DAY 66 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Exercise: Compare These Eight Nudes
Forget the subject matter — what is each of these paintings actually saying?

A Model (Nude Self-Portrait), by Florine Stettheimer, 1915.

So this feels a lot like the the Olympia painting, but later. “Hey thanks for the flowers!” and there’s no hand blocking her privates. It’s interesting it’s a self portrait. That feels pretty cheeky for 1915. Also with the exclusion of “Laure” it feels like she’s her own independent woman, maybe? Or maybe she’s offering the flowers to the viewer?

…

Curiator: Stettheimer was acutely aware of the subversive feminism of her “feminine” point of view. In 1915 she completed, Self Portrait, the first known example of a woman painting herself entirely nude. (Paula Modersohn-Becker is often credited as the first woman to paint a nude self portrait; however, the 2 works she painted in 1906 show her body naked only to the waist.)

As erotic subjects for male viewers’ pleasure, nude figures were traditionally painted with their eyes averted or closed. Stettheimer, however, based her self portrait on 2 nudes that were considered shocking and “morally depraved” in their time.... As with the Maja, she positioned herself resting on her right hip, ensuring that her bodily representation of sexuality—her bright-red pubic hair—is optimally presented to the viewer....

Stettheimer was already 45 years old when she completed Self-Portrait, an age when women were (and still are) considered well past their prime of youthful beauty. She was proud of her fashionably slim body with small breasts and shapely legs. At the time, women’s dresses were only beginning to rise above the ankle. The idea that a woman, particularly a wealthy, unmarried, middle-aged one, would paint herself nude was unthinkable.

Stettheimer never publicly exhibited Self Portrait. Both Parker Tyler and the artist’s sister Ettie referred to it with the title, “A Nude,” rather than identifying it as a self-portrait. Given the scandalous nature of the work, it is conceivable that those around her were blind to the resemblance. The artist must also have understood the controversy that acknowledging the work as a self portrait would have caused... (http://hyperallergic.com/329408/florine-stettheimer-feminist-provocateur/) 


Stettheimer is reclining but propped up on her right side by large pillows. She lies on a mostly white comforter or textile with red vine accents. On the left side of the painting her arm is bent at the elbow and she rests her head delicately on her finger tips. She has a modern looking short-ish red hairstyle. On the bed below this arm is a golden necklace made of circular beads.

Her other arm is also bent at the elbow but drawn in to her body with her forearm extended straight up. In the air she holds a bouquet of flowers, providing some of the only saturated color in the piece. Stettheimer’s legs are crossed at the ankles, leaving her pale body on display for the viewer.

The expression on her face is a mixture of aloof, bemused, and knowing. She looks right at the viewer, and her red lips are together and slightly curved upward into a very subtle smile. 

The background of this piece is less intricate than her later work. Behind the figure is a curtain depicted through vertical brushwork of white and light lilac. The brushwork is thick and visible, giving the background a great amount of dimension. It is flanked, across the top edge and side edges of the painting, by a light pink curtain, with black fringe. These curtains however don’t extend all the way down the left and right sides of the work; they are interrupted by the model’s sumptuous pillow.

This painting is inspired in part by Edouard Manet’s 1863 painting entitled “Olympia.” In Manet’s painting, the model is meeting the viewer’s gaze, wearing a gold bracelet with a maid behind her carrying flowers from an admirer. Olympia was more than likely modeled on a sex worker and for that reason caused a scandal at the Paris Salon of 1865. In contrast, Stettheimer is featured by herself, holding her own bouquet in the air. 

Stettheimer’s subtle changes radically alter the sitter from a prostitute to an independent, modern woman: Rather than receiving a bouquet from an implied admirer, she pleases herself by holding her own flowers.

DAY 65 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Exercise: Compare These Eight Nudes
Forget the subject matter — what is each of these paintings actually saying?

Blue Nude, by Henri Matisse, 1907.

Because of the lack of eye contact, it feels a little more like she’s just enjoying the outdoors alone and nude, as one does ;) Her body position does feel like it’s on display for us however. The hand on her head feels a little like a headache, or a “what am I doing?’ vibe.

