ART/WORK: A Book Review

by Danielle Mund

There’s no doubt in my mind that the art world is a treacherous place. On the one hand, it’s a cranky old establishment with a severe hierarchy of reputations and tastes; on the other, it’s a fickle young thing that claims no hard-and-fast rules.

But although the art world could not exist without the artist, it is somehow the artist who often seems most lost in this tangled-up web. As an artist, you have beans to your name until you’re on your deathbed, other people’s crap gets hooked up at David Zwirner while you can’t get a lazy eye to look at your masterpieces, and there isn’t enough time in the day to do everything you have to do. Then, of course, there’s the reputational hazard.

Luckily, ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career, a new book by power duo Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber, provides a ton of valuable information for the artist who, for lack of a better expression, hasn’t yet “made it” in his or her career. Neither Heather nor Jonathan are artists themselves—but that’s precisely what makes their advice both valuable and unique. Heather is a director and curator at Mixed Greens Gallery in Chelsea, and Jonathan has practiced art law at a prominent New York law firm and has also represented artists on a pro bono basis for Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. Plus, they’ve each secured teaching positions at SVA next term on account of the book. It’s a pretty safe bet they know what they’re talking about.

I got my hands on a copy and honestly couldn’t put it down. It’s not only easy reading but is laid out extremely efficiently and takes a very well rounded approach to providing advice for artists and their careers. One of the most striking aspects of the book—and importantly, an aspect that separates it from what’s already on the market—is that it isn’t a one-sided how-to manual. Whereas most other books are “inspirational” and try to “get the artist in the studio,” in ART/WORK, the authors assume as much about their readers and instead aim to explain the practicalities beyond simply creating the work. They interviewed dozens of people in the art world, from artists and curators to gallerist-dealers and arts lawyers, in order to get a diversity of opinions on how to be successful. In my own interview with Heather and Jonathan, Heather admitted they were actually surprised by how little conflict of opinion there was on how to do things successfully in the art world. Turns out being an artist isn’t the free-for-all you may have thought it was when you applied to art school—at least, if you’re serious about making it a viable career. There really are rights and wrongs (or betters and worses).

Throughout, ART/WORK assumes its reader is a serious and practical artist who already devotes the necessary time to doing his or her work; obviously, that’s the single most important thing an artist can do for his or her own career. Given that, Heather and Jonathan agree that the next most important things for an artist to do are be organized (keep written track of your inventory and images), do his/her research (figure out where you fit in within the art world), and do more research (apply for grants, residencies, etc.). Be focused with your applications, though: one of the biggest mistakes artists make is applying indiscriminately, which will only get you a higher rejection rate and takes you away from working on your art. If you do your research first and know where you stand, you’ll have a higher chance of succeeding not only in getting grants and residencies, but also in securing gallery representation and the right kinds of clients.

Heather noted that Jonathan is “great at putting legal documents into very easily understood sentences and paragraphs that anyone can use.” I very much agree. He even includes sample agreements (more wretchedly known as contracts) in relevant chapters, which can be tweaked by readers for their own purposes, and used for artist-gallery relationships as well as direct artist-client relationships. Jonathan smartly remarked in our interview that “just the process itself of writing stuff down helps you think through what the issues are; it brings out issues you didn’t necessarily know were there, because it’s only when you start to write something out that you realize ‘Oh, I’ve been assuming this all along, maybe the person I’m doing this arrangement with is assuming something else.’ So the exercise [of writing an agreement] in and of itself is worthwhile for that alone. And then, the idea is to be as clear as possible, and to have fewer things to argue about later.” While his sample contracts are helpful, they don’t replace having a lawyer to make sure everything with your legal document is kosher. If nothing else, have your friend’s-cousin’s-sister-in-law—who’s also a lawyer—look at it.

ART/WORK’s strongest underlying point is that you, the artist, are and should be in full control of your career, and should think of yourself as an entrepreneur—even if you have gallery representation. Will the artist-as-entrepreneur ever take over the need for gallery representation, I wondered? Not likely, but things have certainly changed over the past decade or so to make an artist more accessible to a wider audience. Interestingly, the Internet has certainly played a large part in opening up the once very closed art world network. Only ten years ago, Heather noted, it was unthinkable for a gallery to sell works online. Now it’s absolutely necessary for galleries—and artists!—to have websites, and selling art online is becoming increasingly common. “As a gallerist,” says Heather, “while looking for new artists—for both representation and group exhibitions—it’s really frustrating when an artist doesn’t have a website. It’s difficult to actually figure out if I want to do a studio visit with them, or if I can put them in a show. So I think an artist is doing him or herself a huge disservice by not having a website. It’s just making it that much harder for someone to find you or contemplate your work for different opportunities.” (Might I suggest Arlosites.com?)

Chapters on how to stay organized, submit your materials productively, get business cards and a website, show your work, work on consignment, pack your art, deal with loans, commissions, galleries, and clients, and more are all packed into this 281-page reader. It keeps its textbook format fun with droll little cartoons and lots of quotes. If you have any questions at all about your career as an artist, whether still in school or mid-career, invest in a copy or two of ART/WORK. I swear, it’s worth its weight in gold.

Check out ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career on Amazon.com.

This review was previously posted by Danielle on Artlog. I bumped into Danielle about 30 seconds before her interview with Bhandari and Melber. With my interests already piqued and then inspired by Danielle's comments, I went out and got my own copy of ART/WORK (a staff pick at the Strand, $13.56) and am thoroughly enjoying it. When I am finished, I will interview/have a conversation with Danielle to discuss what this book means in a larger context for artists and art today. This will be the next posting here...coming soon...

