Education for Socially Engaged Art is the first “Materials and Techniques” book for the emerging field of social practice. Written with a pragmatic, hands-on approach for university-level readers and those interested in real-life application of the theories and ideas around socially engaged art. The book, emphasizing the use of pedagogical strategies to address issues around social practice, addresses topics such as documentation, community engagement, dialogue and conversation, amongst many others.

The book was published by Jorge Pinto Books in 2011 and can be acquired online.

An interview on the subject can be found here:

http://www.artpractical.com/feature/interview_with_pablo_helguera/

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“For too long Social Practice has been the notoriously flimsy flipside of market-based contemporary art: a world of hand-wringing practitioners easily satisfied with the feeling of ‘doing good’ in a community, and unaware that their quasi-activist, anti-formalist positions in fact have a long artistic heritage and can be critically dissected using the tools of art and theatre history. Helguera’s spunky primer promises to offer a much-needed critical compass for those adrift in the expanded social field.” -

—Claire Bishop, Professor of Contemporary Art and Exhibition History, CUNY, and author of Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship

“This is an extremely timely and thoughtful reference book. Drawn from empirical and extensive experience and research, it provides a curriculum and framework for thinking about the complexity of socially engaged practices. Locating the methodologies of this work in between disciplines, Helguera draws on histories of performance, pedagogy, sociology, ethnography, linguistics, community and public practices. Rather than propose a system he exposes the temporalities necessary to make these situations possible and resonant. This is a tool that will allow us to consider the difficulties of making socially engaged art and move closer to finding a language through which we can represent and discuss its impact.”

—Sally Tallant, Artistic Director, Liverpool Biennial

“Helguera has produced a highly readable book that absolutely needs to be in the back pocket of anyone interested in teaching or learning about socially engaged art”

—Tom Finkelpearl, Director of the Queens Museum, New York, and author of Dialogues in Public Art

Excerpt

[From the chapter 1., DEFINITIONS]

BETWEEN DISCIPLINES

The term “social practice” obscures the discipline from which socially engaged art has emerged (i.e., art). In this way it denotes the critical detachment from other forms of art-making (primarily centered and built on the personality of the artist) that is inherent to socially engaged art, which, almost by definition, is dependent of the involvement of others besides the instigator of the artwork. It also thus raises the question of whether such activity belongs to the field of art at all. This is an important query; art students attracted to this form of art-making often find themselves wondering whether it would be more useful to abandon art altogether and instead become professional community organizers, activists, politicians, ethnographers, or sociologists. Indeed, in addition to sitting uncomfortably between and across these disciplines and downplaying the role of the individual artist, socially engaged art is specifically at odds with the capitalist market infrastructure of the art world: it does not fit well in the traditional collecting practices of contemporary art, and the prevailing cult of the individual artist is problematic for those whose goal is to work with others, generally in collaborative projects with democratic ideals. Many artists look for ways to renounce not only object-making but authorship altogether, in the kind of “stealth” art practice that philosopher Stephen Wright argues for, in which the artist is a secret agent in the real world, with an artistic agenda.[2]

Yet the uncomfortable position of socially engaged art, identified as art yet located between more conventional art forms and the related disciplines of sociology, politics, and the like, is exactly the position it should inhabit. The practice’s direct links to and conflicts with both art and sociology must be overtly declared and the tension addressed, but not resolved. Socially engaged artists can and should challenge the art market in attempts to redefine the notion of authorship, but to do so they must accept and affirm their existence in the realm of art, as artists.  And the artist as social practitioner must also make peace with the common accusation that he or she is not an artist but an “amateur” anthropologist, sociologist, etc. Socially engaged art functions by attaching itself to subjects and problems that normally belong to other disciplines, moving them temporarily into a space of ambiguity. It is this temporary snatching away of subjects into the realm of art-making that brings new insights to a particular problem or condition and in turn makes it visible to other disciplines. For this reason, I believe that the best term for this kind of practice is what I have thus far been using as a generic descriptor —that is, “socially engaged art” (or SEA), a term that emerged in the mid-1970s, as it unambiguously acknowledges a connection to the practice of art.[3]

SYMBOLIC AND ACTUAL PRACTICE

To understand SEA, an important distinction must be made between two types of art practice: symbolic and actual. As I will show, SEA is an actual, not symbolic, practice.

A few examples:

Let’s say an artist or group of artists creates an “artist-run school,” proposing a radical new approach to teaching. The project is presented as an art project but also as a functioning school (a relevant example, given the recent emergence of similar projects). The “school,” however, in its course offerings, resembles a regular, if slightly unorthodox, city college. In content and format, the courses are not different in structure from most continuing education courses. Furthermore, the readings and course load encourage self-selectivity by virtue of the avenues through which it is promoted and by offering a sampling that is typical of a specific art world readership, to the point that the students taking the courses are not average adults but rather art students or art-world insiders. It is arguable, therefore, whether the project constitutes a radical approach to education; nor does it risk opening itself up to a public beyond the small sphere of the converted.

An artist organizes a political rally about a local issue. The project, which is supported by a local arts center in a medium-size city, fails to attract many local residents; only a couple dozen people show up, most of whom work at the arts center. The event is documented on video and presented as part of an exhibition. In truth, the artist can claim to have organized a rally?

These are two examples of works that are politically or socially motivated but act through the representation of ideas or issues. These are works that are designed to address social or political issues only in an allegorical, metaphorical, or symbolic level (for example, a painting about social issues is not very different than a public art project that claims to offer a social experience but only does so in a symbolic way such as the ones just described above). The work does not control a social situation in an instrumental and strategic way in order to achieve a specific end.

This distinction is partially based on Jurgen Habermas’s work The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). In it Habermas argues that social action (an act constructed by the relations between individuals) is more than a mere manipulation of circumstances by an individual to obtain a desired goal (that is, more than just the use of strategic and instrumental reason. He instead favors what he describes as communicative action, a type of social action geared to communication and understanding between individuals that can have a lasting effect on the spheres of politics and culture as a true emancipatory force.

Most artists who produce socially engaged works are interested in creating a kind of collective art that impacts the public sphere in a deep and  meaningful way, not in creating a representation—like a theatrical play—of a social issue. Certainly many SEA projects are in tune with the goals of deliberative democracy and discourse ethics, and most believe that art of any kind can’t avoid taking a position in current political and social affairs. (The counter-argument is that art is largely a symbolic practice, and as such the impact it has on a society can’t be measured directly; but then again, such hypothetical art, as symbolic, would not be considered socially engaged but rather would fall into the other familiar categories, such as installation, video, etc.) It is true that much SEA is composed of simple gestures and actions that may be perceived as symbolic. For example, Paul Ramirez-Jonas’s work Key to the City (2010) revolved around a symbolic act—giving a person a key as a symbol of the city. Yet although Ramirez-Jonas’s contains a symbolic act, it is not symbolic practice but rather communicative action (or “actual” practice)—that is, the symbolic act is part of a meaningful conceptual gesture. [4]

The difference between symbolic and actual practice is not hierarchical; rather, its importance lies in allowing a certain distinction to be made: it would be important, for example, to understand and identify the difference between a project in which I establish a health campaign for children in a war-torn country and a project in which I imagine a health campaign and fabricate documentation of it in Photoshop. Such a fabrication might result in a fascinating work, but it would be a symbolic action, relying on literary and public relations mechanisms to attain verisimilitude and credibility.

To summarize: social interaction occupies a central and inextricable part of any socially engaged artwork. SEA is a hybrid, multi-disciplinary activity that exists somewhere between art and non-art, and its state may be permanently unresolved. SEA depends on actual—not imagined or hypothetical—social action.

[2]. See “Por un arte clandestino,” the author’s conversation with Stephen Wright in 2006,  http://pablohelguera.net/2006/04/por-un-arte-clandestino-conversacion-con-stephen-wright-2006/. Wright later wrote a text based on this exchange, http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/153624936_2.html.

[3]. From this point forward I will use this term to refer to the type of artwork that is the subject of this book.

[4] Paul Ramirez Jonas’ project, produced by Creative Time, took place in New York City in the Summer of 2010.

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 this monthly blog and/or for a book that will serve as a professional development tool for emerging professionals in the arts. Your question will be treated confidentially and it will appear as anonymous unless you specify otherwise.

To see previous issues click here.

Dear Estheticist,

How do you deal with rejection?  As an artist, I know I need to apply to grants, residencies, and other professional opportunities — yet I have a very hard time when my application is rejected: I enter into a depressive mode and my already low self-esteem takes another blow. Sometimes I feel that I should not even bother entering into a process that may hurt me even more than what can help me. What to do?

Best

Applicant

Dear Applicant,

A central part of being an artist is to accept that not everyone will understand, like, appreciate or be willing to support your work.  The application process to a grant or a residency is only one of the many ways in which this reality becomes manifest; it just feels particularly brutal because these are instances where people (jurors, curators, etc) are forced to make a “yes” or “no” decision about your work. In reality, your work is being always evaluated when you exhibit it or make it public.  Furthermore, the reasons why a work is rejected can be very complex, and sometimes have nothing to do on whether the jurors like the work or not — sometimes some artists are selected over others not because the work is deemed superior, but perhaps because it is more appropriate in form or context to the kind of opportunity for which it is being reviewed.  At the same time, I don’t advise you to ignore rejection altogether: while you should not let them get to you emotionally,  you should try to examine, in an objective way, the patterns of these rejections and see if there is anything about them that you can help: was the application well written? Did you aim too high?  Is the documentation appropriate?  Were the artists selected significantly different from you and why?  This should be studied only with the purpose that you can make a more informed and better application the next time.  And yes, you should continue applying — even at the risk of getting yet more rejections, it will only make you a better artist.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I am a painting student currently doing a BFA in an art school.  I am convinced that I want to be an academic/realist painter — that is my goal in life— and I have a deep dislike for anything conceptual. To me, an artist who doesn’t know how to draw is not an artist, and the whole contemporary art scene seems to me like a giant scam. My professors however want to push me to do more “contemporary” stuff,  but it all seems to me like bullshit.  I just keep telling them that I want to be an academic painter, that I could not care less about any other kind of art, but they say that I am stuck in the past. And perhaps I am, but why is painting like Velazquez such a bad thing? He was a better artist than anyone alive today.

Sincerely,

Velazquez II

Dear Velazquez II,

You are entitled to do any kind of paintings you like— whether they are exact Velazquez reproductions,  social realist murals, or paintings of Elvis on black velvet.  And you also are right in being distrustful on the way in which the art market tends to create a hype for certain kinds of art. However, there are a few things for you to consider. First, it is unfortunate that you have taken such a categorical stance given that you are still doing a BFA.  Art school is meant to be a place where you explore different mediums, where you study art history, and where you expose yourself to a variety of practices. Your professors certainly cannot force you to be any kind of artist in the future, —in fact, I can assure you they will be gone from your life after you finish your BFA, and you will be free to do as you please— but while you are still studying, you should take advantage of these other worlds they can offer. If you want to be taken seriously as an artist you have no choice but to understand what all periods of art are about and be capable to critique them from an informed standpoint before you reject them.

Your ultimate decision has to do with how you see your role in society. Strictly academic artists make work that is about pleasing the eye, about the use of technique, and it is mainly used to decorate environments. Contemporary art is about commenting on our contemporary life, often in a critical manner. There are many gradations in  between, of course, but as long as you think that you want to make work that is unique, that makes an informed comment on reality, you will see that it is not possible to ignore other kinds of art being made today around you. This applies also to artists working in the realist canon:  even they, when they are successful, are making work that is aware of contemporary issues.

Making traditional art is uncomplicated and straightforward: you either know how to paint like Velazquez or you don’t. Contemporary art is messy and ambiguous, and you may never know if what you are doing will be considered relevant; yet that is how great visionary art is born. All art at some point was contemporary.  And while certainly there is a lot of bad conceptual art out there, I can assure you that there is even more horrid, ridiculous, and amateurish realist art — and this variety comes without the benefit of the doubt as to its mediocrity.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Why are art magazines so boring?  I am an artist and I consider myself reasonably well-educated, but I just can’t get interested in how magazines write about art. For the most art I find the writing of our trade pompous,  unnecessarily wordy, and unimaginative. Am I alone in thinking this?

Frustrated Reader

Dear Frustrated Reader,

You are not alone.  For a long time there has been a generalized dissatisfaction around art magazine writing.  You well pointed out that these are trade publications: as such, they need to employ a language that commands respect in the field.  The kind of “objective” or “neutral” voice that you see being pursued in many art reviews and features draws its style from art theory, if not necessarily its substance—thus our suspicion about it.  And certainly this pursued objectivity takes precedence on creating imaginative writing, which could be perceived as not serious and even amateurish by some ( there are art critics who write in overly opinionated ways, mainly to entertain, and/or to create an artist-like following).   The good news is that blogs and other online communications are starting to liberate art writing, making it more fluid, concise, and less bound by archaic or academic rules.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I am an African-American artist. My work deals with a wide variety of issues: nature, politics, urbanism, and even abstraction. However, I feel that because I am an artist of color my work tends to always be read under that lens. Worse, curators tend to ghettoize me by inviting me to ethnic-specific kind of shows. Don’t get me wrong: I am not conflicted about being black.  And I guess my work could partially be read in that context, and I have accepted some of these invitations because they have been good opportunities to show. But I don’t appreciate being ghettoized this way, and I feel my work gets reduced to be about being black.  How can I communicate this to everyone?

DKF

Dear DKF,

Every time you are invited to exhibit at a show you need to weigh in the advantages and disadvantages that it provides. It sounds like you have accepted to be in shows that emphasize issues that you don’t want to be too associated with, perhaps because you think that it will just provide you exposure. You should think twice. The kind of exposure that a show under this subject may provide may be precisely the kind that you don’t want to get. In other words, while your work will certainly become more visible, it will reinforce the connection between your work and those culture-specific issues that you want to detach yourself from and just contribute to further ghettoize you.  Artists make entire careers of just dealing with one subject; this doesn’t sound like a good idea for you, especially if the subject you are associated with comes out of genealogy or necessity.  The only way to break the circle is to decline invitations to exhibitions that will reinforce the perceived stereotype of what your work is about. You don’t want to be invited to exhibit because of your ethnicity; you want to be invited because you are a good artist.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

What is the etiquette for selling work from the studio? If I have a gallery, can I sell from my studio too?  Should I sell it at half price, or can the price be higher?

Best

Open Studio Artist

Dear Open Studio Artist,

Selling from the studio when you have a gallery can be a risky proposition, especially if your studio is available to a public that can also be reached by this gallery. Even if that was not the case, (for example, if you gallery is in Europe and you are in the US) you should not sell work out of the studio without the knowledge and previous agreement of your gallery (some galleries may be ok with this practice, others won’t).  Furthermore,  you should be careful about reducing your prices from the ones of the gallery —it may only downgrade your own prices and hurt both you and those who represent you.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist

I am a conceptual artist who makes deceptively simple pieces. And I am sick and tired to be told by ignorant people that my art work can be done by a four year old, that it doesn’t require any effort, etc. I would like to have something to tell these people every time I receive an imbecilic comment like that. Any suggestions?

