Americans have many expectations when they head to an art museum. One is to look at modern and contemporary art, fetishistically exhibited, that they believe their child could do. This ritual would not be complete without their mentioning, even declaring, this opinion to other visitors. This performance persists for a number of reasons. It’s validated through repetition, especially by people who are unsure of how to react to modern art. This reaction is also funny, (I guess,) and so it rounds out the total emotional experience of the visit. Finally, the development of ‘deskilling,’ one of art history’s most central narratives, is not well understood. When taking painting classes in prep school, a supposed bastion of precocious academics, the teacher explained, “They got to paint that way because they had gotten really good at painting realistically,” citing Pablo Picasso’s Blue Period as evidence of a sort of regulating Royal Academy in the sky.
Deskilling isn’t well understood in the comics world either, and sometimes painfully ignored by those who jockey for comics’ acceptance by the art world. It is also notably absent from Bart Beatty’s slyly neutral account of comics-art relations, Comics Versus Art, (which Noah Berlatsky and I have previously reviewed.) Yet deskilling might present the largest obstacle to comics’ admission into the gallery.
Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1923– not quite monochromatic
Deskilling is hard to pin down. A monochromatic canvas, a bicycle wheel, and a running locomotive dangling above a museum entrance are all valid examples, (and works of art, for those skeptical.) The first eschews the use of painterly skill or representation, the second the use of any artistic manipulation whatsoever, and the third was made by an artist who only ordered the work’s creation– and hired skilled engineers to suspend a purchased train for him. The painting could be Kazimir Malevich’s or Aleksandr Rodenchko’s– each believed to have reached the ‘zero of painting,’ or ‘the end of painting,’ respectively. The bicycle wheel is better known as a type of “readymade,” a prefabricated object that functions as an artwork in a gallery context. It is obviously Marcel Duchamp’s, who is equally famous for his upturned urinal, Fountain. Finally, its tempting to argue that the final piece, Train by Jeff Koons, involves a lot of skill– look at how much skill it takes to dangle a steam engine over a busy thoroughfare, or to make a steam engine in the first place! And how scary it feels to stand under it. However, the engineers aren’t credited and their contribution is merely an execution of the real work of conceiving the piece. Also, Koon’s showcasing of his factory of art-laborers, often young artists themselves, plays into his identity as a provocateur.
Deskilling partially arose in protest to the institution of art, although the institution of art quickly swallowed the movement through its acceptance, and profiting, from these subversive works. Deskilling also thrived with the expressionists, who wished to tap into more primeval, deeper consciousnesses through savage colors and distorted, deliberately ‘primitive’ or ‘childlike’ representation. Others used deskilling to push the boundaries of art as far as they could go. As championed by critic Clement Greenberg, abstraction rejected representation and technique outright, in pursuit of the truth of painting– making deliberately flat, optical, and material surfaces. Pop-artists who rejected Greenberg’s conclusions also worked in a deskilled style, by incorporating cultural “readymades,” low-brow art, in their factory-like practices. Commenting on the automatization and deskilling in the industrial sphere, minimalist artists employed artisans to assemble their works, and were concerned more with the physical presence of the work than with the craftsmanship of the pieces. The development of Conceptualism might have delivered the most resounding blow. Sol LeWitt’s “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” states, “In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work…the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” He expands on this in “Sentences on Conceptual Art,”
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
While painterly craft, naturalistic representation and artistic craftsmanship are occasionally resuscitated, it is often by conservative reactionaries, during periods of massive spending, by wealthy collectors who prefer these qualities, (despite what is believed about the taste of the very rich.) This is not always the case, especially concerning feminist artists who seek to restore attention to the human body– abstraction, conceptualism, minimalism and the like derive their power from their disembodiment, which for better or for worse is conflated with male rationality. As traced in Noah’s piece here, comics and art have been locked in a similar, gender-flipping battle for some time. And deskilling isn’t always masculine– the Dadaists subverted gender and sexual tropes through collage, a revolutionary new medium at the time.