Danielle Mund holds a BA in Art History from Wellesley College and an MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art, where she specialized in Post-War and Contemporary Art. >>> view her website

A Different Tune

by Drew MartinInteresting things happen when you take objects apart. For example, you see how they are engineered and constructed. But when components are separated, never to be in union again, the paths they take may be entirely divergent: not unlike old schoolmates, detached siblings and other untangled relationships that were once bound and contained.

I had a upright piano at home a few years ago, which I got for free on the condition that I move it out of the previous owner's house...quite a feat for three not particularly strong men. Though I played a little on the ill-tuned thing I started not enjoying it because the first thing people did when they came over was bang on it. The idea of moving it again was too daunting so I decided to transform it. I wanted to make it silent and sculptural...to cut it down to one gem. For days I hacked at it and cut it up with a circular saw, using wood and metal cutting blades. I even caught it on fire by accident when sparks from the harp lit the sounding board. All that is left now is part of the harp, which I painted black and hung on the wall..all 400+ lbs of it. It is a beautiful piece for me because it has a very playful feel to it, like a child's plastic stencil and yet it is massive and quite dangerous.

What also came out of the piano was a completely different piece. I threaded and hung all the keys from a tree in the backyard but this sculpture quickly disintegrated. The "ivory" white veneer of the keys curled and the wood rotted. The pleasant surprise of the work was that the wind made the keys sway and when they did you imagined/even heard music in your head. Most interestingly, the music you heard changed accordingly to the weather: how cold or how sunny it was outside as well as what time of day it was. More often than not I heard Chopin.

Not in the UK - Don't Need $2,500

My personal email account has been compromised and apparently, according to an email from "me" earlier, I am in down and out in the UK and begging for money via Yahoo!. Here is a picture taken of me earlier today on the streets of NYC with a whopping $20 in my pocket, which will last me a week.

My apologies to anyone reading this who received annoying emails from my old account. I am emailing from a new address now. Thank you to everyone who called in to check up on me.

Here is the content of the hacker email...the funny thing is, other than the bad grammar which was the biggest tip-off, the circumstances are up my alley:

Am in a hurry writing you this note, Just wanted to seek your help on something very important, you are the only person i could reach at this point, and i hope you come to my aid. Because something very terrible is happening to me now, i need a favor from you now,I had a trip here in United Kingdom on a business.Unfortunately for me all my money got stolen on my way to the hotel where i lodged along with my bag were my passport was ,And since then i have been without any money i am even owing the hotel here.So i have limited access to emails for now, please i need you to lend me about $2500 so i can make arrangements and return back please,i have spoken to the embassy here but they are not responding to the matter effectively, I will return the money back to you as soon as i get home, I am so confused right now.I will be waiting to hear from you.
Regards
Andrew Martin

I responded from another account and the scammer gave this forwarding address for where the money should be sent:

18 Manor Road

Chigwell City
Essex County
England
United Kingdom

Here it is on Google Earth. I have designated it as the first Museum of Peripheral Art IMPOSTER site:

You're So Vain, You Probably Think This Blog Is About You...

To writers, singers, thespians, artists and even politicians and athletes I ask "Who is your audience?" There are probably two answers to this. For the first you might cobble together a fan base, financial or emotional supporters and perhaps a general age group/demographic plus some friends and family. But the response closer to your heart, one you may not even acknowledge, is probably an audience of one, an absent parent, a dead friend, a busy mentor, a god, a demon, a potential lover, an invisible soul mate. The more impossible, the better...meaning...the more intense the pursuit, the more constant the calling. In a mediated era in which people entertain social sites with thousands of friends these two kinds of audiences may seem quite polar, but that's the point/gap worth contemplating. What better reactionary way for a scorned lover to show resilience than to boast an astronomical number of friends, post fun-in-the-sun pictures of a recent trip to Aruba and publicize a new love once all other access to someone has terminated. The difference now is that the exhibitionist can "use" more than just a friend or two to make his or her point. He or she can, in fact use a thousand people or more in the needy throws of emotional turbulence.

That being said, the audience of one is not so easy to pinpoint. There may be layers of humans involved (the Carly Simon composite), with only one, original core, whose most recent reincarnation may be the most highly exposed. All of this is pretty basic psychology and a bit too sophomoric to follow through with...but...I think what is interesting is the layering in the broad-cast message. The veneer may be "I'm doing great without you" but the wake behind that may be wide and long. Perhaps it's a frank, continuing dialogue, advice, a friendship or another kind of relationship that should have been salvaged through all else. These are personal unsolved mysteries.

The relationship to this most intimate audience is best explored by the Harvard University professor and poetry/literary critic, Helen Vendler in three hours of online lectures recorded at Princeton from April 14-16 2004 and titled Speaking to Invisible Listeners: George Herbert and God: Intimacy with the Better Self; Walt Whitman and the Reader in Futurity: Intimacy with the Longed-for Camerado; John Ashbery and the Artist of the Past: Intimacy with a Vanished Twin.

To listen, click on the link below and search "invisible"
http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/lectures

Vendler's discussion of the lyric voice annihilating distances with utopian mergings removes us from the lone, desperate acts and helps us understand what it means to be an intimate friend, answering with improvements...answering "a speaker's questions using his very own syllables."

Into Sight, Out of Mind: The Five Minute Museum

The hackneyed phrase Out of Sight, Out of Mind is presumptuous. Perhaps this can be said of things without much emotional investment but the truth is that most longings and yearnings are a matter of Out of Sight, Into Mind, which may in fact lead to a kind of obsession and mental loops that are continuously played, which are hard to escape. This is the force behind Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in which a parted couple tries to erase each other in their memories through a medical procedure. If the reality is Out of Sight, Into Mind, then might the opposite have a reverse effect? What would Into Sight, Out of Mind entail? The proposition would be to create a Five Minute Museum with the following ten instructions:

1. Gather gnawing keepsakes.
2. Find a bare, private space.
3. Pin up the tangibles: photos, letters, drawings, etc.
4. Step back and survey the collection for five minutes.
5. Seal your emotions into these objects.
6. Remember the bad times.
7. Acknowledge the good outcomes.
8. Think of what else you would rather be doing and how boring this all is.
9. Take down the display.
10. Part with it.

