I'm an artist, so, um, kapow!
May. 10th, 2006 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusThe 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!
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 issueJuly 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!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 02:43 pm (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 02:53 pm (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 02:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:01 pm (UTC)of course, there's also your eyepatch, which grants you pirate rights of grappling and conquering.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:10 pm (UTC)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".)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:16 pm (UTC)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
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:20 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:40 pm (UTC)Pretty much how I think of them, actually, and mainly just because we both associate each other with, you know, 1990.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:52 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 03:59 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 04:03 pm (UTC)And I have to say good for you, cause it's hard in this world to get recognition. Specially in something like art.
Hello! Figured it out.
Date: 2006-05-10 04:17 pm (UTC)i-D Magazine, 1998.
I hate waiting...but this was worth it.
Re: Hello! Figured it out.
Date: 2006-05-10 04:20 pm (UTC)an errant correspondent writes
Date: 2006-05-10 04:34 pm (UTC)G&P were commenting gleefully at the way the art seems to be taking off, when we were at L's gig the other night. Young bands live all over East London because there has been this residential shift of penniless studenty cool people from holloway/archway to clapoton/hackney/dalston/bethnal green/whitechapel. The artists are all holed up at the back of secret Scritti gigs and the like. But right now nobody in groups really thinks artists = wankers.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 04:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 04:51 pm (UTC)The problem with people like you, Nick, is that you do more than one thing well, and the world demands a single-word answer to the vocation question. I can't help think that "storyteller" is a bit unsatisfactory and exclusionary for you. And "performer" has associations that may not be ideal. Perhaps a new meme is called for.
But more importantly: what's this about you being "famous for dissing babies"? That's something I aspire to, as at present my skills are limited to glowering at them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 04:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 04:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-10 05:16 pm (UTC)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.