I’m just back from a whirlwind trip to Pittsburgh to check out the 2008 Carnegie International, and I’ve also been scrambling to get a few projects done this week, so I’ve been unable to post to CAFA for the past week. To make up for this recent blog-lull (blull?), below are a few quick Bullet Points of Failure for June–this miserable month of miserably (so far) gloomy weather.

• Last night, at a dreary-wet, underattended Art Happy Hour (my side-project designed to counterbalance the constant depressive pull of failure from this site), I got to speaking with a local artist named Jim. He’d just come back to live in Minneapolis, where he is from, after spending five years teaching at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He is, it seems, a regular reader of CAFA (the first I’ve ever met, actually), so we got to talking about failure and local art, and he said something brilliantly perceptive: “Here’s what I think about Minneapolis now that I’ve been away and come back: I’ve never been in a place filled with so many brilliant, capable, and creative people who are going nowhere.”

• I didn’t realize this at the time, but back in November, 2007–about the time I was starting up this blog on artistic failure–a Carnegie Mellon University art professor started The Museum of Modern Failure, as a project for a class called “Art in Context.” The idea was to celebrate people’s personal failures, and the “museum” was a black wall on which people post a wide range of “failures”: whether technological (the Hindenburg, the Titanic), unpopular inventions (Segway, Firestone tires, Comanche helicopters, the DeLorean), cultural flops (Milli Vanilli, Ebonics, the mullet), or so on. The concept was suggested by student Rachael Brown, a 22-year-old creative-writing major. She noticed that the store that would come to house the museum, located at 2628 E. Carson St., had a “history of failure… The most recent failure was Bookends, a used computer store operated by the adjacent Goodwill, where old Epsons and educational CD-ROMs had failed to keep the business afloat. ‘I just find it really humorous that blunders aren’t what we celebrate in museums, just big successes,’ Brown explain[ed].” In a perfect coda to the project, the temporary museum close just shortly after it opened, in December of last year.

• My review of the Carnegie International, as well as a long Q&A-style interview with its curator Douglas Fogle, went live on another new side-project of mine–a blog of visual arts writing on the Rakemag.com site called The Thousandth Word. I didn’t realize it until later, but my take on this big blockbuster international survey exhibition reflected something about the clouds of failure that hang over these times:

The best work in the 2008 Carnegie International reflects intimate, eccentric, often uncertain moments even as it hints at deeper and vast problems in the society. This is art of the resigned, pitiful shoulder-shrug variety, not of the noisy (and perhaps useless) hammer-thud variety–such as what was on display in such blustery recent shows as, say, the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Many of the personal and intimate gestures of these artists are designed, in fact, to spill out over from the private mind into a public realm, perhaps like pond ripples or a zen butterfly’s wings flapping or other suitable metaphor.

Warning: What follows is a bit on the self-serving side. Not that blogs in general aren’t all in some way an exercise in solipsism, but I just thought you should know, in case you were shill-sensitive, that this post is wholly intended to tout a new project I am involved in: A Twin Cities-based blog of art criticism and arts writing called “The Thousandth Word.” It’s being published by Rakemag.com, and involves the effort of a group of six sharp-tongued and perceptive critics calling themselves “The Vicious Circle.”

Since you’re all religious readers of CAFA, you will likely recall that I reported here back in March that the Rake Magazine, for several years a chief supporter of quality coverage on the local visual arts, ceased print publication. Well, as it turns out, I was surprised to learn that Rakemag’s existence did not entirely blink out after that announcement. While there were drastic layoffs, and while the remaining staff were moved to a smaller, more humble location, Rakemag regrouped itself, retooled its business-model (in keeping with these virtual times), and began to expand its online-only list of offerings: namely, a growing roster of blogs on sundry topics.

“The Thousandth Word” is the result of weeks of discussion, negotiation, and planning. The first post of “The Thousandth Word” explains the process a bit, and lists the professional biographies of the six writers of this blog. The plan is for the Vicious Circle to fan out across the city and region, take a looksee at what’s being made and exhibited artistically in town, and write two monthly posts apiece on what we each discover. The result will be twelve or more critical posts on art for an information-starved community of local artists.

So, what we’ve got here, gentle art readers, is a bit of lemonade squeezed from the rock-hard old lemons of these current times of (artistic failure).

