Art Hacks: Understanding How to See Art

You Are One of Multitudes

 In a previous Art Hacks posting I spoke to the issue of learning about art. And it concentrated on the resources available to a busy studio artist whose time and finances are limited.  Another aspect of learning about art is understanding the art you do see.  And this is profoundly more complex than it seems.  While you don't need to know Art History or Art Theory that doesn't mean that your art can ignore or otherwise that your point of origin for creating art has been thought about and studied for centuries and you're stuck with explaining why you are doing what you're doing given the inherited gifts of the past.

Visual Philosophy

One of the best descriptions of a visual artist to their art practice is that an artist is exercising a Visual Philosophy. The by-product, the artwork is rationalized by a belief system that has been developed by the individual artist to express a vision in a philosophical ecosystem of taste, implementation, and intellectual inertia.

Each of these considerations  depend on not only learning but refining the information you gather into something unique to your own art. And the idea of philosophy should not necessarily be confused with asserting messages of any kind. It can be nothing more than the esoteric biorhythm that you use to create the art that you do. 

Attention Span

Numerous studies of people's behavior in museum settings indicate that the average time spent looking at an individual art piece is very, very short. The Toledo Museum of Art has put together a primer on the subject for the average patron.  There are others and the studies are mixed ranging from 17 to 40-odd seconds.

All artists are different but anyone attempting to create fine art is attempting to speak to an order of humanity that shares a love and understanding of the work being produced. This is not the same as creating work that phishes for the attention of a well-known commercial audience.

Generally speaking, having your work exhibited in a museum is validation that the work you do is being accepted at a high level of aesthetic sophistication or curiosity. This brings us back around to the actual value of the piece being exhibited in a museum.  Does anyone actually see it? I will return to this subject in a much more detailed entry.

But the fact of the matter is that being shown in a museum is more important as resume highlight than as an exposure mechanism.  There is a robust discussion that questions whether or not showing in a museum is more important than having your work bought and exhibited in a well attended venue - public, private, or digital.

An artist who randomly visits a museum in which their work is being shown and expects to happen upon any meaningful criticism of their work is more likely to expect being struck by lightning given the statistical odds.

The exception to this scenario is attendance at art openings in which your art is exhibited. Art opening ceremonies first curate a cohort of attendees who are a peer audience for the work. Secondly, the audience is constrained to the perimeters of the show itself. Attending these openings is time well-spent.

An Artist's Reason for Museum Visits

Presumably artists have more targeted motivations for visiting museums. Unlike a tourist or patron who goes to a museum to see as much as they can in a constrained amount of time and energy, an artist (should) be better prepared to make use of the resource.

This means taking the time to do a personal inventory of work that is of interest and that that is not. Decide which list is a priority this visit.

Take a second pass of your wish list and further prioritize the candidates of interest. You know how much energy you'll have and you also know your saturation point. Draw a line under the last item you would expect to see no matter what and make that your plan 'A'.

Make a plan 'B' likewise as a backup should things change.

Finally, articulate what you hope to accomplish by going.  Consider this a set of expectations that you need to meet to consider the visit a success or 'Done'.

Attending with these things in hand, ensure that you don't get sidetracked before seeing what you what to see for good reasons.  Once you've accomplished all you wanted to (been there, done that), you can call it day or graze in other parts of the museum.

Define 'See'

An artist must be learning all the time. In fact, Robert Motherwell believed that art could not be taught but that "it could be learned". And learning was defined as deep, frequent exposure to other artists and art.

The act of seeing includes reading about the artist and their intentions in the art they create.  In the case of historical art, are there myths or stories you need to be familiar with to enjoy or critique the work?

And once you visit the art, take it in.  Dedicate some real time to just throwing around mental models of how and why it was made.  Why this solution to the problem?  How would you do it differently? Why?

Take the time to develop a more comprehensive and mature memory imprint than 'like'.  This  builds your  capacity to think about your own work.

Art Hacks: Curating a Taste in Art

Developing Your Own Art

This aspect of an artist's time is all about developing and investing in your ability to recognize what makes art in the world valuable and important and worth participating in.  This is different from the satisfaction of making a well-crafted thing or participating in a well-performed act (cooking, DIY assembly, and so on).  For a fine artist, this is a sharpening of personal sensibilities and thoughtful calibrations about making and advancing fine art.

And being an artist is different from being an arts and crafts professional that is manufacturing well-established, kitsch product for mass commercial consumption. If the art you create is all about how it looks then you're probably an arts and crafts professional concerned with skills mastery as a primary and maybe exclusive interest.

