Replies: 17 Comments
on Tuesday, January 31st, walt said
Jose and Ron, brilliance will always educate itself whether it does it in an academic institution or in the wide world. You know even those of us with various degrees often are confronted with the possibility that our pedigrees aren't the right degrees or not from the right institution, or even that by having a degree at all one is out of the creative loop somehow (there has been a lot of emphasis given to 'self taught' artists in the last 20 years). But in the end it is brilliance that illuminates!
on Tuesday, January 31st, jose freitas cruz said
Ron, I didn’t think you were revering the art verbiage of the 80s, quite on the contrary, but as you say it was the fad at the time and I just assumed it had to be done and that I’d best learn quickly how to do it. The artists I learnt my trade with (some of whom were also teachers at art academies) always told me to stick to my guns and learn the way I had wanted to learn, from the artists themselves and away from the academies, and that unless I wanted to secure a job teaching at the academies, aiming for the diploma would be a waste of time. I always felt they were genuine in their remarks and they helped demystify a goal I had been led to believe was unattainable for me, just as I know yours and Walt’s remarks to be genuine and helpful to others who might come upon them.
I wouldn’t want people to take my ‘mea culpa’ in my previous post to be a sign of weakness or acknowledgement of defeat. Hell, no. you guys made me see why I was doing it and by doing so have helped remove some of that insecurity that becomes especially present when I’m on my way back home from showing galleries my portfolio – it’s never there when I’m back in the studio or at an opening with the people I happen to attract to my work. I’m actually proud of this condition of being self-taught, of going out to meet artists I feel I can learn something from and asking for advice in whatever field they can teach me, and it has been through meeting such artists both in the flesh and virtually, as I have come to meet you guys, that I get the fuel to go back to the studio bent on proving the system wrong. No anger, just sheer steadfastness! Stubbornness? That too, I'm not such a great fan of Rice Crispies anyway.
on Monday, January 30th, walt said
Ron,
Balthus was a freakin' chimney as I understand it. I doubt I'll live that long if I don't quit. You're right about the degrees in the Rice Crispies boxes. They have begun to seem a dime a dozen. We were thinking about doing it that way a few years ago. But its kinda a hard to ask for $20,000 a year without some kind of big ceremony at the end. So we still use the Ohio Theater and give them a nice dploma with degree inside. Now if we gave a BA instead of a BFA maybe we'd go for the Rice Crispies.
on Monday, January 30th, Ron Massey said
Jose,
I wasn’t in any way revering the long-winded exercises in verbal dissecting of each others work that I mentioned as part of the I980’s art school training, they were just a sign of the times, and I’ve personally always been glad that I just missed out on them. I heard of them from younger students who quite often found themselves that it just got in the way of good painting time, but by then even art students were becoming pretty co-operative people.
There are plenty of brilliant , quirky, eigenheimers (one for the Dutch here,… nice word ) in the visual arts and music who have had no academic training. For some reason in music one seems more likely to gain acceptance/ success and Jazz has for instance always been a fertile meeting ground of the academically trained and self taught where no one is much interested in paper credentials. As for those papers, well, it’s my opinion that for some time now a lot visual arts degrees and diplomas might as well have been given out randomly in packets of Rice Crispies, so I wouldn’t go feeling too insecure on that count.
I think with middle-age that most people realise that they’re not as unique and interesting as they thought they were, and that a good part of their youth memories have become pretty flexible mythology. It’s a difficult thing , but a crisis is usually just a shedding of old skin, when viewed after the fact.
I mean by this that it can be cleansing and relieving giving you space to breath in the years left to you, in any case, this is how I try to view it.
