A professed anarchist has become mayor of Reykjavik in Iceland (the nation that led the way in collapso economics).  His name is Jon Gnarr and among other things he is a comedian.  His campaign included a song which you can hear on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxBW4mPzv6E.

Gnarr had to find coalition partners for his party and insisted that he would only accept people who had watched all five seasons of The Wire.  If you’ve seen the series you’ll know how it might serve as a political filter.  Maybe that’s why it was buried after midnight when it screened on New Zealand television (most likely it was because the language is a little unparliamentary and the realism is much more edgy than we’re used to).  If you haven’t seen it, the good news is that it’s widely available on DVD and it’s worth the effort.

David Simon, lead writer, director and producer of The Wire, sees it as a contemporary version of ancient Greek drama.  He says* ‘Instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces.  It’s the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomic forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no good reason.’

The Wire challenges many of the core myths of our society.  It is extremely local and remarkably international.  Set in Baltimore (not far south of New York) it is packed with ingredients that could only belong to a particular city.  At the same time the dynamics of Baltimore symbolise Everycity.

Simon is fiercely angry about the corruption and stupidity that drives some of our main institutions.  For example, in terms of law and policing he says: ‘I am unalterably opposed to drug prohibition; what began as a war against illicit drugs has mutated into a war on the American underclass, and what drugs have not destroyed in our inner cities, the war against them has.’

One of the consequences for America is that it has placed more than two million people in jail.  In California the state budget for tertiary education is more or less level with the budget for prisons.  In New Zealand our rate of imprisonment is lower but there is big political pressure to jail more people – at a cost of $90,000 per person per year.  Most of the people in jail are from our local ‘underclass’.  Advocates of imprisonment should view The Wire and consider whether there are aspects of law and enforcement which make our communities more dangerous.

Simon also confronts what he calls ‘untethered capitalism run amok’.  He says that the show explores the ways in which ‘power and money actually root themselves in a postmodern American city and … we as an urban people are no longer able to solve our problems or heal our wounds.’  It’s hard to escape the sense that our most fundamental institutions – the law, schools, government, democracy, commerce – can morph into monsters.

New Zealand rates closer to Nirvana than it does to Baltimore although we share many of the same dynamics – mostly on a much smaller scale and without the culture of hand-guns.  TLC’s campus is in the low-decile area of Taita and we see the problems right there.  It isn’t as if our society is falling apart but there are precursors of major trouble.  The Wire is a powerful way of focusing attention and building the courage to try a few things differently.

* In THE WIRE – TRUTH BE TOLD, book by Rafael Alvarez

By Jonathan Milne

One of the fears of beginning artists is that others will steal their ideas.  At TLC exhibitions there are stern signs saying NO PHOTOGRAPHY.  I assume that there is a worry that people might use images to make money at the expense of the artist.

Since TLC began in 1988 we have never had any convincing evidence of illicit copying or cheating.  There have been one or two grumbles (‘Your work looks too much like mine’), but on investigation we haven’t found anything other than an overlap of themes and styles.

Cheating turns out to be more complex than it seems.  At one end of the spectrum are brazen, undisputed acts such as wholesale copying and on-selling of movies.  At the other end of the scale are acts which sometimes look more like education than cheating.

We teach children by mimicry (copying) and when it comes to art we blame them for following our teaching too well.  For example, figurative drawing is based on the notion of making a copy of something you can see.  It’s a strange idea because the ‘copy’ is an illusion and it can be made without a shred of creativity.  Meticulous paintings of photographs are called ‘photographic realism’ and they are generally counted as ‘art’.

It is then just a small jump to a ‘style’.  Is it ‘copying’ to make a picture in a pointillist style?  The funny thing is that you can press a button in PhotoShop and achieve a pointillist result with no creative input.

The notion of ‘cheating’ is increasingly blurry.  You can see a vast amount of art for free on the internet, but under some circumstances it is an offence to copy it.  You can borrow a DVD of a movie and view it legally, but if you make a copy you are technically breaking the law.