Unloved conceptualist

Dear unloved conceptualist,

Next time anyone suggests that what you do is simple, ask them to prove it — not by telling you what they would do or how would they do it, but by doing it.  Most people think they can paint a Pollock or a Malevich,  but when put to the test and given the materials, they have no idea how to do it. It’s the same with conceptual art.  Hand them a piece of paper and a pen and ask them to propose a conceptual art piece.  As they are certain to produce an amateur and naïve piece, then proceed to do a ruthless critique as you would tear apart the work of a student.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I am an emerging artist who works as receptionist in a commercial gallery to make ends meet. I am a good worker and am liked by my boss, but I have always felt slightly uncomfortable about being an artist who works in a gallery. The other day I had an awkward situation when a collector had seen my work in a show elsewhere and started talking to me about it in front of my boss, asking me to come to my studio. I know that my boss didn’t like that, but I didn’t know what else to do. I guess my question is: is it a bad idea for an artist to work in a gallery? Am I shooting myself in the arm by pursuing a job at a place that technically should be representing me?

Sincerely,

Dislocated artist

Dear Dislocated artist,

You are right: it is wrong for an artist to work at a gallery. It is of course a necessity for many artists to take a job at a gallery, and many artists at some point in their careers have to take a gallery job. These, however, when they are done, should be on a temporary basis and it is much better when the role that you play in the gallery is a behind-the-scenes one (say, registrar, shipping, etc) and not being at the front desk. Being in the job of receptionist will expose you to interact with desirable individuals (such as Roberta Smith, for instance) in very undesirable circumstances. Your job implicitly diminishes the status that you should or potentially could have as an artist, and while you are getting a paycheck, you are doing yourself a disservice by presenting yourself to the public as someone who is not more than an assistant to others. Furthermore, most people in the artworld are chronically incapable to appreciate complexity, so to most people it is impossible to grasp that the same person can be a talented artist and a receptionist by necessity. And finally, this may be a strange fact, but collectors, curators and critics in order to be seduced by an artist need to have an aura of distance between the actual person and them.   In your current job, there is no way that you can create such aura, and for the most part your being there demystifies who you could be. If I were you, I would ask your boss to let you do another job that is less public inside the gallery, and if that is not possible, start pursuing another job opportunity that will keep you away from the line of fire of critics and curators so that next time that they interact with you they meet you as the artist, not you as the gallery receptionist.

Sincerely

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I’m sure you have addressed a question similar to my query in the past, maybe on a regular basis, but where does an artist start? I have a current, and large, body of paintings and I am eager to establish a relationship with a gallery, ideally in NYC. Is there a source that suggests new galleries or galleries that promote the work of new artists as a specialty, or philosophically?

There is a lot of information online, but very few promote actual next steps or suggest resources that may actually help secure a show. I’m looking to connect with galleries that may take a chance on showing the work of an unestablished painter.

Sincerest thanks.

MK

Dear MK

Thank you for your inquiry. Your desire to “get started”, as you say, is perfectly understandable, but there is a reason why you can’t find a source that lists new galleries for new artists to pick: galleries don’t like to be solicited randomly just because they or you are new in the market. Furthermore, “getting started” doesn’t mean that you necessarily need to get a gallery, be it in New York or elsewhere. Nor does having any gallery guarantee that you will be in a better position than if you didn’t have one- some galleries are so awful that it is better to get started solo until a better deal comes along.

But let’s examine this need of a gallery for a moment: the reason one wants a gallery is to sell work and to gain exposure and reputation.  If your need is to make money, it is preferable that you supplement that need in some other way for the time being while your career starts taking off- you don’t want your paintings to carry the burden to support you right away, otherwise you may not be able to experiment freely with them. If your interest is to increase your reputation as an artist, you first need to build a reputation that will make you visible, and perhaps, attractive to the dealer. This is done in two ways: one, by inserting yourself in the circuit of acquaintances and people that support that gallery, and by studying the program of this gallery. You can’t just arrive to a gallery and dump  your slides for them to review- they will likely go directly to the trash. You need to make an informed approach, choose the galleries whose program you identify with, and make a case for them to review your work explaining why you think your work connects with what they do. You also need to be ready to argue why you think your work would bring something new to the gallery’s program. This won’t guarantee that the gallery will take you in (nothing does) but I can assure you that the more seriously you take your approach the more seriously they will look at your work.

That said, it is wrong to think that getting gallery representation is the solution to enter the art world. Usually it is the other way around: galleries take you in BECAUSE your work has something new to say, and if it has something new to say it is likely because you have paid attention to what others have been saying with their work and are ready to respond to them.

What is most important, in other words, is that you pay attention to the works of other artists around you and see how your work dialogues or interacts with them. If you think it doesn’t in any way, most likely you could benefit from attending more art exhibitions and openings, and become a more integral part of the art scene through its discussions and debates. That will get you a better sense of the things that curators and artists are in pursuit of, and to be part of that conversation, and in the long run, getting a gallery may come afterward, naturally.

sincerely,

The Estheticist.

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.

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Dear Estheticist,

I am an artist who is fairly well known in her hometown – a middle-sized art world center. Through the grapevine I heard that an influential curator is curating a show at the main museum there on a subject that is THE subject that has occupied a good part of my career (and most people in that art scene know it). Furthermore, the title of this upcoming show sounds strangely similar to the title of one of my works. Yet, my work has not been included, and I have heard that the artist roster is finalized. This curator knows who I am —we’ve met and been in panels and other things together before— although I am not sure the extent to which he knows my work. I know that being excluded from shows that one feels are exactly about what one does as an artist is an unnerving but common incident, but this case feels to me particularly humiliating given the location, context, and proximity to me in the content and title of the show. I have no way of knowing if this is simply an omission or if this curator really doesn’t like what I do — yet I feel that my exclusion will be interpreted locally as a statement against my work. Is there any way I could insinuate myself into this exhibition (remember that so far the show is not public knowledge), or at least get clarification about why I am not included without appearing presumptuous?

Sincerely,

Hometown Girl

Dear Hometown Girl,

Your anxiety and even indignation about this show is understandable. However, there are few things for you to think about: first, you should ask yourself what this incident might say about your own insecurities as an artist (all artists have insecurities). You yourself say that you are well known in your town, that people identify this subject with your work, and that people will notice your absence in the show. If all this is true, then the embarrassment may actually be experienced by the curator who failed to include your work, as he may appear to others as not having done his homework properly. If, alternatively, the curator is intentionally making a point of excluding your work, there is no point in arguing with him on that. You may want to send a trusted friend or supporter to casually mention your work on this subject to this curator, but this is a risky task that may backfire, if it becomes public knowledge that you lobbied (and maybe failed) to get into the show. Like it or not, the best course of action on your part on this situation is to do nothing, and let the events unfold. You must trust that the work that you have done in the past stands on its own, and your reputation should be able to withstand the fleeting passing of a famous curator through your hometown.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Last summer I made a misstep by assaulting a good friend critic with the work of another dear artist friend. Something went wrong but I am not sure what it was. I would like to get your advise on how to help the career of other colleagues without making anyone uncomfortable, including myself, and how to detect and communicate a negative response from others.

Thank you,

The North African

Dear North African,

It is commendable that you have the generosity of heart to help out your artist friends. Intercession by a -theoretically neutral- third party is the most important kind of help that one can receive as an artist. However, and as you also realized, you do have to be careful not to impose your friend onto others and thus jeopardize your own relationships. If you want to introduce an artist friend’s work to a critic, here are a few things to consider: 1. do not let your friend know in advance that you will be making that connection; if for some reason the critic doesn’t like the work or the idea of meeting your friend, you will end up demoralizing your friend even more. 2. when you introduce the artist to your critic friend, this also has to be done gently and with tact. One way to do it would be to invite the critic to your friend’s show (without the presence or knowledge of your friend), or simply share images of your friend’s work with the critic and ask for an opinion. It also would not hurt to be perfectly honest with the critic and say that you want to help your friend— most people are sympathetic to such situations. Also, if in your request you show to your critic friend that you are aware that you may be imposing on his time, this simple acknowledgment will go a long way.

It is not appropriate to ask your critic friend point blank to do a studio visit with the artist, or to do anything that will place the critic in a difficult situation (such as starting to be pestered with solicitations by your artist friend). Your critic friend may feel obligated to comply with the request just because of your friendship, but it may generate resentment later. All you can do for your artist friend is to facilitate a way in which the critic will get a glimpse of the work; if there is interest, you can help even further. But it is not possible for you to convert others to your friend’s art. You may want to ask yourself if there are any other ways in which you can help your artist friend, maybe through invitations to social events where your friend may make new connections; or through sharing information about grants, residencies, or resources that may translate into opportunities. And regarding how to communicate a negative reaction: you should always prevent from hurting your friend’s feelings by plainly saying things like “my friend didn’t like your work”. You should always present it in the best light possible, which could be something like: “I believe my friend is focusing on other kinds of art at the moment.”

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist:

I have a persistent fantasy where I approach someone like Rob Pruitt and offer him a cash reward if he can get me a solo show at Gavin Brown’s. All he’d have to do is whisper in Gavin’s ear, right? Here’s my question: how much should I offer him?

Yours,
Dan Levenson (New York)

Dear Dan,

Thank you so much for your question. As you yourself recognize, this is a fantasy, which is defined as “an idea with no basis in reality”, so I feel, for the sake of usefulness, I should answer the question in how it would
work in the real world. In the real world, no money will be directly exchanged or offered and you must never be personally involved in the operation. You have to get a triad of collaborators: one, an influential collector, then an influential critic and an influential curator. All of
them at different times need to whisper to both the ear of Gavin and Rob. Then you set up a star-studded celebrity dinner where they are invited and they meet you. At that dinner they will be surrounded by other impressive individuals who will whisper to them about your magnificence and hotness. Then the influential collector will make the request to Gavin to quietly sell a few works of yours from his collection (these will be works that you will have given to the collector for free beforehand). Gavin will jump at the chance and turn the offer into a solo show. (for more details on how to do this, watch “The Sting”). You will ask, I am sure, how do you then get a hold of that influential collector. Basically you do the same “triage” process with that individual, and the same with the previous three individuals that you will need to reach to in order to get to the collector who will get you to Gavin. This is why these exercises are known as social climbing: you can’t parachute your way in —only in fantasyland.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Whose opinion is the right opinion in the world of artistic critique? How do you deal with polar opposite opinions?

Artist

Dear Artist,

You point out a perennial problem that artists face: whom should one listen to? If we receive negative criticism, is it because our work is truly deficient or because it is so advanced that others can’t perceive its visionary nature? If we are praised, is it for the right reasons? And when our work is simultaneously praised and attacked, what does that mean?
The field of art critique, as you are referring to it, has a wide range, from the novice to the connoisseur. Needless to say that the criticism of the layperson, while it can sometimes be useful, it generally lacks enough knowledge of context to make informed assessments of your work ( so, for instance, I would not be overly concerned if your local dry cleaner hates your performance art works).
Then, toward the middle of the field of criticism there is a remarkably wide area of consensus- such as, agreement on what is a technically and conceptually-sophisticated art work, the relevance of certain movements, artists, and also on what constitutes a truly original artwork versus a simply derivative piece.

On the extreme end, however, which is what I imagine you are referring to, gets very interesting. Critics, curators, and artists break into various camps – formalists, conceptualists, neo-Marxists, guattari-ists, etc. Many times their differences simply cannot be solved, partially because art history is full of equally valid opposites (Matisse/Picasso; Delacroix/Ingres, etc) and there is no such thing as a single path to making significant art. But even if one of these camps were to possess the absolute “truth” as to where art is going in the future, at least from the standpoint of the present moment we don’t know what the current debates between these camps will look like. And it is not possible for you, not to anyone, to know the outcome of these debates.

All this to say that when you receive conflicting criticism about your work you should pay close attention to who is formulating these criticisms (or praises), and what is motivating their comments. Could it be personal? (many times it is). Could it be their inability to recognize the possibility of practices that are different from theirs? Are they a bit blinded by their commitment to some monolithic art principles? Are these people who you respect, even if you disagree with them? Ultimately the answer may lie on which camp you identify yourself more closely with. And it has to be a deeply personal choice. Your best bet is then to follow the opinions not that most flatter you, but that point to the issues that you care most about. And, needless to say, to follow the opinions of those who are currently considered the “taste-makers” just because they are given importance in the art world, will just turn you into an opportunist — something that may helps in the short run, but nothing more.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

One more question…

What is the responsibility of the artist in making more art? Isn’t the
world already overwhelmed with objects, stuff, art?

Am I having an artistic crisis?

Artist

Dear Artist,

Yet another classic question. This one, however, contains no less than four hidden fallacies in its simple formulation.
The first one is that you are assuming that art is always about its material object.
The second one is that existing art is capable to be an efficient surrogate to any possible future art.
The third one is that art is born out of responsibility, not out of necessity.
And finally, that art can stop to be made.

All four of these assumptions are wrong.

Art may often be an object, but it is much more than its objecthood- it is a way of understanding the world that allows us to see it anew. Even if we were to destroy all the existing art today, its effect has already taken place in us and we have evolved partially thanks to the insights it has given us. Then, most artists make art not because they feel a civic responsibility to make it, but simply because they have to: making art is much more of a human need that it is a constructed activity that services society, even if that ends up being one of its functions. And, as a human need, you can’t prohibit art making— it would be futile and pointless. And that is a good thing, because every passing moment brings a new kind of reality, and that new kind of reality demands some need for interpreting it. That’s what artists do: they respond to the moment they are living. So while you may admire a Leonardo, he is still our ancestor, not a living person with whom you can have a conversation about your daily life. Contemporary art can do that for us, and if we are willing to listen, in the best cases it won’t feel like an accumulation of stuff, but a liberating, enlightening experience.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I’m truly afraid that after graduate school I’ll end up working the same awful, minimum wage jobs I had before starting graduate school. How can I prevent that from happening when it’s all over with? Would it be too far of a stretch to move out of the country (USA) in search of work? Are job prospects better anywhere else?

Jen

Dear Jen,

Try to use art school to learn some skills that you may be able to repurpose for other jobs. There are many fields that absorb people with art school training: conservation, fabrication, digital imaging, archiving, education, museums, paper making, advertising, theater lighting, sound and film editing, television, graphic design, 3-D modeling, drafting for architecture, publishing, etc.
The pay of these jobs will depend on how advanced you manage to get your technical skills. Let’s face it: you won’t ever make a lawyer’s salary, but it is perfectly possible to find a reasonably satisfying niche that would allow you to pay the bills and give you the peace of mind to make your work. I wouldn’t discard the possibility to move elsewhere, but if I were you I would only do it if the place you move to will be a beneficial climate to develop your artwork.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

How do you tell your best friend who is an artist that her most recent work is the most awful crap you’ve ever seen?

Liza G. , Madison WI

Dear Liza,

If you feel so strongly about this new series you must speak up, for your friend’s sake. One way to do this indirectly -that is, without you becoming the bad cop- would be to instigate a situation that will bring the awfulness of this work into your friend’s mind. Such situation would be such as bringing a respectable and outspoken person to come see the work and be upfront about it. Another strategy is simply to lobby for her previous work ( which presumably is better than the current one ) and convince her that there was an interesting direction in it that she should retake. But the truth is that the best and most effective strategy is to simply arm yourself with courage and tell your friend that you love her and that her work is the most awful crap you have ever seen. She may not stay your friend for long, but she will thank you one day.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

In 1660, a mysterious sect of Dutch mystics arrived to an island in the New World with the objective to create a new society. Their governing principle revolved around the uninterrupted performance of a single dramatic work in seven tableaux vivants. Invoking alchemical imagery and hermetic thought, their goal was to arrive to a higher state of being by collectively embodying the symbolic representation of all of human and divine knowledge. Their experiment, which would last a century, would test the human boundaries of time, physical endurance, and the commitment of a society toward an idea.

