One Painting, One Question. Spurred by an entirely white canvas hung in an art museum that Jim and I visited recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about meritocracy and art. It’s not that I didn’t think the entirely white canvas was art. I just started wondering more about who decides what is hung in a museum. Why was that painting there? Much like I often wonder who decides what gets published.

Consider Meritocracy. We are steeped in it in the United States. Meritocracy is the basic idea that quality is rewarded rather than cronyism, wealth, or connections. An article in the Economist, Meritocracy in America, describes this well:

The United States likes to think of itself as the very embodiment of meritocracy: a country where people are judged on their individual abilities rather than their family connections. The original colonies were settled by refugees from a Europe in which the restrictions on social mobility were woven into the fabric of the state, and the American revolution was partly a revolt against feudalism. From the outset, Americans believed that equality of opportunity gave them an edge over the Old World, freeing them from debilitating snobberies and at the same time enabling everyone to benefit from the abilities of the entire population. They still do.

But we’re not a meritocracy, and we never were. The Founding Fathers excluded just about everyone who wasn’t a (somewhat) straight wealthy white guy.

But here’s the rub—we still think we’re a meritocracy in the United States. We just can’t give that idea up.

According to the ideology of the American Dream, America is the land of limitless opportunity in which individuals can go as far as their own merit takes them. According to this ideology, you get out of the system what you put into it. Getting ahead is ostensibly based on individual merit, which is generally viewed as a combination of factors including innate abilities, working hard, having the right attitude, and having high moral character and integrity. Americans not only tend to think that is how the system should work, but most Americans also think that is how the system does work.

The idea of a meritocracy, described above in an article from Sociation Today is a hard idea to give up, but I think it’s an important one to examine and let go of. If you want some statistics about how the United States is not a meritocracy, read that article.

Back to Art. In a meritocratic art work, quality is rewarded by being exhibited, bought, printed, or published. I’ve been thinking about meritocracy in terms of what finds itself published in a big publishing house.

I know far more about what finds itself published than what ends up in a museum. Lots of good books are published by big publishing houses. And by “good” I mean that these are books of art–they evoke emotion, they change how you view the world, they add to your world. And lots of totally crappy books are published too, some because the author is already famous, some because they are expected to sell well, but mostly both. And by “crappy” I mean that you have the same sensation after reading them as you do consuming a package of Pringles–empty and malnourished. And yes, “good” and “crappy” are relative and subjective terms.

It’s important not to confuse publishing (or appearing in an art museum) as an ultimate judgment of your work. It’s a judgment, all right, but not necessarily one of quality, not necessarily one of merit. It certainly may be. But art doesn’t operate as a meritocracy any more than our current system of government does.

I’m wondering if this is related to a discussion Jordan had about Validation on her blog. Since I don’t get so much (with very little published), I’m wondering if I’m just being bitter. I’m trying to shift the paradigm from one of “If I just study hard (write well, paint well, sculpt well), I’ll be successful (published, exhibited, bought)” to one that doesn’t seek the approval of a society that seems mostly intent on consuming Pringles.

And now back to the Workplace. One of the most damaging effects of the myth of meritocracy is that many of us in the United States believe that if we buckle down and work hard we will be rewarded by keeping our jobs, getting promotions, or getting paid more. We’re presented with discrepant evidence over and over that should shift our thinking away from the myth of meritocracy, but it doesn’t. At least it hasn’t.

All of this leads me to the Guerrilla Girls, whom you probably want to read more about in an interview, Frida Kahlo, Guerrilla Girl, on feministing. This is what provided one answer to the question, “Why is this painting in the museum?”