NEVER SAY I KANT

Once I finished school my plan was very simple. I would move to New York, hang up my shingle and become an overnight success.

 

The specific avenue of success scarcely mattered. What was important was the pursuit of a prestigious, high-profile occupation, preferably in the arts but not necessarily limited to it.

 

Money was secondary - stature, however, was vital.

Against my better instincts I hired what they called at the time a vocational consultant, which sounds a bit like a parole officer which explains why they're now called career coaches.

We went through my résumé and scrupulously analyzed my strengths and my weaknesses. The fact that I went to art school was seen both as an advantage and as a liability. Since I concentrated on Critical Theory at the expense of the more traditional studio classes my skill set was seen as severely limited. On the other hand my graduate dissertation on the polylogic of disjunctional banalities in advertising proved to be extremely useful especially since I hit the job market at the height of the recession.

At $110 an hour I couldn't really afford too much advice and the few blind alleys and wayward suggestions on offer indicated to me that maybe a parole officer would have been more useful.

At an Occupy Wall Street afterparty in some guy's loft on Franklin Street I met a fashion agent who had just finished working on an anthology of museum exhibition essays from the 70's and 80's. She told me how amazed she was at how the photographer was able to make all these nerdy looking curators appear so interesting and sexy. The publishers knew that the appeal of a book of this kind would be extremely narrow and so they tried to push for a more glamorous look.

 

A light went off in my head and the next day I got in touch with a former classmate of mine who was working as an assistant at Vogue. We arranged to "borrow" some fancy lights and a few backdrops and after I hastily put together a few writing samples we put together a promotional package that landed me my first writing job.

 

   

I've been working as an art critic and independent curator ever since and whenever someone asks me how to get started in this business I always tell them that prose is not the only appropriate place for soft focus.