A Crucial Difference: An Interview with Anne Hars

Anne Hars is a Los Angeles based artist who comments on spaces through her paintings, drawings, photography and, more recently, urban gardens. She received her MFA in 2004 from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA, has exhibited widely in California and has participated in residences around the country including the Hammer Museum, Cooper Union and the Vermont Studio Center. Anne has recently started a gallery in Los Angeles called The Thinkery.

Drew:
We met in Prague in the early 1990s. I remember visiting your studio in the former Zensky Dum (House for Women). I was captivated by the space. Your drawings remind me of it: an intersection of planes at uncommon angles. This is a big theme for you isn't? Defining space in drawings or improving space with your urban garden projects.

Anne:
Before the garden series I was most excited about creating spaces in which to enter, and about that phenomenological process of entering into a work. I started with drawings that were very, very small and had to be looked at with a magnifying glass. It was such a simple way to make something otherworldly. In a lot of sci fi blackness isn’t infinity, endless whiteness is. Blackness is the universe, a place with destinations, stars and planets. Whiteness is without destination, its fog, chance and aloneness. When one creates worlds on paper one can create utopias - as long as they are just for one. Utopias for One. It’s the only way utopias can work, really. I mean, if you create a utopia, you can still have guests over to visit your utopia, they just can’t overstay their welcome. For years I have heard people call utopianism “utopic”. Is that a real word? It sounds so medical, so clinical, like an unwanted growth. Or like ectopic, which means out of place and refers to a fertilized egg growing on the wrong side of a uterus. Which seems like a common idea of what a utopia is; an out of place fertile growth that nonetheless cannot sustain. Now I’ve just talked my way into really liking the word utopic.

Drew:
Do you think living in Prague influenced this interest in spaces? In Prague every inch of the center is considered and detailed and full of human touch. Moving back to the US, with its abandoned lots, concrete and asphalt splatterings is hard to swallow. Or did you take away a different experience from Prague: the air pollution, hard winters and communist blunders?

Anne:
I had been living alone in the desert of Arizona for a year before going to Prague. I was an apprentice to a figurative sculptor who was very old and I slept in a makeshift foundry. I was like an urchin. I slept under so many covers in the winter that my arms went numb at night from the weight and I would wake and have to flail them off me (I slept with them folded over me for extra heat). Mice would run through the layers of blankets. I had to forage for firewood by a creek. I don’t think most American girls were living like that, but what did I know. Arizona was escape from the cold wet marshes of New England with its puritanical smallness. It was infinite space and I was safe from the claustrophobia of family history. I could have spent all my time marveling at distance but the old sculptor insisted I draw nudes six hours a day, work in the foundry for two banging away at figurative bronzes and only then could I go stare at infinity for a few hours as long as I had a sketch book and produced drawings. Maybe that’s why I don’t draw people.

Then it was time for my European tour (I had only read old books in which this is done) so I went, and I loved it because I couldn’t understand anyone! Bliss! The immense silence! Why would anyone actually learn another language when not learning was so fantastic? I loved sitting in the midst of so much humanity and not understanding words. Speech was the musical accompaniment to the architecture: Europe for an American is like shrinking oneself down and running around in the endless flourishes of a Baroque frame.

When I got back to America I entered a convenience store and almost fainted in front of a wall of candy wrappers. Not infinite space. A wall of visual white noise.

So the flourish is immensely important idea for me. Prague is architectural glossolalia, the flourishes took over and encrusted the city. The servant usurped its master. Who needs the art when you have a frame of ever expanding intricacies?

Drew:
Your flying fans and vector mountain drawings are interesting because the mountains are stand-alone objects so the fans that are broken and fragmented, laying waste on the mountains, seem more like victims of a unfair obstacle than their own misdirection. Are these images just about those simple surfaces or do they have a deeper meaning and metaphors of the fragility of life or the unfortunate chance of some relationships?

Anne:
America is all about walls of like things. Things always are standing in for the things they resemble. When I came to Los Angeles to go to grad school I got a small apartment in Pasadena. So many apartments have low ceilings here but they all have ceiling fans. To me, many interiors feel threatening. When I was a kid I lived in a huge dilapidated Victorian mansion with no central heating and lots of raccoons. My parents were basically caretakers - a wildly misused word in their case. There were chairs that had elaborately carved caryatids of men arching their backs violently backwards to support the armrests. I was so horrified by the plight of these little men and the cruelty of the chair for their imprisonment. What an awful thing! Most of the furniture terrified me. A soft red velvet chair would have spiky bits of horsehair jutting through or a brass tack worked loose would jab and tear. It all seemed to threaten instead of comfort. But I think, like a lot of kids who grow up in broken homes (divorce, insanity, abuse, what have you), there is a certain amount of transference that takes place. Memory isn’t a recording of events, it’s a compilation of the smallest fragments of clues to prod a fiction of sorts that make sense of all the emotions left stewing.

Remember the beginning of Apocalypse Now? The guy is staring up at a ceiling fan and it brings back a rush of memories, flashbacks. So ceiling fans became the icon for flashbacks to war. And then, because I work in architecture, I love icons for things in 3-d programs, the clunkier the rendering the better. Icons are like the fragments of memory we use to restructure a memory, so my stand-in (a simply rendered icon from a 3-d architecture program) became the Meta stand-in for the fragment of memory that goads memory.

