The Consciousness Painter

 

'Sunset Holocaust,' Elisabeth Condon, 2009
Acrylic on canvas, 118.10 x 78.74 inches

Every now and then I meet an artist who reminds me that with all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, art can still be a meaningful occupation.  When I do, I often notice that artistic mastery is a non-linear process.  Elisabeth Condon is the real deal, and in the last couple of years her work has hit an exponential curve.

Over a year ago, I was lucky enough to visit Elisabeth's studio in Brooklyn with my critique group.  I'd seen her exhibition at Lesley Heller Gallery in 2008, and one painting in particular had impressed me; it started to become metaphysical jazz, blurring the boundaries between space, time and consciousness.  But it was hard to tell if this was an accident or not.

During her crit, it became clear that Elisabeth throws the entirety of her heart, mind and soul into her work, and she's got a lot of these things to throw.  The details of her trajectory make up a respectable résumé--influences ranging from Chinese scroll paintings to Dr. Seuss; trips to China, residencies in Miami, Spain, Yaddo and Taiwan; figure painting intensives, architectural studies, paint pouring. If I were a real art critic, I'd feel obliged to trace these influences in sober detail.

But I'm not.  I'm just another painter, who believes that great art transcends both biography and intellect.  "The Chinese believe that paintings must have chi," said Elisabeth, and her paintings have tons of it.  They come at you like a tidal wave, immersing you in the full experience of color, sucking you into spaces which twist and bulge and drop away, altering the fabric of your mind.

 'Gaoxing, Beijing', Elisabeth Condon, 2009

Acrylic on canvas, 118.10 x 78.74 inches

The paintings she was working on when I went to her studio were a quantum leap beyond the work in her Lesley Heller show; bigger, freer, less literal and more graceful.  One of them, an enormous blue poured abstraction, was half finished.  In standard crit group fashion, we suggested she leave it that way.  She replied, "I can't, I just can't."  Elisabeth doesn't hold anything back.  Art doesn't occupy a cool, political corner of her life; it IS her life.  And her life is a joyous and generous one.  

Since then, things have only gotten better.  In her best work, the distinction between abstraction and representation becomes meaningless--form, space, color and architecture dance among themselves as limpidly as thought.  Standing in front of one, you find yourself remembering experiences that aren't necessarily yours.  Elisabeth's work communicates directly, without any need for translation. 

The Art World is Dead. Long Live Art.

By now, anyone who cares is well versed in the Tragedy of Becky Smith's Bellwether.

Once sales dried up by the fall of 2008, Becky called three of her largest collectors, pleading for some business — “I tried playing it cool, and then I tried playing it direct,” she said. She recounted a typical conversation: “I need to sell you something to continue to be here,” she would tell a collector.

“I’m just not buying,” was the reply.

“Did you hear me? I have this artist you collect who will have to get another job. If I can’t sell you something right now, I’ll have to close,” Becky would say, but the response was the same. “I felt forsaken,” she recalled. “All these collectors who supported me and my artists, they just disappeared. They didn’t care.”

Although I was not the kind of person who ever registered on Becky Smith's radar, I feel about as sorry for her as Chris does. She was something of an idealist; even as she careened into a business that, at its peak, cost her $75,000 a month in overhead--more than most artists earn in two or three years--she thought that it was at least partly about the art. About ideas, creation, passion, beauty, humanity, exploration, the pursuit of excellence, originality and insight. That stuff.

I guess we all do.

I can count on one hand the number of Chelsea art dealers who have ever been polite to me. Polite, as in acknowledging my existence when I say "Hi, I'm Stephanie. You are..?" instead of blankly looking through me for a second before speaking to the person next to me. Polite, as in offering me a glass of champagne and allowing me to accept it, instead of moving it past my outstretched hand to the couple ten feet behind me. Polite, as in saying, "that would be lovely!" when I offer to show them my portfolio after visiting their gallery regularly for a year and a half, instead of "It's a waste of time for me to look at your work."

(Actually, not a single one has ever said "that would be lovely," even though that's my usual response to other artists. As far as I know, there's not a single Chelsea dealer who has any idea what my art looks like, let alone an opinion about it.)

That hasn't stopped them from sending me press releases, once the 'art criticism' business imploded and the art blogosphere took off. Talk about wasted effort. Dudes, get a clue: once you have been egregiously, offensively, unnecessarily rude to me in person, you can inundate me with hype and schmoozing for fifty years and I won't come back. I won't come back to interview you, have a glass of wine, or sneeze on the art. I will ignore you. You are a waste of my time.

But what I realized, after the Fall of Bellwether, was that some part of me still believed that there was some reason to respect these people. That no matter how idiotic, banal, frivolous and inane was the majority of the 'art' I saw in their galleries, nevertheless the New York Art World stood for some sort of quality. Some kind of allegiance to the life of the mind and the exploration of the spirit.

