oh yea i went and heard Lee Child (the author) speak the other night. He said something reall interesting at the very beginning of his talk which is roughly paraphrased as follows:
He said that the commercial and artistic sides of his job/passion go hand in hand and you cannot get one without the other, it sounded kinda money making and callus until he followed up by saying his work, his writing does not exist and is not really real (durrr) until it is consumed by someone. Unless a book he has written is bought and read by someone else then it really only exists in his head... the consumption is part of the process, it makes his writing and the process real and complete.
So this made me think about art and in particular photography. How does the consumption part of it pan out for us as photographers? I was involved in two group shows and a solo show while in the states and then another solo show posthumously (haha) on top of several other shows over the four years i was at Art School. In all honesty i have sold fuck all of my work. Does this mean that the process has not been complete>? in some ways i feel like it might have. I agree with Lee Child in that fact that the consumption, the viewing or understanding or appreciation of an art work is part of the whole artistic process. How do you know someone is an artist if you have never seen/bought/viewed their work>? but i felt like i was painting myself into a corner a little and saying that because i haven't sold much work therefore stuff doesn't count...hmmm
So the other long winded thing I was also thinking about in terms of consumption was the Internets and how we all have this presence on the web (blogs, linkedIn, facebook blah blah) and how this effects the way we consume and view art. I spend hours trolling the web on blog sites like I heart Photograph and 72dpi yet the last time i was in a gallery...um...a couple of weeks ago maybe? shit when did i last see something in person....our online presence is fascintating. I had an old friend of mine ring me tonight who commented that she found my blog within seconds online because "...there arn't many of you online..." As she said this it felt a 50/50 split, half of me was like 'wow cool she found me online, thats pretty cool' and the other half was thinking...'fuck its so open, so public, so unregulated i have to be more careful about what i do online...' It took me back to the photography elective i undertook in Second year and Dunedin based artist Michael Morley's dire warnings about our online footprints and the possibilities for surveillance/monitoring and tracking. Not to mention copyright infringment and a scary new way of having our work disseminated (outside of our control)
ok enough writing.
2 comments:
hey friend! you've provoked a response from me! the main issue i have (which you touch on, but don't extrapolate) is that 'consuming' is not necessarily 'purchasing'. As you point out, we consume art at the gallery - at the moment that this exchange takes place, our work has then transferred from our perception to someone elses. similarly online. Does the artist know about this transformation? only through feedback (verbal or written critigue - i.e. artist discussion, review)
Do we need this feedback? some artists/people do - and i guess for some people, the purchasing of their work is the ultimate review...but if you don't make commercial work (and of course, books are different...we don't look at them in art galleries...but we do use libraries still...) then how do you measure success? Many artists I know, just need to make...they don't need to make money directly from their artwork and it should be acknowledged that this is ok! I suppose everyone needs to work out their own position huh? ...and sure as shit it will change over time...
;-)
this reminded me a lot of a quote that i put up with a ted talk, recently.
"but somehow i manage to sort of get this thought out into an object. and then it's there, okay? it means nothing at all, the object itself just means nothing. once it's perceived and someone brings it into their own mind then there's a cycle that has been completed."
so i've been thinking about this idea a lot recently, as well. and the aspect of the life of a work post sale with the show and whatnot. but i think the previous post is really well put. and even your commentary about the internet hints at that point. our work is consumed or viewed on a much broader scale than we realize via shows or even the small internet footprint that we create. how do you track who all views your work via blogspot/flickr/facebook/etc.? it's hard to measure artistic success by monetary gain, especially in a world wide economic recession. but i definitely understand what you mean. sometimes i just feel as if i have all of this stuff and what the hell does that even mean, to have made all of this? but i feel like it's impossible to measure the true value of these findings/experiences until a while down the road. and even then, it's all perceptive. right now i just feel like i have to be a bigger/better person because of it all. i think we'll be alright, master kiwi.
Post a Comment