Uryonstelaii is a project consisting of two complementary components: a book published by Jorge Pinto Books, New York,  and a one-time only series of performed prologue tours delivered by historical reenactors. The contents of the performed prologue are not included in the publication and are not meant to be reproduced beyond their single performance.

The project was presented as part of The Sixth Borough, an exhibition at Governors Island in the summer of 2010 curated by Manon Slome and Julian Navarro for No Longer Empty.

“All history threads between what was and what could have been; all art threads between what is and what could be. In Urÿonstelaii, Pablo Helguera tugs at these threads, unraveling, reweaving, embroidering. The result is a strange and at times poignant tapestry of the possible, the dreamt, the present, and the lost.”

D. Graham Burnett, author of Trying Leviathan

“Like a ‘lamb in wolf’s clothing,’ Pablo Helguera uses the exoteric mechanisms of historical erudition to lure us to his magical island of the Ourobourians. But right about the time we lose our footing on the land’s slippery shores—when we begin to wonder if the artist has gleaned an esoteric tradition for more than just source material for his island’s symbols and nomenclature, when we start to navigate his land with the non-verbal hunches of the alchemists’ score, and call into question the artifices we employ to gather the world around us—we realize Helguera has really taken us on a journey to another land altogether, the most forbidden of places–the self.”

—Lise Patt, founder  and director of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Los Angeles

Images from the “Prologue Tours” at Governors Island’s Fort Jay on October 2, 2010:

Excerpt from the beginning of the book:

In spring 1671, in Amsterdam, a mysterious book began to circulate among a small circle of intellectuals. Written in Latin and entitled Principia of the Live Image Method of the Ourobuorians, it provided a painstaking description of a single dramatic work consisting of seven elaborate tableaux vivants, one for each day of the week, to be performed in perpetuity on a remote island in the Americas. The instructional text, accompanied by obscure references and symbols, appeared to have been written for those already initiated into a society dedicated to the performance. It claimed that the continuous, collective presentation of the work would help participants attain transcendental knowledge that would lead “to the universal unveiling of the invisible threads that connect all the essences underneath every object.” The text’s millennial language and apparent fanaticism suggested that the author was a member of a northern European sect of Menonites or Pietists that, persecuted in its home country, had made its way to the Americas. And yet there was little, if any, mention of Christian rituals or beliefs.

Tableaux vivants had existed since the Middle Ages in presentations of liturgical dramas. In the Netherlands these were normally performed by groups specifically dedicated to this purpose, known as rederijkerskamers (“chambers of rhetoric”). These groups had emerged in the fifteenth century out of secular and spiritual brotherhoods in Flanders whose original mission had been to aid the clergy in the creation of religious processions and dramas.  Rederijkerskamers had a strict order of membership and a very specific hierarchy (with titles such as Prince, Emperor, Dean, and Fool) and developed their repertoire mostly to participate in contests known as landjuwelen (“country jewels”), where they would showcase their dramatic achievements. They were experts at creating “wagon plays” with biblical or historical subjects and elaborate triumphal arches, which often served as theatrical sets with a variety of entrances and performing spaces.

Principia of the Live Image Method of the Ourobuorians appeared to be the product of a rather esoteric rederijkerskamer, one that had moved from the Netherlands to the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam or had recently formed there. It was not unusual for members of rederijkerskamers to form societies there—such was the case of the famous Dutch playwright Joost van den Vondel, who fled religious persecution in Germany; they were merchants (such as Hendrik Laurenz Spieghel) and marine underwriters (Roemer Visscher). Some readers suggested that Principia was the product of a splinter group of Labadists, a protestant religious community founded by Pietist Jean de Labadie. De Labadie’s ideas had gained support in the Netherlands, and some groups emigrated to the New World in the 1670s to escape persecution.

The questions Principia introduced were deepened by the emergence of a second anonymous text a few years later, in 1673, titled Annals of the Chambers and Fortress of Urÿonstelaii (today usually referred to as Annals).  Annals appeared to have been written by the same hand as Principia, but it was a more detailed work and even more puzzling to scholars. At face value it was a compendium of the architectural structures on the island described in Principia, all apparently guarded behind a fort,  but it was soon determined that the descriptions might also function as metaphorical narrations of the ideology and history of the society that created them. Annals also provides clues to the text and name of the sacred performance introduced in Principia.

None of this brought anyone much closer to solving the enigma of Principia. It was by no means a traditional text even within rederijkerskamer literature. Rederijkerskamers generally presented religious and morality plays, usually dramatizations of stories from the Bible. In contrast, the elaborate descriptions of  tableaux in Principia had no recognizable connection to any religious writing; they were more closely connected with hermetic writing and the Rosicrucian manifestos of the early seventeenth century, although the images in Principia were unorthodox interpretations of the alchemical and hermetic symbols of that tradition. The term “Ourobourian,” from the Greek noun ourobouros, refers to a circular symbol of a snake swallowing its own tail, in a representation of infinity that was very prominent among alchemists throughout Europe. But in Principia, although ourobouros retained that original meaning, its conjunction with the concept of the island made it a more expansive symbol.

So who were the Ourobourians? What had brought them to America with the singular mission of dedicating the life of their community to the representation of a single performance? And what was the purpose of the fort and the structures in that island, and those carefully constructed tableaux?

—

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@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. Please specify if you want to remain anonymous in your request.

QUESTIONS TO THE ESTHETICIST

July 2010

Dear Estheticist,

As a an educator, should I be encouraging my students to make what I think is truly challenging work or work that will be easily consumed and integrated within a professional or academic market? Where does the greater responsibility lie, to each student and their livelihoods or to my future hopes for society?

please don’t answer “both”

Encouraging Educator,  San Juan, Puerto Rico

Dear Encouraging Educator,

You are making that assumption that by encouraging your students to make truly challenging work you will negatively impact your students livelihoods, which I am not certain is the case. But let’s set aside financial considerations for a minute and think about a few comparisons: Should a law professor teach his students to be efficient crooks so that they can quickly ascend to become the next corrupt government or should he teach them to fight to defend social and civil values? Should a medical student rather learn boy scout first aid techniques or how to do heart surgery?

As an arts professional, you are entrusted with the education of young people who are easily impressionable.

At a first glance, making commercial work may seem to them a more viable career opportunity; in reality, it only turns them into mediocre individuals who will never know any better. As their professor, it is your duty to show them that commercial success in art is a possible byproduct but by no means the sole goal, and that success in art lies beyond making money. You should teach them to be the best artists they can possibly be, as if you were teaching yourself. If that entails making challenging work, and questioning art to its roots, that’s then how it should be.  Teach them what you with you would  have been taught as a young student. Make them better artists than you. If they so choose, later on, to descend into commercial mediocrity, that will be their choice.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I recently curated a group show at an alternative space and an important review was written for a major weekly publication. The critic missed a lot of key points about specific artworks, (i.e. omitting names of collaborators, misquoting artists) and also seemed to misunderstand the participating artists and my approach to the medium at hand. I’d like to set the record straight. Is there any way to try and correct the misconceptions or do I just let the critic lie?

Sincerely yours,

Curators Anonymous

Dear Curators Anonymous,

No one can do anything about a critic’s opinion, but if the critic misquoted, gave misinformation or mischaracterized any other factual aspects of the show, by all means you must respond to correct that situation. This should be done in the traditional way of writing a letter to the editor. You may also try to do it in other ways, clarifying those points in an open letter for instance. This second option has its consequences, as you risk indirectly drawing more attention to this critic’s opinion more than it should. At any rate, however, you should stick with debating the factual aspects of this critic’s review, and not on the more subjective take on, say, your curatorial angle.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

How do I ask for credit to an ex-boyfriend with which I have done long and intensive collaboration, which includes a video in which I perform and a costume if he uses the footage in all situations?  How do go about explaining that a collaboration in nature is with two and more people and that it is actually helpful to credit each other?  Since I am more involved in the art world it’s a little hard to explain these things to another person who has less experience but it’s very important to me that I have the credit for the work I did as I credit people I work with as an obvious automatic response.

Thank you,

Genevieve

Dear Genevieve,

Thank you for your interesting question.  Based on how you present the problem, you are right: you should receive some sort of credit for this piece. The way

you receive the credit would depend on how it was originated: if both of you came up with the idea, then it is a collaboration; if it was his idea and you helped, you should still receive some credit, eg. he should be credited with the concept and you with the costume, performance, execution, etc. In any case, yours is not a unique situation; many people who  work together (and sometimes ARE together) in what appears very spontaneous situations later on argue about issues of authorship such as this one.  It depends how far you want to take this, but one benevolent way to handle this is that you should share with your ex-boyfriend other examples of similar collaborations where both artists get credited (say, Christo and Jean-Claude, Claes and Kosje Oldenburg, Diller and Scoffidio, etc). Technically, you are legally entitled to sue your ex-boyfriend for using your image without authorization (assuming that no release form was signed). But you may not want to take your case that far, nor would it serve you much purpose. The best is to move on, let that be what it was, and learn from the example when you engage in future collaborations.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

How many viewers are enough?

Paul Ramirez Jonas

Dear Paul,

They will never appear to be enough.  But you will know they are too many when you lose sight of yourself.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Should I move to Detroit? It seems so…open. I like my fun part time adjunct jobs here in Chicago but feel like this could drag on forever (showing in friends apartments, teaching part time, renting.) Will things be different in the “D”?

Laura, Chicago, IL

Dear Laura,

Thank you so much for your question.

There are two main reasons why one moves to another city: because career opportunities are better, or because your personal situation will improve (quality of life, love interest, etc). You should ask yourself on whether either of those two areas will improve if you are to go to the big D. At a first glance, unemployment is really high in Detroit, so employment-wise it would be a challenge. It is true, however, that Detroit offers a very interesting and inspiring emerging art scene that, while smaller than Chicago, lies at the epicenter of social and cultural environment that is prone for the creation of very interesting art. But the main issue is, if you want change, why not real change? Move to Berlin? Los Angeles? New York? Buenos Aires?  They all have vibrant art scenes. The West Coast is very open (space-wise). Amsterdam is open too (mind -wise).  You are right: staying in Chicago will take you nowhere career-wise, but staying in the Midwest won’t change it either.

Best

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist:

Too often my viewers think my works of visual fiction are actually factual.

What is the most effective way to signal irony?

Beauvais, Knoxville, TN

Dear Beauvais,

Thank you for your question. The question for you is, why would you want your viewers to know the truth? Ignorance, in this case, is aesthetic bliss.  Think about the conundrum that every parent faces about when to tell their children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist- they eventually will come to the age to realize the truth, but  when parents break the news prematurely they cruelly and abruptly destroy a child’s world of magic and fantasy. As artist, you give your viewers the gift of a possible reality, and it is not your job to undo it for them. Let them figure it out on their own- most eventually will, and they will feel rewarded —even if they are infuriated by having been temporarily fooled, they will be delighted with themselves for having figured it out. And if for some reason they never do figure it out, they never deserved to know the truth in the first place.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

What should I wear for the opening of my solo show? Does the same dress code applies when I’m part of a group show?

Ramón

Dear Ramón,

Dress code at an opening is extremely important. What you are wearing often says more about your work than the work itself, because, let’s face it, no one looks at the work on the day of the opening, but everyone checks out what you are wearing.  For a solo show, it is common to overdo it (like wearing Prada), which would make you look like an amateur “solo show artist”. The best is to take your cue from the dealer, or curator- always dress a bit less flashy than them so they feel that they are the stars of the night (in the end, they don’t have the creative outlet of making art, so let them have their little moment of fame). But don’t overdo it: to dress too casually is very 90s and it is too used by middle-aged artists, which you don’t want to do.  For a group show, you need to take the cues from your fellow exhibiting artists: they will hate you if you try to outdo them in wardrobe, plus you will look like you are desperate for attention. For that, it is best to dress as if you were just attending the show as a guest.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Halfway on the process of making an art piece I discover that another artist has already made a project so similar to mine that it will make my work seem like plagiarism.  Please consider that this is the only piece I’m producing specifically for a group show that opens in a few weeks.  There might not be enough time to abandon the idea and start something new.  My name is already printed in the invitations and catalogues.  What should I do?

Ramón

Panama City

Dear Ramón,

Thanks for your question. Here are a few considerations for you to ponder: 1. Would the trajectory of your work logically evolve into a piece such as the one you are producing?  If this is the case, you should not be afraid to make a piece that resembles another. Many works look alike, but the intentions, the context, and the reasons for which they are produced vary widely. Think about white on white paintings. It is more important that your piece has a natural connection with the work you have done in the past than whether it looks like someone else’s. One possibility would be to include a device (a handout, for example) that would help explain how you arrived to this particular solution.

2. Is the artist whose piece was made before of a previous generation? If so, you should dedicate the piece to that artist or make a Dan Flavin-esque reference to him/her (like “to Dan Graham, who is crazy but interesting”).  If the artist is a contemporary of yours, and furthermore, if his piece is in the same show, this would not be a good idea. At any rate, it is preferable to accept the coincidence frontally and honestly than pretending to be surprised about it.

If, on another hand, this work is not logically connected to what you have done in the past, and this other artist exists in competition with you, I suggest that you just pretend that you intentionally made this piece just to fuck around with him.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Are artist residencies really the only answer?

If so, why did Smack Mellon reject me?

Jin

Dear Jin,

Artists residencies are no solution to having an art career, if that is what you mean. They are a bit like drugs- they are addictive, they make you feel good and productive, and on a limited dose they do help, but soon you can become a residency junkie, floating from one residency to another, like those people in universities who like the idea of being a student forever. As a result, those artists who are constantly in search of residencies to get a career forget to get a life. And the problem is, if you don’t have a life, you don’t have a subject to make art about, and your work will start looking like  bland, flavorless and generic residency art.  In this sense, it is healthy that we don’t get accepted into every single residency we apply to.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Here’s my question- what is a good way for a curator to sustain meaningful relationships with artists over time AFTER exhibiting their work? Sometimes it feels like the exhibition planning stage is an intense period of collaboration and then once it’s over we move on to the next project and part ways.

Best,

Julie, Chicago, IL

Dear Julie,

Thank you so much for your question.  The answer is simple: most artists want to stay in touch with curators after doing a project and most do. However, artists are strange specimens who can often display little generosity in their interactions with people who they don’t see as immediately being able to further their career, and this is why you may feel that after working with an artist this artist may feel that you are a “been there, done that.” The best thing is to be direct with them: tell them that you want to have an ongoing dialogue, that you are interested in their work, and that you hope that you two may share a career-long professional dialogue.  Most experienced artists understand this perfectly and will respond gratefully; the young ones who are getting started and still feel they are the hottest thing in the universe will eventually come around and understand the dynamic, but it is for the curator to set the ground rules, so that not every time that you ask information for a project it will mean that you will give them a show.

And in the case of those who may ignore your reaching out for a deeper dialogue or demand a completely utilitarian relationship, the question then for you would be: why bother?

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

How can a curator answer every single email to every single artist who drops an email to her/his inbox? Is it ok not to answer?

How can a curator raise money possibly for every artist that she/she wants to work with or in need?

How can a curator make sure that the money s/he raises in a museum that that money goes to for what it is raised for?

Can curators monopolize access to the part of the world that they are thoroughly informed about? Whose information is that anyway?