Then I thought, "$75,000 a month in overhead?" That's not art, that's fashion. Fashion, corruption, and excess.

Because a business that generates a $75K monthly overhead for a white room filled with arcane, useless objects can only be sustained by the kinds of people who happily pay themselves multimillion dollar bonuses in taxpayer money after their personal actions torch the global economy. It can only be sustained by the kinds of people who are driven to accumulate infinitely more than everybody else, no matter how many others go sick, hungry or unemployed. It can only be sustained, in other words, by sociopaths.

It's no mystery that I and the New York Art World don't get along. My interests lie in the direction of timelessness and balance.

'Twisted lotus mandala' (study), Stephanie Lee Jackson, 2009

Thus, I have realized that if I am to maintain my integrity as an artist, I have to forget about galleries. Instead I will seek to hang my work in wellness centers, yoga studios, doctor's offices, spas, churches, and any other place that exists to heal and nurture the human spirit, not crush and deride it.

I'm pretty sure this is the right direction to take, because immediately after coming to this conclusion, I started working steadily, despite being blocked for over a year, despite being broke and stressed and taking care of an infant all day.

Does that make me a kitsch artist? Well, it could, except that I'm not going to change into someone else. If people think my art is kitschy, they're not looking very closely. And if there's one thing I've discovered about New York art dealers, it's that very few of them actually know what they're looking at.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly

and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

It was only after speaking truth and listening for a few decades that I realized a couple of things; first, that you have to repeat yourself a lot, matching your actions to your words, before anyone believes you about certain things. And second, the reason the dull and the ignorant are dull and ignorant is that they don't listen back.

Truthful statements with which I tested these propositions: "I'm an artist." "I'm moving to Mexico." "I'm moving to New York." "I love you."

It was a full decade before my nuclear family stopped tacitly expecting me to get over this 'artist' delusion and go to medical school. I had lived in Mexico for three years, and Brooklyn for two, before people stopped sending me invitations to events in Northern California with 'RSVP' on them. And some people I just stopped loving.

One thing I've learned, from running doggedly against the wind of other people's expectations for years, is that 'individualism' is a myth. Success requires community support. Look at the 'acknowledgments' on any CD, film, flyleaf, or program; the more financially and artistically successful the creation, the longer the thank-yous. The visual arts are no exception, except that visual artists tend to be even more bashful and egoistic than the average actor. Thus we have trouble asking for help, and resist acknowledging the help we get.

Moreover, the institutions which are allegedly in place for 'supporting' visual artists, such as schools, museums, galleries, and non-profit organizations, act as parasitic forces on the vast majority of artists. The art school I attended sucked its students financially dry while sabotaging their careers. Most juried exhibitions are funded by the application fees of rejected artists; grants and residencies are often awarded for political reasons rather than artistic ones; museum collections are still heavily weighted toward the white, the male and the wealthy.

It's easy to say that all of this shouldn't matter. A Real Artist will transcend all of that. And this is, to a certain extent, true. Creative people will find ways to survive, albeit not always comfortably.

But I drove myself to the verge of exhaustion, bankruptcy and despair by believing that people believed me, and now I'm wondering if it's worth it. Because if 'art' is not assessed according to the values with which it is created, it might as well not exist.

To be continued.

How to Sell Your Art In Manhattan for Free

Rumor has it that certain Chelsea galleries are renting out space by the hour, in a sort of Recession Special that is allegedly going to help artists make ends meet in these desperate times. They must suppose that there are still a few thousand artists in the city who have not figured out that the only people who come look at, and occasionally buy, your art when you are not represented by a Big Important Dealer are your friends, and you can invite your friends to your studio for free.

But what if your studio happens to be in a Scary Neighborhood, as so many studios are, and your friends with disposable incomes refuse to visit you there? It so happens that there are other options than renting out six feet of blank wall in a failing gallery on a weekend when all the collectors are in the Hamptons. So here is some practical advice, from an artist who has Actually Been There.

On the sidewalk at West Broadway between Prince and Spring, Saturdays and Sundays year-round, that is. You might also try Fifth Avenue near the Met, or Union Square, but I don't personally know the scene, so don't blame me if you get roughed up by the regulars.

1) Stake your space before 8:30 AM.
You will need a folding table or a display rack to do this. Set it up on a section of sidewalk between the foot-traffic zone and the curb. Do not set up directly in front of the doors of any retail establishment; they will call the police and have you removed if you do. Do not leave any objects of value, such as art, on the rack or table while you are off napping in the car or sitting in the café.

2) Do not expect any foot traffic before 11 AM.
Tourists and other people with disposable income sleep late on weekends, rather like you used to do, when you had a day job and a dealer.