There are smart marketers who realise that cheating can be good.  Musicians give away segments of their music in the hope that people will ‘steal’ it and thereby help them to sell albums. The same tactic can work for artists.  If your work is seen you have a better chance of making sales.

Education itself is problematic.  How can students engage with art if they’re deemed to be cheating by making copies?  It puzzles me that there are galleries that allow people to make drawings of art while at the same time prohibiting photographs.  Even more problematic, how can critics usefully talk about art without being able to use images?  If artists and their agents are so possessive or greedy that they won’t allow any ‘reasonable use’ of photos, then they are inhibiting education.

When I wrote ‘GO! The Art of Change’ I used nearly 1500 images, almost entirely my own photos, many of which gratefully, were of a substantial number of art works by TLC students.  If we had been required to pay royalties for all the art then the production would have been an economic and legal nightmare.  The book would have been impossible and this is why small countries like New Zealand don’t have many books about their own artists.

I’m therefore drawn to a different notion of ‘cheating’ and ‘copying’.  If the cheat is causing damage by undermining your livelihood, then it is pure, old fashioned cheating and deserves to be penalised.  If there is no damage and of educational value or possible free publicity, then maybe it deserves to be encouraged.

By Jonathan Milne

When you create art you’re taking the lead.  You have to make your own decisions and follow them through.  You are in charge.

If people acknowledge you as an artist they are probably thinking about your work.  Without putting it into words they are also saying that you have made effective leadership decisions with your own particular skills and ideas.

Art-making is Leadership 1.01.  It isn’t as if every good artist is a good leader, but every good leader is going to have some of the qualities of a good artist.

The second challenge for an artist (Leadership 1.02) is to create the means to make more art.  Typically (but not always) this involves money.  Selling requires something beyond the art itself – artists need to engage with others.

The early stages of an artist’s career can be frail and unpredictable.  Picasso, for example, now appears as an art colossus of the 20th century but, had it not been for Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, an art dealer, he may well have remained poor and unknown.  Picasso wrote, ‘What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn’t had a business sense?’

Picasso’s work, particularly ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, was championed by Kahnweiler and became famous.  Teamwork was crucial to success.  Both artist and dealer had leadership roles.

It turns out that this kind of ‘distributed leadership’ is overwhelmingly more common than ‘pyramid leadership’ where a person called the President, King, General, Mayor, Chief Executive (or whatever) appears to be in charge.  The pyramid system requires a chain of command – people are supposed to do what they’re told.  Trade unions sometimes expose the shortcomings of the pyramid by ‘working to rule’.  They meticulously follow orders and the result can be worse than not working at all.

Nations largely work on distributed leadership.  Everyone is ‘leading’ simply by doing whatever it is that they do.  Most of the time no one is giving orders.  We make choices based on a subtle interaction between personal and collective thinking.

When you make art you also make decisions that go beyond the work.  If you get stuck or bored you must decide how to respond.  If you become famous you will need to decide how to manage fame.

The secret is to find open-ended patterns which are ‘growthy’ and sustainable.  You don’t have to be Picasso to be successful.

The paradox of ‘distributed leadership’ is that you can find a way to serve others and do what you like. Then it no longer matters whether you’re the president.  You’re free to lead through your own creativity.  It’s the best of all worlds.

'Flambeau de noces chimiques' - Judit Reigl 1954, Pompidou Centre, Paris

Have you heard of Judit Reigl, or Simon Hantï, or Jésus Raphael Soto?   They are all on the walls of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, along with a legion of other artists whom most of us don’t know.  They’re interesting too, basking in their low-visibility fame.

They stand close to big names like Picasso, Kandinsky, Pollock, Braque, Bonnard and Matisse.  Many of the big name works were as unknown to me as Judit Reigl.  Some of them were remarkably unremarkable; others stopped me in my tracks.

