I've gotten myself in trouble yet again... but it's been quite a few years since it last happened so maybe it's not a recurring theme... but just one of those things.
So over the last year and a half or so I've been linked with a gallery and we've been going from strength to strength. The man had sold a few of my bits and pieces, in and around other shows, and I'd set up a group show that went quite well earlier this year. Recently we'd done another show, which is on now, but I stuffed up monumentally by taking on fibreglassing and not being able to get the artworks ready for the show.
I did, though, do a few works on the side, a coupla paintings and an assemblage or two, so I was covered and we got a show together. But the Boss man wasn't happy about me not being able to pull off what I'd said I'd do so it was demotion time... back to square one. All good I suppose, I can handle humility, but the way it was done left me somewhat put out and I made a decision to remove myself from the gallery but with the door still ajar if the gallery owner was willing to admit a little responsibility in the debacle that was my undoing.
The thing was that if the understanding we had going into the exhibition was purely commercial then I'm totally with his decision; it's a pragmatic choice that if someone doesn't come up with what they say they will then things need to happen, simple! But when friendships involved, and we'd become rather palsy in the build up to the exhibition and really enjoyed the construction of a vision for the gallery in the future, then one expects friends to come to the rescue when you stuff up. I think that that's what friendship is all about; sharing the load.
I was talking with a good friend last night, who's already well over my emoting over the issue at hand, but during the conversation she mentioned the difference between commercial and personal... and I just don't do that. My ethical base is such that I will no longer act purely commercially in any given situation. Its all personal!
So when a friend leaves me out in the cold, in a time of trouble for me, then I'm aware that I'd rather be somewhere warmer. I suppose what it comes down to with me is that the art itself is beside the point. The art matters but it doesn't matter as much as the interpersonal relationships. Art is merely the vehicle, the tool, to be in a place where people come first.
It's times like these where the ideal of being a socialist are put to the test. If I were a capitalist then the stuff would come first, being part of a gallery would be more important than the short term backward slide that's been allotted to me but being I'm a socialist, social over capital, then the nature of our relationship, between me and the gallery owner, is more important.
And it's not a pride thing either, I can eat humble pie till the cows come home, it's about self worth and defining the area you work in and making sure that the flow of respect is even between all the people present. If somebody decides to use position and power to define themselves as better than others, even when the excuse is commercial validity, then it's time for me to move on and seek a place where the reality is more attuned to my beliefs.
And that belief is basically simple. I believe that holding ideals and causes, and serving them with rationality and pragmatism, as uppermost and that they serve people first and these people are supported by stuff, capital serving social,... is the only way to achieve success... a lasting and solid success that can be used by others to rise up to the best that they can be. To me this is the only way to build an authenticism into any venture so that people coming to it as an enterprise can feel subconsciously that it is a valid and worthy enterprise.
This may seem irrational, and it basically is irrational, but does that matter?
In the arts, as in all other fields where progress is a given requirement, to do as has been done before is rational but it defeats the purpose of progress. The new, the untried; the stuff of progress, is always irrational except in the slightly twisted oxymoron whereby it is rational to be irrational if progressing is the required outcome. Rationality always comes afterwards. Something must be first done in an untried way for progress to occur and afterwards the measuring and allocating can occur that makes it rational but initially any movement forward is irrational.
All well and good but I've left out the idea of failure because as we all know that to attempt the untried means that failure is a very valid possible outcome. It simply is this way. The amount of progress required is equal to the amount of failure that must be accepted.
So when my friend accepts the amount of progress I am attempting but denies me when the outcome is failure then that friend is unable to make progress, simply by denying the failure, and so I have to move on to a climate more attune to a reality I believe in. It's funny but only a few weeks ago I'd met a fellow socialist and when we were doing the get to know each other thing I'd said that one can only achieve progress by being entirely accepting of failure. I suppose now that I actually understand that in the sense that without accepting possible failure you can't progress.
I'd say that this personal success and progress is just that. A state whereby we are able to achieve progress,with our physical presence supporting our spiritual self, with a realistic admixture of the rational, that which we've done, mixed with the irrational... which needs to be done.
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