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Learning to Look : Whistler, Fireworks, and a New Way of Seeing

July 4, 2012 in Events, Images, Process, Words with 9 Comments

 

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, ca. 1875. Oil on panel, 23.7 × 18.3 in. (Photo courtesy the Detroit Institute of Arts-Click to Enlarge)

I’ll never forget the first time I saw James McNeill Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold. I was still in high school when I stumbled across the painting in an art history book and was immediately stunned. I had never seen night captured so perfectly in an artwork before. Even as a teenager, I sensed that Whistler had caught those falling skyrockets at exactly the right time—not at the point when they were at their most garish and outrageous, but at the poignant moment when the fading sparks were falling into water.

Whistler’s style and composition owe something to Japanese ukiyo-e prints, which were popular with many Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters. Monet was a collector and Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo owned over four hundred Japanese prints. One of my favorite ukiyo-e artists, Utagawa Hiroshige, had a lasting influence on James McNeill Whistler. Hiroshige’s extraordinary series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, was of particular importance. As the Brooklyn Museum website explains, Whistler was inspired by the Hiroshige prints that he once owned. “As the West entered a new century, Japanese woodblock prints provided an artistic alternative—in the use of color, perspective, and spatial structure—for presenting changes in society.”

It’s interesting to compare this Hiroshige print, Fireworks at Ryogoku (below) with Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold (above). Both images are striking in their own way, but the difference between painting  and woodblock printing techniques allowed Whistler to depict the fireworks and night sky with greater delicacy, as well as a deeper, more complex palette.

 

Utagawa Hiroshige. Fireworks at Ryōgoku (Ryōgoku Hanabi) (8th Month, 1858). From the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, c. 1856–58. Woodblock print. (Photo courtesy the Brooklyn Museum)

Whistler’s loose, impressionistic depiction of fireworks at night was not to everyone’s liking when his painting made its public debut. Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket sparked an infamous feud between the artist and the Victorian critic John Ruskin. In 1877 Whistler sued the Ruskin for libel after the critic condemned the painting in his publication Fors Clavigera:

“For Mr. Whistler’s own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir Coutts Lindsay [founder of the Grosvenor Gallery] ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of willful imposture. I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face.”

The trial produced this hilarious exchange between John Ruskin’s lawyer, Attorney General Sir John Holker, and Whistler during cross-examination:

Holker: “What is the subject of Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket?”

Whistler: “It is a night piece and represents the fireworks at Cremorne Gardens.”

Holker: “Not a view of Cremorne?”

Whistler: “If it were A View of Cremorne it would certainly bring about nothing but disappointment on the part of the beholders. It is an artistic arrangement. That is why I call it a nocturne.…”

Holker: “Did it take you much time to paint the Nocturne in Black and Gold? How soon did you knock it off?”

Whistler: “Oh, I ‘knock one off’ possibly in a couple of days – one day to do the work and another to finish it…”

Holker: “The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?”

Whistler: “No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.”

 

James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge, c. 1872–1875. Oil on canvas, 26 7/8 in × 20 1/8 in. (Photo courtesy of the Tate Britain, London. Click to Enlarge)

Hiroshige’s influence on Whistler can also be seen in his breathtaking piece Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge. Here again, Whistler uses the golden sizzle of fireworks over the river Thames to wonderful effect. The compositional similarities between Whistler’s painting and Hiroshige’s print, Kyobashi Bridge, are unmistakable.

Whistler and Hiroshige taught me a new way of seeing. From both of these artists, I learned that less is often more. The best art, regardless of its medium, captures the essence of a thing, and leaves out all of the right parts. This idea was pushed to its limits by the minimalist artists of the 20th century. The gap between Whistler and Ellsworth Kelly or Hiroshige and Agnes Martin is not as great as it may appear at first glance.

Utagawa Hiroshige, Bamboo Yards, Kyōbashi Bridge (12th Month, 1857). From the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, ca. 1856–58. Woodblock print. (Photo courtesy the Brooklyn Museum. Click to Enlarge).

I think of these artworks by Whistler and Hiroshige each year when the Fourth of July holiday rolls around.

As an ardent lover of fireworks, New Hampshire is an ideal place to live. Each town has its own fireworks display (some shows are larger and better than others, but regardless, the crowds are never a problem). The local villages are kind enough to stagger their events on different nights so there are no scheduling conflicts. Before the show, there is typically an ice cream social, music, swimming, and other community activities. As locals gather around the lakes with their glow necklaces and bottles of bug spray, so do the mosquitoes, followed immediately by the bats.

In the past four days, I’ve seen two local fireworks shows—one over Dublin Lake by Mt. Monadnock and the other over Norway Pond in my old neighborhood in Hancock. In the case of Dublin Lake, I decided to make the mile-long journey on my bicycle. The hills were steep and the bugs intense, but the moon was bright—bright enough to throw shadows onto the empty road.

During my night ride, I spotted a fox, two porcupines, an owl, and a deer. Other mysterious creatures lurked in the bushes. I never saw them, but I heard their rustling. The number of dramas playing out in nature each night while we lie in our beds is staggering. (I’m reminded of this fact each time I hear the coyotes howling outside my open bedroom window.)

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

At Dublin Lake, I perched myself on a rock and waited. In a brilliant stroke of Yankee ingenuity, the woman behind me swatted bugs away with a tree branch. I buttoned up my shirt and rolled down my pants to protect myself from the swarms. Just as the fireworks began, a bat skimmed over the top of my head.

I’ve never heard a boom so loud before. Each explosion ricocheted off the side of Mt. Monadnock and bounced over the water. I can only imagine what the foxes, porcupines, and deer were thinking. The excited children, on the other hand, made their thoughts very clear: Those are my favorite. I like the purple ones! I like the one that looks like a splash in the water (little girl)! I like the giant red ones that look like a bomb going off (little boy)! Today I learned that there are more exacting names for these firework effects: peony, chrysanthemum, dahlia, ground bloom flower (there are lots of flower names). Also, willow, palm, crossette, spider, horsetail, time rain, fish.

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

 

 

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

Whenever possible, I prefer to be in nature without the distraction of electronic devices. This means no camera. No cell phone. No i-Pod. When it comes to fireworks, though, I make a rare exception.

Each year I photograph the local fireworks, and each year the photographs are a surprise, even to me. While these images aren’t “art” in the strictest sense, I do think they capture artful moments. Like Whistler, I’m particularly fond of the less dramatic scenes, the golden criss-crossing tails, the juxtaposition of colors, the unusual patterns captured by the camera, though not always visible to the naked eye.

Sometimes the point of taking a picture is the end result. We want a record of where we’ve been or who we’ve seen. Or maybe we are setting out to create art or capture something larger than ourselves. But often I find that the actual process of taking a picture is just as important. A camera can focus our attention and allow us to see things we might have missed otherwise. It sharpens our senses and also opens us to the happy accidents that often occur when we click the shutter.

