The other day I was talking to a colleague about “the lean years” in art making. You know; you’re out of school, not yet where you want to be in terms of exposure, or business, and you start wondering whether you are on the right path. You see your schoolmate’s careers taking off, and feel a pinch of envy, or anguish, and maybe you feel like you are out of the loop, because you are holding a day job, and aren’t working on your art as much.
Needless to say that today’s version of art patronage is a joke compared to what it used to be, and that the stigma on art-collectives and unions is far from gone, making kindred spirits less inclined to pursue common projects. So for those of you who have not secured your Sugar Daddies/Mommas yet, I will try to offer some detached advice which is easier to say than to follow...
#1 Never ask yourself the “Did I make the right decision?” question unless you are doing art at that very moment! If you are on the right (or wrong) path you will know right there and then.
#2 As humans, we can’t help feelings of envy from arising, but we can turn them into positive energy. There are many implications to our colleagues making it in the art world. If they were friendly to you, then you can feel happy for them. If they weren’t, then it means that “if that looser can make it, then mine should be coming pretty soon...” No, but seriously, these things can be taken as an indication that people at your level are finding their niche, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t.
#3 If you feel like you are out of the loop, then get back in it! It only takes one hour to flip through the art journals in your local bookstore once a month. In New York, you have even more possibilities, escape from work every now and then and go to a gallery. There are bookstores like St. Mark’s where you can go at night to read. Even if you hate the work being shown out there, at least know what’s being shown out there. Every skilled profession has a whole culture of journals and things to keep its practitioners informed and you, as an artist, are no exception. So you have to go see the work, and inform yourself.
#4 Disconnect your TV! Or better yet, give it away. You are in NY, you lazy, bum! Go to the movies, go to a park, or at least walk and rent something good on video! Without the idiot box you’d be surprised how much time you will find to work, or take in other art forms. Of course if you thrive on pop culture or make video art then keep the TV, but maybe give yourself a regime of x number of hours to work, or just play it in the background while you work.
#5 Make your day job work for you. Go for things that will either feed your technological knowledge, or teach you how to run an operation. Did I mention free Xeroxes? Lots of computer-scanner access? Web searching? Try service, do something that feels good. At least we got an education, some people would kill to have the choice to study whatever they wanted in their hearts.
#6 Just because you aren’t creating objects doesn’t mean you have to stop practicing. Keep a sort of journal with possible projects as they pop in your mind. Maybe later you will have a surplus of time, and a deficit of ideas, and you can refer back to these ideas and pursue them.
One teacher asked me once “If you didn’t have access to the materials that you are using now what would your art look like?”
Exactly….
Your art is the expression of something that is within you. Try to find out what those concerns and relationships are, and learn to apply them to different things in your life. Most importantly, try to recognize them in other people’s actions as well.
#7 Research, research, research. We could all use better skills, or more information on grants, residencies and the like. There are some links on this blog, and please e-mail me any others that you have. Share this information with your colleagues, so that you establish a dialogue and they can return in kind.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Monday, May 17, 2004
Today I was listening to a Pop Art discussion on WPS1....
Today I was listening to a Pop Art discussion on WPS1 Art Radio. It must have been from the 70’s or 80’s, I couldn’t tell because there were no discernible date references. I caught the last three speakers --all art critics. The first one seemed to be defending, or advocating, the qualities of Pop Art, but the last two caught my ear the most.
Neither was condemning the movement, but they both had a bone to pick with Pop Art for seemingly antithetical reasons. One said that while talking to Lichtenstein he told the artist that he didn’t like his cartoon paintings because (and I am greatly summarizing here) the subject matter was "so strong that he could not see the painting, or its qualities as an object." The other one used as his case study the Campbell’s Soup paintings by Andy Warhol, and said that his problem with them was that the subject matter was so banal and timid, that they might as well not have any subject matter at all. That such choice showed a lack of passion and a sort of “running for cover under the roof of graphic design” [my own words, it’s hard to recall word by word what he said].
Although I think both those artists were good and skillful, specially Warhol; I tend to agree a lot with the points mentioned by the last critic who went on to talk about the old Western habit of making a tyranny out of every movement. What I don’t agree on with any of them is on the premise of having to choose between form OR subject matter, (the Greenbergian tyranny of minimalism), and on the belief that somehow subject matter takes away from the concerns of the craft and the search for new ways of expression. If post-modernism has shown us anything is that the search for new media has arisen FROM the need to express new ideas. If you doubt this, look at all the artists that were the greatest defenders of “art for art’s sake.” How many new media did they come up with? With the exception of Duchamp and Picasso they were all highly romantic artists working on 19th century methods even as new discoveries in industry were bypassing them at lightning speed. Even the Futurists chose canvas and bronze as their mediums! Paradoxical indeed...
