Subscribe to our feed
Eye care: the artist’s most precious asset
Digital photo of the back of my left eyeball taken with a retinal scanner.
I love getting my eyes “read.” First there’s the sense of accomplishment. Like getting your taxes done or washing the floors, or visiting your doctor or therapist, or your Tarot card reader I suppose, you know you are going to feel good because you are looking after things, yourself in particular.
Then there’s the toys. He has a machine that tests your peripheral vision. You press your eyes one at a time up tight against a view finder, then push a button whenever you see a small flash of light anywhere in the circular field. It’s like a video game you can’t fail.
And of course there’s the attention. Rotholz has great chair-side manner. He’s bright, engaging and concerned in all the right proportions. You can get all the usual stuff, reading the eye charts and the resulting prescription anywhere, but where Rotholz really comes alive is when he’s looking at your retinal scans. He’ll tell you what he’s looking for and what he sees and what it means. And he notices things. He’s observant. With me it’s my skin, which reads like a page recording a litany of bad habits. With the gentle paternal authority of an old-timey family doctor, Rotholz patiently but firmly reminds me to look after myself. It’s like a medical check up but without drawing blood.
Winston Leathers, screenprint, c. 1970
We take a lot of things about our eyes for granted, so a few more notes about eyes and eye care.
The poets say the eyes are windows to the soul but they are also practically useful in detecting a host of ailments: “Communicable illnesses such as AIDS, syphilis, malaria, chicken pox and Lyme disease as well as hereditary diseases like leukemia, lymphoma, and sickle cell anemia impact the eyes. Pregnancy also affects the eyes. Likewise, indications of chronic health conditions such as congestive heart failure, atherosclerosis, and cholesterol issues first appear in the eyes.” [from Wikipedia]
We also take the “rightness” of what we see for granted. Yes, Patricia, the images projected on the back of the retina through the lens are indeed upside down and backwards: “Initially, the light waves are bent or converged first by the cornea, and then further by the crystalline lens (located immediately behind the iris and the pupil), to a nodal point (N) located immediately behind the back surface of the lens. At that point, the image becomes reversed (turned backwards) and inverted (turned upside-down).” [source] This is the way a camera lens works (including the pinhole camera and camera obscura) and also, somewhat mysteriously, reversed left to right (but not upside down) the default setting for Photo Booth on my Mac. What software developer thought a computer screen should act like a mirror?
photo: Todd Pitt for USA Today
The most important 158 pages you will ever read!
The sensationalism of the title of this post is intended to demonstrate the kind of difficult questions facing the arts and culture sector today: a question like whether sensationalizing in order to attract audiences compromises core cultural values. Simon Brault’s book No Culture, No Future (Le Facteur C en français) sets out not so much answer this question, or questions like it, as re-frame the whole way we think about the place of culture in society.
Drawing on his extensive experience as CEO of the National Theatre School, spearheading the restoration of the Monument-National in Montréal, founding Les journées de la culture, and as Vice-Chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, Brault describes the various impasses the cultural community faces to achieving sustained support: we must, he argues, fundamentally question and then rebuild the relationship between the cultural sector and the public. Brault’s project is a road map to “democratization,” the kind of engagement in which the public does not merely “participate” as consumers but is so deeply connected to culture that it is an indispensable part of life.
For Brault it is not a question of finding better arguments for supporting the arts. He notes that we have ample evidence of the positive economic impact of museums, galleries, theatres, orchestras, festivals, etc., yet the arts and culture are still generally regarded as a luxury, affordable in good times but far from essential. Brault cautions against putting too much store in economic arguments; it is better to hang on to core values even if that necessitates underestimating the economic contribution of the arts and culture because the alternative: “one-dimensional and instrumental thinking that reduces cultural value to calculable economic impact,” risks shearing off the very core values that are the foundation of our best arguments.
