You Get It After You're Dead!

It's been a while, but this is a good one. I have a friend who came into a little money, or so they thought. Turns out, when they had the nerve to ask the family head about it, this is what they got. "You get it after you're dead." And they were, forgive me, dead serious. Still, always good for a laugh!

Now I haven't figured that one out yet, and I'm not sure I ever will, but the other day I figured one like it out quite by accident. I think someone was lamenting the whole "artists never make it until after they are dead" thing. I immediately, without thinking, responded that this was the way it was supposed to be. Then I realized that I wasn't being ironic; I was right.

I've written before about the whole "you can lead a horse to water but can't make it drink" thing. That was a hard one for me because I was a teacher. It was my job to make the horse drink, or so I thought. Then I realized that it wasn't supposed to be the challenge I had taken it for, and that you couldn't do it. That just depressed and frustrated me. I was so sure that if I couldn't do it I was a failure. Clueless. Forgive me. Then one day I got it. You're just supposed to lead the horse to water. Drinking has to be the horse's idea. You not only have to accept this one, you have to like it. And of course this goes for the rest of life: you not only have to accept the truth, you have to like it. Then again, you don't have to if you don't want to. Drink or don't, it's up to you.

But this is the deal with artist's always getting famous after they die. It's a good thing, believe it or not. We didn't hear it all our lives for nothing. It is the way it is, and the way it is supposed to be. The exceptions are so few, much fewer than we think. There are more aspiring artists that get off the bus in New York on just one day than there are famous artists. It's a fact. Artist's are not supposed to be famous in their lifetime. It ruins them. History is littered with artists who were famous in their day and we have no idea of who they are. It is almost impossible to be famous and be an artist. It is putting the cart before the horse. There's that horse again.

The Fork in the Road; The Razor's Edge

I ran into a couple of artists yesterday. One in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Same thing. Frustrated about their careers. Leon Polk Smith liked to say that if he had to he would pay money to be an artist. The fact is, every artist does pay. They invest money in studio space and supplies that they will never get back.

Stay close to the source. You find God in nature and in life, not in churches. The same is true of art. You have to stay close to the light. Every second an artist spends worrying or obsessing about their career the farther they get from the light. The world is filled with temptations to take the wrong fork at every turn. We compare, we score, we want more. It may be natural, but it's the wrong fork. It is simple math. You do the work. Without the work you have nothing. With the work you have everything that matters. The rest is crap, and it lures us with promises that are static illusions. Visions of grandeur, visions of glory. False evidence that we matter somehow.

Those two artists I ran into are gifted. Art is a gift. For giving. I just wanted to slap them. SHUDDUP! STOPPIT! Quit wasting your time and mine talking about stupid shit. If they could only hear themselves. Sure, they do another kind of math. The exposure game. The more exposure they get, the more chance they have of making it. Never happen. You can't force life. All you get is resistance. Be grateful for what you have if indeed you have some time during the day when you can do the work.

Sharing your work is a blessing as well. It is part of the process. Find ways to do it, but don't be pushy. Let the horse drink when it feels like it, all you can do is get it there. Better to make sure the water is good, clean, pure, drinkable, worth drinking and so on.

That's the deal. The razor's edge. It is not only sharp for a reason, we are supposed to keep it sharp. Every minute. And every choice we are faced with, every dilemma, every spot we find ourselves in, we are challenged to do the right thing, make the right turn, make the right choice, by ourselves, the best we can, with the best tools we have, and our best judgment, and our biggest heart.

NEW AGE (of) AGENDA--THE HUMP!

The information age is over. We got the information and it is us. Too much info. Now we must face the new age. The Age of Agenda. Machiavelli would be horrified, ironically. There is such a thing as too much of even a good thing.

Where does this put us? The Age of Agenda means everyone has an angle. Not to be confused with the Age of Enlightenment, when everyone had an angel whether they liked it or not. Agenda is by definition secret. It is redundant to identify it as such. Some are just more or less secret than others. Gone is the Age of Innocence. This is the opposite age. On the other side of the wheel.

