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    • XVII

      • Colleen Asper Labor with Rectangle
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Monument Working Strategies LLC: Structuring Creative Freedom
      • Triple Candie Exhibition Preparations
      • Sean Raspet 2GFR24SMEZZ2XMCVI5L8X9Y38ZJ2JD…
      • Owen Kydd Handheld
      • Dan Levenson Notes From Jessica
      • Julia Rommel Easy Tacker
      • Jordan Kantor MAN(ET/DE)GAS
      • Sreshta Rit Premnath The Last Image
      • OJO The Adventures of Nuclear Wad & How He Learned To Stop Dreaming
    • XVI

      • Julia Sherman Re-Claiming Susan B. Anthony
      • Robert Hult Hasidic Street Posters in Brooklyn
      • Runo Lagomarsino Pedro’s Story: An Unsuccessful Transatlantic Traveller
      • John Houck Pine Ridge: An interview with Jim Houck
      • Brian Zegeer Dragoman of Little Syria
      • Sidney Russell Kuna Yala Swag
      • Desirée Holman Outer Spaces: Part I
      • Faith47 The Unexpected Present
      • Carmen Winant Personal Best
      • Philip-Lorca diCorcia Red Bull Snake
    • XV

      • Jessica Green & Tom Griffiths Terra Incognita (A Video Game Folly)
      • Prem Krishnamurthy The People’s Representation: On Staged Graphics in Klaus Wittkugel’s Work
      • Cian O'Day N/A, or On the Dark Stores of Brian Ulrich
      • Yasmeen M. Siddiqui Avatar Gone Analog: Musings on The Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh
      • Emily Larned ARTS 02–2011: The Artist-Created Institution as Art Practice
      • Yoonjai Choi & Ken Meier Interview with Metahaven
      • Aaron Kunin Space and Place in Two Video Installations by Amie Siegel
      • Tom Griffiths Interview with Barbara Griffiths
    • XIV

      • Colleen Asper & Justin Lieberman In Conversation
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report To The Committee On Periodical Group Exhibitions
      • Ryan Mrozowski & Mike Womack Before-Biennial-After
      • Kay Rosen Waiting for Michael Asher
      • Kate Gilmore Drag
    • XIII

      • Talia Chetrit Van Hanos’s Harlem Studio
      • Mieke Marple The Lives of Objects at The Suburban
      • Laurel Nakadate Island Light
      • C.D. Parker Draw Me a Pie Chart Powerfully
      • Alan Reid Despondent Babysitter
      • Lucy Kim & Leeza Meksin Art Crimes
    • XII

      • Anonymous On Looking at Nature: An Untitled Petition on Crapomimicry
      • Paul Huf Musical Box with a Dancing Ballerina
      • Lance Wakeling Voluntary Sculptures: Photographing the Unmonumental
      • David Kennedy-Cutler Possession Obsession
      • Nine Budde Stopping by at a Friends’ Place
      • Cody Trepte Untitled (Something Clever Here)
    • XI

      • Adam Helms Hirschhorn at Gladstone Gallery
      • David Scanavino Fact or Fiction
      • Jason Tomme The Voodoo of Robert Irwin
      • Kristin Posehn The Rocks of Rocklin
      • Joanne Greenbaum Decorating the Void: On Clay and Dirt on Delight
    • X

      • Jennifer Dudley Interview with Daniel Bozhkov
      • Dushko Petrovich & Roger White Report to the Committee on Decentered Practices
      • Shana Lutker Artists Are Not
      • Agnes Martin. Photo by Charles R. Rushton.


        Agnes Martin once remarked in a lecture that she had heard a scholar say that people were either responsible or neurotic. This, Martin said, left out the artist. I interpreted this to imply that artists should be neither responsible nor neurotic: responsible to no one, following their own minds, and free of the anxiety and distress that burdens other people. That’s nice to think about, though not very realistic. But then, maybe Martin meant that artists are both responsible and neurotic…

        We all know that artists are and are not a lot of different things, in all kinds of combinations. It is virtually impossible to define what it means to be an “artist” (not to mention all of the presumptions that will be made in this essay about what “art” is). In addition to being a job, making art is a way of looking at the world — you can do anything and say you are doing it as an artist. Trying to come up with a profession that is similarly flexible in definition, simultaneously very broad and very specific, is rather difficult.

        Perhaps because of this, artists are always struggling to define themselves, to describe what it is that they do. The relatively recent inclusion of artists into academia and the disciplinization of art means that, to some extent, there has begun to be a standardization of what it means to be an artist. It also means that there is interest in defining and studying an artist’s practice so that it can be taught.

        Marcel Duchamp playing chess.

        In general terms, the kind of artist that academia is interested in producing is one that fits into the academic system. Art as an intellectual pursuit, above and beyond the work of a skilled technician, is a modern idea, and the artists being produced by this system are supposed to think about their role as more than simply making things to decorate the walls or inspire piety. Artists now learn to think and write and talk about what they are making, and why they are making it. This logically leads to a lot of writing and reading and talking about art by artists, which leads to art journals and exhibition spaces run by artists.

