Seeing Red, Part 2: The Dress

Seeing Red, Part 1: The Play

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Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present at MoMA

My photograph above; from Zimbio.com below
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Continuing with color, we come to Marina Abramovic’s red dress. She’s wearing it as she performs in the atrium at MoMA. There she is, sitting at a table, enveloped by noise, silently looking at people who sit on the other side of the table looking at her. While there must be a Zen lesson in there for her audience, I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea of spending eight hours a day, six days a week, staring at strangers for two-and-a-half months. So I do the next best thing. I look at the dress.

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Abramovic is living inside a high-necked, long-sleeved garment that flows over her and pools at her feet. The metaphor: She's giving every drop of blood for this performance. The visual comparison: If a Beverly Semmes dress sculpture were shrunk in the wash, Abramovic's performance dress is what it might look like. .

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Beverly Semmes sculpture, left; image from the Internet; Abramovic's fluid garment via Zimbio
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Upstairs on the sixth floor of The Artist is Present, the show goes on with numerous performers who are not Abramovic in pieces that the artist had once performed. First I squeeze between a naked woman and man to get from one room to another; I face the woman and say "Excuse me," as I press against both of them to get past. It's not unlike the subway at rush hour, except that they don't push back. (I see later that there's another entrance.) Then there are the two dressed people, a woman and man, standing and facing each other in frozen poses; both seem poised to speak. The woman, I notice, is blinking an inordinate amount. It’s the only part of her body that moves. Around the corner from them are two white-shirted people sitting back to back; they are joined at the hair. Probably because I’ve seen pictures of these performances dozens of time, I am oddly unmoved.

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There are videos—Super 8 films originally, I’d guess—of Abramovic and her then partner, Ulay, slamming into each other. Or leaning against each other separated by a sheet of glass. I wonder if Elizabeth Streb, the choreographer who puts her dancers through the most athletic and dangerous of paces, was influenced by this work. I love Streb’s troup, but again I’m oddly unmoved by the Abramovic performances.

There’s more, including a recreation of the raised living quarters built for Abramovic in the Sean Kelly Gallery some years back. You know--the one with knife blades for ladder rungs? The one Carrie goes to see in Sex and the City? Abramovic lived in/on it for a month. There’s a video of the performance. And you think your studio apartment is cramped? At least you have privacy. I walked into the gallery when she was performing the piece, but I was seized with the urge to bolt, which I did.

When I walk into the room with the woman pinned to the wall about 20 feet off the floor, I stop. My heartrate increases. OK, phew, she’s supported by a bicycle seat and there are pegs for her feet. What? I’m relieved? She's high on a wall, arms outstretched like the Vitruvian man in a tense tango with gravity. She’s caught in a headlight of massive proportions, but if you look at her, she makes eye contact with you. This has to be excruciating and I’m party to it? I bolt.

Back in the atrium Abramovic is still sitting in that dress. It’s the perfect color. What she and her performers are doing is bloody hard work. Masochistic, perhaps. Introspective, perhaps. But bloody hard nonetheless.

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You can see performance pics of the pieces described here, on the MoMA website, and on a You Tube bootleg. .A look at the performances from the performers' point of view is here.

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This Just In . . .

"Tell Goebbels that we're not going to finish shooting Hitler Bought Hillside Property in Iceland." Hitler finds out You Tube has pulled all his memes.

Seeing Red, Part 1: The Play

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Alfred Molina contemplating a "Rothko"

Image via the Internet: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

I have been seeing a lot of red lately—a play, a dress, and several very good paintings.

Let’s start with the play. Of course I’m talking about John Logan's Red, on Broadway at the Golden Theater, which looks at several months in the life of Mark Rothko in 1958.

When I take my seat at 7:50, the artist is already seated in his green Adirondack chair, back to the audience, before a large red painting. There’s no curtain, so from my primo spot in the mezzanine I am able to fall visually into his studio. On the painting wall facing the audience is the red canvas. My view of it is broken only by the artist in his chair. To the right of the chair is a table laden with paint cans and brushes. Nearby, a slop sink. On either side of the studio are other large paintings in red and black. There’s a phonograph and record albums. All that’s missing is the smell of turpentine. (Really, the set designer should have provided at least a whiff of it.)

