How do you break up with a collaborator? Asking for a friend.

Barbara Kruger. Untitled (Thinking of You), 1999-2000; screen print on vinyl; 123 1/8 × 100 11/16 in.

Simple in theory, painful in practice—but the way to break up a collaborative partnership is the same as for a romantic one: with as much honesty and compassion as you can muster. If you’re splitting up to pursue solo projects, then you have to say so; if you’ve found a new collaborator, you’ll have to announce it; if there are irreconcilable differences around ideas, money, or division of labor, then you have to discuss them.

Anyone with a conscience knows that you have to do this face to face. If you’ve shared the profound process of making art together, then you must honor your former collaboration by also experiencing the awkward, sad space of separation. And even if the conversation ends badly, at least you’ll walk away with integrity.

Find neutral territory for your chat—refrain from polluting the studio environment with bad feelings. Explain your reasons calmly and without rancor. Even if you’re truly incompatible at this point, avoid hyperbolic assertions or blaming the other person for the split. Own your feelings by using “I” statements rather than “you” statements (for example, “I’d like to work solo for a while and pursue my ideas” instead of “You always insist on doing it your way.”) If you don’t have a lot of practice with these behaviors, try writing your thoughts out before meeting. And listen to the response with empathy.

Breaking up, as the song goes, is really hard to do. If you’re keyed up and feeling defensive, it may be tempting to enumerate your (former) partner’s faults—but don’t, even if her behavior turns hostile. Instead, focus on the positive: how you’ve developed your ideas and work, the strategic and technical lessons you’ve learned, and the way that collaborating has expanded your thinking. Express your desire for your (ex) collaborator to do well, and talk about how you might support one another’s practice in new ways.

Depending on how emotionally difficult this meeting turns out to be, you may need to cool off and then meet again to discuss more practical matters. If you hold materials or tools in common, they will need to be divided. You’ll also have to think about the future life of your collaborative oeuvre. How will you proceed with the artworks you hold in common? Who will store them? Who will track inventory and sales? You will need to draw up a written, signed contract (you’ll find some food for thought here, and you might be able to use some of the contract language found here). Endeavor to be fair, lest you end up in court later like Marina Abramović and Ulay. Remember that a good contract protects both parties equally.

Many of the long-term artistic partners I know pivot between their solo and collaborative practices; if your relationship is not already damaged beyond repair, you might consider suggesting a hiatus instead of a permanent split. However, if you really can’t work together anymore, then your best bet is to be forthright, sympathetic, and equitable. Good luck!

A few months ago I moved into my first professional studio, which I share with two other artists. They have been friends for a long time, but I don’t see much of them because my work hours are different from theirs. One of the artists is not very respectful, she keeps leaving her things in my part of the studio (we don’t have dividing walls between us) and possibly even borrowing my tools (often things are not where I left them). She doesn’t seem to do this to the other artist. I’ve moved her things back into her space and left a couple of notes but the situation continues. I also mentioned the issue to the other artist, but she didn’t seem to want to get involved. Help! What should I do?

Tracey Emin in her studio, circa 1996.

Let’s start by assuming that a crisis is not looming; some people just don’t have the same need for rigid boundaries of space. Generally they don’t intend any disrespect, they just have different ideas of what’s appropriate. Maybe Artist A grew up in on a commune, or is from a culture that regards shared space differently than you do. Perhaps she is simply thoughtless, which is certainly not the worst crime ever to be perpetrated by a studio mate (ask me about the jackass who drunkenly urinated on a shared wall, where it soaked into a colleague’s work on the other side). In any case, clear, forthright communication will be your deliverance. Without knowing many of the finer details—like exactly what she is leaving in your space, and where, and why—it’s not easy to determine what you should convey to her, but here are some general strategies that might help.

