Top Ten Words I am Sick Of Seeing On Artist Statements

September 1, 2016 7:50 PM

Andrea Liu seeks to problematize this continually deferred relationship in her essay entitled, the Top Ten Words I Am Sick Of Seeing On Artist Statements.
posted by gemutlichkeit (119 comments total)

I wanted to criticize this for being described as an "essay" when it is really just a list, admittedly rather longer than the initial 20 points that marked my initial stopping point, but then I discovered that this is in fact a link to a .DOC file which may contain the essay itself. I haven't opened it because my interest in reading this essay cannot overcome my disinterest in selecting a location to save this file to. Regardless of that derail, the list kept me thinking about its contents even after I composed this response, so I guess it's a pretty good list.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 7:57 PM on September 1, 2016 [14 favorites]

These things always seem like they're created with some kind of "Madlibs: Pretentious Narcissist" kit. I was about to say that the writers of these things should probably just write the way people speak, but then I realized that they probably do speak the way they write.

Top two things I hate seeing on a website: 1. Tiny yellow courier 2. bright blue background
posted by jonathanhughes at 7:59 PM on September 1, 2016 [31 favorites]

Yeah it's not a well designed page.

In screaming about artist statements and their vague meaningless language, it falls into the exact same vagueness trap.
posted by Ferreous at 8:00 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

The previously mentioned .DOC file is just the contents of the page, but black on white, not yellow on blue, so much easier to read if you're turned off by the web page.
posted by jonathanhughes at 8:04 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

All names of future Portland apartment complexes. And one SpaceX drone ship.
posted by Auden at 8:06 PM on September 1, 2016 [8 favorites]

Blue screen of death!
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:15 PM on September 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

This simultaneously makes me want to scream, because it's so true, and laugh till I can't breathe, because it's so true.

I have reached a point in my life where this is now my artist's statement in its entirety:

"I like to make pretty things."

Because I absolutely refuse to play that game anymore. (And one of the great things about being an artist is that refusing to play the game just makes you seem more artsy.)
posted by MexicanYenta at 8:15 PM on September 1, 2016 [55 favorites]

The doc file is identical to the page. The page however is right on, despite the yellow monospace on blue. I want to write a companion piece: "phrases I hate in continental philosophy conference paper abstracts" except that it would be identical.
posted by dis_integration at 8:16 PM on September 1, 2016 [7 favorites]

What's interesting to me, which is not the Dilbert-esque "in my job I hear these words and phrases so often they feel cliche", is that I find metafilter's white-on-blue color scheme wonderful to read, but this yellow-on-blue scheme almost painful. The differences in saturation of the blue, and thinness of the font strokes, seem to matter the most. This comment might seem like a beanplating derail, but as she says on her page, "Andrea Liu is a visual art and performance critic..." My comment addresses the liminal space between sign and semiotics of her stylesheet, particularly code that says text-rendering: optimizelegibility; while also saying font-family: "Courier New"; and color: rgb(255, 255, 0);.
posted by traveler_ at 8:36 PM on September 1, 2016 [27 favorites]

oh snaaaaap direct call-out of Eyebeam and NYU ITP
posted by gusandrews at 8:47 PM on September 1, 2016

Holy crap this list makes me so fucking glad I am a cartoonist rather than a Fine Artist. I don't have to play this game at all. I can just say "here's a comic I spent a few years drawing, it's about X Y and Z, it's twenty five bucks on Kickstarter or free online" or "here's my pitch for a cool space opera cartoon".

Gimme that low culture, baby. You can take that interrogation of the concept of "art" and shove it up your intersticiality.
posted by egypturnash at 8:47 PM on September 1, 2016 [13 favorites]

oh crap also my alma mater
posted by gusandrews at 8:48 PM on September 1, 2016 [2 favorites]

My artist statement is "stop reading these idiotic artist statements and just look at the art."

Because I'm not a writer. I'm an artist.
posted by freakazoid at 8:57 PM on September 1, 2016 [4 favorites]

Aww, I like liminal spaces.
posted by Artw at 9:02 PM on September 1, 2016 [23 favorites]

Pretty sure the cricket-flinging subway lady didn't use any of these. Point in her favor!
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:04 PM on September 1, 2016 [13 favorites]

The templates are especially lovely, even if the site burned my eyes. Thanks for sharing!
posted by lazuli at 9:05 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

A few years ago a friend asked me to proofread his artist's statement, so I crossed out all the pretentious phrases and rewrote them in plain english, and he was all no no I have to use those words because the gallery told me to, I just wanted you to look for typos and bad punctuation.
posted by maggiemaggie at 9:08 PM on September 1, 2016 [29 favorites]

My "blue screen of death" comment got cut off -- I was trying to say that her site both looks like a BSOD, and that it somehow managed to give my ancient temporary laptop a BSOD. It was probably just a coincidence, but either way, annoying as all hell.
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:09 PM on September 1, 2016 [3 favorites]

Anyone else bothered by the fact that there are more than ten words on this page?
posted by cristinacristinacristina at 9:29 PM on September 1, 2016 [15 favorites]

Nope. Not a single other human being anywhere.
posted by lazuli at 9:32 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

The list made me nostalgic for my undergrad classes in contemporary literature! I have never felt smarter and more knowledgeable than back then...
posted by ipsative at 9:37 PM on September 1, 2016

The apolectic delineation of the text manifests controversy diverging spacial relations in the inner-privleged imagination which exudes compressed images of William Burroughs polishing a Luger.
posted by clavdivs at 9:37 PM on September 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

Top ten works of art I'm sick of:

1: Art that's so damn clever and self aware, it crawled up its own asshole and back out its mouth without even trying. (Or realizing it?)

~

I agree with Ferrous that it's just as vacuous a piece as the writing it would like to critique. I'm not attempting to deny that such writing should not be criticized, however what does this achieve other than another eye-roll at the seemingly unending hypocrisy of the art world?

Sure, the "art world" seems to be a massive orgy of ego (and money laundering/speculation) masquerading as high-culture, artists statements and all, but that's been the case for a long time. I guess making fun of the current de-rigueur language trends is new and possibly thought provoking to some...anyways, now I'm beginning to crawl up my own you know what so I'll just stahp.
posted by nikoniko at 9:58 PM on September 1, 2016

I did not see "Exploring our relationship with spaces." in there.

