WIRdy

By Writer in Residence Blair Brennan

​Art writing should be art or shut the fuck up you’re bringing me down.
—Glen O’Brien

“Why does Latitude 53 need a writer in residence?” It was a question posed to previous Writer in Residence (WIR) Megan Bertagnolli. Megan did not go into too much detail when she told me but I will pretend that the question did not descend into the usual waste-of-tax-payers-money diatribe. Let’s believe that the question is really about the connection between words and visual art.

Language and visual art are about thinking and communicating. This is not as simple a concept as it seems because there are many who believe that art is about looking more than thinking. Edmonton’s past is filled with artists and a few ignominious writers of that sort so this is important to note. Writing and art are, however, parallel discourses that overlap when we talk or write about art or when art includes language.

As a reader of much varied critical assessment of art and more than the daily required intake of artist statements (dangerously high levels sometimes). I have some concerns about art writing. All writing is part of a community’s historical record. I’m indebted to Regina-based artist and writer, David Garneau, for making this apparent to me along with his general encouragement for my own writing. At their best, both critical writing and artist statements are valuable tools for contextualizing an essentially visual experience. At its worst, art writing (by reviewers, critics, art historians and artists) is used to prop up weak ideas and otherwise unsuccessful art work. There is no other discipline where it is as easy to “baffle with bullshit” than art writing.

To counter this problem I attempt to practice Glen O’Brien’s advice:

Let’s get busy. Let’s clean house and embarrass the shit out of the poseurs.​ Let’s ​knock em out. Let’s act as nasty as Jesus on a bad-hair day. Let’s write​ like a ​drive by shooting. Let’s talk up a war of words that makes the world funnier and ​more beautiful.

Here I should also comment on the artist-critic. While O’Brien pleads for more artist writers, art critic Peter Plagens decries “Mommas, don’t let your artists grow up to be critics”. The elephant in the room, or “800-pound Janus” as Plagens puts it, is conflict of interest.

Plagens mentions the harshness that some artist-critics reserve for art that is similar to their own (i.e. “the competition”) and the possibility that artist writers will not be written about (especially by other artist–critics) for fear of retribution. He states that artist–critics may have difficulty getting represented by commercial galleries, being purchased by collectors and may not be included in group exhibitions for which their work would otherwise be suitable. Plagens is thorough. He makes a good case against the artist writer but I would rather read what an artist has to say about art galleries, granting institutions, public art commissions, etc. After all, you don’t ask the rich if the food bank is working.

Here endeth the lesson but I’ll go to tell you what you’ll find on Latitude’s WIR for the next six months or so:

Information on current shows (primarily in the capital region), specific concerns of mine regarding visual arts and art writing in Edmonton along with other info on projects that I’m engaged in. Some recycling, things I’ve written in the past (some previously published some unpublished but all of it re-contextualized for the WIR project) and experimental writing projects – art writing that is art and all of it, I hope, “as nasty as Jesus on a bad hair day.”