June 2009 Archives

About ten days ago as I write this, someone sent me e-mail in response to my earlier post here and blew my mind. I was thinking of writing the whole exchange up as a post, and I may one day do that, but in the meantime I just wanted to say that the discussion altered some of my approach to my paintings. In particular I'm thinking more about Munsell values across the whole work.

But before we get into the studio, we have to walk from the subway over the Ninth Street Drawbridge. It's not the most scenic route over the Gowanus Canal -- I'm no Gowanus expert but I'd have to vote for the "boardwalk" crossing up at Carroll Street -- but it's got a lovely view of the expressway and the surface of the canal itself. Some days the water is coated with a scum of oil and other scary stuff which is, in one way, absolutely horrifying; and yet it's also visually beautiful. When the water is calm it looks almost like colored glass has shattered on the surface.

You can also see the giant Lowe's sign that brings this fair city light. It's okay if it clutters up the view: They put in that little promenade down on the left in the photo. Over on the right you can see a barge waiting to be filled up with construction debris, or maybe some kind of recyclable stuff. A lot of people talk about cleaning up the Gowanus Canal, and it's a great idea, but it's going to be really hard, because unlike other industrial waterways which have fallen into disuse on a large scale -- like the Hudson or the Passaic -- it's a working body of water.

Okay, so we've walked over the canal, we've passed Tonky's sign, we're in my studio. And what do we see? Why, my latest paintings, of course.

I apologize for the unimaginative titles. I mean, "Reclining Nude"? Really? But I'm not feeling creatively titular at the moment. And, as usual, I forgot the sizes.

I'm most happy with "Reclining Nude" despite the lousy generic title. If I get around to writing it up, the e-mail lesson I received will make it clear, but the short version is, I learned that some of my more successful paintings have a range of values; and similar, but unsuccessful, ones, are made up of paints very close in value. I decided to make use of this in mixing my colors, and this is the best result so far. (Also note use of the Golden Section.)

I mentioned in a previous post that I've been following the Mark Kostabi Method for the past three years. I decided recently that it was taking too long, or maybe that I'm not applying the Method properly. I decided I should do what people always advise when trying to break into any business: Be methodical and persistent.

So I've taken it upon myself to visit every gallery I can, starting with Chelsea and then moving on to the Lower East Side and maybe Williamsburg. And I'm only limiting myself to those areas because I have to draw the line somewhere. I went to Chelsea Art Galleries Dot Com where you can helpfully find a list of every art gallery in New York City, just about, and get the list by street address.

It's a very long list. There are over three hundred listed galleries in Chelsea alone.

I started going down the list last Tuesday. It is with a heavy heart and very weary feet (to say nothing of calves, knees, thighs, ass and back) that I type this on a rainy Thursday. (I was supposed to go back out today but I'm really too tired. Also, it's raining. Did I mention that?)

My heart is heavy because I visited somewhere around forty galleries in one day and I realized something: There are a lot of galleries showing a lot of art.

When I said this to my long-suffering wife Dawn, she said, "But isn't that a good thing? Doesn't that mean there are plenty of places to show your art?"

Maybe. But what it means to me is this: The art world is enormous. Absolutely burgeoning with artists being shown by galleries. And in all of that I'm supposed to think I can find a dealer who can somehow convince enough buyers to purchase my art so I can make a living. How is that even possible? There simply cannot be enough art customers to make a dent in the market. There's simply too much supply and it's impossible there's enough demand. Impossible.

Even if I were confident that I'm the world's greatest artist, I'd have to be daunted by the numbers. And I'm not confident in that. There's no way for me to be confident in that. In fact I'm fairly sure now that I will never be confident in that. Because how can one tell if one's a good artist?

How do you determine if an artist is any good? Over at Franklin's Art Blog the commenters all seem pretty clear on this, but to me they're all ultimately dancing around the final analysis. Because they talk about humbling yourself to the demands of your medium, they talk about work and discipline. Work hard and you will be rewarded.