I have been working with, and checking out the art of a lot of new media/tech art people recently, and they sure do love to explore our relationship with spaces.
posted by St. Sorryass at 11:13 PM on September 1, 2016 [9 favorites]

When I see an artist whose work I really like, I often have to consciously avoid reading the artist's statement because oh my god artists stop ruining your art by announcing you're a pretentious buffoon! And I know it's a genre with its own demands and clichés, but I can't help it, I get to wondering how they have so little self awareness that they think this is a cute or smart or amusing way to describe themselves, and I start to wonder if I'm dumb for liking their art, because they sure seem to have been dumb while making it and maybe this is a sign that I am foolish and fall for PT Barnum art.

Which is probably in at least some measure a fact if being a word person looking at visual art and presented with nice comprehensible words, and I know galleries want the pretentious words, but also, ugggggggh, stop being a pretentious sophomore! Your ridiculously performative words are problematizing my liminal relationship with your work and I'm backing right back over that threshold and out of the gallery.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:26 PM on September 1, 2016 [10 favorites]

I was going to go all "[previously]" but according to the site search, Arty Bollocks has never graced the FP. It has, however, problemetized our relationship with algorithmically-generated pretentious verbosity in a comment or two.

In less algorithmically cynical ways: this site's lack of calling out the art-tech program I dropped out of (but calling out everyone they wanted to compete with) reassures me that dropping out was the right call.
posted by Alterscape at 11:41 PM on September 1, 2016 [1 favorite]

But what is actually wrong with using philosophico-aesthetic jargon? Don't all specialized fields develop their own jargons to represent more complicated ideas?

I think you could argue that Andrea Liu is merely lashing out at the realisation of loss of their expected own personal prestige, distinction and power, that was to come by developing an ability themselves to wield these terms. The ubiquity of the terms in other "lesser" artists has driven Andreas Liu into a kind of conservative ressentiment.

Liu's disappointment and loss of privilege in the face of a democratisation of aesthetic theory manifests itself in this rant against "theory" / "jargon" / "bullshit", which is ironically, just as commonplace as the theory itself.
posted by mary8nne at 1:18 AM on September 2, 2016 [16 favorites]

Top Ten Reasons Sophomores are the Worst. Omg juniors rule.
posted by ian1977 at 1:42 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

That link made me want to poo
posted by Sebmojo at 1:44 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

It problematised the relationship between me and my colon
posted by Sebmojo at 1:47 AM on September 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

Was it a rupture problemitization or more of a suture sitch?
posted by ian1977 at 1:50 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

But what is actually wrong with using philosophico-aesthetic jargon? Don't all specialized fields develop their own jargons to represent more complicated ideas?

Because a lot of these phrases represent quite simple ideas that could be described with simple English words instead of sounding like someone pasted academic French into Google Translate and hoped for the best.
posted by kersplunk at 3:28 AM on September 2, 2016 [20 favorites]

Solid blue background on the internet? Don't they know professional standards?
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:38 AM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Last January, my alternate-retro-future surf band (we like Man or Astro-man? possibly more than is healthy) got invited to play at a seminar at the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. A seminar on aural sculpture. It was a fun gig in the end, but dude, the questions we were asked, and the answers they expected from us...

"What's your process?"
Um... We come up with some riffs or something, then make a bassline and some stylophones fit, and maybe slap in some samples that made us laugh.
"Do you think of yourselves as artists or musicians first?"
Neither, really. I guess we're each a (guitarist/bassist/drummer/stylophonist) but even that seems like too lofty a claim.
"....oh. But like, what message so you want your audience to take away?"
Uh... Have a good time? Is dancing a message?
It went on like this for several pints with the organiser ahead of the gig (sorry, seminar) which we played at unnecessary volume in a (sculpture) studio in the basement of the Slade. Nobody knew what to make of it (fun fact - attendance was compulsory for more than half the audience, as part of the post grad sculpture course) but those of us in the band learned an awful lot about the important emotional content and vital social critique of a largely instrumental band called We Are A Communist. It was interesting. We still don't think we're artists or sculptors(!) but we do think art students are full of a lot of shit (but super nice).

shameless plug: Link to music on my profile, first bandcamp link
posted by Dysk at 3:45 AM on September 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

I've been putting my stuff into more shows lately and have seen a bunch of artist's statements. At my hobbyist/amateur level, most of us don't know what we're doing and just sort of make it up as we go along. There's a bit of a cargo cult thing going on here - we're told we need an artist statement to hang in Upper Peoria Art Association's Stairway Gallery, so we throw something together based on what we see, copying certain tropes and styles because we figure that's what Real Artists Do.

I've tried to bodge mine together into some sort of narrative, but there are definitely some cringey parts in there, some of which I think are required others because I was like "ungh tired of this thing now" and just put text to screen.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:01 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Don't all specialized fields develop their own jargons to represent more complicated ideas?

I don't disparage architecture its lintels and pediments and newels and clerestories, nor mechanical engineering its chamfers and fillets and journals and detents. I do disparage the business world its attempts to action existing synergy while cross-platforming a brand-forward message with exponential scalability potential.

There's nothing inherently complicated about the ideas in the former examples. Rather, they're ideas not commonly discussed outside of their respective fields, and the jargon allows practitioners of those fields to discuss them economically and precisely. The latter is an example of using fluffy, fancy words for their own sake where, as kersplunk noted, less-flashy words would serve just fine (assuming there's anything of substance to begin with).

Also, is the link, by omission, condoning "generative process"? Because I am really sick of hearing "generative process".
posted by 7segment at 4:04 AM on September 2, 2016 [22 favorites]

I was having fun reading this, but by the time I got to the bottom, it felt like the writer was taking such a scattergun approach that the satire lost its savor. It became practically anything anybody might say in an artist's statement ever. Some of her targets didn't seem very target-y to me. Still, I enjoyed it. As others have said, especially the templates.

