Rebel Artists Unite!


In high school, I was one of those angry outcasts who couldn't wait to grow up. I thought "When I'm an adult, I can do what I want! I won't have to jump through hoops for my teachers. I won't have to kiss up to stupid rich kids. I won't have to conform to fit in!"

I imagined that when I grew up, I'd just hang out with lots of crazy, smart people. We would talk big ideas, make great art, have lots of sex and drink lots of beer. And we would actually make waves! Because rebel kids can break the rules, but rebel adults can change them.

Well, I just turned thirty, and I guess I'm an adult now. By now I've realized that people don't grow up, they just get older. The adult world is actually just a more cynical version of the teenage world. The art world, for instance, is not much different than high school. There are rampant jealousies, daily insecurities, delusions of grandeur and lots of self-centered egotism. There are brown-nosers and bullies, back-stabbers and do-gooders, socialites and social rejects.

But if the art world is just like high school, I wonder what happened to the loudmouth sluts, the drug-dealing punks, the awkward poets and the brilliant nerds? When did we all turn into the good students, the happy cheerleaders and the simple-minded jocks? Why has everyone joined student council and stopped smoking pot?

In high school, artists were the rebels. We didn't even want to fit in. But now we're tying bows around our ears, wagging our tails like puppies at the pound, hoping some gallery owner will please come and take us home. We don't even want to be transgressive, we're so damn eager to please!

How did we become so complacent? When did having nothing to lose change into having nothing at stake? When did dumb hard work and fashionable conformity become the key to a successful career? When did we stop playing the art world, and the art world start playing us?

Right now the art scene seems tragically boring. But it's us artists who're to blame. Graduate schools may have trained us, but they've also tamed us. We've been taught how to cultivate correct conceptual content, design the perfect package to put it in and find the coolest theories to wrap around it. Coming out of school we feel savvy and smart; ready to take on the art world. But there's a fine line between learning a system in order to manipulate it and learning the rules to better conform to them. I wonder if we know the difference.

I recently heard about a professor who had asked his graduate students about ambition. I thought: what a great idea! Encouraging students to make ambitious art; art that risks failure and demands an active audience. But this professor was actually talking about career strategies. Did these students want to get into the Whitney someday? And how did they think they might achieve that?

Well of course we all want to have successful careers. Success is no longer a dirty word in our circles. It's obvious that art requires an audience, and the bigger the audience we can get, the better. But isn't it ass backwards to put career-strategizing before art-making? And most importantly, doesn't this just make for boring, low-aiming art?

We shouldn't be making our art to fit into preexisting models. We should be thinking up new models for making art. If the art world is actually dictating the terms of our practice, then the game is over, and we should all just stop. We're not doing anything important here.

On the other hand, maybe all is not lost. We could really make some waves if we wanted to. We just need to stop making safe art and start making great art! Let's stop kissing ass and listen to our rebel hearts instead.

Cindy Loehr
New Art Examiner, Nov/Dec 2001