Studio Berehaven Annotations

New Website is LIVE

2012-03-08T17:52:00.000-08:00

robsullivanart.com

Needs a few tweaks and additions, but it's up and running. Take a look.

Here at the End of All Things

2012-02-19T14:35:00.000-08:00

Final Residency Summary:

A Master’s Thoughts on
The Art Institute of Boston’s MFA Program

“Well, I’m back” (Tolkien, 1008).

And, like a Tolkien character, I have been greatly altered by my experiences. Expectations were such unknown quantities at the start of the program (save to obtain Master status in two years), all I could do was, as I’ve said in the past, remain as objective as possible. Admittedly, it wasn’t always possible, but I can say that I entertained new and difficult material with a great deal of consideration. This mindset helped enormously; it changed me. I’m not ashamed to acknowledge that it effected a maturation - one that occurred at a critical, personal, and especially - an artistic level. In hindsight, this was a very necessary transformation.

Before I begin in earnest, I’d like to share this little anecdote: “Journey,” as a word to describe one’s participation in our program, is an insinuated taboo for students, especially when you’re writing thesis and appearing as a Group 5 in the last residency (at least in its first few days). We all try really hard to not say it, for fear of reprisal: “You said the ‘j’-word, you noob.” It is a little trite, perhaps; a little new-agey for a program where critical language is employed. Maybe it’s because the word suggests more of a travelogue than sheer experience? Still, though I did hear the expression bandied about, albeit unintentionally, I always gave the speaker the benefit of the doubt. One can argue that such an excursion is one of the mind - traveling to places in your head that you’ve never been (let alone knew existed). And, truth be told, I personally logged quite a bit of actual mileage back and forth to New York in order to visit mentors, shows, museums and the like. So, despite the mildly illicit nature of the “journey” as a descriptor for one's time in the program, it is somewhat apt.

In those travels (speaking of which) I was able to meet and talk extensively with artists who operate on the upper tiers of the contemporary art world. Some of them are now considered friends. I’d never dreamed of such a thing. By virtue of the program, it became a reality. I went to shows that, in the past, would have held no interest for me, but instead, I found great edification in critically engaging with the content. It’s true that I travel with my family every so often to New York, but these visits were nearly monthly, and the need for continued scholarship justified all these trips - otherwise, I would not have bothered... And I did feel that NYC was the only place, really. Yes, I was born, raised, and completed my undergrad work there, but I also knew - inherently - that there is no substitute when it comes to its great wealth of art and artists. For me, in order to complete my MFA work to the best of my ability, despite the 400+ mile removal and the difficulty such travel imposed, it was there or nowhere. It was the best decision.

Of course, those who set the tone for how to approach and participate in critical thought deserve the greatest amount of praise. I cannot stress the incredible pedagogical strength of the AIB MFA faculty. The diversity of scholarship, the way in which critiques were addressed, the sheer depth of information they all (individually and collectively) hold amazed (and still amazes) me. Their presence was a gift, no mistake. I cannot thank them enough for what they have done for me. If I can remit payment in any real way, it will be through the fact that any achievements of merit in my future shall sit as testament to the quality of these individuals.

Yes, I did learn a thing or two. But it was only through investing in the opportunities as presented to me by the artists and scholars I met along the way. Much of what I’ve gained can be found in the text of my thesis. The thesis is, in many ways, cumulative, though not necessarily an aggregate of the texts I’d penned in prior semesters. It marks more of a confluence and fruition of all the thematics I’d been exploring -- and some with which I had not yet come to terms. Research, writing, style, content -- it is all fully actualized in this final document. The latest paintings are reflective of this, too, and are but the inkling of the thesis project as a whole; a new platform upon which I can base many more paintings. This is, I believe, the crux of the thesis -- and any MFA program worth its salt. So, then, I developed: a new understanding of art (cumulating in the contemporary); a richer understanding of my own art as it relates to contemporary art; and through this, established a new and solid base from which I launched a project that reflects these understandings. In other words, the thesis acts as a touchstone to bigger things, post-Masters.

Since this is a pretty informal document, I will be candid here and let the reader know that this program - again, like any program worth its salt - makes high demands of the MFA candidate. That said, in the low-residency format, where one might hope (note the word choice) to fold the required work into one’s daily life, while not in-residence, instead, just adds to the challenge. It becomes an imperative to harness the self-discipline to NOT sink into domestic regularity. I realized that this required, of course, a great deal of effort, and I was familiar enough with the task, having spent a decade as a freelance artist for a New York illustration agency. The routine - or, at least, operating under an art-based sword of Damocles - came back soon enough. The more pressing issue was how to promote the idea that I was actually a full-time student. It is terribly hard for anyone save your AIB peers to understand the reality of the situation. Even close family and friends cannot really fathom the fact that, for two years, you have adopted a lifestyle of art and scholarship, as opposed to a part-time dalliance. But your presence (or perhaps conspicuous absence, since you might be trapped in your studio or library) at the table - yes, your very corporeality - makes it seem as if you are some sort of ivory-tower hobbyist, play-acting at something of tertiary importance. Now, I can’t say that this is the absolute truth of the matter, but, from my interactions with my fellow students, it is not at all an uncommon experience. Relationships can become strained, and feelings of guilt can encumber your process. Sleep gets to be luxury. Stress is your familiar. All you can do is put your head down and work through it all. It’s the only solution, because sublimating your difficulties through any other activity is ultimately a waste of time. Time is in extraordinarily short supply; it's the ultimate luxury. The warnings proffered by advisors and peers (like me, as a recent alumnus) - especially regarding the subject of time - seem like so much rhetoric. They are not.

If you heed all this, you will get through it. As with anything, it sounds easy on paper, but the real-time execution is something else. Personally, however, I wanted far more than to merely “get through it.” I wanted to know how far I could push myself without throwing the positive aspects of my art (i.e., my painting skills) under the bus. Holding on to representation and skill was, in hindsight, a harder road -- and I’m glad I took it. But that was not the driver. The driver was, oddly enough, the intellectualization of art and its relation to the world at large. Again, my thesis explicates this more fully, but I still marvel at my naivete coming into the program. When I was introduced (immediately) to all I had missed (the sociopolitical, theoretical, and philosophical components of art), I became extremely disturbed at my lack. This super-motivated me to remedy the situation. I daresay I almost overcorrected in my second semester, but some well-placed admonition set me to rights. Again, in hindsight, I think if I had cruised along semester to semester with little issue, it would have meant I was doing something very wrong. As creative thinkers, we need to go off the rails in order to see where the track lies. Once you re-orient, there is far more clarity and trust in future judgement.

If I can give, with this brief essay, some sense of closure to my own experience, then I must conclude with some remarks about my “people” - my peers. Realistically, we do not spend a great deal of time together as compared to perhaps any other program - only 20 days out of the year. But, the crucible of the residencies are truly white-hot and the bonds we form are hard and fast. I’ve gotten to know some incredible people who also happen to be incredible artists. The last residency is truly a gift, in that I was able to be with members of the other groups in the formal settings of critiques and seminars. Also, it needs to be disclosed that the social activity at the bars in Kenmore Square after an ever-long day of residency is an integral part of the experience. This decompression is vital. To suss out, over various libations, the sheer density of the 12 hours of theoretical art discourse in which everyone had just engaged, is perhaps the only way to stay balanced. Without this, I would have hit the wall of non-receptivity pretty quickly. Now, to speak specifically of my own group, the 15th graduating class of the MFA, is to speak of family. We underwent perhaps the greatest personal transformation of our adult lives, and, as mentioned earlier, we were the ones who most fully understood how much it meant to one another. In the loneliness of the semester, physically separated from my art companions, I could still rely on their understanding, compassion and sheer want for my success (as the feelings were mutual) to get me through any dark period. We were all in it together, though apart much of the time. It made the times we were together that much sweeter. I’ve said it before - in fact, I publicly announced it in our final ceremony: I could not be more proud of us, nor be more proud to call myself part of the 15th AIB MFA Graduating Class, January, 2012.

Postscript:

This is not the last of my writing. Not that I am an essayist, but I am also, as it turns out, not merely a painter. I am an artist. The written word is another function of my creative vision, and I will engage in writing when it is prudent to do so. In fact, as long as I am painting, I will no doubt also be writing.

Citation:

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994 ed. Print.

Graduate Exhibition

2011-12-22T14:41:00.000-08:00

Click to view!

MFA Final Statement

2011-12-20T14:45:00.000-08:00

Robert Sullivan

Artist's Statement - 2012

Religare – (from L.) 1. To reconnect. 2. Lactantian root word for 'religion.'

I believe there is a contemporary and profound import in reconnecting to “faith” – that is, faith as a dimension of trust in art, self and society – through a traditional artistic practice like representational painting. The original connection between painting and faith has been slowly worn away since the Renaissance. What was at first religious became romantic, then prosaic, and ultimately, the subject of an ironic cynicism. There is now a conspicuous absence of the faith/art parallel in today's secular discourses. My project is to syncretize painting and its native religious impulse without the burden of the ideologies that have diminished its significance.

Using quotidian images that recall the notion of flight, I endeavor to reframe them as symbols of spiritual yearning and transfiguration. These recontextualizations do not exist merely as representational surface idioms, but also signify an engagement with the transcendental and how it might be expressed in a contemporary vernacular. The construction of my paintings employ a simple rather than a more baroque presentation, promoting a contemplative space where speculative thought and objective observation might happen. It is in this space where that inherent principle of spirituality in art can still resonate, free from dogmatic doctrines, and offer a reclamation of faith.

Knee Deep in The Final Stretch

2011-08-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well, there's been a good break in posting here, but it's essentially because I am now in my Thesis semester and all my energies are being dedicated towards that big 'ol document (there is very little studio time to be had at this point). I had considered posting it in installments here as a WIP, but that seemed a little foolish, considering the major alterations that will take place until the final is released in November.

I do have some images to post that I didn't get around to before the last residency. Those will be forthcoming.

There will also be new paintings that will accompany the thesis, but they are only in development right now, and will manifest only after the writing is near-completed.

In the meantime:

(apologies to Oglaf.com for the appropriation -- though it IS appropriate)

Group 3 to 4 Transition - Semester Summary

2011-06-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

[note: I am actually in Boston posting this - my Group 4 residency starts tomorrow. I have new work, but was unable to get decent photos of the paintings. I will post them when I return to the studio and can take some good shots.]

AIB MFA

Semester Summary

January-June 2011: Group 3 to 4 Transition

It cannot be stressed enough that these last 6 months were an incredibly important time for me as an artist striving towards his Masters. As I had stated in the Residency Summary in the beginning of the semester, this period needed to yield a high level of production and focus. I'm happy to say that I think I've achieved that.

Of course, this remains to be seen as a fait accompli, as I will get many comprehensive critiques on the work at my Group 4 residency. Nevertheless, I feel like I've accomplished something of value in my painting and research and that those two things have meshed in a way they hadn't before. And, the other thing to which I'd alluded in the Residency Summary – the importance of the studio work as a springboard to the thesis – was foremost in my mind. With an amazing assist from my mentor Peter Rostovsky, I was able to craft a series of paintings that have both formal and conceptual cohesion; individually, and as a group.

I can recall the difficulties of my Group 2 to 3 semester – the lack of surety of direction, the soft-pedaling regarding exploration, and the sticky written work. It wasn't as if I produced poor work, but it lacked true focus technically and thematically. That semester's forays into getting more facture on the painting's surface was something I definitely wanted to take along into the new work. The binary tension between painting's tactility and the photographic gesture certainly lent new interest to my surfaces. But this technical narrative was not fully realized: the painted gesture was too prosaic, existing as it did outside the conceptual directions with which I was experimenting. The conflation of these things needed greater consideration. In many ways, my success this time around was due to looking back while simultaneously handicapping myself to get ahead.

An introduction to Lars von Trier's film, The Five Obstructions, was a fantastic object lesson, showing me that operating within a set of proscribed constraints yields more thoughtful and directed work. As I had discussed in an essay produced this semester, “The End of Art and What To Do About It,” Foucault drives this point home: “Only creativity is possible in putting into play of a system of rules; it is not a mixture of order and freedom.” (Chomsky-Foucault, 29). Not only did this put me in a better frame of mind with regard to the already-shrunken space of painting within contemporary art, but it also gave me the motivation to excise the non-essential in my work. Therefore, based on responses to previous monochromatic works (Pteronychus [the small seagull piece] and All Natural [the mint ice cream cone]), I decided to execute each painting with a single-color theme. In the same vein, I realized that, in past works, my striving towards opening the vectors of meaning was failing against the didactic nature of the subject matter and/or its conflation with add-on devices (weird backgrounds, collage-like elements, etc.). Again, I was guided by my mentor to strip away all but the fundamental aspects of the reference. For example: In the case of one of the last pieces I executed, Magisterium, I had painted in a background in front of an unfurled duck wing. It consisted of a photographically blurry view of the pond as told by the reference material. This made the piece, as a conceptual whole, far too prosaic and lyrical, closing down the reading. When I overpainted a flat value on top of it, it moved into a realm where I could see a Ribera, a Caravaggio or an Orazio Gentileschi rather than a recontextualized photo.

Materials became an issue of even tighter focus this semester. Both Peter and Tony (Apesos, my advisor) made me more sharply aware of the need to understand the historical nature and practical application of oil paint and its adjunct mediums. Originally, I had been using a fairly standard procedure in my painting, thinning with only linseed oil, and more recently, with Galkyd products from Gamblin – synthetic alkyd resins with a syrupy feel, but a self-leveling quality. Peter had suggested trying mediums that might give me more lift and stiction to the brushstrokes, so I employed Gamblin's Neo-Megilp. It sure added body – almost distractingly so. But, this wasn't the solution he was hinting at. In our second mentor meeting, he brought out some very traditional mediums: a Venetian medium the likes of which was used by Velazquez; and a glass medium, with glass dust suspended in the polymerized oil. They were beautiful in their own right, and I could see how reflecting painting's history through using these historical mediums was a sophisticated way to expound on the technical narrative. Moreover, in a visit to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with Tony, he proceeded to point out the use of egg-oil emulsion in much of the Flemish painting – especially in highlight passages. He drew my attention to the nature of how the paint not only had a wax-like sheen to it, but pooled in such a way that made it more of a creamy consistency rather than a spiky, impasted passage or a layered, chalky-cool paint buildup. After seeing these examples, I made an effort to employ polymerized oil in my medium mixture as well as the introduction of walnut oil, as opposed to linseed. It was a struggle at first to produce the results for which I normally strive. I wasn't fully understanding the feel and balance between medium, pigment and surface with these new ingredients in place. But, I pressed on, and I have to say, it made a great deal of difference in how the paintings resonate optically.

After completion of my first work this semester – a quasi-drawing/painting on frosted polyester called Catastrophe Paradox – I shifted my naming convention for the subsequent full oil paintings. The fact is, I had come into deep conflict with my Catholic faith beginning back at the start of my MFA pursuits in January of 2010. I hadn't written about it to this point, because I had no inkling of how or why I should make it relevant to my art nor my Master's experience. However, it is a deep-rooted discord, and I felt that now, since I began feeling more comfortable in my formal approach, that I should fold this internal discourse into my concepts. The titles reflect Catholic doctrines and rites that, in some discrete or oblique way, sync up with the image depicted. Many of these pairings strike a dissonance once the relationship is recognized, and this is purposefully done, as it is relevant to my disquiet over contemporary Catholic issues. However, I do not wish to delve into a full explication of these meanings at this time. If the relationships are not fully realized by the viewer, it does the work no disservice; there are many other meanings to be had when these paintings are presented.

With this in mind, after this next residency, my task will focus primarily on the development of my thesis. The nomenclature direction will be further explicated with regard to my personal experiences and development, but again, perhaps not with specific meaning in mind. I have submitted the outline for my thesis, an the thematic focuses on the re-presentation of the quotidian. “The quotidian” does not necessarily mean banal, everyday objects or images only – the contemporary idea of the quotidian has broadened to contain a plethora of images that stem from oft-repeated tropes within high and low media alike. My typical jumping-off point of manipulated photographic reference (from numerous open sources, including my own photography) gives me a huge cache of predictable imagery from which I can paint. I have already made this gesture in the work I've generated this semester (and I'll undoubtedly produce a few more in the coming months), so my premise is established enough physically to write about it as my thesis platform.

The next level towards which I have been striving is here already. It is, for all intents and purposes, the final level in this stage of my artistic growth – and will no doubt serve as a springboard for the rest of my life's work. There are another 6 months ahead in which I will engage in the written aspect of my constructed visual components. But also, there will be new work that will be a direct evolution from these recent pieces. Since I made the point of being particularly reductive this semester, I will become additive from this point. A re-introduction of the figure will be a component, as well as the addition of more color. However, it will be vital to keep my current conceptual principles intact without being circumscribed by something stylistic. In other words, I must stay true to the spirit of the current body of work.

Citation:

Chomsky, Noam and Foucault, Michel. The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature. New York: New Press, 2006. Print

Representational Painting After Richter

2011-05-17T21:12:00.000-07:00

Gerhard Richter: "Cloud" o/c, 1970

Gerhard Richter: "Toilet Paper" o/c, 1965

Gerhard Richter: "Uncle Rudi" o/c, 1965

Representational Painting After Richter:

Critical Issues

“I don't know what motivated the artist, which means these paintings have an intrinsic quality. I think Goethe called it the 'essential dimension', the thing that makes great works of art great” (Richter, Text, 85 ).

Criticality in painting developed in such a way as to determine the intentionality of the artist, the formal handling of medium in relation to the work and the intrinsic individuality that resulted from a fusion of the two. That said, it would be considered extraordinarily blunt and prejudicial to look at, say, the 17^th Century Dutch epoch and conclude that the paintings of Vermeer, de Hooch, ter Borch and/or Maes are fundamentally the same. Sure, it's true that within the generalized tenets of art history this era has been rendered into a convention (the Dutch “Golden Age”), but connoisseurs of painting have made the differences between these artists and their works quite clear. Therefore, a superficial convention of flat image alone could be called uncritical. Why, then, is representational painting now only discussed employing the terms of photo-based painting? It seems as if photo-based painting and its critical discussion in the contemporary has been fully conventionalized to the point that it envelops most forms of representation. No one seems to be making a connoisseurial argument in this realm. The kind of sensitivity that used to be applied to discussing painting looks to be completely absent.

In order to get to the root of this matter, we must look at the most seminal figure in postmodern representational painting, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932). Richter is at once inclusive and divisive when it comes to postmodern theory and painting. His training ranged extensively, moving from a traditional art education in Dresden in the 1950s to his exposure to modernist and postmodernist ideas in the 1960s, meeting and working with Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke and Joseph Beuys. These experiences helped to govern Richter's artistic approaches and thus led to an impressive stylistic diversity in his work. He certainly puts painting through its paces, especially when it comes to his photo-based work, testing the waters of critique with nods to history painting (as in the Baader-Meinhof suite, October18, 1977, [1988]), the Duchampian-readymade (Kitchen Chair, [1965]), and German Romanticism (Himalaya,[1968]). The aporia that erupts within the work (and this is what elicits the greatest fascination in critical circles) is made manifest via a purposeful aridity in his delivery. That is to say, Richter paints – as much as he is able – with a deft, but formally anonymous hand. Employing no idiosyncratic mark-making nor eye-catching surface manipulations, Richter desublimates the tropes of painting and eludes much of its historical associations while simultaneously provoking postmodernist critique by the very use of the medium. He has stated that he paints “to bring together the most disparate and mutually contradictory elements, alive and viable, with the greatest possible freedom” (Daily Practice, 166).

As is well known (and obvious in the work), Richter employs the use of photographs: his own; found or co-opted; newspaper and magazine clippings; postcards; and snapshots of screen images. The distortion that results in these photographic reproduction processes is something that Richter has often mimicked – blurring, warping, imitating the dot-matrix of a screen – in the painting itself. One of the most interesting effects of this imitation is that it calls to mind the harmony/dissonance binary of photography and painting: The blur of a photo is due to the lens of the camera and the photographic image can be imitated in a painting via a skilled hand. However, the painted surface is not actually blurred or distorted; paint is paint, no matter how one applies it. And Richter is indeed skilled, well-schooled in the manipulation of oil paint, even in impasto techniques. However, he reserves this for abstracted works, created mainly from 1970-1980. The surface-related activity in these is very much related to the scope of said works, with complex layers and effacements effectuating palimpsest.

