"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.

The Prompt: Ailey

In my most humble opinion, I believe that any rules concerning art making and art viewing are subjective and personal.  Our beliefs and our aesthetics are the products of nature and nurture in our histories of self. 

      We are all brought up in varying value systems that place behaviors, objects, people, histories, ideas, aesthetics etc. within hierarchies that shape our judgments, our ideologies.  Whether we accept or reject these value systems, they still have an effect and contribute to our own personal ones. I can have my own individual “truths” but they are not universal, nor can I assume they are right as much as I can assume that yours are wrong. 

      So in terms of how this affects how I think about and make art- I value art that is sincere in its allegiance to the maker’s value system.  The only time I am afraid of art and art making is when I sense that the maker has compromised their genuine self and their personal truths. I value earnestness, in art, and in others and myself.  Everything else is peanuts.

The Prompt: Gordy Ruchti

Gordy:

My Art

I don't make much art anymore.  One could speculate as to when I'm going to start, but that's a really simple bet.  When I make art, I try to think of something I want to communicate.  When I sit down to write a piece of music, I want to get across something, I want to make sure the audience is hearing what I'm hearing.  I am usually lazy about accomplishing this, but I still believe that clear ideas of sound and material gestures are imperative in making my compositions.  In many ways the timbres (for visual artists, this is the color of the tones, the shaping of the sounds) are less important in what I denote than the pitches and chords themselves.  This may be sloppy or exhibition of my technique's unrefinement, but I feel as though my pitches can designate the tone, dynamic, sound that I am trying to capture, sometimes even the articulation and rhythm to accompany the frequencies of vibration.  In many ways I care more about the harmony than several other things.  I will bend the lines up, down, and I will sometimes disregard a greater structure for the musical moment, the present, the now, what melody or chord is necessary NOW.  I hear something, and I know that it is beautiful to me, so I do my best to show those who may listen subsequently how beautiful it can be for them.

 

In Visual Arts, I try to communicate with positive reinforcement.  Toccata is really the only example I have.  It reaches a cloth hand out to the viewer, begging to be touched and gawked at.  This is something I find really important in visual arts, because I myself find it hard to participate in visual art without being very close, almost awkwardly close, to a piece.  I want to see the textures of many things.  Paintings, not as interesting.  I find texture in painting almost absurd.

 

I believe that an artist must be communicating something.  I find the "my work is too heady, too refined, too advanced, and will only be understood by a future audience" mantra to be complete bull-shit.  Rather, I find it completely true, and I think that artists who espouse it are inane.  If you aren't communicating, I don't know what you're doing.  And don't say, "not communicating," hardee har har.  Umm, that's saying something.  But to ignore this factor is more than a faux pas in my eyes. 

 

I like spacing.  I like objects that aren't arbitrary, but in seeing Louise Bourgeouis' installation, I really had to notice that I may not be educated enough in appreciating art to appreciate it the way I want to.  I see her stacks of objects on mini-pikes and they are called people.  I liked the big rods that represented her family (and I have little, but everything against cannibalization of formerly produced pieces), but the ministacks were annoying to me.  Why?  Of course, I have much to understand to understand things the way I want to.  I didn't enjoy some of the drawings of buildings with legs on them.  I find the figure a little arbitrary sometimes.  I think that it is not that important much of the time, but then I guess I haven't crossed the lines necessary to see that to communicate you have to talk to people.  WOOOH people.  I didn't like the buildings with legs on them not for the message, but for the apparent sloppiness in drawing.  Or paintings.  Whatever.  I don't know what it is, but sloppiness in painting, in drawing, can turn me off.  I find it neither nonchalant nor expressive.  However, I find the need sometimes to express myself in a similar fashion, but too often I can't understand what the author is doing drawing legs more sloppily than I would in a game of Cranium Cloodle. Again with my education.

 

I think art is very personal.  I think this stuff should be very personal.  I don't believe that somehow people should take offense.  That's a little weird.  I mean, seriously, we're going to get upset or shy because somebody says something is art and it's not what you thought of?  If we don't accept this, what are we accepting?  If we don't know who we are communicating with, or that we are communicating with, what are we doing?