How can a curator get out of his/her “connector” mode and share his/her resources with other professionals locally and internationally without losing his/her “edge” and knowledge pool?

How can a curator deal with professionals in parts of the world that immediately steal/mimic his/her models, his/her “artists” or content or prior modes of knowledge production?

How can a curator rise professionally without aligning herself with power structures, power artists or author-ship driven curators?

How can a curator rise professionally without being power obsessed, being an ass whole, or being a bitch?

Can there be curator-angels? Are there prior examples?

How can a curator embrace both the Antiquity and Contemporary Art World?

Is it ok for a curator to be nice to her/his assistants interns yet appropriate their work?

Thank you very much.

Istanbul curator

Dear Istanbul curator,

Thanks for writing. You really had a lot of questions. Here are your answers.

How can a curator answer every single email to every single artist who drops an email to her/his inbox? Is it ok not to answer?

It is not ok to not answer. Ignoring an artist’s legitimate inquiry via email is a sign of arrogance and pretentiousness. Best practice, if unable to answer each email individually, is to have a series of readymade responses, such as, “thank you for making me aware of this material, I will take a look at it but as you may know I receive many requests every day and may not be able to give you a full response.” In the case however, of annoying artists who pester you every day, you are not obliged to answer every time, and it is perfectly fine to let them know that your inbox cannot sustain a thousand exhibition announcements from them. Goes without saying of spam- just block them on your email list.

How can a curator raise money possibly for every artist that she/she wants to work with or in need?

You can’t- you have to pick and choose your funding battles. As curator you should make a short list of those projects that you are willing to spend your political capital on. That said, you are not responsible to find funding for every artist- you are their supporter, not their mother.

How can a curator make sure that the money s/he raises in a museum that that money goes to for what it is raised for?

You can’t, unless if you are the director. In that case, you need to fundraise from the outside- that is, work with a foundation that will give the money directly to the artist instead of the institution (many private and government foundations work that way).

Can curators monopolize access to the part of the world that they are thoroughly informed about? Whose information is that anyway?

It is not cool, nor possible, for curators to colonize thematic or geographic areas of the world. To think you can do it is delusional. Information belongs to no one. Being territorial, furthermore, is a sign of insecurity, not only in curatorial but in every field, and it does not go unnoticed when a curator is protective of a particular area or subject.

How can a curator get out of his/her “connector” mode and share his/her resources with other professionals locally and internationally without losing his/her “edge” and knowledge pool?

You have no obligation to do your fellow curator’s homework. But you can always provide raw material to them, inasmuch as they will also reciprocate with you. In general, generosity breeds generosity.  It is also perfectly fine in some circumstances, when someone seems particularly needy, to suggest a consultant fee for your advise.

How can a curator deal with professionals in parts of the world that immediately steal/mimic his/her models, his/her “artists” or content or prior modes of knowledge production?

Documentation, documentation, documentation. There is nothing you can do if a curator replicates exactly the same show that you did a year ago. But you can let everyone know that you were there first. And then, if you did your job, everyone will know who is the plagiarist.

How can a curator rise professionally without aligning herself with power structures, power artists or author-ship driven curators?

If by “rising professionally” you mean becoming one of those on top of power structures, or an author-curator, you will have to engage with those structures. But you can create rules of engagement that will preserve your integrity and do not devolve into professional prostitution. To achieve that will prove your true talent as curator, and as social mediator.

How can a curator rise professionally without being power obsessed, being an ass whole, or being a bitch?

There is the misperception that all powerful curators are all those things, and it is not true. The truth is, many factors – such as luck, which you will need- are out of your control, and regardless of how hard you try most wont make it to the top. But if you make it to the top by being an asshole, you don’t deserve to be there anyway— you don’t even deserve to exist. This has again to do with what you mean by “rising professionally”. In my view, and I bet in the long view of history, the curators that will matter are not the ones on top of the most famous institutions, but the ones who curate the best exhibitions. So, please do not sell your soul to the devil.

Can there be curator-angels? Are there prior examples?

But of course there are. Paulo Herkenhoff in Brazil is a teddy bear, also perhaps the most influential curator right now in Latin America. Elizabeth Smith, now chief curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario, is a wonderful person and great curator. Stacy Switzer, director of Grand Arts in Kansas City, is the sweetest person and incredibly talented, independent and intelligent.  They are around- don’t think that curators need to be bad people. Only mediocre ones are.

How can a curator embrace both the Antiquity and Contemporary Art World?

It can be done, but the art world is not ready for them, because most in the art world are culturally illiterate about anything that happened before Duchamp.

Is it ok for a curator to be nice to her/his assistants interns yet appropriate their work?

No.  There is no replacement for giving credit where credit is due. If the assistant did the research, that’s exactly how you credit them. If the assistant produced the installation, you say so. And if your assistant curated the show, he/she should be listed as the curator, and you as the assistant.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

What should my artist statement look like for grad school applications? Should it be limited to one page?

Rachael

Dear Rachael,

Keep it short and concise, one page.  Be honest, but please avoid commonplace statements. Do not copy fancy words that you don’t understand from books, nor do try to play the game of  ”I am going to write what I think they want me to tell them” because there is no way you will win it. Reviewers usually have read a million artists statements before yours and can detect a contrived statement from a mile away (I know I can).

Do the following exercise: write three art statements. One of them should be the one that truly describes who you are and what you believe in. The other two you should write it imagining that you were someone else (a friend, colleague, etc). As you write the three statements, think about what makes them different from each other. Then show the three statements to other people to look at and ask them which one best describes who you are. If they all point to the one that you wrote imagining yourself, then you are good to go. If not you have to go to the drawing board.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

If an artwork is in a crate in a storage facility in Long Island City, is it

still an artwork?

Put away,

Paul

Dear Paul,

You ask very interesting but complex questions, so here we will have to get a

bit more philosophical. According to Bishop Berkeley, one of the great English

Empiricists, nothing exists unless it is being perceived by someone. Then,

Ortega y Gasset, on the other hand, said that  our behavior is constructed under

assumptions that we have regarding the existence of things. For example, when I

wake up in the morning and prepare myself to go out to start my day, it is

Because I am assuming that the world is still the same than when I went to bed

the day before, that when I open the door the street will be there, etc.  So: if

we follow these ideas, what matters is not on whether the work still exists

physically, because it does exist in our minds, and continues influencing our

behavior. Let’s say the caves of Altamira are an artwork. Most of us haven’t

been to Altamira to corroborate they exist or are still there, yet one can say

they continue exerting their influence.  And even when they vanish, due to

accident or duration, they are still artworks in people’s mind.  If a

performance piece is stored away in our memory, isn’t it the same than when a

physical art work is on a storage facility?

Sincerely

Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

Thanks, that was very helpful, but it leads me to the inevitable question:

If a tree falls in a Museum, is it an artwork?

Yours

Paul

Dear Paul,

Trees provoke two kinds of noises by falling. One, which is less important, is the actual noise of falling. Second, more important, is who yelled (if anything) “tree falling” before or after the fall. (“tree falling” meaning “this is art”). Then you have three possibilities:

1. When no one yells anything after the fall, then the fall is invisible and inaudible to everyone. The tree vanishes.

2. If the museum was the one who yelled “tree falling” (before or after, it doesn’t matter) many people will hear it. It will be an artwork (whether its good or not it doesn’t matter: the noise is there to stay and the reaction it will provoke is unavoidable). Yet, the next generation who wasn’t there to hear the first or second sounds may never know it happened in the first place unless the second part of #3 happens (see below).

3. If the one who yelled wasn’t sanctioned by the museum, the falling will be an artwork, but very few people may hear him/her, so few people will see. It will barely exist. But it may crawl here and there in someone’s memory. If lucky, the tree will take root and grow on enough people’s minds. If it cannot be uprooted from them, it is likely that one day it will be planted, as a monument, in the museum.

Sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I often find it hard to write my own artist statement.  Could you advice on how to make this easier.  Is there some sort of template that I can follow?

Ramón

Dear Ramón,

Don’t follow templates- there is nothing more horrid than reading the typical statement using the same words and unpronounceable terms.

Here are a few ideas though:

- Ask three people who know your work best to describe your work in one paragraph. Use those paragraphs as a guide to discuss your work

- Write three statements- one of an artist you truly admire, one of an artist you truly abhor, then write yours. In writing your statement, think

about how your work differs from the other two.

-have a curator or artist friend interview you about your work. tape that interview. transcribe the parts that you liked onto the paper.

My favorite recommendation is , however: contest the notion of  artist statements. They are a terrible idea anyway. Do you think that Marina Abramovic or Gerhard Richter ever had to write artist statements? Come up with your own format: interview, short story, cooking recipes. Something that represents your work better

than the typical bureaucratic text, something that makes it more compelling to read. The whole reason why unimaginatively people request artist statements is because they need a way to know what the artist thinks of his/her work. If you do that without using that format, it shows you are a creative and thinking being.

sincerely

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I want to be famous, and I am open about it. What do you think I should do:

Which of these is the best way  to get fast recognition, wealth, and fame? and

if possible, to feel good about myself and what I do.

a. contemporary art (Star)

b. pop singer

c. actor

d. (super)model

my skills are very limited but I have good ideas.

I have no previous experience in any of these fields

thanks,

Anonymous (I havent decided on my stage name yet)

Dear Anonymous,

You are amongst the minority. Who wants to be famous anymore? Be chased by paparazzi and tabloids, die of an overdose while still young,

be immersed in legal battles with the many ex-spouses who will fight to take over your estate, being debated publicly over the kind of

Liposuction or plastic surgery you have conducted on yourself.  In any case, your avenues depend, as you may have guessed, on your abilities:

if you have a great body, supermodel is the solution; if you know how to fake feelings, you are an actor, if you can sing and move at least decently onstage,

you are a pop singer. If you can’t do any of these things, – that is, if you are not that attractive, you can’t really act, sing or move- then you are stuck with trying to become a contemporary artist, as that is the field where all the fame-starved and slightly untalented people go. The bad news: fame in the art world is so easy to get that it hardly counts as true fame. Like Maurizio Cattelan said, being famous in the art world is too easy for everyone because the art world is like, 2000 people. The good part: because art stars are second-rate celebrities, they are not so famous that are pestered with paparazzi, tabloids, ex-spouses, etc.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

What happens to the contestants on work of art after they get voted off? Are they still allowed to produce art?

Sincerely,

A concerned pop culture addict

Dear  Concerned Pop culture Addict,

Regardless of being winners or losers, basically all contestants, critics, self-appointed experts,  and any other people who are associated with the TV program should not  be allowed to be part of the Art World anymore. As they have clearly displayed their transparent obsession with fame and power over their interest in art, the appropriate thing for them to do (and for any of us to do to them) is to move to Las Vegas and work at a third-rate casino variety show, which is where they belong.

sincerely,

The Estheticist

Dear Estheticist,

I am an artist who has recently graduated from an MFA program in a medium sized American city. My schooling has given me the impression that in order to be a real, viable artist I now need to spend years of my life jumping around from residency to residency, if I am lucky enough to be invited to do so, in a state of constant mobility. This global nomadic life style is not my dream. I believe in knowing people and places for a long, long time. I would like to maintain a sense of home. I accept that it is important to build a wide web of relationships within the art world if one wants to succeed as a professional artist. But how do I do that without sacrificing the depth of relationship I have been building with the people and place where I live?

Sincerely,

Ariana Jacob

Dear Ariana:

Thank you for your question. You are absolutely right in not wanting to sacrifice your immediate surroundings and the people who are closest to you in exchange of your career. And by no means you should or need to sacrifice them. However, the artist profession does imply certain negotiations with your immediate realm.

The globe-trotting phenomenon in contemporary art is fairly recent. Back in the 60s, artists didn’t transport themselves that much— they mainly stay put. Then in the 70s, 80s, and specially the 90s, artists became biennialists, cultural tourists. While this movement has been criticized in the sense that many artists make banal art about whichever locality they are in,  there are wonderful things about this unprecedented mobility: your work will be influenced by many and rich new ideas and cultures. To stay in the same place forever, unless you are Emily Dickinson (who rarely left her house), will likely isolate you and make your work self-absorbed. Today, it is important to get out of the house. Another thing you should be aware about is that the international network of the artworld is here to stay-  you will realize that wherever you go you will start finding familiar faces. So it is possible- and necessary, to find people of your generation (artists, curators) who live in different cities and maintain an artistic, and friendship, dialogue with them. Those relationships will also last forever.   And then, as an artist, you will become a citizen of the world. You will arrive to Venice and the Rialto Bridge and cafe Florian will feel like coming back home; you may go over the years to Mexico City and enjoy hanging out at the Covadonga where most artists meet. It will be a new kind of familiarity.

Furthermore, the years that follow your MFA are very important for you to be active. This is the time when you need to be out there exploring the world; that will change in 10 years. After that decade, artists usually become a bit more sedentary. So my recommendation is that you make yourself a clear plan of “travel action”. You don’t have to be a nomad- then you would become a residence addict, which is not productive or useful either. Pick and choose your residencies; if you go away, go far away, not to the next town.  Shoot for significant experiences that may help your development: go to the venice biennial, to sao paulo, new york. Go also to places that few in the art world go to: Zagreb,  Beirut, Bogota. You will find incredible artists communities there.

One last word: as long as you are aware what is your home base, you shouldn’t worry. But you should be prepared to leave it every now and again. Remember that the main reason we leave a place is to rediscover it.

sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

Is it ethical for an artist either to offer a work of art as a gift to a curator (for example, after the decision for inclusion in a show, or after the show ends), or offer a reduced sale price for a work of art to a curator?

Artist donor,

Dear Artist donor,

While many do it, it is unethical to give any gift to any curator as a quid pro quo for any favor.  In the long run, an artist (and curators, for that matter) gain respect amongst their peers for their integrity not only as professionals but as individuals. To favor such practices only decreases the perception that others may have of you and will counterbalance any short-term benefits that you may derive from engaging in such sleazy arrangements. Similarly, you should also think twice about curators – or even dealers- who expect to get a work of yours in exchange of including you in a show. Not only is that completely unacceptable, but likely those are not very professional curators nor people one should aspire to work with.

There can be, however, instances where, if you have a sincere friendship or dialogue with a curator (or dealer, etc.) that has developed over time, that you may want to give a work of yours as a gift, and it may be entirely appropriate. But as with any gift, one should never give with the ulterior purpose to receive something in exchange.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I’m a choreographer. Recently I’ve noticed that some artists who’s work is

basically choreography have had large scale shows and sold pieces to major

museums for a lot of money. How can I transition into this situation. Or is this

trend already over?

Thanks,

Melinda

Dear Melinda,

Thank you for your question. Your observation is correct: many choreographers indeed have made work that goes into the visual art world and thus is purchased and collected as if they were paintings.

Unfortunately, there is no set “strategy” to make a choreography work enter into the visual arts market. What you see happening is essentially that some artists are working in ways that speak to issues that are directly connected with the visual arts realm, through theoretical angles (eg. issues around sculpture for example) or political/gender issues. Because these particular works speak to other artists in that discourse, and /or because they have been influential to other artists and periods of visual art, ( and many of those artists have presented their work in the context of museums or galleries in the past) these pieces are deemed as belonging to the narratives in contemporary art museums. To simply plant a choreography in a museum wouldn’t do the trick, as you would need to first insert the piece in that dialogue, or, like Tino Sehgal, take elements of choreography and turn them into a conceptual art product.

sincerely,

The Estheticist.

