An artist must be unusually intelligent in order to grasp simultaneously many structured relations. In fact, intelligence can be considered as the capacity to grasp complex relations; in this sense, Leonardo’s intelligence, for instance, is almost beyond belief. Duchamp’s intelligence contributed many things, of course, but for me its greatest accomplishment was to take him beyond the merely “aesthetic” concerns that face every “modern” artist - whose role is neither religious nor communal, but instead secular and individual. This problem has been called “the despair of the aesthetic:” if all colors or nudes are equally pleasing to the eye, why does the artist choose one color or figure rather than another? If he does not make a purely “aesthetic” choice, he must look for further criteria on which to base his value judgments. Kierkegaard held that artistic criteria were first the real of the aesthetic, then the ethical, then the realm of the holy. Duchamp, as a nonbeliever, could not have accepted holiness as a criterion but, in setting up for himself complex technical problems or new ways of expressing erotic subject matter, for instance, he did find an ethic beyond the “aesthetic” for his ultimate choices. And his most successful works, paradoxically, take on that indirect beauty achieved only by those artists who have been concerned with more than the merely sensuous. In this way, Duchamp’s intelligence accomplished nearly everything possible within the reach of a modern artist, earning him the unlimited and fully justified respect of successive small groups of admirers throughout his life. But, as he often says in the following pages, it is posterity who will judge, and he, like Stendhal, had more faith in posterity than in his contemporaries. At the same time, one learns from his conversations of an extraordinary artistic adventure, filled with direction, discipline, and disdain for art as a trade and for the repetition of what has already been done.
AKADEMIE X LESSONS IN ART + LIFE - TUTOR: THOMAS LAWSON
AKADEMIE X LESSONS IN ART + LIFE
LESSON 19
TUTOR: Thomas Lawson
Page 178
Artists notice stuff - the way things come together or fall apart, the telling detail or overlooked ruin, the tell-tale gesture. To be an artist, you have to train yourself to pay attention to the world in which you live, constantly looking for clues, always aware of your surroundings. Make notes, try observational drawing or taking photographs, study how things are made. There is no one method here. The task is to find a way to notice the details that make sense to you, the details that will open your eyes to content.
AKADEMIE X LESSONS IN ART + LIFE - TUTOR: Chris Kraus
AKADEMIE X LESSONS IN ART + LIFE
LESSON 18
TUTOR: Chris Kraus
Page 170
Whereas modernism believed that the artist’s life held all the magic keys to reading works of art, neo-conceptualism has cooled this off and corporatized it. The artist’s own biography doesn’t matter much at all. What life? The blanker the better. The life experience of the artist, if channeled into the artwork, can only impede art’s neo-corporate, neo-Conceptual purpose. It is the biography of the institution that we want to read.
Reviewing dOCUMENTA (13) in New York Magazine, Jerry Saltz coins the term ‘Post Art’ to describe work that ‘doesn’t even see art as separate from living…things that aren’t artworks so much as they are about the drive to make things that, like ar, embed imagination in material and grasp that creativity is a cosmic force…A chemist or a general may be making Post Art every day at the office.”
From Academic Emulation toward Romantic Originality
History of Modern Art, seventh edition, H.H. Arnason Elizabeth C. Mansfield, Chapter 1, page 4
The emphasis on emulation as opposed to novelty begun to lose ground toward the end of the eighteenth century when a new weight was given to artistic invention. Increasingly, invention was linked with imagination, that is to say, with the artist’s unique vision, a vision unconstrained by academic practice and freed from the pictorial conventions that had been obeyed since the Renaissance. This new attitude underlies the aesthetic interests of Romanticism. Arising in the last years of the eighteenth century and exerting its influence well into the nineteenth, Romanticism exalted humanity's capacity for emotion. In music, literature, and the visual arts, Romanticism is typified by an insistence on subjectivity and novelty. Today, few would argue that art is the simply the consequence of creative genius. Romantic artists and theorists, however, understood art to be the expression of and individual’s will to create rather than a product of particular cultural as well as personal values. Genius, for the Romantics, was something possessed innately by the artist: It could not be learned or acquired. To express genius, then, the Romantic artist had to resist academic emulation and instead turn inward, toward making pure imagination visible. The British painter and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827) typifies this approach to creativity.
Akademie X: Lessons in Art + Life
from AKADEMIE X - LESSONS IN ART + LIFE
Tutor: Katharina Grosse
Lesson: The Artist as a Link Among other Links
how I see the world: I do not see borders - not between foreground or background, nor between the visible and the invisible. I do not perceive the world through its recognizable forms, but through its possible appearances. I see the world as it is - as illusion.
I realized that thinking is performative and therefore thoughts project space. I change the world by thinking about it in different ways and by giving space to these thoughts. Therefore I can actively create past, present and future and let them happen at the same time.
