Anoche (2012) two-channel video, 7min.

Quodlibet (Bellas Artes)

Exhibition at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City

April 21- June14, 2012

opening April 20th, 7pm

http://www.palacio.bellasartes.gob.mx/index.php/cartelera/mpba

Quodlibet (Bellas Artes) takes on the history of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico’s foremost exhibition and performing arts center. Opened in 1934 after decades of construction and reflecting a variety of styles as a result of the hiatus created by the Mexican Revolution, the Palacio is a site charged with a complex past, having serving as stage for the most prominent figures of Mexican art as well as internationally. Helguera’s exhibition, a result of extensive research of Bellas Artes archives, includes the incorporation of objects from the theater’s little known and yet vast warehouses of Opera, Dance and Theater, housing objects from decades of past productions.

Ida de forma ( 2012). From the series "Album Histórico". acrylic and digital printing on canvas, 36"x52"

Incorporating musical composition formats, scriptwriting, and narrative pedagogical approaches into the gallery space, the exhibition consists in  a deliberately tendentious selection of several known and obscure anecdotes of this site and has made a narrative patchwork of them through the works in the show.  The term quodlibet, which refers to a musical composition that takes form with various melodies, refers to the idea that the construction of a nation’s cultural identity is dependent of physical stages where to enact it, and this process, always complex and prone to accidents, is made as much through canonization of artists and  works as through misunderstandings, misenterpretations and omissions, thus building a selective history that before we know it, becomes official. Quodlibet functions as an exercise in composition, mixing elements from official and personal histories, as an interpretive project that uses this building not only as a container but as performer of its own history.

Video still from "Anoche" (2012), two channel video, 7min.

Desarrollado como proyecto específico para el Palacio de Bellas Artes, Quodlibet reflexiona sobre la forma en que la identidad artística de una nación se va proyectando en espacios físicos, eventos, y obras artísticas concretas.  El proyecto parte de la historia del Palacio de Bellas Artes y de su peculiar significado para la historia cultural de México. Este recinto ha sido, por espacio de ocho décadas, un contenedor y escenario monumental de un sinfín de eventos, exposiciones, espectáculos y episodios a veces exhaustivamente documentados y en otras ocasiones totalmente perdidos o solo existentes como breves  pies de nota o historia oral. La exposición hace una selección deliberadamente tendenciosa  tanto de los capítulos conocidos como de las anécdotas mínimas del Palacio para efectuar un engranaje narrativo a través de instalaciones, video, pintura y obra en papel.

still from "Anoche" (2012), two-channel video installation, 7min.

En su investigación, Helguera ha hecho uso de los archivos existentes del Palacio así como de los objetos procedentes de las bodegas de las compañías de danza, teatro y ópera, todos ellos cargados de la historia de los espectáculos de donde proceden.   Quodlibet (término que se refiere a una composición musical que se compone de muchas melodías conocidas) alude al hecho de que, en palabras del artista, “la identidad cultural de una nación requiere de  escenarios físicos para irse construyendo, y este proceso, siempre accidentado y complejo, está constituido tanto de canonizaciones de artistas y obras como de malentendidos de lectura de nuestra historia, que incluyen el rescatar y eliminar fragmentos, rehaciendo cada vez el pasado con nuestra memoria selectiva.”  La presente muestra funciona tanto como un ejercicio de composición que mezcla elementos provenientes de la historia oficial y personal, sino como proyecto interpretativo, utilizando a este edificio mismo no solo como contenedor de historia sino como instrumento narrativo.

Polyvalent Spaces:

The Postmodern Wunderkammer and the Return of Ambiguity*

(published in Toward a New Interior: Anthology of Interior Design Theory. Edited by Louis Weinthal, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011)

When the real is no longer what it used to be, nostalgia assumes its full meaning. There is a proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality; of second-hand truth, objectivity and authenticity. There is an escalation of the true, of the lived experience; a resurrection of the figurative where the object and substance have disappeared. And there is a panic-stricken production of the real and the referential, above and parallel to the panic of material production. This is how simulation appears in the phase that concerns us: a strategy of the real, neo-real and hyperreal, whose universal double is a strategy of deterrence.

Baudrillard, Simulations

Sometime in 1987, on a modest block of Venice Boulevard in downtown Culver City, of West Los Angeles, the Museum of Jurassic Technology quietly opened its doors to the public. The project was the creation of an unassuming man named David Wilson, offering viewers an immersive, exquisitely installed Victorian-era museum environment full of dimly-lit dioramas and exhibitions. The theatrical displays offer a wide variety of natural and historical oddities that narrate what Wilson defines as “the Lower Jurassic”, ranging from horned ants and Flemish moths to microscopic sculptures made out of human hair and representations of old-time remedies. The MJT recurs to obscure chapters of human knowledge to offer a Borgesian universe of poetic and cosmic connections, guiding us, as the museum itself claims, “as a chain of flowers into the mysteries of life.” The museum’s perplexing exhibits, with their elaborate narratives, beautiful presentation, and, to many, suspicious veracity, have generated an enthusiastic cult-like following amongst contemporary artists, taking a unique spot as an “artist’s Wunderkammer”.

A second example of a contemporary Wunderkammern, although this one on the East Coast and taking art history as its subject, is located on a rear building near the corner of Spring and Mulberry Streets in New York’s SoHo. Opened to the public in 1992 and still in operation, The Salon de Fleurus doesn’t have a web page nor does it advertise itself through any means. Instead, it has existed mainly by word of mouth for two decades in Manhattan, and its hidden feel is vital to its own anachronistic condition (as it references a historical period far before the digital age). The Salon is open only in the evening hours (I was told this was done in order to give a certain quality to the experience). I will not describe the interior in detail, so as to not disrupt a potential visiting experience of the reader, but suffice to say that the name relates to Gertrude Stein’s apartment at 27, Rue de Fleurus, where she held what was likely the very first collection of modern art. The evocative environment, presented against the background of an Édith Piaf album, oscillates between the domestic and the public space, or between an antiques bazaar and a museum. Several paintings hang on the dim lit walls are described as the work of “anonymous authors” but appear to be replicas of works by Cezanne, Braque, and Picasso. Together, they conjure up a defining yet fragile moment in history when these pieces were hanging for the first time in history. Visitors to the Salon (the Salon only admits a very small group of people at a time) are welcomed at the door by a host who describes himself only as the “caretaker” of the collection[1]. He conducts the group to the rear end of the building and, once entering the Salon and letting the visitors take it all in, starts with a narration that further enhances the space as a perfect hybrid of a historical house and a mythical place—namely, the birthplace of modernism.

I

Because neither Wilson or the Salon organizers themselves claim their spaces as art project nor describe themselves as artists, this doesn’t seem to be an accurate label to give to either of them; yet the pedagogic license taken over the interpretation of the objects, the opaque mission statement of their enterprises and the unusual conditions of the exhibitions also would prevent one to place them in the roster of Los Angeles or New York cultural institutions. Wilson’s decidedly ambiguous positioning of his museum has made it, for the most part, impossible to extract from its original environment and inserted into a traditional art historical narrative. A case in point would be a casual conversation I had on the subject in 1999 with MoMA’s curator Kynaston McShine, who had just opened his exhibition The Museum As Muse—MoMA’s attempt to document and chronicle both the institutional critique generation and the Postmodern impulse by artists to use museum’s as their subject. When I inquired about the conspicuous absence of The MJT in MoMA’s exhibition, McShine shrugged: “I just didn’t know how to fit the Jurassic into the show”. A similar problem arose when curator Larry Rinder selected the Salon de Fleurus to be part of the 2002 Whitney Biennial. While some objects of the Salon were placed in the galleries, they felt out of place inside an art museum. The effect of being inside the Salon was impossible to recreate and the true experience was left for only a few scheduled visitors to the actual location during the biennial.

McShine and Rinder are not the only ones who have had trouble pinning down these Postmodern Wunderkammern—like the MJT’s conceptually elusive Flemish moths—into art history. The constant conundrum of how to place these projects in a curatorial context—what is true or not about the exhibits, on whether this should be regarded as an art work or not, on whether the institution should be treated like any other museum, and so forth— is also the main reason of their success, and may simply just point to the fact that they may actually be all these things at once. It was the late Marcia Tucker who first gave the most accurate assessment of the MJT: “It’s like a museum, a critique of museums and a celebration of museums,—all rolled into one.”1

Much has been written about the MJT in terms of its history, its exhibitions, and its connection to the traditional cabinet of curiosities—most notably by Lawrence Weschler in his 1995 book Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder—so I will not repeat Weschler’s insightful description and analysis. What I will focus on in this short text is in offering some thoughts on where these contemporary Wunderkammers like the MJT and the Salon de Fleurus could be placed in the larger historical context of contemporary art practice, tracing a brief typology of these projects and their spatial and narrative strategies, and argue how its manipulation of spatial, cognitive and narrative conventions proposes models that in fact are now helping redefine the notion of the alternative space employing, in an unorthodox way, community building notions that are comparable to Ray Oldenburg’s theory of the “third place.” I will argue that their slipperiness, achieved through a delicate choreography of physical and conceptual space, has become one of the most important contributions to rethinking today’s artist enterprises, merging earnestness with irony, certainty with self-doubt.

II

One of the great gifts that Postmodernism brought in the visual arts was, via Minimalism, the appropriation of historical models through the filters of irony and self-awareness. This attribute is common of artist’s insertions into institutional frameworks roughly ranging from the 1970s to the early 90s (such as Michael Asher, Fred Wilson, Hans Haacke, Barbara Bloom, Andrea Fraser, and many others) that became associated with institutional critique. These groups of artists used the theatrical and pedagogical conventions of museums as a medium to build a phenomenology of the viewer and increase awareness, self-reflexivity, and critical thought on issues such as the authoritative voice of the museum, the subjective narratives of art history, and the alignment of cultural institutions with economic and political power. The more ancillary practice by artists to concoct museums as critical and autonomous mechanisms could be traced back to the inauguration in 1968 of Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles. By creating conceptual and nomadic museum without a permanent collection, Broodthaers’ project displayed the self-consciousness, irony, confrontation, and mutability that became the basis of institutional critique. Broodthaers’ fictional museum model, as well as the later works by artists who took on the institutional disguise, were more than an atavistic simulation: it was a reappropriation of the experiential ritual of art, a criticism of the purported knowledge onto which modernism laid its foundation, and an attempt to blur the boundaries of art and life and historical and fictional narratives.

These type of hybrid “museums” adopt a museological narrative model that from the onset counters the rational linearity of Modernism and a rebellion to the tenets of its pristine ideals of neutral space. In terms of space, it is natural that, because the canonical modernist narrative in the visual arts had been staged using the white cube, that its counterpoint should be constructed using an opposite device. In the case of the Salon, there is an attempt to re-enact the pre-modern environment that led to the construction of the white cube: the domestic space where artists socialized, exchanged ideas, and lived their lives. Similarly, the MJT appropriates elements of the entire history of museums, ranging from the XVIIth century cabinets of curiosities to the XIXth century natural history museum, as if searching for a new historical referent that would altogether bypass the avant-garde.