Have there been parallel deskilling events in comics history? Cartoons could be taken as a deskilled form of naturalistic drawing, yet caricature isn’t historically understood this way. During WWII, newspaper strips’ decrease in scale encouraged minimalistic, less virtuosic drawing, as epitomized by Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comics. But this was less a philosophical/artistic choice than a necessary adaptation under pressure. Self-publishing and the internet have allowed artists with less artistic skill to release work, occasionally to fantastic success. Alternative publishers like Picturebox champion artists with deliberately ‘amateur’ styles, which conceptually contribute to the entire meaning of the work, and are not considered limitations. Interestingly, these comics marry two different deskilling trends, expressionism and conceptualism, through an often problematized narrative. Alternative publishers have also fostered the cult of the outside-artist. In the art world, outside-artists are fascinating, eerie case studies, somewhat pitied but revered as autodidacts and prophets. In the comics world, extended isolation is a given factor of comics making, and few institutions exist to reward or educate cartoonists. The outside-artist is a heroic model.
Yet for most of its history, comics were an industrial and institutional product, not a commentary, nor a protest of institutions. Rather than problematize authorship, the comics community struggles to recognize the work of artists who were exploited by publishers. Past and present masters are identified by their the craftmanship, demonstrated through draftsmanship, composition, technical ability, interplay with text and narrative, and understanding of the human figure and setting, all mediated through deliberate, auteristic style. This perspective is difficult to reconcile with the narrative of contemporary art, and isolates comics from the ‘mantle of history’ draped over the shoulders of the deskillers.
Comics have a place in an art museum. It’s just the same place devoted to other crafts, like furniture and silverware. “Note the single penstroke that articulates the supple line of Superman’s (c) cape, evidence of great technique…”
Back in high school, it wasn’t surprising that a history teacher provided better insight into deskilling than the art-teacher, busy convincing students to take their still-lives seriously . A few college-level art-history classes later, a trip to MoMA felt like a stroll through the natural history museum of the industrial West, full of emotional/philosophical artefacts of various cafe cultures and art-heroes. The comics world isn’t alone in de-valuing deskilling. Museums have to construct celebrity-artists to anchor the meaning of these works, which seem facile or clumsy or laughable at face value. The most successful art heroes are those whose legends are married to an iconic (and decorative) style– Vincent Van Gogh tragically, Picasso and Andy Warhol with much posturing and self-awareness, and Jackson Pollock somewhere in-between. Roy Lichtenstein’s life may be less memorable, but the cartoon punchiness of his work more than makes up for it– the populist attraction of the comics he ironicized became the best insurance for the durability of his appeal.
Deskilling is such a contentious issue in comics, it seems like…even though at the same time there’s this punk aesthetic where not being able to draw is okay. It’s like bad drawing is okay as long as the concept is also not any good….
In his novel The Hippopotamus, Stephen Fry’s hero attends a local elementary school’s parents’ day exhibition of kids’ art.
“Call that art?” he shouts.”An abstract expressionist of forty could do that!”
Re furniture & silverware: I once had a long rant in me about the commonalities between art comics and studio glass, but then I sobered up…
Seems to me that “deskilling” is just another silly academic invention.
Not sure what you mean by that Alex. It was invented by artists, not academics.
Like I said, comics folks often express a lot of resistance…even though they also laud people like Dan Clowes and Jeff Brown, who can’t draw very well by most traditional measures.
I wonder what this discussion is like in Japan? The illustration tradition there just seems much more central to art…so I wonder if deskilling is less fraught for comics folks there?
The day that comix are universally accepted into the museum/fine art “golden circle” is the day that the last professionals finally leave the field and the kiddies and hustlers take over … the lack of draftsmanship and basic visual skills in most examples of this art-form makes museum beatification inevitable.
Deskilling is a euphemism for taking a sow’s ear, sprinkling a bit of hipster irony over it and et voilà: a silk purse.
This makes me feel like Hate Week, Part Deux!
Oh…I also really like Kailyn’s point about outsider artists being heroes and models for comics folks. A lot of comics greats — Kirby and Crumb, maybe most obviously, but also Sim and Marston/Peter and Chester Brown, and even Alan Moore — read as being just about outsider artists from a mainstream art perspective, I think.
Hey Mahendra. I…just don’t really see how exactly comics triumphs by rejecting the art movements of the last 50-100 years. There are some good things about conservatism, maybe…but sitting on your lawn whinging about these crazy kids when the crazy kids are pushing 80 just seems kind of ridiculous.
There’s bad conceptual art the way there’s bad anything. But comics’ record of aesthetic achievement is not so luminous that I’m ready to grant it the status of keeper of the one true flame.
And…beatifying professionalism — I don’t know. Isn’t that just another way of saying you want to stay in the clubhouse forever and never come out?
