George Bolge An interview with George Bolge, Director of Boca Raton Museum of Art, by Angela Di Bello

Please list several of the competitions that you have juried and describe some of the goals and challenges that you experienced.
As a director of a small museum, over the years, I have judged hundreds of art festivals and competitions all over the state of Florida, at a local level and national level as well.  I was the director at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, and judged the Hortt Memorial Exhibition and Competition, which is a nation-wide competition.  I’ve also judged the All Florida Competition, which is the oldest overall state competition.  Additionally, I’ve judged portfolios for artists preparing for graduate study in art.  So, over the years, I have spent a great deal of time doing this.  Whether they’re experience level is exhibition, competition, college or even younger artists, I think it’s always a good idea to remain fresh. You need to know what the artists are doing out there.  For a regional museum, this is very important.
As far as some of the goals and challenges, when you look at a competition, when I look at any competition, there are several questions you have to ask.  First, do you want a single judge or do you want multiple judges?  The advantage of a single judge – good, bad or indifferent – is that you have the backing of a singular opinion.  Multiple judges give you many opinions, but the reality of it is that you settle for something in the middle.  One judge will like this one, the other judge will like that one, and you’ll settle for a third.  As long as you have a finite number of things to go into an exhibition, and a finite number of prizes, multiples judges always involve negotiation.  Because of that, I prefer the single judge.

Next, you have to decide whether you want the juror to be an art historian, a critic, or a working artist.  The working artist, of course, is the one who has his nose in the grindstone, and probably is the most sensitive of the three.  The critic will probably give you the relevancy of what’s happening now, as opposed to an artist who might be bogged down in his own pursuit, or an art historian, who is a historian primarily.  An art historian concerns himself with what is current, and what is proof to be valid in the past.  He is in a more secure position to tell you what has proven, over the years, to be of value.
The third choice you have is how the show is judged.  A show can be judged in any number of ways.  A show can be judged purely on technical skill.  A show can be judged purely on the relevancy on what is being discussed.  In other words, an artist who deals with a socio-historical problem, rather than a classical vase of flowers sitting on a table, is relevant.  So a judge has any number of ways he can approach the final product, and what he figures to be the best in the show.  Over my years, when someone asks, “How do you know that’s a good work of art?” the only definition that I can give is this: a good work of art is a work of art that has stood the test of time, and has been evaluated by a group, who know not only know the artist, but what he’s trying to do, and the consensus is that it’s good.  That’s it.  Everything else is subjective.
Now, there’s always a certain level of subjectivity.  As an art historian, normally you do well because you’ve literally seen thousands of works of art.  For example, I’m a Greek and Roman archeologist, I have literally seen thousands of corei – so I know what a good one looks like.  If you’ve seen thousands of paintings, there is a chance, unless you’re absolutely numb, that you have some idea of what is valuable and what is of value. 
You set up the parameters.  When you judge a show, how many pieces should you pick to fill the space?  Do you in fact fill the space, or use the space as a creative element with the ones that you’ve selected.  Every competition works out that you pick the one you like the best, that’s number one.  The one you like second best is number two, and it can go on item to item.  So, if you have space for only 30 pieces, you pick the first 30 that you like.  This does not mean that you don’t like anything beyond there, but that’s what you do as far as space.  Because once the selection has been made, it has to be placed within a narrative context for that exhibition to make the experience valuable.  Many people feel that this is not how you pick an exhibition.  Instead, they put a painting up on a wall, so that everybody has a little bit of wall, and everybody has one painting in it.  So, suddenly the artist becomes less of an individual, rather than one of many parts.  However, if the judge is of one mind and one theme, then everything holds together just as an exhibition in any other museum.  So, at one point, you pick the artist, at another point, the exhibition tells a general theory, a story, a basic premise, basic relevancy, what’s happening, what people are reflecting on, and what are their concerns.  An exhibition, once it’s peopled with the individuals that you select, takes on a whole nature of itself.  And a good judge, once he judges that, will judge not just the individual pictures, but also what that exhibition has to say on its relevancy. 