Couple Pablo Picasso 1971 Pompidou Centre, Paris

When you walk through a giant gallery the art blurs a little.  It’s like an overdose of speed-dating.  Instead of slowly ‘getting acquainted’, each piece of art has two or three seconds to get through our defences.

Fame skews our attention because a well-known name inevitably attracts a second glance.  We look longer at Picasso than Judit Reigl.

I recall a photography exercise which tricked me into a different way of looking.  The tutor randomly threw hoops and each person made their pictures from within one of the hoops.  Instead of being flooded with abundance we were invited to discover magic in whatever was there.  It worked.  We found that visual riches were largely a product of our imagination.

Try the same tactic with student art work.  Pause in front of one exhibit and think about the qualities which make it amazing.  Imagine for a moment that it is signed by one of the great names.  Perhaps it is an early Pollock.  Wow.  You can really understand the beginnings of a spectacular career.

Critics and historians do this with hindsight.  They look at works of a famous artist and invent a logical sequence of steps to connect early influences with greatness.  The test of hindsight is whether it works as foresight.  Can the same critics predict which artists are going to be great in the future?

We don’t normally look at art in terms of ‘greatness’ – we look at it in terms of conversation.  It isn’t so different from what happens when we read a novel.  It might lead to new insights or it might be a passing entertainment.  That’s how art works.  Novels and paintings that trigger wonderful conversations have a better chance of becoming famous.  However, an ‘unknown’ artist may catch you by surprise and bring new meaning into your life.  Potential conversations are tucked inside each person who dares to engage with art and creativity.

When I search through a student show, I look for images that might work in the TLC publications.  I see new things each time I walk around.  The art questions my preconceptions.  It’s a sobering exercise.  Judit Reigls pop up everywhere.  Fresh, vibrant and packed with expressive power.

Take your time.  Be willing to return to look again and again.  Trust the elusive way our minds connect with what is around us.  With a little practice you’ll get into the habit of finding magic.

By Jonathan Milne

What do you do when you think no one is interested in your art and you’ll never make a living from it? It is a crisis faced from time to time by most creative people.  It’s normal.  There are ways to cope.

The early days of TLC involved some massive wobbles.  Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s TLC was tiny and vulnerable.  I worked like a maniac to ensure that our classes happened and that they were memorably good.

The money situation was chronically fragile.  I used to jog to the post office every day and hope that new enrolments were in the mail.  I also grabbed opportunities to do other work (mostly part time teaching) to keep the cash flowing.

By far the most positive thing was the progress of students who did our courses.  It was richly exciting and positive for just about everyone who participated.  Excitement doesn’t pay the rent but it’s a signal that something good is happening.  The hunger and enthusiasm of students helped to convince me that TLC ideas were worth fighting for.

Maybe this is more important than anything else.  If you feel that your work matters, that you have something to contribute to the world, then difficulties cease being psychological burdens.  You still have to apply yourself to achieve practical results but it’s a whole lot easier to focus on action instead of being bogged down by worries.

Like most artists I’m not driven by money but I realised that it was important to deal with the financial side of the school.  I felt invigorated talking with marketers and reading books on marketing.  The underlying idea is to draw attention to things of value.

Marketers can be pathologically optimistic and it took time (and many mistakes) before I realised that there are no certainties.  Marketing, like art itself, is a conversation.  You have to discover what works.  The oddest thing I ever did was spray pamphlets with a little whiff of perfume before putting them in letter boxes.  It didn’t sell anything but it did add a new dimension to a hugely boring task.  And of course it was research.  I was learning about the way people connected (the things that don’t work are just as important as the things that do – you learn how to make the best use of your energy).

My current marketing guru is Jeffrey Gitomer (http://www.gitomer.com/).  Gitomer.com is bursting with good tactics (all free) and – hidden behind the blah – an engaging sense of life, the universe and everything.   He encourages you to be effective by being yourself – a great message for artists.