It seems to me that comics (as we know them), as a post-art product intersects naturally with deskilling. They’re both products of the same recognition (or creation) of the commodification of ideas. To clarify, comics succeed as products (and can be created as products) in the same cultural climate that thinks that “art” isn’t necessarily just “masterpiece”. Or, more realistically, a climate that doesn’t care about “art” very much at all. For better or worse.
On a related note, the idea that somehow comics will lose their “underground credentials” if they’re accepted by the “establishment” is dated to say the least.
To strengthen that up a bit, comics doesn’t need a “deskilling” because its conditions of possibility require that there is a quasi-democratic “marketplace of ideas” already at work. Comics don’t need to be deskilled because they’re products of environment that already takes “skill” to be relatively unimportant (or at least that it takes a backseat to affect or concept). Citations: the massive success of xkcd, qwantz, Pearls Before Swine.
Hmmm…that’s interesting Owen. But — xkcd isn’t art. Or, I mean, nobody’s going to put it in a gallery, I don’t think.
Basically, you’re saying comics is pulp crap, so craft doesn’t matter. And comics *is* pulp crap; this is true. And pulp crap and deskilling in the art world are somewhat parallel phenomena, arguably — at least, pulp crap has been around for a long time, but the particular mass produced version that includes comics syncs up at least somewhat chronologically with deskilling in the art world.
But the fact that they’re parallel phenomena doesn’t make them the same phenomena, exactly. They’re sort of overlapping, I’d say — which is why there’s this static around deskilling. As Kailyn says, comics tries to establish its aesthetic bona fides through demonstration of craft (see Chris Ware)…and then ends up sneering at visual art because the desperate effort to validate oneself through craft isn’t valid anymore. It’s the rage of the guy who filled out the paperwork and is told by the bureaucrat in charge that they’ve changed all the forms.
I also like Kailyn’s point that deskilling has essentially led to a more intransigent cult of genius and individuality. Which is perhaps good for comics; Chris Ware and Dan Clowes, at least, can play on that field, even if (especially if?) their concepts are increasingly banal….
In other words, comix are doomed to be (mostly) badly drawn … I think this may hold in North America but the Francophones will sometimes dare to insist on technical minimums … and the Hispanophone world also
Curiously, few editors will publish fiction that possesses a verbal grammar as poor as the usual visual grammar of the average NA graphic novel … ie., why can’t we deskill literature as thoroughly as the visual arts were, long ago?
To extend your analogy, Noah, saying xkcd or “The Simpsons” isn’t “art” is like telling a kid that he can’t get into the clubhouse when the rest of the kids already got bored and went to the pool.
Perhaps some kids only think they can swim?
Literature hasn’t been deskilled in the same way for the most part, it’s true. E.L. James can’t write at all, but nobody thinks she’s art….
Dada did some interesting weird things with poetry, but they haven’t become central to literature the way the parallel experiments in visual art became central to art….
The only things that in my limited experience that approaches relevance to literary deskilling are Beckett’s novels.
Most editors still dare to edit … few art directors dare art direct anymore, not like they’re supposed to
words are still expected to make at least grammatical sense … but pictures are not that important to consumers … or businessmen
Wow! Thank you everyone for posting! I’m at work right now, but will be back later tonight to post replies. I hope everyone will want to continue the conversation then…
Owen, Beckett is an incredibly skillful writer. Abandonment of plot isn’t the same as deskilling.
Mahendra, trust me; editors rarely dare to edit the way they used to. They barely have time to spellcheck these days.
Touche, Noah. But you could say that many “deskilled” artists were extremely skilled in choosing the way that they were going to present their rudimentary and/or sloppy figures. Similarly, in the novels, Beckett’s virtuosity is in his meandering exploration of the breakdown of sense. Take this passage from Malone Dies:
In any case here I am back in the shit. The aeroplane, on the
other hand, has just passed over at two hundred miles an hour perhaps. It’s a good speed, for the present day. I am with it in spirit, naturally. All the things I was always with in spirit. In body no. Not such a fool. Here is the programme anyhow, the end of the programme. They think they can confuse me and
make me lose sight of my programmes. Proper cunts whoever they are. Here it is.
I will admit that it was wrong to call it “deskilling” but there is surely some sort of overlap of intentional nonsense and intentional deskilling.