Drew:
Though your drawings make use of crisp vector lines, the photos on your site are quite the opposite, vague and mysterious. Are those a way for you to comment on and push a medium which is typically too predictable and defined?

Anne:
I did some huge pieces on muslin, 9' square, of interiors that were really a jumble of icons of interior and exterior stuff. They were really white and washed out. I hung them really low so you could feel like you could just step through into them. I called them Heaven at Eye-level. There are a lot of songs about heaven that depict it as a giant house that has everything you could ever want for. I made the work and I was listening to interviews with and about Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who researched near death experiences and white light experiences. A majority of the descriptions of white light experiences involve a misty bright white space in which the “traveler” meets with family and friends.

But there is a lighter side to my work. I mean, its pretty absurd. I did a series of drawings in which lawn mowers and bidets interact. One can’t survive without absurdity. It's super important. I like work that is both funny and serious depending on the viewers mood. Sean Landers once told me his favorite work was both stupid and clever. I think I generally agree with that, except I’d use the terms poignant and absurd.

Drew:
Is your involvement with greening urban spaces simply a human reaction or do you think it is a particular calling for you as a visual person who can identify and correct blights?

Anne:
All my projects are artworks. I am working as an artist and I reside in a community and I do what I want. Material is all around.

I think the artist I aspire to be is one unhindered by current or past definitions of art and what form it should take. I do what I love and what works. I see a very strong coherence in my practice that is not, perhaps evident by what things look like. I do, however, think its time to step up to the plate and take responsibility for every aspect of artistic production especially in choices concerning materials. I’m really not interested in art comprised of resin poured over stuff, for instance. The first artist we showed at The Thinkery, though, showed work of that exact description but with a crucial difference. She had worked for a local art celebrity who used tons of resin and toxic materials. She rescued the detritus - the bits of hardened clumps which would have gone on to kill sea turtles and poison landfills - and incorporated them into shrines, devotional pieces and powerful vignettes about connection and isolation. They were great because the actual material could be questioned and then one could move on into the complexities and layers of meaning. It wasn’t because she wanted the look of resin poured over wood, it was there, it was someone else’s oblivion that she took up and transformed.

That’s a crucial difference.

Drew:
Thank you for your time. Are there any new projects on the horizon?

Anne:
I’ll continue to cultivate my garden.

New Photograghy 2009, Leslie Hewitt 2010: An Interview

Leslie Hewitt is a photographer and sculptor currently represented at the Museum of Modern Art's New Photography 2009 exhibition (through January 11, 2010). A short video interview with Leslie by Eva Respini (Associate Curator, Department of Photography, MoMA) is available on MoMA's website. The following posting is my own interview with Leslie, which I asked her for in order to answer some questions I had about her work. Once we got started, I immediately abandoned the notes and questions I had prepared and simply let the dialogue proceed frankly.

Leslie Hewitt is perhaps one of the most elegant, educated and thought-full artists working today. She is mature, articulate and has time on her side which is evident in her youthful curiosity, patience and control of the temporal elements in her work. Leslie received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2000 and her MFA from Yale University in 2004. I am very pleased to present here a phone conversation we had yesterday while she was driving back to Harvard University where she is currently a Radcliffe Fellow. This text was slightly edited during transcription in order to clean up the stray habits of discussion and make it more readable. What is missing, however, is the sound of her smart, clear voice and her candid laughter.

Drew:
I went to MoMA Friday night and saw your work there. Congratulations on the exhibition.

Leslie:
Thank you.

Drew:
What was the selection like? Were you part of the whole process or did they just announce that you were going to be in it?

Leslie:
My experience thus far is that the curator contacts you and there is a certain level of engagement that has to happen. I do not think I have ever been in a show when that was not the case. I met Eva Respini about four years ago and she saw my work at the Studio Museum exhibition Frequency. And then we met and had several studio visits and conversations. I don’t think I was always privy to her interests in curating a show eventually with me included. But we did have a series of conversations around the work that I was doing. And then in January we had another studio visit and she let me know she was working towards the next New Photography exhibition, which they always do and is always the last space after you go through the collection with some of the more historic works...and then you end with contemporary propositions. So she was looking at artists and I was one of them.

Drew:
So are those pieces that are there in the show part of the collection now?

Leslie:
There is only one that is part of the collection.

Drew:
Is that the “Ebony” one? (Riffs on Real Time)

Leslie:
Yes.

Drew:
OK, because there was a triptych on the left and then a diptych to the left of that. Is that right?

Leslie:
Yes.

Drew:
So who chose the other work? Was that something you got to choose or did they look at your work and say “I want this piece”?

Leslie:
All of the photographers in the show also work in other mediums so we went through a phase where she was also interested in some other works but then towards the midpoint she realized the show would be most effective with two dimensional works. So it was a give-and-take. Initially I did not want the Riffs on Real Time series but she really fought for that, to have that present. And I guess I am only saying that because that is an older one. So that was the compromise.

Drew:
Did you know the other photographers/artists in the show prior?

Leslie:
I know Walead Beshty pretty well. Not personally but I have had the longest awareness of his practice than of anyone else in the show. Sara VanDerBeek is another artist who I knew prior to the exhibition at MoMA. But Walead’s work I felt like I followed a bit more.

Drew:
I guess what I want to ask about is that the name of the exhibition at MoMA is New Photography 2009 and yet I feel like a lot of your influences come from the 60’s, such as Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs or even earlier artists such as Magritte and Duchamp...or David Hockney, who is later. What are the influences? I am referring to your set-ups that remind me specifically of One and Three Chairs by Kosuth.
Leslie:
Well I would definitely say I am aware of it but for me a lot of my references come from outside my art practice. A lot of my references or inspirations come from French New Wave Cinema. I also love Third Cinema. The risks they were taking in narrative is important for me on the subjective position. Many of the films...like Godard’s early films...were, in that era, fixated on the importance of the personal narrative. The subtext is always political. It’s on the periphery. The center is always this personal aspect. And I would say the reality of Third Cinema gives me the courage to take certain risks. That is where my initial interest comes from in terms of a visual narrative. It is more visually playful and imaginative. This lineage promotes freedom to project a personal narrative and give it a frame that is political or a frame that is social. A frame that is socially and politically aware.

