Your Art Doesn’t Suck. You Do
Leaving an art exhibition a few weeks ago, I called a friend, and once outside, went scorched Earth on the show. My friend said something like, “Why don’t you write about that? You’re an art critic. Isn’t it your job to pan bad art?”
I don’t call myself an art critic partly because I don’t evaluate art. I write my response to it as an artist and believer in art—not as an industry, not as decoration, but a stranger human impulse with transformative powers on both personal and societal levels. I write about local contemporary art in the context of a global discourse. If I don’t have anything nice to write, I usually don’t write anything at all. It’s not because I’m nice. I just prefer to spend time on work that moves me or triggers thoughts I’m interested in pursuing. I would never relish lambasting artistic effort that fails. Failure is essential. What bothers me is when there is a clear lack of effort. I object to blurring the line between the right to make art and entitlement to approval. I am troubled by hyper-careerism, a lack of consideration for the viewer, and over-focusing on everything external to the art itself.
As another year of art-viewing winds to a close, my grievances have accumulated. So, in the immortal words of Alice Cooper, no more Mr. Nice Guy. The following list of demands is a nod to two landmark articles by Dan Fox: “Your Band Sucks” and “How to Be in a Shitty Band.” So, in the pro-art and deep punk tradition of this magazine…
IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SUCK AS AN ARTIST
1. WORK HARDER
Art is not easy. It’s not supposed to be. I wouldn’t tell a hobbyist to work harder, but if you call yourself an artist, don’t half-ass your vocation. And I don’t mean tinker more or produce more stuff. Do all the hard work of refining your voice, building your skills, and figuring out how it can be braver and better. See good art. Go! Now! Stand in front of a great artwork for an hour and think about why you like it. Put all the love, labor, grief, and courage you have into your art as if your life (and the viewer’s experience) depends on it. Because it does.
2. CONSIDER YOUR AUDIENCE
The work you make in your studio is your private Idaho. Until it’s in public. At that point the audience’s experience matters. Here in New Orleans, perception of the audience exists on a spectrum from nobody cares to they should approve of whatever I make. Art benefits from a small circle of honest supporters who share values, inspire greatness, and challenge us when necessary. Cultivate that circle, and play to it. Perfect the gallery lighting as if your heroes may show up.
When you exhibit your art, you have determined that it is finished and ready to be seen independent of your best intentions and your cute pictures on Instagram. Engage in the creative act of empathy and imagine a first encounter with your own work. Sometimes, in an effort to be unpretentious and let the bons temps rouler, New Orleanians can be inconsiderate. If a gallery is closed when it’s supposed to be open, if there are beer cans in the corner, if digital works are not plugged in, you are disrespecting your viewers and wasting their precious time. That’s just rude.
3. EDIT
Only show work you believe in. Sometimes this requires a little distance from it. Spend time quietly looking at your art. This will reveal its weak spots. If you didn’t get it right, throw it away and try again. This is part of the process. Hold yourself to high expectations.
4. PROTECT YOUR ART FROM CAPITALISM
To those selling work at art markets, this point does not apply to you. A contemporary art gallery, however, is not an art market; it’s a framework suggesting the objects therein hold meaning and are part of a larger conversation. There’s a story in the Bible where Jesus discovers vendors selling merch at the Temple. He freaks out, flipping tables and sending them away because the Temple is a sacred space, not a commercial one. A few months ago, I saw earrings for sale in a group show at an art gallery. This infected all the work in the show, giving it the pallor of merchandise.
It’s difficult but possible to earn a living making art. It’s also possible to make art in the margins of other for-pay jobs. One of my favorite painters is an electrician and another works at a grocery store. How we earn our income is for every artist to navigate for themselves. But if you want your art to be taken seriously, you need to treat it seriously, and show it in an environment that supports that aim. Elizabeth Peyton launched her exhibition career in a rented room at the Chelsea Hotel.
“Artists need to eat,” an artist friend once told me. Artists do need to eat. So do surgeons, but we don’t want them overbooking procedures. So do restaurant owners, but we don’t want them serving rotten food. If artists want to make a little money selling merch, or a lot of money climbing the corporate art ladder or the grant-giving org ladder, that’s up to them. But there’s a problem with conflating wanting to maximize profits and needing to eat. A system based on capital does not value artists, nor does it value any human beyond their ability to turn the economic wheel. At least art gives something crucial, spiritual, essential, back to its maker. Protect your art from capitalism or don’t, but own your decisions rather than suggesting you’re a victim of them.
5. STOP SPEAKING OVER YOUR ART
I don’t want to hear why you made it or what it means to you, not when I’m looking at your work and maybe not ever. As soon as I enter a gallery, I’m in dialogue with the art, which does a better job of revealing what it’s about than you give it credit for.
Artists, PLEASE radicalize against the artist statement. I have literally NEVER read a good one. This desperate marketing document has normalized “explaining” art while fostering a lack of faith in it. Don’t spot-treat weaknesses in your work with explanation.
Any necessary information can be included in the title and list of works. Trust your art. The only written statement any viewer needs at an exhibition is this: “You know everything you need to know. If the art bores or confuses you, that’s valid.
P.S.: Feel free to contact me later if you have thoughts or questions.”
Artists, I love you. But I hate when you are apathetic, discourteous, or lazy. I hate your surrender, lack of creative problem-solving, and complaining. Being an artist makes you special. But no more special than a janitor or physician. But we get to work with art, which has the mysterious power to harness human feeling, promote empathy, courage, and remind us of our inviolable freedom to think, feel, and create. So artists, let’s be brave and bold, take risks and lean hard into the most terrified, audacious, savage, and authentic version of ourselves. Then go to bed, get up the next day, and do it all over again.
illustration by Laura Frizzell