In terms of narrative linearity, the MJT’s exhibits don’t deal with art necessarily, but rather with curiosities of science and history, returning, as it were, art to an encyclopedic mission, a primal habitat where it once shared space with scientific and religious items, as well as with objects of superstition and of wonder, liberating it from the modernist demand of speaking about itself. The Salon de Fleurus, by presenting replicas of famous paintings that are claimed as anonymous, proposes a questioning of authorship that is not only pre-modern, but pre-art historical, returning to the time when art in churches had no authors.

III

Different and unique as they both are, both the Museum of Jurassic Technology and the Salon de Fleurus employ a strategy of contextual displacement and immersion, where the viewer has to ask oneself where he or she is. This slight confusion is key to introduce the viewer into a situation where objects and the place itself, although are being assigned specific names (this is a museum, that is an exhibit, this is an artwork, you are a museum visitor, etc.) they soon start looking like something else and shedding their officially assigned meaning (in the same way in which the MJT’ s scientific exhibitions don’t appear to be objective, the Salon doesn’t feel like an anonymous location, but rather a very accurate historical reconstruction of a very concrete place and the events around it). What is regained by this strategy of displacement, interestingly, is a more heightened awareness of the visual information being presented to us.

Connected to the feeling of displacement is the playful tension that both spaces employ with the notions of authenticity and truth as conveyed by an institution. While using formal devices and authoritative interpretive tools such as the ones used by museums, but also presenting statements that are at best dubious or arguable, one is left to wonder, perennially left with more questions about the answers that are being given. The more one scratches for the “truth” of these places, the more one sinks into ambiguity.

Another, equally important component of these two spaces, is their intimacy. Both the MJT and the Salon are relatively small locations, so the social dynamics that take place in there are closer to the one that would take place in a small or medium size shop than in a public art museum. Size allows also for a more personal relationship with the art, and perhaps for an unexpected kind of isolation where we are not surrounded by others to influence our thoughts on what we are experiencing— instead we are there to reflect on our own and to have one-to-one dialogues. Additionally, spaces like these become conversation pieces amongst the initiated, offering a mystery that can be discussed and debated. Amongst those close to the spaces, the humor of deceit also becomes important.

It goes without saying that all the above described conditions are very difficult, if not impossible, to recreate in public art museums today. A museum’s public mission and duties toward access, interpretation, and their sheer mandate to accommodate large groups of people to every exhibition greatly reduce the possibility to preserve the one-to-one experience of art. In reality, this is the great irony about museums, which in theory should offer viewing situations where the art works come to life in the mind of the viewer. Yet, because the public demands access and information in all sorts of formats, much of the art experience needs to be mediated through a series of frames, labels, and explanations that can quickly turn each artwork into a dead specimen. Contemporary Wunderkammern, by contrast, can afford to dispense with any demands of public service and create a world were a seemingly opaque and surreal logic erases every sort of frame, or rather, the frames that it presents appear to fuse into the work itself (the mission statement of the MJT, for instance, instead of explaining anything, only becomes an extension of the opacity of the interior space).

Jean Baudrillard’s quote at the beginning of this essay refers to how the inevitable effect of a perfect simulation is the nostalgia of the real. There is indeed a pervasive sense of longing on these places, a romantic impulse to restore a kind of knowledge that had been lost (or, quoting one of the exhibition titles of the MJT, “no one will ever have the same knowledge again”). In the postmodern context, this nostalgic sensibility should not be interpreted just as a Pre-Raphaelite-like movement toward recapturing some kind of lost innocence or building an artistic Arcadia, but instead as another kind of impulse as described before: the restoration of the viewing experience, and the attainment of secret knowledge, as in an alchemical process that bestows the visitor with a prized possession through mysterious means.

III

Both the MJT and Salon de Fleurus emerged during a period where the global expansion of the art world in post-wall Europe led to a oversize biennial landscape, where major museums focused on blockbuster exhibitions that would attract the larger public, and where incremental rise of the art market, and the decline of public funding for the arts in the United States led to the closing of many alternative spaces and displaced many artists communities in search for spaces to present their work. At the same time, in the late 80s and early 90s, urban changes in American cities led sociologists to propose new models for neighborhood design and about local solutions to community building. In 1989, sociologist Ray Oldenburg famously proposed the notion of the “third place”, that location between work and home where individuals find an environment that is structured just so that they can feel at ease but also stimulated enough so that they can engage in activities that reinforce their sense of selves and their sense of belonging (the notion was taken, and successfully implemented, by the corporate chain Starbucks which expanded exponentially in the 90s selling the idea of a location that was just between work and home).

The Oldenburgian third place is grounded on the notion of a participatory public, where the primacy is personal interaction, and where participants can feel most at ease. In perhaps a counter-intuitive way, spaces like the MJT and the Salon de Fleurus proposed a version of the third place for the art community: a place for the initiated, where experience of the work takes primacy, but simultaneously serves as a social glue. By making it difficult to access, the membership becomes more enthusiastic. Furthermore, I would posit that these third spaces in the visual arts go beyond the normal duality of work and home: they propose a space between truth and fiction; between the museum and the artist studio, and between public and private, and between knowing and unknowing. While theoretically grounded in postmodernism, they point to a step beyond traditional oppositionalities where we by necessity need to adopt simultaneous roles as architects and inhabitants, or as curators/narrators and actors. The viewer, in this case, becomes a complicit participant in furthering the dialogue of fiction (that is, by playing along as a regular museum visitor).

Looking at the new generation of artists and artist spaces in Los Angeles, one could argue that at least in the case of the MJT, its example has been followed by a number of new experiments, if not on museum-building, certainly on the ambiguous spaces. The Center for Land Use Interpretation, founded in 1994, describes itself as an “education and research organization” but it participates directly in the art world through site-specific projects and activities. Machine Project, a space run by artist Mark Allen, while it doesn’t operate like a museum has adopted a hybrid model of community center, Kunsthalle, and school. Artist Fritz Haeg turned his house in Los Angeles into a school organizing a variety of activities that ranged from basic learning experiences to performance. Many more spaces emerge on a nearly daily basis. New York has also seen a remarkable proliferation of such hybrid spaces (although due perhaps to the much more higher rents in the city, they tend to live much briefer lives).

What is clear from the experiment of the Postmodern Wunderkammern is that, drawing from the tools of Institutional Critique, they emerged as autonomous spaces that refused definition as a key part of their identity, small in scale in order to retain individual relationships and experiences, and reached out to a type of knowledge that may be obscure, universal, erudite, or simply strange, to produce moments of wonder and communal experience, always by participating in a simulated representation. Their nostalgic aura is yet another of their disguises: they are as much about the present as they are about the past. They point to a need to abandon permanent structures and move, as we already do in so many phases of our contemporary life, into movable platforms of experience.

This blog documents the development of The Well-Tempered Exposition. The project consists in a methodical investigation on the formal components of the performance art practice.  The year-long project will be developed as a series of 48 scores which will be developed and performed in a series of public experimental workshops in various cities. Upon its completion, the final aim of The Well-Tempered Exposition is to exist as a collection of scores addressing the rhetoric, contrapuntal and compositional structure of performance art as we understand it today.

The WTE is structured around the existing forms in Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (1722),  a collection of keyboard exercises composed in all 24 major and minor keys, originally intended as a pedagogical textbook “for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study.”  Today it is considered one of the foundational works of modern Western music.  The WTE project seeks to retain Bach’s original pedagogical intent while also “translating” the complex compositional formulas of Bach’s work into correlational forms such as verbal counterpoint, contextual harmony, movement,  and other elements.

The project is being developed over the course of a year senior residency at Location One in New York, where it will launch on September 21st, 2011 with a performance with Beatriz Helguera-Snow at the keyboard.

Sections of the project will be presented at Performa 2011, the RISD Museum, and the 9th Havana Biennial, amongst other venues in Brazil, Mexico, Italy, and elsewhere. The project is supported by a fellowship of the Franklin Furnace Archive.

August 24, 2011

Writing about a work-in-progress is a challenging, and somewhat frightening, task. Usually when we undertake a new experiment it is better do to so privately, in order to minimize the unsavory possibility of failing publicly. Yet in the case of this project I am happy to take that risk as this project is by and far a collective experiment  and one that can greatly benefit from collective input.

First, I will try to describe the project as succinctly as possible: The Well-Tempered Exposition is an attempt to “translate” the compositional structure of The Well-Tempered Clavier, one of J.S. Bach’s greatest works, into the realm of the performative visual arts. The questions around this proposal may likely be: why doing this, why now, why with Bach, and why this work?  Isn’t Bach already over-interpreted? Do we need yet one more experiment or analysis of an European composer in the practically infinite literature of his work, which has been analyzed from the standpoints ranging from statistical analysis and language to even alchemy and baseball?

The place alone of Bach and the WTC in the history of Western music may be enough to justify a year of study to it in any capacity. However, my motivation for focusing on Bach and on this work is specifically geared to inserting some melodic static to the current debates around what we understand as visual performance art. I don’t seek as much to illuminate Bach’s work (more than enough capable minds have done so already) but I certainly think that Bach can help us think a bit more seriously, and maybe critically, about performance art.  If Bach has served as an inspiration for cosmologists and philosophers, he may also do us some good.

I will characterize my motivations in three areas: one is related to debates around creativity and invention in composition. The second has to do with to what I will describe as ‘conceptual’ oratory, which is really about the understanding of the conceptual confines and DNA of performance art. And the third has to do with pedagogy.

1.

On the year when Bach died, in 1750, Baroque art had long past its heyday, even in music ( musical baroque came somewhat after the visual arts) yet he continued composing pretty much in the same way he did decades before. By the mid-Eighteenth century new forms of composition, such as the symphony, had emerged. In fact, Bach while revered in his time was not given the recognition that he is given today—it would take nearly 150 years for the musical world to fully appreciate the extent of his achievement.  The type of compositions that Bach produced were tied to a kind of writing that at the time were considered outmoded. “Modern” composers were critical of learned counterpoint and the next generation of composers did not favor the fugue (Mozart and Beethoven wrote a few, but they clearly were not into them). Furthermore, it may also be interesting to know for the non-Bach specialist that Bach himself did not introduce new musical forms. From the standpoint of the visual arts, this may appear a bit puzzling:  could we think of an artist  who would be considered the best of all times and still have not been an innovator of the form?

Bach belongs to a time where ideas of aesthetics were fairly removed from ours, right before a paradigm shift that comes with the Enlightenment under which a new kind of aesthetic is to emerge, in an articulation that primarily culminates with the work of Kant in his third critique (1790). In Kant’s version of aesthetics, the genius in art is about innovation or originality; in Bach’s time, art was about invention.

Today the terms ‘invention’ and ‘innovation’ may sound like synonims to us, but in the 18^th century ‘invention’ meant something different. Inventio is a term that belongs to the classic art of rhetoric. It is considered the first part of a speech — the thing that will be said, or the content of the speech to be developed. In music, it would translate as a musical idea or a melody. Yet this ‘new’ musical idea would still conform to a set compositional structure. Its innovation lies in the development of the form, not in the transformation of the form.

