Art & Perception

Maurice Ploem found the “official gallery circuit” to be empty and sterile, so he started his own gallery in his home in Haarlem’s Proveniershof.

Maurice’s gallery, called De Provenier, is to the left of center in the photo above. Maurice wanted to provide exhibition opportunities to good artists who had not yet become “famous.” I had my first show here in the year 2000. I have another exhibition starting next week.

Maurice works in a broad range of media — bronze, oil on canvas, painted wood. He says of his gallery: “Here one can see how work looks in a home environment.”

Above is an example of one of Maurice’s painted wood objects. He was inspired to make pieces like this when he was sitting by the fireplace on a cold December evening. He picked up an old piece of wood to throw on the fire. Looking at the object in his hands, he said to himself, “No, I’m not going to burn this.”

. . .
Does it make sense for an artist to show work in a gallery like Maurice’s, or is it better to stick with traditional galleries?

Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night

It’s not much of an observation to say that a lot of artists are crazy, but it’s interesting to observe that few successful ones are.

That is contrary to commonly held myths about artists. That’s what makes it interesting.

It was my recent experience on Whidbey Island that prompts me to say this. I met a lot of successful artists there. They were successful on every count. They were doing exactly the art they wanted, and they were making decent money.

By “decent money” I mean over fifty thousand a year. Of course, that’s not a lot of money in terms of what it takes to own a home and raise a family in many parts of the US, but if you’re able to live where the real estate is not too expensive and you’re reasonably thrifty on top of that, it can be done. Many people manage on less. Most of the pro artists I met on Whidbey were doing much better than that.

But what struck me about that Washington group is something I’ve noticed again and again in other places with other publicly successful artists. They were not just calm and friendly people, they were genuine social adepts. These people were all highly tuned to their audiences; indeed, what was singularly remarkable was not their ferocious independence but their sense of community with the human race.

I don’t know if we can thank Freud for the notion that neurosis is helpful to an artist, but that notion does not accord with my own experiences with artists.

I look at the crazy ones with their messes and incomplete projects compared to the order of the power studios; I look at the nervous smiles of poor sellers compared completely natural engagement of the big sellers, and I know.

I’m on to something.

So to complete the list of why artists don’t make it we have:

1. The art is technically inferior.

2. The message is either boring or disagreeable.

3. The artist does not even try to sell.

4. The artist does not produce enough.

5. The artist wants too much money.

6. The artist is crazy.

The last undercuts them all.

Freud was wrong. Success in the arts is directly proportional to sanity.

The best and most successful artists are some of the sanest people you will ever meet.

Of course, one might ask, how is it, exactly, that craziness reduces one’s chance for success?

I can think of a recent example from my own life in which I tried to help an excellent artist but was rebuffed by insane suspicions about my intentions and unprovoked attacks on my character.

A guy can only take so much.

But that’s something crazy people do. They live life like it’s a script for suicide, and so they always make wrong choices at critical junctures — like ruining friendships by failing to understand social boundaries.

How does one handle such people? I genuinely want to learn because it’s obvious to me that a lot of artists are troubled beings, and if they could just get it together socially, they’d have so many more chances to win.

If a Tree Falls in the Forest Does it Make a sound? Only to the trees with ears. I am not at all being funny. Everything is dependent on a tuned in listener. When it comes to art, sometimes there is no one there, meaning that those who can or want to understand what it is that you are up to, are not in the room. There will be others in the room who find your work similar to learning that there is “only” broccoli left in the refrigerator to eat. (Sorry broccoli lovers). This is not the feedback you need.

When having your worked critiqued, here are two questions that need to be in the mix

1. Ask the person who is doing the critic “What does this work (the art, what ever it is) mean to you?”
2. Then ask “What does my work say about me?”

If the answer to number 1 is nothing, then by-pass 2 and go directly to finding another critic.

Now for some Turkey.

Walter Bartman was my art teacher in high school in 1984-86 in Bethesda, Maryland. Students of “Mr. Bartman” were ten times more likely to become Presidential Scholars in Visual Arts than students in other art classes in the United States. Although he retired from high school teaching in 2001, Walter Bartman continues to teach landscape painting in Maryland and in workshops across the U.S. and in Europe.