3) Shiny, shiny, shiny.
Artworks that catch the eye of tourists and fashionistas need to be bold, colorful, and executed in a recognizable (read: retro) style. Picasso knock-off prints do very well, as do photographs of NYC landmarks. Small paintings of dogs and flowers are also great sellers, as long as you put in enough consecutive weekends to build up a following.

4) Simplicity of display is essential.
Remember, you are competing with the chaos of a Manhattan retail district sidewalk, and all that that implies. Don't try anything subtle or fussy. Use a simple black backdrop and a vertical display format; sandwich boards are the most stable. Bring folding chairs, suitable attire for the weather, a friend and a sense of humor. Make sure that everything is firmly anchored, especially on windy days; find or bring a few large rocks to chain your table to.

5) Be consistent and professional.
Don't share a display rack with an artist whose style is utterly unlike yours. Don't show art from every phase of your creative development. Don't show anything on unstretched canvas, unless you're just there to drink beer on the sidewalk with the other losers.

6) Package yourself.
Have business cards with your website and your etsy.com store available. Keep works on paper in plastic sleeves. If you can beg, borrow or steal a credit card machine, do so; people spend twice as much with half the consideration if they can charge it. Come to think, you may be able to use PayPal from your cell phone; do the research.

7) Cover your behind.
Go to the irs.gov website and register for an EIN. It should come in the mail within a couple of weeks; keep it to show to the cops if they pester you with talk of business licenses. Be nice to the other artists on the street, even the Chinese guys selling kitschy framed photos mass-produced in China, and stay out of political and territorial wars as much as possible. Remember: the fiercest battles are always waged over the smallest stakes. A few square feet of sidewalk is not worth a night in jail.

8) Do not expect to be discovered. Especially, do not expect to sell your work for anything like Art World prices.
Works on paper move for between ten and forty dollars; paintings for between fifty and a hundred and thirty. Feel free to price them higher, but be aware that you will be sitting there for a long, long, long, long time.

9) Tell your friends.
You may think you're going to display your brilliance for a world of ignorant strangers and bring them to their knees, but round about three o'clock you're going to be very glad to see a familiar face, even if it's only your brother-in-law the IT guy. Hey, don't IT guys make pretty good money? Do his walls need something on them?

10) Appreciate your day job, if you've got one.
Isn't it great to be getting a paycheck for sitting behind a retail counter in a temperature-controlled environment, or for washing dishes, or scrubbing toilets, or painting houses, or laying tile? Isn't being an artist kind of overrated?

Revenge of the Bourgeoisie

Q: "Do you paint portraits or landscapes?"

A: Only when I'm fundraising.


Face it: most people have no interest at all in contemporary art. I cannot count the number of times I have been asked this question when introduced as an 'artist.' It used to mean misery for all of us, as I embarked upon a condensed, tortuous and unappreciated précis of twentieth century art history, until I finally learned to answer with, "I paint with oil on linen. They're big. Here's my website if you're interested."

Moreover, as a painter who attempts to expand the boundaries of self with work that does not belong to a recognizable genre, I endure a significant amount of contempt and dismissal within the contemporary art world itself. Spokespersons from Big-Ass Art Institutions would never admit it, but there is a not-so-subtle bias against painters when it comes to awarding grants, residencies, solo exhibitions and places in the Whitney Biennial; the unspoken but loudly implied subtext is, "God, another painting. That's so boring, so bourgeois, so Been Done Already, so over."

Of course, painting still gets shown; the problem is that it is often shown as a conceptual conceit, as an interestingly retroactive quirk, amongst the sea of progressively quirky Conceptual Installations. The bigger problem is that such painting is often really bad painting, shown for political and financial reasons, not for any integral qualities of form or execution. The plain fact is that the vast majority of contemporary art impresarios have no earthly idea what a good painting looks like, and couldn't care less.

But now that the market is crashing, galleries are closing left and right, and funding for non-profit institutions is drying up, these institutions are perfectly happy to try to re-capitalize on the backs of the lowly portrait painter:

Don't get me wrong, I love Smack Mellon as much as the next guy, but isn't it a little ironic for an organization that cleaves toward site specific installations, and has little interest in contemporary painting, to rely on painters for fundraising? Please, tell me I'm wrong.

I used to assume, naïvely, that the contemporary art world was a hierarchy like any other--a climbable meritocracy. You'd start out as a student, learning technique and getting to know your peers; you'd exhibit in group shows, apply for grants and residencies, and as your work got stronger you'd win some of them. Art dealers and curators, always on the lookout for new talent, would discover your work in registries, open studios and group shows. They'd remember it from panels. Eventually, if you did good work and paid your dues, you'd build yourself a modest career--not necessarily Fame, but regular shows, a dealer, an income.

Ha.

