8 Artists Give Advice to the Young | Louisiana Channel

so when I was teaching this was the one of the test I will ask you know how you know you're an artist that's the main question and you know to know an artist or not is like a breathing you don't question breathing you have to breathe otherwise you just die so you breathe so if you wake up in the morning and you have some ideas and you have to make them and this become like a kind of almost obsession and you have to create and you have this urge to create you definitely noticed but you're not a great artist you're just an artist to be great artist it's all different types of rules and and you really have to if the kind of is like a physically obsessed you it's like like it's nothing else in your mind the only advice you ever hear is something you already know and it just gets confirmed if you think of all the advice that you've heard 50 million pieces of advice people and there may be three or piece four pieces of advice you can think of having taken when I was really young William Burroughs told me um and I was really struggling we never had any money and and William the advice that William gave me was build a good name you know keep your name clean don't make compromises don't worry about making a bunch of money or being successful be concerned with doing good work and make the right choices and protect your work and if you build a good name eventually you know that name will be its own currency the advice I have is probably things that are a lot of young musicians and artists already know that although some of them may have the ambition to be the next the next jay-z or the next whatever whatever it is the number of those artists are very very small and often the artists who are very successful that way they they don't have much flexibility they in achieving success they kind of lose a lot of their creative freedom they have to keep making the same thing more or less over and over and over again and that if the musician or artist values their freedom and that the ability to be creative then they have to maybe realize that they won't be making hundreds of millions of dollars they might be making less money but they might have more artistic satisfaction painter photographer filmmaker video artist whatever you do nobody else can do that better than you I think you know what the thing is is we're not in you know we can't impart any kind of wisdom to anyone else we're so immersed in the of our own activity stick to know even how to give anyone advice so my advice to younger artists would be something like to be very sensitive to where they are and what times in what part of the world and how that constitutes the artistic practice the artistic inquiry I think the great artists have to be ready to fail which is not too many people do because when you have success in a certain way then in the public except you in a certain way you start somehow involuntary reproducing the same images the same type of work began you're not risking and the real artist you know always change their territories and they go to the land they never been and there is unknown territory and then you can fail and you can risk and that failure actually is what makes this this extra you know ready to fail that makes great artists so it's not that the isn't things to say to artists but I miss there the specific things they gave to here it's it's not worth a while listening or you with you are telling them so I think it has to do with the specific interaction of the person giving the advice and the person receiving it rather than broad nostrils work hard do your best do what you like and people respect you for it it doesn't matter what subject you take on in the end whatever you do is going to be a self-portrait it will reveal who you are if it's arrogant it's about you if it's pretentious that's about you don't think you can escape yourself by your choice of subject matter there are many things like that that one can say but unless someone is needing those words they don't get hurt make your own way in the world I don't wrap up warm wrapper eat properly sensibly don't smoke and find your mum funny fur I had the very old professor really which I liked very much and he gave me two advices he said to me if you are drawing with your right hand and you're getting better and better and we come here to us so that we do we know closed eyes you can draw anything you want immediately change to the left hand and that was very important advice because because when you become routine that is end of everything and the second great advice you say to me you know in your lifetime you probably will have one good idea if you're really good artist and if you genius two good ideas and that's it but be careful with them don't do anything that somebody else that you know deep in your heart somebody else can do better I do what nobody else can do except for you what I think the best advice is I think working with that is working with something that is very fierce very strong very robust and even though the whole world seems to say that are this fragile should be marginalized it's not important it's counterproductive it's you know doesn't belong to the center of what what reality is defined as artists should have confidence in the fact that we're making a drawing on a piece of paper is changing the world by definition making art is making the world so it is an unbelievably rewarding thing to be an artist and to be full behind that idea as a young artist and to actually see that having chosen they in many perspectives strange choice to become an artist it's also to have chosen to be a part of the world to be a to be an artist actually to be a human being and these times it's all difficult you have to go through life hopefully you know trying to stay healthy you know being as happy as you can and and and pursuing you know doing what you want if what you want is to have children if what you want is to be a baker if what you want is to live out in the woods or try to save the environment or maybe what you want is to write scripts for detective shows it doesn't really matter you know what matters is to be is to know what you want and pursue it and understand that it's going to be hard because life is really difficult you're going to lose people you love you're going to suffer heartbreak sometimes you'll be sick sometimes you'll have a really bad toothache sometimes you'll be hungry but on the other end you'll have the most beautiful experiences sometimes just the sky sometimes you know you know a piece of work that you do that feel so wonderful or you find somebody to love or your children or there's beautiful things in life so when you're suffering just you know it's part of the package you know you look at it we're born and we also have to die we know that so it makes sense that we're going to be really happy and things are going to be really up too you

Channel: Louisiana Channel

Views: 954,640

Keywords: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum, art, advice to the young, advice, Marina Abramović (Visual Artist), David Byrne (Musical Artist), Patti Smith (Musical Artist), Wim Wenders (Film Director), William Kentridge (Visual Artist), Ólafur Elíasson (Visual Artist), chapman brothers

Id: qyKXw24JX5g

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 05 2015