Art/work

“[ART/WORK]... guides artists effectively in taming the beast that is the contemporary art world.”

For the past week or so on my commute, I have been reading ART/WORK by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber (Free Press, 2009), which I learned about through Facebook from Toronto artist Barbara Gilbert. Having taken an excellent workshop with her a year-and-a-half ago through CAR/FAC (Canadian Artists' Representation/le Front des artistes canadiens) Ontario, I was anxious to follow up on the tip.

Because the book is dense with quotations from members of the art world, I chose to pace myself and ended up retaining more when I took a break after reading each chapter. Even though ART/WORK is nice and compact, I suggest approaching it like a box of good truffles: don't consume it all at once.

Starting with the title, there is an absence of sugar coating. The message is clear: being an artist is work. It is a job, not a hobby, at least if you want to build a career as an artist. Bhandari and Melber’s tendency to be straight with the reader persists throughout the entire book, which guides artists effectively in taming the beast that is the contemporary art world.

As practical as the book is, addressing topics like writing an artist statement and tracking inventory, the authors have a sense of humour. Cartoons by Kammy Roulner are featured throughout; my favourite shows a young girl who asks, “Mommy…can you explain post-colonial identity politics to me?” Also enjoyable for its tongue-in-cheek approach to the arts is the chapter called The Gallery Courtship, which uses the analogy of dating to discuss commercial gallery representation.

The authors’ complement of skills is noteworthy. Bhandari is a gallery director and Melber is an arts lawyer. Bhandari is on the inside, so she can draw the reader’s attention to the way galleries actually operate. Melber, meanwhile, instills confidence in the reader about tackling legal issues like copyright and contract negotiation because of his background in representing artists.

ART/WORK is presented as a book that picks up where art school leaves off. From talking to artists, I gather that some instructors are more inclined than others to talk about life after the safety net of art school. Some schools even have courses in managing a career as an artist, like the Professional Practice course in the Art and Art History program at Sheridan College/University of Toronto at Mississauga. When I was a student there, they had not yet introduced that course. A few years after graduation, I remember sitting down with a former classmate to answer the kinds of questions that are addressed in artist career guides, because I was lucky enough to land a series of jobs that allowed me to pick up on some of the intricacies of the art world. Now, as a librarian instead of an arts administrator, I look back at that conversation and I see an information need—or is ‘information gap’ the current lingo?

If you are a studio instructor reading this post, I urge you to promote artist career guides to your students, or send them to this blog post or my other posts about artist career guides here or here.

I realize that with good reason, the emphasis in the classroom is on ‘finding the artist’s voice’ and making quality work, but eventually students will stop focusing solely on artwork and will need to turn their attention to the combination of art/work. Please, mind the gap between 'art' and 'work'.

Book cover added in 2020 via fair use/dealing. Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6161407-art-work

What happens in the studio stays in the studio

"I was disappointed to see Emma escape the grasp of one male genius only to fall into bed with another."