Dear Estheticist,

I am writing with an ethical/aesthetic question about collaboration.  have collaborated for many years with a more famous artist than myself and I feel that I’m not being credited properly for my contributions to our shared work. Is it appropriate for me to ask that we get equal billing? How would you recommend I broach this issue?

Do you think it’s tacky to have to ask?

Signed,

Better half of a collaboration

Dear Better Half of a Collaboration,

You are right that these days the role of a curator falls into a gray area when the curator enters into production or collaborative roles with an artist. It is also true that in many collaborative situations the curator enters into this role in an unexpected way, sometimes having to do much more than what was originally expected. But by far the root of the problem lies in the little communication that exists between artists and curators regarding credit, and the shyness by many curators to always defer to the artist in these matters.  In these situations, it is absolutely correct to specify the kind of credit that you expect to receive from a collaborative project, but this should be stipulated before the project begins. If things change over the course of the project, then you should point to the artist how the project has evolved in a way in which you feel that now its a collaboration in which you are doing more than the usual curatorial duty. Also, regardless of how famous the artist is, you should not “ask”: you should hold your ground and stipulate how you expect to be credited before you proceed with the collaboration.

Sincerely,

The Estheticist

THE SYMPOSIUM was  a special hybrid project presented in conjunction with the international exhibition project PR04 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. PR04, a bi-annual contemporary art event in Puerto Rico, includes installations, interactive projects, and is an important forum of exchange and dialogue of conteporary art. This year the subject of PR04 is the Olympiad, and projects developed as part of it address, to some extent, the Greek tradition of the Olympics.

SYMPOSIUM  was a hybrid product between  a traditional symposium and an actual performance of Plato’s symposium, as an updated reenactment by various prominent writers, artists, and critics. The objective was to utilize both the more relaxed discussion format of the symposium in the tropical setting of the Caribbean, and to transpose the philosophical debates about love, passion and desire to current issues in contemporary art. Participants were asked to present the points of views of their “characters” following the format of this famous dialogue, and to enter into a debate with participation from the attending public.

The project followed the general spirit of PR04 in that it reclaimed the classical cultural tradition of Greece as in the Olympics, and seek to also revive the nourishing nature of the public dialogue, making it more a matter of both spiritual and physical enjoyment than a dry academic affair.

The Symposium is one of the foundational documents of Western culture and arguably the most profound analysis and celebration of love in the history of philosophy. It is also the most lavishly literary of Plato’s dialogues–a virtuoso prose performance in which the author, like a playful maestro, shows off an entire repertoire of characters, ideas, contrasting viewpoints, and iridescent styles. A symposium is literally a “drinking together”–in other words a drinking party. In Athens, in Plato’s day, symposia were strictly stag affairs. As a rule, they consisted of a fairly lavish, semi-formal banquet followed by ceremonial toasts and bouts of drinking.

Symposia were usually held in private homes in specially designed dining and party areas. The guests (from as few as 3 or 4 to as many as 12 or 20) reclined on couches arranged in a circle. An entire service of ornamental cups, bowls, plates, and vases were set out for the occasion. After dinner, amid hearty servings of wine, the guests would converse, engage in song contests, enjoy the professional entertainment, or, as in the case of The Symposium, compose speeches or deliver mock orations.

A preliminary rehearsal was conducted on June 4^th, 2004 at the University of Camaguez, and the  public final performance was presented at the Olympic village of Rincón the following day, with food and drink being served throughout the entire duration of the event.

T H E    S Y M P O S I U M

By Plato

Written 360 B.C.

Reinterpreted by Pablo Helguera
Persons in the dialogue:

Xandra Eden as ARISTOPHANES

Nelson Rivera as PHAEDRUS

Ryan Hill as PAUSANIAS

Hamza Walker as ERYXIMACHUS
Pablo Helguera as AGATHON

Christine Hill as ALCIBIADES
James Elkins as SOCRATES

–

PABLO HELGUERA (Agathon) (Mexico City, 1971) is a visual artist living and working in New York.

HAMZA WALKER (Eryximachus) is the director of Education of the Renaissance Society in Chicago.
NELSON RIVERA (Phaedrus) is an artist, theater director, writer and composer living in San Juan, Puerto Rico
RYAN HILL(Pausanias) is a visual and performance artist living in New York.

XANDRA EDEN (Pausanias) is associate curator of the Power Plant in Toronto.
JAMES ELKINS (Socrates) is an art historian and critic based in Dublin. He is the author of many works, including “The Object Strikes Back” and “What Painting Is”
CHRISTINE HILL (Alcibiades) is an artist based in Brooklyn. Her ongoing project, Volksboutique, was featured in Documenta IX and many other international exhibitions.

SYMPOSIUM

Symposium

First part

PR04 Olympic Village, Rincón, Puerto Rico

June 5, 2004

Pablo Helguera

Ladies and gentlemen:  two thousand, two hundred and thirty four years ago, a certain banquet amongst notable Greeks took place, and that’s what became known as the Symposium. I am here to present to you the Symposium by Plato. My name is Agathon in the Symposium. In the symposium Agathon gathers a group, and as in any symposium people drink, sing, dance, do speeches. In Plato’s Symposium, the guests decide to do speeches about love, and thus here, we will talk about love.

But one thing I would like that you do with me first is to have a toast.

(the audience toasts)

What each one of us here will do is to take a role front the original characters of the Symposium. As we go into the discussion, we would like you to be part of it, asking questions or interrupting.

In the symposium the discussion starts with Phaedrus, who tells us his theory of love.

Phaedrus

In my speech I thought about using Phaedrus’ own words, but at the same time bring in the words of a lot of poets, not from Greece but from later years – including my own. So I included these and brought them together with whatever Phaedrus is talking about.

My text is Spanish and English, some of it is translated.

Gran dios es el amor

Love is a great god

Todos mis pensamientos hablan de amor

No tiene el amor genealogia conocida ni se la invento por nadie pueblo o poeta

Su origen no lo se pues no lo tiene, mas se que todo origen de ella viene aunque es de noche

O soleil c’est le temps de la raison ardente

Amor fin doble corazon son la misma cosa tal como dice el sabio en su cancion

Y asi no puede ser uno sin el otro como el alma sin la razon

You must sit down, says love and taste my milk

So I did sit

How fair you are, how all rapturous love

Here is your figure stately as a palm tree and your breasts are like clusters of fruit

I say let me climb the palm tree and take hold of your branches

Qué lindos se ven tus pies con sandalias

tus caderas torneadas son collares obra artesana de orfebre

tu ombligo una copa redonda que rebosa vino aromado

tu vientre montoncito de trigo adornado de azucenas

tus pechos igual que dos crías mellizas de gacela

quedeme y olvideme del rostro recliné sobre el amado

ceso todo y quedeme dejando un cuidado entre las azucenas olvidado

de vos será.

Her image had passed to his soul forever.

And no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy

Her eyes had coal and her soul had —

To live to her to hold, to triumph, to recreate life out of life.

To rage, to lust, to write, to commit, all these were product of the god of love

If you were to drop dead i would never stop loving you

Even though we could no longer screw

Solo a los amantes les viene de voluntar morir por otros

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence,

The most sublime act is to set another before you,

Solo el amor puede poner verguenza por lo feo

Respetuoso amor por lo bello, que sin amor y verguenza no hay manera

De que ni particular ni ciudad alguna lleven a cabo obras grandes y buenas

No picture is made to endure or to live with, but it is made to sell and sell quickly with usura sin against nature

Todo cuanto existe digno es de entrar en la obra de arte, porque goza de la inmanente dignidad de la existencia

El arte no distingue cosas sucia o inferior, la distincion de la cosa sucia podra venir del estómago, la cosa inferior del cerebro, el corazon no tiene nada que ver en estas diferenciaciones. Un gran dolor, un inmenso placer hacen olvidar lo sucio y lo inferior, liberando todo en emocion.

Love is worth it

Tal vez nos casemos este anio, amor mio,

Y tengamos una casita,

Y tal vez se publique mi libro

O nos vayamos los dos al extranjero

Tal vez caiga Somoza, amor mio

and yet you know, hatred, even of meanness, contorts the features,

Anger, even against injustice, makes the voice hoarse

Oh we who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness

Could not be ourselves friendly

Y sin embargo sabiamos tambien que el odio contra la abadesa desfigura la cara

Tambien la ira contra la injusticia pone ronca la voz

Desgraciadamente nosotros que queríamos preparar el camino para la amabilidad

No pudimos ser amables.

Perdoname amor, si no te nombro,

Fuera de tu canción soy el asceta,

La muerte y yo dormimos conjuntamente

Cantarte a tí tan solo me despierta

Incapaz de acción politica, no denuncio a mi solitaria vocación de cultura

A mi empecinada busqueda ontológica

A los juegos de la imaginación en sus planos más vertiginosos

Pero todo esto  no mira ya en sí mismo y por sí mismo

No tienen ya nada que ver con el cómodo humanismo de los mandarines de occidente

Que lo mas gratuito que pueda yo escribir asomara siempre una voluntad de contacto con el presente histórico del hombre

Una participacion en su larga marcha a sí mismo como colectividad y humanidad

What thou lovest well is a true heritage

What thout lovest well shall not be taken from thee

Entonces todos los hombre de la tierra lo rodearon

Desvío el cadaver triste, emocionado, incorporose lentamente

Abrazó al primer hombre, y hechose a andar

Y en resumen tales son mis palabras

Que el amor es entre los dioses el más antiguo, el más venerable

El senor de los senores

Que en cuyas manos se encierra para los hombres vivos

Para los hombres toda posesión de virtud y bienaventuranza.

Pablo

As you have seen, Phaedrus has a very ideal notion of love- a poetic interpretation of love.  We can start to reflect what kinds of love we have.

Pausanias

One of the things that makes love ideal is to say that it is only one thing, and everything that isn’t that ideal is dishonorable. So what I am proposing is that there are two ideals of love: there is the older god of love, and there is one love whose nature is absorbed in ethereal desires: the common and the heavenly.

What is interesting in Pausanias is that he talks about the purpose of love.  What is animating this love?  Is it to not discriminate, to engage one’s lusts, one’s appetite, or is it more heavenly?  Is it more about the soul than the body?

The other idea is that love is goal oriented, [it has to have a noble goal] so for example the love would be not noble if you are only thinking about the orgasm, and not the spiritual side.

As I go through these ideas, what’s interesting to me is my reaction to them, because I wonder what’s going to make them relevant to my life, or what’s going to make it relevant to the time I am speaking in. I think it is interesting and sad that we don’t have a definition of what a soul is.

Pausanias also talks about rules for love, that there are rules for love, that there is good and bad love.

Agathon

What is bad love?

Pausanias

I don’t know…[however]  I’ve had a lot of bad love…

Alcibiades

Bad love could be publicly acknowledged [negative] sexual things like pedophilia. We [maybe also] are talking about masochistic love.

Pausanias

In psychology there is an idea that there is an unhealthy love for you.

Alcibiades

It could be a much more subtle evil, doesn’t have to be about drug abuse.

Pausanias

My experience is that even bad love brings wisdom. If I am going out with someone who is insane, then maybe it will make me a little less insane…

Eriximachus

I think the problem has to bring together bad and love. Part of the problem is that you can’t translate the term in a more subtle way, the way that  they are referring to love, as it refers to the state and citizens and being a good person so that “bad love” is still “love” all the same but its not in the sense of pederasty, bestiality, those things mentioned as value judgments as we do today,  such as adultery. Maybe [bad love] is more like ‘love that has to be conducted in secrecy”.

Pausanias

There are a lot of ideas here such as that love is more than about the body and beauty, and that once beauty its gone, the love is gone, and that a good love can endure the loss of beauty. What’s moving to me is this split that I see happens in contempoary culture, and that’s what makes more sense for me.

These speeches are not about love in how we relate [to each other], but on the idea of love and how we celebrate the spiritual love and how it is beneficial to society- because if one falls in love with someone who is good and you are trying to be good, there’s two people trying to be good, and this can only benefit society.

Alcibiades

This issue of honor and dishonor in the text speaks about on whether its honorable for you individually or whether if it is for the greater good. It talks about some sort of workmanship to love rather of love for its own sake, which is also interesting to go over the art context about whether we are actually contributing something in the greater sense.

Pausanias

I think this talks about the idea of working out love, this idea that love should be this manageable thing… What means to work on your love? It means to make your love an ideal that you can work towards. After that notion of the ideal becomes institutionalized, you’ve got a lot of underpaid workers there!  In art, seems to be same kind of thing, instead reverse: you can’t just love your art, you have to work at it

Agathon

So what does Pausanias says about relationships today?

Pausanias

That’s where [Pausanias’ speech] doesn’t work for me, because I think it is a mixture for me of both-  although I have to say in terms of , that the idea of healthy and unhealthy love seems to be something you see in a lot of talk shows, like Jerry Springer.  Is that about bad love or is it about good love? I can’t answer if it is good or bad, but what is interesting to me is that a good love is something that lasts over time, that once the beauty has faded, there is a deeper love that goes beyond the body.  That’s something that we talk about when we transfer it over to the state. Which is: Bill Clinton was the Daddy of America and suddenly became a national interest because how can he be a great leader of state if he can’t control his lower common self? This made American people very upset because they didn’t want to think about how perhaps this idea of a long term relationship would not work for everybody. So in this sense Lewinsky is perhaps an example of bad love, because of her interest in power, etc.

The other idea [ that I like] is that when you are truly in love you are of service to your partner. It could also be that because there is an understanding that their well-being is your well-being.

Erixymachus

I want to go back to the issues of ethics , good vs. bad love. I am deeply troubled by it, and in thinking of a structure of discussion, only once before have I been at a dinner when the topic of love came up in an informal setting and the idea of raising the dinner conversation to the level of theater. The conversation stopper of that evening, [which I will bring up] in the spirit of this of this symposium, was: could you sleep with an artist whose work you didn’t like?

At some point we had to agree whether we would have to say yes or no.  I would like to know by a show of hands, who would sleep with an artist whose work you didn’t like?

(some in the audience raise their hands)

Audience member:

How about sleeping with a curator whose work you didn’t like?

Socrates

Socrates’ favorite thing is to take notes on what everyone is saying that check off contradictions and things like that… but in relationship to this, I wonder the kind of thing Socrates might say is that you have to define “like”, because by definition you don’t like anyone’s work more than you like yours, because otherwise you would be doing that work.

Erixymachus

I would object to that idea, because if you were to reverse that question… I mean to say…if it is an artist whose work I like and I slept with him, then it’s the word “like” problematized?

Socrates

Socrates doesn’t know what the word “problematized” is.

(laughs)

Erixymachus

If you saw it and you like the work, the idea of a virtuous person who you admire and you like the work and turns you on?

Pausanias

A great artist is not necessarily a virtuous person. I think there are certain kinds of artists out there who don’t think of themselves first, but there are great artists whose social, human part is not working that well…

Aristophanes

Also I want to say that in relation to the idea of sleeping with someone whose work you don’t like-  you can see it in two ways: first as taking advantage of them by having a love of the flesh while you have a distaste for whatever they are trying to express through their work; or you can look at it as being very generous because maybe there are other things about their personality – the way they look, etc-  that actually you  are willing to overlook, and are willing to love somebody despite their imperfections.

