The ‘ladder of abstraction’ is a continuum that stretches between the specific and the extremely general. The ladder has 4 distinct levels; abstractions (theoretical and imaginary), broad concepts , groupings and hard-core specifics. ( ‘Abstraction’ here has nothing to do with, like, you know, ‘abstract’ as the opposite of ‘realistic‘. The ladder of abstraction explains how you get Elsie the cow and farmer Brown into the White House just by stretching conceptual levels.
The ladder of abstraction can ascend ( or descend) like this:
1. Bessie the cow
2. cattle
3.farm assets
4. the economy
or this:
1. Aesthetics
2. Metropolitan Museum (or the Los Angeles Art Museum)
3. Artists in New York City (or LA)
4. Art student
All art is made for someone to look at. A really interesting thing is how artists gets people to look at their particular artwork. Where they start from is not as interesting as the incremental changes that become parts of objects . The ‘ladder of abstraction’ is interesting to me because its logic levels can describe the territory between the bad artists and the good-enough ones. The good-enough artist and the no-good artist start at the same place and diverge somewhere else. The divergence doesn’t begin with ideas (most of the ideas that make up contemporary art have been in circulation since 1870) and have nothing to do with originality (there no such thing). The differences have to do with usage. One of the factors that separate the so-so artists from the good-enough ones is percentages: what percentage of the current thing in play is self-developed as opposed to imitative?
A friend of mine defines the not bad/not okay artist as someone who’s
a. more interested in techniques than an ideas.
b. aversive to risk-taking.
3. whose entire involvement in artmaking is focused on HOW rather than WHY.
My friend has had a number of studio assistants and draws them exclusively from this pool.
Although many artists are terrific at making things, the good ones are often totally disinterested in HOW and only concerned with WHY. The good-enough artist makes work that devours ideas. The work is good-enough to look at and the most interesting thing about it is how it keeps all the idea’s elements in play; mixing, timing, combinations.
Here’s one example of a good enough artist; Salvador Dali.
Dali was a prodigiously intelligent, technically gifted and ambitious artist; the idea of melting clocks requires an intensely risky imagistic leap of faith. Dali exhausted his mine of ideas half-way thru his career. At that point Dali and transformed innovation into repertoire, falling from the top of the ladder straight to the bottom where he met his imitators battling to rise up to the Dalian heights.
Dali imitators live with Bessie the cow on the lowest rung of the ladder of abstraction. They colonize Dali’s original leap to a high level of abstraction but lack velocity. As painters they are technical wizards recreating the look of his work while reinforcing its staleness.
You can’t become a better or even good-enough artist by working within someone else’s parameters, the whole point lies in driving up the conceptual percentages. Originality is not a requirement; what important is permutations and risk. Risk ratchets up the conceptual ante propelling the object upward on the ladder.
When Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize I started thinking about prizes for artists. There are a variety of them, grants from foundations and governments, awards like the “anonymous was a woman”, Fullbright program and the MacArthur. There are odd bits like artist’s residencies, visiting artist programs.
I always wonder about the processes for finding winners for all these different giving situations. Do jurors prefer something that’s expected and recognizable, voting for a specific kind of artwork as opposed to voting for an individual artist? Ultimately, any award granted is based on the “American Idol” model; an assumption that demonstrated accomplishments in the present predict achievement in the future.
American artists really need money to do their work but the US doesn’t possess an arts-friendly culture. Do the prizes and awards ultimately make the culture friendlier? Although awards give artists recognition and some money to buy studio time and materials, art-friendliness has yet to occur. If the prizes can’t/don’t change the culture, do they ghettoize the accomplishments they award and confine them to a narrow community of interest?
Many of my friends have won these prizes; NEA, MacArthur etc. I’ve been delighted for them, happy that financial pressure was relieved. Like Obama they earned their prizes for the quality of their work rather than its quantity or appearance. Unlike the American Idol model, their future efforts were not rewarded.
I’ve just read a press release announcing the winners of something called “Artprize”. It’s founders claim it’s “the biggest art prize in the world” (this is true if you don’t figure in the more meaningful MacArthur award). Its 10 winners each received $250,000. The “Artprize” award process is unique and highly democratic. It involves (among other things) artists applying directly and finding a sponsoring gallery. The winners are those who got the largest share of votes from the citizens of Grand Rapids, Michigan This is a process grounded on the flimsiest possible parameters for good, better, best. Choices aren’t based on the voters’ wide exposure to contemporary art or even reflect enthusiastic community support.
The winning Artprize artists are pleasantly unexceptional. All do kinds of work many other people do and all their work is nice; big hearted and a best of all, not ‘elitist’. The winning choices are the outcome of a popularity contest; uneven, not bad, fervidly middle-of-the-road.
