How Artists Can Become Recession-Proof | Big Think

How Artists Can Become Recession-Proof

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Remaining distanced from the profit motive should help artists make it through the recession, says the painter.

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Ross Bleckner:

Ross Bleckner received his Bachelor of Arts degree from NYU and his Master of Fine Arts degree from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia California. He is well-known for his large-scale paintings in the art world and his works have been shown in esteemed public collections throughout the world, including MoMA, MoCA, Astrup Fearnley, Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mr. Bleckner is also recognized as the youngest artist ever to have a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In addition to Mr. Bleckner's works, he has taught at many of the nation's most prestigious universities. Additionally, he is president of Community Research Initiative on AIDS (CRIA), a non-profit community-based AIDS research and treatment education center.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: How can artists make it through difficult economic times?

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Ross Bleckner:When I first came to New York, it was a pretty lean time. Me and my friends, everybody who had any idea that they were going to make a living. I tell you, nobody, nobody.

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I went to graduate school at California Institute of the Arts. I graduated NYU. I got my M.F.A. I didn’t get an M.F.A. to network and to find a gallery. I got an M.F.A. because I thought, and I knew, eventually, I’m going to have to go and teach, maybe.

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There are all kinds of things you can do. You know, throughout the later ‘80s and also in the late ‘80s, it was kind of a slump, ‘90s. It was kind of a boom time. But I’ve been through the downtimes and you get through them.

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How do you live in this present moment? As a young artist, I’m not going to say; listen, I teach at NYU Graduate and I see the level of anxiety.

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But I also see a kind of calm, a kind of retrenching, a kind of re-understanding of who should really become an artist and why, that they say to me that they don’t expect anything. So what gets stripped away is the sense of entitlement that a lot of artists who have been doing very well, who got literally out of the gate. And the extremely well aren’t used to it. And they are going to have to learn how to deal. Maybe, maybe not, who knows? Everybody’s situations are different.

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But I think if you’re a young artist, first of all, you’re not used to the money. So don’t have expectations that you’re going to get used to it, it opens up all these worlds for you. I mean, there’s community work, there’s service work, there’s non-profit work, there’s travel, there’s opening up spaces collectively. It’s basically very at [hock].

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And I think what comes out of that becomes the work that solidifies itself, [has] the year or the next year or the third year and to however long this goes on, continues.

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And it’s also true, the businesses, not just in the art world, we’re all in the same world. We just went through a period where it was a winner take all mentality. That wasn’t the Bush years. Now, I think, we’re entering a period of how do you get through the next few years and who survives [IB]. And I think it just might be the people, including the artists, who somehow will be able to get in touch of the reason why they originally became artists. And it wasn’t the fun, it wasn’t the money, it wasn’t the irony, it was really the necessity to, you know, express something that they wanted to put into the world.

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Card: How can we leverage uncertainty?

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Ross Bleckner: What I think that is so interesting and what will change things forever is the lack of certainty. The fact that, finally, you come to a point in our cultural life where we could all look at each over and say nobody knows.

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When I hear Alan Greenspan sit in front of a congregational committee and say, “Well, that’s what I thought but nobody knew,” I think that’s pretty startling.

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And I’m not just talking about economic thinkers and policy makers but that goes all the way down the line, all the way down the line, you know.

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How do you create the new possibilities anywhere? You create them by mistake, by embracing this sense of uncertainty that’s going on now. Because that’s what really is. That’s, in a way, what really should’ve been, what was, was the delusion.

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