Visiting artist Janine Antoni (right) with GW student and artist Rachel Schechtman. Photo: Meg Clark
Students of The George Washington University’s (GW) Fine Arts program have an exceptional opportunity to meet one-on-one with leading and emerging contemporary visual artists that participate in our Conversations with Artists series. The morning after their public program, artists lead critiques (“crits”) of students’ work. They spend about 30 minutes each with four to five students and then conclude the morning with a communal lunch with students and faculty. A mutually inspiring process, the crits are a welcome challenge that proves equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. This semester, I accompanied visiting artists Janine Antoni and William Pope.L to GW and listened in on the crits, fascinated to witness the exchange of ideas between veteran and student.
While I was there, I had the opportunity to observe the evolution of graduate student Wesley Clark’s master thesis work, Constructs (pictured below). Clark’s installation is on view through April 24 in Gallery Classroom 102 at GW’s Smith Hall of Art.
Visiting artist William Pope.L (left) with GW student and artist Wesley Clark. Photo: Dean Kessmann
I also found humor in the studios and work spaces in the department:
"Guide for Consumption and Placement" Photo: Meg Clark
The course is taught by Anne Goodyear, associate curator of prints and drawings at the National Portrait Gallery and adjunct professor of art history at the George Washington University, in collaboration with the George Washington University. It focuses on the evolution of exhibition practices and collecting of modern and contemporary art starting with the Armory Fair of 1913 and ending with examples from present day.
Karen spoke to the students about the history of The Phillips Collection and spent some time outside the library’s Reading Room so that students could observe photographs and archival materials that speak to the museum’s early history. Karen also led the students on a tour of works in the collection relevant to their discussion of Duncan Phillips’s relationship with fellow collectors and artists, including Arthur Dove, Katherine Dreier, Marsden Hartley, and Alfred Stieglitz.
Janine Antoni, "Inhabit," Digital C-print, 2009, 116 1/2 x 72 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Each season has a theme that ties the conversations together. This season’s theme, “Art as Experience,” emphasizes the importance of experience over interpretation, drawing much from the philosophy of museum founder Duncan Phillips as well as theorist John Dewey whose writings on what constitutes an experience in art inspired the theme. While the experience of an artwork may be validated with the expiration of its material (material that may very well be integral to the piece) we must transcend this materiality to experience the purity of the artist’s intent.
It goes without saying that it is more difficult to have an experience with some artists’ work than others. Sometimes we just don’t get it. Even after a wonderfully in-depth conversation with an artist we still may not understand his or her intent. I can’t tell you how many times I have left a conversation more confused than when it began–but I consider these inconclusive discussions a success on the artist’s part. He or she has set me on a search for understanding.
You may not need to view the artist’s work in real time (as opposed to slides) in order to have an experience, to understand the intent. These artists are so well versed in explaining and relating their work that you can form a fond appreciation from merely a 2D experience. Then there are artists for whom the conversation is a performance, in which case the conversation is the experience, and you cannot help but be enveloped in the intent (or perhaps realize the trickery after-the-fact).
This fall we heard from two artists, Wolfgang Laib and Jill Downen, both of whose works are densely material and implicitly spiritual, as well as from the London-based artist collective, The Otolith Group - whose conversation/performance challenged notions of how we interpret images in contemporary society.
The conversations continue in February when we welcome Anthony McCall, whose work focuses on the relationship of the human body with space, creating a heightened sense of self awareness. In the video below, McCall discusses his light sculpture Between You and I, which was part of Creative Time’s first quadrennial PLOT/09: This World & Nearer Ones.
Performance artists Janine Antoni and William Pope.L round out the 2011-12 season in March and April. Antoni describes her work and relationship with material in Art21’s segment on “Loss and Desire.”
Conversations with Artists programs require advance registration as space is limited. Visit the museum calendar for more information and to make a reservation.
