My friend, fellow artist and a-n blogger Emily Speed, sent me this link over the weekend – some words by Agnes Martin on disappointment & the process of working as an artist. Martin has long been one of my favourite artists; I remember seeing her piece Morning at Tate Liverpool’s 20th century retrospective – almost three years ago now, on an early date with S., my boyfriend. I stood -silent, transfixed, and quite anti-social – for what felt like an eternity; experiencing her work physically was one of those art/life experiences; the rare ones, the transcendent ones. I came home and wrote reams of scribbled and excited notes in my notebook (which led me to the succinct conclusion: “Re-read Plato.” — his Theory of Forms, in relation to art, is something in which I’m desperately interested.). To me, Martin is one of the most truthful artists of the last century – if not ever. There’s a purity, a subtlety and a quiet directness to her work that is both breathtakingly beautiful and incredibly honest. As the artist herself said, talking about Morning, “It is about how we feel.”
Martin has also said this (which is quoted on the blog to which I’ve linked above):
“A sense of disappointment and defeat is the essential state of mind for creative work
“That is why art work is so very hard. It is a working through disappointments to greater disappointment and a growing recognition of failure to the point of defeat.
“‘Defeated’ is the position from which to have something to say, to rise up.“
This last line; yes, and yes, and yes. It was precisely the affirmation I needed this morning – barely half-past seven, with the sun not long risen & the wind racing through the trees & against the buildings. After several very dreadful, very, unspeakably dark days, I woke and I rose with a renewed sense of purpose and faith in what I wish to do – my usual sense of September re-awakening, but intensified and brought to a point. And then to read these words! It is true: I have felt defeated; but I shall rise up; in a quiet way I shall speak, I shall work. Because I have to. Because I want to. Because I must.
… Oh, the way that these things find us when we need them. Serendipity. Truly, I don’t know where I would be without it.
For I am coming to understand that I (and, therefore, my work) thrive on solitude, quietness and intense, first-hand experience; the private self and the inner life rather than public demonstration. Of course, there are other artists who work in this way too, but in Liverpool, where I currently live and work, I appear to be in a minority of one, in amidst the noise and clutter and slick self-promotion. My mistake has been to attempt (to over and again attempt!) to place myself with in the prescribed boundaries of what A Working Artist ought to be, and invariably fail.
I wrote this in a post dated August 16th, and after a conversation with a friend, I’ve realised that I hadn’t read or thought it through with anything like the appropriate thoroughness. It was pointed out to me that, by saying that ‘I appear to be in a minority of one’ I was effectively condemning all the other artists working in Liverpool. This was not my intention; there are a number of Liverpool-based artists whom I like and respect, and whose work I admire. A better way of phrasing it would have been to say that I am in a minority group of artists, and the minority/majority contrast often feels much starker in Liverpool. When I say that ‘I appear to be in a minority of one,’ in a way I suppose I am hoping for the opposite; hoping that appearances are deceptive and that there is, perhaps, a place for me.
Writing as an outsider, there is, in this city, much of what I described as ‘noise and clutter and slick self-promotion’; there are many people whose work is less than the myth they’ve built around it. There are many, many sacred cows that it’s considered bad form to criticise. I’m not in the business of walking on eggshells to preserve the status quo.
However, while it is true that I often feel as though I am in a minority of one (with no useful connections, no potential collaborators and no opportunities), it isn’t fair of me to denigrate all other artists. Generalisations make for really great polemic, but they help nobody at all.
My mind keeps coming back to something Yoko Ono posted on her Twitter account. It seems to be about the idea-roots of her famous instructional paintings, such as ‘Painting to See the Skies’ and ‘Painting to See the Room’ (both 1961, both published in her book Grapefruit). These “paintings” actually consist of brief instructions that involve making a hole in the canvas and viewing the world through it. Ono wrote:
The inevitable happened when I opened a hole in my painting: the reality which came through the hole outshined my “design” on the canvas.
This resonated with me very deeply. I experience the world very intensely (I suppose almost religiously), and I have often struggled to reconcile my compulsion to record, recreate and represent with the inadequacy of my attempts. I suppose that in many ways I am disinterested in second-hand experience. Consider the way that writing – truly great writing – can connect with and illuminate our inner world, becoming a linked, holistic experience in its own right. This is what I want from (my) art.
Yesterday I walked to the riverside, and sat next to the place where the boats leave for the Isle of Man. There are only a couple of sailings per day, so it was a peaceful place with lots of outward & upward space for thought. The sky and the water were deep, deep blue, and there was a bright breeze that made the water dance & sparkle. Everything seemed very alive. I thought about the curious dissonance between this wide-open and giddily, maddeningly glorious world and the gallery, which is often the exact opposite of alive. “Stultifying” was the word that came into my mind – to stultify can mean to impair, invalidate, to dull and inhibit, to negate. And I do feel that certain spaces – authoritative, stifling spaces – have a very dulling and diminishing effect upon artworks. There are a few major contemporary institutions in Liverpool with this kind of space, wherein nothing can live. On top of this, many of the independent/artist-led spaces are (by virtue of what artist-led ventures can actually afford) just ugly and unpleasant, which can sometimes have the unfortunate effect of making the exhibited work seem a little tawdry.
So is the gallery a necessary evil for the artist? Should one build one’s work-philsophy around the idea that it must someday take a solid form & sit, curated, in a whitewashed room? Is that the only conceivable outcome for an idea? Must the artist be object-fixated and public-focused?
The saddest thing that I received in my email today was an invitation to the opening of an exhibition by a group of recent graduates. I read through the explanatory text, and realised with a sudden jolt that it read like a covering letter for a job application. The language of self-justification, phrased like a plea. An extended passage describing how the exhibited work would appeal to various social groups… It made me so sad. That it’s really come to this.
But there are also happy things! I’ve found that writing this blog & enunciating my concerns/sense of isolation has un(b)locked something in my unconscious. Suddenly I have a much clearer idea of what it is I want to be and want to do, and a method of operating that doesn’t involve forcing myself into an uncomfortable position, the more accepted paradigm. (This is something I’ve been doing my whole adult life; trying to substantially alter the inalterable stuff of my psyche, that I might better fit alongside my contemporaries. Chameleon instinct, ever adapting. I’m ready to try being myself, unaltered.) I’ve come to realise – and it was so very obvious – that one must make something from what one is given; that that is all there is to be done. So rather than feeling guilty and inert because I am not exhibiting enough or working in the same way as other artists I know – or worrying because I feel that my contemporaries don’t rate my work – instead I’ll find a way that works for me, rather than against me. Instead of feeling hemmed-in by isolation, why not feel liberated by solitude? Perhaps it’s in how you approach things.
In other news, I’ll be accompanying some of my bookworks to the Piccadilly Self-Publishing Exhibition and Fair, which will take place on Sunday 3rd October at Piccadilly Place in central Manchester (the exhibition will continue until the following Friday). The event is being co-organised by Caitlin Howard (a-n blog here) and Sophie Lee, two fantastically talented recent graduates whom I met at the Manchester Artists’ Book Fair last year. I’m so excited to be a part of it!