Luckily, our generation is leaving Herr Greenberg behind more and more, even if they circumspectly shy away from denouncing his beliefs. But even as artists increasingly embrace a complexity in subject matter, many will nod in approval when somebody starts pontificating on the virtues of “Art about Art.” Hmmm... is the same meekness behind our current political quagmire? :-)
Anyway, the truth is that an art about art will limit your palette quicker than anything else, because the things you are talking about are contained within the medium itself! In other words, if there is nothing to express outside of yourself, or the items in your toolbox, it is very rare that you will find the need for new ways of expression (and therefore growth), or engage in the play of meanings and ambivalence (whether in media or subject matter) present in many of the art that today continues to move us. You will just engage in an exercise in banality in which you are rearranging the same materials, or ideas, over and over; more like a decorator, and not like a propagandist, which we all are.
By this I’m not saying that you should drop what you’re doing, and start doing Bolshevik or neo-classicist posters, but that we should stop mindlessly repeating this minimalist mantra that subject matter eats away at objectivity. We should all hope that the objects we produce are AS COMPLEX as the subject matter that propels them!
I have not seen one single purist movement that was known for its creativity. Not in literature, not in religion, not in government. Usually such movements tend to be destructive because they are based on exclusivity, are too often guided by some sort of tunnel vision, and have no use for tolerance, adaptation, or practicality.
So embrace your subject matter, and most importantly, EXPLORE IT to its fullest, both in content AND form. Weave a beautifully simple and/or tangled web, but weave it well, and artfully, because nothing is unconditioned, and art will give you ideas about life, but life will give you ideas about art.
Neither was condemning the movement, but they both had a bone to pick with Pop Art for seemingly antithetical reasons. One said that while talking to Lichtenstein he told the artist that he didn’t like his cartoon paintings because (and I am greatly summarizing here) the subject matter was "so strong that he could not see the painting, or its qualities as an object." The other one used as his case study the Campbell’s Soup paintings by Andy Warhol, and said that his problem with them was that the subject matter was so banal and timid, that they might as well not have any subject matter at all. That such choice showed a lack of passion and a sort of “running for cover under the roof of graphic design” [my own words, it’s hard to recall word by word what he said].
Although I think both those artists were good and skillful, specially Warhol; I tend to agree a lot with the points mentioned by the last critic who went on to talk about the old Western habit of making a tyranny out of every movement. What I don’t agree on with any of them is on the premise of having to choose between form OR subject matter, (the Greenbergian tyranny of minimalism), and on the belief that somehow subject matter takes away from the concerns of the craft and the search for new ways of expression. If post-modernism has shown us anything is that the search for new media has arisen FROM the need to express new ideas. If you doubt this, look at all the artists that were the greatest defenders of “art for art’s sake.” How many new media did they come up with? With the exception of Duchamp and Picasso they were all highly romantic artists working on 19th century methods even as new discoveries in industry were bypassing them at lightning speed. Even the Futurists chose canvas and bronze as their mediums! Paradoxical indeed...
Luckily, our generation is leaving Herr Greenberg behind more and more, even if they circumspectly shy away from denouncing his beliefs. But even as artists increasingly embrace a complexity in subject matter, many will nod in approval when somebody starts pontificating on the virtues of “Art about Art.” Hmmm... is the same meekness behind our current political quagmire? :-)
Anyway, the truth is that an art about art will limit your palette quicker than anything else, because the things you are talking about are contained within the medium itself! In other words, if there is nothing to express outside of yourself, or the items in your toolbox, it is very rare that you will find the need for new ways of expression (and therefore growth), or engage in the play of meanings and ambivalence (whether in media or subject matter) present in many of the art that today continues to move us. You will just engage in an exercise in banality in which you are rearranging the same materials, or ideas, over and over; more like a decorator, and not like a propagandist, which we all are.
By this I’m not saying that you should drop what you’re doing, and start doing Bolshevik or neo-classicist posters, but that we should stop mindlessly repeating this minimalist mantra that subject matter eats away at objectivity. We should all hope that the objects we produce are AS COMPLEX as the subject matter that propels them!
I have not seen one single purist movement that was known for its creativity. Not in literature, not in religion, not in government. Usually such movements tend to be destructive because they are based on exclusivity, are too often guided by some sort of tunnel vision, and have no use for tolerance, adaptation, or practicality.
So embrace your subject matter, and most importantly, EXPLORE IT to its fullest, both in content AND form. Weave a beautifully simple and/or tangled web, but weave it well, and artfully, because nothing is unconditioned, and art will give you ideas about life, but life will give you ideas about art.
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