Exceptional

My last post warned against the temptation to believe either yourself or others that you deserve recognition. I recommended against ever going there. Pit of despair. A hole you'll never get out of so you will just keep digging deeper and deeper and deeper. It is a question of grace. Humility. Shame, even. But the message I sent was loud and clear if you want to live a healthy, happy, productive life as an artist: don't you dare!

Its twisted twin of temptation is just as dangerous: ever believing that you are exceptional. If you or anyone else either whispers it in your ear or shouts it from the rooftops, don't believe it. It is a trap. This hole will be just as hard to get out of and take years of penance. Exceptional is the secret secret of the spoiled brat, the selfish jerk, the crazed egomaniac. Special rules.

In earlier posts I've invited everyone to think of themselves as special, in that way that all life is special, in that way that all life is a miracle; and I believe that. I believe that everyone has the gift of life; the gift of a mind of one's own; the gift of a free spirit. THIS IS NOT THE SAME! This does not make you better than anyone else!

How can I explain this to the satisfaction of both sides of this argument: to the ones who believe that no one is special and that to think otherwise invites only chaos; and to the ones who accept this as an invitation to be spoiled, selfish, and arrogant.

The first group discourages all things in others. To discourage is to cut the legs out from under. It is to invite failure and foster cowardice and fear.

The second group encourages the wrong sort of behavior. It's my-party-I'll-cry-if-I-want-to behavior. It is a poor substitute for true encouragement, which inspires others to be brave, to do the right thing, to lift themselves and other up, to reach for the best in themselves and each other. That is what encourage means.

Embrace that you have been given a special gift as an artist, but never believe that this makes you exceptional. Again, it doesn't make you better than anyone else. The gift is for giving. It is inner, and personal; and the other thing, the aberration, is the worst in us, some sort of license to run roughshod over the world.

Some might say that this is all really a question of balance; balancing the rights of the individual against the rights of the group and vice-versa. Perhaps this is so. Knowing where to draw the line. I think it is more appropriate to call on the idea of the heart, which has always been synonymous with both courage and goodness. I think that is where we find the answers.

In our hearts we know what is right, and in our hearts we know that life is special, and that it demands that we are brave. This covers both the individual and the group. Choose that. Exceptional is indeed the province of all things ego. And so I caution: don't go there.

* * * * *

Nonetheless it might be worth adding that in the rare, rare instance of the truly exceptional, if and when it exists, one would more than likely find nothing less than complete grace and humility, and not even the smallest whisper of...

Surviving The Fall

I'm not sure anyone else experiences the fall from grace the way art students do after they leave school, and although everyone graduating feels the wound; the future art-makers get it with more salt. This may explain why so few graduates go on to actually become artists.

What am I talking about? The gold star, the support/reward system, the pat on the back, feedback, the people who are paid to care. When you're in school there is a giant support system in place for you whether you know it or not. At the very least they know you're alive, and that is not the case when you leave.

After you graduate no one knows you're alive, and the fall is so sharp, so far, so dramatic that few people can take it. Because you're making something visible, the proof of this is all the more painful. You're hanging it out there. You're making something that can be seen, can be touched, can be responded to, and when no one sees or touches or responds to your work the results can be devastating.

When your work goes ignored, when no one engages your efforts, you will question why you're doing what you're doing, whether it is worth it, whether you should quit(or worse, whether you should go back to school so you can get it all back).

If you're just out of law school and you hang up a shingle, it will take years to establish your practice. That's why you will probably join a firm instead. Twenty years later maybe you're a partner. An artist is on his or her own. The chances of joining a gallery out of school are slim, and an entirely different matter. Few galleries recruit. Fewer artists are ready. It takes an artist years to shake their influences and develop a mature style. Other support systems are almost non-existent. Parents and families are going to be concerned. Do you have a job? Are you selling anything? What about commercial work? The pressures are going to be relentless. Every letter, every phone call, every visit home is going to be piling it on.

What do you do as a young person who really wants to be an artist but is really feeling the pain and the pressure?