Neither is it a question of simply increasing government funding. Brault reminds us that state funding of the arts and culture is purposive, based on philosophical principles and broad social objectives. In Canada there are two approaches, one in Quebec founded on France’s culture pour tous (culture for all), in which state investment in culture is understood as promoting democratic participation, and another in the rest of Canada based on the British system of autonomous arts councils which detaches culture from politics. For Brault, it is not a matter of which approach is better. The bigger issue, he argues, is the multiplication of programs to fund arts and culture among Ministries and departments and agencies at all levels: while this abundance promises greater independence from single-source funding, there is real danger of arbitrary retraction where policy objectives are vague and unaligned (something we are witnessing already as funding regimes threaten to topple like dominoes, starting with recent “clearcutting” of arts programs in B.C.).
Neither is it a question of cultural communities more strenuously or loudly asserting the importance of culture. For Brault this approach is crippled by contradictions and competition within the cultural field(s), the contradiction of cultural “experts” professing to know what’s best for the public and a public largely unconvinced but nevertheless expected to foot the bill, and competition that periodically erupts into skirmishes and fueding, for example between “universalists” who believe in hierarchies that produce “excellence” and “relativists” championing diverse, critical, independent voices. Brault again refuses to choose sides. Rather he focuses on the practical dilemma that despite remarkable growth, increasing diversity and powerful new communications tools, the cultural communities are unable to find a common voice or arguments that are broadly credible outside their own immediate spheres. This leads Brault to what is perhaps the most provocative assertion in the book: that cultural policy cannot be left to the cultural community itself.
Brault balances this assertion with a fair and impassioned plea to address the economic plight of working artists. Clearly creators are the foundation of the arts and Brault is sensitive to the failure of both market and state to build sustaining economic structures. Refus Global, the Kingston Conference of 1941, income disparity, and number of artists (142,000) are all discussed in the book, as are arts organizations.
At the end of the day, however, Brault asks us to look at the problems from a different perspective, to come at them not from the inside out but from the outside in. Great progress has been made, he notes, through international policy agreements like the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expression, which establishes culture as a universal right, and which has permitted governments to insulate their distinctive cultural production from the “pure” economic competition of free trade markets. The underlying concept of “culture as an essential dimension of human experience” is a foundation upon which we can begin to build a better integrated, stable and sustainable cultural field.
In Part 3 of the book, Brault puts forward a practical example of the kind of building he envisions, taking us through his experience restoring and re-purposing the Monument-National to the formation of Culture Montréal, a consortium of arts, government and business leaders whose singular mission was to join the words “cultural” and “metropolis” and make them synonymous with “Montréal.” Brault is frank about Culture Montreal’s ultimate failure to create a single new agency that would have been responsible for all cultural activity in Montréal, but undeterred from his conviction that cross-sector cooperation is the way to move culture from the margins to the centre of the public policy stage.
Here again, Brault’s is unafraid to court controversy; his ideas about centralization, working with but not being led by cultural producers alone, and overall emphasis on “leadership” rather than “governance” may rattle the chains of cultural workers rutted in certain ways of doing things, tethered to state funding, suspicious of the private sector and siloed by internal policy and politics. Brault is respectful of these constituencies, which he sees as “legitimate, necessary and [to be] sought after,” but asks again that we approach things differently: the key to moving forward, he argues, is the human factor—developing trust relationships between funders, sponsors, creators, producers, presenters, etc., building a common vision, “to imagine the city differently,” which then makes it possible to get things done.
Brault ends the book in the same tone of modest conviction that runs throughout: fixing the arts and culture will not solve all the problems of the world, but it may be an essential antidote to the overwhelming litany of disasters presented daily by the media. Culture is empowering. Wherever people struggle, there is culture. Song, dance, theatre, music, art give us solace, but more, they concretely improve our lives, allowing us to recover our sense of hope and work together. What we must form, he concludes, is a lasting pact between culture and the public, a common understanding that culture is essential, sustaining.