I’ve done both editing and ADing and I agree, Noah, the former profession is in decline; but compared to the latter, it’s doing fine. Many editors can tell competent writing from incompetent but fewer and fewer ADs have the corresponding visual skills.
A lot of writing is still informational and thus functional (and thus deskilling resistant) but most pictures, comix et alia, are decorative and interchangeable at best.
We’re making stunted drawings for stunted eyes.
re: Noah’s list of outsider artists in comics — Marc Singer starts his monograph on Grant Morrison by discussing his wacko beliefs about magic; I read that as partly positioning Morrison as outsider artist (but also partly because Singer thinks you need to understand those wacko beliefs to properly understand his comics).
Fantagraphics’ collection of Rory Hayes definitely casts him as outsider. Also, I guess, the Fletcher Hanks reprints, and much of Dan Nadel’s Art out of time
Noah– The paperwork metaphor is great, and I hope I’m not wrong in taking your first comment pretty seriously– and agreeing with it. I almost wonder if comics takes the opposite view of Sol LeWitt’s… that in such a corporate culture, the concept is at best ‘slick,’ and at worst, shameful. The spontaneity and the labor of drawing is what rescues a comic’s authenticity. Hence the trend toward maximalism– even where artists haven’t received formal training, they’re trying to draw like they have– lots of hatching, stippling, blades of grass and tree leaves…
I feel like people ‘forgive’ Brown and Clowes because they are trying to draw more naturalistically than they can. Sort of like, ‘at least they’re working on it!’ And when they fail, they reach their own, uncomfortable but expressionistic style, which segues into comics’ auteur preoccupation. Clowes’ work always feels cramped and stiff, which complements his narratives.
Jog– I’d love to hear that rant. I rant about it from time to time, but I wish I more often had the excuse that I was drunk.
Mahendra– I’m a little confused by your first comment. If you’re saying that comic’s lack of artistic skills will eventually lead it into art world acceptance, I’m not sure I agree.
On the other hand, if comics were to participate in art world narratives, they’d be one step closer. But how could comics effectively deskill? There is no ‘academy’ or institutionalized aesthetic to rebel against. And hiring out assistants to draw comics for you is already a part of the industry.
I think you’d really like Arthur Danto’s work on Institutional Theory of Art. It’s worth a look. Also, Peter Burger argues that your sow’s ear, the fact that a urinal becomes bam! presto! ART, demonstrates the failure of the avant garde. The only body that has power to magically transform things into art is the ‘art world’ itself. The avant garde sought to tear the art world down, to destroy art as a separate category and to fuse art into daily living. Don’t blame the black square– blame how it is used and pimped out by museums today.
Owen– These are really great thoughts. But I’m not sure we’re at the point of post-art yet. Also, while Marcel Duchamp and Batman are both commodified, I don’t think there’s much to gain from generalizing them this way. They’ve both reached ‘commodification’ through different paths, and with different end results in mind– Batman will always make a billion times more money through licensing, for example. And its these differences that are a hundred times more interesting than just saying “Commodification, yeah!”
Kailyn: “On the other hand, if comics were to participate in art world narratives, they’d be one step closer. But how could comics effectively deskill?”
Deskilling is unlikely to happen on a significant scale in comics for many of the reasons already listed; primarily the literary aspects of the form which follow more closely artistic developments in contemporary literature (serious or otherwise). And Noah has already noted that literature hasn’t been deskilled to any great extent. In this instance, it is more instructive to compare comics to movies, particularly the acute lack of deskilling seen in most (even the most respectable) Top 100 movies list. Noah may think Tarkovsky as clumsy but there’s nothing “deskilled” about his oeuvre. The guy worked with technical maestros and was one himself. I don’t think you can put Bresson or Godard in that category either.
There’s also the desired point of all this deskilling – get into galleries and recognized by the “art” world and then what? While it may be popular to think of artists as following their muses blindly, a significant number of “deskilled” contemporary artists have an eye firmly cast on marketing and commerce. And who can blame them?
This market-oriented end point looks like a dead end as far as art comics is concerned. Even in Europe (where comics are slightly less disreputable), the prime movers in auctions are literary, representational, and nostalgia laden. In America, superhero comics are virtually the only game worth considering when it comes to dollars and cents. Yes, there are usual suspects who do gain income from gallery sales but the vast majority seek movie deals/adaptations, merchandising, and book store sales. The gallery thing is a sideshow.
