Artist for President

We assert that there is a culture of artists that may be different and
separate from all other cultures and that our culture may be governed or
ungoverned according to principles which non artists find peculiar or
offensive.
We are tired of explaining ourselves.
We are tired of feeling guilty for how we are.
We are sick of feeling like frauds in comparison to people who are just that.
We are tired of making apologies for who we are.
We demand the right to not make sense.
We demand the right to contradict ourselves.
We demand the right to change our work.
We demand the right to call what we do work.
We demand the right not to call what we do work.
We demand the right to align ourselves with the social class we find most
interesting.
We demand the right to call ourselves working class.
We demand the right to be elitist.
We demand the right to do what we want including not doing anything at all.
We ask that our neighborhoods be returned to us.
We condemn the forces of greed that have caused our evictions.
We condemn the forces of greed that have turned us into products.
We condemn periodicals that, in a gladiatorial fashion, pit one artist
against another in a series of picks and pans that erect false antagonisms
and vulgar difference.
We condemn patriarchal drug laws.
We condemn all encroachments on our freedom of speech.
We condemn those who would seek to divide artist culture by developing and
maintaining models of difference based in essentially fascist notions of
race, gender, ethnicity or preference.
We condemn those who would assert that art or artists are anything but
universally found.
We condemn those who blame the artist.
We condemn dealers who do not pay their artists.
We condemn dealers who lie to us.
We condemn dealers who do not return our phone calls.
We condemn dealers who dump us.
We condemn dealers who close their galleries but keep our work.
We condemn dealers who make us do their dirty work.
We condemn dealers who cancel our shows because they can’t support the work.
We condemn dealers who see us as an easy buck.
We condemn any art venue that thinks we like staying in third class hotels.
We condemn any art venue that thinks we can transport our work like a mule.
We condemn any art venue that invites vulgar people to our dinners and
expects us to kiss their ass.

This is for failed artists who feel like failures.
This is for successful artists who feel mauled and mutilated by the empty
promise of stardom.
This is for the faded art star who wonders what went wrong.
This is for artists who never got a chance.
This is for the secret artists who are too embarrassed to admit it.
This is for the artist who found the reception for their retrospective the
most depressing day of their life.
This is for artists who can’t afford to go to the doctor.
This is for artists who can’t afford to have a family.
This is for artists who can’t afford to be artists.
We reserve the right to hate America.
We reserve the right to hate any and all organizations that hate us.
We reserve the right to have contempt for those organizations while enjoying
their privileges.
We reserve the right to be suspicious of the family.
We reserve the right of obscurity.
We reserve the right to make things nobody understands.
We reserve the right to make things nobody likes.
We reserve the right to make things nobody buys and believe they have value.
We condemn efforts to turn art schools into universities.
We condemn efforts to turn art schools in businesses.
We condemn the idea of the artist as manager/ bureaucrat.
We condemn efforts to turn artists into cartoons.
This is for the idealistic artist who still believes.
This is for the tragic artist who accepts.
We reserve the right to escape the moralistic gaze of power.
We demand the right to claim books, records, magazines and cable T.V. as
deductions on our income tax.This is for the artist who wants to describe the adolescent but not be
treated as one.
This is for all the adult male artists suffering under the label “bad boy”.
This is for all female artists who strap it on.
We condemn critics who do not check their facts.
We condemn critics who write reviews from gallery press releases.
We condemn magazines that do not print letters.
We condemn periodicals who do not pay critics.
We condemn periodicals who underpay critics.
We condemn the reactionary support of youth culture.
We condemn museums who don’t clean the glass on our works.
We condemn museums who don’t plug-in our work.
We condemn museums who have chic openings to which none of our friends are
invited.
We condemn institutions who ask us to donate for auctions then don’t invite
us to the event.
We condemn raffles that make our art works into party favors.
We condemn museums as branches of the commercial gallery system.
We condemn museums who are afraid to hire curators with ideas.We condemn museums that can’t stand up to their Board of Directors.
We condemn museums who are cozy with business.
We condemn granting institutions that use funds to curry favor with political
interests.
This is for the young artist.
This is for the early mid-career artist.
This is for the mid-career artist.
This is for the late mid-career artist.
This for the early late-career artist.
This is for the late late-career artist.
This is for the artist suffering from the prescriptive nature of those
categories.
This is for the dead artist.
This is for the dead artist we remember.
This is for the dead artist we forgot.
This is for the dead artist we forgot for awhile but are now remembering.
This is for the artist’s boyfriend.
This is for the artist’s girlfriend.
This is for the artist’s widow.
This is for the artist’s first wife.

We condemn curators who show up late for studio visits.
We condemn curators who make visits with no obvious purpose.
We are insulted by collectors who explain our work to us.
We are insulted by collectors who brag to us about other artist’s work
We are insulted by collectors who think they own us.
This is for artists of all imaginable disadvantage who were not allowed in.
This is for the artist who wanted to quit but knew nothing else.
This is for artists hoping for ideas.
This is for artists hoping for money.
This is for artists looking for a sense of purpose.
This is for artists longing for purposelessness.
We condemn all cultures that allegedly love art but hate artists.
This is artist’s culture.


Meg Cranston 1996-1999
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I found this while searching for grad schools today.
Meg Cranston is a professor of public practice at otis.