On New Year’s Day I received the following manifesto from my
friend, the Baroness, and it brought back a world of wonderful and exciting memories
of when we were young and would stay up all night talking about art and music and
discovering the power of a great art manifesto. Since then, quite a lot has
changed for both of us, but the inspiration and passion that can be felt while
reading a well written art manifesto still is not lost on me.
The
artist manifesto dates back to 1909 with the Futurists, an Italian art
movement, and it increased in popularity until the beginning of World War II.
After that, the artist manifesto seemed to have died out, but lately there has
been resurgence in writing art manifestos and most contemporary manifestos can
be found on the Internet. Wikipedia has a pretty exhaustive list of artist
manifestos if anyone is interested in checking a couple out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_manifesto
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| Linear Construction by Naum Gabo |
My
favorite art manifesto is “The Realistic Manifesto”, written in 1920 by
brothers Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner. In terms of its historic significance,
it is essentially a declaration that Russia has something to offer the West in
regards to art: Constructivism. One of the closing sentences contains the most
memorable phrase I have ever read and it has been stuck in my head since I read
it almost twenty years ago: “We assert that the shouts about the future are for
us the same as the tears about the past: a renovated day-dream of the
romantics.” I have always thought that would make a great book title some day: “A
Renovated Day-Dream of the Romantics” :)
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| Monde by Antoine Pevsner |
Recently, I have been looking into applying for grants in order to
seek assistance to frame my I Ching project and one of the books that I have
been using is Gigi Rosenberg’s “The Artist’s Guide to Grant Writing: How to Find
Funds and Write Foolproof Proposals for the Visual, Literary, and Performing
Artist”. I have been struggling with writing my Artist Statement for months now
– I know
that I need to write it, I just had no idea on where or how to start it – and,
then, I read yesterday that Ms. Rosenberg compares the Artist Statement to
being your own personal manifesto… and, suddenly, I have a direction.
Has anyone else found this approach to writing their artist
statement helpful? Or were you able to find inspiration elsewhere? Whose artist
statements do you admire? My suspicion is that I am over-thinking this and any advice
regarding artist statements would be greatly appreciated.
Jenn White
White Rooster Studios
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