9 Burning Q's with Writer/Sociologist Marin Kosut
Why the 'Art Monster' author, artist, and academic feels it's imperative to dismantle New York artist tropes
Marin Kosut finds the abundance of glamourous narratives about New York visual artists to be, for the most part, total bullshit. As a sociologist who studies art and culture extensively, she knows full well that most artists make tremendous sacrifices for the sheer privilege of making their work, yet never even get close to being coronated as a success with a huge solo gallery show or Cultured cover story. Even if they do, that success can be fleeting.
“In American culture, the default is to focus on the individual (are they not working hard enough, not talented enough), rather than on systemic and historical conditions that impede success,” Kosut said. She set out to bring attention to those conditions through the stories and anecdotes she shares in her new book, Art Monster: On the Impossibility of New York—a series of meditations that paint a far more accurate picture of the real lives of working artists in New York.
The editor of the Encyclopedia of Gender in Media (Sage), co-editor of The Body Reader: Essential Social and Cultural Readings (NYU Press), and co-author of Buzz: Urban Beekeeping and the Power of the Bee (NYU Press), Kosut has engaged in many art/curation projects herself: Pay Fauxn is an “impure post-white cube gallery in the anti-formalist tradition” located at an abandoned pay phone shell at a bus stop at a defunct nursing home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. From 2013-2017, she co- produced exhibitions and other projects as GCA (group club association) in Bushwick, Brooklyn and most recently at Bible, a black cube gallery in a basement in Chinatown, NYC.
Pay Fauxn
She generously took the time to answer 9 Burning Q’s about writing Art Monster, the secret sauce of making it as an artist, and whether or not the New York of today is still a hospitable environment for aspiring artists.
MUTHR, FCKD: What inspired you to write Art Monster with a focus on your own experience in the art world and the stories of artists struggling to reconcile the fickle fiscal nightmare that is the reality of being a working artist in New York City?
Marin Kosut: I felt compelled to write a book that described how most serious artists in NYC live, that is, without a safety net, generational wealth, or connections. I came to New York with money for about a month’s rent, and I knew only two people. I wanted the city to save me, revive me, make me. In some ways it did, but it also broke me (financially and mentally). I wanted to unflinchingly talk about social class and money, the grind. The lion’s share of books published on visual artists fall into two camps, those documenting the lives of famous people and/or dead people, and those that are self-help, career advice, the “how to” make it as an artist guide. I wanted to write a book that captured lived experiences—the messiness and costs of being an underfunded New York artist.
MF: The book engagingly sheds so much light on the arbitrary reality of becoming an art darling success story and how that success, if ever found, could be fleeting. Why did you feel it was important to demystify this iconic trope?
MK: The rags-to-riches trope is seductive and reassuring, a version of the American Dream, but few artists can ascend from poverty to prosperity, to become one of the “ones to watch.” And it’s not their fault. Most of the artists in the book have done all the right things; earned multiple degrees, work over forty hours a week, play the game, but still can’t get traction in the art economy. Like other over-educated workers, success isn’t guaranteed even when you play by capitalism’s rules. And if you by chance become an “art darling,” and get chosen, you can’t assume you won’t be dropped. It is ruthless.
MF: You write beautifully about the paradox of struggling to live in and love New York (“Place lands in the bones,” v. “The city doesn’t require you or desire you”) specifically to how artists at once feel as if they belong and as if they’re always priced out and is no place for them. In your current estimation, do you think it will ever be possible for ambitious creative folks without benefit of generational wealth to roost and create in the city again in a holistic way, without becoming “creators?” Is it even worth living on ramen with 6 roommates in Bushwick? Or is that over?
MK: I will never say New York is over for artists. The storied version of New York—Chelsea Hotel, Cedar Tavern, Warhol’s Factory—that mythic landscape of art community and cheap rent is obviously over. Artists must deal with the push towards professionalization and the rise of the “creatives.” Notwithstanding, I still have faith in art and artists. As for the Bushwick/ramen question, I say go for it, rent a bin in an over-priced warehouse buildout with other artists, or find a run-down apartment. Stay out all night, meet people, DIY shit, collect experiences, all that. It’s fuel for the work. It’s exciting when you’re in your twenties and thirties, I did it and I’m glad. Like the grasshopper poem, what are you going to do with your one wild life? What would the city be like without artists wilding out?
MF: In giving the book structure, was establishing time, place, and tone easy or challenging for you in the writing of it?
MK: The first drafts of the book were appropriately shitty, and they were also conventional in terms of time. I didn’t want the book to progress in a linear way, starting with a historical overview of the city, or moving forward from when I landed in New York. As I am an unreliable narrator, wrestling with writing the book within the book, breaking the fourth wall so to speak, I chose a non-linear timeline. I jump from present to past in the text and I assume my reader is intelligent and game to go with me. In real life, we experience and juggle time in complicated ways and I like books that do that. In terms of tone, I’ve spent most of my writing life deploying a measured voice that reflects a third-person point of view required in scholarly texts. My tone in this book is embodied and emotional. Early workshop readers described the tone as “bitchy” and “snarky,” to which I respond, fuck off. That’s the New Yorker in me.
MF: You examine the perpetual vagaries that artists live with—the need to have this stuff within that allows you to surf waves of the unknown. What do you think that stuff is? Nerve? Delusion? Hubris? All of the above?
MK: Yes, probably all the above descriptors. But the words determination and faith ring truer to me. Art gives purpose to some people’s lives on a deeply personal and spiritual level, and it makes life worth living.
MF: Within the context of establishing a sense of place in your book, did you deliberately set out to weave artist neighborhoods, like Chelsea and Ridgewood, and the gentrification that inevitably follows, into the narrative?
MK: I didn't intentionally think about place in the beginning, as I was mostly focused on artist's narratives and how I would weave them together with my own experiences. I wanted to try my best to get their stories right, and find themes that might thread the book. After I figured out my 'characters,' I grounded them in specific neighborhoods, including the ones I lived in and started galleries in. Since I moved to NYC, I've always rented in gentrifying neighborhoods, first Williamsburg, then Bushwick, etc. in the early 'pre-discovery' stages. For most working artists, gentrification is inevitably a part of their story and its inclusion in the book was organic.
MF: Do you feel like you have to be an “Art Monster” to succeed as an artist? With everyone and everything you’ve observed, what seems to be the secret sauce?
MK: I think the ability to have all your physical and embodied needs met, the ability to focus solely on art, and to be in the space of the imagination is crucial for artistic production. Freedom from distraction, the stuff at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of basic human needs. Thus, the secret sauce would be time and money, serious support. Why do you think a MacDowell residency (or any other) is so coveted?
MF: Are you writing another book and if so, share with the class!
MK: I’m working on a novel. It’s in the early stages, not fully fleshed out, but I know it is set in the twentieth century (I don’t want to deal with the Internet, texts, social media, Google, AI, etc.) and the main characters are working-class women constrained by their time and place.
MF: What are your thoughts about “aging out” of New York? You touch upon it, but I’m curious.
MK: New York gets harder as you get older and require stability, healthier food, more sleep, and less chaos. However, I like the idea of moving to New York to retire. Throwing all your material stuff away, pooling resources, getting a tiny apartment that’s near a hospital and doctors, within walking distance to bodegas, free concerts, performances, parks, and people watching. I hate the thought of spending my last years alone, socially and culturally unmoored and under-stimulated in the suburbs.
***
ME TOO, darling. ME TOO.
xx
MF