I think I’ve figured out why I botch every attempt I’ve made at writing an artist’s statement. They seem based on separating the art/artist from the person, and I have no idea how I would go about doing that. I might as well write a biography and family history, combine it with a list of the mediums I work in and what I hope to achieve though my creative works (and why). That’s not a short essay, it’s a medium sized novel. That I still don’t know how to start.

Should have brought my notebook to the bookstore. Didn’t find the book I wanted, but did spend an hour reading a nifty history of art materials (euorpe-centric, fresco and egg tempera up though acrylics) that I couldn’t justify buying today but should go on my LibraryThing wishlist.

Though I did indulge in an expensive starbucks triple shot eggnog laced creation in honor of it being the weekend and not having to actually be anywhere.

In honor of NaNo. Full thing here.

Make no mistake about this: if you have written and finished a novel you ARE a writer.

Don’t let anyone, particularly some snotty so-called publishing professional, demean this achievement. You’ve written a novel = you’re a writer.

It doesn’t EVER have to be published, and you’re still a writer.
You can publish it online, on your website, or with any of those book printing mills, and yes, you are still a writer.

Usually one snark-post on something is enough to cool me down, I’m still pretty het up and grumpified over Jeff Abell’s letter to the NY times, so I think a point by point snarking is in order.

Ms. Smith?s article has made the already tenuous tenure of artists in academia even more tenuous.

Well, it’s obvious you didn’t major in language. “Tenuous tenure” is twee enough without the second use of tenuous, to say nothing of the part where you’re wrong wrong wrong like? a wrong thing.

GETTING tenure might be even more uncertain and fraught than it used to be, but the whole point of the tenure system (correct me if I’m wrong here) is that once you have it, it’s damn near impossible to get you out, right? It is (barring some truly spectacular malfeasance) the closest thing to a lifetime appointment. Of course, those who have attained this lofty goal (in all programs, not just the MFA’s) have a well and vested interest in making sure the system remains strong. If the pyramid crumbles, after all, what will you have to sit on top of?

Her call for artists to go forth without credentials is na?ve at best

You’re in an ivory tower, so let’s not go slinging that particular word about, eh? Unless, of course, you personally lack basic health insurance and are hoping that someone buys something you made in the near future so you don’t have to fall back on working at the gods be dammed mall, or are holding down a day job so you can make art in the evenings.

and seems to assume that graduate programs fail to teach artists survival skills

You mean like a full course on how to get though flu season with no health insurance? Please, do tell me how a portfolio review course prepares a 20 year old for that.

or encourage them to develop emotionally vivid works.

What the ever loving? fuck does “emotionally vivid” mean??

I concur with Ms. Smith that the Ph.D. in art is a bad idea in the United States, where an M.F.A. entails 60 hours of graduate credit.

So glad to hear that. Your condescension honors us.

No one says an education is cheap.

So only the rich or those who are willing to indenture the better part of their working lives should be allowed to call themselves artists? What a smug, overbearing, elitist pile of crap.

To imply, however, that this is money ill spent is to endanger the job of every artist with a university appointment.

You mean everyone with a job like yours. Now we come to the crux of the matter.

That Ms. Smith thinks a band of renegade conceptual artists will do a better job of teaching young artists than university professors do is insulting.

Er, I’ve been taught by some of those vaunted uni. profs, and it’s insulting that you’d think they’re qualified to do much of anything beyond making sure that everyone likes the same things they like.

Also, when was the last time you ducked into an art history class? Most of the major art movements of the 19th and 20th centuries started in direct opposition to the entrenched academic art communities of the time and were roundly decried by the then-current elites as trash.

In fact, can you tell me one historically relevant art movement in the modern era that started in the classroom?

It?s also like yelling ?fire? in a crowded theater,

Really? Really? You feel you’re in imminent danger of being trampled?

as it comes at a time when many colleges are already cutting art faculty.

As though we haven’t been seeing arts programs on the primary and secondary levels on the chopping block for decades. Colleges are cutting programs and facility all over the damn place because, if you haven’t noticed, times are hard right now and it sucks for everyone at every point on down the line. The arts are ALWAYS the first thing to get hit because the public has the notion that they are useless “extras” that are not really needed. (Folks like you are not helping that perception in the slightest, by the way.)

In short, you’re the nekkid emperor, and someone pointed this out to you. Your junk is out swinging in the breeze and it isn’t particularly impressive, so go find some skivvies and come back once you’ve checked your ego and entitlement, ‘kay?

Not that this is a shocker to me, but the Times notes that some artists are raising the idea that one does not need to spend umpty-thousand dollars on a professional degree to be a professional artist.

The professionalization and academicization of the art world has been lamented for some years, but lately they have become epidemic. (Roberta Smith)

Unsurprisingly, some academics are affronted:

Her call for artists to go forth without credentials is na?ve at best and seems to assume that graduate programs fail to teach artists survival skills or encourage them to develop emotionally vivid works. (link via Art Vent) (Edit: direct link to the letter)

I’ll be over here, laughing my ass off. I’ll also put out the offer of pencils at dawn to any academic gatekeeper who thinks that a piece of dearly bought paper makes one artist inherently better trained, more authentic, or more more marketable than another. Better than 2/3 of the folks I knew in fine arts programs in school are doing anything but art professionally, as it is a very nearly impossible way to feed oneself, and always has been. I have lived my entire life surrounded by working artists. Some had degrees. Some did not. At the end of the day, it didn’t much matter either way.

And of course, none of this is new.