Fair Enough

This view shows one quarter of one of the two dozen art fairs. Granted, it's the largest but that's still a lot of art!

The circus of art fairs that happens every year in Miami can be daunting on many different levels. It’s visually overwhelming to visit a thousand or so galleries in a weekend. The schlepping is almost as taxing physically. Perhaps the hardest part for an artist, however, is the in-your-face assertion of social hierarchy and market-making. It can feel like a punch below the belt.

Because there is no objective way to measure the worth of a work of art, the market is largely built through social jockeying that established hierarchies within each Art World constituency—galleries, artists, and collectors. Position is power and while there is much that is wonderful about such a vast assemblage of creative talent, this event is a market foremost and ugly emotions such as pride and envy are not necessarily discouraged.

I went to Miami to see and be inspired by amazing art, to catch up with friends I see less frequently since moving to Virginia, and—let’s be honest here—to advance my own position within the hierarchy. How does one do that without feeling inferior or without behaving crassly?

These are standard concerns within any marketplace, but with a pretty big dose of salt for an artist since I am my business. There can be no firewall between my soul and that which I produce and sell. A least that’s how I feel. So I wanted to do well but also to stay upbeat despite all this sausage being made around me and I wasn’t sure how I would do it.

In truth though, it’s really just a decision toward the kind of person I want to be: generous, serene, joyful, and the active application of those virtues in my every action. Thinking that way made the whole experience a lot more fun, and probably more successful too.

It’s the only way to live anyway and that’s how I approached it. And you know what? It was a good weekend.

Getting it all down in 150 words

Few prospects are as daunting for an artist—or yield as predictably sub-mediocre results—as writing an artist statement. At one of the #class sessions I attended last month, writer Sarah Schmerler co-crafted a working artist statement for a quasi-volunteer in real-time.

It was an interesting way to lay bare some of the reasons why it can be so difficult, and although there are no easy answers, understanding the obstacles makes them easier to overcome.

Most people reading this blog are aware of my deep appreciation for excellent writing and my consequent disdain for the majority of artist statements, issue of authors who have never studied writing with anywhere near the seriousness of their chosen métiers—if at all.

To be fair though, fixing an artist statement is not just about improving one’s general writing skills. The form is difficult because one must translate into words ideas and emotions that are inherently non-verbal. Writers employ language and artists visuals.

An artist statement must cover a lot of ground. It needs to describe the physical nature of the work, including the size, scale and materials—the what and how. Then it must tackle the more difficult question of why, while placing their specific work in the broader arc of art and civilization.

Every genre has its conventions and an artist statement should really be 150 words or less—far fewer than I have already devoted to this post (we’re currently at the 225 mark). So it is easy to understand why artists are so vexed at the prospect of baring their souls in such a way, and why they understandably fail more often than not.

For my part, I have traditionally ignored the hard word count and simply tried to be relatively concise. Before Sarah and Jen’s session, my statement weighed in around 600 words—four times the recommended length. Clearly I had work to do.

With the goal of creating a more perfect—or at least acceptable—artist statement, I challenged myself to craft something better than before, while being brief enough to honor the 150 word convention. Here’s what I came up with; an ever evolving essay but ready to share.

Comments are always welcome.

My drawings, prints, and scratch boards probe the membrane between Earth and sky, terrestrial life and the vast beyond. Tree canopies, silhouetted treelines, and occasional human interferences such as telephone poles act simultaneously as intermediaries and embodiments of the aspiration toward that infinite mystery.

Ranging in scale from tiny to gigantic, and often designed to be presented high on the wall or on the ceiling, they recall childhood afternoons on the grass, gazing upward through a net of foliage, or a glance toward the darkening horizon when it is time to run home for supper.

Our shared affinity with trees predates history, reaching back to primate ancestors who lived among them. Even still, forests and reforestation hold the key to our species’ survival. I can feel that synergy when I work and I’m glad to be part of an endless chain of precedent that will always be contemporary and relevant.

March Madness

March is a time of emergence and stepping forth. The sun passes over the Equator and will stay with us for a few seasons. Lives that were thriving but hidden under the fallen leaves burst into the open bold and vigorous. Renewal is in the air in the countryside, and in the city too!

Back in old New York, Jen Dalton and Bill Powhida closed the book on their month-long #class extravaganza. They were kind enough to allow me to moderate the discussion on Artworld as High School. My session was fun, but my strongest impression came from the overall experience of being inside the larger exhibition—albeit for a short time.

I needed surprisingly much reflection to settle on the word exhibition to describe #class. Although there was technically some art on display, it was marginalized to a secondary room. #Class was not about the presentation of visual artifacts, as is typical in most gallery shows, but rather the pure exchange of ideas, usually ephemeral, in the larger conference- (or classroom-) configured main gallery.

On the night I was there, it started with a two-our table discussion about similarities between the Art World and a clique-infested school cafeteria. I wore my letter jacket, which I am proud to say still fits and we talked about how to penetrate the small group that inhabits the top of the social pyramid (for sake of discussion, we accepted the metaphor as valid) and the ways that art explodes stratification. It was a very worthwhile conversation, but it was just the beginning.

