Love this Christopher and the photo of you and Farley is priceless. The quote that comes to mind after reading your essay is from Stephen King's book,
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
“Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
Hi Christopher, I always enjoy your Substack essays. This one provokes a question you might want to address in a subsequent post. What makes an artwork intrinsically good? You allude to it, but it would be great to hear your thoughts.
Thanks Jay. You're right that that subject deserves a stand-alone essay, and it's always a pretty tricky topic in any case — one that goes right to the whole messy realm of gatekeepers, authority and hierarchy. But my answer to the question is simple enough. I think a work is good when it does well what it sets out to do. So that knocks the whole issue of stylistic or ideological hierarchies right out of the conversation. Quality isn't about what you do, but about how well you do it. In the case of the Ab Ex painters I cited in the piece, DeKooning did abstract expressionism beautifully and masterfully. Newman didn't. Maybe you have to actually be a painter to know that, but it's true regardless of whether or not you are. What Newman was good at was promoting his personal zippy brand. Maybe that was all he was trying to accomplish anyway. I think that's basically what I'm saying about a lot of the work we see plastered all over the place nowadays. It's branded product first and foremost. Sometimes it's painted/sculpted/photgraphed/filmed or whatever well (or skillfully) and sometimes not. But to me the "art" isn't in its commercial savvy. It's someplace else.
Late in his life, my Dad told me (and my brothers) to “do what you love.” He had no inkling of art as a career. He had been a corporate guy in sales his entire career. Yet, he loved it and he wanted us to know he had deeply cared about what he did for a lifetime. It impressed me that he was passionate about something to which I could never be so committed. I had already fully realized that I wanted to make art, and that path was the only thing I really wanted. So it sunk the hook even deeper.
Seeing my first painting by Van Gogh in person literally took my breath away. After so many years, I could see his hand at work, feel it. I never imagined that was a possible outcome. I was so close to grasping that hand! Other paintings opened up other revelations: the small Corot at the Met called “Banks of the Seine at Confans,” Chardin, a show of late DeKooning at the Whitney, Rembrandt’s self portrait in the Frick Collection (all of them, really) and sculpture, the Parthenon marbles at the British Museum.
I have come to recognize a feeling that sometimes happens, in a different way, with work by my friends and contemporaries. An urgency. A poke in the ribs that makes one shift involuntarily. Something that gets in my head, that bothers me. It’s all part of that package of what drives me to do more. Not love of painting only. A bug. It pushes from many directions.
One place it never, ever pushes me from is the success and reward department. It’s an entirely different motivation.
I read the same essay recently and thought he was describing some version of my life in the art world. It is a strange thing that we do. I love your comparison to prize fighter. That is exactly it. Hands raised, crowd cheering, and in a few rounds bloodied and crawling back into the ring. Somewhere between his essay and yours I too have thought, why do I do this over and over again?
You never cease to amaze me how diverse your creative paths run, which reminds me of my own. It is this freedom to explore that keeps me going. The curiosity of whether or not I can make or do something that might be great. Often they are not, but they hold some possiblity for something greater, something close to those paintings in the canon of art history that I so admire. That connect to a wider humanity. The art world may not agree with what I am doing, but hopefully a future passerby will see it differently.
As always, I immensely enjoyed reading your thoughts on this art life and art world we traverse.
Love this Christopher and the photo of you and Farley is priceless. The quote that comes to mind after reading your essay is from Stephen King's book,
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
“Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.”
Hi Christopher, I always enjoy your Substack essays. This one provokes a question you might want to address in a subsequent post. What makes an artwork intrinsically good? You allude to it, but it would be great to hear your thoughts.
Thanks Jay. You're right that that subject deserves a stand-alone essay, and it's always a pretty tricky topic in any case — one that goes right to the whole messy realm of gatekeepers, authority and hierarchy. But my answer to the question is simple enough. I think a work is good when it does well what it sets out to do. So that knocks the whole issue of stylistic or ideological hierarchies right out of the conversation. Quality isn't about what you do, but about how well you do it. In the case of the Ab Ex painters I cited in the piece, DeKooning did abstract expressionism beautifully and masterfully. Newman didn't. Maybe you have to actually be a painter to know that, but it's true regardless of whether or not you are. What Newman was good at was promoting his personal zippy brand. Maybe that was all he was trying to accomplish anyway. I think that's basically what I'm saying about a lot of the work we see plastered all over the place nowadays. It's branded product first and foremost. Sometimes it's painted/sculpted/photgraphed/filmed or whatever well (or skillfully) and sometimes not. But to me the "art" isn't in its commercial savvy. It's someplace else.
Late in his life, my Dad told me (and my brothers) to “do what you love.” He had no inkling of art as a career. He had been a corporate guy in sales his entire career. Yet, he loved it and he wanted us to know he had deeply cared about what he did for a lifetime. It impressed me that he was passionate about something to which I could never be so committed. I had already fully realized that I wanted to make art, and that path was the only thing I really wanted. So it sunk the hook even deeper.
Seeing my first painting by Van Gogh in person literally took my breath away. After so many years, I could see his hand at work, feel it. I never imagined that was a possible outcome. I was so close to grasping that hand! Other paintings opened up other revelations: the small Corot at the Met called “Banks of the Seine at Confans,” Chardin, a show of late DeKooning at the Whitney, Rembrandt’s self portrait in the Frick Collection (all of them, really) and sculpture, the Parthenon marbles at the British Museum.
I have come to recognize a feeling that sometimes happens, in a different way, with work by my friends and contemporaries. An urgency. A poke in the ribs that makes one shift involuntarily. Something that gets in my head, that bothers me. It’s all part of that package of what drives me to do more. Not love of painting only. A bug. It pushes from many directions.
One place it never, ever pushes me from is the success and reward department. It’s an entirely different motivation.
Thanks again for a provocative one!
I read the same essay recently and thought he was describing some version of my life in the art world. It is a strange thing that we do. I love your comparison to prize fighter. That is exactly it. Hands raised, crowd cheering, and in a few rounds bloodied and crawling back into the ring. Somewhere between his essay and yours I too have thought, why do I do this over and over again?
You never cease to amaze me how diverse your creative paths run, which reminds me of my own. It is this freedom to explore that keeps me going. The curiosity of whether or not I can make or do something that might be great. Often they are not, but they hold some possiblity for something greater, something close to those paintings in the canon of art history that I so admire. That connect to a wider humanity. The art world may not agree with what I am doing, but hopefully a future passerby will see it differently.
As always, I immensely enjoyed reading your thoughts on this art life and art world we traverse.