 

I believe so much of this because Kerry has showed me.  I believe that art is important in whatever way we want it to be, that maybe indie productions of things we know in a more commercial form are truer.  I have seen the sounds and heard the shapes he's tried to make clear to me, and there's so much more to go.  The real clear thing I have is that I need more.  I need to do more/see more.  Synesthesia.  How much can we combine, how much can we bring together, and I'm ready.

The Prompt: Zak Kirwin

Zak Kirwin:

I don't rightly know what happens when I make art.  I am going to for safety's sake include everything creative and without practical application into the category art.  I think for myself I lose for a moment that tugging sensation that concrete issues of survival or impossible situations put on my heart.  It's like I am leaving behind more frustrating, or at least more senseless, problems and am going back to an old knotted ball of twine that I have been working at untangling for years.  I know many aspects of it, but am still mystified, but always excited to find a new route to begin untangling.  Thats one facet, though, I would say, and many more exist, many contradictory in nature.  I think that perhaps I just love exposing my brain and imagination to the harsh air of reality, just to see what results.  As far as making money for art, i don't think it illigitimate at all, nor do I think I will never do it, I just believe it will always be far inferior to that which is made for no reason at all, or that which is made as a gift.  that's where its at, but that won't feed you.  ooooh what a crux!  Thanks for giving me the chance to pontificate pretentiously!  Hope you are doing well, and would enjoy a true "catch up" email.  word. peace.  song.  Food.

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.

The Prompt: Nadeem Mesbah

Nadeem:

My first inclination is to say art doesn't have rules. But that's clearly not true because a large part of artistic "invention" is rule-breaking, and it's certainly not a personal rule. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what makes "art" in an attempt to create a framework in which to create, or outside of which to create, or to put in relation to creation. Can we call the act of defecation art? Well, actually yes, it is if Martin Creed is the one filming it. But then what makes that "art", as apposed to a pornographic video of someone shitting, which you could find on the internet long before martin creed came along. And certainly if Martin Creed had made that piece 50 years ago, it would never be shown as art. Could 2 Girls 1 Cup be called art? What if it had been shown in a gallery instead of online? So it's clear that whatever the definition of "art" is, it's a relational concept that can only be understood in terms of society and culture at large. But what about the Mona Lisa, a Duchamp urinal, etc. Do we not call these timeless classics, instantly identifiable as works of artistic merit? So it's clear then that there something inherently outside time that can be identified as art. And here, I'm just talking about "high art".   

But this isn't actually answering the personal. What are my rules for my art? First, it has to have humor. It's usually a personal humor, about personal events, but if I don't chuckle while I'm making it, it's not good. I can't make sense of things if I can't figure out how to laugh at them. It's a nervous habit, to be sure. It's my way of defusing things. Of taking tension out of situations, of ignoring my own neurosis and  I think, most importantly, it my way of connecting it to the rest of my life. It's how I keep things from getting too serious. For me, seriousness is what kills art. Life is serious, art should be a refuge from that seriousness. At the same time, my process of making is horribly repetitive and mundane. I don't know what to do with painting because I can't get in the rules of it, the structure and the repetitious system of it. I need to understand the system I'm working in to find the humor in it, to figure out how to make it funny for myself. It's about making 1+1+1+1+1+1.... add up to less than the sum of it's parts, and then have that loss be something more. When I try to make it add up to more, or even just add up, I find I can't, that something ends up wrong.

The worst thing art can do is take itself too seriously; to presume it can change the world. It can't. It never has and it never will. I think it's egomaniacal to assume it can. The act of making art is like an extra marital affair. Pieces should be treated as such, performed in secret behind closed doors and only thrown to the wild after it starts to fail to capture lust and desire. I want my viewer to feel like they're stepping into something private and a little uncomfortable; someone else's personal space, yet without any of the traditional artifacts of personhood. Perhaps the best way to describe it might be stumbling into a physical representation of someone else's cosmogony, one perhaps regarding something slightly alien.

But this is all still non-sense. Perhaps if I distill a list:

1. Have fun while creating.

2. Periodically, while working, take on a facade of intense thought coupled with either sitting and looking intently, or standing and pacing around. Stare upwards, off into the distance, and twist one's mustache or play with one's hair. 

3. The use of caffeine and alcohol should be employed to work late into the night, so as to avoid strictly coherent and reasoned thought.

4. Anything that can be understood solely through through reason should be disregarded as either fallacious or irrelevant to life.