When you hit the inevitable speed wobble, take time out to consider what has worked really well.  Chances are that’s going to be the zone of the ‘real you’.  The next step is to build on what works.  For a dose of hard-headed encouragement you might like to check Gitomer.com.  Then it’s a matter of pondering your situation and figuring out what you can do to make a difference.  In the end it isn’t the wobble that matters, it’s your willingness and ability to make an effective response.

Evidence of danger is all around.  At airports in Europe it isn’t unusual to see soldiers carrying machine guns, all part of the continuing story of the ‘war against terrorism’.  Outside every school parents deliver and collect their children from the front gate because there is a constant sense of danger on the streets.

It isn’t new.  In southern France, at Le Cros de Caunes-Minervois, there are the remnants of a fortification that dates back nearly three thousand years.  It looks like a pile of rocks but it used to be an imposing defensive position.

Throughout France there are examples of fortifications, mostly castles, some in advanced states of decay, others preserved for tourists.  It appears that people have always had barricades as a defense against marauders.   Mostly, of course, life happened out in the open where people tended their crops, looked after animals and played.

Today the connected feelings of defense and aggression are stoked by rapid reporting of death and disaster.  It isn’t only about fighting and killing – economics and the environment have been turned into horror stories too.  Although there are some dangerous possibilities, we question whether they are worth the chronic fear which is generated by a constant diet of bad news.

The most dangerous aspect of fear is the inhibition of play.  Without play there isn’t much art and creativity.  Without creativity we’re not going to be able to respond effectively to danger.

Play is the starting point of TLC’s Diploma of Art and Creativity.  It’s a paradox.  The economy wobbling, the environment getting messed up, lots of fingers on lots of triggers, and we’re saying “hey, let’s learn how to play.”

Play opens hearts and minds.  There isn’t any single recipe.  Even a simple act of observation can be playful.  It’s as if the whole world is dancing and we are encouraging you to find a way to join in.

A beginning point of play is that it helps us get along together.  When people are getting along well they find it a lot easier to find ways to deal with the things they call ‘problems’.  It becomes easier to do science, make art and develop business.  It helps move us through protective barriers – the mental equivalents of the metal detectors and body-scanners – so that we can be ourselves.

TLC offers the play of engagement rather than the play of distraction.  Our programmes are about engagement with the world.  It’s about the audacity of fun.  If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right.

Jonathan Milne (Managing Director)

The disturbing news is that what happens in America often flows on to New Zealand.  The unemployment rate in America has doubled to around 10% in the last two years (NZ has moved up to 6%).  More than thirty-six million Americans are currently receiving benefits via food stamps.  Western economies as a whole are in a mess and are dependent on what might as well be called food stamps.  Rod Oram in the Sunday Star Times (November 29, 2009) said ‘Central bank support of financial systems and government stimulus of economies equals 30% of global GDP.’

Putting it another way, the financial system is a social welfare cot case and is receiving massive support to ease the potential of a much bigger calamity.

This may look like terrible news for budding artists because state spending is getting tighter and tighter.  Our government has put a heavy lid on educational spending and we’re hearing new versions of old advice about learning to be happy with less.

On the bright side our politicians might finally wake up to the fact that money itself is a big part of the problem.  Currency trading has become a massive and essentially useless business.  Global trading in New Zealand currency went up by nearly 900% in the six years to December 2007*.  In the last half of 2009 our currency bounced 23% between the lowest and highest values against the US dollar.  Does that have any grounding in reality or is it part of a giant financial poker game?

If the poker game was taxed at a very low rate per transaction, the money could go into education and other worthy causes.  Naturally the poker game would get smaller and less profitable, which could free capital for things that actually matter.

TLC has been very conservative during the ‘decade from hell’ and we’ve kept our borrowing to a minimum.  Instead of joining the money market we’ve built capital and put it into our new Taita campus.  We have moved into the ‘Twenty-tens’ in better shape than ever.  We’ve built the best art and creativity resources in New Zealand and it is a privilege to be involved.