Taste and Time

One formula for a definition of (artistic) taste is that aesthetic distance and persistence of exposure to art equals a measure of the sophistication of taste. In other words, the closer and longer you expose yourself to art you can absorb, the better.

Regardless of how you define art, its a necessary (though some will debate this) and a time consuming exercise.  It does not necessarily need to be costly.

One of the first orders of business is to re-evaluate your art education to date.   This comes in at least two forms art skills you've been exposed to and art theory and recognition.

Skills

If you are exercising and refining skills that you have already established a trajectory with (say, painting or sculpture) then you already have some inertia going.  If you're unsatisfied with your existing skills and can't seem to make progress on your own then it makes sense to enroll in a skills based studio arts program that's very hands on. 

Art Familiarity and Recognition

This includes art history, art theory, and art curatorial subjects.

Art History

The study of Art History is increasingly a dubious exercise for a studio artist.  The mounting list of problems with History courses generally include their (politically motivated) veracity, the hopelessness of the scope of the field, and their actual affective and effective consequences on an artist.

The undiscussed much larger issue with history narratives themselves is that, for a studio arttist, sequencing historical art is unimportant.  What is of interest are the art problems represented and solved by artists working in familiar aesthetic topologies.

The sheer, ever expanding volume of artistic production, discovery, and redefinition is another impossibly complex problem with any artistic discussion.  For studio artists, the complexity can devour time and energy that is well beyond any benefit the exercise can deliver.

A comprehensive Rosetta Stone-like survey of Art History issues and recommendations can be found on Art Historian Dr. James Elkins' website.  There he suggests a number of exercises an interested party might experiment with to develop a bit of an art exploration map of what you have been exposed to, what you enjoy or dislike, and so on.

A 21st century approach to learning art taste and appreciation needs to start with taking advantage of the internet tools such as videos and digital recommendation agents. And it needs to be emphasized that in advocating the use of recommendation engines there is always the very real chance of intellectual claustrophobia setting in.  In other words, you need not allow yourself to get too comfortable in aesthetic echo chambers. Get comfortable with discomfort if you hope to learn and grow.

Art Theory

Like Art History, the study of Art Theory is debatable. A studio artist doesn't necessarily have a need for theory to create art.  But Art Theory is saturated with the vernacular of art past and present.  In this regard, becoming exposed to and at least mildly familiar with Art Theory subjects of the day promotes and broadens your individual taste. And to some degree, it ensures that you can be part of the art conversation.

Again, a comprehensive Rosetta Stone-like survey of Art Theory subjects can be found on Art Historian Dr. James Elkins' website.  You can, cafeteria-style, pick and choose what you think may be of interest and as your vocabulary grows you'll be able to search out art of interest with a far greater specificity.

Curating Your Taste and Your Art

Part of the learning process is an exercise in developing vocabulary, tools, and a pocket full of ideas. 

As you identify videos that capture your interest, add the to your own playlist for return visits. And each of these videos will recommend complementary content - other videos, artists, and topics that can extend your own artistic horizons.

An old adage advises that "travel broadens the mind".  This is true enough but being an artist with a full time job, family responsibilities, Time and budget considerations, and other constraints may make this impossible or minimal. Not everyone can travel and visit museums and cultural venues.

If travel broadens then let's add that surfing the web can be just as educational and satisfying.

All major and even minor museums have rich websites to browse.  The larger museums offer seminars and tutorials that are excellent sources of historical, theoretical, and contemporary art.

Google Arts and Culture is another excellent resource for learning about art.

And a personal favorite site of mine is Mary Lynn Buchanan's visits to art galleries.

In every case, its easy and important to explore what's been done and what's being done in order to navigate where your own art is going.  Spend a few hours a week just learning and laerning to see.

Art Hacks: Managing and Scheduling Show Opportunities

Managing Complexity

One of the many important day to day priorities for any artist is managing finances, schedules, and life's other plans. Here we'll assume you like the vast majority of artists work full-time at another job in addition to managing household and/or family obligations.

Digital Calendars Are Your Friend

The best way to schedule art show opportunities is by using a digital calendar that's available through most email providers. I use the Google calendar.

A good digital calendar will allow you to create more than one calendar. It makes a lot of sense to separate art events from your day-to-day activities. Calendars can then be overlaid, one into another when requiring a detailed look at more complex sets of arrangements. This becomes important to recognize and avoid timing conflicts.

In a previous Art Hacks entry, I discussed where you can look for art show opportunities. These sites will list local, national and sometimes international entry opportunities.