Part of the answer as to why  Bach is considered so relevant despite not being an innovator of forms is that, actually, the development of the form, when taken to its ultimate consequences, can amount to innovation. This is the argument that, in his brilliant analysis of Bach’s compositional techniques, entitled “Bach and the Patterns of Invention” Laurence Dreyfuss makes, by saying that Bach’s ways of pushing within the formal constraints of the Baroque period constituted in itself not just a critical reimagining of the traditional musical ideas of the Baroque but a forced reference for any future musician. Thus Bach has the rare credit of being not just the culmination of an era, but as the beginning of another. In other words, Bach blurred the boundaries of form an content.

Performance art today, in my view, exists in a similar crossroads between form and content — a crossroads between deciding whether it is a formal discipline— ‘a genre’, that is, such as painting— and a conceptual sensibility that permeates every other kind of art. Under this logic, “performance art” is just a set of relatively connected conceptual actions that date roughly from the 60s til the present, while “performativity” encompasses every medium found in lots of modern and contemporary art. I personally am in favor of the interpretation that performance is, and should remain, a meta-genre. But if that is the case, how do we develop a useful criticality toward it? How can we know what it is if it can be anything? What prevents us from the “anything goes”, invertebrate gravitational force that produces so much mediocre performance art? My thought  is that the debate can be illuminated by conducting a reflection on composition that analyses the relationship creativity vs. invention as previously presented in Bach’s case.

2.

The second set of concerns is linked to the relationship that Bach had with the art of rhetoric, which I already introduced. In Bach’s time, there was an ongoing musical tradition that established direct links between the construction of a speech and the composition of a musical piece. This is easiest exemplified by the use of rhetorical terms in musical composition such as Inventio, expositio, elaboratio, executio, etc. In a fuge one inserts “voices” that intertwine between one another, as if one were constructing a conversation.  The ranges of regimentation of this idea varied throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century,  and were best articulated by Johann Mattheson, a contemporary of Bach who first made reference to his work in print. We will undoubtedly hear more about Mattheson in this project, not least because he was a fascinating figure but because his adamant interest in relating the structure of speech to music will prove useful.  Using rhetorical structures of the time is a common way through which several musicologists can map out and study Bach’s works.

I will argue here that, as much as performance art may be seen as the most open meta-genre as they come, it also has its own rhetorical devices like any other kind of art. Performance art does still function within the parameters and the narrative of conceptual art- that in itself is some kind of score. It is naïve to attempt to do performance works while ignoring the kind of performance practices of the 70s or 80s. So the acknowledgment of that history is already a concession toward the need of conceptual structure. So while we may not be able to speak about a formal rhetorics of performance art, we can certainly speak of some kind of conceptual rhetorics, or ‘conceptual oratory’ —that which is being said within a performative approach. It is important to note here that when I refer to rhetorics or oratory I do not mean to refer exclusively to acts of speech, or to voice-related performance: I refer to performance art as a set of activities (could be through movements, actions, experiences, etc) whose devices and conceptual/compositional mechanisms could theoretically be mapped in a similar way to the kind of music from the late Baroque period.

3.

Last but not least, The Well-Tempered Clavier is, in essence, a textbook.  Bach was no theorist nor was he even very strong as a writer (his extant writings us are almost exclusively business-oriented; his letters very brief and he didn’t leave a single written piece that discussed his aesthetic interests or intentions). However, he was a famous and successful teacher —exemplified most immediately by the fact that many of his own children went to become major composers in their own right (and surviving the shadow of a towering father like Bach must not have been an easy feat). Bach’s pedagogy  thus was not theoretical but almost entirely practical: his students learned by playing the compositions that he devised for them, such as the WTC.

As an educator and an artist, I have always pondered about the questions around how to teach performance art from a practical —not theoretical or art historical perspective, which is pretty much what we do today. Then in art school we all try and experiment with crazy performances (that was my experience as an art student), in varying degrees of mediocrity and occasional discoveries, until we graduated. I was always left, however, with the sense that my learning in those performance art classes was at best random and haphazard, and what I had learned was more out of luck than out of having followed any methodical exploration.   I would like to think that it is possible to teach the performance art practice without that same haphazardness. But knowing that not everyone may agree with me,  I would argue that in any case we would be well-served by at least discussing the existence of a practice-based performance art textbook— which the WTE attempts to do in a humble way.

Perhaps this entire project is prompted by a personal memory from art school. When I was a senior  BFA student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the early 90s,  I took a performance art class. There I met a number of colleagues with whom we developed a somewhat fanatical fascination with performance, and soon we had taken over the performance space of the school at which we would spend all-nighters preparing pieces that we would present the next morning to the class. One of our most admired colleagues was Eduardo Martínez-Almaral, a Cuban artist.  Eddie had come to Chicago via Miami, where he had been involved in theater and was trained as a light technician.  Eddie was obsessed with Bach, and his works always incorporated his music in some way.  (Sometime after art school Eddie shifted his interests and while continued to do some performance, he never went back to perform these pieces or to explore Bach). They usually were extremely long durational pieces —sometimes lasting four, five hours— during much of which the audience would remain inside the space in complete darkness and silence.  After some seemingly interminable time, a beautiful floating red square light would turn on in the middle of the space. Some time later, a partita would play for a few minutes. Then some more time, someone would perhaps walk slowly into the space. The entire event would often consist of combinations of very short movements, light projections, and of course the music of Bach. The pieces generated huge reverence in school.  It always seemed remarkable to me that a man who was an organist and choral teacher in a small town in Germany in the XVIIIth century could feel so contemporary and move so many people in a collective experience; but it all was due to the possibilities to translate this sensibility into a contemporary realm, as Eddie had done. The WTE is thus dedicated to Eddie and the brief magic that he created in that student performance space in Chicago.

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Note to our readers: You may have noticed that The Estheticist took a two month vacation. The hiatus was due both to a decreasing stream of inquiries and to our own summer slumber. Since we did not encounter major opposition to this gap, we may continue publishing issues in accordance to the level of inquiries and less in accordance to the monthly calendar. This is, in the end, a labor of love, so we may take advantage of the fact that we have no advertisers.

Dear Estheticist,

I’m a conceptual artist in a third world country who still cant live off my art. i tried to sell photographs but collectors here are still dubious about the medium and still cling to the idea of a unique artwork. I’m not complaining about having a day job to support myself and my art, but the resentment for artists who don’t need a day job inevitably creeps in sometimes. After seeing The Grirlfriend Experience and reading about Andrea Fraser’s work about being procured for sex by a collector for money and treating that as an artwork ( though i really really hate her, everything about her), im now contemplating on doing the same (or completely whoring myself ) just to have an edge and a bigger slice of the art market. I know those kind of under the table transactions are not new but will it really be worth it in the end?

The Martyred Whore

Dear Martyred Whore,

Fraser’s piece is about using conceptual strategies to make completely explicit that subservient relationship that artists and galleries can end up playing to collectors. It is very different from turning your entire production over to the whims of whoever you think may like your work. First, you should not compare yourself to artists who don’t have a day-job- each artist has a completely different set of circumstances in their lives and it is impossible to draw useful parallels. Your collector base may reside outside of your country, and there is also an advantage to living in a distant place from major art capitals. But under no circumstance should you sacrifice the integrity of your work: it always is so much better to have a day-job than start producing substandard or commercial work for the market.

As an aside, I would offer that the reason you dislike Andrea Fraser so much is because you identify so profoundly with her work. Its an old symptom amongst artists.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

Can curators be artists?

Sincerely,

Obviously, a Curator.

Dear Obviously a Curator,

The curatorial practice is creative in its own right, but even if the curatorship of an exhibition is so brilliant as to have the resonance of an artwork, it should not aspire to be seen as one. Artworks are entities that call attention onto themselves. When curatorial projects behave that way, they usually do so at the expense of the artworks included. At some point in the 90s, around when Nicolas Bourriaud wrote Post-production, we thought that the era of the original art was over and what would replace it was only the ability to combine things, to paste together, the era of the DJ.  And in truth, this new activity has become an art in its own terms, curatorial practice included. But it has not replaced artmaking altogether. So when one curator tries to make his or her art using other people’s artworks, that usually doesn’t come off well. The problem is not on whether the curatorial practice can be considered a creative endeavor, but rather that curators who really want to be artists end up being bad artists and bad curators.

Sincerely

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

An artist whose work I like has offered to trade their artwork for mine. How can I determine a fair exchange and talk about the trade in a way that makes our relationship stronger?

Trader

Dear Trader,

Your way of operating in this circumstance will need to be both pragmatic and generous, and will also depend on the current place in the career of both of you. If both of you are more or less at the same level career-wise ( critical recognition and similar market value for your works) there should not be much of a problem: both of you should give each other the freedom to choose a work within your oeuvre of each other’s liking and then do the exchange. If you are a younger  or less recognized artist than your friend, you should be considerate and defer to him/her as to what piece (or range of pieces) he/she considers  appropriate to exchange, and even when you are given green light to choose anything you like, you should exercise good judgment (try not to go for the huge piece that clearly costed a fortune to make or one which is very coveted).  However, if you happen to be in a stronger position (market and reputation-wise) than your fellow artist, you should ignore this difference and treat your fellow artist as an equal (Sol Lewitt was famous for doing this; he would exchange works with artists he appreciated and would trade works with them even though it was clear that whatever piece he was sending was usually worth much more than whatever piece he was receiving).

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

As an artist, how do you price artwork? It’s painful to price artwork. Aren’t

they really priceless? Unless one has another job to pay for daily expenses,

artists need to make money, too, in order to live.

—Just wondering

Dear Just Wondering,

The reality of our world is that many priceless things have to be given some provisional price tag. Life is priceless, and yet if one dies there can only be a finite amount of money dedicated to this person’s life insurance. So the monetary cost of an artwork is an imperfect representation of its cultural value. As artist, you have first to accept that fact and then, if you do want or need to sell your work, adjust to the realities of the market around it. The variables will have to do with your place in your career, the impact that your work has had in the world so far, its uniqueness, etc. You can refer to the prices of other fellow artists who are in similar stages of their career than you.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist

Your opinion wil be key for an ongoing project we are going. A well known artist in Córdoba, Argentina, invited a renowned curator and three artists (including me) to curate a show of his work. My question to you is the same than the one the artist is making to us: what kind of work should he produce for this show?

I await your response.

A.L.

Dear A.L.

In some cases, artists behave like those individuals who enter a tarot parlor so that a card reader will tell them what do to. The thing about those instances is that usually the person already knows what he or she will do- the card reader only helps him or her come to that realization and feel as if some divine power enlightened her to make that decision.

