SELLOUT

Thanks For Reading!

SELLOUT has been an incredible learning experience for me, and I want to thank everyone who read and commented for their participation.

As you know, there are only so many hours in the day. I can either write about the process of making art and the artist's lifestyle, or I can just go make art. I have decided to just go make art.

I will still be online. Please visit my blog for the latest information about my own artmaking and artthinking, and ArtCal Zine for occasional critical essays.

If you are interested in art business content, I cannot recommend Jackie Battenfield's book highly enough.

Hiatus

I'm having a problem administering this blog, and I need some time to think about it.

SELLOUT gets a lot of email. Most of it is unhelpful. It's mostly strident requests for personal advice, personal sad stories, *enormous* jpegs of people's work, and kind of stalky stuff about where I, personally, have been seen on the internet and in real life. And re-mails wondering where my personal reply to the personal advice question is. I get a lot of these.

Wading through these anxious, grabby, selfish emails takes a lot of time and gets depressing. As a result, I have developed a much better understanding of what gallerists and curators go through--why they tend toward such strongly policed boundaries.

First of all, I declare email bankrupcy. I deleted the contents of selloutadmin-at-gmail-dot-com today.

Second, don't email me for awhile.

Third, I have to think a little bit about the format and structure of SELLOUT, and whether and how it can continue. I can't change the behavior of a small minority of readers. And being available via email has resulted not only in headache, but in some really interesting conversations with financial planners, artists' consultants, curators and artists, some of whom have more of a career on than I do. These conversations are relevant to the larger group and could turn into posts...

...if I weren't spending my allotted SELLOUT time deleting raw expressions of anxiety and desperation that are not helpful to the larger group.

I empathize with the sadness, anxiety and despair that most emailers express. But the bottom line is that I have a life to live and art to make myself. I can't be responsible for other people's feelings in the way you all are asking me to be. And I can spend only so much time on this blog every day. Either I spend that time deleting emails or developing good content.

If I can figure out a good strategy moving forward, then I will be back.

Friday Survey: Ambition

When I think about the word "ambition" I think about The Yes Men. They're my own personal yardstick. I'd like to be half as ambitious, half as willing to put every single inch of my butt on the line. I like their politics, I like that they have nothing to do with institutional critique. I am working toward the same ideas that they are, but their work has nothing to do with mine. I find this helpful.

Who's your yardstick? Who do you measure your own ambition against, if anyone? What's the most ambitious thing you've ever done as an artist? How did you accomplish it? What did you learn?

Don't be anonymous. The best story is getting tapped do a guest post about your project. Complete with your name and pictures.

Saving Is Countercultural

Savings is Countercultural.

Americans don't save. We have a negative rate of savings. And you fancy yourself a bohemian artist, not some bourgeois asshole always being oppressed by The Man. So you should go and get yourself an interest-bearing savings account and put money in it regularly*.

You already know all the reasons you should save money regularly. Unexpected things can happen, and they always require money. You could get so sick that you can't work, or get a great opportunity that you need to jumpstart financially. You might want to focus on making art all the time; buy a house; take a residency without financial worry; fund an ambitious project; get old with a modicum of grace and comfort.

If you're like me, you have friends who are no longer making art because they are paying off credit card debt. If you're like me, this saddens and scares you.

Bitching About Sexism Is A Losing Strategy

I have gotten a lot of requests via email to talk about sexism in the art market. I figured that Edward and Edna have already covered this topic ad nauseum... but you know, there is one thing about this topic that cuts to the heart of what I think about the world in general:

I think that merely pointing out inequality can be more than ineffective. I think it can perpetuate the inequality.

There are fewer woman artists than man artists for good reasons that women are complicit in and can change:

1. Women are taught to be good girls; wait to be asked; see themselves in relationship to others; not want to stand out; not break rules. Art is about being bad and doing something without being asked. It's about standing out--it's a cult of individuality right now, although I want that to change. Avant garde = breaking rules.

2. Women do not help other women as much as they should. Women can be really sexist with one another. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most of the sexism that has been directed at me in my life has come from other women.

3. Women grow up thinking that if someone really appreciates you, they anticipate your needs and desires. And they are taught not to do anything until they know they're not fucking up. Men tend to be taught that they need to ask for what they want, are taught that fucking up is OK, and that you have to put your hands on whatever it is and start.

The Problem With Personal Finance Advice For Artists

I am still working actively to source and create good personal finance content that is relevant to artists, but it's tough. This post on Simple Dollar just told me exactly why.

Financial planning is about tomorrow. Making art is fundamentally about today.

This orientation toward today expresses itself in about a million stupid things I do with my money. I don't fund an IRA regularly because I hate losing liquidity. I pay a lot of stupid fees because I value my time right now more than I value "a few dollars" that I won't see sucked out until later. I FedEx things.

The problem with this lifestyle is that it winds up making me dependent on one of two Deus Ex Machina that you can admit you're counting on in the back of your mind as well:

1. Becoming "Famous"
2. Getting a really cush teaching job in a research institution. (Usually dependent upon at least a little famousness)

Anticipation Monday

I like Obama.

I like that he isn't pretending he can deliver universal health care. I like that he is otherwise throbbing with hope. I like that he tends to tell the truth. And I like the uncynical but decidedly edgier-than-earnest picture that he paints of a world in which we don't need to be pandered to and at the same time are enabled for very big dreaming.

I don't think any other candidate actually understands the moment we are in like Obama.

But enough about me. You voting tomorrow? Who are you voting for?

Entrepreneurship

I was talking to a friend last night, and we agreed on two things:

1. Every truly successful artist we know thinks like an entrepreneur and not like a starving artist.

2. This requires fantastic flexibility of mind. Not only do you have to overcome all that pre-programming you get in school, but in the case of the current kings and queens (Serra, diSuvero, Bourgeois, et al) you had to do it in an environment that had nothing to do with business or money or power.

All those bluechippers didn't get famous by waving slidesheets in front of powerful people. They helped one another create opportunity out of nothing. Entrepreneurship is seeing and exploiting possibilities. Seeing and squeezing the fruit that is in front of you. It's an astoundingly creative way to look at life, but with none of the victimy artist mythologizing.

Things are different today than they were in the sixties. Paula Cooper begat Marianne Boesky--power concentrated in specific places. There is a specific game you can play. I honestly believe that playing this game soely on the powerful-people's terms will get an artist all the way to the conservative middle. I think that if you want to do more than that, then it's best to go do something. Help someone. Don't even worry about whether or not it's art. See and exploit every opportunity, not just the ones we have all been conditioned to see.

Clarification: I Meant Buy A House In New York Or LA

I understand that artists' housing programs are in place in cities that are not NYC. I was on the board of one in Tucson. They're a benefit to the city. Paducah and Pittsburgh are looking for artists to create gentrification. I get it. But that's not the side of the coin I'm talking about.

What I'm saying is that gentrification is an arc, and that artists are useful on one side (Paducah) and stop being useful on the other side (NYC). I am talking about the art-center experience. The post-gentrification side of the arc.

In Paducah, artists are being courted as agents of gentrification.

In Brooklyn, artists tend to fly under the radar, often living and working illegally and paying through the nose to do so. Even if your home does not get raided by the NYFD, you still have to renegotiate your lease periodically. At some point your rent will go up dramatically because you, artist, made it OK for white, middleclass people to live where you are living.

Because artists tend to rent, they tend to get pushed out by gentrification.

In New York City, this matters.