Cartoonists who have the knack for deskilling treat comics as a sideline, almost a hobby. Short of government funding, they wouldn’t be able to put food on the table otherwise. They try to sell their gallery art as just that (not comics), mostly at off-kilter, “NoBrow” art focused galleries.
EG of deskilling in literature = Jack Kerouac, and some other Beats. Cut-ups, an absolutely prime example; cutting the lines of control/image-lines.
Outsider Art: many people use this term when either “Folk Art” or “Art Brut” would be closer to what they’re really talking about.
Much of this conversation is crabbed by the presumption of some bi-valency about art’s legitimation.
There are also some pretty narrow definitions being implied about the site of artistic skill. Phoneme? Articulation? Song? Polemic? Prosody? Revelation? Evasion? Defiance? Humility? Freedom-within-constraints?
Are idea generation, gestural balance, and representational eloquence the only things an artist can be good at? There’s always a discourse, isn’t there? Navigation of an amodal reticulation of desires and striving.
Wow, sorry about that last sentence. And to think I deliberately avoided using “rhizomatic”.
Kailyn- You always sound so surprised and grateful that anyone responds to your work. Your writing is good, no need to thank people so much.
Mahendra- Are there not any artists you like who have some sort of crudeness or notable limitations to them? I too wish there was more virtuosity around; but I still think even if an artist has a low skill level but knows how to successfully achieve their goals within their limitations, that is all that matters and they can be as powerful as anyone.
I actually think there is still too much snobbery in text/prose writing. Many people completely refuse to engage with a book unless the grammar is perfect. I’ve seen several reviews complaining about too many adverbs and not talking about the content at all. Like those idiots who say “your argument has spelling mistakes, so I cant take anything you say seriously”. There should be a special layer of hell for people who think perfect communication skills are more important than what a person has to say.
I love extreme virtuosity in visuals and music but Lee Brown Coye, Nick Blinko, Elizabeth Siddal, Alfred Kubin and Adolf Wolfi all have their own sort of virtuosity. Even Fuseli and William Blake were said to have lowered the bar in some ways but were just as good as anyone.
I liked some Rory Hayes but a lot of it looked too similar.
I’m not into Clowes but since when was he unskilled? How exactly does his work look much less skilled than the average comic artist?
That infamous James Kochalka Craft Is The Enemy argument is up on TCJ recently. As much as I disagreed with most of his points (and agreed with his opponents), I felt he was partly right about lots of artists developing a style that calcifies and never surprises. But some would say something like The Simpsons really doesnt need visual surprises to work. John Romita Sr’s work is pretty much always the same and I doubt many people seek out his work like they would Kirby, Ditko and Colan; but Romita is hardly a big problem (although I would say even though he could do clarity, he never made the stories seem interesting, which I think is necessary when you are working with dull stories).
Even though in some ways it seems western comic art is more varied than ever, I think there is still some serious gaps in what styles are available. I’m not really into Sue Coe or Melinda Gebbie but I’ve always had a lot of respect for both because they have a very personal style that has nothing to do with fitting in with the comic art world.
There are too few comic artists who dont slot into american superhero style, manga or the dominant alternative comic styles. It baffles and saddens me that there is so little in the tradition of EC-Warren- Heavy Metal (the heydays). That sort of fizzled out in the 80s with a bit of Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, some Eclipse/Pacific comics. Very little is left of it. I’m not saying those comics were always great, they often left whole lot to be desired (especially the stories) but it doesnt make sense why there isnt a bigger audience for it to exist in a modern form.
I also just read that TCJ Zak Sally interviewing Peter Bagge and they are both lamenting the direction Underground Comix went in (basically too much Raw and not enough Weirdo. Too much middlebrow, not enough anarchy, humor and oddness).
I recently discovered the joy of Carlos Nine. That guy knocks my fucking socks off. For the first time since perhaps my teens, I have an artist to look up to and not just simply admire. I think he maybe draws better than any comic artist I’ve ever seen. WHY ISNT ANYONE TRANSLATING CARLOS NINE! I’ve only found Dungeon Monstres translated. Stunning linework, so masterful yet utterly free.
“I’m not into Clowes but since when was he unskilled? How exactly does his work look much less skilled than the average comic artist?”
There are a lot of punk rock artists like Clowes…but that doesn’t change the fact that he can’t draw especially well. That is…I’d agree that many alt comics creators aren’t virtuosos, but that just means the phenomena of not being very skilled is generalized.
