VITAMIN P!!!

Response to Selected Works From

“VITAMIN P: New Perspectives in Painting”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

List of works cited:

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

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

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

ENDGAME

A Response to Essays From

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

List of Works Cited:

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

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

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

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

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

2010 NYC Spring Art Walk

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Works In Progress

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

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

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

Critical Theory 1 Response

Response to Selected Texts From Critical Theory 1

 
 The origins of homosexuality and its relational politics in postmodern art are illustrated very clearly in Gavin Butt's “The Greatest Homosexual?” which specifically explores “camp” and the work/life of the artist Larry Rivers. Rivers, very aware of his place in the art world in the mid '40's as a heterosexual white male, understood the need to undermine that very fact and indulge in what he correctly found to be “truly bohemian” - the gay social world. It was certainly transformative in his art, but it gives rise to a few problematic notions:  Did Rivers' choice qualify homosexuality as the arbiter of “better art” in that time? Can we equate Rivers to a kind of “Elvis,” co-opting homosexuality as a performative persona, just as Elvis did with blues music, which was developed and nurtured by American black culture? I suppose the latter question is covered by Butt's explanation of “camp,” yet Elvis, in his time, was not considered camp (109).  Nor is Rivers' love and performance of jazz saxophone given a camp status, even though he is fully aware that he is co-opting (again) music with deep roots in black America (Butt 123, note 22).
 
 As an introductory text, Mary Anne Staniszewski's “Believing is Seeing” serves its purpose well. The pictorial lead-in that develops the art/not art discourse is apt, if not amusing. However, though Staniszewski addresses (in the last two chapters) the relationships of art/culture in the mass media age, her de jure development of the topic conflates, rather than delineates. For instance, if postmodern art can accept a signature as “art,” (for naming gives value and power), how is this different than corporate “branding?” There is a corporate pretense at creativity, of course; marketing departments have “creative directors” and “designers,” but there is no intention for art to be made. Staniszewski parallels Madonna and Cindy Sherman (and rightly so), but asks for distinctions to no longer be determined: “Isn't it time to leave behind criteria that equate 'high' with Art and 'low' with popular culture and commerce...?” (285). Despite her plea, many of the old hierarchies hold firmly to their established places, and this fact is glaringly overlooked.
 
Speaking of marketing, the overall tone of Alan Kaprow's “Happenings in the New York Scene” reads a bit like an advertisement for itself. Kaprow also paints what now must be considered a classic Venn diagram of the “artistic sellout” in his desire to keep the Happenings a pure art form and not subject to the “melodrama” of fame:
 
 
Is this the first published instance of the declaration “never sell out” in postmodern art? It would be intriguing to find out, albeit a difficult task.The fact that these artists were trying so hard not to “sell out” shows the unsustainability of the Happenings – something which Kaprow admits: “The attention and pressure will probably destroy most of us, as they have nearly all the others.” (67-68). There was a certain audacity to this, but at the same time, it is rather brave, as there was no way to know that there was any real cultural value in the Happenings, given their tenuous existence. As it turns out, the spirit of the Happenings has lived on through the internet in the online vernacular of today's youth culture. Media portals such as YouTube have given voice to an absurdist, randomized stream of social commentary, where pop cultural memes are reinterpreted/repurposed through highly personalized, idiosyncratic expression.
Robert Smithson's essay, “Cultural Confinement,” reignites the old, Duchamp-ian argument that the museums and galleries (the institutions of art) represent a confinement of art as the only places “Art” can exist. The rules are made by the institutions and artists historically conform only by unfortunate necessity. Smithson, like Duchamp, seeks to break the rules but the twist here is that Smithson is approaching it from a literal “outside” point of view; he has taken art into the great outdoors. But, manicured nature is still too much for Smithson: “Parks are idealizations of nature, but nature in fact is not a condition of the ideal.” (249). Yet if Smithson's “ideal” is a perfect corroboration/collaboration with nature and art, and since nature is transient, is not the art transient? Is this corroboration achieved at its highest (ideal) standard in a specific time frame/season/light/weather condition? How can the art conform to the unchartable parameters that natural forces may dictate? Or is it presupposed that every interaction, no matter what nature dishes out, is in perfect alignment with the art? That is a convenient device. Smithson's taking art out of the museum into natural worlds is indeed laudable, but there is a presumptive quality to his reasoning that is, ironically, reminiscent of a museum's pedantry.
With regard to Sol Lewitt's “Paragraphs on Conceptual art,” the author humbly suggests that there may be inconsistencies in his writing: “Even when writing these Ideas, there seemed to be obvious inconsistencies...” (184). An instance where this becomes evident as an arguable point is his implication that concept alone makes a stronger artistic statement than a finished product: “The idea itself, even if not made visible, is as much a work of art as any finished product.” (182). This is not quantifiable by any objective means. Metaphorically, the artist is keeping the idea under a rock. How can quality, impact (and/or reaction), and success (however measurable) be determined? It might be reasoned that, with the limitations of physicality versus the infinite iterations of thought, the purity of an idea is in greater danger of corruption in the mind of the creator than if it were to be presented in a physical form.
 