“I sit for a long time and watch one thing,” says the writer Barry Lopez. “If you don’t do that homework, you don’t make yourself vulnerable enough to a place, and it never releases itself into you.”

Learning to look is perhaps the most under-appreciated skill of our generation. Do I love the fireworks for themselves? Of course. But I also love the fact that for a few days each year, individuals gather together in one place, expose themselves to the elements, and for a short time, stare at the sky, not their computer screen or cell phone.

We see what we expect to see. But if we’re still and patient, if we take time to turn off our devices and get out into the real world, we leave room for so many more possibilities.
 

Photo by Michelle Aldredge (Click to Enlarge)

 

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The Art of Focus : 5 Ways to Free Yourself from Digital Dependency

June 17, 2012 in Process, Resources, Words with 14 Comments

 

 

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.         — Blaise Pascal

 

Our day begins with good intentions. Feeling rested and focused, we set our priorities. We resolve that today will be different from yesterday, because today, we we’ll stay on task. But then we turn on our computers and smart-phones, and before we know it, we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.

We’re living in an exciting time as artists—a time when technology is empowering us to bypass gatekeepers and connect directly with our audience. And for those of us who work alone in an office or at home, technology offers some welcome relief. ”That’s my Twitter origin tale,” says writer Colson Whitehead, “it’s nice to have a little company during the long workday.”

But the downside of technological innovation is that our computers, phones, and myriad of screens also offer countless distractions from the creative work that matters most to us. The temptation is especially strong for artists who use technology as an essential tool in their creative work. Composers compose music on their computer, writers write novels, filmmakers edit their films, photographers develop work digitally. Even painters must spend time sharing their work online and connecting with their audience. But there is a critical difference between using our computers in an active way versus passively allowing them to hijack our day.

So how do we make the most of this technology without frittering our lives away? How do we create time and space for deep thinking, creation, and real connection within the chaos of digital life?

 

The Serpentine Gallery in London and Edge.org collaborated on the Serpentine Map Marathon, which included non-stop live presentations by over 50 artists, poets, writers, philosophers, scholars, musicians, architects, designers and scientists. This drawing by Douglas Rushkoff was part of the event. (Photo courtesy Edge.org. Click to Enlarge)

After thirteen years of working at The MacDowell Colony, I’ve witnessed the transformative power of retreat. To disconnect, to court solitude, and to seek out a community of supportive peers is the perfect recipe for creating great art.

Recently, I had a conversation with an artist who was suffering a serious bout of depression because she was transitioning from MacDowell to her “real life.” And I remember how devastated I felt when leaving my residencies at the Hambidge Center. It’s not that our “real lives” are so horrible. It’s that colonies and other retreats reduce our choices to a manageable workload. Because we don’t have to answer the phone or keep up with every email, run errands, or think about what to cook for dinner, we feel less overwhelmed and are better able to focus. We feel more like our true selves.

The lesson of such retreats is that simplification and less choice often lead to more contentment (an idea that Barry Schwartz addresses in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less.)

But how do we create this kind of “retreat” in our daily lives once a residency is over? And how about those who can’t get away because of work or family?

Here are five things we can do right now to be more creative and productive and bring some sanity to our lives…

 

1. We need to recognize that technology is a tool. We should control it; it shouldn’t control us.

There will always be naysayers when it comes to innovation. Socrates famously warned against writing because it would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories.” Through the centuries, we’ve been cautioned against everything from the printing press, to the radio, to television, to video tape. The Internet is just the latest in a long line of inventions to be met with suspicion.

As writer Douglas Adams has observed, “anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright.”

 

"The Internet is not to blame for your unfinished novel: you are," says writer Colson Whitehead. "It's called willpower. If you can't muster the will to lay off Gawker, how are you going to write a book?" (Photo by Erin Patrice O'Brien)

It’s not technology that’s the problem. It’s us. We need to take a deep breath, step back, and get a bird’s eye view of our own habits. As Colson Whitehead famously said in his Publisher’s Weekly essay, “The Internet is not to blame for your unfinished novel: you are.” Here’s Colson:

“I say, yes, you can rent out a hostage pit. You can also close your browser. It’s called willpower. If you can’t muster the will to lay off Gawker, how are you going to write a book? I can’t blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I’ve spent watching lost balloons disappear into the clouds. I did it before the Internet, and I’ll do it after the apocalypse, assuming we still have helium and weak-gripped children.”

Technology is an aid. A tool. We should be mindful of how we use it and realize that the decision to text or email or tweet is just that—a decision. In his new book Program or Be Programmed Douglas Rushkoff writes, “Freedom—even in a digital age—means freedom to choose how and with whom you do your reflection, and not everything needs to be posted for the entire world with ‘comments on’ and ‘copyright off.’” As Rushkoff point out, “we are too busy wading through our overflowing inboxes to consider how they got this way, and whether there’s a better or less frantic way to stay informed and in touch.”

 

 

We are faced with competing interests on a daily basis—a choice between our virtual online communities or the face-to-face community that includes our friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors. Too often our default response is to try to choose both at once. If we need to use Facebook or Twitter to share some news, then by all means we should do it. But no one benefits if we attempt this task while also having a serious conversation with our spouse or a co-worker.

There is a critical difference between using technology as a tool and merely using it to ease boredom or loneliness. Awareness and deliberateness changes everything. In the end, I would argue that it’s the quality of our attention and connections that matter, not the quantity. It’s about empowerment. We need to be proactive and not reactive if we want to use the tools of technology to their fullest.

“Whenever I open a gap between myself and my screens, good things happen,” says William Powers in his book Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. “I have time and space to think about my life in the digital realm and all the people and information I encounter there. I have a chance to take the outward experiences of the screen back inward.”



 

2. Choose to disconnect.

“Close everything,” advises Leo Babauta at Zen Habits. “This means everything possible on your computer that isn’t absolutely necessary for the task at hand. If you don’t need the Internet to write something, close it. Close email, all notifications and reminders, all programs not needed for your task. If you need your browser open, close all tabs — bookmark them, or save them to a read-later service like Instapaper. You can always open these sites when you’re done.”

Bill Powers recommends that we focus on one idea or person at a time and tune out the rest of the world.

“If I want to shut out distractions and really get some work done on my notebook,” Bill says, “I turn off the wireless, transforming the computer into a disconnected tool…Digital technologies should acknowledge in their design that it’s sometimes good to be disconnected. A small but helpful fix would be to provide a prominent Disconnect button that would allow the user to go back and forth easily between the two zones, connected and not.”

