The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America

Before I complete my thoughts on one Minneapolis artist who is currently skirting the abyss, a few more words on the topic of how poorly Minneapolis treats its arts community and its less fortunate despite its entrenched self-image (and deep amounts of supporting propaganda to support the image) as a place particularly enlightened and progressive on these issues.

A few weeks ago I quoted a local artist who had blogged that Minneapolis was not all that friendly to artists. After my post, the blogger responded with this: “Minneapolis shouldn’t feel bad about not supporting artists. Lots of places can’t support their artists. But Minneapolis should stop making out with itself in the mirror and take a look at itself instead.” He also wrote: “I think this place is a fine spot for a middle class, well adjusted, creative person with a descent backup plan to get a good start. I believe that I have personal issues that keep me from realizing my goals, specifically in this place.” And he vowed to leave Minneapolis soon: “Come 8/31, there’s nothing keeping me here. Unless I start a fun dance band, or find my calling in middle management, or give myself a labotomy, I’m moving.”

Barbara Ehrenreich, in her exposé about the working poor in America, Nickel and Dimed, famously exposed Minneapolis as being among the least friendly places for people without money. In Minneapolis, the ”living wage” was calculated to be $11.77 an hour, and Ehrenreich got a job at Wal-Mart paying $7 an hour. Because of the poor layout of the city and the inadequate public transportation, she had trouble getting to work on time (she went carless for the duration of her experiment). And because of the lack of affordable housing, she could not find a decent apartment and had to stay in a barely adequate rattrap motel—like many of her co-workers. While she wondered at first how her co-workers could even think of paying $40 to $60 a day for a dive of a room (totaling up to $1500 a month), she soon realized that low-wage earners had to deal with a double-edged sword—they could not afford to pay the large sums (a full month’s rent, plus a down-payment, plus bills, etc) needed to rent a more cost-effective apartment and so had to live in more expensive, less suitable conditions.

Earlier today, meanwhile, the artist Combs made final preparations for walking away from his modest apartment—writing on an artist forum: “i quit existing on paper soon. hidden place in which to land and radiate art, incognito in society, unseen and silent… i feel like moving like a shadow down between the cracks of society and back again. lost and unlost. whole and broken hearted. pulling something out of the self that has craved the foreground, albeit bringing a new lonliness with it…”

I once quoted the Minneapolis gallerian Thomas Barry on how he felt about the city after running a gallery there for nearly thirty years: “In general, [local support] is nowhere near what is necessary to make it a vital place for showing and making art….It was better in the Eighties, most definitely. Art was a fashionable thing and people bought into it….But it’s pretty much been flat for a long time now. A lot of talented people can’t continue to make art because they can’t afford to.”

Were Minneapolis a better place for the working poor—be they artists or non-artists—it might be easier to forgive the place for patting itself over and over for its wonderful self-image. But in addition to the fact that the poor can barely survive here, and artists (who come from all over the region to be in the place that constantly extols itself as an artistic Mecca) often flounder here to get established and to thrive, as I described in 2006, in reality, at best, Minneapolis/Minnesota ranks below average nationally as an art center. Among the failings of Minneapolis in the art realm: in 2003, budget cuts of 30-60 percent decimated the State Arts Board, and while much of the budget was restored for the current biennium (after four years of struggle among arts orgs and artists), that money is likely to go the way of the dodo yet again next year—owing to yet another brutal state budget deficit; arts employees in Minnesota are generally paid 30-50 percent less than their counterparts in other places, leading to large rates of job attrition in the arts worker corps; neither Minneapolis nor St. Paul has a cultural affairs officer, a public arts plan (though St. Paul has a modest non-profit public art org), a functioning arts and culture plan, a cultural tourism initiative or plan, or any of the other features of other cities/regions serious about their arts community; and, of course, all of these factors trickle down and lead to continuing despair and hopelessness among the artists on the ground.

Sorry, fans of Failure, that I’ve missed a few posting days this week.

