art on my mind

BBBBrain

2011-12-07T13:57:00.003-05:00

(see here about this photograph)

I’m on the brain bandwagon, reading about consciousness and the brain, vision and the brain, the brain that changes itself. It’s a tremendous subject and I’m just at the very, very beginning.

What is consciousness, our sense of self, is something I’ve been interested in since I started studying Buddhism a bit some 10 years ago. For Buddhists, there is no self; and for many brain people, there is no self. There are experiences, we exist, but there’s no thing that you can point to and say, that is moi.

Once Robert Thurman recounted a story about a guy who attended a retreat about no self. At some point this guy didn’t know which person he was in the room. That freaks me out totally.

The more and more I read about it, we are just bits here, there. Seems like the brain makes the continuity, a narrative; it creates a self and what it goes through. I suppose we need that story in order to be able to function. I’m not sure why we need to function. Maybe there's stuff we simply have to go through; because of karma or agita, or something.

I don’t know why there has to be people who get bombed and people who don’t get bombed.

This is all interesting philosophically, but I’m wondering if it’s perhaps a way to approach art. I’m not sure how it could be. I haven’t figured that out because I’m in the middle of it. But I’ve made work that is responding to these philosophies and sciences somehow.

So far I have: legs in motion, legs in space, legs as form (that would be the three streams that make up how we see). I don’t know why legs, except they are limbs that carry us and that you sometimes feel and sometimes don’t. I spent many years not really feeling them. The problem with legs is that Guston painted legs. I’m concerned about the derivative-ness as usual. Then I have guardians/bodyguards (they would be my protectors, maybe my survival instinct). I also have some mirroring, which is how people connect. I love mirroring. I think I need more of that. We’ll see what comes out next.

Guy who had a weird dream

2011-11-14T12:46:00.002-05:00

I’ve been tapping various sources to try to learn why – aside from its formal attributes - ancient art is so enticing.

The least interesting vein of information has been my high school art history textbook. There, writers make up a narrative to fit their own idea about what art is. And it seems that for them, art is about the artist and his supreme will. For example, with regard to a figurine from 2100 BC (like this one above), it reads, “The sculptor [worked the hard stone] with consummate skill, making an opportunity out of difficulty.” But the concept of skill and of opportunity, and also of sculptor, is entirely modern. These were societies that didn’t make images consciously, as an esthetic or cultural exercise, but because they were powerful, because they served a purpose.

And I’m not really interested in what that purpose was; who the king was, what he wanted, what was happening around him. I’m not interested in specifics. I like generalities. That’s why I find Joseph Campbell’s conversations with Bill Moyers about myth more interesting. For the former, myths are the ground of humanness throughout the ages. Because, when you boil it down, when you generalize, there aren’t that many themes to develop. So, ancient art might be interesting to me in part because I see a humanness boiled down. Guy praying for direction. Guy walking with animals. Guy who had a weird dream.

Billy Childish

2011-11-06T17:42:00.003-05:00

It’s so hard to know if what you’re making is a piece of crap. Worse, if it’s bullshit. I think you know deep down when you’re fooling yourself, when it’s just pretension. I hope so. Anyhoo.

The Billy Childish opening at Lehman Maupin LES was vitalizing. He talked, read a few poems and also sang a few songs. Lots of anger in the writing, but it’s so much his own that’s it’s not a turn-off. It seems that his anger is directly linked to the high personal standards he has for himself and the world around him. It’s probably fair to say he’s an idealist. Aren’t all artists?

The paintings aren’t angry. They’re bucolic, energetic, loose. I almost liked most, but really loved this volcano here. I feel good in its palette, its image, and also its freedom.

As he related, he was able to let loose in painting once his personal life was no longer in such turmoil. I can understand that entirely. I can’t really think of an example where personal mess and artistic burgeoning co-exist, despite the myth that torment is the stuff of meaningful art. I think you are stable and free.

Blogging in tongues

2011-10-31T17:07:00.001-05:00

I’m still wondering what’s really relevant about ancient art, aside from its esthetic economy, which parallels a contemporary sense of chic spareness. I think there’s a directness in ancient art that we today read as meaning. No wobbling and ruffles. They’re SYMBOLS, we say. Symbols make us feel profound. I suppose symbols are in fact profound. But I’m not sure those symbols are apt for our times. Unless those symbols are something we need now. That’s what I wonder.

The Ancients didn’t think they were making art. Artness is a value that was imposed much later. I don’t really know what they thought, but from what I gather, visual representation was a tool for them. It showed something. It served as something. I think artists today hope their work will do the same, but it can’t really in the same way, because we have a category called art. So we can’t really go back to art as use. Although art can speak like symbols.

Directions

2011-10-25T10:59:00.006-05:00

(Still from a Ryan Trecartin video)

The Occupy Wall Street protesters are teaching me a lot about horizontal. There have been accusations, critics, worries that the movement has no leaders, no demands. But what I’m seeing is that it is precisely this widening of the field that is allowing for the movement to embrace other groups and complaints and to grow. This horizontal can also be called non-hierarchical. I’ve heard Ryan Trecartin’s videos being described as non-hierarchical. I suppose they could also be called horizontal.

But frankly I’m more attracted to vertical for it’s concentrated energy and strength. In terms of social movements, there is of course the word “uprising.” That surge is vertical. In terms of art, I see columns, standing figures, even seated figures, back straight.

The problem with vertical is that it is narrowing. It’s a funnel, and in terms of art, I personally need to let it spill out so as not to be constrained. But really, I guess you need both directions. The base of the horizontal, the thrust of the vertical.

Going beyond

2011-10-20T15:38:00.003-05:00

What I’m trying to figure out is why mankind’s first images have such a contemporary feel. Is that work relevant to – even significant to - our times other than formally, esthetically?

Formally, esthetically speaking, the work lives on today because it lives: high-contrast patterns are energetic and bold lines are vectors. Furthermore, when images are schematic, they go beyond a specific time. Why is there no respect for the schematic? Is it because it’s not observed, because it’s not what we see with our eyes? Some schematic images can look like generalizations, but others are metaphors, they point to something bigger.

Schema: A pattern imposed on complex reality or experience to assist in explaining it, mediate perception, or guide response.

But why is it relevant to our times? I’m not really sure.

This art is pre-self. There is no turning inward, no me-reflection, no depiction of subtle emotion (brains then just didn’t do that yet). The images these cultures made served as consciousness. They were used as consciousness. Art today can expand our consciousness. So the connection must have to do with consciousness. With letting go of the self. With making a leap outside of ourselves and into understanding.

Hallucinating

2011-10-17T11:49:00.003-05:00

(Georges Braque, Lying Nude (The Bather IX), 1932)

I’ve been thinking about hallucinations. Generally we associate the word with acid and mushrooms. That doesn’t interest me so much mainly because I’ve never tripped and I never want to. I don’t need it, I’m scared enough as it is. I suppose it has be powerful. New York Times art critic Ken Johnson just published a whole book on the influence tripping has had on modern art.

Georges Braque also used the word “hallucination” to describe the process of artmaking. Miro did too. In a statement in Minotaure, December 1933, the latter said:

It is difficult for me to talk about my painting, since it is always born in a state of hallucination, brought on by some jolt or other – whether objective or subjective – which I am not the least responsible for.

From what I gather, these artists were both using the word to describe what we might now call a process of “making the unconscious conscious.” I doubt many would use the word “hallucination” anymore in this way in our times, because we’ve become so familiar with psychoanalysis, dream interpretation and representation, etc. It doesn’t really qualify as halluncination, in my mind, because it’s familiar (now). We can explain it, whether it’s accurate or not. I think a hallucination must be something that feels outside the self.

Direction

2011-10-13T20:45:00.002-05:00

(Thomas Hirschhorn, Tool Family, 2007)

I don’t see my drawings before I make them. I don’t have a vision or a continuous voice that dictates what’s next. I just do and work with what comes out. If I have a preliminary idea, it never works. So what is it that moves the work? Because they are moving as a body, the drawings keep coming out, and they change. I must therefore have some kind of inner direction. I just don’t know what that direction is.

I suppose I have a position: that art is best when it’s personal. It doesn’t have to be about you – and please, spare me - but I like it when it’s your verve, stripped of pretension. For example, I like Thomas Hirschhorn, despite what I used to think. His work isn’t about him, but it is deeply personal. And it is deeply visual. Yes, I also think art at its best is visual, that it’s its own language, not dependent on explanation.

One definition of consciousness is that it is generated by language. Language describes and then we have what it describes as part of our awareness, as part of how we conceive of the world. There was a time in history when language wasn't as developed, when a mind couldn’t reflect on itself, couldn’t describe itself, guide itself. This mind, a pre-conscious, two-part mind called the bicameral mind (Julian Jaynes), hallucinated voices and figures as guides. Sculptures and effigies were made not as a reflection of these voices but in order to aid these voices.

This is all related, I just don’t know how.

I slide

2011-10-09T21:38:00.004-05:00

(Carsten Holler's drawing for a slide to be installed at the New Museum)

The thinking says if I don’t write I do not exist; if I do, I have a chance at being a great artist.

I’m conflicted by the global grief expressed about Steve Job’s passing. Is it that we love our iphones like a family member, therefore we love Steve Jobs; or is it that we love a spirit of thinking outside the box. Maybe both and neither. But in my mind it’s what we do with technology that matters. The rest is an impulse buy. A great pair of shoes. In fact, this morning I had a dream about shopping for shoes and it felt wonderful. Feeling wonderful isn’t to be poo-pood.

In terms of art, new technologies can be exciting, but the excitement can overshadow the art of it – or the non-art of it. What I’m saying is, a video is a crappy video if it’s only a demonstration of special effects. Yet one more reason why drawing is so appealing to me. Because all the frill is gone. It’s wonderful to build a gazillion dollar slide in a museum, but it’s momentary entertainment. If you strip it away, it’s a spiral and it’s movement. Just like the iphone is communication. But what will you communicate.

La Pointe Courte

2011-09-10T09:37:00.001-05:00

Agnes Varda’s first film “La Pointe Courte” from 1955 combines staged narrative with reportage. As such, she has been named the grandmother of the French New Wave. The film itself follows the existential discussions of a couple as they stroll through a poor fishing community – the husband’s native village - in the south of France. Or maybe we’re following the town and their residents, which include this couple. Both elements have equal weight. The film can be somewhat tedious – especially the staged narrative – but it sticks with you nonetheless. I can’t stop thinking about it.

Varda was a photographer before she turned to film, so many shots look like well-composed stills with movement. It’s precisely this movement - not precious – that makes what you’re watching so alive. And cats. So many cats doing their thing, making life bearable. See the one in the background here?

Happy art labor day

2011-09-05T19:11:00.006-05:00

(Peter Bruegel, The Harvesters, 1565)

I’m translating the writings of a well-known international artist (TBA). This artist has nothing to do with Peter Bruegel.

What I’m noticing about his language is his assurance. I want X, I will do XX, it will be XXX. It is, to say the least, confident and assertive. I don’t see how any of his readers could suspect doubt. And if there is any, he’s assertive about it.

This is in fact the artist’s strategy; partly how he communicates his intention and partly how he convinces hesitant dealers. The actual and painful doubt of the creative process is kept to himself because it’s not part of the piece as he sees it. Actual doubt is personal; this art is about ideals.

When one of his pieces is ready for viewing, it has to stand on its own, and separate from the viewer. The viewer looks at something that is outside herself. It may become part of her, or resonate with her, but at first, it’s always outside. Sometimes the artist helps the viewer into the piece. I suppose writing can help do that.

Of course, this artist - and artists in general - can’t and don't have full control of what the viewer sees and what all kinds of viewers see. The piece, once outside the artist and once outside the viewer, has a life of its own.

Commercial Perks

2011-08-30T09:22:00.005-05:00

I completed one of my first commercial job last week through Artstep: a 35 foot restaurant mural made to look like old advertising on the side of a building. I was part of a two-person team who rendered the design and execution.

A few things I noticed. First, a large swath of people complimented me on what I was doing, and that’s recognition, whether it’s the kind I had in mind or not. One construction worker on the site asked me if he understood what he was looking at. He did. Seeing it on top of “getting it” seemed to be a perk to his day. To mine too.

Of course, there’s the puritanical artist's panic that doing commercial work is unpure, and that real artists should be focusing on more profound concerns in the studio. Do I want my name associated with this? Does it mean a gallery won’t take me seriously? Will this work effect my “real work”? Who the F cares. I like what we made and I actually have enough money this week to buy some sneakers.

And in any case, back in the studio last night, I noticed a playfulness, a willingness to expand my visual vocabulary. Maybe the mural made me – briefly – less sanctimonious.

Courtiers R Us

2011-08-15T18:34:00.003-05:00

(Francisco Goya, Portrait of the Marqués de Sofraga, ca. 1795)

If I want to use the word “metaphor” in a sentence, can I say “The courtier is a metaphor for our times,” or does a metaphor have to be a thing? Perhaps it would have to be the “court of France” is a metaphor for our times. Or maybe I have to use the word “figure” instead: “the courtier is a figure for our times.” In any case, it is.

Among the words associated with “courtier,” is “favorite;” people close to a ruler who are ambitious and climb the social and political ladder because of his or her connection to power.

“Courts” are worlds of hierarchy, intrigue, rules and backstabbing. Courtiers are sycophants with little regard for others. They can also be frustrated servants or middlemen. In historical painting, donned in fashionable clothing, they look as if they were caught in their times. As such and posing stiffly, they are often endearing, ever human.

