On Being Recognised: The Artist
“There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.”
“The artist is a myth. ”
“Vasari, what a dickface…”
My Instagram profile reads A R T I S T; the spaces between the letters represent the sharp intakes of breath followed by the irretrievable gulps that form such a rubicon crossing. Don’t bother counting, there’s five GULPS, including the opening GULP, wherein a sharp intake, long and oval like a pill, is swallowed past a relaxed tongue for the throat to do all the work, leaving me already breathless before the work of A R T I S T is done. Calling yourself an artist is hard work, especially if you are aware of the mythology of the artist passed down since Plato's expulsion of the poets from The Republic. The self-belief, self-regard and social confidence needed in living up to the claim of 'artist', a pronouncement yearning an echo from a peer community that will believe the pronouncer, and furthermore, legitimise such a pronouncement through public recognition or reward, is mythic.
The myth of the artist mediated throughout history (and mythology as mentioned in the tale of Arachne), from Plato to Pollock, is a myth that was hard fought for. “It’s a contested identity. It’s hard won. You have to fight for it. “Anyone can be an artist !” We know that’s not true !" (Sarah Thornton) The artist has been many things, from menial labourer to aggrandised or misunderstood genius. Under church patronage god was the auteur, the artist the artisan. Under the art market the artist has become an insecure pawn under the new god of capitalism. The overly famous phrase “art is what the artist says is art” might be true in the privacy and security of the artist's home or head, but institutions legitimise that private thought by transitioning the artist from the safety of their home or head into the public sphere, where the artist has to wrestle with equal amounts of recognition and rejection. It's a big and scary leap, and there is no way back when you jump, just up or down or a genial slow crawl.
The title of 'artist' today is equated with institution: “the artist is an institution” Andrea Fraser says with a knowing smile as queen of institutional critique. And, as one artist provocatively said among his own paintings and students in a gallery, “Art is something you exhibit.” Some 'artists' will take serious issue with such a claim, an idea that intimates the exhibiting artist is the only true artist. For an artist to proclaim that in a gallery standing among their paintings is a little exclusive. The exhibiting artist is part of a very small and exclusive club. That said, there is no better way than exhibiting to garner recognition, with the added potential for something more permanent and monetary to stave off literal hunger.
Artists hunger for something less substantial and necessary than bread and water, or the body and blood it will never become. Artists hunger for recognition. And this recognition must come from those that do, not those that don't do. Vasari was an artist; artists wanted to be in his “Lives”. Artist Andrea Fraser quotes Pierre Bourdieu when she says “recognition” for the artist “is to be recognised by those the artist recognises”. Recognition here is conflated with mutual respect. Everything outside this society of mutual admiration is arbitrary. The artist does not want to amass popular consensus for their work amidst the “looky loos” – those that look but don't participate. Artists want their peers to recognise them. It is other artists' observations (not opinion) that matters to the artist, even though it is seldom given.
Take for instance the Artists Support Pledge rolling out on Instagram, through which artists sell their work for €200 or less, and if and when they accrue €1000 sales, they buy a work from another artist under the same Pledge. I bet it is a lot sweeter if the buyer is an artist, especially one the artist recognises. However, there is risk in this goodwill economy, and that is the risk of not being recognised by either those you recognise or, at the very least, those you don't recognise. Unsurprisingly it seems painters are the ones that are benefiting most from the Artist Support Pledge. In a public conversation with the “painter” Philip Allen, I asked, "Do you consider yourself a painter or an artist?" He replied, “I wish I could call myself an artist”. Painter or artist, artist or painter, I can't help but think Philip Allen's wish to be an artist is not conciliatory, consciously or not. There is something special about being a painter recognised by another painter, painting being as pure as the driven snow in comparison to the bad aim of the pissing contemporary artist. There is a purity in how painters attend to other painters. As one painter said to me, “I paint for other painters.”
In Sarah Thornton's book 33 Artists in 3 Acts she divides the definition of the artist into three chapters, one of which is “Kinship” (the others “Politics” and “Craft”). Through “Kinship” Thornton hoists words like “empathy” and “affinity” to illustrate the social relationships and behavioural patterns in familial and social groups in this micro-world of the artworld. Artists find acceptance within a very small coterie of individuals who get them, mostly. After a return to art-making after an eight-year lapse, I'm beginning to empathise once again with the plight of the artist in terms of being recognised. Contra to the notion of empathy being something positive, the empathy I'm feeling in the studio is making me think I will be more (not less) critical when I return to writing on *Live* art again post-pandemic. You really can't empathise with art or the artist until you feel the plight and pleasure of the artist in both your head and hands. This is something I forgot. That's why artists make the best critics when they weave the critical sentence. Artists empathise with art and the artist coldly and in secret when things don't ring true in their eyes. Nevertheless, empathy and affinity are communitarian drivers, whereas the more instrumental drivers of being and living in the world as an artist are irrevocably tied up with institutions, from education to art market. In a world where white walls have eyes, the dance of hyper-visibility and ladder groping gets a little tired.
After completing the first phase of my art education, my CV was a mere half a page, a quarter of which was, white lies. I first realised institutional support was important when I tried to join Visual Artists Ireland and found they had criteria for their membership which divided those artists that had achieved institutional support under the incongruous “Professional” member, and those that didn't under “Associate” member. To be recognised as a “Professional” member you had to fulfil specific criteria that was exclusively connected with recognised institutional support in the form of solo exhibitions, collections, commissions and so on. My confidence was shattered, but my route was mapped out by institutional ambition. “Confidence” has been a big part of what it is to be an artist since Vasari's “Lives” portrayed the artist (specifically Michelangelo) as someone with god-given powers imposing his will on the world and not the other way around. As Gombrich claimed in The Story of Art, “There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists.”
Perhaps I am arguing to reclaim the old idea of 'artist' away from the institution all the way back to the poet whom Plato wanted to kick out of the Republic because they were disruptive in their mimesis of reality which, in Plato's terms, is just a representation of a representation that leads us in the wrong direction away from the plane of ideal forms. I am placing a lot of emphasis on language here (the word 'artist') to save the day, but I believe language is a defining factor in defining the artist's position alongside the institution, which artists cannot ignore in order to survive or just feel valued through institutional support, which is sad, but the way it has always been. The artist is defined and reclaimed here in the face of the institution. Andrea Fraser's “The artist is an institution” seems rhetorical, like, let's say, “The artist is an island.” It doesn't ring true. For me the definition of the artist is pragmatic: The artist asks What if? and then does What if? Artist is a word that catches on the tongue rather than rolls off it. And not every 'artist' is an A R T I S T according to other artists – "Art is not a democracy" Gore Vidal proclaimed with a smirk. Nevertheless, some artists seem to attribute nothing really special to the role of the artist outside of saving themselves:
“I don’t know what art does for people who look at it, but is saves people that make it.
”