Akademie X: Lessons in Art + Life
Tutor: Dan Graham
Lesson: Art Schools at Their Best and Worst
BEST
Visiting artists: Lectures and studio visits
Class trips.
Availability of video, film and audio equipment with technicians
Practical training in areas such as graphic design.
Good libraries
WORST
The emphasis, since the 1980s, on making art as a specialist professional ‘career’ rather than as a passionate experiment.
The obsession with the artist as a future ‘art star’.
The obsession with making an academic rationale for art, a good example being the overuse of the world ‘problematize’.
Teaching only the contemporary art that is found in the art magazines in the library.
Lesson: LOVER LETTER from us - Tutor: Olafur Eliasson
AKADEMIE X LESSONS IN ART + LIFE, lesson 8 - PHAIDON
…We don’t pronounce ahead of time what we think we need to know. After we do something we don’t say others should do that thing. We try to learn how to learn, so we learn where we have to go by going. We evaluate and critique ourselves along the way, and together, and always, and all ways. We invite other artists and practitioners to think and do with us. We believe in risking vulnerability and practicing in the robust discomfort of uncertainty. A shared vulnerability is important. We believe in getting out of our comfort one. We believe in an economy of effort. Of making an effort. In rejections that offer alternatives. We believe in thinking and doing, in the active imagination as an agent in the world, in shaping and being shaped by the world, in causing the world to wobble differently depending where we stand. We like the world wobbling differently.
School is not a place for a safe enclosure of lessons. School is an amplifier for the world. Lessons are not fixed ahead of time or they become rules. Dogmatic. Concrete. Belaboured. The syllabus is written after the course ends. The course is endless. The curriculum emerges out of the energy and relationships in the space and the world. It emerges out of the encounters in the world. It emerges out of the social contracts for how we negotiate and engage with each other in the world. It emerges out of questions and feelings, empathy, the politics of experimentation, perceptual awareness, the responsibility of taking risks and compassion.
A philosophy of care. It emerges out of the ecology of thoughts and ideas, being conscious that we are conscious and the felt feeling of being present. It emerges out of the question: how can art change the world?
Our school emerges out of questions of why: why make a specific artwork? Why do something one way and not the other? Why put a work in an institution? What relationships does a work empower? How does a work allow us to understand and feel the conditions and constraints through which systems squeeze the world into different forms, so that what works can touch the world? Finding our ‘whys’ helps us to prioritize content, helps us sharpen a precision with tools. Sharpening our tools helps us to collaborate with others and builds openness. Simply breathing can provide the material for a workshop. Simply breathing can be a lesson plan. Breath now. Take a deep breath. Simply breathing can help us feel an awareness of where we are and what we are doing. A pause. Break. Caesura. Everyone participating shapes the lesson, makes the lesson more, makes the lesson on.
Examples of thinking doing:
1) Go outside with the group. Walk backwards for fifteen minutes through the city. Note the change in speeds. Note what changes in who approaches.
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4) With a group stand in a circle in public space. Laugh out loud for five minutes. If you have to, fake the laughter until you make it happen on its own.
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11) As a group, walk very, very, very, very slowly for fifteen minutes in public. Very slowly. Like you are in slow motion. Like you are conscious of every bend and muscle. Like the air is a thick viscous plasma of breath. Feel your weight on the ground. Feel the ground pushing up against you. Feel your balance shift to imbalance. Cultivate that cusp of balance and control. Cultivate the carp out of it. Feel each part of the slow motion as it is distributed through your entire body. Don’t forget to breathe.