– Post Scripts —
Simon Brault’s book Le Facteur C was released in French in February and in English in May as No Culture, No Future. I found it somewhat difficult to get a copy of the English version. Amazon and Chapters weren’t stocking it; they said it would take 2-3 weeks to get a copy. My local bookstores, which, in my downtown Toronto “artsy” neighbourhood, you might expect to stock it, didn’t, or had sold the few copies they ordered and then didn’t re-order. I finally found a copy at BookCity, the remainder store, of all places. The publisher of the English version, Cormorant Books, reports that the book has almost sold out of its initial press run, 1000 copies, in 10 weeks, but they are uncertain whether to reprint. By comparison, 4000 copies of the French version were sold in Quebec in 10 months.
This is a book that should be dressing the windows of bookstores coast to coast to coast, that should be a hot topic of debate with copies being traded between friends and colleagues. If it is not, it is proof of the very challenge Brault describes in the book: until the public is truly, madly, deeply engaged with the arts and culture they will continue to be precarious (and, we might add, important books like this are not going to reach everyone they should reach).
Getting public commitment to the arts, the very subject of the book, is also the thing that will limit its reception in English-speaking Canada. In Quebec Brault’s book was a “cause célèbre” for months, with coverage in all the major newspapers. But then Quebec is Brault’s home turf, where he is very well known for his many accomplishments, including Les journées de la culture, a province wide arts festival.
Perhaps I am overstating this. Perhaps all the people that need to read this book already have. But I mention it because in the book trade there is a tendency to think that all books have to sell to the wide market for them to be successful when in reality most books have small but often dedicated audiences. The challenge is how to reach these “niche” audiences when the trend is, as Alberto Manguel lamented in his 2007 Massey Lecture, towards the “industrialization” of literature. Outside of Quebec where culture is a dominant force in public policy, books like Brault’s are too easily lost in the cacophony.
__
I have a few criticisms of the physical book. The French version is published somewhat austerely like a policy treatise—in trade paperback format with a glossy cover, glossy interior pages and standard single line spaced typography—which it is, and is not. In fact Brault lays out complex policy ideas using accessible language that makes them easy to grasp. Clearly he is hoping for a wide readership. The English design is a little “friendlier:” slightly smaller, almost pocketbook size, with an attractive colour cover, elegant French flaps and easy to read 1 1/2 line spaced text. I especially like the short summary text at the beginning of each of the major sections (in both English and French versions).
There is no index, which is understandable because I know from experience that indexing is an intense, specialized task that is both costly and extends publication dates. However, it serves an author well to indicate succinctly what they feel is important enough to index and it serves readers to be able to quickly see from an index what has been included, and what left out.
I have only one other criticism and it is something of a “pet cause” for me. It’s about translation. Brault’s translator, Jonathan Kaplansky, is clearly a professional, as reflected by his rich vocabulary and stalwart effort to find equivalent English vernacular expressions to match Brault’s accessible writing style. However, if English were his first language, you would never encounter a phrase such as this: “… the daily commitment I’ve carried out for fifteen years to favour cultural democratization and bring the arts to the heart of urban developments.” This sounds pretty much like it’s been run through Babelfish. What he means to say, and it is not easy to capture in English, is something more like: “… my daily work over fifteen years promoting cultural democratization and bringing the arts to the heart of urban development. Is it a big difference? Not for those who are reading through to the ideas. But if the goal is to render a text seamlessly accessible to English-only audiences, then, forgive me for saying so, but francophone authors and publishers have to work harder at it. I understand the challenges; there are few thoroughly bilingual translators. Perhaps the answer is to use two translators or a translation team, a bilingual francophone to translate from French to English and another for whom English is their first language to polish that up to the standards of vernacular English. Would that double translation costs? Perhaps. But it is a cost that must be borne if treasures like Le Facteur C are to be widely read, appreciated and effective.
– drift –
Kazuo Ohno 1907-2010
Kazuo Ohno, Japanese Butoh dancer
I learned about Ohno in 1991 or ‘92 when I was in Montreal for a meeting of Canada’s artist-run centres. As I recall, Petra Chevrier invited me to take a much needed break and see a movie. She took me to see a documentary at a rep theatre about the Japanese Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno. I don’t recall the name of the film; it must have been either “O-shi no shozo” [A Portrait of Mr. O] (1969) directed by Chiaki Nagano or “The Scene of the Soul” (1991) by Katsumi Hirano. In any case, it was very moving, carving an exquisite space in my heart.