5. At no point should contemplation of the deeper meaning or greater intellectual importance of a piece occur while making it.

6. The work should come from the gut and the heart, not the head. Only work from the groin should be coupled with the head, and then it must always be coupled with the head.

7. Keep things simple. Don't say something with a film if it could be said in a single picture, a picture if it could be said in a sentence.

8. The consumable one should be using up as fuel for creation, when making art, is one's ego.

9. One should investigate what one does not understand.

10. ???

There is no profit.

The Prompt: Rachel Schragis

Rachel:

I have been struggling with this.

It feels like a harking back,

the part of me that has this on the tip of my tongue is fading.

I am petrified it will disappear.

What is art? This makes me stuck.

Some questions I more want to answer:

what could art be?

what is art for?

why should we make it?

Art is naming your own agenda. What will I make? and when and where and why? Lining up your reasons with the practicals of time and space, getting yourself together to make a thing. From this we grow. I see art-making as having an inexhaustible and mostly untapped educational potential. Learning to make art one is proud of is essentially they same thing as learning to be a person you are proud of- to name what you want to achieve, to reach for it, and to find peace in the distance between the reality and the ideal.

There are two products of art: the object and the learning. We have spent forever trying to name what makes the object great, how much it is worth or how it ought to be discussed and ranked. But that learning, that other product, remains unclassified. When I have access to this other product- that is when I know the artist and/or have meaningful access to their process- I find it to be deeply moving. The lessons, the experience, the thrill, the devastation, the satisfaction, the knowledge, the factoids, the feedback that the artist gets as a result of making their creative product is the most moving bundle of intangible something that I can imagine existing, and yet the viewers are usually given very little access to it.

Maybe this does not matter, maybe these beautiful bundles of learning that art makes within its makers are meant to be hidden. If this is true, the language around art ought to shift: artists do not make art for the benefit of society, rather art makes artists for the benefit of society. So we, as artists, have some obligation to push ourselves to make art that will change us. We should lay out projects for ourselves that we are deeply invested in, and we should do them with our everything: brain, heart, body, gut. However we define it, we ought to make things that will inspire us to be better people.

But what about the audience? I am not satisfied with the learning of art being hidden, or even obscured. I want artists not only to strive to make art that moves them, but to try to let others in to what they have learned as much as possible. I am not interested in indirectness, I believe art is challenging enough for the viewer without the artist trying to hold anything back . Art is desperate. Use ever strategy you have: try every angle. every option. use every material. use language. repeat yourself. write an artists statement, a long one aimed at the dumbest people you can imagine. make it so children will get it. Show how you made it. show pictures. hang up your sketches. Put out your journal and a guest book. make your mother sign your guest book. sit next to your artwork and explain it. ask questions, answer questions. try to understand yourself and make yourself understood.

I am self-conscious writing this, because I worry that those who are reading this and know my artwork will laugh a little. Whose artwork or what approach could possibly fulfill these desires besides the one I took last year, where the space within which I was grappling with my ideas about myself in the world was framed as the artwork itself. Yes, this continues to be how I think about making art. It's my own ideal. I interpret my own imperative, that art be about learning, as a call to make art that directly addresses big social and ecological issues of the world today. I struggle with work with more oblique subject matter, but I am excited about this struggle. I do not think abstract work, work about aesthetics or work with indirect content is meaningless or irrelevant, but I feel unsatisfied with it: Almost all art work I see makes me yearn for a good explanation of why the work is worth the materials it takes to make it. It is denial to think that people don't see what a work of art is made out of, and so art can never entirely transcend being about what it is made out of.

And yet, those of us who look at art often forget this. We see paintings as being about whatever the image on the painting is of. Casted or carved figures are not about metal or plaster or stone or wood. Videos don't have to be about video. I am frustrated by this, but also stuck: does this mean I think every artist has to reinvent the wheel? There has to be some way to use the conventions of art history to our own ends, to play within the options of particular media and for that to be enough.

A few times in my life I have seen artwork that speaks directly to my experience as a human being: emotions, sensations, knowledge, worries, or that is in itself an experience that is so unique or moving that it demands to be processed and integrated in to my life afterwards. Most of the time I enjoy art, though, it is via the knowledge I have been given as a student or art and art history. I have the language and the chronology, the recognition, that allows me to access what a work of art is trying to accomplish. It is accessed through the particular privileges of my own life. As trained artists and fortunate, educated people there is a great temptation to use this knowledge set as the launching point for our artwork, and to some extent it is inevitable. I believe that we have an obligation to be conscious of this trend, and to at the very least be able to name how our work is derived from the social/historical construction of art we have inherited and embraced.