The truth is a lot darker. The real forces which determine the shape of the Art World hierarchy are simple: "I'm More Special Than You" and "Who's Got the Money." It is constructed of creative cul-de-sacs, mediocre minds, territorial spite and disingenuous protestations of 'fairness and equality.' This is why painting is despised, but never absent.

Because people like paintings. Ordinary, dull people go to look at them in galleries, and hang them in their homes. They get inordinately excited about the idea of having their portrait painted. They like beauty, and think that they have some idea of what it is.

This is well-nigh unendurable for people whose entire reason for being is to be Different and Superior. These people must seek out and produce the arcane, the cryptic and the self-righteous; they must speak and write in polysyllabic gibberish; they must, above all, look with contempt upon the bourgeoisie. At the same time, they must convince a handful of staggeringly wealthy people that they share this superiority of being and perception, in order that they may fund their lifestyles.

It wouldn't do for these patrons to spend billions on objects that a construction worker or a soccer mom might look upon freely, appreciate and enjoy; thus, the piles of inaesthetic goop, fortified by hermetic rhetoric and a total absence of standards. For if once you admit to the existence of Quality, what's to prevent hordes of outsiders from achieving it, and thus devaluing your investment in the Few?

So now that the sustaining patrons are much less wealthy, look for painting to come back into style. Or at least, look for affordable art auctions containing art that you, the Common Person, might actually like.

Vanity and Shame

Transcript of recent interaction between myself and Ico Gallery:

Dear Stephanie Lee Jackson,

I recently been introduced [sic] to your work online, and I must say I'm very impressed. After reviewing your website, I'm extremely interested in finding out more about you and the process of your work. I feel that your work would be a grand addition to Perceptions Of Reality, which is our September collective exhibition that uses the Surrealist ideology of entering a different cosmos, and combines it with that of abstraction and Fauvism, which in effect will create an alternate view of reality, previously unexplored by one artist. This exhibition will the inaugural exhibition in our new flagship location in our extravagant ground floor 3,000 sq ft gallery in Chelsea.

[two paragraphs of pretentious blather about "renaissance," which, in case you didn't know, is a French word meaning "rebirth."]

Upon perusal of the attached proposal, I found the real reason for this 'career opportunity': $2500 in fees. I replied posthaste.

VANITY. GALLERY.

Get a clue. And take me off your mailing list.

Vanity galleries are like Nigerian 419 scammers; usually they crawl back into the woodwork like cockroaches when confronted with the truth about their business practices. I was thus rather surprised to receive a reply.

You do realize why you're [sic] resume is non-existent, right? With an attitude like that, you will not make it in the business of art!

My first impulse was to press the 'delete' button and forget about it. But I have been making a habit, lately, of stating my boundaries when strangers try to shame me, even though this may come across as hysterical and overengaged; it is helping me eradicate the bad habit of taking jerks too seriously.

Hello, could you BE any tackier?

I know enough about the 'business of art' to know that artists who show with galleries that charge thousands of dollars in fees never get any artistic respect, and are unlikely to recoup their fees in sales, because galleries that charge fees have less incentive to build a collector base; their overhead is already covered. They also prey upon artists with 'non-existent resumes' because they are looking for the ignorant and the insecure who haven't yet figured this out, and are thus vulnerable to their scams.

Genuine, respected art dealers make studio visits, spend time getting to know their artists, and build a consistent program over time. They don't do online searches and send out flattering (at first) emails to every random artist they find. This isn't the first solicitation I've received from you; you need to keep a better database.

My 'attitude' is generally just fine, thank you very much. I am just sick of being an object of predation for every fool with an MBA and cultural pretensions. If you believe in art, put your money where your mouth is and start a real gallery. Select your artists for their skill, passion and commitment, not their economic idiocy, and treat them decently. Which means NOT charging them fees.

Good day.

This is pretty much the basic screed, which any artist ought to know by heart. What I want to point out, though, is the levers which predators of all stripes use to control people.

Note in their first contact, the fulsome level of flattery; this is the sort of thing that every adolescent assumes will come as their just due--say, when they first upload their work to Saatchi Online. You have to be working a few years, and have your illusions shattered a few dozen times, before you truly understand that nobody will EVER come across your work online, or on the street, or in a restaurant, and be so blown away that they offer you a Chelsea exhibition and thousands of dollars per piece. (Unless you are Swoon, or Barry McGee. And I'm not even sure that both of these artists are solvent.) Our culture is too saturated with images for that to happen. Plus, anyone who thinks they truly understand what an artist's work is like from an online image doesn't understand visual art at all.

Then, of course, once their cover is blown, out come the nasties: "You do know why your resume is nonexistent, right?" People who use flattery as a tool are highly prone to use humiliation as a weapon, since these are two sides of the same coin. Simply, they're trying to shut me up by hitting my most vulnerable spot.