 
The feminist texts: “Virility and Domination in Early Twentieth Century Vanguard Painting” by Carol Duncan; “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity” by Griselda Pollock; “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” by Linda Nochlin; and “Excerpts from The Dinner Party” by Judy Chicago; do well to illuminate the role of women in art historically as it pertains to the contemporary. It is clear that the province of art and art history has been (like history itself), dominantly phallocentric. The very truths of that formally accepted matrix are exposed and, in some instances, rendered into mere opinion in the face of these  feminist critiques. It is a harsh and necessary light that is shed upon such an exclusionary facade. However, though it was (and still is to an extent) completely necessary to denounce the male-dominated art construct, it does not seem prudent to insist that every male artist's intention in depicting the female form is to denigrate it, which is what Carol Duncan intimates throughout her entire essay. Specifically, Duncan's treatment of Matisse's Carmelina shows her pointed agenda has no boundaries: “(Matisse) blazes forth in brilliant red... The artist, if not the man, masters the situation...” (300). Why is his use of red a device of subjugation? Could it be that he was merely wearing red? Or, knowing the cleverness of the artist as a colorist, perhaps the use of red directs you to his image in the work because of his artistic ego, and not his male libido? Does not conflating those things exacerbate the issue?
 
 
Judy Chicago's piece is a wonderful construction of a new feminist history through art, symbolism and biographical presentation. The feminist movement did indeed gain huge momentum in the thirty years since then, and it initiated change on a massive scale. Granted, it is not global, nor has equality been achieved in even the most progressive of cultures. Nevertheless, there is surely a success story here, as it cannot be argued that women now operate in seats of power and importance as never before. In ever-increasing numbers, women are occupying public offices of great political influence, as well as private offices of corporations wielding substantial financial power. Of course, these seats were historically occupied by men, and the culture of conquest engendered therein is still safely harbored in these institutions because of such a history. However, rather than seeking to change things from their positions of power, women in these seats have seemingly co-opted the culture. It is hard to argue that they have not accepted the inherent corporate and political will to dominate to at least a professional degree. This goes against Chicago's demonstration that women achieved great things (for women and for culture as a whole) by fighting against these entrenched male frameworks, not by aligning themselves with such things. Chicago has shown how women have made progress by tearing down walls of oppression from without – and in doing so, there is now the opportunity to do it from within. One would hope that women will capitalize on this favorable moment in history.
 
 List of works cited:
 
 
 Butt, Gavin “The Greatest Homosexual? Camp pleasure and the performative body of Larry Rivers.” Performing the Body/Performing the Text. Ed. Amelia Jones, Andrew Stevenson. London: Routledge, 1999. 107-124. Print.
 
