Should you exhibit while still in school?

This summer, Topics students talked a little about whether or not it was a good idea for artists to begin exhibiting while they are still in grad school. The panel at the beginning of the summer - and the article in the New York Times about "hot" grad programs had no doubt gotten a few people thinking, but when I saw an interview with Chuck Close (whose self-portrait appears at right - see, we're getting all artblog with the images!) in the current CAA News, I thought I should post a little bit for everyone to consider.

What do you think of students exhibiting their work before they graduate?

Part of the problem is that schools require students to make consistent work instead of encouraging them to bash around and try a lot of different ideas and different styles. Young artists should resist zeroing in on their vision so early…
I absolutely believe and always have believed that artists shouldn't go public with work until they are ready to lay their necks on the line - which means that anything an artist did before going public is nobody's business. But the minute you decide to go public, an artist sets a specific trajectory and seems to truncate other options. I think it is really good to bang around for a while and really be sure you can love with the work that you make for a long time before you decide to show it.

Politicality

One of my brighter Art Center students came up to me today and seemed distraught. She told me she'd had a "discussion" with a friend in which they disagreed about the nature of art. Her friend suggested she go out and ask a few more people's opinions. The issue? They were debating whether or not all art is political.

Fortunately, my student was smart enough to know that the answer partly depends on what your definition of political is, but she seemed more than a little disappointed by the rapidity with which I said I thought, sure, art is political. (I guess I know what side of the argument she was making...). We talked about how, in Western art before modernism, all art was political in the sense that it reinforced the power of the church and state. In The Invisible Dragon, Dave Hickey convincingly talks about the art of the Baroque, for example, as a form of religious propaganda.

Things obviously get muddier the closer you come to the present. After all, what is political about a Pollock? Turns out that there may be plenty. Not too long ago, Louis Menand contributed an article to the New Yorker in which he addressed the oft-made claim that Abstract Expressionism was a tool of the CIA. I've been interested in this idea for a while - one of art my heroes, the poet Frank O'Hara, was involved in the development of international touring exhibitions of the art some have called political propaganda for American-style democracy. I'm fairly sure, based on my research, that he was as apolitical as they come (which I consider a fault, but that's another story).

What I realized (too late) that I should have said is that I don't think anything is inherently anything - things become meaningful based on how they are used. Art may not be intended to serve some political agenda, but once it leaves the artist's studio and belongs to the world, it gets put to use in ways the artist never imagined. Many people like to say they hate political art, but I think what is often meant by that statement is that they hate art which is overtly political - art that insists on being used in a certain way, like some craft objects insist on being used in certain ways by their use of certain forms and participation in certain traditions. It makes sense to hate art that is dictatorial as much as it makes sense to hate governments that are dictatorial.

Of course, this raises a whole slew of issues – how do we make sure the objects we make are put to uses we don’t find deplorable? Should we care? If we don’t care, are we immoral? I’d greatly appreciate your comments so I can pass them on to my student…

Alibis?

Hope everyone has an alibi to shield them from investigation of the theft of a Warhol and Pollock from the Everhart Museum in Scranton. According to the Times Leader ("Northeastern Pennsylvania's Homepage"), the pieces were stolen in the middle of the night and police responded to an alarm. The works are valuable - the Warhol is estimated at $15,000 and the Pollock is comparable to one that sold for $11.6 million, according to sources quoted by the paper.
Me? I hope they don't come calling, because if they do...I'm going to say Mike Reenock did it.

Gaetano Pesce at the PMA

Hi All, Gaetano Pesce is lecturing this Friday, November 18th at 6pm. 10$ w/ student ID, 25$ members, 35$ non-members. Check out www.philamuseum.org. for more info about his career and works. Best, Terri

This is for you, Lee...

I thought you'd appreciate this, Lee. The image, under the headline "Touchdown Jesus" ran on the New York Times website this afternoon, accompanying a story about the sculpture's presense on a rural Ohio highway. It made me think of your attempts to bridge the gap between urban and rural art audiences. Hope all are well, gb.

Looking at Drawing

If you're still scratching your head about drawing, you might want to look at this show:

This Friday, November 18th, SPECTOR presents  Drawing For It 2, a diverse collection of pieces by artists who draw as a means to an end along side artists whose medium is drawing. The show is a survey of pencil, pen and ink works within which you can feel each artist's hand.

Artists are Huston Ripley, Matthew Fisher, Caitlin Perkins, Willie Condry, JT Waldman, Hiro Sakaguchi, Randall Sellers, Elizabeth Haidle and Amanda Miller.
The show opens November 18th from 6-9PM and runs through December 9th.

SPECTOR
510 Bainbridge Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147
www.spectorspector.com
215-238-0840

Gallery hours
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 2–6 PM
Or by appointment

On appropriation - from Jane

I went to the conference Ursinus College had Tuesday on "Artistic Appropriation in the Age of Litigation"
Before I got there, I had onsidered a few places where I had witnessed appropriation in what I think are good and bad ways. There is always so much debate about how much, and in what use is this acceptable. The conversations there opened my eyes to how much appropriating goes on. Fair use lawyers there demanded that appropraiting is fine if the intent of the artist is to comment directly on the appropriated image, but if it used simply as a device to simplify one's own artistic efforts, it is fraudulent. Any thoughts on this one?

research

I've been asked to teach a class next semester at Art Center and I'm fishing for ideas. The class is called The Art of Research and it is a studio course that aims to close the gap between students' interest making and their familiarity with the context of their practice. It's not a history class, but a class that should give them some research methodologies they might take with them into their practice. Trouble is, how do you teach research without researching something?
I've been polling artists about the way they do research and what place it has in their practice, and I'll eventually share the findings with y'all, but if you've got a moment, could you tell me a little about the roll of research in your studio practice and how you go about it? This is all off the record - I'm not looking to hear so much about Independant Writing class as about if it has been helpful in the studio at all, and if so how, and if not, how might it be more so?
Thanks - gb

Online Virtual Graffiti?!?!?!?!

Promoted and represented by Sprite and MSN is a site where you can do your own "stencil graffiti." It's called Refreshing Wall (I know, how bad is that name). I'm not promoting it, I just want to expose the stupidity and utter ridiculousness of it. How far should corporations go with their advertising campaigns? The answer is a double-edged sword. Then you have to ask yourself: How far should artists go with their art? It's obvious that we are biased to one of those. just thought I'd throw out those thoughts.