Awards
2009 Art Journal Award
Richard Meyer, “‘Artists sometimes have feelings’” (Winter 2008)
Richard Meyer (right) talks to the artist Paul McCarthy, from a video interview for Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image
The Art Journal Award is presented to Richard Meyer for his insightful, rich, and personal essay, “‘Artists sometimes have feelings,’” published in the Winter 2008 issue as part of a larger forum focused on working with living artists. Grounding his exegesis in the Fogg Art Museum director Edward Forbes’s 1911 account of the beauties and pitfalls of working with living artists, Meyer gives an unusual measure of historical depth to his work and the issue’s topic, making clear that the “problem of the living artist” is indeed not new.
Beyond this important claim, Meyer deftly keys in on Forbes’s comment, “Artists sometimes have feelings,” the essay’s title, and uses this assertion as a means, through two important examples, to investigate how the feelings of both artist and art historian serve as prisms that affect the nature, focus, and tone of critical and historical work. Using himself as subject of inquiry, Meyer allows us to understand the ways in which feelings structure our work. Moreover, he shows us how those feelings, even in their capacity to hinder and thwart communication, construct boundaries and limitations for our work (often subconsciously). Meyer’s essay ultimately provides us with a stunning example of how scholars “do” contemporary art history, recovering the history of Fight Censorship group in general and the work of feminist pioneer Anita Steckel in particular.
Jury: Nicholas Mirzoeff, New York University, chair; Alexander Alberro, Barnard College, Columbia University; and Steven Nelson, University of California, Los Angeles.