First, it’s a good idea to figure out precisely what the offenses are and why they offend. Is your work easily damaged, and the potential for disaster is stressing you out? Are you irritated by the thought that your tools might be lost or broken and not replaced? Do you just need to have a space that feels 100 percent your own to be secure? You are entitled to set boundaries, and knowing specifically what you need and why can help you craft some language that might convince your studio partners to respect them. Just remember, they have needs too, and you might have to negotiate or come up with helpful solutions. If having a visible, inviolable physical perimeter is important to your peace of mind, you could mark areas of the studio with tape or paint on the floor, or hang a curtain (these options should be discussed with your compatriots before being enacted, or else your gesture might be read as furtive and petulant). You could also discuss mutually beneficial options: If Artist A moves her canvases into your space because there’s not enough room to work (and then forgets to put them back), then building a shared rack or rearranging the studio to make a storage space might be the answer. As for your tools, you can always buy a locking cabinet (this measure has the added benefit of helping to prevent theft in a more general sense, in the case that the studio is broken into).

I’m guessing that only the most basic details are spelled out in your lease, so it would be a good idea to craft a studio agreement that deals with issues of interpersonal space. Again, this can be accomplished only by direct communication, so try having an all-hands in-person meeting, and then sending out an email with the details of what you agreed upon.

While we’re on the subject of talking face to face, perhaps you could schedule periodic studio meetings, since normally you are in the studio according to different schedules. A monthly meeting will give everyone a chance to share issues, propose changes, etc. Think of it as a regular studio visit, a chance to bond with your studio mates and talk about what you’re working on. Having a regular meeting will keep any bad feelings from building up, and provide an opportunity to reinforce your friendships and social connection, which will do wonders for the esprit de corps.

As a means of conflict resolution, leaving a note rarely has the desired effect because the attitude that underlies it is indirect and non-cooperative, and obliquely asking Artist B to intervene is not mature behavior. If you want to solve this problem, you’re going to have to sit down with Artist A (and B if possible) and spell out the terms of what you need. Be prepared to ask questions, and be willing to listen to the answers. Healthy relationships are not conflict-avoidant; start over with a different frame of mind, and approach the situation as a problem-solving collaboration. Don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal, which is for all of you to have a great place—physically and emotionally—to make your work. Good luck!

Got an art-related dilemma? Submit your question anonymously here.

Amer Kobaslija. Sputnik Sweetheart of New Orleans and the End of the World, 2007; oil on two panels; 85 x 124 ¼ in.

In his 1971 essay “The Function of the Studio,” conceptual artist Daniel Buren defined the artist’s studio as a metadiscourse of “frames, envelopes, and limits” imposed upon the working artist in the age of advanced capitalism.[1] Claiming that this privileged space had become nothing more than an “ossified custom”—a “commercial depot” for curators and dealers to ship works out into the world (and thus detach the artwork from the conditions of production and site of creation)—Buren stated that artists could only resist the domestication of their work by preserving it within their studios forever (like Constantin Brancusi) or abandoning the four walls of the studio altogether for a life of art making away from institutional repression and commodification.

Buren’s provocation turns on the idealized notion of the modern atelier, described famously by Honoré de Balzac in his 1831 Romantic tale of artistic failure, “The Unknown Masterpiece.”[2] Setting the story in a cramped, skylit room cluttered with the detritus of an artist’s struggles—the idealized working environment for the solitary male genius of 19th-century literature and art—Balzac dramatized the central dilemma of the studio as both a mental and physical space that encloses the corporeal and psychic “energy essential to art’s existence.”[3] Thus, Buren’s desire to reconnect the studio with social life seems to fall in line with our current era of “post-internet artistry,” where nomadic career paths, collaborative practices, work-from-home jobs, and overnight internet art stars are the norm, and notions of passive aesthetic contemplation and private retreat are interpreted as oppressive and old-fashioned.

