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Welcome to M(art)ch Madness 2015, the not-entirely-serious contest to determine the greatest artist of the 20th century. The format is the same as the NCAA men’s basketball tournament: four brackets of 16 artists, in single-elimination contests. In this case, the winners are determined by YOUR votes.
After four play-in games to determine the four 16 seeds, the 64 bracket is set. The last two voted in were David Hockney (beating Max Beckmann) and Frida Kahlo (over Claes Oldenburg). Unfortunately, the votes split evently in the other two, so I had to cast the tie-breaking votes, in this case for Chuck Close (over Grant Wood) and George Bellows (over Agnes Martin). See what happens if you don’t vote?
The full 64-team bracket can be found here:
http://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=457697.
(It’s a crappy website but it’s the best I found to host the bracket. Click on “championship bracket.” Suggestions for improving it are welcome)
The artists and seedings were chosen by me. Scroll to the bottom of this page to read more about that.
First-round voting begins today. I’ll post half of the first round match-ups today, then the rest tomorrow. Voting will run through Friday. Make sure you vote and please share this with anyone who might be interested.
Paris Regional
No. 1 Pablo Picasso vs.
No. 16 David Hockney
No. 8 Marc Chagall vs.
No. 9 Salvador Dali
No. 5 Amedeo Modigliani
No. 12 Joseph Cornell
No. 4 Alexander Calder vs.
No. 13 Josef Albers
No. 6 Alberto Giocometti vs.
No. 11 Gustav Klimt
No. 3 Georgia O’Keeffe vs.
No. 14 Arshile Gorky
No. 7 Francis Bacon vs.
No. 10 Constantin Brancusi
No. 2 Wassily Kandinsky vs.
No. 15 Jeff Koons
New York regional
No. 1 Jackson Pollock vs.
No. 16 Frida Kahlo
No. 8 Louise Bourgeois vs.
No. 9 Fernand Leger
No. 5 Willem De Kooning vs.
No. 12 Jenny Holzer
No. 4 Roy Lichtenstein vs.
No. 13 Arthur Dove
No. 6 Giorgio De Chirico vs.
No. 11 Donald Judd
No. 3 Jasper Johns vs.
No. 14 Isamu Noguchi
No. 7 Richard Serra
No. 10 Helen Frankenthaler
No. 2 Piet Mondrian vs
No. 15 Richard Avedon
How I chose and seeded the artists:
The idea was to select the 64 most significant visual artists of the 20th century. I included painters, sculptors and photographers, and omitted architects, film makers and performance artists. That might seem arbitrary, but it I had to draw a boundary somewhere.
Then I went through lists of artists and grouped them in four tiers, from obvious top seeds down to more marginal cases. Those tiers formed the basis of the seedings, with the top group making up the 1-4 seeds, the next group 5-8 and so on. I wanted the list to reflect conventional choices, but I also wanted diversity in genres, geography and gender. So when there was a border line call, I tended to choose a photographer or sculptor vs. yet another abstract expressionist. I tried to keep my own biases out of it, and I excluded some of my favorites. To get to 64, lots of major artists were left out but hopefully my choices make sense. If not, let me know.
The match-ups were somewhat arbitrary, although I tried to avoid having similar artists face each other in the first or second rounds. The contests are more fun when the style’s are so different, and I didn’t want a major school eliminated by the second round.
Percival Henry: The Fantastic Four and more 
Chagall v Dali in the round of 64. Tough draw!
Pollock v Kahlo — tough match-up!!!
Rembrandt and Vermeer must have been on the bubble
Forgive me–Maybe next year’s tourney can look pre-20th century…
Eager for Warhol v Sherman!!!
Francesca Woodman could have been on the bubble (maybe do a women’s tourney too?). I saw that Giacometti sculpture in the Pera museum here in Istanbul last Friday. It looks like photography was shorted by the selection committee for this tournament.