Ever since I wrote my last two articles, I have been exhausted. Not only did I finally publish an article that had languished for years in various states of incompleteness [Zollinger] but I also wrote the first in a new series of articles [Burgay]. To force new language into active use, to create radical growth in the very act of writing, that’s something I can do, but it leaves me struggling for my next thoughts. I have to lay fallow, like a farmer leaves one of his fields every season, so the land can rest before providing its earth for seeds to grow.
Writing has always been my talent, and my passion. But it’s by no means easy. It is where I seek my challenges. Writing presents as sequential but involves ambiguities and complexities. For as many ways as there are to communicate easily, there are diverse ways to lose oneself in a miasma of meaning. Sometimes getting lost is the intention, and sometimes it’s the consequence of roaming amid various contexts. The interpreter of meaning can be a poet, an essayist, or a storyteller, and the struggle remains the same. This is why I am so enamored of abstraction, painterly and otherwise. I want to come up against something mysterious, to be challenged by form. It gives me an excuse to tilt against windmills. It’s the justification for tilting that challenges me at its most essential. The greater the challenge, the greater the attraction to it.
Some say the role of the writer is to provide clarity. Mere description is not enough. We can do that with our eyes. To use language is to immerse oneself in varieties of meaning. Having written about art not only as a critic but also as a curator, I have taken on some very bad habits that I hope to lose quickly. The curator tends to traffic in presumptive complexities, and often writes around a subject rather than plowing through it. The curator addresses their theme first and the art works second. He hides behind meaning. On a rare occasion he comes up against an idea that proves so huge and unwieldy that it may need to be shelved. Such a theme may be extremely worthy but will prove nearly impossible to foreshorten. I’ve dealt with such themes in my active period as a curator, and though they are engaging to the extreme, they can easily dominate my attention to the detriment of actually getting other things done. Looking back upon the many exhibitions I curated, there was always an agenda at hand that made the theme necessary. Sometimes the exhibition was geared toward, and was critically reflective of, the immediate community surrounding it. Sometimes it had to do with a specific genre of art, or a primary material. Sometimes it was a psychological or anthropological orientation. Most have dealt with aesthetics, with looking, and with themes that connect the two. Most of my ideas for curating have begun with some primary engagement with artworks. Whether from individual studio visits or group exhibitions, I am visited by a moment of wonder in which two or more bodies of work commingle to suggest an idea. I run with the idea and take it linguistically as far as it can go. Then I look around for other choices to complement or challenge the ones under consideration within the limits of the original concept.
When I look at an idea as original to itself, or couched in cultural sources that pull me farther and farther away from artistic intentions, then I become lost. The degrees of meaning available in diverse sources mainly represent those sources, and cannot be taken lightly as justification for some other kind of experience. Writing needs to go in one direction or another, or it will be left on weak ground. Good curating should also mean good writing. But what guarantees this is a devotion to one’s subject, no matter how complex it may become. In order to determine what is essential it is necessary to run the ideas down, chase them into corners, and force them to give up their truths. It takes a textual dedication to get from the original germination to the final root.
Following my first visit to the 2004 Whitney Biennial, I encountered several works of art that got me thinking about a shared attitude between them, a sort of Gothicism. I had been seeing this piecemeal in different gallery exhibitions and it appealed to me. I had taken the long view of them and allowed them to play in my mind. Ideas travel in art works like scents travel through the air—invisibly yet with force. I had to understand the roots of this attitude’s appeal, my particular take on it, and the final shape my ideas would take, whether a book or an exhibition. In order to do this, I had to be willing to plumb the idea down to its most remote depths, and to follow where it took me, perhaps all the way to the dawn of mankind and back again. The essential question that had to be answered was: Where does belief come from? In order to properly address this, I had to follow my theme and its title in one direction while I followed the source of my inspiration—those contemporary artists I saw in those exhibitions—in another.
If you are curious about the exact details, you will have to wait. Having returned to this subject has made me want to revisit it as a project, which I’m not giving away for free. Further details are yours for the price of a monthly or yearly subscription to The Other Side of the Desk.
