What is this choir of possibilities you offer me? Where can it take us? What tragic song may be ours, what sort of future may a non-future contain? Then again, isn't it just a question of measure? Stop here. Stop here. The still. The gesture, frozen, with the impossible life no less possible than any other still. Still. Hold it more gently. Don't make your hand into a fist. Let them be flowers, let them be flowers, singing flowers, watching singing flowers, for just another, for just another still.
I posted two photos from the Rock & Republic ad campaign recently. Here is the complete set (I hope). Also, the Rock & Republic website has a great song. Can someone ID the name of the song?
Model: Charlotte Carey (Photogenic LA) & Stephane Olivier (Photogenic LA) Ad Campaign: Rock & Republic, Fall 2009/Winter 2010 Photographer: Giuliano Bekor Stylist: Keegan Singh Hair: Giannandrea Makeup: Gudrun
Sources:Photos #1, 3-7 from Rock & Republic, Photo #2 from Zinio abd Photo #8 from Le Book
Stage seven of our cooperative textile project, Compositional Conversation, has been posted on Terry's blog. Go read about Fulvia Luciano's experience with our ever-changing art piece and check out her video, too. Comment love is, of course, desired and shamelessly begged for (at least by me).
I had written this in hopes of having it published, but the magazine declined so I'm posting it here, instead!
10 Ways To Revitalize Your Creative Muse
If your muse is feeling droopy, has gone on vacation and left no cell number, or has simply gotten stuck in a pattern that chokes off spontaneity and fun, then it’s time to be proactive and remind your muse of the beauty of creation. It’s easier than you think!
1. Remember your bravery.
Edgar Allen Poe once said, “There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge.” Courage is everything to an artist. The courage to make a mess, the courage to ignore what others are doing and take your own path, the courage to face a blank canvas or an empty sheet of paper or a yard of stark white fabric and blaze ahead with color, stitch, marks, sketches- some of the very elements that are the bread and butter of artists. So reconnect with your bravery. You don’t have to go skydiving or swim with the sharks, but if that’s what felts your wool, do it. Sing in the grocery store (yes, out loud!). Look total strangers in the eye, smile and ask how their day is going. Listen when they tell you. Take that favorite piece of fabric that you dyed back in 1980 and then loved too much to do anything with and rip it into pieces. Reassemble it, with other torn scraps of paper and fabric in your stash, into a quick and sloppy collage. And then don’t rearrange endlessly until you’re blind, leave it as it is and enjoy the textures, movement and abandon of the process. Do whatever it takes to remind yourself that right now, today, no one is creating art that’s more relevant to you than what comes from your own hands.
2. Zoom in.
Train yourself to notice details. If you can afford it, get yourself a good camera with excellent optic zoom and macro settings (forget about digital zoom- I just about guarantee you that you’ll hate the grainy, pixilated photos they produce). Then get down on the ground and crawl around, taking close-ups of the grass, shrubberies, bugs, the nap of your carpet. Everything has texture and the closer you get, the more abstracted the object becomes- art lies in those details, I promise you.
No camera? Break out the sketchbook and try to capture what you see, and don’t let the old bugaboo, “But I can’t draw!” stop you- this isn’t fine art meant for your next gallery show, it’s just for you. As long as it comes close to capturing the essence of your subject, you’re doing just fine.
3. Spend a week at a folk school or artist’s retreat.
I cannot recommend this highly enough. A week or a weekend, cloistered away with other artists, is not only refreshing to your muse- it can also be a transformative experience that impacts you and your art forever.
My personal favorite retreat is the John C. Campbell Folk School, but there are dozens more schools and retreats offered around the country- and around the world, if you’re inclined to explore new cultures. Nothing reinforces your confidence in yourself, re-energizes your desire to just make art, or gives you a better sounding board than spending time with craftspeople who understand what you do and accept you as the artist you know you can be.
