The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226389618 ISBN 13: 9780226389615

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2010

Synopsis

The image of a tortured genius working in near isolation has long dominated our conceptions of the artist’s studio. Examples abound: think Jackson Pollock dripping resin on a cicada carcass in his shed in the Hamptons. But times have changed; ever since Andy Warhol declared his art space a “factory,” artists have begun to envision themselves as the leaders of production teams, and their sense of what it means to be in the studio has altered just as dramatically as their practices.

The Studio Reader pulls back the curtain from the art world to reveal the real activities behind artistic production. What does it mean to be in the studio? What is the space of the studio in the artist’s practice? How do studios help artists envision their agency and, beyond that, their own lives? This forward-thinking anthology features an all-star array of contributors, ranging from Svetlana Alpers, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Storr to Daniel Buren, Carolee Schneemann, and Buzz Spector, each of whom locates the studio both spatially and conceptually—at the center of an art world that careens across institutions, markets, and disciplines. A companion for anyone engaged with the spectacular sites of art at its making, The Studio Reader reconsiders this crucial space as an actual way of being that illuminates our understanding of both artists and the world they inhabit.

About this title

About the Author

Mary Jane Jacob is professor of sculpture and executive director of exhibitions at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and coeditor of Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art and Learning Mind: Experience into Art. Michelle Grabner is professor in and chair of the Department of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and codirector of The Suburban, a gallery in Oak Park, Illinois.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

THE STUDIO READER

ON THE SPACE OF ARTISTS

University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2010 The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-38961-5

Contents

Foreword by Lisa Wainwright...........................................................................................................xiPreface by Mary Jane Jacob............................................................................................................1The Studio as Resource................................................................................................................17Buzz Spector..........................................................................................................................21Rochelle Feinstein....................................................................................................................23Shana Lutker, "Index: Dream Studio, 2003–2006"..................................................................................28Michael Smith, "Recipe: Perfect Studio Day"...........................................................................................30The Studio as Set and Setting.........................................................................................................39Howard Singerman, "A Possible Contradiction"..........................................................................................47Frances Stark.........................................................................................................................49Robert Storr, "A Room of One's Own, a Mind of One's Own"..............................................................................63Bruce Nauman, "Setting a Good Corner".................................................................................................68Michael Peppiatt and Alice Bellony-Rewald, "Studios of America".......................................................................80Annika Marie, "Action Painting Fourfold: Harold Rosenberg and an Arena in Which to Act"...............................................87Kimsooja..............................................................................................................................88The Studio as Stage...................................................................................................................99David J. Getsy, "The Reconstruction of the Francis Bacon Studio in Dublin"............................................................104Art & Language, "Art & Language Paints a Picture".....................................................................................119David Reed............................................................................................................................121Thomas Lawson.........................................................................................................................125Charline von Heyl.....................................................................................................................126Svetlana Alpers, "The View From the Studio"...........................................................................................150Rodney Graham, "Studio"...............................................................................................................153Joe Scanlan, "Post-Post Studio".......................................................................................................154Carolee Schneemann, "The Studio, June 22, 2009".......................................................................................156Daniel Buren, "The Function of the Studio"............................................................................................163Daniel Buren, "The Function of the Studio Revisited: Daniel Buren in Conversation"....................................................166Carrie Moyer..........................................................................................................................169Marjorie Welish.......................................................................................................................170Marjorie Welish, "The Studio Visit"...................................................................................................181The Studio as Lived-In Space..........................................................................................................195Mary Bergstein, "The Artist in His Studio: Photography, Art, and the Masculine Mystique"..............................................217Rachel Harrison.......................................................................................................................219Lynn Lester Hershman, "The Studio Present"............................................................................................220Brenda Schmahmann, "Cast in a Different Light: Women and the 'Artist's Studio' Theme in George Segal's Sculpture".....................237Karl Haendel..........................................................................................................................239Brian Winkenweder, "The Kitchen as Art Studio: Gender, Performance, and Domestic Aesthetics"..........................................251Glenn Adamson, "Analogue Practice"....................................................................................................259Amy Granat, "1107"....................................................................................................................261David Robbins.........................................................................................................................264The Studio as Space and Non-Space.....................................................................................................269Jon Wood, "Brancusi's 'white studio'".................................................................................................285James Welling, "Paris, 2009"..........................................................................................................286Caroline A. Jones, "Post-Studio/Postmodern/Postmortem"................................................................................302Courtney J. Martin, "The Studio and the City: S.P.A.C.E. Ltd. and Rasheed Araeen's Chakras"...........................................311Katy Siegel, "Live/Work"..............................................................................................................317Suzanne Lacy, "Beyond Necessity: The Street as Studio"................................................................................321Walead Beshty, "Studio Narratives"....................................................................................................332Andrea Bowers.........................................................................................................................336Judith Rodenbeck, "Studio Visit"......................................................................................................341Lane Relyea, "Studio Unbound".........................................................................................................351List of Contributors..................................................................................................................360Illustration Credits..................................................................................................................363