Despite our underlying stability we’re still vulnerable to changes in the world economy and to government policy.  The best protection is for staff and students to think of new ways in which art and creativity can be relevant to the wider community.

Two particular areas of development are especially important.  One is the relationship between hands-on art experience and general ‘problem-solving’.   This is something which is vital to education everywhere.

The other major area is well-being.  I recently heard psychiatrist Stuart Brown say that the opposite of fun is depression.  No wonder that people find that the fun of art is good for them.  It’s exciting and inspiring.  It does something for the human spirit.  It is a message to all who care to pay attention.  When the human spirit is strong, we will find ways to prosper.

* based on figures in the Sunday Star Times, 29/11/09

There are many different tactics to build connections (reading the TLC newsletter is one of them!). I also recommend a free subscription to the Robert Genn Twice-Weekly Letter. Just go to http://www.painterskeys.com/ and check it out.

Robert Genn is possibly the most generous art writer in the world. His regular letters are a treasure. They are richly democratic and feature input and art work from a great diversity of artists. Although he is primarily a painter his columns have value for anyone who is living and working creatively.

Genn is less concerned with answers than with sharing different points of view. He says “There are as many answers as there are artists.”*

The letters blend discipline and openness. Along with a constant undertone of craft skills there is an intense awareness that we can’t control everything. “Magic happens when orderly processes are disordered.”** So we are taken to the heart of great teaching. Skills are the foundation but they don’t go anywhere until the artist lets go and trusts the magic.

There are two ways to go to the paradoxical place of disciplined freedom. One is to pay attention to other artists and to notice that each finds their own way. It’s like the legend of the Holy Grail where the knights knew that the regular pathways were for other people. They therefore built their knowledge and took it into places where there were no footsteps.

The second technique is to grapple with the poetic imagery that Genn supplies in abundance. Consider: “Art thrives when surprise prevails. Peeling back a Raku kiln is like opening birthday presents. Curious potters gather at the smoky, mysterious shrine. These folks are so nervous, some of them have taken to drink. A shout goes up – there are tears of disappointment, yes, but also tears of joy. All art needs to be such a birthday.”**

Poetry, by its nature, is mysterious. You can’t quite pin down the meaning of a poem, and that is precisely why poetic imagery is such a good tool to deal with paradox. Art is surely the kingdom of paradox, and while physics may help in the mixing of colours it is never sufficient to take us to wisdom.

Behind his extraordinary depth of knowledge Genn has a sharp sense of effective communication. The easy thing for a writer is to tell a story. The hard thing is to open and sustain a conversation. It is strange to feel like a participant in a conversation without saying a word, but that’s what happens. The letters are like fireworks which set off endless flashes of new inspiration and connections. Genn himself thrives on the fireworks of his readers and process builds into a kind of cosmos of ideas.

Genn has a big and loyal following because the letters are rewarding. It’s as simple as that. In the gigantic clutter and clamour of internet communication, Robert Genn consistently delivers something special. There is something for artists, for teachers, for humanity. I can’t help but love an artist who says: “Stuff like planning and research and reference and inspiration and time and the right mood aren’t worth a farthing compared to audacity.”***

*Feb 10, 2006
** April 4, 2007
*** 17 March 2006

TLC is nearly 21 years old.

It seems like a long time, but time is relative.  My favourite way of looking at it is a line which says ‘Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.’

Robert Genn, in his wonderful newsletter, talks about doing art work within the time of an old hour glass, which happens to take 37 minutes.  His students achieve exciting results within the shortened hour.

Einstein figured that time is bendy and it behaves differently according to your own situation.  If you’re motoring along at the speed of light then time stops, or so the theory predicts.  Subjectively time feels different depending on whether you’re enjoying what you’re doing.   When you’re with someone you love, or you’re immersed in making art, time seems to disappear.  On the other hand if you’re having root-canal surgery or you’re stuck in an extremely dull lecture, time goes very slowly.