But what's working hard in art, in painting? What's it look like? When I was a computer programmer, I knew what working hard was like in my profession. You tried to take what my professor Derek Morris called the customer's "mumble mumble" and turn it into logical structures. You guessed at how long it would take you to figure out what the customer wanted and make it for them. You wrote code and designed data structures and you made sure you had it done by the date you promised it. If your programs didn't work, if you were late, if your work was unsatisfactory, you tried harder next time.

Likewise, when my father was an auto mechanic, I saw what hard work was. You figured out what was wrong with something and you fixed it. In a way, that was a lot like computer programming. But you also pulled wrenches and lifted heavy things and stretched and squeezed and banged your knuckles a lot. You finished jobs by the date you'd promised. You stayed late if you had to and you went in early to get the work done. Working hard had a pretty clear definition.

But what's working hard in painting? Everyone agrees you can go to the studio every day and paint a painting and spend months and months on just one and still end up with a crappy painting. You can practice and gain skills, maybe, but even those are questionable: What's skill in painting? Color matching? Representation? Grasp of the Munsell value scale? Composition?

My old Glee Club director, Professor William F. Ondrick, always liked to say to us during practice, "There's no substitute for the work, not even genius." The work there was clear, too: Come in on time, follow the director, get the notes right. Practice pracitce practice. We'd spend hours plugging, going over tricky phrases to make sure we had the timing and inflection just right.

I won't dispute the value of practice. Of work in that sense. But it doesn't lead inexorably to goodness, does it? To quality? No, it doesn't. You can get better but are you really good? If you're a computer programmer or an auto mechanic, you can answer that question. If you're a singer in a Glee Club, well, it's harder but there's still not much wiggle room (I was never very good myself). But if you're an artist?

The only real way to tell if you're any good as an artist is to have lots of people see your work and decide, for themselves, if it's any good. If enough people think you're good, then you are. How many is enough? My thinking: More than will see it in your lifetime. The culture decides what's valuable, what isn't, and it takes a long time for those decisions to be made. In the meantime, though, you can get an idea, maybe. Maybe enough of an idea to sustain you while you're alive. Maybe not. But it's all there is.

So the main thing, for an artist, is to find an audience. To get people to look at your work and decide for themselves if you're any good. That's what it's all about, then: Finding that audience. Getting the work out there. Getting it seen. Communication.

And how is that possible today?

It works for some artists. What makes them different? Which is like asking, what's success? Just a few quick names off the top of my head, living artists who are well known: Chuck Close, Elizabeth Peyton, Eric Fischl. Why them and not anyone else?

Do they work harder than other artists?

Are they better than other artists?

Is it luck? Is it persistence? Is it consistency? Happenstance? Magic?

Out of the masses they emerge. They've been chosen. By whom? In what way? Is there something to be done here? Is it all just arbitrary?

With all that's going on how could I possibly get noticed?

I've been going to galleries in Chelsea for three years and I haven't even set foot in a third of them. My journey on Tuesday made it clear to me it's going to be extremely difficult for one person even briefly to visit every single gallery. And that's just one neighborhood in one city on the planet. There are only about 2 million households in the United States with an annual income over $250,000. That's approximately the fine art market right there. You do the math.

My daughter, ten years old, calls out as she leaves.
The only word I hear is "Daddy"
and I run upstairs to the front door to see her
striding purposefully down the street to her friend's house
wearing her kerchief on her head,
one of her kerchiefs she always wears, which I love so much and find so infuriating,
because I don't know where it comes from
and I don't think it looks good, this style,
but it's so completely hers
and I love that she's true to herself,
whoever she may be.

I have this very clear memory from my childhood. I must've been very young, no more than eight years old. Two doors down from me there lived this older boy, Steve. He always called me Chris-O. Great kid, grew up into a great guy as far as I know. I haven't had any contact with him in years and years -- the old neighborhood, which seemed eternal, is gone now; all the families moved away. But last I heard he was a great guy.