I believe that we should try to make art that allows the audience in, that does not assume the viewer has any codebook of art to help them access it, and that makes some acknowlegement of the unnamed learning-product, in the conventional object-product. Doing this requires an acceptance that the mission is impossible, because no one will ever get as much from your work as you do. Maybe so many hold themselves at an arms length from their own work because they are afraid that if they eliminated this distance, they would have to confront the reality that they cannot be fully understood. better not to try. Making art is selfish- it will never do as much for any other person as it does for you. Any potential for giving to others by making artwork is secondary: it lies in the search to make them understand all that you have gotten from your work. You will never achieve this mission, but I believe we should still really try.

The Prompt: Our Closed Minded Selves

The Prompt

I have decided, largely from Rachel's advice, to have each one of these responses as a separate post.  This will making commenting on them a lot easier.  If you respond using the "anonymous poster" option, please, don't remain anonymous!  Tell us who you are!

Below is the prompt I sent you all (and more, we are still awaiting some responses). Oh, and yes, I got Zak wrong... so ignore the example I use him in. I decided to still keep it in the prompt just because I feel like the prompt is at a point where it is not meant to evolve anymore. For now on though, I guess it will come with this disclaimer:

I have been wanting to know what really is going on when we make art and when we look at art.  What is going on in our heads?  What are our rules for making?  What are your most dogmatic guidelines?  What things make you cringe?  What do you think is immoral when it comes to art making? What will you never ever do?  What should art do and why?  Why do you believe any of this?

An example of one of my own dogmatic rules is that I think installation should always be about architecture, hence why I make pieces about architecture.  I believe that historically architecture is the foundation of installation; Kurt Schwitter's Merz Bau was a room, not a piece on a pedestal.  I recall Zak laughing at the idea of art that makes money.  That is one of "his rules," maybe (I don't want to speak for him).  This is what I want to get at.

I imagine that our responses will disagree more than agree.  At least I hope so, but we should remember to not take these responses too personally either.  Though I have this dogmatic rule of "installation must address architecture," it certainly is not the only means I judge an installation with.  I'd imagine that we are both open minded people, but I want to see the side of us that is close-minded.

I see these responses as being the antithesis of artist statements we may have written.  I see the artist statement as addressing internal issues (i.e.- "I use only car parts when making pieces because my father was a mechanic, and being witness to this blah blah blah), whereas these I see as being about external factors.  For example, "I use car parts in my work because I want to appeal to an unrepresented-in-galleries working class public blah blah blah." As we get more into it, sure, we might find that these two things are more close together than they are far apart, yet here we are making that very distinction.

Make these as long as you like. I am ready to read pages and pages.

Why Louises?

I have thought a lot about Louise Bourgeois in the past few months after having seen the her retrospective twice now (once in August at the Guggenheim and once at LAMoCA in November).  Initially, I just admired her way of making things and how she was a genuine and hard worker.  She actually gives a shit.  I always thought her work seemed a little too obvious at times, though I liked her a lot more than Judy Chicago.  Judy Chicago was an artist who was living through the women's suffrage and I admitted that I would probably never understand that.  You aren't too concerned with subtlety when you are fighting something obvious.  She was stating a problem and certainly could serve as a figure to the 80s feminists that came after her.  I give her credit, just as I did Louise Bourgeois.  Plus, I do actually like Louise's art; I just never saw myself as someone following in her footsteps, like I have with Bruce Nauman.  I feel for a long time, he is to whom I have been responding.  I have worked off of him.