I have profound respect for anyone who survives as an artist, I value their labor as well as intellect. I applaud work that is ‘approachable’ (I think this means that it has qualities anyone can appreciate without much exposure to anything else). Saint-Gauden’s beautiful work is a good example of ‘approachable’; it doesn’t preclude excellence, intellect or significance. For the “Artprize” ’significant’ isn’t a consideration, the raison d’etre of the prize is predefined and limited by populism. Everyone gets chance at the big money no matter what kind of work they do. The best part of the concept is that it achieves a pleasant comfort level in an otherwise, arts-unfriendly environment.
Niki de St. Phalle made objects that are as approachable as you can get, but the work is not nice. It’s even magificent, in a deliberately populist way. Her large-scale work has a distinctive, interestingly difficult edge that links sexuality to object-making. She’s an intellectual whose work rose from a conceptual arena that interested many French artists of her time.
Not only is it approachable, you can walk on it and touch it, even go inside it. The interaction is part of it, integral to its meaning. Her work is intellect in the disguise of a blow-up doll. In terms of meaning and significance it’s light years away from the “Artprize” winner who was awarded the $250,000 for a sculpture of a moose made entirely of thousands of carefully welded nails.
Here’s more info on ArtPrize
The Basics
At ArtPrize, any artist—from established to emerging—has the chance to show work. Any visitor can vote. The vote will determine who wins the largest art prize in the world. We also took the unusual step to allow people in the city to open a venue and choose the artists to show in their space. There is not one official curator or jury for the competition.
The number of venues is fluid, so the number of competing artists is fluid. The possibilities are wide open.
We can’t predict what will happen, but it should be a lot of fun finding out.
Come and see.
- Top prize: $250,000
- Dates: September 23 – October 10
- Location: Grand Rapids, MI USA
- Winner is determined by public vote
- All attendees of the event can vote
- Top 10 entries will receive a prize
- Multiple artists can collaborate on an entry
- Artists may only submit one entry
- Property owners/renters in downtown Grand Rapids can become a venue
- Number of artists represented is only limited by number of venues that become available.
More posts on PRIZES
Here is a 12/15 post from Real Clear Arts
Guess Who’s Winning $50,000?
Last night, United States Artists announced the winners of its annual $50,000 awards at a ceremony in Santa Monica. There were 50 lucky winners, including ten in the visual arts:
Diana Al-Hadid, Brooklyn
Terry Allen, Santa Fe
Vija Celmins, New York
Anthony Hernandez, Los Angeles
Joan Jonas, New York
Kim Jones, New York
Martin Mazorra and Michael Houston, Brooklyn
Dave McKenzie, Brooklyn
Judy Pfaff, Kingston, New York (one of her installations is at right)
Dario Robleto, Houston
Looking at the list, it’s hard to draw any conclusions about winning characteristics, except one — New York (including Brooklyn, of course) is still the center of contemporary art.
On the other hand, for this round of awards, the fourth, ”USA Fellows” in all disciplines — dance, architecture, design, literature, theater arts, music, media — come from 18 states, according to a press release. They range in age from 28 to 82.
I still believe in tooth fairies, genius, originality and the auteur even though I know it’s a terminally modernist viewpoint. Writing, composing, art making of most sorts begins the same autoerotic way, all by your lonesome; totally in the dark. No standards except for your own personal impossibly high ones.
In his performance “And So On, End So Soon”, Robert Filliou set out the idea that Bien Fait, Mal Fait, Pas Fait (Well done, Badly done, Not done) are equivalent proposals. These 3 equivalencies are frames of reference, a set of outcomes. For the “Good Enough” artist “Well done, Badly done, Not done” are potential endpoints, risks to be considered.
Over the course of becoming more jaded about other people’s creativity levels, I’ve done a lot of thinking about bad art, bad writing, bad music. I’ve read reams of fatuous wall texts and captions. I’ve been on award juries and suffered in darkened rooms thru hours of culling process, DVD after DVD. I’ve watched endless videos; my aversion reflex now so strong I leave rooms where monitors lurk. “Badly Done” can be intentional (the mirror of well-done) in which case it’s a celebration of absurdity, illogic; it’s existential, its the good-enough flop.
‘Bliss-point’ is a term used to explain the eating behaviors of the overweight and obese. Once you’ve eaten enough fats and sugars there you are, ready for seconds; food bliss achieved. It has nothing to do with hunger, it’s an autonomous process, the organism pleasures itself giving the brain a nice hit of yummy.
I think the concept of bliss point can be applied to the bad artist. Like having an eating disorder, the bad artist reaches bliss point through the process of makin’ lots-o-’stuff’ without too much thought. This explains why bad artists are so prolific. It’s an ego-high with minimum effort. Their ’stuff” is generally based on someone else’s ’stuff’, completely imitative but what the hell, they’re gonna make more. Imitation is not the highest form of flattery, it’s the flat- lining of intellect and effort.
‘Not Done’ may be the best strategy; who knows?
Artists are not part of a real system, they aren’t pieces in a large jigsaw puzzle in which each artist has one and only one Categorical Place.