I have no way of knowing yet how accurate was Holland Cotter’s NYT review of the just-opened Whitney Biennial, but, based on his descriptions of the show and what I know of it myself, this assessment sounds about right:

…this year we have a Whitney show that takes lowered expectations — lessness, slowness, ephemerality, failure [emphasis mine] (in the words of its young curators, Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin) — as its theme.

A biennial for a recession-bound time? That’s one impression it gives. With more than 80 artists, this is the smallest edition of the show in a while, and it feels that way, sparsely populated, even as it fills three floors and more of the museum…

Past biennials have had a festive, party-time air. The 2004 show was all bright, pop fizz; the one two years ago exuded a sexy, punk perfume. The 2008 edition is, by contrast, an unglamorous, even prosaic affair. The installation is plain and focused, with many artists given niches of their own. The catalog is modest in design, with a long, idea-filled essay by Ms. Momin, hard-working, but with hardly a stylistic grace note in sight. A lot of the art is like this too: uncharismatic surfaces, complicated back stories…

…the overall tenor of the show is low-key, with work that seems to be in a transitional, questioning mode, art as conversation rather than as statement, testing this, trying that. Assemblage and collage are popular. Collaboration is common. So are down-market materials — plastic, plywood, plexiglass — and all kinds of found and recycled ingredients, otherwise known as trash.

As a side-note, I have visited the past two Whitney Biennials, and I have reviewed them—usually focusing on the Minnesota angle for a little Minnesota-based web-publication. I find Cotter’s quick take above on the past two Biennials to be pretty spot-on, though I’d probably be a little harsher in my assessment of the 2006 show (and, indeed, I was). So, I have no reason to doubt him about the 2008 version.

I also then must say, “kudos, Whitney!” for recognizing—like CAFA—that failure is the order of the day in art.

As a final note, I do plan, once I can break free long enough to do so, to visit this failure-focused Biennial. In a perfect world, in which I have enough time away from my day job and enough left-over energy, I’d write more regular reviews of local and national art for a hungry local audience. (I say this fully realizing that all the local art criticism venues are rapidly dying off.) Still, I’m hopeful that I can, later this spring/summer, visit the seemingly less dire, more circumspect, more internationally derived Carnegie International, which opens in May, and write a comparative survey of these two major art events.

And heck, if I can’t get the review published somewhere good, then you can be sure it’ll end up just another feature of Failure. Stay tuned!

An alert reader recently forwarded to me, upon reading my essay about the artistic drive, a poem by Marge Piercy. I was so amazed by how closely this poem’s tone and subject matches up with the tone of my essay that I simply had to post it.

By the way, phlogiston, according to the artist who send the poem, is an alchemical term referring to the hidden fire that lives in wood before it is actually burned. Enjoy the poem.

For the Young Who Want To

by Marge Piercy

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don’t have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.’s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else’s mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you’re certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

Following on the heels of the essay that I wrote five years ago and reposted a few days ago, I wrote my final word on Hollywood in January of 2004, after a long ten days spent back home.

Here you go:

Hollywood Art Critic, Part 2

January 31, 2004
Michael Fallon

IT’S BEEN SAID MANY TIMES BEFORE, but California is a bizarre place. And I don’t mean the constant calamities. (Sure, it might seem unnerving that there was an earthquake up near San Simeon just this morning as I write from a coffee shop in Malibu–but that’s background noise here.) I’m also not referring to the endless stream of eccentrics who make their home in California. (San Simeon, for example, is the locus of William Randolph Hearst’s infamous castle; Hearst was once spoofed by an outlandish and vastly overweight filmmaker in the movie “Citizen Kane;” the filmmaker later in life shilled for cheap California wines before dying of a heart attack in Hollywood in 1985. Strange enough stuff for most places, but rather quotidian for here.) Rather, mostly what makes California strange is its endless taste for make-believe.

If one had time, one could read Boorstin and Borges, Baudrillard and McLuhan and perhaps Sontag, and somehow come to understand the state’s Hollywood-borne penchant for fancy. For example, why does the state’s electorate continue to elect actors to play the role of the chief executive office? (We all know from our experience with the wrestler that this just doesn’t work in the end.) Or, in more mundane life, why do Californians eat “teardrop” tomatoes, rather than what we more prosaic Minnesotans call “grape tomatoes”? (They’re the same thing, just different names.) Or, why, at the end of the day at Disneyland, do machines spew out “snow” over Main Street after the fireworks show to conjure up the magic of a winter wonderland to an enraptured audience in 60-degree weather? (This stuff turns out to be some sort of detergent foam that, if you’re not careful, can sting the eyes.)