Artwork in this post is plein air painting by Walter Bartman [click images to enlarge]. This interview was edited for publication together with Leslie Holt
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Haarlem is a major art center — in historical terms. When the genres of landscape and still life were revolutionary and new (in the 17th century), Haarlem artists were the key players. The Haarlem portrait painter Frans Hals is one of the most influential artists in history. Much of what is best about Manet‘s work he borrowed directly from Frans Hals. Van Gogh was hugely influenced by Frans Hals as well.

Haarlem also has one of the greatest Michelangelo drawing collections in the world. But this is a dead collection, in a sense: in a recent major exhibition in Haarlem, artists were not permitted to study Michelangelo’s work in the only way that makes sense, drawing within the exhibition itself, looking directly at the master’s work. Although there was a huge volume of visitors to the show, there was almost no serious critical analysis of the art or the exhibition (here are exceptions: 1, 2).

Thus, Haarlem is a cultural graveyard. Haarlem’s living inhabitants treat the past with silent, uncritical reverence. The tombstones of the old masters (native and foreign), cast a long shadow over contemporary artwork and creativity.

Artists in Haarlem today can be divided into two broad categories:

• those trying continue past traditions (especially in still life painting)
• those trying to be part of the great international art scene.

In the first category are some talented painters achieving commercial success with their neo-17th century still life paintings. But in this endeavor, they are little more than expert craftsmen. [Hanneke van Oosterhout is flirting with the idea becoming one of these, but I think she will pull out before it is too late].

In the second category are artists who are in denial about their place of residence. These artists would probably be better off if they moved to the real international art centers of today — New York, London, Berlin. How can one be a great international artist living in Haarlem, of all places?

Before we all pack up and move to New York, I’d like to point out that the action in the great living art centers of today is not all that impressive. I’ve spent a lot of time in New York and Berlin, with an eye to moving there for the sake of my art career. I was singularly unimpressed by what I saw in the living art culture. I might move to New York for its great museums, but not for its contemporary galleries.

More interesting to me than moving is to look at this cultural graveyard I live in, and see what are the weeds growing besides the tombstones. What is the new life here? Might it grow into something for the city to be proud of?

Where do you live and work? Could your city or town become an important art center? Or would you rather move to New York?

. . .

In a future post, I will profile what I consider to be the most exciting contemporary Haarlem artwork.

On the first day of class my freshman drawing teacher had us all go out and buy 9″ x 11″ hardbound sketchbooks. We were expected to carry them around with us over the course of the semester, and draw constantly. Now, thirty years later, I find that I have an encyclopedia set of these books filling a shelf in my studio. Keeping journals/sketchbooks has become an integral part of my art practice and my everyday life.  But the way I use them has changed.

               I think of a sketchbook as something you draw in, and a journal as something you write in. And though I’ve always used the same book for both, I see that mine have evolved over the years, from more sketchbook to more journal. In the early ones I did very involved drawings, sitting for hours doing studies from nature, or drawing people. These days the drawings in my journals tend to be notational, and if I do anything more finished it’s on single sheets of paper. 

              My journals function as sketchbooks, idea books, diaries and scrapbooks. I always have the current one with me, in the bookbag that I carry around, along with whatever I’m reading at the time. And over the years I’ve developed certain conventions for them. For example, I’ve gotten in the habit of starting each entry with the date, time and location, so it’s very easy for me now to look back through them and see when certain ideas initially occurred, or where I was when I was writing about something. I also, early on, started keeping a list on the back page of the journal of the books I read. I list the title, author, and the date I finished reading it, and if the book made a particularly strong impression on me I put a star next to it. So at this point I have a running list of pretty much every book I’ve read during my adult life, including re-reads, and a simple rating system that is useful when I want to go back and retrieve information, or recommend books to friends. When the journal is full I put a number on the spine and add it to the shelf, and I start a new one.

               These journals serve several functions for me. The most obvious is that they’re a place to store ideas so I don’t forget them. Putting them down on paper also forces me to clarify the ideas somewhat, at least enough to put them into words or a sketch, and it also relieves me of the burden of carrying them around in my head. Often seeing the idea on paper helps to spur variations. Sometimes these ideas are visual, sometimes verbal. Sometimes I’ll start with a quick drawing, spin out a verbal list of associations or connections, and then do more drawings. So the journal becomes a place to not only record ideas but also to develop them.