I also talked about how you might develop an algorithm to help you prioritize the importance and calculate the affordability of entering a show.

Scheduling Art Show Applications

The most important date requiring scheduling is the due date for application and payment. I'll borrow a computer science term here and refer to it as the last responsible moment.  In other words, regardless of whatever else may get scheduled between now and that date, that date is our last chance to take responsible action on it.  Today the date may look speculative because of conflicting other items of responsibility.  However, things change all the time and if we keep that date as a placeholder our schedules may in fact open up and make applying possible.

Labeling the Opportunity

Once you find an opportunity to show art, its promotional material will give you a wealth of information.  Using the unique name of the show for a label  maintains a corresponding tag should you later need to search for it.

You may also want to create a priority or value code as part of that label.  This code helps prioritize the opportunity in terms of affordability or desirability. 

You can schedule the due date either as a meeting or an all day event depending on your taste.

So a label might look like: ****-$$$, Big City Big Deal Art show

So far, so good.

Notifications

Creating a system to notify yourself of impending opportunities is a great way to manage a schedule that will soon consist of multiple opportunities that are often competing for your attention.

I happen to like and recommend email notifications because they can be left in one of my email categories (a tab, folder, whatever affordance the email service offers). I can also star or label them to make their identification and sorting a no-brainer.

I like to notify myself two weeks in advance.  That gives me plenty of time to plan and make decisions about my time and budget. Because these notifications are emails and because they aggregate in my email they will cluster around busy periods. This means I'm not only being notified of a shortly coming show but in my preview of those coming weeks I see *all* imminently available opportunities - a nice by-product of the email method.

If I wait until the last responsible moment to apply to any given opportunity, I've had the time to make the best choices.  Its also sensible to wait until you've been accepted to prune unwanted noise in the calendar that makes itself obvious.

One last detail.  Some galleries require a pre-application registration that may be different.  Use *that* date instead.

Details

Now all that's left is to add as uch or as little more you care about.  Location, times, and so on.  In the comments or notes field I like to insert the url that points to the application form and prerequisites. It is not unusual for galleries to extend application deadlines.  That bookmarked url becomes invaluable in maintaining your records.

Identifying what you plan to enter is a worthwhile note to self.  Don't double book your work.

Rinse and Repeat

Every opportunity to show art means drop-off and pick-up dates, show openings, and if you volunteer time that's to be scheduled.

These scheduled activities can sometimes span days - schedule it that way - you'll need to know.

Use the same unique label convention you used for the application deadline entry.  Drop-off notifications need to be received prior to your last responsible time to decide. If you can't drop-off then that's information you need up front.  Pick-ups can be negotiated (usually).

Once accepted, edit the calendar entry to cover the time from drop-off to pick-up and note the work that's exclusive to that show.

HowTo

Google calendar tutorials

Art Hacks: An Overview of Showing Art

 The act of showing and getting art shown has many relationships to other aspects of artist's opportunities and responsibilities. Here I'll attempt to both define what showing art might mean as well as identify what impacts the decision-making and logistics of that task.

Showing art is a fundamental activity that most artists spend time and money doing.  In fact, your identity as an artist on many social media forums will question with something along the lines of, "If you aren't showing and selling your art then *for whom* are you making it? For some critics, showing and selling art are closely and inextricably coupled. You can't be whole without the two because in their view artists do not create for self-satisfaction - there has to be an audience.

What Does "Showing" Art Mean?

I cannot speak to (usually global, urban) high-value commercial galleries An artist who has that kind of representation will find the information in my Art Hacks blog posts to be provincial and worthless.

So this is for the rest of the 99.99999% of us.

An obvious place to start showing your art is at a local arts organization's gallery.  Sometimes membership is required but usually there are shows open to non-members for a slight increase in entry fees. These organizations usually sponsor virtual galleries as well. These group shows are almost always an eclectic mix of quality.  That said, using your best judgement as to whether or not your work will complement the particular show is advisable.

Another source of exposure are restaurant and office spaces. In this case you simply can make arrangements with the proprietor to display work on their walls. There is risk involved. In one case, I showed at at popular Brooklyn restaurant and everything went seamlessly.  When I went to pick up the work it was coated with a layer of grease that accumulated from kitchen steam.

On another occasion I added a piece to the wall of a local bakery that closed abruptly and took the work with them.  So co-operative arrangements can get tricky.

