Quote of the day, yay!
"This heavy weight, pressing down and through the body, is the certainty of death. Depression is a form of pragmatic realism. If everything humans can achieve means nothing in the moment of death, why live? Why move forward? If the end result is erasure, why participate in the unending march toward annihilation that constitutes daily existence? It is the confrontation with this fact that precipitates depression. No amount of ego, money, or fame can deliver a human from depression, because no amount of ego, money, or fame can prevent death. The most interesting artists, the most pragmatic artists, the artists who work on problems beyond their own self promotion and success, work in a state of constant, unending depression. To face the certainty of death, without the fantasies of success or progress, and still make artwork is a radical gesture. Radical gestures cannot be maintained. Death wins.
[...]
Depression is often directly caused by, in the words of Carl Wilson from a recent review of a biography of Alex Chilton, "whatever drives a handful of artists to be great at the expense of being good, to gamble double or nothing on the long odds." To these artists, working often means the same thing as failure, in direct opposition to the ones who produce to prevail, the game players and the posers, the networkers and the opaque black holes, the ones that master systems and moves, techniques and cliques, professional attitudes and academic jargon. Have fun being successful. Have less fun not being successful. Thus, depression. Someone has to lose, something. Despite all assurances, in whatever form, be it connections, friends, curators, awards, prestigious exhibitions, magazine articles, or money, there is no guarantee that an artist can or will make a great work. Many artists game the system, making things that will bring success fast and easy, or things that sit in judgement of fast and easy by ironically moving faster and easier. This is cynicism. These artists have already lost everything, and their work doesn't matter. Being successful is nothing. Failure is the most important thing in the world, and it is the mistakes that cannot ever be replicated that are the most beautiful.
[...]
If reflected through the prism of desire, the spectrum of physical objects that can be described as contemporary art reveal wide rivers of desire: desire for power, desire for money, desire for influence, desire for security, desire for fame - these desires are the main courses to run, and yet they are corrupt. Art driven by these agendas is art in name only. Art forms, like a crystal, past the limits of desire, beyond which lies the unknown. One cannot desire what cannot be conceived, but what cannot be conceived can be created."
-- text for Depression, exhibition organized by Ramiken Crucible at François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, 2014
[...]
Depression is often directly caused by, in the words of Carl Wilson from a recent review of a biography of Alex Chilton, "whatever drives a handful of artists to be great at the expense of being good, to gamble double or nothing on the long odds." To these artists, working often means the same thing as failure, in direct opposition to the ones who produce to prevail, the game players and the posers, the networkers and the opaque black holes, the ones that master systems and moves, techniques and cliques, professional attitudes and academic jargon. Have fun being successful. Have less fun not being successful. Thus, depression. Someone has to lose, something. Despite all assurances, in whatever form, be it connections, friends, curators, awards, prestigious exhibitions, magazine articles, or money, there is no guarantee that an artist can or will make a great work. Many artists game the system, making things that will bring success fast and easy, or things that sit in judgement of fast and easy by ironically moving faster and easier. This is cynicism. These artists have already lost everything, and their work doesn't matter. Being successful is nothing. Failure is the most important thing in the world, and it is the mistakes that cannot ever be replicated that are the most beautiful.
[...]
If reflected through the prism of desire, the spectrum of physical objects that can be described as contemporary art reveal wide rivers of desire: desire for power, desire for money, desire for influence, desire for security, desire for fame - these desires are the main courses to run, and yet they are corrupt. Art driven by these agendas is art in name only. Art forms, like a crystal, past the limits of desire, beyond which lies the unknown. One cannot desire what cannot be conceived, but what cannot be conceived can be created."
-- text for Depression, exhibition organized by Ramiken Crucible at François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, 2014
posted by Nor at 08:07
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