Wow, talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

I should not be allowed to read crap until I have my force field fully activated. I'm turning into a crusader, I can feel it. I am trying to save painting from some whacked out misconception that painting (a) holds less less meaning than weaving ponchos on the street outside a gallery or making dinner for poor friends  (b) that painters only make paintings in order to make money and (c) in the process I am also trying to save people from having to wear crappy ponchos while thinking they are culturally enlightened.

It's one thing to choose a conceptual project without an end product as your chosen medium, but to suddenly jump on the bandwagon and declare that the economy has forced everyone to give up traditional mediums and to inanely assume that do-good art is "unsellable" and loaded with meaning, WTF???

I mean, we're at viral status right now. Code Orange, people. I went to grad school in the 90's. I quit painting because I didn't want to be weighted down with "The Object" etc blah blah blah. I came back. I saw the light, whatever. I'm not dissing Social Art, I'm just in awe that suddenly there's this wave of people who think thought they were going to "cash in on the hot art market" and when it didn't happen, they jump ship. I'm also in awe these stories are permeating the media.

Mat Gleason has also written about this much more eloquently and rationally in the current issue of Artscene.

I was going to just link to the NPR report, but what fun would that be. No, you must read it here. I gave up on trying to clean up the spacing issues from my slipshod cut and paste job. Link to story with pictures here.

5/26/09 10:33 AM
In Tough Times, Artists Find Inspiration, Invention : NPR
May 26, 2009
by Laura Sydell

Over the past decade, the notion of the "starving" young artist became a bit of a misnomer, as artists right out of school were snapped up by galleries, sometimes selling their work for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But times are changing; after a decade of record-setting prices, the price of art at auction was down 35 percent in the first quarter of 2009, and art galleries are cutting back and shutting their doors.

Last year, 27-year-old painter Michelle Blade finished her MFA at California College of the Arts. She was looking forward to cashing in on the hot art market — until she discovered that the market wasn't as good as she expected. "People are just not buying work anymore," Blade says. But, Blade adds, being an artist is about more than just money. She says the realization that it was going to be harder to sell her paintings freed her up to think more about meaning. Her latest art project is a series of one-on-one sunset conversations documented with photographs.

"This isn't sellable," she admits. But, she says, "this project is opening up a huge community to me, and this is a new way of having an art practice." Triple Base, Blade's gallery in San Francisco's Mission District, is a for-profit gallery that has a not-for-profit arm meant to support experimental work. For the past few years, gallery co-director Dina Pugh says, it was hard to get artists to use the nonprofit.

"There was a sense that art was becoming a little bit staid, a little bit safe," Pugh says. "I think we're all involved in art because we want to see it challenge the status quo. … But I think it's hard when people are making a lot of money, [because] they just want to keep doing what works."

Pugh is now seeing a change. Artists in San Francisco have been experimenting with social practice art — a movement that questions virtually all of the conventional notions about art, from the need for galleries to the very definition of an artist. Pugh had one artist weave ponchos in the street in front of her gallery and gave them away to people in need. Another gathered unsold vegetables from farmers and cooked dinners for, well, starving artists.

"I feel a sense of optimism," Pugh says. "People are kind of excited that the options are more open to them now to experiment in a way that they didn't before. ... Maybe they would have been considered kind of hippie-dippy or Utopian."

This wouldn't be the first time that a major crisis has sparked a new art movement. The Dada movement was born out of the tragedy of World War I, says art historian Mary Anne Staniszewski, as a reaction to the ugliness of the war. "They started to make works in a radically different way, and it is really the most influential break in terms of the 20th-century art movements," Staniszewski says. "They really started making performances, collages, happenings."

Staniszewski notes that the Depression sparked a social-realist movement that gave us photographers like Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, and that the upheaval of the 1960s brought more attention to the work of women and minorities. She adds that in times of crisis, institutions are sometimes more open to different kinds of art.

"Another really key point is that artists have been taking on all of the great and important questions of our time this whole period," Staniszewski says. "It's just that the very, very mainstream art world has not paid attention to it." Instead, the focus has been on extravagance — as with Damien Hirst's piece, "For the Love of God," which featured a human skull made of platinum and decorated with more than 8,000 diamonds.

Painter Chuck Close hopes that era has come to an end: "It'll be a time of major purging of a certain kind of wretched excess, I think."

Close, who is in his 70s, has had a long and successful career painting photorealistic portraits. He says he worries about the struggles ahead for many of his less financially successful colleagues. But, he says, artists are a different breed from investment bankers.

"An artist will lose everything and still go right back into the studio and get to work," Close says. "I didn't notice anybody at Bear Stearns offering to go in and work for a year for free to try and keep their company going." Even if artists are now going into the studio with less certainty, Blade says, maybe that's not such a bad thing for art.

"With the economy going in this huge downward spiral, we need a moment of reflection," she says. "I want to take the idea of the sun setting and kind of just look inward, because there is no West; we can't go to a new frontier. There is nowhere else for us to go. Everything has been established."