Yes, we could call it the Age of Politics. Same thing. Everyone has a blog. Everyone has an agenda. Nothing, NOTHING, is what it seems. 1984, but just twenty years too late. The Age of Paranoia? That too. Topsy-turvy. I can't wait for the movie about two gay men who cheat on each other and have secret lives as married men with children and are too ashamed to admit to it. Won't that be fun. Maybe I should contact an agent.

Cheating. That is what Agenda is about. One thing out front and another in back. The new beast with two backs. Cheating on oneself and everyone else. It is everywhere. We celebrate it. It's like gravity. Been there all along, but now everybody's doing it. I love the one about the pretty teacher having sex with one of her students.

WOW! That poor 14 year old boy. He's only the hero and envy of every adolescent boy past and present. And they are calling him the victim! We are talking about a thousand over-lapping agenda and no one can see the forest for the trees! Are the comics having a field day? Fox News and every other station is wringing their hands over this one. The only bad news here is that this kid's paradise on earth has turned to shit. For that I am sorry. The end of innocence is not what they were doing together but what everyone else has made of it.

Are our leaders at least partly to blame. Absolutely. Especially the bushy one we have now. I normally identify the agenda thing as the hump. You know, someone's trying to hump you. Everyone is trying to hump everyone these days, and I'm not talking about that teacher and her student. I'm talking about that hump that is about domination. It's like the Republican Agenda. Is there anyone these guys aren't trying to hump? The public, the environment, the animal kingdom, the world, God!

This is the Year of the Dog. It is kicking off the Age of THE HUMP, appropriately enough. Although I think it really started in the Year of the Rooster. So what can you do? You watch out! You lie down with dogs you get up with flees, and you probably got humped in the process. Don't close your eyes and hope it will go away. This is the gauntlet. Keeping your eyes open is the only chance you have. See things plainly. It is not a question of whether someone has an agenda, it is just a question of what it is and what it is going to cost you. The next question is, can you pay the piper? The bushy one.

NEOAB: Settled Abstraction

Before getting into the abstraction of the last twenty-five years, NEOAB, or neoabstraction, I would like to rant a little about another one of those negative ideas that get passed down unchecked, along the line that having a mind of your own or doing what you feel like are bad things. IMPRESSIONABLE. You know, how very impressionable he or she is, and how sad. Like this is a bad thing. That a person is moved by something or someone. Too sensitive. Too willing to listen. To consider trying something different, outside one's normal sphere of experience. It falls in the same camp as INFLUENCED. These are in direct conflict with the other two I just mentioned. If you have a mind of your own and do what you feel like, you are probably less impressionable and less likely to be influenced. Nonetheless, the idea that one could or would be influenced by forces outside oneself is not even worth discussing. We are nothing if not a lump of clay shaped by the world around us. But the idea that being unimpressionable would be considered a virtue is mind-boggling. That being easily impressed is a sign of bad character, that being influenced is a sign of weakness or perhaps a lack of character. The real question should be about which forces we allow to make an impression on us, and whether we are influenced by positive or negative energy.

One of the absolute worst things one can say about an artist is that they are heavily influenced. It is downright mean and practically indefensible. There is not an artist alive who has not been heavily influenced. The greatest artists were probably the most influenced. I just heard a story about the great Miles Davis, whose wife turned him on to rock and roll and Hendrix, and how it changed his life and his music. De kooning, Pollock, David Smith, Rauschenberg and everyone else, were influenced by Picasso, who made no secret of his influences and took it a step further by acknowledging that they were self-conscious influences, that he didn't borrow, he stole. Nevertheless, the worst thing you can still say about an artist is that they are influenced, period.

Consider the people in this world upon whom nothing makes an impression. The unimpressionable. The unmovable. By anything, especially the unprescribed, the unique. Things like children, nature, animals, art, music, literature, etc. Two things: first, what a shame; second, STOP making a virtue of the affliction.

Because if you are going to get anything out of this life you must allow yourself to be touched. The hope is in nature, in love, and in art. Let them make an impression.

Now on to NEOAB.

