individual expression, part 2

Visual art has the misfortune of being both instantly culturally significant and out of reach for most people.  It is confusing to be an artist involved in production of images and objects that are simultaneously accepted as having cultural value and not representing the culture that they are apart of by the value of the market associated with the work as products and commodities and the perception of esoteric or hermetic subject matter.  Of course, artists are accepted within their field and do not have to deal with this precarious relationship as much in galleries, museums, and other institutions and people associated with visual art (and the art world--though Ben Davis has made me consider this term more and want to use it sparingly).  

As artists and the ones producing art work, we are seen as both "talented" and "skilled" for the work that we make but should be limited in how we talk about the work, or the work is our primary mode of communication and gallerists, collectors, curators, and critics have authority to talk about the work.

This is, of course, not true for all non-artists working in the field and there are very many that are true supporters of individual artists.  There is something about this relationship and history that has put artists at a disadvantage, though--when it is acceptable for artists to only rely on what their work looks like and rely on that to fully communicate their ideas, their work, and the context of both, I worry about artists' ability to represent themselves and one another as a group.

The inverse of this, of course, is the mindless buzzword talk of certain artists--talk that often seems to come from a place of insecurity.  I'm sure it seems idealistic to state, but what I'm talking about is an honesty and earnestness in communicating and contextualizing ones own artwork, including owning up to parts which we don't have figured out yet.  It is a great misfortune to speak about ones work as though everything is figured out or solved--anyone who spends time in the studio knows that it is self-doubt, questioning, and internal dialectics that make us return to the studio, over and over again.
We loose some of this when we allow non-artists to talk for us in a way that does not encourage and include dialogue.  Enough of the position that artists shouldn't talk about their work--the history of that is born from times when art was produced out of patronage or for churches and assumes that each piece is a perfect and complete piece in and of itself (individual expression, again).  People who take the position that they can speak with authority about a work without including a dialogue or listening to the artist is not truly supporting artists but has another agenda in mind.

oh, the agony...

A lot of these issues have been reoccurring since Roberta Smith's talk at the Des Moines Art Center. Other issues have come up in correlation to a book by Dylan Trigg titled The Thing.  Both are interrelated, but it might take a bit more than a single post to connect.

Two comments of Smith's are what is lingering to me; one was the "real artists suffer" comment, the other was an answer to my question in the audience.  I asked Smith if she thought whether artists should be able to talk about their work.  Her response was that it wasn't our purpose to talk about the work, our job is to make it.  She also commented on it being a product of graduate school.  She isn't upset, per se, when artists talk, but she'd much rather look and see and she feels most often that artists hinder seeing with talking (I'm paraphrasing, of course). I get this sentiment; I understand it from both sides--how great it would be to not have to think about my work and just make it (which is idealistic and false; it's a misnomer made by non-artists) and how great it would be to not have to speak publicly about my work; I also can see where experienced art patron/critic/supporter would rather look on their own and not be influenced by what the artist has to say.

It is hard, though, as an artist, not to see this as a position of power held over artists: either keeping artists docile, keeping them producing for the market, or exerting some other kind of control.

I'm starting to look into this as a point of research; figuring out historical models (albeit likely on a larger scale affecting more detrimental forms of power) but hope to think about these things in perspective, particularly in late capitalism.

Trigg's book, too, has impacted my thinking about artists in the history of art and, perhaps, something that has either been overlooked or not discussed in art, particularly the artist's position in movements classified as Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and others.  Trigg is making a case for a new type of phenomenology that acknowledges a complexity in the concept of a body, which has always been the assumption of phenomenology--the study/thinking about what a body can sense.  Trigg, and others, acknowledge that this is a mistake--even Merleau-Ponty can be interpreted as to realizing the complexity of "a body" as a singular concept.

Likewise, whenever we think of art making (or the artist, for that matter), particularly when we assume "art as expression", we are talking about individual expression.  Even so-called contemporary political art and social practice art still assumes individual expression of political statements and "making something better".

Not only is this incredibly problematic to assume such individualism is the single source of expression (albeit the American way), but I absolutely believe/confirm that this is the wrong conception of expression, and that an individual/body is much more complex.  It is incorrect to assume that Monet was, theoretically, a single individual for the duration of his life as a painter and it is incorrect to define his "expression" in a singular way.  Certainly criticism and history allows for multiple interpretations, but these interpretations, though differing slightly on his aesthetics, view, outlook, influence, etc.  all assume his body of work coming from a fixed individual, which is false.