Pausanias

This brings interesting questions, because if art is the only thing that is important to you, then what is your artwork about? Then, concerning this idea of tying philosophy to judgement,  on whether something is good or bad… I am not the kind of person that believes in that kind of philosophy.  I like to be confused, because when I am confused I am free, and there are not these kinds of categories, there are no categories that have to be broken all the time. There are a lot of things that I am thinking in terms of that duality.

Agathon

Perhaps what you mean is that you don’t want to be ruled by permanent paradigms, but you don’t want either to be confused all the time?

Socrates

Nobody in this dialogue says that they are confused, but in any case if anyone would say that, it would be Socrates himself…

Pausanias

The arguments presented in this Platonic dialogue are made in a way to support Socrates’ final comment, who solves the “problem” by breaking it down by categories. And [back to the realm of art] when you look at the art of the 60s and 70s, you can see that there are these artists who are trying to do that [deconstructing the essence of art]. Then look at the marketplace, where [art is objectified and] objects are bought and sold. Because there is money there, perhaps that’s bad love. And good love is when art can be experienced with no way to be bought and sold. So, what is the role of the market in this discussion? Maybe you should tell everyone about Andrea Fraser.

Agathon

Andrea Fraser is an artist who is very involved with institutional critique. Most recently she did a piece that consisted in having sex with the collector- as part of the piece.

Alcibiades

A word that we haven’t used in discussed honorable and dishonorable is ‘whoring” its not only marketplace, it’s about dirtiness… Andrea Fraser is asking “who owns who” in this experiment. Are they in power? Is someone more or less dignified for taking money for their work?

Audience member:

There is a difference between selling and selling out. She’s doing what she is doing in her own terms and she has created a context in which to do it; what she’s done is to maintain control of the context.

Socrates

A lot of this is apart from the dialogue, but I am thinking what Socrates would say about this whole discussion about corruption…and he might say that money is not good nor bad- that stuff we are talking about in here is not in the dialogue, but one of the reasons it is not, aside from that its not related to art, is that it would be considered utilitarian, completely detachable, so it wouldn’t even matter what ends you were looking with your art.

(…)

For the sake of this conversation you can say that [the relationship between art and money] there is hypocrisy here, but is this hypocrisy relevant?

(…)

I don’t think Socrates would have been interested in any of this, so the question is what has happened in the 2000 years prior to this dialogue? Somehow we have figured that there is some sort of connection between these things, and we all sort of believe it but can’t really say how, and especially not in terms of this dialogue.

[We turn into ERYXIMACHUS speech]

Eryximachus

[quoting from Eryximachus’ speech from the Symposium]:

…but one has to deal with the effect upon human beings of rhythm and harmony by a process  known as composition or the right use of melodies and verse forms in what is called education difficult as it occur,  which demand skillful artists we come back to the old notion that is the love felt by virtuous men which should be gratified and preserved, with the objective of making those virtuous who are as yet less so. This is the noble, the heavenly love, which is associated with the heavenly muse, Urania; but there is also a vulgar or common love associated with Polyhimnia, and anyone who employs this must exercise great caution in its choice of people upon whom to employ.

Love is in the air.

[Eryximachus puts on the radio and starts changing stations. The audience listens to various songs of love in different styles: salsa, bolero, religious songs, rap, Paulina Rubio, etc]

Its such a dirty old shame when you gotta take the blame for a love song, because the best love song is written with a broken heart. Now the tears in my eyes are ever blinding;  the future that lies before me I cannot see.  Although tomorrow I know the sun is rising lighting up the world but not for me.

Example B (little Kim)

I know a dude, his name is Jimmy

Used to run up imme

Night time, pissy drunk, off the hainy grainy

I didn’t mind it when he fucked me from behind

It felt fine

Specially we used to grind it

He was a trip when I sucked his dick

He used to pass me brick, credit cards and shit

Something to sleep, I took the keys to the jeep

Tell em I’ll be back

Don’t fuck some other cats

Flirting, getting numbers, in the Summer

Ho hop raw top you know mans drop

Then theres homy Jimmy hes screamy gimme

Lean in my back busting nuts in all in me

After 10 times we fucked

I think I bust twice

It was nice

Kept my neck full of ice

Put me in chanels, kept me on ice

Cold sucking his dick rocking the mike

There was something about this dude I couldn’t stand

Something that could have made his ass, really

Something I want, but I never was pushy

The motherfucker just never ate my pussy.

I don’t want dick tonight. Eat my pussy, right?

Oh oh oh

Li’l Kim  L’il Kim

Bring it to me now

I know it dude

Push a cue

On Flatbush and Avenue U

Had a weak spot

Used to pump african black

Used to seal his bags

So his work was woodn cap

I used to see him in the tunnel

With fuckers at dawn

Whispered in my ear

You wanna get this fuck on

I dug him

So I fucked ‘im

He wasn’t nut

He wanted me to suck im

But I didn’t

I aint from

Sex was Wack

I jumped on his dick

Brought his ass to sleep

He called next week

Asking why I didn’t meet him

I thought your ass was still sleeping

He laughed

Told me he bought it pack

Could he come over right could he come over right fast

And fuck my pretty ass

I’ll pass nigger

I think we’re stretched

If sex was record sales

You would be double plat

The only way you are seein’ me

Is if you are eating me

Downtown taste my love

Like forest brown

Try to impress me

With your five g-stones

I can be ten g’s nigger

If you leave me alone,

Screaming

The moral of the story is this,

You ain’t licking this

You ain’t sticking this

And I’ve got witnesses

Ask any nigger I’ve been with

They ain’t eat shit

Til they stick their toungue in this.

I aint with that front shit

I got my own bends

I got my own ends

Immediate friends

Me and my girls rock worlds

Some big niggers fuck for car keys

And double digit figures

Good dick I cherish

I could be blunt

I treat it like its precious

I ain t gonna front

For lectic niggers that front that they really

Suck my pussy

Till they kill me.

You feel me?

Example C: James Brown

Ha! I don’t care

About your past

I just want a love to last deep

I don’t care darlin about your faults

I just want to satisfy your pulse.

[inhales helium]

When you kiss me

When you miss me

Hold my hand

Make you understand

…

In a cold sweat

Ho ho ho

I don’t care about the wants

I just want HA to tell you about the do’s and don’ts

I don’t care about the way you treat me darling

I just want you to understand me, darlin’

[inhales helium]

When you kiss me

And you miss me

Hold me tight

Makes everything all right

Put it put it

Where is at now

Miss io miss io

Let me have it.

That owes its thanks to Eryximachus, Little Kim, James Brown, John Corbett, Terry Kapsalis, John Cage’s speech. Thank you.

Symposium- Second part

Aristophanes

I will present something related to Aristophanes’s myth- the classic story that usually starts like a tagline of a film, something along the lines of “they were all alone in the world until they found each other” this is and old story, and everybody knows it, it’s the one about the search for the soul mate – so-called your other half but the belief that the romantic relationship between two people form some type of fullness is suspect these days. In the age of internet dating the intellectual part, the very basis of romantic love, concept that the personal fulfillment, the love for another, is often considered to be an embarrassing illusion, and the illusion that two form one is started by Aristophanes in Plato’s symposium. He proposes the idea that originally there were three sexes: a man, a woman, and a man-woman, and these humans had four arms and four legs; they had two legs looking the opposite ways, they walked upward but they often rolled over and over again on their hands and feet very very quickly, that way over large territories, and they were very powerful and strong, and actually threatened the gods. So Zeus decided to cut them into two, and when he divided they were very much saddened and clung to each other, so Apollo decided that he would rearrange their sexual parts in the direction of their faces so that when they embraced each other they would be able to have sex with each other and get some satisfaction from their embrace, and that would be true also of all the female and male humans. So that is how the idea of “looking for the other half”, and it has survived for thousands of years, and also has rationalized the idea of family and other needs in one person. So our notion of love, I think partially the idea of financial independence of women, along with advances in science, that make it possible for women to be artificially inseminated and have a child of their own, and even the idea that we can clone ourselves, and make another human out of one, so we are creating independence in countries that are technologically advanced and affluent. But love is still such an intense fascination … we seem inundated with the topic. I can’t think of any other topic, there are so many ruminations on the idea of love and manifestations and symbols of love in mass media, on the internet sites like love live, friendster and other offer many opportunities to hook up with individuals and the reality shows where people try to get the perfect match, and even the music industry, which since its earliest beginnings has been relying on the love song, sexual lyrics, of such explicitness that they verge on the comical- so we all seem desperate for a little amore but all these forms (television, internet, music industry) are really commodifying the idea of love, its not really about love at all, but about selling the idea of love. Were are in a society that emphasizes the self, and self preservation, and internet relationships tend to tell great risk- I think there is a certain disillusionment with love as this perfect oneness, that has to do with the internet – the idea of socializing from the isolation of the computer screen also we are living in a time when its increasingly open culture and part of this isolation could be that people are confused about what people’s sexual preferences are, and it is hard where to stand, or how to go about courtship, and there is still a very high divorce rate, that shows us how fragile relationship are, and  that relationships cause a lot of emotional stress. I got a very sad talk! So this is the side that is shown in mass culture, mass media, but at the same time there is another thing going on- last summer I did studio visits with many studio artist and many were doing work that dealt with the subject of intimacy and desire, and love- although they would never say that this was what the work was dealing with. Also I think that some people, at least in Toronto,  sort of expressed it through a camaraderie and openness that was very inspiring and there is this day, August 14^th, the great blackout, when the whole city of Toronto, and new York, and many cities we experienced this very peaceful night that brought strangers together, this wonderful feeling in the air that you know its there, but you just need the time to experience it an enjoy it. And so I organized this exhibition showing this young artists entitled “the republic of love”  and I  basically wanted to give the audience an opportunity not only to see the work but also to reflect upon what the conceptions of love were in that context versus popular media. I won’t describe what was in the show, but I think it is something that is important, this idea of self-realization through love is perhaps not seen as something as a possiblity and I think love — where I grew up most people were encouraged, said you have to happen this yourself before you can see it happen it to someone else. Anyway that’s my stance on the subject of love and want to propose that if they misbehaved  and perhaps that’s whats happened to us now instead of looking for another half we could be looking for three other quarters– that’s why there is interest in non-monogamous relationships and also growing population of people that define themselves as bi-sexual, searching experiences in more than one person.

Pausanias

Brings the idea of gender and asexual gender, and trasgender. This idea of self-definition instead of being defined by gender they are defined by themselves. Its almost a way to take these two halves and making them whole again but in a new way, people reinventing categories in order to have a greater sense of themselves. Maybe it is three fourths that are together. How can a marriage survive that?

Eryximachus

I think what makes it sound fresh from the gender perspective contemporary parlance of contemporary gender politics that gender has this essentialist notion relates to identity is gender is something like means to an end I think. Wholeness is the issue, not gender.  When you think about gender it’s a charged issue, but I think the issue of love in a broader, holistic sense, love and socialization, love and its relationship to medicine, as the foundation of other things, as opposed to “now we can’t talk about love unless we talk about the institution of marriage”, the issue of marriage does not even come into this conversation.

Aristophanes

The idea of romantic love and marriage is very new- with the rise of the bourgeoisie, that is something that we are supposed to seek out, a mate that you are in love with and get married to, instead of an arranged marriage or marry for money or for family reasons.

Eryximachus

But when we use the idea of modern love, what time does that entail? Renaissance or..?

Socrates

There is a book by Dennis Cuchebrand [ sp?] called “love in the Western world” its all about the origins of modern romantic love that is rooted in the Trobadours in the XIIth century, and so brings up things like Tristan and Isolde and other romantic periods, that would like be an anti-Platonic reading: marriage, love, fall, separation…

Pausanias

One of the things that interests me about Aristophanes story is that it’s not a Hollywood plot, – a man and a woman getting together- it’s about all these different kinds of ways that these relationships can happen. But aside from that, I think its not about finding wholeness, but about getting rid of loneliness. I mean, when I read that all I thought was the desire to completely not feel alone in the world, and the desire to unify with someone else was didn’t matter who it was, just finding that other half

Socrates

This question would be an out of character in the dialogue, but why would you say that none of the characters in the dialogue talk about loneliness?

Eryximachus

I think that the tone Aristophanes’ story, which is quite fantastic and somehow has a sort of “are you serious” quality, eliminates a certain human set of motivations- such as loneliness. The tale has something of an Eastern influence…

Aristophanes

I just want to mention that homosexuality in Plato’s time is very common and accepted, and also that Aristophanes claims that the union between the male beast divided into two is the purest type of love, which I think is largely due to the fact that is a very male-dominated society, and also that the perfect union man-man, they are longing to be with each other but they cannot say why is it that they need to be with each other and that is why Aristophanes makes this story up.

Socrates

Just want to mention that in the literature on the Symposium people make a lot of that,  and they make it into this whole story of the enigma of the story of love, that one passage, which is a very brief passage- becomes the whole —– that Aristophanes is really aiming at, that he loves to talk about but you don’t know why, that’s another kind of romantic projection, of romantic love back into the past .

Agathon

Here is where Agathon has to weigh in- as he comes after Aristophanes in this speech- and he is into is to understand what this whole idea of wholeness is about, and he questions Aristophanes in what the is forgetting about this kind of higher power which is God, and the love to God is what is truly important.

So what I thought would do would be to first explain what Agathon says, and then how this translates into the notion of how art, which is a product of love, (according to Agathon) how art makes us whole.

He says first: love is blessedest of gods, he also is the youngest, because he did not exist in the early years, when the gods were at war.

The things that were done before love were done out of necessity only unlike other things in humankind. So love is young and dwells in soft places, in hearts and souls.

Love is all flexibility and grace, and like any natural thing, it cannot do or suffer wrong.

Men and women serve the god of love out of their own free will, and where there is love there is obedience, and where there is love there is justice. However, love is the ruler of desires, and love can conquer war… etc.” and he goes on and on. But I will try to break it down a little bit and tell you what he would actually say about art:

Love is the fairest and blessedest and the best of gods, it is also the youngest, because the love was not invented out of not necessity, like other things in humankind.

Art is also invented out love, not out of necessity; There is something youthful about making art; Art does not become important for being useful

Love is always young and dwells in soft places, like the hearts and souls of people.

Art that only exists in people’s brains is not real art; art that you don’t feel something for is not real art.

Love is all flexibility and grace, and like any natural thing, it cannot do or suffer wrong.

If art is the product of love, and if love is all flexibility and grace, then there is nothing such as bad art. Meaning, Art is only what it is,  because it could not be either good or bard, so it should not be treated as something wrong.

Men and women serve the god of love out of their own free will, and where there is love there is obedience, and where there is love there is justice.

Art is a disinterested activity- which makes me think that political art or commercial art don’t really exist or are not real art.

However, love is the ruler of desires, and love can conquer war.

Art can help us do things that can help us would improve the world. And Art can defeat politicians

Love is the author of poetry and generates poetry in others

Art generates art in others

Love is the core of creation, as we are all the product of an act of love,

Art is the core of its own creation, because we create art once we see art and learn the language of art;

Love makes humans to be of one mind at a banquet

Art is a language that we all share and make us a universal community;

Love fills us with affection and empties us out of disaffection

We recognize each other through this language, and can fall in love with each other;

The pilot, helper, defender, saviour of men, in whose footsteps every man follows is love.