Part of it is I’ve been swamped 24-7 of late putting together a fundraising event for the little art organization I direct as my day job. Don’t let anyone ever tell you (ever) that fundraising, no matter for what amount (even for small-town nickels and dimes), is easy… Oh man, is it anything but easy.

By the way, the auction we’ve put together is pretty awesome, in a small-town Minnesota kind of way (with at least two world-renowned artists)—in case you happen to be one of the rare people at present in this country who are flush with cash.

The other part of my absence is I’ve been following the self-destruction of a young artist here in Minneapolis named Gabriel Combs. Combs has known for a number of weeks now that he’s going to be evicted from his drug-den urban-core apartment in the infamous Stevens Square section of Minneapolis. Here’s what he wrote (unedited) to a local artists’ forum back in early February, during the coldest part of what has amounted to the coldest winter in Minnesota in the past 15 years:

looking into renting a weekly room for awhile. luck seems to have run out. was inevitable i suppose. strange how i can’t get a job. i’ve always been curious as to what my character would become reaching complete desperation… what i will be reduced to doing, simply to survive a little longer… my instinct to survive is mercenary at rock bottom.

I should back up a bit.

I first met Gabriel Combs in 2003 or 2004. I had been writing for a website in Minnesota run by the Walker Art Center and funded by the McKnight Foundation called Mnartists.org, which also had—in an effort to connect the local community of artists—established an open forum for artists. I, of course, with my interest in community affairs, my Gen-X lack of online savvy, and my infernal optimism, have been a regular contributor, participant, and watcher of the Forums since they were mounted.

I also, in 2002, founded a local arts writer association called the Visual Art Critics Union of Minnesota, and, around 2003, I set up with the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts a lecture series called the Trialogues, in which we connected a local art critic/writer with the artists exhibited in each of the MAEP’s exhibitions.

Long story short, I met Combs at one of my favorite venues (a bar) after an early Trialogue event—back when I was pushing the events to any and all comers. I remember him as being smallish, but strong and wiry, full of the angry energy of a disciple of the Juxtapoz movement, and I’ve had a kind of ongoing “connection” (for lack of a better word) with him through the online forums ever since. As I recall, he had brought a small drawing (of a techno-beetle done in graphite on paper), that he made a point of passing around the bar table to see how the critics would react. (I kept my cards to my chest, as I was the nominal organizer of the event and had to remain political; but let’s just say here and now that I’ve never really been much of a fan of the acolytes of Robert Williams…)

Needless to say, Combs and I haven’t always gotten along. Let’s face it, I’m an opinionated arts writer, and he was an artist struggling to get noticed in a market overflooded with artists. It was inevitable that I’d eventually be the target of his frustration—if only because I stupidly kept myself in proximity. At one point, after something I wrote that only indirectly concerned him ca. 2006, Combs wrote the following gut-clenching diatribe against me on the mnartists forums (which I post primarily because it reveals, I think, something essential about the artist):

I think you need to be called on your shit. So far, i’m up to Sam Spiczka, Ben Olson, and John Grider whose comments could’nt be posted on your blog, which you say you did’nt pull down in a hissy fit, yet I think we all know better. The hypocrisy of how you complain about artists whining about not being noticed is sad, and at times a blot on the (or clot in the) scene. In contrast, a general rule i’ve heard repeated over the years has been that it takes around ten years for many collectors to acknowledge artists. Judging by the time you arrived in MN, got in the MIA’s foot in the door show, and then bailed from showing your visual art, you are what? At one third of that time? Another example of your long history of not getting what you want and getting negative. I would’nt bring these things up, but you insult other people who refuse to give up. You speak of artists harassing you for attention in your columns, which I have personally witnessed, but you asked me for images from the Inkala, Grider, and Combs Caffetto collab show, at which I was first hesitant, but gave in on your *second* request. You proceeded to hack it up in reality, again dismissing the “Juxtapoz” movement, which you’ve been unable to correctly set in history in any way, raising suspicions of yet another acidic kickback from your weaknesses. Your bashing of Olsons’ work was pathetic, (especially in contrast to the glowing and truthful review by Mark Wojahn on mplsart.org, (and you are both VACUM)) with an even more pathetic attempt at tying into a supposed overall flaw in art history. I would call it basic disrespect. Insult without a backup. Your blog came down again after a criticsm by myself, and a statement made by Spiczka on mnartists.org forums that was dismissed and dodged. True, you have given your hand to some decent (not great) writing on the arts the last few years, but also have undermined your own work better than any artist “attack” could by your general bitterness laden with venoumous hypocrisy, child-like behaviour, and your thinly masked pen-names. You’ve alienated the audience, the core peoples who would back you up.