Many are enchanted and mystified by the work of Baltus,and we can create all sorts of ideas about the man, but we don’t really know what he thought about himself beyond his paintings, he may well have found himself to be a very ordinary person who loved the company of his wife and who saw his second great achievement as , the ability to smoke phenomenal amounts of cigarettes to a ripe old age?!
on Monday, January 30th, walt said
Sorry for the typo on the Isadora Duncan paraphrase. Of course what she really said was something more like If I could have said it with words I 'wouldn't have to dance it.' Not the other way around.
on Monday, January 30th, walt said
The following is a response to an e-mail I received today. I think it may add a bit to the ongoing discussion here. I'm keeping the name of the sender private since they contacted me privately through my web=site. Essentially their comment was just that they were thrilled to hear someone discussing and critiquing the practice of writing statements.
Thanks for your e-mail. The Surrealists and Futurists were really the first to write manifestos and various statements. But they were a rare breed of artists who had a lot of battles to win before anyone would pay attention to their work. It has only been since sometime in the mid 80's that artist statements have become the norm. This was begun mostly in university art programs during the 80's. I was a grad student at the time, albeit a bit older than most, and was aware that this was a new thing at the time. I was fairly well read and knew a bit about the artworld prior to that time. Universities had always struggled with the fact that studio programs were quite different than other more academic curriculae which depended primarily on thesis and dissertation papers as evidence of knowledge gained. These programs were hard pressed to come up with some way to verbalize since their ability to accept visual work as evidence of academic achievement was weak. To say the least academia has always had a hard time with the expressive arts as have most of the rest of the more verbally literate world, primiarily in the U.S. especially.
The idea that one must explain or defend ones work on the idea that no one will understand it otherwise has undercut work that is clear and readable while enhancing those whose talents are less obvious in the visual realm and stronger in the verbal realm Isadora Duncan earlier in the century was asked to explain her dance. Her response was simply if I could say it in words I would have to dance it or something like that. Picasso often laughed at the miserable attempts of various critics to verbalize the meaning and purpose of his abstractions. But he never issued a definitive statement. Matisse's most often quoted comment abouthis work was really quite simple yet undefinitive...he made the comment about making art for those mental workers that would act something like a relaxing arm chair for the mind. Warhol mostly mocked those who tried to get him to dfine what he was doing. Most artists talk about the techinical aspects of their work or about the narrative or symbolic suggestions of their work but rarely in any definitive way.
I know that galleries need some education, often because they are not that eductated in terms of what really makes great art great art. They are looking for something they can sell either because the imagery is acceptable to their clientelle or because the artist is noteworthy or even infamous for things that shock or titilate the viewer. So beyond that they need what I call talking points similar to the kind of lists of terms and concepts put out by those in various political, military or corporate public affairs offices for those in the organization who have public contact. Often times artist statements are little more than talking points. Dianne Bowen's remarks about the artist she met fit that model perfectly. Just enough info so that the gallery or a critic can have something to get the conversation started.
I'm afraid that the older I get the more I tend to trash the whole statement concept, at least in my thinking, and lean towards simply letting those who can talk about it use their own terms. The most infamous version of this is when Clement Greenburg and Herold Rosenburg were both championing the abstract expressionists and each came up with their own way of discussing the validity and purpose of abstraction. The artists themselves, with a few exceptions, were relatively illiterate. And when they spoke about their work it was more personal, poetic, technical talk. But the work had already been defined by the time anyone outside their own circles hear what they had to say.
And Ron Massey mentioned Balthus who was by practice mute about the meaning and purpose of his work until a few years prior to his death when the temptation to set the record straight finally got to him.
And remember the Impressionists did not name themselves. It was a negative criticism that their work felt like fleeting impressions rather than fully formed and serious and finished works of art.
In fact it is very hard to find the words of famous artists over the centuries even to learn their techniques let alone what the meaning of their work is about. But now we hear all about how the work of some 26 year old recent grad student is "deconstructing" the idea of western art (I doubt they even understand western art well enough yet to copy it let alone well enough to deconstruct it) or how they are making images that challenge the very idea of what art is. This is just too easy. Picasso once described non-objective art as an "empty bag one could throw anything into." I feel the same about these pop psychology and pop phylisophical statements.