Chapter One

Buzz Spector

I have worked, or lived and worked, in fourteen studios over the thirty-seven years since I made the first artwork that could be construed as the product of my consciousness of self as an artist. These spaces have ranged in size from a corner in a bedroom to approximately 1,900 square feet. What they've all had in common are drawing tables, at least one chair, and shelves for books. It hasn't been mere restlessness that has led me to such an itinerary of places. New jobs (teaching and otherwise), graduation, sales of buildings in which I'd rented space, and changing circumstances in my private life have each resulted in a move from one studio to another.

In recent years the site of much of my artistic production has not been my personal studio but workshop or rental spaces that have the equipment I need to make photographs or works of handmade paper. Still, what happens in those sites is preceded by reveries, choices, and designs executed in spaces I call my own. I hold to the memory of some of my previous studios more than others, not so much because of their size, accoutrements, or location, but because of the small epiphanies that took place there. Such revelations move both forward and back in time. Let me share a story:

In 1982, soon after I began tearing pages out of books to make art, my parents visited my live/work space in Chicago. They were nonplussed by the array of torn books I'd set out for display on the main studio table. In a family of readers, the respectful treatment of books was a requirement, not an assumption, and for my mother in particular it was hard to look at those fields of torn pages as works of art. After some strained conversation about found objects and creative destruction, my mother became silent, regarding one particular altered book, which held rows of freshwater snail shells on one side of its excised text block and rows of small beach pebbles on the other. "You know, Buzz," she murmured, "you used to line up rows of shells and pebbles on the sand when I'd take you to the Morse Avenue beach." As she recalled this pleasure of my early childhood, even before my sister and brother were born, I was myself seized by an extraordinarily vivid recollection: of sand on my fingers, the smell of suntan lotion on my back, the cries of gulls, my mother in her black, one-piece bathing suit, and the lines of shells, stones, and beach glass beneath me as I lay on my stomach making order.

Not every day, or for every artist, but on some days for most artists, a vital thought happens at/in their work, and from the interior space of inspiration the artist can begin its embodiment in the exterior space to which conceptualization is connected, the cognitive spatial armature of the studio.

Every studio I have had since graduating from college

1. Second bedroom in an apartment. Drawings made at small thrift shop table and stored beneath bed. One bookshelf, made from boards and concrete blocks, and a four-door file cabinet. Two years.

2. Second bedroom in a rental house. Drawings pinned to Celotex sheet mounted on one wall. Two file cabinets and two metal-frame shelving units: one for books, one for art supplies. Two years.

3. Graduate school studio in converted reception room of a former carriage house. Brick fireplace and small kitchen. Easel for drawings made from a four-by-eight-foot sheet of plywood. One wooden bookshelf, metal-frame shelving unit for art supplies, and same file cabinets as before. Two years.

4. Shared studio space on fifth floor of manufacturing/warehouse building. Easel from previous studio converted into worktable. One file cabinet, two wooden bookshelves, and two metal storage cabinets: one for art supplies, the other for potential collage materials and finished work. One year.

5. Second bedroom in rental apartment. Thrift shop table for drawing, completed work kept beneath bed. Same file cabinet, storage units, and bookshelves as before. One year.