As the lights go up, Rothko rises from his chair and caresses the surface of the painting he has been studying. A hopeful job applicant enters and Rothko barks, “What do you see?”

“Red,” responds the applicant, who, we learn, is an artist himself. What follows are some 10 minutes of bombast as Rothko carries on about the importance of seeing, the subtleties of hue, and the inner turmoil faced by the painter who is striving to create meditative space. I suppose the playwright has to, well, set the stage for an audience of non-artists. And why else would we see the artist caress the surface of his painting like a lover, not one but twice? But, jeez, Rothko is the art professor from hell.

I’m not the first person to say this, but as soon as the expository dialog is out of the way, the play takes off. We get a sense of the rhythm of the studio as artist and assistant work, sometimes in tandem, sometimes at their specific tasks: stretching the canvas, priming it (with more dramatic flourish than the last act of Tosca), mixing paint, cleaning brushes, and carrying out the countless mundane chores required of studio practice.

What we learn:
. Rothko (born Marcus Rothkowitz in Russia, he tells the assistant) is working on a $35,000 commission for Philip Johnson’s new Seagram building on Park Avenue
. His paintings will create a sanctuary of contemplative color that flows from painting to painting
. He is one angry, compulsive, didactic, overbearing sonofabitch
. He smokes way too much
. He drinks (a lot) and eats in the studio and frequently covers himself in paint; so much for studio safety

. Despite the care with which the assistant works, Rothko treats him carelessly until the day the young man explodes, reminding the overbearing painter that these canvases are “for a restaurant” for chrissakes. That would be The Four Seasons.

The restaurant commission is eating at Rothko. When the assistant walks into the studio one morning, he finds the painter asleep over a bucket of red paint. His arms have fallen into the liquid and he’s dripping red up to his forearms. There are gasps at this neat if overly dramatic bit of foreshadowing. (In 1970 Rothko would suicide by slitting his writs.) There follows the denouement and then the lights go up.

Alfred Molina is sublime as the tortured and tortuous artist; Eddie Redmayne as the assistant grows confidently out from under Rothko’s thumb. The paintings are pretty good facsimiles and the lighting designer renders them nearly incendiary.

Red is a narrow but intense slice of a post-war, pre-feminist art life set in a grimy but glowing New York studio. Go see it if you can.

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Read more:

. Roberta Smith and Ben Brantley, New York Times (separate reviews, excellent pics)

. Jerry Saltz and Stephanie Zacharek, New York Magazine

. Chris Rywalt, blogging on NYC ART

. Christine Cariati, Venetian Red

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Next up: Red, The Dress (and the artist wearing it, Marina Abramovic)

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Marketing Mondays: The Dealer's Commission

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50/FIFTY

Recently I was looking over the feedback at The Vanity Gallery, a previous post that continues to attract reader comments. One comment caught my attention:
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“As much as I have a problem with vanity galleries, you aren’t exactly correct in saying that regular galleries don’t charge artists . . . actually they do and it’s called a commission . . . Money is either made up from or after a sale, but the artist pays one way or another.” *
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This is stunningly uninformed thinking, and it makes clear how poorly art students in the decades before 2000 were prepared for an art career. Indeed, many mid-career artists are still laboring under concepts like these. So today I want to talk about the dealer’s commission.

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Let me put it simply. I am thrilled that the dealer takes a commission because it means she has made a sale for me.

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The typical commission is 50 percent. The dealer is not scratching into my price. She is sharing in a price that we have determined together. Together. Whatever prices my paintings carry now—and those prices are uniform throughout the network of galleries that represent me—they are higher than when I first started out. The price is cultivated, year after year, based on my experience, exhibition history, collector base and bibliography (in other words, the resume), my sales history, and well, frankly, what the market will bear.

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The dealer is not cutting into my price. She is talking 50 percent of the retail price, which typically gives each of us the money we need to keep doing what we do.

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Now that I’ve been at this for a while, when I become involved with a new gallery, there’s really no discussion because the prices have been cultivated. (If you’re just starting out, you’ll want to probably discuss pricing with the dealer.)