…

wiki: Blue Nude (Souvenir of Biskra) ("Nu bleu, Souvenir de Biskra"), an early 1907 oil painting on canvas by Henri Matisse, is located at the Baltimore Museum of Art as part of the Cone Collection.

Matisse painted the nude when a sculpture he was working on shattered. He later finished the sculpture which is entitled Reclining Nude I (Aurore).

Matisse shocked the French public at the 1907 Société des Artistes Indépendants when he exhibited Blue Nude (Souvenir de Biskra). The Blue Nude was one of the paintings that would later create an international sensation at the Armory Show of 1913 in New York City.

The painting, which may be classified as Fauvist, was controversial; it was burned in effigy in 1913 at the Armory Show in Chicago, to where it had toured from New York. In 1907 the painting had a strong effect on Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, partially motivating Picasso to create Les Demoiselles D'Avignon.

When Blue Nude was publicly exhibited soon after it was painted, it became the source of controversy that involved issues of race, race relations, and colonialism. Complaints by critics and viewers that the race of the figure in Blue Nude could not be identified, complicated the issue of "the Other." The ability to identify "the Other" was crucial to the mindset of colonizers, and a major aspect of the colonization program.

…

Where is Biskra? Algeria. It’s funny that not being able to tell the race was problematic for the viewers/critics.

DAY 64- HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Exercise: Compare These Eight Nudes
Forget the subject matter — what is each of these paintings actually saying?

Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch, by Paul Gauguin, 1892.

Yikes! Is Gaugin feeling guilty? “All these under aged girls I’ve been taking advantage of…their dead ancestors must really hate me!” She seems to be saying come sleep here next to me, on the side of the bed where the spirit of the dead will stare into your soul all night long! Enjoy!

…

Wiki: The subject of the painting is Gauguin's young native wife Teha'amana (called Tehura in his letters), who one night, according to Gauguin, was lying in fear when he arrived home late: " ... motionless, naked, belly down on the bed: she stared up at me, her eyes wide with fear, '... Perhaps she took me, with my anguished face, for one of those legendary demons or specters, the Tupapaus that filled the sleepless nights of her people."

Art historian Nancy Mowll Mathews says the painting is a direct descendent of a previous series of "frightened Eves" that Gauguin painted from 1889. His 1889 Breton Eve, shown at the Volpini exhibition of 1889, represented Eve as in fear of the snake, reinterpreting the traditional Christian theme of innocence before the fall.In his letter of 8 December 1892 to his wife Mette (famously neglecting to mention that the girl in question was his lover), he says "I painted a nude of a young girl. In this position she is on the verge of being indecent. But I want it that way: the lines and movement are interesting to me. And so, I give her, in depicting the head, a bit of a fright." He then needed to find a pretext for the girl's emotions.[4] At first (in his letter to Mette) Gauguin made the old woman the subject of her fright, but later in his account in Noa Noa made himself the subject of her fear. Mathews says it is too simple to attribute Tehura's terror to her belief in spirits and irrational fear of the dark; she says, following Sweetman, that Gauguin's sexual predilections should not be ignored when trying to understand the work. Rather, she suggests the girl's fear was a response to Gauguin's aggressive behavior, consistent with his known battering of his wife Mette, the submissive fear in her eyes his erotic reward.

Stephen F. Eisenman, professor of Art History at Northwestern University, suggests the painting and its narrative is "a veritable encyclopaedia of colonial racism and misogyny". Eisenman's book Gauguin's Skirt challenges conventional notions of the political and gender content of Gauguin's paintings. In Spirit he sees parallels not only with Manet's Olympia (see below), but also with the Louvre Hermaphrodite in the boyishness of the features and the a tergo posture. The androgynous depiction is in keeping with Polynesian cosmology and its stress on the dual nature of things.

Other historians such as Naomi E. Maurer have viewed the narrative as a device to make the indecency of the subject more acceptable to a European audience.