And speaking of winter, the fashion rage in Malibu this December seems to be knee-high mukluks. Since I’ve been sitting in the open courtyard of the Coffee Bean Café in a strip mall a block from the ocean, I have seen nine women, and one man, wearing this displaced garb–often with short skirts and midriff-revealing tops–as they wander from store to store (Malibu Lifestyles, Indiana Joan’s, Planet Blue) looking like extras from a Klondike gold rush movie. I came from the direction of Hollywood this morning via the Ventura Highway and Mulholland Drive, through the Malibu Valley and the scrubby Santa Monica Mountains, but this is definitely the deepest suspension of disbelief I have seen all day. Consider how impossible would be the diametrically opposed phenomenon: bikini-clad lifeguards on the beach at Lake Harriet in late December.

If you think California is so strange, you’re probably wondering, why are you even there? Well, I could talk to you about the true reason–preempting the winter blahs that have tended to afflict me every year since moving to Minnesota seven winters ago (yes, I count my time in winters) through contact with sun-warmed Pacific Ocean salt air–but that’s not terribly interesting. Instead, let’s talk about the reason I’m going to present to my accountant at tax time: I am here to research further the potential of becoming the Hollywood Art Critic that I dreamed of becoming in my column of August 29 of last year (see link below).

LET’S BEGIN AGAIN. On my third day of my recent trip to California, just a week before this past Christmas, I made my way to “The Brewery” just east of downtown Los Angeles. I had been hearing a lot of buzz lately about how this artists warehouse commune was the ground zero of L.A. art activity these days, and while it turned out the complex was not much more than what’s going on in Lowertown or in the NE arts corridor, the visit was revealing nonetheless.

At the Brewery I bumped into Mat Gleason, the editor and publisher of a ten-year-old underground arts zine called Coagula (see link below), a low-tech, slash-and-burn gossip rag that art regulars from coast to coast seem to hate even as they can’t help but read it. (To give you an idea of Coagula’s attitude, a book compilation of its first five years is called Most Art Sucks and is billed as the “only honest book about the world of contemporary art.”) Gleason himself was a fast talker who relished keeping tabs on who’s been stroking whom in the back rooms of the art world. Indeed, when I came on the scene he was busy complaining about the Coagula compilation book. It turns out Most Art Sucks didn’t sell particularly well–despite the fact that David Bowie wrote a glowing book review of the text for barnesandnoble.com, and that a Bowie blurb was included on the book’s back cover.

“You would think a publicist might be able to get us some publicity based on this fact,” says Gleason. “But what do I know? She couldn’t get us a write-up anywhere.” This leads to a litany of further invective. For example, as it turns out, the aforementioned publicist now works for Viggo Mortensen’s nonprofit “charitable” organization that is charged with funding art. “Really it’s a scam,” says Gleason, “It exists for Mortensen to take a write-off and to filter money to his artist friends.”

Eventually I make my escape (but not before hearing more complaints–about Gleason’s landlord, about how cold the studios are, about some art by a dead artist he’s been saddled with and that no one wants to take away), intrigued that he brought up the issue of publicists. According to the New York Times, Hollywood these days is all but ruled by publicists. A recent article by entertainment columnist Frank Rich quotes journalist Peter Biskind saying: “The disconnect between appearance, as it is presented in the media, and the reality of what actually occurs behind the scenes is as great in Hollywood as it is in Washington, if not greater.” And in fact, as I discovered when I first began researching what kind of art a “Hollywood art critic” might end up covering, the lion’s share of the art buzz out here was more of the same-old same-old California penchant for unreality. That is to say, if you look for info on California artists what you get is a lot of guff about Hollywood stars who act the part.

To mention just a short list of Hollywoodians who have gotten press for their artistic pretensions of late–there’s Tony Bennett, whose sailboat scenes have been collected by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kathi Lee Gifford, and Arsenio Hall. Beyonce Knowles was quoted as saying of her painting habit: “It takes me away, and it’s really peaceful.” Dwayne Hickman, star of the 1960s TV show “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” says painting “is an expression of art that you can sit down and do anytime you want. I can’t go downstairs and act, but I can go downstairs and paint.” Couple Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson hang their own work on the walls of their sunny L.A. home. Michelle Pfeiffer wishes she “could paint like Renoir.” And Jane Seymour; Jennifer Anniston, Brad Pitt, John Waters, and the aforementioned Viggo Mortensen and David Bowie have been among those cited in the “trades” for their art habits.