Earning that 50 Percent
Sometimes the dealer makes a lot of sales, sometimes not so many. Either way, a good gallery will earn every penny of the split. She’s mounting a show, which requires taking out an ad, producing a card and perhaps a brochure or catalog, and providing food and wine at the opening. She’s also doing the PR that gets information about my work to critics and curators.

Beyond the exhibition itself, she’s maintaining an updated website, and she makes sure art consultants and collectors know when new work of mine comes into the gallery. She works actively to place my work into private, corporate and institutional collections. She's proactive in securing payment so that she can pay me. Outside of the gallery she maintains visibility via attendance at social events where she cultivates relationships with current and potential collectors. She may also take my work to art fairs.

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You make the art. The gallery sells it.

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The dealer does this not only for me but for every other artist she represents. To be sure, the artists who have higher profiles and/or who sell better probably get more of her time and attention, but the point is that all of this is part of what the gallery does to stay in business. If the gallery isn't actively working on your behalf, you have every right to wonder what, exactly, the dealer is doing for you. Before you pitch a fit, however, consider the dealer's overhead and costs, which is exactly what New York gallerist Ed Winkleman does in his blog post, The Logic Behind the 50-50 Split.
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Other Percentages
In that aforementioned post, Ed notes that some artists are able to negotiate a better percentage for themselves. Get famous and you can do that, too! On the other hand, I have heard of at least one gallery that takes a 60% commission from even its most famous artists (a certain venue on Sutter Street in San Francisco, perhaps?), but most galleries operate Even Steven.

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Lower percentages may be taken in some other situations
. Co-op galleries: around 20 percent, but the artist is supporting the gallery through membership dues, and she will underwrite much of the cost of the show. This is not a vanity gallery because the artist is an owner of the gallery, helping to determine policy and membership, and she will retain the larger percentage in sales
. Non-profit institutions: between 20 and 30 percent, in keeping with a community or educational mandate and, of course, the organization's 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit status
. Juried shows: between 20 and 40 percent, though 40 is high. These shows are typically underwritten by the entry fee. While a fee is paid to the juror, it's typically an honorarium rather than a fee that reflects the number of hours a working professional puts into the project; moreover, many institutionally affiliated jurors may do the job as part of their institution's outreach. So unless there’s a catalog, or a big-name juror has been paid a large fee, the gallery should not ask more than 30 percent. You’ve already paid to enter the show!
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What About Discounts?
Some dealers absorb the 10% “courtesy” discount, which has become fairly standard. Some dealers absorb the discount only if it’s over 10%. Still others ask the artist to split the discount, whatever it is. (And sometimes the prices are adjusted to accommodate that discount). The particulars are between the dealer and each individual artist.
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This post just scratches the surface of the topic.

If you want to understand more about dealer thinking, check out Ed WInkleman’s book, How to Start and Run a Commercial Gallery (my review here). If you're working with a gallery, have a frank discussion about the issue with your dealer. She won't resent it. Such a discussion may help clarify issues that have been hovering.

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As always, your comments are welcome.

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*Opening comment edited for space

Eavesdropping

I've overheard some interesting comments since the beginning of the year. First there was that doozie over by the Water Lilies at MoMA: "It's pronounced monay, like the joolerey." Then there were these, guaranteed verbatim:
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Mother to her approximately 12-year-old collector son on 20th Street in Chelsea:
"I'll match your funds, but I want a say in your selections until you're 16."

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Father to preteen daughter walking by Victoria's Secret on lower Fifth Ave:
"You're not going into that store until you're 50!"

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Mother to teenage daughter on the F Train headed into Brooklyn:
"You can talk until you're blue in the face, you're not getting a gun until you're 18."

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.What have you overheard lately?