I had the same reaction as the person up-thread who does cartoons. I just finished writing a romance novel, and it's like, "Well, I like people having relationships and falling in love and kissing and stuff. Also it's funny." There's so little room for pretension deep in a genre where people let their ids run wild for the fun of it.
posted by not that girl at 4:20 AM on September 2, 2016

Some of her targets didn't seem very target-y to me

There's no 'there's no there there' there.
posted by thelonius at 4:22 AM on September 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

The difference between the high/contemporary art world and other fields is that these artist know they are a bunch of pretentious bastards. They don't have a problem with it. Some pretension is required to play, otherwise why wouldn't you just get a job in a supermarket? However, the argument that these things are too pretentious is just going down the route that says no creative project may show flair, or vision, but instead must stick to a set of guidelines that nobody has to hand.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:39 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Suggested generic artist statement:

I like the way this came out. If you like it too, great! If you don't, we'll both be happier if you go to some other piece.

posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:41 AM on September 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

I've been in photography school for the last few years and I'm so glad that they don't traffic in all that MFA speak there. This stuff makes me wince.
posted by octothorpe at 4:45 AM on September 2, 2016

Artist's statements usually make me gag, but I blame the absurd expectation that visual artists be able to fluently explain their work in a non-visual art form, not the artists themselves.

I can't find it now but I remember we had a similar thread to this a few years ago and someone said they'd had a job/internship in some small gallery where they'd get the chance to help decide what work got exhibited. They were excited about this until they found out they wouldn't get to see the art at all - they had to decide just based on the artist's statements.
posted by kersplunk at 5:10 AM on September 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

It felt like a random shotgun blast targeting everything and nothing. But then, as someone who went to art school and worked in an art museum, I'm all too aware of the pressure on artists to say deep-sounding things about what they do. Most of the artists of my acquaintance were basically people who made things or performed acts, not the kind of people who liked to write analytical essays. Many of the essay-writing people become curators who like their artists cleaned up and/or dead.

I still can't explain why my attention seizes on certain images in certain settings and why it becomes a preoccupation for me to get across (in paint, in photos, in anything I can find) what it is that transfixes me. I know theoretically that no one can see what I see, but that doesn't keep me from thinking how obvious it is. Oh, that word "liminal?" That's a good one. I'll use that.
posted by Peach at 5:17 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

When I read "Top Ten Words I am Sick of Seeing on Artists' Statements" the first word that came to my mind was "body." Strangely, I did not see that word in her entire screed.

Yeah, the piece was like a "random shotgun blast" (nice phrase, Peach), but International Art Speak makes you want to scream and shoot sometimes. It was hard for me not to enjoy her rant.
posted by kozad at 5:23 AM on September 2, 2016

Roland Barthes and I like it best when the author is dead.

Fortunately, the author is always dead.
posted by sonascope at 5:31 AM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Thing is, I am intrigued by the performative dimension of language in liminal space, how it seeks to negotiate the tension between rupture and suture, to problematize a continually deferred relationship from the ongoing interplay between physical site and displacement, subverting the traditional subject/object relationship. The post-Fordism of a multi-channel sound and video installation from repurposed materials in hybrid space displays the temporal/spatial dynamics of the dialogical relationship between the collaborative duo of the affective dimension and itinerant practice in its final iteration.

But then, basically, I am really just an inventor.
posted by Segundus at 5:39 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

If you google the template phrases, you can find the real life examples that the author is making fun of.

For instance, the post-feminist slut/voyeur is apparently Laurel Nakadate.
posted by anotherpanacea at 5:43 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

This post and its comments are really not much different than gripes about pretentious pomo academic literary criticism. Whether you view that as a good or bad thing is up to you. Just an observation.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:53 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Why do they write this way? Because they're playing the game. If you're not already a rich trust funder, you're at a huge disadvantage in society because you decided to make this your career. So the gallery wants you to write some pretentious boilerplate shit to go along with your work? You do it. Because it's part of the game. It's what sells. You'll never be a great artist until you start acting like one, so get on it.

Thankfully, Andrea Liu has written a wonderful crib sheet to make it easy!
posted by fungible at 5:54 AM on September 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

Thank you fungible!

If you don't like how people write about art, blame the gatekeepers that feast on this nonsense.
posted by lownote at 5:55 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Because a lot of these phrases represent quite simple ideas that could be described with simple English words instead of sounding like someone pasted academic French into Google Translate and hoped for the best.

Le postulat de cette hypothèse a pour fondement une incompréhension linguistique qu'on pourrait aussi qualifier de manque de précision herméneutique puisque toute incompréhension a pour base une différence ; différence qui porte aussi en lui le germe de richesse philosophique.

Translation: yep.
posted by fraula at 5:59 AM on September 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

pretentious pomo academic literary criticism
Is "pomo" something I need an MFA to understand?
posted by clorox at 6:03 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is "pomo" something I need an MFA to understand?

I think it's slang for 'post modern'.
posted by Jalliah at 6:04 AM on September 2, 2016

Because a lot of these phrases represent quite simple ideas that could be described with simple English words ...

I simply do not believe this is true.

Take an example, what would be an equivalent "simple English words" way of talking about the "the performative dimension of language"?
or any of the other 20 examples?

oh actually her 20th example is the "simple english words" approach itself!

“basically i am really just an inventor” isn't that the epitome of the anti-academic posture.
posted by mary8nne at 6:23 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

That's a pretty good "postmodern piss taking of the artists statement" artist statement that they've got there.

10/10 would laugh and side eye again.
posted by Annika Cicada at 6:28 AM on September 2, 2016

I'd love to read a historical version of this. Say the one 20 years ago that rants about "intertextuality" and "deconstruction".
posted by Nelson at 6:40 AM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

If I did not communicate my message to you with my art, then I failed. If my message is too complicated to be communicated with an artwork and a title, then the message needs to be conveyed with other means or refined until it can be communicated as an artwork. Some media, like literature, music, and theater, use language directly to communicate meaning. Try those, they're great!

I just....I can't with artist statements-- they display a lack of trust with the audience as thinking humans who can pick up on meaning and think about it, and a lack of trust in my abilities and worth of my message. If you're going to deconstruct meaning, just fuckin' deconstruct it and let us figure it out.
posted by blnkfrnk at 6:43 AM on September 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yes! I just had to make two artist statements and I'm not guilty of any of these! Not going to art school is finally paying off!
posted by clockbound at 6:46 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I used to love sketching and doing art for fun until I took an art class with the sort of teacher who rants for long periods of time about how old ladies who paint flowers are not artists and comics are not artists and doing crafts is not art.