Where my feelings started to change for Louise (though I wasn't aware of it yet) was when I began reading Howard Zinn's "Artists in Times of War." Zinn mentions an early American feminist and anarchist, whom I had never heard of.  Her name is Emma Goldman.  When Zinn first mentioned Emma Goldman, my feelings towards her were like those I had towards Louise.  I didn't like what they were doing (the content), but liked how they were pursuing their goals.  I respected that.  A lot.  Upon coming across Goldman's name, I decided to investigate further.  I came across her autobiography, "Living My Life," but that was too massive for someone I just started reading about.  Instead, I purchased a shorter book about Emma, and started reading it.  It is interesting to note that Emma Goldman actually didn't join an early feminist movement in America--I want to say very late 1800s--because she thought their interests were inconsequential compared to her ideal of creating a localized America--that is, an America with many small approximately self-sufficient communities, as opposed to huge sprawling urban areas with a very wealthy upper class.  In any case, as I read, she impressed me more and more.  A Russian immigrant, who came to the states to escape her father and help start an anarchist revolution in America, was ironically a successful co-owner of a "mom and pop" ice cream shop with her lover, Alex (?) Beckman, who was trying to make enough money to go back to Russia for some reason regarding the spreading of anarchism.  Then there was a fiasco in Chicago with a "private army" killing some unionizers or something, and Beckman decided to go kill the owner of the factory or whatever it was, he shot the owner (Frick?), but didn't manage to kill him.  He went to prison, and the adventure just goes on and on with Emma working in a prisoner's hospital (which was a real treat because she had wanted to go to Medical School when she was living in Russia)... In any case, I am only half way through the book, I can't remember too much of it, and it's already fascinating.  (One last thing that I have to put in about Emma Goldman.  While talking to workers about the benefits of anarchy and worker rights and preaching to them that in the long run, their efforts would be rewarded, an older worker asked Emma a question that made her rethink how to go about achieving her beliefs.  The older worker asked quite simply, what is in it for me in the short run?  What does next year matter, if I die next week?)

After reading about Emma Goldman's futile struggles, sometimes joining the very system she cursed (this is obviously inevitable, but I imagine this was painful for her), I just completely reconsidered her stance.  I mean, she is a woman, who decided to run away from Mother Russia (she was no Socialist) in order to pursue her ideal in America in the mid-late 1800s.  That impresses me to no end.

Then when I saw Louise Bourgeois' show once more, the same feeling hit me.  I just realized on a whole new level the difficulties she faced just as a woman (even if she married someone wealthy--Adam Goldman, a Jewish art critic/historian).  Then I also thought about the obvious connection that they were both early American immigrant feminists (Louise is French, if you couldn't tell).  I realized that I didn't know too many early feminists, but another sculptor came to my mind.  Louise Nevelson, whose work is above right, was born 1900, 11 years before Bourgeois (though Nevelson died in 1988, and Bourgeois is still alive).

Currently, these are Kerry's Obsession of the Month (Oh yes, books about them made it to my Christmas list).  After doing some research at the Portland Public Library, I am starting to see some things Bourgeois has resolved that now challenge me.  The most pressing of my problems is where my figurative sculpture connect with my installations.  That seems to be the next big step that I must make in order to understand what I'm doing more.  Let's look at Bourgeois' "Spider" (1997).  If we were to make a rough formal analogy between my "Walker" and her "Spider," Allan (the figure carrying the stove) serves the purpose of the spider, and my ramp serves as her cage.  What was of immediate interest to me when looking at this piece was that an "egg sac" was inside the cage, dead center on the ceiling.  The spider's body looms right over this egg sac and it appears as if it may be attached to the spider itself.  But, I don't know.  The boundaries of the spider's body are lost there.  The egg sac looks as if it could belong to the cage or the spider.  The egg sac does not serve as a mediator, but it does play a liminal role.  It's inbetween, it makes me curious.  If I extend my "Walker"-"Spider" analogy, something else becomes clear: both Bourgeois' eg sac and my cupola in "Walker" are a major third element both of which can be easily overlooked.  But that's it.  I think that is one thing that makes "Spider" so amazing to me now.  With the egg sac, she gets the spider and the cage to mold together; she molds ideas of architecture and body, and how they inherently relate.  Now, I also realize that making a "Walker"-"Spider" analogy can be dangerous and seem pretentious or disrespectful; I realize too, that a giant spider looming over a cage already creates a stronger relationship than a man carrying a stove surrounded by a spiraling ramp.  I also have learned that her spiders really mess with scale and the idea of scale when they interact with a cage.  The cage is emblematic of architecture, and the spider a figure.  Wait, what?  But then the figure is bigger than the architecture!  All I have to say to Bourgeois is: **** ***!  Why the hell didn't I think of that?

