Diary of an Art Historian

Gallery Dreaming…

In order to be permanently closer to my partner (he’s a US citizen) I’ve decided to move to Philadelphia, USA. But I’m still committed to doing a PhD in the UK if the AHRC will bless me with some more funding love. So, lots of international nomadry to come, which is damn exciting!

M lives in West Philly, which is a regeneration area near to the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. There’s also the ICA, the Slought Institute (international art gallery) and plenty of hipster cafes, open mics, a farmer’s market and a community-oriented yoga studio nearby within about a ten minute walk-radius.

I’ve come up with a new, amazing plan. M and I are going to find a building near the yoga place, do it up, and open a contemporary art gallery and studios. M is a musician, currently doing teacher training. He’ll eventually be setting up his own community music school/outreach centre. Compassionate and artistic and awesome plans ahoy!

Will do my best to make little updates on this blog as often as possible to show you our research, planning and action processes towards this goal. We’re also planning to be urban chicken raisers. Life is good.

Think when my MA is over I’ll take a Business course! Have found an introductory one on the Open University. How exciting! Have definitely got my mojo back after several months of dithering and ill health. Stay tuned for breathless updates and lots of sketches!

Also, do check out my portfolio website/blog http://beckyhunter.co.uk

I went to see my University careers adviser last week. Partly, I went as a distraction from my impending essay deadlines, however it an was eye-opening, practical and exciting meeting. The focus was on making more of my writing and critical abilities to actually make money, thereby having more freedom to travel and to support my studies – or even, dare I say it, art practice – in the future.

I summarised the basic, but great, advice in a recent blog post. Even though it’s obvious stuff, it is far more motivating to speak to an actual person about your life plans than to simply makes notes in your Moleskine. It might be of use to artists too.

While writing my post I found myself feeling creeplngly guilty about a) working hard and b) seeking to find out about such slimy things as networking and taxes. However, this is practical life stuff, right?

As a teenager, I spent a lot of my spare time making art and music and writing for free, for joy, hanging out with artists, reading about art and philosophy. I was so idealistic about these things. I have been feeling restless lately and have been thinking about the past. Shouldn’t artists have some kind of freedom from these slippery concerns – or at least be more interested in the integrity of their work than pleasing people? How ought money and art to relate?

I would love to hear from any other artists or writers out there and how you navigate this tricky area.

A friend told me a while ago that one of the most worthwhile human characteristics is resilience. I’ve recently come to believe this is so. Having been rejected (albeit with the nicest possible letters on creamy, thick, embossed paper) from several US graduate schools and not having applied for UK PhDs this year, I’m attempting to bounce back with a bright new idea to get me through next year, before the round of doctoral research proposals begins again!

So… I’ve started writing a business plan with the help of Young, Fabulous and Self-Employed’s excellent template (http://www.yfsentrepreneur.com/2009/12/dream-by-da… – totally recommended for getting a new, inspiring perspective on your business, whether you’re an artist or a maker of widgets). I will be a critical and informed freelance art writer and speaker for hire, specialising in relationships between contemporary and modernist art practice and theory and a passionate approach to my subject (sympathetic towards artists), combined with a cutting criticality that’s not afraid to be true to my artistic values.

I must admit that I’ve been inspired lately more by writers and designers with an online presence, work ethic and enthusiasm, rather than by art world figures. Gala Darling, Nubby Twiglet and Molly Crabapple are three current role models – intellient, articulate and talented, and making a fulltime living from their writing/visual practice. I wonder how other people here at [a-n] feel about this. Do you have mentors, models or support groups, or work more through intuition, or reading up on stuff? Doy you feel that artists should be concerned with business to a similar extent as more mainstream visual professions such as graphic design? I’m really interested as I sometimes feel as if I’m betraying myself in some way by focusing on how to earn a living rather than on creative flow.

NEWS: Upcoming Lectures:

– May – Lecture on Felix Gonzales Torres at MIMA, Middlesbrough

– June – Lecture on Agnes Martin at Empty Shop Gallery, Durham City, and at the University of York

(More info will be given when dates are confirmed)

I have been mostly taken up with reading for, and planning, essays… I’m particularly excited about my current work on Cornelia Parker’s ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View’. It’s been interesting to think about it in terms of the modernist tropes of the grid and the monochrome.

While Parker’s installation is neither grid nor monochrome, its photographic documentation tends to present it as a dramatic black mass and it is hung from a wire ceiling support (in a gird shape). Its elements are actually carefuly ordered around the central lightbulb, starting with the tiniest fragment and expanding outwards to the largest sections of broken down shed – which form cross and grid shapes like barriers between the viewer and the work.

In particular I’ve been looking at Briony Fer and Rosalind Krauss’s writing on avant-garde originality and sequence. Both art historians are concerned with the fiction of origins, found in grids and monochrome works by artists such as Malevich.

By origins, Fer and Krauss mean both the artist as a unique creative genius, whose super self manifests unique works of art, and also the idea of the monochrome or grid as a radical paring down or peeling back of the picture to it ‘original’ or basic rectangular shape. Of course, both historians are highly suspiscious of these modernist beliefs. (I might go into this more if people are interested?)

To me, Parker’s presentation of a huge, frozen explosion in Cold Dark Matter harks back to these ideas of artistic origins, albeit in a rather slapstick or parodic idiom. I will be exploring in my essay what it is that Cold Dark Matter might help us to think about earlier art historical reliance on the idea of the original.

It would be interesting to hear from artists that are blogging on a-n who consider their contemporary practice in terms of an ongoing dialogue with modernist thought, figures or forms – this might be critical or pleasure-driven, or a form of re-working for the contemporary moment.

Please do get in touch as I’d like to do more work on this in the future.

ps – I’m really enjoying being on twitter. Following AxisWeb is especially helpful as they signpost interesting events and opportunities… I also hooked up with the wonderful Miro Dance Theatre in Philadelphia. Love being international!

pps – I have ordered Lucy Lippard’s novel, mentioned in my previous post, so will write more about that when it arrives. Can’t wait :)

I think the title of my blog here on [a-n] might change to ‘making words to think about things’.

As I’m studying full time and getting writing published elsewhere the ‘writing’ part of my practice is coming to the fore and I’m starting to think I’d like to make a living that way… I’ll keep you updated on how that goes… (I reckon it’s ok to be on [a-n] as someone negotiating an artistic-historical-writerly practice that seems to be slowly drifting away from making things of my own… that’s kind of sad… but I’m working on the premise that everything has its season.)

On that note, I’m getting interested in the written work of Lucy Lippard, both in terms of her gradual acceptance of feminism (of personal interest to me right now) and in her transformation into a kind of visual-word artist. Though she often moved in the 1960s and 70s art world as a kind of prototype, all-powerful contemporary curator, to me she seems much more of an artist in the way she created catalogues in the form of boxed index cards or made random selections from encyclopedias to accompany artist biographies. I’m also trying to get hold of her ‘novel’ I See, You Mean, from the late seventies as I’ve heard it’s a wonderful example of

While I’m here, I’d also like to signpost a a new piece of published writing on Axis Web that has generated loads of debate in the comments.. which makes me very happy… and has really brought out the nuances of the issue (namely, ‘Is all art politically useless?’) from philosophical, artistic and art historical viewpoints.

One last thing! I’ve started blogging more regularly (and academically) on my portfolio website and next week (Monday to Friday) is going to be MONOCHROME WEEK as I’m currently researching an essay around that topic. So if you have any interest in that area, I warmly invite you to come along to my academic site and join in the debate :)

Oh, ps – you can also follow me on Twitter, how exciting, entry into the digital information whizzy landscape.