After two long days spent packing and storing the contents of our Toronto apartment/my studio, I indulged in reading fiction on the road trip back to New York. With two sewing machines, a judy (body form), and boxes of fabric stowed safely, I was happy to lose myself in Samantha Peale’s The American Painter Emma Dial (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 2009). New York-based Emma Dial used to be an avid swimmer, but now she struggles to keep her head above water, so to speak, as the studio assistant for Michael Freiburg. He hasn’t touched a canvas in years because Emma’s work is such a good match for his own, which makes him incredibly dependent on her. Michael is Manhattan personified: thrilling and fast-paced, with no desire to slow down. Emma, meanwhile, would like nothing better than a reprieve in her Brooklyn studio. Alas, she is entangled in a complex relationship with Michael, compounded by their illicit sexual relations (he is married). Clearly, chain smoking isn’t the only addiction that Emma and Michael share. The female protagonist finds herself living a cliché that was once exhilarating but now feels suffocating. Emma is a talented artist in her own right who has been living in the shadow of Michael, but also of her scatterbrained and sensual filmmaker friend, Irene Duffy. Although she redefines her identity in relation to Michael and Irene, damaging her relationships with them along the way, it is her interactions with the peripheral characters that bring Emma the greatest clarity. For example, she confides in Michael’s collectors, the Breslauers, that she has a studio and subsequently daydreams about actually making work there. She inherited the studio lease from her former professor, Meredith Davies, whom she assumed to be a sell-out when she skipped town for love. However, she spots Meredith’s work in The Armory Show and realizing that she has maintained her artistic practice, is reminded of her own artistic goals. While walking through the lower east side, she encounters a former classmate, Chris Cagnasola, to whom she blatantly lies about her artistic pursuits, which reveals the heartbreaking discrepancy between the life she has and the life she craves. Overwhelmed with self-consciousness, Emma even avoids her mother over the holidays, because she can’t handle her judgment as an art historian about her daughter creating work for another artist instead of furthering her own career. Ultimately, Emma realizes that self-acceptance is more important than anyone else’s acceptance of her, prompting some major life changes that propel the book forward. Here's my two cents' worth: I have a hard time buying the idea that Michael, being a landscape painter, is one of the three artists that changed the face of New York painting in the 1970s. I suppose they needed to be landscapes so that he could gender them and make annoying remarks (in front of his wife, no less) like suggesting that Emma hasn't made the water “sexy enough”. I can appreciate the fact that as landscapes, they remind the reader that Emma is trapped in a metropolis. Overall, I was disappointed to see Emma escape the grasp of one male genius only to fall into bed with another. Even though she has a moment of self-assertion with her new lover, it’s rather subdued. I wanted more for her, but the book leaves off just where there is a suggestion that she will begin to give herself more. Book cover reproduced in 2020 via fair use/dealing. Source: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/books/robinson/robinson4-6-09_detail.asp?picnum=1

The artist’s guide

“Battenfield shares her success stories but also discloses her professional foibles, which creates a sense of ‘we are all in this together’.”

Under normal circumstances, is The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love (Jackie Battenfield, Da Capo Press, 2009) a book that I would stay up into the wee hours of the night reading? Most likely, yes. I read it cover to cover on the bus ride to Canada, finishing it while the sun rose over Burlington, Ontario this morning. Because of the organization of information, it functions like a reference book so readers could also easily skim it for an overview of the issues they may face during their careers and then revisit particular chapters on an as-needed basis. Another way that it acts as a reference source is by including annotations of recommended books at the end of each chapter.

I really like the tone of Battenfield’s writing, which is firm, but not heavy-handed, not to mention empathetic. Her voice has not been diluted to the extent that it sounds neutral; the advice sounds like it is coming from a mentor or teacher. Battenfield shares her success stories but also discloses her professional foibles, which creates a sense of ‘we are all in this together’. I think this tone is very appropriate, especially after leaving the author’s presentation at the NYPL the other night. I rode the elevator with a group of artists who sounded excited to take control of their careers, but there was definitely a collective hint of trepidation that made the enclosed space seem a bit suffocating. Her ability to establish trust and camaraderie with the reader, if such a thing is possible in a one-way exchange, is a strength of this book. Her presence is not overwhelming though; it is not as though the book reads as one woman’s journey through the art world. Even if it did, Battenfield has balanced her own perspectives by including side bars of quotations from arts professionals about topics as varied as proposal writing and tax preparation.

Unlike so many artist career guides, this one has pictures, and lots of them. Occasionally they are images of work by an artist who has been quoted in the book so their presence is not critical (though it is certainly welcome), but usually the images are of artworks that illustrate a specific point. Since artists are visually oriented and presumanbly, many of them are primarily visual learners, breaking up the text with images shows that Battenfield really knows her target audience.
Book cover reproduced in 2020 via fair use/dealing. Source: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jackie-battenfield/the-artists-guide/9780786748068/

Making a living as an artist

“…the financial realities of being an artist are difficult to ignore. In today’s world, it is difficult to build a career on making art for art’s sake.”

As I rode the escalator of the New York Public Library Mid-Manhattan Branch last night, I gazed down in amazement at the number of people lined up to check out books. I thought to myself, “Printed matter is not going down without a fight.” I made my way to the sixth floor for Jackie Battenfield’s presentation, ‘Making an Artist’s Life Work,’ which was followed by a book signing.