I stopped doing art for fun after that class and it's been more than 10 years I still feel she's managed to suck the joy and meaning out of art done by the "common people", the inferior people, those unworthy of doing art.

Yuck.

Such people create more suffering when making art in whatever that means to each person should be the birthright of every human. If you make art such that your goal is to make everyone else who does art feel inferior and meaningless you have not served them but robbed them of a sacred part of their humanity.
posted by xarnop at 6:51 AM on September 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

 → Top two things I hate seeing on a website: 1. Tiny yellow courier 2. bright blue background

Yellow on blue is usually the sign of a former Amstrad CPC user.
posted by scruss at 6:55 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, artists are sorta caught between a rock and a hard place, aren't they? Ahem—I mean, they're forced to explore the liminal space between a rock and a hard place. Resolve the tensions between rocks and hard places? Anyway.

If you're making art that isn't forcing you to think about the material as you develop it, then you're maybe not pushing yourself in the way that results in art being provocative or compelling. Maybe some of that art is interesting for audiences, but as the person actually creating a new thing, feeling as if you're retreading ground you've covered a dozen times before can be really aggravating. So you're constantly tempted to try things which, by their nature, you can only articulate in fairly complex ways.

The thing is, the inverse of that audience/artist dynamic also holds true. Things which are frustrating and challenging for you are maybe old hat to most of the viewing audience, especially if you're I dunno 22 years old and your critiquing audience is twice your age. And when you're in the middle of a really intensive thought process, it does matter that you note the distinction between "exploring the tensions between X and Y" and "operating in the liminal space between X and Y", not because your audience gives a shit, but because you are still struggling to define what it is that you're doing. It's a trained skill in and of itself to be able to turn those thought processes off and trust that they'll be there for you to turn on again when you return.

This is a subject that I suspect I'm inclined to play perpetual devil's advocate to. If the linked article had been a defense of artists' statements, I'd instinctively feel the need to rip that defense apart; instead, I find myself empathizing with the sincere artists who do feel like this jargon maps out a territory that matters a great deal to them, but which they have a very difficult time expressing. A part of my personal artistic obsession is exploring the dynamic between casual English and abstract academic language, and trying to figure out which bits of which are actually performing useful functions versus which are just along for the ride cos we're so used to them. A lot of "simple" English is just as needlessly wordy as jargonized English, but we don't notice it as much, because we're used to a particular sequence wherein three sentences are used to say one thing so we just write it off as "normal". Then somebody uses a single precise term that they think is important and red lights flash in our heads and we hear sirens and literally nothing else the writer says matters because we've already stuck em in the Asshole Hole. (The ((Ass + 1)Hole), if you're mathematically inclined.)

In summary, art is a land of contrasts. I bet a lot of people who really love artists' statements are probably real frustrated by people proudly boasting about how they're glad not to have to think of their work in those terms. Neither group is "right". Both groups irritate me when they act like they've got a working theory of what The One True Art ought to be, failing to realize that it's that mentality itself which is the serious cause of all their problems.
posted by rorgy at 7:02 AM on September 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

"Artist statements" are basically apologies, aren't they?

I make electronic music of various kinds. My process generally involves fucking around for a while until I think I've stumbled into something neat, and then running with it until I think it's done or I'm bored with it.

I've been doing this for decades, and can improvise anyway -- so at this point the whole start to finish on a track might be 2 hours or 20, just depending on how things go. Usually much closer to the low end.

For 2016 I gave myself the challenge of finishing one track per week (and I'm well ahead of that) -- and when I'm done, I post it with a little blurb about the process and gear. Almost every blurb is some variation on "I was listening to this other song and got the idea to try X with Y" or "I was playing with this new piece of gear and liked what I heard" or "I was going to do something with style Z but it turned into style Q instead".

There is no explicit philosophy or thought process behind it. It's the exercise of a set of skills, it's play and experimentation and improvisation that get frozen into a recording. Does that mean it's not art? Whatever, don't care.
posted by Foosnark at 7:08 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

[Foosnark]: Does that mean it's not art?

Sorry to burst your bubble, but posting your (self admittedly) derivative musical noodlings on Soundcloud is a bit different to oh you know actually working as a contemporary artist and living on grants, performance pieces and various works.

From the sound of it your work it is not really "art", it is not even attempting to be "art" today.
posted by mary8nne at 7:18 AM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Some media, like literature, music, and theater, use language directly to communicate meaning. Try those, they're great!

...This...this kind of thing isn't absent from literature, music, and theater either.

Understand - I love my friend C. I love the theater company he founded, and I love and am proud of the work I did running that theater company with him for ten years. We worked very, very well together, had a lot of success, and very, very few disagreements on company policy - and if we did disagree, we were usually able to negotiate our differences with only a few minutes' worth of discussion, brainstorming, and collaborating to find a mutually-satisfactory resolution.

I think in our entire working relationship - nay, in our entire friendship - there have only been about two disagreements which we had to leave at an impasse. One of them was about politics - but the other was about the mission statement for that theater company, which he wrote himself when he founded the company a year before we met, and which contained a phrase about how the company sought to create theater "through some combination of bloodshed and eloquence".

For ten years I told him, at every board meeting, that I had no idea what the fuck that meant and suggested he edit that. For ten years he refused.

And thus, in bloodshed and eloquence was the company founded, and in bloodshed and eloquence did it fold two years ago, and I still don't know what the fuck it means and I have always suspected that neither does he.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:28 AM on September 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

I've edited a couple of painter friends' statements, and one painter really hated having to do them, but it was expected, and there we were, trading drafts back and forth. The other said he hated it, but I think he actually liked it, and there we were, too, trading drafts. They both resented that it was expected and both professed that they'd rather be "making art."

The first didn't like it because he really didn't like interrogating his process or his likes and dislikes or all the other assumptions that hide behind "neat" or "funny" or "got an idea." The second secretly liked it because of that effort. Making that painter's own self the center of everyone's attention is a big part of who they are and what they make.

