Art & Perception

A blog like Art & Perception is, in some ways, a substitute for the local café. The ability to discuss art with people around the world compensates, at least in part, for the loss of the immediacy of face-to-face contact. But it’s not a complete substitute. Direct interaction is still important for many reasons, and consequently there is a need for ways to facilitate it by letting people know about opportunities to meet each other, to learn, and to see art.

Few of us are so plugged in to our local art scene that we are aware of everything that’s going on in terms of shows, openings, talks, social events, etc. The newspaper may list major events, typically those for which an ardent volunteer or a motivated gallery has written a press release. In the case of my hometown of Bozeman, Montana, there are several places on the web that have listings, but judging from what is there, I suspect they are little known or used. Most of what is happening is invisible to the public. Sometimes that’s desired, though certainly not always.

But more important than the events themselves is the community that could potentially form around them. The past quickly slips into oblivion, and there is no convenient forum for the remembering, discussing, reviewing, proposing that might be engendered.

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I posted sometime back on living the art life and how it would be great to have one’s personality be in tune with art such that the art and person blossom to their fullest…  I was thinking about the art life a lot after reading reports on art done by people of questionable backgrounds (some of whose victims are now demanding that the artworks be rescinded and not be considered works of art). more… »

It’s that hair-pulling but hopefully insightful time when I have to write an Artist’s Statement. I’ve done this before for particular projects or shows, but this is the first time I’ve tried to write a general statement about myself as an artist. The purpose is to provide information to interested visitors at the gallery I’ve recently joined. So my audience is the general public, or at least that part which would visit an art gallery. I feel that’s quite a different audience from other artists (like you all), in turn different from a narrower group, such as photographers working in black and white.

I take the statement very seriously as a way not only to communicate, but for me to consider what is really important, perhaps defining, about my artistic endeavor. The tone of it is critical. I don’t want to be too “artsy” or intellectual, nor do I want to condescend. I want it to be straightforward, but at the same time I want it to entice and suggest rather than answer all questions. It needs to have a personal voice, to sound like something I would say, and ideally not like something anyone else would say. This is what I’ve got so far:

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I had a very successful Photo Lucida with my contra dance project. The consensus after 4 days of reviews, with some of the top people in the photography fine-art field, is that the project has legs and great potential. Now I need to name it.

Alec Soth has a post today on book titles. He loves pondering them, feels they define and sum up the nature of a work, and that they can make or break the success of a book.

I am considerably less gifted in this realm, despite my usual felicity with words. I am struggling to come up with an all-encompassing, pithy and memorable title for my contra dance project.

“Contra Dance in America: A Photographic Journey” is accurate, but really boring. My other working title, “Unconfined Joy,” is from the over-quoted Lord Byron poem, which goes,

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.
   ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

Any ideas out there? Here’s the link to my “yes-it-really-needs-updating” dance page. You can also look through the blog posts from Photo Lucida.

Each gallery has its own program — some cross between the work that it shows and a concept of what the gallery is supposed to be about. As Edward Winkleman explains on his blog, artists must know about and study these programs. The dealer in general takes a dim view of the artist who, with no clue of what the program is about, walks in the gallery door and asks the dealer to have a look at his or her work.

The reason is simple. The program is not really about the artists, even though it consists of the artists’ work. The program is about the dealer’s vision. “I am the program,” says Winkleman in the context of his own gallery. [NOTE, Edward was kind enough to point out that I get the context of his statement incorrect.] The gallery program represents the real and conceptual manifestation of the dealer’s aesthetic goals. If the artist has no idea of what those goals are, it tells the dealer that the artist does not take him or her seriously — a bad start to the artist-dealer relationship.

What this means, according to Winkleman, is that artists need to do a lot of research into the gallery scene they want to break into. This takes time, because a gallery does not present its entire program at once.

Where possible, the artist should engage the dealer in an informed dialog about the program. Yes, about the program, not about the artist’s own work. It is only after the artist has demonstrated a genuine interest in, and respect for, the program that it makes sense to broach the topic of having the dealer look at what the artist does. This initial dialog is a process that will take some time and should not be rushed. The key is, have the dealer get to know you and to hopefully to like you.

Should you bring your actual work into a gallery? Never, never, never, says Winkleman. When the time is right, initiate a discussion about your own work via email, attach digital files for images, or provide a link to a website. Don’t send slides unless the dealer asks for them.

Can the artist fool the dealer with a phony interest in the program? To try to do so shows a misunderstanding of the whole system, according to Winkleman; if the artist is a good fit for the gallery, there will be no need to fake an interest; the mutual admiration will be there.

In sum, the artist needs to devote a serious effort to landing in the right gallery. As Winklemans explains:

if you send your images cold, you end up in a heap of other artists, many just as good as you, and in that context (with equally good work available) the decision to work with this or that artist includes other considerations. If you have a dialog with the gallerist already, you have a leg up over the competition.

So there you have it, how to deal with dealers.

What all of this left me wondering is, how much are our views of art influenced by interaction with the people who made the art? Would the dealers be better off screening themselves from artists’ personalities, looking at those digital images with no names attached, before deciding which to consider for their programs?

If this is the way the system works, how do you feel about it, as an artist? Do you feel inspired to go out and study the programs? How do you feel about being part of a program? Is it better to be a dealer than an artist? Is the dealer a form of artist, after all?

The Arts section of today’s The New York Times examines the strange history and odd future of an artist considered to be one of the geniuses of the 20th Century and possibly the greatest of the Abstract Expressionists. Ironically, he remains–by design–virtually unknown to the general public and this despite the fact that he may have been even more prolific than Picasso.

For those of you unfamiliar with Clyfford Still, he is most certainly the ultimate manifestation of an artist’s contempt for commercialism, museums, galleries and collectors.  He is famous for denouncing the galleries and museums of the art world as Nazi gas chambers.  After a brief period of selling and displaying some of  his work, Still retreated to a remote farm in Maryland and spent the remaining decades of his life painting furiously, cursing critics and the commercial art world and hiding his work.  In a one page will he specified that his body of work could never be sold, never be separated, never be shown next to another artist’s work and could only be shown to the pubic in a Clyfford Still museum that would be built by an American city and would exclusively house his entire collection.

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Posted by Karl Zipser

Hanneke can’t post today, so I am going to post about her work instead. Here is a detail from a painting. Can you guess what this is?

Hanneke has diverse talents. She makes both still life paintings and paintings like this one. The question is, what should Hanneke focus on? It’s a question we discuss from time to time. Hanneke paints still life because she loves still life. Ironically, still life, which in some ways is marketable, may be standing in the way of her making art that could get her more recognition. Should Hanneke paint “challenging art“, artworks speaking to terrorism, racism and other -isms of our time? Or is humble still life the real challenging art of our time, something which no serious avant-guard collector or dealer would dare to exhibit?

I’d be curious to hear what you think. Terrorism and social ills are not really Hanneke’s thing, but perhaps she should be practical and make less acceptable paintings. What do you say?

And don’t forget to look at the rest of this image… more… »