The well-known artist who invited you must have had his reasons to choose all of you specifically. You should explore with him a bit further as two why he chose you, how he thinks your perception will result in an adequate curatorship, what expectations he has of you, etc. Your mission is to help him articulate, through this kind of questions, those vague ideas about the show he would do and bring those to the surface of his consciousness. You are not to dictate to him what to do.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

How does an artist promote herself without interfering with the galleries she is with and has been with for 5-10 years.  Websites,blogs, auctions, social media and contests – how, without asking about each thing – to be moral, honest and still ambitious.

Question 2 (like press at whitehouse – two part question, sorry) How can an artist go from selling at okay price, to making a living – if she sells a lot, but has no fame to raise her prices – this is a big question, I know.

Sincerely,

B.

Dear B.

1. Most galleries welcome their artists taking the initiative at promoting their work- what no one likes is to have to carry the burden of doing all the promotion for one person.  The more you spread the word about you and your gallery, the better for both. However, galleries are there to represent you, and it doesn’t look very classy when the artist becomes the extension of the PR department of the gallery- let them do the dirty work whenever possible. Galleries preserve the aura of the artist- let them do that. Focus your efforts on the aspects that they can’t help you at- asking for residencies, getting speaking gigs, going to social events where you meet potential supporters of your work. There are many more ways in which you can promote yourself without spamming people every day.

2. Regardless of how much you sell right now, your prices can only go up depending on the demand, and the demand will only increase if more people become aware of, and interested in your work. And this will only happen if you constantly seek opportunities to advance your career- obtaining museum shows, getting into biennials, maintaining a certain level of activity, etc. If your career is on a standstill or you haven’t had major breakthroughs, raising your prices will only hurt you.

sincerely,

The Estheticist

The Neologist

Mock Turtle

Term used  to refer to nouveau riche collectors who buy the worst pieces by famous name artists —usually those which no serious museum will collect. The term comes from a character from Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland.  e.g. He has a mock turtle collection.

The Estheticist is a free ongoing service of art consultation around practical, philosophical and ethical issues around the visual arts profession. To ask a question, email estheticist [ at ] aol.com. Participants accept that their questions may be used for a printed publication that will serve as a professional development tool for emerging professionals in the arts. Your question will be confidentially and the question will appear as anonymous unless you specify otherwise.

To see previous issues, click here.

Dear Estheticist,

I make autobiographical work but my emotions sometimes get on the way.  People tell me that the work is too sentimental and even corny at times, but I feel that if I don’t insert my feelings and my personal life in the work, the work is dead. What to do?

Romantic

Dear Romantic,

Self-portraiture, or autobiographical work is a perennial subject for art, and there is a lot of successful autobiographical, even confessional work out there. At the same time it is an extremely difficult kind of work to do — for every interesting autobiographical work there are hundreds, if not thousands, of over-indulgent, uncritical and naïve works by mostly amateur artists who think they are more interesting to the world than they actually are. The temptation to present yourself in a better light, to make your life a great epic, is too great and requires great maturity and detachment to see oneself coldly. This is why to give free range to your emotions when you are making a work about yourself may end up turning people off. You should consider some “detachment” strategies, like thinking of other subjects as proxies of yourself, which may allow you to gain some distance and perhaps even to discover more things about yourself. Like Flaubert, who claimed ‘Madame Bovary, c’est moi’, practically every artwork we do is a self-portrait.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

My work is about challenging the system of art, but how can I engage the art world if to engage with it is essentially against my rules? Either I stay isolated forever or lose the integrity of my practice.

Sincerely,

Outsider, California

Dear Outsider,

My suspicion is that you never really wanted to be outside in the first place.  If you are so concerned by the acknowledgement of the art world for the kind of work that you do, most likely you regarded your supposed rebellion against art as some kind of vacation from the system, but always with the hopes that they system will come back to embrace you. It may be better for you to come to terms to that fact, and once having established that, think about how you can still challenge the system by still being engaged within it. If, on the contrary, you find that your philosophical stance really takes you outside of it, you will not miss it much.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I am a scholar focused on a very specific period of art. There are very few people in my area of interest and as a result it kind of gets very competitive. I have a colleague who I feel is always looking over my shoulder of everything I do, always asking for references and information that it has taken me a lot of hard work to compile, and I always feel she is imitating my work. Is there something I should say or do? I don’t want to be rude, but…

Sincerely,

Anti-copycat

Dear anti-copycat,

You are right in that it is not fair for your colleague to reap the benefits of the information that you have worked hard to obtain.  Because this is a person that you are likely to keep running into in the future (given that your field, as you yourself say, is so small) it is not appropriate, nor in your interest, to be too confrontational toward her.  You may want to be a bit more private about the research you are doing at the time, and be ready to share it only once it has become fully public (e.g. if you have published it somewhere, etc).  At the same time, you can continue being helpful to your colleague, but instead of giving her your full bibliography, let her show you what she has so far and only help her in solidifying the information she has compiled already. If you truly are a step ahead of her, you should not worry too much — the person who really has done the work is usually recognized in the end.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Some of my friends- we all make art— feel uncomfortable using the name “artist”. It sounds so… pretentious. Some people use the term “image makers”, or “cultural workers”. Is the whole idea of the artist dying? Is there an alternative to the name “artists”?

Sincerely,

Art Laborer

Dear Art Laborer,

You point out to a phenomenon that has gradually been taking place since Barthes’  “Death of the Author”. Artists have gradually grown uncomfortable with the historical baggage of the term as it has been associated with individuals who are ‘illuminated’, or are perceived to exist in some sort of higher spiritual realm. Instead, we have favored terms that favor professional, technical or even labor connotations (“worker”, “practitioner”, “maker”). In the end, none of these terms quite works in describing the full scope of what an artist does. We may have to spend a while still figuring out a replacement, but in the end we may have to simply revert to the old fashioned term and maybe try for the time being to live with the preciousness it denotes.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I am a young artist from a small country with no interest in art. I have migrated to a different country but now I feel weird and don’t know how to go about meeting curators or galleries.

How should I approach the artsy nest in this big city?

The Immigrant.

Dear Immigrant,

It is normal to feel weird after you immigrate: nothing is the same. You will never be the same. You are going through a process of adaptation that will take several years, if you do choose to stay where you are. Because you are undergoing that transformation, you should not impose on yourself huge tasks that may be hard to accomplish. You should see yourself as being part of a long-term process of development that will feel very slow at this point, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t advance. In order to do so, there are three things that you should consider doing: the first is to go to openings and art-related social events to meet other people. Do studio visits with other artists. Use the traditional channels of showing work- participating in competitions, call for entries, etc. even if you don’t get selected, you are sending the work out.  Secondly is to focus on work: make as much work as you can. The third is to not turn your back to your country of origin: even if you think it doesn’t care about you, it will always define who you are, and you will become a better artist by trying to figure out that relationship.  Take things slowly; set realistic goals to yourself for each six months and touch base with yourself after each cycle. Slowly you will be moving forward.

Sincerely

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I run a non-profit alternative space/kunsthalle where we produce ambitious projects for artists (we don’t have huge resources, but we fundraise hard for each project). In the town where I work it’s pretty much my space and a successful gallery which represents some of the most prominent artists here. As as result it has become inevitable that I would work with several of them. Each time, we have paid for the entirety of the work, and almost always, the artwork goes to some art fair where the artist gallery sells the piece and makes a pretty good profit from it. At the same time, the gallery never offers to help financially in any way, yet they wind up benefiting enormously for the fundraising work that I do. I am starting to feel like the private fundraiser of that gallery. Should I demand that if the work is sold a percentage of the investment should be given to my space?

Sincerely,

Fundmaster

Dear Fundmaster,

I know it is frustrating, as an administrator, to see the commercial side of the art world benefit on the work that you did.  However, you need to recognize that part of the problem lies in your own choices. I am not sure that it was so inevitable that you would need to work with the local artists who already have a system of support (i.e. the gallery).  Instead, you could work with artists who are emerging or yet in need of representation, and who could benefit from the kind of wonderful opportunities that you offer in your space. It is not a good idea for a kunsthalle to get involved in the commercial side of things: it is not your territory, and you can easily get distracted from the important things, which is to put a strong and experimental exhibition program, whether the works are unsellable or hugely profitable. It is also important to remember that as much as artists and galleries have gains, they also have losses: lots of works never sell.  You, in turn, may not keep the cash, but no one can either take away your reputation.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I am a collector with a small but — I think— decorous collection. There is an artist that I have supported over the years of whom I own several pieces. Recently, a piece that I had from ten years ago got damaged accidentally and I asked the artist if he would be willing to take a look at it and perhaps fix it. The artist took it to his studio and when I got the piece back, to my surprise, not only had he  “fixed” the said problem, but he had added new elements to the piece and altered a whole section completely. I felt this wasn’t right as he really now has turned the piece into something else, and I told him so; but the artist argued that he had never really liked that certain section and wanted to fix it once and for all.  Do you think the piece has now lost its value? Was he in his right to make such alterations?

Sincerely,

Dumbfounded collector

Dear Dumbfounded Collector,

Sol Lewitt once wrote that artists should always be allowed to modify their work. I, for one, disagree with that assessment, as would most museum conservators. An artwork, for better or worse, is a representation of a period in an artist’s career, and to come back five, ten, twenty years later and change what we did then not only distorts the record, but obliterates the older piece replacing it a present work. In that sense, your piece may have indeed lost value as a representative work from that period by that artist. Next time you experience a similar problem I would probably go to someone who specializes in conserving works, not making them.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

The Neologist

Lame curator

Someone who usually works for an institution and bears the title of curator but has little or no decision power.

Arte al dente

Works that emerge at the exact moment of the height of a particular trend.

The Estheticist is a free ongoing service of art consultation around practical, philosophical and ethical issues around the visual arts profession. To ask a question, email estheticist [ at ] aol.com. Participants accept that their questions may be used for a printed publication that will serve as a professional development tool for emerging professionals in the arts. Your question will be confidentially and the question will appear as anonymous unless you specify otherwise.

To see previous issues, click here.

Dear Estheticist,

I am a final year fine art student/ emerging artist interested in the art world market. I am torn between passion (traditional painting) and conceptual art – which I also enjoy. Is it “selling out” to go down the commercial art route with painting? Is this wrong? Is conceptual art right?

E.M.

Dear E.M.,

You are making lots of innacurate assumptions. Conceptualism doesn’t lack passion; making traditional painting doesn’t guarantee commercial success; and there is no “right” medium. If your desire is just to make money, you are indeed selling out, regardless of what work you make.

Your situation is not unusual. Many emerging artists who are graduating have to negotiate a number of apparently opposing aesthetic stances, being seduced by all of them at once. “Traditional” painting —and by that I understand painting rooted in XIXth century aesthetics and techniques— may feel like a safer choice, as it is grounded in those familiar terrains, but the truth is that it is equally difficult to produce innovative work in any medium. You likely are not ready to make a choice yet: you need to resolve your assumptions about conceptualism vs. painting first by continue to experiment, make work and look at other artists who have addressed both painting and conceptualism. You can only know what side of the spectrum you are in by making work, and only by making work that you truly believe in you can hope to be satisfied. Commercial success may follow.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

What is the point of a poor derivation/ version of “Untitled Film Stills”?

