Art Work by Sally Mann

I read Art Work by Sally Mann.

On the flight to ICANN84 I’d finished the only book I brought, so I walked around a bookstore in Dublin to find a book that I’d want to own (I usually read a library copy before buying) but hadn’t read yet. There was a full-table spread of Art Work on the second floor. An American photographer from Virginia on a table in Ireland. The book’s packaging is well done: clever title and cover with spot gloss on the photograph; thick, smooth paper stock so that all her photos print in high resolution.

Sally Mann is a really good writer.

On “manufactured luck” in cities

For starters, most ambitious young artists and writers put in the obligatory stint in grad school, the more prestigious the better, where they will make friendships and meet the cohort within which they will burst onto the scene, bushy-tailed and sharp-elbowed. To do that, the majority move to a city where they can meet still more artists and writers, but, more importantly, the people who can help them on their quest for attention and success: gallerists, publishers, collectors, and rich, connected people.

This is carefully manufactured luck, not the pure, palm-to-forehead variety, and I see many young artists in possession of it. I was not one of those. (16)

Sally is a good counterexample of the “you must move to San Francisco” argument (borrowed from startup circles). She’s smart, ambitious, and successful, and she lives in Lexington, Virginia.

I’m personally invested in this topic having moved from Brooklyn to Cincinnati a couple years ago...and now considering a move back to NYC in the next couple years. We’re fond of Cincy. We’ve liked our time here and would be genuinely sad to leave it. I’ve had some good local career moments and maybe even some palm-to-forehead luck, but on the balance, I think manufactured luck rewards ambition more.

On artist suffering

From her chapter on rejection:

I believe artists should suffer.

Not just as an obligatory rite of passage, something that you can cut corners on or pay somebody to do in your stead, like the wealthy avoiding war service...And I’m not talking about glamorizing suffering, or publicly displaying your personal pain in all the myriad, often self-destructive ways we devise to do so, nor do I see it as a cross-off-able Herculean labor. The point is not to get to the other side of performative suffering...the point, as you have surely been told countless times, is to build character. Without character, you will have nothing to say. (33)

It bothers me when people glamorize suffering, so I’m glad she makes that distinction. Julia Cameron does a good job puncturing the suffering artist image in The Artist’s Way. Counterexample: I think Scott Jurek’s North glamorized suffering (for runners, not artists).

I don’t agree that all artists should suffer. I am a fan of type 2 fun, which you might call suffering, so maybe I’m making a semantic argument. But it doesn’t feel like suffering to me. Rejection—like from a job I really wanted or a magazine I pitched—does feel acutely disappointing, but I wouldn’t call it suffering. And it doesn’t mean you “have nothing to say.” At least I hope not. My nerdy nonfiction book doesn’t require suffering—it requires hard work to be good, sure, but not suffering.

Then again, I my writing feels most important or, I don’t know, magical, when I’m suffering. I mean important to me (because writing through pain can be a way out) and suffering from something outside the “art work” itself (e.g. family conflict).

On editorial rigor

From her chapter on killing your darlings (emphasis mine):

Sure, they’re your darlings, but if they’re not good enough, send them straight to the choppy-chop. Faulkner was right about that, even if he wasn’t the originator of the famous quote...and didn’t necessarily think he needed to apply it to his own writing; if one thing in your creative career will define your work for all time, it will be your editorial rigor.

...nobody makes consistently brilliant work. But the impact of what little brilliant work we do make will be diluted by the mediocre work if it’s out there too...Wait until you have a lot of it, even if it’s decades, ruthlessly cull out the mediocrities, even if you love them, then slip the winches and set the good stuff out to sea. (201, 202)

I’ve been digital gardening for over two years now. Not a long time, but not a short time either. There are a couple things here that run counter to the whole gardening shtick, giving me pause about my blogging philosophy.

I often tell friends to start their own website and that no one will read it at first, which is a good thing. It allows you space to experiment in your corner of the internet. You can selectively send out links to stuff you’ve written (or recorded, painted, whatever) as you grow more comfortable with your voice and what you want your space to be. Unfiltered gardening is ok when no one reads your stuff—good when you’re starting out, but not as good once you’ve written a bunch of stuff. At some point you need that “editorial rigor” as Sally Mann calls it.

There are ways to visually signal the completeness and quality of your work. I can’t remember where, but I saw a digital garden that uses a handwriting font to convey draft status. Those affordances help, but at the end of the day editorial rigor might be required. Don’t even let readers see your mediocre work. Choppy-chop.