First off, don't take it personally. You haven't done anything wrong. This happens to everyone. Everyone. They just might be hiding it better than you.

Next, this is going to be really hard, but you can do it. Know that it is hard. No one cares whether you're an artist or not. No one is supposed to care. You're supposed to care. You're not going to get a medal for doing something really hard. No parade. In fact, no one is going to like you for living your dream. You think someone who chose to work nine to five instead of writing novels or making sculpture is going to like you for doing it. You think they're going to be cheering you on? They are going to think you're a bum, or, you're going to make them feel bad and look bad for not following their dream, if they had one. So get used to it. You're going to get some abuse. You're going to be blocked, denied, knocked down, resented and begrudged. It just makes sense. This is what you're up against.

Also, for what it's worth, learn to carry an umbrella when it looks like rain. Your parents and family are naturally going to be concerned and they are going to put pressure on you to be self-sufficient and secure, in part so that you won't be at risk and in part so you won't be a financial burden to them. Be smart about it. Help them to feel at ease about your choice. If you're happy, they'll be happy. Let them know you're ok with the challenges you face. Let them know it's worth it to you, that this is what you want. Show them you can survive.

Next, all you need is one friend who can give you feedback. Braque and Picasso had each other. You'll have to make it a two-way street. Give as good as you get, or better.

Be VERY patient about getting recognition. DO NOT give into the ancient temptation about deserving recognition. It will only make you bitter. It is a bad mistake and a bottomless pit of despair. If you're in it for recognition then choose a different profession, fast. Do this thing you love for its own reward.

Then the obvious is two words: low overhead. Don't spend money you don't have. Work inexpensively. Find cheap space, and live where you work. Put your creativity and imagination to work for you. I know a painter who made her own furniture, and then ended up being an artist who makes furniture. Don't want what others have. Make it yourself. Make it happen yourself!

You can survive the fall.

No Fear of Painting

I'll get right to it. Painting is like flying. It is fun. It is free. You can see! You can see better. Or, it's like swimming, which if you're holding onto the edge of the pool, or standing in the shallow end, means you're not-- swimming. If you're swimming in lanes, well then, you're up to something else as far as I'm concerned. People want to make painting like swimming in lanes. They want to put a stop watch on it, they want to bump you out of their lane, make you get out of their way, decide if you even deserve to be there, if you're any good.

You can't hate haters, and you can't judge judgers, or you're just like them. So ignore the people swimming in lanes, and if they want to call that swimming, well then, more beer for you. Mark Spitz, arguably one of the great swimmers, once said swimming was just being comfortable in the water. If you do feel comfortable in the water, if you're happy in the water or happy flying, then this whole obsession with being any good, being judged, is not only beside the point, it is a waste of precious time, time for swimming, or flying, or painting. It is not only not positive, it is negative, like a four point turn around in basketball. Something is lost. How do I know this? I ended up in the lane swimming world of painting many years ago, and I was a critic too! I was young. Mea culpa, Mea maxima culpa. I live in another country now.

OK. I've said this before: people say someone has a mind of their own as though this is a bad thing, as though it was not only not ideal--the way it is supposed to be, but also definitely a problem. We can go into why it frustrates people if you have a mind of your own, why it is threatening and so forth, but I'm going somewhere else. People say someone is a free spirit in the same sort of strange way, as though it's flaky or not for everyone. How strange and how sad that we are born into bondage and ushered into more by the very people who should be setting us free and protecting that freedom. I guess its more beer for them.

Have a mind of your own, first and foremost, and be a free spirit. What else should you do and be? Treasure your life; like the baseball manager that said treat every out like gold. Treat your life like the most valuable gift you possess, because it is. It all starts there.

If you want to be an artist, then be the best artist you can, but also be the worst, because if anything worth doing is worth doing well, it is also worth doing badly. Be the worst artist in the world if that means you can do the thing you love. I have been steered in different directions in my life by people who supposedly had my best interests at heart, but it wasn't true; they just wanted me to do what they did, or what they needed from me for themselves. They tried to pimp me as far as I am concerned.