There is something sincerely fundamental in Richter's explorations, and that is a deep-seated mistrust of ideology. [His upbringing under the pall of two dictatorships (Hitler, then Stalin) certainly gives him a strong reason and resolve to question the nature of dogmatic thinking.] He follows the line of a fellow German intellectual, the philosopher Theodor Adorno with Adorno's statement that the “idea of art [is] to gain control of semblance, to determine it as semblance, as well as to negate it as unreal” (78). With this in mind, Richter wishes to continue to imbue, or perhaps invoke in painting and representation that “essential dimension” to which Goethe referred. In doing so, it can be imagined that his art might transcend the conventionalizing nature of postmodern criticality/academia – the preeminent ideology of the contemporary art world. It is easy to note this polarity between artist and critique in Richter's 1986 conversation with Benjamin Buchloh. Here Buchloh postures as a postmodernist ideologue, misunderstanding Richter's intentions at many turns. One particular instance is in Buchloh's mistaking Richter's photo-real painting oeuvre as pastiche, calling it “a cynical retrospective survey of 20^th Century painting,” to which Richter replies, “I see no cynicism or trickery or guile in any of this” (Daily Practice, 146). Rather, the very linkage of the painted objects – the photos, the images, the likenesses, conflated into one source-point “reality” – reveals not just a didactic lack of continuity, but elemental associations that are almost musical. Look at the sequence from painting to painting: a cloud, a roll of toilet paper, and then the artist's Uncle Rudi in his Nazi uniform – the resonance of the latter work is that much greater in the harmony of the surrounding works. The Buchloh-Richter conversation in toto is vital, as it provides solid insight into the overreaching tendencies of postmodern criticality when confronted with art that subverts and/or expands beyond ideological theoretical modes.

Thus, Richter has become iconic of “anonymity” in representational painting. And much like Buchloh's misses in his cat-and-mouse with Richter, the trope of the “anonymous hand” has been conventionalized into all discussions of representational painting and is discussed solely on the grounds of photo-based tropes. What was once an indefinable space of experience (the essential) has undergone typical morphological deconstruction through critical agencies and become incorrectly concretized into a canonical model for contemporary painting. “X-factors” in art always delimit a fragile space, for, in the Foucauldian sense, the armies of discourse will rush in and seek to instrumentalize them.* Through such instrumentalization, ideologies spring forth.

So now a certain myopia is prevalent in dealing with contemporary representational painting. Of course, artists are aware of this, and many have aligned themselves with this stunted kind of criticality. “Painting by committee” is fashionable in this arena. It not only fulfills the latest, edgy model of artist as solely Conceptual, but also subverts any emphasis upon skill, leaving the painting job to a studio of “workers”. Postmodern tropes have blunted the edge of representation as it pertains to photography, and the non-styles of the studios of Jeff Koons, Kehinde Wylie and Rudolph Stengel, for example, perpetuates the problem. These works are very different surface-wise than a Richter, being far more “slick”, but they are nonetheless meant to be read as didactically photo-based with no individual “hand” present in the work.

What is it, then, that can lift a painter such as myself out of these constrained conventions? How would this one painter of the realistic image individuate himself from others? If the nature of the discourse has been blunted, then perhaps the tactics a painter might bring to bear need to be fairly blunt. If I want to function in this strange terrain of generic approaches, it may be time to return to structural roots, that being the very physicality of paint. The aesthetic of painting needs to be re-embraced alongside contemporary conceptual narratives. Why would a painter not want to embrace that part of painting's history that still resonates so strongly even today? Madlyn Miller Kahr, in her essay on Velazquez' Las Meninas, calls the masterwork “a demonstration of the combination of intellectual subtlety and aesthetic sensibility that the best of its practitioners bring to painting” (245). Why can't this sentiment function in this day and age? I believe it can.

There are a few artists who bring this aesthetic to bear today, about some of whom I have already written: Michaël Borremans, Jenny Saville, John Currin, Vincent Desiderio. And there are others – Johannes Kahrs, Vija Celmins, Eberhard Havekost, Lucien Freud, and Ulrich Lamsfuss – to name a few. Many of these artists' paint applications are great examples of a return to a more painting-specific aesthetic. Surfaces can be highly imperfect and erratic, with instances of stray brush hairs lingering in extruded strokes, fingerprints and exposed raw linen. The very textures call to mind a warmth/mystery/myth of the European painter's studio. The straightforward conservative aspect of such historical structural reference serves to distance and positively differentiate itself from the contemporary ideology of representation conventionalized as “photo-real”. Peter Rostovsky, upon seeing a Borremans in person, remarked, “It's like a Sargent with its surfaces, but combined with the content it becomes a Richter with dreams, instead of just photographs” (42:29).

It is vital for me to understand and incorporate an aesthetic physicality into my imagery. I have experimented with this, but need to continue in order to make manifest that signature “mark” using the traditional surfaces and mediums in which the paint is suspended. In this, I will be able to find again the dignity of “painter as painter”. That is, in the creation of a painting, the physical and mental are dualistically indistinguishable.

* Foucault's attitude in this regard is reflected in this example: “When social and political scientists increasingly claim the importance of categories like “invention”, “fiction” and “construction” for their work, they often double the theoretical attitude they initially set out to criticize... [this] lacks any sense of the materiality of the process of theory production.” (Lemke, 63).

List of works cited:

Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory (1970), trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Print.

Kahr, Madlyn Miller. “Velazquez and Las Meninas.” Art Bulletin 57.2 (1975): 225-246. Print.

Lemke, Thomas. “Foucault, Governmentality and Critique.” Rethinking Marxism Vol. 14, Issue 3. September, 2002: 49-64. Print.

Richter, Gerhard. The Daily Practice of Painting. Ed. Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. Print.

– Text,Writings, Interviews and Letters. London:Thames and Hudson, 2009. Print.

Rostovsky, Peter. Personal Interview. Recorded in Brooklyn, New York. 7 May 2011.

Yes, There are Paintings Too

2011-04-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the delays in posting images. Really haven't had time to get halfway decent photos of these latest works. They really need a pro to photograph them, as they are very reflective. I wanted to at least get them outside, where it would be somewhat easier to get an even light on them. It's been raining a lot over the past few weeks, so the opportunity really hadn't presented itself until today. It was still difficult and they probably deserve better. I did the best I could to get them looking halfway decent for your perusal.

Well, enough whining - here's some stuff:

Imago - o/c, 24" x 28"

Heterarchy - o/c - 30" x 40"

Reliquary - oil on linen mounted to panel, 12" x 16"

Rubric - o/c, 30" x 40"

The End of Art and What To Do About It

2011-04-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

"Reverse" - Jenny Saville, 2002-2003
oil on canvas, 84" x 96"
[An example of a "New Old Master"]

"For The Love of God" - Damien Hirst, 2007
platinum, diamonds, human teeth
[An example of a "postartist"]

In Pixar's 2004 CG-animated blockbuster, The Incredibles, there is a scene early in the film in which a mother (Helen Parr) and son (Dash Parr) are arguing over the use of their super-powers. The Parrs are a family of superheroes who are consigned to living a “normal” life due to a government edict (brought on by lawsuits), and Helen is imploring that Dash help retain that facade of normalcy by not using his super-speed in school or any public activity, such as sports. Dash objects:

Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.
Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is. (15:30).

This is the framework that Donald Kuspit sets up in his book, The End of Art. It is the very postmodern notion that (as the Fluxus movement worked to establish) everyone is an artist. If this is the case in the 'postart' world of the contemporary, then it is pointless to call oneself such. This apprehends the title and personage of “artist” from its original standard as social arbiter and relegates it to a post of mere vanity. 'Postartist' is the corrected term, with Kuspit borrowing it from Allan Kaprow, the architect of the 'Happenings' performative works from the 1960s. It was the belief of Kaprow and his fellow practitioners that life was more interesting than art – and this was, as it seems, at the expense of art.

For Kuspit, the overtly over-commodified, über-clever, superhyped kitsch, such as the work of Damien Hirst, is the contemporary result of what Marcel Duchamp launched around 1915. He began to purposefully segregate art into a realm of pure intellectualism, abandoning the aesthetic for the anti- aesthetic. His seemingly capricious detachment from art aesthetics was the progenitor of generations of postartists, in Kuspit's view. The European Dadaist movement, once adapted and restyled in New York (much to the credit of Duchamp's Fountain), laid the foundations for postmodern, anti-art movements such as Fluxus, Pop, Performance and Conceptual art. So then, Duchamp's 'willful indifference' evolved with each developing movement into a strict denial of the possibilities of aesthetics and its relation to reality. This is, sadly, a reversal of art's purpose.

It is a bleak, gray landscape that Kuspit paints for us. Postart has overwritten and overridden not only aesthetics, but also its reflective vitality – its relation to our existence. It is only through 'real' art that we can track life through a “phenomenological reduction of the everyday in and through the aesthetic.” (Kuspit, 132). But where now is art's place as a privileged space for contemplation? If art no longer occupies this space, where then is that place in our sphere?

The straight answer is, it still lies in art. For what is now deemed 'art' (which is, in fact, Kuspit's postart) has become, through commodification and novelty for the sake of its own self-consuming disposability, an undistinguishable extension of the modern entertainment complex. Postmodern art now reflects consumer culture in an unabashed mimesis of the shallow artifice of the artificial. And with a culturally bereft, winking nihilism, embraces this fact in its own despite. This points up the common thread of cynical irony so common in postart works. It is also insipidly boring; the premise is always obvious, and you 'get it' instantly. What is functional about this? Art always intends to have a function – which is, at the very least, to provide insight. Non-functionality is synonymous with death.

Now then, I do believe that Kuspit, despite the inherent truth in his words, may be critiqued for his hyperbole, if not lack of hope. Art's death has been heralded and pronounced far too many times for Kuspit's proclamation to also be a literal consideration. Kuspit himself notes these incidents: William Blake's fears in 1820 of an unholy conflation of art and money (162); Gauguin's similar reflections on this topic seventy years later, as he notes how this evil alliance will destroy art in the new (20^th) century (170); Clement Greenberg's view on kitsch in 1939 as the defeating foil to the avant-garde (171); Richard Huelsenbeck's observation and agreement in 1957 with the Dadaist assertion that “art is dead” (170); and David Rabinowich's 1963 critique of minimalism as the death of art emblemized (170-171). Even the very idea of the end of art was appropriated in the 1986 Boston ICA show, Endgame (I discuss this at length in a response to the Endgame essays from my first MFA semester*). As Kuspit notes in his postscript (which is altogether too short), there are a good number of artists (painters, he cites specifically) still practicing an art that is materially (aesthetically) resonant, while also satisfying modern, conceptual concerns. In other words, there still remain, and have remained, painters who never believed it was a good idea to throw the aesthetic baby out with the bathwater.

Van Gogh declared that “painting is a faith.” (Lublin, 113). Indeed, with all that has transpired, as chronicled by Kuspit, it seems like one would need to have a deep and nearly blind (deaf would probably help, too) faith in order to continue creating aesthetic art-objects such as paintings. Truth be told, the space of painting has been radically delimited; not only by the inclusion of all sorts of radical and contemporary media (digital, video, installation, performance, etc.), but also by the contemporary critics, dealers and collectors who would control the commodified – and rather unregulated – cash machine that art has become in these postart years. As a painter, my realization of these closed-down parameters caused me no small amount of despair, initially. I felt incredibly marginalized by the cold barriers set up by the contemporary art construct.

Nonetheless, I have chosen to 'keep the faith,' as it were, not only aligning myself with the 'New Old Masters,' as Kuspit names the artists in his postscript, but also looking to other sources for inspiration. In a 1971 debate, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault discussed ideas and motivations behind creativity in a modern age. At one point, Chomsky talks about the modern suppression of creativity by social institutions and posits that if this chain of oppression is unbound, it will reveal an inherently humanistic surge of artistry. Foucault's reply is not necessarily a disagreement, but it is a practical insight into the modern era. He is far more interested in how creativity can (as it was then, and still is now) operate, and perhaps flourish, within a set of constraints: “It is not a matter of combination. Only creativity is possible in putting into play of a system of rules; it is not a mixture of order and freedom.” (Chomsky-Foucault, 29). This describes a more limited framework giving a more stable creative foundation that would be unavailable if everything was permissible.

This theme can also be found in the excellent Lars von Trier film from 2003, The Five Obstructions. In this documentary, von Trier takes his mentor, the filmmaker Jørgen Leth, to task over Leth's The Perfect Human. Despite his deep admiration for Leth's work, von Trier challenges his mentor in a kind of Oedipal duel, daring him to make new versions of this film with particular obstructions in place. The first obstruction, which takes Leth to Cuba (an unknown quantity to him, thus restrictive) with the restriction that he can only shoot 12 frames per shot. While filming, Leth laments his agreeing to this: “It's totally destructive!” and “He's ruining it from the start!” (4:30-4:40). But later, upon seeing the completed new version, von Trier is amazed and remarks, “The 12 frames were a gift!” (15:40). The successes of the new versions were all in thanks to the restrictions put upon the veteran filmmaker. (In an amusing moment, von Trier 'punishes' Leth by insisting that Leth make a free-form version of the film. After the fantastic experiences with prior obstructions, Leth is horrified at the prospect and pleads for another obstruction.)

In this age of super-interconnectivity via the digital realm, we have – cliché notwithstanding – the world at our fingertips. For the creative mind, a new dictum has arisen: 'everything is allowed, nothing is permitted.' Such a thing easily neuters our creative impulses. So then, it is precisely through the narrowing of our artistic boundaries (some chosen, some preordained) that we can obtain a more focused – and consequently, more expansive – vision.

With this realization, I (and others) can herald the downfall of postart. Postart was the easy way out, co-opting anything and everything (the commercial as well as past art movements) in a backhanded, ironic and unsympathetic manner. The postartists' appropriated and deconstructed art reprisals emblemize a lack of artistic courage and conviction. Such spectacles are akin to dressing down a (perceived) weaker rival in public, in lieu of addressing one's own insecurities. However, this act lays those insecurities rather bare in such a way as to incriminate the actor as an unknowing fool.

The job of an artist is to not be foolish, but insightful. Through searching in earnest for my artistic path, I have jettisoned the notions of postmodern postart insisting that representational painters cannot represent art in any way other than anachronistically. Finding the magnetic North of my aesthetic compass should never have been something about which I felt was a less-than-artistic pursuit. My formalized language of representational painting is the vehicle that allows me to announce my unconscious unconsciously. So then, in pursuing the deviations and visual inquests using my foundational aesthetics and professional skill sets as the basis, I can and will reveal the full scope of myself and my relationship to the contemporary world in my work.

Works Cited:

Chomsky, Noam and Foucault, Michel. The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature. New York: New Press, 2006. Print

The Five Obstructions. Dir. Lars von Trier. Perf. Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth. Films Sans Frontières [France], 2003. Film

The Incredibles. Dir. Brad Bird. Perf. Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson. Disney/Pixar, 2004. Film.

Kuspit, Donald. The End of Art. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print

Lublin, Albert J. Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent van Gogh. New York: Henry Holt, 1987. Print

* May 16, 2010 entry on the “Studio Berehaven Annotations” blog – http://robsullivanartnotes.blogspot.com/2010/05/endgame.html

Inventing Fame, Inviting Problems

2011-03-14T20:11:00.001-07:00

Paul Gauguin, "Self Portrait With Halo" 1889. Oil on Wood 31" x 20"

Jean-Michel Basquiat, "Self Portrait as a Heel" 1982. Acrylic and Oil on canvas, 96" x 61.5

Inventing Fame, Inviting Problems
Critical Theory III

According to Henri Tajfel, "the effects of social identity are driven by a need for positive distinctiveness in which one's own group is positively distinguished from an outgroup." (519). With this in mind, we can easily hypothesize the need for the selfsame distinctiveness for an individual artist to positively distinguish themselves from other artists. There is, as noted in the theory, always a contextual/environmental factor at play. In the the case of the artist, it is the "art world": the studio; the work; the galleries; local culture; the "scene" (receptions, institutional gatherings, etc.); and the individuals involved within.

In creative fields, the want for recognition is not merely a need based upon inflation of ego - it could also be said that such a thing is beneficial for one's career. Different levels of esteem – or fame – can be achieved with different levels of acclaim. At the highest levels, it will push the artist out into the world beyond art, allowing them to be recognized by the world at large. I will discuss instances of this and the inherent problems that manifest themselves as a result. The first is an in-depth look at the life and work of Paul Gauguin. The second will bring the discussion into the contemporary with related postmodern issues of artist-as-celebrity with a focus on Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Parisian artist Paul Gauguin was highly steeped in mythologies – one path leading to a furtherance of the artist as native-bohemian (an adoption of the “noble savage” motif) – the other, to an artistic/sociopolitical movement in the discourse regarding primitive people and places. In 1879, he left behind a family and banker's job in Paris for Brittany, where he began to weave a stylized artistic fantasy. He adopted the more antiquated native tropes of Pont-Aven (wearing wooden shoes, for instance) in order to personify his artistic take on the town as an antiquated backwater. It was nothing of the kind in the 1880s; it served more of a tourist getaway for contemporary Paris. Nevertheless, this marked the beginning of Gauguin's excursion in to the promotion of two kinds of falsified “other”-ness: his own and his subjects'.

Truth be told, Gauguin's rationale for over-exoticising may be traced to his own lineage and upbringing. His mother was half-Peruvian and he spent a few of his young years in Peru. No doubt there was a part of him that sincerely desired to take his “primitive” heritage and integrate it into his art as well as his life. His work reflected an incorporation of simple, outlined and pictorially flat elements found in the older indigenous arts of island and South American cultures into his work. Critics of the time established his modern, post-Impressionist tack as “Symbolism.” An 1891 account of Gauguin by G. Albert Aurier describes this simplification through a process of depicting “multiple elements of objective reality.... [using] only lines, forms and distinctive colors that enable him to describe precisely the ideic significance of the object.” (194). This formal appropriation could be considered problematic in light of Gauguin's French colonial worldview. However, in studying the work, his adoption of this style was a highly original fusion, be it pastiche or no. His work still stands as an original paradigm shift in the formal aspects of modernist painting.

Nevertheless, his life and career in Tahiti proved to be problematic indeed. The decision to embrace his Peruvian heritage could never counter his true cultural background – that of a late 19th Century Parisian banker. This aspect is further underscored by the fact that, prior to Gauguin's arrival, French missionaries had already been hard at work in this French colonial possession for nearly a century. Gauguin's hope for an authentic native experience (much less “going native”) was an impossibility. Despite this, Gauguin applied his life and work towards the archetype of an idealized primitive civilization. His marriage to the 13 year-old Teha'amana was undoubtedly rationalized by the tradition of such youthful marriages in the culture, but it was automatically rendered problematic by his own cultural standards; French society would find such an arrangement criminal and immoral. This is further problematized by what he gained by this union, as he was in straits with regard to food and clothing, as Solomon-Godeau notes: “[B]y virtue of [Teha'amana's] well provisioned extended family, [she was] his meal ticket.” (325). It remains speculation to wonder whether it was Gauguin's inflated appetites – apropos of his “savage” persona - that kept him holding onto the fantasy of a Tahiti long past. His sources were pastiches of tales told by Teha'amana – someone who was already a generation removed from her lost culture. He depicted an incorrect and “innocent” version of this past in his paintings, promoting this misrepresentation to his collectors back in Europe.

Gauguin was indeed “a reactionary revolutionary, one who placed hope not in the modernist present and future, which he despised and feared, but in an uncorrupted, uncolonized past, a past that had, like a princely birthright, been snatched away from him, and that he ended up spending a lifetime trying to recover.” (Cotter, PC21). His career survived on the myth of the self-exiled artist. And he spent himself on maintaining it – so much so that he had to remain in exile, an embittered expatriate, finding his untimely end via complications with syphilis and alcohol abuse.

It is no wonder that the artistic evolution from the modern to the postmodern should also encompass an evolution from the “mythological” artist to the “celebrity” artist. A persona that perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the preeminent postmodern decade – the 1970s – was that of the artist Andy Warhol. With Warhol, there was no line between the artist and the work – fame was engendered by name recognition. Other artists were able to capitalize on this mania in subsequent years, parlaying their art careers into financial juggernauts, such as David Salle and Julian Schnabel. New York City was the locus point for all of this. This was the era of artist-as-superstar.

As the art market moved into highly fertile financial territory in the early 1980s, dealers and artists alike were striving for the “next big thing.” With the paradigm of the celebrity artist now in place – young bohemians flooded lower Manhattan with experimental art in hopes of hitting it big. Anything and everything was up for grabs. A young graffiti artist with the tag “SAMO” began to grab the attention of those close to the “scene.” Through a series of fortunate events, coupled with much help from his enigmatic charisma, SAMO – aka Jean-Michel Basquiat – was “discovered.”

Richard Marshall recalls that Basquiat “first became famous for his art. Then he became famous for being famous. Then he became famous for being infamous.” (15). The unfortunate circumstance of how this came to be was, in part, fueled by an unshakable drug addiction, born from the street life that Basquiat espoused at age sixteen. The other part was perhaps more insidious, and no doubt kept this sensitive young man from shaking his crippling dependency.

Similar to Gauguin, Basquiat had an ethnic background that fueled part of his artistic and intellectual makeup. He was born to Haitian parents, but in Brooklyn. Like Gauguin, he spent some childhood years in the country of his progenitors, where he learned Creole and French. Nevertheless, his native soil was very much New York. He was ultimately raised in an upper-middle-class, financially stable household, his father being an accountant. This is a problematic area that does not completely gibe with the “kid from the street” ethos that Basquiat embraced, but he understood the street life and reflected the culture back in his art with a fresh and direct style. He drew upon black historical figures and histories to reflect his Haitian-African roots and how that played into his take on street life. This was all wholly unique to the New York art scene, and he soon garnered serious attention from high-powered gallery owners and dealers.