I think there's value in considering and analyzing ones work and assumptions and so on -- and not just artists! -- although yeah, the language can be overwrought and dense and not always worth untangling.
posted by notyou at 7:39 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

"Does that mean it's not art?"

I'm glad you're creating and sharing. If that is not "art" than the people who feel pretentious about art can have it, I'll stand with the people who just want to create and share with their fellow humans- who would rather grow their hearts than grow a sense of superiority about their skills that divides them from their fellow humans instead of connecting and relating and growing closer.

I think symbols can have great power and their form or the skill of how they are created is less important depending on your goal. And not everyone has to have the same set of goals about art. It's a big world. There can be meaning in many a types of creation and production.
posted by xarnop at 7:44 AM on September 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

(self admittedly) derivative

Not really what I said, but you've already judged my creativity and found it wanting without any need to actually hear anything I've done, so I guess communication is futile. I didn't mention Soundcloud, and in fact rarely use it. But you have me ALL figured out, I'm sure.


actually working as a contemporary artist and living on grants, performance pieces and various works

My brother went to Ringling School of Art & Design. He paints. He's had stuff in galleries a couple of times, but doesn't live on that. He's never gotten a grant. He has traded paintings for tattoos. He gets a regular paycheck from Trader Joe's for painting signs. Artist or not?
posted by Foosnark at 7:44 AM on September 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

From the sound of it your work it is not really "art", it is not even attempting to be "art" today

There are certain differences between those that create for a living and those that create because they desire to, but to say it's not art is bullshit.
posted by chambers at 7:48 AM on September 2, 2016 [13 favorites]

"1. liminal space"
Lord yes.
posted by Outlawyr at 7:59 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I made a thing. I am thinking about other artists who have also made things and how they made them, and also about builders who make things so there can be cities and ways to get to them. Sometimes those things fall apart or aren't finished and I like to paint them when they are like that. Also I like plants, and the sky, and lights when it is dark out.

And I fucking love liminal spaces.
posted by pernoctalian at 7:59 AM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Do what you want and don't worry about the labels other people apply to it.
posted by freakazoid at 7:59 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

How about at a big multi-artist even put together bingo cards with the best pretentious phrases?
posted by sammyo at 8:07 AM on September 2, 2016

Dysk, you had me at "we like Man or Astro-Man? possibly more than is healthy". That's a perfectly fine artist's statement IMHO.

This thread is tempting me to write up something simple about Why I Draw The Comics I Draw and bribe a friend with a degree in postmodern gender intertextuality to translate it into Humanities-ese. Or just get some Barthes and play Burroghsian cut-up with it. I'm not sure there'd be much difference in the result. But I'm also still a cartoonist, so I still don't have to do this kind of shit unless I think it'd be funny. Still glad I ditched that fine arts-oriented school all those years ago in favor of animation school.
posted by egypturnash at 8:07 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh hey it's the "Let's trash intellectual artists thread" on mefi.

See y'all hosers later.
posted by Annika Cicada at 8:12 AM on September 2, 2016 [9 favorites]

No Mo Po Mo. Period.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:16 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

"1. liminal space"
Lord yes.

When I say "liminal zone" I generally just mean a time when reality is particularly thin like New Year's Eve or Halloween (or a physical place like Recessions, if you've been to Recessions for karaoke you know what I mean, that place is the border crossing between our reality and one that's much worse) so usually when I refer to a "liminal zone" I mean I'm going to explore chaos and go where the night takes me by getting super fucking wasted.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 8:25 AM on September 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

Or, like, when you're half awake and half asleep and stuff crosses over.
posted by Artw at 8:26 AM on September 2, 2016

Art as well as many other things in the world are often better appreciated when there is context and a way to tie the visual (or audible or even smell) into the experience of the viewer. Studying the history around the time of a great opera may give it life. And technical jargon is also helpful to focus on a particular topic or aesthetic that's being highlighted. But too often artist statements seem to string a seemingly random set of jargon and personal (feels made up) history to just add importance to the show. The key point is perhaps many statements are just not well written if the impression is "I'm not smart enough to get that" rather than "Oh wow, that makes sense, cool!".
posted by sammyo at 8:27 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I should make it clear for anyone who feels trashed, I personally am happy to stand up for those who like expanding their vocabulary and thinking about art concepts and using those words to talk about it. It's fun to show off, and that's ok if that's the goal-- it's also easy to forget a lot of people haven't been able to go to art school or devote a lot of time to learning about art, some by choice and some by difficult life circumstances that have taken precedence, so writing for a target audience with that in mind might help reach those who will be alienated by that language. However it's ok to write just for a niche, or make art just for a niche who likes that kind of art and is knowledgeable about the vocabulary in art circles and learning environments.

Doesn't bother me at all personally what people write about their own work- but I don't like when the art world sets itself up to alienate anyone who deviates from those norms and makes them feel excluded from participating in art without being shamed or seen as inferior. I think there is space for some art arenas to be exclusive spaces for those are part of that community, and for some to work a little harder to be inclusive- to make art accessible to people who don't get to participate as easily.
posted by xarnop at 8:38 AM on September 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

This seemed like a playful pisstake of some conventions that could use their piss being taken. I enjoyed the lookfeel of it, down to the yellow monospace on blue. And, as often when posts touch upon such stuff, I'm a little surprised at some of the parochial responses from the (this) Blue.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:38 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Maybe what she needs to do is to issue some kind of clarifying statement about the website she made. So people understand it better? idk
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 8:39 AM on September 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Is "pomo" something I need an MFA to understand?

It looks to me like artistic kerning.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:59 AM on September 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

But what about the didactic of the dialectical dichotomy?
posted by spacely_sprocket at 9:00 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

After looking at this page and then coming back to Metafilter, it turned the Blue into the Bluish-Gray.
posted by degoao at 9:48 AM on September 2, 2016

I'm throwing in behind academic words and "liminal space" - I looooooooove vocabulary. I love writing. I love finding the words I need to say what I'm thinking.

It's not the words I hate, it's the people who use them.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 9:50 AM on September 2, 2016

"It looks to me like artistic kerning."

You ever do a google search for "pomography"?
posted by I-baLL at 9:56 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

But what about the didactic of the dialectical dichotomy?

