From: Christopher Lovenguth (zantzant@hotmail.com)
Date: 10/25/02-09:59:27 AM Z
This is sort of turning in to a “what is it about modern art that I hate so
much” discussion again. But I agree with some of your points Michael. I do
however have issue with your basic premise.
First about Radiohead (just joking)…no really… you should be more worried
about the new students putting Britany Spears and N’Snyc posters in their
dorm rooms (yes people are telling me they are seeing this on campus) then
people listening to Radiohead. (Again this is all in fun here I hope you
know)
Now to some serious stuff. While I think I understand where you are coming
from, your points are based on a foundation that young students and
“hipness” equals a lack of intelligence, bad art and somehow a compromised
reading ability (which I don’t know why you keep bringing this up). The
thing is while these young students are still learning, they have figured
out something that maybe you might have missed. In order to make it in this
profession (it is a profession as well as passion) you have to be “hip” and
sell yourself. Thank Warhol and New York city artist for that (sorry if that
offends any New York city people on this list, you are all a bunch of nice
people)! The competition is so extreme out there you have just as much of a
chance being a rock or movie star then getting a show in a somewhat known
gallery. These new students understand this. They also know that galleries
will only take the “hippest”, “freshest” work out there. Why would galleries
want another collection of Ansel Adams-like landscapes when there is so much
new and “hip” work out here?
This is the reality and for a lack of a better word, it sucks! I mean you
have to sell yourself just to get in to grad school (which I can’t even do)
because the competition is so strong. I understand when applying there are
300+ others out there with at least half that number having portfolios
comparable and/or better to mine. All of us fighting it out for four to six
open spots. Pretty soon, if not now, you will have to be on that competitive
wave in order to just get in to most BFA programs. That is the reality. It’s
hip to be an artist and intelligent hip people who can sell themselves as
well as what they are trying to do in their work will get the spots and
shows. Sorry if that ruins your day. -Chris
>From: Michael Healy <mjhealy@kcnet.com>
>Reply-To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca
>Subject: Re: Book(s) query
>Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 01:02:10 -0700
>
>Sorry to tell you this, Jack, but I am from San Francisco. Played my Haight
>and Avenue and SOMA haunts for many a year until very recently. Spent 5-6
>days a week printing at Rayko in SOMA. Enjoyed a fine summer there printing
>alongside Zig Jackson before he too packed up and left, for Savannah. I was
>fortunate to leave Rayko before they suffered their demise and got closed
>down. No, I know your town. The more it changes, the more it has remained
>the same. Say otherwise, and I'm afraid I will (respectfully, I hope) nurse
>the suspicion that you either suffer those delusions peculiar to SFans, or
>haven't lived there long enough to see the planets' return. Which will
>happen, I promise you. Meanwhile the proper response was, "I'm outraged!"
>
>Seriously, though, my response was not intended to be pejorative at all. I
>was being deadly serious. On two points. First of all, the idea of "out of
>date" sounds really bizarre to me. It sounds painfully ridiculous. Sure,
>painting like Monet is out-of-date. Talking like a Beat poet may be kind of
>out of date (unless you frequent what's left of North Beach...) I recognize
>this syndrome all too well. Sad to say, I think it is especially prevalent
>in the so-called SF art scene. But that wasn't my point. My point was, what
>the hell does it even mean to talk about art and out of date?
>
>The trouble is, artmaking, and you can like this fact or hate it, embrace
>it
>or deny it, but the fact is, artmaking sweeps us into the (now) long
>continuum and dialectic of at least six centuries of Western artmaking.
>This
>is true whether you paint or work clay or shoot images. Artmaking certainly
>has a history of attempting to break ground, or just to "break with".
>Perhaps that's what you were referring to. We do live in an age that has
>acreted plenty of mod names; yet it is interesting to observe that this age
>remains fleeting as to its true "label". One thing I would note: artmaking
>seldom has been artmaking by accident or mere impulse. I mean to say that
>the reflective human being -- the experienced human being? -- and I don't
>care whether they make art or or only get up every day and live their
>life -- had better exercise a conscience if s/he is to be taken seriously
>by
>people who take this stuff seriously. We forgive a 19-yr-old kid for
>failing
>to understand this. How could they think otherwise? Geez, all of us were
>19-yr-old kids. Maybe it would be safer to say that we HAD BETTER look the
>other way, so they can find their feet underneath them. But for how long
>are
>we supposed to do this? Not until they're 60. Not even until they're 40. I
>do not feel at all that we have a responsibility to be forgiving of the
>older ones among us, the ones who supposedly have knocked around and
>learned
>from it, the ones who supposedly are experienced, the ones actually in
>charge of teaching and guiding.
>
>Which brings me to the other point I was alluding to. Leading means looking
>into the distance. That distance has a frontal, forward dimension (future);
>and a backwards dimension (past). In the presence of these, we who lead or
>speak for, need to try to stand above this particular moment's particular
>cry for some particular "hip" -- which after all means video-everything in
>2002, Peter Frampton in 1975, Beatle boots and Peter Max paintings in 1966.
>To borrow from Ecclesiastes, things come and things go. Young people may or
>may not be cognizant of this, and this is to be expected. But by God,
>teachers who are not cognizant of this are a completely other sort of
>problem.
>
>Don't get me wrong. I empathize with the need to try to "reach" the next
>new
>generation of potential artmakers; but the responsibility carries far more
>ramifications than a concern for their opinion that people older than 20
>can't say anything meaningful, or their relief when we make them feel warm
>and fuzzy. This syndrome is misguided. It is tantamount to selling them
>down
>the road. They need to cultivate a character. They need to practice a
>resiliance. They need to develop a packet of personal solutions to art
>problems. And this is helping them do that? No, this is akin to holding our
>tongue when we see that they can't read and write, because we're afraid
>that
>if we tell them so, they will feel bad about themselves -- or dismiss us as
>old farts for caring about brick-and-mortar in the New World Order.