As reviews of Basquiat's work mounted, it became noticeable that the neo-expressionist moniker was being paired with “neo-primitivist.” Much of this press hinted at an painter's intuitiveness not born from an attenuation to the culture, but rather a “savage” primitivism that smacked of heavily racial overtones. The art world of the mid 80s, despite all its liberal tendencies, did not yet know how to fully accept a young black man as its new prince, even though all the “right” people had canonized him. His misgivings over this are clear in the highly personal interview he gave to Tamra Davis in her documentary The Radiant Child. (1:03:00 – 1:04:00).

This misrepresentation of this complex and talented young artist came to its unfortunate head when Basquiat's very hero, Andy Warhol, asked him to work alongside him and produce a show together. It remains speculation to discern whether Warhol was aligning himself with this hot new upstart in order to reinvigorate a flagging career, or that he was trying to bring Jean-Michel past the last hurdle into art superstardom alongside himself, Schnabel and Salle. Unfortunately, the press read the former implication into the show, admonishing Basquiat for “playing the art world mascot.” (Reynor, 91). This had the effect of sending Basquiat into a spiral of heavy heroin use, from which he would not ever recover, dying from an overdose in 1988 at the age of 27.

It is so unfortunate and unnecessary that problems arose from the mere fact of fame being thrust upon Basquiat so quickly. In a strange reversal of the Gauguin paradigm, where the artist was the sole proprietor of the myth, and ultimately held the power of his artistic fate in hand, the impressionably naïve Basquiat was in the hands of the moneyed peoples of the art world: wealthy, powerful, white men. They sought to cash in on not just his talent, but, in a surfeit of ignorance, his “otherness.”

Works Cited:

Aurier, G. Albert. Symbolist Art Theories- a Critical Anthology. Ed. Henri Dorra. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 192-203. Print

Cotter, Holland “The Self-Invented Artist.” New York Times. 25 Feb. 2011, New York ed. Section PC, 21. Print

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Dir. Tamra Davis. Perf. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Suzanne Mallouk, Annina Nosei and Julian Schnabel. Arthouse Films, 2010. DVD.

Marshall, Richard. Jean-Michel Basquiat. New York:Whitney Museum of Art Press, 1992. Print

Reynor, Vivien. “Basquiat, Warhol.” The New York Times. 20 Sept. 1985: Arts Section, 91. Print

Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. “Going Native.” Art In America. #77 Jul. 1989. 313-329. Print

Tajfel, Henry. Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. Eds. David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, Robert Jervis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Print

Mentor Visit w/ Peter Rostovsky + Some Time in Chelsea (Part 2)

2011-02-24T13:16:00.000-08:00

[here's a link to Peter Rostovsky's site: www.peterrostovsky.com]

Fortunately, I was able to back right up to the freight elevator to get my work into Peter's studio building (which, by the way, appears on your right as you're avoiding potholes and swerving rigs while Manhattan-bound on the elevated BQE; "KALMAN DOLGIN" is inscribed across its brick facade.). It was far too windy to take the 40" x 60" piece out and try and walk it to the door, though it was maybe only 10 yards away. I would have parasailed right out over the Newtown Waterway in a heartbeat.

I brought what I felt was the most successful work from the program thus far: "Sublimation" (the crashed Porsche); "Atelier 2010" (the nude S.P. w/sheep); "Pteronychus" (seagulls); "All Natural" (ice cream); "Tao of Flux" (the big wave on frosted polyester); and a new work on polyester, "Catastrophe Paradox" - pictured below. [It's actually oil on polyester, as I had trouble with surface scratching on this slightly different brand of poly. Plus, the architecture proved difficult to manage in vine charcoal. I used Gamsol with Ivory Black for the monochromatic passages and full color (for fire, anyway) with Galkyd Lite for the flames.]

"Catastrophe Paradox" oil on frosted polyester, 36" x 24"
[Sorry for the lousy phone pic. Plus, it's still taped to the board here. Better shot forthcoming.]

Peter got right to it, identifying his preferences and his reasons for them. Most attractive to him were the monochromatic works, the seagulls being particularly successful in his estimation. He broke it down to a very simple construct: the less number of "moves" one has to make in terms of concept/execution, the more open the work becomes. So, "Pteronychus" is one move, according to this playbook: I made a formal optical shift - that is - I merely changed the palette and tweaked the contrast. "All Natural" is two moves: an optical change plus the conflation of the two elements of sky and ice cream as an odd juxtaposition. "Sublimation" is three moves: The idealized car crash; the idealized sublime landscape; and the meshing of the two to create an open, but distinct, narrative. Now, this is not to say that the latter is an abject failure - it's more truthful to say that, the more moves one has to make, the more you can run into trouble; the "trouble" being that the work becomes too didactic. This is also not to say that a rote formula can take any image and make it a perfect painting. The image itself and its reception need to be taken into account.

I was made aware of even more representational/real painters that are engaging in this practice. Besides Peter himself, there's Michael Borremans, Eberhard Havekost, Wilhelm Sasnal, Vija Celmins, Johannes Kahrs, Anna Conway, Michael de Kok, and Cameron Martin - to name a few. Their kind of operation within the tenets of the "traditionally trained painter" is far different than what John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage do. The latter two have developed a more cynical irony about how they present their subjects, which gives them a certain leeway to paint in a more formally classical manner. It's a little negative at worst, but at best, it is a kind of game they're playing with critique. Either way, I'm less attracted to working in such a sardonic milieu. Peter is in accord, believing more in a visual/optical game with an engaged viewer rather than an expository gambit with a likely pundit.

So, then - it came to the point: what will be the underlying theme that I can get behind for the thesis work this semester? We had talked through the pros and cons of working with (and against) certain tropes and historical mechanisms in painting, especially as it pertained to my work and my engagement (critical or practiced) with those things. In as much as I enjoy the practice of "epic" painting, my visual language has not yet developed over the kind of Baroque lines necessary to pull that off. There just isn't time to experiment with that, so I will leave it as something for the future. But, what I have already done successfully is a re-presentation of the quotidian - it just needs a more streamlined visual course over a series of works. This is my plan. I have already run a number of concepts by Peter, and it became abundantly clear how some work better than others within this framework.

The board is set. The pieces are moving. We come to it at last…

Mentor Visit w/ Peter Rostovsky + Some Time in Chelsea (Part 1)

2011-02-21T18:53:00.001-08:00

The former part of this post's title is the most important thing here, but I did the latter part first - so, for the sake of chronology….

As much as I wanted to attend Kamrooz Aram's show opening at Perry Rubenstein, I had to teach my landscape class at MECA that Friday until 4, so getting to Chelsea by 6 was clearly out of the question. I didn't make it to Long Island until 10:30 PM, actually.The next morning, I drove to Brooklyn and parked in front of Peter's studio. It's in a warehouse kind of building right on the edge of the BQE - fairly industrial, so the parking was easy on a Saturday. It was a short walk to the L train at Lorimer, so I hopped that to the end stop at 8th Ave & transferred to the C for 23rd. The wind out by 10th Ave was unreal. I had designs on walking the HighLine, but not in that gale.

Perry Rubenstein had just opened (10 AM) and I went in to see Kamrooz' work. I should mention here that he was a speaker in one of AIB's "Art Talks" at the last residency and I was not alone in feeling that it was a terrific explication of his work. As a result, I had a good line on the chronological evolution of his work, both visually and conceptually. And the new work was superb: he definitely went up a level. The growth that he's achieved - so organic and fluid within his oeuvre - is certainly something from which any artist can learn. His Fana' works are my personal favorites, so I've posted some here. Sorry about the lousy phone cam pics.

One of Kamrooz' "Fana'" paintings. Not sure of dimensions - around 50" x 40"

Another "Fana'" piece. "Untitled #6," I think.

A detail of one of the "Flag" paintings. It's a good size overall, maybe 70" x 80" or so.

I put my head down against the blast coming in off the Hudson and went around and up to 25th, stopping in at Henoch near the corner. Yes, I know: the usual suspects doing the usual things. Still, many of these people have amazing skills - some I couldn't even begin to touch. But, with such common and/or didactic concepts, well… it's a lot of pretty pictures is all I'm going to say about that.

Marlborough Chelsea is just a few doors up, so I walked into their huge space to find the large paintings of Juan Navarro Baldeweg, the show entitled, "Pintar, Pintar." Baldeweg is one of the foremost modern architects in Spain, so I was interested to see how he incorporated his love of spatial structure inside a flat plane of canvas. Now, I don't mean to sound flip, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb too far when I say that if Matisse were alive and an architect, his paintings would look like Baldeweg's. Even the prodigious use of red was apparent. And instead of print patterns, the patterning used here was derived from fencing, corrugated steel and other building materials. Should I dismiss his love of this very specific formalism? I don't know. Much of it was aesthetically pleasing, but it is definitely hard to get past his pastiche of Matisse's favorite formal moves.

Juan Navarro Baldeweg - "Pintor II" 2010, o/c 79" x 98" (approx.)

Next was a new gallery, though I had been in the space before: Axelle is now Bertrand Delacroix Gallery. Apparently, this is the same owner, but a different venture. And, strangely, I was approached by one of the gallery reps in exactly the same manner as I had when I'd last visited in the space's Axelle incarnation - that being, the young woman thought I was a dealer. I enjoy playing the part, and I suppose I look it in the way I study the works, but I dislike being disingenuous, even if it's harmless, so I excused myself to look at more work in the back. From a contemporary critical standpoint, the work was uneven, but I did think that much of Beth Carter's drawings were really fun and engaging, and Beate Bilkenroth's paintings were very strong. The latter works were of large utilitarian (modernist) apartments/condo-type buildings, and they really "moved" on the canvas. I'd seen the same subject dealt with in a representational fashion at Steven Zevitas' in Boston and it was not as strong as Bilkenroth.

Painting by Beate Bilkenroth in the window of BDG. Didn't get the title, sorry.

Last, but not at all least is Donald Judd at Pace. I have a strange affinity for this kind of "minimalism" (Judd hated that term), mostly because I appreciate the economy of form engendered in the work. I also enjoy it because, despite his best-laid intentions, I still can derive representation in those minimal forms. The piece, "Untitled" (1989, Cor-Ten steel) was my favorite in this grouping of wood, steel concrete and aluminum structures. It was just a big rectangular, rust-colored steel box on the floor with a thin beam inside the lower quarter and a thin, taller beam running along the top about a foot distant from the first one. At certain angles, this created a bi-level canyon-like effect which reminded me of natural forms in the Utah landscape; natural bridges and the like. Even the oxidized material underscored that relationship. I doubt very much that Judd would have agreed with me. But I wonder if his good friend Rackstraw Downes might…? Downes did spend a lot of time at Chinati. I'll bet there was a bit of this kind of discussion going on between them all the time - you know, non-signification versus representation and the like. Hopefully, Rackstraw might write about that one day.

Donald Judd - "Untitled" (1989) Cor-Ten steel. 39" x 78" x 78" (approx)

Anyway, I made my way across town to a Greek diner on 1st across from Stuyvesant Town. Good souvlaki and dolmades. The L is right there at 14th, so I could make the quick trip back to Brooklyn.

(cont'd in Part 2)

Downes Show Debate!

2011-02-09T11:46:00.000-08:00

Here we have a response (in yellow) from Daniel Kany to my rebuttal, and my response (in blue) to Mr. Kany's letter in kind. Make of it what you will:

I read your comment about the Downes review with interest and appreciation - it's nice to be taken seriously.

Have you ever read my criticism? I stand by painting and even people like Robert Solotaire. I love landscapes and plein air painting every bit as much as contemporary art.

I think most people don't understand how incredibly radical the Impressionists were. Not just for their technique, but even their painting of contemporary life and even industrial landscapes. That was radical. And it was absolutely noticed at the time.

Downes writes and talks about them and Cezanne and other 19th century greats. They are his target and I believe they are his context now.

Downes used to hire people, for example, to walk back and forth as models for his city scenes - just like Monet used his wife even multiple times in a scene. For example, there is a 1873 painting of his wife and daughter seen twice in the same poppy field in Argenteuil.

I think what you might be missing is that I think Impressionism was THE most radical moment in Modernism. Following Manet's lead, they set the process of modernism to chipping away at the very foundations of painting as a cultural practice.

I believe Downes and I agree on that point and that he has been trying to get past them but doesn't feel he has quite done so. Some of his defining points underscore this - including his long, labored time at the canvas and his arbitrary swoop.

Who else introduced subtle shifts of the time of day other than Monet? Think of his haystacks and the Cathedral at Rouen. Monet also invented the series and when you think in this light, the 6 sided barn and the 4 razor panels make sense more than anything else as a direct response to Monet.

The issues of perspective have been used by many artists for interesting personal effect - I even referenced Van Eyck's Arnolfini Marriage of 1434 that makes an incredible deviation from perspective. But for artists from de Chirico to Gregory Gillespie and so many others, this is hardly an issue that belongs to Downes along.

I make it clear Downes is brilliant, intellectually engaged and can paint incredibly well.

I appreciate your comments but I stand in this case by what I wrote.

And my response:

Thank you for responding in kind. I have not ever openly questioned a published critique, so if my tone was anything other than academic, I apologize. My reasons are far from personal. I have no personal connection to Downes, nor does an artist of his stature need any defense from me. After all, he is a well-established critic himself.

I don't doubt that you stand by painting. I find your emphatic fascination with the importance of Impressionism to be well-warranted; it was indeed a huge leap for painting as a herald for Modernism. And I don't underestimate this movement, either. If you read my comparative essay regarding Vincent Desiderio and John Currin (click to read), you'll see that I give Manet full marks as the progenitor of modern painting.

Believe me, I know well all of what Downes does in order to achieve his pictures. I've seen his journals and sketchbooks at the Aldrich alongside "Under the West Side Highway." It's quite an undertaking. And I wouldn't call the perspectival tropes that Downes employs an "arbitrary swoop." His essay, "Turning the Head In Empirical Space," shows that this is anything but arbitrary. He's explicated his processes regarding this topic in numerous lectures.

I think this is where I need to cite the more important reasons for my response. I don't wish to bandy our art history knowledge about like a tennis ball. I am not an historian, anyway - I am a painter, so that is not really my purview. A contention of mine is that I found your review was, on the whole, sorely negative -- unnecessarily so. I understand that you felt beleaguered by a "cold intellectualism" that you derived from his work. Your opinion is your own, of course. However, your opinion remained rather unexamined and far too empirical in tone. Many of your compliments were backhanded and/or tempered by dismissiveness. You tell me Downes is an incredible painter, yet also "workaday"? What's more important to me - in fact, MOST important - is that this is a major show of an important painter here at our little PMA. Anyone who reads your article will be left with the impression that if they decide to see this show, it will leave them cold, unimpressed and perhaps depressed by intimations of apparent bleakness. Consider this: At a wine tasting, a server pours someone a red and says, "This medium-bodied Tempranillo is redolent of black cherries and earth, with a hint of mild vanilla in the finish." If the taster knows little about wine, they will think they are tasting those basic descriptors (whether the pourer knows what they're saying or not). The power of suggestion is very strong. Why saddle a very worthy show with such joyless opinion?

For that's all I could read in your article. And I have to take issue with that - especially since you heralded the publication with a Tweet that you were "taking a great one to task." Really? And did you? As I'd said earlier, your opinion is your own, and you can certainly stand by it, good or bad. But that can't be all there is in a critical essay; there is no critical rigor to be found there. And those who can't tell the difference will read your review and think that Downes is not worth their time. This is a great disservice to the reader, the Museum and the artist.

You have written what you have written, and I understand that. However, I hope you might come around to enjoy what Downes is REALLY trying to do in his work. I highly recommend his essays in "In Relation to the Whole" (it's in the MLA of my essay on Downes). I found it very edifying as a painter, but also historically fascinating, as each of the three essays encompass three distinct decades of Downes' career. I'm more than hopeful that you will eventually come around, for I can cite your very essay: You found Downes' work to be "gritty and workaday," and so, too did the French public initially find the work of the Impressionists "gritty and ugly."

And they came around, didn't they?

There may be more to come - who knows?

[edit: 2/15/11 - Mr. Kany and I came to an agreement to disagree via private emails. Frankly, he was fairly intractable and "didn't care" about Downes' acceptance within the contemporary. I find it fascinating and heartening on the other hand. Should that color one's view? I think it's case-by-case. In the case of, say, Damien Hirst, it's clear that the art is more about gaming contemporary critical systems. With Downes, it's much more about effort and diligence, making it far more sincere and, in my eyes, far more laudable.]

Rebuttal to Daniel Kany

2011-02-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

Panel 4 of "Four Spots Along A Razor Wire Fence/ ASOTSPRIE"
by Rackstraw Downes

Here is the article in question: http://www.pressherald.com/life/audience/downes-paints-brilliantly-but-misses-on-visceral-connections_2011-02-06.html

You may recall the review that I wrote about this show when I saw it in Southampton, posted in this blog in October of last year (click here to read). I knew virtually nothing of the man when I wrote this essay, and in immersing myself in his life and work, I became a huge admirer. I have no personal connection, nor ulterior motive in defending him. In fact, he needs no defense from me; he could far better handle a poorly conceived article than I ever could, as he is also a distinguished critic and critical thinker. Nevertheless, I cannot let a review such as Kany's stand without question. If you read my review and his back-to-back, you can see how informed research stacks up against unexamined opinion, respectively.

Here is my rebuttal:

I feel like this review is the thing that's missing connections - numerous ones, in fact.

For one, Downes as a "child of impressionism" is a bit dodgy considering he was actually an artistic product of mid-60s Yale along with Richard Serra, Chuck Close, Janet Fish, Nancy Graves, Brice Marden, etc. --- not exactly a bastion of impressionistic painters, let alone thought.

And if by "impressionism" you mean that Downes is primarily concerned with the optical effects of on-site painting - well, that's shortchanging his work by a long shot. The idea of turning one's head in empirical space using plein air painting as a format is solely Downes' province. You did mention that, but you left out the most significant part. Downes' practice is perhaps the first "humanistic" usage of perspective in painting in a long, long time. It is perhaps the only instance of this ever seen in plein air painting. Representational art hasn't seen a change in this arena since the purely mathematical treatises by Ficino on Brunelleschi, which have been the standard since the 13th century. This is important, because the viewer is truly experiencing the "painter's view" with Downes' works as opposed to a classical, math-based rendering.

And what of narrative? What is the "cold, unappealing message" about which you write? My most recent visit to the show (my 4th, counting the Parrish Museum's exhibition in Southampton) was on a Friday, when the PMA waives its fee (a wonderful thing). This brings in a broader viewership - one that is maybe not so "intellectually elitist" as it were. I overheard numerous conversations in front of such works as "U.S. Scrap Metal Gets Shipped for Reprocessing in Southeast Asia, Jersey City" and noted many mentions of words like "environmentalism" and "ecology." This may not hit the nail on the head, but so what? There is indeed narrativity within Downes' work, and for some reason, you either failed to see it or failed to mention it. Don't even get me started on the time-based elements of his work (see: "Four Spots Along a Razor-Wire Fence"), which in and of itself implies narrative.

The most uncritical part of all this is the very fact of Downes even maintaining a presence in the contemporary discourse. If his work were as disconnected and intellectually anxious as you claim, how is he a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award winner? Those don't get handed out to artists who speak in intellectual monotone only. Not just that - but he's a painter! A plein air painter! A representational, realist, dyed-in-the-wool, outdoor painter! Contemporary critics have - for decades - relegated this kind of art and artist to the realm of the "Sunday Painter" with all of the pejoratives that entails. Have you not given thought to the fact that Downes' rising far above this must resonate with some kind of historical significance? Perhaps he's doing something not only right, but bringing something new to what had been (maybe unjustly) dismissed as hackery. And in terms of criticism, there is none more critical of representational realist art than Peter Schjeldahl; in fact, he's on record as "having scant use for it" ['True Views.' New Yorker, Oct. '04. p 208]. Yet, even this respected (albeit ruthless) critic reserved praise for Downes, which speaks volumes.

You can't dismiss these things in the name of uncritical opinion. It does a disservice to the artist, the museum and the reader. If you are to "take on the great ones" (as you Tweeted), you may need to research the greatness of your subject more thoroughly. I've already done that (with citations to back my claims), should you care to take a look: http://robsullivanartnotes.blogspot.com/2010/10/show-review-rackstraw-downes-onsite.html

Not sure what to expect in return, but I stand by my words as something that's far more fair than slapdash opinion.

Gonna Need a Bigger Easel

2011-02-04T18:59:00.001-08:00

[Sorry, blog's getting too serious - time for a bit of fun]

Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'. I'll paint this masterpiece for you, but it ain't gonna be easy. Bad muse. Not like going down the Met chasin' Degas and Tiepolo. This art, swallow you whole. Little recontextualizin', little mimesis, an' down you go. And we gotta do it quick, that'll bring back your patrons, put all your galleries on a payin' basis. But it's not gonna be pleasant. I value my process a lot more than 20 thousand bucks, chief. I'll conceptualize it for 20, but I'll paint it, and frame it, for 150. But you've gotta make up your minds. If you want to stay cultured, then ante up. If you want to play it cheap, you'll be lookin' at giclees of Monet's "Water-lilies" the whole winter. I don't want no installation types, I don't want no curators, there's just too many artists on this island. One hundred fifty thousand dollars for me by myself. For that you get the canvas, the frame, the whole damn thing.