So far, no product designers have taken Bill’s suggestion seriously, but luckily some programmers have. Novelists like Andrew Sean Greer and Nick Hornby use Mac Freedom to help them keep focus while working. This simple program blocks Internet access for up to eight hours. Users must reboot if they want to get online while Freedom is running. The hassle of rebooting means less cheating.

Powers took the idea of digital “freedom” one step further. Tired of the family ending of up alone together immersed in screens, Bill, his wife Martha, and their son made the radical decision to create a “digital Sabbath” by disconnecting from the Internet on weekends. This not only changed their dynamic with each other, but it also changed their dynamic with the outside world. Eventually, their friends and work contacts grew accustomed to not receiving responses to emails on weekends. Bill and his family took control by setting intentional parameters for technology in their household, and (surprise, surprise) in time, the outside world adjusted its expectations.

 

Writer William Powers took the idea of digital "freedom" one step further. Tired of the family ending of up alone together immersed in screens, Bill, his wife Martha, and their son made the radical decision to create a digital Sabbath by disconnecting from the Internet on weekends.

To do our best work it’s essential to create a buffer between ourselves and the information onslaught. “When I was in college and starting to think about writing” explains novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, “I was driving once from Princeton to D.C., where my parents lived, and there was a sex therapist on the radio. And someone called with whatever problem, and this therapist said, ‘What do you do in the bedroom?’ And the guy was like, ‘Well, watch TV, sleep, have sex, do my taxes; that’s where we change our clothes…’ And the therapist said, ‘Don’t do anything in your bedroom except have sex and sleep. Don’t watch TV, don’t do—because all these things are going to be on your mind, and it’s going to be much harder to separate this thing that needs to be separated out.’ And writing is like that. If you don’t find a way to create a wall between it and the world, the world will always win.”

“To engage with the digital—to connect to the network—can still be a choice rather than a given,” Rushkoff explains. “That’s the very definition of autonomy. We can choose to whom or what we want to be available, and when. And we can even choose people for whom we want to be always on. Being open to a call from a family member 24/7 doesn’t require being open to everyone. The time it takes to program your phone to ring for only certain incoming numbers is trivial compared to the time wasted answering calls from people you don’t want to hear from.”

 

"Solo Scenes" (1997-98) by Dieter Roth, which is currently on view at MoMA in New York City, is comprised of 128 television monitors that present continuous footage of the Swiss artist alone sleeping, working, eating, and recovering from alcoholism during the last year of his life. (Photo by Michelle Aldredge)

3. Set a time limit.

Positive rituals are critical to the creative process. To work effectively, we must control our digital workflow, and not let it control us. “We scramble to keep up with the never-ending inflow of demands and commands,” Rushkoff says in Program or Be Programmed, “under the false premise that moving faster will allow us to get out from under the endless stream of pings for our attention. For answering email and responding to texts or tweets only exacerbates the problem by leading to more responses to our responses, and so on.”

Spending our day glued to a screen makes us reactive instead of proactive. To break this cycle, we must make mindful choices. As Powers explains, setting time limits and rewards with the “modest goals of clarity and calm” will help break the “workaholic cycle of email.”

“Pick something important to do, and set a limited time to do it,” suggests Babauta at Zen Habits. “That might be one hour, or 20 minutes, or even just 10 if you’re having a hard time getting into it. The time limit helps sharpen your focus. If you have limited time to do something, you’ll be forced to decide what’s important. It also means you’re not doing some unlimited task that could take hours, but a very specific one that will be over in X minutes. Setting a limit is good too for when you decide to process your email — only 20 minutes to get as many emails processed as you can, for example.”

 

"Close everything," advises Leo Babauta of Zen Habits. "This means everything possible on your computer that isn’t absolutely necessary for the task at hand." (Photo courtesy thepowerofless.com)

 

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The Art of Taking Risks : 13 Years, 3500 Artists, 7 Memorable Lessons

May 6, 2012 in Found, Images, News, Process with 16 Comments

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

When I was a girl, I was fearless. I was always falling out of trees, off of speeding bicycles, into muddy creeks. Once, I was bitten by an angry goose. I was knocked on the head accidentally with a baseball. A rock. And a basketball. On one hot summer evening, the rope of the tire swing broke and sent me and my best friend, Michael, hurling through the yard like a hockey puck. And then there was the morning I tumbled into my neighbor’s cactus garden. (Who knew that cacti spines came in so many size and color variations? Ouch.)

But somewhere on the way to adulthood, the youthful spirit of risk took its leave. Like so many other “responsible” adults, I succumbed to the tyranny of the regular paycheck. Although I never lived extravagantly, I traded my time for money, and money for things. Once on that spinning wheel, it’s hard to get off. Often we forget that it’s even possible to stop, reevaluate, and make radical changes to our lives. It feels too scary. Too hard and overwhelming.

This past year has forced me to stop and reconsider my options. Ten months ago, when I launched Gwarlingo, I never could have anticipated how quickly the site would grow and how enthusiastically it would be received. Some incredible opportunities have come my way as a result–I’ve made new friends, had fabulous conversations with readers (in person and online), traveled, flexed my writing, tech, and photography skills, been on the radio, been hired for new, challenging projects, and more. And every minute has been pure pleasure for me. For the first time in ages, I have no idea what surprises the day will bring when I get out of bed, and that excites me.
 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

After thirteen remarkable years working at The MacDowell Colony, I’ve decided it’s time to take the leap into full-time self employment. The decision wasn’t easy, but I know it’s the right thing to do. Letting go of my 9-5 job (with a regular paycheck and benefits) will allow me to expand Gwarlingo and tackle some new creative projects. Is it a risk? Of course. But it’s a risk that takes me back to those free-wheeling, tree-climbing days.

While I’ll miss all of my friends at the Colony terribly, I can still be part of a creative community through Gwarlingo and through some new collaborative projects that are on the horizon.

Over 3500 artists have passed through the doors of MacDowell during my tenure there. That’s a lot of creative energy in one place. In the past few days a number of people have asked me about the experience of working at the Colony for over a decade. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve learned in my thirteen years at the nation’s oldest artist retreat…

  • If you are open, receptive, and generous with others, the majority of people will be open, receptive, and generous in return.

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  • Reserve judgment. Forget rumors. Listen and be patient. Most people will surprise you.

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  • The most successful artists don’t have some mysterious gift that allows them to excel in their field. They simply work hard, work consistently, take creative risks, and don’t worry about what other people think. This is the real formula for creative success.

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  • It is artists who have the best bird’s eye view of our culture today–they can tell us where we’ve been and where we’re going. They have the special ability to imagine alternatives to the present.

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  • Artists can also view the world from a micro level. They can help us appreciate the unseen.

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  • Solitude is an art. Unplugging and learning to be alone with yourself is essential if you want to do your best creative work. Technology is a tool. We should control it, not the other way around. Turn off your phone, Twitter, email, etc. Do it. The withdrawal symptoms will subside, eventually.