I got it into my head for some reason that I could physically overcome Steve and his friends. I don't know why. They never bullied me or pushed me around or, as far as I remember, had much to do with me at all. I was a little kid. But I'd decided I could beat them in a fight. Nothing violent or angry about it -- just a competition. I don't know where I got this idea, but it seemed to me that if I could meditate, do a mind-meld, like Spock -- only mind-meld on myself -- then I'd become great fighter.

So I went over to Steve's front yard where he was fooling around with a couple of his friends and I challenged them. I don't remember that they were angry or mocking or anything. They went along with it. I went to the side of Steve's house, performed my self-mind-meld, came out, and promptly found myself on the ground looking up at Steve. He helped me up laughing, not at me, but with me. Like I said, he was a great kid. I demanded to try again and got flipped onto the lawn again. I asked for one last try and got it -- and landed flat on my back. Of course. Steve was a lot bigger than I was. I was a little kid.

There's no shame or humiliation associated with this memory of mine; I don't think any of the boys ever made fun of me or picked on me for it. Certainly Steve didn't. There's no anger or need for revenge here. I don't think I was very upset by my defeat, just confused. I'd done the self-mind-meld! So it's not a bad memory of mine, just a very clear one.

I'm thinking of that memory now because the series of events is wonderfully focused: I thought I could do something and I was unequivocally shown that I could, in fact, not do that thing. It wasn't a question of wanting it badly enough, or exercising my will, or practicing my technique. It was, quite simply, not possible. And this was made abundantly clear to me.

Now I'm over thirty years past that moment and I miss it. I miss the clarity of it. Because here I am and I don't know if I'm any good at anything. Every moment of my life I feel I'm forfeiting the game because I don't even know how to show up. Where's the field? What are the rules? How can I tell if I'm winning or losing? Am I on my back or not?

I have no idea.

Three years ago I decided to attempt the Mark Kostabi Method of becoming an artist. It seemed simple enough: Go to galleries and meet people there. Eventually you'll meet people with whom you have things in common. You'll make some friends or at least acquaintances. Talk with them. Bit by bit you'll find the gallerists interested in your kind of work. Once you've got something of a relationship established, you can offer to show them your work.

Three years later and I find I've gotten to know exactly three dealers well enough to ask them to visit my studio. These aren't strangers; these are people who'd stop to talk to me on the street. We know each other. We're not best friends, but we're more than casual acquaintances. I sent e-mail to two of them asking if they'd make a studio visit to see my work; and they both completely ignored me. They didn't make excuses; they didn't say they were very busy, or not taking on new artists; they didn't say anything at all. They simply pretended I'd never sent them a message.

Eventually I spoke to one of them in person. And they told me that they were, in fact, very busy, but maybe if I asked them during the summer....

The gallerist's manner, however, was one of...maybe mild annoyance. That I'd had the temerity to bring up the topic instead of pretending, as they had, that I had never asked. Although I could be imagining that; the signals were subtle enough, and my understanding of human behavior poor enough, that I'm willing to consider that the gallerist genuinely was too busy to take eight seconds out of their busy schedule to reply to my e-mail message, and that they sincerely wouldn't mind dropping by my studio if only I mentioned it during a less stressful time in their business cycle.

Is there a game going on? Am I playing it? Am I losing? I really don't know.

I've never known.

Is it possible to wake up one day and realize that you're the bad guy? To find that you're not FDR or Winston Churchill; to find that you're not even Hitler, but that you're just some jerk turning in your neighbors because you know they complained to the town council that you don't mow your lawn often enough. Some little loser making people's lives just that little bit worse and grumbling about how they got what they deserved.

Is it possible to realize one day that you're just an asshole?

That's what I'm thinking. That for years I've thought I was an okay guy, intelligent and talented and decent, and now I'm coming to realize that I am, in fact, a stupid, worthless asshole. Not totally stupid: Smarter than average, maybe. But a lot dumber than I thought I was. And not completely untalented: Capable of minor mediocrity at best. Not even Salieri, because he, at least, put in the work.

But a grade A asshole? Oh yes, that I am.