I don’t agree with you about Clowes at all, Noah. I think this a matter of taste. For me, he’s been a terrific draftsman ever since Lloyd Llewellyn, and his later work is extremely polished. His work has always had a fairly high degree of stylisation (from the retro “Atomic” look of LL to the more Peanuts-inspired cartooniness of Wilson), and a definite stiffness, but I see that more as artistic personality than inability. And even where he’s not the most fluid draftsman in terms of anatomy, his technical skills are certainly very strong — use of tone and color, design sense. Clowes seems to me have influenced a lot of younger artists — from Adrian Tomine to Sammy Harkham, Jordan Crane, Kevin Huizenga, Ethan Rilly, none of whom I really see as taking a “de-skilled” approach. Can you imagine anyone looking at a page of Clowes and saying “my kid could do that?” Mark Beyer, Gary Panter, yes — those are to me, the American equivalent of Takashi Nemoto or Yusaku Hanakawa. A younger example is Josh Bayer, Pat Aulisio and many of the artists featured in anthologies like Suspect Device — some of the most devoted de-skillees in American comics today! I could even see referring to Dash Shaw as de-skilled at one level — but again, the design sense, use of color etc., counteract the somewhat clunky draftsmanship. I think there are a lot of artists in comics who start out looking like de-skilling is what they’re about, but what they really are is just not very highly trained; they begin very simply, even awkwardly, but over time they gain in polish, refine their design sense, and end up looking, I don’t know if professional is the word, but definitely not shocking to a viewer who expects are to be skilled. If you’ve seen the early work of Box Brown or Gabrielle Bell, for instance, compared with what they get up to today.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
[Deskilling] was invented by artists, not academics.
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Nah, it was invented by businessmen:
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Deskilling is the process by which skilled labor within an industry or economy is eliminated by the introduction of technologies operated by semiskilled or unskilled workers. This results in cost savings due to lower investment in human capital, and reduces barriers to entry, weakening the bargaining power of the human capital.
It is criticized for decreasing quality, demeaning labor (rendering work mechanical, rather than thoughtful and making workers automatons rather than artisans), and undermining community.
…Work is fragmented, and individuals lose the integrated skills and comprehensive knowledge of the crafts persons.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deskilling
Oh, we’re talking about “art”? Check out the connection. From http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/art/unhappy-days-in-the-art-worldde-skilling-theater-re-skilling-performance :
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…“de-skilling” [is] a term from economics to describe the way in which skilled labor is replaced by new technologies operated by semi-skilled workers, resulting in a lower investment in human capital. This process accelerated in the 1960s and 1970s, precisely at the moment when Judson choreographers were rethinking dance as everyday gestures; when Fluxus artists were poking fun at classical music in irreverent scored “events”; and when conceptual artists consciously renounced technical competence in photography. De-skilling entered art discourse in the 1980s, in the context of writing on conceptual art: It denoted the tendency to outsource the production of works of art to workers in “other-than-art fields,” thereby placing the artist in a managerial position.
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Why, then, can’t a comic-book publisher, or editor, thus call themselves the true Artist, the underpaid schmucks who merely write and draw the stuff just hirelings, craftspeople at best?
Consider Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party,” “an important icon of 1970s feminist art and a milestone in twentieth-century art,” [ http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/ ] , which took “the labor of 400 volunteers to complete” ( http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/art/2007/04/table_for_39.html )…
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The nature of Chicago’s own reverence for the feminine is revealed by the fact that the actual cost…..was absorbed by volunteer feminine labor. The five years of so-called collaborative effort that went into the making of Chicago’s breakthrough in the class struggle between men and women was, in essence, one more round in the exploitation of co-religionists by a canny gospeler.
