Melaney Ann Mitchell

I have been living in Kansas City, Missouri half a decade now, and the main discussion I find

myself in is that we need more writing. We have great conversations at every opening,

Boulevards in the hands of every artist and their friends. They speak honestly about the

works they see, and as they head home the discussion continues maybe in a tweet or a post

to Facebook; a vague comment about the work, or to congratulate their colleague on the

show. The critical discussion – both positive and negative – seems to disappear. It’s as if

Kansas City’s dialogue is a cherished vapor that very few are willing to freeze into words.

Is art writing really that scary? I look at cities like New York and Chicago where the art

scenes and discussions are translating into successful blogs like Art F City, Hyperallergic,

and Bad at Sports. Do these publications exist in these cities because they have schools that

teach the craft of art writing? I can’t see this as true. The craft has been publicly criticized

bitterly and compared to overhyped advertising. Filled with a academic jargon taken from a

bounty of e-flux press releases, has art writing simply a way to broadcast the names of

artists to give them a buyable allure?

Another point stems from the artists themselves in the need they feel to create a body of

work that stands up to the way it is being written about.Is the academicism honest, and if it is

why do so many artists struggle with simple written forms of interpretation like artist

statements and press releases? Can artists interact authentically with culture without burying

the purpose of their work in academic jargon? As an art student, I felt naive in my lack of

understanding the language of my peers, but at the same time I saw right through it. Is it

wrong to make work about what non-artists understand? How can an artist expect to sell art

if their buyers didn’t have the privilege to sit in a room and talk about Jacques Derrida for

several hours every Wednesday? If non-artists are the ones we want to purchase art but

they cannot speak or decode the language, it creates an uncomfortable barrier. Is it up to the

artists themselves or the writers to break this? Intellectual discourse is at the heart of many

artistic and written practices, and I don’t mean to say that it is bad. However, can we expand

the language ourselves, accept a more informal tone and yet convey the same thing to our

audience?

Image from NV in KC courtesy of Judith G payday loans Levy. Image credit: Megan Mantia

Art writing has another layer that tends to make people shy away from the practice; it

establishes a hierarchy. Kansas City is a small town, and critical writing can cause issues

within the city’s artistic social structure. I recently had a studio visit with Judith G. Levy, a

local artist who wrote and directed “NV in KC: A Story About Artists and Envy in Kansas

City”. In this film, the fictional lead character creates a chart of the perceived hierarchy of

Kansas City artists and art institutions, and documents the reactions of the community to it. I

wanted to know how Levy thought artists responded to her film.”No one expressed anything

negative to me my having made a film about envy, and many artists who saw the film told me it captured what feeling envious is like for them. I continue to be interested in this

conversation.” Do we become envious of the people in the community who get written

about? And if we do, why not write about our own ideas and use that effort to move us away

from envy and towards a greater sense of empowerment?

Competition and hierarchy are part of human nature and can be harnessed productively. So

many artists want to have their work in an exhibition in order to move up a few notches on

that chart in their heads. Can’t we use the envy we have for those artists with works in

Kansas City blue chip galleries, by doing exactly what musicians, who have a significant

online presence, are doing and get our voices heard online too.

Can an artist’s work be “viral” like a video of a cat or the digital release of an album? Could

that in turn lead to more authentic and artist-driven notoriety? Imagine if you had the ability to

reach out to a collective audience that spanned from Overland Park to Shanghai, and that

allowed you to access the marketplace for your work. What would it mean if artists took more

control via the internet to sweep them from the obscurity of their studio into the art market?

And would this succeed? We need to be artists payday that speak up and reach for larger

audiences. Kansas City is wealthy with intelligent, witty, talented artists. As a community we

need to share our thoughts and ideas on our own work and our peers’ work through written

word. We cannot leave the job of showcasing the vast and sophisticated dialogue to the

small group of art writers that exist here. It isn’t an issue of making work faster I don’t think,

or making work that looks a certain way, or making work that yells the loudest. However, we

need to expand our social agency as artists through writing, and in turn expand the dialogue

among ourselves and the marketplace.

WRITE NOW!

May Second Friday Exhibition Radar