Words and Pictures; Applying to an MFA Program
Why do we make art? To express things for which there are (often) no words. For me, art that "matters" scratches an itch in my head that I can't reach with words. And there lies the rub. To succeed as an artist---living or dead---you need words. They could be your own words, they might be the words of a dealer, critic, or historian, but without them your art will most likely not be seen as you intended---literally, for the old masters, and figuratively for the conceptual.
As an art school dean, I struggle daily with the profound irony of requiring artists to articulate the non-verbal. The production of discourse is at least as important as the production of art to every MFA program which is honest about their intentions. We need your words to make your process and your work visible to us.
Marcel Duchamp's "readymades" and his ambivalence about artistic labor were the urinals that launched ten thousand MFA degrees. Most undergraduate art schools anachronistically require the student to show a portfolio demonstrating an ability to render hands, feet, perspective, scale and texture. Most MFA programs do not. What they do require is a recondite artist statement and a portfolio that demonstrates a freedom to move beyond rendering. The discourse of the "crit" supplanted traditional academic art training 40 years ago and we haven't looked back.
The problem is that much work that falls within the categories of 'process' and 'conceptual' art is actually performance art. In 'Work Ethic' (Baltimore Museum of Art, 2003) Helen Molesworth talks about the seismic changes after World War II, the moment in modern human history which rocked our world (and not in a good way), when traditional artistic skills such as drawing, painting and sculpting were increasingly seen as so last-century. Works like Robert Rauschenberg's 'Erased de Kooning Drawing' (1953) and Robert Morris' 'Box with the Sound of its Own Making' (1961) were game-changers, "content to be described in the language of work as opposed to that of art". But would they be content to not be described in any language?
The elephant in the avant-garde room is that without knowledge of the avant-garde canon of and the language with which to describe it, works like Rauschenberg's naughty 'Erased de Kooning' offer nothing much to see. The object---the piece of paper which no longer contains a drawing---is a relic of Rauschenberg's performative erasing. Without words, the picture drawn by de Kooning and erased by Rauschenberg loses all meaning.
It is not unlike a restaurant in which the waiter needs to familiarize you with their "concept" before taking your order lest you fail to appreciate the food, which is often less appealing than the concept. (I'm talking to you, Wylie Defresne.) I don't mean to suggest that all art which requires language in order to be apprehended and appreciated is suspect. No---actually I do mean to say that. Successful process/conceptual art will have an affect on the viewer without text. Sol LeWitt's wall drawings are mind-blowing on their own and even better upon reading his elegant 'instructions'. So pace, Robert Rauschenberg, but the object known as 'Erased de Kooning', an artist's in-joke on the demise of draughtsmanship and the ascendancy of concept, is mute without words. And so my advice to MFA applicants around the world is this: give us art that stands without words, but be prepared to talk about it!
As an art school dean, I struggle daily with the profound irony of requiring artists to articulate the non-verbal. The production of discourse is at least as important as the production of art to every MFA program which is honest about their intentions. We need your words to make your process and your work visible to us.
Marcel Duchamp's "readymades" and his ambivalence about artistic labor were the urinals that launched ten thousand MFA degrees. Most undergraduate art schools anachronistically require the student to show a portfolio demonstrating an ability to render hands, feet, perspective, scale and texture. Most MFA programs do not. What they do require is a recondite artist statement and a portfolio that demonstrates a freedom to move beyond rendering. The discourse of the "crit" supplanted traditional academic art training 40 years ago and we haven't looked back.
The problem is that much work that falls within the categories of 'process' and 'conceptual' art is actually performance art. In 'Work Ethic' (Baltimore Museum of Art, 2003) Helen Molesworth talks about the seismic changes after World War II, the moment in modern human history which rocked our world (and not in a good way), when traditional artistic skills such as drawing, painting and sculpting were increasingly seen as so last-century. Works like Robert Rauschenberg's 'Erased de Kooning Drawing' (1953) and Robert Morris' 'Box with the Sound of its Own Making' (1961) were game-changers, "content to be described in the language of work as opposed to that of art". But would they be content to not be described in any language?
The elephant in the avant-garde room is that without knowledge of the avant-garde canon of and the language with which to describe it, works like Rauschenberg's naughty 'Erased de Kooning' offer nothing much to see. The object---the piece of paper which no longer contains a drawing---is a relic of Rauschenberg's performative erasing. Without words, the picture drawn by de Kooning and erased by Rauschenberg loses all meaning.
It is not unlike a restaurant in which the waiter needs to familiarize you with their "concept" before taking your order lest you fail to appreciate the food, which is often less appealing than the concept. (I'm talking to you, Wylie Defresne.) I don't mean to suggest that all art which requires language in order to be apprehended and appreciated is suspect. No---actually I do mean to say that. Successful process/conceptual art will have an affect on the viewer without text. Sol LeWitt's wall drawings are mind-blowing on their own and even better upon reading his elegant 'instructions'. So pace, Robert Rauschenberg, but the object known as 'Erased de Kooning', an artist's in-joke on the demise of draughtsmanship and the ascendancy of concept, is mute without words. And so my advice to MFA applicants around the world is this: give us art that stands without words, but be prepared to talk about it!