Time Flies when you're having fun (a quarter of a second in the lives of insects flying around a bright light). Photograph By Jonathan Milne

Many cultures have the view that time goes around in circles.  The movie Ground Hog Day reduced these circles to the length of a single day, but in Hindu philosophy the cycles are millions of years long.

Fashions in art can be close to Ground Hog Day.  They go round and round fairly quickly.  The Pre-Raphaelites were revolutionary in their day.  Then the Impressionists were revolutionary.  And since then the revolutions have occurred more and more quickly until now we have a sort of continuous revolution, which is what Chairman Mao said he wanted.  But revolution has turned into a fashion.  It feels compulsory to do something new and provocative every year, regardless of whether there’s any point to it.

When I look at TLC art I see something a little different.  We see a continuing line of engaging work.  But curiously it has never been preoccupied with fashion.  Our staff and students have been engaged with a process of discovery.  TLC art shows are about exploration.

From a human point of view exploration is timeless.  It makes no difference whether we’re 21 years or 21 decades.  Malcolm Gladwell argues in ‘Blink’ that much of our most useful experience is instantaneous.  Is the history of an artist (or an organisation) the story of a number of critical instants.

I think life is a conversation (and ‘history’ consists of those things from the past which we decide to make relevant in the present) .  We do things, the world responds and we in turn respond again.  Some of the conversations turn out to last longer and maybe fly higher.  Others fall flat, or maybe need to be tried again in different circumstances.

The whole point about TLC is that it is a conversation.  We’re people engaging with people and exploring things that matter.  TLC staff and students are explorers, forever testing the boundaries in new ways.  When you’re at a show or viewing TLC work on line, you’re talking with explorers.  Welcome to a timeless conversation.

The Times item said: ‘…babies and very young children are terrible at planning and aiming for precise goals. When we say that preschoolers can’t pay attention, we really mean that they can’t not pay attention: they have trouble focusing on just one event and shutting out all the rest. This has led us to underestimate babies in the past. But the new research tells us that babies can be rational without being goal-oriented.’

I’m convinced that these same processes occur when adults engage in art (which takes them out of their usual logical landscape). Essentially art takes us into different kinds of thinking from the routine habits of school study. Rather than being something to abandon, like a pair of shoes which are too small, it’s a dimension of thinking which could be fostered throughout our lives.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/akaradrix/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The writer of the Times article, Alison Gopnik, and fellow researcher Tamar Kushnir, carried out some intriguing tests which enabled them to gather clues about the effectiveness of ‘baby thinking’. For example, pre-schoolers could do a kind of statistical analysis and make reliable choices between coloured blocks which caused a machine to light up. They would choose the colours that worked more often (quite a subtle test).

When you try to find what ‘works’ in art you’re doing much the same thing, and far from being a limited aspect of pre-school intelligence it’s something that crops up again and again in the more complex aspects of our lives. It’s relatively straight forward to do the arithmetic for a shopping list (how much do you have to spend and what do the items cost?). On the other hand it can be extremely complex to figure out career choices or the value of education. How can you predict the benefits of tertiary study in the overall arc of your life?

Art gives people the opportunity to practice complex, non-linear reasoning. This is different from reductionist thinking in which all unnecessary aspects of a problem are set aside. The challenge with real life is that everything is a factor. Pre-schoolers are doing something fundamentally important when they see a world in which everything is happening at once. That’s the way things are. The arithmetic of shopping lists is useful but it’s only a small part of the big picture.

When you grapple with art, even the apparently simple things like the choice of colours are really complex. One of the extraordinary benefits of art is that it provides real practice for this type of thinking. You get clues about what is working. The clues are different from getting the right answer in a multiple choice question but they’re nevertheless effective. Just as pre-schoolers can do statistics without numbers, adults can use art to sharpen their skills at navigating complexity.