I have stumbled upon a wonderful gimmick with this series, and I’m going to push it as far as possible, God-dammit.

I should mention that I worked on these in various new spots around DC, many of which were lovely. I went to the French joint Bistro Bistro in Dupont Circle to drink a $2.50 glass of wine during the tail end of their happy hour. After half an hour, the bartender poured me a second glass for free. You seem to be enjoying our characters, she told me, since I’d been in close proximity to one of their odder old regulars who seemed to be a bit on the colorful side. Anyway, I hope I can go back there soon and get a proper meal.

Scanning these guys, on the other hand–not so much fun. But it’s amazing how much my drawing style has changed since I began this series last year. Take note, art historians.

I heard it’s considered bad form to write about all the things you’re applying to because then you’re stuck blogging with your tail between your legs when you don’t get accepted; but God-dammit, I spent the last two weeks working on a grant and a show application, and I want to kvetch about how exhausting it was.  And there’s another deadline July 23! Good God. On the plus side, I’ve always been the sort of person who likes carry all of the groceries to the door at once, rather than break it up into shorter, lighter trips. Might as well cram all of the Artist Statements / Proposals / JPEG burning into a reduced timeframe, and then get on with the real art-making.

On the plus side, I found time to start the Conversation Series (pictured), which I’ve been mulling over for awhile. And it looks better than how I imagined it would. I worked on the first batch on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the Portrait Gallery atrium, listening to Harry Potter and two tourists discussing the atrocious cost of their cafe brownie. I’d say, “good times” but honestly, that doesn’t even begin to describe how glorious an afternoon it was.

This weekend, while the city was buzzing with World Cup fever and Gay Pride, I was installing the second-largest piece of art I’ve ever created* at the Convention Center. A few snapshots below–higher-quality pictures coming soon.

*The largest piece of art was created in grad school in 2005, and involved a projector and a motion detector. In case you were curious.

Chris Roberts-Antieau New Orleans 6/4/10 12:17 AM

In my head, I’ve always personified major US cities as members of an unruly family. New York and LA are the two hot shot fraternal twins (Sweet Valley-esque, as it were–LA is so Jessica Wakefield to New York’s Elizabeth, no?). DC is the Type A, industrious one, waking up early to hit the gym; Baltimore is its more artistically talented, but somewhat defensive and disorganized younger sibling, who bristles if you draw comparisons (maintaining that a quirky character is far more impressive than showing up to things on time). Chicago is the hilarious uncle who you always want to sit next to at family gatherings, though beware the nasty temper; Portland is the token hippy, no surprises there; Cleveland’s the chain smoker who’s been working on his novel for the last several years and is going to finish it eventually, once the kids find jobs and move out of the basement.

And then there’s New Orleans, which I visited for the first time last week, the lazier, charming, somewhat alcoholic cousin; a lovable ne’er-do-well. But mostly there was a wonderful artistic casualness to the city that I found refreshing.  In a band? Just play on the side of the road and plop down a hat next to your CDs. Draw pictures? Put them in the back of your truck and hawk them on Frenchmen street. You don’t need the organizational skills that are one of DC’s key selling points–no Facebook groups or laborious grant applications, or public art committees–just throw your stuff out into the world, and see what sticks.

From, “The Learners,” by Chip Kidd:

“He was the most astonishing contradiction of components I’d ever encountered. Shy yet fiercely communicative when putting an idea into your head. Vocally astringent regarding his own abilities but not to the point that he couldn’t produce—he was as prolific an artist (yes, an artist, and I never use the term, especially regarding people I like) I’ve ever seen. But I could feel it. Everything he sketched, penciled, inked, made—was a payment, one he could scarcely afford; as if it physically hurt him to put pencil to paper. Yet that only seemed to spur him on, to live far beyond his means. He was unable not to. For Sketch, to draw was to breath, and so the air became lead—silvery in the right light, dark soot in the wrong; heavy, slick and malleable—into shapes he brought together in glorious orchestration, with a child’s eye and a rocket scientist’s precision, all fortified by a furious melancholy, a quiet engine of sourceless shame and humility.