I paint because I like to. Like flying high in the sky, or playing in the mud, or swimming in the open water. What could I care if I am a bad painter, if such a thing could be true, if doing the thing you love could ever be bad; and furthermore, what do I care what some critic thinks? I don't paint for them. I don't ask them to pay to see my work. If they want to stop and drink, well, I hope they enjoy it because I want them to be happy. Otherwise I just paint for free, and maybe for the ones I love and that love me. The others, the lane swimmers; I feel no opposition, and hope the same for them. If opposition is in their hearts, if they feel compelled to argue or judge instead swim, well, I will wish the best for them. I give no quarter and expect none in that regard. We are all free.

Culpa Minor

You have to be willing to be bad. You have to be willing to fail. No one tells you this.

As an artist you have know this. You are going to make awful things. You are going to make mistakes. Never mind that this is in large part how we really learn. Hard knocks. We learn by screwing up.

So here is the kicker: if we can't admit to our mistakes, if we can't admit when we've been bad...what? We don't learn!

Doing something bad or making mistakes is impossible to contemplate for so many of us, especially those of us who have high expectations of ourselves or thrust upon us. This is what accounts for what are called underachievers and overachievers. High and low expectations.

Admitting to mistakes or failure is so impossible for some people that they resort to denial, lies, blaming, cover-ups, misdirection, and anything else that will get them off the hook. They are PARALYZED by the very idea of mistakes or failure. They even become hostile.

Admitting to mistakes and failure not only allows us to learn, make amends, and move on; it allows us to take risks. Risks become impossible if mistakes or failure are forbidden. Learning from our mistakes not only helps us grow, so does taking risks. Admitting to mistakes and failure takes courage; not doing so is giving into fear.

As an artist one learns very quickly to treat failure and mistakes as friends. So often you hear of the "happy accident." Artists make a special effort to incorporate what would otherwise be considered a mistake or failure and learn from it. It enlarges their experience, and it makes them brave. It explains why so many of us give up on our dream to become an artist. We can't tolerate the shame of so much disappointment. It also might explain why so many of those who do go on to be artists aren't afraid of a lifetime of failure. It is more than art being its own reward; it is more than learning to get back up after getting knocked down on a regular basis; it is the profound knowledge that we are always learning and that we and our work will be better for it, and that that is what is most important.

Humble Pie

I doubt there is an artist out there who doesn't know that the next thing they do could be a complete bust. We live with it. We try to beat it; we try to get around it. We can't. Of course, it cuts both ways. There are two sides to what we face; the glass half full and glass half empty of it. Tabula Rasa; abyss. Fresh start; bottomless pit/fall of dispair.

John Ashberry complains about how as a poet he has to start over every time and every time can be a disaster and that this is hell; novelists get to tinker securely with the more solid ground of a work in progress. But I don't think so. Even with a novel in progress under your belt you still face the blank page every day.

I like to admit I don't know what I'm doing, but nobody really knows. Seriously, who knows? This keeps us real. As soon as you think you're in the zone, you're out of it. Pride comes before a fall.

I work in serials. These allow me to face the abyss. Bit of a crutch, but it gets me there. An excuse to make a painting I always say. I work away until I feel like there is nothing left of something, and then I start again. But still, if I do something where I think, yes, wow, I'm sailing free, well, before you know it I have a death spiral on my hands.

They talk about it in baseball all the time. Not just for hitters, but pitchers too. You think you have your best stuff and you get lit up; you think you won't be able to find the plate and you throw a no-hitter. I heard the Indians manager, Eric Wedge, talk about it, staying real, assuming nothing, taking nothing for granted, when the media wanted him to talk about their recent success: he said he had to live what he preached.

When I was a drawing teacher I had only one thought I wanted to impress on my students: don't assume anything and you'll do fine. Never think you know. Look and see.

Assuming anything is our first mistake. Do we want to be able to assume things. Of course. Does it make us secure. Of course. But if you can assume as little as possible, and take nothing for granted, well then, you can be right there, and give yourself the best chance in any situation, and best of all, you can be truly grateful. Assuming things rules out learning and gratitude, two of life's greatest gifts.

