I was 17 when myself and several other drop outs, outcasts, let’s call them friends, were all together in New York. Well, essentially we were all painters at the time, although few of them still paint at the moment. And I remember very clearly this disdain for the word artist, as if the title somehow carried with it a stench, a kind of desperation, a term that might make somebody feel sorry for you. I don’t know why that was the case, or who planted that idea in our heads. But there was a thing going around- nobody wanted to call themselves an artist.
I thought of myself as a painter, that is, one who is exclusively or primarily concerned with self-expression through paint. That was damn good enough for me, and truly, I felt a disdain about the term, or rather the label of artist, as I had met a countless number of hacks, frauds, talentless bozos and of course, art students who I never felt were up to snuff, capable of “dynamite” or capable of living a life that was truly their very own. So, I think to distance myself from that type of riff raff, I labeled myself particularly after my practice, painting, and then, later on, years later, after New York, I must have said, “well, why the hell shouldn’t I call myself what I am?” What I always was, wanted to be, and what I am still, today, right now? Why give the name up for the phonies to use? So, truly, I finally come correct, the circle has come all the way back around, and I hope if anybody asks me what I do, or even better, what I am, I can look them squarely in the face, and honestly reply “I am an artist”. And if they don’t squint, shirk, or shy away, I can then be sure to add… and a writer. I think that would do just fine.
On some strange day, I can’t remember the day or even the year, I had a dictionary nearby. And just like one of those things you do when you are bored enough, stupid enough, a silly type of thing, I vividly remember looking up Pablo Picasso in the dictionary, knowing that dictionaries may include notable historic figures from time to time. So, there he was, no photo, nothing dramatic, nothing grandiose, there was Picasso, in the dictionary, and next to his name, it simply said “Spanish artist”. That was it. And I can’t really say why, or how, but this made me, momentarily, the happiest man on the planet. Spanish artist. What else does one need to know? What else could be said? I thought that fit everything in the world, put everything in the world rightly in its place. And so there you have it. Spanish artist. And so now, I put my own self rightly in place with the world when I say I am an “American artist”. And even still, I write this way, I label myself this not out of patriotism (the last refuge of a scoundrel!) but out of the same cold heartedness, the same bare bone fact as Picasso in the dictionary, or any of the various and perhaps immutable facts that one has to live up or live down. Cold as the information on a birth certificate.
But with this idea, that is, the label of the artist. One may ask, well then, what is an artist? Does the artist change in time, does he or she evolve with the times? Is it something one does? (no) Or is it something one is?(yes!)
It is clear to me that when mildly surveying the world as it is today in early 2023, that many people have a hard time with just being. And this includes many of those who refer to themselves artists- the dysfunctional group that they are. David Bowie says artists are all dysfunctional in a sense. But this is only dysfunction of the norm, based on the normal mode of operation. When an artist decides to just be, to really let themselves go, to cast their fate to the wind and the trees, so to speak, then what good is function or dysfunction?
There is no methodology by which to measure these things, because the artist simply is. And the artist simply is because they are on the outside. The artist sits out and looks inward and onward, with no real investment, no real dog in the fight, no real emotion to this or to that. It simply doesn’t matter to him or to her, because instinctually, intuitively, they know they can’t be too bothered by the games that everyone else has already resigned to playing. The clocking in and out business, clerical words like beneficiary, or mortgage, or audit. Who would use such words? Why do they matter? And if we think they matter, we just haven’t found a way to live as so they don’t. The whole human race has lived thoroughly and fully without these words for centuries! The artist barely has the time or effort to count the change in their pocket, not to mention understand the stock market, the economy and so on. It winds up as gibberish, crap, sand through the fingers, the wrong end of a cigarette.
And that’s what the artists in California and New York have gotten all wrong- the art students that they are, they figure themselves as heroes, or martyrs, or activists. They think they were chosen. They think they matter. They think they are destined to either save some form of people, or some form of the earth- and it’s all for nothing. It’s all a big scam. The earth doesn’t need saving, the people don’t need saving, it’s the artist themselves that are in need of something, anything, precisely because they have expectations, desires, diplomas, degrees, greed and much shopping to attend to.
And what else could you expect? When the artists nowadays all go to the same schools, all attend the same clubs, same clothes, same cold white studio, same art, same strokes, same people, same story, same outcome, same sad uninteresting ending. It’s enough to make you sick. It’s enough to not call yourself an artist anymore, but why give the label up to the chum!
So, I say, emphatically, without reservation or hesitation, that it is not what an artist makes…You could very well be a filmmaker, or a poet, a sculptor, dancer, etc. These are wonderful things to be of course, but they are secondary. The film, the poem, the sculpture, the painting, the photograph, these are all simply exhibits, evidence, breadcrumbs, fingerprints of a kind. They are not as important as one might think. They are simply proofs, evidence of a type of existence, a feather, a mark, a smudge in a much larger, grander windshield.
