I do love a good quadrant diagram - proof you can take the boy out of consultancy, but you can't take consultancy out of the boy - it's like a cancer wrapped around your heart - you don't want it, but any attempt to remove it might kill you...
Anyway... This was some thinking I did in relation to Open Calls - at what point does an open call become just an unpaid commission?
There are two axis here (it's a graph after all) top to bottom is talking about 'audience', and left to right is talking about 'vision'. To elaborate:
Audience: When you are making art, are you doing so with the aim of making it only for yourself to consume? Or are you imaging an audience outside of yourself, even if you don't expect to actually show it to anyone?
Vision: Is your art driven by your own vision? Or are you working to a brief supplied by someone else?
Of course, this is gross simplification, but crudely:
My vision + audience of me: Making art that is driven by your own vision, but you don't expect anyone else to see it - it's not that you are embarrassed, is that someone else seeing it is not IMPORTANT to you. I feel art made in this way is typical made for deeply personal reasons, and is often a form of art therapy. People do share this art, but I feel that's a mistake - either it's disrespectful to the viewer/maker, or worse it's disingenuous - you are claiming to be making it just for yourself, but you inflicting it on other people because you actually want an audience but don't want to admit it
Others' vision + audience of me: Making other people's designs/brief, but for your own consumption. I think this is where hobby art sits - it's about the process of making, not the urge to communicate something. Broadly I see this as knitting other people's patterns, or copying other people's drawing instructions. Clearly here (as everywhere) there is a sliding scale and hobby art can be very creative, and can be made for others to experience to some extent
Others' vision + audience of others': This is making public art to someone else's brief - I think this is the realm of commercial art, but I think it can also be the realm of derivative art - literally trying to paint like Turner, or more subtly, making art that you think your peer group expects/requires
My vision + audience of others': To me, this is fine art - you are sharing something that is deeply personal to you, and staying true to that, but doing so in a way that you think will engage other people
All of this is important to me in open calls, because it's about trying to stay in the top left quadrant, knowing you will be pulled rightwards... And deciding when you have 'crossed the line' - I think my piece for the RA Summer Show stayed somewhat left of the line, but strayed dangerously close to it - I definitely made something to fit the theme ('dialogue') and I kinda made it in a style I thought would be RA friendly... But I think I played it well - I made something that was definitely an RA-friendly piece of Tom Grey Art, not an unpaid RA 'commission'
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