Gauguin was an admirer of Édouard Manet's 1863 Olympia. He had seen it exhibited at the 1889 Exposition Universelle and commented in a review, "La Belle Olympia, who once caused such a scandal, is esconced there like the pretty woman she is, and draws not a few appreciative glances". After the French state purchased Olympia from Manet's widow, with funds from a public subscription organised by Claude Monet, Gauguin took the opportunity to make a three-quarter size copy when it was exhibited in the Musée du Luxembourg. The copy is not an especially faithful one and it is thought he completed it from a photograph. Edgar Dégas later purchased it for 230 francs at Gauguin's 1895 auction of his paintings to raise funds for his return to Tahiti. It is known that Gauguin took a photograph of Manet's Olympia with him on his first visit to Tahiti. Claire Frèches-Thory remarks that Olympia, the modern equivalent of Titian's Venus of Urbino, is a constant presence in Gauguin's great nudes of the South Pacific: Spirit of the Dead Watching, Te arii vahine, and Nevermore.

When Gauguin exhibited Spirit of the Dead Watching at his largely unsuccessful 1893 Durand-Ruel exhibition (in particular he failed to sell Spirit at the elevated 3,000 francs he had set for it), several critics noted the compositional similarities with Olympia. Thadée Natanson, a founder of La Revue Blanche, called it the "Olympia of Tahiti", while Alfred Jarry, more pointedly, dubbed it "the brown Olympia".

…

DAY 63 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Exercise: Compare These Eight Nudes
Forget the subject matter — what is each of these paintings actually saying?

Olympia, by Édouard Manet, 1863.

Well, feels problematic with the black woman we can barely see. Like a photograph, they’ve “exposed” for the nude white lady and the woman of color is underexposed. The cat too is hard to see. So the black woman has flowers and is looking at the nude woman’s face, and the nude woman is looking at the viewer. The cat is looking at us too. No one seems super thrilled about any of this. The boobs are out, but the nether regions are covered. I’m assuming she’s actually rich, or maybe her lover is? Where are the flowers headed? For a vase or did they just arrive and it’s like “oh these are from Count Blahdy-blah, jealous, Mr. Viewer?’

….

Wiki: What shocked contemporary audiences was not Olympia's nudity, nor the presence of her fully clothed maid, but her confrontational gaze and a number of details identifying her as a demi-mondaine or prostitute.[1] These include the orchid in her hair, her bracelet, pearl earrings and the oriental shawl on which she lies, symbols of wealth and sensuality. The black ribbon around her neck, in stark contrast with her pale flesh, and her cast-off slipper underline the voluptuous atmosphere. "Olympia" was a name associated with prostitutes in 1860s Paris.[2]

The painting is modelled after Titian's Venus of Urbino (c. 1534).[3] Whereas the left hand of Titian's Venus is curled and appears to entice, Olympia's left hand appears to block, which has been interpreted as symbolic of her sexual independence from men and her role as a prostitute, granting or restricting access to her body in return for payment. Manet replaced the little dog (symbol of fidelity) in Titian's painting with a black cat, which traditionally symbolized prostitution. Olympia disdainfully ignores the flowers presented to her by her servant, probably a gift from a client. Some have suggested that she is looking in the direction of the door, as her client barges in unannounced.

The painting deviates from the academic canon in its style, characterized by broad, quick brushstrokes, studio lighting that eliminates mid-tones, large color surfaces and shallow depth. Unlike the smooth idealized nude of Alexandre Cabanel's La naissance de Vénus, also painted in 1863, Olympia is a real woman whose nakedness is emphasized by the harsh lighting.[1] The canvas alone is 51.4 x 74.8 inches, which is rather large for this genre-style painting. Most paintings that were this size depicted historical or mythological events, so the size of the work, among other factors, caused surprise. Finally, Olympia is fairly thin by the artistic standards of the time and her relatively undeveloped body is more girlish than womanly. Charles Baudelaire thought thinness was more indecent than fatness.[4]

The model for Olympia, Victorine Meurent, became an accomplished painter in her own right.[5]

…

This is interesting, the Musée D’Orsay renamed the works for their black subjects, this one is now called Laure (from his notebooks)

DAY 62 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Exercise: Compare These Eight Nudes
Forget the subject matter — what is each of these paintings actually saying?