The blacksmiths hovering lovingly over their forges, the wood-turners who change a hunk of lifeless oak into sheer poetry, the fiber artists who share their love of textiles and fine craftsmanship- these people get you. They understand the crazy and sudden impulse that pops up at three in the morning to jump out of bed and start a new piece of art. They know the frustration when a piece goes wrong, and they can often help you find its proper voice. And they love their art as much as you love yours. Lifelong friendships can come from such experiences, but even if you never hear from any of them again, the memories alone that you’ve generated can pull you through your darkest periods of inactivity and lackluster inspiration.
4. Buy a box of crayons.
And don’t skimp on the 8-pack, either, go all out and get yourself the 120 unit box with the little sharpener at the back. If the waxy smell and bright color palette alone aren’t enough to get your muse excited, it’s time to scribble. Forget coloring books, though- we’re artists, we don’t want to color in the lines! Use plain copy paper to make some rubbings of items around the house, doodle your name in different typefaces, scrub hard to lay down a thick coating of wax and then scratch into it with the back of a paint brush, your thumbnail or fork tines, peel the paper off the crayons and enjoy feeling the smooth texture between your fingers. Let all of those glorious colors take you back to a simpler time when creating art was about how joyful it made you feel, and not about meeting deadlines or stressing over juried entries.
5. Clean your studio or workspace.
Nothing will keep me out of my studio more effectively than a huge mess. My muse freezes up, my housewife sensibilities flee, and all I want to do is shut the door and sneak away quietly before The Art Guilt digs in its heels. But conversely, nothing screams, “Create art NOW!” to me more than an empty desk and cleared out work surfaces. I defy you to walk away from a clean studio without even the slightest desire to get in there and mess it up again. Yes, cleaning is a terrible task that no one should ever have to undertake. In a perfect world, The Cleaning Sprites would show up the instant you fall asleep every night and begin their work- by morning, your house would be shiny and new. If only.
6. Teach a kid (or ten) to fingerpaint.
If there are children in your life- your own or someone else’s- introducing them to art is not only a delight for both you and them, I believe it is a responsibility that every artist shares.We can no longer count on our schools to scrape together the funding for art programs, and parents are often too busy, tired and distracted to give much thought to art education. As artists, we can fill that gap and in the process, reestablish a link with our own creativity.
Gather your favorite children, throw together some pots of paint and large sheets of white paper and start splashing paint around. Mix colors together until they’re muddy, mash painted papers one onto the other and then peel them apart. Encourage your budding protégés to sign their work and display it proudly. Laugh, play, and most of all, watch your young charge’s fearless approach to creating and remember it. If you can see art through their eyes, even for an afternoon, you can possibly lure your muse back from the Caribbean vacation on which she’s slipped away.
7. Take a long walk somewhere beautiful
Inspiration exists everywhere in the world immediately around us- we just often can’t or won’t see it. It’s not stubbornness on our part, or a lack of imagination, that prevents us from keeping our heads up and our eyes scanning our environment- usually it’s as simple as being out of practice. Take some time to explore the forest behind your house, the local city park, or your back yard. And if you’re city folk, prowl the older sections of town and seek out the aging architecture you find there. Notice the mature landscaping and the old growth trees lining neighborhood streets. Photograph or sketch everything that catches your eye. What you’re trying to achieve is an understanding that art is everywhere, existing in everything, if only it could be seen with eyes that understand. Let those eyes be your eyes.
8. Mine the bottom of your stash for treasure.
This can easily go along with number 5 in my list, as both tasks can be accomplished at the same time. However, even in a pristine studio space, I bet you have containers hidden from view that are overflowing with the detritus of creating art. These boxes are jam-packed with inspiration. Scraps of fabrics and papers that you’ve ripped, sewn, cut apart, tossed aside, forgotten about, remembered later and then forgot again- they are all fodder for jump-starting your creativity. Dig through them again. Reach in up to your elbows and pull out the first ten pieces you can get your fingers around. Then challenge yourself to assemble them- as is, with no further alteration- into a collage. You’d be amazed at where that one little messy collage will take your muse. You could even wind up creating the pivotal series of your career from that one, seemingly insignificant, exercise. Or maybe nothing else will happen with it- but at the very least, you can end your day knowing that you finished something, that you created art and followed through on it until it was complete.