Can’t we recognize ourselves playing the roles we find ourselves playing?

Creative facial hair

2011-08-10T14:08:00.004-05:00

(Master of St. Giles, active 1490-1510. French)

This is the head of Saint Giles, who took the arrow aimed at a hind. What peaks my interest is the asymmetry of his beard: it’s attached to his lip and mustache on the left of the face, but not on the right.

The rest of the painting presents realistic perspectives and details. I’d have to think the unusual facial hair is true to some fact the artist learned. But maybe not. Maybe it’s a visual reflection of the artist’s own experience of looking – a “mistake” he let slip, but that gives the work a vitality that the rest of the image doesn’t quite possess, being as it is, stiff with reality.

The stripes of the hunter's shirt lend some pizazz too, no?

The mind's eye

2011-08-08T11:32:00.005-05:00

(Mycenaen woman, 1300 BC)

I’m very much enjoying Julian Jaynes’ The Origin of Consciouness in the Breadkdown of the Bicameral Mind. It’s not at all impenetrable, despite its title and austere cover. In its pages, the author engrossingly traces the development of consciousness, defining it along the way. It is a total trip.

How about this:

… the early Greek art of the Mycenae and its period shows man as an assembly of strangely articulated limbs, the joints underdrawn, and the torso almost separated from the hips. It is graphically what we find again and again in Homer, who speaks of hands, lower arms, upper arms, feet, calves and thighs as being fleet, sinewy, in speedy motion, etc., with no mention of the body as a whole.

The idea here being that words and pictures reflect what is in a mind, a mentality. When there’s no word for body, it means we don’t have it as an image, we don’t have the mindspace for such a concept or thing.

Even though I have a whole body in my mind, for almost a year now I’ve been drawing unattached heads and detached limbs. I think it’s experiential in that I feel my own body only in parts, sometimes physically unable to feel others.

Unfreedom opens in Ulm

2011-07-21T16:35:00.002-05:00

I'm happy to announce that Unfreedom opened today in Ulm.

Here's our press release (which I wrote).

Unfreedom

Molly Stevens, Carin Riley, Jean Hannon Douglas

July 21 - September 24

Smudajescheck Galerie, Rabegasse 16, 89073, Ulm, Germany

www.smudajescheck.com

Entrenched is the habit of looking at art through dualistic categories: abstract or figurative, pencil or paint, light or dark. These can certainly be helpful as conceptual tools for approaching visual language. But they also can be arbitrary, simplistic and at times even tyrannical. As they pile up, a work’s immediate, nameless punch is crushed. The art is unfree. Free your mind and the art will follow.

Now consider these words uttered in a 1974 lecture by artist Philip Guston:

When you begin painting you’re too free. That’s why it’s always so painful to start a new picture, or to start the process again, because you have to go through the whole thing again and again. To get rid of the freedom, you might say. I think what is happening is that you’re getting to a state of unfreedom. […] And paradoxically, when you can only do this and not that […] you’re more free in some mysterious, metaphysical way.

Unfree your mind and the art will follow.

Unfreedom is an exhibit about this contradiction inherent in art-viewing and art-making. And also about the vibrancy of contradiction itself.

Carin Riley’s dry pastel and paint drawings communicate like a visual koan, a paradox admitting no logical solution, but demanding intuitive understanding. In the narrative here involving a bird, a dress and a tree, her lines are lithe but solid, fluid but unwavering. The work obeys the dictates of form and movement, which are in a delicate balance.

In Jean Hannon Douglas’s plants, the leaves are uncertain, erratic, quirky, and as such, represent the impermanent individuality of the repeated subject. At the same time, what you’re looking at is elemental brush and ink, its strokes, bleeds and varying densities of black. We are in between representation and material properties, illusion and marks on a page.

Molly Stevens’s heads in oil stick are meaty, simplified forms rendered with vigor. Although bound to the Ancients and even pre-history, they are decisively contemporary. Their saturated color and sturdy linework are bold yet unexpected, simultaneously familiar and out of whack.

These three Americans have come together not in the name of freedom but to defend unfreedom, a deferment to conflict.

Home Sweet Home

2011-07-20T21:28:00.003-05:00

(James Castle, Untitled (blue house) 20th c.)

I’m just back home after 10 days of subletting. My apartment feels foreign. A friend suggested I pee in the corner to reclaim my territory.

I’ve spent the past hour positing things around the house in a faux-haphazard way in an effort to re-create my home. It’s fiction, really. Maybe home is a place we make up.

Businesses do it all the time: they create an environment to remind you of somewhere that has made you feel comfortable. Or maybe it’s an environment you fantasize about. Really, it’s all Epcott center mini-worlds.

And I’m thinking art does the same. It’s a place we make or see that feels right, but it’s all made up. Narratives and portraits, but also abstract images. Whatever our intention, it’s an order, a metaphor, a gesture we approve of, whether bleak or dreamy. Either way, it’s entirely personal, and comes off, from an objective standpoint, as arbitrary.

Spirit

2011-07-18T10:25:00.006-05:00

(Matt Jones, 2011)

Ok, fine. Maybe I’ll start blogging again.

I’ve joined the IDP Art Group, which meets every other week. We meditate a bit then talk about art (that I know about) in a way that makes sense to me.

I’m noticing two divides, neither unconquerable, neither surprising, but then yes, surprising, because they are so obvious. One is age, the other is gender. Today just a bit about the former.

I’m somewhere in the middle in terms of age (I’m 39), but I’m clearly not among the youngest. (One girl said to me (in a discussion about Cory Archangel), “For MY generation, Mario Brothers was part of how we grew up. She apparently thinks of me as her mom). The youngest seem to want art to push the envelope and break away from art history. Sure, I can see the appeal, although I don’t think newness is really that new, or that interesting as a focus. What I want to feel is a spirit in what I see. It’s hard to describe what I mean by that word, often an eye-roller. One member (on the older side of our spectrum) explained feeling wowed by the release of a Christopher Wool spray painted arch. I get it. Release is a good word to qualify spirit. In my mind, medium, technology, even subject, are vehicles.

One dude, younger, but not the youngest, has made drawings of his iPhone weather page. He finds pleasure in waking up to sixty-nine (degrees). Sure. I do like this drawing, but I find more long-lasting pleasure in the marker marks, the color, the touch, which are the difference between a drawing and the impersonality of the weather screen. So in this case, the spirit, is the person’s twist.

Light but Heavy

2011-06-29T11:22:00.002-05:00

(Wendy White, Easy Rant, 2009)

Casual, ambivalent, unfinished are words that have been tossed around to describe current painting practices and artmaking: everything from Richard Tuttle, to slapdash abstract painting good and bad, to the Unmonumental show at the New Museum a few years back, to thin paint and “bad painting.” This article calls it “provisional.”

I think the gist is accurate: I do see a lot of under-wrought work around. I’m attracted to it because it doesn’t necessarily follow the rules and also you can see a human spirit at play. I look for vitality and rawness in art and I usually find it in the handmade.

But I’m not such a fan of many of these words, because I take myself seriously as an artist, and words like “casual” don’t sound very substantial. And yet, many writers have suggested that you can be serious and casual at the same time. Maybe. Personally, I’m never casual, even though I’d like to be. The drive behind my own immediate, quick spurts tends to be restlessness, often anxiety.

These words have been pitched as the opposite of program and agenda. And a dichotomy has also been established between everyday and ideal, ideal being a thing of the past, apparently.

I have ideals and I think art can be powerful. I also can feel disillusioned, helpless and that there’s nothing we can do about the way the world or the artworld or art is going. I can be in between an optimist and a cynic, but I’m not indifferent.

All this said, do words help you see?

On Oehlen

2011-06-22T11:02:00.003-05:00

(Albert Oehlen, FM 17, 2008)

In Jordan Kantor’s article about Albert Oehlen’s “Finger Paintings” (summer Artforum) he uses the word “campaign” to describe bouts or surges of a certain something happening in a painting. For example:

Following [Oehlen’s] previous body of work – in which collaged, printed elements jostled with campaigns of virtuoso brushwork in visual mash-ups – this series constitutes a new chapter in Oeheln’s sustained investigation into gesture and how it might signify in the context of contemporary painting.

I like the idea that an artist attacks a painting, that there is waging. I can relate to the approach. You look at the paper and then you go, you go for it, and you don’t really know what’s going to happen.

Investigation is also a key word, as it implies a searching, an inquisitiveness. Kantor argues that Oehlen leaves questions open, that he doesn’t argue a specific point. “Points” and “Positions” and “Intentions” are very important in art school and also for curatorial packaging and gallery marketing. But they bring art to a semantic level, and lessen the primacy of the visual and the visual experience.

So here I am talking about words used to describe an artist whose work isn’t best understood by thoughts and concepts, but through visual marks and scrawls and their possible significance – if any.

Kantor says:

So while they still operate within the aesthetic sphere of painting, these fingered marks speak to some primary moment of abstraction, when the first artists had an idea that mark-making on a flat picture plane might stand in equivalence to other lived experiences.

What makes Oehlen contemporary, is the way he doesn’t assert meaning like many AbEx Iers might have. Marks are no longer considered transcendental – although they might be – but are acknowledged as personal and contingent and also minor.

In short, conflicting impulses and contradiction make for challenging artwork that opens new doors.

Take Two

2011-06-15T15:41:00.005-05:00

(Heidi Pollard, Heart, 2011, oil on canvas, 51" x 40")

On Monday I was a very good student, a very good girl, and wrote a mostly serious summary of Amy Sillman’s article in the summer issue of Artforum. It took forever. But in actuality it’s not very accurate: the spirit is missing.

Today, I’m just going to toss out a list of words that can release AbExII (and I). These words are all from Sillman’s article and could become rhetoric, but let’s hope not.

Uncertainty
Praxis of doubt
Sloppy
Do-it-yourselfers
Refuseniks
Awkwardness
Handmade
Throw shit down
Mess shit up
Dialectical interrogations
If you want the body to lead the mind
Fat paintbrushes
Buckets
Phenomenology
Spills
Reclamation
Reversal of fortune
Springboard
Undone
Reinvigorated
Vulgar
Queered
Recomplicating
Embodies
Double-edged challenge
Gestural
Carnal
Improvisational
Orchid-lavender paint
Discarded materialist excess
Fertile
Sensuous
Repellent aggression
Promiscuous
Unessentialized
Inquisitiveness
Risk of actual delight
Redoing
Formalist rap
Malleability
Funny
Like a big old straight guy who had gone gay

AbEx and Disco Balls

2011-06-13T22:21:00.002-05:00

(Amy Sillman, Nose, 2010)

The summer issue of Artforum has accessible articles about the legacy of Abstract Expressionism. There are a lot of ideas in there that feel relevant to and for me, so I want to (attempt to) recap some here, probably over the next few posts.

Artist Amy Sillman writes funny. In her “AbEx and Disco Balls: In Defense of Abstract Expressionism II,” she notes that the original “school” has been an object of genuine loathing starting with Warhol (and even some AbExers), seen as overly expressive, outmoded or bourgeois. The original period has been boiled down to clichés and specifically gender clichés. For men, the practice is macho (the spurt of the paint), for women, it’s intuitive stroke making. This is obviously simplistic. The actual movement is filled with vagaries and conflicts that go beyond the mythic identity and rhetoric.

But being pushed aside has meant it has become open territory for artists on the margins. Sillman makes many references to Susan Sontag “Notes on Camp.” These are mostly over my head.

AbEx has become appealing to contemporary artists as “an active embrace of the aesthetics of awkwardness, struggle, nonsense, contingency.” You’ll hear talk about “de-skilled” art, but contemporary AbEx artists aren’t focusing on disregarding technique. Rather we’re interested in the terrain of the gestural, messy and physical. And these gestures, this mess, this tactile-ness are also a “technique of the body.” And the body is political: the woman’s body, the transgendered body. AbEx has in this way been reclaimed, and is a way to be promiscuous or anything an artist so chooses. Form and content become one.

The political body talk reminded me a bit of college, but Silman’s essay is quite a bit more nuanced, because (she argues) the body in the AbEx legacy is a body in conversation. It’s not so black and white.

A talk about Enso with Matt Jones

2011-06-10T12:58:00.002-05:00

Matt Jones is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His most recent show at Freight + Volume was entitled Multiverse.

This interview was conducted for the Artstep Facebook page, where I'm spending few weeks looking at line in art.

Molly Stevens: Can you describe what it's like to watch an Enso being made?

Matt Jones: The only Ensos I've ever seen made have been by the artist I work for, Max Gimblett. Here’s how it usually goes with him: a piece of his favorite paper (Thai Garden Smooth) is set on a drawing board, usually a piece of cardboard. He then either places his hand on the paper - I usually think this is him absorbing its power or making friends with it - or he doesn't. He stands up very straight, breathes in very deeply, and exhales audibly. He always dips his brush (usually a large Japanese or Chinese brush) in and out of a quart container filled with sumi ink; up and down, letting the brush absorb the ink, so maybe the brush is as fluid as the ink. One more quick but deep breath in and then (most of the time) a loud guttural shout as he puts brush to paper. The result is an Enso.

MS: Wow, it’s really a ritual or practice. In the art world, we'd call it a performance. And is the result a circle or a line?

MJ: The result is a circle, though one could obviously argue that a circle is a line that connects to itself. And yes, it's very performative.

MS: And does the result matter?