Unpaid workers, mostly young, anonymous women from inconspicuous places around the country, paid their own transportation to and from the West Coast workshops and their own living expenses for the duration of their participation in the construction of The Dinner Party. Only a few core people in the project received compensation. The key members of that core were the three men without whose technical skill The Dinner Party would not exist: Ken Gilliam, an industrial designer who worked full-time on the substructure of the installation; Leonard Skura, the potter responsible for the actual production of the dinner plates; Jean Pierre Larochette, director of the San Francisco Tapestry Workshop which created the introductory banners. While salaries might not have been large, the symbolic import of the difference between the salaried and the non-salaried is not to be ignored. Particularly in a project that roots its appeal in the abolition of class distinctions…
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Truly, “Sisterhood is powerful!” Emphasis added; from http://www.maureenmullarkey.com/essays/dinnerparty.html
More from http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/art/unhappy-days-in-the-art-worldde-skilling-theater-re-skilling-performance :
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By adopting an amateur or everyday aesthetic, the avant-garde narrowed the gap between artist and non-artist, eliding professional and amateur. This produces a questioning of authorship that, if taken to its logical limit, implies a death of the artist as traditionally understood. Roberts refers to this process as a “spectralization” of the artist: When everyone can be an artist, what need is there for a specialized body of knowledge? The avant-garde’s desire for spectralization has been the tacit, paradoxical engine behind innumerable attempts to make art more democratic and accessible, and de-skilling has long been the preferred strategy for accomplishing this self-extinction.
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Why stop at art? Consider how in politics, ignorance and inexperience in the field are pluses, rather than minuses. (“Sarah Palin is presidential material!”)
And think of all the spoiled twerps who came from “everybody gets a gold star” educational ideologies; who’s going to tell them they can’t be “artists”?
In 1925, H. L. Mencken wrote:
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A bad artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula. Hence Dadaism, Vordsm, and all the rest of that sort of buncombe. No really good new fommula, it must be obvious, has ever come oot of a bad artist—which is to say, out of an artist who could not do good work within the old formulae. Among the so~called “modern” musicians, the only ones worthy of any respect are those who have proved their right to be revolutionaries by writing sound fugues. Among the advanced poets who now bray in every cellar the only genuinely amusing ones are those who have sound sonnets behind them. The rest are frauds—and bores.
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Indeed, the article at http://www.brooklynrail.org/2011/12/art/unhappy-days-in-the-art-worldde-skilling-theater-re-skilling-performance goes on to note:
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Unlike amateurism, de-skilling denotes the conscious rejection of one’s disciplinary training and its traditional competences. Crucially, one has to have acquired this training in order to reject it—and this is what differentiates a “de-skilled” performance, such as Yvonne Rainer’s We Shall Run (1963), from an amateur performance in which a jogger runs about on stage. A knowledge has been acquired, and is rejected, but is still perceptible (for example, in our sense of a scored intentionality underpinning the movements). De-skilling, in other words, always requires a re-skilling if it is to convince us that it is more than simply amateur.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Owen, Beckett is an incredibly skillful writer. Abandonment of plot isn’t the same as deskilling.
Mahendra, trust me; editors rarely dare to edit the way they used to. They barely have time to spellcheck these days.
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Yes, and yes; very much so, in both cases.
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Kailyn Kent says:
Sol LeWitt’s “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art” states, “In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work…the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” He expands on this in “Sentences on Conceptual Art,”
32. Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
33. It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
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Well, Mr. LeWitt — hardly an appropriate name — produces the nonsensical gasbaggery one would expect.
So, “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art”? Then artists are unnecessary; why, for the “idea person,” even doing any work towards bringing the conceptual work out into the real world is unnecessary. *POOF!* The “installation” magically appears…
“Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.” – Doubleplus nonsense. For instance, the plots of many great operas are trite absurdities; Old Master paintings are often reworkings of hoary clichés or ludicrous myths. For certain, it’s aesthetically enriching for a work to have “depth” to it. Yet it’s hardly necessary…
“It is difficult to bungle a good idea.” – No, it is ridiculously easy to do so. Happens all the time, in every field of human endeavor.
“When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.” – The biggest batch of hogwash of them all. “Too well”? Consider creators whose mastery of their respective art forms are absolute: Rembrandt, Goya, Bernini, Ravi Shankar, Heifetz, Michelangelo. As their skills developed further, did they devolve into empty, plastic superficiality? Hardly.
What is painfully typical of LeWitt’s “wisdom” is that the most meretricious malarkey, expressed in so simplistic a fashion that any ignoramus can “get” it, with (the most important factor of all) total, absolute self-assurance…
…can impress and bedazzle the masses infinitely more than some complicated, sometimes contradictory, truth.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
I…just don’t really see how exactly comics triumphs by rejecting the art movements of the last 50-100 years…
And…beatifying professionalism — I don’t know. Isn’t that just another way of saying you want to stay in the clubhouse forever and never come out?
