"[1. Just at the beginning of her book Gablik has included a quote from author Lewis Hyde’s book The Gift in which he describes art as a gift, not a commodity. What do you think? What does Gablik think? Is art innately noble? Are artists nobler than other people? As an artist, can you, or should you, work for money? Does money automatically demean you as an artist? Do you need to nourish your spirit? Do you need to do this more than other non-artists?]
I believe that art is actually a gift because, preciously, of the giving quality within the soul of the artist and his creation. That exchange of relaying a life, an experience, an emotion into a given media creates something that is simultaneously noble and destitute. The artist is in fact someone who must come to a realization at an emotional point, that they may be in constant battle, constant debate with the society that raises them into adults. The struggle in a revolving check and balance which always feels ever so slightly like a loosing battle, but a loosing battle for the purest of Kings. It is the art created, it is the emotion spilled and contained, that makes the artist dream again, and believe again, when everything in the world is blank. That, intrinsically is nobility. There is a grace that lies in every soul-consuming artist, in every person that looks at the sky because it calls to him, that looks through ancient history books of artifacts because they feel connected to the hands that sculpted those precious objects. Somewhere we make a choice that makes us into a kind of vague royalty, a blue-blood family so wrecked by the years and the desire to just once, capture everything you feel inside, and everything you see other people making so wondrously. We cannot therefore, deprive art of their “aura”. And money, somehow still needs to be defined because yes, you actually do need food in the fridge, a little bit of utilities, and even, a certain validation. Money of course provides things of survival and placement in societal traditions, but in the art world it works as a pat on the shoulder. It works, almost, because every artist still does want to feel artistic; we want to feel worth it. This of course falls short for the people who choose voluntarily and unemotionally to make art-things because of the monetary value, they become no better that the buyers who buy what they are told is worth it; leaving the artist’s worth separate, leaving the life separate. Gablik pains at this fact, and aches at the knowledge that money will always cause turmoil. She strives to promote pieces that remain, even if unseen, quietly by themselves. So this cavernous place we find ourselves in with the money, the pressure, the stereotypes, the history, and so much other dirt, is what cries for nourishment. Great art may just come from great experience, great love-that is, for what actually opens our eyes every morning. I constantly return to the fact, as Gablik described on p51, that conversations and community with artists of any sort, is something important. We should more often come out of those caves of ours and speak. We should speak about our art, our pain, and our obscure things running around in our thoughts that only very rarely materialize into words. Art therefore, is nourishment itself. What could be more noble? "
[16. How does Gablik come to the title of the book? What price does she consider us as having paid for modernism?]
The author comes to the pivotal question “has modernism failed?” through a variety of small steps. She leads, that is, through the various triumphs and perils in the post-modern world; while citing the nostalgic days-long-gone of Michelangelo, Monet, and many more. Keeping the reader on a journey of opinions-to nod to or scream at-that cause even YOU to actually reevaluate where the proper place to stand does lie. Until finally, we realize that there is (in fact) a bad taste in our mouths; that we do subtly look at the borders of being a working artist as a battle line.
We realize, that we may be at the brink of failure. Failure not at the ‘we’ll never get famous!” attitude, but at the very spot where such statements are the means and the end.
Head smacked against a wall made entirely of mirrors, because the price being paid is on our actual heads. Our work, our expression, and our very goals are in the balance. These things are being turned and sliced and shuffled in someone else’s hands. Gilbert and George, in their 1982 film, declare themselves to the viewer. They declare their roles, their categories, their feelings, to come to the final statement “we are artists”. They stopped. They gave their audience possibly exactly what was being craved; a birth of knowledge risen from the decayed environment of industrialism and capitalism. Maybe it is thoughts like these that prove art as an idea, because as artists we live within ideas about what we are, and what the world could be.
So, Gablik rallies along with me, that there should be a stand-however loud or not-against the failing grade on modernism. It is time for a new phase, it is time for a clean break. Artists may just need to break up with post-modern grime, we need to close the chapter, write a script on it, and leap. We must leap because we are fighting for our own salvation, our own price tags on the spiritual.
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