Residency 3 (Jan, 2011) Summary

2011-02-02T12:15:00.000-08:00

"Synchretism" oil on panel, 18"x24"

"Sublimation" oil on canvas 60" x 40"

"Fossil Record" tar and household enamel on canvas, 24" sq.

"All Natural" oil on panel, 36" x 24"

"Alcyone" oil on panel, 18 " sq.

"Tao of Flux" charcoal on Mylar, 20" x 30"

AIB MFA Group 3
Residency Summary – January, 2011

I am now one full year into the Graduate Program at the Art Institute of Boston, and it has been a hugely edifying experience thus far. A few weeks ago, I returned to a snow-laden Boston for my third residency as a Group 3 student. I brought the six new works that I had completed over the semester and hung them in my new crit group space with a little bit of jury-rigging in the lighting department (it turned out fine). Again, I openly welcomed any and all kinds of critique with an objective attitude, knowing full well that the crits from this residency would inform this new semester's work – a vital period in which I will be executing the bulk of my thesis artwork.

As noted in the semester summary, I had experimented quite a bit with concepts, materials, size and paint facture. This no doubt made for a little confusion with regard to formal critique; it still read on the whole as a “sampler” rather than a cohesive body of work. Nevertheless, I knew this beforehand, so an initial incertitude on behalf of the critic was expected. My ultimate hope was in finding out which piece(s) worked best so that I might move in that direction for the Group 3 semester. This is not to say that I was conducting some kind of democratic “vote for this painting” kind of study, but rather, I was trying to gauge the visceral responses of the faculty and students across the breadth of work displayed.

Rather than engage in a dramatized soliloquy of the critiques, I will instead list each faculty member and bullet-point the vital considerations they offered:

Nuit Banai:

Explore cinematic tropes of screen and rupture
Push formal qualities of realism: foreground vs. background and their respective clarity
The “heroism” of quotidian objects
Read: Roland Barthes – The Reality Effect

Hannah Barrett:

Effects of displaying as group and/or grid
Push burgeoning idea of synthetic vs. naturalistic
Exaggerate illusionistic space
Push textural interest
Look more at Van Ruisdael (appropriation?)
Look at filmic/photographic idealizations of landscape

Kamrooz Aram:
Look at painters:

Peter Rostovsky* (post-Richter photographic realism)
Inka Essenhigh
Verne Dawson
Anna Conway
Ed Ruscha

Oliver Wasow:

Broaden thematics of the narrative works
Play with photographic effects (replicate in paint)
Cameron Martin
Don't get too hermetic; mix it up
Explore Baroque in narratives
look at: Neo Rauch, Peter Doig

Stuart Steck:

Make more work! [“The artists that make the most work make the best work” - John Cage]
Explore cinematic scenes, swap out the dramatic elements with something unexpected
Keep it simple: employ single structural device in the work
Revisit Matthew Barney's “Cremaster Cycle” - look at stills
Increase tactility/ enhance visual pleasure
Employ collage into concepting process (look at Ellsworth Kelly's Tablet – postcards)

Tony Apesos (my academic advisor SP/11):

Work with “overlapping mythologies”
Q: What are the essences of painting?
Q: What painting do I want to see? What is vital to me?
look at: Damon Lehrer, Paul Rahilly
Try surrealist “automatic” drawing in concepting process
Find ways to use “illustration” in own idiom
Be open and directed simultaneously
Connect imagery from one work to the next
Tolkien: Bible/LOTR | William Blake: Bible/Book of Job illustrations
Use collage in concepting process

*[Peter Rostovsky has agreed to be my mentor for this Spring semester]

There are clearly a number of overlapping critiques here, and those are always the ones not to be cast aside lightly. Some ideas dovetail nicely with themes that I was already trying to establish, such as playing with cinematic/photographic tropes. I think the motivating factor behind those suggestions was that I hadn't been pushing those ideas hard enough. Hannah's recommendation regarding an amplification of the synthetic/real binary struck a chord. I've always been operating in that zone, but haven't given it full rein. This gibes well with Nuit's allusion to the “heroism of quotidian objects.” Most interesting is the notion of collage as a way to find my way into a concept. The fact that Tony and Stuart suggested this same thing on separate occasions is notable; I think they both know me in very different ways (Tony, through my painting; Stuart, through my writing and camaraderie), so there is something that they are seeing that clearly necessitates using collage in some way.

As my advisor this semester, I was hoping Tony would challenge me during the crits, and he did. He made some formal painting suggestions, as is his wont; he is an accomplished painter, so such things are welcome. But, beyond that, he handed me some tough self-reflective questions. The “What painting do I want to see? (then paint it)” question seems rhetorical at first, but he assured me it was not. This is still something to wrestle with. My feeling on it right now is that I'm not particularly beholden to any image, but perhaps a series of images dealing with a specific problem. That may well be conceptual or implied, I don't know. The idea of narrative is still within me, but one image may not be enough to hold the narratives I have in mind, whatever they may be. Also, “What is vital to me?” is an equally difficult matter. I tend to enjoy the “clever” aspects of painting: mastery of the technical, leading the viewer to question what they see, using representation in a funny or surprising way. There is no one thematic that specifically lends itself to this way of thinking, though – and I need to decipher what that is in order to create a cohesive body of work. This resonates with Tony's advice to “connect one piece to the next.”

In addition to the critiques was the Critical Theory 3 seminar led by the estimable Sunanda Sanyal. The crux of our (lively!) discussion was around awareness of Western mythologies regarding cultural norms, especially as it pertains to art and art history. As artists, our awareness and empathy with a world that is becoming increasingly more connected on the global level can only begin to take root in our work if we work to understand cultures on their terms. We also worked to dispel the unfortunate conflation of “universal” and “global,” as the former term is merely a facade for a passive-aggressive form of colonization. Knowing how the Other has been repressed throughout history can help us better recognize injustices at the local as well as the global level. Even a venerated institution such as the Museum, as we learned, has not been immune to the Western myth of monoculture.

Also very fruitful was Laurel Sparks' seminar on Professional Development for the Artist. She supplied us with a fantastically helpful document that tracks everything from how art dealers operate through comporting yourself properly when the drinks are flowing too freely at an opening. She explicated this packet step-by-step, and took questions as they arose. The specifics of how the professional art world works has far more depth than I'd imagined – yet – the art world itself is far smaller than one could ever believe. “One or two degrees of separation at the most” is how Laurel put it.

And once again, the faculty put together another enlightening panel discussion. Sunanda and Hannah were the duo on this particular occasion, and the subject was irony. Sunanda's half of the talk dealt with historical aspects of the ironic in visual culture, and cited such significant works like Velazquez' Las Meninas as an example of the artist using the ideals of representation in an ironic way. Hannah dealt with irony in its contemporary context, noting a dramatic shift in its intended use and how it is now rife with cynicism and sarcasm for the most part. But, in the question portion of the program, it came to light that perhaps the perception is that the art/artist seems cynical – however, they may just want to be indulgent. Nevertheless, it remains, as Sunanda concluded, a useful pictorial device in these times of doubt.

So here I am on the cusp of doing some of the most important work of my artistic life. In no way am I indulging in hyperbole here – the program dictates this, and I want to step up to that level at long last. Rather than succumb to the perceived pressure over this new reality, I will take my friend Stuart's advice and just generate a lot of work in the studio. It was enough to be hesitant with my “pulled from the Matrix” shock of the first semester, and then indulge in time-consuming and/or technically strange experiments in the second one. Now is the time to pull it all together in a cohesive, coherent series of works. My definitive intent is to not only have these works serve as the linchpin of my thesis, but also as the foundation upon which I can build a successful oeuvre.

Artists:

Paul Rahilly
Damon Lehrer
William Blake
Matthew Barney
Peter Doig
Neo Rauch
Cameron Martin
Peter Rostovsky
Inka Essenhigh
Verne Dawson
Anna Conway
Ed Ruscha
Van Ruisdael
Ulrich Lamsfuss

Research/Reading:

Barthes, Roland. "The Reality Effect." The Rustle of Language. Trans. Richard Howard.
Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. 141-148. Print.

Cremaster 3. Dir. Matthew Barney. Perf. Richard Serra, Aimee Mullins and Matthew Barney. Palm Pictures, 2002. DVD

Elkins, James. Six Stories From the End of Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. Print

Godfrey, Tony. Painting Today. London: Phaidon, 2009. Print

Pethö, Ágnes. “(Re)Mediating the Real. Paradoxes of an Intermedial Cinema of Immediacy.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 47-66. Print

Storr, Robert. Gerhard Richter: Doubt and Belief in Painting. New York, MOMA Press, 2003 Print

Second Semester Summary

2010-12-24T19:57:00.000-08:00

Johannes Vermeer: Woman Holding a Balance - 1664

Gerard ter Borch: Lady Seated Holding a Wine Glass - 1665

Semester Summary

Group 2 to 3 Transition

June, 2010 – January, 2011

Regardless of a program of study, consultants, tutors, teachers, mentors and what have you – an artist's education relies a great deal upon self-assurance. One's ability to move ahead in the learning process (or learn at all, for that matter) becomes greatly impacted by circumstance and daily life as it is lived. Clarity is often needed to gain insight, but such lucidity is routinely unattainable, a seeming luxury item. So it was for me this semester.

As predictable and cliché as it may seem, I spent a great deal of this second semester in what I felt was a sophomore slump. It may stand to reason that since I ended the first one on such a confident high that I had set myself up for a downturn. Sure enough, the first research paper showed my overeagerness up to a harsh light, as I delivered an over-reaching, near-incoherent pastiche of ideas that never meshed. I received a proper upbraiding over this, which was no doubt necessary. However, I never fully recovered my self-belief regarding my research and writing. A good case in point is in how the following essay came together – that is – the Rackstraw Downes show review. It goes without saying that I have become a huge admirer of the man and his work (more on this later), and one would think that a rigorous study of his oeuvre would yield a fluid, gratifying writing experience. Instead, a hyper-awareness of my predisposition to over-write kept any flow at bay. I wrote insecurely, with a huge degree of self-skepticism. It didn't matter that that piece turned out “acceptable” (as it was deemed), I had lost confidence, and frankly, I felt rather crestfallen about the whole thing. A sense of detachment from the program began to seep into my state of mind.

How do you learn in this situation? How can you process new input and make sense of it when you are already riddled with looming doubt? And, for me, as a painter, how could I create anything feeling like this? Well, the first thing I found out was how not to handle the situation. Better judgment in fetters, I allowed this situation to place undo strain on personal and professional relationships. This only served to splice my problems together, forming a tragic loop. This may seem self-evident, but it is slow in coming when you are inside these predicaments: When you become so sure of weaknesses, you begin to concretize failure into inexorability. It dawned upon me that I was placing an overbalanced import on the academic side of things and losing sight of my primary goal – making paintings. So then, I needed to set the scales aright by directing my focus towards my painting goals.

I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have had Emily Eveleth as my mentor this past semester. Her quiet, thoughtful approach was much appreciated and very much needed. As her oil paintings involve not only large imagery, but definitive impasted passages of mark-making, she fully supported my foray into this technique. As I'd stated in my last residency summary, the most common observation of my work was that the surface was too even. Some felt that it did not engage their vision with tactility, while others noted that my sleight-of-hand style of neoclassical manipulation failed to acknowledge the medium's natural properties. As much as Emily could reveal to me in her studio, and as much as I understood the information – coming back to my workspace and applying proper technique was something else entirely. It very much felt like experimenting. I wasn't afraid of failure in this case, oddly enough. Perhaps my mastery of “clean” technique in a medium that is inherently messy (try putting your coat or bag down in a BFA painting studio, and you'll see what I mean), allowed me to understand that in order to get a definitive mark, all I had to do was leave it alone. But, would my eyes accept it?

One difficulty that became rather evident was scale. I began a 48” x 60” canvas in order to break new ground in this area. This is not necessarily “big” in the world of painting, but it's not exactly small, either – and honestly, it was big to me. The subject matter lent itself to a greater scale and, in hindsight, could have been executed even larger, promoting greater visual impact. However, the technical challenge of engineering this size painting consumed a great deal of time. I was truly in a “learning-as-you-go” mode. As the painting neared completion, I was very concerned about the time frame.* It was unacceptable to take this long, as it was eating into the time needed to complete other works. My intention to use other media (enamel, to be exact) on this large work had to be set aside. I would have to experiment with materials and facture on a more reasonable scale.

The notion of experimenting with new media was still very strong, and an earlier attempt using roofing tar and rustproofing enamel was fairly successful. While wearing chemical-resistant gloves I applied broad applications of tar. By thinning it right on the canvas with mineral spirits, I found that I could control this unwieldy-looking medium with my fingers. The addition of enamel required speed and good planning. Designated areas had to be free and clear of the tar for the enamel to not only stick, but also, the drying time is so fast with enamel, with tar forever workable, the two needed complete segregation. It took weeks for the tar to really set up, and any contact with mineral/petroleum spirits would re-activate it easily. Varnishing was dicey. And my last piece for the semester was a full digression from this: charcoal on Mylar. Dry and delicate, the black dust skated across the surface, held only by the frosted veneer on the polyester sheet. The surface is eminently re-workable, as the 3 millimeter Mylar can be erased over and over without textural compromise. In fact, the oils from my hands and fingers left more telling marks. But even these could be effaced with no trace.

My push into new techniques in traditional oil came about in three medium-sized works. Two of these pieces play off the contrast of impasto and the “licked finish” of illusionistic painting. The third is an exercise in directional brushwork throughout, using visual reference material that would generally call for smooth, blended paint. Something interesting happened in terms of my vision: When the heavy marks were applied, it became difficult to “see,” and I had to not only back far away from the work with each mark, I had to take pictures with my cell phone every so often in order to “unsee” the marks and make sure something was taking shape. Truly, it was something that I had to get used to.

None of this formal technique, however, would take hold properly if I didn't make a point of applying reading, research and theory together in the conceptual execution of the imagery. The suggested motifs of concepting had been proposed at the end of the last residency. One was figurative, specifically – nude self-portraiture. The other was the exploration of quotidian objects along more ambiguous, yet dynamic directions. Despite all the attention paid to the nude self-portrait I'd shown in the June residency, Atelier 2010, I didn't feel like the theme for its own sake was a realm that I could really sink my teeth into. Plus, it seemed too weighted with sociopolitical concerns, which, for good or ill, is something upon which contemporary viewers can get really hung up. This seemed a bit stifling in the face of needing to experiment. Topically, I realized that non-figurative concepts would better serve my needs at this time. I tried to pull a little more from the vernacular in terms of iconography, playing with composition, palette and point-of-view. Also, as mentioned earlier, paint facture, unusual media, and mark-making played a significant factor. The ideas themselves range quite a bit – from a contemporary prod at the Sublime to visual metaphors of painting itself. However, I have found that presenting a visual “straight reading,” especially after exploring the bald specificity of much of Mark Tansey's art, is detrimental to the work. I believe I have made some gains into new and open ground in this respect, as I am trying to allow for multifacteted interpretations of the work according to the viewer's discretion. Sure, there is intentionality, but it is not meant to be fully cogent nor empirically understood. If the latter ideas were my primary purpose, then the "vectors would meet.”**

Interestingly, Rackstraw Downes seemed almost omnipresent in the periphery of everything I did this semester. He factored in conventionally as the Parrish Museum show was the direct subject of my second research essay, as stated. However, this traveling show ended up in my local museum not a week ago, and I had been counting the days of its arrival since I had learned of its winter destination. In the interim, I visited the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut and found a room dedicated to a specific triptych of Downes', replete with cases full of preparatory sketches and journal entries. Needless to say, this man's work ethic, technical prowess, willingness to improve, and persistence of vision (pun apropos) is something to which I should truly aspire. He sets the bar high in many respects. It would serve me well to hold onto this aspiration and inspiration not just for the duration of the MFA program, but deep into the future of my artistic life.

* The notion of time and effort came up in a more concrete fashion when I read a recent article by James Elkins, “Are Artists Bored By Their Work?” (posted December 15th, 2010 on the Huffington Post website, huffingtonpost.com). Elkins explores the marked difference in the time it took to create representational works (citing many Baroque pieces) versus works in the Modernist era. The slant of the essay moves towards the hypothesis that artists who work/had worked in realistic styles became bored by the amount of time and effort required. This is interesting, but I found this passage to be far more engaging: “The relatively short amount of time modern and contemporary artists spend on individual artworks cannot be explained by the fact that we're no longer interested in realistic depictions...” Perhaps in a time when consumption and processing of information is faster and more disposable than it's ever been, I feel that, as an artist, I might want to reflect that notion back to the contemporary and perhaps turn it on its head. Elkins tells that Arthur Danto warned of Elkins' near-fetishizing of “slow looking” in reference to a previous essay. I contend that perhaps there is no greater gift to give than “slow looking” in this age of micro-instant gratification. And this could be engendered by engaging in and embracing “slow painting.”

** This term is co-opted from a segment (13:00 – 15:00) of Vincent Desiderio's presentation at the Art Institute Boston's Art Talks, January, 2010. Desiderio offers a comparative look at the work of Johannes Vermeer versus that of Gerard ter Borch. Their paintings use similar iconography indicating similar thematics, however, Desiderio feels that there is a markedly different result due to the execution of Vermeer's technical narrative. In ter Borch, Desiderio describes the intent of the painter as “vectors of visual thought” moving into the “vortex” (or thematic center) of the work, but ending at a specific, predetermined meaning. A Vermeer, on the other hand, starts with seemingly comparable intentions (using equivalent Dutch iconography), but “the vectors miss” as they come to the thematic center. Desiderio submits that this action serves to amplify different and varied associations regarding definitive meaning in the work. In his estimation, this is what makes for great painting.

Painting People (selections)

2010-12-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

Michaël Borremans: "Four Fairies" (2003)

Chuck Close: "Self Portrait" (2004)

Jenny Saville: "Reflective Flesh" (2002-03)

Borremans, Close, Saville: Selections From
"Painting People – Figure Painting Today" by Charlotte Mullins

The strange cycle of painting in modern history – its rise to intellectual prominence, its self-reflective deconstruction, its disappearance, and its subtle return to the discourse – can be tracked most effectively through the subject of the human figure. From Picasso's cubistic treatment of the female form in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon to Barnett Newman's “zips” as minimalist signifiers for the figure in works like Vir Heroicus Sublimis (Man Heroic and Sublime), the painted representation of people has cycled through innumerable permutations for the sake of advancing the meta-narratives of artistic progress.

The very existence of this book and other contemporary tomes (e.g. Vitamin P and Painting Today) demonstrates a new vitality in painting. The circular argument of painting's demise has become a closed circuit, obscure, and relegated to the past. Now is the time in which the familiar and resonant subject of the figure can be re-investigated using a familiar medium. Just like people, painting has survived despite the vagaries of time and the meandering nature of theoretical crises.

Painting People features nearly seventy artists whose representational painting styles range from classical realism (John Currin), to graphically flattened forms (Laylah Ali), to the boldly expressionistic (Cecily Brown). I will be narrowing this rich field down to a selection of three, the choices reflecting (to a degree) a formal resemblance to my own painting sensibilities. But even within this tighter parameter, the range is diverse.

Jenny Saville (b. 1970) uses oil paint as her primary medium, but it could be argued that it is flesh itself that forms the scope of her work. The paintings featured in Painting People are Reflective Flesh (2002-03), Entry (2004-05) and Stare (2004-05). Ranging from 7 to 10 feet in height, the sheer scale of these works clogs the viewer's vision with impasted, energetic marks of fleshy tints. The array of skin tones moves jarringly from subtle grays to blood reds to shocking blues across the surface of her canvases. Saville's mark-making is strong and highly directional, building form in broad passages using large brushes. But a great variety and vitality is maintained as she often changes the viscosity of her paint mid-form, adding oil as if it were sebum leaking from overactive pores. Abutting the harder marks, she may slide tone into tone in a slippery passage using a dripping mixture. The resulting effect manifests a tension akin to that of living tissue.

The earliest of these works, Reflective Flesh, depicts the artist herself, nude and barely contained by the framework of the canvas. Her figure is surrounded by mirrored surfaces, so we see multiple views of the figure with cubistically repeating body parts filling the entire canvas with flesh. This “de-centralizing” of the body destabilizes what is compositionally central in the painting, and that is the openly displayed female genitalia. But even this is destabilized with a kind of sensorial overload, as the mirrored surface upon which the artist squats doubles the view of her vagina. This control Saville exerts over our gaze is underscored not only by her deft, directional mark-making, but also by the gaze of the artist-as-subject, as her eyes confront the viewer directly. The phallo-centric notions of a woman on display, engendered in painting history by such works as Courbet's Origin of the World, are fully subverted in this bravura piece by successfully re-appropriating the controlling gaze of the painting patriarchy. This period of work served as an establishing point for Saville, as she understood the historical baggage that came with being a woman who paints. Taking control of her own work through re-engineering painting's male-oriented traditions allowed her to find freedom within her chosen medium. “The ideas, for me, wouldn't be as strong without using the traditions of painting as an institution” (Saville 7:10).

