“There’s no money in art, you’ll starve!”

How many times has an artist heard this statement from friends and family?  I have to admit that I bristle a little bit when people  insinuate or outright say that I don't have a real job. When I told people what I wanted to do, they looked at me like I had contracted a disease.  "What will you do if it fails?"  Reply:  "Get a job?  I've done that before you know."

A week ago while I was working on some ceramic project at the Veterans Art Project at Saddleback College, Professor Steve Dilley yelled across the room, "Hey Renee, can you make a living as an artist?"  He was standing with a small group of veterans and one of them had obviously made a comment about not being able to make a living doing art.

The truth is that I work a lot of hours for very little pay sometimes.    I have some diversity in sourcing cash flow in my business having tattoo artists that work for me.  That pays the rent and keeps the lights on so I can do what kind of art I am inspired to do at the moment.  I may want to tattoo one day, paint another or go spend time with other military veterans using art to relieve stess and PTSD.  

Veterans Art Project:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/224652327663058

As a business owner, I am the human resources manager, marketing manager, and often times the janitor.  I made sacrifices to be able to look at the pacific ocean every day and paint or tattoo.  I used to own a big house with a big mortgage and not think twice about spending $20,000 for a landscaping project or dropping $10,000 on a watch that I liked.  I have had children to support since I was twenty years old.  The world of mortgage banking was very good to me for nearly twenty-five years.

I can't do that kind of thing now.   I live in an apartment.   I am thinking about how much I can spend on advertising or how to tear out a ceiling without closing down for very long.  I am not starving but I had to modify my lifestyle pretty dramatically.

I have some great support too.  I have a husband that supported my desire to leave the corporate world and nurture my art.  He has a "real" job.  I had never had a business of my own.  I had no idea how to start but "how do you eat an elephant? " One bite at a time.  I figured it out.  He believed in me and I am grateful for that kind of love.

Not everyone has the same level of support and have met the face of horror when they tell their parents that they want to go to art school or become a tattoo artist.

“Go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”- Kurt Vonnegut  

There are plenty of artists that have a hard time making enough money to eat.  Just ask Vincent Van Gogh.   He would have surely starved without the financial help from his brother Theo and there were still times that he chose to pay for models instead of eating.  Luckily, today an artist has more options for making money than Vincent may have had.  A lot of artists have part-time jobs or even full-time jobs.

How about this one: "Real artists don’t care about money” and “You have to sell out in order to sell your art”.  Another statement that is pure rubbish.  The only people that say that are the ones that can't sell their art.

I think I speak for most of the artists I know when I say Yes!, real artists DO care about money. They have to eat and pay taxes and live somewhere just like everyone else.   They may even want to eat out or see a movie from time to time, or have a nice car. They may even want to send their kids to college.  They may want to go on vacation and see the works of artists there who may or may not have starved in garrets.

There is nothing wrong with wanting compensation for your skill and hard work, whether your work is laying bricks, raising potatoes, putting together a corporate merger, or creating a beautiful pot or painting. We do many things out of love and skill, but we don’t tell our dentist, “I know how much you love your work, so you don’t expect to be PAID for removing that wisdom tooth, do you?”

I am here to tell you  that there is a high like no other when someone loves your work so much, they are willing to part with their own hard-earned money for it. It is the ultimate compliment. Don’t let anyone tell you different.

You can make a living with art. You can make a living selling the art you want to make—IF you take the time to find your audience. It helps to recognize that the business of art is just that–a business. You are creating a product just as if you were in the business of writing a white paper for a venture capital company,  growing food crops, or making and selling food at a restaurant. 

You need the strength and power of a unique body of work, sacrificing time and effort to develop your ultimate audience. But you also need to have something that’s somewhat marketable in the meantime, and bringing in cash flow so you can continue to grow.  Like having a tattoo shop combined with an art gallery maybe?

Many artists don’t really make a living or enough of a living from their work. Some of the names would surprise you. Some are supported by spouses or trust funds. Some rely on academic careers for their bread-and-butter. I know people who support families while making work they love. Yet some people wouldn’t call them “artists”.

The moral of the story here: Don’t let anyone else define “success” for you! It will be different for each of us. And there is room in the world for all of our versions.

By:  Renee Bangerter

The Face that Launched a Thousand Lawsuits

The Portrait of Wally continues to fascinate me. I did not know much about it until I watched a documentary on the history of the painting some time ago. Like a lot of other viewers, I am hooked on the story and the history that is clearly unfinished. I may be late to the game on really understanding the history of this painting but I have arrived.



