Validating the Best Thing You've Ever Done

This post steps outside of my expertise, and so I'm inviting response from those more experienced than me at showing and selling art.

A bit of background: Melinda posted about this, in an indirect way, which got me thinking. And Silvina Day is struggling with her authentic vision which got me thinking some more. I was reading How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist the other night, and had to read and re-read a short passage on "validation" of one's work, because it struck me so. Then, I was visiting Martha Marshall's blog, and read her excellent posts "It's Your Art, not your Soul" and the earlier "Fear of Rejection." The comments there are important to read too, filled with real experience, and wisdom.

I'll reproduce my own contribution to those comments:

Can a non-fine-artist chime in on this one? I’m forced by my field to have a different perspective. As a graphic designer, I create work to fit a client’s parameters. If it’s rejected, it’s basically because I didn’t meet the client’s
needs. Sometimes this happens, when I just know that the work I made is excellent in every way — design, concept, execution (it’s a work of art, man!)… but if I put a Ronald McDonald in front of an exec from Walt Disney, he’s not gonna buy it, no matter how good an idea it is: it doesn’t fit him. That doesn’t make the work less than great — because the client isn’t the determinant of the objective success of the work. But then, neither are my peers.

I’ve seen Martha [Marshall] and Bob Cornelus refer to Art & Fear, which I don’t have, but a quote appears in “How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist”:

"…courting approval, even that of peers, puts a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts—namely, whether or not you’re making progress in your work."–Bayles & Orland, Art & Fear 1993, p.47

...but I had more to say on the topic than I had the nerve to post on someone else's blog:

Unlike my design work, when I create "art that nobody asked for," I put it out for people (anyone) to take it or leave it. If they leave it, I know that that piece didn't meet the viewer's needs -- for that person, at that time. We respond to art at a very visceral, pre-conscious level, choosing to love work that fills a hole in our psyche -- much like we choose mates. We meet hundreds, maybe thousands of potential mates, but are attracted to only one or two at a gut, "this person completes me," level. Showing work is like speed dating between the art and the viewer: it clicks or not, but it has a lot more to do with the psychology of the viewer than whether or not the art is "valid."

The circumstances remind me of something profound that I heard; There was a movie made about this nun -- Susan Sarandon plays the nun, who works with prisoners on death row. In a documentary I saw, the (real) nun was asked why she worked with these killers. She said [paraphrasing] "People are more ... than the worst thing they've done in their lives."

Art is like that: "a discrete act, in a finite space and time." It isn't your whole life, it isn't all of you, no matter how much you pour into it, there's more of you left over that isn't in the artwork. So, rejection of a piece, or a body of work, or your whole career, isn't rejection of you. It can't be. You are always more than the best thing you've ever done in your life.

Validation of your work must spring from your own feeling of rightness and authenticity about your work. In design, I've had to defend my work, and validate it for others — "Why did you choose blue? What's this line for?" This has taught me to be conscious of my choices, and to be articulate about what is and isn't there. But, it's also made me sure that my work was what it was for one very good reason: because that's how I did it. And no one can take that away.

Don't let anyone take your work away from you by making you doubt it.

Whatcha reading?

Melinda accuses me of reading over her shoulder all the time. I say, I'm just easily distracted. Have you read anything lately that gets you so excited, you want to discuss it with anyone that sits by you for more than 30 seconds?

I've had a bunch of books recommended to me by the (extremely well-read) visitors to the Fice and other friends, and so I've been able to single-handedly keep UPS in business, while limiting the recent layoffs at ebay to the mere ten thousand that they felt impelled to do, to impress the stock analysts.

Currently on the nightstand:

Has Modernism Failed? by Suzi Gablik
Silvina gets the credit for recommending this one... it is dense, but intense! Check out this hammer blow on the contradictions of marketing art for a social good:

...since the individual who has a career in mind will obviously be eager to promote his or her own cause, ideals must be bent to suit the demands of our times. "As artists we have sold off inspiration to buy influence," the Minimalist sculptor Carl Andre has said. "We have always had the historical choice of either lying through or living through our contradictions. Now through the genius of the bourgeoisie we have the chance to market them."

Gablik's book is a series of essays on the role of art -- in essence, the conflict between art as individual expression or as a social force -- and whether or not modernism succeeded in moving art forward, or getting it lost. Along the way, she demolishes Clement Greenberg's art for art's sake, the Art Industry, and 'anxious objects.' I'm still devouring this book, sometimes cheering for Gablik, sometimes rolling my eyes -- but there's no question that every page challenges me to reevaluate what I think art is about.

The Vein of Gold by Julie Cameron
A gift from a fellow Creative, this is a companion (or maybe sequel) to Cameron's essential work in unblocking creativity, The Artist's Way. Where Way was about breaking through blocks, excuses and self-criticism to become creative, Vein provides a series of approaches (and those inevitable exercises) to finding one's way to an internal landscape of experience and feeling, suitable fodder for art expression. For the activist artist, Cameron's approach may seem too individual-expressionistic, but her touch is light and she has no agenda on your art, and simply provides methods of tapping into the currents that drive us.

The Artist's Mentor ed. Ian Jackman
Misleadingly subtitled "Inspiration from the World's Most Creative Minds" the Artist's Mentor is a fairly obvious attempt to trade on the success of Jackman's previous title, The Writer's Mentor.
Unfortunately, it isn't inspirational to read quotes about the transformation of the artworld in the 80's into a grinding industry of rock-star poseurs and flashes in the pan — or any other chapters. Jackman takes an even-handed approach to diminishing every worthy preconception you harbor about art and working in art: that your work matters, that art is a landscape of progression, that plein air painting adds something (or that it doesn't).
A patchwork of contradictory quotations from artists and critics, you can find a quote to support anything you like, here. And one to support the opposite, too. Snarkiness and pessimism abound. Inspiration? I don't think so. Avoid this one, if you still harbor a love of fairy tales. But you can find some occasionally self-deprecating humor, if you like to include quotes in your blog:

"Have you ever met an artist that didn't want to be famous? Artists are the greatest delayed-gratification people in the world." — Mary Beth Edelson

Creative Authenticity by Ian Roberts
Still in the beginning stages of reading this one, which I grabbed on impulse from the shelves at Borders.
Subtitled "Sixteen Principles to Clarify and Deepen Your Artistic Vision," Roberts makes an initial case for Beauty, and as I'm a stickler for words, I have the sense that he's mis-applying "beauty" in his argument. I think if he and I could agree on the proper term, we'd probably not be far apart in viewpoint. His writing is accessible and his anecdotes are interesting. Semantics aside, the book is motivating — and inspirational — for artists that are seeking to fan the flame of their artistic calling: like Julie Cameron's lectures, but without the exercises.

So ... what's on your holiday reading list?