Ah but times have changed and now with so many of us artists trying to exist in what has always been a small and competitive market (too many more artists and few collectors meaning lots of supply and very little demand) that anything that will give one artist an edge over another will be practiced. But I think we can be more creative about how we approach it all. I am an academic and believe that the academic reasons for these statements and theses are wrong headed. Art is not science. An artist is not an English major or a philosophy major. But like an English or Litterature major we use the tools of our area of study to communicate our intent...our art is visual not verbal. And the older I get the more I believe that we should learn to stand our ground or at least rethink what and how we say what we say about our work. So while we academics will continue to challenge and encourage students to be literate about what they do I think that the thesis concept should end when the education ends unless an artist wants to also be a writer and join the verbal discussion and debate about what is going on visually. Otherwise let visual work explain itself.
on Sunday, January 29th, Brad Michael Moore said
"To my heart, God has spoken. In my dreams, God has whispered. By my prayers – God has listened… We are alone - no harm, no foul. Before my art, I speak, or cry, or stand in silence’s terror... I cannot take back witness’s memories." - Bmm
on Saturday, January 28th, Hyacinthe Baron said
Jose I believe silence is the ultimate goal of life. A silence that is a sign of contenment a panacea of all life forces in perfect harmony at last. The final book three of my Cassandra's Tear Trilogy is titled: The Echo of A Silence. The characters, a female artist and her model, Cassandra transcend through book one: The Echo of a Scream (of creation) to book two: The Echo of a Voice ( in which they find self expression) and will ultimately conclude in book three: The Echo of a Silence (for some reason I still haven't finished the last one. Damn ego, great for surviving but in the way of the artist.
on Saturday, January 28th, jose freitas cruz said
Walt, my comment is by no means a criticism, I write just as much about my work as any other guy. This blog has forced me to stop and close my eyes: if I search deep inside I know that my urge to explain through words what I have transposed from life into my painting comes primarily from insecurity (an insecurity that comes from being self-taught and not having the formal training required by the galleries I would like to see my work in) and from an attempt to patch things up by replicating the type of exercises Ron mentions were important in art schools around the time when I decided to earn my living as a painter. I’m speaking for myself here, not generalizing. And I won’t spare myself either, it comes, too, from an ego that sometimes succumbs to the belief that it has gone through a process it believes to be unique, unravelled mysteries and acquired insights that it aches to communicate in the belief that this information will in some way enhance the work. Ron, your comments about Balthus, a painter whose work I think highly of but about whom I have yet to read the texts in my version of the book, are beautifully put and have had a strong resonance in me. As much as my ego would like, its life is by no means unique, it has been relived countless times, and as Hyacinthe so aptly puts it ‘by being creative a level is reached on which it is found that what is happening is happening simultaneously to the few, usually artists, who are able to reach it’. But how to resist temptation, how to remain quiet when asked… how to efface yourself and let the work do all the communicating for you? Silence would be just perfect, wouldn’t it?
on Saturday, January 28th, Michael Fornadley said
When an artist uses any narrative in their style of painting expect the obvious questions about what is all about. I hate explaining any of my work, hoping for the viewer can interpret and complete the storyline on their own, probadly would be better than what I could invent. Like Ron mentioned that if we were gifted in the talent of writing why in the world would we be visual. As with any skill it can be aquired but why bang your head against the wall if you are not at a certain level. It is one of the things that bother me about this ladder climbing artists are required to do. In order to obtain that grant, fellowship, job or get into that certain gallery that being able to explain your work in an acceptable manner is required. Most of us accept this and have tried my hand of "art talk" but generally fall on my face because my heart was not in it.
Just recently I had the opportunity to try to explain the narrative on one of my works, I tried my best being considerate of the viewer than went to find a hiding place for the rest of the show. The only exception to this is when another artist ask questions relating not to the narrative or meaning but to the painting qualities of the work. Because I am skilled in that matter, the words come forth and they actually make sense.