I’d let this hoopla pass me by as just so much dabbling by people who have too much time on their hands if in turn the real California artists–the ones worth watching–were getting their due as well. But the simple fact is, the truth beyond the glitzy Hollywood portrait of the pursuit of art is the life of the artist here, as elsewhere, is bleak. Artists in California who do not happen to be Hollywood actors struggle to survive against the terrible ambivalence of society.

I know this first hand, as I spent the rest of my Brewery-excursion in the studio of 70-year-old artist George Herms, a local mainstay since the 1950s. Herms came up with the Beat Generation and has been collected by most of the major museums (including the Walker Art Center). At this point in his career, he should basking in success, coddled by art patrons, happily retired and secure in his finances. But in fact, I discover, Herms is struggling to survive at the Brewery, unable to pay his bills despite all he’s accomplished, and recently sued by the Brewery’s owners for back rent.

“I’m just an idiot,” Herms says, as the afternoon light fades in a studio that is filled with nearly fifty years worth of art and art materials, some of which he’s recently had to raffle off just to pay lawyer’s fees. “I get up and work everyday. I’m more into what I’ve just started than in taking what’s finished and turning it into the coin of the realm.”

If only this were a Hollywood story: The upstart pretender to the throne, looking like a fashion model in his mukluks, would lead a ghost army of nonprofit granters and art patrons from across the sea just as a light foamy snow begins to fall. All would arrive just in time to save the debt-ridden artist from near-certain calamity. Ah, wouldn’t that be something?

Here are some more of my (slightly more cogent) thoughts on what’s messed up about Hollywood, written nearly five years ago by a younger (slightly less jaded) version of myself.

(*Note: Just so you know, I grew up in the shadow of Tinseltown and am quite aware of what LaLaLand is all about.

**Note too: Just so you know, I’m a critic (on art, culture, etc.). I critique. It’s what I do… This doesn’t mean I hate Hollywood. Actually, I critique because I love. Things that I hate, I don’t write about…)

Hollywood Art Critic, Part 1

August 29, 2003
Michael Fallon

HOLLYWOOD LIKES A GOOD YARN—especially a tidy tale that’s been telegraphed in advance, hits all the right emotional points, and plays out exactly as expected.
Consider the recent hit summer flick Seabiscuit. Never mind that the truth of the story of this 1930s-era race horse—as told in Laura Hillenbrand’s book, on which the movie was based–was much more intriguing than the movie version. The producers/writers/consultants/test audiences couldn’t help but keep the story satisfyingly predictable for the glazed but touchingly unjaded eyes of moviegoers.

The very emotional climax of the film—the race with War Admiral–was a complete put-on. Oh, I don’t mean that the race didn’t happen, and that Seabiscuit didn’t win, but in reality War Admiral’s owner didn’t exactly shy away from the challenge, as the movie implied. Both War Admiral’s and Seabiscuit’s owners attempted to gain advantage by setting and canceling the meeting for over a year, and in fact Seabiscuit cancelled more races with War Admiral than the other way around.

Even more egregious a falsehood is Seabiscuit’s depiction as a tiny colt up against the majestic and massive War Admiral. Though the real War Admiral was the more stately and beautiful animal, Seabiscuit was actually the heavier horse. What was odd about Seabiscuit was his shape—he had short splayed legs, and a wide massive chest; but he certainly was no puny runt, and this was no David vs. Goliath race. And, absolute truth be told, Seabiscuit and War Admiral were actually close relatives. War Admiral’s sire, Man o’ War, was Seabiscuit’s grandsire—making War Admiral half-uncle to Seabiscuit. None of this was revealed in the simple underdog-makes-good sweep of the Hollywood plot.

Our culture today is pre-programmed to expect Hollywood-style narrative. There is little room for messy exposition or explanation. I have to believe this is what’s behind the gubernatorial candidacy of Arnold Schwarzenegger in my home state of California. Why else would a guy with no experience and few qualifications suddenly be a front runner in the race to govern the biggest state in the nation? It’s all for the sake of the story—Arnold, the humble immigrant with a dream. Arnold, the boy who overcame his father’s fascist past. Arnold, the party boy who made good (Married a Shriver! Rules the cutthroat world of Hollywood!). Even Gray Davis recognized the Tinseltown quality of the race., He said on August 15: “This election has turned into a Hollywood movie, and I assure you it will have a surprise ending.”