Following that session, the tables were rearranged and there ensued a 15 minute audience-inclusive performance that linked drawings of genitalia in a gender-crossing way with the names of respected public figures. The presenter took the drawings with her and no questions were accepted.

Immediately after that, the tables were re-shuffled again and an art-critic wrote an artist statement in real time. Poor Jen was shanghaied to be the guinea pig and, as her art is exceptionally personal, the process resembled open-heart surgery. Perhaps open-soul surgery would be a more apt description.

Then everyone left and we downed some much-needed beers in the back room. The three sessions were enough to make the head spin, more for the diversity of their offerings than their individual emotional intensity, which was considerable. I can scarcely imagine how it must have been for Jen and Bill to repeat the cycle every day for a month. I hope they’re able to retreat to rest and reflect for a while. I won’t even ask for their impressions until some time has passed.

Although the show was not visual, musical, lyrical, or many other things one expects from an art exhibit, it was most definitely an exhibition: a putting-on-display of ideas and artistic information in a discombobulating whirlwind that neither artists could have anticipated. A reshuffling of the creative deck in plain sight.

When I got back to Virginia a few days later, head spinning with thoughts about the non-visual things that an exhibit can do, Nature greeted me with gusting winds and torrential squalls. Neither coming nor going, March was behaving more like an indecisive lion than a lamb.

And green shoots were shoving aside Winter’s blanket.

Full #class thread

Status Deferred that won't be Denied

I was gathering input for my Art World as High School discussion over coffee the other day with an artist friend of mine when she raised a very interesting point.

She pays a great deal of attention to personality types (as do I). She observed that a great many of her artist friends/colleagues are people who had frustrating high school experiences from a status perspective and are now (over)compensating by seeking the approbation the feel they missed back then. Because they’re trying to make up ground, it is not enough for them that their work be simply good, effective, or respected. It (ergo, they) need to be loved by a large audience.

Unfortunately visual art is not a pathway particularly well suited to broad-based approbation. To say so is not a knock against the quality of a given artist’s output or a dismissal of the public as visually ignorant. Those are weak shortcuts.

Rather, it is simply a question of whether someone can relate to a stranger’s intensely personal message. Perhaps the more leaden a work, the smaller the audience. The result is a maddening tension between a hunger for big-time adoration and a life journey that is paved with small “aha” moments, most of which the artist does not even get to hear.

A better path, to my mind, is to find a way—through meditation or whatever—to be happy with oneself. Torment does not make better art; obsessive, hard work does. Life is too short to spend being unhappy, and art is too important to waste by tilting at chimera left over from who sat where in the high school lunchroom.

But that’s just me.

[View full ThinkTank thread]

Art World as High School

Front portico of my high school, Montgomery Blair--an amazing place I stumbled into and marched out of with a high chin and mortarboard. Image pilfered without apology from a nice article in Open Salon.

When Jen Dalton asked me if I would like to take part in her table discussion “Art World as High School” (March 17) I had misgivings. I felt the description painted high school—and the art world—as a closed environment ruled by cliques, where acceptance and status are all-important and all-consuming.

Not only is this analogy incorrect—the world of art is infinite, as big as the collective imaginations of the millions who make and love art—but that line of thinking is unhelpful in the extreme. It seemed the opposite of helpful, actually.

As one who spends his days on the front lines of the art market, I constantly hear the voices of the excluded sighing predictable fallacies like “If I were an art collector…” “If I had money…” “If I had taste…” as justifications why they could not step deeper into the universe that art has to offer.

The absolute last thing I want to encourage is the idea of art as province of some elite cadre of insiders. That benefits only small-minded people jealously guarding an inflated market, while stifling innovation and depriving the larger world of art’s innumerable benefits. I don't think it's true but the perception is out there and it's devastating and part of me felt that to even debate the topic lends it credence.

Thoughts evolve and the only way to purge a demon is to flush it out into the open, so I decided to join the discussion: is the art world (if we can agree what that is) like high school? If so, is that a good or bad thing?

Let’s start with the profile of an Artworldling; how would they fit into the imagined cafeteria-table system? In my experience, the art world is full of former outcasts—people who were probably not sitting at the “cool” table in high school. They would be pretty nerdy, or natty, sitting with the “creative types.” If that group has morphed into a bunch of exclusionary snobs, it would be pretty depressing. Perhaps it is inevitable but those who have suffered should not make others to suffer at the first opportunity, especially when there’s not even a pretense of redistributive justice. I, for one, will not tolerate that on a personal level. Life is too short.

There is also the idea that those who peaked in high school have probably declined since then—the 20-year reunion phenomenon where the former cheerleaders are fat and the football players are plumbers, and the geek has a great life. While not a universal phenomenon, it does ring true to me. So if the art world is indeed full of closed doors, and the logic holds up, then it’s actually better to be excluded from the clique-du-jour. Those obsessed with status today will be pathetic tomorrow.

