Taking Names and Writing Checks, Fall 2011 Grades, Yanyan, Dec 2011
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.
Andrea Fraser:
I don’t think art has any more of a capacity to produce radical change than any other sphere of human activity. I do believe that art can and should be a site of reflection and resistance, critique and contestation, and realize the potential of its historical development as a relatively autonomous field. At this point, however, art doesn’t even seem capable of defending that autonomy, much less taking on society, except in its own flights of fancy. And that’s where belief tends to come into play, sustaining the fantasies of creative omnipotence - including the power to change the world, despite all evidence to the contrary- with which artists flatter themselves and their patrons. If reason is unconscious, its logic is wish fulfillment but only in fantasy. The perennial promise of art is to turn those fantasies into reality. The problem, unfortunately, is that enacting one’s fantasies is not the same thing as fulfilling the wishes that drive them. Enactment tends to reproduce the very alienation and frustration that engendered those wishes in the first place.
There is one area where the art world has been extremely successful in turning fantasy into reality. That is in producing value. If there’s one thing we can do effectively in the “real world,” it’s turn shit into gold. The fundamental basis for the entire economy of art is belief. Belief in the value of art and belief in the value of specific objects as art. There’s really no other basis for the art market. I don’t know that it can be completely divorced from metaphysical belief. Do the people who spend millions of dollars on a painting really believe in art? Is it only market value? It’s easy to say that, but I don’t…believe it.”
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…
Began a new painting last night with a 2 meter tall x 1 meter wide canvas and red gouache. Red because I’d only brought 2 gouache colors with me to Florence, red and magenta. Played The Holy Mountain whilst painting, as I always enjoy a good film soundtrack to keep the productivity and rhythm going. Pictures to come.
As Roger (Herman) told me, I need to and have been making more ‘mistakes’ on paintings…I suppose it’s good to have clean lines and technical ability, but it’s better to let loose and paint…I’m liking the results so far (2 ‘imperfect’ paintings thus far)
Considering I received a C+ in Advanced New Genres with Stanya Kahn, video and editing isn’t my strong suit…neither is utilizing ‘studio time’ correctly for a film class. I never understood what we were supposed to do during ‘studio time’ anyhow. Edit footage we’d shot in between classes or shoot on campus? Then, everything would have the same setting, i.e. on campus, and look like ‘art video’ or ‘institutional critique’. My concern mainly resides in the world outside of school, as school probably rates 2 out of a 10 importance scale for me. Stanya’s critique of my last video was that it resembled a “bourgeois flaneur”, world-weary and bored/detached way of living, but I was aiming to share more of my nomadic/bohemian lifestyle…and maybe to show off just a little bit. Well..why does showing one’s life automatically amount to showing off?
Questions questions.