Personally (and as a software professional) I don't recommend virtual art galleries unless its your own or an intimate peer group running it.  They are usually impossible to browse and even more difficult to navigate.  These things number in the thousands, the number of artists number in the tens of thousands, and the number of works are innumerable.  Its the artistic equivalent of putting a business card in a bottle and throwing it out to sea.

OTOH, having a personal (free) blog is wise. It saves money. Its exclusive to you and yours.  AND, you control its contents.  It ain't hard.

If you do commodity landscapes, portraits, cute animal pictures and so on you really more accurately belong in the *arts & crafts* fairs, festivals and pop-up shops. This cohort is out of scope for most of the Art Hacks blog post entries.

A previous Art Hacks blog entry discusses the cost of showing artwork.

Where Do I Find Shows to Apply To?

EventBrite and Cafe are two of the art ecosystem darling$ for advertising art shows.  Others exist and are listed on the side panel of this website.  You can always search your favorite search engine for "Call for Art".

Public service announcement: Do yourself and everyone else a favor and avoid art shows dedicated to the ubiquitous and insipid political dross that passes for art. The only way this intellectual sewer of litter will be cleaned up is by refusing to participate and attend.  

How is Showing Art Related To Seeing Art?

This topic will be discussed in a future dedicated blog post.

How is Learning About Art Related To Showing Art?

This topic will be discussed in a future dedicated blog post.

How Do I Manage My Time and Money to Do All This Stuff ?

These topics will be discussed in future dedicated blog posts.

Art Hacks: A Day in the Life of an Artist

 I've been creating art for over a half century and in that time I have developed an inventory of hacks and shortcuts for managing the typical items on the artistic to do list of an everyday artist.  And before we get into specifics let's define a few terms and concepts that require some clarity.

What is an Artist in the context of the Art Hacks discussions?

I think that while many of the Art Hacks tools to organize and navigate the art ecosystem can apply to the "arts and crafts" contingent and to the Art World exclusive club of artists who do *nothing but work on their own *art all day, my experience is that the vast majority of serious artists not only make art but work for a living at something else.

In a future Art Hacks entry I'll further examine the assumptions about who artists are and what we do but for the moment let's use this general description as a baseline.

Time and Money

Time and money are two of the critical components for creating Art.  The following illustration provides a visualization of the many topics and complex relationships artists must navigate and control to maintain a sensible plan for making a go of it.

Future Art Hacks blog entries will provide deeper dives into the open source or free tools, techniques, and resources available to an artist to make the day productive. Needless to say, curating the activities of any given day involves just a few of the things illustrated and everyone will have their own esoteric way of doing things.

Nothing here will manufacture a magic formula for success.  These "art hacks" are aimed at making the creation of art easier and nothing else. Success, profitability, and risk is out of scope.

My previous art hacks entry (how much does it cost to enter a juried art gallery show) is found here. 

Art Hacks: The Value of an Art Donation by an Artist

 

The finest explanation of the value an artist can claim for tax purposes upon donating a piece of artwork is expressed in a blog post called "The Generosity of Artists" by Doug Woodham dated Feb. 11, 2019.

"THE GENEROSITY OF ARTISTS

These artists are generous in the extreme. None of them will receive meaningful tax benefits from their donations, due to two U.S. tax code provisions.

When a taxpayer donates an artwork to a charitable organization, she can receive a charitable deduction equal to the fair market value of the object only if the organization receiving it passes what is called the "related use" test. Put simply, the organization must use the donated artwork in pursuit of its mission. Art that is accepted into the permanent collection of a museum passes this test, as does art donated to a school that will be displayed and used in art history classes. But if the intent of the charity is to sell the work, then the donation fails the “related use” test. In these circumstances, the taxpayer will only be able to receive a charitable deduction equal to what the IRS calls their “basis” in the object, which is typically much lower than its fair market value. Because all the artworks donated to the Miss Porter’s auction do not meet the “related use” test, it’s essential to understand how the IRS defines “basis.”  

The IRS defines “basis” very differently for artists and collectors. Artists can only deduct what it cost them to make the artwork. For example, if an artist donated a drawing with a $100,000 fair market value to a benefit auction, they would likely receive a tax deduction of around $100 for it -- the cost of the pencils and paper that went into making it. This is true even if the work sells for $100,000 or more in the auction. So all the artists donating their works to the Miss Porter’s auction are receiving essentially no tax benefits for their generosity. Collectors are marginally better off than the artists, because the IRS deems their basis to be what they originally spent to buy the artwork. For the kinds of works that show up at auction, that is still likely to be far less than its current fair market value."