Oh boy

Artnet recently published a blurb about the Turner Prize winner, Simon Starling:

On Dec. 5, 2005, 38-year-old Scottish conceptual artist Simon Starling was presented with the £25,000 Turner Prize by culture minister David Lammy at Tate Britain in a ceremony televised on Britain’s Channel Four. The Berlin-based, Glasgow-born artist is known for Shedboatshed, in which he transformed a wooden shack into a boat that he sailed down the Rhine. Starling has also made Eames-style chairs from recycled materials, ridden a motorized bicycle across Spain in 2004, using the water from the exhaust to paint a picture of a cactus, and built a wooden chicken coop for hens, using the wood from the coop for a fire to cook the eggs the hens laid. His work has been little-seen in the U.S. [ed. italics mine]

Um, can we see to it that the U.S. continues to see little of Mr. Starling's work? That'll be my conceptual art project. Maybe there's a big money prize I can win with it!

The blurb continues to say:

Despite such populist posturing, however, Starling’s victory can be seen as a reflection of a "post-YBA sensibility" that is less spectacle-driven and more "modest materially and formally," according to White Columns director (and 2006 Turner jurist) Matthew Higgs.

Mr. Higgs recently rejected my work for the White Columns Artist Registry and I thought then, and think now, that my work just isn't nearly contemporary enough for such things. Another reassurance that I'm going down the right path...

I plan on posting more about this in the future, but I seriously think the art world is due for change within the next 5-10 years. I really think that craftsmanship has to come to the front of the class and I just don't see it today. Take, for example, the recent OPTIONS 2005 show here in DC or many of the images being reported from Art Basel Miami Beach. Surely people are going to grow tired of looking at ugly things (I'm not saying that makes it bad art). Of course, I'm not sure how frequently big-money collectors actually look at what they buy today.

Where's the beauty?

Comments

[eve]

No, yes, yes and yes...
I would actually like to see some of Starling's work, as Turner prize winners go, he is far more interesting than most of late. Just visit the Emin show to see what I am talking about. And yeh, I got rejected from White Columns too, but considering what they have shown lately, I am okay with that too.
I also agree that there has to be some kind of change coming in the arts. Are we the only ones tired of one-liner art? Do I really have to print up and distribute the "bring back beauty" manifesto?
I am pretty sure that you, I and the other artists I know who are focused on creating beautifully crafted (if somewhat obsessive)works can't be out on a distant island of thought.
I think I will stop there, since I could go on for pages and pages...

[Bill Gusky]

Not all collectors and curators crave distressed, junkyard-style work. What I think collectors and curators need, like all markets, is clarity. Collectors and curators need to know that a work they want is part of some clear, easy-to-explain style or movement. It's what separates a $10,000 aluminum foil and commercially-printed paper art investment from a $10,000 Hershey's(r)chocolate bar wrapper.

Your cedar work is beautiful and interesting, but does it belong to or relate to any easy-to-point-out movements? Not that I can tell - I happen to think that's one of its strengths.

If getting turned down for wack-a-doo grants gets you down, though, consider this: you can always drop every ethic and value you've ever held and do one of these two things:

1.) Instead of neat, evenly arranged holes in clean new cedar, shoot variable-diameter ragged holes in giant banks of old half-rotted and tarred barn board, preferably with faded old symbols painted on them---

OR

2.) Front craftsmanship in some bizarre extreme way. Examples: a. drill a perfectly straight 3/16-inch hole down the long dimension of a six-foot 4x4 cedar beam b. make 1000 perfect 1-inch cubes of perfect cedar, then drill each with perfect 1/32nd-inch diameter holes until it's pourous like a sponge, then arrange all 1000 in a long perfectly-straight row.

Either way, just go off the deep end of extreme. If you don't peg into one of the square holes on the collector's-and-curator's neat list of categories, you've still got a shot at being categorized as an Outside Artist.

cheers- Bill

[J.T. Kirkland]

Eve,

Thanks for the comments. I look forward to reading your manifesto.

Bill,

Thanks too. I really dig what you're saying and I agree completely. I think I know how to get my work noticed in the market (your ideas would definitely do that) but ultimately I think it would be crap, herego why I don't do it. Funny how that works!

Your statement, "Your cedar work is beautiful and interesting, but does it belong to or relate to any easy-to-point-out movements? Not that I can tell - I happen to think that's one of its strengths," is very much appreciated. I'm glad you think that. I'm not sure how long you've read my site, but you may have noticed that I no longer use the term "Organic Minimalism" when speaking of my work. It's a label and I don't think there's an adequate label for my work. So, I now call it "Wood." I think that fits!

