Being an artist now -- a mood report on the eve of a new year

“What it means to be an artist today — where do we start on that one?” muses Ed Ruscha, almost nonplussed by a question with too many answers. Finally, the soft-spoken  art veteran decides: “It means facing a lot of information that’s going to be very difficult to take in and swallow because there’s so much of it.”

Once the ramifications settle in, he slyly drawls, “to grasp the total picture would make you wish you could go back to 1960 when things were a bit slower, almost like the Dark Ages.”

That dizziness finds a counterpoint with fledgling film director Michael Mohan on a cold December night in Westwood. His youthful exuberance contrasts with Ruscha’s measured bemusement: “It’s not like it’s going to be crazy; it is crazy, right now.”

Mohan has reason to be excited. His first feature, “One Too Many Mornings,” about two 20- twentysomething  guys who re-ignite their high school friendship, which he shot over two years’ worth of nights and weekends with a budget well under $50,000, will soon play the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in a new category dedicated to low-to-no-budget filmmakers.

Where Ruscha recoils at the opened floodgates of the Information Age, Mohan gushes: “There’s an audience for everything ... if you say I want to express myself and people will see it, yes, that’s what in 2010 you can do.”

So, even in the face of prolonged war and bitter recession, it seems 2010 is a pretty great time to be a young artist. Ubiquitous communication and cheap digital technologies are empowering the striving middle-class artist who steadily cultivates his or her craft, and challenging the cliché of the starving bohemian, or the superstar. At the same time, say many artists, an avalanche of output and constant accessibility might also push them to rediscover the merits of handcrafted work, the necessity of disconnected contemplation and the joys of face-to-face human contact.

To read the rest of John Lopez' s Arts & Books section report, click here.

Photo: young director Michael Mohan. Credit:Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times

Comments

[William Wray]

I sure wish we would stop blurring the lines between filmmakers who want to work in Hollywood as directors from artists like Ed Ruscha.

[Brianna Smittens]

Great idea to ask Ed Ruscha! Isn't he the "artist" who said; “If it springs a leak,” he says of the Good Ship Gagosian, “I will roll up one of my paintings and plug the hole.” He volunteered to plug Larry Gagosian's hole? He's really down with struggling young artists.
Isn't he also the "artist" on the board at MoCA LA who did NOTHING to keep the museum from virtual bankruptcy and didn't bother to show up at the key meeting when the board voted on whether or not to give the museum to LACMA?Yeah - Ed Ruscha - what does it mean to be an artist today? To go for the money and security and never put your neck on the line for anything in which you purport to believe? I suggest a new word painting for Ed to make: "Hypocrite".

[Natalie]

As a young writer I find this encouraging. Some days it just feels too hard to keep pursuing art.

[Bette]

Young artists have a tough time of it, but for most it's what they must to do.
Probably the worst thing about actually making it, as in supporting yourself as an artist and having an international reputation, must be having malcontents, with little knowledge of the struggle, sniveling and whining about your success.

[Donald Frazell]

Everyone struggles, thats what life is. One must have a well developed life before being able to say anything through their visual langauge of art. Thats the problem now, no real knowledge of the word we live in, art scenes are retreats, therapy sessions, and fashion centered day care centers of the insecure, hyper sensitive and spoiled. All artists go it alone, its the only way. One must discover ones purpose, to be of value to a common humanity, which is our business to find, thaht which makes us one. til then, its just living like eveyone else, as it should be. Artistes are no better or worse than anyone else.

art collegia delenda est
Save the Watts towers, tear down the Ivories.