How do we do this thing? One breath, one heart beat at a time.

The Three Ps

When I was a teenager and hitch-hiked everywhere, I learned the lesson about letting go. It was a quasi-spiritual revelation, and more than likely drug induced, but it still applies. The letting go thing was uncanny. When you're standing on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere for hours at a stretch, you get a lot of time to think.

One of the things you're thinking about, of course, is how to get somebody to stop and give you a ride. You start to develop a psychology, and if you spend enough time out there, hitch-hiking long distances, you develop a lot of theories. Theories about everything, but especially about hitching, which in turn become about everything. Things like: needy is unattractive; and that hard-to-get could be surprisingly more effective. You don't want to look desperate, but instead like picking you up would make their day. Of course, some people actually wanted you to make their day, or night, and I found that polite but firm worked just fine when saying no. No, thank you.

But the real lesson I learned was about letting go. Whenever I let go, I got a ride. Every time. Never failed. Well, almost never failed, as I remember it(not hard to tell yourself you haven't REALLY let go). So much so that the huge temptation is to tell yourself you have let go even when you haven't. Yes, I have let go, so pleeeeeease pick me up. Dead give-away is of course telling yourself. If you're telling yourself, you're not letting go. You can't fake letting go. We all want to; we all try to, but it never works, and for obvious reasons. You have to really let go.

I love the trying thing. To this day I know people who are convinced you get points for trying. I ask them to show me where it shows up in the box score, and of course they can't, but the denial is so HUGE.

For all our might we want to saying trying counts for something. We want to say: but look, I tried. Doesn't wash. Never has. The reality is that as hard as we try to sell it to everyone else, we won't buy it when someone tries to sell it to us. If the pilot comes on the loud speaker and says: I'm sorry, I tried to get us to Denver, but how's Toledo? NO WAY! Doesn't fly. Sorry.

We keep trying with the trying nonetheless. I ask you though, show me a time when trying doesn't really mean failure? We say "I tried" instead of "I failed." Check this out: I tried to save my marriage. What does that really tell you? I'm divorced! How about: we tried to win the game? We lost. Do it, with anything. He tried to swim across the lake. He tried to climb the mountain. He tried to pass the bar. Didn't, didn't, didn't.

Otherwise we just say: I saved my marriage; we won the game; he swam across the lake; he climbed the mountain; he passed the bar. We're supposed to try. We're not supposed to talk about it. It is supposed to be understood. Trying is the language of failure. Lose it.

In all fairness, I have to add, sometimes trying seems like all you want to do. Like trying is just enough, any more would put too much pressure on the situation. We don't really care about results. It is a variation on: it is the thought that counts. It is trying that counts. Not results. I didn't really want to save my marriage, I just wanted to try. Maybe then I won't feel so guilty. It is a guilt-free way of removing results from the equation. If trying is enough, then, of course, you didn't really try, you didn't even really want to try. Maybe all the trying in the world wouldn't have made a difference, which of course only makes my point that much more. This is when letting go, really letting go, comes in handy.

We have to know when trying won't ever get it done, and stop. Stop trying. Let go. A scary idea for most of us. Trying seems a lot easier to swallow. Trying and failing. At least I tried. The funny thing is, letting go has a way of getting results of course. Really letting go. Something's going to happen. Something for the best. But you have to let go.

Reminds me of this joke an artist friend of mine told me when he really wanted to get into this one gallery, about the guy who gets a flat in the middle of the night and doesn't have a jack. He sees a farmhouse in the distance and as he goes towards it he imagines again and again that the farmer won't let him borrow his. By the time he gets there and the farmer politely answers the door, he tells the poor farmer that he can take his jack and shove it. It is the wanting that gets us in trouble time and again. Wanting, trying, and the guilt are all part of the same stinky ball of wax.

Which gets me to the three Ps. Came to me in a dream, funnily enough. Perseverance, patience, and peace. Works in hitch-hiking; works in painting; works in everything. Don't want, don't try, no guilt, just do, and love doing it! We do it, "just DO it(deep down even the most stubborn and ornery know the fun is in the doing)," and let come what may.

