The Prompt: Me

Kerry Wessell:

Let's dive right in.

Be honest.

ARTIST AS LABORER

I believe pretty religiously that the artist should be doing the most of the labor (okay, all of it), and as a result, I try to abstain from even letting friends help me too much. I think that paying (or worse, not paying) people to make “your work” is wrong and not giving credit to assistants on the wall is worse. I have promised to myself that if I ever end up showing in places seriously and I am getting help from assistants, then I will put their names next to mine in alphabetical order. I think the first part of this promise I will break is doing it in alphabetical order. I bet that I will feel too uncomfortable to resist a gallery owner, for example, who likes things done how they are “supposed” to be done, and that just getting my assistants' names up on the wall with me will be enough of an argument and will take some courage on my part. I believe that working with your hands allows for some sort of “not conscious” thinking to go on. Your brain will connect dots you didn't see or think of, and every now and then, you'll learn something, whether it is thematic or practical or aesthetic or anything else. Lastly, the act of making gives a nice rawness, an honesty to the piece.

Okay, so here's a small shocker: I've started sewing. Now, I am no stellar seamster and my mold making hasn't led to anything yet, but I think I am starting to see another Kerry Rule About Art related to labor/the artist's act of making: change materials (a.k.a.-experimentation). New materials opens up pathways to new perspectives, therefore new thoughts, therefore new relationships. One material will likely speak to you in a different way than another and will beg to be used in different ways. For me, hardware wire brought me back to figures, plastic begging to be melted brought about symbols (the flag), 2x4s to installation and architectural sculpture, mold making ended up addressing inside/outside, the figure and masks, and sewing brought about the idea of “craft” and the manner in which things are made, masks and the figure.

Now that I've mentioned how I try to follow this rule of “artist-as-laborer,” I want to look at an artist who I don't think follows this rule. Blatant example Joseph Kosuth with his large dog-shaped topiaries. A photograph of two dogs on a greeting card inspired him to hire people to make his artwork.  In the end, we got a practically identical image of two dogs sitting together and looking very cute while doing it, only now they were 50 feet tall and comprised of bushes.  What I find particularly offensive is that he didn't even design it. It was copied almost verbatum from the card.  The studio assistant gives the image to a company, then a project manager shows the workers the image.  Then he organizes how this giant dog is going to be built, and then the workers do their job, they get paid, go home, the piece is shipped out either to Joseph Kosuth's office or just directly to the site. The amount of work Joseph Kosuth did was about zero, from conception to execution, from beginning to end.   It isn't pushing a boundary, it isn't pushing comfort zone. And no, it isn't even pushing my comfort zone of calling it art for the sake of calling it art, or pushing my comfort zone of not pushing my comfort zone. Or any metaphysical step above that. There is never a moment where I feel as though he surprised himself or pushed himself, and I attribute this to his removed approach.

I have to own up though. I may dislike the idea of an artist hiring assistants, but I am not so incredibly dogmatic that I will instantly disregard any piece just because there was hired help.  I give a lot of slack to Bruce Nauman.  Still, you give credit to your violinist, why not your fabricator?  This (not)artist-worker relationship seen with Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, and Joseph Kosuth makes me cringe (but not with Bruce).  This general sentiment is not just bound to contemporaries; I do have some aversion to Raphael for having apprentices.

I suppose all of this is no surprise, and both informs and reenforces how much I value labor. I believe thinking is very important, but looking at the art in Chelsea today, the issue of labor is more pressing. I do think of artist as being both the thinker and the doer, for the record, and I think reading art and nonart related material is very important and doing both art and nonart things is dire.

A MEDIUM SPECIFICITY REVISIONIST (pretension points!)

I am a little ashamed of this, but I am fond of Clement Greenberg's belief in “medium specificity.”. And before we get more into this, Clement Greenberg's theory has become decreasingly important. Greenberg basically believed that all great works of art are great because they utilize techniques or enhance/focus upon characteristics specific to their medium. For example, painting is inherently two dimensional, so a truly great work of art will address this two dimensionality, and so a great painting should not try to create an illusion of space but should try to address the flat plane that is the canvas surface (for modern works. For older works, he explains people have admired them for the “wrong” reasons, and that instead, the discussion ought to be about how the paint was handled). He claimed that Jackson Pollock fell under this theory of “medium specificity,” I disagree with him.  I also do think he is a little too assertive when he essentially claims that we admired artists of yore for the wrong reasons.  That aside, what does medium specificity mean to me?

For me, installation should always address the space it's in, because otherwise it is denial. I don't like denial. To totally transform the space or to create a new space from an old one, to me, is ignoring the space completely. I find/found it as an act of denial. It is to deny the fact that the space I started to work in had no inherent or unique architectural qualities. I think, as an artist, I need to look harder. I find this “denial” also troublesome, because it hides the fact that you started with “the white box” (the gallery/museum-like space). To then deny the fact that you are in “the white box” means you are trying to hide the gallery framework, but really, you are working very much within it. You are trying to hide some sort of truth. I believe that if you want total transformation, take to the streets! Build by stacking trash cans, sing inside a box instead of on a stage, eat some hats off of a hat!