MJ: For Max, yes. Sometimes there are good ones and sometimes bad ones. Bad ones get ripped up. It’s based on his rules and taste about what a good Enso is versus a bad one.

MS: Do these Ensos serve anyone else? Do they have value for the viewer?

MJ: Yes, I think, in two very specific ways. First: anyone can make an Enso. There is no mystery about it technically; it's a circle on paper. Max talks about this in regards to his workshops. He often says "every participant leaves with one or two masterpieces they've made and it really makes them feel great." That's so important.

MS: I dig that. It really un-geniuses the masterwork.

MJ: And second: Ensos signify many things. The cyclical nature of life. A single moment in time. The relationship between that Enso's moment in time and the next Enso's moment in time. All mind, no mind. Beauty. Clarity. Removal of suffering (confusion), etc. The viewer can do a lot of work with these ideas. The Enso is a marker and catalyst for the viewer to access these things.

MS: Do you think you can see those concepts visually in the line, in the Enso.

MJ: Are you asking if there's an "essence" to an Enso that allows access to that information regardless of context?

MS: Yes.

MJ: No, there’s nothing in an Enso that tells you any of the things I mentioned before outside of the context. There’s no "essence" of an Enso as there is no "essence" of any thing. Context is king when it comes to relaying information and its usefulness.

MS: In twitter form, what is "all mind, no mind.”

MJ: Max would say, I think, that one approaches the paper with every experience of one's life (maybe even all lives of that person and/or all lives of all sentient beings ever, the creative unconscious) and when the action of "painting" is made, it's all emptied out, all of it, and that moment is recorded on the paper. No concepts, only the mark. I think that's what the noise is. The shout. Breathing in everything, breathing out emptiness. Pretty literal metaphors.

MS: I pulled this quote from one of Chogyam Trungpa's essays: “Obviously, the sense of being can’t be one solid thing. It moves constantly. It projects out and in, and is very fickle. Nevertheless, there should be some attempt to relate to the overall situation, to a sense of the whole.”

MJ: A good quotation! But what’s the "overall situation"? What’s the "whole"? The work of art itself? The materials it’s made of? The studio it's produced in, the gallery or museum it's shown in? The city the studio, museum, or gallery it’s in? The state? The country? The continent? The planet? The solar system?

MS: Well, all the artist has is the moment of making. A moment of being on paper.

MJ: And then what if you have 100s of Ensos, as Max does.

MS: Then I think you have 100s of moments of being. And all of them are the big picture.

MJ: And what do you do with those? What is the "whole" there? I think they all add up to objects about a certain attitude relating to a specific moment in time. And one can look back at the 100s of them and see a life. It’s literally Max's life in Enso form.

Picky

2011-06-06T12:35:00.003-05:00

(Picasso's Guernica)

In Dore Ashton’s A Critical Study of Philip Guston, she sets up two opposite directions for art: the lyrical and the grotesque. The former, consisting primarily of abstract forms, allows the artist to step away – and sometimes step above – the horror of the world. The latter takes the horror on.

I’m not such a fan of the word “grotesque,” because it implies all ugly with no hope of redemption. George Condo, for example, is grotesque. But Ashton seems to use the word “caricature” interchangeably with the word grotesque, and that makes me understand her term a bit better. Picasso’s Guernica is cited as an example of the grotesque.

She says some artist lines tend towards caricature. (I think mine do.) Nowadays that kind of line is often called cartoony, but I think caricature is a fuller word meaning both essence and distortion at the same time. The opposite of caricature might be “visually realistic.”

With postmodernism in the 80s and 90s, terms aren’t so established anymore and therefore the lyrical-grotesque division isn’t so neat. You can really be in between terms, or be both, or mean different things by either. Over at Two Coats of Paint, Sharon Butler proposes that concepts like “incompleteness” or even “failure” are more accurate ways to talk about what drives contemporary abstract painting forward to completion.

I think the more words the merrier. Just pick on purpose.

A bit on dopamine

2011-06-01T11:55:00.003-05:00

In a my-kind-of-talk interview on Monday, Dr. Gabor Maté talked to Amy Goodman about stress diseases and how they stem from broken parent-child relationships, not from genetic abnormalities.

Humans are driven to be close to one another. In terms of the brain, when intimacy is shunned, dopamine levels go down. Dopamine is an essential life chemical that provides the brain with incentive and motivation. So, no love, no dopamine. No dopamine, no function.

If a child is showing signs of agitation or loss of concentration, doctors now dope up the kid on stimulant medications. The idea is that if dopamine levels are elevated, focus and attention are intensified. Yet, while these drugs can certainly be helpful, this knee-jerk prescription solution ignores the environmental causes of these symptoms, namely lack of connection and nurturing in the nuclear family or community.

As I understand it, dopamine is also associated with reward-linked behaviors like addiction. Do something, release dopamine, feel better. Do, get, do, get. Apparently the ding of an incoming Facebook alert or email releases dopamine. Hence social media as a stand-in for substantial emotional connection does the trick, scratches the itch. No needles.

It also seems that because dopamine increases goal-centered behavior and decreases inhibition, it releases the urge to be creative. Do we create as a means to be rewarded, or do we create because we have healthy connections?

Thumbs up for thumbs down

2011-05-30T13:03:00.004-05:00

Let it be known how much I want to stop writing posts for this blog. I'd rather escape into snippets of passing thoughts – the kind you get on Facebook – because it makes life seem easier. I’d surely enjoy cocaine. Instead I get high on social media.

But the crash is inevitable. Because I don’t get any real sustenance from “likes.” I can’t say I get it from this blog either, but at least it forces me to think about things just a wee bit more. And while the process is mostly hell these days, I like the feeling of having gotten somewhere else afterward.

But why do it when what it really means is confronting feelings of anger, disgust and loneliness? I can’t be sure, but this op-ed piece Jonathan Franzen wrote in the Times hints at an answer:

To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that’s indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self […] If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you’ve despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they’ve fallen for your shtick. You may find yourself becoming depressed, or alcoholic, or, if you’re Donald Trump, running for president (and then quitting).

In sum, through commitment, you get to love and despair, which makes you who you really are, which is alive. Like or dislike?

Sans Claustrophobia

2011-05-23T12:29:00.004-05:00

I think it’s worth the sixteen bucks to see the new Herzog movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, in 3D. Even if you don’t have enough money to pay your apartment electric bill. Really.

What’s great about Herzog is that he gets away with being über earnest, without sounding stupid in the least. He can say things like, “let us now listen to the heartbeat of the cave,” and all you can do is answer a chipper “ok!” I think it’s because his primary and keen interest is fully seeing his subjects. He defers to them. Righteousness comes along when an artist’s interest is paired with a desire to teach it, or make a point about it. That makes viewers feel like they’re in school.

Part of what makes art generous (if it is) is the space it leaves its viewers. The space to draw different conclusions, to make one’s own connections, to move about freely through the artist’s proposition.

Art is generous when it feels like a break from your electric bill.

Give it up

2011-05-18T11:06:00.003-05:00

(Francis Alÿs, still from Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing), 1997)

Nothing but pans in the press for the Francis Alÿs retrospective at MoMa. The drumbeat is satisfying, because, as the basis for good art, ideas are losing support. Especially when these ideas are samey and pat. It seems prominent New York critics want something to look at, not think about. Me too.

I’ve always felt strongly that artists should be responsible, even when provocative. If an artist is going to put something out into the public realm, she should know the concepts behind it. That being said, more and more what I want from art viewing is pleasure – not entertainment, but pleasure. And for me pleasure in art usually means seeing. Seeing makes me feel good. Even seeing difficult things can feel good.

This brings me to the idea of generosity. What is art giving us? In Christian Viveros-Fauné’s review of the Alÿs show, he uses the word generosity twice. First as way to distinguish between conceptual art actions (masturbating in a gallery vs. founding a political party); second, to describe what and how much is given to the viewer.

This doesn’t mean we artists have to reveal everything. But artists, let’s not show how smart we are, let’s be generous.

Numbers

2011-05-16T11:03:00.002-05:00

On the Artstep Facebook page I’ll be posting drawings – contemporary and historical – for the next bit of time. They’ll come with a one-sentence comment, the norm for that writing medium. Here at blogger, a writer is allowed several sentences, but I’d say no more than a few paragraphs.

Artstep now has 38 “Likes,” which is a start. Lady Gaga has more than 34 million. Something like Allegra LaViola Gallery has 660. I’d like Artstep to get a few hundred, because it’s all about quantity. So just click “Like,” would you?

This is how businesses and careers and personalities are being built these days: by providing a steady flow of new information, no matter its quality. I’m sure this is old news by now, but I’m living it. Yeah, it’s gross. Either I do it or I don’t. For now, I do.

With artmaking, often the same is true. You gotta keep pumping it out. “They” want to know what you’re making, now, now, now.

Some studio visit do's and don'ts

2011-05-11T11:15:00.003-05:00

(Francis Bacon's studio)

Yesterday I visited a studio (not Francis Bacon's). Speaking from the other side, here are some tips for artists.

1. Shut up already. Artists spend loads of time with their work, but visitors need time to soak it up. Give some silence.
2. Don’t defer. If the visitor asks, “Which drawing do you prefer,” don’t say, “well, you would know better.” Really?
3. Don’t make statements about your guest like, “Oh, you’re just so busy,” as the guise for saying “God, I feel so bad that I made you schlep over here.”
4. Say what you see. It’s helpful to hear, “I like the way these blacks got so dark. That’s why I like this paper because it allows for it.”
5. Don’t show everything and the kitchen sink.

And here are some tips for visitors:

1. Say something already! Just say what you see. It’s the artist’s job not to make you feel stupid.
2. Don’t act smart.

Taking Sides

2011-05-09T17:00:00.003-05:00

(Christopher Wool, 2005)

Whether it’s fear or reality, I’m concerned that working as an art consultant will negatively impact my drawing and efforts to exhibit as an artist.

People who like artists are artists, one-time artists or wanna-be-artists. The rest think we’re a bit volatile or that we want something from them. Maybe we’re going to invite them to our studio (where they’ll be forced to say something about stuff they don’t like or understand) or ask them to buy or show what we make. Then what? So even though an “artist’s eye” is a selling point, better not tell clients I’m an artist too. But if I don’t mention it, does it mean I still am?

Let’s say it does. If I am in fact an artist, why am I consulting? Why am I trying to move other people’s art? Shouldn’t I be in the studio working or planning my own exhibition? I’d be more devoted if I were starving. On the other hand, this may be my only shot to get my work in the mix.

I can do both I think. I always have. But my brain can’t hold too many ideas about a person – or myself - at once. Even though that’s precisely why I like Kippenberger. He’s so diverse: sculpture, paintings, books, kinetic contraptions, lithographs, posters, all on vast subjects made through diverse approaches. Yet it all comes from a same, palpable personality.

The merging of art and dining

2011-05-04T10:40:00.003-05:00

(Installation of Ross Bleckner heads at Caravaggio)

What do you think about art in restaurants? I’ve always felt that such a context lessens the value of the work. What’s on the wall immediately becomes décor. Art is in museums, the purist in me thinks.

If I just open my brain a bit, though, I find exceptions. I recently went to the not-so-shoddy Caravaggio on 74th Street, where a Ross Bleckner wall of heads fills the back wall. I thought it looked great. And the Frank Stella print opposite it stands its own ground too.

There’s lots of “real” art hanging salon style at 10 Downing. In fact the selection was curated by gallerist Tracy Williams, as the menu indicates. And in the Gramercy Park Hotel designed by Julian Schnabel, the bar was outfitted with a George Condo when I went (I will never go back. I cannot begin to express my distaste for Schnabel. And maybe Condo too.)

These examples are cliché: the usual art celebs, the usual high-end businesses and the usual clientele. But we can do it at our level too. I’m convinced of it.

Drawing is not reality

2011-05-02T11:14:00.002-05:00

(Luc Tuymans, The Secretary of State, 2005)

The shift in the studio last week was that I was drawing from photographs. And you can tell I was. Photographs freeze a gaze and solidify shadows and gestures in a very stiff way (even if a person looks loose, it’s a solidified looseness). If your drawing recreates that, your drawing looks frozen and solidified, even if it’s loose.

We tend to think of photographs as reality, but they’re just realistic. So, when someone draws from a photograph, the result isn’t reality either; the result is a drawing that looks like a photograph, which stops reality in a particular way.

I don’t mean to sound like an Eastern philosopher.

Drawing from a photograph can be satisfying because, if you pull it off, you’re making something that you recognize and that others recognize. In short, it’s impressive. You’re a virtuoso. But, generally speaking, I prefer drawing in which the foremost properties of drawing surface: immediate gesture, touch, palpable essence. If I’m going to use a photograph, I have to eventually leave it.

As neat as the pantry

2011-04-27T16:24:00.004-05:00

(Nicole Eisenman, Death and Maiden, 2009, oil on canvas, 14.25 x 18 in.)

What about the free American woman? In movieland, what are our prospects?

After the age of 40 you can be Maude as in Harold and, with a wonderfully uplifting spirit, but you’ll commit suicide so as not to face old age – and also, you’ve just had enough. Or you can grab your friends Thelma and Louise and drive off a cliff. If you’re upper middle, it’s probably better to be a ball-busting shark or plain old good mom.

And what about the free American woman as artist?

If you want to compete with the guys, you’ll have to be as butch as possible – at the very least, an outspoken feminist. Otherwise, you’ll have to be quirky, lyrical or psychological and preferably the wife of another artist. The monumental is off-limits. But don’t worry: once you die, you can be marketed for the ages.