The very first Modern abstractionists were an absolute lot. Malevich. Mondrian. There were hard line, hard edge for a reason. They were trying to be clear about a new language. They were starting out with building blocks. Lego. The work had a graphic quality because the language came from a graphic place. The inspiration which shaped their images came from places like design and topography. They were not interested in the wilder or even more nuanced side of the language because it served no purpose. Rational clarity was imperative if this new language was to survive. It was no different than the kind of rigid severity required by the Pilgrims to survive their first few winters in the New World. You don't take any chances.

The abstract expressionist began by literally breaking down the hard line of such clarity in favor of exploring a more irrational, personal, emotional, poetic, gestural and fluid expression. They were influenced by impressionism, collage, calligraphy, and the can of worms that was opened by the world of psychology. They wanted to go down that rabbit hole and see what they could find. Dreams, the unconscious, the emotions, these were the stuff of the first generation of Abstract Expressionism, and they crossed the line. If you want an almost instructional example of this, look at the early work of De kooning. Everyone talks about the dissolve of the figure/ground relationship in these works, but one could more easily make a case for the break down of rational abstraction. De kooning would find an edge, cross it, find it again, cross it, again and again. He would do it until he had broken it down as much as he could and still have a painting/composition/picture.

NEOAB is not another generation of abstractionists exploring the language. That is over. NEOAB is the first and following generations of artists who accept abstraction as settled law. Indeed, if the abstract expressionists were frontiersman, NEOAB are the settlers who are building a life on ground those artists before them broke. Is there any virtue in being one of these settlers? Probably not. Virtue doesn't enter into it. NEOAB are not heroes like the original abstractionists. Those guys were giants, no question about it. I would never question that or try to diminish what they accomplished. Never. I have only respect and awe for them. Those of us who follow behind them have a different set of challenges, like keeping the curiosity, the wondering of it moving. It is NOT about refinement. It is instead about doing what it takes to expand. In some ways it could be considered a significant challenge. Like the war in Iraq, it is a question of winning the peace. It is also not about preserving abstraction. While we don't want to lose it, that is a job for historians, not artists. No, it is literally about settling it. Reinventing and reinvigorating it. Bringing new meaning to the language, new testimonials, new visions, new poetry. More than keeping it alive, bringing it new life. It is an evolution. Abstraction is evolving and will keep evolving.

Who are some of these artists? Joan Snyder. Bill Jensen. Jonathan Lasker. Jennifer Reeves. Thomas Nozkowski. Elizabeth Murray. Howard Hodgkins. Jessica Stockholder. Porfirio DiDonna. Richard Tuttle. Have they been around? Yes. Have they been doing this for a while? Yes. Is it settled abstraction. Yes. Is it good. Yes.

So what's the point? Dead End? Beating a dead horse. Scratching the same ground? No. Scratching the surface is more like it. Each of these artists brings their own vision to the language, like jazz, or even english. Since abstraction is indeed evolving, these artists bring that vision to the larger collective that is abstraction. Define abstraction. Well, that's another blog.

Love&Art on Bow Street

I think we are all well aware of what the dangers of individualism are. We hear them all the time. We get beat up by them all the time. We have cautionary tells to guide us, or better, keep us in line. In line. That's the thing. And that is what this is about.

The group, that is any group, family, institution, community, town, government, peer, company, workers, partiers, you name it: the group, they will you tell you that first and foremost the individual "just does what he or she feels like doing(without regard for the group), that he or she is SELFISH.

Most of us accept this as gospel. We might even accept it with shame: "Yes, I am selfish."

We might go a step further and live with that shame and accept that we are bad and that we might never change.

What gets lost in all of this, and I'm probably cutting to this too soon, but feel compelled, is that no one ever questions the group's selfishness. SELFISH. The group is, let's face it, selfish on a LARGE scale, but because it wields the power of the group, it goes unchallenged and unchecked. The only example we have in our entire culture of the negative and selfish nature of the group is when we speak of adolescents and "peer pressure." When we say those words everyone knows what I'm talking about. "Peer pressure" is the most frightening pair of words in the mind/life of a parent. Maybe as scary as the word "war." Scarier.

