I'm an artist, so, um, kapow!

[imomus]

The question "What do you do?" used to be unproblematical. I told people I was a musician, or perhaps a singer-songwriter. And it was true; I had albums in stores to prove it, with my name and my face on the cover.

Now, though, I'm not so sure. I seem to have changed. I mean, what I do isn't really different; I still basically tell stories, just as I did on those records. But I do it in a different context. In journalism, but also in art galleries and museums. These days, I sometimes say "I'm an artist".

Last night my friend Betty Nguyen, who works at Leo Koenig gallery in Chelsea, invited me to a special event there, a "hardcore dinner" by Austrian artist Paul Renner, modelled on the last requests of death row murderers. About thirty people ate beef tartar in honor of John Baltazar, executed January 15th, 2003, chef salad without meat in honor of Stanley Baker, executed May 30th, 2002, breaded fried shrimps in honour of Henry Dunn, Jr, executed February 6th 2003, then chocolate birthday cake with seven pink candles, in honor of Miguel Richardson, executed June 26th, 2001.

I sat between some Koenig artists, painters, and some people who'd come along because the event was listed in the New York Times as a $100-a-head "conceptual dinner"; the lady opposite me worked for Pfizer Pharmaceutical, the person to my left did "political risk analysis for emerging market countries".

When these people asked what I did, I told them "I'm an artist. I have a performance piece in the Whitney Biennial at the moment. I show with Zach Feuer Gallery, just the next block up. Mostly performance..."

The Koenig artists backed me up, asking me what I was working on after the Whitney "in terms of new art projects". One of them had included a portrait of me in a canvas he'd done, and, as the evening wore on and we got drunker on champagne, bloody mary, white wine and pear schnaps, he told the ladies-who-dine: "This guy is the ultimate bohemian! I imagine you (sorry!) as the ultimate couch surfer, spending your whole life living like a parasite in other people's houses on inflatable beds in different countries, with two Asian women on either side!"

"They're inflatable Asian women, too!" I joked, adding "Wow, I wish I was the guy you think I am!"

But, you know, I sort of am that guy. I don't seem to be a musician, anyway. I didn't spend last night at the Mercury Lounge or the Bowery Ballroom, checking out a friend's band, saying hi to my tour agent and my press agent, handing out promos of my new album. I do have a new album coming out, and it's a very decent record. But who we are isn't up to ourselves alone. My new album probably won't get reviewed in important publications like Pitchfork and The Wire. It won't be legitimated by those authorities, and I probably won't tour it around the US, as I used to tour albums.

On the other hand, art world things will continue to happen. The momentum is there now, the kinetic hype-energy lacking in my music career. I'll participate in a group show at London gallery Blow de la Barra between June and September. That's significant because it's the first time my art career has shown up on the radar anywhere outside of New York (apart from one piece in a Tokyo show in 2002, a recut of a Takashi Miike film I made for the exhibition Urbanlenz).



I'm proud to say I'll also be included in Cream 4, Phaidon Press's annual "who's who of the new cream of the crop artists selected by ten of the world's most influential art critics". (Curator Philippe Vergne selected me and will write about my art pieces in Cream; thanks, Philippe!)

I don't want to act all faux-surprised and gee-whillickers about this. I've long been considerably more interested in the art world than in just about anything else. I didn't go to art school, but my best friends when I was a student were art students from Grays. My songs (like "Murderers, the Hope of Women", named after a Kokoshka performance) have tended to draw more inspiration from the art world than the world of music. In London in the late 90s I was on the art scene, not the music scene, and starting in 2000 I began to show in galleries, thanks largely to Zach Feuer, who's still my "dealer" today (except that I don't have any "prices" -- I don't actually sell art, just make performances), and to whom, more than anyone, I owe this rather interesting transformation.

I just had to draw up a list of important reviews for Cream, and here it is, the trail of legitimations (in the form of reviews) the art world has handed me since 2000, during exactly the same period that the music world has been withholding legitimations (in the form of reviews):

2000
Holland Cotter
Innovators burst onstage one (kapow!) at a time!
New York Times
November 10th 2000
(I'm so glad my first important art review had such a pop title! "Kapow" indeed!)