The Naked Maja, by Francisco Goya, 1797–1800. Photo: Buyenlarge/Getty Images

This feels very straightforward “hello, sailor!” in her come hither look and pose. The pillows seem fancy, but I can’t tell if the velvet chair is actually nice, or just a throw over a shabby chair.

What is a maja?

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Maja: Majo (masc.) or maja (fem.), also manolo and manola, after the most popular names, were people from the lower classes of Spanish society, especially in Madrid, who distinguished themselves by their elaborate outfits and sense of style in dress and manners, as well as by their cheeky behavior.[1] 

WIkipedia: The painting carries many of the traditions of depictions of the nude in Spanish art, but marks a clear break in significant ways, especially in her bold gaze. Further, the accompanying pendant showing a woman in contemporary dress makes it clear that the focus of the work is not of a mythological subject, as in Velázquez's Rokeby Venus, but in fact of a nude Spanish woman. More obviously, while Velázquez painted his Venus revealing only her back, Goya's portrait is a full frontal view. Goya's figuration is short and angular, while Velázquez's is elongated and curved, and his figure placed on richly coloured satin, which starkly contrasts to the bare white cloths Goya's maja rests on.

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sort of hilarious there’s the same painting with clothes on:

DAY 61 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 16: Learn the Difference Between Subject Matter and Content

Exercise: Compare These Eight Nudes
Forget the subject matter — what is each of these paintings actually saying?

Rokeby Venus, by Diego Velázquez, 1647. Photo: Art Media/Print Collector/Getty Images

Without looking anything up first, I feel like Cupid is telling Venus to love and value herself. Like “look at you!” I like that she has her back to us. The viewer doesn’t matter. She’s not looking at us in the mirror, she’s looking at herself.

What’s with the pink ribbon? Does she wear it á là Cupid? Or what?

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Wikipedia says: The Rokeby Venus (/ˈroʊkbi/; also known as The Toilet of Venus, Venus at her Mirror, Venus and Cupid, or La Venus del espejo) is a painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Completed between 1647 and 1651,[3] and probably painted during the artist's visit to Italy, the work depicts the goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed and looking into a mirror held by the Roman god of physical love, her son Cupid. The painting is in the National Gallery, London.

Numerous works, from the ancient to the baroque, have been cited as sources of inspiration for Velázquez. The nude Venuses of the Italian painters, such as Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (c. 1510) and Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538), were the main precedents. In this work, Velázquez combined two established poses for Venus: recumbent on a couch or a bed, and gazing at a mirror. She is often described as looking at herself on the mirror, although this is physically impossible since viewers can see her face reflected in their direction. This phenomenon is known as the Venus effect.[4] In a number of ways the painting represents a pictorial departure, through its central use of a mirror, and because it shows the body of Venus turned away from the observer of the painting.[5]

The Rokeby Venus is the only surviving female nude by Velázquez. Nudes were extremely rare in seventeenth-century Spanish art,[6] which was policed actively by members of the Spanish Inquisition. Despite this, nudes by foreign artists were keenly collected by the court circle, and this painting was hung in the houses of Spanish courtiers until 1813, when it was brought to England to hang in Rokeby Park, Yorkshire. In 1906, the painting was purchased by National Art Collections Fund for the National Gallery, London. Although it was attacked and badly damaged in 1914 by the suffragette Mary Richardson, it soon was fully restored and returned to display.

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I would say that there is no eye contact with the viewer so even though technically it would suggest that she is looking at us, it is the more about the feeling than the science, and she is looking at herself. If there were eye contact that would be different.

Watch a video about the time the Venus was attacked!

Aw, man! Poor Venus! And I get why the suffragette might lash out at the concept of “perfect femininity” but I think we’re at the point now where we see how destroying other women is just doing the bidding of the patriarchy. But a man did paint it so…I don’t know. I feel like destroying art is kind of the worst.

