I have to thank Alyson Stanfield over at the Art Biz Blog for the link to this Wall Street Journal article about “The Lost Art of Writing About Art“.
Apparently the art critics writing about the biennial exhibition of contemporary art at the Whitney Museum weren’t so much criticizing the art as they were criticizing the commentary about the art. I believe the criticism involved the words…”unalloyed gibberish”.
Ouch!
Why is it the fashion to use phrases like “inhabits those interstitial spaces between understanding and confusion” (an actual excerpt from the exhibition) when it comes to writing about or talking about art? I experienced a lot of this when I was in school. When the professor called on students to make a statement about their work, those budding artists seemed to automatically gear up into this kind of high flown and incomprehensible language to describe a collage made out of paper and a variety artfully arranged found objects.
And I, who much to the disappointment of my professors and fellow students never quite got the knack of inventing such phrases like “invents puzzles out of nonsequiturs” (another actual excerpt), would be at the back of the class rolling my eyes.
And guess what? That’s how most people will react to your artist statement or any kind of description or commentary about your work if you start writing about how your work “is a conflation of art space and work space” (the hits just keep on coming!).
If you’re exhibiting in galleries or museums, if you’re selling at an art or craft show, if you have a brochure or website, sooner or later you’ll be called upon to write about yourself or your work. Your artist bio and artist statement are the things that speak for you and your art when you aren’t there to speak for yourself. Do you want your potential customers to roll their eyes when they are reading your artist statement?
When you’re writing about your work, be natural. Pretend that you’re explaining what you do to your best friend. That doesn’t mean that you should be talking down to people or that you can’t use 50 cent words like “nonsequiturs” if you need to. Just don’t go for the complicated word or phrase when a simpler one will work just as well. And FYI, no one is going to type in “nonsequiturs” when they are Googling your website. So web-wise, writing naturally about your work will not only make your fans and customers happy, it will also make Google happy when they are trying to rank your site in search engine results.
If you’re in the midst of writing an artist statement, artist Deanna Wood wrote a great blog post on how to write an artist statement a while back ago. Check it out for some great ideas. Plus, read a previous post I did on what words to avoid when you’re writing your artist’s bio. I’ll admit that I’ve been guilty of using these words!
If you’re interested in how not to write your artist statement, check out Carol Diehl’s blog, Art Vent. She wrote about the Whitney exhibit and was the source of these interesting tidbits from the show.