Simple stories seduce us—just ask your average Minnesotan who got sucked into the bad-boy-made-good narrative of the Jesse Ventura show. No need to remind you that the movie didn’t turn out as had been advertised, and our fair frozen state was left with a pretty bad taste in its collective mouth once his term ended. The real world often trumps the fantasy narrative.

“SO WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ART, Mr. Art Critic Man?” you ask. Well, I’ll tell ya. I’ve been wondering lately why art gets so little play in the national discourse despite the ever-growing number of people claiming to be artists. To cite some statistics, the most recent population survey revealed that in the U.S. in 2001 there were 2,108,000 people who claimed as their primary career one of the 11 artist occupational categories established by the National Endowment for the Arts. This equaled 9.8 percent of the labor force—nearly one out of every ten worker in this country. In comparison, engineers and surveyors accounted for 2,145,000 U.S. workers, and scientists/mathematicians/computer scientists accounted for 2,685,000. If you add in the extra 315,000 workers who were employed in secondary jobs as artists, and the 88,000 artists who were unemployed, we end up with a whopping 2,511,000 million American artists cluttering the labor force!

Yet despite the numbers, artists have relatively little national cachet. Ask anyone off the street to name a favorite living artist and you’ll no doubt get a blank look. Ask anyone to name the latest contestant to be eliminated on The Bachelor, meanwhile, or, more to the point, to converse about the differences between the porn peddler and the ex-porn star who are running for California’s governor, and you’ll be in business.

More and more I think this loss of prestige in the fine arts—even as the practice of them has grown exponentially–has to do with the Hollywoodification of our culture. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at art over the years, grappling with the complicated issues and trying to describe them to an audience, and I, and the sixteen people who read my writing, get satisfaction out of this. But the rest of the world, I’ve come to realize, just doesn’t care. Art doesn’t make a sexy enough story. Sure, there are exceptions–Picasso, Warhol, Pollock, Kahlo–but not every artist lives a made-for-Hollywood life, despite what Hollywood would have you believe. Artmaking is a rather mundane and tedious (read: unsexy) practice on the whole.

What’s an art-lover to do then?

I don’t know about you, but I’m a bit tired of butting my head up against the wall of Hollywood. If you can’t convince ’em otherwise, I figure, you might as well pander to ’em. So, below is my working draft for all of my future artist profiles. I can only hope this offering will help make art more palatable in this age.

Profile of Artist X :Artist X is standing on the verge of a great (choose one) dilemma/chasm/turning point/hitch on the road to fame. It is _______ (list time of day) in the (choose one) noisy/stultifyingly hot/rather placid/dirty confines of ________ (list place). Artist X is (choose one) pensive/nervous/eager/ambivalent about the tasks that face him/her as we watch the (choose one) people/cars/wildlife/clouds pass by.
But this isn’t the first (choose one) obstacle/opportunity of this sort the ________(list age)-year-old artist has faced. In fact, Artist X is used to the (choose one) ambivalence/hostility/snide mockery/jeering of society at large. “I can’t count how often I was (choose one) misunderstood/mistreated/ underestimated/dismissed as I was learning to (choose one) sculpt/take photos/paint in the Telemark style of Norwegian rosemaling/be a performance artist,” he/she says, as we hear the distant and (choose one) plaintive/harsh and edgy/warbly/sonorous strains of (choose one) Eminem/Tori Amos/Jewel/Johnny Cash from someone’s (choose one) car radio/boom box/open window/bar mitzvah.
“There was only one person who ever believed in me, despite that I suffered from (choose one) dyslexia/a profound lack of self-confidence/ a horrible physical disfigurement/ rickets,” Artist X continued, looking once at a photo of his/her (choose one) cross-dressing roommate/dog/imaginary friend/great aunt Esther before (choose one) releasing it in the wind/tossing it into the river/setting fire to it/placing it on a ritual altar. “He/she always told me that my work would eventually reach (choose one) the Whitney Biennial/a Paris gallery/the White House front lawn/the Edina Galleria…. And now I have a chance to prove that he/she was right.” &c…Am I ready for Hollywood or what?

Considering the topic of the previous post, I’ve decided here to dig out an old essay I wrote on Vincent van Gogh, in which I puzzled over the artist’s unlikely apotheosis to the front of the line of eternally favorite artists. Enjoy.