2003
Sukdhev Sandhu
Ludic Relish
Modern Painters Summer 2003 issue
July 2003
London
(I couldn't believe it when Cherry Red told me "We don't have any music magazines interested this time. But Modern Painters magazine wants to run four pages on you!")

2005
Roberta Smith
Momus and Mai Ueda
New York Times
July 1st, 2005
(This was an important one; if Roberta Smith likes you, you're really "in the belly of the beast".)

2006
Jeff MacIntyre
The Biennial, Unexplained
New York Times
April 2, 2006

So, I would appear to be "an artist". The art world appears to have claimed and legitimated me. I'm happy to be here. And in a sense, powerless. It isn't entirely up to us what we're perceived as. Other people also have a say, and we have to respect their views on our role.

For me, I still think the most powerful stories I tell are my songs. I think of that as my vocation. But I'm not sure if I can call it my profession any more.

I remember a conversation I once had with my brother, in a car somewhere in Scotland, years ago. I'd just told him I was "an artist". My brother didn't like that at all.

"Nobody should say 'I'm an artist,' the same way you shouldn't say 'I'm spiritual'. These things are for others to say," he warned me.

Well, it seems those "others" have finally spoken. I'm an artist, so, you know, kapow!

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hey Nick, the whitney is damn expensive. I was planning to go there incognito to see you without being seen by you (you know, it would feel silly otherwise) but it's been a month already of planning to go incognito and not daring really because of the price (i am maybe semi-proudly one of the 3 other true bohemians in the city...), so I have to give up an ask you please for any way to sneak in, hoping i don't have to reveal my identity to do it.
Come on, I've got you into places before. ;P
XX

[imomus.livejournal.com]

E mail me at momasu@gmail.com.

[kaipfeiffer.livejournal.com]

well, for my generation (i'm 30), i have the feeling that it is and should be patchwork anyway.
so, i do drawings, i write, i tell stories, i'm a comicmaker, so i do books, comicstrips for magazines, etc., exhibitions with drawings for the wall, most likely in form of digital projections approaching animation, accompanied by sound. i'm editing two big magazines for a small publisher, giving lectures, workshops for art students, am currently also working as a curator for a touring group exhibition, and, besides that, do music, done some concerts ... now, for me, everything is linked together, sort of, it feels basically all like storytelling, or just communicating to me.
still, when i play music, i want it to be listened at as music, not as sounds made by a comic artist. i claim to turn into a musician at times, and into a comic artist/comicmaker at others - even if there are just a few minutes in between these states.
so, when i consider your output: i unfortunately hadn't had the chance to see one of your performances, but your work as a "blogger" is outstandig because you have the ideal personality for it, always intersted, and, important think, also opinioned, to get some spice into it.
as a journalist covering art/design, regarding your work as articles/essays rather than pedestrian "journal"-ism - well, i don't object to it, but i just don't think it has a real importance next to your music.
"timelord" and "otto spooky" are records as good as anything i love in music (which is a lot), sonic worlds i can't imagine now not having in my life.
i'm just not shure you can come up with anything as touching in another medium - not that you have to.
quite curious about your next blog entry - but nervously WAITING for your next album.
and very curious about that book you're writing

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, I pretty much agree with all that. It is a patchwork, but some patches are MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS!

[sleepyworm.livejournal.com]

I caught you on the Stars Forever tour (with Toog), and it was a really fantastic show. It's rather saddening to hear that you've hung up the touring hat; I've always hoped that I'd hear about a new Momus tour...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I still have an agency, Kork, and my US tours usually make a small profit, but to be honest I just can't see myself touring again. It's gruelling and a bit grim, and I was getting sick of seeing the same old venues time after time. What's more, my ears are fucked with the feedback from soundchecks, the volume, whatever. I don't say "never", but, you know...

There is, however, one show in the US this year: Tonic (http://www.tonicnyc.com/), NYC, May 20th, with Fashion Flesh and Toog. I rather suspect it's going to sell out, so advance tickets are recommended.

