The death of the artist holiday

“Ideas for work are coming to me in abundance…I’m going like a painting-locomotive.” So wrote Van Gogh in 1888, in a letter to a friend from Arles, the city in Provence where the Dutch painter spent a year before being admitted into an asylum. Such retreats, and the creativity they inspired, are the stuff of artistic legend. From the Bloomsbury set’s sojourns in Sussex and the St. Ives School’s jaunts to Cornwall, to The Hamptons (where Pollock and Krasner holidayed) and New Mexico where Georgia O’Keeffe painted out in the desert, an—albeit partial—story of 19th and 20th-century art can be told through a trajectory of travel destinations.

Whilst many artist trips have been duly criticised—Delacroix’s journeys to the French Magreb inspired Edward Saïd to write Orientalism and Gauguin’s paintings of French Polynesia have been re-examined in light of his exoticism—the artist trip remains a glorified idea, laced in nostalgia for a bygone era. What we miss most, perhaps, is the idea of uncharted terrain, an artist being able to set off in pursuit of pure discovery, of something truly new and unseen—a heady notion in the age of Instagram and Google—and disconnect from everyday life. Many of these places have been unconsecrated by tourism (an industry, as the saying goes, which ruins the thing it loves), converting small villages and homes into Disneyfied dystopias where the best you can come away with is a fridge magnet, a measly replica.

In an era of ’24/7 capitalism’, international art fair circuits, competitive residency programmes and precarious labour patterns, what does travel and holidaying look like for artists today? Or, as many assume, are artists just always on holiday, seamlessly intermingling work and leisure?

Plaster tracked down seven contemporary artists, from Michael McGregor (“slightly hungover, about to jump into the sea,” in Hydra) to Sharon Kivland (anxious about catching an EasyJet flight to Naples later that day), about what holidays and travel mean to them.

Michael McGregor, Los Angeles and Athens

I’m always on holiday a little bit. An artist shouldn’t be sitting in a studio all day like an accountant. But then I’m also never on holiday because I’m always working. My work is leisure. I want to work hard at leisure and be rewarded. If I’m swimming everyday, having a beer, taking a nap, ideas come. It’s about letting the world happen. I’ve done residencies where they say: “Tomorrow morning we’ll do yoga”. I’m like, yeah if I want to. Hydra [in Greece] is my favourite place in the world. The history of artists who have come here is amazing. But it’s impossible to make work here. I’m reading books, swimming and hanging out. People tend to overwork. And if you look at paintings that are overworked then it’s very obvious. My work has a quality which is ‘al dente’ – it’s not overcooked. That means not being in a studio all the time with turpentine. For me it’s important to work in a place with the sea, orange blossoms and that jasmine smell at night—those are my requirements for life. It might sound luxurious. But they are very simple—and also happen to exist in very nice places.

Kahlil Robert Irving, Missouri

I recently went to Paris. I never really take vacation so that was a way for me to learn what a vacation could be for me. There wasn’t a practise of vacationing growing up as a kid, so it’s a question of what life do I want now? When you get some success or gratification and you make a little bit of money you’ve got to keep moving, you get a hunger for it. I wouldn’t call being an artist a holiday. I make sculptures that sell for $20,000. I’m not fucking around. I have a 12,000 sq ft warehouse studio which is a lot of responsibility, too. But I would call it freedom, to make choices about the life I want to live. I’ve visited 21 countries, I’ve done residencies in Hungary and studied abroad. Separating yourself from day-to-day life in a new setting can help to create a restart. But then some of the stuff I’m working on can only be figured out through working, being present. It’s not going to come to me by travelling or going to a party.

