The relationship of art and life has been a subject for art, a mode of artmaking, and a source of inspiration and frustration for the artist. It became complicated in the 20th century with Modernism’s debate on the role of artists, throwing into question whether they were productive and necessary members of society. We live with that legacy still and, so, for the young artist entering into a career as an artist questions abound around how to be successful and “make it” as an artist.

The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation entered into this dialogue, seeking to address the concern that recurs with each graduating class of MFAs everywhere, when it launched a program in 2003 designed to enable some of the top art schools to better serve their student constituencies. It focused on a graduate seminar that would prepare students with what they need to know.

At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago this seminar, “The Constant Evolution of Being An Artist,” looked to the job of the artist as one of multiplicity, simultaneity, and change. The artist can take on multiple roles during a lifetime and, whether in or out of the art world, these can be detours or embraced as paths contributing to one’s art. The artist can assume different roles sequentially through life, or even simultaneously. Most of all, the life of an artist, like one’s work, is constantly shifting, open to reinvention and interpretation, fluid and elastic, withstanding obstacles and growing. And, so, it is necessary to cultivate the capacity to make change—to evolve.

I was interested in thinking about what it means to be an artist. Evoking a long view, I sought not only to offer what one needs to be prepared to be an artist in practical ways, but to sustain being an artist over a lifetime. The seminar I proposed is organized around four basic concepts: (1) Taking Aim, locating for yourself the issues most at-stake in making art, and then to reinforcing them with skills in the preparation, presentation, and implementation of ideas; (2) Finding Multiple Paths, addressing the many ways in which artists operate (independently or collectively, in their studio and as part of institutions or businesses, which they might even bring into existence), along with practical knowledge bases (law, tax structures, financial management, public relations and marketing, real estate, intellectual property health, safety, and other business practices); (3) Putting Art to Work, delving into employment alternatives, in or out of art professions, including creating your own job; and (4) Sustaining Being an Artist, perhaps the most fundamental lesson, focusing on the processes of creativity and means of sustainment artists find through professional opportunities, communities, and within themselves. Together these topics seek to grapple with fundamental, gnawing questions: How can I continue to be an artist for life…and when it isn’t working, how can I creatively engage and make a life as well as my art?

From the outset, it was clear that this subject was one of benefit to many students and alumni, too. So, with the leadership of Katharine Schutta, Assistant Dean and Director of the School’s Office of Career Development, an exceptional collaboration was forged with the Department of Sculpture, resulting in a larger program of symposia, workshop, and other special offerings. Joining forces as well with the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, we were also able to share these life lessons with the Chicago art community-at-large.

This publication arose out of a personal desire to engender a level of discussion that would bring about a more integrated sense of the artist’s being and, in doing so, contribute to the discourse in the field. Thus, I invited thinkers to join us in this endeavor and their lectures and talks delivered between March 2005 and March 2006 are chronicled here.
 
To Arthur Danto I asked: look at what it means to pursue one’s work for a lifetime as you yourself have so ably done working as a philosopher; is there an essence of being an artist that one brings to crafting one’s life? He responded, “The idea of a ‘life’ continues to engage me, though I haven’t written a word on it as yet. I had some thought about the difference between a ‘life’ as against a ‘CV,’ and the relationship of both to what one must call an oeuvre…The concept of a life in general, and not just in application to artists, is a powerful philosophical idea, something Plato wrote about at the end of The Republic, where he talks about how to choose a life, and what one has to understand in order to do that. That would be the framework I would use….” So the Tremaine initiative allowed Danto’s thoughts to take shape and are presented here, along with those of seminar student Travis Culley and critic George Stolz, as he encountered Danto subsequently still musing on the subject.

In preparation for her commencement address, Ann Hamilton talked with me about the artist’s process and the need to rest in the uncomfortable space that exists before a work of art comes into being—the need to wait and to trust. Part of being an artist is to realize that even after a graduate education in art is completed, one must engage in a continually recurring state of not knowing. Thus, we include her remarks here for their synchronicity with the theme of this volume.

Marcia Tucker’s essay was the keynote talk at one of three business-of-art symposia held during 2004-06. “You have practiced institutionally and independently; you understand knowing and not knowing,” I wrote to Tucker. I asked her to address not only the world of artists but also her own changing creative life, the need to take risks, and to find personal resources beyond art as well as in artworks. The focus of the symposium, “The Entrepreneurial Spirit,” was on inventing your own life, something we think is particularly available to artists. The other participants—Peter B. Landon, Ben Nicholson, J. Morgan Puett, and Tony Wight—whose excerpted remarks follow, all spoke to this subject through their own unique practices.

For Mark Epstein, the task was to give us greater understanding of the “mind of don’t know,” intuition, and the unconscious, in contrast to the notion of conscious preparedness. Countering social stereotypes of the artist as a naïve, I felt it was important to understand and respect the operations of intuition and validate the artist’s creative processes. This talk was later complemented by Yvonne Rand’s sessions on cultivating a creative, open mind through one’s art practice, and a deeper consideration of living your life as a work of art in which life practice and art practice are one.

Laurie Anderson, a Buddhist practioner who was among the many artists whose participation brought lessons to life, spoke about the process of artmaking. You get “trapped, sometimes with no doors but then realize you built it, then you rebuild it.” You get on a self-centered track and changing is hard—“self exposure is a scary thing.” But essential questions have to be the guide. Anderson suggested these are: “Why are you doing this? What do you want out of this?” She talked about the passion and commitment you need to make art. “What does it take for me to make new work? It’s a scary thing. It needs to be fun (‘I can’t wait to do that!’), to have intensity, and allow me to make money—it needs to hit some of all of these things some time. We live in society where, as artists, we are treated like idiots; we feel we need therapy; we feel bad about our self but there is nothing wrong with us. This is an artifact of early 20th century capitalism: seeing you as having value or not much value. But that’s how it is, our culture. And it can trip you up: ‘I’m a failure.’ Don’t waste your time on that. Pay attention. Look more clearly at what you’re doing and not.”

We offer this book as a way of coming back to attention and to remembering, when on occasion, we might have forgotten for a moment why it is important to be an artist.