(It's funny how 90s the blurb on the Tonic site (http://www.tonicnyc.com/index.cfm?&sk=B62E0DF7%2D2628%2D42E9%2D98D4%2D5F8A1B3F285D&&idPage=39&idEvent=5648&dStartDate=05_20_2006) sounds: "a Serge Gainsbourg for the Quentin Tarantino generation," it says of me. You can see why it's important to move on right there. I mean, if I weren't in the art world now, I'd be languishing in the "La Decadanse" section of Other Music, a sad relic of a pre-9/11 world of "loungecore" and "Gen X irony".)

[tassellrealm.livejournal.com]

These days, I sometimes say "I'm an artist".

I wouldn't worry about it either way.

If I were you I'd...

Keep running as fast as you can.

Have as many adventures as you can.

Learn as much as you can.

Gather as little moss as you can.

Identifying yourself as an artist is a way of gathering moss, in my book.

It doesn't matter, though.

At least, doesn't matter that much.

Maybe you feel like you need a home at the moment.

I've been in every version of Vogue a million times. I've never introduced myself as a model.

I've acted in loads of films. I've never felt identified enough with being an actor to say that's what I was.

I've made records. I wouldn't call myself a musician necessarily.

So what do you do, then?

"This 'n' that."

It's strange the kind of reactions you get from experiential landlubbers - like that guy from the other day.

I had a period a few years ago where all I did was get on and off planes and had people constantly hurling money at me for doing next to nothing.

The girlfriend I had at the time used to nag me constantly: "When are you going to get a proper job!"

But I know that if at the time, I'd had no money and was doing jack shit, she would have left me alone.

She was jealous, confused and angry at me for some reason. It was like she felt compelled to rain down the nag police down on me because I'd broken my contract with the universe, or something.

In actual fact I had signed no such contract...

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=144004362&size=l

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, to say something like "dabbler" is probably the safest thing (although you're saying your girlfriend would have preferred you to have "model" written in your passport? I didn't quite understand what you meant there...), and, if I may say so, very English! Very Bertie Wooster!

[trini-naenae.livejournal.com]

The conversation with your brother, the idea that no one should call themselves an artist, is frightening to me. What if the art world decides they don't like me after all? What if I move to a new place and don't fit?

But then, I have always been drawing, and I suppose I've almost always been called an artist. I think it could be devastating to me to not be an artist. I need to draw and photograph, even if it's just to not go crazy in the classes I don't like, even if it's just to record an idea, or something I saw.

I think, for me, that is what defines an artist. Can you not go without drawing/photographing/painting/designing/sculpting/performing/etc? I suppose you could apply that to anything.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes, and I do believe very strongly in this idea of "vocation". I feel my vocation is "storyteller", and that fits everything I do. It isn't really "artist", as yours is. I don't really make anything visual, although I love visual culture, and I think it's a great thing to do with your life, a reason to be.

[iamcoreyd.livejournal.com]

Are you not allowed to say you're an artist because it's intimidating to people? Maybe if you said it dismissively: "Yeah, I'm an artist. It's cool, I guess..."

[readysetlie.livejournal.com]

you know on some weird level I must agree with your brother.

I say weird because when you hear somebody say "I'm spiritual!" you don't think of good things. You think of kool-aid, fields, and maybe a revival here and there with people speaking in tongues and flopping on the ground.

And then when you hear somebody say "I'm an artist!" you border the kool-aid , field thoughts. Throwing kool-aid in a field is art, right? You can flop in an artistic way!

But I think your brother is just concerned because when you say things like that it makes people wonder just when the insanity will start to pop out.

It's all about the love, man.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I know what he means, and what you mean. Being an artist is wildly aspirational, and comes sugar-coated with glutinous layers of narcissistic and humanistic wishful thinking, itself full of paradoxes: "we're all unique, everyone is special" etc.

So, although I strongly believe in vocation, the inner compulsion to make something, I also think it's important to take a sociological view: we need legitimation from the gatekeepers, curators, professional bodies, of the world we say we're part of. I think what this entry is saying is "I notice I am now legitimated by enough of the appropriate authorities to feel like this world has a role for me, and has made a space for me."

And I'm as surprised as anyone, despite having posed as an artist for quite some time.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

What about rituals? I have this project in school to make some kind of ritual. I mean, rituals are also a kind of preformance art except maybe they are done over and over and often have some kind of religious background. "Timed Preformance Art".

