On May 16th 1998, a workshop entitled "How do Artists Capture the Attention and Interest of Art Professionals?" took place in the Miami Art Museum. Miami, Florida.
Moved by an immense curiosity I attended this workshop. After listening to the presenters for around an hour, I exposed some opinions that were only the top of the iceberg of what I will explain here.
The first assault to my intelligence and artistic dignity was the workshop title itself. Did the speakers call themselves "art professionals" and excluded the artists from the professional concept? Why did they assume a paternalistic attitude toward the creators who, in the final analysis, are the reason for the existence of art itself?
In other words, it seems to me that the message this people wanted to convey is that artists are not professionals, and they (the bureaucrats, officials, and merchants) are.
Although the panel moderator assumed responsibility for the writing of the title, I find its content to be a big slip. It is unacceptable to any artist who respects himself. Let's further analyze the meaning of this conference as well as its purpose.
It is interesting to see a group formed by museum directors, curators, dealers, and art critics sitting across the table. All part of the status-quo. They all receive annual salaries from five to six digits at the expense of the raw material from which they make their careers: art and the artists. And yet, these speakers want to teach artists how to capture their attention and interest! Creators, who generally work in most dissimilar jobs in order to support themselves and their art, must capture the attention and interest of this group of self-denominated "art professionals".
I do not doubt the good intentions moving the organizers of the workshop in presenting what they considered their main objective: to help artists, but, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
These so called "art professionals" are telling us (the message is clearly implicit in the form and content of the workshop): Hey, art's jugglers, buffoons of the court of professionals come and call our attention somehow. We will move from our seats only to come here and tell you how to call our attention...Hello!. Please!
Is it that for you, dear speakers, the art professional concept includes only those who in a way or another (worthy or unworthy) have succeeded in inserting themselves in the market?
Is the market, in reality, what determines the quality of an artist's work?.
Then, I understood the subliminal message:
To them, professionals are only those who profit from their work. Well, according to this definition Modigliani, Van Gogh, or Beuys were not art professionals. They became professionals after death.
It makes me laugh!
I sincerely believe, my dear art professionals, that you should move out of your chairs and get closer to the artists. Find out what they are doing, discuss their work with them. And love them passionately, give yourselves with love, respect, attention, and care to the creators...of all your wealth and comfort.
The title of this workshop is absurd, as well as its definition and objectives. Its development confirmed my initial impression. Of all the panelists there present, only one I found to be really coherent as she offered some real help to the listeners there gathered to devour the wise words of the art Gurus. She was the speaker from Dade County Public Schools giving definite as well as dignified alternatives for living. Teaching is, perhaps, the most interesting, clean, and secure job for a creator. She addressed the group in a concise manner, opening doors and possibilities. Beside this one, none of the other panelists offered anything interesting, neither as a discourse nor as an alternative to darkness. On the contrary, in the majority of them I observed the arrogance of who feels in control over the others and wants to remind them the rules of the game. In this way, for instance, I heard from Mr. "art professional" Richard Arregui the following phrase: "The artist must understand that he is creating a product, and as such, it is subject to the market rules"...All sensitive beings there present must have shrunk on their chairs. This phrase was depressing...specially to an artist, to a genuine creator. For art product dealer, Richard Arregui, the artist is only that: a factory worker, a producer. Mr. Arregui's phrase brings its creator to the level of the star from the Spanish T.V. advertisement of Maria's Furniture.
It is sad.
In the world of ideas, where art moves(and not in the decoration field where it is frequently placed) it is difficult to accept the view of a mercantile mind. And according to that philosophy (if there is one implicit), whoever is today an art dealer, could very well be a car dealer (used cars, of course) tomorrow. In the final analysis, product is product, regardless of where it might come from. If it comes from technology, the land, or from thought, the seller's objective is to make a profit.
I have heard, some where, that selling is also an art?
I saw Fred Snitzer with his aspect of good-natured bear, hiding his astute eyes. Fred diluted himself in justifications around the difficulties of that profession, having to pay insurance and to respond to the interest of the, according to his words, his sponsor?
Well, Fred, I dare to give you an advice, If that job is so cumbersome you can change your profession. At least you will get a break from those heavy weights of insurance and sponsor.
But above all, you would get a relief from the intellectual "cubaneo"...that so much damage causes to the culture life of this city.
