tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8464695944263209582024-03-19T05:16:01.719-07:00Critical Distancenotes and essays from
the studio of robert sullivanRob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.comBlogger94125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-48556844061828107672017-10-12T13:04:00.003-07:002017-10-12T13:04:43.893-07:00Migrated to MEDIUMThis blog has laid fallow for a bit. Some material has been selected out and now will appear at <a href="https://medium.com/@robsullivanart">https://medium.com/@robsullivanart</a> on the Medium publishing site. Any new material will appear there. Thank you.Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-84765626910153428962015-12-28T20:07:00.003-08:002016-01-04T13:07:28.774-08:00Thank you, John Seed<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3q0B8ctLxvtvuRPxE_lZePOOR8c0XcjqUQKVJYQsYjKtiUH1JAtf6sCcVqOL9iExp9JXhC0ec7vJtHYOKrRFpGrnA9_0hBi_sOi0NP9c1eFamy_kmh9dnnYDndraeTfnvN2-YcvXNvEQ/s1600/Altus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3q0B8ctLxvtvuRPxE_lZePOOR8c0XcjqUQKVJYQsYjKtiUH1JAtf6sCcVqOL9iExp9JXhC0ec7vJtHYOKrRFpGrnA9_0hBi_sOi0NP9c1eFamy_kmh9dnnYDndraeTfnvN2-YcvXNvEQ/s320/Altus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;">"Altus" - 2015, R. Sullivan</span></i></div>
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[This is a rather rambling “response” to the John Seed essay, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/so-these-three-artists-wa_b_8873906.html" target="_blank">“So These Three Artists Walk Into a Jeff Koons Show…”</a> It doesn’t address all of his topics, but I selected out a few that I thought bore further discussion.]<br />
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I appreciate the sentiment that John is addressing in this article, if not in toto, then at least over the more foundational points. Nevertheless, even though it is tons of fun to use Koons as a straw man for the argument over “what’s wrong with the contemporary?” - it reminds me exactly of contemporary art theory classes in which Bouguereau is similarly burned in effigy for the sins of painting’s representational past. Neither of those tactics sit well with me. If you get scholarly types from both sides of this artsy coin together in a room, it’s akin to putting a dehumidifier and a humidifier in the same room together: a lot of energy is spent, and nothing changes.<br />
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Deconstructing the validity of the manufacture of Koon’s “goods” guarantees tumbling down a rabbit hole into which I’d rather not descend. I, too, studied under Steve Assael with some of the very same people who have worked/are working at Jeff’s 29th and 11th facility (as well as the Broadway and Houston facility some years back). I know what happens there — I’ve seen it firsthand. The phrase I can ascribe to the goings on there is as apt as it is appropriately banal: it is what it is. Anyway, this isn’t necessarily about the issue at hand. Pun intended, I guess, because the idea of skill and its ties to a kinesthetic relationship to the hand is really what should be addressed more thoroughly. This topic inhabits a slippery slope too, but acquisition and exposition of skill seems to be the defining factor for a lot of artists who identify as “post-contemporary” (AKA “classical realists.”).<br />
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I’m not going to address Daniel Maidman’s article (most of my argument here deals with a lot of what he discusses), but rather the selection that Seed cites in regard to skill. Maidman’s phrase “unskilled genius” is a ridiculous oxymoron — unless he’s being purposefully cheeky, which, contextually, I doubt. How can one ascribe genius to one who (supposedly) has no skill with which to exhibit said genius? Does he mean idiot savant? If not, then the genius part lies somewhere where such content is knowable, so perhaps the concept is enough. If that is the case, then the visual that accompanies it clearly does not have to be coeval with high-level conceptuality in order to be read. In fact, in the contemporary, the visual often serves as a juxtapositional foil to the high-mindedness or cleverness of the concept. Sometimes it is couched in irony, or may have some codified meaning in its formal structure. At any rate, the better works of this kind get you to think, regardless of the hand skills involved, or lack thereof.<br />
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But, again, this is not what we should be addressing, is it? Every critical analysis of contemporary artwork that the “post-contemporary” congregation sets out to scrutinize always ends up in fetters over the lack of formal substance. I’d rather address the idea of having skill, the work that results from employing said skill, and see how this may or may not fulfill the criteria of what it means to be a skilled artist. This is a subject that I am fully qualified to tackle, as I am one of those artists who possesses excellent hand skills. I’ve spent 20+ years honing them, and I think I’ve passed that 10,000 hour mark. This is nothing particularly special, mind you. Of course, I do not take it for granted, but neither do I feel that this alone will ever be enough to be a quality artist.<br />