Working at a similar scale to Saville, but with a nearly opposite formal and conceptual quality is the painter Chuck Close (b. 1940). Close works exclusively with the portrait as his subject matter, the head generally cropped at the shoulders. Along with self-portraiture, his sitters mainly consist of family members, fellow artists and curators – people with whom he has had personal and/or professional relationships. Painting People features two oil paintings from 2004-2005 – Self Portrait, and Andres II, the latter bearing the visage of the artist Andres Serrano. The photorealistic style of Close's work is consistently represented through three-plus decades, but the formal tactics that he brings to the canvas are ever-changing. Over the years, Close has moved from tri-toned acrylic paint and airbrush to paper collage, to ink thumbprints, to oils – and is currently working with daguerrotypes and tapestries. Relying solely on photo-reference, he uses varying forms of grid systems, reiterating the mechanical accuracy of the photo in paint. This imitation of the photo is not intended to copy, but to recontextualize the flattened reproduction into an object of illusion. Close professes his affection for this particular charm of paint media in an interview with Charlie Rose: “[Painting] transcends physical reality... it's a magical window built out of colored dirt” (10:00-10:45).

In Self Portrait, and Andres II, we see Close's grid-work very distinctly, the difference being that the painting of Serrano shows the grid tilted at a forty-five degree angle. The large scale of these works, at close range, reveals a highly controlled handling of paint. Kaleidoscopic marks of muted (for Serrano) or complementary (for the self-portrait) color render self-contained mini-abstracts within their grid-form confinements. Facial recognition at this level of study is impossible. But, as Lisa Yuskavage notes, “...your work, like most good work, is full of contradictions. It implies intimacy, yet, in order to look at each painting, you are forced to step way back” (33). It is only at a distance that a likeness can be seen and, in fact, an extraordinary level of facial detail is made manifest. In this way, Close is controlling the experience of the viewer, putting them in an odd position to confront the subjects on a proximal level of privacy with which only the artist is familiar. His didactic, formal tendencies seem perhaps counterintuitive as tools to create such compelling personas on the canvas. Yet, instead, those constructive elements foster the illusion, turning the physicality of the optical around on us.

The figural works of Michaël Borremans (b. 1963) feature an austere palette and spartan compositions. People depicted in his paintings seem very non-contemporary and their attire suggests they may be transplanted denizens from the 1930s and '40s. The artist also employs the use of stock and/or found photography for his figures, and plays this up with washed-out skin tones and soft-edged brushwork. With this general schema, Borremans removes the figure not only from contemporary associations, but also disallows the viewer from imposing any individuality upon them. They have become almost purely symbolic – mere signifiers for “a figure.” Fully cognizant of painting's historical connotations – that it is not only a medium, but a channel of discourse between a painter and the history of painting – Borremans uses the symbolic quality of subject and paint to foster the idea that paintings are indeed objects. But for all these formalities, the strange displacement of spaces, subjects and atmospherics moves the work out of its seeming stillness, suggesting a kind of tableau vivant. So then, a dichotomy arises through the embedded atemporality: despite their object-ness, they can theoretically move in real-time. Borremans states that “[paintings] are mental things, they’re not objects. They have this mental vibration, and they are here now. A painting is always now” (Ribas 2).

The selections One and Four Fairies shows female figures in contemplative poses, enveloped by their dun-colored environments. One depicts a lone woman in a half-length profile, her head and hands evoking the only substantiality in the painting. Her white blouse is diaphanous, transparent through to the briskly painted ground – a brown and gray reminiscent of a late Mark Rothko. She is still: her head bent with eyes downcast, luminous in a light gray expanse, while her clenched hands at rest in the umber lower third of the canvas. Four Fairies has a very similar feel, but the canvas as well as their upper torsos are divided by an inky block of paint. The four women also look to their hands, their gestures suggesting a half-engagement in some menial, factory-like task. Yet there is a sense that they are also contemplating this dark, horizontal obelisk into which they are thrust. Its surface is minimally reflective, however, its solidity is called into question. Runnels of paint cascade downward from the dark form, dripping onto the nearly raw canvas directly below. The environments in both these works are more paint than defined space. Is it all fictive? “Fairies” are out of folklore – so is Borremans couching his work in the realm of the unreal? “Borremans draws an intellectual line between art and reality, but then he takes a truth about painting and treats it as a truth about life. A painted figure will only ever be paint, it will never capture the individual essence of some person, place, thing or time” (Ribas 2). His human figures contemplate their meaninglessness in a seemingly meaningless world in an effort to find resolution. Can this desire be realized? Ambiguity implies a directive: the viewer is held responsible to answer this question.

List of Works Cited:

Close, Chuck. Interview by Charlie Rose. PBS. WNET, New York, March 13, 2007. Televison.

Glueck, Grace. “Of A Woman's Body Both Subject and Object” New York Times December 6, 1996. p. C29. Print

Prater, Elizabeth “Michaël Borremans – A Victim of His Situation.” The Ember January 7, 2010: n.pag. Web. Nov. 2010.

Ribas, João. “Michaël Borremans – the AI Interview.” Art Info March 14, 2006: 1-3. Web. Nov. 2010.

Saville, Jenny. Interview by Elaine C. Smith. “Smith and Saville” Arts and Parts S01 E01. STV. Pacific Quay, Scotland, October 20, 1996. Television.

Yuskavage, Lisa. “Chuck Close.” BOMB 52 (Summer 1995): 30-35. Print.

Some New Semester 2 Work

2010-11-15T12:36:00.001-08:00

All Natural - oil on birch panel, 20" x 30"

And a close up:

Alcyone - oil on birch panel, 18" x 18"

Close-up:

In my very recent visit with Emily, we both agreed that this was a successful venture into creating facture on the painting surface. It was highly experimental for me, but I was able to develop a decent technical facility with bigger, juicier marks of paint in a fairly short period. The use of panels rather than canvas was a big help, as the paint truly sits up on the primed birch, as opposed to sinking into the weave (and more absorbent commercial primers) of stretched canvas. I'm proud of the fact that when it came to using just pure layered wet-into-wet paint, I stuck with large (#12 and up) bristle brushes, and kept the blenders in a drawer. The only blending (purposely done) was the no-texture cloud background of All Natural.

Again, as far as discussing conceptual aspects, I have to leave that between Emily and me, and give full disclosure at my Group 3 residency in January. I am happy to tell that Emily felt these were very solid pieces as far as the direction I'm looking to go conceptually. Let's go out on a limb here and say that things are slowly coming together.

The Picture In Question

2010-11-14T19:00:00.000-08:00

A Response to

"The Picture in Question:
Mark Tansey and the Ends of Representation"

by Mark C. Taylor

“The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real” (Stevens 6).

The historical criticisms that have arisen from 'picturing a text' are as ancient as the philosophies of Plato, declaiming artists as “tricksters” and “magicians” (Taylor 8). The evolution of this can be tracked through Structuralism and Clement Greenberg's prescription of Formalism to the Expressionists, followed by the postmodern, Post-Structuralist assertions of philosophers and theorists like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. The Picture in Question follows the painter Mark Tansey as he systematically deals with the problems inherent in these criticisms by way of his paintings. The author, Mark Taylor, guides us along in a textually illustrative chronology of the painter's oeuvre, and explicates much of Tansey's process throughout.

I feel fortunate to be a representational painter in a time in which Mark Tansey exists and works. He wields a technical brilliance with oil paint that is on par with the acumen of his conceptual thinking. With these skills, he has boldly confronted the philosophers, historians and critics who, for decades, insistently provoked an end to representation in painting. In doing so, he has taken the front line of a new vanguard of representational painting, clearing the way for a long overdue reinstatement of this honorable practice back into the discourse.

Unfortunately, the book contains no images, and the author asks that his audience overlook this glaring omission. The justification for this is that Tansey revoked permission to reproduce the work due to his fear that Taylor's take on his paintings and processes would further the dominant criticism of his art as illustrative. This rationalization almost subverts Tansey's raison d'être, in that his work primarily argues that text is not the dominant force in representation and that the visual (his paintings, specifically) renders it with greater efficacy. His pictures are, of course, the proofs of his arguments, and I would have liked more inclusive and immediate reference points than the visual source list in the index.

It is a mistake to look at the earlier works of Tansey and write them off as smug, anti-establishment visual puns. There is a great deal of thoughtfulness to the nature of Tansey's questioning. The fact that he does this via image is, in itself, a nonstandard stratagem. His images are so technically (formally) superior, that it compels the viewer to engage beyond what seems like “surface cleverness.” However, as I read further into Taylor's explication of Tansey's paintings, I wondered about the level of engagement required to decode the metaphors he puts forward.

An accessible quality of his work is his use of a monochromatic palette. Rather than undertake the codified allusions of color, he focuses sharply upon on form and content. These elements comprise the visible 'text' with which he develops the themes and narratives in his work. The nature of his palette is also helpful in developing one of his more common motifs: ambiguity. For instance, in the painting White on White, (1986) [fig. 1], the wind-blown atmosphere in which the Inuits and Bedouins meet is either a snowstorm or a sandstorm. Due to the lack of color, the clarification is withheld, and it becomes both at once. This, of course underscores and subverts the binary opposition inherent in the subjects – a clever critique of post-structuralist thinking.

Less accessible is the content of Myth of Depth, (1984) [fig. 2]. Taylor does well to set up the cast of characters and the scene: Jackson Pollock walks on a turbulent ocean surface, while in a nearby dory, Clement Greenberg lectures to a coterie of Abstract Expressionists (Helen Frankenthaler, Arshille Gorky, Robert Motherwell and Kenneth Noland) (10). Once this is established, it is clear from the title (text) and the cast that Greenberg is showing the group that the realistically depicted water is not real and therefore has no depth, so it is perfectly safe to walk upon. The Ab-Ex 'messiah,' Pollock, demonstrates this with typical bravado. The argument is two-fold: Is depth in painting a myth? In the modernist, New York School of the 1950s, it most definitely was. But what of this scene? It may be 'just' a representational work, but it clearly depicts depth. So, pictorially, we see the binary opposition of Formalism versus Content. This dovetails into the second part of the argument – an historical one. The era of Expressionism was primarily about stifling representation via jettisoning content and painting experientially (expressively). However, the visual depiction of the feeling of painting is, in itself, a representation. So perhaps what Greenberg is pointing to is not Pollock, but maybe the necessary end of Expressionism, as it cannot free itself completely from its own subjectivity.

There is a difficulty here regarding the density of metaphor and encoding that takes place. What kind of viewership is conversant with (for example) the teachings of Greenberg, the philosophies of Derrida, the arguments of Foucault, their respective relationships to modern art history, and is possessive of a visual familiarity with the physical likenesses of these very individuals? Clearly, much of Tansey's work is for the visual consumption of an academic audience, and a very particular one, at that. In fact, I would contend that the primary audience for the bulk of the paintings (with a few exceptions) described in The Picture in Question are the very individuals (and/or their acolytes) depicted therein. This predilection can be better understood through Taylor's admission in the book's preface that Tansey's thorough investigations in modernist/postmodernist philosophies and criticisms paralleled his own. (Taylor x). But this does little to alter the fact that most viewers are not privy to such great depths of academic knowledge and understanding.

Another debatable aspect of Tansey's work is not his use of (and subversion of) binary opposition as a critique against postmodernism, but how many of these concepts were fashioned via his “Color Wheel.” He created a table-sized wheel comprised of three nesting wheels which turn on the same central point [fig 3]. Graphed on the inner ring are nouns; the center, participles; the outer, nouns or noun phrases. This “wheel of language” gave Tansey textual referents for titles with which he might create more than five million possible images/combinations. There is a humorous aspect to this, as this process bears a resemblance to the “exquisite corpse” Surrealist word game. Titles like Pathologists Demonizing the Prophylactic Eye represent a typical combination. Taylor's support of this “gaming” tactic is clear: “As Tansey spins his wheels, the questions his paintings investigate proliferate” (53). This may be so, but the initial texts generated must be held up for questioning first, since, as I've illustrated, they may be rather questionable. This gamesmanship may bait critical thinkers in the know, but I would argue that this places some of his work even further away from the reach of a larger audience.

The explicit chronology that The Picture in Question employs shows the necessity of Tansey's experimentation with conceptual mechanisms like the Color Wheel (the artist calls such devices “technophors”) as he was consistently striving to visually reconstruct that which had been deconstructed via modern critical thinking. Since many different strategies of critique had been used over time, Tansey had to change up his visual tactics with each historical encounter. By the mid-1990s, he had visually demonstrated faceted, flexible responses to much of art history's important modern critiques. His limited but learned (not to mention influential) audience witnessed an emboldened, informed questioning of modern art discourse using the unlikely vehicle of representational painting. With this as a bulwark, he turned his incisive mind to its future.

Using the newer scientific studies of catastrophe theory, chaos theory and complexity theory, Tansey charted a new and highly ambitious course for his work. To my mind, and in this book, these advanced modes of concepting culminate in 1994's Water Lilies [fig. 4]. This is a contemporary take on Monet's paintings of the ponds at Giverny. The figure of Monet himself is visible as an inverted reflection in the upper middle section of the painting. However, unlike the art-theoretical contexts, philosophical premises and specific personas depicted in many earlier works, Water Lilies functions in a pictorially rich, but textually free dimension. Every visual is seen a state of “punctuated equilibrium” – the tipping point at the edge of chaos. The water cycle is depicted in flux between its primary states of solid (ice), liquid, and gas (clouds), and the very growth of the water lilies out of the thawing pond's surface is under imminent threat of the rushing water coming in from a breach in the pond at the right. Between these elements, there is a space of tension where the water is glass-smooth. However, in this space lies the reflection of storm clouds, foreboding that perhaps this calm is just a transitional moment, and that disaster may, in fact, befall the threatened lilies. There is no visual cue to onto which one may hold, nor with which to bring closure to the meta-narrative. The flux of time and the interstices of space are seen in a perpetual state of change, ever perpetuating new changes.

At length, The Picture in Question shows Mark Tansey initiating dynamic changes in his art, probing different visual strategies to reveal the endless transitions of being, nature and time. This reflects Werner Heisenberg's principle of visualization: “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning” (78).

Works cited:

Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. New York: HarperCollins, 1958. Print.

Stevens, Wallace. The Necessary Angel. New York: Random House, 1946. Print.

Taylor, Mark. The Picture in Question: Mark Tansey and the Ends of Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Print

Show Review: Rackstraw Downes - Onsite Paintings

2010-10-14T09:20:00.000-07:00

At the Confluence of Two Ditches Bordering a Field with Four Radio Towers (1995), oil on canvas, 46" x 48"

Rackstraw Downes (b. 1939) has been practicing his finely tuned craft of outdoor (and indoor) painting below much of the contemporary art world's radar for some time. I was surprised to find that this is his first retrospective in a forty year career, despite a steadily growing representation in major museum collections. It was only after receiving a MacArthur Fellowship last year that serious recognition has come to this most deserving, hardworking artist. The reason for all this may be that Downes' oeuvre exists in an atypical, singular relationship to modern art's critical ideology. That is – he may well be the only practitioner of representational perceptual landscape painting that is recognized by the contemporary discourse. Critic Peter Schjeldahl notes: “Tactfulness like Downes' is so rare today, it's exotic” (Wilson 100).

His very history seemed to resist the typical trends. In 1961, leaving his native England and Cambridge (he majored in literature), he came to the U.S. to study painting at Yale. Minimalism was the cause célèbre of the academic art world at this time, exemplified by the pedagogy of his teacher, Al Held. Downes expressed his disenchantment with the tight boundaries of pure abstraction, stating that “...the arguable and inconsequential theoretical basis of it, and the narrow specialization of the artists created an atmosphere in which art as I understood it could hardly breathe” (16). He began to gravitate towards a more representational language of painting, following the tutelage of Alex Katz and Neil Welliver. The influences of the latter two artists prompted a move to Maine, and in doing so, Downes left behind the tropes of abstraction for the rigors of representation.

Despite a lack of practical training in the craft, Downes strove to hone his representational painting skills. It was not without difficulty, as he recalls, “Why had I not learned to draw, and how do you match the colors out there?” (25). Yet, his persistence and inborn observational skill enabled him to eventually capture the soft and trembling edges of foliage in New England's atmospheric light. Dunham's Farm Pond (1972), the earliest work in the Onsite Paintings exhibition, serves as a good example of Downes' attention to Welliver's painting methods, but it also shows a definitive shift away from flattened, modernist surfaces. The glow of the summer haze he observed and captured here was achieved through careful tonal adjustments, enveloping the natural forms of the landscape in softness. This early work perhaps represents his first foray into an organic idea of vision, playing down traditional, mathematical perspectives with a perceptual, atmospheric one. These notions become distinctly more significant in future works.

Unfamiliar with Downes' process, I speculated about it while perusing the show. My initial assumption was that he was using photography of some kind to support his detail work. For example, the phenomenal clarity with which 110th and Broadway, Whelan's from Sloan's (1980-81) is so painstakingly rendered must have required some kind of photo reference that he took back to the studio. Surely, it would be a necessity to employ such a tactic in order to render the dozens of trucks, the hundreds of windows, and the scores of figures moving to and fro in this bustling Manhattan intersection. Surprisingly, Downes does not even own a camera, let alone use one. From the preparatory drawings to the final chip of concrete, thatch of weeds, distant parked car, or incidental passerby – he is on site, recording it all, often taking a year's worth of multiple visits to achieve his vision.

In The View North from Washington Bridge on the Harlem River (1983), it is evident that Downes is investigating the complexities of capturing perspective as the truth of an observed experience – that is – what the human eye sees when turning the head in a vast space. In this painting (and others after it), there is a sense of the urban landscape wrapping across the field of vision. A deep diminution of space occurs as the head turns left-to-right from the central point – which, in this case, are prominent apartment towers. As they advance towards the center, they bulge outward, as other elements fall away obliquely as the canvas extends laterally. The artist comments upon this particular aspect of building the work by identifying a “clothesline construction... which means that all of the events in the painting [the changing forms] happen in a one-by-one order along the horizon, which is a surrogate for a clothesline” (Skowhegan 6:40). There is a heuristic quality to this, as the expansive quality of the space becomes actualized for the viewer, as it was for the artist at his easel.

Within these elaborate constructions lies a strong narrative. Downes is very interested in the environment; the neglect of nature through urban “progress” is his most poignant thematic. However, he presents his views unsentimentally and evenly with no inclination towards drama. In fact, he finds most Hudson River School paintings to be “theatrical in concept and calculated in execution” (Ottman, 19). For Downes, the true wild is not the modern notion of wilderness – the protected, well funded and “approved” tracts – it is land that has been neglected, trash riddled, weed infested, and unceremoniously disregarded: “[W]eeds interest me more than ancient redwoods; they are the vanguard of nature's forces as she wages her war back on us” (58)

These attitudes towards nature are evident in paintings such as U.S. Scrap Metal Gets Shipped for Reprocessing in Southeast Asia, Jersey City (1994), where the vista stretches from the almost amusement-park-like Port Liberte Condominiums (left) to a fully operational, coastal scrap yard (right). In the space between lies an unnamed cove, where egrets feed in the shallows amongst rotting piers, and the wreckage of barges is strewn throughout the tall marsh grasses. As my eyes moved across the breadth of the canvas in a more careful inspection, a narrative unfolded. A tiny ferry coming into the landing at the condominiums is undoubtedly a commuter ferry, shuttling residents across New York Harbor to and from work in the financial district (the Twin Towers can be seen in the distance, extreme left). The financially bloated, theoretical trading that takes place in those pristine halls of commerce is reflected back in its counterpart across the cove: the gritty, physical reality of the commercial scrap metal facility. Here, the castoffs of consumerism are harvested and sent to Southeast Asia where they will be imported back and re-sold as new consumables... and the cycle continues. But, beneath the artist's unsparing representation is a suggestion that there might still be hope for this shrinking world. By virtue of his empirical methods, Downes offers an encouraging thought: “there is so often this incredible adaptation on the part of the wildlife” (Spears). It is in the marshy cove, there within the interstices of the urbanized terrain, that the artist finds the true wild somehow hanging on in the wake of human commerce.

The exhibition includes several interiors. For one such piece, the title alone, Untenanted Space in the World Trade Center, Winter Sun (1998), gives the picture great significance. However, it may be the unfortunate facts of history that charge the painting with a funereal quality. Nevertheless, the sheer weight of emptiness in this huge, abandoned office space is palpable. But, even in this most synthetic of spaces, nature is still active, represented by brilliant gold bars of sunlight. They strafe the floor in long diagonals, owing to the low angle of the winter sun. The outdoors is brought indoors with a new twist – the low, oppressive ceiling replaces infinite sky. The artist emphasizes this downward pressure, forcing our eyes to follow the patterns of light into the foreground. Here, Downes revels in his paint, capturing the morphology of the floor.

There is one particular painting in this show that, for me, exemplifies the qualities of this excellent artist: At the Confluence of Two Ditches Bordering a Field with Four Radio Towers (1995). The format is “non-standard Downes” in that it is nearly square – but that is the only anomaly. In this scene, located somewhere on the periphery of Galveston, Texas, four radio towers recede in closely spaced verticals from the middle distance. Power lines rush in from the lower-middle left and sweep upward in a synchronous lyrical curve across the background webwork of the towers' guy wires. Their parallel profiles suggest musical staves across the score of an overcast sky. These lines are remarkable, as they are etched into the facture of the sky's impasted surface, yet are still precisely painted in an unbroken, calligraphic gesture. Below, two drainage ditches, beautifully articulated with their patchwork greenery, triangulate towards us, not quite coming to a confluence in the bottom center - for this is where the artist is standing. It is also where, as the viewer, I am standing. With skill and aplomb, he takes me to this spot, this unprepossessing vista with its secret beauty, and exhorts me to look... and see.