Again, do whatever it is you do as an artist(no one can take that away from you). Don't want results, don't try, and that means success, appreciation, recognition, respect, gallery, money, any of it. Don't feel guilty because you're surrounded by idiots who think that those are the measures of being an artist(the guy who came up with "eyes on the prize" was of course blinded by want, and should have had his eyes poked out with a stick). You know better. Trust yourself. Just do, and be happy. Peace.

Why an artist like Rothko, whose work represented nothing if not this very idea of faith, should have folded so badly in the end, should give us all pause, and make these three Ps that much more imperative. Whatever else happened to him and so many other artists, whatever caused him to abandon the two essential principles of faith: I can do it, and It will be ok, I'll never know, but this is why we call the straight and narrow the razor's edge. Rothko is now more than anything a cautionary tale.

When you stumble, when your green grass has been taken from you, get it back. Somehow, someway. And know that it will come back, somehow and someway. I'm an atheist but the religious proverb: god helps those who help themselves, resonates with these principles. You can do it, and it will be ok. A two part harmony. Perseverance and patience; and peace.

What Counts!

Many years ago, well over twenty, I taught a class at RISD called Light In The Tunnel. At that point I was thoroughly aware of the risks of being an artist and that we all needed to take care of each other. I suppose I grew up with the dark tunnel because as long as I could remember I was an artist, and as long as I could remember people warned me how hard it would be.

Even as a little boy I hung my brother and sister's work in my room because my mother didn't acknowledge what they did, only what I did. It didn't seem fair or right even then, as much as I may have personally enjoyed the attention. I still feel exactly the same way. I feel like there has to be room for all of us, that that comes first, that that is the law. I still try to hang the work of my brothers and sisters. I still think being an artist is just something we do. I still think it is not a competition.

Comaraderie was one reason I liked being a young artist in Rome. It seemed more of a together thing. Brothers and sisters. Even New York had quite a bit of that. For that I liked New York. People in the arts looked out for each other.

I've talked about how artists start wondering if what they've been doing adds up(usually happens when another artist dies and we look at their life's work). The numbers thing struck me. Adding up. And then: what counts. Counting. Mattering. Counting means mattering; mattering means counting. The numbers. It gives one a little peak into the way we think. The way we operate. It gives one, a little light in the tunnel.

One way or another we have to come to terms with the numbers. We have to do the math. We have to play the numbers and decide. What matters? What counts? Again, values. Values means numbers. We can talk values all we like, but at the bottom it is still numbers. What's number one? Whose number one? Sounds mean. Is mean. Life isn't fair. Fair is up to us. Each ONE of us. And then the numbers can add up to something good, and that is good news!

Nobody Needs To Be Somebody

Like I always say, I’m not too sure about my take on this, but last week TWO artists in different situations within an hour of each other told me the same thing: that they couldn’t deal with not being somebodies.

Now you hear this all the time from artists in some form or another, but always more disguised. These two both used the same word: SOMEBODY! I don’t know if this is the result of having Paris Hilton go to jail and having to hear about it; that it got in the water supply somehow. I don’t know. But for two people who don’t know each other to use the same language to express the same lament within minutes of each other is amazing to me. I am sure my head must have rocked when the second person said it. And I wasn’t in Hollywood or New York, mind you; I was in Harvard Square!

In both cases I did my usual: careful what you wish for; be lucky you’re a nobody; you’re free. Clearly they didn’t feel that way, and in no way appreciated my attempt to comfort them. THEY weren't free; they were PRISONERS OF NOBODY!

And this gets to my previous post, and some before that. Don’t let life make you a prisoner of nobody. Don’t let anyone tell you your grass isn’t green, I don’t care what color it is. Don’t let anybody tell you you’re not special. Don’t let anybody put Baby in a corner.