Big Geometries

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Warren Isensee at Danese: Left, Halo Effect, 2009, oil on canvas; far wall, Cakewalk, 2010, oil on canvas, multipanel

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A few weeks ago I posted Small Geometries, which featured the reductive sculptures of Kevin Finklea and the joyously gridded paintings of Helen Miranda Wilson. Now we're switching scale.
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Warren Isensee's show at Danese, which just came down, featured his trademark "nesting" rectangles--which I love--as well as a couple of dramatic wall-size installations. These new works explode the geometry out of the nest, so to speak, while retaining the same retinally stimulating linearity. You can see more on the gallery website.
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Peter Halley at Mary Boone: Installation of three works, each acrylic and roll-a-tex/canvas, 80 x 82 inches
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Halley's show closed yesterday, but the gallery has some installation shots. While I like the juxtaposition of the two shows here--all rectangles within rectangles--I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of Halley's work. His colors are too eye-searingly acidic for my taste (I prefer Imi Knoebel, who also shows at Boone if we're going in that chromatic direction), but ya gotta dig the way Halley creates a visual trope and sticks with it. Well, I do.

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Marketing Mondays: Critical Feedback

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From last week’s post on Ethical Dilemmas comes this anonymous comment: “Nearly everyone I know, including myself, refuses to give an honest assessment of an artist’s work, especially if it is a negative one.”

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This commenter goes on to say that while s/he “craves” an honest assessment, it’s really a positive assessment s/he's yearning for.

Feedback is essential, and too many of us don't get enough of it after art school. Yet when we get it, it's easy to get pissed off or feel hurt. And when we give it, it's easy to wimp out. So Anon’s comments form the germ of today’s post, which comes as four questions:

1. What happens if a friend asks for your critical opinion of his work, and you don’t have a particularly positive opinion?
. Do you demur? (“I never discuss a friend's work,” or “Let’s talk about this when I return from Australia, which will be in, oh, three years.”)
. Do you hedge? (“It’s interesting,” or “Wow, what a change from your previous body of work.” )
. Do you equivocate? ("There are things I like about it and things I don't.")
. Do you lie? (“I like it. Really, I like it,” you say and then feel sick in the pit of your stomach because you have encouraged a direction you don’t think is good for your artist friend.)
. Do you give your honest assessment? ("I don't think this is your best work and here's why.") And if so, are you prepared for the disappointment or anger, and the possible weakening or loss of a friendship?

2. Does the conversation have to involve personal opinion? Are you wimping out if you opt to simply discuss what you see?

. Sometimes artists just want to have a fresh pair of eyes look at their work. Can the discussion be about the compositon, the color, the size, the technical issues?

. Can the discussion be about where this work might fit into the larger context of what's happening now?

. Ask questions. Let the artist tell you what the work is about. Maybe it can be less about your opinion and more about your interest in the artist and her work.

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3. If you do deliver negative criticism, can you do it in a way that’s constructive and helpful without alienating the person who has sought your opinion?
. In my experience, there’s always something that interests me, something I like. Something that allows me to start with a positive thought before getting to the negative heart of the matter. And I always preface my comments with, “This is the opinion of one person to a particular group of paintings. It’s not the final word on your work.” Still, it's easy for the artist to focus only on the negative and feel devastated or, worse, feel personally attacked.
. Anyone—but art professors particularly, since you do crits regularly—how do you dish out your negative comments without slicing into the heart of the artist?

4. Is there a difference between the kind of negative criticism you deliver to a friend and that which is delivered by a critic who, presumably, is able to keep a professional distance even if s/he knows the artist?
. Is there something we can learn from the critic in the way of delivery--placing the work in a larger context, perhaps, or using emotionally neutral words to describe the work or your perception of/feelings toward it? For instance, that would mean leaving "love" and "hate" out of the conversation.
. I will share a story here: I consult occasionally with artists who ask for critical feedback on their work. Since I am being paid for my time and opinion, the understanding is that I will be fair and honest, and as emotionally detatched as possible. One time I had to tell someone, "Your work is beautiful and beautifully crafted, but the path you're taking has been carved out by another much more well-known artist. Your work will suffer by comparison. I think you'd be better off directing your your talent down a path of your own making." I held my breath, as this was someone I knew, someone who had a significant body of work that I perceived to be largely derivitave. There was a pause. "Finally, I'm getting the truth," said the artist, who admitted some apprehension about the direction but who had been getting only the classic "I love it" from friends. (Postscript: This artist is carving a parallel path with strong, original new work and has been showing regionally to good response.)