So if the idea of the group being selfish seems like some paranoid ridiculousness to you, think "peer pressure" and go from there. Think of all the billions of selfish and destructive things the "group" has come up with (individuals don't make war, for example, groups do.) Some of them are the most ridiculous things one could ever imagine. Let's make everyone take two years of say, algebra, so that they can become well versed in the practice of mathematical equations; and then let's make it critical to their future in life that they get it, and if they don't let's relegate them to low-paying jobs in the service industry because, yes, we've made mathematical equations the bar that will decide who moves on and who doesn't. Now tell me how many people you know use algebra in their lives EVER. It tells you what group has selfishly imposed itself on everyone else, and did exactly what it felt like doing.

Where am I going with this? Art. Art has always been tarred as selfish. A selfish act by the selfish individual. Decadent. It does nothing for the team. Useless. The word art has never crossed this president's mind or lips. It serves no purpose in the military industrial complex that is this administration's sole agenda. Art is the voice and will of the individual. The only one, by the way, who will say that the emperor is not wearing a stitch.  It is also easier for the group to justify any means to survive. Any means. It can lie with many mouths. In fact, I don't think we can count on the group for the truth. Too much at stake. The truth is the domain of the individual. Now don't get me wrong. The group does good. It is a given, it is a necessity, it is a reality. Group and individual, individual and group. They gotta get along.

But the group is an entity, guilty of the same things individuals are, just in larger numbers. Every individual has to be able to fend off the group in a given situation, just like with peer pressure. It might be about conforming to group expectations or group thinking. It might be about performing for the group expectations and group thinking. Many so-called individuals only represent and mouth group expectations and thinking. There was a time not that long ago, for example, when women and minorities were expected to think and act according to the dominant group's expectations and thinking.

Every young person that considers a life of art is bound to be greeted with a great deal of opposition from every quarter. Some of these greetings will attempt to attack their personal character for the choice they are making. Do I think that it is selfish to be an artist? Obviously the selfishness of the group does nothing to justify selfishness in the individual. What I do think is that we each have a life and that it belongs to us, no matter how much we might owe any group. If a life of art is an individual's choice, then who can argue with that? Art contributes to many peoples lives. I won't say everyone's. That would seem to be enough, however. It takes all kinds to make the world go round. Breadmakers, bridgebuilders, bankers, baseball players, and yes, bass players. We have room for it all. No accusations or recriminations. Go fourth and multiply is fine if you like math, but waxing poetic can outshine the stars.

No Illusions

I was at Bow Street today, my wife's art exhibition space in Cambridge, and a man came in with a bit of an agenda, and that's ok. He did take the time to look at the paintings first and that was good. At first he didn't have anything to say except that only one of them was signed, which was true. It was a print. Anyway, at some point he expressed the concern that young people go into the arts with some kind of illusion about what it's going to be like and then they are disappointed. I had to stop him right there. Since when has our culture ever painted a pretty picture of what's in store if you choose to be an artist? NEVER. You might as well be deciding to grow up and be a heroin addict. From the very beginning all we get are pictures of pain and alcoholism and degradation. Warning after warning. Parents, teachers, college counselors, movies, magazines, etc. SO MUCH SO that I think people choose a life of art very often because that is what they want. Not the art, but the lifestyle of struggle and alienation. There actually could be some disappointment there if you don't achieve that dramatic result. Heaven forbid that an artist should live a happy and fulfilling life. Who would care? It would seem completely antithetical and inauthentic. The man said a lot of other "stupid" things along the same lines, but he wasn't stupid. He just repeated the same garbage that passes for knowledge of the way the arts work or the world works. Cliches, of course.

On another note I was again surprised to find someone going on about the professionalism of curators and museums and the like. I used to have the same reaction to my art history teachers who went on about their theories all the while oblivious to the fact that some human being somewhere actually bothered to think and feel and make the things that historians and museums make their livelihood from. Without the artist they would be in real estate. But you would never know it. There must be some deep-seated resentment there. It makes them keep trying to put the cart before the horse.