I heard that there is actually some jerk out there that wrote a book criticising Mr Rogers for telling kids they were special. Apparently the saint of kid tv should have been teaching them to work harder! Work for whom? Him? So we can dominate the global economy? Whoever you are I hope you get kidnapped into slavery making running shoes twenty hours a day in China. That should teach you about hard work and not feeling special and liking it.

On the other hand, paradoxically, NOBODY NEEDS TO BE SOMEBODY! Of course nobody doesn’t need to be somebody. I’m sure Mr Rogers would say just be yourself, and be happy to be yourself, and don’t look over the fence for greener grass. It is not going to make you a better artist, or a better person, that’s for sure. Just leave your campsite a little nicer. I loved that Fran Leibowitz, in the late 70’s for INTERVIEW magazine, once said that if she was interviewing someone the chances were they weren’t a very nice person. The point being that if they were somebody enough to be worth interviewing, they were a jerk getting there.

Ironically, again, over a dozen years ago the last words I said, blurted, shouted, to my friend the long since dead artist Leon Polk Smith were, unrehearsed and for being mean to my now wife: if you’re not nice, you’re nobody. To which as I was leaving he shouted down the corridor: then I’m nobody. To his credit. Of course I didn’t mean it that way. What I might have said was that the very least you might be in this world is kind.

Leon was just being himself, none the less. Did he fret about being somebody sometimes? Absolutely, and it could be scary. He thought that he had been denied the greatness he deserved by people who had stolen from him. He thought that Elsworth Kelley and many others had ripped him off and gotten the glory.

What was funny about that was that anyone who knew Leon admired him and could have cared less about that stuff. They liked him for him, not for being somebody. I did. I was glad to know him, and I was glad that he was not some big somebody so that I could know him, because he was real. Really real. Authentic, as they say. How he got to be who he was is a fascinating story, and it wasn’t because he went to the right art school, studied with the right people, and knew the right people in the right places. He wasn’t a Motherwell, or a Tuttle, or a Marden. He was the real deal. The real McCoy. Yes, he’s dead now, and I miss the old nobody.

Green Grass

If you don’t think the grass on the other side of the fence looks greener, then chances are people probably think you’re smug. So it goes. But the whole point is that the grass just looks greener; it isn’t really greener! Some people spend their whole lives looking for the greener grass and never figure this out.

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ll reference my one brief mentorship with Richard Tuttle yet again, to make my point. Richard Tuttle said one thing to me at the opening of my show at PS1 in 1980(and yes, by this time our relationship was already in decline after just a few years). I had two large murals in oils in a project space. I was hiding out in the basement listening to a Giants game with the janitor. I ran into Tuttle on the stairs. With a giddy smirk he dismissed my show, saying it was like a really nice truck sitting in the back yard; in other words, all dressed up and nowhere to go. I mention this for two reasons.

Yes, I was one of those people; my grass was plenty green, thank you very much. All dressed up and nowhere to go is just a negative spin on the fact that he was always looking for the action, while as far as I was concerned my grass was green enough for me. I was happy to get dressed up and just be. Maybe dressed up was just how I looked to him. It is a way of saying that there is no there there, of course, but who decides? One person’s frontier is another person’s back yard, and I learned that young. The “action” always made me want to take a shower. All those people caught up in the grass on the other side of the fence made me uncomfortable, mostly for them.

My oldest is doing graduate work. His teacher is a well-known contemporary art historian. He is in the same position as a Richard Tuttle, or that I was at one time as a New York art writer and teacher at RISD. Decider! People look to you for judgment. Judgments. It is a corrupting force. It is why I quit writing art criticism and why I quit teaching. I refused to go there. I was reminded of the whole thing with Tuttle because my son told me that this teacher just saw his new paintings and that the first thing my son was aware of was: would his work be dismissed, in this case with a sound his teacher makes with his lips. Apparently that didn’t happen. Instead he got something more positive, more along the lines of pleasant surprise, which was nice for him.

The thing I tried to give my students, as well as the artists I wrote about, was that other sense; that sense that their grass was green enough, if not really green. Of couse the whole system collapses if we are not driven by the doubt, the need, the greed, the lust for greener pastures. And of course, we will be reviled for being smug.