Maybe Art World High School is not so bad after all!

There is second way to approach the discussion. Instead of viewing high school from a hypothetical anthropological perspective, what if we look at it in terms of personal development? Then the analogy gets really interesting.

The high school years are a time, terrifying for many, when one begins to make consequential decisions about how to live. What we do not realize at the time, however, is that what we do matters much less than how we do it. Fashion and cool mannerisms are important not because they indicate some Darwinian capacity to keep up with the pack, but because of what it says about our relationship to our fellow humans. Will you follow or will you lead? Indeed, a terrifying choice and few choose the latter.

For me—and I can only speak of my own experience here—high school was a triumphant time, not because I was the most popular kid, but because I came to understand over the course of those four years that I didn’t have to play that game—couldn’t and mustn’t because it wasn’t my path. There are infinitely many ways to live and each person needs to do what works for them. Ultimately, that realization brought a measure of popularity by the end of high school and I’m well situated now with an interesting life, beautiful wife, and the same body I had back then.

That’s what art is for: it’s all about trying to make sense of a mysterious life and putting things together in new ways that somehow just work. So, from the standpoint of personal development, the life of this Artworldling is exactly like high school, and I love that.

Love and Cold Water

Plenty of cold water in my neighbor's yard. Actually, this photo is not germane to the post--I just included it because I like it.

A since-departed mentor of mine once told me, “All an artist needs is love and cold water.” That two-part prescription is problematic on both sides of the equation but lets take them in the order they come.

For an artist, appreciation and approbation can be powerful motivators but their pursuit can be ends unto themselves. I actually don’t know too many artists whose ambition is to be wealthy through their art (not much danger of that) but very many would like to be appreciated, influential, respected within their field, remembered after they’re gone. Reasonable enough but when you think about it, those are pretty big requests, beyond the reach of most who are not lucky enough to have a bridge or a park bench named for them.

One blessing artist enjoy is that if they work real hard and are lucky, they create living talismans that alter perspectives and perhaps carry their name into the future. That’s the goal but I am repulsed when someone pushes that agenda too hard—their ego, their need to be loved eclipses the work. That’s just me though: I am much more interested in real, impactful work than keeping track of who’s famous at this moment.

In order to be loved, an artist must love their work in a giving way and love does not carry a quid pro quo: I love thee that I may be loved. The artist needs love but he must give it out, not knowing whether it will redound.

What about the business with the cold water?

There has been a debate through the ages—and I’m not going to answer it on this blog—about whether artists need to suffer to find inspiration. Consuelo didn’t simply tell me that artists need the universal solvent for its life-giving, thirst-quenching properties. She wanted me stay out of my comfort zone, away from complacency. I think she was right: I work best when I’m challenging myself and taking that terrifying leap from bathtub to freezing waterfall.

There’s a second, more sinister interpretation that also holds some sway: that artists should not get paid; that suffering, privation, and tragedy are somehow good for the artist’s work.

Believe me when I say this: my work is not better after a poor night’s sleep. My work is not enhanced by shaking and baking out in the marketplace so the mortgage gets paid—I simply make less art during those periods. Spiritual hunger is good, and perhaps a little gnaw in the belly can get you off the couch but starvation does not yield up good art.

Basic respect and appreciation, subsistence, and the occasional splash on the face—that’s enough to keep most artists going. The good ones find a way to keep going even when those basics are not forthcoming.

Art is a Gift

My mother used to knit hats for the homeless, so I was delighted when I saw that someone is also looking after the cans where they forage and the trees under which they sleep.

UPDATE: Hear about the piece in this NPR report.

My friends Jen and Bill are organizing a series of events and happenings back in New York that explore many aspects of the relationship between art, artist, and society. One big question they are discussing is where art aught to sit on the continuum between gift and commodity. Clearly art can be either or both, but I really love when art is a gift that is freely given. I joined the conversation yesterday and I was very quickly treated to a very fine example.

When I got into the studio this morning, my neighbor Robin asked if I had seen the sleeve on a tree in the nearby park. I had no idea what she meant so I went and investigated. Turns out that someone had knitted or crocheted an arm-warmer for one of the wonderful trees in Lee Park and also a cozy sweater for a nearby trashcan.

None of us could figure out who made them but I'm sure glad they did!

They are scruffily beautiful and possess all kinds of critical merit, such as their commentary on the homeless who spend their days on the nearby benches. They are delightfully absurd and quite unexpected--and "out there" in every sense. They belong to everyone, without even the artist herself coming between the art and the viewer. There is no label, signature, website, artist statement, or gallery to contact.

They sit in a public space where all kinds of people walk, with no velvet rope to pass or white box to penetrate. It will be interesting to see how long they last--Robin says it's been a week so far and everyone I saw seemed to love them.

This is a successful and and unmediated gift, pure and bestowed without reservation, and transformative, like good art should always be. Like many handmade gifts, its greatest virtue is simplicity. If you would like one of your own, go ask your grandmother.