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In some ways, it’s fun to be an artist with “Traditional Skills” (Seed’s term). You always get positive reactions from those outside contemporary spheres, that’s for sure. Hand skills often make your work that much more accessible. As a professor of studio art (as I am), it’s also handy to be able to demonstrate a logical process towards good drawing and painting through the traditional methodologies (you know, those ones that have been tried and tested over 6 centuries..?). If you know what you’re doing, this works pretty well. And, that’s just it: these skills can be taught. Some folks get the hang of it faster than others, but, if you’re interested (and you practice), you will eventually have something of decent quality coming out of your brush/ pencil/ Wacom tablet/ etc. It’s easy to say, hard to do, but then again, so is a marathon, and how many people run those annually?<br />
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Here’s a little anecdote: Even though I had a quality undergrad studio art education, I was never really given the full lowdown on the landscape. Sometime after obtaining my BFA, I bit the bullet and got myself a french easel and went down to the shore. It was a disaster. I clearly did not know the first thing about how to paint en plein air. My studio practice was of little help in the great outdoors. I made a point of studying the Hudson River School masters, as well as the American Impressionists (my grandmother was from Old Lyme, so I had an inherent draw towards that bunch), and after a LOT of failure, I became pretty good at plein air painting, eventually. It was a good experience, and it taught me how to be far more efficient in my picture-making process, and I realized that there is always something more to be learned in painting. However, it still felt like a means and not an end. It was a new tool; a new skill, if you prefer. Were my predilections set on being an outdoor painter, it would not have been that hard to elevate my game with more specific practice and dedication. But, as I noted: to what end? To be the next Church or Bierstadt or Childe Hassam? Were they not themselves already? I would be merely tracing the contours of a mountain already built by giants. I would just end up engaging in a kind of history painting, when it comes right down to it. (I should mention that Rackstraw Downes has done something amazing in this arena, but it's taken him my entire lifetime to do so.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIqFiCaZGGDBrts3B7IcQB0AVcEd988WqzxWdqEplCEEuoCy5C_H8OASR8yCdlrjYHUKRL_yKH5V3jg2eqnIA8ereAwCeZtIyXl6kitJIhecNit9FOxzBKyzg0eKh6eAlDAvF4CBmwxVI/s1600/Church.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIqFiCaZGGDBrts3B7IcQB0AVcEd988WqzxWdqEplCEEuoCy5C_H8OASR8yCdlrjYHUKRL_yKH5V3jg2eqnIA8ereAwCeZtIyXl6kitJIhecNit9FOxzBKyzg0eKh6eAlDAvF4CBmwxVI/s320/Church.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Frederic Edwin Church, "Sunset across the Hudson Valley" 1870</i></span></div>
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That in mind, I want to bring up the neo-atelier movement, which a lot of “post-contemporaries” seem to be 100% behind. Is this not merely an historical reenactment of the 19th century European painting schools? I’ve walked through the studios at a particular NY ‘academy’, and I did indeed think the work quite excellent in terms of skill-based standards. Yet, aside from various modes of the students’ outfits, I felt the place was a direct and reactionary throwback to antiquity. The work could have been produced by one student or many different students. Even with my trained eyes, it all looked the same. To what end? To acquire traditional skill? These students already had it in spades. What exactly were they doing with it? It was all treadmill work with no road time, to use the running analogy once again. Oddly enough, it made me think of Koons’ studio: busy bodies producing quality, workmanlike products. The difference in the atelier works were that these lovely figures on toned paper had no conceptual basis, they were just pictorial placeholders for the models that had stood on the now-empty dais. How were they any different than, say, the shadow tracing done by the daughter of Butades done in 600 BCE?<br />