Another speaker who did not say much was Helen Cohen. In an sour manner she expressed what she believes an artist should not do. Offering a dialectic negation of negation (Do not do what you are not supposed to do). I do not believe any of the other participation was of any importance. The main repeated recommendations were directed toward the idea of the artists returning to their studios and do their work.
This recommendation reaffirms the idea that the ones sitting in front of the panel were not professionals. Of course, I believe many attended the workshop to obtain the mechanism, shown by the machine, necessary to arrive.
But to arrive where?
To become part of this great prostitute art market is?
To be recognized by society?
To inflate the big egos, pseudo-artists posses, when inept flatterers call them important?
Oh transcendence! This latent preoccupation of the pseudo at all intellectual levels. But the desires of becoming known walk together with great ambition. Ambition attracts fame and it puts money in the pocket. It assures a stable and pleasant life. Placidness eliminates questioning and irreverence, because the chain of interests created by the desire to arrive at the immaculate altar of fame and artistic transcendence, carries within a great load of social hypocrisy.
An artist, a creator, will not smile to the powerful in order to use his power. He will never be a hypocrite with the ignorant, specially the poor rich ignorant who abound on art's arena. He will not exchange his artistic freedom for his economic freedom. Neither he will make a career out of his artistic work (as recommended by some of the panelists).
Art is not a career. It is a human condition.
The authentic artist will never plan his development. Instead, he will found it through his path. He will look for his universal truth in all human knowledge (not only in the artistic). He will drink his intellectual honey from every manifestation of the creation. His sieve will not allow a grain smaller that his standard, because intelligence, "dear professionals", is implacable with its preferences.
"I know the faces, said Gibran Khalil, Because I see throughout the fabric my own eyes weave, and search for the reality under."
An authentic artist will never establish periphery relationships with his surrounding world. Instead, he will create relationships from center to center with all that surrounds him, deeply observing its development. In the field of our concern, Visual Arts, anyone can learn how to paint. But not everybody is an artist. The first, the painter, only needs a good hand and training. The second, the artist needs the hand, the training, and something that cannot be given by anyone: a good mind. The rest would be, as a colleague of mine says, "the hand that paints".
In the "Art world" there are many hands that paint.
There is also much fanfare and theater around the frivolous stage of art. There are many extra-artistic interests. Too much Circus.
And the circus trainers call themselves professionals.
There are also plenty candidates to the clown role, more than available positions.
There are many "Kiril" who would silence the most incommensurable "Andrei Rublev"...
For all of these reasons I decided, years ago, not to participate in any event related to art. No openings. No workshops. No competitions, no Fridays of galleries in Coral Gables.
I leave the circus to the buffoons aspirants.
I have retired myself into pensiveness and exaltation in front of my work to find the essence. In my desire to separate from the non-essential I have walked to the sea, to the silence, to the depths. To this encephalic mass of the planet, the ocean. (Solaris).
From the sea I obtain all my vital and creative energies, and the elements to do my work. And at the same time I return to the sea my artistic results as themes.
Only a blasphemy like this workshop could have been capable of making me to react in this fashion.
The world is at the end and the beginning of a new age of development. Art is at the crossroads of accumulation and definitions. And all accumulation of quantitative changes must produce a qualitative jump.
Let's stop to treat Art as a sad merchandise. Let's return it to its essence: a poetic explanation of life and human existence.
Andrei Tarkovski used to say:
"Modern art has entered a wrong path, because in the name of mere self-affirmation it has abjured from the search of life sense itself. In this way, the called creative task becomes a strange activity of eccentrics looking only to justify the singular value of their egocentric activity".
This is why postmodernism has been the last shout of art for difference in this century, giving way to the cathartic confusion necessary for the beginning of the new century. In this way, the postmodern art current could be denominated as Post-Mortem.
It is still to be defined what will be Art's destiny in the century XXI. In the hands of the ones involved in this task lies the possibility that Art will return to its essence and will completely separate itself from the mercantile career of which it is now part.
In the same way the intelligent world is retracing its steps to the natural and essential basis of humanity.
I honestly believe that it would be healthy in the part of artistic institutions, galleries and critics, to convoke workshops of serious discussions on the fundamental problems of art, its aesthetics as well as its ethics. Because, at the end of the story, we, the artists, make art, and they, the museums, galleries, and media (what Robert Morris named as "the iron triangle of art")... they build "Art professionals"...
Frank Leon, 1998.