The voices of geezerdom

Art in America, Jan, 2007 by Raphael Rubinstein

Letters to a Young Artist, by Gregory Amenoff, Jo Baer, Cai Guo-Qiang, Mex Katz, John McCracken, Elizabeth Murray, Adrian Piper, Stephen Shore, Jessica Stockholder, et al., New York, Darte Publishing, 2006; 96 pages, $15 paper.

A young artist, recently arrived in New York, writes letters to successful older artists, asking for career advice. The premise of this book sounds like an exercise in ass-kissing that could only result in pages of platitudes or polite brush-offs. Much to my surprise, Letters to a Young Artist--the title echoes both Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and Herbert Read's A Letter to a Young Painter--turns out to be a fascinating volume. The 23 letters in it, from a refreshingly wide variety of artists, not only dispense plenty of potentially useful advice for novices but also reveal quite a bit about the artists themselves. (The book, portions of which originally appeared in the magazine Art on Paper, doesn't include the original letter the young artist sent out; strangely, no explanation is given for its absence.)

In a lengthy, pragmatic letter offering a philosophical formula for becoming a "successful, outstanding artist" ("you must identify what an artist does in this world and what relationship exists between yourself, society, and culture"), Xu Bing looks back at the challenges he faced at the beginning of his career. After a "very conservative art education" in China, he had to wait, he tells his young American correspondent, until he was 35 to engage with Western contemporary art. And when he arrived in the U.S., he had to cope with problems of language and culture. Xu also confesses that his technical skills were inferior to those of many other artists. His approach was to transform his limitations into strengths, using his "distinct perspective" to make a kind of art that those around him could not.

At the end of the letter, Xu advises the young artist, whose name appears nowhere in the book, to "just work, and don't worry whether your talent will be discovered" because, thanks to the speed of modern communications, "tragedies like those of van Gogh's time basically do not exist." Falling prey to a smugness that is all too common in today's art world, Xu seems to believe that museums and curators now possess an infallible ability to discover and exhibit every good artist in the world.

In one of the shifts of perspective that make this book so lively, the next responder is painter Gregory Amenoff, whose advice couldn't be further from Xu's intellectual strategizing. "Remember that ARTISTS DRIVE THE BUS," Amenoff urges, breaking into caps to make his point. "The entire enterprise is built on one central event: the creative act in the studio," he adds. Amenoff also counsels staying away from art fairs, supporting fellow artists, trying dumb things in the studio and looking for something else beyond fame and financial success. Another veteran, John Baldessari, strikes a similar note: "Don't go into art for fame or fortune. Do it because you cannot not do it."

Peppered throughout the book are asides that reveal the writers' skeptical views of the current state of things. Elizabeth Murray, who stresses the importance of having a life ("I realized over time ... that I could still do my work and have a partner and a family"), observes that the "art world seems to conjure up a lot of nonsense right now and seems to be only about trends, money, and fame." Photographer Stephen Shore says that as a teacher of 20 years' experience, "more and more, I see students who are driven by a desire to have a show in Chelsea and be a successful artist." While Shore says that this shift is understandable, he adds that "it has little to do with why I make art." Shore ends his letter by guessing that the young artist is using his "moral dilemma" about whether or not to pursue early success "as an excuse for not engaging your work.... Cut it out!" Shore sounds like he's probably an excellent teacher.

Jessica Stockholder is of the just-go-ahead-and-do-it school: "I would advise you not to believe for a moment the vein of art criticism and theme/ that hatters on incessantly about the emptiness and failure of the avant-garde. You are a person, armed with free will and the tools to discover that will." Howardena Pindell's intensely practical letter includes a caution against letting other artists into your studio for fear they'll steal your ideas. She also stresses the importance of keeping good records and exercising due diligence on potential dealers ("do they pay the artist, and how quickly, when the work is sold?"). And, she adds, don't think for a moment that the art world is free of bias toward minorities and women: "To this day I am still dealing with this issue."

One unexpectedly recurring theme is the importance of books. Pindell has a habit of reading "every day from about 11:00 P.M. until 1:00 or 2:00 A.M." Mex Katz, whose short letter is full of classical-sounding maxims ("Taste is a moral code" is my favorite), advises: "Read all you can and remember that by the time you've read it a large part of what you read is obsolete." Joseph Grigely recalls that much of what he learned about art and being an artist came from writers, especially John Keats. Amenoff suggests reading biographies of artists ("those narratives can also help you to see beyond the conditions of our particular time").