Ohno passed away this month at the age of 103.
A great array of photos, video clips on Free Art London List (FALL).
From the BBC obituary:
“Akaji Muro, leader of Japanese dance troupe Dairakudakan, called Ohno “a miraculously extraordinary dancer. He taught us the lesson that existence is a fragile state of non-existence. May he continue to shed light as a spiritual guardian for all young Butoh dancers.”
[drift]
P.S. If you recall my post about artists as superheros, turns out its a theme that’s in the air: The League of Extraordinary Dancers, from director Jon Chu.
Meanwhile, Canadians will be treated to the “new” reality show about artists, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, debuting on Bravo this Saturday at 8 Eastern time (the series launched three weeks ago in the States). So much for art school and all those student loans.
Banksy’s cleaning up
Banksy's cleaning up... the art world and from the art world.
- Banksy [Quoted in a comment on the CBC's website]
With the movie Exit through the Gift Shop, UK artist Banksy and co-conspirator Shep Fairey set out to clean up modern art while cleaning up in the process. The movie proposes to be about what it’s not, the story of a guy, Thierry Guetta, who was supposed to make this film about street art but couldn’t. For sure, there’s a lot of good footage of Banksy, Space Invader, Fairey and others, but the unexpected twist at the end, which is literally an exit through a ginormous gallery as gift shop packed with the most preposterously derivative and directionless “pop” art shoots straight for the heart of the bloated commercialism of the art world. Pity the poor suckers who’ve paid, if the movie is to be believed, tens of thousands for the crap art Banksy and Fairey concocted for the movie.
Neither artist needs the money; they’ve done very well for themselves, having been elevated from street to “high art” galleries, but with their creation Mr. Brainwash (MBW) they have fabricated a monster of proportions unseen since Mary Shelly’s Dr. Frankenstein channeled lightening. One can only imagine the gales of laughter reverberating through their cavernous warehouse studios as they try to outdo each other with the worst possible ideas for new art by MBW.
Don’t get me wrong. My 12 year old and I loved the movie, graffiti, and stencils in particular, are a great use of both media and the ineffable, gallery-like blankness of our cities’ decaying surfaces. How can you not love cheap, lo-fi, diy reproduction that is yet full of the auratic value of handicrafts, vintage clothing or faded photographs? (And I must say, it was, having dabbled in such murky waters myself, a pleasure and revelation to learn about Banksy’s “Princess Di” pound notes.)
No one begrudges artists like Banksy and Fairey making some serious do re mi off the movie and the ersatz work of MBW. Artists live with contradictions. As Hans Abbing points out, artists will at one moment among themselves spurn the market and in the next congratulate each other if one manages to get a sale. This is, Abbing, says one of the many contradictions that make the art economy “exceptional.” So in a way it is unexceptional that Banksy and Fairey should send up the contemporary art scene while also cleaning up. There’s also a history of sending up the art “market” that’s tempting to cite. But really, do we need to regurgitate Duchamp (again?) or trace his legacy through Rauchenberg’s “erased” De Kooning drawing to Manzoni’s canned shit? Oops, I just did.
Cut it any way you like, Exit through the Gift Shop mines contemporary art’s Catch 22; you can’t entirely dismiss anything that puts itself forward with enough… I don’t know what to call it… oddness? single-minded-ness? Integrity derives from critical distance, but, as we have learned so well over the past thirty years, the market is infinitely elastic, able to absorb even the most polemical, or as the movie demonstrates, inane assaults.
At the end of the day, the extent to which the flic leaves you with a strangely uneasy, incomplete feeling testifies to a kind of success. Nobody should feel comfortable with it (though street artists come through relatively unscathed) or complacent about the state of art today.
…
Wikipedia is useful to learn more about street art, and the guy Exit is allegedly about, Thierry Guetta.
…
DRIFT
Vanity Fair’s Julian Sancton is on to them.