What Vincent van Gogh Means to Us Today

By Michael Fallon

News Item: Aug. 4, 2003
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Toby Sterling, Associated Press) - “Film of Van Gogh allegedly discovered.”

“Photography was still young and celluloid film had scarcely been invented when Vincent van Gogh committed suicide in 1890. Yet a team of Dutch filmmakers claimed Monday it has made a documentary about a snippet of film shot that year in which the artist allegedly appears…. According to Lumineus Film Productions producer Jeroen Neus, Van Gogh was attending a welcoming party for a new pastor in Zundert when he was coincidentally captured on film for a few seconds by an early film enthusiast. The film supposedly lay for almost a century in a damp attic before it was discovered in 1984 and restored.”

I WAS NOT SURPRISED to read the above news, for I’ve long thought that Van Gogh is accorded a near-Messianic status among the art lovers of the world. Of course we all know there’s little chance that the figure in the film is actually the artist, but it’s pretty to think so–in the same way we are fascinated to hear about Jesus Christ’s visage in a potato chip, or the Virgin Mary stain on a brick wall (or Elvis at the local minimart, for that matter).

In the art world, Vincent Van Gogh has a cult following and his paintings are granted the status of sacred relics–their worth is almost incalculable. The most expensive painting ever sold was a Van Gogh–his “Portrait of Dr.Gachet” was bought by Ryohei Saito in 1990 for $85 million. The Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam is one of the city’s top tourist stops, drawing 1.3 million visitors last year, according to once source. Last March marked huge celebrations of the artist on the occasion of his 150th birthday. The Dutch village of Zundert, where he was born, has named 2003 the “Van Gogh Year” in his honor.

Meanwhile, any institutions that are fortunate enough to have a relic of the artist’s hand are given cathedral status. (”Does the Arts Institute have a Van Gogh?” is a question I’ve heard more than once.) Van Gogh’s work is revered more than any other art saint’s (perhaps only Leonardo’s work competes). “He is a big name like Einstein and Beethoven,” said Andreas Bluehm, head of exhibitions at the Van Gogh Museum. “We are always amazed by how popular he is and his popularity seems to be growing.”

One can only speculate why Van Gogh has attained such luminance. Yes, his paintings have a certain magic to them–they’re at once colorful, expressionistic, and edgy but still easily accessible. Still, just to compare, Gaugin was a far better painter than Van Gogh; Cezanne was more innovative and influential to the generation of the artists who followed him, and fellow post-impressionists like Georges Seurat and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec made more immediately eye-catching images.

If anything, Van Gogh was an eccentric in art history, a painter with an anomalous style of fairly negligible influence. After all, as we often hear, Van Gogh was a complete flop in his own time and sold but one painting while he lived (a mediocre and muddy effort called “The Red Vineyard”). And he has no direct artistic lineage into the twentieth century.

Many might suggest his popularity has to do with the sensational facts of his life–his scandalous love for a pregnant prostitute and for a cousin, that whole episode with his ear, his falling-out with the painter Gaugin, his institutionalization for mental illness, his suicide at the age of 37 in 1890. Much of the turmoil of his life is well documented in his paintings–the madness that tormented him is apparent in the eyes and swirling color of his later self-portraits, and in the wild fantasy of his most famous painting, “Starry Night.”

But for my money, these facts of his life don’t quite add up to his paramount status. After all, a lot of artists through the ages have been troubled or scandalous or infamous. Andrea dal Castagno was involved in murder and other mayhem; Michelangelo feuded publicly with popes; J. L. David had a hand in the French revolution and was nearly executed, and so on–and none of these artists are nearly the icon that Van Gogh is.

Instead, I think Van Gogh’s status today says something about our age, and the ideals we strive to attain as a culture. Van Gogh represents to many modern people the quintessential romantic dreamer, a cultural-creative Don Quixote-cum-urban hipster who was above the quotidian trials of daily life. Because of the obstacles he overcame to paint, and the single-minded passion he brought to the task, Van Gogh is representative of the burning, soul-wrenching passion to create that we want to believe lies at the heart of human experience. In this, he is an archetypical ideal. His life represents all the risks we wish we could take but are not brave enough to–giving up the day job and all the bourgeois comforts of middle class, dropping out of society and fleeing to the south of France, attempting to establish an artists commune and above all else burning to make up for the time lost in genuflecting to the daily fucking grind.