Drew:
And also your narrative is both the context as well as the temporal elements in your triptych. When I went to see your work at MoMA I was much more engaged than I thought I would be. I watched the interview online first with you and Eva and you were talking about the triptych being upside down. That almost seems like an art joke. But when I went there, I got to see what you were trying to do. There was something with the quality of the plants that looked quite different because there was a different sense of gravity. Was there any tongue and cheek in that aspect?

Leslie:
No. One could say that is embedded in photography. There is an aspect of photography that does connect to that effect. There is no mystery that both of those effects come along at the same time. Thinking about knowledge and awareness of optics and how our eye works and how vision works and how photography plays into that. It’s definitely not something that I have to try hard to engage with. But for me I was really thinking more in terms of gravity…thinking about perception and making it a physical experience…making the experience a visual experience but something that is a process of working through even in one photograph and I think I do that in different ways like in Riffs on Real Time it's through all of these layers. So in essence you are looking at a flat surface, so there is no trick of the eye, really, by allowing the frame or the edge of the photograph to always be visible in the second photograph. To me that is another dismantling of the illusion of photography. I feel like a lot of my work is a bit dry in that way...that it reveals the mechanisms that are at play. So, yes it's turned 180 degrees but you also have a sense that there is a human hand in it. There is this dialogue that I am hoping, at least visually, that happens between me-the composer of the still life...or the narrative...and the viewer to put together, take apart and then put back together. For me it's more about slowing down the visual process than it is about creating an illusion. I kind of reveal how it's being done.

Drew:
I think the reason it did work for me when I saw it present was that you are taking pictures of objects and by having it upside down you are almost saying that the end product is not the photograph that MoMA or anybody wanted in the New Photography 2009 show because it's still an object and you can turn it right side up if you wanted to....it's still a physical object you can play with. When I first saw your work I thought I was too distracted by the concept-the conceptual delivery and not understanding, as you say, the political/social message in it. How do you balance the message and the delivery so it doesn't just come across as minimalist and so you don't lose somebody either way?

Leslie:
I don't ever think it could be void of it. Not to go overboard with Third Cinema...because for me Third Cinema really represented that...and I think French New Wave did too, because you need both, right? If you are trying to tell a story a certain way that's evocative of something, a previous form may not be suitable for it. So in a way you do have to engage in aesthetics. You have to engage in the way something visually looks in order for the work to be evocative. So I think I also value that and I value the aesthetic quality of the work that I am making but I also hold it accountable, and I hold myself accountable, by thinking about the social and political context that I am in. Because I don't necessarily think that we are ever void of that. So even if it is a completely minimalist sculpture it's still made in the year that it was made, right? It's still in context whether the work engages it directly or not.

Drew:
Right...and also you are using a lot of found objects, either books or headboards and these are very domestic objects. I didn't see, when I was looking at your work online, any industrial materials. And then I also thought a lot about the minimalists: the male minimalists versus the female minimalists, like Eva Hesse, who was a minimalist but she had a completely different approach to minimalism. Hers was one of loss as opposed to the absence of the adornment. I think your work evokes more her approach for me than say someone like Duchamp or someone later like Tony Smith.

Leslie:
I agree. What I really like about Eva Hesse's work is that it is very evocative of the body without representing the body. And there are other artists who I really look towards. I really love Carl Andre. And I also love Gordon Matta-Clark...even though he is not necessarily considered a minimalist, it's how he engages with architectural space in fragments and how he deals with time and entropy.

Drew:
While we are talking about Eva Hesse...what I really like about her work is that she is able to grasp a lot of social issues without being obvious. She never really shows the female body, for example, she's using tubes and cubes and different things and she doesn't play on her background at all, she's always in that minimal state. So what I want to ask you, as an artist, is how you edit yourself by saying "No, this might be too much if I do this" or "I need to do this if I have to get my idea across"? You had one piece with all the Roots books together, which I really like. It could be anything from a grave to a raised garden bed...it had so many different meanings to it. So how do you edit yourself and say "I need to have Roots here" as opposed to just books?

Leslie:
That particular work was really specific. I would not create that piece again.

Drew:
Why is that?

Leslie:
Sculptures take on a different quality for me. There are some sculptures I have made, like Grounded, that don't have a direct reference embedded in it. The Roots sculpture was a little bit different because I was thinking about the archives in a really specific way...and also about recalling the first edition of it and I was thinking about the original and what the original means. That was such an emblem of so many different things that I really needed to use it, physically as an object in that particular piece. I have done other work where that's not the point so the reference doesn't need to be there. In the Riffs on Real Time work, where it is a larger series and there are very potent and latent references that come in, I pull back. And then there's some photographic works where's there's nothing, where everything is opaque and everything has just its form-formal presence. So I think with the photographic works I allow myself the push and pull to go back and forth because in a series duration plays a different role. With the sculptures my intention is to make an autonomous object. And the Roots sculpture was where I made that exception.

Drew:
Where was that shown?

Leslie:
It was shown in an exhibition in the Thomas Dane Gallery in the UK called Civil Restitutions.

Drew:
I remember seeing the volumes and around the volumes was a border. What was the border signifying?