A quick trip to any café exposes the ominous cloud that hangs over Buren’s call for a “post-studio” age, as Starbucks and pay-as-you-go office space evolves into the new office for artists, students, and creative professionals clicking away on their laptops. Yet the mythology of the sacred atelier persists in our contemporary culture, as Amer Kobaslija’s current series of paintings at Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans indicates. Taking up the weighty legacy of the artist’s studio, Kobaslija’s work explores the studio as a concept, a locus of artistic identity, a space of sociability or private retreat, an alchemical universe of transformation, as well as a psychological construct.

Pablo Picasso. Frenhofer at work on his “Unknown Masterpiece,” 1927-1931; engraving for Ambrose Vollard’s commission of illustrations for Balzac’s Le chef-d’inconnu; 7 7/8 x 11 in.

For Kobaslija, the studio is a unique and personal world built of interchangeable stuff: floors, walls, shelves, canvases, paint, paper, chairs, tables, brushes, easels, and lighting fixtures repeat themselves across the series, their positions made mysterious by the absent bodies of the artists working (and sometimes living) inside. The invisible movements and patterned routines of the artists order the placement of these unique assemblages, turning each picture into a leftover document of the “work” of the work of art. Following the Romantic tradition (I am thinking of Gustave Courbet’s epic painting The Artist’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up the Seven Years of My Artistic and Moral Life from 1854-55), Kobaslija seems to suggest that “the studio activity of the painter has never been seen as essentially private, but always somewhat performative.”[4] Yet despite the artist’s ambition to underscore the generative side of the creative process, for Kobaslija, art always takes place in a closed room.

Amer Kobaslija. Studio with Chair and Ladder (J. Pollock, E. Hamptons), 2015; oil on Plexiglas; 12 x 14 ¼ in.

Using his own studio as well as the studios of his close friends, colleagues, and artistic idols such as Jackson Pollock and Balthus as subjects, Kobaslija seems to equate painting the studio with a unique form of access into the artistic process and the inner psyche—but it is an access tinged with uncomfortable voyeurism, claustrophobia, and at times emptiness. This is confirmed by the troublingly high vantage point that Kobaslija uses in each picture—an uncomfortable position that demands that the viewer take on the viewpoint of security cameras or surveillance equipment. The uneasy feeling that these painted worlds are on the cusp of breaking down or in the process of some violent, unfixable transformation adds to the ominous charge of the series. If the studio has traditionally been a place of solace from reality’s complications, this exhibition seems to respond with urgent ambiguity by asking important and unresolved questions about the place of artistic practice within today’s society, and the traditions of Western art making that have not (and will not) go away.

Amer Kobaslija was on view at Arthur Roger Gallery through May 30, 2015.

[1] See Daniel Buren’s essay “The Function of the Studio” (1971), reprinted in The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists, eds. Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 156-165.

[2] See Honoré de Balzac’s Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, first published as “Maître Frenhofer” in L’Artiste (Paris, July 21 and August 7, 1831), revised and republished in 1837, trans. by Richard Howard as The Unknown Masterpiece (New York: New York Review of Books, 2010).

[3] Ibid., p. 43.

[4] See Barry Schwabsky’s 2009 article “The Symbolic Studio,” in The Studio Reader, p. 90, for a more in-depth discussion of Courbet’s studio scene.

Amer Kobaslija. Sputnik Sweetheart of New Orleans and the End of the World, 2007; oil on two panels; 85 x 124 ¼ in.

Buren’s provocation turns on the idealized notion of the modern atelier, described famously by Honoré de Balzac in his 1831 Romantic tale of artistic failure, “The Unknown Masterpiece.”[2] Setting the story in a cramped, skylit room cluttered with the detritus of an artist’s struggles—the idealized working environment for the solitary male genius of 19th-century literature and art—Balzac dramatized the central dilemma of the studio as both a mental and physical space that encloses the corporeal and psychic “energy essential to art’s existence.”[3] Thus, Buren’s desire to reconnect the studio with social life seems to fall in line with our current era of “post-internet artistry,” where nomadic career paths, collaborative practices, work-from-home jobs, and overnight internet art stars are the norm, and notions of passive aesthetic contemplation and private retreat are interpreted as oppressive and old-fashioned.