Which I think in equal portion it can be that

Art can take us to safe places where we can better deal with this world,

Art is a savior of our tormented minds,

Art, as a product of love, can make us grow,

Making Art is a different way of making love,

The best art we have made in our lives contains all our love,

We love art because it makes us strong,

Because it makes us richer, because if makes us better than who we are,

Even if everything ends, if the world disappears, if we have to live in wholes

We can thing about things and think about them as art,

The limits of art is only the limit of our imagination and it does keep us, if not necessarily young, it does keep me alive.

I want to make a toast to our love, for art.

Socrates

That was really interesting, because I did something very similar to that, but also different, because what you did was to take the word “love” and substituted it with “art”; what I did was to go through the dialogue and substituted the word “love” with “love of art”; its an important kind of difference, because what you were doing was changing the subject, in a sense  – which is not to say you didn’t get truths out of that- whereas my notion was if every time they say “love” they “say love of art” then you know they are taking the subset as an example, seeing if the doctrine applies, so this is what I was toying with. And I got this idea from that book on painting by Derrida, in which he says at the beginning that the subject is the shape of the desire for truth, in what it pertains to painting; and so there would be other shapes for the desire of truth. So in this case there would be love and there would be shapes of love when it pertains of art- it would be like a special case.  But, while this has been going on, Socrates has been making a list of all the things that would have baffled him, and then things that he would have disagreed with.

Among the things that would have baffled him would have been what Ryan (Pausanias) said about the embrace of ambiguity- because the shape of his dialogues for the classicists that study that- is that they (called aporiatic dialogues) lead to a state where the person arguing with Socrates is reduced to a baffling idiot, the aporia is the person who has no idea what they are claiming anymore and this happens a couple of times in this dialogue, like in this bit where Socrates questions Agathon. Then there is a thing called “elenchus, or elenctic dialogues” when you demonstrate, through this immeasurable series of horrifying annoying questions, that the person actually holds the opposite to what they were claiming minutes before. So the reason why I think what we have been doing would have baffled Socrates,  is that I think we don’t have anything against that, if any of us could actually sum up that kind of rhetoric we would be happy to have someone say “okay, I have no idea what I am saying”, but then we would enjoy that, so that ambiguity is, as the art historian  —- would say, a use of power for us- a lot of contemporary art is based on trying to find ambiguity- we love the kind of darkness and obscurity and the difficulty- but in these dialogues that would truly baffle Socrates, because if we ever reach the point in our conversations where we would know what to do, Socrates would say: “okay, now what? Let’s not be there anymore”.

Pausanias

I think that these dialogues are about trying to created order. But I would say now that people are more interested in embracing chaos. That may be the difference – now what is interesting to me is to look back and see how order was important to these people, and now I start to see how there may be a need in our culture for search for some kind of a balance…

Agathon

Well, in a way that was the origin of this whole discussion. Usually the discussions that take place nowadays feel so unstructured that I really wanted to know what would happen if you really try to follow some sort of structure.

Socrates

There are a couple of books that have come out on beauty and the search for clarity and balance, so this is in the air…

Pausanias

Just to add, in our political time, which is so conservative, this interest in balance is in fashion. As soon as you got this isolated point of view, and you are out doing stuff in the world… you have to allow chaos…

Socrates

I think that is completely true and some of these people who are writing stuff about beauty and truth, they are seriously conservative and old-fashioned.

You would ask yourself on whether there is any artist who wants to make something that is not ambiguous. At the Art Institute in Chicago we have these Koreans who are educated in a very conservative art setting, and they really don’t like ambiguity. One of my students brought a picture of a fish, a happy fish with smiley face and eyelashes, and said that it was a self-portrait. I said that couldn’t be because no one is that happy, and she said ‘I am’.

The next thing that would have baffled Socrates, was [the notion] that values are essential. This comes up a number of times. Communities believe that an artwork of like Rembrandt is good because many believe so- this would be what we would call “re-response criticism” in other words, that Moby Dick can mean anything if your class decides what it means.  That is really different from these dialogues, where goodness is beauty, inherently, is not because the majority voted for it, but because these are eternal facts.

The third thing I think that would baffle Socrates would be called “pscyhologisms”, which is is values or judgements of psychological origin or best explained through psychology, for example self-esteem, destructive relationships, relating, and loneliness particularly.

Then in terms of “love of art”, that it has a moral character or a virtue, like a moral purpose. Second that “love of art” entails moderation or temperance, which is an idea that is completely out since the Renaissance, basically- noboby is trying to moderate anything- nobody is trying to de decorous and balanced. Also, love for art is “tough, and shriveled, and homeless,” which sounds too much like the [romantic struggling] artist idea. There is also this thing about immortality, that “love of art” “wants reproduction, or immortality in birth and beauty”, “love of art neither comes to be nor passes away”, “love of art is not anywhere in any other thing, but itself, by itself, with itself”- that is the moment in which Plato supposedly enters the dialogue. I think there is a huge gulf there between our attitudes and Socrates’ attitudes. First of all, we don’t believe in that we are making stuff for the ages in the sense that Michaelangelo was, and then there’s this whole thing about creativity here, which is close to old clichés of creativity and depends on the equation of art and beauty so it’s a real pre-modernist idea- you could hold to it, but you would have to be someone like Odd Nerdrum in order to believe anything like that. Then there’s this question that love of art that love of art could really be known through the kind of discussions that we are holding, and here I think the misunderstanding would be mutual: because to Plato, there would be way too many digressions, we are not sticking to the point, we just like to chat – “chat” is not a Greek word, I guess-  and the incomprehension would be mutual- there is a lot of great literature about how awful person Socrates was, there’s great stuff that Nietzsche’s written about how he was the “disease” that was produced by the decadence of the Greek society, that he was the gadfly, famously, but mostly, that he was this annoying person, which was a source of truth but also of breaking the illusion- so there would be  a mutual mistrust: Plato would mistrust our dialogue as much as we distrust his. There is a fair amount of scholarship about how this is not really philosophy, and not really a dialogue, and not really a narrative, but a mixture of all rest of them,  the way that it comes on the fourth, fifth, sixth hand, that someone remembers that he told someone else then told it wrong so he retells to him again, and this exercise makes a lot of people these days ask why it had this form, why there are speeches that didn’t have the final truth- so that problems we have with that would be reciprocated- there would be problems if we tried to insert this conversation there.

Erixymachus

Would it be perhaps that the theatrical form helped to make a clearer story and really convey the point more strongly?

Socrates

One kind of answer is that back then they only had a limited set of categories for the kinds of dialogues, and all that was in what we now call poetry, but they conceptualized them in different ways,  but the other kind of answer is that the truths that happen in the dialogue are the kind of truths that pertain to concepts that are so widely held in life that they are entangled with many other concepts- that is why its so easy for Socrates to set these trip wires for everybody, because you can’t have consistent set of beliefs unless they are fenced off, so the point therefore of having a dialogue like the Symposium, which is not just a doctrine, but which actually takes the people through the steps of humiliation, by Socrates’ hand- the point is that because these things have so far-reaching connections, therefore every reader has to rediscover in the answers of the hapless people what their answers would be, so it has to be enacted.  But then there’s still an enigma which I still don’t see anyone giving an answer to- which is when Plato starts speaking in his voice, which is what happens when the simply writes his doctrine- then how does Plato want people to think about that in relation to what he wrote before, because how come there is other kind of truth that doesn’t require that kind of dialogue?

In terms of what we would agree on, is that the love of art has to do with seduction. This whole rhetorical business of the dialogue is about seduction, and that becomes obvious at the end, when Alcibiades comes to Socrates and says “all what you say has no truth or content, all you wanted to do is to seduce me”. That is a way of twisting the whole thing, so I thought point of contact is that artworks are about seduction. There’s all kinds of parallels between the language of talking about liking art and the language of love, and the rhetoric of seduction and the way of speaking in studios. Sometimes when students are fiddling in their studios, getting them ready for the critique, it’s a lot like being in front of the mirror, with makeup and things like that, although its not you who wants to do the seducing but it’s the work. This infamous word, “interesting” , its like a post-modern stand-in for whatever statements that are not being made; but for this context it’s also infuriating because it shows that the seduction is not going well!

The second one has to do with Aristophanes’ doctrine of doubles and all that. But the idea of ‘complement’ is similar to a word used by Derrida uses, which is “simplelong” which is the thing that matches you from you which you were divided before history began, which you don’t necessarily recognize but which you need,  so I am not continuing your critique but I think you can really use this, because if for love you substitute “love of art” then the doctrine is really nice, because then it would mean that art is the simplelong, it is the thing that complements you, but you can’t ever reattach yourself to it, ever.

Aristophanes

There is also this nonverbal way, where it gives but it remains a mystery.

Agathon

In fact art is in a better position, as it can always remain mysterious, whereas love normally fails to be mysterious forever.

Socrates

There is a passage from Daniel Halpern, who teaches at MIT, who says about this idea that Eros (love) “springs from a sense of lack or limitation, it pursues a fullness of being that forever moves in and in the course of that continuous struggle establishes a tenuous whole on existence or presence”.  Which is something that sounds reasonable to me?

Then there is this thing where, in this infamous passage, there is a lot written about how this dialogue anticipates Judeo-Christian, Christian love (agape) but apparently both Saint Agustine and Jerome both say that the Symposium contains a lot of Judeo-Christian values, and apparently there was a lot of backlash against that, and now people are returning to this idea that there is genuinely an expansion of the idea of love past the limits of the Greek language, and this special kind of love, which is similar to the Christian idea of love. One example is Kierkegaard, who asks “what is “love thy neighbor?”” and the answer is “he who I love as my neighbor is not the object defining love but the nature of love that defines the object”. And St. Augustine in the “City of God” there is a passage where he is talking about different kinds of love and says “there is a love which is itself to be loved, there is a love which is not to be loved, and there is the “agape”, the human virtue which is the right order, free… unimposed of human love by human love itself”. That’s the expand of Christian “agape”. So in a sense this love for art would be this whole consuming kind of thing; we wouldn’t be able to theorize it in the rest of the dialogue.

Then there is this notion that you could use the Symposium to prove that art is interpretation, and it would go this way: Diotima treats “interpretation” itself as an erotic enterprise; Diotima tells Socrates that Eros serves as “an interpreter between gods and men, filling and bridging the gap between beings who otherwise would never meet”, and so the whole art of love and also the prophetic interpretation depends on Eros, so interpretation itself (or, in this case, the love of art itself) would be  a form of interpretation.

Another that love of art could be understood as an obligation. That would be from a notion that Derrida has that art is an unasked-for gift, that when you walk into a gallery and you see something it’s a gift to see it but you didn’t ask for it; the gift is on a form that you didn’t quite anticipate, as the experience is unique and surprising, so it instills in you this sense of obligation that you have to return, but because it is an artwork, you can’t return it, there is nothing to give back. Then Derrida goes into all different kinds of ways in which people try to return it: by becoming curators, or becoming art historians and try to tell the “truth” of it, or becoming conservators and trying to physically change it…

Agathon

Why would that be seen as a return of a gift, as opposed to the claiming of ownership of it?

Socrates

Because it can’t; because it is a gift of truth, because you return the truth; but in the wider sense of “gift” there is no really giving back.

So what strikes me about that is that after a lifetime of looking at art you’ve got a very complex sense of unfulfilled obligations…

And the last thing: it struck me that talking about how we love art as we are doing here, has maybe in a way of hiding from actually loving art; this occurred to me because I am reading this book by George Perec, his biography entitled “W”, where every other chapter is about this childhood, and there is a chapter of a story that he wrote when he was thirteen or fourteen about a mythical island off Tierra del Fuego, where everybody plays a sport, and then what happens as you read about the island in excruciating detail, things start go to terribly wrong, judgment is arbitrary, and women are kept sequestered until the age of fourteen, so it is a story of a place that tried to keep the world at bay but that fantasy keeps getting more and more horrific; so it occurs to me that there’s a way of arguing that the whole dialogue – and our discussion- is a way to keep at bay what is going on in art, and there are ways to support this by looking at the text. Halpern says “to fix one’s case on a literary object (and I would substitute here with “art”) which is to say in the prospect of someone else’s neurotic activity is a perversion of direct desire”; which is to say that the Symposium is fundamentally perverse, because it is about someone else’s desire, and what you should do is to stop the conversation and just love the art.

Alcibiades

Alcibiades comes all the way in the end, drunk. I am not drunk, but I will summarize a bit about Alcibiades’ position that I align myself with… he is overwhelmed and obsessively in love with Socrates, and is completely unafraid to embarrass himself,  ready to speak the truth. And Socrates has basically summed up Symposium. From the position of Alcibiades, we talk about replacing love with art, and the question of sleeping with someone whose work you didn’t like, from his perspective the point is the experience, that its all about the position- Alcibiades has this interesting, introverted perception created by being inebriated and open, in a way he is talking about it all is an issue of perception. And I think that in that case, being able to grasp what the real situation is depends on how one sees it. And definitely within my own practice, once we are acting one role out, I don’t want to be pretending to be something, but I want to be “something”. I think Alcibiades’ idolatry of Socrates is mythological. The position that I identify with is having a completely uncynical, possibly naïve, yet completely genuine belief that one is doing is large and effectual and that is the core of  what one wants. There is a book entitled “Against Love” by Laura Kipnis, and it is polemic because she speaks intentionally against love, it’s about being confronted against love. Her ostensible argument is that Western American, monogamous love, is a completely archaic form- in other words, what she is arguing, is that monogamy is dead, and we should accept it, and society will favor a long-term monogamous relationship over a happy one. But what her argument ends ups being – and she goes into a really long list  and diatribe of things you can’t do with monogamy-  its actually creating your own circumstances. And this is what Alcibiades does- he decides what he wants and goes for it. And in art too, there is so much art history that asks are you a techno artist, a conceptualists, neo conceptualists, all these fake point of application – and I think the underlying thing that you have to be cognescent of is that it is “my life” and that you have to construct it yourself. And love, like art, is one’s own construct. I am talking about a  life-long investment that becomes one’s own legacy that we leave behind.

*****

[streaming audio files]

The Art World Home Companion, Smack Mellon, July 17 2010:

The Art World Home Companion, Introduction:

The Art World Home Companion, The Estheticist:

[full video documentation below]

The Art World Home Companion is a radio program originally conceived for  Condensations of the Social, an exhibition at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, curated by Sara Reisman in June-July of 2010. The project pays tribute to Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, adapting the concept for the contemporary art community. The “Estheticist” segment of the  program invites public participation and offers a counseling and answering of art-related questions from listeners, in the spirit of Randy Cohen’s New York Times column “the Ethicist”.

A live program was presented at Smack Mellon on July 17, 2010 with the participation of Ryan Hill and Larry Krone.

Pablo Helguera and Larry Krone performing "Art Basel", AWHC, 07/15/10, Smack Mellon

Introduction:

The Art World Home Companion is the great variety show and radio podcast desired and expected by all and produced by none — until now. For those of you who feel lonely amidst the social choreographies of the art world, whose anxieties about professional issues generate unanswered questions that they are afraid to ask, who cant detach from Facebook and are a bit nostalgic of the time when you actually got to see and talk to people in person, but feel awkward at openings, for those for whom the art world remains inscrutable, who cannot understand why it is the way it is— who feel that our social rituals are slightly absurd and contradictory, our theorizing incomprehensible, our ethical behavior suspicious, our professional acting opportunistic, and yet you still ache for being part of it —this program is your friend, your companion and your Saturday morning sunshine.