Kind of funny, but most of the artists responding to this work with narrative themes. After all landscape, portraiture, color field, abstract or non objective works generally do not require any additional explaining. When you put questions into the head of the viewer, accept that you are going to have to provide some answers.
on Friday, January 27th, Dianne Bowen said
Hey Walt,
I have always found it hard to write about my own work. I recently attended a seminar at the CUE Art Foundation in Chelsea about this very topic.
The speaker was artist John Zinsser. He delviered advice directly with a sense of Humor. I went home that evening and revamped my bio. It is much better now. (grin)This is from his Press Release;
Zinsser, 42, is a leading member of a group of younger abstract painters responding to the legacy of the American Abstract Expressionist movement through newly objective terms. His works are duochrome, radically reduced to just two colors, oil painted over enamal.
He has exhibited widely in the US and Europe since 1988. He was co-founder of the "Journal of Contemporary Art in 1988 and has written for such publications as Art in America. He is currently a lecturer on contemporary art at The New School University in New York.
Why state I am specifically connected to "American" Abstract expressionists he asked the audience, "becuase I think it's important to know I am an American abstract painter. "Duochorme" a word he said his friend used for his color palette.
on Friday, January 27th, Ron Massey said
Walter,
This subject of the struggle between visual and verbal is something I wrestle with often . Augmenting ones visual work verbally I think became an important exercise in art schools in the 1980’s, .. since then it’s been difficult to avoid having to offer some sort of literary attachment to ones work. You can’t really present your work anywhere anymore, least of all on the www, without there being some pressure to”explain”. On figurative work this pressure is probably greater, …most people being afraid to ask about abstract work for fear of an avalanche of indecipherable gobbledigook they may be unleashing… with a little experience however, they learn to be equally fearful of asking about figurative work,!! .. I’m sure that I’ve made my fair contribution to these fears along the way, especially my few attempts in Dutch, which were probably real” double –gobbledigook”,…. at least,--- I have to assume that from the long silences that ensued.
I‘m often disturbed a little when I hear the awkwardness of a talented musician , scientist or visual artist talking of their work, and have to promptly remind myself that they aren’t writers or poets in most cases…and that they express themselves in their chosen medium for a good reason. They are often in a situation where they feel forced to respond verbally to a situation. (Listen to the Saul Bellow link on Albert Sughi’s last blog, and you see that even writers don’t come away unscathed in these situations.) Balthus, a painter that I think we both admire offered little if nothing in way of ”explanation” during his long life, and only in later years opened up a little, ,in order to as far as I understand it, dispel a load of utter nonsense, that had been fabricated over the years to fill the empty spaces. His attitude was one that I understand and completely respect. I’ve noticed in myself that when I buy an art book ,like the one I have of Balthus, that, I’ll look at the images for months or years before I ever get around to reading the text. … and the text doesn’t change so much. If Balthus only wanted me to know him via my imagination and his canvases, I’m content with that and very grateful for the experience.
Some visual artists have ambitions in writing and you Walter are obviously one of the few. In my opinion you’re ambitions are well founded,( and I’ve read a fair bit of your stuff by now) because you do communicate clearly and unpompously with sufficient depth and romance that the reader feels that they’ve learnt something and been inspired a little as well. You have an ability that most visual artists don’t have but I question whether it’s always a benefit. For instance I see your” Skyscape” here and the words “Have you seen the wind?”, I don’t know if that’s a sub- title ?, but for me it’s enough, the mood is set,… all the rest you’ve written is nicely done, but it also gets in the way a little. It reminds me a little of a work by Yves Tanguy entitled “Mama , Papa is wounded” (1927)… the work and title are grafted in my mind, and I’ve created my own numinous mythology about the work. If I’d ever met Tanguy, I may never have asked him what he meant with the work, and, ..if I had, and he’d told me something I could understand it probably wouldn’t change the mythology I’ve created. I think that’s what Balthus wanted as well, that people created mythology around his images rather than about him.
I try myself to use titles as a poetic correlations to steer the viewer into the mood of a piece , beyond that I don’t feel obliged to or very capable of giving explanations. Some say that explanation is a form of death, and I tend to agree.
