Art and Words

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

I’ve long thought of art as a visceral experience. Stand in front of it, open your eyes, and you can’t not see it. But language is entirely different. Effort must be made. Meaning must be pushed through a screen of words, like Play-Doh through a Fun Factory. It comes out the other side and coalesces into more or less the same shape, but something is always lost, or changed.

: Stephen Maine
HP12-0402

I like to write. I like searching for just the combination of words that will convey what I mean with precision but also ease and fluency. And I know that art critics are going through the same process when they write, but I have a lot of trouble understanding the more academic ones. Perhaps I just don’t know enough of the insider jargon that exists at the core of any specialty. I don’t understand surgeons when they talk amongst themselves, or pilots, or software engineers, either.

SVA faculty member/artist/writer Stephen Maine http://www.stephenmaine.com addresses this issue in the new edition of the Brooklyn Rail, with far more precision and fluency than I can. His article, “Discourse ≠ Art” is all about the difficulties of discussing art – of applying words to art and hoping to create understanding. http://www.brooklynrail.org/2013/03/artseen/discourse-8800-art

: Stephen Maine
HP12-0505

You should read the article yourself, but I am happy to report that it persuades me that good art conversation does not stray far from the art in question, and that good writing communicates better than bad. That should be obvious to all, but it isn’t, and this article is both an excellent example and a much-needed reminder.

Art Blind

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

The crowds, the booths, the noise – I just couldn’t take anymore. And if you think I’m talking about the 127 Art Fairs that sprung up in New York this week, you’d be almost right. The truth is, I was art blind before the fairs opened. I was saturated. I couldn’t stand to look at any more anything. I couldn’t have one more conversation about process versus content. So although I should have gone to at least 113 of them, I didn’t.

Where DID I go? Coffee Fest! The coffee trade show at the Javits Convention Center. Numbered booths, crowded aisles, overstimulation of my already overtired eyes; it might as well have been an art fair. Or a gift show. Or the GLBT convention with which it was sharing space (at least they had blow-up palm trees and colorful balloons).

Trade shows are trade shows, I’ve decided. And art shows are just as full of hucksterism and gritty commercialism as any other trade show. There is no pretense that they are doing anything other than selling as much of their interchangeable inventory as possible. No wonder the galleries don’t want the artists to come.

But back to Coffee Fest. My sister Jennifer Cook owns a wonderful independent coffee shop in Katonah, NY (NoKa Joe’s – go visit. She has a bookstore upstairs!). And she needed to see what was new in coffee and coffee accessories, so I went along with her and her photographer/beekeeper friend Karen Sabath.

AND happened to arrive just in time for the finals of the Latte Art World Championship. Proof that there is no escaping art. The barristas impressively produced their championship cups in front of a live audience (try THAT Art Fairs!) and then we all got to sample the products (ditto!). Coffee, tea, protein shakes, smoothies, scones, muffins, shortbreads, biscotti, and, oddly, lots and lots of oatmeal.

On the way out of the Javits Center, just in case you weren’t already buzzed from the caffeine and the sugar, there was a Starbucks doing bang-up business. It was a perfect end to spring break.

Split Ends

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

If it were a horse race, the SVA MFA Fine Arts candidates would win going away.

Sara Mejia Kreindler

Rob Campbell

Brian Whiteley

For reasons only slightly known, apparently having to do with booking the gallery, the thesis shows (the class is divided into two shows) are held in January and February before graduation.

Nick Fyhrie

David Jacobs

Naormi Wang

Emily Langmade

I’ve just had my first look at the second thesis show, Split Ends, and was really impressed by the quality of work, the ambition and scale of the installation projects, and how different it is from the first thesis show, We Object.

Feng-Tsung Chan

Dongsuk Lee

This exhibition is primarily installation, sculpture, and video, while the first show was dominated by painting, drawing, and other flat media.

Keith Hoffman

Anna Costa e Silva

I’ve seen most of the Split Ends work develop over the year in the studio, and it is remarkably different when presented in a gallery – transformed by the space, and transforming the space in turn – in a way that doesn’t happen with paintings.

Kwantaeck Park

Part of that comes simply from having to unmake, move, and then remake found-object sculptures and assemblages. Part of it is that in a new space the artist makes new decisions, again in a way that is unlike paintings.

