Day Fifty-four: Random good stuff.

1

I 

      I have a habit of collecting things I like that I find in articles and other things that I read online. They are a digital version of my shitbooks - journals that I have kept since I was 16 of quotes, pictures, poems, and other bits I've collected in my life. They are a constant reminder of the richness of my life, and a record of how it has been lived. They are also a source when I think I have no ideas or I'm having a hard time getting excited. They're like a sketchbook for my brain. How do you collect your thoughts?

.     stretches a person without defeating him
2. provides clear goals
3. provides unambiguous feedback
4. provides a sense of control

Cultural critic Thomas Frank, analyzing the socio-economic meaning of the trend, argues that Normcore resonates "because it points to an obvious but unspoken fact of our time: That coolness itself is done... Maybe this will become more obvious ... as we remember the social and political conditions that gave rise to the counterculture in the first place: A mass middle class whose lockstep consumption drove the economic growth of the nation; a rigidly hierarchical white-collar workplace that offered security in exchange for conformity. None of this exists any longer... The urgent need of our age ... is to hold on to that middle-class society the counterculture thought was so soulless and unfulfilling."

If I went to a lady of the night, I’d probably pay her to tell me jokes. – Andy Warhol

Ford, in return, is a great admirer of Martha’s and tells a story about the time he replaced all the machinery on his ranch near Santa Fe with black versions, since he couldn’t bear to see bright yellow tractors roaming the landscape. It didn’t work, however, since the earth in New Mexico was red-brown and stood out against the pristine black paint. “And Martha said, ‘Well, why don’t you try grey?’” explains Ford, who replied that he’d thought of that, but every manufacturer had a different grey, and they’d never match. “And Martha said, ‘You should do what I do. I have my own grey colour mixed and I send it to each manufacturer so all the greys are the same.’ I must admit that I was pretty impressed, and of course a bit jealous.”

she said, “Well, you know, I just decided I’m going to take the fact of myself as given. I accept myself.” And it freed her up to do whatever work she wanted to do, instead of having to explain

LW Okay. It will come back in a minute or two. In the meantime, how do you define or differentiate between being a teacher and being a mentor?

KW The teacher can impart actual, useful skills that an artist can use—like composition, technique, pushing and pulling, putting more pressure on your pencil and then reducing the pressure, creating a dynamic line. The mentor can embrace the holistic aspect of the artist to provide a holistic meaning: It’s less concerned with the technical aspects unless there are some real, glaring problems. It’s more concerned with where the concept meets other concepts and then meets the real world—the effect of a piece. You can talk about what the artist desires for the work. What are they trying to make happen there? Not just in the work but outside of it—what are they trying to affect.

“She’s only interested in excellence: she won’t have five types of tomatoes, she will only have the best kind of tomato, and if there are no good tomatoes, then she won’t have any tomatoes. It’s an approach that raises questions about the way that everyone else works.”

Day Fifty-three: Artists are insecure, and marvelous.

Read this. It is long, but enormously valuable.

We don’t spend enough time thinking about the full story, and here it is, a father talking to his daughter and they are telling a very full story. I also LOVE it because, here she is, Kara Walker, one of a handful of contemporary art superstars, and she is talking about how insecure she is. In her head, she is not “there” and will never be there. As a teacher, an artist, a person, she is the critical voices in her head, just like I am, like my friends are. This after the mass of publicity and praise for the sugar baby. She just is, a person who makes art, who says things that touch a nerve in people, not by saying what she is asked to say, but what she has to say. I need to do that to. I have no idea how, but I will figure it out. I always do.

Day Fifty-two: Artists are narcissists.

Artists are narcissists. They just are. I don’t intend to sound critical or judgmental. I include myself in this statement.

nar·cis·sism [nahr-suh-siz-em] noun

1.

inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. Synonyms: self-centeredness, smugness, egocentrism.

2.

Psychoanalysis . erotic gratification derived from admiration of one's own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.

Ugh, maybe I should take that back. I believe it, but am also hesitant to place such a label on a pursuit that I believe so wholeheartedly in. I have to say it though. To make art, you must wholly believe in the lens through which you see the world, and believe in that perspective’s rightness so completely that you depict that vision in a way that the world can share it. It is kind of obnoxious. It is also valuable.

Leaders are narcissistic. Politicians are narcissistic. Teachers are narcissistic. Athletes are narcissistic. Doctors, Lawyers, pretty much every role our culture venerates has a mandatory narcissistic aspect. Artists also just make good scapegoats. There is no direct altruism inherent in art. Except that whole recording culture for the understanding of the future thing.

This article highlights that narcissism without stepping back from the individual. I’m not a critic, but I think the role of the critic is to step back from individual artists and into the big picture and to articulate that big picture clearly and objectively. Contemporary culture is not unlike this mass of consumable abstractions and individual cool artist stories. Darlings of the art world are the same as darlings of politics, of tv, of music. They are the loudest and brightest. They have the most engaging story. It rarely has to do with what they make.

The work Saltz highlights in this article was done by the following artists.