By the same token I had a friend of mine declare the other day that people were FINALLY starting to recognize his work, as though he deserved it somehow, as though his genius and the recognition of it was well past due( he once referred to his work as "the cause!"). This is just as crazy. He always gets himself in trouble. Expecting too much from people because of some psychotic notion that he is a great artist, dammit. He promptly alienated the woman, who was kind enough to show his work, because he made too much of the group show she would be putting him in that was months away. He dragged in a lot of paintings and didn't like the works she chose, instead wanting her to take more important and major works. Maybe she should have just gotten rid of everyone else's work and just shown his. He is the great artist afterall and these other people were just pretenders. Needless to say she finally told him to take a hike. He was outraged by her negativity. Afterall, who needs that? We can all relate to this, of course. God knows I've embarrassed myself on ocassion over the years with some arrogance in the face of a dealer.

On the other hand last summer I had a dealer beg me to let her show my work. I wasn't interested, but I wanted to honor her interest; not wanting to reject her outright the way dealers are of course quick to do with artists. In front of my friends she expressed her interests and even frustration. I never asked for anything, and even warned her that she had her hands full. I liked her. I didn't like her artists at all, which is unusual, since I am pretty easy to please most of the time. Shlocky comes to mind. Anyway, I insisted we keep things on a friendly level and left it at that. A few weeks ago I received an email from her telling me she was sorry but she couldn't show my work! Wow! What are you going to do? Amazing, of course, since I had never asked for the honor. Nevertheless I got a rejection. So there you have it!

ANYTHING WORTH DOING...Is actually worth doing no matter how well you do it.

Think about it. Who decides what is well done? Your boss, your parent, your local newspaper critic, your average guy off the street? You may appreciate it when someone else appreciates your thing well done, and everyone likes to be appreciated, but what does it mean? It occurred to me immediately as a child that the obverse of "anything worth doing is worth doing well" was even more true, that anything really worth doing was worth doing badly, or just as well as you could, which may be really badly or who knows. Just as much of a cliche is the Van Gogh tale: but it fits. He loved what he was doing and no one else much cared, until now that is, and you can't get within three feet of his work without a museum guard backing you off. He may be the exception to the rule, but then again, who knows? Who knows is what it is all about. "Who." And "Knows."

There are two answers. You know, and nobody knows. Furthermore, why would you let some other mere mortal dictate your choices. People do, lots of people, all the time, and lots of other people want them to. The words "it is your life" don't occur to them. But it is your life, no matter who you are, and if it occurs to you that something seems worth doing, then by all means it is worth doing no matter how well you do it. In other words, anything worth doing is worth doing badly. If that offends someone else, then that falls into the category of their problem. And they are entitled to that.

Someone asked me yesterday, how do you hang your work out there. How do you keep from being hurt?

Well, I've been showing my work since I was ten in a "professional" context. The older I get, however; the more I embrace amateurism. Not that I don't appreciate a professional dentist or airline pilot, but in the area of the creative, I think it keeps things in a healthier perspective. Professional artists and writers get a little stiff for me.

But back to the question. Well, it is a balance. You have to have a healthy opinion of yourself, perhaps even a high opinion. Of course professionals get a rigid high opinion of themselves that overcompensates for the subjectivity of things. It needs to be balanced, again. Everybody bleeds, everybody gets gas(sorry), and everybody needs to be loved. Everybody. Everybody has an up and a down side. Yin Yang. Make room for your bad self and then you can work on it. Make room for your good self and you can appreciate it. Not too high or too low. I hang my work out there for those who might appreciate it. Do I think it is worthwhile? That is understood. Does anyone else have to think it is worthwhile? No. I may not like that someone thinks I'm a lousy painter, but I would fight for their right to their opinion. Because that is what it is. Opinion. It is not knowledge. No one can know what is good or bad. They just have an opinion. The greatest people in their fields all have their detractors, which is as it should be. You can't take opinions either way. If you do you give up your freedom. Of course this does not mean you can't consider someone else's point of view. Again, that is your choice. But it is just their point of view, and it is skewed thus, and it may or may not work for you even if it works completely for them.

So I take it all with a grain of salt. The good and the bad. I've had people at the top and the bottom go both ways and it was pretty much the same. Take it in stride. Stay close to what makes your motor run and work hard to keep it running. Up and down can take you out of your groove(when does a groove become a rut?). Rudyard Kipling wrote a very wise poem about it(If).