He gave up the day jobs–the comfortable life he could have had if he’d found any pleasure dealing art, teaching in a boarding school, preaching to Belgian coalminers–and in his late 20s set out to follow his passion, painting, in the biggest possible way. Here’s the truly unique fact of Vincent Van Gogh: he knew what he wanted to do, and he set out to do it despite its unconventionality. And he did it damn well despite that he attained absolutely no material success for it (and despite the fact that his early work shows little conventional talent for it).

It’s a pet theory of mine that humans are born with an endless capacity for passion, but everyone in our lives–parents, teachers, bosses, society-at-large–conspires to wean us of this trait. If you’ve ever heard a baby shouting for her mother’s milk, who is certain only in the knowledge that she is surely going to die of this hunger-pain, then you know how raw and human this sort of emotion is. Yet when’s the last time you felt remotely like that inner infant? If we think on it, passion is a great evolutionary tool. When we somehow find it in ourselves, not only does it help us perpetuate the species but it also spurs us to attempt great things–build bridges, make sculptures, invent life-saving devices–even if everyone you know is telling you it’s a damn fool mistake. Passion helps us say “scupper the consequences,” and it lies at the heart of most of our culture’s most meaningful achievements.

Unfortunately, nowadays we live in a well-mannered age, a time when all the passion has been drained from our manner of living. We spend endless empty hours on the freeway, sitting at a desk in front of one cathode-ray tube or another, attending PTA meetings or watching kids practice soccer at a park, avoiding our own lives with diversion and entertainments, and doing very little of any creative significance. Our lives are anything but passionate. Our age is an age of anti-passion.

Is it any wonder then that art is so popular a practice now? We all dream of being a closet Van Gogh–chucking our shit jobs, our credit debt, and all the chintz that fills our crackerbox houses to live a life more meaningful and real, to be the passionate humans we are meant to be. No wonder there are so many more people who claim to be artists than ever before (2.5 million according to the last census), and no wonder we worship the painter Van Gogh so–we’re all looking for a glimpse of the natural creative passion that is our birthright.

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.

Kristin Tillotson, of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, this past weekend made mention of a little essay I wrote on artistic competition for (local site) mnartists.org. It’s a small mention–so small I completely missed it when I read the paper on Sunday and had to have it pointed out to me–but nontheless it’s complimentary of my work, describing it thusly:

[Mnartists.org posts] Features, forums, podcasts and the like [that] range from obtuse to interesting (Michael Fallon’s honest piece on the role that jealousy and competitiveness play in artists’ relationships, under “Behind the Scenes.”)

For those of you who missed the original essay, and I know there are a few of you poor souls out there–here it is in its original form.

On Artistic Competition

October 8, 2007
Michael Fallon

Is the art world necessarily a dog eat dog place? Does reputation mean more than substance? What drives artists to do what they do? Michael Fallon’s essay for Monica Sheets’ Jerome Fellows project has thoughts about this–respond in the Articles Forum.

ARTISTS AND ART LOVERS OFTEN CREDIT COLLABORATION as a prime driver of creative expression. But if one examined the actual record of artistic accomplishment, one would find that togetherness and cooperation aren’t a very common spur to artistic efforts. Rather, artists often are driven in their creativity by baser impulses: jealousy, vindictiveness, competitiveness, even pure hatred.

Call it “creative differences” if you will, but head-to-head battles abound in art history. Vincent Van Gogh brandished a razor at Paul Gauguin in the south of France. Pablo Picasso got along with few other artists. Paul Cezanne denounced his childhood friendship with Emile Zola, after the author published a novel loosely based on Cezanne’s life. Jackson Pollock broke with his teacher and mentor Thomas Hart Benton, saying the elder artist’s teachings at best gave him something to rebel against. And James Turrell broke from his friend Robert Irwin, shrugging off several intriguing months of joint experiments on sensory deprivation.

One of my favorite artists, the celebrated French classicist Jacques-Louis David, could be the patron saint of artistic competition. Not only did he fight with nearly every artist of his time—including several former students, whom he deemed ungrateful to their former master—but he throve on contention and competition, fostering it in his atelier by positioning his students like chess pieces placed at varying proximity to him. The artistic spirit of many a student of David was broken after jockeying to be shown at the annual Paris Salon (as a student of David) or to be that year’s recipient of the Prix de Rome. I often wonder how many young artists throughout history have given up on art after having to deal with such bitter competition.