Jamie Sneider

Denise Treizman

This show has dramatic lighting, lots of recorded voices and soundtracks, and impingement of art pieces on one another. Or is that infringement? Or collaboration? In any case, it creates energy and a show that is worth experiencing.

The Visual Arts Gallery is at 601 West 26th Street, 15th Floor, and the exhibition remains up until March 9th.

: Ates Ucul

: Matthew Eck

: Marc Bradley Johnson

Do You Remember When Art Was Fun – part 2

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

Polka Dots Make Me Happy

I was lucky enough today to spend time speaking with several of my classmates in school. It’s cold and gray and wintry here in New York, and Seasonally Affective Disorder (SAD) seems to have swept through our studios like a depressed flu.

I can get revenge just by drawing you funny.

We were talking about the irrational art world in which we find ourselves living and working. Critical voices surround us, pushing us, taunting us, making us doubt ourselves. Often the most challenging faculty are the ones who force us to face new things and take chances. We don’t enjoy it; it’s like being poked over and over again in sore spots. But sometimes it works. My anger and sadness are moving me to make art that is totally new for me. I just don’t know if I like it.

Bad Day?

The things we are praised for are crazy and unexpected. Really? You like that? And we wonder: is that genuine admiration or is he pushing my buttons again?

Do you remember macaroni picture frames and woven potholders and pencil holders made of popsicle sticks? What about the paintings we made in second grade that our teachers loved, and our mothers loved, that ended up proudly displayed on the refrigerator? There was joy in that making.

I relax by knitting. No one criticizes my sweater.

All too often, for us grad students, joy has been replaced by doubt and worry. To say nothing of enormous debt. But joy is what we need to find again. Our joy is what will help us make authentic art that begins with what’s real inside us. To hell with everything else.

If my next body of work is based on potholders, or rainbow paintings with glitter, don’t shake your head. Congratulate me.

Jean-Michel Basquiat – “It’s About 80% Anger”

Posted on February 16, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

There was a time I thought Andy Warhol could have been a little more careful with his paint application. And I thought Jean-Michel Basquiat was a talentless scribbler.

: Installation View
Jean-Michel Basquiat at Gagosian
Untitled (L.A. Painting), 1982, on right

Which is only to say that I remember them alive and working, and that I spent much of my earlier life being stupid.

When Andy Warhol, who had a life-long fear of hospitals, died in one unnecessarily while his private nurse slept on duty, my heart broke a little for the sad irony. And when Basquiat died the following year, of heroin and his own Warhol-broken heart, his art finally came alive for me.

: Basquiat, In Italian, 1983

Today I count myself lucky that from the societal margin of my high school and college days I lived a little bit of the Warhol era. Today if someone compares my work to Warhol’s (unless what they’re saying is something like, OMG Andy Warhol would have hated your work), my heart sings. No one compares my work to Basquiat’s, but I wish my work were good enough to encourage that.

: Basquiat, Untitled, 1981

Warhol, who was born the same day as my father, died in 1987 at the age of 58. Warhol’s reputation was long established – he was a game changer, an art-world phenomenon, and a genius at self-promotion. But all of that only mattered because the art was genius, too.

Basquiat died at 27 in 1988. He had been a street kid with a natural talent whose comment on his own art was, “It’s about 80% anger.” The raw emotion of his work has not only stood the test of decades (this year will mark the 25th anniversary of his death), it still has an immediacy that is fresh today.

I am just back from Gagosian’s Chelsea Gallery, where more than 50 Basquiat works have been put on display. (http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/jean-michel-basquiat–february-07-2013) Although the opening was last week, the gallery was packed. And room after room after room are full of Basquiat’s anger, his scribbling mark-making, his comments on racial inequality, and his amazing, stunning use of color. What courage it must have taken him to pour out his soul in the face of criticism and the fickleness of “experts”. It is not just the paintings that make me want to cry, it is the story of the lost boy who gave us so much and then gave up on life.

: Basquiat,
Untitled (Two Heads on Gold), 1982

For me, Basquiat and Warhol are forever friends and collaborators – the influence of each obvious on the other. The influence of each obvious on me and on artists everywhere.

