Seven Days in the Art World

I've recently picked up "Seven Days in the Art World" by Sarah Thornton - I've been looking forward to reading this for a while and finally was able to get it from the library. So far I've read the Intro and the chapters on The Auction and The Crit. I found the one about the Crit fascinating as I love the idea behind critiques however, in actuality find them questionable valuable.

A bit of the chapter discusses different perspectives on a critique- what is useful, what is not; some teachers of MFA programs use a crit to dig deep into the work and challenge the artist to defend themselves, their work and their ideas. Others use it for the artist to listen to what their audience/peers say about the work by not being able to respond. This also challenges the audience to really look at the work/text and as Mary Kelly says, it teaches them to read the work. "Ask yourself 'is this in the text or is this what I am bringing to it?'"

The chapter also delicately addresses the validity of MFA programs and the unfortunate hopes of the students for a ticket to success by receiving an MFA.

Here are a few things I've picked out. From the Introduction:

"Art is about experimenting and ideas, but it is also about excellence and exclusion."

From The Crit chapter: Legitimators of an Art Career:

MFA (better if from a top-ranking school)
Awards/residencies
Representation by a primary dealer
Features in art magazines
Inclusion in prestigious private collections
Museum validation in the form of solo or group shows, international exposure at well-attended biennials
Appreciation signaled by strong resale interest at auction

People often ask me what I hope to do with my art, especially people not involved in creative careers. I think people want to know if I hope to sell everything I make, or get it hung in a coffee shop, or if I make it for my own personal expression and don't care what happens to the actual artwork. I usually say I want to be a successful artist and to feel accomplished in my field, but what that looks like could be many things. I think the things listed above from "Seven Days" and describing them as "legitimators" is exactly what's in my head when I'm thinking about being successful and receiving some sort of recognition.

I think artists (especially young artists straight out of an MFA program) want recognition, but don't want to admit it. Or they think the are entitled to it and dismiss those that don't give it to them. I haven't met very many that will work for that recognition, but rather want to be discovered as brilliant rather than putting the work in towards being accomplished.

The chapter quotes Paul Schimmel, chief curator of the MCA Los Angeles: "Talent is a double edged sword. What you are given is not really yours. What you work at, what you struggle for, what you have to take command of, that often makes very good art."

One last point that I thought was interesting from this chapter was the discussion of the word creativity. Thornton's conversations with students at CalArts reflected their disgust with the word. They called it a "lovey-dovey cliche". Thornton then goes on to muse "Perhaps creativity is not on the agenda at art school because being creative is tacitly considered the unteachable core of being an artist?" I wonder if the students want to reject discussion about creativity for fear it would be revealed that they aren't creative.

How the critique went

Last night I participated in the Open Crit program at the Hyde Park Art Center. I posted about this particular program a couple of days ago with all the details if you want to take a look. There were four artists that were critiqued last night: Kate Friedman (mixed media artist), Alan Thomas (photographer), Renee Prisble Una (sculptor and installation artist) and myself, and the crit was well attended by a very engaged audience. 

All of the work was much higher calibre than the first critique and it was great to be in good company. I presented four of my pieces from the "I live in a duplex" series which I've been working on this past year. Basically, I started out with the idea to paint two portraits together on one panel to see how they would interact. A painting of a single person is one thing, but a painting of two people tells a different story. 

I received a wide range of feedback- it seemed either people really liked what I was doing with the pieces, or really disliked it. Each critique is facilitated by two people that are fairly well established in the art community. Last night it was the photographer Dawoud Bey and curator Nathan Mason. They really liked the way that I captured the psychological tone of each person but both thought I was unsuccessful at painting double portraits. Dawoud suggested I cut them all in half and then I would have something. 

I really tried to flesh out from them what they thought wasn't working. A big problem for both of them was that not all of the portraits are spacially correct. For example, in some of them it looks like one person is right on top of the other, and then of course each background is completely white and void of spacial reference. While this is intentional, Mason said that for him this made it so that there was no interaction between the two people in each piece. This is probably the feedback that I had the most trouble with. While I understand that the spacial ambiguity might flatten out the images, I didn't understand the leap to then saying there is no interaction between the two people when they are the only thing on the picture plane. They also said it looked "forced" which perhaps refers to the fact that not all of the portraits look natural in their placement. "Clumsy" was another way Dawoud put it.

I've thought quite a bit about whether or not I want them to be spacially "correct." I've always come to the conclusion that I want it to be ambiguous because they don't have to exist in the same physical space (in my portrayal) for them to interact. They can interact in many ways besides being physically next to each other, and this is what I wanted people to think about. They are really only connected because I painted them together. Since both Dawoud and Nathan had a pretty strong feeling on the matter, I'll have to take another look at my work with this in mind and see if I look at them differently; to re-evaluate whether or not they're working.

Part of the reason I started this series is because I'm interested in the stories that are co-created between the viewer and myself. Last night many people chimed in with what "story" they thought was being told in each piece- and they're ALWAYS different from one another. There were people that adamantly disagreed about what was going on in each scenario and I think a lot of people were fascinated by the apparent diversity of responses to one painting.

The critique gave me lots of great food for thought, challenged me to be able to explain my work and allowed me to meet some great people. I even had one woman give me her card because she wants to be included in my series. It's been a while since I had some challenging and critical dialogue about my work, and for those of you that know me well, you know I thrive on it. 

Here are some detail shots of the other artists' work: on left- Kate Friedman, on right- Renee Prisble Una.