Mentor, 2nd semester

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

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

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

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

Study/Experiment With New Materials

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

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

New Work

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

Flyover - oil on canvas, 24" x 36"

Pteronychus - oil on canvas, 12" x 12"

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

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

It's Just the Beginning

Semester Summary

Group 1: January-June, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VITAMIN P!!!

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!