What would I really like to have happen as a result of my work? I'd like people to feel like going there, and I would like them to have a worthwhile time, whatever that is. But they can go on not go, and I'm fine with that. It is the old, you can lead a horse to water thing but you can't make them drink. That is how it is supposed to be. They only drink if they want to. I don't invest too much in their reaction either way. Do I feel like to be appreciated is to be understood. Yes. Would I like it? Yes. But again, I don't let it affect me too much most of the time. Do I hate being ignored. Sometimes, but it goes with the territory. Freedom means responsibility, and if I want the freedom, I have to want the responsibility.

But I'll go back to the beginning. Painting is worth doing to me. I am really into it. Could I be the worst painter on the planet? Of course. I've gotten a thumbs down from my father for most of my life. I didn't let it stop me. Why? I like to paint. I think it is worth doing. Why? I can think of a couple of reasons right off. I like color. I like that it affects me but I don't know why. I like beginnings. I like the blank slate. It is like the bow of a boat with nothing but open water out in front. I like making something. I like mushing paint around and seeing what happens. I like the way paint tells me things and helps me to see things. I like the way it feels. I like being a part of the language of paint, and painting and the history of painting. I like connecting with the first person that ever did a cave painting to tell a story or express a feeling or idea. I like the way you can take it in all at once, that it is spatial, not linear.

Now what about the people who are confused? The people who think that they are empowered, entitled, equipped, enlightened enough to decide how well people are doing what they are doing it and whether they should be doing it at all? There are a lot of these people, and more are being born everyday. What do you say to them? Nothing. They are entitled to their delusions. They are bullies and like any kid knows, the best thing to do is ignore them. Walk away. I spent too much time fighting bullies and I suspect it made me one too. Don't fight. Walk away if you can. What do you do when you see them hurting someone else? Well, I hate to say it, but I still try to stop them if I can. Mostly I feel pity for them, but I believe in protecting and defending the frailer of us. Which is why I went back to teach at RISD. To shepherd the more fragile sensibilities that wanted to be artists. In the end I had to leave them to their fate, however, because RISD is for artists who want to get ahead( I did), and so you get what you deserve. You can't have it both ways. If you want to play with the big boys, it is a rough game, and someone is going to get hurt. If you want to just be an artist, well find somewhere and go do it. You don't need to play the game. If you think doing something is worth doing then do it. If your parent, mate, sibling, teacher, boss, whatever has a problem, again, it is their problem.

So that's what it's about. I do what I do because I think it is worth doing. I hang it out there to make the connection. Either I do or don't connect, but at least I made the first one with myself. For what it's worth, I think painting can be like music or nature, and work its magic whether people are paying attention or not. Do I think it's magic? Yes, to me that is what magic is. And it is worth doing because I think so.

PS It is understood that we are not talking about something that is hurting someone else, I mean REALLY hurting someone else, not just "disappointing" them. You have to know right and wrong. That is understood. Where that line comes into play is something you will have to decide.

Bows Art

Stacey Parks, my wife, has taken a space in Cambridge on Bow Street. It has large windows and looks out at the Lampoon Building at Harvard. She plans to open a space for art. An art space. I've been involved in a few since I was a boy on Via Margutta in Rome, and I suspect things have changed a lot since I ran my last gallery on Newbury Street ten years ago. It was called Gallery 28 and it was just across the street from the Ritz. It wasn't really a gallery, but an art school exhibition space that showed the work of artists from Boston and New York for the most part. Occasionally it included faculty in the shows, which was nice for the school.

I guess what I'm getting at is that exhibition spaces like the ones I've shown in or directed have long been absorbed into our ever-widening consumer culture. Alternative spaces are an anachronism. Part cliche, part joke. Everyone is excited that she is doing this space, but sometimes the reaction is all about business. Will it succeed? How will you pay the rent? Cambridge is not a good place to try to sell art. It never occurred to Stacey that she would be selling art, just showing it. I remember when I opened my second "alternative space" in Providence, RI(The Cleveland Gallery), and I jokingly told the Providence Journal art critic in an interview that if I ever sold a piece it would be like Christmas. That was the headline, of course. What I was suggesting was that it would only come once a year. My assistant did sell some pieces while I was out.

