Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 630
With Margaret Anderson, Naoshima, Kagawa, Japan
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Fresh experiences can lead to new tastes and a life that feels longer, Julie contended. Remember when you were little and an hour-long car ride felt like a lifetime? “I think it’s because, truly, everything’s new. When you experience new things, time slows down a little bit,” she told me. “When you go on trips – which is my favorite thing to do – everything is new, and you feel young again. And reinvigorated with new ideas, new perspectives, a new understanding of yourself.”
Julie Curtiss quoted in Get The Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 623
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
At the time [the Renaissance], Bologna was unique in championing the professions of women. The home of Europe’s oldest university, which had supported female students since the thirteenth century, the city considered women artists as integral to its development. Praised by scholars, written about by biographers and adored by the locals, they were also supported by patrons of all social classes (from bankers to barbers), creating a varied culture of artistic patronage. (By contrast, in Florence and Naples, commissioning was reserved for select noble families.). Women were also encouraged to sign their work, as well as to paint self-portraits for the purpose of being known and, most importantly, remembered. No wonder scholars have recorded a staggering sixty-eight women artists working in the city between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
These notable exceptions remind us that women have always been perfectly capable of being artists. But while there could have been an abundance of women working at this time, in reality female artists were an absolute rarity, seen as ‘tokens’ rather than pioneers. (After de Rossi’s death [in 1530], no female sculptor is mentioned in the city’s records for 200 years.). And little knowledge remains of those working during the Renaissance period. Most of what we know has been passed down by male scholars and through legal documents, rarely from the women themselves.
Katy Hessel in The Story of Art Without Men
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 623
The Studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Jealousy? Hmmm. Jealousy links up with competition. It’s hard to compete, really compete, in the art world. That’s why award ceremonies are a little suspect. Athletes can compete. I don’t know how much you can really compete as an artist. You can compete with yourself.
You are an explorer. You understand that every time you go into the studio you are after something that does not yet exist. Maybe it’s the same for a runner. I don’t know. But with running, or swimming, or gymnastics, or tennis, the achievement is measurable. Forget about competition. Rather, commit yourself to find out the true nature of your art. How does it really work; what’s the essence of it? Go for that thing that no one can teach you. Go for that communion, that real communion with your soul, and the discipline of expressing that communion with others. That doesn’t come from competition. That comes from being one with what you are doing. It comes from concentration, and from your own ability to be fascinated endlessly with the story, the song, the jump, the color you are working with.
I know this sounds a little monkish or even sort of “holier than thou,” but I really do believe it. And that said, jealousy is a human sentiment. Few of us are above it. John Lahr, a writer, told me that the major emotion in Los Angeles is envy. I have to say he’s probably right. And a lot of it has to do with how close or far from an Academy Award one is. And LA, the capital of smoke and mirrors, would have sone believe that the award is just a step away. When you drive down Hollywood Boulevard, some of the dreamers look as though the dream ate them alive.
Anna Deavere Smith in Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-Up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 611
Barbara’s Studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
This common participation in the Trinity of Line, Form, and Color has founded a promiscuous fellowship which, while promoting the respect for skill, promotes to a far greater degree the misunderstanding of art. For skill in itself is but a sleight of hand. In a work of art one does not measure its extent but counts himself happiest when he is unaware of its existence in the contemplation of the result. Among those who decorate our banks and hotels you will find many who can imitate the manner of any master, living or dead, far better than the master could imitate himself, but they have no more knowledge of his soul than they have knowledge of their own. We will know how little skill avails, how ineffective are its artifices in filling the lack of true artistic motivation. His “less is more,” is Robert Browning’s famous evaluation of this problem in comparing the imperfections of Raphael’s art to the impecability of Del Sarto’s, “I should rather say that it will be more difficult to improve the mind of the master who makes such mistakes than to repair the work he has spoilt,” Leonardo wrote. Neither Giotto nor Goya exhibited half the skill of Coreggio or Sargent, either in the complexity of their undertaking or the apparent virtuosity of execution. The artist must have the particular skill to achieve his particular ends. If he has more, we are fortunate not to know it, for the exhibition of excess would only mar his art. You may be sure that the artist whose method is muddled betrays less his technical inadequacy than the incoherence of his own intentions.
