The distinction between art and not-art is divisive and lots of people have already talked about it. I also relate to, and have heard many stories of others feeling alienated from art displayed in museums. Most of the time I’ve been in a space where everything is labeled like they are in exhibition spaces, I’ve gravitated to reading the curators’ explanations first. I’d then gaze back at what was looking at me and try to win this staring contest with this edified perspective. I don’t know if it was possible to win in this context.
My best friend prompted the most memorable shift in my approach to observing and appreciating art. They said that they look for pieces of their own experience in these objects that others have made. This transition from a desire to know the truth to then just to know my part in it: it felt and feels much more fulfilling than to walk in a room and to judge the worth of what I was looking at—money? objective honor? appreciation? my time?
I visited the Barbican’s Unravel exhibition recently. Perhaps it is because I am more open and more sensitive at this moment in time than any other, but I felt like these pieces were tied to my life in a way that I have never been able to in other, more similar spaces (except maybe there was this exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Dublin that featured 30 early career artists’ work that I think sparked this at first, perhaps).
It was a re-recognition of myself, of toys that I used to make in my closet and my bedroom, worlds created out of dirt and recycling and samples and (mostly) free things.
At this exhibit I realized that the most relevant distinction between artist and not-artist (personally) feels like the ability to articulate what you have done and why, and for that to ostensibly be connected to some broader audience. 2024-04-22_0016
Received by which critic? In the context of which conversation? What terms and conditions are you entering on, even as they are invisible, when you do so? Any conversation has its own dynamics and desires and prejudices. It’s just holding balance with exploring different conversations and getting to know which ones might dampen and frustrate your own sense of aesthetic, without allowing it to dampen and frustrate it.
Connected to this train of thought is an excerpt from one of my favorite podcasts as of late: the Blindboy Podcast. This episode is titled “The History of Whales who wear dead salmon as hats.” At one point he responds to a reader asking him how they might start off as an aspiring writer. I’m not sure how faithful the punctuation is, but I think I did a good enough job transcribing:
Submit to these publications, not to get published, but to get rejected. Get rejected so much that you will not experience the feeling of rejection as something negative and you will understand it as an essential facet of being an artist. And the more rejection you get, the more feedback you’ll get. The more rejection will feel completely normal. you’ll understand failure not as a bad thing, but as a thing that must happen. Failure will become a thing you don’t fear at all. and then when you write you’re no longer fighting the fear of failing. You stop trying to copy people. You won’t write because you want to write something good or something bad, you’re like a firefighter who practices their own fire every day. Flames are just part of your job. They’re not scary anymore, when you can write and the fear of failure isn’t present, you’ll find your own unique voice. Your unique voice as a writer. Then your writing gets better. You keep submitting. there’s less failures and then you get published more.
It’s easier said than done. How do you remain in dialogue with the world, but to contribute to it meaningfully and authentically in the meantime?
In an alternate life, perhaps I was a fiction writer, maybe a seamstress, maybe a portraitist, maybe a fly high steampunk widget.