"Not a lecture" with Peter Schjeldahl

Peter Schjeldahl

On Thursday, March 10th, some friends of mine and I made the soggy trek to UC Davis to listen to the art critic from the New Yorker give a lecture. We arrived just in time to hear Peter Schjeldahl inform the audience that he doesn't give lectures, as he never learned how. Additionally, he does not consider himself a scholar, but a writer instead.

Schjeldahl began his non-lecture reading from The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde. "I pledge allegiance to Wilde's model of art criticism," he told the audience. From this reading and from his short commentary afterwards I gleaned a few enlightening quotes.

He quoted Gertrude Stein in saying "Artists don't need criticism, they need appreciation." He stated his perspective that criticism is a performing art, and that every good artist or critic is an outsider in a way that counts. One of my favorite says from him that I grabbed from his talk was "wrongness worries us more than tedium." Which I think is a powerful statement that extends beyond the realm of art into almost any area of human existence you'd like to apply it to. So often I am more afraid of having the wrong answer or doing the wrong action than I am of sitting silently and just dwelling in monotony. As artists, though, we don't have that right. We should be pushing boundaries and asking questions. Routine is a detriment to creation.

Following the reading and brief commentary, Schjeldahl took questions from the audience. When asked about his work as a critic and the writing done for it, he informed us that he didn't know if he would write anything if not paid for it. This raised some questions for me on the purpose of making work and what derives from the act of making. Is it enough to just make and never profit from the work? Or is spinning profit as existing solely monetarily disingenuous to the product created?

He answered a question of camera phones, saying that he doesn't like photography as documentation of art, "you think 'ah, I got that!' No you don't." This raised questions for me about appropriation and the idea of authenticity.

When asked about buying artwork: "Writing a check is so much more sincere than writing a review, because it hurts."

About the perception of difficulty: "It's got to look easy, that's why it's hard."

And, lastly, on the concept of memory: "Memories are always being overwritten. It's why I don't believe in memories. I think they're all bullshit. Memory is synthetic, not a recording device."

Truthfully, I did not know what to anticipate when driving down 80 to this lecture with a noteworthy and well recognized art critic, so I had no expectations to disappoint.  I came away from the evening with a lot to think about and felt far better for it. So, while this was not a lecture as they typically tend to be, Schjeldahl introduced new ideas or reinforced old ones that I had been considering.  I'm glad I was exposed to his work and way of seeing. I'd rather be wrong than complacent.

What if?

I decided I would steal/borrow/appropriate my friend Caiti's idea to make a blog post about an activity we did in our most recent Graduate Seminar this last Thursday. Caiti wrote about hers on her blog, you can find the entry at caitichan.blogspot.com

So, this past Thursday we were scheduled to have yet another grad seminar critique. These are no problem and are actually a lot of fun and insightful; you can get a lot of nice feedback that you might miss out on when showing your work to larger bodies of students, the dialogues that occur can be really good. The only thing was, this was set to be the fourth critique in a grad seminar class we had had in the last four weeks and we were all a little burnt out from the tedium. This day we were asked to select one work to show. We hung our work and were assigned perhaps at random (or perhaps not) to a fellow grad's work and asked to write 15 "what if's". No more information or guidance was given, and we were customarily released to our own confusion. 

Som was assigned a work of mine to reflect on and wrote 15 interesting "what if's" that I wanted to share. I have retyped it below to aid in readability. I should be uploading a photo of the work reflected on shortly once I am back in my studio. I also wish I had kept an image of the list I created for her. Perhaps I can revisit this post once I have had a chance to catch up with her and get some additional documentation. 

  

Travis (Trevor) 

What if...

1. the object artwork it were suspended (fishing line) something that wouldn't show
2. made the process markings were more apparent
3. used there was a dif. shade of turquoise 
4. there were more curves as opposed to angles, perpendicular, & parallel lines 
5. this particular piece this piece had a backside and was displayed on a the pedestal a pedestal/ground/specific pedestal specific pedestal?
6. more experimentation with finishing treatments to wood (stain/epoxy resin/pour wax on it/burn it/anything other than sanding it)
7. hung on the wall crooked
8. this piece was separated into 3 dif pieces perhaps act as a triptych
9. backside there was a backside and displayed
10. process parkings on the wall like in the studio
11. shadows painted on the wall that don't necessarily match up to the piece itself
12. hung a few more couple inches away from the wall
13. jutting out @ an angle
14. more holes in the side of the plywood in some kind of sequence
15. paint the whole thing blue

And Bring to Bloom the Flowers - Mustafa Shaheen

Mustafa Shaheen - TRVR,  2016

So there I am. Check it out. Even got some Boston on it.


My friend Mustafa is a phenomenally talented painter, with an excellent grasp of form and light. I was honored to have the opportunity to sit for one of the nine portraits included in this recent show of his. This is a fairly delayed posting on the show, I began writing this back before Valentine's day, but I wanted to finally complete this and get it published.

This past month Mustafa had his first solo show since his graduation last December. After our art club, Form, had a group show in the Union Gallery last fall, the gallery director asked Mustafa if he would be interested in having his own show in that same gallery some months later.  He is a very dedicated painter with quite possibly the best work ethic I've seen in any of my peers. It was stunning to see how he laid out and planned his paintings for this show, the scheduling he had from start to finish and the amount of time he had to block out for each canvas to get it all done to his own particular standards.

We've had many conversations about our mutual drives, the one that fuels our perhaps irrational attention to detail and craft, the particular way in which we both try to master our respective mediums, and the intriguing way we both seem determined to explore similar but opposing needs of ourselves inside the work.

He might be the first to tell you that he is more logical than emotional, and that empathy is not an common feeling he deals with. He might be more mechanical than anyone I currently call my friend. But this interest in understanding others and understanding the emotion of empathy drives the work he does as well as informs his interactions with others. His interest is the contrast of mine, where I have an interest in exploring a more logical and mathematical self, seen in the clean lines and well planned forms of my sculpture.

It was fantastic to be able to see his work displayed as it was on such a professional level. He does excellent work, with a desire to understand the inner workings of his subjects, why they do what they do and what drives their daily decisions. There is also an fascinating element to all his work that can inform one about the tendencies of the artist; despite Mustafa's desire to understand the emotional meanderings of those around him, his work is done in such detailed and meticulous practice. His paintings, in ironic and literal fashion, might be more about him as a person than the models that sit for his work.