Is it really a surprise to anyone that museums exhibit less than 5% of the work they collect?
The Los Angeles Times would have us believe that this is, in fact, news. And while artists are shocked (...shocked!) to find there's no room in the museum for their work, museums remain the gold standard for achievement in our profession. What is wrong with this picture?
I've been having this sidebar conversation via email with an artist who's getting his MFA and is thinking about his thesis show and how it seems like an artificial thing. While everyone asks him if he's showing, his frustration about the need to exhibit while he's still growing as an artist has been simmering. To him, rolling out a bunch of canvases and standing there delivering the artspeak to his teachers and invited guests isn't going to transform him into the artist he wants to be. To him, showing these paintings is a step on a path that is supposed to last a lifetime. When I was in school, we used to say we were learning to paint so we could be great artists in our 60s. That's what I read between the lines of this artist’s emails.
Of course, at the time we were all saying this, others were snickering that we were only saying it because there was no room in the Whitney Biennial for us and that this was some sort of sour-grapes strategy. But really. With nearly 10,000 new artists getting degrees every year, where the hell are all these paintings, sculptures, installations, ceramics, prints, books, and whatever supposed to go?
I recall preparing for my thesis exhibition and working on these paintings that I wanted to have a certain pearly finish. One of the people who came to my studio, perhaps in an effort to get me to lighten up, told me that she regarded student work as proposals for mature work. Maquettes, essentially, for work we’d be really do when we got out of school. I did lighten up and get the paintings done, but I’ve been haunted by this feeling for a few years, that most art I look at is really a discursive foray, not an object made to any kind of exacting specifications.
One of the most interesting books I’ve looked at recently is Deep Storage: Storing, Collecting Archiving in Contemporary Art, edited by Ingrid Schaffner and Matthais Winzen. It’s a kind of index of an exhibition and a practice artists (and – whoa- non-artists, too) are deeply engaged with in society (Google “scrapbooking” if you don’t believe me). In a weird way, it reminded me of an equally fascinating but less hip book, David Halle’s Inside Culture: Art and Class in the American Home. Halle’s writing is not exactly memorable, but the book is illustrated with dozens of images of the interiors of people’s houses and the art that hangs in such spaces. It’s a little like a hardcore version of Dwell or Met Home except that unlike these sterilized decorator magazines, one sees how lives are rearranged to accommodate paintings and sculpture and how these things – removed from their white cubes and glossy art magazines – might really affect people who live with them.
Maybe this is just another way of getting at the problem of gross overproduction in studio art. Consider the thing you’re making in its life outside of the studio, the gallery, the museum, or the magazine. Consider making things that cannot be photographed so you don’t place more value on the slide or digital image than on the thing you’re making. Consider that the art most of us love, doesn’t come with an artist who stands beside it and drones on in artspeak.
3 comments:
After the horn-tooting session during winter crit. I have been feeling slightly inadequate because none of my work has found a home on any gallery walls. Further I'm getting tired of answering the question, "Do you sell your work," which seems to be the standard inquiry whenever I tell someone I am earning my MFA, to which I reply "ehh, not really."
I like the fact that I am in "school." I am a "student." In a sense I think that gives me a bit of a safety net, allowing me to expand, and explore, without concern for whether or not my work meets gallery standards, knowing that it is developing.
I am a big fan of Robert Henri's book "The Art Spirit," in which he whole heartedly embraces the idea of the educational institution as a place for growth, not pruning or polishing in order to move paintings. I want my work to be in a evolutionary state for the rest of my painting existence and especially now. I think Hokusai really nails this in the following quote:
"From the age of six, I had a mania for drawing the form of things. By the time I was fifty, I had published an infinity of designs, but all that I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature... In consequence when I am eighty, I shall have made more progress; at ninety, I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred, I shall have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, be it but a dot or line will be alive."
So here is to 110, may we all keep growing!
New Years Resolution - to rant freely on the Blog
Where is our art supposed to go anyway? Are we just making things to sell & producing a product for market? Was Henry Darger not an artist because he was a compulsive producer of stuff that he didn’t intend others to see, let alone own? Are we running out of walls and homes for our art? Has there ever been a time, since the Paleolithic era, when every artist and every artist’s creation had a place to be? Supply and demand - if you don’t make something that people want you’ll have surplus. I have surplus; oh boy do I have surplus. But if everything I made had a wall or a place to call home I’d be very disappointed with the art world and frankly quite embarrassed. I’ve made a lot of crap. A few good pieces here and there, but a lot of crap. And if I can I will continue to make a lot of crap and a few good pieces here and there. Keith I think you’re right, Hokusai nailed it.
Maybe its okay that there is a glut of MFAs and a huge amount of artists being turned out by the art mills. Maybe we need a little overpopulation to thin the heard. Not everyone’s going to make it as an artist or continue to make art and that might be okay. Not to be to Ryandian but I’ve been part of non-juried art groups and YIKES - the last time I checked you don’t need a license to call yourself an artist. If you tried to “be a doctor” and practice medicine the way some people just decide to “be an artist” and make art, you’d “be arrested”. An MFA might just be a way to say, at least to the establishment, yes I am an artist. But making a living at it isn’t in the description of any class in my schedule yet. And to be honest I don’t think it should be. It’s an MFA not a MBFA. I don’t think being in the business (the sales of product) of the art world should define whether or not you are an artist.
If achievement over others is your goal, compete at the highest levels. To be competitive at the national level compete regularly at the world level. Take the toughest competition to task and you will rise to meet that level.
If you regard the highest form of achievement as "the museum" don't limit yourself to mediocrity by showing, studying, and talking with the masses. Surround yourself with the those who achieve at those levels, you will gain a higher level of understanding. With a lot of practice and hard work you will gain what you need to realize your goals. If making money and a living with your art is enough, seek out grants and market your art to accepting galleries. Go at it like its a business, because it is. Your level of education is irrelevant. Your ability to generate income is paramount. Even blind squirrels find nuts once in a while (as the saying goes). Hopefully your art is more passion- less about product.
What are you doing art for? If it is money, don't do art, invest. If you seek meaning- get religion or a shrink. And if you seek achievement and approval take up golf. The results are more easily measured. -C.
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