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So comics creators should just, sheeplike, follow the crowd? Regardless of how asinine, dead-end, and utterly counterproductive to the narrative functions of most comics art those are?
“Ooh, let’s have a conceptual ‘graphic novel’; all the pages are blank, and readers can give free rein to their wildest imaginings!
“Of course, I’ll expect to get paid top dollar for my brilliance…”
Because if you don’t run with the herd in pursuit of its latest crazes and fashions, therefore you’re a fanboy who wants “to stay in the clubhouse forever and never come out.”
No other possibilities exist…
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Owen A says:
It seems to me that comics (as we know them), as a post-art product intersects naturally with deskilling…Or, more realistically, a climate that doesn’t care about “art” very much at all. For better or worse.
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Eesh. No surprise that a climate that can consider it a “better” thing that people don’t “care about ‘art’ very much at all” would feature grotesque terms such as the hideous “post-art product.”
“Post-art product”! (Shudder) That makes Newspeak seem positively warm and cuddly. Must have come from academia…
34. When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art????
… there was a time when you were expected to learn your craft perfectly, so that as you matured intellectually, you could learn how to jettison craft and technique
That is the essence of being a serious artist: master technique to overwhelm it
“That is the essence of being a serious artist: master technique to overwhelm it”
There’s no one way to be an artist…and being “serious” really is not always the best way to make great art.
There isn’t one formula. Art ain’t math.
serious as in being serious about your draftsmanship
no, it sure ain’t math, more like anti-math … the harder you work, the less money you’ll have
That’s still math. Just inversely rather than directly variant.
Some folks work really hard and make lots of money. Some don’t. Some art with crappy draftsmanship is great; some isn’t. Some art with great draftsmanship sucks. It’s case by case.
Yes, but I can sympathise with Mahendra’s anger; he is one of the most skilfull, craftsmanlike, hard-working artists in comics and illustration today; witness his Hunting of the Snark:
http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1024&bih=571&q=mahendra+singh+hunting+of+the+snark&oq=mahendra+singh+hunting+of+the+snark&gs_l=img.12…1485.20641.0.24094.35.9.0.26.26.0.110.798.8j1.9.0…0.0…1ac.1.17.img.Q7tHinv9Fy8
That degree of intelligence, hard work, dearly-acquired craft being poo-poohed in favor of some lazy jerk of a deskilled poseur like Jeff Koons …well, keep Mahendra away from any firearms.
I just want to be allowed to like Mahendra and Duchamp both, is all….
I ? Rrose Sélavy … did you ever see her descending a staircase nude, on her way to a urinal signing?
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Noah Berlatsky says:
I just want to be allowed to like Mahendra and Duchamp both, is all….
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For sure; and, likewise, indeed…
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There’s no one way to be an artist…and being “serious” really is not always the best way to make great art.
There isn’t one formula. Art ain’t math….
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Absolutely!
Why, look at what a splendid cartoonist James Thurber was; he hadn’t achieved technical mastery to jettison in the first place…
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4104
http://tiedemania.blogspot.com/2009/05/james-thurber.html
…yet how delightfully expressive, in some cases (the foreboding dame merging with her house) striking a note of Saul Steinbergesque brilliance.
However, the crowning advantage of achieving that mastery is that with such a firm foundation, one can strike off in other directions and not fail abysmally. In the fashion hat an intelligent person can fake stupidity, but an idiot can’t “fake” intelligence; soon as they start speaking,the jig is up!
If Uderzo had not achieved mastery, could he have achieved the astonishing stylistic diversity (if not towering artistry) on display in the first image here? https://hoodedutilitarian.com/2013/06/oddity-uderzo-and-jacobs/
Hasn’t deskilling in literature primarily been an issue affecting poetry, rather than prose?
Probably…but poetry couldn’t be much more irrelevant, so…
I have noticed that nobody has brought up the good-bad aesthetic of King Terry, or the scratchy and varied styles Gary Panter works with in his comics. There are also the artists who came out of fort thunder such as Brian Chippendale and Mat Brinkman. To me, all of these artists point towards something more crude and deskilled being presented as a legitimate piece of art. Comics to them are just an artistic method to work within, and much of their work echoes the work of the various artistic movements of the 20th century, infusing it with an awareness of the “low” culture of comics, video games, pop music. Their work is worth noting I think for working within the constraints of the trashier kitsch it references. Self aware while being oblivious in a way.
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