Artists as inventors

I think that all this talk about the need for copyrighting your work comes from the mistaken notion that there are creative individuals who invent new ideas. We are so much a product of the particular society that we are born into. If you can locate the period of time and place that a person was born in, you can easily predict the types of thoughts and concerns that they will be having during the course of their lives. Sure people have different temperaments, but the objects of their imagination will always have a similar cast. The horizons of a given culture always frame the symbolic elements in a particular way. And to give someone credit for being an independent agent is to ignore the fact the one's peers, family, and the society in general are respondsible for creating the "individual". It is the society in general that recognizes a work of art as superior, maybe not always immediatley, but inevitably. It is the act of recognition that gives the work its significance. In recognizing a superior reflection of the cultural zeitgeist, the society chooses the pieces that serve as emblems of the contemporary. Jackson Pollock would have been completely forgotton if he made drip paintings a hundred years earlier. In addition, one of the biggests myths of Western culture is that there are in fact autonomous individuals. The notion helps to amplify ambition and competition, allowing the market to flourish. But we are literally nothing without others. We get no sense of self without the presence of the other.
-JP

comments about 3/9/07

Veronique's presentation was very nice. I wanted to bring up one of her comments for further discussion. She stated that the 'duty of art is to be controversial.' I disagree with this sentiment. I would say that if there is any duty for art (which is in itself highly debatable), it would be for it to be open, intellectually curious, and sincere. In being open and honest, the work may turn out controversial; and then the artist must have the courage of their convictions to carry it through. However, I feel that art which focuses on just being controversial is formulaic, shallow, dishonest. To create such work, artists merely need to find a widely respected belief or tradition, then exploit it by transgressing it with a kind of dismissive insouciance. This has been the modus operandi of at least some artists in the past. Art as controversy then becomes the favored explanation in visual studies classes, because it is an easy explanation. As a result, it begins to appear that artists' only intention was ever to be controversial...

As to the question of whether or not the federal government should fund art, I don't have very strong feelings on this matter, but tend to think that it has a negative effect in general. Such funding was certainly used as cannon fodder by the neo-conservatives, and helped them regain power of Congess in the 1990's. So it appears that having the government connected to art helped to create a backlash against a more liberal and open society. I don't see how the federal government can mingle with art without politics seeping in. I do feel sorry for theatre and dance companies that need the money to put on their elaborate productions. I wouldn't really mind the federal government funding them.
-JP

Merging art with politics

In reference to the Tax article:
I don't believe art and politics ought to be merged. James Joyce had an excellent way of looking at this issue. He wrote that "the feelings excited by improper art are kinetic, desire or loathing. Desire urges us to possess,... loathing urges us to abandon, to go from something. These are kinetic emotions. The arts which excite them, pornographical or didactic, are therefore improper arts. The esthetic emotion (I use the general term) is therefore static. The mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing."Portrait of the Artist
Political or didactic art can never give the means to take control over ones lives because the experiencing subject is always being moved in a highly programmatic fashion.

Artist statements

I found it interesting that our guest speaker (Elizabeth) told us that curators aren't particularly interested in artist statements. I believe she said to keep the statements short and sweet. I am glad she said this, and that the impression created by the work is what really counts. I think that this is how it should be. This confirms my suspicion that the art department policy of having grads write thesis statements is a waste of time. In fact, I think it is counterproductive, because it forces you to rationalize what you are doing; when in fact, making art is not a rational process. The artist statement is always an afterthought, because if one were to start with a coherent statement, they wouldn't be able to create art. They would be illustrating a set of concepts, in some didactic or prosaic way. Unfortunately, the intuitive model, which really almost everyone follows, is frowned upon by some of the faculty here. It is my feeling that any truly successful artist is fundamentally intuitive in their creative process.
-JP

Artist's models

Concerning the reading that dealt with artist's models. I was wondering whether or not the models were valid. But then it occured to me that the models could really apply to any kind of public figure; seeing as though they are so general. Here's a little thought experiment, in which I used the models to describe professional athletes.

Skilled worker: Pedro Martinez
Rule breaker: Mike Tyson
Intellectual: Greg Maddox
Naive Talent: Babe Ruth
Entrepeneur: George Forman
Economic failure: Mike Tyson
Social critic: Mohammed Ali
Social parasite: Barry Bonds
Social healer: Jackie Robinson
Charlattan: Floyd Landis

These models could also be applied to politicians, CEO's, preachers, talk show hosts, etc.

-JP

Why we are artists?

Part of the discussion in the last class revolved around why people choose to be artists and not doctors or lawyers. One of my professors in undergrad once told the class that all artists are manic-depressives. I disagreed whole-heartedly at the time. First of all, to claim that every single anything is a manic depressive seems like quite a stretch. But sometimes I think that this exaggeration my have a kernel of truth. Back to the question of why one chooses art, it may be more of a matter of art choosing the individual. A passage from a book I read by Ernest Becker called The Denial of Death for me sheds light on this. It says that "the key to the creative type is that he or she is separated out of the pool of shared meaning. There is something in their life experience that makes them take in the world as a problem; as a result they have to make personal sense out of it... Existence becomes a problem that needs an ideal answer; but when you no longer accept the collective solution to the problem of existence, then you must fashion your own." This perhaps a little too simple statement sums up for me why I, and perhaps many others become artists. I cannot help but take the world as a problem, and it always appears as a connundrum. So by turning away from the world, one can try to create an analogous one in which one has some control.

concerning the events of 1/21

The class discussion centered on whether it was okay or not to work in an artist's painting sweat-shop. Surprisingly, several people thought it was a perfectly acceptable route to take. I totally disagree with this. This is not some kind of Shaolin temple, where the sensai gives the pupil seemingly menial tasks, but is in fact training that pupil to be a great karate master. A sweat shop is a sweat shop, no matter whether you are producing sneakers or you are making paintings. While it is true that sculptors often require skilled help to realize their projects, I would like someone to name a single decent painter who had assistants do their work. Rubens often had assistants help him with parts of his paintings, and his paintings suffered greatly for this. The only motive for an artist to have assistants do paintings for them is purely financial.
-JP