Ironically, Portrait of Wally is probably one of the most remembered prisoners of war from the period.  This beautifully haunting painting started as the personal property of Jewish Viennese gallery owner, Lea Bondi, whose gallery and private collection were seized by a Nazi curator after the Anschluss of 1938. Austrian painter Egon Schiele’s boldly sensual paintings were decried as pornographic in his era and, nearly a century after his death. It ignited an art-world war and influenced the moral position of museums on the issue of Nazi plunder.

After the war, with Austria transforming itself from Nazism’s heartland to its “first victim,” the painting passed into the state collections with a deliberately misleading description and an inaccurate attribution to another—conveniently dead—Jewish owner. Wally became a part of Austria's "natural patrimony". Restitution was out of the question. I'm not calling names but Austria seemed to be somewhat of a chameleon, changing colors as it suited their needs when it came to the Nazis.

Bondi eventually recovered her gallery’s holdings, but not Portrait of Wally. Through a somewhat suspicious clerical error, the painting became the property first of the Austrian National Gallery, then of the privately owned Leopold Museum, which loaned the portrait and 150 other Schiele pieces to New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1997. After a lot of legal wrestling, and shortly before the portrait was set to be shipped back to Austria, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office seized the painting and launched an investigation into the true ownership of Portrait of Wally, triggering angry protestations from the Leopold, MoMA, and other prominent museums.

Leopold was a doctor with a real passion for art and an obsession for Schiele in particular. Bondi tried everything including offering to trade other works by Schiele in trade. Epic fail. Leopold was not going to part with the painting. He went so far to create a catalog of the chain of possession of Shiele's works and conveniently excluded Bondi from having ever owned Wally.

The film shows a detailed account of how Portrait of Wally changed hands over the decades. It makes a fairly devastating case, via archival evidence, interviews with many of the key players, and an expansive scope that includes restitution laws, whitewashed national histories, and the questionable ethics of art institutions.

You can watch the documentary on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and iTunes. Here's a trailer if you are interested.
http://portraitofwally.com/trailer

So why am I thinking about Wally again today? The painting made news this week. Because of continuing legal tangles, almost none of the $19m settlement has been distributed to the paintings heirs. 

A federal judge in New York has dismissed a claim for compensation by a man who maintained that he played a crucial part in the return of Egon Schiele’s 1912 Portrait of Wally to the heirs of the original Jewish owner. Robert Roistacher, the boyfriend of one of the heirs, sought $2.75m, saying his effort to contact the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office led to the painting’s seizure by authorities and the eventual $19m settlement for the estate.  

Her creator died in 1918 but everyone still wants a piece of Wally.

By: Renee Bangerter

Raising Awareness through Art

Today's artists are engaging the world and their audiences in vital and surprising new ways. They use an enormous variety of media and draw on sources ranging from pop culture and politics to ethnic heritage, classical models, and deeply personal life experiences. 

This weekend, over 40 protesters staged an intervention inside the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan during Saturday night’s pay-what-you-wish admission hours. Unfurling mylar banners, dropping leaflets, chanting words, handing out information to museum visitors, and drawing attention with the use of a baritone bugle, the group worked to highlight the labor conditions on Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates, where Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a franchise of New York’s Guggenheim, is being built.

See the footage here: http://hyperallergic.com/110856/protest-action-erupts-inside-guggenheim-museum/

Staged in the midst of the museum’s newly opened Futurism exhibition, the intervention, a term used by some members of the group to describe the action, received both applause from visitors who seemed excited by the commotion and reactions of confusion from others unsure what was going on.

Charity Oetgen, a student at Laguna College of Art + Design and Army Veteran, and tattoo artist produces art with a conscience. Her works are moving and often disturbs the viewer while bringing to light a tragedy a world away in the Republic of Congo. She spent months there learning more about the plight of the Bonobo, a primate closely related to the Chimpanzee. They are killed for bush meat leaving orphaned youths without the skills to survive on their own. She spent time in a sanctuary caring for these babes.

The watercolor above depicts the suffering of an animal, locked in a wooden crate for years. Below is an oil painting depicting the destruction of their habitat. It is just as emotional for her to paint these works. It is worth it to her because these pieces of art will be presented as her final works from the college in the hopes that they will be purchased.

She uses art to not only raise awareness but to raise money that can make a difference in their lives and not just in the minds of those who view it. For some artists, it is not enough that you know of the injustice. Artists like Charity put verbs in their sentences and create actions in their lives.

Probably Picasso's most famous work, Guernica is certainly the his most powerful political statement, painted as an immediate reaction to the Nazi's devastating casual bombing practice on the Basque town of Guernica during Spanish Civil War.

Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering it inflicts upon individuals, particularly innocent civilians. This work has gained a monumental status, becoming a perpetual reminder of the tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol, and an embodiment of peace. On completion Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed. This tour helped bring the Spanish Civil War to the world's attention.

Goya, one of my favorite artists, had an instinctive dislike of authority, and witnessed first-hand the subjugation of his countrymen by French troops. During these years he painted little aside from portraits of figures from all parties, including an allegorical painting of Joseph Bonaparte in 1810, Wellington from 1812 to 1814, and French and Spanish generals. 

Goya worked on drawings that would form the basis for The Disasters of War. He visited many battle sites around Madrid to witness the Spanish resistance. The final plates are testament to what he described as "el desmembramiento d'España"—the dismemberment of Spain.

Although Goya did not make known his intention when creating the plates, art historians view them as a visual protest against the violence.

During the conflicts between Napoleon's French Empire and Spain, Goya retained his position as first court painter to the Spanish crown and continued to produce portraits of the Spanish and French rulers.

He was deeply affected by the war, he kept his thoughts private on the art he produced in response to the conflict and its aftermath. He was in poor health and almost deaf when, at 62, he began work on the prints. They were not published until 1863, 35 years after his death. It is likely that only then was it considered politically safe to distribute a sequence of artworks criticising both the French and restored Bourbons.

How important is art to social change? Is this the most effective use of art? I do not create art with a social message. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about it. I see people around me creating awareness or protesting a social policy. I guess I use my art in a way to distract myself from things that are wrong in the world. Is it wrong?

By:  Renee Bangerter

Olympic Art Champions

Most everyone I know is watching or at least aware that the Winter Games kicked off last week in Sochi Russia.   Between snowboarding, luge, and more, athletes will be competing with gear and style that looks a lot different from that of centuries past. But one thing that we'll likely never see again is the visual and lyrical art that was once part of the competition. Yes, you read that right. In the early 20th century, art was actually an Olympic sport.  Maybe more people in my life would watch it if there were art competitions!  It would definitely seem odd to go to a sports bar to watch the art competitions.  

In 1906, French baron and founder of the International Olympic Committee, Pierre de Coubertin, thought it might be interesting to integrate arts and culture into the Olympic Games. 

Athletes who also dabbled in art were given a chance to win medals in other events. Rumor has it Baron de Coubertin himself even entered the Games under a pseudonym in 1912. While some of the artists that participated, such as Jack Butler Yeats and Paul Landowski, went on to see success in their careers, many faded into oblivion after their Olympic wins.

Medals were awarded for works of art inspired by sport, divided into five categories: architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture.

The juried art competitions were abandoned in 1954 because artists were considered to be professionals, while Olympic athletes were required to be amateurs.  (What about that Dream Team in basketball??)  Since 1956, the Olympic cultural program has taken their place.

Olympics: Summer Olympics, 1912
Award: Gold medal

Carlo Pellegrini was an influential magazine artist and illustrator.  His graphic artwork "Winter Sports" won the first gold medal in the category.  After his win, he became a famous caricaturist for Vanity Fair magazine.

Some people get all the talent.  Only two people have won Olympic medals in both sport and art competitions. Walter Winans, an American who lived in England, won a gold medal as a marksman at the 1908 Summer Olympics in the running deer (double shot) competition. In 1912, he won another shooting medal — silver this time — in the running deer team competition. By then, he had already won a gold medal for his sculpture An American trotter. 

The other Olympian with successes in both fields is Alfréd Hajós of Hungary. As a swimmer, he won two gold medals at the 1896 Athens Olympics. Twenty-eight years later, he was awarded a silver medal in architecture for his stadium design, co-designed with Dezső Lauber.

The medals that have been designed for this years Winter at Olympics at Sochi are looking pretty sharp…  

The concept for the Sochi 2014 medal was created by Alexandra Fedorina, modeling and design by Sergey Tsar’kov, Paul Nasedkin, and Sergey Efremov.

The design is centered around the idea of the contrasts that embody Russia and the winter season. The usual metals of bronze, silver and gold, have been embellished with a rather stylish glass element, through which “the sun’s golden rays are deflected as through a prism of snowy mountain tops, the warm sea and frosty ice living side-by-side.” The glass has been engraved with the patchwork quilt design seen throughout the games, and which represents the “mosaic of national designs from the various cultures and ethnicities of the Russian Federation.”

Seven gold medal winners will all receive an additional gold medal, embedded into which is a small piece of the meteorite that landed near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk on that exact day last year.  

By Renee Bangerter

Ceramics: Art or Craft?