Battenfield is an accomplished artist, teacher, former gallery director and arguably a motivational speaker. “Success is not something that happens to you. Success is something you create,” she told the large audience. Because every artist has his or her own trajectory, it’s essential to identify what personal success would be and then “go after it in a dogged fashion.” This wasn’t mere lip-service. Battenfield pointed out that many career books aimed at artists specify the ‘what’ but not the ‘why’ or the ‘how.’ She has a knack for addressing the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ in an engaging fashion. For example, she asked members of the audience to raise their hands if they could picture Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and then asked them to raise their hands if they had seen the work in person. Her point in highlighting the discrepancy was that “the world will know you through some reproduction of your art” so it’s critical to have high quality documentation. This idea is not novel for me, especially since I’ve been looking at art reproductions regularly while filling in part-time at our library’s visual resources centre from the winter onwards, but I had never thought of it in quite that way. As to the ‘how,’ she gave the audience ‘homework,’ such as drawing a 50-mile radius around their place of residence on a map to target local exhibition opportunities through not-for-profit organizations.

On my way out, I did not join the line at the circulation desk but I did have a book in my hand: I decided to purchase Battenfield’s very reasonably priced The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love (Da Capo Press, 2009). I knew it would make my tax preparator happy, based on a previous conversation (Q: That’s all you spent on art books? A: I’m an art librarian. I check out what I need and if our library doesn’t have it, then I try inter-library loan).

Before I wrap up this post, I want to make a pitch for artists’ career guides. Over the next week, I will post a review of Battenfield’s book as well as Art/Work by Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber (Free Press, 2009). Even though career guides like these have a commercial bent, they can still be very useful for artists who aren’t necessarily trying to make a living from their creative practice (i.e., students, emerging artists, etc). Take me, for instance: I have a day job so I don’t depend on income from my art. Why would I be interested in books like these? Because I recognize that the advice is really about organizing your time so you can be prolific and about increasing exposure to your art. For example, Battenfield urged the audience to add five former contacts to their mailing lists. That strategy could lead to sales, but it could also lead to a review from a critic or interest from a curator.

The more an artist progresses, he or she will encounter grants, artist fees and awards, making income accumulate where once there was none. As an artist begins to show outside of his or her region, there may be a desire or need to travel for exhibitions, making expenses add up. Thus, registering an art business seems inevitable, even for a career that is centered on exhibitions instead of sales. Once that business is registered, the artist needs to demonstrate an attempt to generate income. That said, the financial realities of being an artist are difficult to ignore. In today’s world, it is difficult to build a career on making art for art’s sake.

The one and only

“Magnolis argues against the notion that there is but one correct interpretation of a work of art, and against the concession that multiple interpretations are possible only if they are compatible.”

I think I’ve found some answers to my questions from my last post, thanks to the chapter ‘One and Only One Correct Interpretation’ from Joseph Margolis’ The Arts and the Definition of the Human (Stanford University Press, 2009). My first attempt to read this philosophy book was compromised by the sound of teenage girls on the Metro North train snapping their gum and chattering so loudly that I can only assume their generation is near-deaf from overusing portable listening devices. Oh dear, I hope I’m not going to become one of those shushing librarians.

Magnolis argues against the notion that there is but one correct interpretation of a work of art, and against the concession that multiple interpretations are possible only if they are compatible. The essence of his argument is that art is not objective, exemplified by his question, “...is the meaning of a poem simply the meaning of its words?” In keeping with the poetry analogy, he could easily quote Yeats' exquisite line, “...how can we know the dancer from the dance?” because one of his many arguments centres around intentionality and the presumed inseparability of the artist from the artwork. I won’t get into the minutiae of his other arguments because I don’t have a background in philosophy, but I will touch on this one as a follow-up to my previous blog post.

He states that artworks contain intentional properties, unlike physical objects that occur naturally in the world. I think of this as ‘Rather than finding artworks in the world, we make them and share them with the world’. Of course, sometimes artists use 'found objects', most famously Marcel Duchamp who exhibited a urinal and turned art history on its head, but let’s disregard that complication for now, shall we? While Magnolis doesn’t entirely disagree with philosophers who insist that artists’ intentionality is of great import (Arthur Danto, for example, sees intention and interpretation as inextricably intertwined), he says that interpretation shouldn’t depend on awareness of the artist’s motivations.

