The other day I mentioned to a friend that I’ve been writing a blog. Naturally enough, he asked me what I write about.
I froze – I had no idea how to put it into a couple of sentences, especially since I was working on The Communist Manifesto without Nouns at the time. Next time I will be prepared – a condition I very rarely experience. So here’s the answer to that question:
I mostly write about the relation between a visual artist’s work and their explanations of it, and how theory can affect practice. Artists explain their practice to both themselves and others and they need to take care that their non-visual thinking does not contaminate their work through worry about the implications of their justifications and contextualizations. Concerns about a successful career are often the culprit, although not always. Regardless of your line of work, it’s easy to baffle yourself. Examine your thinking while you work. Are you thinking about how other people will react to it? That could lead to second rate work. Are you thinking about how this could be the best piece ever, as long as you don’t screw it up? This is the right track. It should be meant to please you, and nobody else but you. Strangely enough, that will give it the furthest reach. I don’t think Shakespeare or Mozart were worried about the critics, or the guy next door.
Here’s a shorter version, assuming you plodded through the one above: I write about how artists can weaken their art because of their concerns about things like their career. I also write about other things that interest me, but the first thing still comes up from time to time.
And on that subject, this is a perfect time to post a Krendallgraph by the illustrious Wm. F. Krendall (apologies for the image quality, I only have a low resolution PDF of the final edit of issue 7, Fall 2004 of my presently defunct magazine Wegway Primary Culture (It was an appropriate sized file for emailing between the Art Director and me, the editor, in an era before Dropbox and the like) (and further apologies if you click that link because the website for the new version, Wegway 2.0, is incomplete, and basically non-functional, but there is some interesting stuff there, including, believe it or not, the proposed method of payment of contributors and the fine print)).
On my computer anyway, if you click on the images in my posts, they get big enough to actually read.
wegway 
I could see the image relatively well. Is that graph supposed to apply to everybody? Because my fulfilled expectations are not really that high…
LikeLike
The graph was directed at artists, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t be applicable to anyone in a field that requires new ideas, approaches or analyses. The difficulty for everyone, including artists, is how having basically no education would benefit someone trying to develop the next important thing. I took it as sarcastic humour, the point being, the method for generating the truly novel includes finding the most basic assumptions in a discipline. In other words, asking very unlearned questions.
I took fulfilled expectations as applying to the viewers of art, not the artists. To unfairly generalize, work that fulfills a viewer’s expectations is seen as beautiful and very ‘arty’ indeed. Work that doesn’t fulfill expectations tends to bounce off the viewer’s forehead. People who don’t worry about art (in an enjoyable sense) like their beauty to be a cinch. Here, I’ll quote Clement Greenberg, further to our comments on your post http://www.davidyerle.com/on-the-people-who-comment-here/ , “ambiguity is precisely one of the largest sources of pleasure in art”. More about that in a future post inspired by our conversation.
On the other hand, it may be as you ask: The graph might refer to everyone’s expectations, and that makes perfect sense. My fulfilled expectations aren’t all that high either. It’s the unexpected good result that causes the artists’ high, which, in my opinion, is way better than the runners’ high. The unexpected bad result leads to more questions and adventure. All the art I make is either “genius” or “crap”, and a mediocre result is definitely included in the crap.
LikeLike
Reading this, I am not even sure if it’s a good thing that you should have an elevator speech ready. I would imagine something along the lines of a business card, to spark an interest in your blog. I see comments that way. Not to advertise someone’s blog, per se, but to introduce yourself.
Thank you for posting links to the Krendall Graphs and the Macaroni Camera.
Brilliant. 🙂
LikeLike
I think you’re right in a way. If someone is going to like my blog, then they should be sold by my typical fumbling, round-about answers to their questions. The problem is, sometimes I size someone up and think they might find this blog entertaining or useful. So how do I interest them before they glaze over? I can’t blame them. To be a snot about it, there are an awful lot of people out there with a limited capacity. If they try to pitch something to me, changing the subject becomes a high priority.
I’m glad you liked the stuff on the magazine site. I think Krendall is funny and Hendrik Mallmann is wonderfully eccentric. When I published him, I asked to buy one of his prints but he wasn’t interested in selling. My budget is limited, but it would have been inspirational to have in the house.
LikeLike
Although I am not at all an artist your advice resonates with me. I believe that there are fewer and fewer standardized careers today anymore (even in “hard sciences” and technology) and many of us are trying to utilize a unique combination of skills and experiences.
It is detrimental to compare yourself to others all the time and to try to anticipate what critics might say – in particular critics who might have followed the traditional route, that is gathering experience in a specific, “established” field over decades.
LikeLike
Yes, I think the advice applies to anyone trying to improve current opinion. I try to uncover the fundamental presuppositions in any claim or practice. I found that it was the way to write successful essays for my undergraduate degree in philosophy. And I’ll confess that the BA, and an art college diploma are the sum total of my formal education. I pined for a PhD for a while, but I got over it. Benedetto Croce said somewhere that all the most significant developments in philosophy were the development of a method. I can usually put my hands on a quote, but not this time. C. S. Pierce, developer of semiotics, never got a professorship because of his atheism. Maybe that set him free. One more … Schopenhauer said hilarious things about philosophy professors who thought of themselves as philosophers.
LikeLike
[…] the comments on my post the other day, The Elevator Speech, I said, “It’s the unexpected good result that causes the artists’ high, which, in my […]
LikeLike