Enough with the arts already
Lady Gaga and other celebrities immortalized to ward off the evil of economic collapse.
But seriously, no one doubts that art will persist through dark times. Even the “Dark Ages” are no longer considered to be entirely bereft of cultural accomplishments. Artists, at least the good ones, are, after all, born not made, and in any case, are exceptionally resourceful. And there are good reasons to be concerned that now is not the time to be clamouring after the money that so many worthy, essential, causes need. May cooler heads prevail.
One such head is Jared Diamond’s. His book Collapse observes how cultures in the throws of crisis will invest inordinately in culture. The Mayans, for example, just as their world began to splinter and feed on itself, invested more in temples and ritual than ever. There are good reasons for that of course. At times of stress and conflict, people naturally grow desperate for answers. When systems fail, pray. We go gaga for culture. Whether it’s hedonism, or merely self-medication, the parallel between ancient civilizations preoccupation with things symbolic and mystical and today’s bloated cultural industries is unmistakable.
No artists were harmed in the formation of this opinion.
Butler vs. Saatchi smackdown
178 x 120 mm, 7 x 4 3/4 in - 176 pp - 55 b/w illustrations ISBN-13: 9780714857473
Reading Art – If Phaidon approached you to do a book called “My Name Is Paul Butler and I Am A ____” what would you put in there?
Paul Butler – …An Artist. With everything I do – The Collage Party, Reverse Pedagogy residencies, The Upper Trading Post, and The Other Gallery, I approach it as art. To me, an artist’s role is to make sense of the world that surrounds us. One of the things I’m interested in the artworld itself. By getting involved as an educator, gallerist and curator, I’m able to research or experience every aspect of that art world, and respond to it accordingly with new models.
RA – I personally love short books with large type like this one but they fall into a general mass-market category I call “guru-hype” books. Do you think Saatchi is cheapening the whole enterprise of art book publishing with this book?
PB – I’m a big believer in making art accessible to all, so I applaud whatever it takes to get people engaged. In the UK, there is an overall awareness of contemporary art, which we don’t see here in Canada or the US. I think the general public avoids contemporary art because they don’t understand it. Books like ‘Seven Days in the Artworld’ the ‘The $12 Million Stuffed Shark’ and ‘My name is Charles Saatchi…’ serve as bridges between art and new audiences.
RA – Saatchi is pretty harsh, in a kind of cute curmudgeonly way, when it comes to pretty well everyone in the artworld; critics, curators, theorists, collectors; but when it comes to artists, it’s clear he loves them unequivocally. He says being an artist is the toughest job in the world (p. 67) and that there’s no such thing as a failed artist (p. 97). You’ve worked with more artists that probably anyone in Canada. Would you agree with him?
PB – It is a tough job. But it’s a job that nobody asks you to do. It’s difficult because there is no cut-off date to be discovered as an artist. I mean, you can be 90 years old and still waiting to ‘emerge’. For that reason, I feel sorry for many artists who are in pursuit of an unattainable dream. If it were sports, your body would give-out forcing you to retire. One of the problems I see is a lack of awareness about the benefits of practicing art. We all recognize the benefits of physical activity, but only a select few pursue sports as a profession. So while I praise anyone for finding their artistic outlet, I’d prefer to see an Artworld with fewer artists.
So, I would have to agree with Saatchi that there is no such thing as a failed artist, but I would say that there is such a thing as a failed professional artist. We should keep in mind that Saatchi’s is just one opinion. Right or wrong, it’s pretty entertaining and refreshing to hear someone speak openly and honestly about the art world.
RA – The only critical thing Saatchi says about artists, and it’s not necessarily about artists exactly, it’s about them going undiscovered, he says talent is always in short supply and it’s too easy to mistake mediocrity for brilliance. Yet from where I’m standing I’m seeing more artists than ever, more venues and generally the quality, at least here in Canada, is pretty damn fine. Do you think talent is as rare as Mr. S. suggests and that talented artists will always find their way?