9. Go to galleries and museums
This bit of advice may seem like a no-brainer, but really- when was the last time you visited an art gallery or museum as an artist, rather than as a tourist? So often, when we walk into the hushed, expectant atmosphere of an art gallery, we’re suddenly left feeling like outsiders, coming to gawk at the pretty paintings. We forget for a while that we actually understand this stuff, that it lives in our blood and that, while we may never achieve the status of “Master”, we are nonetheless active participants in the culture that produced such works.
So visit a gallery. Take your time with pieces of art that capture your imagination. Try to determine what it is about the piece that clicks for you. Deconstruct the art so that you can better understand the artist and his or her vision, and if you’re lucky enough to have the artist present, talk to them. Ask questions about their work, delve into their intent, their vision, their technique. Most artists who attend their own shows are eager and enthusiastic to discuss what they do and why they do it. They want their art to be understood- just as you want yours to be similarly examined and understood.
10. Cut yourself some slack
You are an artist. But no one can be in the process of creating art every minute of the day. Life, family, friends, play time away from the studio, time for quiet contemplation- all of these are essential to balancing our lives. They are equally as important as our art and deserve to have our full attention. Feeling guilty because you’re too busy to make art today or next week, punishing yourself because you just don’t feel like doing anything this afternoon but sit and watch TV or read a book, convincing yourself that you’re just not good enough to be counted in the ranks of the artists you admire- these are all the little self-defeating games we play with our muse. The longer and more fervently you repeat these mantras, the more likely you'll convince yourself that your muse will leave and take up residence with someone more willing to be open to the gifts it provides.
So allow yourself to take a break, guilt-free. Don’t worry- if you want it, your muse will still be waiting for you when you return.
Your Muse Isn’t Dead, Honestly
I used to fear that my creativity would eventually dry up altogether, that some day I’d run out of ideas or the desire to make art- as if talent is finite: once you use it up, it’s gone. But really, that was just a fear, an irrational belief that I didn’t really deserve an artist’s life, that I wasn’t good enough or strong enough or filled with enough vision. Baloney! Creativity just asks for one simple thing: commitment. Commit to yourself, commit to your muse, and the art will follow.
This worked for Terri Stegmiller, so I thought I'd give it a shot, too. I'm cleaning out my garage studio and have a bunch of like-new how-to books I'd love to get rid of. They range from mosaics to polymer clay to mixed-media instructional books. I'd enjoy swapping for them, but I'm in such need to get rid of them that if you want some and just don't have anything to swap, that's fine, too.
Works by Janine Antoni (the first one is a sculpture - a cast of the artist - and not a photo of a performed action, as is the case with the second one). And as a bonus, a work by her called Umbillical (2000), made of a "sterling silver cast of family silverware and negative impression of artist's mouth and mother's hand".
Du Juan looks great as usual but the overall editorial was kind of BLAH! The only shot I liked is photo #3 with Du Juan wearing Prada waders and shorts standing in front of an oil refinery.
Model: Du Juan (IMG) Editorial: 60 Memorable Fashion Moments Magazine: Vogue China, October 2009 Photographer: Chen Man Stylist: Ling Wu
The two recently* opened exhibitions at the main two contemporary art centers in Warsaw – Zachęta and the Contemporary Art Center – have some clear similarities.
Both exhibitions are witty, explicit dialogues with art history. They both play on the distance that separates contemporary art conventions from what has been somewhat recklessly left behind. Radziszewski exhibits works hidden in the depths of the national gallery’s archives. Some are excruciating to look at, others are curious discoveries or brilliant works. Grospierre goes back to the format of the Kunstkammer and does what he does best – plays with it.
They both focus on the structure of an exhibition, and make it an essential aspect, a sort of a meta-work which goes far beyond the classical idea of curator and uses the ambiguity of this function to the utmost. It is impossible to say where the curator’s role stops and the artist’s begins. This goes far beyond the inclusion of the curator’s own works in the exhibition, or his manipulation of the showing. We never know when the appreciation of the shown works is genuine, and when it is ironic. And because of the artists’ works being part of the selection, the self-irony is, as always, disarming.
