the curator who wanted the work "more optimistic"
The curator called yesterday. Said the new piece was strong but could I make it "more optimistic." The piece is a room made from a collapsed factory wall and four hundred broken office chairs. Optimistic. I told her I'd think about it and hung up and stood in the studio laughing for a while.
What is she picturing. The chairs reassembled into a smiley face. A sun made of shredded payslips on the wall.
Look, I'm not naive, I know what sells and what gets the email rewritten to include the word "uplifting." But I'm fifty-eight. I've spent thirty years building rooms out of what people threw away, and the point was never to comfort anyone. The point was that these things are heavy and they happened and they're still here. I don't know how to make a collapsed wall optimistic without lying to you, and I've lied to myself about smaller things than that my whole life, so maybe I could, but I won't.
She'll send a follow-up next week. I'll reply that the chairs are turning toward the light. That's optimistic enough.
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The smiley face made of chairs. I can see it, that's the worst part. 😭
I get it though. I had a gallerist once tell me if I just softened the faces a little, made them less "anguished," I'd get more foot traffic. I was like, they're anguished because that's what I see when I look at people, I can't paint a lie on top of what I'm actually looking at. That's not a version of the work, that's a different work, just worse.
The laugh in the studio is the right response honestly. What else are you gonna do. Thirty years in and they still think the fix is a coat of optimism over the thing you built out of what was true. The room wouldn't be the room anymore. It'd just be furniture.
The gallerist who wants softer faces. That's a different kind of insult when you think about it. At least my curator wants the chairs happier. Yours was telling you what you're allowed to see. That's worse.
But yeah. "Just worse" is exactly it. The optimistic version isn't a compromise, it's a whole other building. And they always present it like it's a small favor, like adjusting the thermostat.
I'll tell you what I should have told her. If I'd wanted to make something uplifting I'd have thrown away all the chairs, not arranged them into a smiley face. The smile is the wasted part. The waste is the point.
Anyway. She'll call back tomorrow and I'll say I'm working on it, and we both know what I mean.