"Inside the Studio"

It seems that my 6 or so months in Portland have been spent repositioning myself--formally, I saw myself in the Duchamp-Johns-Nauman family, but I now also feel more connected to artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Judy Pfaff and Jim Dine. What was great about Jim Dine (besides the fact he attended the School of Fine Arts at Ohio University) is that he was really interested in turn of the century artists. This seems pretty unimportant probably, but I definitely have felt the pressure from peers to know what's hottest on the scene, even though I find just about everyone on the scene a total waste. I often wonder, "Why am I not connecting to this piece, this artist? Am I out of the loop?" and then I decide to look at some of the classics of Bourgeois, Nauman or Kurt Schwitters. But maybe that's okay. It's a preference.

One overarching theme that many artists mentioned was being compartmentalized. Judy recounts that after one of her earlier shows, she became quickly known as the "stick figure artist" for her angular, mono-colored, reductive figures. She immediately saw what the art world/critic was doing, and stopped making them and started to make her industrial, colorful installations that were comprised of many new materials. In general, Judy doesn't like to be compartmentalize or to compartmentalize. She says she doesn't like work that is in “one emotional place,” but rather wants a more complicated feeling. She doesn't like her installations to be “too located” and doesn't think art is about the Minimalist ideas of mass and weight. She prefers something dreamed or remembered, “a sensation comting into focus” (17).  Donald Judd laments being known as a Minimalist and furthermore says that there was no such movement, that it was a "careless falsification of the history." I have left an anecdote regarding the "Minimalists" at the end of this post. Maya Lin recounts that while in school her professors were telling her that she had to choose between architecture and art, and that she couldn't do both. Lo and behold, now she is doing both.

Louise Bourgeois provided some much welcomed tough love and her story also serve as a good model for students, who are, to be frank, being greedy. Every Sunday, she has an open house, and people (mainly students) come and want her to crit their work, and she obliges and offers constructive criticism (keep in mind, she is 97 years old). What most of the students do is cry (at least according to her story). Louise suggests that it is because they don't want criticism, they say that is what they want, but what they really want is to be told they are the next Picasso, and they want love and encouragement (who doesn't want the last two?). Louise states, "I do not need to show my work, and I do not need to explain it. [...] They want the show and the publicity and the big sale, and there is no end to it" (pg 75). Louise became an artist before the idea of selling a piece was a concern for most artists. In her day, the gallery was novel, and after your show you'd take whatever was shown home. From Louise's perspective, "selling" is new.

I personally think that friends and family are better sources for support than an artist you've just met and whom you've asked to crit your work. I'll admit, I've thought about going to Louise's open house for a crit, but now I am more interested in going and talking to her about what she does. I totally get the logic though, and it's really appealing/alluring to go to an artist and then dream up a ridiculous scenario in which the artist looks at your work, says you're a genius, and that you have two shows tomorrow in Berlin and Chelsea. To borrow a line from my friend Thomas, "seriously kids?" There's a lot that is pretty messed up here. I find it pretty disrespectful, on the whole. First, it sounds like students maybe mistook "open house" for "free crits on Sundays!" At least when I first heard about it, a friend described it as being the latter.

There are two other excerpts that spoke to me: "The feeling of creating is really your fight against depression. The thing is not to get depressed, which is not interesting at all; te thing that is interesting is to get out of depression, and the way to get out of depression is by having a couple of bright ideas. It really works" (76) and "The discipline, the routine, I do not mind them. I don't take vacations: I don't enjoy them" (77). I think the first excerpt really explains a good part of life in Portland. Productivity really helped my mood, and I only hope that I can be as confident as Louise to feel not feel as though people need to see my work.

And one more: "I don't know what kind of syndrome that is but a lot of artists cannot stand success. But they cannot stand failure either... so you might say that art is an addiction you cannot control" (75).

I was particularly pleased to come across Jim Dine in the book, mostly because I have not been able to find enough articles and books on him, and he has become an "Artist of the Moment" for me. There isn't really any general theme that inspired me, so this is a pretty illogical paragraph.  Jim Dine attended Ohio University's School of Fine Arts and seems to enjoy working, much like Judy.  He seems to measure himself against Van Gogh to keep him going, to keep him working, to keep challenging himself. A story he told of the painter Bonnard I think serves as a good comparison to Jim Dine's work ethic; on several occasions, Bonnard would sneak into museums with his paints and brushes and touch up his paintings before he was caught. The physicality and "deadpanness" of Dine's work is evident when he reveals that one of his techniques is to hammer a nail into a spray paint can, and just let her rip. I'd like to end this with a quote from Dine: "I quit on a drawing before the paper is totally gone physically. That's one of the ways I quit; another is I lose interest. The drawing becomes too much for me--to much of a good thing, sometimes--but you stop when your mind blocks up" (80).