Without you, we exist.

Without us, you do not.

There were worse comments along the way about things I’d written in print. I didn’t take offense (after a locally well-known and respected printmaker wrote, in a letter to the editor, that he’d like to smash my head in with a brick, I long ago stopped caring what local artists say about me for what I’ve written as a critic). I never responded. So why, you wonder, would I even care about such an erratic and unstable artist now—now that he’s about to be out on the street, primarily due to his own choices?

Well, if I don’t care about the self-destruction about one lowly artist in one insignificant American backwater town, then who will?…

TO BE CONTINUED…

First, some rare good news: The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America has learned that one of its blog postings, the first of a two-parter about the Colorado artist Dean Fleming, was picked up this week by the website of the Minneapolis-based magazine, The Utne Reader. Thanks to the Reader for their interest in this unusual artist, and in the Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America.

To read more about Fleming, you can also go to this post. To read more in general about struggling, aging artists go here.

Meanwhile, the bigger news this past week in Minnesota was the demise of the monthly feature magazine The Rake. Now, some would say–in a market where the local papers have downsized significantly over the past few years (cutting numerous arts and cultural writing position), where the local newsweekly has fired and replaced its entire writing/editorial staff over the past year, and where the local media market is constantly in flux–the loss of The Rake was just another blip on the path to local media/cultural/practical illiteracy.

It’s not putting too fine a point on things to say that all local publishers (and media professionals) are running scared. “Things have changed radically in the last six years, and I think it’s going to get worse long before it gets better,” Rake Publisher Tom Bartel said. “It’s too expensive to produce journalism and then have Google come along and take all your advertising.” “At best, these are challenging times, maybe even recessionary times,” said John Rash, a senior vice president at advertising agency Campbell Mithun who follows the media market and writes a monthly column for the Star Tribune. “While there is some tremendous journalism on websites and in smaller publications, it is more difficult to monetize it, both locally and nationally. Newspapers themselves have struggled.” “We think the next 18 months are going to be tough for advertising in general,” said Deborah Hopp, publisher of Mpls.St.Paul magazine, based in Minneapolis. “Our expectation is that, around here, weaker players will fall by the wayside.”

For purposes of our interest in artistic failure, however, the loss of The Rake hits home because this publication was particularly invested in and involved with the arts locally—initiating a quarterly arts insert (and a celebratory event) called 10,000 Arts, hiring a former arts writer as their editor-in-chief (which meant lots of interest in arts writing), and partnering with and supporting a number of local arts organizations on a range of projects.

The Rake will be missed…

By the way, as a separate, but related note: I wasn’t even aware that the Utne Reader still existed, were you?…

Gerald Prokop, in his new blog, has a few bones to pick with how Minneapolis/Minnesota treats its artists (even as we pat ourselves on our collective back for our self-perceived enlightenment).

He writes (in one post):

Minneapolis can’t support artists. Take the number of venues or galleries and compare it to the number of musicians or painters and you have a problem. And some of those people are cooler than you. Some have “friends in the scene.” Some have money in their family or other weird sources of income. Plenty of them are younger than you and willing to take greater risks. Add my own personal struggle with myself, and it gets hard to compete.