Brooklyn Potter

Dear Brooklyn Potter,

Your question seems less a question than the downright statement that a poor, derivative work (in this case, of Cindy Sherman’s “untitled film stills”) is pointless. In any case, let’s see if that is actually true by unpacking your question/statement in two parts: 1. Is derivative work pointless? and 2. Is a poorly made work pointless?

If by “pointless” you mean that it doesn’t contribute significantly to advancing the discussion or dialogue in art, it would be a hard thing to prove. Sherrie Levine’s work is all built on derivation, but that is indeed its point. But without going to such extreme: is art done under the influence of a particular “school” pointless? Let’s say it is, but then I am afraid that encyclopedic museums would have to discard most of their works. Part of the problem of saying that a derivative work is pointless is that it is almost impossible to determine when a work stops being indebted to past artworks and becomes its own original “self”; in fact the consensus is that it is practically impossible to make an artwork that does not derive some of its references to previous art. In fact, one can argue that a work can be both derivative and innovative: think of Picasso in how he would “steal” from other artists and yet produce his own original works. Innovation can occur by using existing structures.
Furthermore, it is important to remember that the notion of “derivativity” as applied to art is a modern creation: not all historical periods, or cultures, have always praised originality as the highest aspiration for a work. And even today, if you read Marjorie Perloff’s “Unoriginal Genius”, she makes a strong case for contemporary writers who intentionally, and successfully, question the very notion of originality as inextricable to meaningful art.

As to whether there is a point in a poorly made work, that depends on the eye of the beholder. If you consult the Museum of Bad Art, you will see that the curators have found great value in some of the most aesthetically offensive works ever made, effectively turning them around to make us enjoy them as masterpieces of naiveté.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist

If you know a lot of information about a dealer, is it ethical to tell your friends or should I keep it to myself? Dealer not too honest..

Sincerely,

529

Dear 529,

It partially depends on the personal/professional relationship of yourself and your friends to the dealer. If you currently were working for this dealer, and have a lot of access to information to the dealings of the gallery that you feel uncomfortable with, the ethical thing to do is to confront the dealer directly, or quit. As an artist being represented by the dealer, a similar situation applies —if you are going to badmouth someone who represents you, it may speak more about you than about the dealer. If you, however, are an external observer, and you know of people who may be harmed by this dealer’s dishonest practices, by all means you should let them know.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I am an artist who works with several different mediums. One of my most personally favored mediums is singing, although I don’t use it primarily in my current work. I am losing my voice, as a result of a cigarette addiction. When singing certain types of music, the loss is not very noticeable. When singing other types, it is very apparent to me and to people who know me. At times, I feel like I have very little control over my vocal expression– like I have these great ideas in my head, but am rendered dumb to express them by a deteriorating artistic ability.

All of this has little direct bearing on the work I’m developing right now, and yet it has some bearing in a psychological sense: The fact that I increasingly can’t perform the artform that I have worked with for the longest in my life, an artform that in many ways has defined me, makes me feel incapable as an artist, even though there are other mediums I have used and continue to use with proficiency. Incapable isn’t the right word, actually– It makes me feel like I’m losing a huge part of the soul behind my work. This doesn’t even entirely make sense to me, and yet here it is.

Aside from the obvious suggestion of quitting smoking (which is easier said than done, because I have tried a lot), what should I do, and why is this affecting my attitude towards the rest of the work I do, when I’m working with ideas and mediums that are mostly unrelated to singing?

Sincerely,

Existential Laryngitis

Dear Existential Laryngitis,

In reading your question, the first thing that comes to mind is the case of Chuck Close, who as you may well know suffered a tragic spinal artery collapse that left him nearly paralyzed in 1988. He was once asked what would he have done if this incident had left him completely paralyzed. He answered: “I would have become a conceptual artist.”
Close is a remarkable case of an artist whose determination to make art helped him to remake his life and find the conditions under which he could continue to paint, under severely restrictive circumstances. His response to that question reveals that determination, and the sense that regardless of our physical (or financial, or any other) limitations, it is possible to find creative ways to continue producing, as long as our mind is alert. While it may be true that you may not be able to do coloratura in the future, I believe you are unfairly conditioning yourself to make art only if certain aspects of you remain the same, — something that is not sustainable in the long term: even if you are healthy, you will need to stop singing one day. Your challenge is to find the imagination and creativity to take what you have and make the most of it. And forgive me for saying it, but if art is that important to you, you should be able to place it over smoking.

Sincerely

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

How do you recommend artists without studios go about making studio visits? I and many artists I know do not have a studio space for various reasons including: transience; unavailability of affordable spaces in high rent cities; cost (who can afford a studio when you can’t even afford to pay your rent, food, student loans, supplies to make art, etc.). There are those who romanticize “post-studio practice,” yet the fact remains that most struggling, underemployed artists would prefer to have a studio. It’s also seen as a badge of commitment and seriousness rather than as a socioeconomic factor. Mostly I meet for coffee with people and bring my laptop to show images, or have them over at my dining table where I can bring out a few small objects / drawings and show the bigger things on my laptop. I am going to have a visit with a commercial gallery soon, and am wondering what I can do to demonstrate the quality and materiality of my work when most of it is in storage. And also how to give a sense of my creative character, which is also important when giving studio visits, and imparted by the space we create and the things with which we surround ourselves.

Thanks,

Impoverished Yet Ambitious

Dear Impoverished Yet Ambitious

It is important to remember that many important artists didn’t have a studio for most of their careers, or ever: Felix González-Torres would meet curators at a coffee shop. It is true that having a studio (and let’s face it, having a gallery) is some sign of status, of your commitment to your work, and a reassurance to the visiting curator that you are a professional. And as you point out, there are instances where nothing can replace to see the actual piece in a physical space. However, we are indeed living in a post-studio time, and more and more it is familiar to curators to work with artists who don’t have a physical space of their own, and most professional curators/dealers are able to envision a work though digital images without seeng the actual thing. An alternative, when you have to do a formal presentation at a studio-like space, is to ask to borrow (or rent) a studio space from a friend or acquaintance for the day. You can always also compensate by inviting people to meet you at places where you are having exhibitions, or apply for temporary residency spaces where you can also arrange for meetings.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I have recently returned to painting after years of working in sculpture/mixed-media installation. I had forgotten about how painting can be so agonizing- one little corner of blue, for example, had me in despair last night- I was clenching my fists and saying out loud, “what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?”.

It’s amazing how a little square of wood, fabric and paint can have such an immense emotional effect. I guess that challenge is a big reason that painters are compelled to paint, and to be freaking out about colors and lines probably means one is passionate about what they are doing. But horrible stereotypes do come to mind of such angsty painters as Pollock and Rothko, and I find it a little worrying. I want to paint, but I don’t want to go crazy. Is there any way to enjoy safer painting?

Thanks,

Nervous Painter

Dear Nervous Painter

At an interview once, Gabriel Orozco said that he found his artistic voice the day he left art school and stopped trying to be an artist. Many times the reasons we agonize about making a particular work have nothing to do with our lack of creative potential, but to the fact that we are unconsciously blocking it by imposing crazy demands on ourselves. You appear to be terrified of not being able to create a great painting, and that whatever you engage in will not live to some kind of standard out there in the world.
You first need to remember that the studio is like an alternative Vegas: whatever happens there stays there — if you want it to. You need to regain the freedom of experimentation, and that can only happen if you embrace the idea that whatever you do in the studio does not need to be seen by the world. Experiment with easily disposable materials; don’t think of every brushtroke as a final statement on your fate. And in the end, rest assured, if the painting fails, you only need a bit of white paint and paint over it.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

The Neologist

Vip-ing

Making an art event appear really exclusive in order to ensure a large attendance.

Rehatching

Refers to the practice by some artists to take a finished work back to the studio to modify aspects of it. He rehatched all his works from the 70s.

Dear Estheticist,

As a latino artist making art about my culture, I often ask, “what’s the point of making this kind of art?” Sometimes it seems futile… everyone always says “Uptown is so far”… Is it up to me to bridge the gap?

—Washington Heights Girl

Dear Washington Heights Girl,

It is very difficult to be an artist negotiating two cultures, but it is that very need to negotiate that will make you stronger. You have been presented with both a gift and a challenge: you come from a rich background of cultural references, and you live in a situation where it is possible for you to take distance from them and see them critically.  You should not see yourself as a Latina artist against the white mainstream, or someone who needs to abandon her background to be accepted, but rather as an artist who is informed by both a latino background and a downtown art world.  And the people who may reject your art or claim you as one of their own don’t decide where you belong: they are all actors on the social and cultural environment that you are to respond to as an artist.

Both places are imperfect and uncomfortable, and both will at times appear to make you feel foreigner. But it is a necessary condition for an artist to be an outsider:  it is a necessary standpoint to better comment on reality. So while it may be a burden to, as you say, “bridge the gap”, it is essential for you to maintain a relationship between those two worlds, and use your frustration as energy toward creating more art.  The wrong direction would be to give up either uptown or downtown. As you grow into a fully –formed artist, those physical barriers will prove themselves as more psychological than real, and you and your art will eventually be able to subsume both.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

-

Dear Estheticist

As a white male philosophy major, I find myself in a position of culture-less-ness. I identify with little geographical or religious heritage. In my artistic endeavors, I find myself embracing technology as a mediator between myself and history. I honestly enjoy this bridge of philosophy, art, and technology, yet sometimes feel left out of a greater cultural movement ( e.g. latino art, etc.). Am I over-eager to attach to “the now?” How should I reconcile  my lost soul?

_MDL

Dear MDL,

Firts it is important to recognize, as you seem to do already, that we don’t choose our background— or lack of it.  This is a condition that we can’t change, and thus it is of little use to worry about how it could be different. However, there are two other things for you to think about. One of them is that the absence of a past or a culture, while perplexing, can also be incredibly liberating. Octavio Paz once wrote that Americans are successful because they are born toward the future, whereas Latin America is forced to develop looking toward the past. You should take advantage of the condition that affords you to carry a heavy weight of history. Secondly, there is nothing wrong on wanting to engage with the present, but to cling to any set of labeled movement, be it self-proclaimed or imaginary (eg. latino art) doesn’t turn you automatically into a motivated or original thinker. Your solution is not to find a culture, but to find motivation and ideas. You should travel, have experiences, engage with your times, meet people that you may feel are kindred spirits, and through those experiences you will eventually create a culture of your own, which in turn will lead to your artistic vision.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

-

Dear Estheticist,

A few weeks ago, after contacting the curators of an exhibition, I received an official email letter from the institution’s curatorial team stating that my work had been reviewed and that “after careful consideration,” it was not going to be included in the show, but that they would keep my files for “future possibilities.” Last week, I received a beaten down and dirty envelope. To my dismay, it was the same package I had sent to the curators. Unopened, and still bearing the red marks of “return to sender” it was accompanied by a US Postal note stating that it had been lost in transit and couldn’t be delivered. Besides the inefficiency of the postal service, and the time that took them to notify me, I am distraught by the curator’s claim that my work had actually been reviewed and archived for later consideration. What to do? Should I print and frame the letter along with the returned envelop and include it in a future exhibition called “Rejects From the Heart?” Should I create a public performance denouncing this rather (un)common practice and call it “My Missing Files?” Pictures included, should I Tweeter it, Facebook it, MySpace it (does this one still exist?) Should I call the Ethical Commission on Curatorial Practices and Exhibitions? or should I discretely and valiantly TAKE IT LIKE A MAN and swallow my semi-broken artistic aspirations, pride and prejudice?

