Day twenty-four: The continued adventures of Richard Serra.

Day twenty-three: Grieve.

When someone is dying or something is lost, we must recognize that it is going, and recognize the value and beauty in that life. Notice where the light lands on their bodies. Listen to the quiet.

My aunt is very sick, and I am at her house with my mom so that she can say goodbye. It is strange to see my aunt’s delicate yellowed skin and her limbs thin like a newborn bird. She makes quiet mumbling noises unless she is excited. When she saw my mother’s face last night she called out in joy, but the noise was so foreign, so different from the confidence and sass I’ve always known. This woman was my mother’s protector when she was a little girl. It’s hard to see the quiet pain in everyone. Our lives are sitting next to hers, it is hard to know how loud we should talk or whether it’s okay to laugh. This is a family designed to laugh with each other, so we keep trying. It makes me think about immortality.

I was mildly obsessed with immortality as a graduate student. I read furiously about the biological and anthropological reasons for romantic love and attraction, about our senses, about reproductive habits of different species, about DNA, survival of the fittest, dogs and cats living together, and mass hysteria. (This world will miss you Harold Ramis!)

I eventually came to the conclusion that all humans are born to seek immortality, to continue the world in our own vision, and to contribute to that path forward. Most people do this through sexual reproduction, by having children. Artists are able to do this in another way as well, through the objects that we hope will outlive us. For a long time I was making work specifically about my family because I find my family to have a fascinating and complex story. It took me some time to realize that my work wasn’t much about the personal, but more about how my family stories reflected more universal stories. I’ve since been creating the artifacts of stories, and many of these are about grief.

Grief is hard to understand without experience. It is easy to push away. Grief is something you have to recognize to get through. We are in a world of stories where the focus is on dangerous or horrifying events. The real difficulty in these events doesn’t come from the event but from the aftermath, the layers of pain that come in grief and dealing with regret.  Grief is mysterious and temporal. Difficult to let go of or hold on to. It is the sister of grace. I'm trying to let it come in, and to let it go.

Day twenty-two: Debate.

The other night my gentleman friend and I were discussing my post from day twenty. He said that some of my thoughts sounded stuckist. I can’t remember my response, but I believe it included some disagreement. The funny thing is that I couldn’t remember what the Stuckists actually stood for. I sometimes find myself on unsure footing and when that happens my first instinct is to argue. Usually my most vehement arguments lead to me realizing that the other person is right immediately afterward. 

This overview of the Stuckist manifesto is enormously interesting to me. While I don’t wholly agree with all of it, I have to say that much of it falls in line with the expectations and ideals that I hold art to. I should probably write my own manifesto soon, or just write a response to this manifesto as a whole. Blog project!

One point we were discussing was this sentence, “Art practice has specific benchmarks of quality, experience, and knowledge.”

What I was trying to articulate was that it is possible to educate opinion and subjectivity, and in the arts that education has a deep well to pull from. I frequently speak to people who are not artists, and am frustrated by the idea that, when speaking about art, that every opinion is equally valid because all opinions of art are subjective. It may be snotty of me, but I think that my twenty plus years of art making and education make my opinion of the value of a given painting or collection of work more useful and important. I think that experience and knowledge inform what I see, and if they don’t, why have I bothered with all of this? We live in a culture where everyone claims expertise without being an expert. Shows like American Idol and the Voice for singing, Amazon for books and writers. MOOCs are the same as physical universities. Maybe I am old fashioned. I miss the days where it was more widely accepted that to make something of value takes time, focus, education, and experience. I’m not saying that there is a single right source of that accumulation of knowing, but I do feel that is important.

I would also like to reiterate that even though I am thoroughly educated and immersed in this art world, I have no idea what I’m talking about.  This blog is just as much, if not more, a learning project for me than it is for anyone else; a way to educate my opinions and to incite conversation and debate. It is an imperative to be flexible and to remain open.  Thank you for listening to me argue with myself.

Day twenty-one: Welcome surprises.