And so, we have always gotten this wrong. We have always thrown away Vincent, but kept the Van Gogh. We have always shrugged at the artist life, with a sense of despair, a sense of uppity-ness, a sense of elitism, but we keep, in the major halls of the museum, the place, the auditoriums, the castles- we always keep their works, and we remark on their lives then with intensity, pierced lips, open eyes, open heart- when standing in front of a painting that is. But Henry Miller said, the artist can’t truly do this- or at least, shouldn’t. The artist must be willing to part with this idea, at the very least, when he is forced to. That is to say, that he way, one unfortunate day be forced to part with his work for good. And that may come or it may not, but truly heartbreaking it would be. Bu then again, perhaps the artist will be forced to do this. And it should be made clear, I am not referring to selling paintings and parting with them. For almost every artist nowadays is willing to part with their work for the sake of money as quick as they can, like a factory for soup dispenses with cans, like an automobile maker dispenses with hub caps, like a to-go cup from a shit hole restaurant-paintings, art, dispensed cold as revenge, quicker than silk shit, to the mass public with enough dough, all to be strung up, hung up in some gaudy loft where it would be lucky to be seen by ten people in a year, not to mention the occasional glance by the rich prick who bought it.
If I say there is an artist of this generation who I admire, who I think can carry the weight, than I might as well just elect myself. Who should I believe in more than me? And what makes an artist? What do I mean? What am I getting at? It’s the outside, yes, but also the value the beauty, the irony and the attitude in which one lives their lives. For me, an artist should strive to make their life a work of art, a thing of beauty, with all the grace of form and figure as a Michelangelo, the power and dynamite of a left hook, the gusto of a de Kooning, the landing of a gymnast. These things artists are busy making in a studio are routinely questions of craft and perhaps of art. But who sits with their head all day in the pages of a book? Or the linen of a canvas? Should one not go outside? Live a life that is worth writing about, painting about, or otherwise defending? I think one must go and live. Questions of life and death must be cornered squarely, questions of craft come later, if at all.
It’s what an artist does, and that’s why I mention Picasso and Henry Miller. Common people, especially artists have been under a mass delusion about these two titans role in the bigger picture. You see, they both were talented, productive, prolific, and as overused as it is, both were “genius”. True enough. True enough that their works spoke to a generation, many generations. True enough that their works were both scandalous, outlawed, celebrated, etc. But it is not simply the work. Picasso, at the age of just 9, produced masterful paintings. Miller, by his own accord, got started late, led a life of misadventure. And so there are differences in these men…
But both, however, never shied away from their own destiny. Never took a look at their very own lives, their own existence and blinked. Looking as only an onlooker can, born several decades after the death of each of these men, I say these two men lead the way in what I would call an artist that simply is — we take much more from their lives, their life choices, their lifestyle than we actually may ever realize. It is only Le Demoiselle de Avignon, cubism, Guernica that we remember, it is only Tropic of Cancer that still reverberates through my generation- we have all but forgotten Miller’s letters, his sketches, his life beyond that one book. And again, these are simply proofs of life, proofs of experience, not the experience themselves. And that is, of course, not to diminish the works themselves, for an artist must produce something, I believe, but only to highlight that the works are strictly informed by a life that is beautiful, disastrous, universal, damned, decayed, charmed, jubilated, and ultimately free.
That is the only way, I believe, I can live and so I say, without a doubt, I shall live that way, and that is what makes me an artist. Nothing else. Nothing inside the ring. Everything outside the box. Guts, thoughts, ruminations, contempt, dreams, sex, love, family- all outside the bounds of reality. All outside the bounds of expectations. All equally unattainable, all equally damned and blessed.
If Picasso or Miller had not led such a life, that is, had the courage to lead such a life, than their works, Picasso’s paintings would be simply as ornate wallpaper, or window dressing. And that's not to say there aren’t masterpieces amongst his works, but without the life, the life that he lived, what’s the difference? If not a stance in his own destiny, then they would be ornamental, decorative, bullshit. If not for Miller’s travels, his begging, his gusto for everything tasty, succulent, dreamlike, surreal, grandiose, depraved, decrepit — his stories would be nothing more than a modern-day Stephen King, who may be a popular writer, but undoubtedly, sells most of his books at the airport, where customers anxious for a flight, in need of a piss, hurriedly purchase his words, so that perhaps during their flight, they may read his words, and therefore drift asleep. There is no use in commerciality. I say that, true, in some form of revenge, because commerciality never had a use for me.
Perhaps it is revenge, perhaps it is bitterness, but nevertheless, I am made slightly colder by these things, so that I see things (the world, this creative and literature business) more clearly. And when one sees things more clearly, soft words won’t do. Only dynamite, only words for the throat, only slices to the jugular. That’s right, with these words, I aim to cut the population of artists down by at least a half. If not more. You heard me right. I am out to kill. I am out to set off dynamite, because that’s what the artist needs and that’s what the artist in me sets out to do. Dynamite, like Miller put it. Because all mediums have been corrupted, molested, transfigured, transfixed, bloodied, pillaged, raped, disheveled.
Does one think that the world hears of some new artist, let’s say some painter, who, just by chance, attended an art school, wound up in New York, and then, by even further chance, is represented by a gallery, pushing works for a fortune? How could it be they say! The favelas in Brasil rejoice! The stinking floating sewers of Lagos thank you! The farmers in Afghanistan, they Thank you! How we are grateful, another art student in New York, making waves for the papers. It’s enough to make you vomit. It’s enough to never call yourself an artist, out of embarrassment. Out of pity for those who go on like this. But then again, why give the term up to the chum? Why not set the record straight? Why not just simply refer to myself as I am- an artist- and simply get on with living and hopefully much later, get on with the dying? Because compared to life, all this “art” we speak of doesn’t mean a damn thing.
JSV
2023