And in another post he writes:

I have mixed feelings about the art “scene” here, if you can call it that. I used to really believe in it. Afunctionul was all about investing in our place, and the local scene and how we could build it through those “unestablished” venues to create a healthy, diverse culture. But that was over four years ago. Since then, I tried my best at creating and marketing my visual art. I constantly felt like the “scene” was going on without me. Being an artist here is more about choosing your friends then creating your work. It’s more about having a style and fitting in somewhere socially. I closed my studio because I ran out of juice. I was broke and I wasn’t being myself. I would go to every gallery opening because that’s what you’re supposed to do.

It’s partly my fault for being socially awkward. But I dread the day when misfits don’t have the privilege of a career in the arts because overachievers have changed the standards.

It’s quite possible that the reasons I failed here as a visual artist would have caused me to fail anywhere. Regardless, I wish people would just shut up about how great it is here.

Minneapolitans like to create insulated communities, or cliques. And from that viewpoint, you can convince yourself that it’s anything you want it to be. And with our corporate paychecks, we can finance our fantasies.

For those who are interested, here’s a bit more bio about the work that Gerald Prokop has done since the early 2000s. He sounds like a doer, and it’s a shame he hasn’t found a community of support. I’m going to keep reading his blog to see how his career develops…

It’s become rather common, perhaps even boringly so, for critical writers to kvetch about their craft’s growing obsolescence and looming demise. (I myself am guilty of such an act.) Such a glut of self-obsessive hand-wringing by critics is easy to dismiss, since it is so self-serving at heart and since none of it really addresses the heart of the problem (which I humbly submit is that art itself is failing in America)…

Still, in all the critical hand-wringing you have to believe there is some cogent thought and valuable information. This piece, written by Terry Teachout in July, 2007, examines with cold-eyed objectivity the disappearance of quality regional critical writing (in press publications). The article starts by quoting a veteran NY drama critic: “We’re the last generation of newspaper critics, you know. After us, everybody will be online,” and then it enumerates the situation on the ground at that time–loss of book-review sections in papers across the country, loss of classical music critics in the Chicago and Minneapolis papers, loss of regional movie critics across the country…

Teachout goes on to give a simple explanation for the situation: “Newspaper circulation is declining, driven downward by the rise of the new Web-based media, and many papers are trimming their staffs to make ends meet. Whenever times get tough at an American newspaper, fine-arts coverage gets thrown off the back of the sled first.” He also mentions that a number of critics, as well as some arts advocates–both up in arms over the cutbacks—blame arts bloggers for this situation. Teachout somewhat disagrees with this last assessment about blog critics, saying that “some of them do it better than their print-media counterparts,” but he also laments the loss of real critical perspective about the fine arts in regional print publications.

One of the most important civic duties that a newspaper performs is to cover the activities of local arts groups — but it can’t do that effectively without also employing knowledgeable critics who are competent to evaluate the work of those groups. Mere reportage, while essential, is only the first step. It’s not enough to announce that the Hooterville Art Museum finally bought itself a Picasso. You also need a staffer who can tell you whether it’s worth hanging, just as you need someone who knows whether the Hooterville Repertory Company’s production of “Private Lives” was funny for the right reasons.

In the end, Teachout concludes with two points that I happen to agree with. One, though he is now prominent NY critic, widely read and widely admired, he still worries about the loss to the overall quality of criticism now that print publications are abandoning it. After all, he says, he got his “start reviewing second-string classical concerts for the Kansas City Star 30 years ago. Now that such entry-level jobs are drying up, I fear for the future of arts journalism in America.” Just this week I had lunch with a young arts writer in his mid-20s—who’s been writing short and pithy arts preview pieces for a side-publication of one of the Minnesota dailies—and he’s begun to seriously wonder after two years at his craft whether or not there are any options for him to have an eventual career doing this thing that he’s surprised he likes so much. “I don’t know what to do,” he says, putting his finger on a certain Gen-Y dilemma. “I’d love to keep writing, but I’m at my capacity between my day job and the freelance writing gig and all the shows I end up going to. I’d also like to have a job someday that allows me to make more than 12 dollars an hour…”

Finally, Teachout warns any artist who is prone to bid glib “good riddance” to the critic: “Any artist who’s been side-swiped by a lame-brained critic will doubtless be tempted to cheer this news. Before such aggrieved folk break out the Dom Perignon, though, they should pay heed to the warning of Virgil Thomson, who dominated American music criticism in the ’40s and ’50s: ‘Perhaps criticism is useless. Certainly it is often inefficient. But it is the only antidote we have to paid publicity.’ If you think you can do without that antidote, more power to you — but you’d better be prepared to buy a lot of ads.”