[onesock]

JT,
Whenever I saw a plywood panel piece at ARt Baz or any of the other fairs last weekend, I thought to myself,"This is okay, But it really needs HOLES in it!"
But seriously, I did think of your work there and could see it fitting in nicely (hope you take that as a compliment :) )
The quality of obsessiveness was rampant at these fairs, or I should say obsessiveness to beautifull or uncanny effect. Your work has this quality. Could it be ramped up a bit? Sure, but not for its own sake.
I criticise my work all the time, I say if only i had a million used watercolor pans I could really make something! But you now, I like my little understated things too, I love Richard Tuttle (saw his work at Art Baz too) so how could I not see value in the understated?
My point is, you are exploring processes, I see your work advancing, becoming more sensitive to the material, you are considering the form and letting the concept and significance of that form reveal itself- these are allright by me.

I would like to see your work out there.Your voice needs to be apart of the dialogue ( other than this blog).
I dont like the idea of being wrapped up in the market driven system either. I dont like the idea of having to stick with one material or one style. My mind is much too varied and broad for that. There are plenty of artists who have been all over the map with their art (Deiter Roth, Mike Kelly). This is why I think that if I teach for a living and try to get my work known by some curators and statrt to get museum shows and such. I know the standard trajectory is small notforprofits, then commercial galleries, then small museums, then big museums. One of my professors at FSU completely avoided the gallery scene and had a pretty good career on the museum circuit. Anyway, that is my thinking for now, no telling where all this may lead, if anywhere!

[onesock]

SPeking of which, there must be a way to get your work seen by curators other than being in a gallery. That is why I am submitting to juried shows, because even if I dont get in I am assured that the curator (who may be from MOMA or the WHitney or wherever) has seen the work. I also have an idea to send postcards of my work with my URL to museums to curators' attn. What do think about all this? I am not saying I have the answers but I keeping thinking " hey I am creative dude, I should be able to find a way to buck the old system!" :)

[onesock]

I keeping thinking? good one mark!

[J.T. Kirkland]

Hey Mark,

Thanks for the comments... all three of them! I agree, everything needs more holes drilled into it!

I take your comment that my work would fit in at ABMB as a compliment. The thing is, like you (I think) I'm not so concerned with selling my work or being a part of the art commodity market. Of course, ABMB represents a way to get where I'd like to be... with the curators and gallerists who can help make things happen. I'm more interested in people seeing my work than some big-shot collector buying a piece and putting it into storage.

You brought up an idea about postcards sent to curators and such. I have some ideas about that and will email you about them. I think you'll like it.

Thanks again for the comments.

Oh, one more thing. You mention "ramping" up my work a bit more. I'd be interested to hear what you're thinking about in terms of "ramping" up. After the "Frames" series I plan on working on a series that ramps things up by taking my work to an extreme... an extreme of very few holes in a piece. Details to come, of course!

[onesock]

Yes I guess I was speaking in terms of the extreme gesture, in either a minimal or maximal direction. I dont know. It is something I struggle with in my own work because I ask myself where I think the work should go, what type of experience I want to create. I ask these things constantly. Then I go to Art Baz and see such crazy, cool stuff and feel that I have to be careful not to get wrapped up into making it extreme for its own ends. Its obvious that is a way to garner attention. whether or not that is the correct road to take for the work itself is another question. And perhaps intensity and extremism can take other forms and be expressed on other modes than just "bigger is better". Also I suspect that things get "ramped" up as your opportunities and venues ramp up. For example, what you may create in your studio my change as you are faced with filling an entire floor of a museum.

[Bill Gusky]

Mr. K, the violet stained piece is gorgeous, very lyrical. Glad you dig my jive, it's sincere, driven by similar circumstances.

Also, notice how the entire system for artists to get their work to the public hasn't changed in 150+ years. It's growing outdated fast. The time of easily defined movements is past as well. The entire market now is built on outdated premises. Its own weight will eventually bring it down, but people like us can help by just doing what we do and not accommodating the market. We are the relevant future of art making. Hopefully we'll live long enough to see the change that's bound to come.

My people are from Kentucky too, several generations back, anyway. God's country down there. I hope one day to relocate to such warmer climes.

Happy Holidays, sir.

[J.T. Kirkland]

Bill,

Thanks for the compliment on "Pile." Just to clarify, the piece isn't stained purple, it's all natural wood. That's the actual color of the Aromatic Cedar now. Over time the color will change. I have sometimes used clear lacquer but mostly my work is all about natural wood. In fact, I despise stain... it's what my work fights against.

As for this: "notice how the entire system for artists to get their work to the public hasn't changed in 150+ years." I'll have a post on this subject sometime this week.

Thanks Bill!