Jerry Saltz - How to Be an Artist

Lynda Benglis, Fling, Dribble, and Drip, 1970

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Copyright 2020 by Jerry Saltz

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Saltz, Jerry, 1951 author.

Title: How to be an artist / Jerry Saltz.

Description: [First hardcover]. | New York : Riverhead Books, 2020.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019031361 (print) | ISBN 9780593086469 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593086476 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: ArtistsPsychology. | Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)

Classification: LCC N71 .S157 2020 | DDC 701/.15dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031361

Cover design: Grace Han

pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

To art, artists, and the art world, and to my wife, Roberta Smith, all of whom redeemed me

Agnes Martin, photographed by Alexander Liberman, 1973

Step One

YOU ARE A
TOTAL
AMATEUR

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT BEFORE YOU EVEN GET STARTED

Vivian Maier, Self-Portrait, 1955

1 .

DONT BE EMBARRASSED

I get it. Making art can be humiliating. Terrifying. It can leave you feeling exposed, vulnerable, like getting naked in front of another person for the first time. It can reveal things about yourself that others might find appalling, weird, boring, or stupid. You may fear that people will think youre abnormal, dull, untalented. Fine. When I work, my mind races with doubts: None of this is any good. It makes no sense. Anyone who sees this will know Im a dope. But art doesnt have to make sense. Art is like birdsong: its made of patterns, inflections, shadings, shiftsall things that have emotional and perceptual impact, even if we can never really translate their meanings. Every work of art is a culturescape of you, your memories, the moments you spent working, your hopes, energies, and neuroses, the times you live in, and your ambitions. Of the things that are engaging, mysterious, meaningful, resistant over time.

Dont worry about whether your art makes sense. The faster your work makes sense, the faster people will lose interest. Let go of being good. Start thinking about creating.

Shoog McDaniel, untitled, 2018

2 .

IMAGINATION IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN KNOWLEDGE.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

T he imagination is endless and always there. Its a lens, a tool that enlarges life, that animates your own Cambrian ocean of past, present, and potential future forms. It adds what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called gorgeous nonsense, making unreal things real and real things unreal. Pledge allegiance to it; live up to it; honor and listen to it; take pleasure in it; let it be your magic lantern and flying carpet. Your imagination extends your mind to the world around you. It pressurizes, composes, decomposes, and connects thoughts. Its inseparable from you and will be with you on the day you die. The imagination is not a state, said William Blake. It is the human existence itself.

Creativity is what you do with your imagination. Write down your flights of fancy, your moments of wonder and fear, your dreams and delusions of grandeur. Then put them to work.

Make the imagination your compass star.

Frida Kahlos The Two Fridas (1939) inspiring visitors to the Grand Palais, Paris. (Photographed by Jacques Demarthon, 2016)

3 .

TELL YOUR OWN STORY AND YOU WILL BE INTERESTING.

LOUISE BOURGEOIS

A men, Louise. Dont be reined in by other peoples definitions of skill or beauty, or be cramped by what is supposedly high or low. Dont stay in your own lane. Drawing within the lines is for babies; making sure things add up is for accountants. Proficiency and dexterity are only as good as what you do with them. But also remember that just because youre telling your own story, youre not automatically entitled to applause. You have to earn an audience. And dont expect to accomplish that with a single, defining project. Artists cant capture everything about themselves in a single work, or reflect every side of themselves in every new work. You have to be a little detached from your artenough to see what youre doing clearly, to witness it, and to follow it. Take baby steps. And take pleasure in those baby steps. Even when youre making it up, make it your own.

Louise Bourgeois in 1975, wearing her latex sculpture Avenza, photographed by Mark Setteducati

4 .

RECOGNIZE THE OTHERNESS OF ART

I s the writer much more than a sophisticated parrot? Gustave Flaubert wondered. Most artists know this feelingthat were being led by something outside ourselves. We all choose our styles, our materials, modes, means, tools, and so on, but the work we create isnt entirely a matter of conscious choice. I never quite know what Im going to write until I write itand then Im not sure where it came from. This is arts otherness. Its so powerful that you might sometimes wonder if art is using us to reproduce itselfif art might be a self-replicating cosmic force (or a fungus?) that has colonized us into symbiotic service.

This can be thrilling. It can also be unsettling. Its like a ghost is writing, Bob Dylan said, except the ghost picked me to write the song. Dont let this creep you out. Instead, learn to trust it.

5 .