The Myth of the Artist

In preparation for a visit by Dave Hickey to Madison, I've been reading several articles he has written. We are doing a short workshop with him.

What I like about his writing is that it's rather no nonsense. Straight to it. He doesn't bog you down with too much theory, yet makes his points.

In an article that he's working on about Andy Warhol, he makes a connection between Warhol's work on Orthodox Icons. While brief it was a good discussion of how Warhol used icons and not images to elaborate in his art.

For me though, more importantly, the article got down to who Warhol was beyond the images we see. The article portrays him as a professional. "Down to business" For me this is being an artist. There is a time to play and a time to be serious. Too few of the people I've dealt with in Madison are the later. Many of them would rather bullshit about who got drunk at which opening or how they taked to this person or that. They think that being an artist is more about performance than it is about making the work.

My biggest issue with many of the artist I know is that they want to become this image of the avant garde, a saint of all that is creative. They don't even care about what is truly at stake. The publics perception of what it is to be an artist and what an artist does. I'm sick of artist being thought of as a clown (Nauman) or some oddity. That is what the artist has come to portray in our contempory world.

For me an artist is a voice of reason. They bring a different perspective. They bounce between being spectators to being activitists in an effort to conceptualize the whole. Artists are good at taking tools and making them relavent.

As long as we dance around, doing foolish things, we will be understood as being just that. When the responsibility of being an artist weights upon your shoulders, then you know you are actually creating something that is full of meaning and worth.

This is a quick rant - just needed to get it out.