Myriame Dachraoui, Tunisia

My last holiday was in Tokyo. This trip came at a time when I knew I needed to encounter a new culture. When you travel you know you’re about to open a new perspective. Most of my travels are related to work, whether to attend exhibitions or art fairs. Like many North African artists I have difficulties being refused visas. I was exhibiting in Los Angeles and I didn’t even try to apply for a US visa. I lived in Mexico City for half a year which had a major influence on my artistic journey – it is the place to be for artists today. When I came back, I started thinking about changing my career path from architecture to focus on painting. I don’t think of art residencies as holidays, but they are the moment when artists become the most productive—you really cut yourself off from all forms of distractions, leading to a true state of concentration. When I travel, I focus on visualising my work. Sometimes it feels like magic happens. I travel for a few weeks, take some time to sketch and write. Then as soon as I’m back at my studio, everything falls into place.

Dean JF Hoy, London

I’m a massive fan of Americana so going to America was a big deal for me. I make teddy bear sculptures and my dad is a lorry driver so I always think about the bears on the front of lorries there in the Smoky Mountains. I did a piece where I deliberately left one of my teddy bear pieces in Tennessee in a random neighbourhood with a note around its neck. It’s a whole story that is unravelling but the trip ignited the story – I like the idea of my bears being all over the place. That trip felt more like an artistic endeavour than a holiday. My intention wasn’t to work while I was there, but because so many of my visual inspirations are those kind of reblogged Tumblr images it was research too. I think it was Fiona Apple who said when she’s making work she’s sad and when she’s happy she’s just being happy. If there’s a feeling I want to get out, then I’ll be making and working, but otherwise I want to spend my time doing fun things and going on holiday.

Susan Finlay, Berlin

Not having much money and also the fact the art scene is so international – it does end up being residencies or work trips that become a holiday. For me, the combination of creative work and having parents living in a different country means often there is an emotional labour aspect – tying in work trips with visits to family. I’m going to Lithuania in October for a residency. I’m slightly stressed because [my partner] is coming in the middle. So I’m like, “oh god, I hope they don’t expect me to do anything then.” Then I’ve said yes to all these meetings while I’m there, so I might just end up doing the exact same thing I normally do. Place is really important in my work. For my book Objektophilia, I went to Vienna for research. I visited Texas for The Jacques Lacan Foundation. It was really nice but because I can’t drive I couldn’t really see much, walking along the side of motorways. I had to look it all up on Google afterwards. I do find travel nourishing—doing something really intense on your own. And just physically being somewhere that looks different. The plastic bags in the supermarket seem incredibly exotic.

Darcey Fleming, London and West Berkshire

As an artist, I don’t identify with holidays at all. It just doesn’t make sense to my working process. It’s not like you take a holiday and you suddenly have time off. I’m extremely obsessive, so I can’t register a break and I don’t allow myself to have them. I’m quite instinctual, and if I get a good idea, I just want to be in my studio with my materials, riding the surges of energy. I haven’t been on holiday in a while. Even if I went for a day and a half, I’d always bring my work with me. My work is performative and process-based, so I can do it at any point. I hide within my process or within my work. I have so much in my studio that I’ve just merged with stuff. I need to get out of that and expose myself, which feels scary as my safety blanket has gone.

Sharon Kivland, France and London

In a book series, trivially titled Freud on Holiday, I followed Freud, reconstructing his holidays. I got AHRC funding so it was presented as a scholarly activity (I would call it para-scholarly). My university’s finance department was outraged: “She’s constantly going on holiday!” I know lots of people who can lie on beaches, but even as a child I was unable to do that. It’s not my temperament. I can spend hours in my studio or study deferring work – looking for an article, buying shoes online, but it’s still in the terms of work. A holiday is frightening. What is slipping away from me, in the farniente of a holiday? I sometimes imagine the idea of a cruise. For my father’s work, every two years we travelled to New York from England or Italy on a liner. That was an amazing suspension; someone always bringing you little snacks. That kind of holiday is attractive. It’s about the journey, not the arrival, wandering around in those non-spaces, meeting casual strangers. There’s more respite in the in-between spaces of the airport or the departure lounge than the holiday where you are meant to be enjoying yourself. Getting there is half the fun. Or, as Craig Saper writes in an introduction to one of my Freudian holidays, “not getting there is half the fun”.