No soy la única

Papá Noel no llegó con mi libro del tiburón (aunque ya lo tengo, review coming soon!) pero me trajo otras joyas.

Manual de estilo del arte contemporáneo de Pablo Helguera se ha convertido en mi nueva biblia -y no es para menos. Después de unos días de extrema desilusión leo las primeras páginas y me siento extrañamente reconfortada... he aquí algunas perlas:

Many of those who enter into the visual arts field -typically, the art and the art history students- have a set of early experiences that has made them extremely critical of the art world. In certain cases, their disappointment is so deep that they cannot appreciate any value in art. But without being able to consider abandoning it, they remain in it, making ther lives, along with the lives of those around them, even bitterer. Some of them will resort to teaching in order to sabotage the careers of the younger generation; some may choose criticism in order to sabotage the careers of of all artists; and some may choose arts administration in museums in order to expand their destructive capability to include the general public. This happens, we believe, because on the onset of entrance into the art world one tends to have a bit of an idealist notion about what this world is like and expects things like spiritual or metaphysical fulfillment. One may also expect to experience [...] the possibility of being part of a cultural elite whose profession balances intellectual sophistication with the sense of fashion. [...] What the starting art dreamer encounters, however, is a very different reality: a hostile, competitive, and highly intimidating environment. Young artists struggle to get their slides seen by curators and rejection becomes a routine experience; young curators have to work for five years in volunteer internships in small cubicles in large museums, xeroxing materials and typing checklists before they are invited into a meeting or allowed to participate in any significant decision for any exhibition. The critics rarely get paid, let alone given the opportunity to publish in the first place, and rarely do they get to decide what they want to write about. [...] With first experiences like this, it is natural to develop an apprehension towards the art world. [...]

Some consider it unfortunate that an activity considered transcendental and of vital relevance to the spiritual progress of humanity such as contemporary art is governed by economic directives, but it is necessary to accept this and to learn how to live with it [...].

Amen.