Clear Seeing Place

by Brian Rutenberg

  Exhibiting your work in galleries also opens you up to professional rejection. Over the years, I’ve had stacks of reviews—most of them great, some raves, and a few pure suck. Edward Sozanski, chief art critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, disliked my work so much that the dealer wouldn’t even let me read the review; she bought all the newspapers within a few blocks of the gallery. She needn’t have worried. I never read my reviews—not out of apathy, but because I already possess enough self-doubt that I don’t need it articulated by a writer. A few years later, Kenneth Baker, critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, gave me a rave review that my dealer said was one of the finest he’d ever read in that paper. I was grateful but didn’t read that one either. A good review can be just as disruptive as a bad one because it’s natural to want to repeat good behavior.

  Art critics have a job to do, and so do I. Mine is to show up every day and make my paintings regardless of whether people like them or not. Worrying about critical reception is harmful because it removes the option of failure. Every painting fails before it succeeds. Mine look gorgeous the first day, but they nosedive quickly, so I spend the next six months trying to get them to hum again. I still get rejected, and it stings for exactly 1.75 days, but I’m a professional. Processing rejection is just another important layer in my tackle box, no different from drawing the human figure or mixing violet and yellow to make brown. Failure is not a lack of ability but a badge of proof that you’re working and learning. There are many things to fear in life (viruses, plane crashes, bagel pizza), but there is no upside to a fear of failure.

  Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.

  —Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

  Feel Your Own Pain

  Shortly after moving to New York City, I was in a downtown studio with an older, well-known painter and a few friends. He gathered us in a circle and asked, “Who here is a painter?” My hand shot up instinctively. He peered over his bifocals and said, “OK, you can leave.” The room fell silent as I awkwardly made my way to the staircase with a lump in my throat. My brain didn’t know whether to make anger or tears. At the bottom stair, I realized something that changed my life; as if I’d turned on windshield wipers in a storm, suddenly everything appeared clear and close. Don’t be the first to raise your hand. Don’t be so sure. There will always be someone better than you, but there can never be anyone like you. At the bottom of a staircase in a downtown loft in 1988, I gave myself permission to stop trying so hard. When I learned to expect nothing, I got everything.

  Art schools teach critical thinking and technique, tools designed for the upside of a career. But what about the shit storms? What about the creative blocks, lack of money, lack of space, bad reviews, no reviews, rejection letters, bad business moves, and general feelings of inadequacy—and that’s not even counting the stacks and stacks of lousy paintings that require storage. We must own all of it. An artist is like an onion; peel away the layers, and there is no more onion. Doubt and uncertainty are essential layers in a complete tackle box.

  Every painter needs a constituency for pessimism, a person or persons with whom they can be negative away from the pressures of the art-world clown car. Your constituency should be made up exclusively of artists because they’re the only ones who understand the day-to-day stuff; nonartists mean well when they offer advice like, “Why don’t you just get into the Whitney Biennial?” or “You should get the New York Times to review your show.” However, they don’t understand that an artist needs the entire rotation of life’s experiences, good and bad, to tell the truth. Regular jobs demand your peak performance, but only art requires your crappiest, most miserable self too. John Lennon said, “No one can harm you, feel your own pain.” Without negativity, you can’t be delusional, and self-delusion is what makes art possible, for every creative endeavor begins in a flash of googly-eyed crazy. How could human beings perform delicate brain surgery or write string quartets without first believing that they mattered and are going to live forever?

  My early paintings were awful. I never wanted to be great, just less awful. Success is too often confused with popularity; it’s gross that a film has to gross $100 million to be successful. Art doesn’t work that way. True success is curiosity and effort. Popularity is given and taken away by others, but curiosity and effort are yours alone.

  Painting has never been more vital than it is right now, and we are living in it. As I said before, painting is local knowledge; it plants a stick in the mud that says, “We were here,” and lays a trail of crumbs so that we may find our way back home again. Although painting can educate, protest, memorialize, confront, and provoke, it cannot change the world; but it can alter one person’s world by filling his or her remaining moments of life with supreme quality. If you reach one person, then you’ve made the earth a better place. Don’t be afraid to make bad paintings. Die a little death now and then; you’ll be okay. If you make a mistake, scrape it off and start over. No one cares if you screw up. There are no talent scouts. You’re on your own. Your work doesn’t have to be groundbreaking—it doesn’t even have to be good, but it must continue. So lock your door and make your own clear seeing place. It’s easier than you think. I’ve told you how I did it. Now it’s your turn to do it better.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my editors, Richard Koss and Dara Kaye. Thank you also to Rachel Christenson for her superb design, and Courtney Calon, Meghan Harvey, and Girl Friday Productions for their expert guidance and attention to every detail.

  Special thanks to:

  Robert & Cheryl Fishko

  Jerald & Mary Melberg

  John Raimondi & Ralph Cantin

  Gregory Amenoff

  Nancy Toomey

  Timothy Tew

  Nicola Lorenz

  Niccolo Brooker

  Jillian Casey

  Louis Newman

  Karen Winer

  Kevin Dao

  Mary Hurt

  Gaybe Johnson

  Chris Clamp

  Grace Cote

  Jules Bekker

  Corky Davis

  Randall Morris & Shari Cavin

  Spencer Throckmorton

  Paul & Helen Anbinder

  Steve & Maddy Anbinder

  David Shirey

  Chuck Close

  Darby Bannard

  Ursula Von Rydingsvard

  Judy Pfaff

  Wolf Kahn

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Theresa Duran

  Phil Freshman

  Kathy Schnapper

  Ron Porter & Joe Price

  Jeff & Jodi Salter

  Robert Gilson

  The 92nd Street Y Art Center

  The Fulbright Program

  Irish Fulbright Association

  Robert Gamblin

  Steve Bates

  Tippy Stern-Brickman & Michael Brickman

  Joe Santore

  Basil Alkazzi

  Helen Du Bois

  Amr Shaker

  Susanna Coffey

  Joyce Robinson

  Dennis Elliott

  David Ebony

  John Dorfman

  Martica Sawin

  John & Kim Rutenberg

  Michael & Melissa Rutenberg

  Jim & Joan Peck

  Fritz & Jenny Reinbold

  Mark & Colleen Reuland

  Valerie Morris

  Karen Jones

  Arthur McDonald

  Mark Sloan

  Douglas Ashley

  Steve Rosenberg

  David Kowal

  Barbara Duval

  Alan Lokos & Susanna Weiss

  Russ Gerlach

  H. Allen Holmes

  Arne Svenson & Charles Burkhalter

  Virginia Friedman

  Jim & Betsy Chaffin

  Spring Island Trust

  Br
ookgreen Gardens

  Paul Matheney

  Jeffrey Day

  Tom Starland

  Declan McGonagle

  The Irish Museum of Modern Art

  James Quinn

  Herbert Khaury

  Ernie & Joanne Garcia

  About the Author

  Widely considered to be one of the finest American painters of his generation, Brian Rutenberg has spent forty years honing a distinctive method of compressing the rich color and form of his native coastal South Carolina into complex landscape paintings that imbue material reality with a deep sense of place. He is a Fulbright Scholar, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, and a Basil Alkazzi USA Award recipient, and he has had over two hundred exhibitions throughout North America. Rutenberg’s paintings are in private collections all over the world and are included in such public collections as the Butler Institute of American Art, Yale University Art Gallery, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Peabody Essex Museum of Art, Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina State Museum, and many others. He lives and works in New York City with his wife, Kathryn, and their two children.

  For more about Brian Rutenberg, please visit www.brianrutenbergbooks.com and www.brianrutenbergart.com.