As for anyone who might be discouraged rather than inspired by these tough times, Close likes to remember the words of his mentor, painter Philip Guston, who advised that someone who could be talked out of being an artist shouldn't be one in the first place.

Follow up comment included:
Cynthia Tyler (JudithAbraham) wrote:
May 22, 2009 6:00:15 PM PDT

If you are going to write a story about contemporary art - more
research into the history of the critical discourse is advisable. If
you had investigated artists at the top commercial galleries in
New York (for example) you would have found many mid-career
practitioners for whom non-painting and/or "relational art" is
the basis of commercially successful careers. Relational Aesthetics
is a significant movement that emerged in the 1990s and rapidly
became part of mainstream art practice. (See the work of Rirkrit
Tiravanija, Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan etc). The work of
artists like these coexists at galleries with the work of painters
and sculptors in a cozy manner. Yes, the economic downturn
may cull out people who are not seriously committed to what
they make, but in general the art world has been pluralistic for a
long time and remains that way. This is hardly a revelation.
Artists have to make art. There is no question about it. Money is
good. But art happens, whether there is income from it, or not. I
cannot be talked out of being a woman, being 58 years old,
loving dogs and cats, longing for Venice, or making art. Thank
goodness, it actually does support me, most of the time. I am
blessed.

I'm so there. Can I bring a sleeping bag?

Panel Discussion: Is Conviction in Painting Possible?
The first talk, titled Is Conviction in Painting Possible? will start at 4 pm on Saturday May 23rd and is a panel discussion on the current status of contemporary painting. The talk will aim to examine the intrinsic challenge in theorizing about contemporary painting, based not only on studio practice but also through writing.
√√√√√√√ I'm excited about this. √√√√√√√√

Honor Fraser Gallery
Culver City

Mary feels like facebook might be too claustrophobic and other things today.

There are some things I'd rather not have to keep repeating in my life, and on anther note, I'm beginning to feel like having a presence on the Internet is akin to going through Lacan's mirror phase, and I thought I had moved past that, too...

I was actually all set to write an lengthy treatise about privateering, but after I wrote about it in my personal journal, I decided I was having too sad of a day to want to post it in it’s entirety, so here are a few paragraphs in no particular order.

**

Putting a work on exhibit with a price tag attached to it is a gutsy thing to do. On more than one occasion, I have taking solace in hearing a well-known painter I respect here in L.A., say that his/her paintings do not sell. He/she has said this publicly, which is even more of an amazing thing to cop to in a world where you’re a pariah if your work doesn’t sell. People want to equivocate sales with success as a measurable yardstick. If your work is priced (I'm having some grammar issues here, pay no mind, I'm tired) the price of your work is based upon experience and works similar to yours in street cred, and it sells, but doesn’t sell out, does this mean it was priced too high? If that same work was priced at half and it still didn’t sell, what would that mean? What if you priced your work so cheap that anyone with an extra $25 on hand could buy it? And it still didn’t sell? Would you give your work away? Or conversely, what if you priced your work so incredibly cheap and it sold through the roof, would suddenly you think you were onto something? Would that mean you were collectible if you then raised your prices? I have no answers.

**

Another friend of mine makes ceramics. She has cultivated a collector base and mailing list since day one. Her work is not radical and she makes work priced from $15 to $130,000. Everyone bought up the $15 work at her studio sale. I would also add that she is the second ceramicist I know who set up a studio immediately after school in order to go into business. That was not my training. No one told me as a painter that as soon as I finished a work I should plop a price tag on it, set up a shop and go into business. It was about showing the work and making art that was critical. If I were to dwell in the past, I might wish that I had the benefit of more of a practical background. My experience is what is was. There are deficits and assets.

***

I have received way too much flack over the course of my lifetime for making abstract work. This ranges from people who say they don’t get it, or think there is something that they are not getting- to educated art world people who think that abstraction is either too elitist, too emotional or irrelevant for our current times, to most recently, a beginning drawing student of mine I overheard ask, “Does it mean anything?” This doesn’t take in account the host of people who think anyone can paint abstract work to the recent letdown of hearing that a collector was more “curious” about my work than actually interested in collecting it for reasons that deal with things beyond my control.

***

I have been passionate about my role as Defender of Abstract Art and Champion of Awkward Painting, most of my adult life. For me, abstraction and text are as real as someone else’s painting of fruit. Steven LaRose used the word, ‘pure’ and ‘pre-linguistic’ in conjunction with his image-based pencil drawings. That’s how I feel about my abstract work. Occasionally I will paint a recognizable object or words, but it’s all the same in my world, and it comes from the same point of love and investigation. That’s my purity.

