What is creative activity? Social media would have us believe it is fast and furious—cue the dizzying double-speed video of someone making something. In fact, the creative process doesn’t usually lend itself to drama; a lot of what happens in the studio would appear to be inaction, the outwardly humdrum, inwardly remarkable percolation of ideas. In other words, it looks pretty boring.
“Boring” is a word that comes up twice elsewhere in this issue. First, in Carlos Valladares’s piece about Ira Sachs’s new film Peter Hujar’s Day, in which Hujar, played by Ben Whishaw, describes his day in minute detail to his friend, the writer Linda Rosenkrantz (played by Rebecca Hall). “Is this boring?” Hujar asks her at one point. It is not boring, Valladares assures us, but neither is it in any conventional sense riveting. It is, he writes, “the movements of an artist’s day: the preparation for the work, the work itself, and then … reflection.” That it isn’t Mission: Impossible is precisely the point. “What gets erased,” Valladares ponders, “when we shackle ourselves to the Hollywood notion of ‘action’?”
Related Articles
The word “boring” comes up again in Jeremy Lybarger’s interview with Chicago-based artists Nick Cave and Bob Faust, longtime partners in life and in creative pursuits. They discuss how they collaborate on various endeavors, from making things to hosting exhibitions in their live/work space. Their rapport is easy, and at a certain point Cave seems to worry that there isn’t enough drama. “Are we boring?” he asks toward the end of the conversation. “I didn’t think so,” Faust answers. It’s the same answer that Rosenkrantz gives to her friend Hujar in Sachs’s film: “No,” she says. “It’s not boring to me.”
Action is relative. At the end of the day, artists are problem-solvers. Every painting, every sculpture, every film is a series of problems created and solved by its maker, using ingenious methods of his, her, or their own devising. Just when you think an artwork won’t work, it does. Maybe it really is Mission: Impossible.
FEATURES
Razor’s Edge
Talia Chetrit walks the tightrope between fashion and art, intimacy and control.
by Lillian Fishman
Printer Perfect
Advances in digital printing are changing what kind of art object a photograph can be.
by James Welling
The Mind’s Eye
In her paintings, Mernet Larsen wants to see from many angles, all at once.
by Emily Watlington
Motherload
On exhibiting care and mothering in an age of imperiled democracy.
by Lucy Ives
Deals with the Dead
How licensing agreements with artists’ estates keep legacies alive
by Jeppe Ugelvig
An Assemblage of Sorts
In the studio with Nick Cave and Bob Faust.
by Jeremy Lybarger
DEPARTMENTS
Datebook
A highly discerning list of things to experience over the next three months.
by the Editors of A.i.A.
Hard Truths
An artist worries about troublesome funding, and a painter of mural ads wonders if he’s a hack. Plus, an obsolescence-themed quiz.
by Chen & Lampert
Sightlines
Novelist Brandon Taylor tells us what he likes.
by Francesca Aton
Inquiry
A Q&A with Ira Sachs about his Peter Hujar film.
by Carlos Valladres
Object Lesson
An annotation of Gabriela Ruiz’s Collective Scream.
by Francesca Aton
Battle Royale
Aspen vs. St. Moritz—two artsy winter wonderlands go head-to-head.
by the Editors of A.i.A.
New Talent
Mimi Ọnụọha uses AI to point out lacunae in our so-called Information Age.
by Alex Greenberger
Syllabus
A reading list for a crash course on the New York art world.
by Emily Cox
Appreciation
A tribute to Robert Grosvenor, a sculpture who started with Minimalism before venturing into his own realm.
by Arlene Shechet
Issues & Commentary
On the pleasures and perils of hot girl feminism.
by Emily Watlington
Spotlight
Minnie Evans’s legacy raises questions about power dynamics between self-taught artists and the art world.
by TK Smith
Book Review
A reading of Olivia Laing’s The Silver Book.
by Larissa Pham
Cover Artist
Mernet Larsen talks about her painting on the cover of A.i.A.
REVIEWS
Bukhara
Bukhara Diary
by Elise Morton
Chicago
“Strange Realities: The Symbolist Imagination”
by Emily Cox
Frankfurt
Suzanne Duchamp
by Kelly Presutti
New York
“Sixites Surreal”
by Jackson Arn
“Vaginal Davis: Magnificent Product”
by McKenzie Wark
São Paulo
São Paulo Bienal
by Emily Watlington