THOUGH TIMES HAVE CHANGED, THE HONEST ARTIST KNOWS that competitiveness, jealousy, and backbiting abound even now in the art world. Artists feel it when an artist “friend” receives a grant award that they themselves applied for, when fellow artists organize a show or other opportunity but don’t include them, or when word comes back around about some artist friend’s sniping about their work.

This touchiness is understandable. Art is a tough thing to pull off in the world we have made for ourselves, overrun with pointless distractions and ambivalent about beauty created by hand. The artist’s practice is often thankless and tense. Grants, exhibition opportunities, sales and other patronage are hard for any artist to procure, especially when so many fellows are scrambling to dip into the small pool of support. The inevitable rejection faced day after day by the striving artist is an almost certain recipe for existential crisis.

As a critic I have had a microcosmic view of the local artistic foot-race. I’ve seen home-grown artists scramble to position themselves in proximity to certain trends and fashions and in opposition to others. It can seem that the order of the day among local artists is: You’re in my camp, or you’re an enemy.

As a result of my attempts to call this race and position the racers in relation to the National Art Derby, I’ve been called “negative” and “bitter” (and worse) at times for words I’ve written and also—for the very same review—been taken to task by an artist for being too positive about his rivals. Furthermore, I’ve known artists locally who were friends with each other twenty-five years ago, who now could not stand to be in the same room. I’ve seen gallerists court artists with talk of bringing their work to their fabulous new space who eventually grow bitter from dealing with artist demand and run off into the night issuing curses and blame at everyone who contributed to the gallery’s failure.

NONE OF THESE STRUGGLES ARE UNIQUE TO MINNESOTA; they are conditions inherent in the stressful pursuit of art across the country. Still, based on what I know of other places I can say there is one particular point of struggle that makes this place different. This is the air of contention that surrounds competition for the direct artist grants given each year by three major charitable foundations in this state—the Bush Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and the McKnight Foundation.

This money, of course, is generous and unusual in this country, especially for an art market of our middling size. But the opportunity that this money and exposure gives to individual artists becomes toxic and jealousy-inducing.

Artists who have been turned down for one of these grants—and a great many fantastic local artists have never won a single one of them—likely think pretty much the same bitter thought when rejected: My art is better than, or at least as good as, what was granted, so why didn’t I win? And this is true whether or not the artists are aware that the jurying process for the grants is subjective, with very human jurors who will often appreciate some art more than other for capricious reasons. Even more disturbing than the universal sour grapes among the non-granted, nearly every artist I know who has been fortunate enough to receive one of these grants almost immediately forgets his or her good fortune and begins plotting even more intently to go after the next batch of grants.

The final irony is, despite the poisonous jealousy and competition that comes from these annual scrambles for the fleeting cash trophies of foundation grants in Minnesota, no one single artist—I’m guessing—would propose that we do away with the grants. If I suggested, for instance, that we pool all this money and divide it equally among anyone and everyone who made art in the state during a given year—yielding each artist at best an annual award of perhaps $5.40—I’d no doubt be laughed out of the room. And rightly so. No artist would give up the slim chance of hitting a career-validating lottery—taking in a cool $20K or even $40K—for the sure shot at such paltry chump change.

In the arts the very air of competition is what drives artists to continue striving. Artists want to become the chief alpha dog of art. That’s the big prize—to struggle mightily but in the end to triumph. The art race can seem as much a draw to artists as the making of art.

In the end, while we all know that hypercompetitive fields, like art, can create a world of hurt, frustration, and disappointment, we also know that such an atmosphere is preferable to the opposite. It’s natural for artists to imagine what cannot be—a world in which nastiness could be kept in check, where everyone could help each other to get ahead in an arts-ambivalent world, and in which collaboration and harmony brings us all together. It’s a natural wish, but both impossible and undesirable—in the same way as a freezer full of vanilla ice cream would be a waste of space.

Competition and contention often yield good things, and in art these factors may be necessary to guarantee each succeeding generation strives to surpass the previous one. After all, two of the students of Jacques-Louis David who faced much of the master’s fiercest scrutiny, Antoine-Jean Gros and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, survived to become two of the most prominent artists of the age that followed David.

Every artist should remember these two figures the next time they feel so frustrated or jealous that they want to chuck their brushes and paints in the proverbial river. No victory or award ever went to the competitor who gave up the fight.

Competition may be, in the end, an evil that is essential to the moving insights of art.