Sometimes the unexpected happens. Often it’s something that you would have known if you’d really thought about it. You would have known it was coming, but didn’t believe it was coming, so you weren’t quite prepared. These are the things that we need to welcome. I ended up taking a last minute flight on Monday, and I have some catching up to do. I think I sometimes feel that if I’m not doing something just right it isn’t worth doing. This makes it hard to welcome surprises. This unexpected trip isn’t fun, but it is important, and has come with gifts. Gifts come when you welcome surprises, along with the stress. Meet Richard Serra. He is on this trip with me and will have many exciting adventures. Maybe.

Day twenty: Art, money, and baseball.

I found this lecture this morning to be exceptionally interesting and relevant to what I've been saying about how art gives back, regardless of the economic value it may or may not bring to individuals. It runs through a series of experiments that reflect the behaviors and response patterns of people in a position of wealth. There is so much focus, in the world of contemporary art, on the market and the inflated rates of works. It's rarely mentioned that only a fraction of that goes to the artist. Most people don't realize that those enormous resale values go to collectors and dealers, of then through auction, and if the artist sees anything from those sales it is in the value of later sales, but this market is so variable that is nothing that can actually be counted on.

I don't know if people have an idea of what it feels like to sell your work as an artist. It's always been a hard thing for me. Most of my favorite sales have been to friends, but that can get weird too. When I am in a situation to sell work to an acquaintance or stranger though, or through a dealer, it feels especially odd, and more about appeasing someone's ego or need for attention than what one would consider a typical consumer transaction. None of the rules we typically apply to buying and selling goods are always present, it is fraught with variables. I do think that some of this rests on the wider concept of our places in society as artists and buyers, where these roles place us on the perceived ladder of wealth and success. I think it is also an outcome of the skewed perspective that this country has of the value of art in general - whether it is a luxury or a necessity, what it says about the status, intelligence and identity of the person who considers and purchases works of art.

I believe that art plays a role in community that is hard to calculate. Like the perceptions that Malcolm Gladwell outlines in Blink and other texts, our understanding of art can change with each viewing. This makes it difficult to measure the specific effects that art has in fostering community, diversity and cultural understanding and respect.

I'm not saying art is completely subjective. That actually bugs the crap out of me, and is where education should come in. What makes art good is not based entirely on what we like. That is offensive. Like any other long-practiced activity, it has a long and deep history. Art practice has specific benchmarks of quality, experience, and knowledge. For instance, I have enormous respect for Cubism: the conventions of looking it introduced, it's place in the trajectory of modern art, the way that this new mode of thinking influenced accepted norms of painting and sculpture and how they intertwine. I also don't care if I look at any of it. It's sad and brown and mostly bores me.

If you are not interested or aware of art and still don't get my argument, maybe you are a sports fan. Baseball, maybe? While much of the history and value of baseball is rooted in historical statistical analysis and win/loss records, anyone that is a fan of this game recognizes the value of both Ty Cobb and Roger Maris, but may favor one over the other. They are both legends of the game but played different roles on the field  with enormously different style and temperaments. They played in different times, by different rules. What Maris did was responding to the history Cobb helped to create, and holds value in part due to that response. I like Roger Maris.

Baseball is not a necessity either. That doesn't stop it from being the national pastime.  Or a multibillion dollar industry. It has an effect on our national identity that exists outside of being a career for its players, or a job creating industry. The individual players who are rewarded have a system that helps to protect them and gain recognition and financial gain incrementally. It is still incredibly hard to be a baseball player. There are no guarantees, and most take the dramatic risks involved for love of the game.

Welcome to my world.

Day nineteen: Yes and no.

Wisdom from an old source:

Those who say yes are rewarded with adventure.
Those who say no are rewarded by the safety they attain.

Day eighteen: It's better to be good than to be on time. Go to openings.

It's better to be good than to be on time. Go to openings.

Pictured above: The Bronze Fonz, in Milwaukee

Day seventeen: The value of critique.