Split.
posted by Artw at 9:57 AM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

My niece is always refining her artist's statement as a dancer/choreographer. I told her to include, "... has more than the average number of arms and legs."
posted by StickyCarpet at 10:05 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

“basically i am really just an inventor” (almost always said by heterosexual male artist)

As a hetero male, I'm afraid I need someone to explain this. Is it meant by the men to be putting themselves down, propping themselves up, or neither? I realize this is stupid, but I don't get it. Please help?
posted by josher71 at 10:06 AM on September 2, 2016

There's no 'there's no there there' there.

There, there. There's a "there there" over there.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:08 AM on September 2, 2016

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:09 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

My aunt has been doing ceramics for years, earned her Master's in the art when I was still in grade school, and has exhibited pieces in various places. I asked her once how she responds to persons viewing her works. She said she lets them lead the conversation, as in "Oh so I see here that this piece speaks to your deep feelings about XXXX and obviously was influenced by YYYY and I love that you incorporated ZZZZ, was that what you were going for here?" to which she replies "Yes, exactly!"

The patron leaves feeling smart and appreciated, and my aunt leaves just happy that the thing she made for whatever reason (or no reason whatsoever) got shown in a gallery. Everyone wins. No pretension necessary on the part of the artist.

She gave me a pot once that we use to hold brushes in the bathroom. It has (entirely coincidentally) exactly matched the color scheme in not one but TWO places we've lived, an old rental and our current home. I am sure that was exactly her intent when choosing that particular shade of pale peach glaze.
posted by caution live frogs at 10:26 AM on September 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

"liminal space"

Something I first heard of in anthropology class in the 80's
posted by thelonius at 10:26 AM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I need to memorize some of these for the next time I visit a museum.

Sometime in the late 90s my sister-in-law and her then husband were visiting us in the Twin Cities. They wanted to see the famous cherry in the spoon sculpture so we went to the sculpture garden. Then we went into the Walker Art Center. My wife and I are more Minneapolis Institute of Art people but we were game.

As we went from gallery to gallery we were getting a little numb. So we started "interpreting" each piece, taking turns. No matter what, we always ended each interpretation with "and that represents man's inhumanity to man."

We started getting a following. A following that began to chant "man's inhumanity to man" with us. Who said that Minnesotans were remote and humorless? Well, the Walker staff didn't see the humor in it but that's too bad.
posted by Ber at 10:51 AM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

why care what someone else writes on their artist statement. write your own any damn way you want.

the words shouldn't matter if the art is good, or if it resonates with you for whatever reason.

artists aren't writers for a reason. or something.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:18 PM on September 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

TBH as a writer being asked to go too far into why I wrote something is a tricky proposition for me.

(I have lots of opinions on other peoples stuff, obvs)
posted by Artw at 12:49 PM on September 2, 2016

Metafilter: "and that represents man's inhumanity to man."
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 1:07 PM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sure, some of this is certainly low-hanging fruit for satire, and cliches / overuse of words are a thing. But a confluence of concerns/themes along with focus on the craft seems normal and natural, and finding a way to communicate your artistic preoccupations in a more precise way - as part of a continuing conversation, couched in concepts and terms of art that have specific shared meanings in that conversation - doesn't strike me as a huge sin. And complaining about artists exploring space, or talking about 'temporality' or 'ambiguity' is like.. I don't know. Seems like that's a lot of what art is trying to do if you're not working on representational stuff? If you're able to see through ALL of it as tired bullshit, then I want to check out your art and how it does something new, but I'm skeptical.
posted by naju at 1:39 PM on September 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Daisy: What do you do, Brian?
Brian: I'm an artist.
Daisy: Oh, Tim's an artist. What kind of thing do you do?
posted by Artw at 1:46 PM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

"When I see an artist whose work I really like, I often have to consciously avoid reading the artist's statement because oh my god artists stop ruining your art by announcing you're a pretentious buffoon!"

See, here's the thing - anytime this has come up for discussion in any group of artists I've been a part of, it's been unanimous that we all despise writing these things. The problem is that the higher quality art shows and galleries all demand them. You can't even apply for most good art shows without including a few paragraphs of dreck.

The problem is that the people making the decisions about these things are generally not artists themselves - and I find that a lot of people who aren't artistic like to imagine that there's some mysterious mental process to making art, and that only some people are born with the ability to engage that process.

This came up for discussion recently in a group I belong to, and the consensus was that because a lot of customers also believe in the Mysterious Process, when they ask a question, most of us usually make up some pretentious answer to satisfy them. Always give the customer what they want, ya know?. It works, too. They get all happy because they can tell their friends they had a conversation with a real artist, and they can tell them what this Important Piece of Sculpture they just bought really means.

(Even if the sculptor simply found a piece of scrap metal and welded another piece of scrap to it in an arrangement that was pleasing to the eye.)
posted by MexicanYenta at 2:28 PM on September 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

From the sound of it your work it is not really "art", it is not even attempting to be "art" today.

Dude, you sound like an actual dinosaur. I didn't think there were still people living who thought in these terms.

Seriously, I cannot understand how in every other area of culture people are rooting out these kinds of arbitrary distinctions and examining the stupid, disturbing biases and assumptions that underpin them, yet so much fine art discourse is stuck on old-fashioned, conservative, conformist, empty indicators of value. It's terrible. If some artists are truly interested in explaining their art in a jargony, "intellectual" fashion, that's great, but the way everybody is expected to crank these things out to be taken seriously, no matter how transparently inane the actual statement turns out to be, the way everybody is expected to pretend to think and work this way no matter how they actually think and work, is just depressing.
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 2:42 PM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Hey!!! After reading this, the bright Mefi blue is now pale, Prussian, or cornflower. Strange effect.
posted by Oyéah at 2:42 PM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

While I was still a muckety-muck at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the thing that would invariably set my teeth on edge were the people that described themselves as "visionary" artists, because honestly, that's a title that's bestowed, not chosen like a damn brand, and for me and a lot of other people involved, we'd just automatically make a mental substitution of "huge asshole" for "visionary" in the same way you do when someone describes themselves as a genius or a "thought leader" or whatever the hell is the new synonym for huge asshole.