So my feeling is that if you are asked, and you are honest, and you are fair in your delivery, it's possible to say what you have to say without crushing the ego and psyche of the artist. But not always.

And that brings me over to you. How have you handled the issue of critical feedback--whether as the giver or receiver of critical feedback?

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Materiality at Amy Simon Fine Art

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Panoramic view of Ready, Aim, Inspire
From left: Jeesoo Lee, Cecile Chong (on dividing wall) and my paintings, foreground and in the distance; scroll below for a virtual tour of work by each artist

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So there we were, in Westport, Connecticut, the middle of a nor'easter, having an opening. This was on March 13. The three artists showed up--Cecile Chong, Jeesoo Lee and myself--along with an assortment of partners and friends, and Amy Simon had put out a fabulous spread. Then, despite the winds that were blowing trees down all around us, artists and collectors and friends of the gallery started showing up. .

The Amy Simon Gallery, just off I-95, is in an oddly shaped and utterly charming former mill. The floors look to have their original wide pine planks, and there's even a river that runs by the building. I knew of Simon's gallery because she shows a few other artists whose work I love--David Ambrose, Carolanna Parlato, Scott Richter and Paul Shakespear--so when she invited me to show, I was pleased. In bringing together Chong, Lee and myself, Simon acknowledges the materiality of our work, even though we all work differently. Chong and I work mostly in wax, though she is narrative and I am reductively abstract; Lee creates large-scale linear abstractions on paper that are sewn. It's an odd but satisfying mix.
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The show is up through next Saturday, April 24; if you're in the area, please stop in. In this post, I'm going to take you on a virtual your.
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Chong, born in Ecuador to Chinese parents and now living in Brooklyn, paints Japanese geisha figures, often shown interacting with little white girls. Talk about a cultural mix. This painting of Chong's is on the back side of the dividing wall shown above. From this vantage point you can see a drawing by Jessoo Lee over the flat file and a glimpse of the long end of the gallery, where most of Chong's work is installed

Below, we travel down that section of the gallery to see Chong's paintings

Below, turn to your right and you see a wall of work by Jessoo Lee, with a glimpse of my work in the distance . . .

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. . . and that brings back, more or less, to where we started

Since I talked about materiality, I've got a detail from each artist. Chong, above, in fact serves up substantial passages of abstraction within her narratives. Just above the chunky corner (shown in full view just above the detail) is the outline of a figure with legs and skirt. The staccato line suggests stitching, which leads us to . . .
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. . . a detail of Jessoo Lee's collages work, shown top and just above the detail of Chong's work
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In this detail of my Vicolo 42, visible in the bottom row center of the near grid shown in the installation shot a few images above, you can see how I've carved into the surface, allowing under layers to push their way visually to the surface.

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You can see more of my work here; Chong's here, and Lee's here.

Click here for specifics about the show

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Tantric Paintings at Feature

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The World’s Two Poles United (Day and Night, Light and Darkness, Stillness and Movement, Shiva and Shakti), 2000, 11.75 x 8.75 inches

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I saw Tantra: Anonymous Paintings on Paper, at Feature Inc. last month, March 4-27. The Monster of Time (see below) prevented me from posting images until now. This was a modest installation: thirteen small paintings on heavy paper, arranged in a corner of the gallery.

Tantra is the union of the soul with Shakti, the Goddess. A tantric practitioner reaches spiritual union through meditation and focused breathing. Breath contains the energy of the universe, prana, which unites all things. These paintings, and others like them, embody codified images that express specific ideas in tantrism; meditating on them stimulates the eye and mind toward a particular mystical experience. On a more material level, these reductive abstractions by anonymous artists are powerful as art. And that may be spiritual experience enough for some of us. Let me show you what I saw.

