Help Desk: Conceptual Conundrum

Help Desk is where I answer your queries about making, exhibiting, finding, marketing, buying, selling–or any other activity related to contemporary art. Submit your questions anonymously here. All submissions become the property of Daily Serving.

I just finished the first semester of my MFA at [a well-regarded East Coast school]. At the end of last term, I had a disappointing review and my professors said that I wasn’t working hard enough to produce an integrated body of work (I showed them a series of things that were conceptually connected but materially diverse). I get the feeling that what they want me to do is work like most of the other artists in the department, who essentially just make the same painting over and over again. I don’t know what direction to take. Do I stand my ground, or give in?

I’m sorry you’re in a glump about your review, and I sympathize. The hothouse environment of MFA programs tends to produce a myopia that can make a discouraging review feel truly crushing. But now it’s time to dust yourself off and get moving again, and—if you let it—your position could be more nuanced than either a fight to the death or complete capitulation.

Without knowing the specifics of your situation (such as your current oeuvre, the stated goals of the program, or the methods for assessing first-semester work), I’m going to throw out a few very general statements: In many MFA programs, the expectation for the first year is that students will push their work in new directions. If you came to the program with materially diverse work, it might have been assumed that you’d use your initial months to explore a different kind of production. Additionally, your professors may be hoping to see your ideas brought to conclusions that are thoroughly considered and explored in high definition; cohesion in a body of work can teach you to self-analyze and develop your intentions. Finally, it could be that the conceptual connection between the works is not at clear as you think. But in any case, don’t just make inferences or “get the feeling”—find out! Inquire directly, and talk to more than just a couple of people. Over the next few weeks, schedule a handful of studio visits from different faculty members, fellow students, and curators outside your institution. Prepare questions for them and listen to what they say as they observe your work.

There’s a caveat, of course: If their feedback is not germane to what you’re trying to do, or if it doesn’t provide assistance that furthers your thinking, then it’s probably not very useful and you’re free to let it go. Some professors can only approach the critique process from their own praxis, and their advice may not be beneficial to artists who have divergent practices. Students have to be able to take feedback with a grain of salt.

MFA programs are, to varying degrees, organs of the market; at the very least, the narratives that pervade most contemporary arts programs are market-driven. A quick glance through the portfolio of most “successful” (read: currently making money) artists will show you that if you want to sell your work, you will benefit from having a recognizable product—and that is easily achieved by making things that all look alike. You needn’t adopt that particular strategy, but you should be aware of how it is shaping the world around you. The question is: What kind of artist do you want to be? The direction you take with your work should reflect what you want to achieve—be it development of technique, a conceptual platform, gallery representation, a job, etc.

Because I can’t be there in the studio with you, I’m tempted to play devil’s advocate from afar. If you’re used to making visually and materially diverse works, what would it mean to make similar things? Is there a conceptual space from which you could explore sameness? Since you’re in grad school, surely you are reading something edifying and at least slightly pretentious on the subject (cough Benjamin Buchloh cough cough). Consider this passage from When the Moon Waxes Red, by Trinh T. Minh-Ha:

“When repetition calls attention on itself as repetition, it can no longer be reduced to connote sameness and stagnancy as it usually does in the context of Western progress and accumulation, and its globally imposed emancipatory projects. When repetition reflects on itself as repetition, it constitutes this doubling back movement through which language (verbal, visual, musical) looks at itself exerting power and, therefore, creates for itself possibilities to repeatedly thwart its own power, inflating it only to deflate it better. Repetition outplays itself as repetition, and each repetition is never the same as the former. In it, there is circulation, there is intensity, and there is innovation.”

(Incidentally, I read this in the first semester of my MFA.) Good luck!