As a self-serving, Minnesota-Art-Failure-Tale (MAFT) aside: I’ve been attempting to address this issue (of the death of criticism) in Minnesota since early in 2002, after a downturn in critical writing staff at the metro’s weekly and one of its daily newspapers led me to start a local art critics’ association called VACUM. I have to admit that my efforts haven’t done much good, and today, six years later, Minnesota continues to be a shrinking market for arts critical writing.

In a previous post, I described—in an oversimplified, somewhat glib six-point plan—how artists are exploited, over and over, by cities around this country. The sixth point of the plan read:

• Kick the artists out of your buildings, sell to investors at a huge profit, retire fat, happy, and with a spotless conscience.

Since you’re likely not one of the conscienceless exploiters, you probably wonder sometimes what are the results of this callous manipulation of artists. What happens to the artists once they’re turned away from the hip and happening urban district—and from the spacious studios and accommodating galleries—they’ve helped create? Well, as it happens, I’ve profiled a couple of artists through the years who have faced exactly those circumstances, and I’ve seen the fallout. It’s not pretty…

In the spirit of open information exchange, I’ll share two such profiles. In the first, I write about Frank Gaard. He was one of perhaps hundreds, maybe even thousands, of artists displaced and removed from their studio and living situations during the artist-spawned regentrification of Northeast Minneapolis.

A wildly productive artist of long-standing status locally, Gaard long has lived (as the story describes) on the edges in terms of financial, and mental, stability. As a result, he was in a terrible position to weather a sudden and unexpected change of living circumstance when he was kicked out of his apartment in 2001. In the profile, which appeared in City Pages in the fall of that year, I describe his conditions, after having moved to a dingy basement apartment in one of the roughest parts of South Minneapolis, thusly:

Gaard has a haggard look about him these days. His face is lined and sags heavily into his thick shoulders; his skin is pale and his wispy gray and white hair flies from his head in unkempt bunches. His eyes and his occasional smile still exude charisma, but the overall air about the artist is what doctors from another age might have called melancholia. The effect could also be that of stress stretched over a long, bleak period. Gaard had to leave his Northeast apartment this past summer after his landlord sold the building. (The artist had been providing paintings in lieu of paying full rent.) His new apartment contains colorful acrylic canvases leaning against walls and furniture, stacked on tables and counters. These may not be the best of times, but Gaard continues to work at an impressive clip; he is nothing if not a persistent man.

The happy coda to the story is eventually Gaard pulled himself back up by his easel legs. When I visited him at home in 2006, his circumstances had changed dramatically. There was light coming through the window of Gaard’s front living-room studio in the cute clapboard house he kept with his new girlfriend, and he looked many times happier and healthier than five years earlier. It probably helped too that he was also fresh from a triumphant, widely publicized local billboard project that had been commissioned by the Walker Art Center.

Still, it took a good four-five years after his exile from Nordeast for Gaard to get back to this stable ground. Four-five years of stress, unhealthy living, and lack of production (he only had one exhibition during this time) before Gaard was a viable artist again. It’s very revealing, after all, that at this moment of triumph, in the little Walker web-Q&A posted to accompany his billboard project, this is what Gaard has to say:

7. What advice do you have to offer young people today?
Enjoy your youth before the evil days draw nigh.

The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America is proud to introduce a new feature: Minnesotan Art Failure Tales (MAFT).