As a performer, though, I get the misery of writing artist statements, because it's what I go through when I'm forced to write bios. It fucking sucks to have to foam at the mouth about how brilliant and innovative you are, even when you're doing work you're really proud of, and I think there's an extra pressure on visual artists who aren't necessarily great at language, which may be why so much of it is couched in whatever fashionable terms are making the rounds (I got through college without reading the assigned books with a mastery of the lingo of semiotics and a whole bunch of opaque French social criticism, sadly enough, churning out blathering deconstructionist nonsense as a cover for the fact that I just couldn't stay focused long enough to get through Chaucer). Sometimes people are pretentious prats, but other times, it's just oh my fucking god, why do I have to write these goddamn things?

The best language will always be that which is bestowed, which is why, after being yanked onstage to speak at the memorial service for a lovely friend by her equally lovely husband, who introduced me as a "stand-up autobiographer," I officially decided that that was, in fact, an actually pretty on-the-mark description of what I do that twenty years of flippy-floppy attempts at bio-writing had utterly and longwindedly failed to accomplish.
posted by sonascope at 2:45 PM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Right off the bat I would have enjoyed this more if the list items were links...
posted by xtian at 3:42 PM on September 2, 2016

“basically i am really just an inventor” (almost always said by heterosexual male artist)

As a hetero male, I'm afraid I need someone to explain this. Is it meant by the men to be putting themselves down, propping themselves up, or neither? I realize this is stupid, but I don't get it. Please help?

Lots of artists, oftentimes men, humble-brag about how regular and practical their interests are, in contrast to the effete/effeminate/eggheaded artist stereotype. Most of the big-deal 20th century modernists and post-modernists equated "artiness" with un-seriousness, and sneered at the very title of "artist" while valorizing blue-collar masculine labor. Marcel Duchamp, the father of the readymade, referred to himself as an engineer. Minimalist sculptor Carl Andre worked as a railway brakeman. Conceptualist Allen Ruppersperg once compared being an artist to being a plumber in that both people "had a job to do like everyone else."

Claiming to be an inventor feels like a similar move, as the title evokes toiling in a garage workshop with a soldering gun rather than mincing around with watercolors.

(I say this a het male artist who totally paints with watercolors while watching The Last Unicorn).
posted by ducky l'orange at 4:32 PM on September 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

I mainly recognize the inventor thing from fashion and clothing where its predominantly female designers who have some weird technological soon on things, rather than fine art.
posted by Artw at 4:37 PM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's great perspective, Artw.

I'm definitely used to (male) sculptors (ab)using the title, but my sample's bound to be skewed.
posted by ducky l'orange at 4:44 PM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is completely hilarious and awesome, thanks for posting it! I would love to read more by this writer if the poster or anyone else has any recommendations.
posted by Cucurbit at 6:02 PM on September 2, 2016

The received wisdom here is that every Artist's Statements are just a bunch of pretentious jargon, which is often true, but there's more to it than that. I find the entire concept of the Artist's Statement interesting in itself.

An Artist's Statement is a convention, in much the same way that every wedding receptions will always have some toasts and speeches by friends and family, which are often not examples of amazing speeches, but it's just what everyone expects in that situation.

The jargon is kinda expected in the same way, because every group of people use special vocabulary as part of their group identity. In the fine arts it's a bit messy because of the influence of academic theory, which adds various bits and pieces of vocabulary in a jumbled imperfect manner.

Several years ago there was a common and annoying (or funny) trend where artists were encouraged to use as much jargon as possible, but I think it's peaked, and from what I've seen in galleries lately, the recent trend is towards less jargon and shorter simpler comments.

An Artist's Statement will never make or break or a show; It's the text version of the snacks or press releases or the artist's hair-do at the opening, which are all little miniature creative components of the entire presentation in themselves.

And if you need to make an Artist's Statement, please take this advice.
posted by ovvl at 6:39 PM on September 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

...a lot of these phrases represent quite simple ideas that could be described with simple English words instead of sounding like someone pasted academic French into Google Translate and hoped for the best.

Okay, so I've given this a shot. I picked the first 6 items from the list and tried to translate them into simple English words, without losing any meaning or context.

"liminal space"
a kind of experience that many people share, but that is hard to put into words, because is it not just one thing or another, but a suspsended state of transition where many things are possible

“in its final iteration”
in a state that represents the end of a process, but not necessarily a resolution, just the last step in a series of steps, each of which is equally valid

"itinerant practice"
an endeavour that I’ve devoted myself to pursuing, on an ongoing basis, that shifts and changes and moves with me from time to time and place to place, in a such a way that the moving and shifting and changing have become part of the meaning of the art

“rupture” or “suture”
two very opposite but totally connected kinds of effects, one of which is a ripping or tearing, and the other of which is a sewing or mending. you can’t have the mending without the ripping. This dynamic of ripping and mending makes up the fabric of our culture, and my art is trying to convey how that ripping and mending feels, when expectations are broken and there is trauma, but then over time new habits form and everything starts to normalize. So the mending might mean that everything is healed and moving forward again, but in that healing something important, radical and maybe political that was revealed has been lost, a wound has been hidden and covered over. Both the ripping and the mending can be painful and both can be freeing and affirming, and my art tries to express this paradox.

"post-Fordism"
a contemporary Western cultural era in which we have moved beyond the mechanics of mass-production and industrialization of the early 20th century, into a much more complicated system in which technology, the economy and personal identity have become so intricately intertwined that even simple terms like “worker” have changed their meaning enormously. I want people looking at my art to think about historical connections between technology and labour and how they have changed in the late 20th and early 21st century, and I am indicating a sense of anxiety about these changes. My work is (at least partly) about trying to express what it feels like to live in this point in time, while thinking about history and technology and how we came to be where we are today.

"the performative dimension of language"
the aspect of language that is not just about labeling, or naming or describing something other than oneself, but is about expressing oneself and one’s identity through the use of language itself. Performing in this case means the everyday ways we interact with other people, a socially engaged process of being and becoming who you are in a collective community, rather than just a simple, fixed expression of my name is XXXX, or I am female, or any other term that nails it all down. This way of thinking about language and identity is about how both are fluid, and how the words and sentences we choose are all culturally influenced, and how we as individuals are always morphing and shifting, not just through the ways we act, or the ways we describe ourselves, but through the ways we describe our interactions with the world.