I'll stop being flip.

Art by women is different than art by men. I don’t see that as the problem. Let’s just broaden the categories and expand the notions of destiny.

Jeune et Belle

2011-04-25T15:40:00.008-05:00

(Natalie Baye in "A French Gigolo")

I have a soft spot for mainstream French movies, the kind that aren’t really trying to be film, but that just tell a story and let you spend ninety minutes in the French mindset and in Paris if you’re lucky. It’s as refreshing as some time away, and you don’t have to take a plane.

This past weekend's selections from Netflix instant watch were about love, the true kind versus the kind that you pay for, for convenience sake. These were upper middle class scenarios, so no down and dirty prostitution and tales of societal misery. Just good clothes and the struggle between personal freedom and intimacy.

In “I do: How to Get Married and Stay Single,” a perfume nose hires Charlotte Ginsburg to be the perfect fiancée so his family will leave him alone. “Priceless” is the tale of two young beauts – a man and a woman - who hunt down older partners in order to mooch off of their well-heeled life along the Riviera. The best though, was “A French Gigolo,” which endearingly tells the story of being the older woman asking for such services (yes, let's acknowledge that that perspective would likely not be considered on this side of the "pond").

France is a country that prides itself on its sensuality, on breeding the femme fatale, on coining the term “ménage à trois,” and accepting the open marriage (how many times have you been reminded that both Mitterand’s wife and mistress were at his funeral). But all that is facade. The French are the most tradition-minded, family-oriented people I know. And every single one of these movies reaffirms it. In the chilling voiceover that ends “A French Gigolo,” the woman “of a certain age” declares, “I am a free woman.” That she is, but lest anyone think otherwise, the free French woman is lonely and will live to regret it.

Miserable Authenticity

2011-04-20T14:40:00.004-05:00

(Kirk Hayes, Stairs (For Kelson), 2006)

(Philip Guston, Untitled, 1980)

I was immediately attracted to this piece by Kirk Hayes in Gumption, a group show now on view at ZieherSmith. But is it the particular work that I like or the appeal of the association I make? That’s certainly reminiscent of a Guston pink and the roughhewn foot is part of Guston’s vocabulary (anyone who has been reading here a while knows, I like my Philip Guston.) Hayes’s other oil on panel in the exhibition rings more true to me. The line between influence and imitation is fine indeed.

With my own drawing, it’s so hard to tell when something is enough my own. If the question pops into my head, I probably have my answer: I’m too close. If I’m wracked with insecurity because I’ve never really seen anything like it, then I’m probably in the right zone of authenticity, miserable authenticity. Only with time does the sting wear away into a “maybe that works.”

All this said, with an almost-Guston my wall, I could be a happier person.

Lazy Monday

2011-04-18T10:46:00.011-05:00

Today, more photographs, less words.

What is that painting behind Obama?

Wouldn’t this make a great drawing in oil stick? I’ll lose the Blonde in my version.

I still like them.
(Demonstration for the release of Ai Wei Wei yesterday in front of the Chinese Embassy).

Margins

2011-04-13T17:07:00.007-05:00

This is the most memorable work I saw today at the American Folk Art Museum. It's by a well-known self-taught artist named Bill Traylor, who was born into slavery and started drawing in his 80s. I still find it awkward to have work by "marginals" in a museum that institutionalizes "the marginal" (marginal to me).

As museum goers and art lovers, we tend to only learn about an artist's background if the artist is black, a woman or poor beyond can't-pay-back-my-loans. Sure, personal history is interesting and certainly does add dimension to seeing work. But we tend to chose what personal history matters. For some reason, we don't think the fact that Julian Schnabel has a new model girlfriend "matters." Nor does it "matter" that Molly Stevens found the deductions necessary to reduce her taxes to $4400, down from $10,400.

Dusty

2011-04-11T16:23:00.002-05:00

(Elizabeth Murray, Everybody Knows, 2007, oil on canvas, 87" x 93")

I have no doubt that I would have liked Elizabeth Murray as a person, and that’s based on the Art21 episode I saw about her. And I respect the breakthrough she represents for women artists, braving male bravura in the public eye, making it her own along the way. But frankly, the show of her early work at Pace seems like a marketing ploy, a way to historicize – sorry, Historicize - her development and her death as an artist now gone and ready for the canon.

The back room where the early work hangs looks dusty, both physically speaking and in terms of its relevance to her best known body of work, her cartoony sculptural paintings. The most pleasing connection between the old work and new is her luscious surfaces. But aside from that, I’m not convinced Murray’s leap from early to mature style should be noted in particular.

One more generalized point. It’s a subjective line, but she crosses it for me: the work is too cartoony. It’s hard to pinpoint why, but I think the bubbly shapes and abbreviated motifs are goofy. And despite being in the great minority, I can’t get past it to see all the supposed amazing whirls and dimensions.

The Loneliness of Art

2011-04-06T10:25:00.005-05:00

(David Hammons, Bliz-aard Ball Sale, 1983)

I’m grateful for my brother’s blog for helping me listen to music – something that has always been overwhelming to me, partly because of a pressure I feel to love it, which I never really have, save for a predictable sliver of 70s soul and anything by Neil Young or Nina Simone. In all honesty, I get lost and antsy in all the sounds. But I’m starting to find my way through thanks to The Lonely One, which introduces one song per day with commentary. We’re now in late 60s England.

Through today’s song, I’m reminded again of the importance of implication in visual art. Really the only art I respond to in a long-lasting way is one that operates through parallel, not through pounding, emotional message. It’s why David Hammons selling different size snowballs on the street is more of a whammy than a photo-reportage on the no-exit of street vending.

Having said this, I want to defend creative expression (I hope I'm not being too unlinear today). Creative expression is a personal force that I’ve rarely championed here, being so concerned with Art, capital A. Yesterday, in an excellent, heartbreaking homage paid to Juliano Mer-Khamis on Democracy Now, the term “creative non-violent resistance” especially rung true for me. The power of creative expression reigns in anger and desperation, and that's what can become political. However, I still believe Art in essence is not political. Making Art is a lonely act. Creative expression is a democratic power.

Yes, I know. Ai Weiwei. Still. Let’s think about it.

ArtStepNewYork.com

2011-04-04T09:46:00.003-05:00

(Me looking friendly and in the know)

Sometime mid-week (last week), after realizing that financial throes are likely to be my new normal, I went into super-productive mode. Some might have gone out and found a steady paycheck, which really makes the most sense. But instead, twenty-four hours later, I had a new business – or at least a new website. But you can’t view it on a smartphone or tablet – yet.

Artstep is an art advising service for people who don’t want to get involved in the hoo-ha of the art world, but who want to take the step of buying contemporary art for their home. They want to skip intimidating galleries, but they don’t know where else to start. In fact, they might not even know what they really like when it comes to art.

I think that said people should start with an artist who actually likes art (that artist would be me) and who can help said people navigate various galleries, but also bring said people to artists studios, offer installation advice and even an in on how to look at art.

If said people is you, it would be great to hear from you. If said people is not you, but you’d like to become involved, it would be great to hear from you.

Another money riddle

2011-03-30T20:22:00.003-05:00

(Carroll Dunham, Square Mule, 2007)

Today I learned that we underestimated what we owed in taxes for 2010 by seven thousand dollars.

I haven’t drawn this well in months.

Loaded

2011-03-28T11:22:00.002-05:00

(Julia Roberts chilling in Bali on the path to happiness)

How can you become a better person? In recent years, Hollywood has given us two options, both entirely apolitical. To qualify, you just have to be loaded.

You can go the way of The Blind Side and take in an abandoned inner-city youth with athletic potential. This movie is based on a true story, and as such, is pretty incredible. But when you watch the real family being interviewed by Mike Huckabee on Fox News, you know other intentions are at work: namely to promote a vision of what happens when you rely (not on government but) on the good Christian will of individuals. Everyone will live happily ever after. Just make sure your new family member is docile. But even if he’s not, you’re a member of the NRA, so everything should turn out ok anyway.

Or you could go the route of Eat, Pray, Love and indulge in travel to Italy, India and Bali. In Italy, you might have to buy size 2 jeans, which is a bummer since you used to be a size 1. You’ll lose the pounds in India though, but not your attachments. Guess that would take even more meditating. It takes so long! Never mind, in Bali, you’ll fall in love with Javier Bardem. He’ll make you feel better. And somewhere along the way, you can email your friends who will send over $17,000 for a local to buy a house.

I certainly don’t mean to downplay individual lives and amazing experiences. Sometimes one person at a time is the best you can do. But on the level of popular culture, these tales become parables and also mirrors of the reigning ideologies of our times.

Art Apps

2011-03-23T07:50:00.004-05:00

(Martin Kippenberger, Disco Bomb, 1989)

Hello from Jury Duty.

I’m just realizing that Apps can actually be useful, even if they use up more of your time.

Artnear first locates you and then pinpoints galleries in your immediate surrounding area. There’s also a list of venues and artists by neighborhood too. That said, when I wanted to find the address of the Kippenberger show on the Upper East Side, it came up empty.

But I had noted it in an app called Evernote, which lets you store notes, screenshots and images, like in a notebook or (remember the) filofax. The neat part is that your Evernote folder on your computer will automatically synch with the one on your phone, so you can “jot down” something at your desk, and find it later on your phone.

This is all probably old news by now. And I don’t really like talking about technology earnestly. But I guess I want to know what other apps you think are good.

The snob's phone

2011-03-21T22:59:00.004-05:00

(Philip Guston, Hooded, Charcoal on Paper, 1968)

I can’t really post today because I got my first iphone. I feel that my status has been upped, that I’m part of a club and that club says something about me. It says I’m savvy, on the go, a multi-tasker, a liberal, too good to be true. I’m coordinated, busy, up to date, pretty damn well off. The iphone is the snob’s phone, for sure. I love it already.

But I still like my art plain and simple. Charcoal on paper please. Do you realize this drawing must have taken all of two minutes, if that - after years of build up to get to this point of course.

And the sound of charcoal on paper. You can't beat it. I think there's app that'll record it.

Snob

2011-03-16T09:42:00.003-05:00

(Percy Heath and Jimmy Heath)

Like I was saying on Monday, if you have a democratic spirit in art, you focus little on your personal position. What matters is the well-being of the whole, animated by diverse parts. I confess again, I have a hard time letting my individualistic urges go. Therefore, not only am I an art capitalist, but I’m an art snob.

Virginia Woolf, in her hilarious essay “Am I a Snob?” (thanks Ixv) provides a definition:

The essence of snobbery is that you wish to impress the other. The snob is a flutter-brained, hare-brained creature so little satisfied with his or her own standing that in order to consolidate it he or she is always flourishing a title or an honor in other people’s faces so that they may believe, and help him to believe what he does not really believe – that he or she is somehow a person of importance.

Really what has to be highlighted here is that a snob doesn’t actually believe she’s superior. She therefore sets things up around her in order to feel better about herself: she’s comforted by certain friends that complement an image she’d like to project of herself as independent and edgy; she fills her head with lofty thoughts about the potential of art (I think therefore I am). This is snob psychology, and it explains why one such person would prefer to be surrounded by like-minded artists in a gallery. Because, braving difference on her own is too damn scary.

I can think of three art snob antidotes off the top of my head:

1. Find your inner-aristocrat whereby you don’t need to care about other people. My friend, I’ll call her Shields, was a good example. She had no censor mechanism and would tell dirty jokes at every dinner party possible.

2. Find your inner-Heath Brother. To quote Percy Heath, “The reward for playing jazz is that you get to play jazz… It’s something to live for.”

3. Genuine, if only temporary, feeling.

Art Capitalist

2011-03-14T14:52:00.003-05:00

(Basquiat, Mona Lisa, 1983)

Do you have the democratic spirit? I’m afraid I don’t when it comes to art. I can understand making brightly colored animals out of bleeds of watercolor, or a precise design with a pencil and ruler, I really do, but I don’t want to show my own drawing along with it.

If I surround myself with like-minded work, my work will be complemented, understood; it will have a point of view. But if I’m just one in a motley crowd, I end up becoming a stereotype of what I am. My stereotype is “art is expressive.”

What wins hearts in a motley situation is realism. It’s something to hold on to in a crowd . But to me, realism is not about exactitude (to botch Matisse’s quote), it’s about an essence. That mindset fits in with the “art is expressive” cliché.

If I had a democratic spirit about art, I wouldn’t worry about the way my work communicates. What would matter would be the whole, a living organism made of many individual parts. I wouldn’t worry about the value of my own contribution, but about the value of the larger contribution to a mightier cause.

In short, my name is Molly Stevens and I am an art capitalist.

Drawing as performance

2011-03-11T11:37:00.002-05:00

Why draw in public? I have no idea.

I'll be drawing from 3-4pm and then will be at the kids station after.

Monster Drawing Rally benefiting the Dumbo Arts Center. This Sunday.

What's Up in Teen Pop Culture

2011-03-07T10:23:00.002-05:00

It’s all about Rihanna. Not with Eminem. That was months ago. I mean the new Rihanna video called S & M. A fascinating subject indeed, although here it’s rendered for primetime TV. But let me tell you, when a twelve year old asks you if she can eat the dinner sausage like Rihanna does a banana, you know something is still working in pop culture.

Then there’s a guy (a band? a brand?) called Neo-con. Oh, wait, I mean Madcon. What’s amazing about a song like Beggin’ is its instant familiarity, a jingly – yes, catchy - blend of 60s and 70s for the 00s. It sounds like a spoof, but in fact it’s a cover. Of course I prefer the Frankie Valli version because I still believe in authenticity. So kill me.