Last weekend, I went to the Experience Music Project in Seattle (it's basically a museum for rock'n'roll and all of its children... all of its children). Before I get into this, let me explain real quick what is there, what it looks like. The exterior was designed by Frank Gehry, which means the whole building is organic as opposed to geometric. The interior has lots of screens and headphones and posters. One exhibit featured Jimmy Hendrix, who I would guess would be horrified seeing the soul of rock'n'roll being made white-life-friendly. Then on the third floor they have the "studio," wherein you can hit this one large electronic drum that has the ability to sound like various African drums. There are also little rooms in which you can play guitar or vocals. It is not unlikely that you will see a 16 year old boy playing a song while his girlfriend looks at him sort of dreamily, as if saying, "my, he's just so talented... and so sensitive."  I had a minor freak out while at Experience Music Project. And it's idolizing rich rock stars who on the surface shun money in a gold house (read: the museum). Then I got to thinking that this was really nothing in comparison to the funding and support that the visual and conceptual arts get (granted, rock stars make more than visual artists--but the infrastructure for music doesn't seem quite as costly, especially after one takes into account viewership). This scared the bejeezus out of me, and has inclined me to take to the streets. I would love to drop one of my contraptions on a NYC street

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I really enjoyed reading Judd's essay(?), mostly because it reminded me of one 300 level art history class, which was mostly comprised of junior and senior art and art history majors. It was one of the earlier classes, and we had just read a book on Minimalism (enticingly titled, "Minimalism"). In the book, the author repeatedly said that Minimalism was not a movement, nor any other psyeudonym (like ABC Art, literalism, primary structures). I was surprised when about half the class were advocating that it was a movement (especially considering the author was saying it was NOT a movement). Whether or not it was a movement I think could be debated, but then, let's debate with the author's argument, but instead, it was as though these students thought the author had said, "Minimalism is obviously a movement. Duh." It really boggled my mind. Someone had said exactly what I was thinking, "But didn't the book..." Sound the horns! Here comes a debate! Basically what happened is that all the art historians were taking the position that Minimalism was a movement, whereas all the studio majors were saying that it was not a movement (a trend, yes, maybe). And I will never forget what this one (excuse me) asshole said. To paraphrase, "But like, they all hung out together and were making similar work, that's totally a movement." This ended the debate, and was seen as a truth. Well, Timothy (let's call him), let's see what Donald Judd has to say.

"I've said this one million times and I hope the recording is working to hear me say it one million and one: "Minimalism was a derogatory term that someone coined. Barbara Rose gave "ABC" a try, and it was derogatory. The "Primary Structures" term was not meant to be derogatory, but it was very misleading: there is no such style and there was no such group. It's very easy to find out there wasn't a group. I hardly knew Robert Morris; I met him in March or April of '63. I had a show at the end of that year, so I didn't have anything to do with Morris's work. Also his work comes out of Duchamp. I knew Dan Flavin for about a year prior to that and I didn't know him well. And there was no discussion. There was no group. Sol LeWitt is many years later. Carl Andre I met because he was a friend of Frank Stella's, but he told me on the street, walking along, that he carved things out of wood, and at that piont he was also flirting with my then wife, and I stopped listening to Carl. Three or four years passed before I had any idea what he was doing, when he finally had an exhibition.

"That's the so-called "Original Minimal." Since then, half the world has become Minimal, but that's just more publicity. Now Stella's considered a Minimal artist, and so are a whole bunch of painters--so in no way was it a group. These people didn't know each other. The idea of a Minimalist movement is a very careless falsification of the history. At any time you're going to have certain correspondences between the best artists, which is ignored, too. People don't talk about that and that's legitimate thing to write about; you can say there are certain things in common between me ad Claes Oldenburg, say. But I naturally feel I'm an independent artist, and I don't like suddenly disappearing into some group that I consider to be nonsense." (pg 120).

Man, the creme de la creme of the "Minimalist movement" is even saying it wasn't a movement and there were no lasting connections. That kid was brilliant.