However, each artist enacts the role of contemporary art trickster in a different way. Beyond questions of scale, budget and context of production, the two exhibitions are at two opposite sides of an old aesthetic debate. They present two different approaches to the question of value in aesthetics. But first, let me give you a brief description of each of the exhibitions.
Karol Radziszewski’s exhibition To Pee in a Bun, is grandiose. It is a personal take on the collection of Poland’s most renowned and respected public gallery of Modern Art (charmingly called The Encouragement for Fine Art). In it, he acts “merely” as curator, and also as one of the numerous exhibited artists. Here is what the curator had to say in a conversation with himself as artist :
C: Curators are the ones who make the artists conscious of ‘what’ they have created and ‘why’; often, they also manipulate the works being displayed, creating their own narratives from pre-existing works, at the same time disregarding their previous context. A: Like you did in this exhibition? C: Yes. (laughs) A: Why? C: I treat other artists’ works as elements of a larger whole, like tubes of paint, from which I have to squeeze out colours in order to paint one complex painting. A: That’s a very colourful metaphor . . . C: Thank you.
We could say that Nicolas Grospierre creates a similar procedure of remixing curator and artist when in the Kunstkamera installation, (which is the size of one of the smaller rooms in Radziszewski’s exhibition), he hangs mainly pictures of objects and photos created by other people, and signs the whole as his piece. Yet the vectors, here, point elsewhere. Instead of spreading the works and opening, if not exploding, them, he seems to move inwards, closing the space and folding it yet again. Upon entering the "room", we discover a game of images reproducing images reproducing the same space with other images. The game goes on, like a play with mirrors, ad infinitum. The "meaning" is still ambiguous - yet it concentrates, thickens, moves toward inhabiting the space instead of abandoning it.
So what does all of this have to do with philosophical debates?
In an article published in 1936, Stanisław Ossowski, one of Poland’s most notable thinkers from the famous Lvov-Warsaw school of thought, argued against aesthetics understood as the “construction of value systems”. The generalizing of arbitrary aesthetic feelings and opinions to the level of theory should, in his opinion, give way to a sociological perspective on art and the aesthetic, one which would embrace the richness of opinions and points of view instead of imposing them. This bold proposal was answered the same year by another great mind, Henryk Elzenberg, who argued that no matter how weak and prone to error, our aesthetic judgments remain anchored in value systems that can and should be discussed – as we cannot speak of aesthetics without referring to value, and values are open to discussion.
To put it bluntly: in Radziszewski’s exhibition I see Ossowski’s distancing from aesthetics as a system of values, while Grospierre’s installation follows Elzenberg’s ideals.
These are really two different ways of approaching the world.
Ossowski claims that any discussion about aesthetic values comes down to a power struggle. And this overpowering does not go through a sharing of enthusiasm or disgust, but goes through the attribution of value. Why? Elzenberg explains:
Apparently [the value-based aestheticist] lacks qualifications: he does not have the authority, or the suggestive strength, or the capacity to contaminate others with his feeling. And he is overfilled with the will to rule. Thus, he tries to convince the victim that if this victim feels the same things he does, the victim will be right, he will be somehow objectively correct; and he will be wrong if he dares otherwise.
Hence the need for distance. It seems Radziszewski claims it on every single step. On one hand, his collection is a moving away from an engaged position, it is rather a questioning of our aesthetic values, of their ever-astounding relativity and apparent insignificance. Who are we to say that this is pretty, and this isn’t? How are we to judge the works that a mere 30 years ago were judged outstanding, while today they’re hidden away in a museum cellar? On the other hand though, Radziszewski’s approach differs from Ossowski’s philosophy in one respect: being an artist, and not a social scientist, he does not feel the need to eradicate the position of power. To the contrary, he exposes it by exploring it to the fullest. Why bring a porn film into the gallery? Because it’s shocking, and attracts audiences. The aestheticist’s position allows him to create values arbitrarily:
A: You’re a curator — does that mean power? C: Absolute power! (laughs) A: Most people believe curators are unfulfilled artists. C: I think that does hold true for me. Besides, to quote Krasiński yet again, ‘Art is too serious a business to be left in artists’ hands.’