One more mention: Willow Smith. She’s Will Smith’s daughter (get it?) and she’s ten. Back in the day when she was nine, she recorded a song, “I whip my hair back and forth,” and well... At one point, she walks out whipping her hair back and forth, wearing a t-shirt that reads “I love me.”

Can you practice along with me? "I love me, I love me, I love me.”

Monday's faux koan

2011-02-28T18:21:00.002-05:00

(Drawing of ancient Chinese comet observations)

What I want to say today is that I don’t have time to write anything.

So two questions instead: is it better to have a handful of art friends that you like only some of the time, or 0 art friends that you like all of the time.

And on the flip side:

Is it better to be liked by a handful of art friends some of the time, or by 0 art friends all of the time?

Outsider

2011-02-23T10:48:00.017-05:00

(Top: Freddie Brice, Untitled, c. 1987-1990 ; Bottom: Molly Stevens, Untitled, 2011)

So much of what is called “outsider” art is appealing to me for the bold visions that show little if no respect of institutional culture; you get fearless combinations of text, figuration and patterning; gutsy colors; un-precious supports and materials. To be a true “outsider,” you apparently have to not only have no affiliations with a school or official art culture, but you have to not even know that either exits. Sometimes this means the work’s bold visions are visionary; sometimes it means that it isn’t institutional but rather institutionalized. In fact Dubuffet’s term “art brut” – which I think started it all - was meant specifically to describe work by asylum inmates. The line is fine for me. I don’t want to admire work by the unhealthy or the unaware. Not only would that be exploitative, but it would be unhealthy and unaware on my part.

A lot of outsider art is scary. In James Kalm’s video report of this year’s Outsider Art Fair , we see a standing sculpture from Haiti that is said to contain a human skull; another piece is made of dirty rags and looks like a face. I don’t want to know what it can do. Keep the needles away.

I’m not scared of the word primitive if it means early. And I don’t mind the word tribal if it means part of community’s culture. I do wince at the word naïve (according to whom?). And I’m wary of the jumble that outsider-primitive-tribal-naive art has come to encompass. In a way, it’s all a manner of saying “not the white dude who teaches at Yale with a show up at Zwirner” – with condescending irony, for sure.

Often it’s best not to think too much about terms. A piece is good if it’s good, no matter what it is or where it comes from. You jut have to call it art.

Unfreedom

2011-02-16T16:17:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine who actually has a functioning career as an artist thrives on freedom. It’s her M.O and at times also her schtick. Fuck ‘em, break free and be free. It’s appealing, I can’t deny it. I admire her style, but by nature, I tend to wade in the struggle.

On my team is Philip Guston. In an exciting collection of his writings, lectures and conversations, he says:

When you begin painting you’re too free. That’s why it’s always so painful to start a new picture, or to start the process again, because you have to go through the whole thing again and again. To get rid of the freedom, you might say. I think what is happening is that you’re getting to a state of unfreedom. […] And paradoxically, when you can only do this and not that […] you’re more free in some mysterious metaphysical way.

A few weeks back, I wondered about the psychological freedom that might bond artists as visually different as Amy Silman, Brice Marden and Pierre Bonnard. Perhaps a more precise investigation would involve questioning how each, through unfreedom, came into the work’s truth.

Insider Art

2011-02-14T18:39:00.009-05:00

(David Hammons, up now)

I could not believe my eyes when I read this review in the New Yorker of David Hammons’ new show at L&M.

You know it the instant you step in the door: here is marvelous, very possibly great art, a game-changer and a joy […] Nearly every one of these works belongs in a museum, in a room of its own. Any other art juxtaposed with it would curl up and die.

I ran over (and it takes so long to get up there!)

I respect Hammons and so I cannot just write off my immediate disgust with this show as failed art. But, these works do not pack the punch that I want. There’s plenty to think about, but I don’t want to think. I want my romance, my esthetic qualities. I don’t want insider references, stance without pleasure.

And what is the position exactly and why was I so pissed? Maybe I don’t like it because what he’s doing is covering the struggles of human expression as they have been adulated (Abstract painting), hiding it behind old, tattered garbage bags and plastic tarps. This is ugly stuff. Is that the idea? Are my art values reactionary? Is this the death of art (again? Yawn). Is he giving the finger at even trying to go down the path of art? Is this a political statement about the cannon of art in light of Egypt, Africa, the United Snakes of America?

Let me know what you think.

The art-event bandwagon

2011-02-09T17:51:00.005-05:00

(Installation view of Christian Marclay's video, The Clock)

I feel silly writing about “The Clock” when every critic on this island has already done so, giving it a standing ovation. Christian Marclay’s video is a 24-hour montage that’s an actual clock that you sit and watch. It is composed of thousands of movie clips in which time is displayed or discussed minute by minute, practically second by second. There are scenes, splices of scenes; moments build, moments stand still; time is scary, funny, suspenseful, bloody. And all the while there are timepieces bookmarking it all.

I was there specifically from 3:37 to 4:32. This stuff is great if you have even only an ounce of ADD because time flies. I could have easily stayed longer. The theater was packed and I hear on weekends there are lines to get in. On Fridays, the gallery stays open 24 hours.

What this piece does so well is give the sense of the world’s breadth and momentum. Or that’s at least what it presents and it feels real. Time is a construct that we use to organize it all. It’s way of framing constant movement and change. It's a metaphor too that we believe in. For example, we're convinced time moves “forward."

But blah blah. This is enjoyable art. I tried to think of something more insightful to say, but couldn’t. They’ll be plenty of that anyway. Someone will bring up Douglas Gordon’s 24-hour Psycho, right?

PS:
From Jerry Saltz's Facebook discussion. This is a comment by the New York Time's Ken Johnson:

ok, i took the jerry challenge. went back and watched for 90 minutes and came away with a split decision. i can think of as many reasons why it is good, if not great, as i can for why it is not so great. i got a better sense of just how canny the editing is but also a sense of how the mood keeps canceling itself as scenes change. i thought of baldessari's photographic montages, which, unlike surrealist montages are more semiotic than surrealistic/psychoanalytic. marclay's wit and cleverness are immense, and the execution is unimpeachably polished. philosophically there is plenty to talk about: real time vs. fictive time; time as a construct; modern, bureaucratically regimented, machine time and human freedom. the possibility of escaping time. time vs. eternity. but i have the feelng that the mandate to fill out 24 hours of clock time -- however impressively fulfilled -- produced something kind of impersonal. is it a work of soul stirring art, the product of a prophetic visionary? or an amazing stunt? i came away divided. so, i guess, it's a draw and we went dutch. all of which, i imagine, i'd have to rethink if i sat through all 24 hours. or not.

Internet Art

2011-02-07T16:58:00.005-05:00

(George Condo, Homeless Harlequins, 2004)

It’s certainly a good feeling to be able to identify the works and artists George Condo refers to when viewing his retrospective at the New Museum. It made me feel smart, in the know. “Ah, that’s Ingres.” But the next thought is inevitably, “Boy, is that ugly.” Grotesque is more precise. Outsized boobs, popping eyeballs, elongated hairy limbs. There’s no respite from it. There’s no beauty, save for the amazing paint handling and confident drawing.

Does this make Condo’s work powerful social critique? Not immediately. On site, I didn’t feel offended, I didn’t feel a rousing sense of agreement. And this might be because, in numbers, critique is overwhelming. But in hindsight – and in looking at individual images online - it has whammy power.

Does this mean Condo’s work is actually more suited for reproduction and speed? Are the paintings each a quick, slick stab? I’ll go back with that in mind.

The look of freedom

2011-02-02T17:40:00.005-05:00

(Amy Sillman, 2009(?); Pierre Bonnard, Before Dinner, 1924; Brice Marden, Cold Mountain 6 (Bridge), 1989-1991)

Can work by different artists be unified not only by formal elements (similar palette, complementary touch) but by a spirit, a drive? I’m not talking about conceptually comparable works, but a shared artmaking psychology. Can psychology be visual?

What if there were three artists for whom drawing represented an escape. In the “real world” they might feel weighed down by obligation – “god, another dinner party” – or by decorum – “you simply must be a certain way” – or perhaps criticism – “you are not.” But on the page, for these three, all the should, can’t and must disappears. They can be who they want or strive to be for the short moment that their inner voices, or actual outer voices, allow them to. Can a viewer see this freedom?

Sure, you need some examples, I know.

How about: Amy Silman, Pierre Bonnard, Brice Marden. They are very different, of course, in terms of era and approach. Silman is palpably anxious, Bonnard quiet, Marden balanced. But what about the urge to make, the release, the door it opens. Can you see that? I’d really like you to answer this question.

The art-money disconnect connect

2011-01-31T17:35:00.005-05:00

(all I know about this sculpture is that it’s by George Sugarman)

In 2010, I spent $1979.54 on art supplies. My income from drawing was $0. I do believe the Feds at this point will consider art not to be a profession of mine, but a hobby.

Upon realizing this, I unwillingly but finally surrendered to hopelessness, coughing out the following declaration, “making money from drawing is just not going to happen.”

The next day I landed a show in Germany.

Shortly after, I experienced an “I know what I want to draw!” moment. After hours of fun, there were strange heads on my wall.

Last Wednesday, I was finally accepted into the Drawing Center’s Viewing Program.

Today we learned of $800 in dental payments. In January 2011, I earned $733 from translation. At this rate, this means I’m about to hit an art milestone, right?

Esthetic Wanderlust

2011-01-24T13:51:00.009-05:00

(Peter Doig, Paragon, 2004, big)

Also on artcritical, you can listen to an opinionated conversation about the celebrity painter Peter Doig. Most of the panel members are scathing about his compositions, subject matter and technique: is it not simply obsolete, if not arrogant, to emulate Gauguin on a far off island in this day and age?

That said, at the end of the discussion, it is concluded that Doig does not so much paint about his subject, as he does use his subject to stake out a position; a position about what painting is for him, or about the psychology of western artmaking. His position, whether he knows it or not, is that he is lost.

I think I could say that my drawings are not about the subject either, but more the result of an approach. Outside the studio, I am well aware that I have only minimal control of my life. When drawing, I recreate this non-control, but can watch myself wrangle with it; I can watch myself take risks, fail, succeed and attempt to organize, as subjective as these terms are. This essentially means that I think drawing is a place to struggle to define. And yet I never can, because I’m always moving to the next thing. And besides, definition is temporary.

Moving to the next thing is esthetic wanderlust. So, in the end, Doig and I share something in common. We are like every other productive person of privilege of our times: searching without a distinct cause, impatient, fickle. And sometimes effective to some.

Does any of this help you see what’s in front of you? No. But it’s food for thought, especially when you’re grantwriting.

Back to Basics

2011-01-19T13:15:00.003-05:00

(Installation view, Vincent Fecteau)

At artcritical, there are engaging recorded discussions about recent exhibitions in the Panel Review section. I turn it on in the studio to distract my thinking mind from what I’m drawing.

In a conversation about the 2009 exhibition of sculptures by Vincent Fecteau, the panelists made distinctions between size and scale, surface and structure. Sounds basic.

As is it is commonly understood, a monument is a commemorative work that usually towers over us. But something relatively small can be monumental not because of its size, but because of its scale. A depiction of a head that is five feet tall is monumental because it’s not human scale, but a five-foot building is not, unless perhaps there are tiny people also depicted. It gets more complicated when forms are not figurative, but abstract.

I’d also add that the monumental is generalized, non-specific. People are archetypes, forms are reductive. That said, I don’t think a monument can’t be intimate, personal.

Intimacy is something that can be offered through scale (or not), but it can also be revealed through surface. For example, if you have a rough, handmade edge on your five-foot head, it will remind us that it was crafted by a person, not at machine. The hand isn’t disguised and therefore the piece comes back down to the human. In art speak, you could say in this case that there’s a tension between scale and surface.

Scale, surface and structure are essentially formal elements in an artwork. Some viewers find meaning more in an idea or concept behind a piece, but I find meaning in its making. These days that’s perceived as a romantic notion. More on this another time.

Initial thoughts on season 1, episode 1

2011-01-17T10:57:00.007-05:00

It’s such an effort for me to turn off my thinking mind. Try, try and fail again. What ever I do ends up being for a purpose.

I don’t have a TV. That might come across as righteous, but really it’s because I’m cheap. And also I fear its effect. When I watch too much television, I feel like a failure, because I’m not performing, striving. I’m just watching, vegetating.

Vegetate is what my Marc recommended I do when he told me to Netflix something dumb. So I started Desperate Housewives, and now I must finish. At least season 1. I’ll be done by tonight, which means I’ll have watched some 24 hours of TV in 4 days.

I was sucked in when in the first minutes of the pilot episode, a prototype character shoots herself in the head. This signifies – it’s the conclusion, really - that life as you are about to see it is enough to make you want to kill yourself. I’m often unclear about what cynical actually means (distrustful of other people’s integrity or sincerity; doubtful that an endeavor is worthwhile), but this series-start is cynical by definition. Satire is something else. So is irony.

My immediate hunch is that artmaking can’t really be cynical. Because why do it if it’s not worthwhile. Or maybe cynical would be the motive: making pretty pictures for checks. Is it cynical to make art for anything other than for art's sake? I think that would just be naive. Is that thought cynical?

