Quick Sketch: Bobby Chiu Isn't Everything Wrong With Art

 Back when I was renting a studio, sitting on one of those equilibriums of life, happy to flirt with a studio colleague by day and a call centre colleague by night; a friend of mine visited and expressed the idea that they would like to come document my process as an artist. I was incredibly productive at the time, if a mediocre artist, staging two solo shows a year, but I liked the idea because I felt it was important for young artists to know how much of my time in the studio was spent eating Doritos and watching tv. 

Being good at art, like a disciplined, dilligent artist improving their craft with a dedication that falls far short of machine learning, is, to many an outsider, indistinguishable from someone in a deep depression. They may not leave their room except to make toilet and eat some garbage they can cook most of the bacteria out of with minimal fuss. They may draw all the blinds so they can control the light sources and sit in front of a computer with a vacant expression on their face all day. When really inspired, they may roll out of bed and put on yesterdays clothes skipping a shower so they can get right into it.

Having a studio, as well as providing you with a dedicated work space sufficient for all the shit your practice accumulates over time, can also serve to remove you from the people who become concerned about your mental health and happiness when you are working hardest at work worth doing, something many people in conventional careers may never experience. This is not to poo-poo anyone who works with spreadsheets or whatever, that is work I have also done, found incredibly rewarding and it is slightly unfair that when an analyst has reconciled a bunch of disparate and disorganized finances or built a superior prediction model for the forthcoming years production and sales targets, it's not a thing that they can hire a room in a trendy district and have all their friends and family gather to celebrate their production like an artist can. 

But let's be real, there are far more people working with spreadsheets than want to be working with spreadsheets because that is where the economy is at.

Flash back a further 8 years or so, I was discovering what art was all about when I just set myself the challenge of staging a solo exhibition. I had no idea what I was doing or even if I could do it. Bobby Chiu was at that time incredibly, incredibly important to me. He was a digital artist in the era of CGTalk and Deviant Art, he did these long youtube streams if you want an idea of what Bobby Chiu was like 15 years ago, here's one I remember watching but haven't reviewed:

He basically used to paint and impart the experience of an older artist to younger artists. Talking about how hard it was going to be, how important your mindset was, how to deal with failure. They took the form of a conversation with a wise man, even though you weren't talking. 

At the time, he was probably getting enough income from selling prints and maybe books at conventions, doing some concept work here and there. He was running as near as I could discern a community group called "Subway sketching" in Toronto where people met up rode the subway all day sketching commuters to improve their drawing.

Bobby Chiu was incredibly important to me at this time and he was really passionate about building a community of artists. He had some connections and started interviewing in depth artists that I like. Tim Sale, I only found out was dead from writing this blog post, what a shame, but Bobby Chiu interviewed him and it wasn't behind a paywall, or membership-newsletter wall, nor was Marcelo Vignali, Bill Pressing, Francis Manapul, Cheeks Galloway, Francisco Herrera, Alberto Ruiz or Humberto Ramos.

The early tingling, that this feast of online parasocial artistic community and connection could not last wasn't driven by the knowledge that Bobby's gotta eat, that artists can't live off "exposure" forever. It was actually when Bobby started interviewing people at Pixar. 

Like arguably the least interesting aspect of Tim Sale's career as an artist was that he did the paintings of the psychic heroin addict in the first season of Heroes, a show that ran into the writers strike and immediately crashed and burned, yet that was what Bobby really wanted to talk to him about, not Tim Sale's work on "The Long Halloween" set in the DC Batman "Year One" continuity established by Frank Miller and probably best known to you as the comic Nolan adapted "The Dark Knight" plot from.

Most of the above links to artist interviews for Schoolism login possessors, came I think from Brand Studio Press, they were all artists publishing books of their collected illustrations through the same outlet. They were probably largely drawn from Bobby's professional network.

This was contemporaneous to when Kevin Pollack could get Tom Hanks, Larry David etc. down to his podcast. Joe Rogan probably hadn't started his podcast yet, or had done so very recently. 

