Looking back on the Kaffe Krisis, and discounting the sour grapes, mudslinging and my rather curious attempt to put out a fire by pissing on it, there is still an issue at the heart of it that merits discussion, and it's the journey of an artist. Kaffe is a perfect person to use as an example, because, product aside, his process as a knitter and fiber artist is classically that of an artist. One can see that in his obvious fascination with process.
Artists value process as much as product, the journey as well as the destination. New stimuli, new ideas, and change are absolutely necessary for an artist's growth. When I knit, or when I choreograph, the next project is often what I didn't do the last time. The last work was stranded color work, so this one is lace. Or process carried through over several projects: I found myself making a series of ballets over a few years where I seemed to be shooting around a mark, and kept going until I had finally said what I felt I had to say on that theme.
The market for art is geared almost entirely towards product, and a very good way to succeed quickly is to fill a market niche. When a ballet company calls someone like William Forsythe to commission a new work from him, the last thing they want from him is a bold experiment. They want a ballet that is like the other ones by Forsythe that prompted them to call him. "Oh yeah, Forsythe. That's the guy who makes work to electronic music and everyone wears black." In knitting, we get, "Oh yeah, Fassett. He's the color guy."
Some people are most interested in mining a single theme for long periods of time, so the desires of the market coincide with their artistic needs. Some people's main goal is to be well known, so they respond to the market demands. We have artists whose love affair with the market is so intimate that one cannot tell whether they caused trends or responded to them (Madonna), artists who actually made their own versatility and chameleon nature their "niche" (Meryl Streep). Everybody falls somewhere on the continuum. In knitting and dance, the two forms I know, the market doesn't usually spill into popular celebrity, so the pressures aren't as great.
Knowing Fassett only through his work, my guess has always been that his fascination with a single theme (color) is from within, not without. His popularity coincided with his desires more than shaped them. For him, artistic change comes from taking this single theme, exploration of color, and moving from medium to medium (paint, knitting, needlepoint, now quilts, recently costume designs) rather than taking a medium such as knitting and exploring all aspects of it. I've always admired the latter, preferring elegant solutions using characteristics unique to the medium (for instance, cabled darts in knitting) and it's always been my quibble with Fassett, but that's how artists are. Some tree roots are shallow and spread, some tunnel down toward bedrock. His way is not mine, but the artistry within it cannot be vouchsafed.
As for me, I tend to be a chameleon, it has hurt me sometimes in dance, where people kept wondering when I was going to develop a "distinctive voice." I've ended up taking a rocky road, like Streep in acting, a "distinctive voice" is something that runs under, rather than directly upon, the surface of my work. She can be the French Lieutenant's Woman or Karen Silkwood, dye her hair and change her accent for the role, but there is always something in the process and analysis of the approach that is still Streep. It takes people a little longer to trust one artistically that way, but as I said, some trees have shallow roots, others have deep ones. I may do Arans then lace then stranded color work and then a ballet or a magazine article and Kaffe may do color exploration after color exploration, but we are both following an inner road.
One last note on the subject. Failed inspiration is something that cannot be seen except in hindsight. Artists go into eclipse all the time. Sometimes they run dry. Sometimes they no longer reflect the current imagination, even if they are still producing work. Culture and society moves along a separate road than the artist, and sometimes their paths diverge, even if the artist still feels richly inspired, s/he may not inspire others until the culture changes again. And how many artists have shocked us in old age or after a long silence with a work so pure in its expression that it almost burns our eyes as we see it, our hands as we touch it? Do not worry about the artist in eclipse. Eclipses end.
LAW
©1997 Leigh Witchel. All rights reserved.
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