That rhythm of progress
Or why I think artists should slow down, step out, retreat, and miss some deadlines
Hello from my studio to yours,
This week, as my writing deadline for this newsletter came and went, I’ve been thinking about the space between what we expect ourselves to do and what we actually do. What we set out for ourselves, what our days actually look like, and how we find a middle ground between these things.
Many of the artists I work with carry the worry of comparing themselves to other artists within their immediate communities. This week, a friend and client asked me: “What do I say to people when they ask me why I don’t sell my work? What do I say when they want to know what I make or when I will have an exhibition?” In fact, she felt so distressed by these questions, that she told me she preferred not to be called an artist. “I’m not making anything,” she said. “How can I call myself an artist?”
“But you are still alive,” I said to her, startled by how extreme this observation felt, but also how true. And, being alive, is perhaps what our energy has gone toward this year (or at least among my communities this has been a serious priority, requiring significant focus and attention). Why would sales of your work matter, now?*
The larger question she was asking was about productivity as it determines the validity of what we do. This is probably the most common question I am asked, by artists who are looking for their path in a world that is intentionally exclusive and mysterious about its inner workings. It’s a question that underscores how cultural ideas of forward-momentum derail our own sense of what is important, our own natural rhythms of making. In some cases, this emphasis on progress, productivity, and success even provokes questions about who we are, particularly when we fail to meet the goals and deadlines we set—or think we should set—for ourselves. How can I call myself a writer, if I didn’t get this newsletter to you yesterday, on time?
You may have heard a cocktail party version of this well-intentioned productivity question, which often comes in the form of: “What have you been up to?” “What line of work are you in?” “When will you finish that dissertation?” “How is the job search going?” “Where can I see your work?” “How’s that book manuscript coming along?” “Do you have a gallery?”
I’m not against the idea of moving forward, of completing a task, of celebrating milestones. I want galleries to represent and support you, and I want museums to call and beg to show your work. I want your book to be published to immediate and widespread acclaim. But, I am convinced that the amount of time we spend focused on these external markers is out of whack and needlessly pressured. It is even counter-productive, not just to our work, but to our fundamental well-being as creative souls.
I am writing this note to you during my weekly writing group session. This week’s session leader is a brilliant and radical academic who also writes fiction, someone I admire tremendously. She drew our shared prompt from Anna Tsing’s book The Mushroom at the End of the World. “Progress is embedded, too, in widely accepted assumptions about what it means to be human,” Tsing writes. Words like agency, consciousness, intention, even the casual phrase looking forward are part of a widely accepted emphasis on constant striving and heroic able-ness.
Think about how we call our art “work,” because that is the best word we seem to have for what we make. But work is also the labor we do for money, not inherently the space of imagination. As Tsing observes, this emphasis on momentum is how we divide ourselves from non-human species, who do not think about the future in the same way, or at all. “As long as we imagine humans are made through progress, nonhumans are stuck within this imaginative framework, too.” That is, our notion of temporality (in the West, particularly) traps the non-human world in its destructive path, without seeing that there are other ways of being: moving sideways, moving slowly, not moving at all, stepping back, falling apart. “Without that driving beat,” Tsing writes, “we might notice other temporal rhythms.”
Am I saying that our insistence on endless applications, gallery sales, exhibitions, and constant production is accelerating climate change? Maybe… At the very least, I am saying that they are entangled with one another.
My writing friend’s evocative prompt for us included the questions: “Thinking about whatever story you might be telling now, what is the story without progress and its driving beat? What objects, life forms, entities, possibilities, could you pay attention to? What has been ignored because it didn’t fit the time line?” I want to ask you the same thing. When do you allow yourself to step out of insistent forward movement and just get down and dirty with the imaginative possibilities outside of production and sales and awards and publishing, and, and, and…? How can you resist, subvert, and stop this persistent forward march?
My client friend was feeling stymied this week by external deadlines for submitting her new work for an exhibition. The deadline had overtaken her creative process, leaving her feeling uninspired and blocked. But outside of that imposed time line, she had so many new ideas, so many directions she was exploring as she imagined returning to her studio. She felt embarrassed not to be producing the work yet, and I wanted to hug her as I insisted that the ideas are part of the work. In fact, they’re perhaps the most important part.
In a collection of essays titled Tell Them I Said No, Martin Herbert offers historical examples of artists who effectively resist the machineries of the art world. Herbert thinks about retreat as an aspect of creative survival, in contrast to the prevailing idea that we must be constantly present. Writing about artists such as Agnes Martin, David Hammons, Cady Noland, and Trisha Donnelly (among others), Herbert concludes that one unexpected outcome of moving away from the constant self-promotion, incessant production, and endless presence the art world demands is that the art world wants you even more! Rest easy: if you disappear from this cycle of production, someone will find your work and celebrate it.
Perhaps this is my long-winded way of apologizing for not sending you this newsletter yesterday morning (I am sorry about this, and I’m confident that I’ll return to the more regular schedule next week). But in that particular failure, I am also interested in what it means to soften our relationship to the word should. What should you be doing these days, in year three of pandemic living? I really don’t know. But what I wish for you, rather than the stress of should is the groundedness of not knowing. Let go of the shoulds and focus on the living. From there—I promise—the work will come, in its own time.
With gratitude for your reading,
Laura
*This is my question for the folks who are able to survive without sales; my response is of course quite different, geared toward building a workable strategy, for artists who need to sell their work in order to feed themselves or their families and kinship networks.
Laura August, PhD makes essays and exhibitions, lumpy pots and wild gardens. She has curated more than 20 exhibitions as an independent curator working between the U.S. and Central America. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Mellon Arts + Practitioner Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, and her writing has been recognized with an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Alongside her consulting practice for artists and writers, she teaches a process, practice, and professional strategies class for artists at the Glassell School of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.