I feel the urge to draw attention to my first section, Artist-as-Laborer, where I talk about listing your assistants and to this second section, where I mention denial. Both of these ideas lend themselves to a simpler rule: Be honest, be direct, be upfront about what you are doing and how you are doing it.

ON ART HISTORICAL REFERENCES AND OTHER THINGS

Though I was a die-hard “medium specificity” revisionist , I just want to say, I generally dislike pieces loaded with an art historical reference. In a general sense, we all work from someone else and so in that sense, we fall into art history, but none of us quite go far as Sherrie Levine's “Fountain” casted in bronze. There are two primary problems with this approach: (1) there's something to “get.” It has a very specific and obvious meaning to anyone who knows about Duchamp. And I think there's an argument to the fact that someone could interpret the piece as if it was Duchamp's original, but I don't think it's a very good argument. (2) it is a very limiting approach that really brings few surprises and ultimately doesn't give us much to look at or think about (unless we have to for class or unless it is our occupation to think about it). I mean, basically, what she does is she copies another piece of work, changes it slightly (I.e.-casts it in a different material), and there you go. It asks, “what is truly original?”  The question just doesn't interest me. 

Some conceptualists say that they want the viewer to get the idea, and so, they do not want there to be anything in the end to look at (I might actually be paraphrasing Levine and I know that an art historian said this of Damien Hirst Inc.'s market items). I find this inherently problematic. If you want people to get the idea, why did you make anything/have anything made for you? If you want to gesture away from The Object, then why make them and why not become a philosopher?

I've also become very much against the “drop a title and make a piece” schtick.  It is also just something to "get."  I think a title may help connect dots, but in some cases, I feel as though it is the only dot.

I DON'T DARE TO BE STUPID; I MUST BE STUPID

Initially, I didn't consider this one of my rules, but really, I really abide by it (though I don't judge by it). I think this writing response so far has been very, very serious. Maybe too serious. I know that I can take things too serious, and it is dangerous, so, I must be stupid with my pieces in the end. I regretfully get close to making a “punchline,” but so far, adopting the slapstick of the 3 stooges, per se, has been an escape from getting too serious.

Some of us are probably familiar with the system of making functional objects nonfunctional as a method to art making. If you look hard enough at a Buster Keaton film, you will see this exact thing happen. He'll pick up a bucket with no bottom, and so when he goes to fill it, he will soak his legs. A while a go, I was thinking about this. What is so damned funny about this to me? I realized it during a scene where Buster Keaton is walking on the top of a tall boat. He is walking close to the edge, looking up, up and to the right, and up to the left. He looks everywhere except right in front of him. Then I got it, that's the joke for me. It isn't him actually falling off the edge of the boat. It is the conditions, under which the action of falling off the boat, that must happen.

In order for the rake to hit Curly, it has to be positioned in the right way, he has got to make the right moves. In order for Charlie Chaplain to get soaking wet legs, he has to keep his eyes off of the bucket. I follow this rule when I make contraptions. I set up the scene and I let the participant follow the script. Though, my humor is a little dark. Or rather, a little mean. So the participant can say the hell with it. I try to predict their choices and movements. I want to give them a somewhat limited experience.

It is worth noting that when I work, I want some pieces to have an “unkind” sense of humor, but they are never jokes.

I WANT PEOPLE TO THINK, SO I AM WARRY OF

Though I'm adverse to making my pieces “fun,” I don't mind “fun house” pieces, unless it just starts becoming so sensory, that people forget where they are, what they're doing, and don't ask a thing. When this happens, I think there's a breakdown of communication, or well, at the very least, if the breakdown of communication is what's supposed to be communicated, then I ask, “so... what? You got me to climb over there and then over here, and then there was music, some fuzzy nice stuff, and I saw a pretty video... now what?” I think being focused on a few senses dominates over our sense of association.

Some immediate things sensory things that have the potential to be dangerous to this end are: scale for scale's sake, gimics and novelties, and giving the participant too much to do (pulling levers, playing with objects).  I think it's great to give the participant something to do, really.  But I think it needs to be treated with care.

I have made allusions to the audience here and there, and all I can say is that, in general, I want to make my art approachable enough for a working class, a blue collar class to be interested. These individuals don't have to love it, they don't have to see in it what I see, but I just want them to at least give their earnest attention to it. I think that 2x4s have helped me to this end.

It is important to remove ourselves from the art-seeing public and art academia on occasion. I think the many schools allow artists to develop themselves very rapidly and maturely, and so I appreciate them; however, I don't want to end up making pieces with overt references to Art History, or pieces where the reference to, say, Rodin's "Thinker" feels like the entirety of the piece.