I agree, Jerry
It is terrifying to think that the art world that we all aspired to enter is simply vanishing in front of our eyes, but at the same time so calming to know that this is happening as there were so many things wrong with it. All the emerging artists I know, including myself, were always torn between the business side of art – we still need to pay the bills – or just being content with being an artist.
What is to be an artist anyway?
I often think about cave art when my imagination takes me into philosophising about art and business. Back at the beginning of mankind, there were no artists. The prehistoric images that survived and we see today are nothing less than an inner desire to express something. Let’s face it, those “artists” were not making any money nor having any celebrity status. They were just making.
Now, if we think about the process: to be able to draw on cave walls in that expressive manner and with such confident stroke, those people must have practiced not only looking but making too. And a lot. But practising where? Where are all their sketchbooks ? Or is what we see today their sketchbooks?
These are rhetorical questions, of course. Answers might be for archaeologists and or anthropologists. However, asking those questions enable us to actually envisage how cave people made those pieces. And that brings us to where we are today.
In the middle of this pandemic, we artists – especially the emerging ones – are trying to figure out what to do. Particularly if we lost access to our studios, workshops, materials and even space itself. How do we do what we are supposed to do? How do we respond to these times without the things and materials we need to create?
We look back at cave art. We get inspired by the way mankind produced those amazing images. We think about how those people just used what was available. How they portrayed their world.
Maybe we don’t need to come up with different ways to show art. The digital, the virtual room, the 3D rendering, the video tour… maybe what we need is to be a bit more like cave people.
I sometimes get scared about this sort of “art future” I guess. I have always had these sort of existential feelings. Where I wonder what I am doing and if I am doing it right. I think a lot of people are caught up in the idea of an art “lifestyle” and at points I was too. This instagram styled art world of this kind of successful artist life. And I felt disheartened by it.
I came from the position of having moderate success early on online for fanart that I drew of video games and movies… I wanted to get away from that and after a series of events I then closed up those accounts and tried to stay away from social media. I still have a poor relationship with social media now. I find it difficult because I feel like I ought to be making work and showing it online but at the same time I am scared to post stuff and in general updating these sort of accounts tires me.
Personally I have always worked at home with limited space mainly only my desktop computer and my drawing table/kitchen table so I feel adjusted to working at home. At the moment I have been very stressed and it hasn’t been so great but I am slowly working on trying to make work again.
But what scares me is this idea I might have to re-enter the world of online art showing to make my work known. And it may take me sometime to feel up to it but may be I can do it.
Sorry for the super long response!
It’s great that you are trying, very hard, to make art, in whatever form and materials are available to you. I think whatever you come up with in these restricted circumstances may seem incredibly precious and significant when you look back on it from the future. When you are sitting beside the pool, drink in hand, in your hillside live-work complex, with your pair of Irish wolfhounds at your manicured feet, and your personal assistant waiting to hand you the phone, with your agent in California/Shanghai on the line, you may think back and reflect: yes: back in the Corona-wars of 2020. That’s when it all started.
And Dani: ‘Cave Art’ ‘Cave Makers’: I think you may have just named the next essential art movement.
HAHAHA, I love the picture of me by the pool with my manicured feet – so me!
“Cave Makers’ – cool, you’ve coined the term not me 😉