Cites, Notes and Quotes

1) "Louise Bourgeois' Spider: The Architecture of Art-Writing" by Mieke Bal

"imaginary subject sitting in the chair" pg 24

Egg sac molds architecture and body together

2)"The Early WOrk of Louise Bourgeois" by Josef Helfenstein

arch and body

working in the era of the masculine abstract expressionists who saw David Smith as their representative sculptor

"her scultpures were not kept in the neutral space of the studio" pg 19 (studio isn't neutral!)

"The ultimate goal [of "Personages"] was to make them able to stand on their own.  In order to achieve that, they had to be fixed at the most fragile point, since most of "Personages" come down to one or two narrow points at the bottom." pg20 (one "Personages" can be seen top right).

she leaned them against the wall--domestic/objects/everday

she saw herself as alienated from society (her parents family and her own family, both of which consisted of 5 members) "Quarantia"

skyscrapers, male and female genitalia, reductive figures

Adam Goldwater's "What is Modern Sculpture"

Private areas were preferred over public venues while she was working on "Personages"

Her methodic logic (traditionally male)

"Repetition, as the artist has stated over and over again, is the equivalent of emotional urgency." pg31

fragility is adverse to masculine monumentality

domestic objects (knife, paddle, needle), war objects (dagger), modern structures (skyscrapers) all make up "Personages"

Bourgeois' Artist statement in the book (pg31) which was originally published by Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis in "Design Quartly," no. 30,18 in 1954. "my sculptures might be called 'confrontation pieces'"--referencing 18th century painter's "conversation pieces."

She saw "Personages" as being "blind houses without any openings," "At best the artist does what he can rather than what he wants to do.  After the BATTLE (my emphasis) is over and the damage faced up to, the result may be surprisingly dull--but sometimes it is surprisingly interesting," and "The artist who discusses the so-called meaning of his work is usually describing a literary side-issue."

It's a good thing, everybody. Everybody is looking for the same thing.

I want to be around other artists, around my age, all of whom hang around and live around an art co-op of some sort, that is preferably very big.  It is no secret now that I best make friends around my work and theirs.  Being around other artists is also a way of saying, then, that I want to be around friends, old and new alike (Damn SoCa).

I want to be close to NYC, but not in it.  I think NYC does not live up to the hype, but it does have a lot to offer.  But so does the countryside.  And suburbia on occasions.  This could mean Philadelphia, but I just don't really know.  Philadelphia is about an hour and a half or so away, from what I recall.  Being close to NYC will allow me to reap its benefits, but will also potentially allow for cheap(er) studios to rent.

I also am interested in creating UBS2.  Bring back those that are interested into some large communal studio space.  Ideally, folks like Jo, Ailey, Rach, Nadeem, Alex and Devin.  At least anyway.  I can't say I was close-close to people like Beny or Win, but they seemed like good folks whose company I'd enjoy.  And Addison is just too cute to not have around.  I would definitely like to extend this to Zak.  I'm just not sure how into it he might be, being so adverse to art-making-money.  I mean, hell, I don't want to bend over backwards for anyone, and I don't like the common of do-it-somebody-else way of art making.  I have a feeling he is a shade too nomadic also.  But regardless the informal, unofficial invitation to a nonexistent place is extended to him.

Wait... so, what about work?  I got to pay the bills, and currently I don't seem to have a skill set that can viably support me.  I think that maybe I could get my foot in the door at a construction agency if I were on the east coast.  Maybe Judy or Roman could help me out.  Or I could work with an artist.  That's possible.  Really to muse on what work I want to make money is still pretty pointless to do, primarily because it still remains in the "transient winds."  Instead, I will just list a couple dreams jobs:

1) Working with an artist that does mold making, who may potentially use plastics or fiberglass in his/her art making process

2) Work as a graphic designer after knowing photoshop a good deal better

3) Working as a laborer in either construction or landscape

4) Any job requiring welding

5) Working as an apprentice to a skilled carpenter, plumber or electrician (preferably all 3).

6) Working in an amazing book store or library

7) Working with some film/video company that would start me off doing very simple editing, per se, and then also show me the limits of programs like final cut pro, photoshop, etc.

8) Being a technician or technician assistant at some college or university.

9) Any of the above only with employers that were comfortable with learning-on-the-job training.

Thus far, these are the things I think I would enjoy.  And these are the things I want.