More on all of this soon.



 

suffering (or, rather, not having enough of something)

Another assessment of artists from non-artists:  the suffering.  

I listened to Roberta Smith last Thursday evening at the Des Moines Art Center, and there were a number of interesting stories about the world of New York, the myths of artists, and lingering ideals of Modernism.  It coincided with my reading Robert Storr's somewhat honest (but perhaps more attention grabbing) interview on WYBCX about the state of art criticism, too, and a reminder that there are surprising parallels (though of course on a much smaller level) with the "real art world" and the micro-art world of small town Des Moines.  

This is interesting for a number of reasons, but one that is very apparent is the perspective that there does exist a "real art world" in New York, LA, London, etc and that nothing happens in smaller cities.  A New York times critic talking in Des Moines is only ever going to be a visiting lecture, it is never going to be a look, from that critic, at the art environment (can't use community here because it is loaded) of the town that she/he is visiting.  

The parallel between Storr's "calling out" of critics like Smith, Saltz, Hickey, etc in Des Moines is the chatter about Bad Art Reviews in Des Moines.  While its not the same thing, it is parallel in the sense that a town with very little art criticism, there are still threats, disagreements, and preoccupations with the trivial.  Dissent is not appreciated, nor seen for its discursive power, in almost every environment of art.  

While I was certainly taken with many of Smith's stories, I find myself days later focusing on one part of her talk--telling BFA students in the audience that they are not going to be artists, that if they have something else other than art that they are pursuing, they should do that.  Artists, she said, suffer, and are artists because of their suffering. 

Now this seems easy to dispute as the scrapings on the bottom of the pan of Modernist thought, but I think it is incredibly problematic in a broader sense.  

One aspect of this suffering is the myth of New York, which should have been eradicated with the rise of the West Coast art scene, but apparently is not dead yet.  Myopic vision of New York as the one and only art world, determining what is good and bad in art, and determining what sells is a problem for all of us outside of New York, but particularly for those of us that see New York as a giant machine that is the spearhead of the unregulated art market that drives up prices under the auspice of "cultural value" and remains both untouchable and esoteric to the general public.  These same ideas are related to the notion that any artist worth their salt lives and works in New York, so why would one of the very few staff art critics write about someone outside of New York?  It is easy (cheap) to live in Des Moines, therefore artists living here do not suffer enough to be "real" artists.  

Suffering, too, is a bit of a complex thing; Chris Burden suffered very differently than J.W. Turner.  Its a smokescreen statement to say that artists must suffer to be what they are; suffering in Late Capitalism is largely deficiency (not having what one thinks they deserve), and I guarantee that all artists think they deserve more than what they have (should have gotten in to an exhibition, should have sold that artwork, etc).  Suffering is an internal emotion, and not something that can be judged by anyone.  Roberta Smith will never know whether or not I have suffered, and I'm still an artist.  

Were I a BFA student in the exhibition, I might have wondered about safer career paths.  As an artist in a ill covered region of the United States, I'm pissed, because this is another version of elitism: I interpret the notion that artists must suffer to mean that people living in Iowa can't possibly suffer enough to be artists, so go do something else.  I had a painter in New York talk to me about teaching, and she said that I should teach students to be collectors and patrons as opposed to artists.  While this might not have been directed to me coming from the Midwest, it is still part of this detrimental rhetoric against artists geographically outside of the "art centers".  

As a professor, I don't see myself as educating artists, though.  While I'm frustrated at the elitism, I don't see that as my mission, and encourage students to pursue whatever they wish to.  I teach art as a means to teaching non-conformity, original thinking, and perhaps most importantly to teach students to think critically about the single-serve, instantly fulfilling, and vapid culture and society that we live in.  While I've thought that critics were cultural mavens and guideposts in the past, I now wonder how much a part of this structure they are; perhaps they do not question culture and society in the same ways that I do--that, perhaps, my problem with most art critics is that they are looking at art as a cog of the vapid culture and society as opposed to something working against it.  

I will gladly work, think critically, and not suffer; always reflecting on my place in society.