               The journals are not just for my art practice, but are part of my everyday life. I use them as diaries; to record my thoughts, concerns and activities. They are scrapbooks that contain newspaper clippings, postcards and concert tickets. I’ve been writing songs almost as long as I’ve been painting, and the journals contain endless lists of possible titles. It’s pretty obvious how a title can be a starting point for writing a song, but I’ve also had titles launch whole series of paintings. The old cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words also works in reverse –a word can evoke a thousand pictures. Sometimes the same title will result in both a song and a painting. I keep all of these possibilities pretty open-ended, and don’t try to figure them out right away.

               Keeping the journals has taught me a lot about my creative process. I see ideas appear, and then reappear months or even years later, but changed in some way. Like they’ve been percolating under the surface, accumulating resonance and layers of meaning without my awareness. I can read diary entries from years ago, see the things I was excited or worried about, and gain perspective on how they’ve played out in my life. And most of all, the journals are a library of ideas, some terrible and some pretty good, more ideas than I could ever execute in several lifetimes.  I’ve learned not to edit or judge the ideas when I get them, everything goes in, and later when I look back through I pick the ones that are most promising to pursue.

               When people visit my studio and see the journals lined up on my shelf, they say “Oh, you must be very disciplined. I’ve tried to keep journals before, but I always stop.” But the truth is that I’m not disciplined about it at all. Here’s the big secret, the way I’ve been able to keep these journals going all these years – I don’t write or draw in them every day. When you try to do something as a discipline, like a diet or a New Years resolution, it’s easy to start out very gung ho, then miss a day or two, and decide that you’ve failed and you might as well give up. In my case, sometimes I’m working in the journal several times a day, and other times weeks will go by without an entry. But I’ve always got it with me, so it’s there when I need it.

I’m sure many of you keep sketchbooks or journals of some kind. In what ways is your process similar to mine? How is yours different?

This is an excerpt from something that looks like it will grow into a book, but right here, right now, I thought I would go directly to the heart of the subject.

I do not expect to win any popularity contests with this post. Truthfully, I am so far south of caring about that, I think new words would have to invented to describe my insouciance. As “posts” go, it is long, but I barely scratch the surface of the topic.

I can think of a great number of reasonable objections to what I say here. I doubt I’ve heard them all.

But let me say this. I know that for many people, doing art is not about money. Money is no true measure of success. Success is a multi-faceted jewel. Pride. Self fullfillment. Joy of creation. These are worthy. I honor anyone’s right to pursue their craft on their own terms. There are certain forms that are simply not economically viable. Artists who work in those form know that. They continue out of love, and truthfully, I love them for it.

But this post is about making money at art. It’s about making enough money at art to do only art.

Surviving as full time artist is a worthy ambition. I make no defense of that goal. It needs no justification. No explanation is required. None will be offered. It has always been my ambition to live through my art since the first synapses of my mind ever fired. I am by nature a type who must be self employed. Factually, by actual experience, I would rather die than fill out another job application.

I’ve made tons of money in other ways than art, however. I’ve made it doing things that made me sick to my soul, like pretending people needed college in order to be educated, only to see them betrayed by a market which had no place for their skills; rather, their lack therof. I am not a person who is impressed by degrees, rank, position, reputation, or money. I like money. I like the things money can buy. I like fast cars and motorcycles. I like vacations to the islands and long trips in yachts. I like to race horses on mountain paths. I like dining with crystal and dancing till dawn wearing seven thousand dollars worth of clothes, but money is not the measure of a man or a woman. I’d just as soon wear a t-shirt and blue jeans and dig in the dirt as sit in another gods forsaken boardroom and watch another boring brain fart of a Powerpoint presentation.

In this post, though I could not resist “insouciance” above, I have purposely kept the language simple. In fact, as I wrote, I kept in mind the vocabulary and attitude of a bright and rebellious teenager. This is stuff I wish I studied when I was sixteen instead of all the artsy fartsy theory I was discovering then.

How to Make a Living as an Artist

It’s not enough to be good. There are plenty of good artists. more… »