Chapter 2

THE PROCESS OF ART

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OVERVIEW
This learning materials explores the artistic process and the art industry surrounding it:
from individual artists turning ideas into works of art to collaborative creative projects,
public art and the viewer. It covers the following topics:

The Artistic Process

The Individual Artist

Artistic Training Methods and Cultural Considerations

Art as a Social Activity

OBJECTIVES
Upon successful completion of this learning materials, you should be able to:

Describe specific processes used by visual artists.

Compare and contrast art as a social activity and a singular creative act.

Identify and discuss historical forms of artistic training.

Describe the cultural ties to artistic process and training.

 THE ARTISTIC PROCESS
How many times have you looked at a work of art and wondered “how did they do that”?
Some think of the artist as a solitary being, misunderstood by society, toiling away in the
studio to create a masterpiece, and yes, there is something fantastic about a singular
creative act becoming a work of art. The reality is that artists rely on a support network
that includes family, friends, peers, industries, business and, in essence, the whole
society they live in. For example, an artist may need only a piece of paper and pencil to
create an extraordinary drawing, but depends on a supplier in order to acquire those
two simple tools. Whole industries surround art making, and artists rely on many
different materials in order to realize their work, from the pencil and paper mentioned
above to the painter’s canvas, paints and brushes, the sculptor’s wood, stone and tools
and the photographer’s film, digital camera and software or chemicals used to
manipulate an image.

From the Kusama exhibition, part of Fairchild's 2009 Knight Arts Challenge project to expose new audiences to
contemporary art by exhibiting large-scale outdoor sculpture on its grounds. Date: 28 November 2009, 05:27 Source:
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Author: Knight Foundation
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
After the artwork is finished there are other support networks in place to help exhibit,
market, move, store and comment on it. Commercial art galleries are a relatively recent
innovation, springing up in Europe and America during the Industrial Revolution of the
nineteenth century. As these societies concentrated their populations in cities and
formed a middle class, there was a need for businesses to provide works of art for sale
to a population that began to have more spare time and some discretionary income. As
art became more affordable, the gallery became a place to focus solely on buying and
selling, and, in the process, making art a commodity.
Museums have a different role in the world of visual art. Their primary function is in the
form of a cultural repository – a place for viewing, researching and conserving the very
best examples of artistic cultural heritage. Museums contain collections that can reflect
a particular culture or that of many, giving all of us the chance to see some of the great
art humanity has to offer.
The role of the critic commenting on art is another function in the process. Critics offer
insight into art’s meaning and make judgments determining ‘good’ or ‘bad’ art based on
the intellectual, aesthetic and cultural standards they reflect. We will take a closer look
at the role of the critic when we explore meaning in another module.
In this way, museums, galleries and critics have become gatekeepers in helping to
determine what is considered art within a culture like our own.

THE INDIVIDUAL ARTIST

In as much as we have seen art as a community or collaborative effort, many artists
work alone in studios, dedicated to the singular idea of creating art through their own
expressive means and vision. In the creative process itself there are usually many steps
between an initial idea and the finished work of art.

Alfred J. Casson, 1943, Ontario Society of Artists, Black and White Photography

This canadian work is in the public domain in Canada because its copyright has
expired. Artists will use sketches and preliminary drawings to get a more accurate
image of what they want the finished work to look like. Even then they’ll create more
complex trial pieces before they ultimately decide on how it will look. View and read
about some of the sketches for Picasso’s masterpiece Guernica from 1937 to see how
the process unfolds. Artists many times will make different an artwork, each time giving
it a slightly different look.
Some artists employ assistants or staff to run the everyday administration of the studio;
maintaining supplies, helping with set up and lighting, managing the calendar and all the
things that can keep an artist away from the creative time they need in order to work.

Fulcrum, Richard Serra, 1987

Source: en: User: Solipsist (Links to an external site.) (Andrew Dunn)

This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic
license
Some artists don’t actually make their own works. They hire people with specialized
skills to do it for them under the artist’s direction. Fabricators and technicians are
needed when a work of art’s size, weight or other limitations make it impossible for the
artist to create it alone. For example, the size of the sculpture Fulcrum (see above) by
Richard Serra necessitates additional staff be employed in the creative process. Glass
artist Dale Chihuly employs many assistants to create and install his glass forms

Glass art by Dale Chihuly at an extensive exhibition in Kew Gardens, London, in 2005
Date: 16 July 2005, Author: Patche99z This work is in the public domain
 ARTISTIC TRAINING METHODS & CULTURAL
CONSIDERATIONS
For centuries craftsmen have formed associations that preserve and teach the ‘secrets’
of their trade to apprentices in order to perpetuate the knowledge and skill of their craft.
In general, the training of artists has historically meant working as an apprentice with an
established artist. The Middle Ages in Europe saw the formation of guilds that included
goldsmiths, glassmakers, stonemasons, medical practitioners and artists, and were
generally supported by a king or the state, with local representatives overseeing the
quality of their production. In many traditional cultures, apprenticeship is still how the
artist learns their craft, skills and expressions specific to that culture. Some nations
actually choose which artists have learned their skill to such a degree that they are
allowed and encouraged to teach others. An example would be artists considered
National Japan. In the developed nations, where education is more available and
considered more important that experience, art schools have developed. The model for
these schools is the French Royal Academy founded by Louis XIV in the 17 th century. In
the 19th century, the Victorians first introduced art to the grade schools, thinking that
teaching the work of the masters would increase morality and that teaching hand-eye
coordination would make better employees for the Industrial Revolution. These ideas
still resonate, and are one of the reasons art is considered important to children’s
education. A recent New York Times article by Steve Lohr explains how this notion has
carried into the realm of high technology and the digital arts. A woman quoted in the
article says that a proficiency in digital animation is an asset less for technical skills than
for what she learned about analytic thinking.