Mark Rothko in The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 542
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Observing these objects and imagining their history broadened my perspective. In China, we were still living in a culturally impoverished era, but art had not abandoned us – its roots were deeply planted in the weathered soil. The stubborn survival of this indigenous artistic tradition demonstrated that our narrow-minded authoritarian state would never be able to remake our culture in its own image. From then on, when I wasn’t spending time with my parents, I was immersing myself in the world of antiques. The dealers found me perplexing, for I followed no prevailing tastes or conventional wisdom. Instead I was taken with obscure objects, and made a point of buying things that seemed to have little or no value; my hungry spirit was nourished as I imagined the stories lurking behind each piece. The observations and insights that came to me from the distant past spurred me on to make art of my own.
– Ai Weiwei in 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
This is exactly my experience with the folk art I collect!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 523
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
How strange the human mind is! When I first began, I think I should have been willing to work at it from the top of a church steeple, whereas now, even to think of finishing requires a real effort. And all this, simply because I have been away from it for so long. It is the same with my picture and with everything else I do. There is always a thick crust to be broken before I can give my whole heart to anything; a stubborn piece of ground, as it were, that resists the attack of plough and hoe. But with a little perseverance the hardness suddenly gives and it becomes so rich in fruit and flowers that I am quite unable to gather them all.
The Journal of Eugene Delacroix edited by Hubert Wellington
Comments are welcome!
Q: What was the first review you ever received and how did you get it?
A: In 1991 I was in my late thirties and had resigned my active duty Naval commission two years before. I had been an artist for five years. I was anxious to get my pastel paintings exhibited, seen by an audience, and collected! As I worked hard to build my resume, I hustled to exhibit in all sorts of spaces that were not galleries: restaurants, hospitals, real estate offices, law offices, theaters, doctors’ offices, and more. The goal was to just get the work out of my home studio.
In December 1991 I presented a solo exhibition at Dumbarton Church in Georgetown (Washington, DC). For years Bryan had volunteered to set up chairs, a Steinway piano, and other miscellaneous equipment for their classical music concert series. The church’s downstairs space was used to showcase artists’ work. So I applied for a solo exhibition, was accepted, and got my first review in a local Washington, DC newspaper called “Eye Wash!”
Moral: artists have to work extremely hard for every little thing that comes our way!
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 499
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Life is a journey back to where you started from, Le Guin always said. True voyage is return. When you get there, you might know a little more than when you began.
Isn’t the real question this: Is the work worth doing? Am I, a human being, working for what I really need and want – or for what the State or the advertisers tell me I want? Do I choose? I think that’s what anarchism comes down to. Do I let my choices be made for me, and so go along with the power game, or do I choose? In other words, am I going to be a machine-part, or a human being?
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations edited and with an introduction by David Streitfeld
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 496
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find – if it’s a good novel – that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little bit, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it’s very hard to say just what we’ve learned, how we were changed.
The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.
The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words.
Author’s Note, Ursula K. LeGuin in The Left Hand of Darkness
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 478
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Artists, because of the demands of their personality, their sense of personal mission, and their need to create or perform, are driven people. Mixed with the love of work can be a terrible pressure to work. For many artists, and especially for the most productive ones, the line between love and obsession and between love and compulsion blurs or disappears entirely. Are such artists free or are they slaves to their work?
In The Artist and Society the psychiatrist Lawrence Hatterer said of such an artist:
His most recognizable trait is his recurring daily preoccupation with translating artistic activity into accomplishment. The consuming intensity of this artistic pursuit brooks no interference or obstacles. His absorption with the creative act is such that he experiences continually what the average artist feels only infrequently when he reaches unusual levels of creative energy with accompanying output. He appears to be incapable of willful nonproductivity.
This is Picasso working for 72 hours straight. This is van Gogh turning out 200 finished paintings during his 444 days in Arles. The artist who is “incapable of willful nonproductivity” is a workaholic for whom little in life, apart from his artistic productivity and accomplishment, may have any meaning.
Eric Maisel in A Life in the Arts: Practical Guidance and Inspiration for Creative and Performing Artists
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 