Even in Provincetown, on whose outskirts we spend our summers, everything is commerce. I was approached several times by one of the more prominent spaces about either partnering or taking over entirely. The talk was always about selling. Now don't get me wrong, I understand that an artist needs to sell his or her work, maybe, but art is not about commerce. That aspect to art, if it has such an aspect, just NEVER interested me, and I was poor most of my life. Professionalism in the arts is almost oxymoronic, and even embarrassing, but it is the norm in New England. It is anathema and even considered naive to think of art in non-commercial terms.

Yankees are nothing if not practical, and it is not practical to think of art in non-professional terms. Amateurism is rank. Of course I couldn't disagree more. But no one makes art for the love of it, or even the fun of it anymore, and what good is that? (I was just speaking with my friend and rare book dealer John Wronoski about this very subject yesterday, about art made by writers and writing done by artists, and how much more interesting that can be--and this will be the real subject of this or the next posting). We get something akin to a coffee cup now. Shoes. Newbury Street in Boston is all about hair and shoes, and that is Boston. A friend of mine, Martin Mugar, was reviewed in the arts section of the Boston Globe today. On the front of the section was a big spread about beads. A picture the size of a bus. His work was blurbed in the back with a postage stamp for an image. This is a world class artist. So it goes. The blurb funnily enough reduced the work to just that, fun, but in a demeaning way. As though Jackson Pollock was so fun with all those squiggles. Embarrassing. But such is Boston. Which is why Stacey is opening a space in Cambridge. Maybe some Europeans will wander by and understand. Art for art's sake in America. How refreshing. That was what her landlady said, and she is French, naturally.

More about Tuttle

In 1977, just about thirty years ago, I left an Alex Katz lecture at Brown University in disgust. He was all business man, all merchant, and I had no stomach for it. I had very intense ideals about art and a bad taste for money. I was reeling. Was this what it was all about? Was this what I had to look forward to as an artist in America? What were my options? Would I be holed up in some institution like my old teachers. I had graduated from RISD six months earlier and I was looking for something. I have a son who is a painter and six months out of school and I see it in him. It is a tough time. Terrifying freedom. Terrifying. Forget two roads in a wood. Try, looking up from the bottom of a very deep hole in the ground. This was not paper/plastic, this was God please send me a sign. It has been my experience that we always get one.

As if by some magic from the Magus a man was standing outside the lecture hall. He looked like a hillbilly. He was hard and withered in appearance, like a smoker, wearing a cheap flannel shirt, the kind that is printed, not woven, and maybe a hoodie and some bad jeans. He was standing under a sign that said Richard Tuttle. I might have said hello or nodded but walked past him into the List Gallery and what happened next changed my life forever. I have never been more excited by an exhibition before or since. Maybe a visit to the studio of Leon Polk Smith.

In this vast gallery space were almost invisible little pieces of shaped paper partially stuck to the wall, below eye level, with watercolor on them, and then pencil lines that left the paper and traveled close by onto the walls. They usually had his fingerprints on them, which was curious. How could his hands have been that dirty? Anyway, I was thunderstruck. Dumbfounded. I looked at each one closely and then again, and then went out and approached the man under the sign. It was Richard Tuttle.

We spoke for a long time. Mostly I listened. He had a lot to say. People poured out of the lecture but we kept on. He spoke quietly so I had to lean in and direct an ear towards what he was saying. One of the things that I remember him speaking about that evening was that there are diamonds everywhere and people are picking up garbage. He also said I looked like I was living under a cloud. Eventually he was expected to join the school president for dinner, so I walked him there and he told me he would rather have dinner with me, and that he was sorry to have to end our conversation. Then he gave me his address in New York.

And so began the only real mentorship I ever engaged in, and it was by accident and it was intense. It started out with a heated correspondence and then a year later, with his encouragement that included putting me in touch with his landlord, I moved to New York. I did not, as it turned out, take him up on his offer to dig in on 11th Avenue, a wasteland at the time. Instead I moved in with my brother on Central Park West, and he didn't approve.