The curator at the Parrish Museum, Klaus Ottman, sums up my own conclusions about this show, this artist and his work: “Rackstraw teaches us to see” (Spears).

List of works cited:

Downes, Rackstraw. In Relation to the Whole. New York: Edgewise, 2000. Print.

“Rackstraw Downes (Skowhegan Lecture Archive).” The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine. 2002. Lecture/Audio CD.

Ottman, Klaus. Rackstraw Downes. London: D. Giles Limited, 2010. Print.

Spears, Dorothy. “Street Life as Still Life.” New York Times 25 Jul. 2010, New York ed., AR19. Print.

Wilson, Malin, ed. The Hydrogen Jukebox: Selected Writings of Peter Schjeldahl. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Print

The Big Picture and Emily

2010-10-03T18:29:00.000-07:00

So here's this new thing (a quickie photo from Emily's studio wall - the whites are blown out, but you get the idea):

It's tentatively titled "Sublimation". Oil on canvas, 60" x 48". Yep, that's pretty large for me. It was a bear to deal with, but I managed it. It did take a while to get used to paint application on this scale. I had intended to do more at this size, but it's just not realistic this semester. I need to experiment on a number of different levels to achieve my original design for the studio component. This takes care of the scale experiment, obviously. More will be forthcoming regarding the content here, but that will have to wait until the Group 3 residency in January.

I showed this to Emily yesterday during an excellent studio visit. We discussed this picture at length -- the pros and cons of it all (formal and conceptual). For all intents and purposes, this is done save a few minor adjustments. We then discussed my direction for the next works and we achieved a greater clarity in that regard; I'm excited about it. My concepts are solid, but the direction of the formal application is more experimental. Should be interesting, but at least I know it's do-able. The big scale thing is so daunting. I can do it, but large blocks of time are needed. With my teaching schedule as it is now, that's just impossible.

I got a few shots of Emily's studio. Below is her first donut drawing. This is seminal, as it spurred her alkyd/graphite work.

Here's the "lesser" wall space on the west side of Emily's studio. The panel painting is complete, while the oblong canvas is undergoing a bit of cropping adjustment. Two charcoal underdrawings are there on the floor, one of which she will probably efface and start over.

And here's a table full of donut setups. Some of these guys are months old. They don't get moldy, but they do compress and start to look strange. She likes that.

In all, a really edifying visit. It was enhanced by lunch afterwards over in Natick with her husband, the abstract painter Penn Young. They shared some great gallery-talk anecdotes and I fielded wine questions. I'm grateful for these fantastic experiences with these amazing people.

CT II Response: Revisiting the Phenomenology Of Painting

2010-09-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

Pliny the Elder's story - contained in his encylopedic Natural History - of Butades the potter, his daughter and her lover, can be cited as the mythological 'origin story' for the plastic arts. Notably, the first physical action taken in recording a perceptual likeness is through drawing. Of course, the effortful mark making of the daughter was not one of strict representation, rather, it was a tracing – that is – an outlining of her lover's shadow cast upon the wall via a 'lamp' (candlelight). Butades, for his daughter's sake, gives this surrogate image dimensional form, casting it as a relief sculpture in order to give it tactile semblance. In doing so, however, one can assert that the original trace was destroyed (effaced) in the process.

Note the formalized practice illustrated in this story: perception of a subject; interpreting the perceptions spatially in order to record on a two-dimensional surface; recording this interpretation via system of marks (drawing/tracing); and using the drawing as the fundamental infrastructure for construction of the represented subject with a new medium. This procedure is systematically present in the painting process, especially that of representational painting.

Painters themselves began to celebrate the romantic mythology of the Pliny story during the Age of Enlightenment, and it was illustrated in well-known works such as Joseph Wright of Derby's The Corinthian Maid (1782), as well as Jean Baptiste Regnault's, Origin of Painting (1785). It is interesting to note, however, that the earliest known painted reference to the story is Bartolomé Murillo's El Cuadro de las Sombras (c. 1660), and it serves as perhaps its most didactic pictorial translation. It does not depict the romantic scene with Butades' daughter and her lover, it is rather a formalized reference to the event: a male artist traces the shadow of a model and a rapt audience is seen in attendance, notably awestruck. The motif that undoubtedly concretized the venerable myth as a founding tenet of Western painting can be seen in the large cartouche in the lower right of the canvas. A translation of the inscription (as researched by Robert Rosenblum) reads: “The beauty that you admire in renowned painting originated in Shadow” (280).

James Elkins writes: "The material memories are not usually part of what is said about a picture, and that is a fault in interpretation because every painting captures a certain resistance of paint, a prodding gesture of the brush, a speed and insistence in the face of mindless matter..." (1999, 3). The latter part of what Elkins describes here is the physical act of making a mark with paint (oil paint, in this case). In this mark-making, the artist is enveloped in the modality of painting both consciously and unconsciously. The conscious aspect is the studied practice of making a mark. This singular action, in terms of modernist critique, has been treated to such reductionism as to parse it to its basest morphemes. This is cited by Michael Newman: “Structuralist semiotics posits an absolute rupture... a temporal explosion that is at once retroactive and catastrophic” (16). One can merely look at a visual timeline of modernism and see how that approach became an unfortunate eschatological exercise resulting in a supposed “death” of painting in the mid-1960s.

Paintings are inarguably pictorial, first and foremost. Treating the visual object as a strictly intellectual one is ultimately reductive. That said, let us speak to the unconscious aspect mentioned earlier. An apposite tactic for a painter seeking to parse the heuristic nature of the discipline may well be one that is more empiricist in nature than a strict, epistemologically rationalist one. One must bear in mind, however, that it is neither beneficial nor advisable to foment the contrasted aspects of theoretics versus physicality in the realm of painting. But, as was stated before, this has not been heeded: the former has outstripped (if not buried deeply) the latter in importance for decades. Therefore, it is important to bring balance back in a revivification of painting via the realm of the phenomenological.

Routinely, the painter engages in creating a work with a thematic at hand, albeit not necessarily an explicit one. Certainly, this demonstrates an objectivist's notion of intentionality. Yet, does the painter have a specific proposal of the final outcome already imprinted in the prescribed physical activity necessary to bring said work into being? Insofar as philosophical constructs would try to allow for such a thing, no painter has a clear expectation of such an exactitude of process; there are far too many variables. On that account, the common, didactic 'reading' of intentionality becomes a peripheral notion. Jacques Derrida muses on the phenomenology of conceptualizing subject matter as a kind of 'lucid dreaming': “Or, if you prefer, the thought of drawing, a certain pensive pose, a memory of the trait that speculates, as in a dream, about its own possibility” (3). As regards the physical process, Richard Schiff weighs in: “…the craft of painting causes [one] to ponder the phenomenological difference between… viewing a distant, elusive horizon, even a dream, and manipulating a brush held tight in the hand" (126). So it is, then, that the aspects of craft and conception merge in pure experience.

The very construction of a painting reveals a copious array of layered mark making. Often, marks are made preliminarily, either as a preamble to a more definitive application of paint, or in a gestural 'blind groping' (as Derrida suggests) for a precise line or rhythm that better suits the predilections of the subject, artist, or both. As a result, many marks are effaced, the 'purity' of their gesture overwritten, or perhaps expunged completely (relatable to Butades). Nonetheless, due to the very nature of traditional oil painting, traces and stains of the pigment remain embedded in the surface (plainly seen in the field of painting restoration, with the use of radiographic x-ray technology). Thus, not only do the physical traces of these marks still exist, the 'pure' – or phenomenological – aspect of those same marks are yet embedded within. This results in a palimpsestic quality that is distinctly peculiar to painting – a characteristic that can be evinced in even a casual viewing of a work by one who knows nothing of these formal traits. David Chalmers illustrates: “In addressing the philosophical mysteries associated with conscious experience, a simple color sensation raises the problems as deeply as one's experience of a Bach Chorale” (11). In looking through a phenomenological lens, a fixed link between painter and viewer comes into focus.

It is not immanent that specific aesthetic experiences will carry over from artist to viewer through a painting. However, there are “invisible conditions” (Elkins 1998, 18) which may emanate from a work, and such projection can be equated with the transcendental. If then there exists specific distinguishable and resonant aesthetic standards in a painting, it follows that specific provisions should converge to engender phenomenal consciousness for the viewer. It is not enough to produce (as was the modernist tendency) a wholly self-absorbed work in a rhetoric of indifference and completeness. It is, however, of greater import that said provisions commingle the former tendency with the 'theatricality of experience' that is the purview of the painter, allowing for an attractive (and mutual) entry point for the viewer. Jeremy Gilbert Rolfe expands on this: “Along with Lyotard, Michael Fried and Steven Bann have also pursued the distinction – also eighteenth-century in its origin – between an art in which one looks at something and an art about that act of looking, i.e.; an art in which one could look at oneself looking. The first sounds like being attracted, the second like wondering what it means to be attracted” (167).

To revivify the discourse of the phenomenological in painting in full acknowledgement of the known critical systems is to bring painting into a fuller expression. It is far too simple to discount the experience of the painter and just parse the objects of his/her production with a distant objectivity, for the painter is just as much 'in the world' as the viewer (or critic). After all, the percipient role of painting is one of edification, so those who wish to do so may engage in a work and share in its full expression. This encompasses the 'being' of the painter, that is: “...the concretisation [sic] of a particular lived experience or 'world'.” (Wentworth 119)

The confluence of the sensorial and the conceptual waters within the phenomenology of painting results in a brackish harbor, rich with a newfound upwelling of nourishment for both painters and those who enjoy looking at paintings. If we choose to recognize this sustenance, it will serve to replenish and perhaps enrich what was lost when modernism forgot the most poignant notion of Pliny's story: Butades' daughter traced the shadow of the young man out of love. The phenomenology of love was forever and inextricably linked to that of art in an impassioned, original act of traditional mark making. We would do well to always remember that.

List of works cited:

Chalmers, David J. The Conscious Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1996. Print

Derrida, Jacques. Memoirs of the Blind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Print

Elkins, James. What Painting Is. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print

On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print

Newman, Michael. “The Marks, Traces, and Gestures of Drawing.” The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act. Ed. Catherine de Zegher. London: Tate Publishing, 2003. 99-108. Print.

Rolfe, Jeremy Gilbert. “Beauty and The Contemporary Sublime.” Impossible Presence. Ed. Terry E. Smith. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. 125-156. Print

Rosenblum, Robert. “The Origin of Painting: A Problem in the Iconography of Romantic Classicism” The Art Bulletin Vol. 39, No. 4, December 1957: 279-290. Print

Shiff, Richard. “Digitisation and Modern Painting.” Smith 125-156. Print

Wentworth, Nigel. The Phenomenology of Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 Print

Residency 2 (June 2010) Summary

2010-08-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

In many respects, my perspective coming into my Group 2 Residency was far more expanded since my introductory experience back in January. Still, I aspired to maintain a level of objectivity about my work and my exposure to new concepts and theories – a strategy that worked remarkably well for me as a Group 1 student.

Unlike the previous residency, wherein my crit group was comprised of a melange of disciplines, the space in which I hung my work consisted solely of painters. I knew right away that this would make for some excellent discourse, not to mention very focused group crits by faculty in which the very idea of painting would need to be addressed as a whole. The latter had become a point of great interest to me by way of my research writing from the previous semester – that is - the pervasive (and hyperbolic) “death of painting” postulate that seemed to pervade postmodernist discourse from the late '60s through the mid/late '90s. Through many discussions with peers and faculty this residency, I have since theorized a more accurate and contemporary depiction of this rhetoric: Painting has lived on, and has recently emerged out from under the radar due to the fading relevance of postmodernist conjecture.

In my critique space, I'd hung the underpaintings of the heavily allegorized concepts, left unfinished and abandoned since I was dissatisfied with that tack, but wanting to show my progesssion. There were also various sketches that supported these works, as well as the hyper-allegorized triptych sketches. The three completed oil paintings at which I'd finally arrived were: Atelier 2010, a nude self-portrait of sorts depicting a sheep being sheared by me; Flyover, depicting a female figure in a flowing dress jumping/hovering/falling over an airport tarmac; and Pteronychus, a small (12” x 12”) painting of two Herring Gulls perched on a rail, done in a Viridian monochrome.

My first formal group critique was one I'd anticipated with excitement, and one I'd like to explicate particularly. It was a “tag-team” critique with Barry Schwabsky and the program Director, Judith Barry. Schwabsky was sitting visiting faculty as well as a guest lecturer for this residency and semester. I was already very familiar with the seminal contemporary painting tome that he'd helped compile as well as authoring its introduction: Vitamin P. I'd not had a crit with Judith yet, and the experience, depth and professional sophistication for which she is known was certainly something I welcomed.

Unexpectedly, Schwabsky brought the traditional prejudices about representational painting to the fore once he looked at my work, saying: “I'm not sure that this kind of painting needs to be painted... (pause)... anymore.” I was only mildly surprised; I am quite used to statements of this ilk, since they are, as I'd stated, “traditional” in the scope of the postmodern view of representational realism. The fact that I can predict this kind of reaction based on the pedigree of the individual speaks not so much to my work, but to the particular school of thought from which that individual comes. Judith's reaction was somewhat deferential to Schwabsky's, and at the same time, confusingly, she commended me for mastering my technique. As to any defense on my part regarding this, I demurred, and will do so here.

Tony Apesos chided me a bit when I spoke of this with him during an individual crit (which I will address later), saying that I should have made Schwabsky clarify his statement. Perhaps, but I'm beginning to feel that critique – and that of my work, particularly – is much like wine. It truly must be allowed to breathe, for oftentimes – even with excellent vintners and vintages – the wine can tend to “shut down” unless it is decanted for a bit. Amusingly, the oenological term for this is that the wine is “dumb.” That said, I don't mean to be flippant – but I waited out the initial rhetorical ripostes of this crit. In time, Schwabsky redacted to a degree, charging that my allover treatment of surface in such a neoclassical (read: no brushwork) manner disallowed him to “enter” the painting. This made sense, and gibed with some later critiques, so I noted it well.

It's not that surprising that the painting Atelier 2010 garnered the most attention during (and not during, by the reaction of passersby) critiques, given that the content is so oddly challenging. Stuart Steck, in our “former advisor” meeting, wondered aloud at how I even arrived at such an image, but praised the work as uncannily fresh. My new advisor for this semester, Hannah Barrett, was not quite as enamored, but still shook her head at the piece, baffled by my choice of subject matter, and deemed it somewhat successful based upon its confusing nature alone. She rather preferred Pteronychus for its noir-ish take of such a quotidian image. Tony Apesos, who enjoys things allegorical (he felt what I was doing conceptually was compelling and, admittedly, to his taste), decided to critique me on a more formal, technical level and made an emphatic point about manipulating my static surface: he advised me to try impasting paint to create tension and interest. Both Stuart and Hannah had mentioned this, as well. It became very clear (since Schwabsky's crit), that this was an important part of the “technical narrative” that needs to be addressed in my work. I'd not yet delved into any system of mark-making, nor paid attention to producing a varied pictorial surface. I'll be honest and say that it was something I hadn't thought about. I've never been one to use much paint, but I see now that that very lack does not speak to painting's history save before Modernism.

As is usual with this program, the very essence of Critical Theory II dovetailed nicely with these realizations about my work. The main thrust of the readings of CT II covered the great relevance and histories of the mark, stain, trace and index. I was hoping for a bit of clarity, as the essays were quite dense; Jacques Derrida's linguistic acrobatics being the most challenging. The inimitable Michael Newman led the group in a surprisingly lively discussion over the four seminar sessions that lent a greater lucidity to the subjects at hand. We also engaged in mini-presentations in which we demonstrated our comprehension of mark and/or trace. I chose to illustrate the notion of mark-making with a slightly altered take on the Surrealist automatic drawing exercise of entopic graphomania; this was well-received. Needless to say, I heeded Michael's elucidation of the texts and will expound upon these topics further in subsequent research papers.

My elective seminar for this semester was Tony Apesos' “Death, Loss and Mourning.” Despite the inherently depressive implications of the course title, it was actually quite dynamic. There were interesting crossovers with Critical Theory II at points with the Pliny story (the colloquial “origin of drawing” story) and Freud's “Mourning and Melancholia.” It was a fascinating workshop, as Tony had us looking at death rituals from (initially) a very non-Western point of view. It was also highly edifying: there were beautiful and contemplative moments, especially during our visit to the Forest Hills Cemetery, where we looked at classical statuary in a poignantly picturesque setting.

Worthy of mention is a panel put together by Oliver Wasow and Michael titled, “Sourcing, Outsourcing and Resourcing.” They both spoke, looking at the contemporary modes of distribution and adaptation of visual resources – primarily through the vast structure of the internet. The levels and modes of appropriation have shifted and sped up to a dizzying degree, and Oliver and Michael unpacked the phenomenon through their practices – photographer and academic, respectively. In my opinion, the panel was very successful. It is crucial as an artist to be conversant with these new realities taking shape via the massive image exchange archive that is the web.

I have been told that my expanding knowledge of contemporary art and critical discourse has accelerated my growth as an artist thus far. A willingness to engage in critical dialogue with an equitable perspective has also undoubtedly been helpful to my cause. Of course, I need to maintain these standards this semester (and beyond). As a painter, I must truly consider the plastic nature of the medium and technically revel in the very fact of oil paint itself, as mentioned earlier. Size will matter in this case, and I foresee a technical challenge there, which will no doubt manifest a new vector of narrative. Conceptually, I will tighten up the parameters, directing my focus on more “theoretical” frameworks, but also focus through a more “oblique” lens regarding the iconic and thematic sensibilities of the visuals. I will continue to explore self-referential themes as well as give atypical treatments to typical subjects with a more ambiguous and contemporary directive.

Artist List:
Paula Rego:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/paula_rego.htm
Ridley Howard:
http://www.ridleyhoward.com/
Bettina Sellman:
http://www.bettinasellmann.com/work/
Jeronimo Elespe:
http://www.johnconnellypresents.com/artist/seriesview/934/456
Benedicte Peyrat:
http://www.morganlehmangallery.com/dynamic/artist_artwork.asp?ArtistID=54
Jenny Saville:
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville/

Kurt Kauper:
http://www.kurtkauper.com

Mark Tansey:
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/mark-tansey/

Robert Feintuch:
http://www.howardyezerskigallery.com/artists/feintuch.html

Gregory Gillespie:
http://www.forumgallery.com/adetail.php?id=106

Paul Cadmus:
http://www.tendreams.org/cadmus.htm

Emily Eveleth:
http://www.emilyeveleth.com/

Rackstraw Downes:
http://bettycuninghamgallery.com/get_artist.aspx

William Beckman:
http://www.forumgallery.com/adetail.php?id=80

Books And Articles:

The Picture in Question: Mark Tansey and the Ends of Representation - Mark C. Taylor

Eric Fischl and the Death of Painting – Mark Vallen, Art For a Change, April 2006

Thick and thin - painters and curators discuss the state of painting in the last two decades – Robert Storr, ArtForum, April 2003

End of Art – Donald Kuspit

Ellen Harvey: New York Beautification Project - Ellen Harvey

Painting People: Figure Painting Today - Charlotte Mullins

The Death of Painting and The Writing of Painting's Post-Crisis, Post-Critique Future – Christopher Miles, Art Lies – A Contemporary Quarterly, issue 47

Working with Stuart

2010-08-02T17:12:00.000-07:00

My writing and research from the past semester would not have been much without the impetus and inspiration from my Group 1 advisor, Stuart Steck. Here are his final remarks regarding my Semester Summary:

I really enjoyed reading your reflections on the past five months. I'm not going to respond with lengthy comments ... but I do have some quick thoughts:

I have rarely worked with someone who was able to internalize (and employ) critical discourse so quickly and seamlessly. It is apparent that you have grasped the complex history and development of modern/postmodern art. More to the point, it appears that you clearly understand the problems and challenges that face artists today. As you rightly note, the expanded field of contemporary art makes it difficult to gauge how one's work can convey a clear sense of meaning and purpose. How is it possible to demarcate one's position in the vast landscape of visual culture if this landscape has no apparent boundaries? Should artists simply strike out blindly in one direction or another? And has the increasingly expansive field of artistic practice effectively rendered a traditional medium (like painting) obsolete?

Your answer to these questions are both thoughtful and practical. I like your assumption that painting is a material practice that can effectively mediate how we engage and understand the world (that is to say, it can mediate our perception of the world in a manner that is fundamentally different from video, performance, and installation). Of course, I'm not always certain that your so-called "exclusive" audience gravitates towards painting with this in mind. I still believe that collectors now buy paintings because they constitute high-end commodities, and thus engender a certain degree of social status and cultural capital. But, as you suggest, this is fine as long as the artist can "see the walls". In fact, these "walls" can provide a useful source of critical commentary, aesthetic content, artistic transgression, and cultural parody.