6. Live/work space in commercial building. Second floor with large windows along east and south walls, sixteen-foot ceiling. Worktable made from found room-divider unit on metal frame with casters. Second worktable/desk made from hardcore door mounted on Ikea table legs, with computer and electric typewriter. Over time accumulated six wooden bookshelves, one ten-drawer wooden flat file, three file cabinets, plus same storage cabinets as before. Artwork stored beneath artist-built loft at one end of the room. Eight years.

7. Studio space in artist-run cooperative. Same worktable/desk with computer. Same bookshelves, storage cabinets, flat file, and file cabinets as before. Artwork piled along one wall. One year.

8. Studio on second floor of commercial factory building. Same storage and file cabinets as before. Acquired second ten-drawer wooden flat file, more bookshelves (bringing total to eight), and new computer. Built two new worktables, recycling Ikea table legs, and wooden storage racks for artwork. Four years.

9. Small rented cottage across the street from the family home. One bedroom used for storing artwork, living/dining area used for studio. Same worktables, bookshelves, storage cabinets, file cabinets, and flat files as before. Futon in one corner converted into a bed when guests visited.

10. Second-floor faculty studio space in departmental adjunct studio building. Worktable, computer, storage racks for artwork. Four years (concurrent with following studio).

11. Two-room studio on second floor of retail/office building. Front room with same worktables, computer, bookshelves, and storage cabinets as before, and one of the flat files. Small closet for storing art and cleaning supplies. Second flat file in second room, plus hand-built storage racks for artwork. Second room later emptied, cleaned, painted, and converted into a project room for invited artists. Seven years.

12. Faculty studio space in art department studio building. Room equipped with loft storage plus built-in shelving, drafting table, and smaller worktable. Same bookshelves, storage cabinets, file cabinets, and flat files as before. New computer and printer. Six years.

13. Office in multiuse campus building. One table for computer and drawing. Storage units and university-provided laptop and printer along one wall, eight metal bookshelves along remaining three walls. Storage room across hall for finished work. Two years (concurrent with following studio).

14. Studio/office space constructed in basement of the family home. Two walls lined with bookshelves, one wall, lit by track lighting, for pinning up work. New worktable, supported by same flat files as before. Same storage cabinets, file cabinets, computer, and printer. Two years (current).

Rochelle Feinstein

My MFA thesis, in 1978, was titled "The Artist's Studio/Inside Out." In hindsight, I was clueless. I didn't ask anything compelling: What is art? Why, and where, does it art happen? Where art is made now seems as irrelevant as much art often is. Writing about the studio in 2009 is a revisitation of the subject. Artists today may locate their work, not on the basis of where it was made, but in relation to expanded fields of interest, geographies, and technologies. This wide-ranging artistic license operates, for better or worse, in the context of a deadbeat global economy.

It occurs to me that a chronicle of my making of things before they became art could be a way to consider a studio practice. A subjective conceit, perhaps, but it may cast light on the origins and variety of creative impulse. A studio is both gestalt and zeitgeist, place and non-place, whether one is a painter or a post-studio artist.

Ages 4–7 My bed, three by six feet, located in my parents' bedroom. The surface supported a menagerie of stuffed animals, systematically arranged by color, size, and species or as imagined peaceable kingdoms. I slept on this plush until my father threw out the lot.

Ages 7–10 A desk in my parents' bedroom. Rewrote and illustrated Little Women: Jo kept her hair, Laurie and Amy were deleted, Father was home, Mother was who knows where. Detailed drawings in turquoise ink (I still have the fountain pen), black lettering. Generated three or four volumes—greasy loose-leaf sheets, gum-reinforced, yarn-bound—which later "went missing."

Age 11 Undertook research. Paperbacks and movies were locationless studios. Most inspirational books: I'll Cry Tomorrow, Lillian Roth's autobiography, and Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm—the stories of a drunk and a junkie. Saturdays, took the bus to the Utopia Theater on Utopia Parkway, blocks from Joseph Cornell's home. I didn't know his name then, later fantasized we might have shared the same movie at the same time—possible with me sitting through three shows a day.

Age 12 Books thrown out and my bus pass forfeited because I had "too many fantasies" and had grown anemic from "lack of sunshine."