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.The entrance to the gallery is to the left in the picture. I've backed up into the gallery to take in the entire installation. All of the paintings, drawing on codified themes, .are contemporary from various cities in Rajasthan, India

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The left corner, above, and two paintings on it, below

Energy’s Egg, 2004, 8.75 x 13.25 inches

(All of the paintings are described as "unspecified paint on found paper." The paint looks like gouache or tempera with intense pigmentation; the paper, which seems to be lightweight sheets attached to cardboard, range from book pages to coarse and fibrous sheets, possibly handmade)
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.Dance of Energy, 2008, 13.75 x 9 inches
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The right corner, above, and three paintings below
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.The Birth of Speech, 2008, 11.5 x 9.375 inches

In Search of the Center, 2008, 12.75 x 9.75 inches

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The Monster of Time, 2009, 11 x 9.75 inches
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. A last view before leaving

You can see more on the gallery's website

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Marketing Mondays: Ethical Dilemmas

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Image from the Internet

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Hrag Vartanian has an interesting conversation with Jennifer Dalton about ethics over the Art 21 blog. I’d like to use that as a jumping off point for today’s post, focusing specifically on the ways artists behave toward one another.

As I’ve been discussing ethical issues with friends recently, three main ideas have emerged:

First, let's hear it for artists who are supportive and respectful of other artists' careers. If you don't have friends like that, find some. If you do, appreciate them!

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Second, there seems to be a divide between artists who are relatively established in their careers and those who are looking to gain a toehold. Some artists are so desperate to get somewhere, they will trample anyone and anything to achieve their goals—copying, cannibalizing and stealing liberally if that’s what it takes. We all know a few people like that. Drop them from your life. (On the flip side, there are accomplished and affluent artists who wouldn’t stop to advise, mentor, refer or otherwise offer a helping hand to a struggling artist whose piece of the pie is barely more than half a crumb. Selfish as that behavior may be, however, the artist is trampling no one.)

Third, “ethics” in the art world is relative. There is no formal Code of Ethics for the Practice of the Visual Arts, notes Pam Farrell, a painter who is also a licensed clinical social worker: “CAA has one for professional practice in Art History. Art schools have codes of conduct and ethics. But since there is no ‘central’ or official organization, like the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association, there is no organizational body in the arts that represents the profession. So, when we are talking about ethical transgressions or breaches, or violations in the visual arts, whose ethics are we talking about?”

Copyright infringement aside, says Farrell, “What might be a guiding force for most of us could be the ‘Golden Rule.’"

In the interest of stirring up some discussion I offer you these 10 scenarios. They’re all true, compiled from a variety of experiences, including mine. Applying your personal sense of ethics—or your interpretation of do-unto-others—how would you respond?

1. An artist contacts a gallery, mentioning that you have suggested she do so. You have done no such thing. You get wind of it from the gallery.

2. You ask an artist if he would recommend you to his gallery. He says, “Let me think about it.” That was almost a year ago, and even a recent reminder has not prompted a response. You decide to go ahead anyway. In contacting his gallery you mention you know him but stop short of suggesting any involvement on his part.

3. You are contacted by a grant foundation seeking a reference for an artist. The problem is that the artist never asked you if you would be willing to write such a reference. What’s more, you wouldn’t have particularly good things to say about the artist or his work.

4. You have developed a following as a good and generous teacher. Working out of your studio, you offer classes in technique to beginner and advanced students. Recently some former students have set up shop not far from you and are offering the same kinds of classes at a significantly reduced rate.

5. You develop a template for a successful art event that brings together hundreds of participants from all over. A parvenu production, organized by someone you know, crops up with many of the same features and speakers that are in yours.

6. An artist in your studio building stops in from time to time. When you visited her studio recently, you noticed a raft of familiar-looking work. Indeed, you could actually see that the changes in her work paralleled the changes in yours.

7. Relatedly, you’ve posted images of your best work on your website/blog/Facebook wall. Now you see that another artist in another part of the country is doing new work suspiciously like yours but in a different medium. You know this is new work for the artist because you checked his website.

8. You assisted an artist for several years. She introduced you to all the dealers and curators who visited the studio. Now that you’re not working for her anymore, you know just how to pursue your career: You contact every single one of the people you met in your former employer’s studio, reminding them where you initially met.

9. An artist tells you, “I have a great method for getting my work out there. When the Art in America Guide comes out each summer, I look up all the artists whose work I like and send my packages to their galleries. I got two gallery shows that way!”

10. You have a friend who’s always appreciative when you recommend him for group shows or artists’ projects but he never seems to recommend you—and he’s involved in a lot of projects for which you would be perfect.

