As it may be relevant to this discussion, I am re-posting this review of the book The Art of Not Making, which first appeared in Art & Deal magazine.
In 1917 an unknown artist named "R. Mutt" exhibited a
perfectly ordinary porcelain urinal at the exhibition of the Society of
Independent Artists in New York City. The actual person who lay behind this act
of aesthetic sabotage was of course Marcel Duchamp. Through his radically
clever mind he managed to transform an object as vulgar as a urinal into not
only a memorable sculpture, but probably the most analysed and written about
object in contemporary art history. Duchamp had simply placed a store-bought
urinal upon a pedestal and titled it Fountain. In doing so he
demonstrated that art became art simply by the artist declaring it to be.
Duchamp also argued that it was the placement of an object within a relevant
context that caused it to be raised from mundane existence to that intellectual
pinnacle reserved for art. For Duchamp, the primacy of art lay in the realm of
ideas, and whether or not art was the result of laborious work or instantaneous
inspiration was immaterial. The social, aesthetic, and cultural ramifications
of Duchamp's "creation" of Fountain are still very much with
us today. There are few things more sacrosanct in the world of contemporary art
than the premise that idea is superior to craft.
Of course ideas (concepts) have always been at the heart of art. The
written histories of both Western and Eastern art revolve around how particular
works of art represent the spiritual, cultural, scientific, or social concerns
of their times. Idea has been paramount, though it is interesting to note that
much of the art we admire in history books was actually the manifestation of
ideas formed not by the artist, but by the artist's patron(s). Thus,
Michelangelo worked within the confines of The House of Medici and the Catholic
Church of Rome, and the humanistic values that many find in his art cannot be
divorced from the overriding need of the artist to illustrate his patrons'
ideas. Michelangelo, after all, created such things as the Sistine Chapel on
commission, and his concepts were in large part bound to accepted versions of
Biblical themes that he was paid to illustrate. His famous sculpture of David
was a received commission from the Florentine Guild of Wool which made a clear
directive that the sculpture was to be of the Biblical David and represent
Florentine freedom. Nearly all of Michelangelo's work was contracted and given
initial conceptualization by his patrons. Similarly, in the East, the
miniaturists of the Persian and Moghul courts were bound to various dictates of
Islam, inherited cultural norms, and the whims, commissions and decrees of
princes and caliphs.
It is sobering to remember that throughout much of the world's history
the artist was not thought of as an independent thinker, much less a visionary.
Artists were judged "good" or "bad" largely upon their use
of finely-tooled craftsmanship to bring into being the concepts of their
patrons. As such, even the most respected artists were seldom given a status
above that of master craftsman. True, many such artist-craftsmen managed to
brilliantly improvise within the parameters of their patronage. But it was not
until much later, with the demise of feudalism, the evolution of freer markets,
and a growing emphasis on individualism, that artists came to be seen as independent
thinkers, visionaries, messengers of truth, and innovators that question
established orders within a liberated social-aesthetic space.
It is good to remember these things when delving into the new Thames and
Hudson book, The Art of Not Making: the New Artist/Artisan
Relationship (written by Michael Petry and released just last January.) Though
this book has seen little attention to date, it is perhaps the most potentially
subversive book dealing with contemporary art this year. The Art of Not
Making is in fact a sort of "coming out" by artists of all
stripes. On one level the book works as a mass-confessional, boldly addressing
an issue that the art world has muttered about for years but seldom addressed
in public: the fact that scores upon scores of contemporary artists do not make
their own work. Author Michel Petry, himself an artist, is to be given credit
for pursuing a very touchy subject with sincerity, candour, and a great deal of
fairness and grace. The artists featured in the book also deserve credit for
their honest admissions and cooperative interviews.
Petry, of course, begins his discourse with the mandatory reference to
Duchamp. It is then pointed out that artists throughout the ages have employed
other artists as assistants. There is a particularly memorable anecdote of a
patron rejecting a painting he had commissioned from the Venetian artist
Bellini as it was thought to have been painted primarily, if not totally, by
the artist's assistants. But The Art of Not Making quickly catapults into
the present. Michael Petry does as most of us involved in today's art world
do...rather all-too-quickly accepting what has become a somewhat unquestionable
premise: that the artist is primarily a conceptualizer whose true work is first
and foremost in his or her head. The actualization of conceptualized artworks
thus becomes a rather mundane, even routine encounter with craft. Contemporary
acceptance of this premise stems straight from the provocation of Duchamp's
famous urinal and the eventual integration of Duchamp's philosophy into the
mindset of the cultural elite.