And the reason I'm posting about this at length, online, despite the fact that it showcases my lack of career success, is that vanity and shame are the forces which keep most of us isolated, helpless, and ultimately unsuccessful. Predators can only survive when they've got a steady supply of weak, ignorant victims who don't share information. Once we learn to step outside of our egos and ask ourselves, "hey, what's this person's agenda? What's the bigger picture? Who is profiting, and who is the loser?" it makes us much harder to manipulate. Then maybe the vanity galleries will disappear--not to mention the vanity governments.

Why I Am Not Renewing My Whitney Membership

Received today:

Dear Ms. Jackson,

It's been several months since your membership expired on October 31. Your support is crucial to the Whitney's vitality and I sincerely hope you'll consider joining us again.

Since its founding, generous individuals like you have helped the Whitney advocate for artistic innovation by responding to emerging trends...

After all, our exhibitions are not just the artists' stories. They are also your story.

Dear Whitney Museum,

It is true--my support IS crucial to the Whitney's vitality. The Whitney relies on emerging artists like myself, not only for direct financial support, but for the media attention, attendance and respect which allow the museum to retain its status as a major cultural arbiter in the contemporary art world. This is why I am not renewing my Whitney membership.

Because the 'story' of 'emerging trends' that the Whitney's curators have chosen to tell, as evidenced by the last two Biennials, is not my story; nor is it the story of the thousands of other emerging artists whose work is aesthetically rich, conceptually engaging, and culturally relevant in a wider arena than that of mere cliquish Art World politics.

Instead, the Whitney has consistently championed art which is conceptually banal and aesthetically bankrupt, selected almost entirely from a pool of artists who have already been filtered by high-profile galleries and cultural organizations, and justified by a morass of pretentious, impenetrable and obfuscatory rhetoric.

As a Whitney member, I receive regular newsletters, exhibition and lecture calendars, and fundraising requests from the museum. Never once in these publications have I seen the Whitney acknowledge or respond to the widespread criticism of its use of egregious 'artspeak' in the most recent Biennial, despite the fact that this issue was discussed in both the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine. I see no evidence that Whitney curators are paying attention to the art blogosphere, which has exploded during the last few years with debate, commentary and original vision at a grassroots level. I sincerely doubt that these curators spend much time looking at artist registries, attending studio tours and alternative exhibitions, or combing through unsolicited submissions in search of unknown artists with powerful vision. The organization's stated goal of 'responding to emerging trends' is a disingenuous distortion of the reality--that its curators pander to the tastes and agendas of a small coterie of insiders, ignoring artistic arenas where passionate engagement is yet unbolstered by wealthy patrons, critical attention, or a curatorial agenda.

As I have come to see it, the Whitney and institutions like it have a vested interest in ensuring that the vast majority of living artists remain voiceless, invisible and powerless. It is our thousands of college tuitions, donations, fees, submissions and applications which keep major art institutions financially viable, and allow their agendas to supercede artists' visions. The aesthetic and conceptual characteristics of the art itself are literally the least important factors in whether or not the work gets shown, if the artistic quality of the past two Biennials is any indication. Far more important are the invisible machinations of profit and ego politics, which parasitically feed upon the resources of artists and art lovers, dependent upon the fact that artists work for free, and will pay for any slim chance at recognition.

After all this, the fact that the Whitney expects literate persons to swallow absurd curatorial verbiage in lieu of a powerful artistic experience is a slap in the face. Cancelling my own membership is the least I can do in the face of such institutional contempt for my intelligence; I can only hope that my example inspires many others to do the same.

Pretty Lady's Art: About To Be Really Hot

Really! David says so!

An art writer I know predicted that the art of the future will probably have something to do with abstraction and with the spiritual.

Coincidentally, Pretty Lady has just realized that her abstract, spiritual painting series, 'The Implicate Order' has nearly completed its integral Creative Arc, and is sufficiently voluminous and powerful to fill a decent-sized gallery. Just in time to seize the Crest of the Future!

So, if any of you darlings happen to have Personal Connections with an up-and-coming art dealer that has Taste and Quiet Discrimination, as well as business competence and personal integrity, would you be so kind as to point them in Pretty Lady's direction? Please and thank you. Pretty Lady has been around the Art World long enough to know that unsolicited submissions are gauche in the extreme, and she wouldn't want to move forward without a proper introduction.

And obviously, now would be an excellent time to invest in an original Pretty Lady canvas yourself. Get ahead of the crowd!

The World is Full of Magic, and We Are All Zombies

Pretty Lady is not at all suprised by this story of the virtuoso at the train station:

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

No, Mr. Slatkin, there was never a crowd, not even for a second.

It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch. Try speeding it up, and it becomes one of those herky-jerky World War I-era silent newsreels. The people scurry by in comical little hops and starts, cups of coffee in their hands, cellphones at their ears, ID tags slapping at their bellies, a grim danse macabre to indifference, inertia and the dingy, gray rush of modernity.