OK, over to you. How would you deal with any of these situations? And by all means share others in the same genre.

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Up Through This Saturday . . .

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Geometric Themes and Variations, is up through April 10. If you're in town and haven't seen it yet, I hope you'll head over to the LES. Click here for my post about it; here for gallery info; here for a press release; here for a map. Covering all bases, I have info and links on the sidebar, too.

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Uttar 157, encaustic on panel, 24x24 inches

Teabonics

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Image via Zack Peabody and others from Facebook

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What do you want to bet that hizzoner, of Crestwood, Illinois, is not a progressive democrat? And what do you want to bet that his grandparents spoke, um, well not English? More ridiculosity, with captions, here.

Marketing Mondays: Meet the Press

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Say you’ve been contacted by a reporter to talk about your work in conjunction with an exhibition or open studio, or any kind of project you’re involved with. Do you know how to handle an interview?

Above and below, talking to the press. (These images from the Internet)

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The process seems simple enough. The reporter asks questions: How long have you been an artist? Tell me about the show (project, event)? Who else is involved? How did the show or project or event come about? You respond enthusiastically.

Then maybe you break for coffee. The reporter's notebook gets put down and you relax. The conversation slides around to an arts administrator in your city who just got passed over for a promotion, or to an artist you both know to be difficult. You're chatting informally so you respond with a less-than-flattering anecdote about the administrator or share a bit of gossip about the artist. Back in interview mode, the reporter asks you, “Would you show me your process? You’re uncomfortable with sharing trade secrets, or maybe the studio is not set up for that kind of show and tell, so you demur. No problem, says the reporter.

The article comes out. You’re portrayed as a gossiping blowhard who’s eager to tout your achievement but secretive about your process. That’s an extreme example, but it happens.

My day job for 20 years was as an editor and writer, so I feel confident sharing these tips with you:

As long as you’re talking to a reporter, you’re on the record
It doesn’t matter whether the tape recorder is running or not, whether she’s taking notes or not. If it’s an interview, what you say is fair game for the reporter--and that includes art bloggers, many of whom have significant and substantial readership. The good news is that if you’re being interviewed, it’s probably for the arts section, not for national news (unless you're a certain well-known artist who has had some copyright issues), so you if you keep to the topic at hand—you, your work, the project—you should do just fine. This is true whether you’re being interviewed in person, over the phone or via email. Yes, you can say “off the record” if you don’t want something reported, but why say it if it’s not meant for publication?

Want to be quoted correctly?
Keep your answers short and clear. Don’t digress. Speak at a slow-normal pace; rapid-fire speech makes it hard for the reporter to take notes, and on tape it can make you appear manic. If you’re mentioning unusual names or titles, jot them down on a small sheet of paper and give it to the interviewer at the end of the interview. If you haven’t been interviewed before, or if you’re a little nervous about the interview, do a mock Q&A in front of the mirror; this sounds silly, but it’s a good way to get comfortable with what you want to say and how you want it to sound. The better the quality of your information, the more likely you are to be well represented.

Be interesting! Have a couple of good sounds bites
From the reporter’s point of view, a boring interview can sound like blah blah blah blah blabbity blah. I once did an interview with the emerging artist son of a famous painter. The guy was a dull as proverbial dishwater. Nothing I asked him elicited anything interesting or quotable. The fact is that he was a boring guy with boring work who was mildly consequential only because of his dad. God, I was glad to get out of there! Another artist I intervied for a feature was not particularly interesting personally, but his work was and his passion for it was; it was a lively interview that resulted in a good article which allowed that passion to assert itself on each page.

One time, I interviewed a florist-to-the-stars for who was so quotable that what was supposed to be a short item turned into a feature with plenty of anecdotes, pullquotes and pictures. And then there was the well-known artist I interviewed in his Lower East Side studio. I did my homework and he responded with stories, pulled out work to show me, and talked about many of the paintings in his studio, including a now-iconic series that was in progress at the time. That was a great interview!

Writers need a good lead and a good kicker—a juicy quote or comment to end the story. Your passion and knowledge will provide them. Indeed, if you can provide interesting information for each point you wish to make, the interview pretty much writes itself. Relatedly . . .