Studio/Gallery Visits

Posted on February 9, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

Color Shift
Installation View at
Mixed Greens

I have friends who love new people. They are true extroverts. Secretly I hate them. No, of course I don’t. But I’m jealous. They make it look so easy, so fun. New people. Yay! Let’s talk about art! Let’s talk about you! Let’s talk about me!

I am old enough that I have learned how to meet people, and speak to groups, and discuss my work and my background. And I am truly interested in others, their opinions, and their lives. But it’s difficult for me. I’m an introvert and sometimes the right words won’t come.

I like to think that when artists, or experts, or even my own faculty come to visit me in the studio that I handle it gracefully, and that panic does not plug my ears past the point of hearing what caring people say to me in the genuine hope of helping me and my work progress. And that hearing them, I respond appropriately, without ego, to gain the most from their visit. I like to think that.

Yellow Rules White and Red
Franklin Evans, 2012

I would like to thank Kathleen MacQueen, art critic and writer of the column Shifting Connections (http://shiftingconnections.com) who visited me a couple of weeks ago. Her insights on my use of multiple versions of the same image were extraordinarily helpful. And last week artist Franklin Evans (http://www.franklinevans.com), whose work I admire, also visited me and helped me with a sticky issue I was facing about layering images and hiding meaning in pattern.

We Have Pictures Because We Have Walls
Arabella Campbell

On Wednesday, I was lucky enough to receive a visit from Heather Darcy Bhandari, Director, and Courtney Strimple, Exhibitions Coordinator, from Mixed Greens Gallery. http://mixedgreens.com/exhibitions.html From them I learned that I was doing some things right, but that I should have edited the work I had on display. And there were other things that weren’t working, like the black-line drawings that underpin many of my iPad sketches.

Heather Darcy Bhandari is also the co-author of the invaluable book Art/Work, which is used as a text in business of art classes and serves to clue in clueless artists about how the gallery world works and how we should behave in it. One cannot possibly overestimate how clueless we are.

Matthew De Leon at Mixed Greens
Window Dressing

All of which is my incredibly roundabout way of getting to the point that yesterday, having walked in pelting hail to the SVA Gallery on West 26th to drop off an application-for-exhibition package, I found myself looking up at the Mixed Greens exterior, whose windows are currently displaying enormous photographs of Andrew McCarthy from the movie Mannequin. I will not admit that it lingers quite strongly, but I used to have SUCH a crush on Andrew McCarthy. The narrative behind the window installation is meaningful (check it out on the website), but it needn’t be since the visual image alone is quite powerful.

Zachary Dean Norman at Mixed Greens
Platonic Solid #2

Inside the gallery I was at first put off by the simplicity of the space and the spareness of the group show currently on display. But I wandered around and looked more closely and slowly began to get it. The art is about art. In the simplest possible way it makes its point that we in the art world spend a lot of time talking (and writing) about art, but the bottom line is looking at it and seeing what it says without words. It is a very witty show, which grows on you as you walk until you’re smiling at the walls.

I want to thank Mixed Greens for providing images on their price lists. And prices, actual prices, for art work that is for sale.

Sherwin Rivera TibayanInstallation View #2 (MoMA, Blue Monochrome, 1961, Yves Klein)

Sherwin Rivera Tibayan at Mixed Greens
Installation View #2 (MoMA, Blue Monochrome, 1961, Yves Klein)

I am very grateful to the artists, and experts, and faculty who come to my studio to help me make better art, probably not knowing that I am quaking with fear inside. If I wait too long to answer you it is because I am afraid and because I get stuck in my right brain, where there are no words. So let me say it here: your visit means the world to me.

Do You Remember When Art Was Fun?

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

Monday at Ikea

There was a time when I drew and painted because I loved to, and not to complete an assignment, or please a teacher, or make something that might be important. There was a time when I created things without first thinking about how they would need to be installed, who would eventually see them, and what those people would think. Sometimes my work was truly awful, but I didn’t care because I wasn’t afraid to screw up. Sometimes it was great and I usually couldn’t tell the difference.

I have problems because I am trying to turn what I love into a career. So now critics and critiques matter, and “because I like it” is not a sufficient answer to “Why did you make that?”