Age 13 I was given art materials. Took them to Alley Pond Park. Drew and painted every day after school, my first daily practice of art. When finished, wrapped everything in a plastic bag and hid it under a flat rock—protection against weather and discovery. I smelled like mulch for five years.

Since age 18 Studios include a kitchen table in Fort Greene, a dead storage space used by my graduate faculty, spare rooms in rent-controlled apartments in New York City, spaces in East village, Chinatown, Soho, Williamsburg, Tribeca, and Dumbo. These studios map an urban pattern in which artists colonize barren, undesirable industrial neighborhoods, which then historically become gentrified.

An artist's studio might be a thought-made material, or not. I started on a bed and write this on a MacBook OS X 10.5.8.

Shana Lutker Index: Dream Studio, 2003–2006

My studio is full of things—things found, things made, things that may help make more things. I have all of the New York Times from 2003 to the present, currently stored in seventy-six white file boxes lining the walls. I also have about fourteen hundred pink straws in blue boxes, dozens of lampshades, beach balls with different kinds of stripes, over four hundred pig figurines, a few brass scales, a box of empty water bottles, thousands of gold doilies, at least six gallons of Elmer's glue, an eighty-foot wide stage curtain that once belonged to the magician Doug Henning, hundreds of books presenting points of view that have since been proven wrong, and a file drawer filled with printouts from the Internet of images of or related to Freud. The following is a collection culled from my dreams, an index of appearances of the word studio from the years 2003 to 2006. In these abstracts, the studio emerges as a place of anxiety, where work happens (or doesn't happen). Also revealed are some surprising insights into the dream studio's organization, location, and inhabitants.

Studio, Working In

April 27, 2003 I was saying that it seemed like I spent all of my time at the studio, as if the guards were conspiring to keep me there. I told them that there were two guards in particular, specific guards who may have been planning to keep me at the studio until 1:00 every night.

January 13, 2006 I kept losing my water glass and going to refill it. The room was cluttered and had very orange lighting. It was an art studio or something.

August 3, 2006 I had a new studio (it used to be Skylar and Erlea's). It was a white, L-shaped room, bigger than I needed though smaller than my studio now, and it was completely empty. I had to do some work for a show but I was having a hard time figuring it out. There were some drawings I wanted to make with text in them and some other things.

September 2, 2006 I think she supported my leaving my jobs to spend more time in the studio. But I also kept getting the impression that she was implying she thought I should have a baby, which seemed out of character.

November 6, 2006 I was setting up this studio, a big room with this lofted part. I was sitting next to a penholder that had all of these strange things in it, sticks with perfectly curled tops that had been wrapped with string, and nearby were these pieces of fabric, all rolled up and stacked, that were really, really beautiful. One piece was on top of this box of scissors or feathers. I started drawing on this sheet of 8 ½ x 11 paper as I was unpacking, and somehow I could translate the alphabet of those things in the penholder; they were stand-ins for the Serbian alphabet, or some other alphabet that belonged to some rarely spoken language. I knew what the letters were and I was making this drawing of pictures that were somehow related, all of these images sort of collaged together. It was a good drawing, black pen, and I had almost filled the page when I got distracted.

Studio, Underground

May 16, 2003 The studios were cramped and dark; it might have been the space that Lauren and I looked at in West LA. I was trying to explain that I used to make videos, but no one really listened to me.

January 13, 2004 A lot of people were working in this house that was sort of underground, it was a domestic space that had been turned into studios.

Studio, and the Outdoors

April 6, 2004 For some reason Elliott took the engine of my car and hurled it onto the roof of the studio while it was running. The roof of the studio was huge and there was a lot of junk on it, and a forest. We went up there and were looking for the engine, but there was no hope of finding it.

April 28, 2005 At the end of the complex there were all of these art studios, and there was a lake in the back of the house. The house had a pool, but it was so close to all of these other pools, they looked like wading pools for the lake.

Studio, and Visitors

July 21, 2003 I went into my studio to find it, and someone had been in there and had taken out my typewriters and left them all out and broken.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0226389618
• ISBN 13: 9780226389615
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 390
• Editor: Jacob Mary Jane, Grabner Michelle