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  • Being an artist is challenging in our society. It’s hard mentally, physically, and financially. It takes a village–a community of friends, fellow artists, and supporters who understand why you do the work you do and believe that it’s valuable. If you have the means, support artists and organizations, like MacDowell, who are helping artists realize their full potential. And if you’re an artist, don’t forget to leave your apartment or studio every now and then. Find a residency program, go to a reading, concert, or opening, or have fun with friends. Play and connection are just as important as hard work.

These are just a few of the lessons I’ll take with me when I go.

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

I have a lot of exciting ideas for growing Gwarlingo. I’m looking forward to organizing live events, providing more resources for artists on the site, and digging into much-discussed topics like money, fear, and technology and how these dovetail with the creative life.
 
And then there is my own creative work that’s been languishing–I have a novel to sell, stories to finish, and photographs to print.

Of course, I will also need to piece together the funding to make all of this happen. Traffic on the site continues to grow. Last month I had over 25,000 unique visitors to Gwarlingo. I expect this number to climb as I have more time to devote to the project. This opens up some new opportunities for sponsorships, which I’ll be exploring.

I’ll also be available for freelance and consulting projects. I have a large project with a nonprofit that will take part of the year, but I also look forward to working with artists who need help with grant writing, project proposals, social media, and artist statements. I have a few artists penciled into my calendar already.

 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky

My last day at The MacDowell Colony will be April 27th. Life is going to be very full until then, so please forgive me if I’m not able to post as regularly in the coming weeks. You will have more of my time and attention very soon.
 
Thanks to all of the staff, friends, and artists who have made my job at the Colony so memorable through the years. I also want to thank the friends, old and new, who have participated in the evolution of Gwarlingo.

We’re just getting started.
 

Image from the vernacular photography collection of Mark Glovsky


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A special thank you to Mark Glovsky for sharing these beautiful images from his found photography collection. Thanks Mark!

 
 

Writer Lewis Hyde : All Creative and Inventive Minds Are Not Simply Solitary

April 24, 2012 in Images, Process, Words with 5 Comments

 

"The Grey Album," a 2004 mash-up by Danger Mouse, is a prime example of the type of copyright dispute Lewis Hyde discusses in his most recent book, "Common as Air." "The Grey Album" combines an a cappella version of rapper Jay-Z's "The Black Album" with instrumentals created from unauthorized samples from The Beatles' LP "The White Album." "The Grey Album" gained notoriety when EMI attempted to halt its distribution, despite the fact that both Jay-Z and Paul McCartney reportedly were fine with the project.

 

Lewis Hyde is a rare breed of writer—a contemporary poet, philosopher, and essayist in the tradition of Thoreau, Emerson, and Czeslaw Milosz.

Hyde’s first book, The Gift, which attempts to reconcile the value of creative work with the demands of the market economy, is a revered text in the art world and has never been out of print since its publication in 1983. Artists like Michael Chabon, Bill Viola, Margaret Atwood, Jonthan Lethem, and Zadie Smith are fans of Hyde’s work, and David Foster Wallace called Hyde “a national treasure, one of our true superstars of nonfiction.”

Although Hyde received the MacArthur “genius grant” in 1991 and is highly esteemed in literary circles, his name is not as well-known as it should be. But even if you haven’t heard of Hyde before, you have likely encountered his ideas, many of which have been embraced and adapted by mainstream writers like Seth Godin. When Godin says, “Art is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording… but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art,” he is popularizing the philosophical arguments made in Hyde’s work.

 

"Part of the project of my book," says Hyde, "is to make it clear the degree to which any created thing has roots in the commons. Even a genius like Shakespeare relied on books and myths that were available to him from the past...All creative and inventive minds are not simply solitary." (Lewis Hyde photo courtesy the author)

In the late 1990s, Hyde turned his attention to the subject of intellectual property. The resulting book, Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership, took almost a decade to complete. His timing was fortuitous, for disputes and lawsuits over image appropriation, music remixes, file sharing, and copyright infringement were on the rise and emerging as the central debate of the digital era.

We now live in an age when agri-giant Monsanto can sue farmers for patent infringement, even if those farmers are desperate to keep Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds out of their fields. One only need to listen to This American Life‘s program on patent trolls or read about Facebook’s recent attempts to trademark the words “book,” “face,” and “wall” to realize that it’s time to reevaluate our country’s intellectual property laws. Corporations may pretend that their litigious actions are motivated by protecting the work of artists, but let’s not kid ourselves. Money is the real bottom line. We have entered a period of “market triumphalism,” a term Hyde uses to describe a pure free-market, private-property ideology.

Clashes over copyright have given rise to the Copy Left or “free culture movement,” a diverse group of artists, intellectuals, lawyers, and activists, who argue that excessive legal restrictions are detrimental to innovation and creativity. In Daniel Smith’s 2008 profile of Lewis Hyde in The New York Times Magazine, Smith cites the case of Emily Dickinson as a prime case of the “corporate ‘land grab’ of information” that has “put a stranglehold on creativity, in increasingly bizarre ways”:

“Dickinson died in 1886, but it was not until 1955 that an ‘official’ volume of her collected works was published, by Harvard University Press. The length of copyright terms has expanded substantially in the last century, and Harvard holds the exclusive right to Dickinson’s poems until 2050 — more than 160 years after they were first written. When the poet Robert Pinsky asked Harvard for permission to include a Dickinson poem in an article that he was writing for Slate about poetic insults, it refused, even for a fee. ‘Their feeling was that once the poem was online, they’d lose control of it,’ Hyde told me…”

 

"For Hyde, as for many legal and political scholars, the C.T.E.A. (the 'Mickey Mouse Protection Act' to its detractors) represents a blatant abrogation of the purpose of intellectual-property law." (Andy Warhol, "Mickey Mouse," 38 x 38 inches. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / Artists Rights Society, New York. Photo courtesy of IKON ltd.)

As Smith’s piece explains, Hyde’s frustrations with such incidents motivated him to become more politically active. In 1994 Hyde supported a unique bill introduced by Democratic senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.

“The ‘Arts Endowing the Arts Act’ was an unusual piece of legislation. It proposed auctioning off 20 additional years of copyright protection for creative works and using the proceeds to build a permanent endowment for the arts and humanities. In essence, Dodd wanted to create a gift economy.