A quick trip to any café exposes the ominous cloud that hangs over Buren’s call for a “post-studio” age, as Starbucks and pay-as-you-go office space evolves into the new office for artists, students, and creative professionals clicking away on their laptops. Yet the mythology of the sacred atelier persists in our contemporary culture, as Amer Kobaslija’s current series of paintings at Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans indicates. Taking up the weighty legacy of the artist’s studio, Kobaslija’s work explores the studio as a concept, a locus of artistic identity, a space of sociability or private retreat, an alchemical universe of transformation, as well as a psychological construct.

Pablo Picasso. Frenhofer at work on his “Unknown Masterpiece,” 1927-1931; engraving for Ambrose Vollard’s commission of illustrations for Balzac’s Le chef-d’inconnu; 7 7/8 x 11 in.

For Kobaslija, the studio is a unique and personal world built of interchangeable stuff: floors, walls, shelves, canvases, paint, paper, chairs, tables, brushes, easels, and lighting fixtures repeat themselves across the series, their positions made mysterious by the absent bodies of the artists working (and sometimes living) inside. The invisible movements and patterned routines of the artists order the placement of these unique assemblages, turning each picture into a leftover document of the “work” of the work of art. Following the Romantic tradition (I am thinking of Gustave Courbet’s epic painting The Artist’s Studio: A Real Allegory Summing Up the Seven Years of My Artistic and Moral Life from 1854-55), Kobaslija seems to suggest that “the studio activity of the painter has never been seen as essentially private, but always somewhat performative.”[4] Yet despite the artist’s ambition to underscore the generative side of the creative process, for Kobaslija, art always takes place in a closed room.

Amer Kobaslija. Studio with Chair and Ladder (J. Pollock, E. Hamptons), 2015; oil on Plexiglas; 12 x 14 ¼ in.

Using his own studio as well as the studios of his close friends, colleagues, and artistic idols such as Jackson Pollock and Balthus as subjects, Kobaslija seems to equate painting the studio with a unique form of access into the artistic process and the inner psyche—but it is an access tinged with uncomfortable voyeurism, claustrophobia, and at times emptiness. This is confirmed by the troublingly high vantage point that Kobaslija uses in each picture—an uncomfortable position that demands that the viewer take on the viewpoint of security cameras or surveillance equipment. The uneasy feeling that these painted worlds are on the cusp of breaking down or in the process of some violent, unfixable transformation adds to the ominous charge of the series. If the studio has traditionally been a place of solace from reality’s complications, this exhibition seems to respond with urgent ambiguity by asking important and unresolved questions about the place of artistic practice within today’s society, and the traditions of Western art making that have not (and will not) go away.

Amer Kobaslija is on view at Arthur Roger Gallery through May 30, 2015.

[1] See Daniel Buren’s essay “The Function of the Studio” (1971), reprinted in The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists, eds. Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 156-165.

[2] See Honoré de Balzac’s Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, first published as “Maître Frenhofer” in L’Artiste (Paris, July 21 and August 7, 1831), revised and republished in 1837, trans. by Richard Howard as The Unknown Masterpiece (New York: New York Review of Books, 2010).

[3] Ibid., p. 43.

[4] See Barry Schwabsky’s 2009 article “The Symbolic Studio,” in The Studio Reader, p. 90, for a more in-depth discussion of Courbet’s studio scene.

Walead Beshty. A Partial Disassembling of an Invention Without a Future: Helter-Skelter and Random Notes in Which the Pulleys and Cogwheels Are Lying Around at Random All Over the Workbench; 2013-2014. The Curve Gallery, Barbican Centre, London, UK. Photo: Alexei Tylevich.