I spent this morning in a silk-screening studio, making a terrible mess, soaking myself with the sprayer at the sink, dripping ink on my clothes, and finishing with an image that wasn’t quite good enough to turn into bad wallpaper. But it was fun.

I spent yesterday out in public, drawing pictures of people walking so fast past me that I couldn’t get a likeness, just a vague image with a sense of movement. I gave hair to bald men and put hoodies on society ladies. Why not? They didn’t care and it was fun.

For me, fun might be the most important forgotten ingredient in what I make. So I wonder, if I care less about everyone else’s opinion, will my art be better? Or will I just like it more? And will that make a career in art possible, or out of the question?

Is My Pain My Job?

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

Friday, January 18, 2013

As an art student, first undergraduate and then graduate, I’m used to hearing contradictory critiques from faculty. Some like my drawing and painting skills, but not my subject matter. Some like my subject matter and think my skills are irrelevant or even unfortunate. Some don’t care about subject matter, just method, material, and abstract formal considerations.

But what I hear more than anything else these days is that I must open myself up and reveal vulnerabilities and personal pain in my work.

I have to say, I didn’t see that one coming. Maybe I should have. But when I studied Ingres, and Rembrandt, Cezanne, and the Impressionists, representation of their personal pain was not why their art was great. Were their personal lives painful? Of course. Was that pain their primary subject matter? Of course not.

Is this a result of the reality t.v./confessional era in which we live? Dunno. But when I think of mining the parts of my life that are no one else’s business, a couple of things happen. First, I get really really angry. And second, I get ideas about how to put that anger into my paintings. Damn it.

Tomorrow Real Art News, In the Meantime, I’m With the Dogs on This One

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

My interpretation of every dog that lives within six blocks of me.

I’ve only lived in New York since last summer and I love it. I love my apartment building and my neighborhood, Chelsea. I love the subways, the shopping, and of course the art. But I have never seen so many dogs in my life. Not just at one time. I mean cumulatively.

There is a time near evening when the population of 6th Avenue is transformed from its daytime mix of shoppers and students and moms and street vendors into something far different: a horde of just-got-out-of-work-professional-men-still-in-their-business-suits-walking-the-dogs-that-their-wives-and-girlfriends-just-had-to-have.

These are tiny dogs with bouffant hairdos on pink leashes with rhinestones. These are grown men saying things like, “Just wee-wee already, Princess. Daddy is tired.” And, “Come ON, Killer, poo-poo.”

The dogs strain against their leashes no matter which way the men turn, and then suddenly lurch to the side to tangle in the legs of strangers. They sit down, mid-crosswalk, causing cabs to honk ($350 fine, but worth it). They want grass, in a city in which grass lives behind bars.

They do poop eventually, leading to the classic plastic-bag lean-and-scoop maneuver. This is not always performed cleanly and efficiently, to the detriment of innocent passersby.

One presumes that it is love for a woman that causes men to behave like this, since it is certainly not love for a dog. Their expressions of embarrassment and resignation make that clear.

Somewhere nearby, safe at home, is the real pet owner: a woman who says all too often, “Honey, would you take her for a walk, just this once?”

Thanks, Clay

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Elizabeth Cook

My brother is two years older than I am and has never stopped teasing me. Ever. When I was much younger and thought I would be a writer, he told me that the less successful I was when I was alive, the more successful I would be when I was dead. And that dying young would help. (“Emily Dickinson,” he would say, looking at me pointedly.)

Then I turned to art and got the same message. (“Vincent van Gogh,” he would shrug.) He also assured me that in the future my work would be authenticated by DNA analysis of the cat hairs caught in the layers of my paint. Okay, that’s probably true.

I just wanted to say thanks to him. Little did he know that he was telling me something valuable: fame and money are not success. I’ve had Henry Darger on the brain this week, along with other artists who worked years in solitude without recognition. What kept them going?

It wasn’t critical appreciation or sales. It wasn’t validation of any kind. So it must have been the drive to create, the striving to make it right, and the joy when it finally (and so rarely) works.

I was in the studio this morning, at a slight loss like most Mondays, when I remembered what was important. I am lucky to be an artist.

So I tell myself: Make something. Anything. And then make the next thing. It’s enough.

the least untrue / elizabeth cook

"Of all lies, art is the least untrue." -Gustave Flaubert

Category Archives: essay