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That is a Relief
Jul. 5th, 2012 11:40 pmFrom an article in Smithsonian by Ron Rosenbaum, about Barbara Kruger:
I like this partly because it seems useful to explain much of the art I like, and much of how I place the line between art and entertainment (I also like entertainment, and of course art can be entertainment and vice versa, but it isn't always), and partly because it is very well applied to the work of Barbara Kreuger, who is excellent but also much imitated by college students who think "image macro! I can do that!" but don't do it that well, and partly because it is a statement which seems calculated to reassure me about my own work, which often only comes into its own the third or fourth time through, which is part of why I often hesitate to revise. Of course, one has to catch attention in the first place in order to repay it later, and here I have problems.
I have been continuing in the back of my mind to consider why and how I create art and how and why I ought to be creating art, because I haven't really written a manifesto or treatise or thesis about my work in two years, maybe three, and the last one doesn't apply any longer, as my ideas have changed. I don't know what the new ones are yet, and I think my thinking about it would be tedious to read. Yet I mainly think about things through writing them out, since this is the only way to tell whether an idea is sturdy.
Possibly pretension is a necessary stage in the process of producing art, and non-pretentious artists just covered it up later. Or possibly not. It's hard to know. Obviously, there is such a thing as overthinking, but this is not a problem I have or am having. I think I would be able to make better choices about what is important if I understood what was valuable. Like a mission statement for a business; normally I lose interest in a company as it leaves its mission statement in favor of "the bottom line." (See Nerve, Starbucks. I look with some concern at Google, but think they're still good. Never thought Facebook was good, but think it's getting worse.) Your mission statement should be your bottom line, if you have any substance, provided you're making enough to stay in business.
Christopher Ricks, a former Oxford professor of poetry, once told me the simplest way to recognize value in art: It is "that which continues to repay attention."
I like this partly because it seems useful to explain much of the art I like, and much of how I place the line between art and entertainment (I also like entertainment, and of course art can be entertainment and vice versa, but it isn't always), and partly because it is very well applied to the work of Barbara Kreuger, who is excellent but also much imitated by college students who think "image macro! I can do that!" but don't do it that well, and partly because it is a statement which seems calculated to reassure me about my own work, which often only comes into its own the third or fourth time through, which is part of why I often hesitate to revise. Of course, one has to catch attention in the first place in order to repay it later, and here I have problems.
I have been continuing in the back of my mind to consider why and how I create art and how and why I ought to be creating art, because I haven't really written a manifesto or treatise or thesis about my work in two years, maybe three, and the last one doesn't apply any longer, as my ideas have changed. I don't know what the new ones are yet, and I think my thinking about it would be tedious to read. Yet I mainly think about things through writing them out, since this is the only way to tell whether an idea is sturdy.
Possibly pretension is a necessary stage in the process of producing art, and non-pretentious artists just covered it up later. Or possibly not. It's hard to know. Obviously, there is such a thing as overthinking, but this is not a problem I have or am having. I think I would be able to make better choices about what is important if I understood what was valuable. Like a mission statement for a business; normally I lose interest in a company as it leaves its mission statement in favor of "the bottom line." (See Nerve, Starbucks. I look with some concern at Google, but think they're still good. Never thought Facebook was good, but think it's getting worse.) Your mission statement should be your bottom line, if you have any substance, provided you're making enough to stay in business.