To bring this idea out of the realm of philosophy and into the gallery setting, it would mean that viewers should be able to appreciate art without an artist’s statement. I suppose I agree with this in principle, but what does it mean when the artist consciously approaches art making differently to encourage appreciation in the absence of expository text?
I have no qualms about admitting that the inability to include an artist statement in many gallery submissions has prompted me to change my cocoon sculptures. My Aberration Series (above) is an outgrowth of this concern; I felt that having three works represent a cocoon at different points in time was a better surrogate for my artist statement than one-offs.

Another point that interests me is that we cannot separate the artist from human culture. Magnolis gives the example of Michelangelo Buonarotti’s Pièta, the marble sculpture of Mary holding her crucified son, which really is as beautiful in person as you would expect. He sees the act of chiseling the sculpture as the artist giving form to a mental image but also as the application of an age-old tool, which is a compelling way of merging philosophy, anthropology, and art. Without the development of tools, the Pièta could not exist in its present form. Likewise, my art is not just the product of one person’s inability to let a problem go; it’s the byproduct of human invention and it binds me to a lineage of people armed with needle and thread. There are two things I really like about Magnolis’ perspective: (1) it could be just the ticket for reuniting art and craft, which didn’t always occupy separate classes and (2) it could be extrapolated into a feminist take on art history because it minimizes the emphasis on great masters and by association, male genius.

Performance anxiety

"A classmate of mine from art school would characterize Winterson’s encounter as ‘losing her artist’s virginity’. I have no such story to tell..." I was outside my usual territory in the library—in the Ps downstairs instead of the Ns upstairs—when I discovered Jeanette Winterson’s Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (Vintage International, 1997). Uh-oh…vintage…yes, I realize that blogs are generally about what’s new. However, this book is too good to avoid blogging about it. Winterson’s writing is eloquent but punchy with re-readable passages like this one about art historian Robert Fry: “It was he who gave us the term ‘Post-Impressionist without realizing that the late Twentieth Century would soon be entirely fenced in with posts” (6). It’s an understatement to call it an ‘easy read’ as the words seem to leap off the page, but skip ahead and you are only cheating yourself.

While standing at the bus stop under the warmth of the sun, I became enraptured only one page in. I hopped on the #12, anxious to continue reading, but it was not meant to be. The rhythm of the words couldn’t compete with the incessant cussing of a loud passenger. Exhausted from being kept up by a street party the night before, I fought back tears of frustration. When I finally finished reading the book from the sanctuary of my apartment, it was in spite of the sound of firecrackers set off from the street below (in the afternoon no less) and a deafening security alarm on the rooftop. Welcome to New York. Winterson comes at the artist’s creative process from the perspective of a seasoned writer, revealing common ground between artists and writers. She begins this book of short essays by recalling the development of her love affair with visual art: it was in Amsterdam, and she was literally moved to tears even though she had no prior interest in art. A classmate of mine from art school would characterize Winterson’s encounter as ‘losing her artist’s virginity’. I have no such story to tell, although apparently sleepless nights in the city that never sleeps will practically reduce me to tears. I have never been affected by art in a visibly emotional way (as many of my classmates have), but once I came close. I sat in the National Gallery of Canada, in the presence of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s Forty Part Motet, a stunning audio installation of individual voices in a choir, willing the tears to come. In light of Winterson’s comment, “Art coaxes out of us emotions we normally do not feel…art works to enlarge emotional possibility” (108), I wonder, is something fundamentally wrong with me as a viewer? (Like Winterson, I have visited galleries in Amsterdam, but with dry eyes). Moreover, is there a right way to respond to art? As an artist, there are certainly reactions that I prefer above others. While I was installing an exhibition a few years ago, someone called my cocoon sculptures adorable and someone else said they were hilarious. I was perplexed, since I had been striving for angsty, not funny or cutesy. One of Winterson's many comments that resonated with me is her suggestion that true artists are interested in the problem, not the solution. Now my mind is spinning. Is trying to control the viewer’s reaction effectively forcing a solution? Does advocating for change (say, of gender stereotypes) smack of effrontery? Considering that she is a pro at bringing questions out of readers, and that she is upfront about her aim to avoid arrogance as a writer analyzing art, Winterson really is an artist who puts problems before solutions. SOURCES: Winterson, Jeanette. Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery. New York: Vintage International, 1997. Print.