        An art historian might teach at a university, write essays, organize conferences, run an art journal, and curate exhibitions. Well, I do those things too — and all of those things are part of my role as an artist. But I also make art.

        And of course there are some things that artists do that are not part of being an artist. One artist I know works as an accountant; she doesn’t consider this to be part of her practice.

        Some artists play chess, and even that might be considered part of their practice, or at least an important influence. Marcel Duchamp was obsessed with chess, and really good at it. Man Ray and Francis Picabia played too. It seems that their chess-playing influenced their work both inside and outside of the studio. They all three made artworks somehow inspired by the game. In 1917, Picabia and author Henri-Pierre Roché played a game of chess to decide whose art magazine would be allowed to keep running, Picabia’s 391 or Roche’s Blind Pig. Picabia won; the Blind Pig folded, and 391 published nineteen issues.

        Leonardo da Vinci, Original source: Hundred Greatest Men, The. New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1885. This engraving has been based on a painting by an unknown artist which in turn has been based upon a red chalk drawing thought to be a self-portrait of Leonardo. This engraving is an image representing Leonardo, not a true portrait.

        Maybe it’s incorrect to suggest that the multi-tasking artist’s lineage only goes back to the modern era. Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his Treatise on Painting, “It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well — such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like — in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually.” He might have meant that it’s important to be good at painting different things, but I interpret his words to be about the importance of failure. Part of being an artist is to continually make things difficult, so that what comes out is different that what was made before. An artist is always trying to find the boundaries of what she is good at, and to try to make something out of that struggle to move outside of that boundary. Failure, Agnes Martin has said, is something that artists do, and do repeatedly — unlike other people, who are scared to fail even once.

        While doing a lot of different things, and expanding one’s practice outside of the studio, is not generally geared towards deliberately expanding one’s personal field of failure, it does allow an artist to carry on some activities that fall outside of the constant struggle with failure taking place inside the studio. In other words, leaving the studio every once and a while can be a good thing.

        Shana Lutker is an artist based in Los Angeles and Managing Editor of X-TRA.

        Sources:
        All Artists are Not Chess Players
        391. Edited by Francis Picabia
        A Treatise on Painting

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      • Steve Cairns & Isla Leaver-Yap Blind Carbon Copy
      • Katarina Burin Rooms No One Lives In
      • Jonathan Bogarin What’s Your Context?
      • Sara Greenberger Rafferty Master of None
    • IX

      • Andrea Hill Fact, Factoid, Factotum
      • Nicholas Weist We’re Interested in Your White Horse
      • Tyler Coburn Ronnie Bass at I-20
      • Allison Kave Doa Aly and Juan William Chavez
      • Gillian Sneed Interview with Adam Pendleton
    • VIII

      • Jacob Hashimoto Interview with Luis Gispert
      • Lilly McElroy Guy Maddin’s Winnipeg
      • Kevin Zucker Thematic Apperception Test
      • Ian Cooper That’s What He Said
      • Colleen Asper Interview with Matt Borruso
    • VII

      • Mieke Marple Interview with Michelle Grabner
      • Farrah Karapetian Reframing Mirrors and Windows
      • Ruby Sky Stiler That’s What She Said
      • Spencer Finch New Zealand Light
      • Dana Frankfort John Walker: Text in/and Painting
      • The Editors Whitney Biennial 2008
    • VI

      • Katie Herzog Bay Area Figurative Language
      • Matt Connors Teignmouth Electron by Tacita Dean
      • Connelly LaMar New Photography 2007 at MOMA
      • Ethan Greenbaum Inside Lights
      • Matthew Lancit Cleaning Magritte’s Pipe
    • V

      • Roger White Jay Heikes at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Interview with Michael DeLucia
      • Erin Shirreff Michel Auder: The Feature
      • Jessica Lansdon Interview with Brian Bress
      • Lisha Bai Suzanne Song at Michael Steinberg Fine Art
    • IV

      • Mariah Robertson Conditions in Time
      • Jacob Feige Psychopathia Pastoralis
      • Eric Golo Stone Interview with George Kontos
      • Skyler Brickley Keith Tyson at PaceWildenstein
      • Lumi Tan Curatorial Project with Jo-ey Tang
    • III

      • George Rush Wayne Gonzales at Paula Cooper
      • Jacqueline Cooper Margaret Wall-Romana at Bucheon Gallery
      • Ana Wolovick Robin Rhode at Perry Rubenstein
      • Skyler Brickley Nicholas Krushenick at Marianne Boesky
      • Luke Stettner Peter Young at PS1
      • Ethan Greenbaum Daniel Gordon Interview
    • II

      • Christine Frerichs Rebecca Morris at Karyn Lovegrove Gallery
      • Skyler Brickley Josh Smith at Luhring Augustine
      • Ethan Greenbaum Kristen Baker at Deitch Projects
    • I

      • Mark Barrow On Abstraction
      • Tova Carlin Superstudio
      • Julia Weist Johannes Vanderbeek at Zach Feuer
      • Skyler Brickley Wilhelm Sasnal at Anton Kern
      • Ethan Greenbaum Cement Garden at Marvelli Gallery