And there you have it, really. Approval. What I soon discovered was that he didn't approve of a lot of things. He made up his mind hard. He called it being severe. He was probably the most thoughtful and intelligent person I ever knew, but he was also incredibly judgmental, even mean. After a while it got to be too much. He thought I wanted a mentor but I didn't. I was thinking friends. The friend thing is funny of course. It has gotten me into trouble a lot. Just wanting to be friends when people think and sometimes are even afraid that I wanted more. To be friends means a lot to me. I never knew much about it and wasn't very good at it. Coming from a divorced family that split everyone up, and having moved around so much, going to thirteen different schools before college, and then even transferring in college, I just knew about being on my own.

Richard went to the trouble of trying to teach me about a lot of things. If we talked about art, it was more about what goes on between the lines, and I liked that. I still do. His biggest obsession was pride, and for good reason, he had a lot of it. He worked me over with it, because I had it too, of course. Everyone does, but it was easier for him to deal with his own by focusing on me. He would question everything. The stamp I put on a letter. It was filled with pride. It was the one the postman gave me, but that didn't matter. That never got in the way of a lecture. He would read so much into it. If I accepted that stamp, then I was guilty. Apparently I should have been more sensitive and asked for another. I have been very careful about stamps ever since, but I am still limited by what is available, and for this I am tortured(not).

Another time he gave me grief for the jacket I was wearing. It was below zero and I had gone to meet him on 11th Avenue and walked there. I borrowed my brother's orange parka because I didn't own anything warm. I think I still got frostbite. But he chided me for the orange jacket. It was pride. I should have frozen. It didn't matter that it was my brother's coat. He had made up his mind.

And that is what this is all about. A mind made up. The good and the bad of it. Richard Tuttle made up his mind like no one I ever met. It is in his work. It takes a shape, it follows a line, an edge, a color. He makes up his mind. In art that is nine tenths of the law.

Richard Tuttle

Richard Tuttle has been in the news lately. Cover of Art in America. Whitney. And why not?

The man has always been something of a mystery. Especially to himself. Watching him connect the dots through his work is like listening to someone talk to themselves. You don't understand what they're saying, and for the most part you don't want to because it's private and personal. You accept the mystery. You like the mystery. You like that there is a mystery, and in the case of Richard Tuttle, that's just what you get.

The work looks like it might be intellectual and beyond you. If it is beyond anyone it is not because it is intellectual, however. It is because it is personal. It is emotional. Perhaps. There really isn't a word for it in english. Which suggests that I know some word in some other language. I don't. I'm just not ruling it out.

The work is difficult for Tuttle, and, by most people's standards, often painful. Is it complicated? Absolutely! But in the simplest terms he can find. He was never a minimalist, however. The guy is resolutely individual. The group is too glib. He makes Thoreau seem like a frivolous social butterfly.

First and foremost the work dances the razor's edge. Originality and freshness are so important, essential, everything really, that the challenge is, again, often painful. Sometimes the frustration when the work falls short is palpable. So why does he let it out there when that happens? Who knows? Maybe in the end that says more than if he nailed something. Maybe failure is more interesting than success. Maybe success, again, is too glib, too easy, not to be trusted. To him I was always the beautiful Addison Parks, taking the easy way out. What can I say, I grew up in Rome, he grew up in New Jersey. You cannot escape these things. I am always becoming Rome. He New Jersey. And he has made it a better place, while I have only danced around it, I suspect.

Tuttle has probably always enjoyed the role of idiot-savant. The work has that bewitching quality of keeping you guessing: it is either absolutely brilliant and sublime or just really dumb. But once you accept his genius you are still in danger of overinflating the experience. You can end up guilding the lily by assigning too much or just more than the "lily" will bear. Poetry is the thing closest to this work. The domain of the ineffable. If you can get there, or better, live there, you'll be fine. Because that is what this work locates, and that is where it lives. You can't get there be studying it, by being smart, by figuring it out, by trying to get on top of it, or even eating it. It is absolutely more about what you don't do than what you do do. DO-BE-DO-BE-DO! But you don't have to DO anything. Just let the work do it all. Of course that is doing a lot. I suspect you could dance with it, just as long as you let it lead.

After all, it is all energy. Poetry in color and shape, line and mark and texture. A voice finding itself in these things. Tuttles listens very hard. And that is good. And we can thank him for that.