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On Being a Professional Artist

First off, let me write that this is not a how to guide about how to become a professional artist.   There are hundreds, if not thousands of those out there, most of them geared toward commodifying the artist personality and by extension the artwork.   I’m not sure if following those guides actually help or not, just like I’m not sure whether my two years in an MFA program actually prepared me for a life of a professional artist.   What I can say is that after the MFA professionalism is something that is not given over by a degree or title but acquired, and even if one doesn’t sell the work they make, does that make them a lesser artist?   I suppose that to be a professional in western culture means to make money off of what one does, but does that immediately negate all the artists that slave away in and out of their studios daily who do not have gallery representation or sell their work, do not appear in flashy magazines, do not get to exhibit in the art fairs and biennials aro

Made In LA

I can’t stand the word archive anymore.   Every curator is an artist and every artist is a wannabe curator.   The tables have flipped almost perfectly against the artist in every imaginable way when it comes to vanguardism and edginess.   No longer, it seems, does the average artist work with any complex issues, though they may appear that way at first. The artist of today is content with towing the line of populist sentiment, pop and pseudo-philosophy, not even commenting on these issues as much as simply cleverly regurgitating what everyone already knows.   The archive is just one of these recent developments that the artworld better soon forget because it is fucking up a whole generation of artists that could have otherwise been helpful in other lines of work, like the food and service industry.    The ridiculousness of the archive is that as a term it has the right tone and desirability for the elite.   It reeks of academicism, and importance. But this importance is also ve
Repeating History: A Nostalgic Perspective  A typical critique of nostalgia has the same overtone of a cliché as does the sentence ‘when one does not know his history, one is destined to repeat it.’ This sentence seems as true as it is patently false in the same way that nostalgia, still a dirty word in our so called post-modern culture, seems to be a word that describes a true emotion, longing, but at the same time keeps its distance by suggesting itself to be a delusion, a sentimental longing for a simple past, a home. That history repeats itself because we are not aware of it is a simplification, a sounding board for generations that grew up with false wisdom masquerading as studied fact. What if it is precisely the opposite that is true? What if it is because we know our history that we repeat it again and again? The nostalgic knows this and therefore she yearns for a time when this was not the case, which is of course never. This case in point was well put in the short mini-s

Back from the (almost) Dead

It has come to my attention that The Gutter Art Critic has been dormant for a long time, over two years to be precise. I am not sure why this happened. Maybe it was because I got into graduate school, maybe because I was busy with making work and residencies abroad, maybe it was life and maybe I couldn't bring myself to write anything sensible other than complaints about the fucked up things I saw around myself. Whatever it was.... today is a new beginning, a rebirth of The Gutter Art Critic. I hope that two years of graduate art school has given me a new perspective, I also hope that living near Los Angeles, the supposed new capital of the art world (whatever that means) has given me a new impetus to write about art and culture from ground zero. Ok, maybe not quite ground zero, I don't actually live in Los Angeles, maybe ground five and a half, because I am pretty close, as close as I think I can stand it. But don't get me wrong, I actually like Los Angeles, well, part

Killing and Painting

How should one begin when writing about George Zimmerman painting? It might be a good idea to put Zimmerman in a context by which we can judge what he is in fact doing and why is it that this is either accepted or not. George W Bush as we know is painting also, and when he was alive, John Wayne Gacy was painting as well. As much as we would like to dismiss their art as hacky, or worse, let us not forget that it has been decades of unrelenting deskilling of artists, pluralism and appropriation of art for the sake of money and consumerism among other things that have resulted in non-artists claiming the status of artist and non-art elevated to high art. Can we at all imagine a time fifty years ago, when critics like Harold Rosenberg or Clement Greenberg were writing about art and producing actual criticism, which meant that artists had to be somewhat accountable to a de facto higher authority than themselves? Regardless of how wrong or conservative these critics were, in their appro

Of Elections and Their Implications

This year’s election for mayor and city council was one of the stealthiest campaigns that I have ever witnessed. Unless one was an ever vigilant follower or watch dog of the local political scene, all one saw one day were a handful of yard signs and an eerie silence in the press and media. As if the fact that the political arena here as much as elsewhere has become a medley of circus freaks and reality tv-like “celebrities” was not enough, the campaign itself had devolved into a he said she said argumentation about why there is so much debt still in the air when all we have tried to do is to make this place more tourist friendly and more developer happy, a tried and true formula for making money. But is that really so? If anything, recent history has always shown that late capitalism is a process by which individuals are compelled to take as much advantage of a given situation and run as soon as the money is made. Was this not the case with most of the “development” in Asheville?

On art and artists in Asheville, contemporary art and its implications (Is something rotten in the art scene?)

The Question For years, Asheville has been seen as an arts destination. The reasons are simple; lots of artists result in lots of art produced which enters the market, which draws in the money, which ultimately draws in more artists and the circle slowly but surely perpetuates itself. Whether or not artists can squeek out a living in such conditions is an entirely different question from the one I will be asking today and it can be found in a conversation, which this article will try to dovetail into, from some two years ago printed in the Xpress. Similar topics have been raised later on Craigslist and Ashevegas. The question that will be dealt with here is the state and nature of contemporary art, its (non)existence, and its representation here in Asheville. Contemporary art seems to have been largely redefined in Asheville. Whether this is a mistake or a concerted effort is unclear. What is clear however is that within this definition are included various practices such as crafts