Current Book: James Fenton – Leonardo’s Nephew
So – Just a couple of days to go until the show opens and my performance anxiety is running high – things seem more last minute than usual, and always at this point I find myself fixating on one piece and fretting about it. This time I’m engaged in making the largest drawing I’ve made in twenty years – appx. 10′ by 15′ and I’m making it in the gallery while we’re installing the rest of the show, since I don’t really have the studio space to do it. While I do that I’m also Looking at the rest of the gallery which is fucking huge and wondering if I’m actually going to be able to pull this off, or if this is the time I’m revealed as the fraud I know I am.
Strong, self pitying words, I know, but it seems more important to acknowledge that the sentiment is there than to dismiss it. That fear is paralyzing to some extent, and yet I can tell that the paralysis has become part of my working method. I factor it in to the amount of time I need to make a show. I can’t say that the emotion has lessened with my professional success. It remains and with it the feeling that each show is merely dodging a bullet, that next time the truth will out. Making work is a particular species of being present and vulnerable and while the trappings of a gallery mitigate that by investing it with a kind of authority, I actually try to be as present emotionally in the work as possible. Generally if I get excited about seeing it, and feel a little nauseous about anyone else seeing it then I’m probably doing ok by my standards. But I’m not sure I wanted to be this nauseous.
And all the time the blank page on the wall looks back, facing me down.
I should slap you!
I’ve been excitedly telling friends about the show, the breadth of the works to be shown: the video installation, the flags, the blind-embossed Rorschach/silhouette, the commissioned pipe, the drawing, and the newest bunnysuit. I think it’s your strongest show in years, if not ever.
I think you distilled and detailed the emotional state probably all good artists go through before a show or performance. The anxiety keeps you focused, and it’s one of the factors that keeps your work smart and sharp — honest, even.
Your work in a “fucking huge” gallery is deserved, and will only showcase your work all the better — I even think it plays off most of your drawings, where the large empty fields of anxiety frame the determination of the crayon and your fertile imagination.
Do you have any particular critics/papers you’re hoping/fearing will cover the show?
The fear you speak of is something I feel when I start a massage, too. I don’t think I’m a fraud, but I’m always afraid I’m not going to be able to help them, or hurt them, or they won’t like it. Staying in the present moment during a massage makes the work that much better, for both my clients and for me. It’s amazing what you can learn about a person by being present while you touch them. All sorts of emotional stuff comes out during massage. The human body is a wild and varied landscape of emotional details. So rewarding, this work.
Does it help at all to hear that those feelings are natural? When you create, you expose yourself; you make yourself vulnerable. I’d be worried if you didn’t feel some level of apprehension.
Whenever I have to do something that twists knots in my stomach, I make sure I have a pleasant activity planned immediately after it.
Good luck! You have psychic cheesecake!
I have to agree 100% with Thor and claudebear; it’s quite a natural condition to have mounting feelings of uncertainty and turmoil with this kind of exposure. Perhaps this is just an unusually dramatic case of it. Sometimes there’s absolutely no way to get outside yourself and see the quality inherent in what you’re doing until after you’ve birthed it. Try and remember how great it’s going to feel when the show finally opens and how others are going to lend some terrific new insights into the work. This always helps me alleviate some symptoms of my doubt.
As far as perceiving yourself as some kind of fraud…these are the most brutal and unfair words you could possibly fire at yourself. I find it highly difficult to believe that some one who has so inspired me and countless others with work of such a poignant, provocative character could ever create something remotely ingenuous.
Good luck with the show! It’s gonna be great because your work is great. I know, I know, I feel the same way before a show and pep talks don’t help!
As to feeling like a fraud, I think this is a fixed state of the contemporary artist. American society constructs us as either brilliant geniuses or con-artists (and a few other things!). It’s hard to cop the genius route (and go out in public),so we end up feeling like losers. Damn modernism and it’s myths! Just remember,artist-fraud is a MYTH. We’re really just hard working makers of meaning (think: philosophic ditch-digger).
It’s gonna be great.
BTW, where is it?
cheers. pete
http://clarkelane.com
in case Nayland’s too busy to answer…
NAYLAND BLAKE: REEL AROUND
Matthew Marks Gallery
522 West 22nd St (btw Tenth & Eleventh Aves)
Jan 16 – Feb 21, 2004
hours 11 am – 6 pm, closed Sundays & Mondays
Wish I was there to see the show. I’ve never seen your work although, I did get to see the work of one of your artist buddies, the last time I was in NYC. As to whether you are a fraud, if you’re stressing about it, you’re obviously not. I think an artist is always most critical of his own work. I know I am. Best wishes.
-Matt
Hopin’
The only one I can think of besides you is Margo Jefferson of the Times, who has written interstingly about a range of cultural products and ideas over the past few years.
Hopin’
The only one I can think of besides you is Margo Jefferson of the Times, who has written interstingly about a range of cultural products and ideas over the past few years.
>if this is the time I’m revealed as the fraud I know I am
Until recently, it was the bad reviews that scared me. This time around, the SF Chron gave me a glowing review that compared me to Anne Sexton and I shook nonstop for a weekend, as though they’d said I was a talentless hack. Couldn’t stop sobbing. Felt insane.
When I made the Village Voice favorite 25 of the year, I couldn’t write. Sure that they’d figure out my presence on the list was a terrible mistake and write a retraction — far better to never write anything again and keep the farce going, you know?
Ridiculously enough, it was doing the work itself — in depression, desperation; turning internally enough that it was only the work that mattered. And it lead me back out of the abyss, slowly — the joy of ideas, of communicating; the excitement of making something that becomes part of all our our record…
I’m glad the show went so well — I love that one of your friends brought up vulnerability, the making/exposing of vulnerability. I think that’s right, and that’s a really powerful way of knowing the experience.
It does all go back to one’s practice of making the work. This information is the hardest for students to believe, but is the thing all artists seem to come to know: making the work is its own reward. The closer you get to that, the more the other things fall away. And you’re right – in some ways favorable response is harder to deal with than negative. The fact is that both are equally irrelevant when it comes time to make the next thing.
It does all go back to one’s practice of making the work. This information is the hardest for students to believe, but is the thing all artists seem to come to know: making the work is its own reward. The closer you get to that, the more the other things fall away. And you’re right – in some ways favorable response is harder to deal with than negative. The fact is that both are equally irrelevant when it comes time to make the next thing.