For discussion on Sept. 10, Greg's group
will read, write about and talk about the essays noted below.
Type up a one or two page response
that briefly summarizes some of the main ideas and then responds to and
analyzes them using examples from the reading as well as from the wider art world.
=This Mike Kelley
quote from "Art21": “I knew by the time I was a teenager that I was
going to be an artist, there’s no doubt about that. There was nothing else for
me to be. I didn’t even want to be the other things that at the time were
outside general culture. I didn’t want to be a rock musician; I wanted to be an
artist. And I think the reason I chose it was that at that time it was the most
despicable thing you could be in American culture. To be an artist at that time
had absolutely no social value. It was like planned failure. You could never be
a success. And the fact that I’m now a professional artist? At that time it
seemed like a contradiction of terms. I came from a milieu in which artists
were despised, whereas rock musicians and drug dealers were—you know—hipster
culture heroes."
= Platform2's invite
to their 2008 "Failure Support Group."
= Matthew Nash's
report on BigRed&Shiny on the "Failure Support Group."
= "If at First You Don't Succeed
... Celebrate" by Lisa Le Feuvre, Tate, 2010.
Some questions to consider: Why do we
fear failure? How do we define failure? How do we define success? What does it
mean to fail in life? In art? Is art making like scientific experimenting, in
which failures can be part of testing out an idea? Should art making focus
primarily on end results? What are the benefits and drawbacks of these
approaches. Is there, actually, a recipe for failure? Are certain methodologies
more prone to failure than others? What is at stake in acknowledging failure in
one’s process, one’s community, or one’s career? Can you think of other
contemporary art addressing failure? Does this or doesn't this art somehow
reflect our society today?