Be prepared to steer the discussion
Small local or regional publications may not have full-time arts writers, so a general assignment reporter—one with little understanding of art, and possibly no understanding of your work in particular—may be assigned to interview you. If the conversation heads in a way that you know will not serve you well, steer it over to where you want it to be. Offer an anecdote, or direct the reporter’s attention to work that you wish to talk about.

Sometimes a photographer or videographer comes with the interviewer. Draw their attention to the work you’d like them to shoot—not by saying, “This is what I’d like you to photograph,” but by a more enticing lead in: “Let me show you my newest work" (reporters love a scoop), or "I believe this is the piece that secured my grant." Or, "See this detail . . . ?" And then go on to focus your attention and theirs on a particular painting. Put away anything you don’t want to be seen. You can’t control what's written about you, but you can control what you offer to the writer.

Appearance matters
If the interview is in your studio, you’ll look ridiculous in your dress-up clothes; if your interview is in their studio, you’ll look ridiculous in your painting clothes. And you may not like what I’m going to say next, but women are always held to a higher standard in terms of appearance. You can ignore that if you want to, but that's the cold, hard fact. Just look at the pictures above. The interviewee in the top picture, dressed understatedly in a clean silhouette and solid color, will stand out for what she says and for the work she has done, not for how she's dressed. If you're Shepard Fairey, you can dress as you wish--though you notice his interviewer is wearing a suit.

Send the reporter off with a small package of information
Standard presentation materials are usually sufficient: resume, statement, a CD with a few images. Make sure the images are titled. Include a business card so the reporter can contact you if she has follow-up questions.

Don’t demand to read the piece before it goes to press
That’s not going to happen. If the topic is unusually technical, a reporter—or perhaps someone from a magazine research department—will read you specific passages to confirm the correctness of the information. (Books are different because there’s a longer lead time. By all means ask to read the materials about you. Some writers will accede, others won’t, but no writer is going to offer, so you’d be smart to ask.)

Send a Thank You note
Unless the writer did a real hatchet job—and despite my opening worst-case-scenario, that’s not likely—send a note of thanks for the piece, even if there's a misquote or two. Any medium is fine: email, postcard, handwritten note. Writers change jobs, some become editors and may be in a position to assign stories. Everyone remembers the interesting artist who remembered them.

Do you have an interview story? Share, share!

Are You in Tucson?

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If you're in downtown Tucson, please stop by and see the show. It's a long, tall drink of cool water--just what you want in the Sonoran desert. I'm showing paintings from my Silk Road series and brand new digital prints from Silk Trail.

Silk Trail 5, left, and Silk Trail 9, both 2010, unique digital prints, paper size 11 x 8.5

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Small Geometries

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The sculptures of Kevin Finklea (in the Project Room at Thatcher Projects through April 17) and the paintings of Helen Miranda Wilson (in the back gallery recently at Lori Bookstein Fine Art) share some lovely commonalities. Both bodies of work are small, they were not the main shows in either gallery (though in my opinion, they dominated), both share the block or rectangle as means and end, and both employ color with subtlety and, well, bravado.

Kevin Finklea: Installation view at Thatcher Projects

The small sculpture at bottom left is shown below in two views:

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Above and below: Bryant Street, 1961

Finklea’s painted sculptures are terse in the best possible way. They say everything they need to with an economy of expression, like haiku (or maybe even telepathy). Luscious wood converses with sumptuous color, each perfectly smooth, perfectly crafted surfaces; color carries on a quiet dialog with itself about value and intensity.
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Above and below: Free Falling Divisions #9, 2010

I couldn’t get very good shots of the installation, but you can see better images on the gallery website.

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Helen Miranda Wilson: Installation view at Lori Bookstein Fine Art

I’ve written about Wilson’s work before (here and here), so I’ll just say that her compositional building blocks are squares of color that pull you in, like Alice into the rabbit hole. The diminutive paintings expand, expand, expand in your consciousness, so that it is you who become small. Heady. And just about every damn one of them had a red dot.

Village, 2008, oil on panel, 12 x 12 inches
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Fall of Night, 2009, oil on panel, 8 x 8 inches

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