Exhibition of exhibitionists

"...the overwhelming majority of images strike me as the visual equivalent of shouting, 'I’ll show you mine if you show me yours'."

My sister and I emerged from the Morgan subway station in Brooklyn on Friday night to find an industrial area that seemed an unlikely location for an art gallery. We were on our way to the opening of Sex Cells, an exhibition of erotic photographs and videos created by the American public using cell phones. When we saw a group of glammed up teens walking while texting, we knew that we must be close to our destination of 3rd Ward.

Was Sex Cells the provocative show that I was expecting? Not really. Maybe the artwork about young people reveling in their sexuality would have made me “laugh, gasp and blush” (as the gallery website predicted) had I not finished reading Art/Porn by Kelly Davis (Berg, 2008) earlier that day on the train. The book includes reproductions of fetishistic stereographs and daguerreotypes, whose size is actually reminiscent of cell phones. Dennis argues that photography brought pornography to a new level, mainly because of its ability to convey realism. The fact that these lascivious scenes were made during the restrictive Victorian era makes them seem a whole lot more daring than their modern counterparts in Sex Cells.

The show, which had an open call for submissions, suffers from an apparent willingness to accept all entries. The sheer volume of images (212, if I counted correctly) conveys the pervasiveness of sexting, but at the same time it desensitizes the viewer. If such a high number of works is going to be included, it might be helpful to capitalize on the indexical nature of photography. Grouping like images together would reveal how few photographs include two lovers interacting, plus it would emphasize the laughable fixation on the phallus in the male portraits compared to the portraits of women, who—how shall I say this—have taken a more holistic approach to pleasure. The installation is weak in general: the images have been blown up on 8-by-10 inch paper and hung in a grid on several walls. The size robs them of their assumed initial intimacy between photographer and lover or would-be lover. It also does little to elevate them to high art status, for the familiar scale and poor paper quality make them look like a home printing job. The statements beneath the images are curled up at the edges, giving a slapdash effect. A staggered salon style hanging could have enhanced the installation because it would accommodate the large number of images and be more in keeping with the ephemeral nature of the medium than a static grid (and that’s probably why the show's videos felt more effective).

Maybe the problem lies in choosing to exhibit works like these in a gallery. Kelly Davis reminds the reader that the controversy surrounding pornography depends on the implication of touch and not just sight. In the case of 3rd Ward, public display connotes only voyeurism. A safe distance between subject and voyeur (er, I mean ‘viewer’) is maintained because the names of the contributors are not posted—with the exception of two artists—which can be explained by the fact that the call for submissions stated that submissions could be anonymous. Anonymity takes two things away: (1) recognition for the artist and (2) the element of inviting physical contact à la names and phone numbers scrawled on a bathroom stall. Perhaps that’s a crude thing to say, but the overwhelming majority of images strike me as the visual equivalent of shouting, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

This is not to say that there is lack of artistic merit. Some of the works are accompanied by thoughtful statements that make reference to concepts like the scopophilic gaze, revealing training in art or at the very least, a vested interest in art. Unfortunately, the inclusiveness means that the more serious-minded works are integrated with what might be considered low-grade porn. I feel badly for one of the participants who referred to Sex Cells on Facebook as her first show in New York City, which is like a badge of honour for artists. Honestly, it feels like participants were duped into dropping their pants for a sensationalist exhibition that is short on curation.

One thing that the organizers have done a terrific job of is selecting a winner. Given my inclination to merge cupcakes with pasties in artwork, it should come as little surprise that I was impressed by the Sex Cells winner. Genevieve Belleveau applied her background in burlesque to a series of x-rated images taken before an unassuming public in an ice cream truck. They tie in wonderfully to the theme of the exhibition and are playful and smart in equal measure. I can just picture Xander Harris in the Restless episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as the voyeur.

All in all, I am not sold on Sex Cells.