New Yorkerland

2011-01-12T11:29:00.005-05:00

(George Condo, The Beatnik, 1987, oil on canvas)

In Calvin Tomkins’s portrait of George Condo in this week’s New Yorker, you’ll read about the artist’s effective Cologne dealer; his few years in Paris living at a hotel and renting studios; a buddy named Basquiat; a mistake called the Pace Gallery (shoot!); confidence galore; fine taste (but not uptight!) and a good personality to boot. Ah, isn’t life in the New Yorker grand. And so well expressed, because when everything is in place, and well adjusted, you don’t need to be grandiose. You are all that you need.

In the Time’s moving review of a moving-sounding book called Twins by Allen Shawn, you’ll read that the author’s father was a “legendary” editor at the magazine. But the world created in its pages was a yoke in real life.

The Shawn home, with its emphasis (like The New Yorker’s) on discretion and decorum, magnified neuroses. […] [Their mother] even chaperoned [Allen Shawn’s] taste in music, "instituting a rule that I could only listen to one jazz record for every three classical ones."

I find myself striving to be a New Yorker living in New Yorkerland every week. It is my pleasure but also my side thorn. Last night, as I met the diamond at the end of the Condo essay, I wondered, as usual, "what exactly am I doing wrong?"

A year in sentences

2010-12-21T12:23:00.005-05:00

(Molly Stevens, (not yet titled), oil stick on paper, large but not huge)

The blog is a slog: it’s something I’ve been feeling as this year ends. ‘Tis the season to feel wracked with doubts about my writing and artmaking. But onward, onward JewBu soldiers.

Looking back on a year in writing here and on Donkey Trail (excluding the interviews), I’ve forced myself to make a top-ten list of favorite sentences. I’ve chosen them because I like them as writing, as ideas, or for the memories they evoke.

My bests wishes to all readers here at Art on My Mind. Thanks for stopping by. See you in January.

10. Backstage with Pink Rocks

9. Making art involves endless choices; you can go safe – stick with what you know, with the good looking cream-white combination - or you can go out on a limb, leap into the unknown, a leap of faith as my friend refers to it.

8. Puppy topiary is a person. I accept that person.

7. But what’s harder, actually failing, or predicting that you might fail.

6. She goes and gets her higher up, who comes out, her hands in prayer position, at a slight bow, as if she were in front of the Dalai Lama.

5. Line does and color is.

4. Dealer is onomatopoetic for money.

3. "Out of Line" is on the Short List in this week’s New Yorker in the Goings on About Town section! Whooooo! Oh, I mean, "I am so pleased."

2. When Slacker first came out in 1991, I couldn’t take it in because I was trying so hard to distinguish myself politically and socially (oh wait, I still am) that anything that became popular I considered mainstream, ie: not good because it was not radical (radical ironically meaning that everything was as politically correct as it could be, that the proper stance was taken in terms of race, class and gender. (Oy vey)

1. The spirit of art goes against the downward spiral – or at least attempts to – and that is not insignificant, for the artist personally, for any interested viewer, and as a symbol.

I am the upper bourgeoisie and I am screwed

2010-12-15T17:39:00.004-05:00

(Martin Kippenberger, Self-Portrait, 1988)

I skim David Brook’s columns only so that I can righteously confirm to myself that he is a pompous conservative and extremely irritating, even more so because he’s so damn articulate. On Monday my skim revealed something about how it’s bourgeois to be interested in self-improvement - and that the bourgeoisie is growing, growing, growing, so expect the self-help section at the bookstore to takeover. This is a good thing, he says

I can understand that if you’re really working class, you can only think about survival; I can understand that self-knowledge is a luxury. I get that. From that point of view, being able to pick up a copy of Deepak Chopra might be enriching.

But I’m an elitist and a snob. I want to go somewhere where Barnes & Noble can’t take me. And I think I can. And I think I can through things like artmaking and meditation (with a mantra) and esoteric books and existential angst. I am such a damn sheltered liberal as someone noted just yesterday. But so be it. I hate the suburbs.

As I am now, where do I fit among middle class values? Nowhere. And, as I am now, where do I fit in an ideal classless society? Nowhere.

Flash of the Spirit

2010-12-13T10:57:00.002-05:00

It has also taken me twenty years to key into Basquiat. Up until now, I just haven’t been able to take him in for all the hype and myth around his person. The documentary Jean Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child is my first step towards the subject.

Despite the annoyingly fast editing, the doc paints a truly affecting portrait. What hit me hard was the core contradiction he embodied. On one hand, he was so tremendously independent in his approach to painting. On the other, he had a palpably gaping need for recognition and respect.

In one interview, Julian Schnabel says of the artist:

[…] he didn’t want to get his feelings hurt. And if he just could have had a little more support in a deep sense so that he didn’t feel so damn lonely, and didn’t feel so taken advantage of, and so damn confused… he just didn’t have to the tools to navigate the sea of shit.

How can someone be both so terribly fragile psychologically and so artistically unequivocal and brazen at the same time?

It got me thinking (again) about what gets an artist to make something and also to make it in the art world. Basquiat got into the latter through fun, through partying, and clearly through the penetrating sweetness of his good looks. And it worked, but it also killed him. He got to artmaking through his kind of stimulation: in his studio, the music and TV was always on, and visitors came and went. What came out as a result is the mystery of art, and I don’t want to try to figure that out.

It's a Madonna pap smear

2010-12-06T10:34:00.003-05:00

When Slacker first came out in 1991 I couldn’t take it in because I was trying so hard to distinguish myself politically and socially (oh wait, I still am) that anything that became popular I considered mainstream, ie: not good because it was not radical (radical ironically meaning that everything was as politically correct as it could be, that the proper stance was taken in terms of race, class and gender. Oy vey.) Plus, I didn’t have a cool air and I wasn’t laid back (oh wait, that’s still the case) so anyone who was, I just promptly wrote off as pseudo (that was a favorite word left over from senior year in high school), as stupid, and, well, as a slacker.

With the distance of almost twenty years though I really appreciate this movie. The vision that we’re all interconnected but entirely isolated and alienated resonates. It’s hard watching over-educated white folk going off philosophically, and it’s hard seeing resignation and wandering, because, frankly, it hits a bit close. But there are wonderful quirks, there’s wrenching suffering, stabbing humor. In one vignette, for example, an artist-type has prepared a stack of cards with aphorisms on them that anyone can just draw at random and contemplate for however long he or she wishes (usually less than a second). One card reads: “Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy.”

This is a portrait of a population and a time, our time too. But, as usual, I couldn’t see that in the moment of 1991. When will I just let my own immediate senses be the judge?

MoMa does the line dance

2010-11-17T14:20:00.004-05:00

(Atsuko Tanaka, Drawing After Electric Dress, 1956)

My point is, the “On Line” show at MoMa – not to be confused with the “Out of Line” show at Slag this past May - is too linear. It’s mostly chronological and too jammed packed. As such it becomes a survey, and that does neither the art nor the viewer any good.

For example, you’ve got some great Picassos in the first room. But they’re literally stacked up over one another so you can’t focus on an individual piece; and then they’re placed next to – surprise – a few Braques! The room gets “wild” with the inclusion of a hanging projection of a whirling dancer. It’s a really nice film, but why so high? If I were installing it, I’d have put it playing on a wall alone. Or maybe next to ONE Picasso cubist collage. I think then you’d start to see line in a different way.

What we need in our MoMa show is some fresh installations of historical work, some air so that I can see, some focused thoughts so that my brother won’t get museum back, and some daring paring down on a (great) subject.

That said, there were some really good finds: a contemporary piece by Nina Canell looked positively exciting because it was precisely mixed-in. And then I enjoyed the mid 20th century work by Georges Vantongerloo and the drawings and video by the Gutai artist Atsuko Tanaka. To boot, it looked good next to a Rauschenberg tire drawing.

There were artists missing though: me.

In Transition

2010-11-15T11:01:00.004-05:00

(Piet Mondrian, Apple Tree in Flower, 1912)

Sometimes there’s talk of an artist’s work being “in transition.” My take on this expression is that it means that the work is neither quite here nor there. It’s evolving. An artist’s work is always evolving, yes, but sometimes a direction is not quite ripened, and that’s what I think they mean (he, my visitor last week, means) by “in transition.”

“In transition” can be very beguiling because it’s searching. You can see the artist’s struggles, experiments and also her failures. “In transition” is vulnerable. After “in transition” comes another phase. Often I hear the word “resolved” to describe it. “Resolution” is confident, it’s a problem solved. A piece or series is “resolved” when a direction is settled upon. This is exciting, of course, because of the depth that can then be explored.

Mondrian is a good example. First his work evolved from traditional landscapes to schematic trees. We could call this the “transitional” phase. Then he came to settle on his iconic grids. Once this was “resolved” he explored and explored. And each work presents its own “resolution.”

Two things: it's stimulating to see that early development from tree to grid. And some artists adopt the transition as a "position." Kippenberger called this mobility the "running gag." More on this another time.

I expound

2010-11-10T10:41:00.007-05:00

(Roy Lichtenstein, Bread and Jam, 1963)

My Monday post is murky to me. I jumped from irreverence, to attitude, to life approach, to detachment, to surface appeal, to intimation of attitude. Let me attempt to deepen the sense of some terms.

By irreverence, I don’t mean a big fuck you (although that is a form of irreverence). I mean un-preciousness. I mean standing out on a limb. I mean having an opinion, maybe unpopular. In all likelihood, exquisite is the opposite of irreverent. Some drawings are exquisite, some are irreverent.

Irreverence is one kind of attitude. Attitude doesn’t necessarily mean a seventeen-year-old thinking she’s got it. Attitude really simply means stance. Artists do take a stance whether they know it or not. In art school they call it a “position” (gawd).

Some artist’s go for outward expression, whereas others go for cooler observation: sometimes this manifests itself in the ways they lead their lives, sometimes it’s in their work, sometimes it's in both. In any case, both are attitudes. Someone like Lichtenstein brings passion to detachment. (Aside: his very detached drawings chock full of individual markings are on view now at the Morgan Library and are a must see).

Some artists are interested in immediate visual communication, which can be very appealing: sumptuous color, enticing shapes. But behind sensual charm can lay (lie? I don’t understand this verb) irreverence. Were not the Impressionists, for example, the scandal of the 1860s and 70s? This form of irreverence may be towards a context, or it may be in the quality of the mark making.

And that, my friends, is today's vocabulary lesson.

First Impressions

2010-11-08T15:54:00.005-05:00

(Raoul de Keyser, Tornado, 1981)

WHO is the most tempting question in the art world. The answer is a quick fix, bringing on extreme: extreme satisfaction, extreme jealousy, extreme admiration or an extreme blank stare. I love WHO, and I’d love to come right out and tell you WHO was here, but I think that would lack class. In a private conversation, sure.

So back to content: of the many subjects broached by my visitor – he asked loads of questions, bless him – one, at this moment, pokes in particular. It was the subject of attitude. I want to remember every detail so badly, but can’t. Maybe because my cat was sitting on his shoulders (yes, she was).

From what I can recall, I told him I would like more irreverence in my work. By which I mean less self-consciousness, more risk, less concern for appearance (not irony though). It was just after that I think he used the word attitude.

He seemed to enjoy how an artist’s approach to life seeped into the work, and seemed to have a penchant for detachment mixed with the personal (On Kawara or Roy Lichtenstein, for example). But he also talked about how a work’s appearance can be charming, even pretty, but intimate attitude behind it. His example was Raoul de Keyser.

Yes, I know who Raoul de Keyser is! Phew! But, do I understand this interpretation? Not really. But I plan on checking it out. My starting point will be that attitude in this case means personal stance.

Does this sound right?

2010-11-01T14:23:00.005-05:00

(Chris Martin, Untitled, 2006)

I’m preparing for the most prominent visitor to date to set foot into my studio. Ever since we settled on a day and time – next Monday, noon, I wrote it into my calendar, as if I would forget – I’ve been drawing like a mad woman, the idea being that I will reinvent the wheel by next week in order to make an impression. One thing is for certain: a public does motivate me.

Word has it that said visitor is not much of a talker. My urge will be to ask him questions about him and what he does, a tactic I’ve developed to deal with my discomfort during social interactions. But this is not a social interaction. This is a meeting of mutual self-interest, and I have to think about a cache of things to say – not over-say – regarding what I’m up to.

At T-6 days 9 hours, here are talking points I can draw on if necessary:

1. A few years ago, I was focusing primarily on text-based art, and became increasingly interested in the line forming the words – its vitality, movement, personal-ness - eventually dropping the word altogether. Now I’m interested in line and/versus color as ways to present the rawest, non-verbal forms I can make. Heads and rock forms are the primary result.

2. I don’t want to be enchanted by a facile primitivism, though. While I really enjoy Chris Martin and Huma Bhabha and their disciples, I’m not into imitation.

3. I’d like to move beyond the pale of new primitive art, and definitely beyond abstract expressionism. That’s why I look at a lot of landscapes, Asian ones in particular, and also the solid forms of Mantegna, the color of Giotto, and I’d like to unleash some more of my inner-Kippenberger. Yes, I’d like to be more insolent, but not ironic.

4. Yeah, these do have a sculptural quality.

5. No, where would I put it! I have a problem already storing flat paper.

6. Ah, good question. You know, I’m not a good tester, so why don’t I get back to you once I’ve thought about that.

7. Are there other people you think I should show this body of work to? For example, I’d love to invite XXX.

8. Really! That’s just great. Thanks so much.

Quick Crit

2010-10-27T19:03:00.004-05:00

(Willem De Kooning, Valentine, 1947, oil and enamel on paper on board)

Listen, Ab Ex NY at MoMa is good, but… I like who I like. And when I like, I really like (Guston). That’s not really going to change. So don’t try to slip in Larry Rivers or even Clifford Still. They remain an intellectual appreciation for me.