The impression I got, and largely given by Bobby, was that the vast majority of people watching his interviews really wanted him to interview Pixar artists that could tell them how to get hired at Pixar.

That's when I began to lose interest in Bobby Chiu's interviews, because I had no ambition to one day work at Pixar, I wanted to make comics and improve as an illustrator. I already found Pixar movies fairly generic, and they probably hadn't made Toys 2 or Cars 2 at that point.

The thing was, like Disney, Bobby was listening to his fans and trying to give them what they want.

He'd already started his venture "Schoolism" a correspondence course for artists that boasted really talented teachers. Cheeks Galloway for example, was one of the earlier interviewees and he was already working for Schoolism. But that was less of a warning sign than the Pixar interviews, Schoolism was new, online correspondence was new. The idea that someone in the Phillipines could have their work critiqued and digitally painted over by Jason Seiler was new.

Flash forward 13 years:

This is a free lifedrawing class Schoolism offers that can be joined by anyone anywhere and generally uploaded to youtube so you can participate in the exercise on your own time.

Participants in the live stream can via chat, direct questions to Bobby Chiu and other participants sharing their work like Kei Acedera, etc.

You could win money all day long betting that any question Bobby Chiu fields the answer will be "You know what I did, I actually enrolled in [insert schoolism course]" Nowdays if you asked Bobby Chiu what he wants for lunch, he would probably be reminded by the thought of a ham sandwich of a Schoolism Course someone can take for that.

And sure, this is a professional Artist that has worked with Tim Burton who runs a business giving 90 minutes of his time a week that he could be using to paint concept art for Tim Burton. In return for access to professional artists, it has to be paid for via advertising, and advertising Schoolism. I feel I could be forgiven for presuming that the cessation of the 90MAC series in June 2022 was because of diminishing returns as an advertising model. If you access the playlist and mute the video it remains a valuable and generous resource Schoolism deserves kudos for.

I understand the business model, and it's nowhere near as egregious a "thing" in the art world as traditional art schools pushing out conceptual and installation artists and found artists. Nor is it on the flipside AI startups launching globally into markets that culturally do not even not respect Intellectual Property, but cannot even conceive of the idea of someone having some ownership of their ideas, like giving midjourney and AItools and whatever other programs have proliferated to people that do not understand why someone would be upset that they picked apples, crushed sugar cane, milled flower, churned butter, exchanged their children for some cinnamon and cloves, made a pie, baked a pie, put the pie on the windowsill to cool and then you came and ate it. These are huge problems to be navigated by art.

This is just someone who used to be a person, and now is a hamster in a wheel. This is a human face to the sad fact that people have to say "don't forget to like and subscribe" because they know full well that people won't if they don't ask each and every fucking time. From the user side, a HUGE part of why I am reluctant to subscribe or like a video is because it's very rare for a new video to get past me. Subscribing to a channel has pretty much no benefit for me, I'll be suggested everything they upload, but it's a currency Youtubers need to get advertiser dollars.

At some point, Bobby got skinner-boxed into being a full-time non-stop mouthpiece for his business ventures. No doubt, because like all sales techniques that are annoying, enough people reward it. If I didn't find Bobby viscerally painfully disingenuous now (and not even in any malicious way, he is just diligent to always be promoting Schoolism) I could probably pinpoint the exact interview where they ceased to be two artists talking about their craft, and began being native advertisements for Schoolism courses thinly veiled as two artists talking about their craft.

Bobby better be struggling, or Schoolism, or both. If Schoolism is doing well, and Bobby is considering which Canadian NHL team to purchase, personally it's appalling to me because the success in art Bobby is modelling is a career I don't want. I want to make art that creates a connection with its audience, I don't want to become a relentless salesman (so relentless Bobby Chiu doesn't have a wikipedia page, only trusting a google search to Imaginism Studios his own production company) who's own artistic output hasn't really been relevant since Tim Burton was.