When it came to another’s work, he longed to praise it but then couldn’t resist critiquing it all within an inch of its life, analyzing deficiencies with uncontrollable abandon and laser accuracy. He was sharp as his Radio 914 pen nibs, and as pointed.

And then he’d apologize. Oh, he would apologize: Oh my GOD, forgive me, please don’t hate me, I’m SORRY, don’t listen to me, why am I saying things, what do I know, I don’t know anything, why do you listen to me you should just tell me to shut UP, I’m awful, forgive me, you hate me, don’t you? Tell the truth. Please don’t hate me. Please don’t. Please.”

It is with regret that I am going to participate in a favorite pastime of DC art bloggers, and take issue with an aspect of Blake Gopnik’s article in the Washington Post today on the Niki de Saint Phalle sculptures on New York Avenue. Gopnik’s denounces these for “not being weighty” and therefore, not art. (Incidentally, I say “regret” because I find the knee jerk reactions to Gopnik’s articles to be almost as annoying as the articles that inspire the criticism themselves, but that’s a separate issue.) I actually mostly agree with him that the works are simplistic, though aesthetically pleasing, so picking out exactly what rubbed me the wrong way was tricky; but I bristled after reading this paragraph:

These works aren’t being billed as sweet decor, as cute pick-me-ups or as crowd-pleasing tchotchkes. The museum is calling them “world-class art.” But if that’s the case, we have to wonder why the art we settle for outside on our streets should be so much less weighty than what we hope to find inside our museums. Titian, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Cassatt, Cézanne, Picasso — they’re hardly purveyors of good clean fun that gets us smiling. Not all the art we’ve valued most has been grim; some has even been cheerful. But one way or another, all of it has been substantial.

I suppose this mindset goes hand in hand with the idea that art needs to have conflict, the same way you need conflict to make an interesting movie, and how we like to imagine our artists as tortured souls; or that any art which is cheerful also has to be ironic in some way à la Andy Warhol, or how we dismiss artists who commit the sin of creating pieces that are “decorative” as though that automatically makes them lesser work. But this is a slippery slope. Art can be light-hearted and substantial at the same time, though not all of it is necessarily, and the idea of denouncing it because it wasn’t as provocative as a giant vagina you could walk through (one of de Saint Phalle’s earlier works he cites) seems unfair. Though I’d be kind of curious to see that on New York avenue.

My new obsession: little paper accordion books you can purchase for $4 at the Paper Source.

Naturally, the more I think that I should really start working big and colorful, the more I find myself creating art that’s small and monochromatic–and these 3.5” guys take it to an extreme. Wonder if Edward Gorey ever had artistic dilemmas in this vein.

Okay, here’s a pet peeve. Art writer/critic finds an obscure and/or arbitrary definition for a term that already has a perfectly adequate definition (eg, illustration, photography, absurdism), then goes on to claim that something in particular does not fit into said obscure and/or arbitrary definition. This isn’t criticism so much as a high school English paper assignment, and tells the reader nothing about the work on display, save that the writer finds pleasure in defining terms.

Please note that I don’t think we should shy away from analyzing the hell out of our opinions, and asking ourselves why we think the way they do. Those are fascinating questions, whether they apply to art, or your friends, or Tucker Max. But I cringe every time I see that whole, “That’s not art! It’s illustration!” line thrown around, or a convoluted essay that concludes with, “Ergo, according to this guy, this isn’t that.” Not because the writer is wrong, per se, but because the writer is inventing an argument where there are no rights and wrongs. Rather, he drew lines in the sand, backed it up with a few arbitrary opinions, and gave us a distraction rather than a discussion. And the real message? Because I have concluded that this doesn’t count, I do not have to care about it.

I say, grab a copy of Webster’s and work from there. And that bizarre “illustration is not art” consensus needs to go off into a corner and die already, but that’s a different diatribe.