DAY 60 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 16: Learn the Difference Between Subject Matter and Content

One of the most crucial lessons there is!

Is this painting about the pope or insanity? Photo: © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/ARTIMAGE 2018

The subject matter of Francis Bacon’s 1953 Study After Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X is a pope, a seated male in a transparent sort of box. That’s it. The content might be a rebellion or an indictment of religion. It might be claustrophobia or hysteria or the madness of religion or civilization.

The subject matter of Michelangelo’s David is a standing man with a sling. The content might be grace, beauty — he was just 17, if you know what I mean — pensiveness, physical awareness, timelessness, eternal things, a form of perfection, vulnerability. This content is High Renaissance. Bernini’s David, made 120 years later, is Baroque — all action and drama.

When you look at art, make subject matter the first thing you see — and then stop seeing it.

The content of Michelangelo’s David is beauty. Photo: CM Dixon/Print Collector/Getty Images

Try to find the content in a painting by Robert Ryman, who has been making almost-all-white work since the 1950s. Ask what Ryman’s (or any artist’s) ideas are and what his relationship to paint is, to surface, to internal scale (meaning what size brushstrokes were used in the work), to color. What is white to Ryman? Note the date: 1960. Why would he make this painting then? Would this have looked like other art at the time? How would it have been different? Ask yourself what else was being made then. How is the work hung on the wall? Is it in a frame? Is the stretcher or surface thick, thin, close to the wall? How is this like or unlike other almost-monochrome works by Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, Agnes Martin, or Ad Reinhardt? Is the surface sensual or intellectual? Does the painter want you to see the work all at once or in parts? Are some parts more important than others? Is every part of the surface supposed to be equally important? What are the artist’s ideas about craft and skill? Do you think this artist likes painting or is trying to paint against it? Is this anti-art? What is Ryman’s relationship to materials, tools, mark-making? How do you think he made the work? How might it be original or innovative? Why should this be in a museum? Why should it not be in a museum? Would you want to live with it? Why or why not? Why do you imagine the painting is this size? Now try a Frida Kahlo.

DAY 59 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 15: Understand That Art Is Not Just for Looking At

Art does something.

Navajo sand paintings are also pleas to the gods. Photo: Geoffrey Clements/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

In the past 100 years or so, art has been reduced to being mainly something we look at in clean, white, well-lit art galleries and museums. Art has been limited this way, made a passive thing: another tourist attraction to see, take a picture in front of, and move on from.

But for almost its entire history, art has been a verb, something that does things to or for you, that makes things happen. Holy relics in churches all over the world are said to heal. Art has been carried into war; made to protect us, curse a neighbor, kill someone; been an aid in getting pregnant or preventing pregnancy. There are huge, beautiful, multicolored, intricately structured Navajo sand paintings used in ceremonies to ask the gods for assistance. The eyes painted on Egyptian sarcophagi are not there for us to see; they are there so the interred person can watch. The paintings inside the tombs were meant to be seen only by beings in the afterlife.

Have you ever cried in front of a work of art? Write down six things about it that made you cry. Tack the list to your studio wall. Those are magical abracadabras for you.

#2

THE LION MONUMENT - Lucerne, Switzerland

I guess this is the closest thing to crying in front of a painting that I’ve experienced. I’m not the only one…

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff—for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion—and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.

— Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad, 1880

I was far away, standing in the rain before the sleeping lion of Lucerne, a colossal, noble, stoic lion carved from the rock of a low cliff. The rain fell, obscuring tears. I knew that I would see Sam again somewhere in the landscape of dream, but at that moment I imagined I was back in Kentucky, with the rolling fields and the creek that widens into a small river. I pictured Sam’s books lining the shelves, his boots lined against the wall, beneath the window where he would watch the horses grazing by the wooden fence. I pictured myself sitting at the kitchen table, reaching for that tattooed hand.

A long time ago, Sam sent me a letter. A long one, where he told me of a dream that he had hoped would never end. “He dreams of horses,” I told the lion. “Fix it for him, will you? Have Big Red waiting for him, a true champion. He won’t need a saddle, he won’t need anything.” I headed to the French border, a crescent moon rising in the black sky. I said goodbye to my buddy, calling to him, in the dead of night.