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I hope you're not replacing "Failed Design" with "Intelligent Design", Cap!

[nicepimmelkarl.livejournal.com]

tracey emin on the blower.

[(Anonymous)]

Congratulations, You're (at least for us all) a "creator of aesthetic things" since your first song!
The art world is so sexy... but anytime i hear someone saying "artist", "I pull the trigger!"

For me, an "artist" (as a job), is a person that has the ability (art as in artistry) to do (and/or use) an object (or a performance) that, in their meaning and/or intention, has an aesthetic causality. So... actually who cares about the "art worlds"?

I'm thinking of that women across the table from Pfizer... maybe the company that produced the deadly poison used on the executions. Sorry... I couldn't resist of thinking on that.

I hate so much the "bourgeois philistines" who "preferred their artists to have nothing to say"... run away from them!

...kapow!

Pedro F.

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

It seems odd that musicians and singers often get older and become artists... suddenly (if they're lucky...) they start to be taken seriously, and get to write articles, are invited for school lectures, etc. Sure, your ability to write, teach, and create art is all valid, but it still seems a bit gentrified, too.

You never hear about the RIAA trying to help out musicians. Rather, they're always trying to "protect the artists". Hm.

[henryperri.livejournal.com]

The American Federation of Musicians trys to help out musicians. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) works to protect recording artists with intellectual property. Of course, the RIAA is evil so everything is their fault.

[tundraboy.livejournal.com]

I am a retail slave, zap!

Nick is a special boy.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

maybe you should just tell people you're the God of Mockery?

whenever i share you with the uninformed i tend to say "Momus is a Scottish musician and cultural critic" and then mention your performances, your rather overwhelming cleverness, your constant travel and fascination with Japan, and perhaps something about your famed libido in the next sentence(s).

i mean...this is just my opinion, but sure you're an artist, but it's more that you construct worlds in words/music/imagery...so...a semantic architect? solipsistic visionary?

[performance] artist works but i prefer all the terms you include on your info page. i like your words and expressions so much i feel you should have a ready-made, fully loaded, self-created descriptor that sums you up without the lumpy umbrella-ness of "artist".

but then this is coming from someone who has been introducing herself for the past year plus as a wind-up robot girl who captures light in boxes. or something to that effect.

Re: Nick is a special boy.

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

btw I heard you made a great ghost yesterday! :DD

[hello-mike.livejournal.com]

I've gotten something like that "ultimate bohemian" line before, at various times, too. You're much better at it than I, and I've gotten old and decided to take a vacation from it and be good for a while and live in one single city for a year or two.

So you're going to have to pick up the slack; I can be vicariously world-wandering via your journal. (The podcasts help immensely, although you don't do much of them anymore, I've noticed.)

Also, I have the flu, and today is dreary, and I had an appointment to view a new apartment and cancelled at the last minute. Not that this is very interesting, but there you have it. Click Opera keeps shut-ins happy.

[(Anonymous)]

It surprises me there's a distinction that an artist always has to work with the visual. If a person's a certain way, all the artforms combine ... writers preferring designers as friends, musicians wishing they could make movies. It seems to be all one thing, with the certain type of individual being better at one form than the other (since they require particular skills of expressing the few base things).

[fishwithissues.livejournal.com]

Is "life artist" hopelessly vague?

The term jibes with the experiential, experimental model of art but, then, it also has a whole lot of that "i'm spiritual" vibe going against it. Call it "moronic holism"?

et in pitchfork, ego?

[(Anonymous)]

are you sure 'pitchfork won't review it' isn't a kind of 'i dare ya' to brett, dominique et alii?

label, baby!

[(Anonymous)]

It's interesting, this classification dance you are doing. If one really bothers to be concerned about (rather than merely observing) how others see what one does, one will define one's life work in terms that those people will understand...and respect a level of success achieved. You seem to take this into consideration when you call yourself an artist—since you are having more success in the art world. But you are still a musician, yes? Why must one preclude the other? Might you call yourself a "social commentator" as as well? Or an "adventurer?"

In yesterday's post you wrote: "Comics as a form are less "elitist", less mystificatory, less marginal, less enchanted, more narrative than art. As Clowes has demonstrated, the narrative and comedy elements in comics can lead you to Hollywood. There you can betray the high little world of art, using the power of the low big world of film."

