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Inside-Outsider
What makes an artist an "outsider"? Is it the self-taught status? Is it the mental instability? Is it a cranky attitude or living in an obscure place? What if an artist has knowledge of current issues & stuff? what if an artist went to college? What if an artist has friends and connections and lacks schizophrenic tendencies?
A knowledgeable art consultant friend once told me, "You're not an outsider but you want us to think that." He's absolutely correct and I recognized that when he said it; I was just impressed that he noticed it about me.
The mystique of getting outside of all the artspeak and art career 'moves' is a sexy one. I'd like to do something different. I wanna do it–achieve artistic fame–by an alternate means. I'm sick of the lifeless plodding that artists have to bow to. Can't we do it a different way? Does it have to be slides, grants, wine & cheese and fat doses of sucking up?
I try to do things in a unique way, which usually comes across in the "everyone's an artist" kinda' result, but the fact is I know, I can see that some people've got it–some don't. I happen to 'have it', I know this, but I'd love to blaze my own trail, I hate following rules when it comes to personal expression. I guess that's why I fight the urge to move to N.Y., L.A. or S.F. I wanna do here–achieve artist hero status right here in Reno Nevada, thinking to myself, "that would be an unlikely thing to achieve".
So in an effort to gain more notoriety, I'm locking myself in a display window in a downtown art boutique for 5 days next week–TO DRAW. No, I gotta say I don't care who sees me doing this David Blaine meets Van Gogh stunt–well, I do, but really I have to keep it at the front of my mind that the point is TO DRAW, nothing more, nothing less.
It will be practice, publicity, and meditation. I've done this "performance" before, but I'm a social animal, I have friends looking through the glass who don't understand how I could be in there and not talk to them. This time I'm goin' full bore. I can't break the barrier.
Maybe this kind of thing reflects a "lonely while surrounded by friends" attitude. Is that universal for artists? To achieve something, does an artist need to cloister himself off from the world?TextureBig.mov
A knowledgeable art consultant friend once told me, "You're not an outsider but you want us to think that." He's absolutely correct and I recognized that when he said it; I was just impressed that he noticed it about me.
The mystique of getting outside of all the artspeak and art career 'moves' is a sexy one. I'd like to do something different. I wanna do it–achieve artistic fame–by an alternate means. I'm sick of the lifeless plodding that artists have to bow to. Can't we do it a different way? Does it have to be slides, grants, wine & cheese and fat doses of sucking up?
I try to do things in a unique way, which usually comes across in the "everyone's an artist" kinda' result, but the fact is I know, I can see that some people've got it–some don't. I happen to 'have it', I know this, but I'd love to blaze my own trail, I hate following rules when it comes to personal expression. I guess that's why I fight the urge to move to N.Y., L.A. or S.F. I wanna do here–achieve artist hero status right here in Reno Nevada, thinking to myself, "that would be an unlikely thing to achieve".
So in an effort to gain more notoriety, I'm locking myself in a display window in a downtown art boutique for 5 days next week–TO DRAW. No, I gotta say I don't care who sees me doing this David Blaine meets Van Gogh stunt–well, I do, but really I have to keep it at the front of my mind that the point is TO DRAW, nothing more, nothing less.
It will be practice, publicity, and meditation. I've done this "performance" before, but I'm a social animal, I have friends looking through the glass who don't understand how I could be in there and not talk to them. This time I'm goin' full bore. I can't break the barrier.
Maybe this kind of thing reflects a "lonely while surrounded by friends" attitude. Is that universal for artists? To achieve something, does an artist need to cloister himself off from the world?TextureBig.mov
5 Comments
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Comment by grijsz on 21 July 2008 at 5:25am - Do not draw, your art is blogging
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Comment by Sorg on 24 July 2008 at 9:15pm -
Here's the 10 Things I Learned In The Box:
http://www.artreview.com/forum/topic/show?id=1474022%3ATopic%3A365407
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Comment by Sorg on 28 July 2008 at 8:22pm
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There's a quote from Thoreau that I found while in my display window one night. It's from a book on hermits:
"A man thinking or working is always alone. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert.
Grijsz, My art's the whole package, Mark talks about fame vs. humble career but I think this career will only come thru some kinda fame. So I've embraced the fact that we're all social animals and people are looking for people, not just art.
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Comment by Sorg on 3 August 2008 at 8:31pm
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Here's an article about a REAL outsider, a couple pictures too. His name was Van Zant, till he changed into Chief Rolling Mountain Thunder and created the folk environment THUNDER MOUNTAIN. He eventually took his own life there, but before that he created a community for outsiders:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nvtoday.com%2Findex.php%3Foption%3Dcom_content%26task%3Dview%26id%3D245%26Itemid%3D54&ei=HgWWSP6PEobKtQPu1PCwCg&usg=AFQjCNGUg5XJRVlwsyafKH4LDBnJn9Yz7w&sig2=R5E0D2qNhaLJ9HW2tXxlOA
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Comment by THE GEWGAWSIAN on 12 November 2008 at 7:43am - The term outsider is open to individual perception, nothing is set in stone. I consider that an outsider can well be an artist who other artists place outside of their own groups of cliquey members. An artist who is not afraid to be radical and not run with the cliquey herds of those who seek to be acceptable to the mainstream.
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