Artist are part of a larger narrative made up of a constellation of small puzzle pieces. The only significant elements that establish visible positions are those that have some adhesive quality, some kind of ‘fit’.
This blog is based on the observation that there is a kind of ‘artist’ whose work creates a fit with its time, an artist whose work is a ‘good enough’ fit. This fit may only last only as long as the life of the artist. Vermeer’s work sank out of sight after his death (there wasn’t much of it to begin with). His work regained its lost visibility some time later when it fit into a category that assigned it worth. J.S. Bach, whose greatness is not currently in dispute, created a body of work that sank into obscurity after his death, no longer influential, resurfacing only when there was some cultural desire for it.
‘Fit’ is not created by some vague or simplistic standard of ‘quality’. Fit is determined by its conceptual content, a context it comes into or creates out of necessity. The good-enough artist is part of a narrative that’s infinitely elastic, accommodating any concept that wanders into the frame of reference along with anything that was there already.
Artists often tell me they can’t understand why I wrote about someone’s terrible work. I think it’s more of a question than lack of understanding; the question is ‘why didn’t you write about me’? I can’t answer that question in a nice way. I write about work that interest me for some reason and like/dislike is irrelevant. I’m especially interested in art that I don’t get, work that has nothing in common with what I do, shares no similar concerns.
Artists also tell me they like my writing. I really like hearing that because you never know if anyone reads anything anymore or just looks at the pictures. I usually write for “Sculpture Magazine” and make it a point to write about sculptors I feel haven’t been sufficiently noticed. I try to do genuine criticism, never PR. While I ‘m not a ‘real’ journalist, I’m a fairly articulate artist who writes. I only write about what interests me and do it from several different viewpoints while keeping in mind several different kinds of readers.
For me, art-writing is the literary extension of the studio visit. I’m more interested in raising questions, more content-oriented than descriptive. No amount of description can compete with an image and no image can come close to competing with an object.
Magazines always publish an image of the artist’s work so too much description is superfluous. In a recent profile I suggested that readers look at the pictures first before reading the article, just cut to the chase.
I love images especially because they relieve me of having to make piercingly intelligent observations such as: it’s red, it’s big, it has many interesting details. Ideally I want the article to represent a 3-way dialog between me, the artist and the object. The writing is condensed from conversation I had with another artist while we sat talking around and about an object, the object’s objective and why it matters.
After a decade of writing about art, I confess to a certain level of impatience and boredom with the gallery or museum experience. I’m jaded and need add a little juice to my art experiences. What I now prefer is to see the work with the person who made it. If the artist isn’t dead I want to see the work and hear what the artist has to say about it in the same space. It’s the process not the presentation that really interests me. I think there has to be something of the artist present with the work, something juicier than the album notes, the terrible wall caption. There needs to be something that keeps the work in a living present, keeps it from becoming a part of the middle distance, a low-cal dessert.
Most of what I now write about results from studio visits. The studio visit between artists is an essential; the curiousity and material I have as a writer originated with the studio visits. The studio is the whole show; the process, choices, circumstances. Usually it’s the only way you find out who fabricates the work and why. I’m especially interested in what’s pinned up on the wall. How big is the space, headphones or speakers, what kind of music, is there a TV set?
Most of what you get out of an object depends on where you see it, especially if you can’t meet the artist or see the studio.Going to openings is never about seeing work it’s about clothing, sex and doing business while standing around eating bad hors d’oevres, drinking cheap wine and having desultory conversation with the artists.What could be worse than the press reveal?
There are a number of art experiences that should be avoided; docent tours, acoustiguides, the Whitney Biennial at its opening or on any subsequent weekend. (In its favor, the Biennial is one of the best places in all the boroughs to take children. How much better can the flashing lights, tunnels and noisy videos be for a 6 year old)?
I’ll going to the L.A. Museum of Contemporary Art because its grand and rambling architecture and its truly risky programming. I like the DeMenil in Houston because of it’s perfervid and disorganized collection, the bad lighting and the fact it has neither gift shop nor cafe. I like the odd architecture and odd exhibits at the DeCordova in Massachusetts. Two places I especially love at the University of Chicago are the Renaissance Society’s crazy hard to find space (where I first saw Kara Walker’s early work) and the Smart Museum as much for its name as its great uneven little exhibits. The Southwest Center for the Arts in San Antonio has a elegant space in a converted Sears Automotive repair shop and is one of the best spaces in South Texas.
These places provide a range of public experiences, I respect and admire their educational goals. To my cloudy, jaded eyes they offer the sensory equivalent of listening to a CD rather than live music or reading a review rather than a book. The best place for hearing music is at any kind of venue. Books are better read than condensed; the review should be a teaser, not a complete experience. People travel to Taliesin because it is where a great architect worked; you are standing inside his process. The best part of the Pollock retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (New York 15 years ago) was a full scale copy of the space he worked in. When I visited his real studio in Springs the immensity of what he was trying to do in a space the size of a small garage hit me in a way his work never has.