Leslie:
It was wooden planks. It was Cypress wood. It hovers a half an inch from the ground. It is not necessarily supposed to signify anything...it was holding the books together but not necessarily. So, in my mind, I was thinking about a book shelf that fell. In this instance you couldn't even take a book out because it would change the balance of what was remaining together.

Drew:
Hmmm...so this is completely different than what I wanted to ask you, this whole interview, which is good. Can you just talk about some other references, you've already talked about cinema. I think it is great that you are not just feeding on ideas from the art world, I think that dilutes work because it's too referential to other art. I like that you are reaching out to other media. Is there anything in literature that has been a big influence on your work?

Leslie:
I do have a lot of references to books in my work and though I can't say that I have a favorite essayist or novelist I will say that I do definitely engage in that way. I think about how text functions. I view it also as another time-based form. So obviously photography is another time-based medium...as is film...and I also understand the narrative as we experience it. I don't deal with it in terms of an oral context but definitely as a narrative in terms of text and how it plays out over time, which is a really important aspect to me. I think that also influences me in terms of how I relate to the viewer. I see that as a really intimate relationship. I think that many novelists and essayists are not concerned with an audience in its grandeur but individual readers. I also think about viewers in that particular way.

Drew:
So what are you working on now, what's your direction? This show at MoMA is looking at you as a photographer. I assume you are still doing sculpture and photography and other media. What are you interested in now? Where do you want to go next...in the next couple years?

Leslie:
I am still working photographically but I am doing a bit more research on optics...optics from the 17th century and also from the 10th century. I felt really fascinated with what was going on politically and socially in the mid-century in the United States and internationally and how that changed our view, or way of looking, and so I am actually going farther back and thinking about the 17th century world and specifically how it relates to how optics changed the view, and the same with the 10th century.

Drew:
So when you say the 10th century are you referring to the House of Wisdom and the Arab studies with glass bulbs filled with water?

Leslie:
Yes, I am really talking about The Book of Optics from the 10th century in what we would call Iraq today...in Baghdad, where a lot of these studies took place. I am interested in the camera and photography and how Optics played a role in it. So that is the particular research I am doing now in the Radcliffe Fellowship where I am and hopefully working on another body of photographic work. Not necessarily retelling the story but using it as platform to address where we are now because we have always lived in a global world so there's a quality I think I am searching for by researching this...and obviously that will then affect how I photograph. So this next series will be in black and white.

Drew:
Are you actually shooting in black and white or are you just taking the color out?

Leslie:
Yes, shooting in black and white.

Drew:
What technically where you doing in the pictures in the show? What kind of cameras were you using? Is it film you are using for those shots?

Leslie:
Yes, I always use film.

Drew:
And that's a whole other temporal issue, that you have to wait for it to be developed or to develop it yourself. I have also been shooting film recently and it is amazing to wait up to a week just to see what you were shooting and it actually makes you think much more about how you are going to set something up.

Leslie:
It's very true...it's very true. With the works at MoMA I used a medium format camera.

Drew:
Everything in MoMA was big and glossy...and not just your work, everyone's. Your one photograph was probably one of the smaller photographs. Is that just a size you need to do or are you thinking about the surface and the size of the pictures when you do these new projects? Or do you just feel like it has to be that size that you are showing now?

Leslie:
Well no, I think I always make things in relationship to the body. So it's important for me especially when there is a snapshot involved that it's larger than what it was...where it can exist along the lines of being something uncanny. It's so familiar yet unfamiliar. So I gauge that depending on the work. I always work in the range of thinking about the body. Not thinking about something smaller than the viewer can imagine engaging with, almost in a confrontational manner.

Drew:
Leslie, thank you very much for your time. Good luck with your fellowship at Radcliffe.

Leslie:
Thank you as well.

Art Lies

by Drew Martin
Art lies...Art lies when it does not stand upright with self-assurance or sit in contemplation. To lie down is an ambivalent position in art. What is vertical is generally full of life; and, seated figures usually express mental activity. But when something is lying down or laid down the symbolism may represent sleep as much as death; or, procreation (at least the pleasures of the act). Imagine what the first standing sculptures meant for the naive observers, drawn by intrigue and repelled by fear because they understood that a standing person or tree required a life force. The early Greek statues placed in temples were manifestations of gods and must have been awe-some to encounter. We now view art with reason and purpose. Perhaps it can be said that objective art is always dependent on its conceptual orientation. A monument toppled is the very opposite of honor. A car turned over is dead. When my flat screen television was defeated by my toddler, it literally died...it's electronic nervous system shut down and now it sits as a coffee table. It is still. It is a sarcophagus for all the faces that flashed upon its screen. It recalls a time when media was furniture, like the old wooden turntable unit I used to sit on and watch the world go by outside our picture window.

Pictured here, top to bottom: A reclining Buddha in Sri Lanka, one of Magdalena Abakanowicz's Sarcophagi In Glass Houses at the Storm King Art Center and my deceased LCD television.

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

by Drew Martin
A former fellow online student at The New School once wrote to me about the color palettes we inherit. He was from Uruguay and he confessed that he was jealous of his graphic artist friends from Mexico because they had been raised in a much more colorful environment and were therefore braver and more experimental with color. I had never considered this but of course it makes a lot of sense...even on a much more local level, i.e. New Yorkers gravitate to a darker and more serious palette than residents of Miami and yet ask any New Yorker what color a taxi is and he or she will say "yellow." I was content with this way of thinking until my current immersion in David Sweetman's biography of Paul Gauguin. What I read does not contradict the national palette idea, in fact it reinforces the concept and makes it multi-faceted.

If you thumb through any art history book and read a paragraph on Gauguin and take note that he was French, born in Paris and died in French Polynesia you would be missing a lot. Even the classic The History of Art by H. W. Janson starts off with "He began as a prosperous stockbroker in Paris and an amateur painter and collector of modern pictures." The entry on Gauguin in Wikipedia explains:

"His bold experimentation with colouring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential exponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms."