In any case, I like your idea of creating work that reaches out to a broad audience -- even as it continues to address aesthetic discourses that are specific to painters. Yet ... I still wonder whether painting can transcend our need for immediate gratification and our current reliance on digital technologies. And I also wonder whether painting can survive in an age when people no longer possess the "literacy" needed to read paintings. This is THE $64,000 Question right now (at least in my mind).

But despite the great challenges that face artists today, I believe that you possess the determination and intelligence (not to mention the skill) to re-assert painting's historic relevance. And while your artistic path may be full of obstacles, I think you have charted a course that will lead you to success. As you conclude: "I must strive to delimit my artistic province with a definitive nod to the character of painting's strengths while acknowledging the history of its limitations." This sounds like a reasonable game-plan to me!

As you can read here, his feedback is as insightful and engaging (which was true when it came to all of my essays) as one could hope for. He really challenged me to think and engage all my texts with focused critical rigor. I hope to work with him again before my MFA is done.

Working with Kurt

2010-08-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

Since my second residency has officially brought the Group 1 semester to a close, I can share some of the feedback from the excellent professionals with whom I'd worked.

Kurt Kauper, as I'd stated, was a fantastic mentor, especially for someone new to the AIB program. Here is his final report on me:

I think that Robert made enormous progress during the time I worked with him. As I've mentioned before, when we started our dialogue he was making extremely traditional work, and didn't seem to understand how it functioned in relationship to contemporary art or current critical dialogues. But because he was so open to critical information, and so willing to consider ways of looking at his work that he hadn't considered before, the paintings he made at the end of the session were far more sophisticated than anyhting I could have imagined. I was particularly impressed by the painting of a man shearing a sheep: I thought that he found a way to make an allegorical painting (something he is clearly drawn to, for whatever reason) but allow it to have an ambiguity and openness of interpretation that made the experience of looking at it somewhat strange: while my first thought was that it was traditional allegory, the elements he chose to include could in fact have been an unusual but actually experienced situation. It alowed for experiences of uncertainty, destabilization, open-endedness, ambiguity, I might even say uncanniness, that seemed to much more succesfully speak to contemporary experience than straightforward, traditional allegory ever could. And that actually made me more willing to also engage with it as a traditional, psycho-sexual allegory. The painting of the woman falling onto/floating above a tarmac was, for me, less succesful, primarily because its artifice was so obvious that it didn't allow for nearly as broad a range of interpretations as his other painting. Nevertheless, it was a step forward in relationship to the first allegorical studies he produced. Juxtaposed with the painting of the man shearing a sheep, it set up a narrative of traditional gender representation that Robert didn't intend. We had a long discussion about that, along with what I thought were the weaknesses of the second compared to the first painting. He very willingly participated in the discussion, and engaged in a very positive way. He didn't become defensive at all, and seemed to get a lot from our dialogue. I also had some critical things to say about the new paintings he has planned, and again he was extremely open to the discussion. Robert's impressive productivity and willingness to enage in critical dialogue, along with his expanding knowledge of contemporary art and critical discourse, has accelerated his growth as an artist. He is now working at a graduate level. He was a pleasure to work with.

Hard not to be happy with this.

Mentor, 2nd semester

2010-07-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

So, my new mentor is the painter Emily Eveleth. It just so happened that I was introduced to her during the Group 2 residency during one of the Artist Talks. It was very serendipitous, and was a definite plus to have been able to secure a mentor so early in the game this time around.

Emily is represented by Howard Yezerski in Boston and Danese in NYC. At this very moment, she has a wonderful retrospective of her "doughnut oeuvre" at the Smith College Museum of Art in Northampton, Mass. I think I kind of surprised her by showing up for the opening night, where she gave a fun talk in the main gallery, surrounded by her incredible work. I HIGHLY recommend seeing the work in person, as her paint quality is super-rich. Confronting these sugary giants is quite something to experience; she paints quite large most of the time. Bonus: SCMA has a terrific collection, which really surprised me with a number of gems.

Right now, I have a few concepts in varying stages, all of which I hope to execute on a large (60") scale. Emily is the perfect person with whom to talk about the technical ins-and-outs of working bigger. My first meeting with her is next week and I'm really looking forward to it!

In the meantime, I'll be publishing a Residency 2 summary in just a few days.

Study/Experiment With New Materials

2010-07-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a study for a much larger work. This "study" is 24" x 24" already, but I needed the working room for the new materials. I used tar (roofing tar, specifically), enamel (Rustoleum, almond color), some VanDyck Brown and mineral spirits. Most of this is painted with chemical-proof gloves, not brushes. And lots and lots of rags! These materials are hard as hell to work with and fairly counterintuitive to the normal opaque-medium painting process. There's some surface concerns in terms of the way it sets up, and I may introduce some shellac, but we'll see in a few days when it stabilizes. Oddly enough, other than the possibility of the enamel being a bit brittle, the tar compound will be nice and flexy, so I'm fairly confident it won't explode on me.

When I finish the final work, I'll elaborate on my intentionality, but you can probably guess why I'm using petroleum-based products for this subject matter.

New Work

2010-07-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

Atelier 2010 - oil on canvas, 24" x 24"

Flyover - oil on canvas, 24" x 36"

Pteronychus - oil on canvas, 12" x 12"

Not a great deal of quantity, but this past semester was more about searching for new ways to conceptualize and deal with my art in a more critically rigorous manner. If you go to the post "Works In Progress", you'll see that a lot of what I was working on I was conceptual experimentation. Using the examples of that post, you can see I was attempting to apply pure allegory in order to develop narrative. I essentially abandoned all of those strictly allegorical (and very layered/coded) concepts save one sketch, which I modified and simplified to make "Atelier 2010."

I will be posting a Residency 2 summary very soon, as well as a quick post about my new mentor.

It's Just the Beginning

2010-06-02T06:36:00.000-07:00

Semester Summary

Group 1: January-June, 2010

Looking back at January's residency summary, I found this passage in the conclusion of the essay: “Through layered subtexts, there needs to be a mediation of the dialogue I wish to occur between the subject and the audience - whether it's about beauty or that the beauty of the execution points out other issues perhaps not so beautiful.” At the time of that writing, I was exceedingly unsure of just how to fulfill such a need in my work. Nonetheless, I stayed focused on the idea that this was a huge key to my evolution and growth as an artist. Lucky for me, both my advisor and mentor also agreed that this was the correct priority.

In many ways, I was led down this path by some very skilled hands. Kurt Kauper, as my mentor, is not only highly skilled as a representational painter, he is also immersed fully in the tenets of critical thinking and its relationship to the contemporary, not to mention his role as an artist and teacher. It surely gave me a sense that I was in capable hands, and I allowed that comfort to keep me focused yet objective. Upon my early forays into allegory and narrative multipanel concepts (a la Vincent Desiderio), Kurt directed me towards the criticism of Benjamin Buchloh, of whom I was unaware. Clearly, an encounter with Buchloh's arguments against allegory - especially allegory as regards representation and painting – created in me a heightened sense of insecurity about what I was doing. It was debilitating to feel such hard-line antipathy towards what I had originally perceived to be a thoughtful method of constructing a pictorial idea. Yes, Kurt put forth the caveat that it was a bit too over-the-top on Buchloh's part to suggest that every allegory engenders a sort of closeted fascism, but still, I need to be aware that this argument is the sort of thing that will be brought to bear should I keep to a neoclassicist's diet of pure allegory.

But, what was next? My artistic narrative language had been weaned on all things allegorical to this point. Thankfully, Stuart Steck, my advisor, had established a rigorous schedule of reading/critical analysis for me over the semester. The genius of this assigned agenda became clearer to me with each paper I wrote. Stuart had devised this series of tasks in such a way as to gradually acclimatize me to a more informed method of seeing painting (as well as other art forms) within the context of the contemporary. Moving from the more familiar (comparative essay on Desiderio and John Currin) to the unfamiliar (analysis of essays from the 1986 Endgame exhibition), I was able to develop a working knowledge of the modern historical drivers that suffuse painting today.

By the time I reached the final analysis, a critical look at the artists of Vitamin P, I was, to use Stuart's term, “on a roll.” Indeed, it was a fine choice of material with which I could test my newfound skills of rigorous scrutiny, as it is a recently published tome of contemporary painting. On one hand, it was heartening to see this medium so prominently featured, since it had been long declared “dead” by many theorists and practitioners of postmodern craft (such as video/ installation/performance work). The proliferative quality and variety of painting currently happening surely countermands such unnecessary cynicism. There is a pluralistic motif in the atmosphere of what is likely an era in which the axiomatic bombast of postmodernism has outlived its relevance to art objects, and merely addresses the aesthetic de-materialization of conceptualism. There is a down side to all this freedom, of course. It may well be that in this “expanded field” of art production, the seeming lack of boundaries could make it more than difficult to gauge how one's work has a clear sense of meaning and purpose.

In fact, despite this widened discursive realm of late, painting has not broadened in proportion to the greater context of contemporary culture. Realistically speaking, it has merely come out from under the radar due to the fading relevance of modernist conjecture. The postmodern world has moved on - much to the chagrin of some who would consider themselves craftspeople - and most information is consumed through electronic means via a video monitor. Somehow, though, painting has not been rendered “ineffectual,” as Buchloh would have it. It is still here, which must count for something. There is no doubt that the appeal – the very purpose – of painting has changed, and that its audience is far more modest and exclusive, but this does not leave it valueless. Truth be told, this precise state of limitation may allow for more clarity and import to enter one's art, once the artist can “see the walls,” as it were.

For me, there is clarity in this situation: I cannot go blindly in either direction. I cannot produce art that is rooted in a naïve, umproblematized past, nor can I blithely eschew all context and assume a mantle of auto-legitimatization. Neither of those things hold any real meaning. Perhaps the latter is reserved for a certain kind of kitsch, but I have little interest in expounding upon the mimesis engendered therein. What must be maintained is an awareness of the history and semantics of painting, and this must be addressed in such a way as to hold to a definitive thematic and aesthetic position. And the theoretical question that is still propounded - “How and why is painting still viable?” - must also be addressed. One part of the answer is in my belief that it is a more aesthetically engaging conveyance of the visual. The very “object-ness” of a unique, crafted artwork calls direct attention to itself on a humanistic, visceral level, vastly different than the response generated by a video or performance/installation piece. This remarkable idea has yet to be dismissed from the art-world vernacular, and it is this very staying power that emboldens me.

It has taken the length and breadth of this semester to do so, but my ability to concept within the “new order” of painting (with a more knowing eye on the past, mind you) has shifted. Rather than straddling a middle ground between a full-on baroque quality and an allegorized single icon – which is where my initial round of concepts led me – I began to simplify. With dual support and agreement from both Kurt and Stuart, I have stripped my concepts down to a simplified, “base” image from which both the viewer and I can derive a broad thematic. I have learned that the discursive nature of the image manifests itself far more definitively and – if I may say – poetically through the full inclusiveness of the viewer. Too often has the painter carried on a conversation with themselves, coming to their own conclusions and consummating all discourse long before exhibition. This leaves the viewer to parse out the conversation as a third party. Perhaps it is a very interesting and even stimulating conversation, but the viewer's own ideas and reflections are cast aside in the midst of such an exclusive colloquy. If I am to speak to a contemporary audience – be it however narrow - I should not leave them out of the dialogue. This give-and-take makes it far easier to expand and change my thematic in concord with the quickly shifting evolution of our current culture.

A final note on that idea --- At different times, my advisor, mentor and I have discussed at some length the solipsistic nature of recent cultural trends and the bolstering of such by instant gratification through high-speed electronic information. The cliché of “fifteen minutes” of fame has gone beyond Warhol's worst cynical thought: there is a sense of entitlement to being famous now. A pointed and challenging question was asked: “Do viewers still have an interest in looking at work that focuses on another person's experiences?” That is – do people care about art anymore? Even the most intellectual and studied young person coming through the artistic ranks today is hampered by the very way instruction, statistics and data are transmitted. All things are at their immediate disposal and are, to that extent, disposable. I contend that painting can transcend these things.

My goal in the coming months is to continue to evolve as not merely a representational painter, but as an artist. My hand skills are honed well enough, and this has shown itself to be useful in the crafting of an image, but that is through mere repetition and practice. The greater challenge is in the nature of the content and my intentionality. I must strive to delimit my artistic province with a definitive nod to the character of painting's strengths while acknowledging the history of its limitations. Ultimately, I hope to challenge myself to re-enter the realm of the narrative with multi-panel works without seeking allegorical crutches, opening up those very subtexts that allow for the presence and input of the viewer to incite and sustain discourse.

VITAMIN P!!!

2010-05-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

Response to Selected Works From

“VITAMIN P: New Perspectives in Painting”

A little less than a decade prior to the first publication of Vitamin P, Hal Foster wrote, "...the horizontal expansion of art has placed an enormous burden on artists and viewers alike: as one moves from project to project, one must learn the discursive breadth as well as the historical depth of many different representations - like an anthropologist who enters a new culture with each new exhibition." (intro, xii). Although Foster was expounding on the shifting sands of postmodern discourse, he may as well have been prophesying the current state of contemporary painting. Indeed, in Vitamin P's very introduction, Barry Schwabsky effectuates this forecast as he sums up, “How can one fulfill the task of the critic...when the range of traditions and references that artists are likely to call on extends so far beyond what a single individual can know? ...(P)erhaps only when one accepts... painting's invitation to direct experience.” (10). The visual feast in this tome, as well as these critics' statements, underscores the pluralism that has arisen in contemporary art in tandem with a dramatic and welcome “return” of painting.

Although painting's last gasp was supposedly heard in the 1960's with the neo-minimalist works of Frank Stella, Barnett Newman and Robert Ryman, echoes of their visuals may still be seen in the works of contemporary painters like Ian Davenport and Markus Döbeli. At first glance, the minimal, non-objective qualities to these works might imply the bluntness of reduction. However, upon closer inspection of surface, techniques are revealed that speak to a broader intentionality. Both artists revel in the very nature of paint as a medium: Davenport uses fully saturated commercial latex (household paint), poured and spread via gravity in a precision set of moves to create his perfectly even, seemingly effortless-looking surfaces. Döbeli, meanwhile, builds up acrylic color to a variety of levels, affecting surface appearance, allowing for a variety of chromatic passages, until the canvas itself becomes the form, reveling in its own physicality. These paintings set up an atmosphere for the viewer; a dialogue which suggests a real presence to the work. They reveal their inherent existence as paintings not through overt signification, but through the artists' technical consideration of paint itself. But, unlike these works' minimalist counterparts of the past, these artworks-as-objects come without the deconstructivist baggage. Paint is not embarrassingly applied as something to be subverted, rather, it is celebrated con brio in its expressive capacity.

In its adoption of a pluralist attitude, painting has seemingly freed itself from the plodding diachroneity of art historical movements. This release has allow for a more synchronic reflection of the contemporary. Mass media has charged our visual input with seemingly unavoidable exteroception. This may have engendered a new level of pictorial semiotics, as postmodern culture now has a lexicon of manufactured images laden with universally understood signification - be they commercial (branding), high art or kitsch.

Johannes Kahrs, Richard Phillips, and Peter Rostofsky are three oil painters who liberally lift from this aforementioned “new vernacular” in full recognition of the charged nature of their recontextualized imagery. Within the teeming center of this neo-vocabulary one will find the the oft-repeated video image; a now-ubiquitous device made fully manifest in the early 1980s via the pop-music video. Kahrs substantiates the known tropes associated with such incessant visuals by distilling them down to their heraldic essences in painted large-scale keyframes. Rostofsky also co-opts the moving image, but delves instead into the cinematic genre, extracting stillframe portrayals of a filmic Sublime, played out in the climactic moments of movies such as 2001 and Contact. Although Phillips' early work was based upon still fashion photography, he has since gravitated towards the moving image as well, finding themes within music videos and popular films that have trendily co-opted the lurid glam of pornography. Phillips executes his controversial work in a re-recontexualization of these charged visuals in a much more graphic manner, juxtaposing titillating female nudes with backgrounds, costumes or other objects that challenge the viewer to confront a now hyper-realized insincerity of manufactured arousal.

Even though the derogatory popularization of kitsch in art was established by Greenberg in 1939, it has undergone – at least in its relation to art – some definitive changes. Morphing out of the Marxist illustration and its antonymous association with the avant-garde, kitsch grew into a realm of acceptance when it became aligned with camp in the postwar period, and then ratified in the 1960's as American high and low culture began to converge. Beyond this, it has been subjected to a full postmodern treatment in the art world, attaining celebrity status through the work of Jeff Koons, and at the same time, it was embraced by an unlikely ally - the Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum - in an attempt to erase the pejoratives aimed at the academic as connected to kitsch.

Currently, kitsch may be once again reinventing itself as representational painting reestablishes itself within the contemporary. The artist-team of Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov not only takes pleasure in the flash of color and texture of oil painting, there is an obvious playful quality throughout their highly synthesized works. Some of the usual kitschy subjects are present: the odd celebrity, happy puppies, primary-colored flowerbeds, prancing naked ladies – it's all there. The veritable carnival of images is almost too much to take, but, like a chorus in a pop song, the hook draws one closer - and then, one sees the dark interior beneath all the fun. Dystopia under the fabricated veneer of utopia is nothing new in contemporary society, but Dubossarsky and Vinogradov's awareness of this sociopolitical polarity took hold in Soviet Russia, where a totalitarian state made this disparity an unassailable, stark reality. Juxtaposing the jovial psychedelia with sex, violence, war, and a general sense that “all is not what it seems,” the paintings turn into a cautionary narrative before a captive audience.

The first powerful revolution against representation in painting can be traced back to the turn of the 19^th Century with the beginnings of Cubism. Since that time, the craft that was so honored in the Sálon de Paris up until the 1890's fell hugely out of fashion – so much so that it was considered by some to be wholly retrograde by the time postmodernism got into full swing in the 1980's (see: Benjamin Buchloh). It is duly known that a great deal of this kind of criticism was undoubtedly necessary to keep art convergent and conversant with modern society. Nevertheless, the wholesale marginalization of an art form, rendered by critics as unproductive or inept, smacked of the exclusionary failures accorded to the insular tenets of modernism. Buchloh, incisive mind that he is, failed to understand the relevance of the medium, even as he commends the celebrated Gerhard Richter for “cynically acquiesc[ing] to the ineffectuality of painting,” to which Richter inexorably disagrees: “I see there neither tricks nor cynicism nor craftiness... I know for a fact that painting is not ineffectual.” (113).

As it happened, painting did not perish in its languishment, nor did it regress back to its antiquated rhetoric. Rather, thanks to artists like Richter, painting survived and revived, expanding horizontally and adopting a vast melange of global and historical sensibilities, all the while calling upon the lessons of its very history to redefine itself.

Two particular artists in Vitamin P whose representational discourse remains contemporarily relevant are Andrew Grassie and Yishai Judisman. Grassie adopts a literal dialogue with the art world, rendering photographic depictions of gallery spaces (sometimes with the exhibit not fully installed), touching on a variety of genres from old master works to installation art to outdoor shots of minimalist sculpture. In any case, each piece is painstakingly rendered in tempera, a difficult and ancient emulsion of pigment, calling to mind the leviathan that is the history of painting. Through the broad context of the subject matter, the historical medium, not to mention the fact that the source material itself is a reproduction, Grassie fleshes out a satisfyingly extradimensional mimetic approach to representation. Judisman's approach is similarly classical in technique, calling upon the spirits of Velazquez and Hals in his engaging portraiture. However, his visual references are disparate: clowns, the mentally ill, sumo wrestlers, fellow artists. By implying the presence of narrative with the very act of representing these oddly fascinating personae in oil, Judisman opens a dialogue with the viewer, challenging one to enter into a mildly discordant psychological encounter with the subjects. In later works, the artist creates an even more complete, yet complex atmosphere, featuring the works dramatically within thoughtful installations. These involved crossovers within representational painting – and painting in general - speak volumes about its perception of the contemporary and indeed bodes well for a diverse and bounteous future.

List of works cited:

Buchloh, Benjamin and Richter, Gerhard (interview): “Legacies of Painting,” Art Talk: The Early 80s. Ed. Jeanne Siegel. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988. 111-118. Print

Foster, Hal. Return of the Real. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Introduction. Print

Schwabsky, Barry. “Painting as Art?” Vitamin P. Ed. Valerie Breuvart. New York: Phaidon, 2007. 6-10. Print

ENDGAME

2010-05-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

A Response to Essays From

“ENDGAME: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture”

The complexion of Endgame, the 1986 Boston ICA show, and its operation within the coda of the traditional art disciplines of painting and sculpture, is posited in this candid statement by Sherrie Levine: “There is a long modernist tradition of endgame art... and a lot of artists have made the last painting ever to be made. It's a no-man's land that a lot of us enjoy moving around in, and the thing is to not lose your sense of humor, because it's only art.” (61). That said, the existence of this postmodern mimetic art seems quite serious, as it is primarily contingent upon diachroneity: modernism is swallowed and then regurgitated with a subtextually analytic proposition. Endgame proposes a sort of “anti-Kant” stance, wherein it seeks to endorse an invalidation of art/object in a declamation of original signification and strives to institute a “new and improved” point of view.

