Royal College of Art, MA Lecture: Life Outside

Life Outside: About the realities of life outside art school

What it actually means to embark on a life as an artist - a whole life.
And in some senses, how one might 'survive' or relish this choice/path. 


What does a 'career' as an artist really mean? A lifelong commitment to eat, drink and sleep art.


Personal values and ethics versus ruthless careerism... The differences between making art and the art market... How to navigate those two different spaces? You need to follow an inner path, not fall into line behind the market or one’s perceptions of the market. Don’t give the people what they want or you think they want. Make it personal.


Can you be successful and keep integrity? Of course otherwise what would be the point?


What does successful even mean in artistic terms? Again, those parameters are truly up to individual. Some people want fame and money, some critical response and others something altogether different.


What makes good art? Like the Supreme Court pontificated on the issue of pornography, I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it. For me, good art integrates the past, is born in the present, with an eye beyond.


Tell me 3 things you have learned about how to 'get on' in the art world? Not to be funny, but I don’t think I have learned how to get on yet. That is part of my problem (charm?). But I found a way around it by being more concerned with getting on with good and interesting people and things. Being hyper social doesn’t hurt either, but drinking too much at inopportune times can have repercussions, more so in the States than UK (thankfully). But then if you have good stuff or do something well, it doesn’t matter—for the most part. And, you might think I am being disingenuous, though it took me a lifetime to learn (and still…), being thoughtful and considerate goes a long way. It certainly makes you stand out in the art world.


What advice would you give to young artist graduating from an MA in London today? Work work work, socialize socialize socialize, be industrious, and look past the obvious routes of dissemination for art and information; and, as Malcolm X said: By any means necessary.

$12 Million Drivel: What a Cow

“Bright colors do better than pale colors. Horizontal canvases do better than vertical ones. Nudity sells for more than modesty, and female nudes for much more than male. A Boucher female nude sells for ten times the price of a male nude. Figurative works do better than landscapes. A still life with flowers is worth more than one with fruit, and roses are worth more than chrysanthemums. Calm water adds value (think of Monet’s Water Lilies); rough water brings lower prices (thin maritime pictures). Shipwrecks bring even less.


Pure-bred dogs are worth more than mongrels, and racehorses more than cart horses. For paintings which include game birds, the more expensive it is to hunt the bird, the more the bird adds to the value of the painting; a grouse is worth tree times as much as a mallard. There is an even more specific rule, offered by New York private dealer David Nash; paintings with cows never do well. Never. “


I always read books non-linearly, and started Don Thompson’s “The $12 Million Stuffed Shark” from the back. With an ending like that I am beginning to wish I never started. Even from someone who appreciates the comfy bedfellows of art and money, I find this drivel, even if true, a bore.

race-ism

Nowadays, jokes involving race and religion are not funny even when they are funny and not racist. I am clearly not speaking about the joke that is galiano and james brown (uk hairdresser in this case).

But here’s one nevertheless: Lewis Hamilton blamed his being black as the cause of his 5+ penalties in as many Grands Prix, referencing Ali G on camera in his protestations– not the cleverest tack when launching an appeal to marshals. Never mind the 5+ people he crashed into along the way. Call it race-ism.