Made of over 12,000 cyanotype prints and photograms carefully placed and pinned to the undulating curve of the gallery wall, the work documents fourteen months in the material and relational life of Beshty’s Los Angeles studio.[1] Thus, every item used, broken, or exhausted in the process of the work’s creation found its way into the work, either as the material matter of the installation itself or as the object photographed. As a representation of an artist’s practice, the work finds a way to acknowledge and render visible the aesthetic compost that is often kept out of sight when objects are placed within the clean white walls of an exhibition space. For Beshty, it is this waste that signals the work of the “work of art”—the constellation of decisions, actions, labor, institutional interventions, and mistakes that inform how objects and projects manifest themselves in dialogue with the world around them.

Walead Beshty. A Partial Disassembling of an Invention Without a Future: Helter-Skelter and Random Notes in Which the Pulleys and Cogwheels Are Lying Around at Random All Over the Workbench; 2013-2014; installation view of wall installation made of cyanotypes. Photo: Getty Images/Chris Jackson.

The discrete separateness of each object invites the viewer to meander between passive and active forms of engagement where classification and contemplation work together, one informing the other, turning the reading of the work into a game of seek and find. Traces of research and creation can be spotted in the photograms of studio equipment, industrial tools, newspapers, and art journals, while strains of Beshty’s personal life and management role can be seen in the empty food containers, employee contracts, exhibition invitations, thank-you notes, and cinema tickets that ripple across the surface of the wall. Adding to the admixture are the more mysterious objects obscured during the cyanotype process that resist the process of naming (and thus significance)—a reminder of art’s resistance to quantitative procedures of data collation and progressive outcomes. Careful to attend to the personal as well as banal aspects of accumulated trash, Beshty is able to pluck at the idiosyncrasies and curiosities exposed in the act of assemblage, where happy accidents and compelling choices are difficult to distinguish within the artist’s paper-blue ecology of purposeful waste.

Like much of Beshty’s work, the Barbican piece is deeply concerned with the dialectical nature of a work’s becoming—its groundedness within a particular historical context, and its openness to the contingencies of time and history—and the material and relational by-products produced within the duration of the creative process. By foregrounding the acts of gathering, assembling, and archiving within this work, Beshty is able to attend to problems of presenting the visible and invisible forces at play in the creation, distribution, and exhibition of his artworks: “I thought of the studio as one big machine…a machine for making a kind of picture…the sum total of all of this is one depiction, is one picture, and in that sense, it’s a transparent picture.”[2]

Walead Beshty. FedEx Large Box; 2008; installation view at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2008 Whitney Biennial: Signs of the Time (New York City, NY). Photo: Whitney Museum of American Art.

It is this desire to demystify process that provides a point of connection between Beshty’s practice and the recent demand for political, state, and corporate transparency. After making his mark in the 2008 Whitney Biennial with an assortment of shatterproof glass cubes made to the standards of FedEx shipping boxes—a gesture that pointed toward the illusion of autonomy in minimalist sculpture, and to the systems of corporate transport and capital that tend to cover over and regulate the processes that deliver objects to your doorstep—Beshty has continued to find ways to acknowledge and create representations of the repression of materiality in contemporary aesthetic production. Similar to the FedEx sculpture series that bears the accumulations of time and travel (marks, cracks, handprints) onto the surfaces of the work, A Partial Disassembling employs the indexical impression of the cyanotype process and the waste of the artist’s studio in order to acknowledge his work’s circulation and complicity within powerful networks of technological, institutional, and social relations.

[1] Only 7,000 of the 12,000 items made it to the Curve Gallery wall. Accompanying the exhibition is a 41-volume book archive that reproduces all 12,000 pieces of the work in its totality.

[2]See Beshty’s interview with the internet television art project VernissageTV on October 31, 2014. The interview can be found on the station’s YouTube channel in the segment, “Walead Beshty at The Curve, Barbican Center, London.” Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LO_o7os4Hs