The Art of Not Making is filled with quotes that
perfectly illustrate the prevailing acceptance of Duchamp's declarations. The
Canadian artist Micah Lexier, speaking about his wall installation of 20,000
custom minted coins for the Bank of Montreal, sums up his use of craftsmen by
saying, "I always have gotten other people to make things. I have an
active mind, but haven't always been so good at making things, so I'd get
something made, or printed, by someone else. It was a response to the skills,
or lack of skills that I have." Similarly, the Egyptian-born artist Ghada
Amer states,"I get involved in the craft aspect of the work but, rather
than getting bogged down in making things, I prefer to look for new ideas and
resolve new problems. So although I'm not a conceptualist, I like to teach
other people to do the work for me; even my paintings are done with
assistants". It is interesting to note in this quote that Amer claims
"I'm not a conceptualist" while at the same time confessing that she
does not like "getting bogged down in making things". One is left
wondering just what it is that she does.
To be fair, most all of the artists interviewed in The Art of Not
Making seem diligent and committed to their work. Some express a deep love
for working with the various artisans they employ. The African-American artist
Fred Wilson, talking about collaborations with glass artisans from the Berengo
Studio in Murano, Italy, states that, "When someone else makes your work,
who they are goes into it as well. If they are connected to it, the fabricator
can develop a wonderful relationship with the artist....Each person brings a
different talent and aspect to it. It can take you in another direction."
Another American artist, Fred Tomaselli, while talking about working with hired
Chinese tapestry weavers, states: "I have never differentiated between the
realms of art and craft. As an artist I am very hands on; everything done by
me, by hand, with only one assistant, so jobbing out to another person whom I
never met and working in another country gave me some pause. But it's
interesting to have the forms articulated by such great craftspeople."
But there are also voices within the book that sound disconnected and
even downright arrogant. One example is the Italian Maurizio Cattelan, who,
while speaking about his conceptual installation of a replica of the iconic
HOLLYWOOD sign on the hills above Palermo declares: "The idea that the
artist manipulates materials is not something that I agree with. I don't
design. I don't paint. I don't sculpt. I absolutely never touch my works."
It bears repeating: "I absolutely never touch my works." One wonders
why this is spoken with such a degree of pride. One can accept an artist's
desire to exist within the realm of pure ideation...but why the seemingly
disdainful allusion to the process of craft?
And then, in other artists, there are the unavoidable implications of
exploitation. Jochem Hendricks, a German artist with a reputation for probing
complex moral and ethical issues, is represented in the book by "6,128,374
Grains of Sand", an artwork which is just that: 6,128,374 grains of sand
enclosed in a glass egg. Petry states: "The only way to verify the count is
to crack the egg and destroy the work of art,"...certainly an interesting
enough concept. But Petry goes on to explain that the artist "paid
assistants (often illegal immigrants in Germany) to count the grains of
sand". Moral questions indeed.
Subodh Gupta is, I think, the only Indian represented in the book. It is
a pleasure to find him discussed as just one more among a host of international
art stars (rather than being segregated and categorized as an "Indian
Artist"). Gupta joins the conceptual choir in stating, "I transform.
My job as an artist is to think, to conceive the ideas." And then rather
surprisingly (at least to me) he adds: "My art is made up for me by expert
artisans all over the world: the thali works were made in America." Of
course my surprise stems from having thought his thali works were made by
Indian artisans, not American.
Perhaps the most disturbing moments in the book are not the many quotes
and interviews with the artists, but rather, the voices of the craftspeople. It
is discomforting to read how seemingly content they have become in their roles
as "makers" for the "conceptualizers". One such
"maker", London-based Anthony Harris, when asked about the question
of authorship replies, "When does an architect build the building? When
does a composer play an orchestra? ....It doesn't matter who made it. Do you
like it, will you buy it, how much do you want to pay for it? That's it. The
creative process is complete: idea, object, sale!"
As a whole, The Art of Not Making becomes
a fascinating book that conjures more questions than it answers. But we are
left to return to the realization that once upon a time it was craft that was
valued more than idea. Ideas were left primarily to the powerful patrons who
commissioned the work. In that sense, have the new generation of "office
artists" (as I like to call them) who "absolutely never touch"
their work, become the new patrons of talented and unsung artist-craftsmen who
have entered into a newly subservient social position? Have the office artists
who spend their days conceptualizing, networking, and marketing, in fact become
non-artist businesspeople who work as defacto agent-advisors to craftsmen? Is
it the "craftspeople"... who have spent too much time learning the
technique of their art to be able to effectively conceptualize and promote
it...who are, in the old-fashioned sense of the term, artists? Who is advisor,
who is agent, and who is artist? I do not ask these questions with any mean-spiritedness,
as I myself have become, at least partially, an office artist who works with
studio artists and craftsmen to fabricate my ideas. But to avoid these
questions is perilous...not only for artists and craftsmen as individuals, but
to the integrity of the art community as a whole.
