You know, when I first came to New York, it was a pretty lean time. Artists, and I mean me and
my friends, everybody. Who had any idea that they were going to make a living? I tell you,
nobody, nobody. I went to graduate school at California Institute of the Arts. I graduated NYU. I
got my M.F.A. I didn’t get an M.F.A. to network and to find a gallery. I got an M.F.A. because I
thought, and I knew, eventually, I’m going to have to go and teach, maybe.
There are all kinds of things you can do. You know, throughout the later ‘80s and also in the late
‘80s, it was kind of a slump, ‘90s it wasn’t, it was kind of a boom time. But I’ve been through
the downtimes and you get through them.
How do you live in this present moment? How do you live in this present moment? As a young
artist, I’m not going to say, listen, I teach at NYU Graduate and I see the level of anxiety. But I
also see a kind of calm, a kind of retrenching, a kind of re-understanding of who should really
become an artist and why, that they say to me that they don’t expect anything. So what gets
stripped away is the sense of entitlement that a lot of artists who have been doing very well, who
got literally out of the gate. And the extremely well aren’t used to it. And they are going to have
to learn how to deal. Maybe, maybe not, who knows? Everybody’s situations are different. But I
think if you’re a young artist, first of all, you’re not used to the money. So don’t have
expectations that you’re going to get used to it, it opens up all these worlds for you. I mean,
there’s community work, there’s service work, there’s non-profit work, there’s travel, there’s
opening up spaces collectively. It’s basically very at ad hoc. And I think what comes out of that
becomes the work that solidifies itself, has the year or the next year or the third year and to
however long this goes on, continues.
So really, I tell them, and it’s also true, the businesses, not just in the art world, we’re all in the
same world. We just went through a period where it was a winner-take all mentality. That wasn’t
the Bush years. Now, I think, we’re entering a period of how do you get through the next few
years and who survives and why? And I think it just might be the people, including the artists,
who somehow will be able to get in touch of the reason why they originally became artists. And
it wasn’t the fun, it wasn’t the money, it wasn’t the irony, it was really the necessity to, you
know, express something that they wanted to put into the world.
What I think that is so interesting and what will change things forever is the lack of certainty.
The fact that, finally, you come to a point in our cultural life where we could all look at each
over and say nobody knows. When I hear Alan Greenspan sit in front of a congressional
committee and say, well, that’s what I thought but nobody knew, I think that’s pretty startling.
And I’m not just talking about economic thinkers and policy makers, but that goes all the way
down the line, all the way down the line, you know. How do you create the new possibilities
anywhere? You create them by mistake, by embracing this sense of uncertainty that’s going on
now. Because that’s what really is. That’s, in a way, what really should’ve been, what was, was
the delusion. And this really is the reality. Now, how deep it goes or how real it gets, obviously,
it’s full with anxiety. Everybody feels it. Every artist feels it. You have to be really not in the
world to feel it. I mean, I know people who sold corporations, who cashed out of major
corporations when the money was incredible, and have lost 30%, 40% of their money. Now, for
me, 40% of their money will be a phenomenal sum. But it’s not about the reality, it’s about the
psychology. To them, its anxiety producing, because that’s what the mindset is.
So, in terms of the art world, will things change permanently? I think that the uncertainty factor
will change things. But that might also change things for the better when it’s all kind of smoothes
out. Will a lot of people disappear? Yeah. Will a lot of business go down? Probably. Will a lot of
artists have to rethink their lives and the way they’re living? Sure. It’s an editing process, you
know. Does it affect the way that I am actually working day-to-day? No, not really or not really
yet. But, who can say? I think everything affects me. I read the papers. In my spare time, I’m a
political junkie. I like politics, I like science. It’s the question. Like I was saying, it’s the
investigation on a day-to-day level. It’s what’s working in my work, what’s not working. But the
bigger issue is what’s working in the world and what’s not working. How the world works and
how it doesn’t work. We’re certainly getting a big dose right now of how it doesn’t work.
There are no new kinds of parameters yet of how it does work or how it will work. It’s like a
guessing game. You have people in policy, people in politics. And, now, they’re just like
thinking on their feet. I thank God that we just have a president who actually you feel confident,
has the ability to think on his feet and work things out in a thoughtful way. I mean, the thought of
having the alternative, to me, would’ve been mind-boggling.