Also, I’m not buying the whole cohesive movement thing. The show is not cohesive. There are themes – moment, feeling, movement – but I don’t see the paintings playing off each other.

That said, it’s true what they say about seeing a work in person: it makes a mongo difference. Like the Rothko room. It’s so visually potent. And the Pollack drips. Those are so dynamic. I didn’t really realize. But then, Gorky and Gottlieb: I don’t know, they just don’t cut it for me, live or in reproduction. With Gorky, I think I’m not getting it, but, with Gottlieb, I don’t think there’s much more.

The surprises were De Kooning (save Woman I, actually). And Motherwell too. And then the lone Joan Mitchell. Wow, it's good.

When a tree falls

2010-10-25T10:52:00.006-05:00

(De Chirico, The Uncertainty of the Poet, 1913)

I’ve never questioned my assumption that the exhibition is the final step of the creative process. Showing, I’ve always thought, is just what comes after making. And this presentation is what makes the work evolve. After a show, when you get back to the studio, you’re somewhere else. Somewhere more advanced (ie: better). This is what they say.

Sometimes the attention causes an artist to steer the work in a direction that will please the most people. When this happens, you have to wonder who the artist is drawing for. But I’m not sure you can ever really just draw for yourself.

The high-minded idea is that by putting your work out into the world, you’re contributing to culture. Some say that art makes a difference. It does make me feel alive. Except for when I’m so mad about the crap.

Psychologically, putting your work out into the world satisfies a need to be seen. I think you can be motivated high-mindedly and psychologically at the same time. Then there’s the motivation of making the pile of paper in your studio a bit smaller. You could always just throw it out. Or cremate it, like Baldessari.

Then of course, you just can’t stop. Can you? It’s an urge. And also, what else would you do? And what about your identity?

When you sell a work, you feel good. Unless the person puts the work in their basement, where it gets moldy. This is what people are talking about when they say they want to “place” the work. Sometimes you just have to pay the rent. But that’s why you have the day job.

Parsing

2010-10-20T10:36:00.003-05:00

(Joan Mitchell)

In last week’s New Yorker, Peter Schjeldahl ended his review like this: “Then those movements [after Abstract Expressionism], too, disintegrated, and it’s been pretty much one damn thing after another ever since.”

I love how Scheldahl sticks to his guns.

Sticking to your guns is a good expression. I picture a guy in a field – and he’s going to die, it’s for sure, because the enemy has him surrounded – but he stays put, gun cocked and ready to defend himself.

And don’t you love the use of the word “damn” here. Damn is onomatopoetic for anger. Rightly placed, it’s a bomb.

Kind of like the word “Dealer.” Dealer is onomatopoetic for money. It makes no bones about it, especially because of the earthy “D” sound. “Wheel and deal” is good too, creating a sense of non-stop movement, maybe because of a slimy ground.

In any case, art changes, just like everything else does, in accordance with the law of impermanence. Artists have got to follow the beat of their own drum through it all. Or die.

Wanted: Art Shrink

2010-10-18T13:25:00.007-05:00

(Molly Stevens, Heads of State, 2010, oil stick on paper, 40" x 60")

When drawing, I’m constantly making decisions: to go in a certain direction, to change a color, to stop working on a piece. I call the shots, but I’ve always had someone who would say (who I've wanted so badly to say), “yes, that’s right, I’m behind you on this one.” This person changes. But she's always someone I’m trying to emulate or please; she's always someone who knows. More than I do.

At this point in time, there seems to be no one I can rely on or turn to but my own damn self. Sure, there’s the encouraging word from friends and loved ones, but there’s no mentor, and this has left me feeling both isolated and uncertain (to use the tamest of words).

And yet this is likely a prime opportunity for me to go my own way and make work that really looks like my own. It’s just that… what if I make a mistake.

The revenge of the unsung hero

2010-10-13T14:09:00.012-05:00

(Christian Viveros-Fauné)

Christian Viveros-Fauné doesn’t mince words. Bless him.

In his latest rant in the Voice, he rips Jeff Koons a new one, and in doing so humiliates the world of art-money that bolsters him.

I especially like this description of his chat with a dealer who toured him through her Koons show:

Besides reconfirming art history's judgments and the weird sense that some rich people still think that price tags measure the cutting edge, the parley lent a particularly Koonsian brazenness to the day. The polished Dayan [the dealer] identified a picture of reverse-cowgirl anal penetration, Red Butt, as having been the favorite of Koons's octogenarian ex-dealer, Ileana Sonnabend: "She hung it in her office, right at the entrance." You don't say. A second image of cum on La Cicciolina's cheek Dayan compared to Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa: "It's called Exaltation." Of course, what else? The exhibition's last hardcore picture waited: Titled Dirty Ejaculation, it bore a feces-flecked close-up of Koons's dick pulling out of Cicciolina's bunghole. "I think it's radical," Dayan purred. Uh, yeah!, I mouthed archly. And if this load were music, you would be the New York Philharmonic.

Passages like these are tremendously satisfying to read. It's the revenge of the unsung hero. You can't help but feel holier, purer, wonderfuller. But really, would that it were so clear-cut. If you're in it - in the art world and in fact in the world in general - you're part of it. That's just one of the many contradictions that we embody by just being here.

Remember when Mr. Virveros-Fauné lost his job as Village Voice critic because he was organizing an art fair? That was ridiculous. It's a messy world. Face it.

Pink

2010-10-11T21:58:00.002-05:00

(Giotto, Joachim’s Dream, 1304ish)

It’s hard to use pink as a woman, because it’s considered girly. And it’s hard to use pink as a man, because it’s considered the opposite of masculine and straight. But what a fine color: strong, optimistic but serious. That’s because it has both red and blue in it.

Every Giotto could be an example. Skin glows pink, robes are pink, the simultaneous dawn and dusk light is pink (I think). Pink looks so good next his blues, his grays, his ruddy reds.

Pink.

And why can’t there be more flying angels emerging into visibility in contemporary art?

The Green Monkey

2010-10-06T10:45:00.005-05:00

I’m just not into brainy art (broken record). Ideas tend to lack vitality and also visual appeal. I prefer to give precedence to the porous connections of the unconscious mind, which is at work doing its thing all the time anyway, whether we like it or not. I’m not in control. And neither are you.

Let me see if I can describe how I can trace the doings of the unconscious mind while I draw. In hindsight, of course. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

A few weeks back I took a picture of a wooden sculpture of a monkey at the Met. Yesterday, I set out to draw a human figure. It was a decision. But, at some point I thought I’d turn it into a monkey, then remembering the piece at the Met. That was semi conscious. Then I began daydreaming about a local (expensive) hangout, called Le Singe Vert (the green monkey), where I hoped to meet a friend. Did I make the monkey association? No.

Then I picked up my orange oil stick. I turned the page upside down, as I often do to continue drawing. Then I started on another piece, while listening to Democracy Now and considering the world’s mess. When I turned back to the monkey, I decided it needed to be green, making no connection to the restaurant. Then I wanted some red in there, and stripes gave the color some air. When I turned the image right side up, I realized, I had made a green monkey with shorts, the kind a street animal might wear as he sits next to an accordion player.

It’s not that I think the unconscious mind makes better art (this drawing, eh). It’s that I know it’s there. And if I give it some room, it makes the work less controlled, lending it a fresh quality that I like. Ideas are just not as interesting.

Wall Street

2010-10-04T09:25:00.003-05:00

(Michael Douglas in front of a Condo-like painting in Wall Street)

One way to look at it is that art makes money look good. It brings “culture” to greed and the downright dirty. Oliver Stone portrays this so well in Wall Street (part I) that you’ve got to feel a bit like two-faced slime striving to join the market as an artist.

Major art fills the movie: in Gekko’s office we’ve got a large Miro-like piece (that he bought for 60k and is now worth more than 600k, he says); at his home in the Hamptons, there’s a Sultan-like lemon, a few Chamberlain-like smashed cars on the wall and some Leonardo-like huge drawings that act as a Greek chorus behind the drama. At one point Gekko buys a Stella-like painting for a couple of mil. This is definitely accurate décor – and it plays a supporting role; it goes so much further than just the classic portraits of foreboding head honchos – the fathers of wealth – that we expect to see on the walls of old-money firms (although there are these too in the movie).

In a telling scene, when Charlie Sheen asks Daryl Hannah’s character (her name is Darien – as in Connecticut?) what she wants in life, she answers a perfect canary diamond and a Turner (as in Joseph Mallord William Turner, I presume). I understood. Art is desired by power because art perfects power. Art makes power appear solid as a rock (a hard diamond). Art makes beauty belong to power.

Creativity in Hospitals

2010-09-30T11:45:00.001-05:00

I spent the day yesterday in the hospital as the escort to my husband who had surgery. It was a surprisingly dull day, only enhanced by the occasional visit of worry. And then there were the posters on the wall, mostly picturesque landscapes.

There was one, a fall mountainside in pastel that included an unusual orange-yellow – something like this image above. It was in fact comforting to see. The color took me out of there. Art can really be a sweet friend.

Most of the other posters didn’t skirt tacky as well, especially when they had words on the bottom like “serenity,” or in one case, “creativity.”

Perhaps only more misguided than using the word “inspiration” to describe an artist’s process is the word “creativity,” as in “I’d like to express my creativity.” It implies a state where everything you do is beautiful, worthy, perhaps even touched by a greater force; in any case, it implies a person’s better side. That’s just not how a (good) drawing comes out of the pepper mill.

That artist didn’t choose that orange-yellow thinking, “let’s be creative.” That hue was something he saw or, in all likelihood, it resulted from the reproduction process.

Realistic fake

2010-09-22T20:21:00.004-05:00

Talking about trees, check out this 1984 sculpture by Judy Pfaff up now at Ameringer, McEnery, Yohe. First, we’ve got those nice stylized trunks providing strength in multiple directions, like vectors; then we’ve got the suggestion of bark, not its faithful and laborious imitation. This keeps up the lightness. And then the sharp-edge chops clearly remind us that light and serious can coexist (and should, in my mind).

How do you get a realistic depiction of "nature." Unnaturally, I think.

That’s all for today, folks.

Does lyricism sell?

2010-09-20T10:46:00.006-05:00

(Installation view of Edefalk's work at Gladstone)

On view now at Barbara Gladstone is an installation by Cecilia Edefalk of tree barks standing like figures on a table. I have a very soft spot for work with trees, even though most are a flop, succumbing to generic poetry. This one did in the end for me because of the exhibition title “Weeping Birch” and then because I heard an employee describing the piece (to a collector) as the result of a “profound” experience the artist had on an island during a storm. The combination of the words “Weeping” and “profound” was just altogether too self-important. The employee then pointed to a group of three or four barks on the table, and said they were $35k (or was it $40k?).

Personally, if I had the dough, I’d prefer to buy Kippenberger’s 1990 installation combining birch trees and pills titled “Now I’m going into the big birch wood, my pills will soon start doing me good.” I don’t need anyone to tell me it’s profound, it just is by virtue of what's there.

Krump drawing anyone? (moi, moi, moi)

2010-09-10T15:25:00.002-05:00

I’m one of those people that must move physically. Sometimes it becomes restlessness, sometimes impatience and often anxiety, but it is, at core, an electricity that quickly stores up inside me.

This is not a concentration problem. When I was in high school, they put me on Ritalin, but lack of focus was a misdiagnosis. The classes were deadly dry. And they had me pegged as an unserious student. I think if they had let me pace around the room, I would have been able to focus on their boring lessons.

When I watch crumping or b-boying, I feel vicariously expressed (you’ve seen the movie Rize or Planet B-Boy?). I just love the spasms, the jutting, the angry thrusts and I admire the control. I’m too scared to try it for myself though. And also, I’m pretty heady, although I’m not a brain. Drawing is a good way to convert the surge, and so is writing, because I’m using my hands and mind at the same time. With drawing, I even get to walk around the table and back and forth to and from the wall.

So, if only I could make my drawings look like krumping.

Expressive sucks

2010-08-25T12:03:00.003-05:00

Expressive sucks. The goal is not just to empty out, to show everything you feel. Who really cares how you feel. Maybe your mom, if you have that kind.

Spontaneity sucks. Especially when it’s related to Expressive. That candle burns fast and shallow. The goal is beyond loosening up.

Obsessive sucks. Get some Spontaneity, get Expressive.

Restraint sucks. Stop being so precious.

Thinking sucks. Don’t you hate smart art? The goal is not to make a point. Write a paper to make a point or do some public speaking.

Intention sucks. Art is aware of itself but not deliberate.

Art requires more and less than my current approach. Oh, were I only to have some Wild Style.

Shut up and draw

2010-08-18T13:18:00.005-05:00

(Carroll Dunham, Another Island, 1989-1999)

What can I do? I set out to draw rocks, trees and mountains, which I fantasized would be great metaphors, and nothing but cartoony tribal figures are coming out. At best they’re Saul Steinberg, or maybe Carroll Dunham, but I fear they’re really more Bart Simpson.

I can’t say that I like them, but I’ll continue, because I have no choice. That’s what’s coming out.