PB – Assuming that you mean recognition and financial security by ‘their way’, no, I think artists are specialists in making art, but not always in self-promotion. Many artists won’t let themselves succeed either – I think out of guilt for feeling like the live a privileged life, or that art is worthless, or they feel like imposters… there are a million reasons artists don’t let themselves succeed. Then, there are some artists that excel at self-promotion, and some of those artists may make up for lesser art with their marketing ability. Again, I think the art world could use a good ol’ weeding out. There is tons of derivative work out there that’ll be forgotten in time. Few artists add to the history of art.
RA – Hans Abbing, in his book Why Are Artists Poor? points out the rather depressing fact that 99% of all art ends up in the landfill. Saatchi seems to agree; he says that a hundred years from now every artist other than Pollack, Judd, Warhol and Hirst will be a footnote. It doesn’t stop him from collecting and promoting of course, and I suspect most artists would be pretty damn happy with a footnote, but what do you think this all means for artists today who are in the midst of producing?
PB – I tend to agree. Who has changed the course of art in the larger picture? Hirst, to me, is a sad reflection of the sate of art, but having said that, he has changed the course of it – for better or worse. I go back and forth with him. I thought his last show with the paintings of skulls he did himself was really important actually – mainly because he made himself so open and vulnerable. Takes balls to do that. I often wonder what would happen if you took the money out of art. Would Hirst continue if there was a modest salary cap? A salary cap would weed out some artists, eh? But I think most ‘real’ artists simply have to make art. It’s not a question of whether they would or not. It’s how they communicate and connect with their world. Who or how many people listen doesn’t matter.
RA – Saatchi has no pretense to being either smart or particularly knowledgeable about art, yet he does say things like “I don’t believe painting is middle class and bourgeois,” so obviously he’s got some ideas. How important to you is an understanding of art history and art theory?
PB – Personally, I primarily work on instinct. I respond to things. I think theory gets in the way. I know enough not to look stupid (I hope), but you either make art with a consumer in mind, or you make what you want and leave it to the consumer to decide. I feel like so many artists play art like a game – like Survivor or something. I would see them at art fairs, researching what sells, so they could direct their practices with buyers and trends in mind.
RA – Saatchi says London is alone in the world in breeding artists who organize their own alternative exhibitions. Evidently he hasn’t been to Canada. Do you think London stole the concept of “artist-run” from Canada?
PB – I doubt it…does anyone even look at Canada? it’s funny that they see the YBAs initiative as original. I’m 37, so I wasn’t around for the birth of artist-run culture in Canada, but I’ve always known artists to start their own shows. How else can you get noticed, other than pay to go to Goldsmiths or Columbia? It’s like that catch 22 – how do you get your first job without a resume to apply with? You create your own jobs.
La maja vestida (The clothed Maja) and La maja desnuda (The nude Maja) - Francisco Goya - circa 1797–1800 - Museo del Prado, Madrid
Gustave Courbet - L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World), 1866 - Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Now that I think of it, most of my favorite works do have to do with sex. I’m lucky enough to work with one of my favorite artists – Richard Williams…. and could go on of course. There’s something about that work that feels confessional and biographic somehow. I just think it takes a lot of courage to reveal your inner desires.
RA – Do you have work up on the Saatchi artists’ website ?
PB – No. I admit when I first got the invitation to join, I got excited thinking I was on Saatchi’s radar. Who the hell is going to look for artists in that massive ocean of art? Feels like an exploitation of artists hoping to be discovered.
RA – I think it’s interesting that Saatchi Online is not really searchable. It’s more like a game than a tool. For example, it would be nice if it were searchable by color, subject matter, decade, country or even price. You’ve made some ventures into online gallery with The Other Gallery. How’s that working out?
PB – He he. I have a love/hate relationship with The Other Gallery. I’ve learned to use the gallery as an umbrella for all kinds of activities – both commercial and non. I’m happy just as long as I’m doing what I want, when I want. I love working with artists – discovering them, talking about their practice, and turning collectors on to them. It all informs my practice in the end.