Patti Smith (on Sam Shepard.)

DAY 58 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 15: Understand That Art Is Not Just for Looking At

Art does something.

Navajo sand paintings are also pleas to the gods. Photo: Geoffrey Clements/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

In the past 100 years or so, art has been reduced to being mainly something we look at in clean, white, well-lit art galleries and museums. Art has been limited this way, made a passive thing: another tourist attraction to see, take a picture in front of, and move on from.

But for almost its entire history, art has been a verb, something that does things to or for you, that makes things happen. Holy relics in churches all over the world are said to heal. Art has been carried into war; made to protect us, curse a neighbor, kill someone; been an aid in getting pregnant or preventing pregnancy. There are huge, beautiful, multicolored, intricately structured Navajo sand paintings used in ceremonies to ask the gods for assistance. The eyes painted on Egyptian sarcophagi are not there for us to see; they are there so the interred person can watch. The paintings inside the tombs were meant to be seen only by beings in the afterlife.

Have you ever cried in front of a work of art? Write down six things about it that made you cry. Tack the list to your studio wall. Those are magical abracadabras for you.

***

I don’t think I’ve actually cried in front of a painting. I’ve have to think about that one…I have cried in films (which can be art on occasion.) The times that count for me are the times that don’t make sense, anyone can cry at something sad but these are more unexplainable moments.

The first of these happened in CHICAGO, during one of the dance numbers, I started to get choked up. Now, I don’t love musicals, or dancing even. So it was kind of baffling. I think it was just the sheer awesomeness of it. The lights and the way it was shot. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger at the top of their game. But then it happened again in Wonder Woman, first when they’re on island fighting each other, then the soldiers, and then of course the “No Man’s Land” scene. That scene was easy, it was like a visualization of what it’s like to be a woman: constantly being under attack, going in anyway and weathering the barrage, mostly in service of others. That scene makes me tear up, even now as I think of it. A lot of it has to do with representation. We so rarely see women being strong and heroic that it takes us by surprise.

DAY 57- HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 11: Listen to the Crazy Voices in Your Head

I have my own sort of School of Athens in my head. A team of rivals, friends, famous people, influences dead and alive. They’re all looking over my shoulder as I work; none of them are mean. All make observations, recommendations, etc. I use music a lot. I think, Okay, let’s begin this piece with a real pow! Like Beethoven. Or the Barbara Kruger in my head says, Make this sentence short, punchy, declarative, aggressive. Led Zeppelin chimes in with, Try a hairy experiment here; let it all show. All the Sienese paintings I’ve ever seen beg me, Make it beautiful. D. H. Lawrence is pounding on the table, Alexander Pope is making me get a grip, Wallace Stevens listens to my language and recommends words, Whitman pushes me on, my inner Melville gets grandiose, and Proust drives me to make longer and longer sentences till they almost break, and my editor cuts these into eighths or edits them down to one. (Writers need editors. No exceptions.) These voices will always be there for when things get tough.

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Maira Kalman

Lynda Barry

Edie Sedgwick

Jean Michel Basquiat

Keith Haring

Eugene Delacroix

Federico Fellini

Giulietta Masina

Marilyn Monroe

Nina Simone

Barbara Kruger

Jenny Holzer

Radiohead

John Cheever

Raymond Chandler

James Ellroy

Helena Bonham-Carter

Phoebe Waller-Bridge

DAY 56 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Step Three: Learn How to Think Like an Artist

This is the fun part.

Lesson 14: Compare Cats and Dogs

Okay, this sounds ridiculous, but call your dog and it comes right over to you, placing its head in your lap, slobbering, wagging its tail: a miraculous direct communication with another species. Now call your cat. It might look up, twitch a bit, perhaps go over to the couch, rub against it, circle once, and lie down again. What am I saying?

In seeing how the cat reacted, you are seeing something very close to how artists communicate.