Is it necessary to separate comics from the world of high art at this late date? I heard an interesting lecture given by Gary Panter last year which included one crucial argument: He dismissed the distinction between high art and low art in favor of a more useful one, that between personal art and commercial art. Perhaps we should rethink the old standbys and make things more challenging for small talkers who ask "what do you do?"label

Re: label, baby!

[larameau.livejournal.com]

ah, i think you hit a soft spot there... especially since the lack of separation between 'high' and 'low' art is typical of japanese culture

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

Ha that was awesome.

I just finally claimed myself a freelance theatre artist a couple months ago. Meaning all my money is now coming from different sources in the theatre ( voiceovers or whatever gigs come my way). I don't do just one thing in the theatre , i switch things up so it's always hard to answer the question. And even this answer "freelance theatre artist" seems long and pompous when I say it.
So I haven't solved how to answer the question of "what do you do."
Anywho.
Enjoyed the post.
Drew is such a funny guy.
Perfect comic for this !

How about " I am an ahhhtist" ?

Pitchfork...bleh

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, Momus! You don't need Pitchfork! Well, maybe financially, but creatively...Pitchfork?! I know that Daniel from Matmos is a staff writer, so I won't be too mean. But to be quite honest, Pitchfork has a dubious record, at best; its style is nerve-grating; and its top 50 record lists are predictably "alt" and infuriating. I mean, they're uber-hipsters, and as (I think) you've made clear on this here blog, you ain't no uber-hipster. So forget 'em!

Also...Bertie Wooster...thank you. I always like it when people mention Wodehouse. It makes me smile.

-Rob

[(Anonymous)]

(He hears! Voices indeterminate! Sees them
moving, in groups, by twos and fours -- filtering
off by way of the many bypaths.)

I asked him, What do you do?

He smiled patiently, The typical american question.
In Europe they would ask, What are you doing, Or,
What are you doing now?

What do I do? I liten, to the water falling. (No
sound of it here but with the wind!) This is my entire
occupation

WC Williams PATERSON, Book Two


-michael

[bricology.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of the story of an American who once asked the former Duke of Kent "so, what do you do?" He gave an icy look and replied "I have a good time".

keep on keepin' on

[larameau.livejournal.com]

dear momos (the greek god), just try to keep on doing all the things you've done in the past, crucial six years: inventing, interpreting, criticizing, mocking, even blaming - through music, writing, and art. being omniscent and multi-talented is not such a bad thing - true, you're not easily pigeonholed, but i think that's your strength. it's the renaissance and baroque idea of the universalgelehrte... revisited!
i only wish i had discovered you before the end of last february...

Re: keep on keepin' on

[phryne-thespiae.livejournal.com]

Dear larameau, I'm a simple unlearned girl, but I love all you are writing. I hope I can write something not completely stupid...but not now. I have too much to learn.

[notazionist.livejournal.com]

Why is it that the most interesting (at least, to me) filmmakers and musicians have shows at the MoMA, Whitney, and other galleries, but not film screenings at the Film Forum or prominent film festivals or musicians, like you mentioned, at the Bowery Ballroom?

I've shown films at three galleries in upstate NY, but not in a single theater, mostly because they're corporate owned. I don't consider myself a maker of films for a gallery space, but what is one to do?

Did you find that beguiling, Momus? I believe you've performed in galleries (your music that is).

Did you ever think...

[(Anonymous)]

...that this artistry might just be a cop-out for a growing lack of relevance, finding comfort in the confines of nombrilism. I do believe it to be rather common among pop musicians facing mid-life crisis (David Bowie seems to have suffered similar bouts of self-importance). Sorry for this to sound so mean, but you do seem to be getting increasingly in love with your own rhetoric and lacking in humor. Momus and Ron Wood, a two man show coming soon?

Re: Did you ever think...

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Again I must ask, when this word "relevance" comes up, relevant to what? There isn't just one scene, one medium or one country, you know, or one set of gatekeepers. To say I was irrelevant to everything and everyone in the world would be sweeping indeed.

[armoredbaby.livejournal.com]

Kapow indeed. Congratulations on your legitimization.