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CREATIVITY | Noah Brier

The Art of Making it Happen

Some thoughts about the role of hustling in art.

March 9, 2007 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 10 COMMENTS

Back in October I was at SFMOMA and saw Duchamp's Fountain. I had seen it before, but was especially struck by the card that went along with the piece. It read: "Fountain was what Duchamp called a readymade, an object elevated to the status of art not because he had created it, but because he had chosen it."

It's exactly the kind of thing people look at and say, "I could have painted that" and then break into a speech about how it's not really art? That bugs me. More and more lately I've been of the belief that art is in large part the very act of declaring it so.

Hear me out: Duchamp's Fountain is admittedly an everyday object that he raised to elite status. But part of what makes it deserving of being housed in an exhibit like the one at SFMOMA is that Duchamp had the balls to call it art. He navigated the system and got it into a museum, there's certainly beauty in that kind of hustle.

Now think about some of the great modernist painters? They brought new styles and ideas to the forefront. They challenged conventional wisdom. In many ways they are the embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit. What we now take for granted as 'art' was once anything but.

I've been watching a documentary series of Christo and Jeanne-Claude for whatever you might say about their work, the fact that they make it happen is really quite magical. How many people would even know where to start the process of placing hundreds of gates in Central Park?

In one of the videos Christo alludes to this fact, explaining to a community board who was voting on whether to allow him to run a fence through a California town that they were all a part of his giant art project whether they agreed with it or not.

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with all this, but I think the bottom line for me is that the act of creation deserves more credit than it gets. Lots of people have ideas and lots of others are supremely talented, but most people don't bring them together and make something real. If I could get a picture of my big toe somehow placed in the Met then whose to say it's not art?

What's more, it's further proof that anything is possible. Art and everything else are up for interpretation. I think I've written it before, but at some point the wheel didn't exist and someone discovered it. Maybe 100 people realized it before, but it was that one caveman who realized it's power that got all the credit.

That's why we've got to make things happen.

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COMMENTS

1wrath

What does SFMOMA mean ? I think it's a company or something.

March 9, 2007

2Noah Brier

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

March 9, 2007

3Shana Lory

You might find this article about experiential/participatory art interesting. I've been thinking about it for the past week or so:
burningman.com/art_of . . .

March 9, 2007

4Adrian Lai

Great example. I agree completely. Ideas are worth sh*t if they're not turned into actions. I've been thinking about this after hearing Benjamin Palmer at Adcritic's Creative Roundtable.

March 9, 2007

5Adrian Lai

Great example. I agree completely. Ideas are worth sh*t if they're not turned into actions. I've been thinking about this after hearing Benjamin Palmer at Adcritic's Creative Roundtable.

March 9, 2007

6Bonnie in Albuquerque

Thanks for the interesting post...I always like starting my day with my coffee and a post from Noah :)
I also get angry when people say "oh that's not art" or "I can do that"....I just want to say, "well you did'nt". Art is so political in the sense of what is considered "art" and who defines this aesthetic. Art is more an experience and the participation in someones expression. I took several courses with Maxine Greene at the Lincoln Center on Aesthetic education and would encourage anyone with an interest to do the same... I would use her ideas in teaching my junior high kids in East New York, Brooklyn, who also would look at the fountain and say "its not art". Its the act of creation and expression that can transform people through their participation. Art can be a very powerful medium for transformation and this art does not have to be something concrete, it can be an idea, music, dance, etc.... By just looking at the final product, the journey from the idea to creation is not appreciated. Maxine Greene really stressed the idea that every part of the creation of any artistic expression needs to be explored and through this each person can create their own meaning and be a participant. Sorry to ramble, but I love her ideas and your post made me think of her.....

March 9, 2007

7Johanna

This topic makes me want to write pages and pages. When I started taking Art History classes in high school, I had no idea what was "good" art. I loved it all, but more and more I found myself gravitating towards this type of thing. It moves me to tears when I see movies like Pollock and How To Draw A Bunny. I think for me it's mostly the surge of "WOW I'VE NEVER SEEN THAT BEFORE GAH" that I love so much.

March 9, 2007

8El Gaffney

Can't help but reference Theodore Roosevelt... "It is not the critic who counts..." (http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/quotes.htm)

March 10, 2007

9KG

Noah, you wrote "...the act of creation deserves more credit than it gets."

Absolutely! It's about the process of doing it, too. There are so many steps to actually getting something from the brain to paper (or canvas or clay or bronze, any material). And if someone isn't used to actually creating something, it's easy for them to stand back and criticize.

I love that Smiths' song: "You just haven't earned it yet, baby...". This applies to this situation.

And it is about guts, like you said. Those people who risk taking that leap from dream to real should be commended — I absolutely agree with you, and it's refreshing to read someone standing up for this.

Armchair quarterbacks are TOTALLY different from the real quarterback in the game, under pressure, about to get pounded by a few thousand pounds of maniacs trying to crush him. (Don't ask me why I just included a football reference to describe the act of creation, but I think it's as hard to be a creating artist as it is to get physically tackled in a game. In fact, it might be harder: most artists don't make millions of dollars every year, don't have millions of fans in stadiums cheering them on like sports heroes do, and yet they put themselves on the line in the same way.)

Great post! Now I'm all fired up about creating.

March 12, 2007

10David Castillo

Great Post!

In general I agree that initiative taken to create something is largely undervalued by our society, but I also think there is a nuance here that is important to tease out.

Often times people who are artists that create on their own terms have to sacrifice a number of things (high wages, security, etc) to follow their vision. While It might be very easy for these artists to live well by creating "art" for business (advertising) or work the gallery system, they don't. That is something that has to be applauded and examined. It is my opinion that by creating these sanctions our society deters artists to create art outside of the box or challenges convention. Yet there is an exception to every rule so some do end up getting wide acceptance for their work without having to bend too much or at all. A good example of two exceptions to the rule would be Banksy or Shepard Fairey, but for each of them there are thousands of other street artists that don't get the credit and are out there creating amazing work at high risk daily.

I totally agree with you that one of the things to appreciate about Duchamps is his guts to do whatever he wants in the face of extreme ridicule.Yet what I most like about him is his desire to DESTROY convention. To me Duchamps wasn't trying to "make it" in the gallery scene, he was trying to kill it by creating something new and accessible to everybody. What a better to represent that by using something so ordinary and gross as a urinal! He used that as an aesthetic battlecry of sorts.

Now someone is going to still say, "it's just a urinal." And I am going to reply, "Yeah but did you use it as a weapon against classist concepts of art?"

So after all of that I am left with can original thinking itself be art?

March 13, 2007