****

I finally set up a site, (without the eBay auction system, so far) in order to sell smaller works. I priced the works on paper at what people have spent on them in the past. When a gallery sells the same work, they take 50%, leaving me with 50%. They take that 50% because they are the ones marketing the work, exhibiting the work and hopefully cultivating a collector base for the work. If they’re doing their job, it’s fair. It’s hard to do two things really well. I paint. I suck at selling. I would rather just make the work and leave the selling to someone else, but this is not as practical as I once thought it might be and it's why I’ve become a privateer and set up a site for selling the smaller works. I’ve made a commitment to follow through with this, not because it's a holiday gift extravaganza or only in response to the economic crunch but because it's a step toward realizing a simple goal of just being a working artist. Simply put. Of course, it would help if I would actually publicize the site, so I suppose that is next.

The next big thing.

I've been ambling in the studio lately, so I got all social and ventured out on Friday to do a studio visit with another painter and drop off some smaller works at the gallery. While doing the studio visit, the concept behind small paintings vs. large paintings came up and he referred to his smaller paintings as "one-offs." I related, but for me the concept of one-offs function as a larger body of work in and of itself. Index, catalog, atlas, and bulletin board come to mind.

At the gallery I talked about small paintings, and tried very hard to avoid or validate the use of the word "sketches," a term several people want to use when discussing the smaller paintings. I am defiant this way. The term sketch implies an incomplete or roughed out thought, one that serves as a basis for a larger or more complete work. This is my anti-sketch point: the smaller works are complete, in their incompleteness. On the other hand, I will acquiesce to the use of the word sketch as, "a comical or amusing person or thing." The exception to this rule are the small paintings that want to be bigger paintings but can't quite seem to make it. And again, this would be the point in my world of frustrated narratives and dystopian wonderments.

I anthropomorphize the paintings way too much.

The whole point of this was really to say that I need some quiet time to think about the next big thing.

I am posting now becuase I will be too tired later.

I managed to practice yoga this morning for the first time in a loooong time. I am always surprised by how unbendable I become when I stop practicing yoga. I also forget why I stop practicing cause I always feel so good afterward. Always. It would make sense then, to continue my yoga practice uninterrupted.

The studio. Yep. I was there today, but nary a brushstroke did I make. I'm dropping a few smaller paintings off to the gallery tomorrow and decided NOT to rush the other 3 that I think I'm finished with, because I may not be finished with them after all. They need sitting time in the studio. I need to stare. On the way to the gallery, I'm stopping by to do a studio visit with another artist.

I had an impromptu coffee with a consultant friend as I was writing this. She was in the neighborhood. Call me a philistine, but as a producer of art, I am so utterly fascinated by the collector of art side of things- the serious collector side of things, the hardcore, that's-equivalent-to-my-entire-mortgage kind of collector. We discuss this kind of stuff and I secretly think that maybe I should spend more time educating myself as a collector. A few weeks ago when the economy hit the first bottom and WAMU was up for grabs, I thought seriously about cashing it all in on one major painting. I didn't, but that gives you an idea of what kind of collector I'd be. Or not. Maybe it just gives you an idea of how disillusioned I am with traditional investments, such as real estate, 401K's and my FDIC insured savings account. It should come as no surprise that "Masterpiece" was one of my favorite games as a child. Maybe there's an art world version of The Sims version out there. If not, there should be.

I also like the idea of dressing up, coiffing my hair and wearing sexy pumps.

As a reminder, next Tuesday is the studio coffee break at 2 PM PST. Unfortunately, I will not be wearing sexy pumps or coiffed hair in the studio. Maybe one day, but not next Tuesday.

things change

works in progress....

The one on the left... as it stands now.

The one on the right... as it stands now.

It's possible they will still change, but for now I've stopped.

*****

I made it to art fair #1 today, The LA Artshow at Barker Hanger in Santa Monica. This is the fair that exhibits, "a myriad of fine art from the 17th century to the present." The present is mostly 20th century, but I saw some nice paintings.

I was there in time for David Pagel's panel discussion with Michael Minelli, Stephanie Pryor, and William Ransom, called, Surreptitiously Yours: Art Politics and Do It Yourself Anger Management. I found myself nodding in agreement with most of what was discussed. Overall the discussion brought up ways in which politics are just bubbling under the surface of some of "today's most compelling work." Some interesting questions were brought up, ranging from the extent to which art is political- Michael Minelli's answer that simply making art is a political act, (I strongly agree) to, "Can you make art while actually angry, and if so, is it any good?" (No, was the consensus.) Pryor talked about her work as being emotive. This was refreshing to hear. I back away from discussing emotion in my work-it's the elephant in the room. I even went so far as to ban pure red from my palette as a fail-safe. I've UNapologetically brought red back in my current paintings, but no matter what, I will not pick up a paintbrush if I am pissed off about anything. It's a waste. It's too akin to throwing a tantrum, which is childish, and which begs the proverbial "my two-year-old could do that." Channeling a tantrum, on the other hand, requires control and concentration. So yep, anger management, the key to building tomorrow's future today.