You can learn more in the world than you can in school
I’m sorry if this is disappointing to hear for those of you who are spending tens of thousand of dollars on a graduate education. The point is: your years studying are a luxurious time to read, absorb, obsess, get jaded, experiment with hallucinogens, work on your Twitter feed and so on. However, after spending four years in college and seven on a doctorate and teaching, I learned more about art in one year working at the Walker Art Center than in any school. Working directly with art and artists in institutions is the real art world. Or in galleries. Or in a booth on the Venice boardwalk. Artists: get a job installing art. Art history or curatorial studies grads: beg, borrow, volunteer, or steal your way into a great contemporary art institution. Don’t be shy. Say you’ll do anything (but not in a creepy casting couch kind of way). You have no idea how much we need you but don’t know it yet.
Y: i don’t get why william leavitt is good
sets and randomly picked out lines from plays and bad paintings
he’s one of baldessari’s favorites though
J: really? weird yah i dont get the art world
ugh why did i hv so much caffeine
Y: i think basically everyone knows as much as freshman art students
it’s just positions of power
J: hahahaha i dunno freshman are pretty dumb
they are pretty horrible
Y: ok maybe sophomores then
freshman year of art school i just pretty much focused on stealing groceries and clothes
“All I would say is that if an artist can afford it, I think it’s wonderful to go to school; undergrad and grad; use that time to meet your peers, develop your language, seek shelter from the storm, form gangs, understand that these are hot-house years that will not come again and are invaluable - and please put on a bikini if you are a young woman; or just wear really tight ass-fitting jeans and no shirt if you are a young man; and do not take off these garments or wear anything else until you are in your late-30s.”
One thing I’ll admit to discovering upon the end of my first transfer year at UCLA is that it doesn’t really matter what you’re making…I could put paint on canvas any way I like…as ambivalently or as purposefully as I like…what I’m making now really doesn’t have any impact on anybody - not my teachers, peers, or even myself. And I think that’s the point of all of it somehow, that quality and artistic innovation as ideals are long outdated, that ambivalence reflecting arbitrary positions in art hierarchies is the most truthful at this point.
Success doesn’t come from a successful painting of buildings and people…it comes from the backing of institutions, wrangling politics of curating, residency and award selection. Relationships to these worlds is what an artist should be seeking, and refining, rather than figure-ground perspective planes. People like to see mistakes reflected back at them! Beauty is taboo. A culture of philistinism, cultural relativity, blasé radicalism…
