Tuesday Oct 2nd The Fall of the Studio?
Began the day in Tate bookshop and bought a new book entitled “The Fall of the Studio” Artists at Work -a provocative title discussing the demise of the traditional studio and the new forms this now takes.
….”It is now rare for art to be produced in a single spot and by a sole individual. Rather it comes into being on myriad ‘sites’, via both physical and virtual bases, and through the collaboration of different people with varied skills and backgrounds.For that matter, few artists can be said to reside in one place. Most operate in multiple locations around the globe and participate in a network of multiple artistic, institutional, and socio-political ‘actors’.” Wouter Davidts & Kim Paice.
Had a productive day reading correspondence between the artist John Latham and other artists in APG.
RESEARCH ITSELF AND THE THINKING IT GENERATES IS A CREATIVE ACT
“…APG’S particular achievement has been to develop workable strategies for placing artists in the decision-making centres of modern society – executive departments of central and local government – in such a way that the artist is able to contribute inventively as an artist to their processes of planning and decision. (APG’s work is in turn a leading manifestation of the growing international tendency for artists to explore new ways of integrating art with the processes of contemporary life.) Where APG is at present unique is in the strength of its insistence on an ideology which comes from within art rather than from politics – and in the depth of penetration it has attained for that ideology, in placing artists to work within government Ministries and other administrative organisations.” TGA 20042/1/1/5/1-37 Extract from draft of letter for Leverhulme Grant submission August 1980 . (I’m really interested in how this works out in practice and how the artist is accepted into the organisation on an equal footing.)
“Artists get to being artists not by any received information that already exists in the public vocabulary, but by having something to get out which is not within experience. This something must take priority over the rest of the considerations the world presents as important, or the individual is not what we should mean by the word (artist) APG has to serve this interest.” TGA 20042/1/1/3/1-24 Letter from John Latham
The artist can be
a catalyst,
a planner,
a liaison officer,
a researcher and editor,
a technical advisor,
a critic and a writer.
TGA 200042/1/1/1/1/1 Letter from Ian Breakwell