In the same Wiki entry, Peru is mentioned twice, briefly, but is not given any credit. In Paul Gauguin: A Life, Sweetman constantly reminds the reader that Gauguin's early childhood was spent in Peru (his mother was half Peruvian) and his senses were not only formed there and absorbed the colors and objects of the country but that he had a lifelong obsession with the native South Americans and always kept Incan crafts close to him. Gauguin even referred to himself as "the Savage from Peru." Unlike Picasso, who only borrowed "primitive" imagery and was influenced by this "rascal" artist, Gauguin was merely expressing a palette and shapes that were already part of him and he felt the need to change the European art world that did not satisfy this side of him.

What we should take away from this is to rethink our own upbringings and review everything that has influenced us. I am American of (pre-Pilgrim) English and German descent, born in California and raised in New Jersey and there are obvious reflexes to these influences. My father is a nuclear physicist and my mother is a Spanish professor, which not only add to my visual vocabulary but also means many related objects were simply part of my "natural" childhood environment.

Yesterday I walked around my parents' house and took note of the family heirlooms and Virgina knickknacks, Aztec calendar, Toldeo sword: Colonial Williamsburg + Mexico + Spain...Our influences are infinite and we can easily trace them for each of us and choose to express different ideas at different times, i.e. being Irish on St. Patrick's Day. While we are looking deeper into our own make-up we should also be as detailed when viewing others who we might judge too quickly and cater to stereotypes. Gauguin expresses this collective contemplation in his work and especially in the title of one of his most famous paintings:

D'où venons-nous? Qui sommes-nous? Où allons-nous?

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Laundry Art: A Thanksgiving Dedication

On Thanksgiving Day, 2009, the Museum of Peripheral Art (MoPA) inducted its first MoPA site, setting the cornerstone for an international presence of MoPA projects. This MoPA site is the laundry room at my parents' house in northern New Jersey.

Since we moved into the our home on August 15, 1978, my mother, Sandra Martin, designated her laundry room as a gallery for Laundry Art, which is any kind of artwork pertaining to the the washing, cleaning, mending, hanging, ironing and folding of clothes.

I fondly recall how one of the earlier pieces was acquired. We were shopping in the 1970's and my mother picked up an ironing board cover in the supermarket and broke out with laughter. The product design featured a picture of a beautiful young woman at an ironing board and a handsome man embracing her in the woods. Needless to say my mother had this image framed and hung it in the laundry room. (pictured above, right in center)

The artwork in my mother's laundry room includes cartoons, acrylic paintings, watercolors, photographs and one large three-dimensional painting/sculpture I did in high school of me caught in the vortex of a washing machine. The very first piece was a large painting on paper of someone ironing, which she purchased at the Ramsey High School Student Art Show in 1974. Surrounding the cartoon figure and the ironing set up are little people engaged in all sorts of activities, soiling their clothes. They are both the cause for the need of the laundry work being done but also a constant reminder that this is endless work. Perhaps this is what is so fascinating about Laundry Art: it is so closely tied to life itself, while other themes in art are too abstract and distancing to relate to the every day life. Laundry Art can never be too lofty or elitist because it embodies the 'ancient Chinese proverb,' After enlightenment, there is still laundry.

The induction included the dedication of a new piece, the picture shown here of one of my dress shirts drying in my basement. My mother also received a framed certificate from MoPA, which establishes her laundry room as an official MoPA site and mentions the contributions this space had for the foundation of MoPA. This small, brief ceremony followed a Thanksgiving dinner and included the reading of a poem I wrote this morning:

The Barbers of Chinatown

by Drew Martin

The old barbers of Chinatown
spend their days underground
in tiled cellars with walls of mirrors
and fluorescent ceilings

These below-grade shops are symbolic
of their age and profession
in this enclave

Their sons and grandsons
work in glass towers not too far
from their crowded, crooked streets
Which, in some ways are more distant
than the most remote villages in China

The barbers greet me warmly
Their business is not clean
but I feel safe and at home there

I point to the electric razor
then to the side of my head
and say "short"

Then I point to my forehead
move my thumb and index finger two inches apart
and say "long"

We both smile and I relax

They used to watch Chinese operas
on silver, portable CD players at each station
Different ones, simultaneously
Yesterday, these were gone

I think they missed the simple sounds
of dull scissors and the cut hair
falling on old Japanese salon bibs

When my barber finishes
I point to the straight edge razor
on the counter in front of me
and point to the back of my neck

He jacks it open and smooths it on the strop
I close my eyes because this is my favorite part

When I ascend to the wet autumn streets
I pass other salons, shops and restaurants
In one window I notice a Happy Thanksgiving sign
It seems so familiar in such a foreign place

A sign of home, abroad

Awakenings

We celebrate enlightened thoughts...the historic Ah-Ha's that break through the humdrum of the day-to-day. Inspirations improve our lot with advancements or simply make us see the world differently. This is where science and art weave in and out of each other, which we witness from Leonardo da Vinci to Georges Seurat. Just as profound as the something as big as Albert Einstein's theories are the little leaps that come from less suspecting places. If you have had the experience of being a parent or a teacher, you understand that these little revelations sprinkle a child's development.

My nine year old son, Calder, loves to build things and last night he did something that blew me away. He had a pile of building blocks (which are often branded as Jenga). He made a very simple squarish tower and then, with the palms of his hands, pressed on two edges and transformed the structure into something much more complex. Not only was it rhomboidal but the edges of the blocks created a pattern that Norman Foster would be proud of. His two year old brother immediately took action and razed the building like a little blond Godzilla. Calder then set to work and spent an hour building quite interesting structures and I went the bed happily assured that he had a future as an architect, engineer or builder.