The bill failed to gain any traction. The entertainment industry, led by Disney, which faced the imminent expiration of its massively lucrative copyrights on Mickey Mouse, Pluto and Donald Duck, lobbied for the expansion of copyright terms without restriction. In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act passed, adding 20 years to the length of copyright, both pro- and retroactively, and ensuring that thousands of creative works poised to enter the public domain remained in private hands…

For Hyde, as for many legal and political scholars, the C.T.E.A. (the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” to its detractors) represents a blatant abrogation of the purpose of intellectual-property law…By extending copyright retroactively, Hyde told me, the C.T.E.A. negated the logic of incentive: Mickey Mouse can’t be invented twice…

The C.T.E.A. spurred Hyde to action. He wrote letters to every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He published an op-ed, the first of his career. In 1999, with the writer Brendan Gill and Archibald Gillies, then the director of the Andy Warhol Foundation, he started the Creative Capital Foundation, a nonprofit that offers financial support to artists in return for a small percentage of any net profits generated by their work, which the foundation uses to finance other projects. He helped organize a low-fee writers’ room in Boston. And in 2004, he became a fellow at Berkman.

Although Hyde is focused on a new book project now, he remains an essential voice on the subject of intellectual property, art, and the marketplace. I’ve heard Hyde speak on multiple occasions over the years–at the Peterborough Lyceum, at a small gathering at NYU, and also during multiple residencies at The MacDowell Colony. He is sharp, humorous, and erudite–far from a starry-eyed idealist.

It was during Hyde’s most recent residency at MacDowell that the author met Ana Pečar, a video and intermedia artist from Slovenia. Over the course of their stay at the Colony, a series of conversations ensued. The following interview is the serendipitous result of their face-to-face discussions, and a fine example of the types of spontaneous collaborations that can happen when artists of different disciplines have the opportunity to mingle and consider big ideas. As Hyde himself has said, genius needs to “tinker in a collective shop.”

 

Ana Pecar performing at "Live Performers Meeting" in Rome, Italy, 2011 (Photo courtesy Ana Pecar)

 

 

Artist Ana Pecar (Photo courtesy the artist)

There is much here to ponder about free speech, the ownership of ideas, and the corrupting influence of money in politics. Hyde’s interview makes one fact clear: the system as it exists today—one that treats corporations as individuals and forces our congressmen to spend two-thirds of their time raising money—isn’t working.

Hyde suggests that we are asking the wrong questions about intellectual property, the free market, and art. Perhaps it’s time we reframe the debate? After all, aren’t all artists borrowing from their predecessors to a certain extent? Art isn’t created in a vacuum–it’s a dialogue with the larger culture, with the art, music, films, and books that are already in existence. ”Creativity is subtraction,” as Austin Kleon has said.

It is original thinkers like Lewis Hyde—visionary artists with the ability to imagine a different paradigm—who can help us reinvent our broken system.

A special thanks to Lewis and Ana for sharing this interview with Gwarlingo.

 

Copyrights and Copyduties: Ana Pečar Interviews Writer Lewis Hyde

 

Ana Pečar: Can you tell us about the area of friction between private property and the scope of things best held in common?


Lewis Hyde: To talk about the tension between private property and common property it might help to think about what we mean by property. One old definition of property is the right to exclude other people, so you know you own your house, because you can exclude people from it, you can keep them out. Or you know you own your car because you can loan it to a friend but you don’t let other people use it.

And in fact in the USA one of our Supreme Court justices said that the hallmark of the constitutionally protected property right is the right to exclude. But this then raises a puzzle, particularly about cultural things, because things like songs and inventions are famously thought of as non-excludable. Once you’ve invented the idea of making bifocal eyeglasses or once you’ve come up with a Pythagorean Theorem, it’s hard to keep people from not knowing it.

Ideas are not only unexcludable but also unrivalrous, which is to say we can share them without anybody loosing them. If I share a bicycle with you, then I don’t have that bicycle, but if I share an idea with you I have an idea and you do too. So ancient people thought that the fruits of human intelligence and imagination were by nature common property.

 

In the early 1980s, David Byrne & Brian Eno recorded "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts," which was influenced by African-style percussion and Afro-American funk rhythms. It is also notable as one of the first rock albums to make extensive use of the then novel technology of sampling.

 

Ana: When and in what context did the law start to regulate the public and the private?

 

Lewis: Particularly with the rise of printing…you begin to have methods of making ideas excludable and rivalrous, even though they aren’t by nature so. The first copyright law came out in the context of publishers enjoying a state-sanctioned monopoly over what appeared in print. It was enacted by the British Parliament in 1710 and named the Statute of Anne.

Things we call “copyright” and “patent” are ways in which the state comes in and takes something which is by nature common and makes it possible to privatize it. A copyright gives you a state-sanctioned monopoly to exclude other people from reproducing your books. I should say that I’m not against this–it is a useful tool of public policy to have these devices– but you really have to think about why you have them and what the ends are to which you dedicate them. And right now we are having serious arguments internationally about this because the balance between private property and common property is out of line.

 

"I think a lot of American artists struggle with this problem of making ephemeral work versus work that can be commodified. A lot of my friends don’t make sellable work and some of the artists that we’ve been having dinner with here, at MacDowell, do not create work that is clearly one or the other. But you may be right that if you did a study of how the weight falls, maybe Americans are more focused on art they can buy and sell." ("200 One Dollar Bills" by Andy Warhol. Photo by Sang Tan courtesy the AP)

 

Ana: Why did it fall out of balance?

Continue Reading…

Jonah Lehrer on How Creativity Works : 5 Insights from Julia Child, Dylan, & Picasso

March 23, 2012 in Process, Words with 7 Comments

 

I can't sing

In 1965 singer Bob Dylan was burned out after a grueling tour; he was sick of reporters’ questions and tired of performing the same old songs. Dylan told his manager that he was quitting music for good and proceeded to disappear. He squirreled himself away in a cabin in Woodstock. Dylan’s plan was to write fiction and paint, so he didn’t even bother to bring along his guitar. But after a short period of rest, words began pouring out of the songwriter. By some accounts Dylan wrote 10 pages of stream-of-conscious verse in a short burst of activity; in other accounts, Dylan says it was 20 pages. Regardless of the length, in only a few months the singer was in the recording studio again recording one of his most memorable and influential songs, “Like a Rolling Stone.” Dylan called the creation of the song a “breakthrough,” later explaining that it changed his perception of where he was going in his career.

Why do creative epiphanies like the one Bob Dylan experienced happen? Is there a scientific reason that breakthroughs occur at certain times in our lives and not at others? Are there specific things we can do to encourage innovation in our personal lives and in the workplace?

Writer Jonah Lehrer delves into questions like these in his new book Imagine: How Creativity Works. Lehrer, whose previous books include Proust Was a Neuroscientist and How We Decide, specializes in the relationship between science and the humanities. Lehner’s work could be described as Gladwell-esque. His books and articles for publications like Wired and The New Yorker are aimed at a general audience and attempt to synthesize research from the fields of neuroscience and psychology with interviews and biographical accounts of artists, creative thinkers, etc.

