Challengers, creators, snobs or visionaries?

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This article was published 01/06/2015 (4012 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of the reasons I like artists is that they resist definition. I dislike artists for the same reason. They constantly chafe against the categories I try to slot them into. To be sure, they are the most frustratingly fascinating people on the planet.

With this in mind, First Fridays will present a special-edition doubleheader for this month’s Art Talk/Art Walk. On Friday, June 5, at the News Café, artist Diana Thorneycroft will team up with art historian and Winnipeg Free Press columnist Alison Gillmor to tackle the question “What, or who, is an artist?”

Generally, artists are viewed as snobby sophisticates, as people who don’t have “real” jobs, or as visionary heroes. Statements like Seth Godin’s have become ubiquitous: “An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity and boldness to challenge the status quo.”

Although artists who challenge convention make up the better part of art history, whether or not they are heroes is questionable. “An artist is someone who calls himself an artist,” a group of “anti-artists” known as Dadaists famously declared in 1917. The group was bent on toppling the bourgeois idea that artists must possess talent and skill. Of course, there have been many cynical riffs on the Dadaist declaration since then, such as “an artist is someone whom the funding agencies call an artist.”

The most interesting definitions usually come from artists themselves, as they give insight into the artists’ own psychology. American artist Tammy Rae Carland, for example, gave author Sarah Thornton this explanation for Thornton’s latest book, 33 Artists in 3 Acts: “Artists have varying degrees of ‘repetition compulsion,’ or a drive to repeat a singular impulse over and over again, trying to get it right, or righter.”

In fact, Thornton’s entire book is dedicated to exploring what an artist actually is. Ultimately, as her premise suggests, there are as many answers to the question as there are artists. Artists working today have customized the role to themselves.

Take, for example, the artists brought together this spring for the prestigious Freize Art Fair in New York City. Nicole Wermers made “sculptures” consisting of fur coats draped over office chairs. Andy Coolquitt assembled rows of derelict deodorant bottles. Casey Jane Ellison held a mock panel discussion, where panelists spoke awkwardly about sexual politics and analyzed photos of sweater-wearing poodles.

When Art Forum critic Linda Yablonsky encountered the array of art on display at the Venice Biennale this year, she wrote “The upside of opening week… was the breathtaking quantity and variety of art going on view at a single moment. The downside was exactly the same.” In the art world there are thousands of acceptable “ways of being,” which can make fairs and exhibitions feel like mazes of contradiction.

This is why Gillmor will speak about artists as mythmakers, and conversely, as myth-destroyers. Both, she says, are equally important. Specifically, she will talk about German artist Joseph Beuys, who has an origin story as legendary as any superhero’s, and who equated his creativity with shamanistic power. Gillmor will also delve deeper into the mythology surrounding Jackson Pollock, describing how the story of the macho, hard-drinking, expressive painter continues to feed our fantasies.

No stranger to controversy, Thorneycroft will speak about the artist as provocateur, and will present several artists whose work has outraged the public. Jonathan Hobin, for example, is an Ottawa-based photographer who uses children as his models, re-enacting some of the world’s most infamous tragedies. Thorneycroft will discuss why she believes the scandals that certain artists create are important for society.

Artists are activists. Artists are healers, academics, inventors, comedians. They are con artists. They are capitalists, anarchists, or both. Some artists believe their art must serve humanity. Others are adamant that art has no function at all.

Though it will no doubt be resisted, here’s a personal, definitive attempt. Artists are people who have the work ethic, nerve and narcissism necessary to nurture their creative obsessions, come what may. They are people who in a single gesture can recalibrate my thinking, or who make up languages that stretch my brain like silly putty. Best of all, they are people who have given me countless moments of sheer delight, when, if I weren’t so mindful of the cool emotional temperature that prevails in most fine-art settings, I’d perform a ridiculous and celebratory jig right there in the gallery.

 

Sarah Swan is an arts writer and educator. For tickets to this event, please call 204-697-7069.