When I awoke another transformation had taken place. My wife had spent the day prior repainting spaces and rooms in our house. Her father is a house and commercial painter in Poland so she grew up with this influence but never ventured beyond simple, clean walls. When I went to bed there was a splotch of a silvery color on a wall, which she was unsure of. When I awoke the color had grown into a landscape around the perimeter of the room, like exotic volcanic formations. (pictured here: a cartoonish acrylic painting I did years ago with tar, broken bottles, beer bottle caps, nails, cigarette butts and synthetic "sleeping bag" with zipper above the new wall painting landscape)

I am currently reading Paul Gauguin: A Life by David Sweetman, (Simon & Schuster, New York 1995). Gauguin came of age in a fascinating time for artists, which spanned the Barbizon school of painters, Impressionists and then the likes of Seurat who introduced divisionism/pointillism. Gauguin deeply contemplated every move...part of it was for profit so he could fix his broken marriage but there was also a genuine side that wanted to advance the arts.

From Paul Gauguin: A Life:

...the 'Notes' (Notes synthetiques by Gauguin) are a first attempt to define an art of the imagination, one which works by awakening sensations rather than simply representing the tangible world. It was an art which would begin not with some object or scene in nature but with the feelings and emotions of the artist. It would no longer be realistic or scientific but subjective and symbolic. In Gauguin's words: "You may describe a tempest to me with talent - you will never succeed in conveying to me the sensation."

This was, of course, precisely what the Barbizon painters, and their successors the Impressionists, had tried to do. Courbet had said: 'Painting is an essentially physical language made up of what is visible. That which is abstract and invisible does not belong to the domain of painting.' Gauguin was now saying exactly the opposite.

He was not the first. Even as the early Impressionists were embarking on their revolution in art, other ideas were also beginning to emerge from artists such as Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, who had been producing strange mysterious images with magical and religious undertones since the end of the 1870s. True, such works looked odd and individual when set beside the great movement released across Europe by the Impressionists, yet just as Gauguin began writing his 'Notes,' others, mainly writers, were beginning to assemble ideas which were not dissimilar in spirit to these mysterious paintings. Already, in Paris, young poets were tentatively suggesting that Zola's earthy novels about the political and social ills of supposedly 'real' people were not the summit of literature that a previous generation had believed. The poet Stephane Malarme and the critic Joris-Karl Huysmans, who had written so forcefully about Gauguin were emerging as leaders of the new thinking and they took as their starting point Baudelaire's belief that 'the whole of the visible universe is only a storehouse of images and signs to which the imagination assigns a place and a relative value, it is a kind of nourishment that the imagination must digest and transform.' Which in his own way was what Gauguin was saying, quite independently, in his Danish attic, far away from the mainstream of intellectual life in France.

Marc Jacobs vs Mike Tyson...and the Artist is...!

by Drew Martin

I have three pensive activities...my morning run, a steamy shower and ironing. The run is reflective and the shower is contemplative. The weekly ironing is when I am open to any mental journey so this is when I watch films, sometimes two in a row. This past weekend I ironed to Loic Prigent's documentary Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton followed by James Toback's documentary Tyson. One would think that the two men have nothing in common, though Malcolm Gladwell would ask you to look more closely at the details and factors of their NY/NJ influences and their birth dates. Marc Jacobs was born April 9, 1963 and Mike Tyson was born June 30, 1966.

Both films are fascinating and revealing. As a personal double-feature it is hard not to make comparisons. Tyson is, more often than not, very likeable while Jacobs comes across as needy and, at times, desperate. By popular vote, the obvious artist of the two would, of course, be Jacobs but after two hours with each man you see it quite differently. Both of them share an intense drive and incredible work ethic but while Tyson is able to step back more and survive the consequences, Jacobs seems to know that his 99% perspiration is his success and that he can never stop. There is no doubt that he has a good eye and day-to-day vision of the fashion world but he comes across as a typical overworked New Yorker and sometimes just as a frenetic manager (of thousands of people) in the absence of having a parenting role and a life outside of his career. Tyson, on the other hand, is a one-man-show and instead of managing down to the support of an army of people he is managing himself away from what he calls "leeches."

Tyson is the more interesting character of the two men because of his extremes. He talks about his pigeons like a little boy and then you see the outrageous pit bull in him biting Evander Holyfield's ear. While Jacobs is calculating others, like a reincarnation of Andy Warhol, Tyson is operating from a much deeper emotional place. He is life, death, fear, hate and love. Jacobs paddles past schools of mermaids in a sea of opinions and advice. Tyson wrestles sharks and swims in the dark pressures of the ocean's lonely depth.

In one scene we see Tyson loading a Super 8 projector and watching famous fights from the 1920's. He watched every famous fight and studied every move, over and over again. He read about all the great fighters and packed the entire history of boxing into his mind and muscles and unleashed it on each opponent at the right time. In Tyson we learn that he is a student of technique and skill, defeating men, who were much bigger and stronger than him, with his speed and moves.

With Jacobs we see not only visual appropriations of artists for his clothing, shoe and bag designs but also a continued confession that he is less than an artist. He expresses the difference between being accepted by Madonna (pop and more like him) and Edward Ruscha, who he is thrilled by (he also squeals when he sees Jeff Koons...and both Ruscha and Koons are more designers' artists, than artists' artists). Tyson has been to the zenith of his art and is the only one of the two men who discusses character: about having character like Muhammad Ali, finding cracks in his opponents' characters and then not being true to his own. Jacobs treats character like last year's designs and is a wannabee artist immersed in a visual world, collecting paintings and sculptures in compensation.

Of course, art is not a competition, but neither is boxing in the end: there are no clear winners or losers only internal struggles.