Yesterday,  I saw a video where an artist walked into a Miami art museum and destroyed art.  The local offender told an officer that his act was a protest against the gallery's decision to only display international art.   I think there are better ways to use art to protest.  Destroying someone's work is never the answer.  Wonder if he knew the vase he broke was worth $1,000,000.

You can view the article here:  http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/18/world/ai-weiwei-vase-destroyed/

I have a point, so I'll get to it.   There has always been a debate about the acceptance of ceramic art into the world of fine art and valued as such.  Is it a craft or does it deserve to be on the podium with fine art?

Clay is a common material with an ancient history of domestic servitude and minor-arts status.  It lasts longer than almost every other medium.  When we study the culture of a civilization, we often start with all that is left, the pottery.  In today's world, clay is not relegated to the utilitarian uses of it's beginning.  Even today, one may be called a "ceramist" rather than a "sculptor" because of the medium.  An artist is typically called a sculptor when using any other medium.  Maybe it's more appropriate to say "an artist that works in clay."  The debate as to whether clay is a craft or an art seems to be fading into history but the values of ceramic art still has a way to catch up with some other mediums.  

Few artists have changed a medium as single-handedly as Peter Voulkos.  He is one of the pioneers of crossing over into the fine art world.  His work contributed to the demolition of the traditional hierachries between fine arts and craft.   His sculptures are known for their visual weight, their freely-formed construction and their aggressive and energetic decoration. 





While shaping an article, he would vigorously tear, pound, and gouge their surfaces. At some points in his career, he cast his sculptures in bronze; in other periods his ceramic works were glazed or painted and he finished them with painted brushstrokes. 





In 1979 he was introduced to the use of wood kilns by Peter Callas; much of his late work is wood-fired. He loved working with an audience.  Seems he was also a performance artist.  I think he valued the process almost more than the finished product.  He literally worked up to the moment of his death in 2001.

Ceramic art literally changed my life.  After a long period of not doing much art at all, I decided to take a ceramic class at Saddleback College in Orange County, CA on Saturdays. I had not touched clay since high school.

That's all it took to reignite the artistic flame within.  It only took a couple of years before I left the corporate world behind and opened a gallery that allowed me to work in any medium I wanted to.  



I came to class one day and told Professor Steve Dilley that I wanted to build a rake kiln.  He gave me a list of the materials I would need.  The next Saturday, I drove up with everything on the list and he put me to work in the parking lot.  When I left, I was ready to fire that kiln up at home.

One of my former colleagues in banking said, "Wow, you are such a hippie."  

That's cool man.  Call me what you want.  I think it's groovy.  

Have a great day everyone.  Look at a piece of ceramic art and think about what it took to make it.  It's natural and will be here for thousands of years in one form or another.

Peace out! - Renee Bangerter

What is Real Art?

Starting my day off by sharing some of the artists that I enjoy really puts me in a great mood and influences how I feel when I get to the studio and start working. I guess you can unfollow my posts if it drives you crazy but I hope it makes you all stop and take a look too.

William Michael Harnett was an Irish-American artist that painted what he knew and used what he had around him. His compositions feel like you step into a bit of the chaos of everyday life. He successfully brought a reality to his paintings that few can achieve but he was criticized 

by his contemporaries for being too ordinary and boring. He drifted off into obscurity for a long time. Many artists agonize over what their contemporaries feel are "real art" at the time. Vincent Van Gogh felt he really had to master the figure and spent and extraordinary amount of time and money on models when we love the paintings of what he observed around him most, the peasant workers, the bedroom, the sunflowers. There's a lesson to be learned here for most artists. Follow your passion and concern yourself less with what others think you should be doing.

by Renee Bangerter

Driven to Create Beauty

February is Black History Month so I thought I would research African-American artists. Most artists lament over the difficulty in making a living as an artist. Imagine being a person of color trying to make a living painting wealthy plantation owners in Maryland and Virginia in the early 1800s. Joshua Johnson l796-1824 was the first African-American professional portraitist. Little is known of his life. He was born a slave and freed at some point. He was trained as a blacksmith, was married and had two children. He was relative undiscovered until 1939.


When I look at his work, I try to think of what it would have been like back then to sit and paint previous slaveholders that most likely were responsible for unbelievable suffering of your family and ancestors. The subjects of his paintings seem to have cold and emotionless faces. He undoubtably may have seen European portraits which may have been responsible for the composition of his work... the stiffness and formal nature. Despite the attempted formality of his subjects, he brings forth charming folk art characteristics to his paintings.

