Throughout most of history, the artist was considered just another artisan, a peer of the cabinetmaker, stone mason and tailor. Masters such as Michelangelo, Leonardo, El Greco and as late as Goya were employees of a Pope, or a Duke or a Bishop or a King, but generally they were just another servant and came in through the "back door" and ate with "the help." By the 19th century, fueled by the challenge of the French impressionists to the art "establishment" of Paris, fine artists began migrating up the social ladder and eventually reached the social zenith which artists and their symbiotic parasites, the art critics, have now enjoyed for nearly a century.

Thus the successful Artist is now a creative genius, somehow different and more sensitive than the stone mason and the cabinetmaker. He or she is able to see and depict social ills, injustices and other assorted important things which the rest of the population cannot see or feel without the help of the Artist. The art critic, of course, translates to the baffled public just what it is the Artist is trying to say with a passionate stroke of the brush or sesnitive line of the pencil.

Like any other process which is separated from the understandable public interaction (which characterizes humans' relations with each other), this unfortunate elevation of the Artist is (in my opinion) the prime cause for the sorry state of the arts we face today and the gasoline which fuels the fire which has consumed our unfortunate National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

What does this mean? It means that (a) when a person dubbed as the "Artist," and (b) a person who is employed as the "art critic" (by one of a select group of media organizations in the world) join thoughts with a (c) person or persons generally employed as curators, directors or advisors (to about half a dozen museums or Universities in the world - let's call them the "art pickers"), together "they" create the Artist with a capital A.

Now we add a select group of galleries, with pristine hospital-like walls, where a pre-groomed group of people with lots of money are herded in and allowed to partake of this Artist's creations and/or destructions. Sometimes, more often than biographers like to recognize, the Artist uses a "channel" to reach the art critic: Jackson Pollock married a Guggenheim (guess which museum then recognized him as an Artist), Robert Mapplethorpe used his lovers, etc. The bottom line is that public is not invited to the christening of the Artist.

This process delivers a product, to wit: "the Artwork," be it a painting, a photograph, sometimes even a "happening," etc. Some of them hang in the houses of the people with money who were convinced by the gallery owners that this work was (a) truly astounding Art and (b) an important "part" of the Artist. The vast majority of the Artworks, however, must sooner or later end up in a museum or displayed in some manner or form which uses public funds. This is where the rubber meets the road and where John Q. Public is now suddenly saying, "Hey, just a minute..."

Shock is always a great source of publicity, and "they" sometimes believe that John Q. Public must be shocked in order to be educated. Never mind that John Q. Public is footing the bill, but Mr. Public will be required to see Mapplethorpe photographs of men urinating in each other's mouths and ordered in school to admire random paint drippings on huge canvasses. If anyone dares to question the artistic value or point of the shock, then the word "philistine" and "barbarian" or "Republican" is brought out. Again, John Q. Public is usually not part of the outcry against this perceived outrage, although John Q. Public's news media is not only invited to the lynching but expected to join in and amplify the outrage.

Is art dead or art talent sick and dying? One only needs to stroll through the Boardwalk of Virginia Beach during their annual outdoor art show, attended by over 600,000 visitors or locally through the Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival in Renton to realize that artists, with a small "a" and ranging from incredibly talented and gifted to horribly unique are alive and kicking, and doing great business selling abstraction, neo-realism, minimalism, my "ism" or your "ism" directly to John Q. Public.

Thus the talent is still here, displaying their work in tents which barely protect it against the wind and rain, with potters and masons and assorted crafters as neighbors and a customer base which asks questions such as "How long did it take you to draw this" rather than "Which pluralistic diversity did you want to convey with that stroke of the pencil." Honest questions, demanding honest answers.

It is the "other" Art world which is sick and corrupted. Let "them" enjoy their "Art" which today may be a toilet and tomorrow a fish tank with a basketball in it. Let the art critics continue to review art shows which need words like "pluralism," and "juxtaposition," and "conceptual." There is an abundance of such art words used by art critics from the Washington Post or the New York or L.A. Times, but don't be fooled! The art words just reaffirm the huge sense of exhaustion and the enormous void of art values which exists "out there" in their hospital-like galleries and their empty museums. We cannot take back our museums because "they" run them but we can support our local art festivals and local artists who brave the elements to bring out the fruit of their labor, sometimes great, many times good and sometimes awful, but nearly always honest.

History teaches that Art critics have seldom been right. They are currently disregarding whole hordes of artists to the trash bins of art history; some of these artists' works will come back in fifty years to haunt the critics. The rejected French Impressionists eventually came back to haunt their early critics, and Vermeer does much better at the National Gallery than Mondrian.

The number of people who call themselves artists (with a small "a") is huge. There are vast numbers of works being produced and created and sold by these artists, whose work rarely makes it to a critic review , much less a museum. There are thousands of artists in Virginia alone and very few art critics, and fewer still who would even remotely dare to tackle the diversity and abundance of these creative people with a small "a."

Support your local arts and crafts festival; find out about your local arts commission; ask your local museum how they acquire pieces for their collection or sponsor museum shows; write to your local newspaper and challenge their art critic if his/her reviews do not make sense to you. Question Art authority; buy what you like, not what you are told to like.

The author is a regional art critic for several art magazines and local newspapers. He is also the co-owner of one of Wahington's top art galleries and also an award winning artist who sells his work mostly through outdoor art shows.