Please advice… I plea to your moral, aesthetic, and ethical wisdom.

Hector Canonge

Dear Hector,

Your frustration with this mishandling of your materials is perfectly understandable, and it is not acceptable for any organization to mail artists a form letter about their work without having even bothered to check on whether a submission was indeed received.  However, the circumstances around these kind of situations are important to consider:  you did not specify, for example, the kind of organization you interacted with (which makes a difference, as I shall explain ) and on whether your submission was an unsolicited one or if it was sent in response to a call for entries. If, for instance, you submitted an unsolicited proposal to an alternative art space or gallery,  I would be a bit less indignant toward them. It is no secret that non-profit art spaces and galleries are inundated by unsolicited requests, and they have a hard time to keep track of all submissions, which prompts them to regularly send form letters. This, while not a nice practice, is about the only thing they can possibly do to keep up with the avalanche of requests they get, and this practice is bound to result in ocassional glitches like the one you unfortunately just suffered. However, if in contrast you submitted in response to a call for entries ( either for an art competition, foundation, or art space) and you received this response, the act reveals a serious incompetence and error in their selection infrastructure and would put into question the objectivity or value of their entire selection process. Artists who submit to competitions, calls for entries, etc. are entitled to having their materials be opened and reviewed, and at the very least be seen by the actual decisionmaker of the opportunity (that is, not a random intern). As such, it is appropriate to write a letter of complaint to the director of the organization, and if it is ignored,  go public about it — not out of vengeance, but in the interest of pressuring them to correct the problem in the future.

In any case you need to see this oversight not as a curatorial verdict on your work but as plain and simple mismanagement. It may only be a consolation prize, but you may agree that it is still better to be rejected by accident than intentionally.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

-

Dear Estheticist,

What is art?

Sincerely,

Swiss Girl

Dear Swiss Girl,

Congratulations for being the first one in the history of this column to ask the more basic question about art.  George Quasha, a New York artist, is in my view the authority on the subject. Quasha has spent many years collecting video interviews with more than 800 artists, curators, writers, etc. responding to this question.

http://www.quasha.com/art-is/art-is

When one reviews the many responses, it is clear that there are as many answers as individuals. This suggests that the main issue about this question is that it can never be given a final answer, as whichever provisional answer is given can immediately be contradicted by a new way of interpreting what art is. Art is a discipline designed to transform itself permanently, along with its values and structure, thus no satisfactory answer can be given.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

-

Dear Estheticist,

Here is my dilemma: I get this email from a Gallery called XXX Fine Art in Chelsea to come in to visit because they like my work.  A while back they had seen my work in an art show and left me a card.  I must admit I did not like the work in their gallery but I thought I would feel it out maybe there would be a change in curation.  I go in and they tell me I should apply to this competition they are having for a show there as well as in Korea and it costs $60.00 (the woman points to the bank in Korea on the application that I should send it too). It was all nice but after I left I decided not to apply. I thought it was a little shady because the work hanging on the walls in no way resembled my work. So then I get this email that thanks me for my submission (they assumed I applied) but I did not get in. I was like huh? then I see on their web page the deadline was in January. Did they really need my money that bad? I want to email them back and tell them that I never bothered applying.  Is this a flat out scam that I should report to the Better Business Bureau?

Sincerely,

Artist who feels that XXX Fine Arts must think Artists Are Idiots

Dear Artist who feels that Able Fine Arts must think Artists Are Idiots,

You did well in trusting your instinct. The fact that the work you saw on view was substandard and not connected with what you do should already be, automatically, a reason to walk away.  If what you see looks bad, it is bad — there is no use in hoping it may get better in the future. Furthermore, art galleries have no business in creating competitions, let alone asking artists to pay them to review their work. While it is not an illegal practice, it is professionally slimy and revealing of a business with zero credibility. Galleries like this prey on uninformed artists to capitalize on their eagerness to be exhibited in New York, and unfortunately there are always those who fall for their scam, thinking that they will get positive exposure and status.  They don’t realize that, with galleries like these, they would be better off selling their works on the street— either here or in Korea.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

-

Dear Estheticist:

I am curating a large international show. An artist whose work I have followed and admired for long invited me to give a talk at a seminar that he is organizing. I accepted. Meanwhile, during the curatorial meetings with my co-curators his name was mentioned, and we all agreed that his work was perfect for our show. I disclosed immediately this possible conflict of interests. I personally feel that there is none, but, as they say, “Caesar’s wife should not only be honest, but look honest” I would like to go forward with the invitation, but am afraid that it will be read as a quid-pro-quo situation. Any advice?

Sincerely,

Concerned Curator.

Dear Concerned Curator,

For starters, as I assume that you are recognized curator since you are curating a large-scale exhibition, an invitation by an artist to an event is not quite comparable to the opportunity you would offer to him: an invitation to this seminar, I presume, is not a distinction that would substantially enhance your position in the art world.  But setting that aside, what the popular refrain that you mention should add is that even if Ceasar’s wife is and looks honest she may still not look so to those who want her to be dishonest. What this means is that there is no way that you can possibly prevent a public misreading of your actions.  As such, you are left with proceeding with what you consider the most appropriate way according to your curatorial expertise as what matters the most is to make the best exhibition possible. Being overly concerned to what the rest of the world may think or say about your actions may lead you to make the wrong curatorial choices. If you (and your colleagues) think the artist you admire is the appropriate artist for this exhibition, not only may you end up replacing him for a less ideal artist but you will also take away this opportunity from him only for a hypothetical fear of a public backlash.  Remember that other saying, that “hell is paved with good intentions”: many shows are constructed out of political correctness, desire of inclusivity, and other moral rules that, while perhaps democratic or fair, can result in terrible exhibitions.

Curators (and artists) who mainly operate through cronyism quickly reveal themselves as such, as this practice displays a pretty visible pattern that shows them acting out of opportunism and connections rather than an integral and objective vision. If you have not had such behavior in the past, your track record should speak against those suspicions.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

-

Dear Estheticist

What is the best question someone should ask about art?

Julien Isore

Dear Julien,

Opinions may differ around the attributes that such a question would have, but I will put forward that the best question one can ask about art has to address on whether there is an underlying order in the variability of the process by which art becomes relevant.

I explain: I am assuming that the best question about art should arguably be the one which helps us dig the deepest regarding the very nature of art. However, this is easier said than done, because the more familiar questions about art offer little enlightement toward the issue and actually are closer to non-questions. To better understand this, let’s look at some of those clichè contenders for the best question about art: “what is art?”, or perhaps “how is something art?” If you think about it, you will realize that the last two questions have been more or less rendered obsolete by the avant-garde: it is fairly established that anything can be art and that there are set mechanisms that make it (or can make it) so.  For this reason, questions about how something is or becomes art are not that problematic or controversial— they are closed questions.  A similar nonstarter is “is this good or bad art?”, as you enter into the quicksand of subjective evaluation, from which you are not likely to emerge with any useful knowledge. In other words, closed questions of this type only refer to definitive, but un-inspiring answers.

So what is more important is to figure out not why I like an artwork and you don’t, but how is it that an art work gains relevance in a particular moment and time amidst a group of people. More promising is the question “how does art become relevant?” along with the more specific “how is this art work relevant to us today?” which presupposes that there are criteria that would help us determine relevance, so that question can only be answered by previously answering the mother question: “are sets of criteria to determine the relevance of art or a specific art work variable, and if so, how?”  The answer to the first half of this question, if art history is any indication, is yes:  evaluative criteria in art vary according to cultural and social periods,  and while some constants often remain (say, we generally agree on the general importance of, say, Velazquez) it is not clear to us, up to this point at least, on whether there is a clear logic to the mutation of taste and of evaluative criteria in art. It likely is caused by a wide set of factors that move us from period to period, deciding, for instance, that Picasso from the standpoint of 2011 may not be as important to us as is, perhaps, Duchamp. But we have no way of predicting how that perception may change again (for all we know, maybe in one hundred years we will decide that, say, Lèger, was the greatest artist of the XXth century). The key lies in answering the question: is there a constant within the variability of art that help us understand its relevance for a particular time and place?  That may be the best question one may ask about art, as answering it may let you know not only what is it that makes us gravitate toward certain kinds of art today, but also what art may look like tomorrow.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Is it ethical to push a painter to the train tracks if it will kill him but stop the train and save the life of two video artists?

Y.o.

Dear Y.o.,

No: it is unethical to waste the commuter’s time and prevent them from arriving on time to their real jobs.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

–

The Neologist

Direct Labor

Term used to refer to the amount of actual physical or mental work involved in the creation of an art work, often with the purpose to argue for a higher or lower price.

Collection Mining

Practice by dealers and curators of discreetly gauging the collection of a rich donor during a reception at their home, with the hopes to identify their interests and influence possible future sales, purchases, or donations.

Regression

Term applied to artists who, after trying a new style in their work that results unsuccessful, revert to a previous style that was better received critically.

Chaperonage

Factor taken into consideration when assessing the social ranking of a yet unknown quantity in the art world by seeing who this person is being accompanied at a social event. Considering his chaperonage, he must be a really hot artist.

The Estheticist is a free ongoing service of art consultation around practical, philosophical and ethical issues around the visual arts profession. To ask a question, email estheticist [ at ] aol.com. Participants accept that their questions may be used for a printed publication that will serve as a professional development tool for emerging professionals in the arts. Your question will be confidentially and the question will appear as anonymous unless you specify otherwise.

To see previous issues, click here.

Dear Estheticist,

I am a very talented emerging artist who is being invited to shows in small galleries or modest art spaces, but I don’t want to spoil my career by showing in these places. I want to start big, and so I am holding out to be picked up for a big show in a museum or gallery. Do you approve of my approach?

Thank you,

Ambitious Artist

Dear Ambitious Artist,

Your gamble is risky and borders on the unrealistic. In order for your plan to work you would need to be a genius and be lucky, two very rare things. You could, on the other hand, be an average artist with an overblown sense of self, which, in contrast, is very common. And you don’t have the distance to be a good judge of which one of the two you are.

Furthermore, your logic that showing in a lesser space will only create a diminished impression of your work is not entirely sound either. Almost no great artists had their start by having a full-scale show at a major museum, but instead started by showing at fairly humble spaces (some of which may now feel legendary, but only in retrospect). And finally, you become a great artist by exhibiting, so you should take the opportunities that are being given to you. If your work is meant to go to bigger places, chances are it will get there eventually by being shown, not by turning down exhibition offers.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

What sort of performance interventions that engage with a governmental body or political community (i.e. congress, city council, lobbyist bar crawl, political fundraiser, etc.) would you be interested in seeing? If an artist solicits answers to a question like the preceding one from a community, and then performs them, where does authorship lie, and how does s/he keep the relationship and artistic product ethical?