RA – You have a real interest in education, which I think stems from your interest in the collaborative/supportive communities that develop in art schools. But your Reverse Pedagogy project seems very anti-art school, like everyone should be self-taught. Saatchi also frowns in the general direction of art schools, criticizing them for having too many students producing forgettable art, but at the end of the day he blames underfunding. Are you planning on ever finishing your BFA and maybe doing an MFA?
PB – Most art schools disappoint me currently. They seem to be more concerned with how many students get full-page ads in Art Forum than shaping a generation of politically and socially minded artists who’ll serve society for the better. For me, my education didn’t really start until I graduated from art school. I could go on, but basically, Reverse Pedagogy was an evolution of the collage party in that they are collectively directed. The participants decide which direction to take things. There are no assignments or teachers. The space and supplies are provided, but it’s up to everyone what they get out of it. Personally, I struggled in art school academically because I’ve found that I learn best through example and exchange. In some ways, I look at the collage party and reverse pedagogy as environments that I’ve created to further my own education. It’s unbelievable the places I’ve been and artists I’ve met through these social pedagogical projects.
RA – btw, I notice you’ve let the website domain reversepedagogy.com go. How come?
PB – It just kinda died without my realizing it. Reverse pedagogy may have been a supernova in that it burnt bright for a year, then just burnt out. For now, I’m focused on other projects and not putting any pressure on reverse pedagogy. We’ll just see where it goes.
The drift (links to things mentioned in or related to this post):
The Other Gallery
The Other Paul Butler
Upper Trading Post, where artists swap work
About the Reverse Pedagogy project | on the Sligo Model Blog
12 ways artists are like superheros (repris)
Andy Warhol's Myths: Superman 1981
Just how exceptional are our artists? The ideas of genius, vision, mystique, no less than the rocketing prices of some artworks make artists appear to be flying like superheroes rather than walking like mere mortals.
How real is this exceptionalism, and is it boon or burden to artists themselves? Superman or starving artist? What part of these contradictory stereotypes is myth, what part reality? And what purpose do these extreme characterizations serve?
It’s not hard to see parallels between the superhero type (we like Superman, the superhero’s superhero) and the artist type:
| Superman | artists | |
| powers | x-ray vision | penetrating insight |
| private life | secret (Clark Kent) | reclusive (J.D. Salinger) |
| dress | tights and cape | cap and walking stick |
| arch enemies | Lex Luther | lex populi |
| public perception | “It’s a bird, it’s a plane…” | “A chimp could do that.” |
| fandom | Lois Lane | “ladies man” |
| employment | mild mannered reporter | all manner of jobs |
| money | no need to touch it | won’t touch it (or can’t) |
| moral compass | knows right from wrong | knows right wing from left |
| groups | Fantastic Four | Fab Four |
| work habits | perfect | perfectionist |
| susceptibilities | glowing Kryptonite | glowing reviews |
The fact that artists share a lot in common with superheroes suggests some basic confusion, a conflation perhaps of mastery and mystery (the difference being a “y”). Why indeed.
Why do we not accept artists as a normal part of society? Are their talents so exceptional? A lot of people working in the sciences, business and politics have talent. Artists are reputed to have exceptional personalities too. But eccentricity is not unique to the arts either. Why then do we treat artists exceptionally, sometimes putting them on a pedestal and at other times vilifying them?
Is it because exceptional talent, like superpowers, can hurt as easily as help? Where the “how” is mysterious and outcomes seem unpredictable, it pays to be cautious, we think.
Or is it because we fear the consequences of real acceptance. Just like Peter Parker or Clark Kent, most artists hold regular jobs that are like a subtext to their “super” moments. But nobody calls Superman a slacker just because he does no more than about 5 minutes of superheroing a day. And nobody is asking why he doesn’t go out and get “a real job” either. If he did; he could fix Toyota’s problems in minutes. In fact he could put the whole auto industry and a host of others out of business. No, if superheros had real jobs, there’d be no work left for the rest of us. So we contain exceptionalism inside certain social, and economic boxes: apples can be golden, but don’t let’s upset the cart.