Pretty Lady herself has been Openly Mocked, here in New York, for glorying in the daily miracles which surround her--the afternoon sunlight cascading across an ancient stone high-rise, fluted with mythic carvings; the jazz saxophone echoing off the urban canyons at dusk; the layers of intricate graffiti peeling in rusty tatters on an ancient fence; the riotous umbrellas of extravagantly pink flowers, mimosa and cherry and dogwood and tulip magnolia, improbably festooning the Brooklyn avenues in April. There have been times when she was innocently sitting on a train, and a young Opera Singer strode magnificently onto her car and treated her to an aria. There have been days when she nearly gave herself heart failure, dancing on the sidewalk to the pipings of Peruvian musicians. She has nearly been run over, pausing on the street to gape at a particularly expressive gargoyle. Heady perfumes of bakeries and crysanthemums and sugar-roasted nuts and Chinese laundries all mixed have nearly sent her swooning. She deliberately walks through sprinklers and loose fire hydrants in midsummer, and will gladly bicycle seven miles so that she might jump into the ocean at Brighton Beach and cycle back, cool and sunburnt and salty.

These myriad miracles are everywhere, darlings, and most of them are absolutely free. Although the opera singer and the violinist could use your tip.

With all of this tragic oblivion in the mass of humanity, is it any wonder that artists nearly starve? Pretty Lady used to sell her work on the street, and she can tell you that this is not a way to make a living. Art is the one commodity where the law of Supply and Demand has no bearing, as Supply is nearly infinite, and Demand is entirely determined by Context. She once had a gentleman stop at her table in Soho and declare, "look, Margie, these are just as good as the ones we saw in that gallery over there, for four thousand dollars."

Pretty Lady replied, "Indeed they are, and you may purchase them for forty!"

The fellow laughed and walked away.

Brushing Shoulders with the Big Leagues

Pretty Lady is delighted to report that her most respected colleague, James Kalm, has been featured in the LA Times! Moreover, the article is quite congenial in tone:

Koons set the tone for most of the press' questioning with his serious comments about the theory behind his art. Then Kalm lifted his camera above a cluster of journalists and said rather loudly: "Would you comment for the Kalm Report, sir?" Noting that a Koons piece had sold for $23.6 million at Sotheby's last November, a record auction price for a work by a living artist, Kalm asked whether people "are too obsessed by the art market now?"

"I didn't sell the work. A collector sold the work," Koons replied, smiling politely. "I think about the production of work, I think about the opportunity for the work. But I really don't get involved with the art market."

"You don't get involved with the art market?" Kalm repeated, his incredulity registering.

"When I say involved with it -- I'm not preoccupied with it," Koons responded.

It's a moment that won't be captured elsewhere.

The Koons video

The Blogger Show video (Pretty Lady is in this!)

James Kalm YouTube Page

The Archetype

Pretty Lady has known, probably, one or two dozen of these fellows. They live in bars and coffee houses around the world; they are Guests of Honor at keg parties. They are both Parasites upon Society, and utterly integral to society's continued progress. If you have never known one of them, you have truly wasted your life.

Victor: These people are on the fringe of society, they have no
money. If they have jobs at all they’re crappy, they do great Art, Music
and Literature and get virtually nothing for it, in fact they lose money
at it. In fact let’s face it, they’re on the fringe they are no-accounts.
That’s the way I always was and I’m happy being that way and I’m happy
having a few people appreciate my work.

Jean: Yeah okay, because part of what I’ve always thought is, part of it
is the connection between like you were a bohemian hippy type and still
are, right?

Victor: I was a rich bohemian when I was younger. When I was{in contrast to} these
people in their twenties, when I was in my twenties, I was very wealthy, I
was a bohemian, there’s no doubt about it.

Jean:(Confused) Now you weren’t very wealthy.

Victor: I was very wealthy and I had a lot of money, what in those
days was a lot of money.

Jean:(tentatively...more confused than ever) Okay..........

Victor: It’s virtually nothing now. The way prices are going up. I
mean in those days I had a ton of money. I mean I was a big investor in
stocks and bonds. I played the ponies, gambled on football. I had money to
burn.

Jean: (perplexed) That’s not true.

Victor: That’s not true?

Jean: That’s not true.

Victor: It is true. You didn’t know me in my twenties,

Jean: Well yeah but,{turns tape recorder off, vigorous debate with Victor ensues. Much discussion about what does "very wealthy "mean? we reach a compromise.}

Jean: But okay, well anyway, so you
had more money than they do, now.

How to Move to New York City

Well, hello, darlings! Pretty Lady has been a bit mopey and taciturn, lately; it seems she hasn't had a thing to say, what with Shocking Scandals popping out right and left, and the financial underpinnings of the local economy vanishing like a sinkhole in the basement. She has been too busy watching the floorboards, making sure they're still solid and present.