 
 Chicago, Judy “Excerpts from The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage (1979).” Artists, Critics, Context – Readings in and around American Art since 1945. Ed. Paul F. Fabozzi. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002. 318-330. Print.
 
 
 Duncan, Carol “Virility and Domination in Twentieth Century Vanguard Painting.” Feminism and Art History: Questioning the Litany. Ed. Norma Broude, Mary Garrard. Boulder: Westview, 1982. 293-313. Print
 
 
 Kaprow, Allan “Happenings In the New York Scene (1961).” Fabozzi 60-68.
 
 
Lewitt, Sol. “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art (1967).” Fabozzi 180-184.
 
 
Nochlin, Linda “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” ArtNews January, 1971: 145-176. Print
 
 
Pollock, Griselda Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the Histories of Art. London: Routledge, 1988. 50-91. Print
 
 
Smithson, Robert. “Cutural Confinement (1972).” Fabozzi 247-249.
 
  
 
Staniszewski, Mary Anne. Believing is Seeing – Creating the Culture of Art. New York: Penguin, 1995. Print
 

Not-So-Perfect Storm

Well, I'm not happy.

A big Nor'Easter decided to use NYC as its rotation point, and the tri-state area received a massive dose of snow this past Friday - the day that was to be my travel day. The odd thing was that the weather here in Portland, Maine was Spring-like on Friday. Of course, the night before it "blew a hella gale" and rained hard enough to scare anyone named Noah, but it never got below 40 degrees. New York has just been pummeled with snow this year. We've got nothing.

Anyway, this prevented my meeting with Kurt. And, alas, he cannot make it next weekend, as he will be away. It's getting a little long in the tooth to wait anymore for our first meeting, so I decided that we will USE TECHNOLOGY (say this with the reverb turned up). I'm sending him images and expository writings about my process via e-mail. We will have a phone meeting over this later in the week.

We have scheduled our next (actual, real-time, face-to-face, whatever you want to call it) meeting for March 27th. He invited me to tag along with his students to the Whitney Biennial. Not sure if he's got work in it, but I wouldn't be surprised. Afterward, we'll adjourn to his studio and discuss things as they pertain to me. Plus, I will get to see his setup and no doubt geek out over his stuff. I'm looking forward to that more than you know.

Meantime, here's a little hint of what's to come:

It's Botticelli's "Minerva and the Centaur," 1480(+/-). It's part of the research for one particular piece I'm working on. No more hints until I hear back from my mentor! I mean it now!

Objects of Wonder

I usually spend plenty of quality time at the Portland Museum of Art, but last week was a little different. I was contracted by the museum to paint some of my small still lifes in the atrium in order to not only promote the new exhibit, "Objects of Wonder", but also to provide inspiration to kids and their families as they tried their own still lifes at stations set up nearby.

Above you see me painting a Totoro (please see Miyazake's films if you haven't already fallen in love with his stuff) that belongs to one of my boys. I had about an hour and 15 minutes to paint him, so he's not at the state of finish I usually prefer, but it was pretty fast for me anyway.

On day two I painted a Chinese ceramic horse (we call him Percy) that I'd painted before. I did an underpainting of this before I got to PMA, knowing I didn't have much time - and he's sort of complicated, as you see. He's about 90% done, I feel. The little guy in the foreground decided to draw one of my "minumentals" instead of the setups that were for the kids. Doing his own thing, as an artist should do, right?

And on day 3, I painted an orange pepper. This one I actually finished in the time allowed! I even had time to sign it! The Daily Sun plopped me on the front page while painting this.

But this was the best work done that day --This one little girl decided to go for portraiture, rather than still life. How flattering is this? Looks like I need to shave, though. I did.

A fun time, to be sure, but wow - do I have SO much to do before my visit with Kurt Kauper in NYC. It's in a few days, so I'll be reporting back on that, soon.