—SW

Dear SW,

You may remember Komar and Melamid’s project of asking a group of people what kind of painting they wanted to see: the result is, almost invariably, a kitschy painting ( usually of a landscape ) which not many artists would be too proud to claim as their author.

Your question appears to depart from the premise that the artist role before individuals or communities is similar to the one of a contractor, who comes to a place to perform a specific job (like an electrician or a plumber). The problem with this thinking when applied to contemporary art is that audiences without an expertise in art practice won’t know how to direct an artist nor be able to envision the possibilities that an artist can bring to them— thus if you ask, say, the council of a small town what kind of public art they would like they may ask for a pretty mural.

What ends up happening is that by relinquishing your control of the artistic process you also relinquish any possibility of making a work that may have a degree of criticality and experimentation, both of which are needed to produce a substantive work. Your proposal would certainly benefit by being attentive to the interests and hopes of the community, but it should not just be subservient to it. You want to challenge your audience as much as you would like to engage them, and hopefully give them a work that can both instigate a dialogue and retain artistic integrity.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

After reading the Manual of Contemporary Art Style, I am convinced that I should give up the pursuit of my own personal artistic vision in exchange for a strategy that has more of a chance to lead to my financial and curatorial success. How can I tear myself away from a commitment to becoming the artist that I was meant to be?

Sincerely,

Graduate Seminar Class Member, 3D Department
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Dear Graduate Seminar Class Member,

You need to start by answering two questions to yourself. First, when you say “the artist that I was meant to be”, what kind of artist is that exactly? And the second is, why is the financial and curatorial success more important to you than pursuing that original artistic vision?

You alone can answer those questions, but whatever route you choose to follow the key realization you may eventually encounter is this: there is no true success unless it is the result of your true artistic vision. What the Manual of Contemporary Art Style does is to provide you a few tips toward social climbing and calculated social tricks to get attention (mainly with the intention to expose the cynicism of these practices). This does not constitute a true career plan and in the long run is kind of a pact with the devil— ultimately your opportunism will show and will make your career collapse. In other words, doesn’t matter how able you are at strategy— ultimately your work has to evidence some originality and imagination, and that is only achieved with an artistic vision. One can argue that Warhol was all strategy, but his very strategy was actually at the core of his artistic vision—thus his genius.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Is not making art art?

Fluxus artist, France

Dear Fluxus artist,

This is more of a logical than an aesthetic paradox, and it all depends on whether you are stating “ I am not making art”. If you say that you are not something, (think of Nixon’s infamous “I am not a crook” statement) you (intentionally or not) are still defining yourself against it, and invite the possibility for someone to argue the opposite. This dynamic is the central engine of art. Non-art is an extension of art as it is a negative territory determined by the existence of art, or rather, it is “art-at-large” (see The Neologist section). In his Negative Dialectics, Adorno argues that we achieve meaning on objects through negations, not through affirmations. What one needs to do in order to effectively abandon the possibility that something may not ever be art is to escape the declarative territory, where non art cannot even be named, where it remains invisible. The moment we find it, we have already taken a step to claim it as art.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

Can current post-production practices be a stimulus to rediscover the historical role in culture that editors, collectors, librarians have played, as well as any other individuals who have been previously shadowed by authors, composers and interpreters? *

Sincerely,
Editor, Mexico City

[*this question is in connection to Nicolas Bourriaud, who argues in his book “Post-Production” that artists today operate closer to the way Deejays do.]

Dear Editor,

If by “rediscovering the historical role” of editors, collectors and librarians you are referring to gaining a better appreciation of the act of information or art collecting and organizing as a creative act, I believe that this appreciation has always existed, and I don’t think that ideas around post-production alter it in a significant way. If, on the other hand, you are referring to the possibility of elevating these individuals’ work (which admittedly is seen as secondary to the art production they process and organize) as art in its own right, the answer would be that this has also always happened, but always also as part of a process of retroactive reconstruction in which we, from our collective present, declare a particular editorial or curatorial project as art. For example, we can determine that Antonio Carreño’s 1930s Manual or Good Manners (social etiquette) reads as wonderful literature, but we can’t deny the historical fact that this work was not written with that purpose, but instead in all earnestness as a compilation of adequate social behavior. Carreño thus turns into a great writer in an accidental way, or rather, through a deliberate process through which we, and not Carreño, have constructed. In fact this automatically happens, independently of any theories in vogue: a good deal of medieval literature and art, which was not meant to be art or literature in the form that we understand it today, has been accepted as such. Anonymous Russian Icons are now declared as art and not just religious tributes.

In any case, I would not hurry to say that post-production theory amounts to a declaration of independence for librarians. The way that it is formulated by Bourriaud, post-production refers to a way of making works which incorporate the mechanisms and methods such as appropriation, juxtaposition, found object, collage, etc. While these methods may come from disciplines connected to research and techical knowledge (the editor or the librarian) these are incorporated into a critical discourse with the intention to formulate a statement. If you don’t accept this distinction and instea declare that all research is art, then you need to extend the honor to practically every kind of activity that consists in writing things: the author of the ingredients in the cereal box merits equal literary consideration than the editor.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

What suggestions would you offer artists who are seeking to overcome creative blocks?

Sincerely,

Miss Constipated

Dear Miss Constipated,

There are many strategies to overcome creative blocks.
Some of them include 1. Change one’s environment. This means something as simple as going to a new coffee shop to think, going on a trip, a residency, or simply going for a walk. The change in routine and exposure to new spaces help you to thinking about your work in a different way. 2. Seek inspiration by spending a period of time reading, visiting exhibitions, or revisiting works that in the past have inspired you; 3. Impose exercises to yourself to loosen up your creativity. Some of these could include to fill a booklet of post-it notes with ideas or words in a short period of time, then display them on a wall and see if what emerged is of interest; take a ream of paper and make a drawing per minute (or write an idea or sketch for a potential work) for an hour; etc. 4. Talk to a group of friends about your work; hold a critique or simple conversation and bounce off ideas from them; 5. Collaborate with someone to produce a new work. I don’t particularly endorse drugs and alcohol as a methodical solution, but they have unquestionably helped many to create. Approaches abound: Rachmaninoff, for instance, pursued hypnotherapy, with success.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I am a professor at an art college in the West Coast. A talented BFA student who I have tutored closely asked me for a recommendation for grad school a few months ago and I gladly accepted. However, as our relationship grew more casual over the school year, at some social event at school the student made a demeaning and hurtful comment to me about my personal life. His comment was done in jest, and I may have invited such relaxed behavior as I am usually for breaking the hierarchy barriers with students. However, I am deeply offended and feel it was a completely uncalled for insult. I made this clear to the student and asked him to never talk to me again unless it was for strict school business. Now the student has written to me to ask me if I can still write his recommendation. I want to stay true to my word, but at the same time I don’t think I can vouch for this student’s character anymore. What to do?

Sincerely,

Offended Professor

Dear Offended Professor,

A professional recommendation to graduate school usually includes vouching not only for the student’s academic record but also for his or her character. Given that your estimation of the student’s character is clearly now diminished by that incident you described, you should be direct with him and let him know that due to what happened you don’t think you would be the best person to recommend him at this point.
However, while this experience may prove educational to him, it may also be educational to you. You yourself say that you may have encouraged this student to engage with you more casually; by doing so, you may have given the wrong impression to this young student that he could interact with you as with any classmate. While he displayed poor judgment, you also sent wrong signals by actively breaking the professor-student social barriers and then being surprised that the student relaxed enough to speak his mind. You should consider on whether a cordial, yet slightly more distant relationship could serve you, and your students, better.

Sincerely,
The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

What are the pros and cons for emerging artists working in small cities vs. large cities?

—In Between

Dear In Between,

The large city gives you greater exposure to current exhibitions, debates, and dialogues going on in the international art scene — a kind of exposure that is hard to replace. The small city typically offers cheaper rents, and in some cases, better material resources to make art (say a university town). It, however, can get too comfortable and not challenge you enough as an artist —sometimes without you even realizing it. In the end, as an emerging artist who seeks to become established needs to maintain an ongoing relationship with the large art capitals, if it is not by moving there, certainly by maintaining a presence there (traveling frequently, working with a gallery in that city, etc).

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

How can an artist who has previously separated a fine art practice from social or political advocacy merge the two into effective social art?

Sincerely,

Super Activist

Dear Super Activist,

First, how is it that both of these activities currently exist separately in your life? Could it be that it is better that both function in separate ways? How would your art benefit from becoming explicitly social (assuming that what you did before wasn’t)?
What does your activism gain from your acting not as an individual but as an artist?
The reason these questions are important is because many artists who feel the moral imperative to abandon bourgeois-type of art production and turn instead to a social form. Yet art that is didactic, illustrative or subservient to a social cause is not worth pursuing as art- instead, it is best to just do activism without the aspirations of making art works. This is not to say that an artist can, and should, effectively be involved politically and socially — it is a civic duty to be so, and not only for artists. And there are indeed many artists who have successfully integrated their aesthetic concerns along with their social and political views. The merging of the both, however, should happen naturally. If instead you make social art out of a sense of duty, you may be short-changing the art part.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

The Neologist

In this new section, we propose new art terms that address current phenomena in art.

Idea-Beautiful
Euphemism used to describe an artwork which departs from a wonderful and/or original idea but is poorly executed.

Art-at-large
Refers to ideas, situations, or objects which have been deemed as direct opposites of art ideas, situations or objects. As soon as an artist declares something to be art, and its opposite not to be, this opposite is only one step away from being claimed as someone else as art — thus it is “art at-large.”

Dealer Spiel
Refers to the two-line sound bite that a dealer typically learns to say about an artwork he or she is exhibiting at an art fair. Dealer spiels have to be extremely concise about who the artist is, what their work is about, and what the piece being examined is. For example: “She is a video artist who lives in Chechnya. Her work is about the Chechen war and this piece is from a series of short films about her bombed neighborhood.”

Curatorial Rigging
Term that refers to curators who specialize in riding curatorial trends en vogue, often exhibiting the better known artists of the moment.

Readymade Career
The term refers to those artists who base their entire production in the direct imitation of the body of work of another, better-known artist to the point of almost literal appropriation, arguing that they only reference the work.

Mock Turtle Art
Describes the kind of artworks within the field of social practice which claim to transform, emancipate or educate audiences but which in reality only do so in a symbolic manner. (the term “mock turtle”, popularized by Lewis Carroll, refers to an 18th British soup which was a cheaper imitation of the real green turtle soup. In Alice in Wonderland, a character known as the Mock Turtle lectures incomprehensibly to Alice about her own education).

