What is an artist? Post 1

Hello readers,

Here is an online article by  Sarah Thornton, the Economist’s chief writer on contemporary art, from the Canadian Art Magazine.

It sets out as its goal to answer the question, What is an artist?

I have a number of contentions with this article. But first, let’s test if it achieves what it sets out to do.

To me, if we’re going to define the term “artist”, it would have to include emerging artists, and bad artists, and commercial artists – just like the definition of a circle would have to include blue circles, and circles made of grass, and so on.

After awhile, Thornton arrives at her definition. But she does not define an “artist.” She defines “contemporary artists”, and “people that society treats as artists.”

“Contemporary artists are ideas people who aspire to originality and make works that they hope will be seen in a museum. More specifically, I argue that the people that society treats as artists are professional thought-provokers who earn the right to be taken seriously through (a) insistent artworks, (b) convincing interpersonal and mediated communication and (c) opportune art-world affiliations.” (from the article linked to above.)

So she does not answer the question “what is an artist”, not really.

It’s hard to know where to start with this.

So the hope that one’s work will be seen in a museum is the qualifying trait of an artist? What about site-specific installations? Are they not art?

I’m not sure what an insistent artwork is, but I suppose I can kind of imagine it…though the term remains vague. It doesn’t really bestow the kind of clarity that Thornton promised us up front.

Are artist statements what Thornton is referring to in (b)? Do blogs count? So artists have to write? Or can the communication take place through the art itself?

And finally, in (c) – pity the poor ersatz artist who does not or does not yet have opportune art-world affiliations. And, who counts as a member of the art world? And, so, does an artist become an artist the moment she is taken on by a major gallery, where she wasn’t an artist before?

As her example of a non-artist, earlier in the article, she recounts a tale of an artist creating a set of landscapes for a seaside hotel, damning him for his “meek” ambitions. But doubtless this is not the only thing this artist has ever done. Is someone disqualified from being an artist the moment one does something to earn one’s living at it, even if the next week one takes that money and does something fabulously original? What about teachers at post-secondary institutions? They’re doing things to earn their living, teaching, lecturing, grading, filling in forms. Does that disqualify them?

I’d love to hear what other people think about this.

All the best, Nicole.

Review or press release journalism?

Canadian Art Magazine has a page listing art events in Alberta and the Yukon in their print magazine. Browsing it this fall, I came across a tiny mention of the Yukon Arts Centre show down at the bottom of the page in 8 point type.

This February, they actually wrote an article about a show at YAC, which was great. It’s good for all Yukon artists to have the Yukon arts scene acknowledged in a national forum.

But the author was never within 2000 km of the show. This is just a spin off the catalogue essay, with no critical thought invovled.

Here is my review, which is based on experiencing the show itself, and engages critically with some of the assumptions in the catalogue essay.

Welcoming your thoughts, all the best, Nicole.

 

Two theatre reviews

Hi there folks,

Here are two reviews I wrote for What’s Up Yukon.

The Guild’s The 39 Steps.

And Moving Parts Theatre’s Peer Gynt.

It’s exhilerating to go out to a show and hit send to the editor that night.

More soon, all the best, Nicole.

Illustrative Contemporary Art

Late in January I went out on a feast of galleries with Lori Beavis in Montreal.

We saw a very engaging set of works at DHC in Old Montreal, in a show called Chronicles of a Disappearance.

It seemed to me that I saw two kinds of contemporary art pieces there. For some pieces, you could walk into the room and apprehend the piece, and it made its impact. It was interesting to read the catalogue essay or artist statement, but not necessary to the apprehension of the piece. For others, you needed that extra bit of information.

For example, though it was useful to know ahead of time that Omer Fast’s 5000 Feet is the Best (2011) is a circular video with no beginning or end, you do figure that out pretty quickly on your own. And the piece has its own impact without any further reading.

In no way to I mean to demean the latter kind of work. On the contrary, the experience made me appreciate the latter just as well. There was an awesome piece by Cuban artist José Toirac called Opus (2005). When you walk into the room, you see numbers displayed on a single screen. The numbers are pronounced by an impassioned voice in Spanish. It’s not until you realize that these numbers have been excerpted from audio tracks of Fidel Castro’s speeches that the meaning of the piece sinks in. Then you can stand there, wondering what each number was being used to prove, what it was counting. It becomes a very interesting distillation of politics. Here is a video that only kind of gives you a sense of the visuals. At DHC, the numbers stay still, and the voice speaking the numbers is not lost in crowd noise.

This summer I made an outdoor installation piece at the Yukon Riverside Arts Festival, which was meant to spoof the practice of the ODD Gallery there. At the opening of their shows, you aren’t allowed to see the show itself until you’ve heard the artist talk. I thought, if the talk comes first, is this still visual art? It the story  is primary, is this not actually storytelling with props?

So I coined the term “illustrative” for work that depends on its artist statement for its full impact, and I’m thinking of “stand-alone” for works whose artist statement takes a more secondary role. These words may well be too loaded; after all, illustration has less status than art. But maybe that’s another assumption that would be worth questioning.

I’d welcome other people’s ideas on this distinction.

Cheers, Nicole.

 

Thinking about Art

Hello reader, I say, hopefully.

I’ve been writing about art for seven years now. My articles have appeared in What’s Up Yukon and Galleries West for the most part.

Recently I’ve found myself wanting to read and learn more, to think more about art. I seem to want to write more too, in ways that my published work in those magazines doesn’t entirely satisfy.

I’m planning to publish links to my articles in this blog, as well as write here about articles I read and art shows I see. I hope to find some useful questions. I hope some people wind up reading this! And I hope that perhaps we can collectively come up with a vocabulary, tools for talking and thinking, that are both accessible and precise.

 

Till soon, Nicole.