In fact, Pretty Lady has been a bit jittery ever since she moved to New York City, in the midst of a recession and a chronic terror alert. It is only recently that it occurred to her that she learned a few Facts the Hard Way, and that there might be a few enthusiastic, ambitious young persons out there in the provinces who might benefit from her hard-won experience. So she is rousing herself to give you dears a bit of Sage Advice, which she wishes somebody had given her, five or six years ago. Not that it would have made a great deal of difference, but there you go.

So! You want to move to New York City. Presumably because you are Talented, and Ambitious, and want to Make It in the Big Pond. She can't imagine any other reason. If you are ordinary and bland, there are infinitely more comfortable, congenial and inexpensive places for you to indulge yourself. She wouldn't wish New York City on anyone who wasn't asking for it.

Pretty Lady, first of all, congratulates you. It seems to her that one may not truly progress in one's vocation, or know one's limitations, until one has ventured out into the Wide World and declared, "Here I am. Bring it on!" There are many talented individuals who never develop their talent by honing it in competition with others; they prefer to swan around the Small Ponds of the world, basking in their native statistical superiority. These people may live pleasant and productive lives, but at heart they are cowards.

People who move to New York City are not cowards; most of them are, however, fools. Pretty Lady is no exception. If she had known then what she knows today, she might never have come here at all; what is certain is that she'd have done a few things differently.

1) If at all possible, have a job lined up.

It is madness to move to New York with no job, no friends, and nowhere to live. One ends up paying enormous broker's fees, getting scammed by moving companies, moving into a trashed, sabotaged and stinking apartment, getting stonewalled by licensing boards, jerked around by temp agencies, and generally sucked dry by an impersonal and parasitic machine. People you thought were your friends suddenly become hostile and insane; total strangers will demand impossible things from you.

A few random strangers, however, will save your life.

2) Do not pay a broker. Find a place to live through friends, or friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends, or Craigslist. As a last resort, sublet or couch-surf until you find a no-fee apartment with air and sunlight and a reasonably sane landlord, preferably in Brooklyn.It seemed to Pretty Lady that paying a fair fee to a broker for a decent apartment was a fair price to pay--two or three hundred dollars, maybe?

Try thirteen hundred. In 2002. It's much higher now--ten to fifteen percent of your first year's rent. At between twelve hundred and two thousand a month, for a modest one-bedroom in a neighborhood with infrequent gunfire, you do the math. All this goes to an entity with no function except to get between you and what you need, so as to extort inordinate amounts of money from you. Employment agencies operate in exactly the same way. Welcome to The City!

3) Sign up for the classes, the co-op, and the social networking groups immediately, without waiting to feel grounded or Financially Stable.
Financial Stability will never happen; if you wait to start meeting people, learning things and taking care of yourself until it does, you will wake up and find that you have spent years in total isolation and deteriorating health, in the midst of a sea of opportunity. Nothing happens in New York without Personal Contacts; you make these contacts in yoga class, biking group, choir, co-op, etc. You cannot afford not to do these things.

4) When people in the social networking groups tell you exactly what you want to hear, do not believe them.

Never believe anything someone tells you in New York until you have known them for over a year, and scrupulously attended to their personal history of Word versus Action, or lack thereof. People will tell you anything to make a First Impression, and the big talkers are never the big doers. They are far more likely to be desperate poseurs looking for fresh victims.

Common Lies to Watch Out For:

"I'll call you tomorrow."
"I'll catch up with you later."
"I've got connections who would be delighted to fund that."
"I'll buy that painting."
"I'll have it to you by Tuesday."
"I have this friend you need to meet."
"You can count on me."

5) Get away from toxic people.

This is an important skill to learn, anywhere you live, but doubly so in New York. Endearing personality quirks such as incompetence, mendacity, pugnacity or sloth, which may be given slack in sleepier communities, are the equivalent of a sixteen-ton weight chained to one's ankle, in a city full of obsessive workaholics who will do anything to get ahead.

Furthermore, finding time in one's schedule for personal friends takes a great deal of commitment and ingenuity, in a city where every individual lives the life of ten; you must bestow that friendship wisely. It is important to cultivate the art of sussing out toxicity in a potential friend before the boat is scuttled and the bridge is burnt. Ideally one should have a smiling acquaintance with many, an intimate friendship with the precious few.

6) Beware the crucible effect.

It is Pretty Lady's inchoate theory that moving to New York City brings out a person's worst self-destructive habits, magnified by ten. One may live for decades in a small town, functioning fairly well with a mild case of vanity, paranoia, narcissism or codependency; one moves to New York and becomes a raging monster. Pretty Lady theorizes that this is a result of the pace, the competitiveness, the systemic parasitism, and the psychological pressure that comes from a pervasive sense of 'This is It, Make it or Break it.' The bad habits which emerge under stress threaten to subsume one's entire personality.

