Students : Student
Show
Each year, work is selected for the Annual Student Exhibition by an outside juror.
2008 Annual Juried Student Exhibition:
The ESU Department of Art will hold the Annual Juried Student Exhibition in the Eppink and Gilson Galleries April 7th through May 2nd. This exhibition is an annual event open to all ESU students who have created works in courses taken throught the Art Department in the past year. (From last year's student show to this year's student show.)
Students may enter up to three pieces in any media. The work must be able to fit through the doors of the Gallery. Pieces must be ready for display-meaning paintings should be dry and two-dimensional work ready to hang. Three-dimensional work must be stable and physically suitable for display. Works will be accepted in the Gilson and Eppink Galleries beginning at 9:00 am Tuesday April 1st. All works must be received no later than 4pm, April 1st to be included in the jury process. All works must have an entry form securely attached. Entry forms are available in the Department of Art Office and the Gallery Office.
The Gallery staff will assist you with matting your two-dimensional works for judging. You will need to provide your own mat board and foam board, or purchase it from the gallery. The opening for the show will be Monday, April 7 from 6-8 pm. Department scholarships will be handed out that evening.
Anne Pearce, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art and Director of Greenlease Gallery at Rockhurst, will jury the exhibition this year. Anne will begin the jurying process on Wednesday, April 2nd at 9:00.
Unike past student exhibitions, works not accepted into the student show may be taken to the Salon de Refuses’** exhibition at the Emporia Arts Council at 618 Mechanic. Students choosing to participate in the Salon de Refuses’ will be responsible for delivering their works to the Emporia Arts Council and installing their own pieces with the help of the Gallery Museum class and the Arts Council staff. Works may be received at the Arts Council between 12 - 5 pm Tuesday thru Friday and Saturday 10-3pm. The opening for this event will be immediately after the Student Show, April 7th from 8-9 pm, at the Arts Council.
At the end of both exhibitions, the work may be picked up beginning Friday, May 2nd at 12:00 p.m. Any work not picked up from the Gilson and Eppink Galleries by Monday, May 5th by 4:00 p.m. will become the property of the University. The Arts Coucil will be open Tuesday May 6th 12:00 pm – 5pm.
2008 Annual Student Exhibition Entry Form
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** The Salon des Refuses’
It's a little difficult for us today to really grasp the volatile nature of the Parisian art world in the turbulent times of the 1860s. As painters today, we have no dominant art institution to compare to the French Academie des Beaux-arts, nor single, overriding "art contest" to compare with the Academy's annual Salons. France during this period had something on the order of 5,000 writers and critics covering the art scene while there were 12,000 working artists in Paris alone. If that sounds a bit top-heavy from a journalistic point of view, it was. As they say, everyone was a critic. France was drunk with art, which would explain why so much of it was simply bad art. I guess about the only thing we have today to compare with this phenomena is the hullabaloo that goes on in Hollywood every year between January and March when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominates and then chooses Oscar winners. In a very real sense, the Salon shows were the Academy Awards of French painting, with often just as much riding on a work being selected "Best Picture" so to speak, as is the case today with the similarly designated gold statuette.
This is not a perfect analogy, however. Although some in the film industry might argue the point, for the most part the A.M.P.A.S. is a relatively progressive organization generally aimed at the promotion of innovative efforts in both the arts and sciences of motion pictures. In contrast, that was definitely not the case with the French Academy. It would be hard to imagine a more conservative gaggle of immobile, stodgy, establishment, stick-in-the-mud hacks bent upon cementing their high and mighty academic traditions in the minds of the public and artists alike, or a group of so-called "art experts" in the press corps more dedicated to aiding and abetting this effort. Even before the Impressionists butted heads with this bulwark of cultural dictators, there was nothing less than a war going on between these art conservatives and art liberals not unlike what we see happening politically in Washington now days.
The Academicians were winning. The ranks of those combating them were just too thin. Leading them was landscape artist, Gustave Courbet, followed at a discreet distance by Edouard Manet, Jean Francois Millet, and Camille Corot, the writer Emile Zola, later Camille Pissarro, and a few others. The "war" reached such a fever pitch in 1863 that the Emperor Napoleon III had to step in and make peace by suggesting that those having their work rejected by the Salon should have their own alternative show called the "Salon des Refuses’" (pronounced REF-u-SAY). But the show became a laughing stock. The problem was that many of the works "refused" by the Academy Salon were quite bad and had been justifiably excluded. However here too, amongst these inferior pieces, was Monet's Impression: Sunrise, Manet's Le Dejeuner sur 'Herbe (Luncheon in the Grass), and a strange looking portrait of a young lady in white (The White Girl, Symphony in White, No. 1) by some American upstart by the name of James McNeill Whistler. A guard even had to be posted by Manet's work to keep the outraged public from attacking the scandalous painting. For the most part, however, they just laughed--long, hard, and boisterously. The show did change things though. Paintings were sold. And art dealers took notice. They might look funny, some of them, but there was money to be made from some of them. In short, the battle may have been lost, but the rebels would survive to fight another day.
Contributed by Jim Lane
20 September 1998