The true test of any theory is when you find it explains things which were previously inexplicable. Why, for example, I haven't made any useful friends in art galleries I've visited.

I can't say it's a total surprise, this finding out that I'm an asshole. But I always thought there were compensations. That my intelligence, my talents, my sense of humor, my loyalty, my willingness to help and support my friends, that my general Boy Scoutness balanced out my assholery.

But now I've had a good look around at my life and I've realized: No. There are no compensations. I'm just an asshole, plain and simple. A stupid, no-talent jerk of no consequence, going nowhere, doing nothing.

Good old Tim wrote to me not too long ago. He had this to say about my drawings:

such simple sketches.

they don't really say anything to me beyond simple and lyrical - the kind of thing I think most anyone could do.

Like plucking three strings on a guitar and calling it a song. Anyone can do it.

I mean, when only dealing with a few lines, how can one drawing be all that much better than the other?

(I'm kind of perplexed as to how or why Chris the art critic finds these to be significant in any way.)

You want me, anyone, to take an interest in your art, this art....why?

I want to hear your argument as to why you think these little doodles of yours are anything more than rather common doodles.

I don't have an argument. Are my drawings and paintings worthy of a show? Of any kind of show? I have no idea. I used to think I did know. Three years ago I thought, hell, even if my work isn't great or even that good, it's certainly at least as good, if not better, than a lot of what does get shown. Because what gets shown is a lot of crap.

Three years of seeing crap and good stuff, though, and now I'm thinking: What the fuck do I know? Back when I first went to the Armory Show I came away thinking one of two things: Either I'm the greatest artist of all time or I have no idea what makes good art. Up until very recently I still kept alive deep inside the feeling that, okay, I'm not the greatest artist of all time or anything, but I'm still pretty good. Clearly it couldn't be that I have no idea what makes good art. Right?

Yeah, right.

Tim says, "Convince me, motherfucker." I can't. Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe that's me, on my back on the lawn. But if it is why can't I be sure? Why this ambivalence? Why can't I look at my work and be sure it sucks? Why don't I know if I'm even playing the game, let alone losing?

Why is it whenever I try to dig down deep everything gets more and more elusive? What's success? How does one achieve it? Why one person and not another? How does this happen? What does it take? How much is work and how much is talent and how much is luck? At what point do you take the blame or the credit?

What does it mean? What does it matter?

I'm a writer and an artist. I have no idea how to even begin to go about getting paid for either. Clearly people are being paid to do both. How does that happen? What does it take? I have no idea. Have I failed in both fields because I'm not good enough? Because I haven't applied myself? Because I haven't tried? Did I lose on the field or did I not make it to the field? Am I playing the game now? What's the score?

I really thought, once upon a time, that I was destined to do good things. Maybe not great things, but good things.

Am I just fooling myself, standing on the side of Steve's house playing at the stupid fucking Spock self-mind-meld I made up?

I promised last time I'd get a better photo of Give or Take a Penny. Here it be in all its glory. And here are some detail photos, too.

I keep trying to make it to the studio more than two days a week, but things keep coming up. This Wednesday I could only stop in for a few minutes to drop off the new panels I'd made; after that I had to go down to the wake for Ray Ashley. I didn't know Ray very well -- he was more of an acquaintance, really -- but his good friend Joe D'Andrea is my good friend, and I used to go down to see them play in the various incarnations of their bands over the years, including Three Hour Detour. That last band -- Ray, Joe, and Helene Zisook -- put together a CD, and one of the songs on there, "Nhema Musasa", is really great and has been in my permanent MP3 rotation since, well, I've had an MP3 rotation to put it in.

It's really lousy that Ray is gone. He was a great guy, very smart, very talented, and I'm sad to see him go.

Anyway, he said, drying his eyes, and moving on. I did finally make it to the studio today. I need to get done whatever I can while I can, right? Make the most of our time together? So I got a painting and a half done. I'm uncertain about them. Not sure if they're done. The second one certainly not, but the first...we'll see.