Now that nothing is radical anymore but we are still stressed about it being so, the era of folk conceptualism has begun and it must be celebrated. Well aware of this,  The Art World Home Companion will reach the artist studios in Brooklyn and the Amish households in Pennsylvania, the pristine galleries of Chelsea and the prairie chicken farms of Mississippi, the grave hallways of Bard and the harmonious mountains of Appalachia. Uniquely American in its folksy spirit and humor, its relentless optimism, its shameless commercialism and its confessional talk show nature, The Art World Home Companion is the Car Guys for art students and confused art school graduates, Dr. Phil for artists and independent curators, the Oprah of the art historians, the Jim Cramer for collectors and dealers, and the Larry King of all of us who care about art but have a hard time not becoming cynical about the art world.  Each program will include special guests, American folk music, art recipes, site-specific travel tips from the Atlas of Art Commonplaces, strange manifestos, and the centrally important program The (Esth)ethicist, to whom listeners can write with their burning professional questions. The art world has now a friend, a shoulder to cry on, a companion finally not to compete against or sleep with for convenience but just someone to laugh with, to love, learn and share our eccentricities, fears and desires as members of our little town which is the Art World.

Radio drama: "Otto's Self-Board Meeting"

Full video of the July 17, 2010 program at Smack Mellon:

Part I: introduction and worst exhibition titles competition

Part II: Radio drama: Otto’s Self-Board Meeting

Part III: Larry Krone

Part IV: The Estheticist

Part V: The Estheticist 2nd part

Part VI: Over the Hamptons and Art Basel

Part VII: Art World Trivia and The Dan Flavin Awards

Part VIII: Documenta (final)

Original Text  (“Viveros”) by Luis Ignacio Helguera from the book   “El Cara de Niño y Otros Cuentos”

Trans. Pablo Helguera and Mónica de la Torre, 2004

Paths lined with poplars, paths and more paths lined with poplars, a single path with never-ending line of poplars, in order to arrive to the house of my old friend. The light of midday lingers, the solar image of the poplar-lined paths appears fixed as in a photograph.

The sun is so radiant that it is hard to see through the light, as if it were mist or a veil. Paths lined with poplars, meadows with poplars, puddles of light, water mirages on the paths. But the paths also appear to be mirages: I see them, I walk on them, and I don’t feel them, it’s as if they walked by themselves. And all of a sudden, finally the music of fountains heard but not seen, troughs, stables, the villa. More than a villa it seems to be a big workshop, a factory where strange things are made. There, inside a sort of greenhouse, is my friend, whistling quietly. He greets me from afar, waving his hand, without stopping to whistle. He looks so old. I want to read you a passage from a book, let me go to the library, I’ll be right back, he says. I tell him to do it later, not to bother now.  He replies: it’s the only exercise I do, and leaves. His wife arrives, kisses me and tells me that its time for lunch. She opens a few tin cans, like those from the ice-cream shop; she tastes the pork loin with potatoes from one of them.  It’s delicious, you’re going to love it, help yourself. She leaves. I realize there is a lot of food in those containers: apple purée, salads, chicken with mole… I can’t find the book, my friend says, while he is going somewhere else. I eat a radish. But I am thirsty, not hungry. My friend comes back whistling quietly, with a book in his hands, he looks for the passage, then puts down the book; it’s not here, he says, and then leaves again, whistling quietly. It seems he’s going to look for another one; it’s the only exercise I ever do, he says. He takes forever. I see a great variety of plants, some of them enormous, and next to them, a row of unbranded liquor bottles. Most of them are almost empty. What’s in them looks like brandy, homemade.  There are no glasses; no plates and cutlery either. I sip from one of the bottles. It is brandy, and it’s exquisite.

I drink the remainders of another bottle. And then another.

It occurs to me that perhaps my friend uses the bottles to play the marimba and thus lines them up, nearly empty, in a row. I drink another’s remainders bottom. And then another. There are stables everywhere. But no horses. In a small area there are a few rooms made of wood, their dimensions are very small. They are interconnected, open to the greenhouse and the gardens, and empty. One and then another and then another and another… all of them empty, without any furniture or pictures or people. They look more like they belong to a dollhouse or a playground. When I go out I see my friend in the greenhouse, whistling quietly and going through the pages of a book. I am thirsty, I say. Drink brandy, he replies without looking at me. Oh! Here it is! And he starts reading out loud. Every once in a while, in the middle of the reading, he stares at me from the top rim of his glasses. I drink the remainder of a brandy of bottle and then another and another and another and one more. I don’t understand anything that he is reading to me, in the same tone and rhythm that is lulling me to sleep. I hear his voice as if it were coming from a monotonous and exasperating snore or from under the water. He goes on reading without a pause, staring at me while continuing to read, now without looking at the book, as if he were reading my face, I can’t stand his voice anymore, it’s my naptime, I tell him.

The light is still radiant.

I need to go to the bathroom. My friend is not there anymore. I can’t find the bathroom. I walk into a stable and as I start urinating, I see my friend and his wife approaching from afar. It’s something that I already knew, she says to him, but I liked how he explained it to me. He’s very serious and doesn’t seem to be paying attention to her. I quickly come out of the stable. She kisses me and says that it’s lunchtime. He leaves, don’t tell me that you are looking for a book, she says, and he: it’s the only exercise I do. It’s delicious, she tells me as she opens a steamy container, you’re going to love it, help yourself. She leaves. Aren’t you going to eat too? I scream at her. I already ate, she responds, you’re going to love it, help yourself. Yes, thank you I really loved everything! I scream. She smiles, from afar, and then leaves. She is young and beautiful. I snatch a pear from a tree and devour it. I am so thirsty. Another pear. It’s not ripe, I toss it out. A long time passes. No one, I walk into a stable, piss, and come out. I decide to go to the troughs.  I hear the fountains, but cannot see them. Paths lined with poplars, many paths lined with many poplars from which I don’t know how to return. I am very thirsty. There is no night. I slowly drink from the trough.  I suddenly feel the earth shaking under my feet, hear furious galloping in the distance. I step aside and see the some wild horses cross the poplar-lined path, riderless but moving in a straight line, setting off a great cloud of dust. I feel the earth shaking under my feet, for a long while. And then again, the deafening sound of light. The radiant light that makes the dust dissipate. There is no night. I slowly drink from the trough; the water tastes like the furious gallop of the horses.

Beauty for Ashes (Ernie Sandidge), Video, 9:51m 2010

Beauty for Ashes is a project about the contemporary practitioners of realist/academic painting and their complex relationship with the contemporary art world. In 1863, the creation of the Salon des Refusés in Paris, which broke with the French Academy, led to the birth of the modern art movement, resulting in the eventual establishment of the avant-garde in galleries and museums worldwide. Almost 150 years after, many artists continue to work with the same shared aesthetic concerns of the classic Western canon, grounded mainly on traditional figurative representation and taking craftsmanship as the central value of their works. The use of irony versus sincerity emerges as a key philosophical divide between contemporary art and those in search for the restoration of traditional aesthetic values of beauty.

This project, which includes a small publication, a video documentary and an exhibition of works by the interviewed artists, examines their perspective and posits questions about the way in which contemporary art defines its historical present.

Beauty for Ashes is being presented in May 2010 as part of the exhibition Undercurrents: Experimental Ecosystems in Recent Art, curated by Anik Fournier, Michelle Lim, Amanda Parmer and Robert Wuilfe of the Whitney Independent Program.

The salon exhibition as part of this project includes the works of Katie Claiborne, Michael De Brito, Madora Frey, Anina Gerchick, Laura Gilbert, and Ernie Sandidge.

[Exhibition text]

BEAUTY FOR ASHES

Give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

Isaiah 61:3

To Robert Rosenblum

(1927-2006)

Art history is kind to those who attempt to move its narrative forward, but is contemptuous to those who refuse to look for new forms and instead content themselves with ones from the past. These kinds of artists, unlike outsider artists, are well aware of art history, are generally trained and educated in it, but either for lack of desire or interest, remain distanced with the theoretical debates of the present, turning into outcasts, or rendering themselves invisible to the contemporary art system, resigned to their peripheral existence from the dominating art world.

The refusal to belong to one’s own time is not a new phenomenon. Every now and then, a handful of these “reactionary rebels” (like Edward Hopper or Andrew Wyeth) are admitted into the annals of art, albeit with a certain discomfort, coming to occupy prominent — if isolated— hallways of an art museum without quite fitting into the canonical narratives of Modernism. Over the course of time the anachronism of those artists, if still unforgiven by most art historians, is rarely a concern to the average museum visitor (Nighthawks or Christina’s World, while art-historically anachronistic, have found their places by force of their popularity and iconic timelessness). This is often the case with other art forms. Is it troubling to us today that Rachmaninoff was composing XIXth century music in the XXth century—well past the time of the emergence of the most dynamic work of the Russian Avant-Garde? From the standpoint of the average XXIst century classical music listener, it doesn’t matter much if his works were composed a few decades later.

Similarly, our obsessive fascination with timelines and evolutionary thinking makes us forget that generations of artists at any given period coexist at one particular time. A history of art of the early 1920s should equally document the rise of Surrealism and Dada as much as the fact that Monet was still alive and actively working on his Water Lilies. Yet, despite the proven impurity and porosity of our grand narratives, our record-keeping mechanisms of journalistic criticism, scholarship and museum collecting primarily document the present through the new forms, while secondary narratives, like old conversations, often recede and exile themselves into other realities.

The prevailing, if rarely explicitly spoken, view of those concerned with constructing, debating and chronicling the present —curators, artists, critics— is that those secondary conversations are at best of little, if any, interest. And yet, this vague desire to continue the semi-Hegelian impulse on the evolution or progress of art is unsatisfactory when art-making today resembles less of an advancement of new ideas than a hodgepodge of debates and references to previous ones, when one observes that artists continue to refer to all sorts of previous modern and post-modern narratives from hard abstraction to land art. Times change, indeed, but do our art forms? What if, God forbid, our cultural moment seen fifty years from now were to be regarded as a vast, reprise —imaginative perhaps, but ultimately a reprise— of Postmodernism? Writers like Nicolas Bourriaud have tried to solve this problem by introducing the —unfortunately also unsatisfactory— term “altermodern,” attempting to add a third chapter to the modern and post-modern narrative. The question is: what are the ultimate overriding values and ideas that we, as contemporary art producers today, subscribe to, and how do they differ, if at all, from those of the past? We may never know the answer until we truly understand those aesthetic ideas that we have broken with, and what that rejection says about us today.

Nowhere is this aesthetic break clearer, or the divorce greater, than between the contemporary art world and the art practices that can loosely be grouped as those of the art academies. Generally described as realist, academic or figurative, the artists who made this kind of work share the aesthetic principles of mid XIXth century art as the dominant tenets of their artistic discourse.

The implicit philosophical breakup with academic art goes back to Kant’s Critique of Judgment, where he attacks an art that is only rooted in the appeal to the senses instead of a cognitive, collective discourse. In 1863, with the creation of the Salon des Refusés in Paris, an effective bifurcation in art making led to the birth of the modern art movement and the eventual establishment of the avant-garde in galleries and museums worldwide. Amidst the vertiginous changes that the avant-garde provoked throughout the XXth century, academically inspired art took a secondary and silent place to a reduced and conservative market.

In the XXth century, Clement Greenberg equated academic painting with kitsch. Academic art communities today have thus created their own ecosystem of validation and support, as well as their own market and context. Grounded mainly on traditional figurative representation and taking craftsmanship as the central value of their works, some of these artists, led by realists like Odd Nerdrum, have defiantly self-defined themselves as kitsch, openly breaking with the notion that they produce art of their own time. The use of irony versus sincerity emerges as a key philosophical divide between contemporary art and those in search for the restoration of traditional aesthetic values of beauty. Whether referred to as academicism, figurativism, realism, or kitsch, the world created by these artists is one permeated by a profound idealism and nostalgia, at times resentful and in its own way rebellious, resulting from a sharp rejection of the values held by today’s art. A text written by an “anonymous student” on Odd Nerdrum’s website is perhaps the best example of a rejection of the contemporary world:

A greeting to you, gifted one, you who want to attain sincerity in your work. You are a stranger to your time, but do not loose [sic] heart! I know Art feels unpleasant to you; you have become a slave beneath an aristocracy of incompetents. Art was never meant for people like you. Art has its justification – the untalented need comfort – but so do you. You have been ashamed of your ability too long. So long as the skillful craftsman can only aspire to defeat, a great injustice is done. Know this: without you as a subjugated guarantor, the incompetence of Art becomes worthless. The money and honor obtained by artists rightfully belong to you, so take them back! Put an end to the humiliation, withdraw from Art and let it complete its fall into worthlessness. The 19th century was the twilight of talent; take part in its dawn. Through Kitsch the talented one can save himself. It is a new discipline in which skill finds a superstructure. A superstructure serving the genius of ability. Do not allow Art to retain its moral authority over ability.

Today for an artist to discard the entire history of the avant-garde and pursue a private dialogue with Rembrandt or Vermeer would strike contemporary art adepts as an act of self-induced deception, and the ideas or works that emerge from this world hardly worth the time of those who have been following a century and a half of aesthetic debates. Yet why is it that we don’t hold the same standards to those artists who still are clearly engaging with modernist ideas that are also nearly a hundred years old?

Rather than vindicating or condemning either the contemporary or academic art worlds, it may be revealing to study the reason of the persistence of the academy almost 150 years after the challenge of modern art, at the current juncture of “art after the end of art”. At a time when contemporary art language grapples with replacing the remaining postmodernist legacy of rendering pure feeling or pure beauty as suspect, recurring to terms like “new sincerity”, and reinserting human dimensions into the frameworks of post-minimalism, the fate of the academy and its idealistic search for sincerity and sentiment may prove to be a fertile ground to initiate a reflection on contemporary art’s dependence on irony. This doesn’t mean that one should have to recur to representation or to the formats of the academy: Greenberg notwithstanding, Abstract Expressionists, in their earnestness, were closer to Manet than they are to Richter.

In his famous novel Of Human Bondage (1915), Somerset Maugham narrates the life of protagonist Philip Carey, a man in search for meaning in his life. In one episode of this search he decides to become an artist and stereotypically moves to Paris. In the contemporary time period of the novel, he enters the academy around that mythical time when Cubism and other avant-gardes are being born— although in the narrative we see an environment closer to La Bohème. His ordeal, as well as those of his peers, is dreadful, as he is an impoverished as well as a mediocre artist doing his best to achieve notoriety. His teachers, and we as readers, know that his project is futile. In the end he gives up art making, and moves on to other quests.

Somerset Maugham originally intended the title of the work to be Beauty for Ashes, but eventually abandoned it as it had been taken by another, now-forgotten novel. Yet it has struck me that the title is evocative of a belief in art-making as deliverance, an idea that once was fervently held and which we in the contemporary art system are so estranged from. Or are we? Do we secretly hope for it, but instead protect ourselves with cynicism? Do we still hope for art to generate emotional and intellectual kingships, but refute that we engage in such idealistic desires? As we ask ourselves these questions, we may realize that those who make contemporary art and those who see themselves in dialogue with the XIXth century are ultimately not that different in their way of understanding the problem of being an artist in the XXIst century. These are questions that we can’t formulate quite clearly at this time —at least I can’t— because they exist in our present moment. The discussion may revolve around the choice that we face: to either make art as a place to lose ourselves in it as ourselves—as the Romantics did— or in hoping that we can project ourselves as someone else—as the cynics do. Both choices, nonetheless, imply a desire to freedom from history.

Pablo Helguera

New York City

May 2010