Jonah Lehrer

Lehrer’s recent interview on NPR’s Fresh Air is a useful introduction to many of the ideas discussed in Imagine. While most of these findings won’t be new to those of you who have read other popular books on the subject of psychology and creative thinking, Lehrer does a skillful job weaving together disparate sources. This book will surely be a hit with the TED crowd and with entrepreneurs, managers, and creative professionals who are trying to foster innovation in the workplace.

But after listening to Lehrer’s NPR interview this morning, I’ve been thinking more about how Lehrer’s ideas apply to artists of all disciplines, as well as to the employees of organizations. Here are some key insights that I find most compelling…

 

The deepest, creative insights usually occur when we relax and let go.

The worst thing we can do as artists is to try too hard. We try too hard in all sorts of ridiculous ways–we set unrealistic goals and deadlines, we set out to make the ultimate “masterpiece,” we compare ourselves to others, and we chastise ourselves when we fail to live up to these lofty standards. In order to make our best work, we have to leave all of this mental baggage at the door and approach the work empty-handed without expectations.

Lehrer cites Bob Dylan and the story of how he came to write “Like a Rolling Stone” as a prime example of an artist who experienced a major breakthrough as a result of letting go.

When we’re stressed, under deadline pressure, and trying desperately to produce our best work, we are likely to fail unless we step back, force ourselves to unplug, and take a break. As Lehrer points out, we’ll actually be more innovative and efficient if we stop obsessing and instead go for a walk, take a shower or nap, tinker with a favorite hobby, or meditate. Scientists have determined that people in a relaxed state and a good mood are far more likely to develop innovative or creative thoughts.

Lehrer cites Bob Dylan and the story of how he came to write "Like a Rolling Stone" as a prime example of an artist who experienced a major breakthrough as a result of taking a break and letting go. (Photo courtesy thelavinagency.com)

Lehrer gives some striking illustrations of this symbiotic relationship between creativity and relaxation. Researchers have found that people are more creative and productive when they work in a room that is painted blue, to give one example. Why? Because blue is associated the ocean and the sky and relaxation.

Relaxing and letting go is not just an internal process, but in many cases demands changes in our external behavior as well. As William Powers has pointed out in his book Hamlet’s Blackberry: Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, we must make conscientious choices about how and when we use technology, unless we want to be slave to a screen 24/7. Compulsively checking email, Facebook, Twitter, etc. interrupts deep creative thinking. We’re addicted to screens; too often we forget that we control technology–it doesn’t control us. We have a choice–we can keep technology in it’s place, or allow it to erode our attention spans and precious work time. Taking digital breaks is just as important as taking physical ones. Whether we use internet blocking software like Mac Freedom, turn off social networking, phones, and email while working, or commit to staying offline on weekends (as Powers has done), our creative work will benefit.

 

Art isn’t all fun and games.

If only the deep insights and epiphanies were enough…But it takes a lot of hard work to realize a creative project. Here’s Lehrer discussing the subject in his Fresh Air interview:

“It would be wonderful if the recipe for all kinds of creativity was to take showers and play ping-pong and go on vacation and go for walks on the beach, but when you really talk to people in the creative business, they want to tell their romantic stories about the epiphanies but then if you push them, they say even that epiphany had to go through lots of edits on it and iterations and lots of hard work after we have the big idea. And that’s a big part of the creative process too, and it is not as fun. In fact, there’s evidence that it makes us melancholy and a little bit depressed. But it’s a crucial part in creating something interesting and worthwhile. If creativity were always easy or about these blinding flashes, Picasso would not be so famous.”

 

"Sunset over Mt. Monadnock" by my six-year-old friend Louisa

 

In order to do our best creative work, we need to find the right balance between mental absorption and letting go.

Silence, focus, and concentration are important. But too much introspection and self-awareness can get in the way of innovation. Research has found that when professional musicians and performers improvise on stage, their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex–the part of the mind that controls inhibitions–actually shuts down.

Self-consciousness is an enemy of creativity. Remember how exciting art class was in kindergarten when we had no inhibitions? But eccentricity, individuality, and creativity are discouraged and eventually “schooled” out of us. At some point, we all learn the so-called “rules” about art–rules about staying inside the lines, coloring in one direction, and choosing the “right” green crayon for a grassy lawn.

Lehrer’s research shows that ignoring such rules and allowing ourselves to be playful again is an essential ingredient for the creative life. As Yo-Yo Ma told Lehrer, we must welcome the first mistake, because the first mistake makes us free. To do our best creative work, we must be focused, but also relaxed and at ease in our own skin.

Yo-Yo Ma "tells this great story about Julia Child making a roast chicken...She was talking to the camera and the chicken would just fall off the plate, onto the floor. And he said, 'Did she make this look of horror? Did she scream? No, the smile never left her face. She picked up the chicken, dusted it off and just went on with the show.' -Jonah Lehrer

Continue Reading…

Ai Weiwei : Creativity Is the Power to Act

March 11, 2012 in Design, Images, Process with 14 Comments

 

Ai Weiwei, "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn," 1995. Middle view of a triptych of gelatin silver prints, each print 49 5/8” x 39 1/4”. (Photo courtesy dailyserving.com)

 

Ai Weiwei, "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn," 1995. Last view of a triptych of gelatin silver prints, each print 49 5/8” x 39 1/4”. (Photo courtesy dailyserving.com)

 

Ai Weiwei’s Blog: Writings, Interviews, and Digital Rants, 2006-2009 has been good company the past few days. Between 2006 and 2009, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei used his blog as a daily notebook where he posted thousands of photos, documented his artistic practice and personal life, wrote about art and architecture, and turned out a steady stream of scathing social commentary. Over 100,000 people visited the blog on a daily basis until the Chinese government shut Ai’s site down in 2009.

Ai Weiwei is a Renaissance man of sorts, with a broad range of interests. He is a writer, architect, sculptor, curator, poet, critic, publisher, and photographer. In the West, he is probably best known for his spectacular installation Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern in London. The work consisted of one hundred million porcelain “seeds,” each individually hand-painted by 1,600 Chinese artisans, and scattered over a large area of Turbine Hall.

 

In Ai Weiwei's "first large-scale solo exhibition to be held anywhere in the ethnic Chinese world," Taipei Fine Arts Museum's 'Ai Weiwei absent' was a critical success. The highlight was the artist's "Forever Bicycles" installation, which was made specifically for this exhibition out of 1,200 bicycle units. (Photo courtesy thisiscolossol.com)

 

Herzog and DeMeuron’s Olympic Stadium, fondly referred to by some as the “Bird’s Nest,” is a feat of engineering, an aesthetic marvel. Ai Weiwei served as a consultant on the project. (Photo courtesy Inhabitat.com)

 

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei holds some porcelain sunflower seeds from his installation at The Tate Modern in London on October 11, 2010. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images courtesy The Asia Society)

Ai is also a self-taught architect and proponent of authentic, simple design. He has worked on over 70 architectural projects total, including a notable collaboration with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron , which resulted in the memorable “Bird’s Nest” stadium for the Beijing Olympics

Recently, Ai has been making headlines for other reasons. On April 3, 2011, the artist was arrested at Peking Airport just before catching a flight to Hong Kong. Around 50 police officers searched Ai’s studio and took away laptops and hard drives. Police also detained eight staff members and Ai’s wife, Lu Qing. The arrest sparked major protests around the world. On 22 June 2011, the Chinese authorities released him on bail after close to three months’ detention on charges of tax evasion. He is prohibited from leaving Beijing without permission for one year.

