The Pitfalls of the Artist Statement

Before I launch into this, might I recommend you read my Artist Statement (in progress): http://www.etierneyhamilton.com/statement.html

I’ve been encountering some criticism on my artist statement which I have been having some trouble making useful.  Granted, I’m kinda looking a gift horse in the mouth here because I sent out my artist statement to my peers and teacher for review.  Here are some of the comments I received:

maybe you could give some specific examples of your art benefiting the viewer somewhere in your statement

I’ve seen you presenting some of your art and I really like it! But should it benefit me? What if it doesn’t?

You make a lot of general statements without backing them up in writing. How does your art benefit the viewer? How does your art reflect current events? You haven’t describe it enough for me to get that part. You write about how information can empower people, but is that what you are doing in your artwork? if so, how?

I agree. Current events are tomorrow’s yesterday’s events. Lol. Furthermore, peoples reality might be completely different from yours. Like the definition of family in my neighborhood the Castro. Example: My neighbors mother moved in with his ex-partner, who is taking care of his kids from his ex-wife.

If a piece serves no benefit to a particular viewer there’s not much that I can do about that.  I do still hold the belief though that yes, my work should absolutely be beneficial.  Lately I have been reading a book by Carol Becker called Surpassing the Spectacle. Her interpretation of how we got to where we are now is about like this:

1. Modernism was “an attempt to articulate a kind of hope for the emancipation of humanity from poverty, ignorance, inequality, and degradation… There was a belief that progress would be continually progressive… points of intersection could be created where an old paradigm was forced to give way to a new one… art… would play a key role in undertaking this mission.”

2. Postmodernism asserted that Modernism had failed– while society had advanced technologically, that technology was not put to use serving the greater good, rather, it was put to use creating profit and serving those at the top.  Pomo artists asked whether the entire modern “…way of thinking, [the] sense of a continuum moving toward some greater good… be abandoned so that some other paradigm might take its place?”.  Becker also asserts that artwork started to show some awareness of class privilege, commodity consumption, and “reification of the status quo,” as well as an awareness that the art world was part of the problem.

3. Post-postmodernism (i.e. Now) asserted that Postmodernism failed when Pomo artists attacked the art world while failing to build a base and support outside of it; whereas Modernist work had some broader support through public funding (e.g. the CIA’s funding of the 1958-1959 exhibition, The New American Painting, the WPA, etc.).  Pomo artists were doing good and important work but failed to see  that the work was esoteric and insular and as a result audiences were alienated.  Becker said that “Most [American] people were not prepared to accept the use of taxpayers dollars… for work that was at best confrontational and at worst nasty.”  She frames Post-postmodernism in this way: That its primary focus is to bring the public back into the fold by working inside communities and focusing more on public art, as in the works of Pepon Osorio, Suzanne Lacy, and Guillermo Gomez-Peña.

So, as an artist working in a Post-postmodern era I feel my focus should be on bringing the public back into the fold, rather than taking a more Greenbergian stance which I see as elitist.  I do see my work as being in dialogue with and a response to the failures of Modernism and Postmoderism, but I think that putting that in my statement is giving myself way too much credit because, in the end, who the f**k am I?

I agree that my statement needs some serious work but so far the feedback I’ve received has been confusing.  Should an artist statement not make broad generalizations about the work or the body of work?  Should I be citing specific pieces?  Does anyone have any specific suggestions for how I should demonstrate certain assertions from my statement?  As far as one of my peer’s take on the subjectivity of reality (and I do agree that reality is subjective), I don’t really understand the specific example he used.  None of my work thus far has been commentary on what a nuclear family is or should be.  It has been about the American military industrial complex with respect to the use of robots and drones, our relationship to world news and access to information, the Financial Meltdown: events which have larger, more global implications; and about utilizing the materiality of video to create an inner meditative space.