Stranger In Paradise

I saw an old friend of mine yesterday. At one time an old boss. It was very interesting. She was part of an effort to show the work of an artist who was getting the support of a nearby gallery. The artist's work was everywhere. The nature of the work was in some ways what one expects if one is to be an artist: obsessive.

What was interesting to me was two-fold. This was my old boss. Someone who was a good boss, and had my best interest at heart. Best of intentions. Maybe even right. Just not right for me. Not the first time someone had plans for me that put being an artist a distant second to a career that was kind of like art that would give me financial security. A mentor/professor in college wanted me to be a museum world person; conservator/curator sort of thing full-time and a painter on the side. I transfered. Needless to say this was the same. Be a graphics artist during the day; artist in your spare time. Problem is graphics, like architecture, is not just inside the lines, it is draining work that demands long hours. I quit, of course. Would rather be poor and live under a bridge. Would rather risk losing approval(affection-place-belonging) to be true, salvage the little bit of integrity and honor leftover critical to being an artist.

The reason I mention all this was that my boss never understood how I could be so ungrateful to blow off her generosity, the life-saving opportunity she gave me. How could I chew off my paw to be free? The professor never understood or forgave me either. But here, right in the middle of my old bosses life was a less polished version of me, I suppose, this strange guy making strange sculptures because it was his life. It was all he could do. My problem, of course, was that I could do these other things. My father was the same way, always trying to figure out what I could do with my talents other than be an artist. He still does after all these years. First it was architecture since I was good with numbers; then it was illustration because I liked writing; then it was interior design because I liked fixing up my home; etc, etc, etc. The difference here was that this guy was a vet, and really wasn't suited to be anything but an artist, socially, mentally, or careerwise.

He was what people call an Outsider. Outsider Artist. Outsider Art. Untrained, untutored, uniformed, unaffiliated, unpedigreed, uninfluenced, un-fucked-with. That is sort of what that means. Outsider. Outsider Artist.

To me that is what every artist wants to be. Has to be. Free. They put up with the training, tutoring, informing, affiliating, influencing, fucking-with, so that they can get permission to be an artist. This guy, and other outsider artists, generally come late to the game, without all the crap. They didn't choose it young and therefore they didn't have to go through the "proper channels." Everybody knows you can't teach art, but they still try. The irony is, of course, if you can't teach it, then what's going on in art schools: doesn't it occur to just about everybody that maybe they are doing something contrary, oppositional, messed up? Making something happen that will make being an artist impossible. Every artist is self-taught(since you can't teach it) but maybe art school does something worse. Something destructive, maybe permanently damaging. I always found it interesting that RISD 's most successful grads NEVER graduated; they always dropped out. You have to consider yourself lucky if you have gotten to be an artist without someone trying to mess with you.

And this is what really pisses me off. Me and other artists who were forced a million times to jump through hoops just so we could make stuff, make art, whatever, just wanting that freedom. When people sort of ou and ah about "outsider" artists. What? You're going to make a fuss about someone who didn't jump through YOUR hoops. Huh? It's one of those lose/lose things. The same people that gush about some guy who is untrained(self-taught) are the SAME ones that tell you that you HAVE to have the training, LEARN technique, LEARN to draw, LEARN art history, etc.(To RISD's credit, and no one but me seems to appreciate it, they didn't try to teach much of that stuff.)

Which gets me to my next point. Insider Outsider. As far as I am concerned, I don't care if you're Brice Marden(the ultimate insider); every, EVERY, artist is an outsider. By definition. Think about it: originality is the benchmark of art. Originality. In other words, unique, in other works DIFFERENT! Original is by definition different. Different: outsider. Same thing.

Artists have to be different every day to distinguish themselves. From cradle to grave. Insiders on the other hand are all the same, they have to be, they want to be, and that is not the artist. I don't care if you went to art school and have a PHD(you still taught yourself!). Some artists even want to be insiders. Not going to happen. If you an artist, you're not the same. If you're not the same; you're on the outside. Artist: Outsider. Enough said.