Ai Weiwei with musician Zuoxiao Zuzhou in the elevator when taken in custody by the police, Sichuan, China, August 2009 (Photo courtesy Ai Weiwei and Christine König Galerie)

 

One thousand and one antique Chinese chairs for the 1,001 Chinese visitors Ai Weiwei brought to Kassel, Germany, for Documenta 12 (2007) as part of his project, "Fairytale." (Photo Courtesy Ai Weiwei via pbs.org)

 

Artist Cpak Ming took a series of photographs of flash stencils around Hong Kong after the arrest of Ai Weiwei. The photographer received a firm warning from the Chinese government after photographing this piece of flash graffiti on the side of the People’s Liberation Army barracks in Admiralty, Hong Kong. Next to Ai's Weiwei's face are the words: "Who's Afraid of Ai Weiwei?" (Photo by Cpak Ming courtesy mymodernmet.com)

In his art practice, Ai has actively embraced technology. “I think the Internet and information era is the greatest period mankind has encountered,” Ai told Hans Ulrich Obrist in the book Ai Weiwei Speaks. “Thanks to this period, humans finally have the opportunity to become independent, to acquire information and communicate independently…I think that art won’t have too grand or too much of a future if it fails to connect with today’s lifestyles and technologies.”

For Ai, virtual reality is as important as reality itself. He believes that all art is social in its way and  that technology can bolster the power and reach of art, particularly in oppressed societies. Ai’s first blog post was one sentence: “You need a purpose to express yourself, but that expression is its own purpose.”

In 2007 Ai used his blog to create a compelling work titled Fairytale. Using the internet, he recruited 1,001 Chinese people who had never been to Europe to wander around the town of Kassel Germany during Documenta. As someone who spent 12 years in New York City, Ai understood the power of travel and hoped Fairytale would change the lives of those 1,001 individuals who made the trip to Europe.
Continue Reading…

Filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara: Gaudi Made Me Realize the Lines Between the Arts Are Insignificant

February 16, 2012 in Images, Process, Spaces with 1 Comment

 

In Barcelona Hiroshi Teshigahara came face-to-face with Gaudí. "The magic of it overwhelmed me."

 

In the West, Hiroshi Teshigahara is best known as the avant-garde director of the 1964 film Woman in the Dunes–an erotic, surreal film that was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Teshigahara’s haunting shots of sand, skin, and water amid the advancing sand dunes have stayed with me over the years. But there is another Teshigahara film, one that is less well-known, that left an even greater impression on me.

Antonio Gaudi is like no other movie I can think of. Teshigahara’s 72-minute meditation on the Spanish Art-Nouveau architect is essentially wordless. He avoids conventional  narrative and instead, lets Gaudi’s buildings do the talking.

Before watching this film, I didn’t consider myself a fan of the Spanish artist. (George Orwell described Gaudi’s cathedral, La Sagrada Familia, as “one of the most hideous buildings in the world.”) But my judgment was based on ignorance–on some vague, false impression that Gaudi’s work was not much more than bulbous, overdone kitsch.

But after viewing Teshigahara’s breathtaking film, my opinion of the Spanish architect has been entirely transformed. Anotnio Gaudi was nothing less than a visionary genius–an original, madly brilliant artist who was unappreciated and misunderstood in his own time.

 

Teshigahara's passion for Gaudi's work comes through on every frame. He's a patient, attentive director with a craftsman's eye for details. He takes the time he needs, allowing the camera to linger.

 

 

Gaudi's Casa Batllo, Barcelona, Spain (Photo by Roby Saltori via Flickr Commons)

 

 

A still from Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy The Criterion Collection)

 

 

Gaudi's Casa Batlló in Barcelona. The roof, terminating in a turret and cross, could represent the sword or spear of Saint George (patron saint of Catalonia), which has been plunged into the back of the dragon. (Photo by Marcel Germain via Flickr Commons)

 

 

A still from Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy The Criterion Collection)

 

 

The Casa Milà is Gaudi’s second most visited building in Barcelona. The roof of this apartment building and office block is one of the city’s hidden treasures, for its view of the nearby Sagrada Familia, as well as for its whimsical and imposing sculptures.

 

Teshigahara’s passion for Gaudi’s work comes through on every frame. Once he has set the scene with opening shots of contemporary Barcelona, Teshigahara brings his camera into Gaudi’s universe, taking us up a characteristic Gaudi spiral staircase. He’s a patient, attentive director with a craftsman’s eye for details. He takes the time he needs, allowing the camera to linger. Blue tiles shift in the light like water moving. Mosaics morph into a dragon’s scales. Güell Park, a planned garden village, feels like a surreal, fairy-tale landscape.

Teshigahara moves his camera slowly through these fluid, organic spaces. Slow tracking shots give us a sense that we’re actually inhabiting these bizarre, sublime places. Gaudi’s curved, organic designs are shockingly surreal and erotic. Like Woman in the Dunes, Antonio Gaudi pulses with human sensuality, and yet there is also something of the divine in both Teshigahara’s film and Gaudi’s fertile imagination.

Hiroshi Teshigahara

This meditation on the power of and beauty of nature is enhanced with music and sound effects by the renowned Japanese  composer Toru Takemitsu and two collaborators, Kurodo Mori and Shinji Hori. As the critic Stephen Holden explains, Takemitsu was an eclectic impressionist “whose music blended avant-garde Western techniques, electronics and random compositional methods with more conventional symphonic music and Japanese traditional instruments.”

The spiral motif, associated with the seashell, is emphasized in Takemitsu’s soundtrack, which incorporates the sound of the distant sea. “The score for Gaudi is a kind of free-floating East-meets-West impressionism,” says Holden, “whose organic flow mimics the sprouting curvilinear shapes of Gaudi’s buildings. The score includes four Catalan folk pieces, electronically altered and combined with other sounds.”

Antonio Gaudi is a tactile film–a visual poem that lingers in your memory long after its over. If you have the patience to listen and look and to defer any pressing questions you may have about Antionio Gaudi the man until the DVD extras, you will find the melding of Gaudi’s inventive architecture, Teshigahara’s sensitive camerawork, and Takemitsu’s haunting score a rewarding experience.

