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How to start writing as an artist?
On the advantages of focusing on both: your artistic practice and writing practice
It took me a while myself to understand that writing can be a helpful tool to clarify, specify, back-up and publish one’s ideas: to contextualize my thoughts through research, to compare and to reason, and to get in touch with art and academic communities.
It is important to stress that, in writing about art, we are not taming the art. Writing about art does the contrary. As Susan Sontag says in her famous 1961 essay Against Interpretation:
We awake our senses to complex perceptive processes and invite others to share our experiences.
With writings about art we offer a platform to start discussions and research processes. I see writing as a way to make artistic processes visible, to learn and understand more about your own work and the work of others. And as an arts teacher: to push fine art students’ self-confidence through becoming part of bigger networks and discussions.
I invite my students to imagine: What if we would write and discuss art as much as we verbalize, discuss and describe sports or the weather? How far would that propel the arts?