Unknown Likes /Known Unlikes
A merger of the Facebook Like/Unlike formula and the famous Donald Rumsfeld statement of “ there are known unknowns [...] and there are unknown unknowns” etc. mentioned before the Iraq war. Used as shorthand by young collectors to refer to those types of pieces or artists that they beforehand know that they will be predisposed to collect or dismiss.

The Estheticist is a free ongoing service of art consultation around practical, philosophical and ethical issues around the visual arts profession. To ask a question, email estheticist [ at ] aol.com. Participants accept that their questions may be used for a printed publication that will serve as a professional development tool for emerging professionals in the arts. Your question will be confidentially and the question will appear as anonymous unless you specify otherwise.

To see previous issues, click here.

Dear Estheticist,

I am a professor at a college, where I teach art. Most of my students are not going to be professional artists — they take art as an elective. The other day a student brought in an artwork based on an amazing idea, albeit poorly executed.  I have been obsessing about that idea for a while now, and I am certain that if I were to make it myself (and given that I am a professional artist I could realize the idea in a substantially better way) it would be extremely successful. I know that this student won’t become an artist (she is not interested in that career anyway) but would it be unethical if I basically took that idea and made a work of my own?

Sincerely,

M. R. F., Boston

Dear M.R.F.,

Let’s say that someone invented a formula to cure cancer but wasn’t able to make the actual medicine, nor does he realize the potential of this idea. Would that person still is the author of the formula if you carried it out successfully to fruition? The fact that your student doesn’t see the potential of the piece she conceived, or that she doesn’t have the skills to produce the final product in a professional manner doesn’t mean that you can now claim its authorship. It is not only unethical, but also insincere with her and with yourself. If you are to carry it out, you will need to give your student some sort of credit (and I don’t mean school credit, but an unequivocal, public credit). It is a fact of life that professors find inspiration from their students, and ideas in art are constantly stolen between artists, but to take someone’s idea —anyone’s — and present it as yours own, will always be a predatory act.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I’m an MFA painting student (that stupidly went from undergrad straight to grad school) and I will be graduating spring 2011. Everyone’s excited for me, but I’m left feeling anxious and overwhelmed. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing anymore with my work. I have no sense of direction or urge to paint (which is horrible considering my concentration), I feel happier with ceramics (another horrible thing, considering I’m expected to primarily paint), I’ve no idea how to marry painting and ceramics for my thesis come spring (is it really necessary? are my professors right?), and I simply feel lost. How do I find my way to what I want to create again? I’ve never been a confidant artist, despite others appreciating my work. I need to find a way to believe in my work without doubt or despair.

Also, I’m terrified come graduation what to do with my life. I want to teach college level art one day, but not right away. I need a break from the currently confining walls of academia. What would you suggest for a newly graduated artist to do? Is it okay to just travel, create work, find master artists to apprentice under, and basically live a nomadic bohemian lifestyle until I find myself? Overall, I feel like I’m expected to grow up in a short amount of time, figure out exactly what to do for my thesis in the spring, and make inspirational art. How do I do this, yet alone get back to loving/wanting to “make?” Help!

Thank you for your time.

-Aubrey, MD

Dear Aubrey,

The anxiety that you are currently experiencing is perfectly understandable and normal, and actually most common for those who are graduating from art school. It is normal to not feel inspired, to feel overwhelmed, and to have serious doubts about your work— all that is part of being an artist.

There is no point in hiding the fact that the toughest period for any artist usually comes right after graduation. Why? Because that is the time when you officially leave the safety of a secluded environment when you can make your work. However, there is no need to panic. Art school is not a normal condition, but on the contrary: it is a completely artificial environment, so you are coming back to real life. So, while it is normal to feel as you do, you are not jumping into a precipice —rather, you are coming out of one.

You have to deal with your situation by parts. First: the thesis show is not the last show of your life, and while significant, you have to see it in perspective: it is just a show. If you don’t have a major body of work to present, so be it— nor does it need to represent the kind of work you will do in the future. I wouldn’t recommend mixing ceramics with painting at the last minute just because you are told it’s a good idea by someone else— you have to do what makes most sense to you. Nor should you feel guilty about abandoning painting altogether— many artists evolve outside of painting, and the experience you developed while painting will remain with you regardless.

Second: after you have dealt with graduation, it is very good to take some time off to think about what you want to do with your work, but you also need to be responsible to yourself and don’t allow this “time off” to become an aimless, permanent vacation. If you want to be an artist, you need to mentally remain one, and make yourself go back to make art after a few months. The most important aspect of being an artist is to continue producing and thinking about art. You are about to experience absolute freedom, and what is scary about this freedom is that it doesn’t have a built-in structure for you to develop your work; you will have to develop it yourself and find your own discipline. You owe it to yourself to continue producing as an artist at least for a couple years after art school. If you realize you don’t want to make art, then you may chose to abandon it, but you don’t give yourself that chance, will never forgive yourself for not trying hard enough. The bottom line: particularly during this pivotal time before and after graduation, please ignore what everyone expects or wants from you: the only thing that matters at this point is what you want and what you want to accomplish as an artist.  You will find the answer sooner or later, but it won’t necessarily meet the deadlines for the MFA thesis show.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

If I want to make a piece about, say, water pollution, how much of an expert do I have to become on the topic? Sometimes it feels like when an artist addresses a social issue it is judged on how deeply one engaged with the subject, so that it doesn’t look opportunistic. I am a concerned citizen and want to make pieces about social subjects that sincerely matter to me, but I am not interested, nor I can, write a dissertation on every topic I address.

Sincerely,

Unschooled Activist

Dear Unschooled Activist,

Neither you nor any other artist can become an expert on every subject we take on to develop an art piece. Nor could there possibly be a quota of knowledge about every subject art is made. The main problem may have to do with how you conceive the functionality of the piece you are doing and your own role as an artist addressing the issue. If you are indeed doing an activist piece that intends to teach or inform people about a particular issue, or even, to attempt to “solve” the issue through your artistic intervention, you will undoubtedly have to become versed on that issue, otherwise you may run the risk to appear naïve and may find yourself biting something larger than you can chew. You may also need to ask to yourself: if your goal is to fix a social problem, why is an artwork the means to do so? Of course you need to be knowledgeable on the subjects you address, but art is not supposed to replace other fields of knowledge— instead, it can bring a different perspective that can illuminate them. That kind of expertise that artists brings do not require a PhD on a given subject, but a kind of ability to observe, visualize and think critically that can’t be acquired by becoming an expert on, say, water pollution.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I would like to hear your opinion on the high art vs. kitsch art dialogue. It seems that we have been confronted by this question again and again and yet a clear distinction cannot be provided. Who makes the decision whether art is high or kitsch or neither? The artist? The gallerist or dealer? The viewer? The critic? And is the question really important at all?

Mr. Realist

Dear Mr. Realist,

There is no central organization that decides what is or is not kitsch, nor a single ruler who determines what is good art or not. However, there is a divide between art that is about an earnest search for beauty, spirituality or whatever you have and art that is fueled by an ironic take on that search.

Whether we like it or not, contemporary art is grounded on irony.  If you make work that appears to ignore the critical attitude toward earnestness of, say, fifty years ago, the work will be identified as naïve or kitsch. The question is unimportant if you don’t want your paintings to enter into the collection of any major museum or ever be recognized by the contemporary art establishment.

Sincerely

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

Today’s art is presented in a myriad ways— on Youtube, performances, books, one-to-one experiences, etc. The whole concept of what an exhibition is has changed. Yet most magazines and newspapers keep publishing reviews mainly of shows that happen within the confines of a gallery and which last the typical three weeks— yet those are precisely the venues, I think, that show the more conventional kinds of art, shown in the most conventional ways.  Is criticism behind?

Emma M.

Dear Emma M.,

Conventional publications review conventional shows, and conventional critics review the work of conventional artists.  There are those publications that try to address the alternative forms of exhibiting art, but most of them, like the art they discuss, exist below the radar of the mainstream.  To ask why the New York Times, for instance, can’t break from their formats for reviewing gallery shows is to ask why the mainstream can’t absorb what’s outside of it.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I feel that we in the contemporary art establishment are a bit schizophrenic about the public. On the one hand we want the masses to embrace art; on the other, we hate it when art is too crowd-pleasing, when museums bring in too much people, etc. and instead we seem to be protective about our insider knowledge. What is going on here?

Sincerely,

Tom, San Francisco

Dear Tom,

The sociologist Daniel Bell coined the term “knowledge society”, arguing that those who produce knowledge in post-industrial societies secure a position of cultural advantage for themselves.  If we think of art as a form of production of knowledge, we can see that the popularizing of insider knowledge about a certain kind of art erases the original advantage retained by those in the cultural strata and the larger public, causing anxiety amongst producers for their loss of status.  The relationship then between producers and consumers of culture is one of interdependence, but —particularly as it applies in contemporary art— as the information age increasingly erases the boundaries between audiences and content-producers, we are likely to see an increase in this schizophrenia in the coming years, and perhaps further steps by art insiders to produce even more encrypted and codified forms of art.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

Why do artists need galleries these days? The 50% they take seems outrageous. Should we try to sell our own work online? Are galleries becoming obsolete?

Solitaire

Dear Solitaire,

Galleries are not obsolete. And even though a few successful artists have been able to survive without gallery representation—Christo and Jeanne-Claude are one rare example— going at it alone is equally complex and demanding, if not more, than working with someone who may represent your work. The artworld uses online marketing, but the true relationships are made on a personal, one-to-one basis.

Even though it seems that online sales are easy to do, think about the thousands of people like you who are also trying to promote themselves online.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

It seems to me that every debate I have about art is ultimately resolved with quoting philosophers (or, whoever wins it is the one who quoted the best thinker).

Do you think that in art the buck stops with philosophy?

Wittgenstein

Dear Wittgenstein,

Philosophy has certainly been the stage onto which most of the key (and of course, aesthetic) debates amongst artists, critics, and art historians have taken place. And some artists, like Joseph Kosuth, have gone as far as arguing that art is a way of making philosophy. But I would say that the wider consensus is that, ultimately, philosophy functions best as a lens, and not as the ultimate consequence, of art. Great things can emerge when philosophy and art function as means to explain each other, but when someone tries to make art with philosophy, or philosophy with art, the risky result is either pompous (and self-absorbed) illustrations of ideas in the former and incomprehensible (and likely inconsequential) babbling in the latter.

Sincerely

The Estheticist.

The Neologist

In this new section, we propose new art terms that address current phenomena in art.

Career Waste management

Euphemism that refers to the process by certain artists of reacquiring and destroying works of their own from certain unflattering periods, in order to show a stronger historical output.

Turninism

Recent tendency in the art world to develop fashions around different disciplines, such as “the pedagogical turn”, “the ethnographic turn”, etc.

Novelty dependency

Refers to the addiction in the art market to works produced in the current year, even if they don’t introduce new concepts or forms.

Art school inflow

Self-reinforcing process by which art and curatorial schools attract a homogeneous class of students with similar values, social class, and political views which leads to standardization of creative outputs.

E-curating

Process by which some curators organize shows, without visiting artist studios and mainly relying on web research and social media.