 

A spiral staircase in the bell tower of Gaudi's Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The spiral motif, associated with the seashell, is emphasized in Toru Takemitsu’s soundtrack, which incorporates the sound of the distant sea. (Photo courtesy SantiMB via Flickr Commons)

 

 

The atrium of Casa Mila (Photo by Chong Ming courtesy WikiCommons)

 

 

The Park Güell bench as seen in Teshigahara's "Antonio Gaudi" (Photo courtesy the Criterion Collection)

 

 

Gaudí’s structures, Teshigahara once said, "made me realize that the lines between the arts are insignificant. Gaudí worked beyond the borders of various arts and made me feel that the world in which I was living still left a great many possibilities."

 

 

Tile patterns from the Park Güell Bench, designed by Gaudi (Photo courtesy Make Mine Mosaic)

 

 

The staircase at Casa Batllo (Photo by Chong Ming courtesy WikiCommons)

 

But how exactly did the avant-garde, Japanese filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara develop such an intense appreciation for the architecture of Antonio Gaudi? I was curious to know more.

Continue Reading…

How To Feel Miserable As An Artist

February 9, 2012 in Process with 2 Comments

 

Edward Hopper, "Automat," 1927. Oil on canvas, 28 in × 36, Des Moines Art Center.


This week a reader sent me a copy of “How to Feel Miserable As An Artist.” This marvelous list was created by illustrator Keri Smith and is part of The Artist’s Survival Kit, which Keri wrote and designed.
 
I like Keri’s list because it emphasizes the ways in which we tend to stay in our safe zones as artists. As I’ve discussed previously, pushing ourselves takes courage and risk, which is inevitably uncomfortable.
 
Sometimes we need a reminder that it’s okay to fail. It’s alright to disappoint people if it means we are working deeply and stretching the boundaries of our comfort zone.

Regardless of your artistic discipline, I suspect you’ll find a few things on this list that resonate…

 

 

Did you like Keri’s list? If so, please share it with others. Subscribe to Gwarlingo for free. You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

 

On Money, Fear, and the Artist

January 11, 2012 in Images, Process, Words with 14 Comments

 

A currency collage by artist Mark Wagner (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

A visual artist I know once told me about an audit she endured with the IRS. My friend is a professional artist in New York City with her own studio. Her work is shown at galleries and museums. She has received grants, been accepted to artist residencies around the world, and every now and then, she even manages to sell a few pieces of artwork.

During the audit, one of the IRS employees explained to my friend that she couldn’t keep declaring a loss for her business year after year. “This looks more like a hobby than a profession,” the auditor said.

My friend attempted to explain the financial ups and downs of being a working artist. Yes. There had been a dry spell in the “income department” in recent years, but her expenses were legitimate. Art was her business, her life, her passion–not a mere hobby. The auditor was completely puzzled. “But if you aren’t making any money creating art,” he asked, “why do you keep doing this year after year?”

 

"The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America," says artist Mark Wagner. "Collage asks the question: what might be done to make it something else?" (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

 

A detail of the above currency collage by artist Mark Wagner (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

I love this story because it says so much about the profit-oriented culture we inhabit as artists (and when I say “artists,” I define that term broadly to include writers, performers, designers, filmmakers, composers, visual artists, etc.).

For most artists I know, money is a constant source of anxiety because most creative projects don’t make economic sense. As artists, we have chosen an alternative paradigm to the profit-oriented one. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be smart about the business-side of art making, only that money isn’t our primary motivator.

The concept of creating for its own sake remains a radical concept in our culture. This is one of the central rifts we’ve seen playing out between Wall Street bankers and supporters of the Occupy movement. One camp places a higher value on profits, while the other a higher value on more elusive qualities like imagination, empathy, and justice.

Of course, if you have your money invested in the stock market, then you want your broker to be greedy with your money–you want to earn 6%, not 4% like everyone else. But when it comes to art, greed turns the best ideas sour. It isn’t hard to sniff-out the difference between work that was created from a free, deep place, and a blatant commercial commodity.

You may be able sell the end product of art–the concert ticket, the photograph, the book–but the idea itself is free. Art is a gift, and like all gifts, it must be shared in order to make an impact.

 

(Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

 

"For most artists I know, money is a constant source of anxiety because most creative projects don’t make economic sense. As artists, we have chosen an alternative paradigm to the profit-oriented one." (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

 

 

"Fear is normal for an artist--it's the reason we get trapped in the cycle of self-doubt and anxiety, the reason we hesitate to declare a project finished." (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

Being an artist is so hard because we’re operating in a parallel universe from the larger culture–one that values imagination, creativity, and ideas more than money or status. But a true creative exchange–one in which art is given and accepted without obligation is a way of side-stepping the soul-crushing grimness of consumerism. I would go so far as to say that it’s an alternate way of being. It’s this free exchange between artist and audience that creates movement, provides pleasure, provokes change, and offers meaningful connection.

As writer and MacArthur fellow Lewis Hyde says in his classic book The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, “The gift moves toward the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns toward him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is great it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us.”

“Motion” is a key word here, for an artist needs this movement to thrive. “Make the work,” said Walt Whitman. “Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping,…Stop it and just DO!” wrote artist Sol LeWitt to his friend Eva Hesse. “All that is important is this one moment in movement,” Martha Graham once said. “Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”

Art that languishes for too long on the hard drive, on the studio wall, or in the murky recesses of the imagination becomes stagnant. At worst, it becomes insular and self-absorbed. “No art is sunk in the self,” observed Flannery O’Connor, “but rather, in art the self becomes self-forgetful in order to meet the demands of the thing seen and the thing being made.”

Fear is normal for an artist–it’s the reason we get trapped in the cycle of self-doubt and anxiety, the reason we hesitate to declare a project “finished.” Our bodies are wired for self-protection. The moment we sense artistic risk or criticism, our “fight or flight” response kicks in. This is perfectly natural, but if we aren’t careful, we can get stuck in this place, unconsciously filling our time with research, editing, re-evaluating, re-writing, re-working (the artist’s version of “flight”).

 

"A true creative exchange--one in which art is given and accepted without obligation is a way of side-stepping the soul-crushing grimness of consumerism." (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

 

 

A detail of the above currency collage by Mark Wagner (Photo courtesy Mark Wagner at smokeinmydreams.com)

 

In Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton writes: “There is only one real deprivation,…and that is not to be able to give one’s gift to those one loves most…The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.”

This doesn’t mean that stillness isn’t important–it’s key to the creative process–but at some point we have to let go and allow our work to be subjected to the marketplace. “The artist who hopes to market work that is the realization of his gifts cannot begin with the market,” Hyde explains in his book. “He must create for himself that gift-sphere in which the work is made, and only when he knows the work to be the faithful realization of his gift should he turn to see if it has currency in that other economy. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t.”

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