The good thing about this is that if one survives and overcomes it, one is an infinitely better and stronger person, a lean and purified verson of self, cleansed of psychic impurities and Stupid People Tricks; if not, well, look at Hillary Clinton. Dear Samantha was right.

7) Treat your real friends well.

Pretty Lady is thrilled to report that after nearly six years in this hell-hole, she is beginning to see the light around her. To her amazement, she looks at her address book and it is filled with astonishingly wonderful, generous, kind, wise, talented, loving people who impress the hell out of her. When she falls, there is a helping hand to pick her up; when she is frightened, there is a listening ear. The economy may have tanked, the Biennial may be full of worthless garbage, and she may be on the verge of bankruptcy, but on the whole she has few regrets.

Related: Why You Should Not Move to New York City

Pretty Lady's Biennial

Pretty Lady just got back from the Whitney Biennial. She has one word to say about it, and that word is: Hmph.

So she is curating her own Biennial, right here, right now, along the time-tested principles of Nepotism, Favoritism, Elitism, and Extreme Prejudice.

Her Biennial will be, at the very least, Pretty.

Libby Pace.

Some people accuse Pretty Lady of being conservative, hidebound, and behind the times; they accuse her of being Against Installation Art. Perish the thought! She is All For Installation Art! The Installation merely needs to be as carefully thought-through, exquisitely crafted, poetically evocative, and aesthetically stunning as Libby's 2003 window project at Healing Arts Gallery in Williamsburg, and Pretty Lady is all over it.

Jennifer Coates.

Who is to say that the traditionally visual cannot also be abstractly metaphysical? Ms. Coates illustrates the Landscapes of the Expanding Mind.

Sophie Jodoin.

Viscerally compelling, emotionally complex Political Imagery--Sophie has been going to town on the war images, lately. She blows Kathe Kollewitz out of the water.

Danonymous.
Simplicity, subtlety, depth and whimsy? That's our Danny-o. Pretty Lady is certain that he'd come up with something brand-new and surprising for her Biennial, perhaps crawling over the outside of the building, perhaps a roomful of toys indoors.

RA Friedman.
Enigmatic, apolitical, immersed in the potentialities of an archaic medium--nice counterpoint to Sophie. Perhaps hang them across the room from one another, as a sort of echo effect.

John Morris.
Organic Abstraction is where it's at, or at least where John's head is at, 99% of the time.

Oriane Stender.
Recycling, sociopolitical commentary, and Really Finicky Detail, to match John's obsessiveness.

Chris Smith Evans.
Pretty Lady met Chris while selling erotic sketches on the street in Soho, one penurious winter. Chris was selling these cute little Shaker paintings, which were flying off the racks like hotcakes when the homosexual gentlemen came by. Later, they discovered that they'd both had a run-in with the same chauvinistic sculpture professor, fifteen years apart; by the time Pretty Lady encountered him, he'd at least mellowed out enough to teach her to weld.

Chris's work does a masterful job in slipping subliminal social commentary into the homes of the petit bourgeois, in Pretty Lady's opinion. Subversion does not have to be aesthetically abrasive.

Nancy Baker.

Our Rebel Belle may project a bit of an Edge, here in the blogosphere, but her lovely paintings demonstrate all the playful, ambiguous joy of artist who careens on a tightrope between Kitsch and the Sublime. No BS at all!

Wayne Thiebaud.


Every Biennial has at least one Token Old White Guy; why should Pretty Lady's be any different? At least dear Mr. Thiebaud's work is cheerful. Pretty Lady always wanted to meet him.

Tara Donovan.

Well, who could resist? Chris, maybe, but who else? As far as Pretty Lady is concerned, Tara may have a whole floor.

Deborah Fisher.

As long as we are going for the Raw Construction Aesthetic, let us be thoroughly committed to it. Raw lumber is boring; alchemical amalgamations of recycled trash, much less so.


You will note that Pretty Lady's Biennial is light to absent upon the video/performance fronts. This is because Pretty Lady's standards for moving pictures have been set by the viewing of actual Films, i.e. those by Kubrick, Bergman, the Coen brothers, etc; similarly, her standards for Performance are at the level of Mark Morris, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the RSC. She has yet to see an 'art performance' that qualified as such.

The catalogue essays for Pretty Lady's Biennial will be provided by Chris and Franklin, pending their approval. If you are, perhaps, a friend of Pretty Lady's and are feeling miffed by your exclusion from her biennial, remember that biennials happen every two years, and she had to save some of you for the next one. ;-)

UPDATE: Oops! Forgot Swoon and Barry McGee. Chris Ware and Julie Mehretu are not included, solely because they've been in the WB before.