Artists are sometimes driven to create when society wants to assign class roles for them. He was a pioneer in American Painting.

by Renee Bangerter

Masterful Remakes

 "I think that the very earliest influence was a horror of having to work in a bank or an office, a desire for a free and creative life." - Frank Auerbach.

Oh, how those words ring true! After a long career in mortgage banking, I broke free to experience a creative life. I could have probably found another job in another big bank or company but I felt like I had hit the wall and needed to be more authentic to myself.

Sometimes life and especially that of an artist seems to be like navigating raging white waters. It is going so fast that all we can do is try to avoid the rocks. We generally paint what we know and what is around us. I am not sure the world would have Frank Auerbach if he had not had people around him that could get him out of Nazi Germany. He lost his parents in concentration camps. He ended up in the U.K. and went to art school. How many other great artists have we lost to wars and their inability to escape their rocks in the white water?

Sometimes life and especially that of an artist seems to be like navigating raging white waters. It is going so fast that all we can do is try to avoid the rocks. We generally paint what we know and what is around us. I am not sure the world would have Frank Auerbach if he had not had people around him that could get him out of Nazi Germany. He lost his parents in concentration camps. He ended up in the U.K. and went to art school. How many other great artists have we lost to wars and their inability to escape their rocks in the white water?

This painting (Study after Tician I) was painted in 1965. This and several other paintings were commissioned as studies of Renaissance Master Titan and the painting (Tarquin and Lucretia). I have shown both paintings here.



I do not paint in the expressionistic style of Auerbach but have great appreciation for other styles. We have several things in common. We escaped the really bad circumstances of our birth and the danger of not being alive to create. He also painted many of the subjects of his portraits over and over again. I like doing that myself.. changing the materials, the perspective, or the light of a specific portrait. I don't know about Auerbach but painting helped me cope with a lot of difficult situations and negative thoughts. I hope it has done that for him as well.

Happy Monday! Start your day off properly. Look at imagery or things that bring you great joy. Let that feeling permeate your soul and no matter what happens for the rest of the day, you can recall that feeling of happiness and contentment.

by Renee Bangerter

Facing Front

Controversial art is not a new concept.  Artists have used their brush to shock or make their audiences aware of a problem or cause since the beginning of time. We were having a conversation about one of my favorite artists in the studio the other day.  I said, "Hey don't you think Albrecht Durer is kind of hot?"

It is no wonder I like him.  He took risks.  He rocked some boats by placing himself frontally, a stance used for the divine when he presented his self portrait around 1500.

We are lucky to have so many writings from his own hand.  It gives you an insight into his mind that you cannot enjoy at the same level through the someone else writing about him.

To be a successful artist and focus on ones work, it helps to be in the right place at the right time.  Nuremberg was an important and prosperous city, the center for publishing and luxury trades.  It also had strong links in Italy, particularly Venice which was not that far away.  He spent most of his life there.   His father was a goldsmith.  Klimt's father was also a goldsmith and he found a way to use his fathers wares within his art 400 years later. Durer did not produce paintings with the gold however, he did use some techniques he may have learned from his father and incorporated some of the tools of the trade in his print work.



Durer is an absolute master working in a multitude of mediums, oil, watercolor, woodcuts for printing.  He painted portraits, animals, landscapes... just about everything.   Durer was a mathematician and engraver.  It seems unfair that one person could possess all that talent and some folks feel like they got nothing.

He said "one man may sketch something with his pen and half sheet of paper in one day, or may cut it into a tiny piece of wood with his little iron, and it turns out better and more artistic than an other's work at which it's author labors with the utmost diligence for a whole year".  I am a laborer.  I have to work at it and it takes me a long time to finish some paintings.  I don't have the heart to think about how much I would make per hour so I just try to put it out of my mind entirely.

Yep, he was a rock star.  It is written that he was an excellent communicator and very personable.  He was friendly with Leonardo Da Vinci who was also a genius in his time.  Maybe that is what was expected of an artist of the period.  No pressure!  There were so many things to learn about and they were both curious and adventurous.  The Renaissance and Reformation was in full swing and being too outwardly vocal could get you killed.

He would have probably been a damn great tattoo artist if he had thought of it or had the tools.  Countless people get a tattoo based on one of his drawings, the Praying Hands done in 1508.  Is there a better example of praying hands anywhere in the world?  No pressure!

A lot is expected of the artist today no matter what the medium.  Art schools are busy and it takes a lot to get accepted.  The academic study of art is more relevant today than ever.  A good artist never feels like there is enough time to learn what they need to take their work to the "next level."  I am no exception.  If only I did not have to sleep or eat.  For now, I will just "face front" and keep making art.

by Renee Bangerter