It’s only because people/artists spend lifetimes looking at art and nature and keep wondering for themselves what it’s about, that art goes on being created. For instance one of the greatest subjects of all art is death – and the exponent of the 21st century knows no more about the subject than an ancient Greek or Egyptian despite science and all the observations of history in writing and the visual arts handed down to him.
As odd as it may sound, once a work of art is created it goes off and lives a life of its’ own. How the viewer interpretes it is in the end more important to the viewer than what the artist says about it because the viewer lives after all in their own mental corner of the universe with their own experiences and stage of development. You’ll never really know anothers’ mind or experience no matter what is put in words or image by that other.
Despite all the advances of science people still look up at the stars and wonder. Knowing about electromagnetic spectrums, carbon chains and melting points of elements doesn’t change the wonder; – a grand unification theory won’t change it either. I suppose it’s wonder that makes humans evolve - it’s the ultimate beauty.
Well sorry Walter, this is almost as long as your blog I think, but you bring it on by choosing the right subjects….and I could have filled the page with links to insomnia sites...?
on Friday, January 27th, Hyacinthe Baron said
Walt I like what you said about walls though I wish you had left out the reference to the Jeffrey Dahmer thing.
What always amazes me in discourse with artists is that sooner or later the discovery is made that by being creative a level is reached on which it is found that what is happening is happening simultaneously to the few, usually artists, who are able to reach it.
Walls have preoccupied me for many years, ever since the days working at Pratt University developing the School Without Walls based on Andre Malraux' Museum without Walls concept which today I apply to so much of the word I do on the internet and various web sites.
In work now are castings of patterns in the sand washes at the Baron Conservancy which change with every rain fall. I am using epoxy resins and fiberglass and other cloths to create walls that are free standing or hung on the wall to create a 3 dimensional effect.
I call these the WALLS OF PERIPATECTIC DIALECTIC because they incorporate all my beliefs and philosophies tendered by nature and forces beyond my control.
Sometimes we all wonder what we are doing? Especially when we are alone in doing it as artists mostly are.
It is refreshing to hear from a like mind.
on Friday, January 27th, walt said
Elena Ray? Is that you girl?
on Friday, January 27th, Elena said
I'm still digesting the first one-I especially appreciate these thoughts tho...'Art is like magic. Some come for the smoke and the sparks. Others to see lead turned to gold. But for the artist each act is an attempt to communicate with God. Each painting is a prayer. It is painting which keeps my thoughts on higher ground. I do not suggest that the artist is more acceptable or in any way more noble in God’s sight. I assume that plumbers feel the same about plumbing, accountants about accounting or teachers about teaching.
"
on Friday, January 27th, walt said
Gabriella, these are perhaps the best I've written. But I'm just as guilty as everyone else most of the time. Especially if I don't take the time to think about what I'm doing. Actually had a critic who disliked the manifesto though. Thought it was too academic.
on Friday, January 27th, gabriella said
Walt; Your manifesto is just great - no artspeak - and refreshingly candid. Your other statements are also very direct and don't either lead viewers by the hand in a condescending manner nor create by slight-of-word a red-herring intellectual chase.
Thanks for writing a blog about this issue. Too many artists either rely on hyperbole in discussing themselves and their work or are inarticulately mute.
Having written various statements over the years in support of my painting I am always at a loss for what to say that in any way sheds light on the work -- my work. I rarely read other painters statements. If I do begin to read a few lines I rarely continue after the first paragraph because if the work doesn’t explain itself as part of its content then why give it any credit? As far as I’m concerned the artist has failed in their intentions. Oh I know, I know that gallery directors, curators, critics and the public want verbiage. But I often find artists’ statements to be either obvious, condescending, arrogant or just plain ignorant and rarely do they illuminate the artist or the art. From time to time I try to ’not write’ a statement in the usual manner. Instead I try to write something that would stand alone as a piece just as each painting stands on its own. Here are a few of those ’non-statements’.