MAFT, Chapter the First

Minnesota Loses Its State Arts Board Director (A Continuing Saga)

Tom Proehl announced yesterday, via a cheerful letter to the Minnesota State Arts Board’s constituent members, that he is resigning as director of the Arts Board to take a “leadership post” with the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

Normally, such an announcement would not carry the weight of artistic failure, and artists and art lovers in this great and humble state I call home could be confident that the once-vaunted local government agency that is the primary state institution charged with fostering artists and arts activities here would carry on its good work. However, it’s my opinion that Proehl’s leaving—after just a bit over one year on the job—leaves the local arts landscape rather desperately denuded.

As I wrote sometime in the year prior to Proehl’s coming on board—during which, owing to various factors, no one could be found to serve in the position—the State Arts Board was rather dysfunctional. In an November, 2006 essay (written a month or so before Proehl’s hiring) called “Adjust Your Sails, Minnesota Artists,” I put it this way:

The Minnesota State Arts Board is one of the oldest such agencies in the United States and has a rich history of supporting art and artists; however, recent times have not been good to the board. Perhaps you’re aware that in 2003 the state legislature, at the prodding of the governor’s office, cut arts appropriations in the state between 30 and 60 percent, depending on which budget line you’re looking at, and not a dime of this funding has since been restored. Perhaps you’re also aware that we’ve been without a State Arts Board director for nearly a year, ever since Bob Booker stepped down last December. But you probably don’t realize the Board itself, perhaps because of the above factors, is a mess, deflated by its inability to hire a top candidate, preoccupied with staff issues and conflicts, and lacking focus in leading up to the recent legislative budgetary request. (I know these things first-hand, after attending recent State Arts Board open-to-the-public meetings.)

“The core issue with the State Arts Board,” I continued, “is stinginess.” The Minnesota State Arts Board pays wages well below the norm. For instance, the offer range for our director position was $20,000 to $40,000 below equivalent positions in several other states. (State Arts Board program officers also make markedly less than their colleagues in similar positions elsewhere; and this is in a state with a reputation for being historically pro-art.)

There’s no doubt today Tom Proehl was lured away by a salary twice (or more, according to Guidestar) what he made as our nordern state’s highest, and arguably most important, public art official. The very fact that such an important figure can so easily and quickly be lured away is one sign of the sad state of local attitudes about the value of art (and a sad state of these artistically failing times).

For what it’s worth, I’d met and interviewed Tom Proehl about halfway through his quick tenure at the Minnesota State Arts Board, and I’d liked him immediately. Even more importantly, I believed he intended to do good things in his position as director. These are quotes by Tom Proehl from that interview that stand out now:

“So we’re moving forward. I think we have a long way to go to make the arts imperative in this state. I think it is about education, and making sure that people know what we do and what the arts do for the population of the state…”

“Right now we’re starting our strategic planning process, which will probably take about a year. We’re going to do convenings across the state—meet with artists, meet with institutions, meet with educators—and try to truly understand how we can support them. What do the artists need, what do the institutions need? We don’t need any more programs where people need to jump through hoops. We just need more funding.”

…[I’m looking to] put our resources into creating a stronger network of resources, putting our financial resources together so that we can create resources for artists, for arts institutions, for educators. It’s truly about making sure that we are serving the state’s population in the best way that we can.”

What’s really unfortunate is over the past six months (since the interview) Proehl had been doing exactly what he said he’d do. He was asking good questions about the Board’s strategies and about its outdated procedures and procedures. He had overseen a restoration of funding levels very close to those of 2003, before cuts were made by a legislature facing extreme budget deficits. He was expanding staff to better tackle the state arts community’s needs. He was beginning to provide a much-needed vision for the arts in this state. While he seemed a little less upbeat the last time I saw him, a few months ago, saying something about how “glacial” was the pace of change in the arts, he was nonetheless still upbeat and gave no indication he was thinking of leaving his position.

Without someone like Proehl at the helm, I’m afraid our Arts Board is going to spiral into more confusion and dysfunction. And without a decent arts life here in Minnesota what are we left with? A very cold Oklahoma?

Ah well, our loss is San Francisco’s gain. All the best to you, Tom Proehl.