>
>I just had the wonderful experience of spending two years watching the
>ceramics professors at the Kansas City Art Institute push their students.
>In
>ceramics, this is a renown art school, the premier school in the country.
>These people were merciless. They are NOT insensitive, I think; but they
>have bigger fish to fry than feelings. They had agendas based on vision,
>based on experience, based on a keen appreciation of history and the
>character development those kids will need if they hope to keep making art
>past their 27th birthday. The professors really weren't all that concerned
>with whether their students felt warm and fuzzy, or thought their teachers
>were hip to the jive. And I do not believe for one minute that this is a
>medium-driven condition that requires a different approach because it's
>photography or underwater basket weaving. Teachers who care about their
>students' future artistic strength and growth, know better than to worry
>about what's hip and "now". They know that what is hip and "now" in 2002
>wasn't in 1995, and won't be by the time 2005 rolls around either. And they
>know, too, that other and deadly serious issues do not get addressed when
>this is a concern -- issues having to do with their own duty as teachers
>and
>leaders, their DUTY, to help students come to terms with strengths and
>weaknesses.
>
>There is much profound richness in our collective experience. Only a part
>of
>the immediate experience of life today actually contributes to that
>collective (historical) experience. Still less does today's "hip" actually
>refute our collective experience. There is indeed a possibility -- maybe
>not
>a probability but certainly a good possibility -- that such coddling may
>lead to pandering, which is tantamount to abdication of responsibility. I
>think we have an obligation -- a moral obligation if we teach or lead young
>people -- to look this possibility in the eye and be honest about it with
>ourselves. To be honest about the character of this temptation, and to be
>honest about its implications for a generation of young art students. What
>I
>am saying is teaching, leading, supporting, require an integrity that has
>very little to do with being a hipster.
>
>A provocative book I have been reading about "reading" brings home this
>dimension. The book is Fadiman and Howard's "Empty pages: a search for
>writing competence in school and society" (1979 -- very dated). "Clear and
>effective writing is not simply a skill or a socioeconomic advantage," they
>write. "Because it expresses the integrity (or dishonesty) of an
>intellectual process, it is a moral activity." Of course we need to give
>artists considerably more slack than that, no matter what their age. There
>is, after all, a mysterious element to artmaking that we need to handle
>softly, or at least obliquely. (And this may be the MOST fundamental reason
>why the Jesse Helms's need to be absolved of their oversight of the NEA.)
>Okay, perhaps calling artmaking per se a moral activity is pushing a bit
>too
>hard. But I am a Modernist more than a post-modernist, and so I bring to
>bear my Modernist's bias. The artist, I believe, works to find
>himself/herself. That, and not the design of appealing New Yorker covers,
>is
>the point of artmaking at its core. So then, in its most focused, most
>impassioned hour, the making becomes something of a quest. In this sense,
>artmaking certainly and absolutely DOES qualify as Fadiman's "moral
>activity". And I do not see how our concern for "mod" nurtures or supports
>or inspires any young potential artist. All I see in that is a lack of
>confidence, and a kind of betrayal.
>
>And all of this is very heavy, and all of us know it already w/o having to
>be reminded. Your remark was fun, it was kind of weird, and I did assume
>that it was just one of those off-the-cuff things, not something you'd
>pondered deliberately. That's why I tried to give the whole thing the spin
>of some levity. At the same time, it did touch on an issue which, at least
>in my own experience, is very real. But honestly, I did NOT think even for
>a
>minute that you would need to run out and buy Radiohead. I swear.
>
>Mike Healy
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jack Fulton
> To: alt-photo-process-l@skyway.usask.ca
> Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 10:28 PM
> Subject: Re: Book(s) query
>
>
> Well, I will take this as comedic for I don't know what sort of
>artmaking
> you refer to.
> However, perhaps my vernacular language exhibited my own datedness in
> using the hip as a way to mean 'of today'. Merriam-Webster says of that
>word
> as: "characterized by a keen informed awareness of or involvement in the
> newest developments or styles"
> Your referral to SF falls upon another blank stare as I wonder what
>you
> imply.
> However, Chris Lovenguth kindly dropped by today with his Becqueral
> Daguerreotypes and a copy of James Elkins "Why Art Cannot Be taught" and
>the
> Orland/Bayles "Art & Fear". Those two books contain the sort of informed
> words I was after.
> I'd say your pejorative mind-vision of what art, SF, et al is about
>is
> truly out of date. Perhaps you've been licking the stamps for your
>envelope
> too much.
> Jack
>
> > Hip & Up2Date?! Oh, THAT kind of artmaking. Jack, why didn't you say
>so?!
> > Listen, if that's the crowd you're dealing with, you need to forget
>books.
> > That medium is way too brick-&-mortar, Dude. The very antithesis of
>hip.
> > Especially in SF. Plus (and you gotta be sensitive to this today...)
>the
> > print may be a constant reminder that they left high school at the 7th
>grade
> > reading level. No, man, if I were you, I would put away those books
> > (probably also the non-video equipment...). Get out there wearing
>black.
> > Sport a toilet-bowl brush goatee. Make frequent allusions to the
>lyrics
>of
> > Radiohead and Dave Matthews. That should, as they say, push the
>envelopes.
> >
> > Mike H.
> >
> >
> >> But, my wish is to be hip and up to date.
> >
> >
> >
> >
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