Like most skilled professions and trades, artists spend many years learning and
applying their knowledge, techniques and creativity. Art schools are found in most
colleges and universities, with degree programs at both the undergraduate and
graduate levels. There are independent art schools offering two and four year programs
in traditional studio arts, graphic arts and design. The degree earned by students
usually ends with a culminating exhibition and directs them towards becoming exhibiting
artists, graphic designers or chers. Such degrees also consider the marketing and sales
practices of art in contemporary culture. Click the hyperlink to view some of the different
art schools
Artist "Bill" Schultz often conducted outdoor classes for his students, taking advantage of the local scenery.Date: 29 January
2011, Author: (Ed62624 (Links to an external site.) This
photograph is licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Many artists learn their craft on their own through practice, study and experimentation.
Whether they come from art schools or not, it takes a strong desire to practice and
become an artist today. There are no longer the historical opportunities to work under
church, state or cultural sponsorships. Instead the artist is driven to sell their work in
some other venue, from a craft fair to a big New York City gallery (New York City is the
official center of art and culture in the United States). There are very few communities
that can support the selling of art on a large scale, as it is generally considered a luxury
item often linked to wealth and power. This is a modern reflection of the original role of
the art gallery.

What is required to become an artist? Skill is one of the hallmarks that we often value in
a work of art. Becoming skilled means a continual repetition of a craft or procedure until
it becomes second nature. Talent is certainly another consideration, but talent alone
does not necessarily produce good art. Like any endeavor, becoming an artist takes
determination, patience, skill, a strong mental attitude and years of practice.

Creativity is another element necessary to become an artist. What exactly is creativity?

It’s linked to imagination and the ability to transcend traditional ways of thinking, with an
exaggerated use of alternatives, ideas and techniques to invent new forms and avenues
of expression. The music composer Leo Ornstein described creativity this way:

“Once you’ve heard what you’ve created you can’t explain how it’s done. But you look at
it and say ‘there’s the evidence’”.

Creativity is used in traditional art forms as well as more innovative ones. It’s what an
artist uses to take something ordinary and make it extraordinary. Creativity can be a
double-edged sword in that it’s one thing that artists are most criticized for, especially in
the arena of buying and selling art. In general the buying public tends to want things
they recognize, rather than artwork that challenges or requires thinking. This dichotomy
is illustrated by a poem by English writer Robert Graves, “Epitaph on an Unfortunate
Artist”:

He found a formula for drawing comic rabbits

This formula for drawing comic rabbits paid,
So in the end he could not change the tragic habits
This formula for drawing comic rabbits made.

The ability to give visual expression is really what art is all about. It can range from
creating pieces just for beauty’s sake (aesthetics) or for social, political or spiritual
meaning. To fully appreciate the artist and their voice we need to consider that if we
value expression we must value a multitude of voices, some of which contradict our own
values and ideas. The artistic process culminates in a form of human expression that
reaches all of us at some level.

ART AS A SOCIAL ACTIVITY

Some of the grandest works of art are made not by a single person but by many people.
Pyramids in Egypt and Mexico are massive structures, built by hundreds of laborers
under the direction of designers and engineers. Egyptian pyramids are tombs for
individual royalty, while those in Mexico function as spiritual altars dedicated to gods or
celestial objects. They are typically placed at a prominent site and give definition to the
surrounding landscape. Their construction is the cumulative effort of many people, and
they become spectacular works of art without the signature of a single artist.

A more contemporary example of art making as a community effort is the AIDS

Memorial Quilt Project. Begun in 1987, the project memorializes the thousands of lives
lost to the disease through the creation of quilts by families and friends. Blocks of
individual quilts are sewn together to form larger sections, virtually joining people
together to share their grief and celebrate the lives of those lost. The project is evidence
of the beauty and visual spectacle of a huge community artwork. Today there are over
40,000 individual blocks. The quilt project is ongoing, growing in size, and exhibited
throughout the world.

Many artists collaborate with non-artists in arrangements designed to produce work for
a specific place. Public art is a good example of this. The process usually begins with a
select panel of the public and private figures involved in the project who call for
submissions of creative ideas surrounding a particular topic or theme, then a review of
the ideas submitted and the artist’s selection. Funding sources for these projects vary
from private donations to the use of public tax dollars or a combination of the two. Many
states have “1% for Art” laws on the books which stipulate that one percent of the cost
of any public construction project be used for artwork to be placed on the site.

After the selection process the artist will commence on an intense collaboration with
architects, engineers, public administrators and others connected with the project,
ultimately resulting in the installation of a public artwork. Because of its complexity this
process needs to be expertly managed. Other countries have similar programs. All of
them allow individual artists and collaborative teams the chance to put a definitive
creative stamp on public spaces. You can view Flemish artist Arne Quinze’s public art
work The Sequence below.
 The Sequence, Arne Quinze, 2008. Wood. Installed at the Flemish Parliament Building, Brussels.
This photograph has been released into the public domain.

Public art projects can be subject to controversy. It’s not easy for everyone to agree on
what constitutes ‘good’ or ‘bad’ art, or at least what is appropriate for a public space.
The issue takes on a more complex perspective when public money is involved in its
funding. One example involves Richard Serra’s sculpture Tilted Arc (Links to an external
site: http://pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/flashpoints/visualarts/tiltedarc_a.html) from 1981.

Time, resources, a space to work in, a supportive family and public, a culture that
respects skill and values creativity and expression: all of these are useful for the artist to
thrive. What does an artist give back to society? They give voice to speak of those
things that language cannot describe, and an experience that pays attention to
aesthetics and an interest in the world. They give expression to what it is to be human in
all its positive and negative forms.