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Unit 8 WRITING ABOUT YOUR WORK

Unit Overview:

  • Read unit introduction
  • Find 3-4 writing samples by artists or curators writing about work that is similar to yours either formally or conceptually. Save these samples in a document and highlight phrases or words that resonate with your work.
  • Review “Strategies for getting Started”
  • Work through the “Creating a Statement Word Bank”

“If more artists wrote honest artist statements, they would be more meaningful. I often find that they write what they think the art world wants to hear. Which is never what I want to hear.”

 
-Denise Markonis [curator, MASS MoCA]

“There are many, many contexts where the first introduction people have to your work is the written word. What. you write about your work ends up in press releases and reviews. If you can write, it gives you so much more control.”

 

-Edward Winkleman [cofounder, Moving Image Art Fair]

Writing about art can be one of the most daunting tasks for an artist. So many of us seek to express ourselves visually precisely because it seems impossible to put our ideas into words. Added to this struggle is the baggage of artspeak. We think that we need to use obscure art world language in order to be taken seriously. These pressures can make writing an artist statement feel like an insurmountable obstacle. 

Over the years of exhibiting my work I’ve come to appreciate writing artist statements for the ways it allows me to think more clearly about my work and share my work with diverse audiences. The statement is an opportunity to create another point of connection with your viewer or provide another way to access your work. I find this way of thinking about statement writing makes the process more accessible and less overwhelming. Writing a statement can be simply another way to connect.

Strategies for getting started:

A good artist’s statement will:
  1. Help the viewer understand why you made the work and why the work matters
  2. Give the viewer key information or context to help her engage the work 
  3. Help the viewer connect the formal and material choices with the meaning of the work
  4. Make direct connections to the images the viewer is seeing (your statement is unsuccessful if it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the work)
  5. Make reference to specific elements of the work (images, formal elements, materials etc.)
  6. Discuss the visual or conceptual strategies you are using
  7. Give the viewer insight into the creation process (if it is significant to the meaning of the work)
Creating a Statement Word Bank

Follow the prompts below to help you develop some language to talk about your work.

  1. Describe the work in the most OBJECTIVE terms possible in as much detail as possible: What is it? What is it made of? What techniques and formal elements are employed? What is its relationship to the space and the viewer? How does scale function in the work? This is not the time to interpret the work. Simply describe what you see.
  2. Describe how you made the work. What process and practices contributed to the creation of the work. Were there any parts of the process that surprised you or changed the direction of the project? How did the media you were working with influence your process and the final work?
  3. Describe how the work is operating. What is it doing? Use verbs. What is the quality of its presence? How does the viewer interact with the work? What is the quality of the interaction? (You may want to ask another person who is less familiar with the work to give you some words) You may begin by making a list of words that describe what the work is doing. Is it interrogating? Parsing? Confronting? Challenging? Connecting? Affirming?
  4. Why did you make this work? Discuss some of the ideas that made you want to create this work. Were you thinking about any texts, movies, other artworks, social issues, thinkers etc. as you created this work? If so are there any quotations or anecdotes that sum up these ideas? What information would provide meaningful context for the viewer? 

What language emerges as your write about the work? Circle any words or sentences that you think are particularly informative or resonate particularly with what the work is doing. Look for a poetic connection between the language and the work.

At the end of this exercise you should have a bank of words and phrases that describe and respond to your work. Use these words, phrases and ideas as building blocks to put together a statement. Use the clearest, most precise language possible as you put your statement together.

CC BY 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.