I had a really good conversation last night about critique. The gist of it was this. As you form opinions, and begin to share those opinions, that's great. Those elements of art making are hard to do. I think it's easy to forget that once you've been in this world for awhile. Critique is practice for seeing what you are really doing, not what you're doing in your imagination. P.S. That first painting of a tiger you made doesn't really look like a tiger. It usually will look like a combination of a cartoon tiger and a man who ran too fast into a brick wall. That's ok. It should look like that at first. The thing is, it takes more practice not just making but seeing. Looking at other art helps with the seeing.

So, critique = good.

That being said, it is also important to critique humanely. I think it's really easy, once you reach a certain point, to critique to show what you know. To show what you think is important. To show how smart and capable you are. I've certainly done that more times than I can count. I think it is important to to have and record those aspects of critique. I also think it is just as important to shut up sometimes. To realize that your valuable opinions are of no use to the person you are critiquing if they aren't ready for them. If they aren't in a place to hear or use the feedback you are offering, it may shut them down or prevent a possible collaboration or friendship.

Related but not related, it is also fun to critique the work of established artists. When I was 22 or so I decided that Degas was a hack. Partly because I was tired of his damn ballet dancers, and partly because I like to poke people sometimes and see what they do. This particular poke session was especially fun and started some great conversations. Then one day, in the Getty I think, I saw one of his pastel drawings that knocked the wind out of me. It was not only beautifully rendered, but it had certain moments where the pastel captured light in this magical inhuman way. It was almost like he had removed the paper and embedded a spiderweb catching sunlight into that moment of that particular drawing. Critique makes me look closer and sit with art longer than I usually would otherwise.

So, critique = bad, then good again.

Tah dah!

Day sixteen: Make whatever you want.

I read this great article about Jasper Johns’ new work last night.

This quote ends the article:

Even after 60 years of making art, though, Johns is still not entirely at ease with his practice. “I laboured over these a lot,” he says of “Regrets”. “Somehow what you end up with seems to be something you should have known was there to begin with, even though you had to work so hard to find it.”

That being an artist is still so arduous perplexes him. “I worry about the difficulty of making things, or the difficulty of knowing what to do,” he admits. “I may think, having been working at this all these years, why don’t I find it easy? Since it’s a relatively simple activity.”

It’s been interesting writing so far because it hasn’t really been about learning how to make art. I think when most people are learning to make, they want some specific instruction, some steps to follow. I think the best way to really learn is to just do something every day. If you don’t know what to do, ask yourself some of the questions below.

What do you want to see in the world?

How big is it?

What color should it be?

Is it for someone else or just for you?

What does the surface feel like?

How much does it weigh?

How will you make it?

You want to paint? Hold a brush in your hand. Put some paint on it. Put a mark on a surface with the brush. Done. Yes!

When I first started painting I was ten years old, and was really into drawing and painting complicated roller rink and carnival scenes. I would make up the stories of all the people I was painting as I painted them. They were very complicated. I learned about layering when I painted one such scene and realized after the foreground was done that it would look way better with a background, and when I painted in the background my poor painting skills ate some of the people I had so carefully painted. The real learning always comes from trial and error. I’m trying to make a horse right now. It looks completely different from the right and left sides. It bothered me terribly when I first made it, but now it’s starting to grow on me. I’m not sure if that is learning, but it’s something.

Day fifteen: Reaffirmation.

The day before yesterday I spoke about the value of art and what artists give back to the world. Then yesterday I wrote about Samsara and Baraka. And just like that I felt all of the emotions that I had decried. I am so damn lucky. My place in the world is so sound. I don’t spend most of my moments focused on my survival and the survival of those I love. Who am I to make art, who am I to do this thing that no one needs when there is so much that so many are lacking?

Then today, this.

At the end of the day, there are the two quotes that I love below.

It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. - William Carlos Williams

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive. The world needs more people who have come alive. -  Jonathan Harris

We get just one life in this world. I have friends who died too young, family that have survived and are currently struggling with cancer. I’m constantly reminded how precious life is. This is what I want to do with it, and I hope, every day, that it does something good for someone besides me, that it’s not the selfish act that I sometimes feel like it is.