There’s no question that secret identities feed plot lines. What Superman does “for a living,” what he eats, where he sleeps (does Superman sleep?) are banal facts. Hiding them gives them some value; it piques our curiosity. Just so with artists: it’s better not know the banalities of their lives; it makes for a better story.
I’ve argued elsewhere that artists are not well-served by exceptionalism. The idea that artists are exceptionally bad with money, for example, merely rationalizes the fact that they are at the bottom of the food chain. In fact most people are bad with money; so we are learning as the realities of runaway credit come to light. Artists are poor not because they are bad with money, but because there is so little money to be had in the art business and what money there is, is all crowded at the closely guarded top of the pyramid.
If artists were really superheros, you’d think they’d use their powers to escape the ghetto of exceptionalism. Perhaps they don’t have time: the pursuit of meaning, like leaping tall buildings, takes a certain kind of super-concentration. Perhaps they like their role: people leave you alone and there’s a kind of freedom in that.
In any event, artists can no more make the world accept them than Superman can and in this respect, they are as powerless as everyone else, meta figures who symbolize the contradictory conditions of normality.
Drift:
Artists periodically reflect on this phenomenon of super-ness:
Luca Buvoli (IT)
Laurie Anderson (US)
The Kinks (UK)
Crash Test Dummies (CA).
Chooky Dancers (US)
“Super” chique – Super fashion goes from art to runway to street.
Super street fashion, from The Sartorialist
Superheroes probably visit art galleries as rarely as everybody else, but the connection between superheroes and artists hasn’t been lost on comic creators:
superheros who have dabbled in art.
The End of Reading (Print)
Publishers are experimenting with add ons like photos, author notes, even video in order to attract higher prices for ebooks, but one wonders at what point they should just get on with it and make the movie.
Thriller writer David Balducci is bidding his enhanced ebook Deliver Us From Evil (due out April 20) will justify a US $15.00 price tag. [source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iftfvIiV7uRYWgrbu8NHH8lDt4rAD9EF93LO0]
Book Shorts, Moving Stories, and others have been treading the same territory, how to effectively use ‘new media’ in the publishing world, unconvincingly imho.
I like reading. There’s nothing like the experience of imagination that it involves. Books are what Marshall McLuhan called a “cool” medium, you have to actively make the meanings, unlike movies where the medium pretty much does everything for you. Of course the theory only goes so far; McLuhan considered TV “cool” compared to movies, and books “hot” compared to an actual conversation… [more on v cool wikipedia]
But would we read if we really didn’t have to? What if everything you can find in books today was also available in other media, especially audio and video. Would you still buy books?
I recently polled students at a talk I gave at the University of Lethbridge on the difference between print and digital books. Much to my surprise a majority of students imagined that books would always be with us and a whopping 79% said they prefer the printed and bound book format.
Calling all shamans
Evidently no one’s losing their sense of wry humour over at the Canada Council for the Arts. The image on the cover of their just-released 2010 grant deadline calendar is a work by Adrian Stimson called Shaman Extermination Sunrise 2, photographed by Happy Grove.
How to Run an Efficient and Successful Studio with Adad Hannah
Notes from FREE SCHOOL at SAW Gallery, Ottawa
Saturday, March 13, 2PM – 5PM / Le samedi 13 mars de 14 h à 17 h
(see whole programme below)
It’s nice to think that successful artists are successful because they do certain practical things that anyone can do. It takes some of the mystique out of the art world and makes it all seem more possible. But when a successful artist talks about these things, it also quickly becomes apparent how good they are at doing things that many artists find very challenging. It’s not just in the concept and execution of their art; it’s in everything they do. Read the rest of this entry »
Open Space Blog (SFMOMA)
- Visitor Flickr Photo of the Week September 3, 2010Maurice, the pug, steals the show in this pic by Sergio. “I’m actually trying to get photos of him in front of different landmarks around SF, like the SFMOMA building. He was in a playful mood that day and started tugging on his leash to get my attention, so I thought that would make a [...] […]Megan Z
