Since last week was kinda long I’ll do a shorter story this week on some lighter fare: my time as a scam artist. The term scam artist includes the word ‘artist’, because all artists on one level or another are scammers. If we’re talking about artists without any other word attached, that is. I think sandwich artists are being scammed themselves. Makeup artists are usually being taken advantage of on some level, and street artists are somewhat neutral, although Banksy really threw a wrench in those gears, and the wrench went for like 75K at Sotheby’s.
Do you think Banksy ever wishes the whole world were still trying to figure out who he is? Did he ever reveal himself? I like to imagine that he wanders around the world introducing himself as Banksy to strangers to see if anyone cares.
I went to The Cooper Union because I got into the exclusive fine arts college and it was free (scam number one) and I wanted, more than anything, to live in New York City. When I was about 10 I got to go on a trip to New York with some family because I was very tangentially related to a single rich person named Tootsie, a third cousin or something who had married a hotelier. We are talking a real Beverly Hillbillies situation, as my fathers family are all dirt poor. I imagine what it must have been like for Tootsie’s husband, the actual rich person in the situation, when her random pumpkin-headed family came around leaving their sticky fingerprints on their white marble walls. When visiting their palatial white and beige home in Westchester, there was a hallway so long I remember thinking what a pain in the ass it would be when you forgot something in the other room. But that trip changed me. I was convinced that when I grew up I would live in New York and become a…person who lives in New York. That was the whole plan.
At art school, I learned how to operate lots of cameras and printmaking machines, and I learned to weld. I treated my four years like a fast pass at Disneyland, determined to see what was up with every kind of craft and discipline they had on offer before my ticket ran out. Also this was before ADHD was a thing, so that probably had a lot to do with my lack of focus. But in every class, whether it was painting or letterpress, I learned the same useful skill– how to bullshit. A consummate procrastinator, and moreover a fraud, I took note of how other frauds behaved. I found it fascinating when someone was able to argue their way out of a bad critique. The art world is filled with charlatans, so it’s no wonder it’s where I thought I belonged. I quickly picked up skills such as not using nouns (“The searching is palpable, but it’s deliberate that we will not see the finding of the innermost.”), hearing people trash your work with a knowing smirk on your face as though they are falling for a trick you devised, wearing off-the shoulder stuff. That worked really well with certain professors.
The bullshit was necessary, since there was rarely any there there in my work. I knew I had things to say, and I wished for the life of me I could get them out into the world where my ideas could be applauded and heralded for the genius they were, but fuck if I knew how to get them out. Upon further reflection, maybe that’s what I was doing the whole time. I could give myself some grace here and admit that beyond some undiagnosed focus issues, I really was seeking something I could do that seemed worth caring about. Searching for a can opener for my brain. Paintbrush? No. Camera? No. This pile of multicolored pompoms? I mean yeah, but still no. So I threw together what I could and dragged it to class on presentation day, knowing I had better ready the only functioning tool in my kit: Verban spin. It didn’t always work, but every failure was a lesson. Something was happening to my worldview during that time. A lot of people who came through Cooper in years after mine would remark how toxic and competitive our class seemed, and now I wonder what part I played in that. I feel bad saying it now, but I never saw anyone make anything that knocked my socks off. No one seemed to know what they were doing, really, and I wasn’t able to recognize the earnestness and the growth happening around me. Maybe it’s because 9/11 happened during my sophomore year. Maybe it’s because I was an alcoholic. Either way, all I saw was marks and scammers all around me, and I knew which one I wanted to be.
There was this one fabulous girl I hated. I think her name was Anya. She was possibly European (edit: New York native) and she would wear these sick outfits and I saw her smile maybe one time. She would walk around glaring mercilessly at everyone in giant colorful dresses and asymmetric, cropped hairdos. And her work was consistent. It might even have been photos of herself? And she presented the same pictures in sculpture, painting, video, whatever. Didn’t matter. She just wanted people to talk about her work. I despised her. I was so mad that she had seemingly gamed the system, only working on one thing for all her classes??? Brilliant. And yes, I see now that I was also very jealous that she had found her can opener. Good for that bitch! Also, using the powers of the internet, I found her, and I am happy to report that she is still a working artist. Good for that bitch, and good for this bitch, because finding her and getting to see that she is still working and still has her wonderfully bitchy facial expression filled my heart with pure joy. Let us love her from afar.
What I always lacked and what it seemed like everyone else had was a passion for what they were making. I longed for it, but I was so ashamed that I didn’t have it that I could not even admit to myself what was going on. I was dark inside, a liar, and I had to believe that everyone else was too. No one really truly cared about their art, they were all just faking it. Eventually I left school and stopped making art because there was no one to look at it, and no one cared in addition to me not caring so things just got sad. Nevertheless, she persisted, and I eventually found something I actually cared about making. Now I do stand up and it’s great because there’s plenty of charlatans here I can complain about, but I at the very least know I am not one of them. What a relief.
I know I opened this by saying that all artists are scammers. Well that was to get you invested, ok? I can’t back it up (ya been scammed! Into reading this!). But the art world is still kind of a racket. The above is a sculpture from a classmate who got really successful making stuff for celebrities who want to seem like batman villains. His stuff is pretty meh, but art is subjective. No, like, it is. I swear to God I believe that. What? Stop looking at me. We all bring our own experiences to art, and that experience being woven into the moment of witnessing a work of art is what makes it subjective. It’s all good. The problem is the bullshit. The “industry,” of fine art, which likes to call itself the Art World, if it deigns to call itself by a name we plebs can pronounce, cannot seem to extricate itself from its own ass most of the time. Case in point, this is from a press piece in something called “Colossal” about the pictured work and its accompanying exhibition:
“Making use of classical and ancient objects, this new body of work experiments with the timelessness of certain symbols,” said a release from Perrotin, where the exhibition will be on view from January 11 to March 21, 2020. Each sculpture is surrounded by series of graphite drawings depicting Ashram’s process in order order to “compress time, at once referencing the past, informing the present, and reaching towards a crystallized future.”
Girl, what?! First of all, what does the term “making use of” mean? Because it looks like he copied some famous sculptures from ancient Greece. Oh, he did? Ok, maybe say that. Because if he made exact copies of sculptures, then he had access to those priceless classical sculptures, which is not something normal people have. Oh but don’t worry, you might be able to see him making the casts in the graphite drawings next to the sculptures. You know, to “compress time” and whatnot. I am feeling compressed for time reading this press release. Jesus fucking christ.
‘Art is for everybody’ is written in one of Kieth Haring’s most famous paintings, and I first saw it on a tote bag from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where my mom worked when she met my stepdad. I used to read that and think it was fucking corny and obvious. It is sad, in retrospect, to realize that it’s a revolutionary statement. Fine and contemporary art is mostly garbage made by one artist in response to other garbage some other artist made the year prior. Kinda fucked, because comedy made for other comedians is how Tim Robinsons are made. But then, comedians don’t have an intellectual zamboni machine working to spin our garbage into something that can sell our wares to Jay-Z for exorbitant prices. We just have the audience, and they are mostly drunk.