The cat is not interested in direct communication. The cat places a third thing between you and it and relates to you through this third thing. Cats communicate abstractly, indirectly. As Carol Bove says, “You don’t just walk up to beauty and kiss her on the mouth!” Artists are cats. (And they can’t be herded.)

DAY 55 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 13: Scavenge

Claes Oldenburg with his Floor Cone in 1963. Photo: Courtesy the Oldenburg van Bruggen Studio, © 1962 Claes Oldenburg

Life is your syllabus: Gather from everywhere.

Andy Warhol said, “I always like to work on … things that were discarded, that everybody knew were no good.” He also understood that “department stores will become museums,” meaning that optical information can come from everywhere, even from a Celestial Seasonings package.

Originality did not conveniently die just in time for you and your generation to insist it no longer exists. You just have to find it. You can do this by looking for overlooked periods of art history, disliked and discredited styles, and forgotten ideas, images, and objects. Then work them into your own art 100 times or 1,000 times.

day2

DAY 54 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 12: Know What You Hate

It is probably you.

Exercise: Make a List of Art
Make a list of three artists whose work you despise. Make a list of five things about each artist that you do not like; be as specific as possible. Often there’s something about what these artists do that you share. Really think about this.

#3 Thomas Kinkade

1. Does he even count?

2. Is he a real artist??

3. Just the worst kind of cliched art

4. His fans aren’t anyone I want to have anything to do with

5. seems like a glorified hobbyist

I worry about only being number 5 and never getting past that.

DAY 53 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 12: Know What You Hate

It is probably you.

Exercise: Make a List of Art
Make a list of three artists whose work you despise. Make a list of five things about each artist that you do not like; be as specific as possible. Often there’s something about what these artists do that you share. Really think about this.

#2 Georgia O’Keeffe

1. I like the idea of her, just not her paintings, except the New York ones.

2. I don’t like flower paintings, even ones that aren’t really about flowers ;)

3. They’re everywhere. I hope she saw some of that merch ca$h.

4. Some are just plain bad.

5. There’s something cheesy about the Southwest

I think while I respond to wanting to be a painter of a specific place (California for instance) I see that there can be a touristy/hackneyed element were you to get typecast as a specific kind of painter and that feeds on itself, where you become the parody or cliche of the place you loved. Like ecotourism, loving a place to death.

DAY 52 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 12: Know What You Hate

It is probably you.

Exercise: Make a List of Art
Make a list of three artists whose work you despise. Make a list of five things about each artist that you do not like; be as specific as possible. Often there’s something about what these artists do that you share. Really think about this.

#1 Takashi Murakami

1. It’s art that someone who thinks they know me would say “that’s SO YOU.”

2. It’s repetitive.

3. It’s boring.

4. It’s devoid of content.

5. It’s dated.

What do I share? I guess I fear being boring and dated.

DAY 51 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 10: Find Your Own Voice

Then exaggerate it.

If someone says your work looks like someone else’s and you should stop making it, I say don’t stop doing it. Do it again. Do it 100 times or 1,000 times. Then ask an artist friend whom you trust if your work still looks too much like the other person’s art. If it still looks too much like the other person’s, try another path.

Imagine the horror Philip Guston must have felt when he followed his own voice and went from being a first-string Abstract Expressionist in the 1950s to painting clunky, cartoony figures smoking cigars, driving around in convertibles, and wearing KKK hoods! He was all but shunned for this. He followed his voice anyway. This work is now some of the most revered from the entire period. In your downtime …

Exercise: An Archaeology
Make an index, family tree, chart, or diagram of your interests. All of them, everything: visual, physical, spiritual, sexual. Leisure time, hobbies, foods, buildings, airports, everything. Every book, movie, website, etc. The totality of this self-exposure may be daunting, scary. But your voice is here. This will become a resource and record to return to and add to for the rest of your life.