A caveat: There's a ton of context that's missing in these synopses. For example, the term "Post-Fordism" links to Marxism, and the term "performative" links to queer theory (specifically Judith Butler). Marxism is huge, obviously, and Judith Butler is massively influential and many other theorists have taken up her ideas and riffed on them and critiqued them and chewed them over producing all kinds of exciting political ideas. By using words that specifically indicate certain discourses, artists can show that they care about those ideas without having to include a whole essay on Marxism, or gender theory, in their 200-400 word artist statement.
posted by aunt_winnifred at 7:42 PM on September 2, 2016 [11 favorites]

aunt_winnifred, your glosses seem to prove that such phrases are efficient shorthands for those who use them.

I think the linked web page is fun and funny. I also love dense theoretical examinations that presume (and sometimes require) specialist knowledge.

Sure, bombastic writing is tiresome, but even more tiresome are the intellectually insecure who fume at people more literate than themselves. (I mean this last generally. It is NOT a comment about aunt_winnifred.)
posted by mistersquid at 10:41 PM on September 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

The rise of the artist's statement seems to be due to the rise of abstraction and of grant committees, who really want to know what they're spending all this money on.

I think it's the CIA's fault. And Roland Barthes.
posted by sebastienbailard at 2:06 AM on September 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

From the sound of it your work it is not really "art", it is not even attempting to be "art" today.

Because art is all about exclusion, distinction, and discrimination! It's all about appropriating public money for private cliques, building exhibition spaces that pretend to be inviting but do everything possible to keep out the wrong sort.

In short, it's about unearned elitism, and thus requires a discourse that signals "merit" where each participant pretends to be idiosyncratic but actually adheres to easily recognized tropes that can be simply summarized and satirized.

Capital A Artists are the greatest threat to art I can imagine.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:21 AM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

aunt_winnifred, your glosses seem to prove that such phrases are efficient shorthands for those who use them.

yes! that's exactly what I thought. That's why I wrote them. I think these ideas are actually pretty complex - understandable for sure! - but tricky to articulate succinctly. And an artist's statement has to be short. So people use specialized vocabulary sometimes. They do risk alienating audiences who aren't versed in that language. It's a difficult situation and writing a good artist statement that communicates broadly without over-explaining the work is really, really hard.
posted by aunt_winnifred at 8:08 AM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

I probably should have expanded a bit more and said that I find my own reaction interesting -- because it's basically a question of "can you separate the art from the artist?" An artist statement is an intrusion of the artist (or the gallerist, I suppose, or the artist's friend who is good with words) into the art, and as much as I might want to appreciate the art on its own terms, sometimes when I'm "introduced" to the artist, it makes me like the art less. Which feels sort-of petty and trivial that I can't separate the art from the artist -- but then when I think about Bill Cosby, separating the art from the artist feels wrong. Obviously there's an enormous amount of territory between "annoying twit with a pretentious artist's statement" and "serial rapist" but the art/artist question is a spectrum and I just find the issue really interesting. And I can't decide whether my reaction is right or wrong (to start liking the art less because the artist's statement is annoying), but that is what it is, and that seems like a PART of the art process that that is part of my engagement with the totality and the context of the work, and then I get all up in my head about it, and then I stop enjoying the art because I can't stop worrying about the conundrum.

Anyway not all jargony artist's statements are pretentious, some are totally interesting, and some are totally terrible, and some are slapped together, or trying and miss the mark but that's fine. I feel like the Supreme Court about pretentious and empty artist's statements -- I know it when I see it.

(And it definitely isn't just limited to visual art ... Sometimes I go to an author's page to see what other books they've written because I liked the one I just read so much, and their self-description is SO OFFPUTTING I can never read another book by them again. My teeth are particularly set on edge by 35-year-old women who conceptualize themselves as misunderstood 16-year-old manic pixie dream girls, completely with sometimes literal "tee hee!" in the statement and ugggggggggggh. Even though I liked the book! The author has just ruined their own body of work for me, and this is an interesting phenomenon.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:14 PM on September 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

So, Eyebrows…pointy?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:59 PM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

So pointy I'm a Vulcan!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:39 PM on September 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm of the opinion that generally artspeak is an abuse of language, which is severe. Maybe I'm just bitter because it's a lot of work to comprehend and the payoff just isn't there for me and I had to wade through it in college. But I think part of the suspicion for me and others is the Emporer's New Clothes aspect where it feels like there is a lot of linguistic smoke and mirrors concealing either simplistic, bad or just nonexistent ideas. That's probably unfair, but one of the best artspeakers I know is also the laziest artist I know. Just throws shit together but can whip up a grip of shit to justify it. Drives me nuts. Like the "Eno" character in "Art School Confidential".

I think another problem with artspeak is the problem that visual communication tends to do what language can't -- capture the ineffable. Otherwise, essays and journalism are better at conveying complex political and social commentary, especially because they can include actual facts instead of just going off of the audience's assumptions. For example, if you're going to comment on late capitalism, essays and journalism would be a far better format for fleshing out ideas based on actual incidents, not just theory. I think even photography has its limitations.

Also I think the pompous sounding element comes from trying to match up the inflated cultural and financial value of some art to some significant relevance in the real world, whether it has it or not.

Plus I'm pissed they ruined liminal; it's a very beautiful word. Fuckers.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 10:51 PM on September 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

Plus I'm pissed they ruined liminal; it's a very beautiful word. Fuckers.

nodding.

As a person who lives in permanent gender liminality, listening to MFA students in portland this summer talking about the Judith Butler pieces they read for the first time in their life really bummed me out. Mostly because cis people's initial reactions to their blossoming awareness of "gender is a force that WILL FUCK YOU UP" begins with "femininity is toxic! Men suck! Down with gender!" and then you get results like that ill-informed jumpsuit project that was linked here a week or so back.

I think artists statements are cute, and yet, I have no problems ruthlessly tearing one apart. That said, I don't need to dismiss the entire discourse of contemporary art in order to critique the flaws and bias of language of that world. That's where this thread kinda became unnecessarily shitty to a lot of people IMO.
posted by Annika Cicada at 5:00 AM on September 4, 2016