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Letter - October 28, 2021
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Ever since I wrote my last two articles, I have been exhausted. Not only did I finally publish an article that had languished for years in various states of incompleteness [Zollinger] but I also wrote the first in a new series of articles [Burgay]. To force new language into active use, to create radical growth in the very act of writing, that’s something I can do, but it leaves me struggling for my next thoughts. I have to lay fallow, like a farmer leaves one of his fields every season, so the land can rest before providing its earth for seeds to grow.
Writing has always been my talent, and my passion. But it’s by no means easy. It is where I seek my challenges. Writing presents as sequential but involves ambiguities and complexities. For as many ways as there are to communicate easily, there are diverse ways to lose oneself in a miasma of meaning. Sometimes getting lost is the intention, and sometimes it’s the consequence of roaming amid various contexts. The interpreter of meaning can be a poet, an essayist, or a storyteller, and the struggle remains the same. This is why I am so enamored of abstraction, painterly and otherwise. I want to come up against something mysterious, to be challenged by form. It gives me an excuse to tilt against windmills. It’s the justification for tilting that challenges me at its most essential. The greater the challenge, the greater the attraction to it.
Some say the role of the writer is to provide clarity. Mere description is not enough. We can do that with our eyes. To use language is to immerse oneself in varieties of meaning. Having written about art not only as a critic but also as a curator, I have taken on some very bad habits that I hope to lose quickly. The curator tends to traffic in presumptive complexities, and often writes around a subject rather than plowing through it. The curator addresses their theme first and the art works second. He hides behind meaning. On a rare occasion he comes up against an idea that proves so huge and unwieldy that it may need to be shelved. Such a theme may be extremely worthy but will prove nearly impossible to foreshorten. I’ve dealt with such themes in my active period as a curator, and though they are engaging to the extreme, they can easily dominate my attention to the detriment of actually getting other things done. Looking back upon the many exhibitions I curated, there was always an agenda at hand that made the theme necessary. Sometimes the exhibition was geared toward, and was critically reflective of, the immediate community surrounding it. Sometimes it had to do with a specific genre of art, or a primary material. Sometimes it was a psychological or anthropological orientation. Most have dealt with aesthetics, with looking, and with themes that connect the two. Most of my ideas for curating have begun with some primary engagement with artworks. Whether from individual studio visits or group exhibitions, I am visited by a moment of wonder in which two or more bodies of work commingle to suggest an idea. I run with the idea and take it linguistically as far as it can go. Then I look around for other choices to complement or challenge the ones under consideration within the limits of the original concept.
When I look at an idea as original to itself, or couched in cultural sources that pull me farther and farther away from artistic intentions, then I become lost. The degrees of meaning available in diverse sources mainly represent those sources, and cannot be taken lightly as justification for some other kind of experience. Writing needs to go in one direction or another, or it will be left on weak ground. Good curating should also mean good writing. But what guarantees this is a devotion to one’s subject, no matter how complex it may become. In order to determine what is essential it is necessary to run the ideas down, chase them into corners, and force them to give up their truths. It takes a textual dedication to get from the original germination to the final root.
Following my first visit to the 2004 Whitney Biennial, I encountered several works of art that got me thinking about a shared attitude between them, a sort of Gothicism. I had been seeing this piecemeal in different gallery exhibitions and it appealed to me. I had taken the long view of them and allowed them to play in my mind. Ideas travel in art works like scents travel through the air—invisibly yet with force. I had to understand the roots of this attitude’s appeal, my particular take on it, and the final shape my ideas would take, whether a book or an exhibition. In order to do this, I had to be willing to plumb the idea down to its most remote depths, and to follow where it took me, perhaps all the way to the dawn of mankind and back again. The essential question that had to be answered was: Where does belief come from? In order to properly address this, I had to follow my theme and its title in one direction while I followed the source of my inspiration—those contemporary artists I saw in those exhibitions—in another.
If you are curious about the exact details, you will have to wait. Having returned to this subject has made me want to revisit it as a project, which I’m not giving away for free. Further details are yours for the price of a monthly or yearly subscription to The Other Side of the Desk.
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