DAY 46 - 50 HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Exercise: Build a Life Totem
Using any material on any surface, make or draw or render a four-foot-tall totem pole of your life. From this totem, we should be able to know something about you other than what you look like or how many siblings you have. Include anything you want: words, letters, maps, photos, objects, signs. This should take no longer than a week. After a week, it’s finished. Period. Now show it to someone who does not know you well. Tell them only, “This is a totem pole of my life till now.” That’s all. It doesn’t matter if they like it. Ask them to tell you what it means about your life. No clues. Listen to what they tell you.

Well, of course I didn’t do exactly what I was supposed to. I went with the idea about each grain/ring of the tree (in the totem pole) is a year and did that as my totem on a map. It starts where I was born and then location got its own color.

DAY 33 - 45 HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Exercise: Build a Life Totem
Using any material on any surface, make or draw or render a four-foot-tall totem pole of your life. From this totem, we should be able to know something about you other than what you look like or how many siblings you have. Include anything you want: words, letters, maps, photos, objects, signs. This should take no longer than a week. After a week, it’s finished. Period. Now show it to someone who does not know you well. Tell them only, “This is a totem pole of my life till now.” That’s all. It doesn’t matter if they like it. Ask them to tell you what it means about your life. No clues. Listen to what they tell you.

****

Okay, so this was supposed to take me one week. I had an idea for a background- California. I’ve lived my whole life here. These are the towns I’ve known well or lived in: Newport Beach, Irvine, Saratoga, Los Angeles (Westwood, Fairfax District, Los Feliz,) Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, and Hemet. As our country slips farther backward, I appreciate the fact that California could say fuck it and become its own country. California’s economic output is now surpassed only by the total GDP of the United States, China, Japan and Germany.

But then thinking more about the assignment, how do I make a totem pole of my life? Is it based on people? Parents, husband, child? But is that all I am, the people I’m related to? This project made me take a hard look at myself in the mirror and it’s like I’m a vampire, I can’t see anything.

I want to maybe do something a little Basquiat-y and have words but I’m worried it’ll end up instead like a kid’s mother’s day card where they do adjectives based on the first letters of your name.

Darling

Energetic

Bossy

Radiant

Artistic

I don’t feel any closer to being able to make this…

I watched some videos about actual totem poles. Maybe it is about people.

DAY 31 & 32 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 9: “Embed thought in material.” — Roberta Smith

What does this mean? An object should express ideas; art should contain emotions. And these ideas and feelings should be easy to understand — complex or not.

These days, an artist might exhibit an all-brown painting with a long wall text informing us that the artist took the canvas to Kosovo near the site of a 1990s Serbian massacre and rubbed dirt on the canvas for two hours while blindfolded to commemorate the killing. Recently, while I was looking at boring black-and-white photographs of clouds in the sky, a gallerist sidled up to me and seriously opined, “These are pictures of clouds over Ferguson, Missouri, in protest of police violence.” I started yelling, “No! These are just dumb pictures of clouds and have nothing to do with anything.”

There is a different way. In the winter of 1917, Marcel Duchamp, age 29, bought a urinal at J.L. Mott Iron Works on Fifth Avenue, turned it on its side, signed it “R. Mutt 1917,” titled it Fountain, and submitted it to the non-juried Society of Independent Artists exhibition.

Fountain is an aesthetic equivalent of the Word made flesh, an object that is also an idea — that anything can be an artwork. Today it is called the most influential artwork of the 20th century.

This project of embedding thought in material to change our conception of the world isn’t only a new development. When we see cave paintings, we are seeing one of the most advanced and complex visual operating systems ever devised by our species. The makers of the work wanted to portray in the real world something they had in their head and make that information readable to others. It has lasted tens of thousands of years. With that in mind …

DAY 29 & 30 - HOW TO BE AN ARTIST

Lesson 8: Now, Redefine Skill

Artistic skill has nothing to do with technical proficiency, mimetic exactitude, or so-called good drawing. For every great artist, there is a different definition of skill. Take drawing classes, if you wish; learn to draw “like the masters.” You still have to do it in an original way. Pollock could not draw realistically, but he made flicking paint at a canvas from above, for a time, the most prized skill in the art world. You can do the same — your skill will be whatever it is you’re doing differently.

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