To remove the discomfort of not knowing where this is going, my initial urge is to immediately try to explain the work, categorize it. If I could show off a range of knowledge about how contemporary artists depict figures, about why some chose realism, about how choice and historical awareness is important, then what I’m doing becomes valid. So I think. But what really happens is that the drawing blocks.

Shut up and draw.

We shall overcome

2010-08-16T11:41:00.002-05:00

(The bodies of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. From the doc "Neshoba: The Price of Freedom")

Most artists with a political conscience have found themselves alone in their studio or room at some point and wondered, “What good is this doing? I’m here and the world is burning outside.”

Some artists try to kill two birds with one stone and correct the world’s horrors directly through their art. But paintings of Abu Ghraib prisoners are not effective against torture and they don’t stand on their own as art. I’ve come to the conclusion that the distinction between visual art and political activism simply is.

On Friday, I was listening to Democracy Now while drawing. I walked over to the computer screen to watch footage of a young African-American boy in the ‘60s, tears rolling down his face at his brother’s untimely funeral, singing with determination “We shall overcome.”

Today, reading Doris Lessing, I noted these words:

Now, when I start writing, the first thing I ask is, ‘Who is thinking the same thought? Where are the other people like me?’ I don’t believe any more that I have a thought. There is a thought around.

Both elbow me. The only thing artists can hope for with their art is that by making it, by showing it, it overcomes. The spirit of art goes against the downward spiral – or at least attempts to – and that is not insignificant, for the artist personally, for any interested viewer, and as a symbol. And it inevitably belongs to a thrust of our times, no matter how weak that force may now be.

Summer Reading sans Stieg Larsson

2010-08-09T08:40:00.002-05:00

(Valentino Achak Deng)

Other than the usual daily and weekly New York press, here’s my summer reading list so far:

Jane Bowles, Everthing is Nice – Very oddball stories written in the most formal, proper language. Nothing is in fact nice, although it wants to appear so (and that’s an outlook I’m a sucker for). She was the wife of Paul Bowles, whom I’d also like to read.

Dave Eggers, What is the What – A painful page-turner about the trials of a Lost Boy who fled Southern Sudan on foot to various refugee camps and then to the U.S. Not hardened, but gentle does the soul become through suffering and loss (unless you’re a Republican, of course). If you don’t feel lucky to lead the life you do after reading this, there is something wrong with you.

Doris Lessing, A Small Personal Voice: Essays, Reviews, Interviews – Her rock-solid, heart-filled voice proves that it’s the person you develop away from the typewriter through your own life and the true acceptance of contradiction that are key to making you a good writer.

Marc enjoyed the Hunger Games series about a scary, sci-fi reality television show and this might in fact make for more typical late-summer beach reading.

What's happening

2010-08-04T14:47:00.006-05:00

(Molly Stevens, Untitled (small drawing 3),2010, Oil Stick on Paper, 22" x 30")

It’s just that I don’t know where to take this blog. I’ve been writing twice a week for three years now as a way to organize my thoughts and also to activate my “web presence,” as they call it. I’m concerned if I stop now, I’ll become disorganized in my thinking and anonymous on the web. There’s white and there’s black. Always.

I could continue to write about shows. I could continue to complain about the art world and the inequities of becoming recognized. I could continue describing the processes of artmaking to myself and maybe to you. But I don’t really feel like it. No, I’m not depressed or discouraged, I just don’t feel like it. That said, if I feel like jumping off a bridge, should I? There’s what you feel, and then there’s what you do.

So, if I haven’t lost you all by now already, I hope you'll tune in next time.

More good press for the Charles Burchfield show at the Whitney

2010-07-14T20:56:00.004-05:00

(Charles Burchfield, Orion in December, 1959)

What impressed me most was not so much the oeuvre, but the way the show was designed and curated. It has the stamp of an artist. In this case, he’s Robert Gober.

Each room has its own atmosphere, its own communication. And the show as a whole is pared down. In one room, there are but two paintings, for example. This is what I aim for in a single drawing: a tightly communicated but complex image. I’ve learned that it can take a thousand to get there.

The work itself leaves me with mixed feelings. Some details and atmospheres are immediately entrancing; but there is also a very tight tie to the written word that feels a bit too literal or familiar to me. These images border on cliché: denuded trees, barren streets. I feel pulled to read the journals instead. But that said, who cares. I have no need for original subject. Really. And there’s so much to see here about being true to one's own work.

What's up in teen pop culture

2010-07-12T09:16:00.006-05:00

(Still from "Waka, Waka")

Justin Bieber. Still.

And covers. For example, a “We are the World” remake but for Haiti. And who sings the opening line? Justin Bieber. What’s more, Michael Jackson was resurrected for the event to sing with his sister.

After rewatching the original (25 years ago?), I only have one word: Bruce.

Also popular among girls is a Mariah Carey version of the Foreigner staple from 1984 “I Want to Know What Love Is.” It’s absolutely terrible and the video will turn you into a Jihadist. Watching shiny Shakira smiling and shimmying “Waka Waka,” a song for Africa that capitalizes on the World Cup, comes practically as a relief. Practically.

Line vs. Color

2010-07-07T10:06:00.003-05:00

(Henri Matisse, The Dessert: Harmony in Red, 1908)

I think it’s true. There are two teams, Line and Color. Sometimes they play together, sometimes they are opposing. But they are always distinct.

Yes, there can be a colored line, and there can be the line outlining a form, but the color of the form is neither of these.

Color is a surface, an expanse. Color takes up room. Line doesn’t fill like color.

Line can go on top of color. And color can go on top of line. But I can’t think of a visual representation of a merged thing called colorline.

The personality of a line is in it’s marking: a line can be flexible or stiff, fast or slow, premeditated or in the moment. The personality of color is in its hue, its intensity, its thereness. Line does and color is.

Color has mass appeal. Line takes some learning and is therefore more elitist.

How am I doing on the generalizations?

Just Vice, Not Miami Vice

2010-06-30T15:46:00.002-05:00

I had a nice visit with a painter yesterday whose palette includes bright yellow and orange. She told me about a young curator who commented that her work was “so 80s, like Miami Vice.” The curator saw neon and thought Don Johnson?

I can only sneer at omnipresent, kneejerk comparisons to pop culture. What ever happened to references to art history, or psychology, or just something else other than TV? Of course, viewers are free to make their own associations, as are artists. The pool is very deep. But curators should really aim to broaden and expand notions of color, form and subject. My opinion.

And why does the fashion – literally the clothes – of these same curators have to be so referential too? The mega glasses and t-shirts with outdated puns look stupid. Also my opinion.

Not with a whimper, but a bang

2010-06-25T11:55:00.001-05:00

Review on the Drawing Center's blog!

Not with a bang, but a whimper

2010-06-21T13:15:00.004-05:00

(Derrick Adams, The Lieutenant, 2010, 63" x 24")

And so “Out of Line” closes at the end of the week. A year in the making, my expectations were high. I had hoped for sales (none so far), a visit from Roberta (I don’t even know if she got our invitations), a new “whooohooo” opportunity. But really, this show is just another step down the long road.

The coherence of the work in the exhibition, my talk, and all the other preparations did bear fruit. We had success, both public and private (personal encouragement, some new acquaintances, the New Yorker for example). But it’s a splash of cold water in the face to learn how much an artist can’t rely on the goodwill of any potential visitors or art-world professionals once the show is up. Really, if you want to make inroads in terms of making a public name or career for yourself, you’ve got to be alpha-male aggressive, opportunistic, even over-bearing. It's a slog. I can’t say that’s my cup of tea.

But, I do want to make work still, and that’s the only reason to stay in the game.

All you need is one partner to keep going.

Primitivism

2010-06-16T11:28:00.003-05:00

(Huma Bhaba, Bumps in the Road, 2008)

Along with “physicality,” the buzzword of the moment (in art of course) seems to be “primitivism.” My BFF (and we haven’t even met yet) Christian Viveros-Fauné, uses it in his article in the Voice today.

"Homunculi" [the current show at Canada] introduces largely accomplished versions of a newly popular trend toward artistic primitivism.”

This term seems to describe art that displays a rawness of expression that is reminiscent or suggestive of either “primitive” cultures – like Africa? I thought we were over that designation – or that borrows from prehistoric peoples, or that is somehow naïve or outsider. I think I prefer the term rawness or intuitive, although that might be too psychological, and not ethnographic enough, if that matters.

An artist I know said this word was used to describe the work of Huma Bhabha. I dig her.

What (the hell) is Modernism?

2010-06-09T17:37:00.005-05:00

(My friend visiting Out of Line)

There are words that are slewed through art circles without a care in the world. “Conceptual” used to be my pet-peeve. If someone says your piece is conceptual, it usually means they don’t get it. To me “conceptual” means work stemming from the Conceptual Art movement in the 60s. It doesn’t mean any piece that makes you think. Let’s move on.

Distopian and ontological. I’m not that interested in exploring these terms right now.

What I want to look at today is the word “Modernism.” There was a time when “modern art” meant “of our times” (Museum of Modern Art). Now we have the word “contemporary” for that. Today “Modernism” should really mean "of the period around the early twentieth century when breaking new ground away from tradition was a primary interest." I’m pretty sure Matisse, T.S Eliot, and Cubism are considered Modernists.

Then I hear “Modernist architecture.” This seems to be the embrace of “technology” in architecture in the 40s and 50s – is that right? - ,which yielded sleek design (the Seagram Building, for example). From our present-day perspective “Modernist architecture” is really retro architecture.

But then there’s “modernism” meaning "relating to self-consciousness and subjectivity." The Abstract Expressionists are modernists, for example. With the term “post-modernism,” the idea of the self became a thing of the past, because the self was deemed impossible to define narrowly (Hey, some people are black and some people are white). But I don't think "modernist" artists are trying to peg anything, really. The approach or filter is just the individual, as I see it.

Many theory-based artists and writers seem to have disdain for strains of modernism in contemporary art (thick paint, psychological bents, the human touch) because it somehow denies that there are systems in the world. Bah. You can favor the mark of the hand and know FedEx exists.

Readers: do I have most definitions of modernism covered here in the most cursory way?

Mini gallery crawl

2010-06-07T16:28:00.004-05:00

(Tuckery Nichols, Untitled, 2010, shoe soles and wood, 3 x 3 x 3 inches)

Can’t wait to get back into the studio. What really matters in all of this is making I think. I just wouldn’t be able to keep up full time with the rest: the networking, the emails, the thanking, the making sure this, making sure that. I’m certainly not complaining about finally being at the beginning of an art career. It’s simply that it’s a lot of paperwork! And it’s very draining at times.

To refuel, viewing art helps.

I particularly liked Tucker Nichols’ refreshing show at ZieherSmith. While it could potentially come across as faux-naïve, the work feels unguarded and playful. Down the block, Josephine Meckseper’s installation at Elizabeth Dee feels the opposite: deliberate and cool, heady and insider.

Over on 22nd Street, a small show of Paul Bloodgood’s paintings at Newman Popiashvili is big. The press release indicates Bloodgood’s interest in how painting can veer from self-expression. It’s interesting to read about (if I understood it correctly), but when I look at his work – and perhaps at art in general - , I can’t help but think it just IS self-expressive. It has a human touch and that's what I like about it. And the rest is the rest.

Out of Line in the press

2010-06-02T09:35:00.002-05:00

"Out of Line" is on the Short List in this week’s New Yorker in the Goings on About Town section! Whooooo! Oh, I mean, "I am so pleased."

This Saturday I will be giving an unconventional slide-presentation that will expand on the show.

The presentation is a subjective survey of what line is and has been in visual art and other domains, including sports, war, language and spiritual practice. I travel far and wide from Matisse to Charles Ray, from my bathroom calendar to a chorus line, from vectors to the most delicate grape leaf outlined by Ellsworth Kelly.

Please come.

June 5 at 5pm.
Slag Gallery
531 West 25th St., Ground 10
 

Things to Remember

2010-05-26T09:26:00.003-05:00

(Claude Monet, Nymphéas, 1914-1917, oil on canvas, 59 x78 3/4 in.)

1. It’s art if you think it is.
2. In making art, you carry out your own vision, not anyone else’s. It’s more personal than showing your influences and it’s beyond trend. And this is easier said than done.
3. One truly like-minded friend goes a long way. Pollock and Krasner, Guston and Coolidge, Gilbert and George.
4. Lists are simplistic.
5. If you camp out at Monet in Chelsea, you will see lots of art world peeps who don’t answer your emails.

The Morning After

2010-05-24T09:17:00.003-05:00

(Crowd shot from the opening of Out of Line)

Some people say, “Fantastic!”, “Love the work!”, “Like the direction you’re going in!”, “Cohesive show!”. But what I dwell on, what I stick to, is the negative. And it’s not even that negative. It’s just not positive, it’s lukewarm, like, “I generally liked it,” or “that’s not my favorite piece.” It might even just be the nebulous “Congratulations.” Then I start feeling my thyroids swell, as if someone were holding me by my neck up against a wall. I’m convinced I’ve done something wrong. Something very, very wrong. And that that one nonplussed comment means the whole endeavor is a bust. That I am a bust. I could spend my whole life trying to change that opinion.

But I digress. Showing art in public is a risk. You don’t show yourself perfectly and therefore you are vulnerable. In front of everybody. But you’ve also made a move, staked a position that can make an impression on a few others, and of course on your own self. I have to say, so far, all in all, this time around, it has been really quite heartwarming.

Installed and Looking Good

2010-05-19T11:15:00.001-05:00

And maybe I can return to normal blogging soon.
Hope to see you at the opening or during the run of the show.