What criteria do you use to judge works of art?
My criteria are relatively simple, as an art historian.  I look for someone’s innovative ideas and the relevancy of those ideas.  I look for how they compare to ideas other people have had, based on my experience, and then, how well he produces it- his technical ability.  And the technical skill should be as good as the idea.  You can have an absolutely brilliant technician, who doesn’t say anything.  I have a friend who put 200 holes in a wooden door.  But they’re just 200 holes in a wooden door.  And it took him 6 months to do this.  There comes a time when your efforts are really not worth the idea you try to carry.  However, keep in mind what the artist is willing.  The artist has an idea that’s very unique to him, and he has to then make that abstract into a viable idiom of expression – some kind of vehicle to carry that idea which he invents.  He then places that idea down abstractly as a painting, because, really, nothing is reality.  So, he makes lines and brushstrokes to make it look like the vehicle of this idea, and then he has to pass it on to people who respond to it.  The whole process is not an easy thing to do.

Out of the three following areas – art education, work experience, or personal aesthetic values -  which one has contributed most to your curatorial expertise and why:
Mine, above all, is work experience.  You literally have to know the artist, you have to talk with them, you have to be part of their world, you have to see what they do, you have to see it over and over again before you get some idea, comparatively, of what is good and what’s bad.  All the book learning you want, art education and all the personal aesthetics you may have are meaningless, unless they relate comparatively to what you see.  And to me, it’s work experience.

In your view, what are the three most important factors that determine a superior work of art?
First, relevancy is important because you must deal with the problems that you are.  You’re a human being, and you are being buffeted by whatever social, historical events that are happening to you.  You should not be painting 15th century scenes because you have no relevancy to that.  Second is originality – how original your concept is.  How you approach it is something else.  Third is craftsmanship – the toolbox you have in order to make it producible.

What can competition sponsors do to help facilitate the jurying process?
For me, leave the juror the hell alone.  That’s the best thing you can do.  You don’t want to show up at the door with an army of women, who just can’t wait to follow you around with a sticker, or pick something up for you, or carry it over.  Just leave him alone.  When walking into a competition, the first thing a judge has got to do is pick his favorite work.  The other thing he picks is the worst work in the room, and then he needs to fill it in between.  Any judge who goes from picture to picture, and studies it for a hundred hours doesn’t know what he’s doing.  A good exhibition, if you know what you’re doing, can be picked in less than an hour.  What you do is you set your premise, and what you’re going to do.  You pick your very best – what you like.  This gives you one end of the spectrum, and then you get an idea of what the rest of the spectrum looks like.  You may walk into a room and the best piece that you see is C+.  You’re not always going to walk into an exhibition where you find an A immediately.  And whether you start with a C+ or not, the message of the exhibition as a whole can be an A.  If you really know what you’re doing, you’re not just picking works of art.  You might say, “Well, there’s really no great work of art here, but I can cobble together these things that look very well together.”  Then, the message is very strong, and you have a strong show. 
Sponsors should decide ahead of time what will fill their space. If there’s a curator who’s going to organize and install the show, you should have a good idea of how many things you need, and the relative running feat of what you’re going to be dealing with.   This will give the judge a good idea of how the show’s going to look, and how many pieces he should pick.

How do artists benefit from entering juried competitions?

The most important thing is dialogue with other artists.  Today, artists see dialogue in what they read about, or by going to other exhibitions.  Any kind of competition will allow the artist not only physically to see one another and to exchange ideas, but also how they’re juxtaposed in a final exhibition.  This is very important for young artists.  They can see who else is doing what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it.  And the juror, of course, should be able to give his reasons for why he selected the show.  And the dialogue that they provide, whoever those judges are, should be open to the artists who participate.  To me, that’s the most important thing.  Anything that would develop into a dialogue for artists, between themselves, amongst themselves, or with the judge, is the most important thing that show has. They also benefit a great deal of what the critics have to say about the show.  Although critics probably don’t know what to talk about.  They usually talk about what trends they keep a run of. 

What advice would you give to artists entering competitions?
Money is not important, although many artists enter for this reason - for the payday or prize at the end.  Money should be of very little importance.  Entering a competition is a very rare opportunity for all artists to gain self-evaluation in a comparative environment.  That’s the most important reason of why they should be there.