Illustration by Jan Igoe
As you may know, artists are a pretty peculiar breed. Having been one my entire life, I speak from experience. As children, we’re allergic to math and doodle through chemistry, totally ignoring the standard prefix for artist, which is “starving.” The career may be cursed, yet we still refuse to surrender our crayons.
If we stick with it long enough, eventually we’ll be paying to hear tenured college professors with ZZ Top beards utter profundities to students whose parents would be shocked to learn how much malarkey tuition covers.
“One of my best students took months painting exquisite portraits she could sell for thousands of dollars,” one hairy professor droned. “But instead, she baked them in a kiln and framed the ashes. Who is to say that’s not art?”
Well, me, for one. I’d prefer the cash (and whatever that professor was smoking). But he had a point. The weirder you are as an artist, the more likely you’ll be noticed. Take Marcel Duchamp, a French guy who was an acclaimed painter. Even though his Nude Descending a Staircase didn’t show any actual naked people, if he’d called it Still Life of Wood Scraps, you’d see the likeness.
Then, in 1917, Duchamp debuted a 3-D work he called Fountain, which turned the art world on its head. To the untrained eye and most plumbers, it was a porcelain urinal. Useful, yes. But was it art? In those days, judges weren’t ready to award best in show to a prefabricated bathroom fixture. Art was still supposed to look pretty over your couch.
That’s exactly what my bachelor friend Tim needed—attractive company for the naked wall behind his couch. An art dealer led him to a huge bouquet of flowers, painted on three separate canvases. The dealer wove a hypnotic tale about Monet’s influence, audacious brushwork and harmonious hues. Surely, only a genius would boldly divide the subject this way, blah, blah, blah. The spiel was Greek to Tim, but he figured girls like flowers, so he took the threesome home to his couch.
A few weeks later, he bumped into the artist at a festival and inquired about the bolt of creative lightning that inspired him to split the subject in thirds.
The artist seemed amused. He recalled delivering the painting to the gallery via Volkswagen Beetle during a thunderstorm. Since most of the masterpiece was hanging out of the trunk, it arrived warped. So the artist grabbed a box cutter, rigged up new supports, and voila—triplets. So much for the dealer’s spiel.
For artists who intend to park their work in a gallery, however, a good spiel—aka artist’s statement—is essential. It should be pretentious enough to leave collectors wondering what language you speak and convinced you’re eccentric enough to be valuable.
Personally, I think great art speaks for itself. Early artists didn’t need verbiage to justify their work. When a Neanderthal guy went to see his buddy, all the breaking news was etched right there on the cave wall. If he’d drawn a T. rex with shaved legs sticking out its mouth, you could safely assume “the bold, primitive rock work and inspired depiction of violent carnage” meant he’d be fetching his own beer for the foreseeable future.
No artist statement required. But “blah, blah, blah, burp,” if you want one.
Jan A. Igoe claims this month’s masterful cartoon was influenced by Rembrandt’s sister, Picasso, Dr. Seuss and Adobe Photoshop. Collectors should take advantage of this raw talent by reading this magazine and sending all their money to her, unless they’re saving for a new fountain. Join the fun at HumorMe@SCLiving.coop.