach people who are far more important to their professional well-being: The viewers who might actually consume their art.

Of course, it may not matter to these collectives what people think of the art they produce; it may not matter even if outsiders ever see the art. Instead, the current cultural moment may much more about a subversion of the existing paradigm. Cotter’s second article on Collectivism in art suggests this is the case with these collectives. While obsessing about the bad, hyperinflated art market of 2006, he suggests these new groups offer an alternative market possibility: “One way or another, joint production among parties of equal standing — we're not talking about master artist and studio assistants here — scrambles existing aesthetic formulas. It may undermine the cult of the artist as media star, dislodge the supremacy of the precious object and unsettle the economic structures that make the art world a mirror image of the inequities of American culture at large. In short, it confuses how we think about art and assign value to it. This can only be good.” Hippy-dippy, indeed.

Credit goes to Cotter for thinking outside the box, but to me such subversion is not all it’s cracked up to be — and I say this even if it means in a few short years I’ll become the dinosaur that Cotter so desperately seems determined not to be. Certainly there’s a chance — however small — that Holland Cotter might be right, that maybe these collectives will figure art out and will eventually produce something worth looking at, perhaps even purchasing. For now, however, as is clear in local art, they’re just not there yet.

That's the end of that, for now.

But stay tuned, kids! In a few days we’ll present more exciting adventures of local art collectives in a follow-up installment we’re calling: “Your Dreams Were Your Ticket Out (a.k.a., Cotter, Part 2)”