I suffer from a wandering eye for art. I have difficulty remaining faithful to a single artist or style. Part of my infidelity is rooted in the ever-changing fashion guard. Styles come and go, and artists who have inexorably attached themselves to a style may find themselves leaving with their mode. These artists are grounded only in the instance of their initial taste of popularity and ride the same aesthetic/stylistic horse until death. I find work by these one-note artists nice when I first discover them, but find their monotony tiresome after a few years (Jessica Stockholder and Vanessa Beecroft really need to branch out). There is no growth. So I leave them for someone new - someone with fresh promise (Oliver Herring is restless enough to keep me interested).

More often then not, I find myself jumping from artist to artist hoping that one of them will save me from banality, and keep me on my toes. I will sometimes just glimpse an intriguing piece while leafing through some contemporary art rag or in the moment before I delete an email from a gallery. I’m not necessarily interested in the artist’s name, just a sense of their exploration. If someone hits the nail on the head, I’ll try to track them down, but I am usually just looking for a stimulating current. I call this current Beatrice.

In Herman Hesse’s Demian, Emil Sinclair becomes infatuated by a woman he never meets. He merely pines for her from a distance. Emil sees her around town and projects his hopes for a better life and salvation upon her. He dubs her “Beatrice,” never discovering her real name (this is a blatant reference to the Beatrice who saves the spiraling Dante from hell by guiding him to paradise). In a way, Sinclair worships at the altar of Beatrice - the embodiment of all he wants.

The problem with membership in the Cult of Beatrice is relying upon an outside source for salvation and a transience in an approach artmaking. I am too swayed by currents in the art world. Someone is doing work that peaks my interest, so against my better judgement, I parrot aspects of their style. It’s too easy to get bored with my own work since I live with it all the time. It’s too easy to see the holes in my thinking. It’s too easy to become disenchanted by the seeming monotony of my work because I see it all the time. It’s too easy to overlook anything new that I’m doing since it came from me, so it couldn’t possibly be interesting. It’s too easy to look to the buffet of the art world and find bits of interesting ideas without committing fully to any of them. It’s too easy to just project my shifting ideas and ideals upon the notion of a Beatrice instead of living up to my own standards.

This is the crossroads I find myself at. I could become a card carrying member of the Cult of Beatrice by succumbing to the lure of curating - finding and promoting promise in others - or I could fight through my self-defeating tendencies to try to make something good myself. But for the time being, I’ve got to unpack all of my art supplies and fight off the hordes of ants that are vying for ownership of our new house. Thank goodness for practical tasks to aid my procrastination.