Free Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

uneducable and there is nothing you can do.”
    During my stay in Los Angeles, I asked all sorts of people, What is an artist? It’s an irritatingly basic question, but reactions were so aggressive that I came to the conclusion that I must be violating some taboo. When I asked the students, they looked completely shocked. “That’s not fair!” said one. “You can’t ask that!” said another. An artist with a senior position in a university art department accused me of being “stupid,” and a major curator said, “Ugh. All your questions are only answerable in a way that is almost tautological. I mean, for me, an artist is someone who makes art. It’s circular. You tend to know one when you see one!”
    Leslie Dick couldn’t believe that anyone had taken offense. “The work you do as an artist is really play, but it is play in the most serious sense,” she said. “Like when a two-year-old discovers how to make a tower out of blocks. It is no halfhearted thing. You are materializing—taking something from the inside and putting it out into the world so you can be relieved of it.”
    Twelve forty-five P.M . The crit class discussion has been meandering for over two hours. About half the students have spoken, but Asher hasn’t said a word, and no one has discussed Josh’s drawings directly. Although the talk is intelligent, it is difficult to feel fully engaged. I have clearly parachuted into the middle of a very abstract and often inchoate ongoing debate. Many of the comments are rambling affairs, and it is impossible not to drift off into one’s own thoughts.
    A few days ago, I drove out to Santa Monica to see John Baldessari, the gregarious guru of the Southern California art scene. Baldessari is six-foot-seven, a giant of a man with wild hair and a white beard. I once heard him referred to as “Sasquatch Santa,” but he makes me think of God—a hippie version of Michelangelo’s representation of the grand old man in the Sistine Chapel. Baldessari set up the Post-Studio crit class in 1970, the year that CalArts opened, and has continued to teach despite a lucrative international career. Although he was hired by CalArts as a painter, he was already exploring conceptual art in other media. As we sat, with our feet up, and drank ice water in the shade of an umbrella in his backyard, he explained that he didn’t want to call his crit “Conceptual Art” because it sounded too narrow, whereas “Post-Studio Art” had the benefit of embracing everybody who didn’t make traditional art. “A few painters drifted over, but mainly I got all the students who weren’t painting. Allan Kaprow [the performance artist] was assistant dean. In those first years, it was him and me versus the painting staff.”
    Baldessari has mentored countless artists, and although he now teaches at UCLA, he is still seen to embody the think-tank model that exists in one of its purest forms at CalArts, even if it has spread all over the United States. One of his mottos is “Art comes out of failure,” and he tells students, “You have to try things out. You can’t sit around, terrified of being incorrect, saying, ‘I won’t do anything until I do a masterpiece.’” When I asked how he knows when he’s conducted a great crit class, he leaned back and eventually shook his head. “You don’t know,” he said. “Quite often when I thought I was brilliant, I wasn’t. Then when I was really teaching, I wasn’t aware of it. You never know what students will pick up on.” Baldessari believes that the most important function of art education is to demystify artists: “Students need to see that art is made by human beings just like them.”
    At 1:15 P.M . we’re in a definite lull, and Asher speaks his first words. With his eyes closed and hands tightly clasped in his lap, he says, “Pardon me.” The students raise their heads. I sit in anticipation, expecting a short lecture. A straight-talking moment. Or a lightning