Leo Gabin – Collective of 3 Belgian artists who started working together in 2002

John Bauer – 42 years old, BA from UCSB

Josh Smith – 37 years old from Tennesee

Angel Otero – 32, got his MFA at SAIC at 24, Puerto Rican

Jamie Sneider – SVA MFA 2012, lives in Brooklyn

Rosy Keyser – 39, MFA SAIC

Helene Appel – 37, German

David Ostrowski – 32, studied with Albert Oehlen

Sergej Jensen – 40, born in Denmark, live in NY

Scott Lyall – 49, MFA Cal Arts

James Krone – 38, Berlin, BFA SAIC

Nick Darmstaedter - 25

Mark Flood – 57, Houston

Israel Lund – 33, MFA PNCA

Parker Ito – 27, Los Angeles

Jay Heikes – 38, Minneapolis, MFA Yale

Oscar Murillo – 27, MFA Royal College of Art 2012

Ryan Sullivan – 31, BFA RISD

Antonia Gurkovska – 30, Chicago and Bulgaria, 2011 MFA SAIC

Gardar Eide Einarsson – 37, Whitney Independent Study program

Nathan Hylden – 35, Los Angeles, MFA Art Center 2006

Louis Eisner – 26, BA Columbia

Joe Bradley – 38, BFA RISD

Charline von Heyl – 54, Brooklyn, contemporary of Laura Owens, Amy Sillman

Ned Vena – 32, BFA SMFA

Hugh Scott-Douglas – 26, BFA Pratt, OCAD 2010

R.H. Quaytman – 53, father was respected NY artist

Sam Moyer – 31, Brooklyn, MFA Yale 2007

Dan Colen – 35, BFA RISD

Lucien Smith – 25, BFA Cooper Union 2011

Markus Amm – 45, London

Stef Driesen – 48, Belgium

Sam Falls – 30, San Diego

Tauba Auerbach – 33, BA Stanford 2003

David Keating – 36, Berlin

I don’t think Stef Dreisen belongs in this group, but she and Marlene Dumas could totally be BFFs. It’s funny looking at all of this online. Looking at their lives and who they might be, because the work mostly looks the same. This really is quite the educated group. Pretty much the same demographic of ages as any MFA program 3-4 years later. I say to them the same thing I said in my grad school crits: Make me care. Show me something interesting.

Something I’m very interested in, but am still trying to find a way to articulate, is the line between wealth and money. This painting is important right now because it is worth a lot of money to collectors. It does not represent wealth, but some of them are trying.

Somewhere along the way we as a people forgot where to draw the line. I think part of that has to do with time. It took Julia Child EIGHT YEARS to make a cookbook that changed the way the world thinks about cuisine. If we are to make an art that truly reflects the world, it needs to be more than this. We aren’t giving it enough time.

Day Fifty-one: Who is the artist I'm trying to be?

It is difficult to come here and write, to speak and not know if anyone is listening. It’s hard for me to speak without knowing there is a listener. I think that is true even when I’m talking to people. If I think that the person I’m speaking to is distracted, or not focusing on what I’m saying, I step back. I choose my words differently. This makes blogging hard for me. I want to know that someone is listening, and I have no evidence that they are so I step back. I don’t know why it’s not enough for me to just say what I have to say, to just put it out into the world, but it is very hard for me. Maybe that’s why I have to do it. Maybe that’s why it’s important to find and speak in this way. To be loud into the void.

I’ve been having a really hard time lately. I feel rootless. I’ve lost some of my anchors. I’ve had some success, and success is much harder for me than failure. I have good habits that I’m having a hard time keeping.

When I started this blog, it was an awakening. It was a chance to talk about things I hadn’t really talked about. It became a way to share some things that I have a hard time talking about and being honest with myself about. Then the shit hit the fan, and I am out here, wandering around in the dusk, that is worse than the dark, because I can see just enough to know where I am, and yet I keep falling. I feel stuck even though I know exactly where I put myself. And I’ve been avoiding one important way to find what comes next, the something that will help me be happy again.  This blog. This voice out there in the middle.

And I was originally tying all of this blog to art, and how to make art. How to be an artist. Answering that question requires me to describe what an artist is. I’m unsure how any answer I come up with for that question isn’t utter bullshit. An artist can be anyone, anything. So perhaps more accurately, I’m trying to describe the artist that I want to be, an artist that I respect. So, I’ll try that now.

1.    Be a human I respect. Be aware of your actions, and how they affect the people and world around you. Be nice. Find ways to express and articulate your caring for that which is outside of you.

2.    Be smart. Read, research, be curious as hell.

3.    Educate your eyes, and create your own aesthetic. What does your ideal world look like? How do you define beauty?

4.    Be skilled. If you are going to make something, make it well. If you are going to break rules, learn them first, instead of being too lazy to try and calling it rebellion.

5.    Put the full weight of your desire behind your ability to change the world. You probably won’t. But you definitely won’t if you talk yourself out of it or if you just fuck around.

That’s pretty much it. So this blog is going to continue in a slightly different fashion, but it will be along these lines, in line with what an artist REALLY is.