How to be an Artist, by Jerry Saltz, #32 Art as a Verb, Zettel 162
In the past two hundred years or so, art has been treated as something we look at in clean, white, well-lit galleries and museums. It’s been made to seem passive: another tourist attraction to take a picture in front of before your move on. For most of its entire history though, art has been active: something that does thing to, or for us, that makes things happen. Holy relics in churches all over the world are said to heal. -
The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich, page 577, Zettel 161
Picasso himself denied that he was making experiments. He said he did not search, he found. He mocked at those who wanted to understand his art. ‘Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird?’ Of course, he was right. No painting can be fully ‘explained’ in words. But words are sometimes useful pointers, they help to clear away misunderstandings and can give us at least an inkling of the situation in which the artist finds himself. I believe that the situation which led Picasso to his different ‘finds’ is very typical of twentieth-century art. -
The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich, page 564, Zettel 160
What upset the public about Expressionist art was, perhaps, not so much the fact that nature had been distorted as that the result led away from beauty…But the men who claimed to be serious artists should forget that if they must change the appearance of things they should idealize them rather than make them ugly was strongly resented. But (Edvard) Munch might have retorted that a shout of anguish is not beautiful, and that it would be insincere to look only at the pleasing side of life. For the Expressionists felt so strongly about human suffering, poverty, violence and passion, that they were inclined to think that the insistence on harmony and beauty in art was only born out of a refusal to be honest. The art of the classical masters, of a Raphael or Correggio, seemed to them insincere and hypocritical. They wanted to face the stark facts of our existence and to express their compassion for the disinherited and the ugly. It became almost a point of honour with them to avoid anything which smelt of prettiness and polish, and to shock the ‘bougeois‘ out of his real or imagined complacency. -
artist Marina Abramovic, from AKADEMIE X, LESSONS IN ART + LIFE
artist Marina Abramovic, from AKADEMIE X, LESSONS IN ART + LIFE
Excerpts from her message
AN ARTIST’S RELATION TO INSPIRATION
An artist should not lie to himself or to others
An artist should look deep inside himself for inspiration
The deeper he looks inside himself, the more universal he becomes
The artist is universe
The artist is universe
The artist is universe
AN ARTIST’S RELATION TO TRANSPARENCY
The artist should give and receive at the same time
Transparency means receptivity
Transparency means to give
Transparency means to receive
Transparency means receptivity
Transparency means to give
Transparency means to receive
Transparency means receptivity
Transparency means to give
Transparency means to receive
AN ARTIST’S RELATION TO SYMBOLS
An artist creates his own symbols
Symbols are an artist’s language
The language must then be translated
Sometimes it is difficult to find the key
Sometimes it is difficult to find the key
Sometimes it is difficult to find the key
AN ARTIST’S RELATION TO SILENCE
An artist has to understand silence
An artist has to create space for silence to enter his work
Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean
Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean
Silence is like an island in the middle of a turbulent ocean
AN ARTIST’S RELATION TO SOLITUDE
An artist must make time for long periods of solitude
Solitude is extremely important
Away from home
Away from the studio
Away from family
Away from friends
An artist should stay for long periods of time at waterfalls
An artist should stay for long periods of time exploring volcanoes
An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at fast-running rivers
An artist should stay for long periods of time at horizons where the ocean and sky meet
An artist should stay for long periods of time looking at the stars in the night sky
How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz #31, Zettel 159
If you are stymied by some artists, keep their names on a list and keep coming back to them. You might start with Rembrandt, unflinching in depicting the physical weight of the world, every vulnerable. Or Constable, as elementally tactile as any artist who ever lived. Once an artist finally makes sense to you, take on a new one. You owe it to you yourself as a seeing machine -
How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz #19, Zettel 158
A work of art cannot depend on explanation. The meaning has got to be there in the work. As Frank Stella said, “There are no good ideas for paintings, there are only good paintings.” THe painting becomes the idea…the artist can embed thought in any material.
How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz #19, Zettel 157
Embed thought in Material. What does this mean? An artwork should express thought and emotion ( I contend that the two can’t be separated.) Your goal as an artist is to use physical materials to make these thoughts and emotions, however simple or complex, accessible to the viewer…Erick Fischl had said that he “wanted to paint what couldn’t be said.” All artists are trying, on some level, to do the same.
How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz #10, Zettel 156
…serious artists tend to develop a kind of creative mechanism - a conceptual approach - that allows them to be led by new ideas and surprise themselves without deviating from their own artistic principles. As an artist, you’re always studying your environment, absorbing sensations, memories of how things work and don’t. The goal is to create a practice that allows a constant recalibration between your imagination and the world around you.
How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz #6, Zettel 155
What’s the difference between genre and style? Style is the unstable essence and artist brings to a genre - what ensures that no two Crucifictions, say, look the same. Oscar Wilde said that style is what “makes us believe in a thing.”…A fresh style breathes life into any genre.
How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz #5, Zettel 154
Oscar Wilde said, “the moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.” Imagination is your creed, sentimentality and lack of feeling are your foes.
The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich, Page 544, Zettel 152
…in all the struggles and gropings there was one thing he was prepared to sacrifice if need be: the conventional ‘correctness’ of outline. He (Cezanne) was not out to distort nature; but he did not mind very much if it became distorted in some minor detail provided this helped him to obtain the desired effect….he hardly realized that this example of indifference to ‘correct drawing’ would start a landslide in art. - The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich, Page 544, Zettel 152
The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich, Page 543, Zettel 151
Cezanne had ceased to take any of the traditional methods of painting for granted. he had decided to start from scratch as if no painting had been done before him….Cezanne had chosen his motifs to study some specific problems that he wanted to solve….- The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich, Page 543, Zettel 151
How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz, Page 76, Zettel 150
If you think that all art should be like High Renaissance painting, or like van Gogh, Eva Hesse, or Basquiat, think again. Human beings are hardwired to crave change. The universe is expanding; so are we, and so is art. Which doesn’t mean it’s getting better, or worse, only that all art was once contemporary art, in conversation with its time. yours is, too. Every choice you make - should serve not nostalgia, but your visceral present. You are an artist of modern life. That personal, specific urgency is what finds every successful work of art. - How to be an Artist, Jerry Saltz, Page 76, Zettel 150