In point of fact, modernism sought, and perhaps achieved complete reduction in painting and sculpture. But in an artistic culture of pure asceticism and self-denial, vitality could not persist. In “The Return of Hank Herron,” by Thomas Crow, a rationalization exists that, within the art of Endgame there is indeed a vitality in the art of recontextualization. However, it may be equally arguable that a mimesis of known reductive artworks engenders reduction. In mimetically reproducing minimalist art, it may well be that the reductive qualities become inherently coded within the new work due to the formalist structure of a technical narrative.

The landscape of Crow's essay is dominated by a central field of gray that is the early '70s parody write-up “Fake as More,” which touts the fictive Hank Herron and his equally fictive show. A ten-year-old make-believe review is rather an odd genesis for an art movement, but it is clear that the fantasy article became a kind of artistic canon, a platform upon which postmodern artists could assail the mannered aesthetic of the modernists. This attitude is clearly delineated in Crow's statement that, “'Fake as More' is a thoroughly unsympathetic attack, displaying more than a tinge of philistinism, on the inwardness of modernist practice...” (15). In this case, we have a vanguard attacking the old guard, the justification for this being that, in the complex war of artistic progress, those who have fallen behind are weak and cannot contribute to art's advancement. The Greenbergian necessity to “make it new” was made nonviable. But this is merely a half-persuasive justification for collapsing 20th-Century modernism in upon itself. Endgame shows how modernism can clearly be re-presented in a contemporary paradigm, but the question remains: does this imitative art also travel down a limited path, keeping 1960s modernism on veritable life-support?

In Elizabeth Sussman's “The Last Picture Show,” high praise is given to Sherrie Levine for her utilization of key technical and theoretical components in order to arrive at her diverse imagery. As fascinating as this may be - in the context of modernist work transubstantiating into postmodern - the technical, formalist arrival at the works' distilled appropriation conceivably do not institute as dynamic a shift as Sussman sets forth. Levine's statement (q.v. - opening sentence of this essay) reflects an attitude not quite in synch with Sussman's assertion that the artist's efforts to level abstraction to a generic, commodified signifier is laced with a “tone of anger.” (62). The artist's intentionality is rendered rather imprecisely by her own words. Truth be told, Levine does not retain her “sense of humor” in that her work engages in a feminist discourse, copying works from a period dominated by men. Sussman confirms this: “Levine, who only copied male artists, explained her exercise as related to feminism.” A tongue-in-cheek approach is not inspired by feminist critique.

A more precise account of what occurred through Levine is that a precedent was set that has allowed for an arguably too-fluid methodology of appropriation 20 years after Sussman's encomium. In 2007, the artist Andrew Mowbray re-created Janine Antoni's feminist-critique-heavy performance piece “Loving Care.” It was, in its technical essence, the exact same work: the artists painted the floor of a gallery using the hair on their heads saturated with hair dye. The difference between the two pieces is a single contextual shift: Mowbray is a man (his piece is titled “Just for Men”). In this, one can see Endgame's purposeful rupturing of modernism reflected forward into a new splintering within the postmodern. Matthew Nash elaborates: “Mowbray's piece is not unique in its approach, nor is it a failed work of art. In fact, it is an ideal example of the state of Postmodern art, which has become thoroughly self-consuming... just as the Modernists rushed toward the "Last Painting" in that endgame, it seems that we are now involved in another endgame.” (Nash).

There is sustained and significant focus upon kitsch, commodification and fetishism in Hal Foster's “The Future of an Illusion.” The Duchamp-ian paradigm of readymade art looms large over most of the sculptural art of Endgame, and Foster duly notes the masterstroke of fetishism contained within that modernist master's work. Considering this, one wonders just what Duchamp would think if he were to see (for instance) Haim Steinbach's work nearly three quarters of a century after “Fountain.” Foster uses the example of Steinbach and Jeff Koons as artists who have purportedly transcended Duchamp with their readymades, but these artists have merely concretized the institutionalization of commodified fetishism in art. Koons, at least, makes it a little more fun than functional.

Foster proceeds, critiquing the work of late 1970s painter Julian Schnabel as lacking mastery due to his (barely) coded sexual fetishism: “Here, then, the work of art discloses what it disavows, and is again seized by fetishism with all the violence of its contradictions...” (95). Yet, when Foster continues along the same tack, using the commodity fetishism of Koons, Steinbach, etc., he describes it as “a fact at once obvious and enigmatic.” (95). It appears that, at some point in postmodernist critique, it needed to be suddenly understood that the sign/symbol had to be abandoned as an idea referent and re-instituted as a neutral and literal signifier. Therefore, it is within this specific mandate that one must approach Koons' “Two Ball Equilibrium” and not see testicles - just a couple of Spalding basketballs suspended in a tank. [This is decidedly more difficult with Koons, when one looks ahead to the hypersexualized fetishism of the 1991 exhibition “Made in Heaven.”] For all one knows, this forced state of insistence is the answer to Foster's query, “...the tension between art and commodity... has it somehow collapsed?” (96).

Concern over this may be a non-issue, however. Foster later espouses the nascent pluralism in the kitsch/commodity fetish work of Koons: “...it was precisely the commodity that destroyed artistic aura in the first place... it effectively turns the readymade from a device that demystifies art into one that remystifies it.” (100).

A“premature” argument that may now be addressed is Foster's distillation of Baudrillard's hypothesis that “all primitivisms are corrupt and all surrealisms are futile.” (103). Is kitsch truly outmoded as an artistically conceptual basis of hyper-realization? In the 25 years since Endgame, this argument may have borne itself out. Kitsch, in postmodern art, has moved far from the point of elevated, commodified fetishism. Contemporary subculture has seen to this, adopting and recycling kitsch as an irony-supersaturated meme, rendering it sufficiently neutral, if not neutered. When recontextualized cliché becomes itself outmoded, it becomes akin to salt that has lost its saltiness.

With the consistent appearance of readymades, the looming specter of Warhol, and the adoption of decades-old parodies as new paradigms, it might give one the impression that Endgame is inconsistent with the tenets of the postmodern. That is, postmodernism's ultimate goal (as with all art movements before it) is to advance itself, to further elaborate upon our changing contemporary condition. Yet, in mimicking modernism with a kind of nuanced imitation in mind, it is successful - in its time – but it is painfully short-lived. Contemporary consumer culture is rehashing itself at alarmingly greater chronological rate. In order to “sell” such a backtracking to the consumer, a heavy dose of irony must be ingested with our daily intake of culture. As the speed of salvage is ever increased, contemporary art must reflect these changes. The simple mimetics of Endgame are no longer enough; art can no longer respond with such axiomatic reflectivity. A far more pluralistic, all-encompassing approach must be taken to the artistic field of battle, as Martha Schwendener intimates: “Those battles are distilled into a different kind of mandate: It's more than just OK to conflate Ab-Ex and Pop, Burchfield and Mitchell, or Johns and Bridget Riley - it's expected. Painting now can function... at the center of the market or within the endgame of postmodernism (or post-postmodernism). Its status, like everything else in the art world, could change at any minute.” (2).

List of Works Cited:

Crow, Thomas. “The Return of Hank Herron.” Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture. Ed. David Joselin and Elisabeth Sussman. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986. 11-27. Print

Foster, Hal. “The Future of an Illusion.” Joselin/Sussman 91-105.

Nash, Matthew. “The Endgame of Postmodernism.” BigRedandShiny.com. Big RED & Shiny, Inc. 13 January 2009. Web. 25 April 2010.

Schwenender, Martha. “Eva Lundsager, R.H. Quaytman, and Mary Heilman Brush Up on Their Painting.” VillageVoice.com. The Village Voice. 20 January 2009. Web. 29 April 2010

Sussman, Elisabeth. “The Last Picture Show.” Joselin/Sussman 51-69.

2010 NYC Spring Art Walk

2010-04-12T06:59:00.000-07:00

(Above: [top] Bronzino Head Study, circa 1542, conte on paper.[bottom] Tauba Auerbach's "Untitled Fold Painting" 80"x60")

Friday morning, I ventured in from Pleasantville (Westchester area, where my wife's sister lives - I left my car at their place) on the Metro North. After dropping my gear at the pied-à-terre (which belongs to another of my wife's relatives), I hit Chelsea and 25th street at 11 AM. I hit Stux, Winston Wächter, Doosan, PaceWildenstein, Marlborough, Agora, Axelle and yes, Henoch. There was a great variety to behold, varying from the very traditional representational painting to digital lenticulars, video, sculpture, installation - the whole kit and caboodle. I'm pleased to say that I feel I've now somewhat of an ability to discern what works and does not work in most of these genres, be they representational or totally non-objective.

A pleasant surprise in the Chelsea visit was finding the Joseph Beuys exhibit, "Make the Secrets Productive," at PaceWildenstein. Talk about a total immersion in Beuys' work! There were video stations, installations and documentary photographs by Ute Klophaus of the "Aktionen" works. It goes without saying that my awareness of Fluxus art and Beuys had been summarily ignored by me (along with the rest of art after Modernism) until my introductions via Critical Theory 1. He is fascinating, I have to say. I had no idea about his work in Ireland. His efforts to draw greater attention to the Troubles, his delving into Celtic cultures and mythologies, and his efforts to establish a Free International University for Disciplinary Research in Dublin struck me as quite philanthropic (even though it was considered self-serving to some). I've written many papers on Irish History, having taken a course in the subject during my BFA, and it certainly drew me closer to my ancestry, so I suppose I have a soft spot for such things. I do also know how hard Beuys' work was taken to task at one point, with our old pal Buchloh in the vanguard. It's good to know that the vitriol has dissolved somewhat in the light of current revisionist critique.

An unpleasant surprise was the incredibly bad painting at Agora Gallery. Coincidentally, it was a sampler of contemporary German art, most of which was painting. About 75% of it could have been considered representational, but almost all of that bit was damn awful. There were a handful of abstracted works, and I enjoyed them much more (but not that much). Perhaps I was missing something? Were these paintings purposely done in a postmodern deskilled mode? With some, I suppose the naive, folky quality might suggest that notion, but the rest. oh lordy, did they suck. Peter Martin's giant acrylic succubi could have been painted by one of my second-year illustration students, and if it had been, I would have given him shit for such half-assed technique and Hot Topic-oriented subject matter. I should have been tipped off by the prices - they weren't NYC-level. The most expensive stuff topped out at 8K, and it ranged all the way down to 300 bucks for a 12 x 16 piece.

So I went up towards the Whitney after some of NYC's finest cuisine in the form of a couple of slices from Aviano's on 9th. I got on the C, and instead of transferring to the E to get across town at 50th, I stayed on 'til 72nd and the Park on the West Side. It was such a beautiful day that I felt compelled to walk through the park. I've missed doing that, so it was a lovely interlude.

The Whitney Biennial was - as I've been told, the usual case - uneven. There definitely were some very good pieces, some of which may have been better served in a different setting, but solid nonetheless. Nothing struck me as "bad" or even derivative - but I was indifferent to not a few things.

Two high points:
1 - Tauba Auerbach's "fake" trompe l'oeil paintings were just great: they sure fooled my eyes. They are huge canvases with big folds in them, and they look, from a normal viewing distance, like Claudio Bravo's straight-on trompe loeils of packages and cloth. At first, I wondered why someone similar to Bravo was in the Biennial; that sort of work doesn't reflect the current tack of the contemporary. Then, I got close to the work. The artist actually folds the canvas into a particular pattern, unfolds it, then spray-paints it with an automotive painting wand parallel to the surface so that one side of the folds pick up the most paint, creating a faux drop shadow. If you look at the topography of the piece from the side, you see the structures of the folds. It's simple and smartly executed.
2 - I timed my visit so I wouldn't miss a performance piece, "Strange Attractors," by Aki Sasamoto. It was very meandering and physical (she stuffed herself into a cardboard tube at one point), but humorous and contemplative at the same time. I won't describe her actions and words verbatim, but I will say that I did understand it after I thought about it post-performance. It turns out it was a highly personal piece that ultimately showed the artist's growth and discovery of her mature, artistic self through a personal "math" of disjointed code involving donuts, hemorrhoids, psychics, dreams of strawberries, the express "A" train, and other fun things.

From there I hit the Bronzino drawings at the Met, which were fantastic. After all the contemporary stuff I'd seen, I felt I needed a bit of "comfort food," you know? After those amazing pieces of history, I wandered way into the back where the Church and Bierstadts hang, just to sit and bask for a time. From there I tried to take in the Limbourg Brothers illuminated manuscripts. but good lord, was I tired. They were just too much for me at that point. I had started at 11 AM and it was now 6:30. All I wanted to look at was a big ol' pint of some heavy cask ale. I headed back to the East Side to York and 74th where you'll find David Copperfields. The taps are clean and highly varied. Victory's "Hop Devil" was on cask, and well, I claimed a Victory for myself!

Works In Progress

2010-04-07T18:35:00.000-07:00

Big-time caveat here: SUBJECT TO CHANGE. I mean, really.

Definitely click on the triptych to see it in better detail.

I'm not going to explain any of this, suffice to say that I'm going ahead with the girl & bee & Laocoon painting (obviously, as you can see this is an underpainting). In fact, I'm not giving any titles out, either. Sorry, but allow me some public mystery, as these things have been/are being dissected by many professional eyeballs. Believe me.

Comparative: John Currin & Vincent Desiderio

2010-04-07T16:48:00.000-07:00

20^th Century critical theory has taken a stance that representational figure painting is no longer relevant to post-modernist artistic discourse. It is an arguable point, considering that one can find representational painters working and thriving in this early 21^st Century, with a select few engaging in contemporary dialogue. This very fact leads to a notion that representational painters have been operating “under the radar” since perhaps the end of Modernism. Two such artists are John Currin (b. 1962) and Vincent Desiderio (b. 1955).

The genesis of Currin's and Desiderio's professional practices may have evolved in a compellingly similar fashion (such as their early penchants to create Willem De Kooning pastiche paintings), but in their respective moments of arrival at representational figuration, the intentionality behind their works took distinctly different paths.

With a deep understanding of historical context, Desiderio concluded that, in order to reify painting – to resuscitate it back from decontextualization via the vehicle of Modernism - he had to discard the reliance upon emblemization and pave a way back to sequentiality. His use of the triptych as a mode for the sequential became a staple of his work. Using dreamlike, mysterious imagery, Desiderio plays down dramatic themes in what he terms a “cubistic thematic situation.” (Art Talks,12:05). Rather than expand the dramatic narrative for its own sake, he does so by focusing upon the development of the technical narrative, which Desiderio believes to be “the embodiment of the thought of the painter.” (Art Talks,13:10).

Currin, in his purposefully leading way, declares in Parkett: “I paint women and that's what my work's about.” (147). These declarations are overwritten by his true “vice,” and that is his love of the masterpieces of European painting. There is no doubt how much it irks Currin when he comments to William Stover, “People would not laugh at the idea of a musical or cinematic masterpiece, but for some reason it is considered retarded and anachronistic and reactionary to wish for a masterpiece in painting.” (24-25). Clearly, he finds joy in employing classical techniques when he paints, but while doing so, he strives to give contemporary qualities to his female subjects. These attributes are derived from his observation of the insidious nature of advertising and stock photography and how women are portrayed by these mainstream, inescapable images. Currin seeks to recontextualize this with Rochelle Steiner: “When it's such an ugly image, I find it's exhilarating to make it a luscious painting.” (81).

In order to make a more specific comparison, two works have been chosen for closer analysis: for John Currin, Nude on a Table (40” x 32” oil on canvas, 2001); for Vincent Desiderio, Academy (48” x 88” oil on canvas, 2001).

In reading the triptych of Academy, we find in the left panel a fallen older man. His robed body rests upon a field of open art books, his eyes half-lidded and staring. The center panel depicts a female nude – young, healthy and clearly embodying the attributes of the classic artist's model. She is presented in a typical anthropometrical pose, symmetrically balanced with hands open. Light suffuses her head and torso as it comes straight down from the ceiling as would the natural light from the skylight of an atelier. Panel three portrays the x-ray of an infant – a newborn. It is a straight rendering, unadorned save for an “R” at the lower left, indicating that the head is in right-side profile.

In stepping back and taking in the complete piece, we find little obvious connection between the images. The scale of the man, the woman and the infant are unrelated. The sense of space is negligible: the man is seen from above, cropped at the thigh, the books covering the floor; the woman floats in an amorphous umber expanse; the x-ray is just an x-ray. However, one can see the angles of the figures in the first and third panels create a classical (academic) triangular composition against the symmetrically vertical central figure; it is the pillar that holds up the others. There is no perspective in any panel – a curious thing, considering Desiderio's fascination with the topic – so this lack must have meaning. The artist, therefore, is establishing a confrontational stance. With no perspective, one engages with these images directly.

The most obvious visual reference to academic art is clear with the model in the center panel, the next being the presence of numerous art books in the first. Looking closely at the images displayed in the expanse of art books, we find right next to the fallen man's ear, Manet's The Fifer. For Desiderio, this icon is more akin to a “cipher”; it acts as his personal touchstone that links art's continuity to the past, as he tells Mia Fineman: “You see that face in Coptic portraits... in Caravaggio and Ribera... again in Picasso's self-portraits... and the self-portrait of Gorky with his mother.” (31). It is the persistence of painting historically emblemized at the onset of Modernism. An interesting detail here is the older man's torso – it seems to be wrapped in bandages, as if he has suffered a beating or has been subjected to an invasive operation. In either case, he is down without any energy left to rise. But why is the Fifer piping into the man's ear? Undoubtedly, it is the duty of a young soldier to rally the fallen so they may soldier on. This is the ongoing battle for painting; it has fallen, but it will get up. Its future, even if it becomes a strange, transparent version of its old self, will still look to its classical past, as the x-rayed infant does. The model will be there as the foundation, waiting for the benediction - which is for the painter to paint her. Fully realized in paint, rendered with skill and clarity, but with no perspective, the artist states flatly: painting will continue, no matter what. It is a declaration of faith in painting's continued relevance, despite the vagaries of history.

Although Nude on a Table is one of Currin's few supine figures, this female nude is still subject to his whimsical anatomical inventiveness. Indeed, it is a nude woman on a table, dramatically foreshortened from the feet in the foreground, to the head peering out at the viewer just over the horizon of her left shoulder. Her body describes a mild “C” curve across a rather mushy-looking, altar-like table covered with a white cloth. A stack of lemons and a candleabra sit just behind her to the left. Similar to Desiderio, the paint is handled skilfully, classically and neutrally. The anatomy, however, is tweaked well out of convention. Extremely angled passages of shoulders, the strange splaying of broad forms, and the flattening of perspective all give a disquieting feel to this oddly attractive naked woman. She is, of course, smiling at us – but with quite some difficulty, as her neck and head are at a less than optimal angle to look forward.

A straightforward eroticism is evident in an immediate way, as the warmly rendered thatch of pubic hair sits practically in the very center of the picture. Undoubtedly, Currin evokes Courbet's Origin of the World, while simultaneously indulging in his Renaissance predilections with the pose's similarity to the dead Christ figure by Andrea Mantegna. And yet, the forced smile from the über-blonde model, the unabashed display of nakedness and the dramatic effort to meet the gaze of the viewer brings one back to motifs seen primarily contemporary pornography.

Despite what may seem like his own objectification of women, the artist actually does the opposite and makes one cognizant of the failure of contemporary progressive awareness to get past this issue, inasmuch as it has endeavored to do so. Currin develops a narrative uniting objectifying tendencies of the past with those of the present, striving to get the viewer to recognize the psychological burden of women and tells Steiner: “Maybe, partly, this imagery makes physical the guilt you feel for objectifying her.” (78). The hills and valleys of the forms on the figure evoke past Realist and Neoclassical notions of woman-as-landscape; as something to be explored, or exploited. The artist flattens these very forms as a camera lens would – again, suggesting pornography - and magnifies the aforementioned perceptions. The three candles, dripping and exhausted, the breast-like lemons, the rumpled sheets all mix modern and old master erotic symbols. The flattening of such a foreshortened form jibes with Currin's overall technical narrativity also, as he states to O'Brien, “Instead of layered physical space, I kind of layered culture.” (3). It is within the conflation of the old and the new, the recall of histories and the ugliness of the now, that Currin makes his assertions about painting.

List of Works Cited:

Desiderio, Vincent. “Art Talks.” MFA Program at The Art Institute of Boston. Boston University Kenmore Classroom Building, Boston. 11 January 2010. Lecture/DVD.

O'Brien, Glenn. “John Currin.” Interview. Interview, Incorporated. 8 June 2009. Web. 28 March 2010.

Steiner, Rochelle. “Interview with John Currin.” John Currin. Ed. Deborah Aaronson. New York: Abrams, 2003. 11-22. Print

Parkett-Verlag, “Cherchez La Femme - Peintre!” Parkett no. 37, September 1993: 146-147. Print

Stover, William. John Currin Selects. Boston: MFA Publications, 2003. Print.

Fineman, Mia. “The Young Master of Media, PA.” Vincent Desiderio Paintings 1975-2005. Ed. Todd Bradway. New York: DAP, 2005. 25-32