Grospierre is at a very different point. He does not feel the necessity to question everything – art history has done it sufficiently. Instead, he looks for ways of exploring the place of art today while not undoing it all yet again. Romantic? Certainly. It is a self-ironic romanticism, one that takes great effort in presenting itself as distanced and eye-winking. No wonder Grospierre cites Italo Calvino and Borges: this is the romantic universe that leads the battle for saving beauty. It is not, however, an intuitive aesthetic experience kind of beauty. The Kunstkamera is all about unending layers of initiation. It is a dive into the possibility of image, the possibility of the reflection of things, of some sort of hidden and evolving harmony between the object and the subject. It reminds one of Heidegger’s conception of art as a window to some other realm we can in no other way describe. Here, this realm always crosses first an image of the reality we know – and so, we never know if this is the level of work-of-art, or it is only a description thereof. Fittingly, the exhibition flyer (a photocopy with clear photocopy marks) explains it all, and more. It seems to impose its vision of the work before we even get to see it. Take, for instance, the “Trophies” section.
Trophies represent four dog muzzles, belonging to the commonest of mongrels. Bolek, Majka, Eryk and Gucio are four doggies among thousands. In the old Wunderkammer we would find extraordinary or unique natural objects: the horn of a unicorn, huge crystals, stuffed reptiles and other monstrosities. The idea was to show nature in the most surprising forms. Today the world seems devoid of the mysteries and much simpler than in the sixteenth century: the monsters disappeared from biology books. Might it be that the world is less poetic, more prosaic? I don’t think so. Even if science discovered many of nature’s secrets, for me poetry and mystery are still present in nature – we can find them in the most common species, such as house dogs.
The two positions can be called “metaphisical” and “positivist”. Elzenberg’s metaphisicist is
quite aware that there are hundreds of traps on his way; that his individual chances of error are bigger than his chances of winning; he feels that his results are to the highest degree uncertain, endangered by others’ critique and by his own. He feels the constant risk. Yet this risk is also his joy, since, as a psychological type, he has in him – and indeed needs to have – a little bit of a man of adventure and his attitude towards the “positivist” is somewhat like the attitude of a sailor that knows he can drown, towards the landlubber, who has no such fiercely unpleasant risk awaiting. It gives him a sort of satisfaction, but that is not what decides about his behavior in terms of acquiring knowledge; the decisive factor is that he does not want to drown. And that is why he is first and foremost careful. The “Metaphisicist” – or rather, to put it in more serious terms, the valuing aestheticist – knows well that his subject is unclear and unattainable and that what he discovers in it flees any adequate descriptions. Thus, although he is a sui generis racionalist to start off, it is nonetheless easy to discover a trait in him that is the contrary of a strict rationalism: the tendency to treat concepts and judgments as merely a type of highly uncertain symbols of a reality that resists human thought. Thus, he will not suggest that the chiaroscuro in which he sees the thing is full light, nor will he bond himself till death due him part with this or that linguistic formula or even this or that discursive elaboration of his intuition. He – yes he! - has something in him of the spirit of empiricism, as he understands his moving into the subject as a multiplicity of attempts and returns, as the entering in contact, as a progressive bonding with reality. Hence, he has the quality of being critical towards his own achievements, he consciously softens the edges of his statements, and is ready for changes and corrections, and, generally speaking, is moderate and more moderate even.
So do you believe in magic? In the aesthetic wonder of art, that keeps evolving beyond all expectations, that is in some strange way always related to beauty, and maintains some sort of objective common ground, some platform of shared values? Or did the whole building of aesthetics collapse, leaving us in a void where any new creation of value is so easily ridiculed, art may at best be looked from a great distance, with an ironic, witty, sensitive yet unaffirming stance?
I must say I prefer Grospierre's installation: it's discursive and communicative, inquiring and playful, desperately searching for beauty, or maybe: aiming at beauty. This is a work of a believer. And although I'm not exactly a believer, I can repeat after one of my favorite characters, Samuel Hamilton: I don't really believe in it save that it works.
*It took me some time to write this... and tomorrow is the last day of Kunstkamera! Hurry if you want to see it.
