(Adapted from the
Emily Carr Institute Writing Centre handout, “Writing an Artist's Statement.” http://www.eciad.bc.ca/wc/artstate.htm)
Artists' statements, depending on their intended audience, vary in length,
form, and substance. The following are some of the elements to take into
account:
- Your audience
- Your purpose
or concept
- The materials
and medium in which you work
- The subject
of your work
- The artists,
theories, and methodologies that influenced your work
- Your own
personal perspective or background.
The interconnected relationship of this
information makes it very difficult to break down into separate categories.
Because artists' statements vary so much, you will need to look at a
variety of examples. Look at the statements provided in exhibition catalogues
(the library has shelves full of these) as well as those on the link
to artists' statements on the Web.
Please, remember that for our purposes, your artist's statement must reflect
your concept and the way that the other elements described above support
that concept. The following is meant only to provide you with questions
and strategies that may help you get started. These questions should also
prove to be useful if you are writing a proposal for a show, a grant application,
or a letter of intent.
Who are you? What is
your background?
Are you a student,
a practicing artist, or both? What is your educational background? Is this
your first show, or one of many? What are your interests? How did your
ideas develop? Are you a collector, an observer, a traveler, an adventurer?
Are you curious about other cultures? Are you interested in exploring gender
issues, theories, memories questions of identity, the relationships between
form and function, certain shapes, brush strokes, shots, etc.? How does
your background influence your work? Are you haunted by various forms of
painting, photography, sculpture, film? What is it you like to explore?
What medium do you prefer to work in? What did you initially set out to
explore, investigate and discover? How did this perspective change as your
work took shape?
Audience, occasion
or situation:
What
prompted you to write this statement? Is this a 300-word statement that
is meant to accompany a grant proposal, or a 1,500-word statement that
will accompany a catalog or a book? Obviously, if you are writing a 300-word
statement and you are having to explain your artistic process as it reflects
your experiences in the art department program, you will mostly want to
focus on your personal perspective, your own process of exploration, and/or
the methodologies and theories that have influenced you the most. Your
viewer/reader will already be aware of who you are, your purpose and the
occasion. But this certainly will not be the case when you are applying
to the South Carolina Arts Commission, writing for a catalog, or providing
information that will be used on a didactic panel that is part of a larger
exhibition. In the case of such a wider audience, you might also mention
who your intended audience is-in other words, for whom you make your work.
This is often integrally related to your choice of venue, and you might
consider mentioning this fact in light of the work's presentation in a
specific context (size of gallery, shape, space, etc.).
What is your purpose
or motive?
The reasons why you
have produced a work of art can vary extremely. Were you motivated simply
by your own interest? Was your work motivated by the requirements of a
course, a call for submissions, a discussion among friends, fellow artists,
colleagues? This may or may not be important information to include. It
may, in fact, be implicit given the type of show, but it is worth considering,
especially if the statement is part of a grant application or a proposal
for a show. Whether it is obvious or not, your purpose or reason for producing
a work of art is usually reflected in the process. In the case of writing
a statement for Senior Show, your purpose or motive should be intentionally
tied to your concept. You need to explain how the work grew out of that
interest, what you became aware of through the process of putting the show
or work together. Your interests, your ideas, your creations, your intentions,
your expectations may often be thwarted, challenged, or limited in ways
you have never considered. For example, you may have set out to tell the
stories and share the memories of others only to find you faced issues
concerning the private and public domain, censorship, and so forth. Your
audience may be just as interested in what motivated you in the first place
as they are in the shifts and changes that took place in the process of
the work coming together.
The materials and medium
and how you make your work:
Your
audience will almost always want to know why you chose to work in film,
sculpture, paint, wood, mixed media, or another medium. Viewers will want
to know how the materials reflect your concept, your process, and your
theoretical interests. You might want to mention how you handle the camera,
the clay, the brush, the wood; how the materials create or set a certain
mood; and how they reflect a certain culture, history, attitude. Your audience
might be interested in the tools you used, whether you made them yourself,
and how you applied or challenged certain techniques. Most importantly,
they will want to know how your technique, process, and materials contribute
to the overall theme, meaning or subject of the work-in other words, what
your work is about. Your choice of materials will usually be integrally
related to the space in which it is presented, and you might consider discussing
this relationship as well.
Historical, critical,
theoretical framework:
What kind
of research did you conduct while engaged in this work? Were you influenced
by certain ideologies or theories of gender, identity, or culture? What
did you read? Who are the artists who have most influenced your ideas?
Did visits to galleries, or travel to other countries contribute to your
ideas, your process, the finished work? What are the historical precedents
for your work? How does it fit in a space/time continuum? Does your work
make a statement about the future, does it challenge the theories of others,
and/or does it provide a new way of looking at an “old” idea?
However you go about introducing this information into your artist's statement,
it is often necessary to use framing when you place your work within a
larger context.
Sources for Writing
an Artist Statement
Mashey Bernstein and George Yatchisin. Writing for the Visual Arts. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2001. [Edens Library: N7476.B47 2001]
See chapters: “How to Write About Your Art,” “How to
Revise and Peer review,” and “Writing Art Manifestos: Expressing
Your Philosophy.”
Martin Gayford and Karen Wright, eds. The Grove Book of Art Writing.
New York: Grove Press, 2000. [Edens Library: N7443 G727 2000]
Ariane Goodwin. Writing the Artist Statement: revealing the True Spirit
of Your Work. Haverford, PA: Infinity Publishing, 2002. [Edens Library:
N8351 .A7 G66 2002]
Peggy Hadden. Chapter on the artist's statement, available online at http://labweb.education.wisc.edu/artcommunity/artisttips/makeartiststatement.asp.
Jack Robertson. Twentieth-Century Artists on Art: An Index to Artists'
Writings, Statements, and Interviews. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1985. [Edens
Library: NX456 .R59 1985]
Henry M. Sayre. Writing About Art. Upper saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
1999. [Edens Library: N7476 .S29 1999; the library has several editions]
Although most of this small book is geared to writing about someone else's
art, the appendix “A Short Guide to usage and Style: The Rules and
Principles Most Often Violated in Writing About Art,” is also helpful
when writing about your own art.
Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, eds. Theories and Documents of Contemporary
Art: A Sourcebook of Artists' Writings. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1996. [Edens Library: N6490.T492 1996]
Additional useful web
sites:
http://www.eciad.bc.ca/wc/artstate.htm
http://www.nitaleland.com/articles/statement.htm
http://www.artistsfoundation.org/html/afa/freeinfo/statement.html
Finding examples of
other artists' statements:
Artist's statements can be found in a variety of books, exhibition catalogs,
and periodical articles and can provide useful models for you.
Strategies for finding artists' statements in the Edens Library can be
found online at: http://www.colacoll.edu/edenslibrary/artguide.htm
Ask the library staff for help!