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There is a strong push from the classical realism cohort that a deep conceptuality is inherent in perceptual work. The engagement of a skilled artist and their labor over a piece is seen as somehow quantifiable: a heartfelt encounter with something ineffable, accessed only through mastery of perceptual painting. It’s a position explicated in a most earnest fashion (in a variety of similar forms) in the essays of “<a href="http://www.tfaoi.com/cm/4cm/4cm335.pdf" target="_blank">Slow Painting: A Deliberate Renaissance</a>.” This is a highly arguable point on many fronts. However, the one I’d like to focus upon is the hermetic nature of this engagement and how that affects the theory. The maker of these works, and artists of like mind, are the only audience privy to this concept. The non-artist and those not interested in skill per se are left out of this conversation. In a few of the essays mentioned above, this argument often extends beyond the perceptual into studio-crafted works, again espousing the ideas of a time/labor-intensive engagement. In truth, an overabundance of time spent on a work might actually point up a certain lack of skill — a struggle with the medium as opposed to a mastery of such. That’s not an unfair position to take, if one looks at this from outside the exclusivity of the theory.<br />
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I liken the kind of hermeticism inherent in this “traditionally-skilled-painter ideology” to attending a cocktail party full of rocket scientists. You think rockets are cool (they are!), and you like space, but the conversations of the scientists are full of physics jargon. Ultimately, you can’t contribute, and you come away empty and bored. This is academy-painting in a nutshell: it looks great, but the only conversation beyond, “It looks great!” is either one of painting geekery or one that revolves around how good it goes with the couch.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYxT6_X-3fuFtnFr6iWfly-Z2qTN_JFA3Q15pdoXIJWMwn0EWFcFZx8CZA9ZhjahqOPsVqdq2nKpBrUFTymXmrPZ2-5YbeqyW8erONeKMwrE-4KT1tOk8OQgJSB7nsKz1motTEZBQDo6g/s1600/Collins_Reclining_Nude_Morning3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYxT6_X-3fuFtnFr6iWfly-Z2qTN_JFA3Q15pdoXIJWMwn0EWFcFZx8CZA9ZhjahqOPsVqdq2nKpBrUFTymXmrPZ2-5YbeqyW8erONeKMwrE-4KT1tOk8OQgJSB7nsKz1motTEZBQDo6g/s320/Collins_Reclining_Nude_Morning3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Jacob Collins, "Reclining Nude, Morning" 2006</i></span></div>
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Speaking as one “on the inside,” I feel like this sort of proto-phenomenology of engagement is terribly reaching. Sure, there are moments of “zen” in the act of drawing and painting as it were, but the nature of Zen espouses a kind of no-mind or nothingness. The very <i>absence</i> of mind allows for better engagement. That's a lot more to the point, but such an idea is certainly not the purview of perceptual painters alone, as they seem to insist. Maybe if the essayists of “Slow Painting” had been a little more rigorous in their assertions, they might have co-opted some of the theory behind Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow,” but I’ve yet to see such an intellectual tack. At any rate, even “Flow” does not underscore skill as a necessary tenet; it’s primarily about creativity. Skill and creativity are very much mutually exclusive concepts. Same goes for the phenomenological: at no time does Merleau-Ponty (or Heidgegger, for that matter) set aside hand-skills as the mandatory tool for mediation of perception. What an intensely empirical philosophy that would be! Yes, I can personally attest to the deeply felt zen-factor in engaging in perceptual (and other) work — BUT — that phenomenon does not exist solely under the umbrella of classical realism or its peripheral offshoots (those with traditional skills). It’s a highly uncritical theory.<br />
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So, what of Seed’s category of “Idiosyncratic Skill?” I like the premise very much, but, his short exegesis is fairly broad. I feel like it should do an end-around and be pointed directly at the “Traditional Skill” crowd to see where, if, and how it fits. How many current practitioners of Traditional Skill employ Idiosyncratic Skill? Based on what is coming out of the neo-atelier scene, none of those people. There are some incredible painters, do not get me wrong — but the top 10 are the ones who run the ateliers themselves. This is not the 17th, 18th, or 19th Century. Jacob Collins does not have a studio full of apprentices. And, in a far different (yet similar!) vein, neither does Kehinde Wiley, for that matter — he just has, like Koons, workers. None of these laborers have any shot at moving into the position of Master. That is indeed the part of history that both ateliers and contemporary studios do not emulate. Even the best of the aforementioned top 10 still produce work stuck in ancient modalities. It is a misuse of such high skill. Or, perhaps a disuse of other skills.<br />
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I’ve written about overuse of allegory in my thesis (<a href="http://robsullivanartnotes.blogspot.com/2015/11/religare-painters-thesis.html" target="_blank">q.v. if you care to</a>), and that seems to be the go-to for a lot of the classicists who feel like that is the idiosyncrasy that will set them apart. But, like academic painting itself, it is a poor mode of conveyance. Even the most politically charged events pictured by some of these incredibly trained painters devolves into an overwrought op-ed cartoon, haltingly delivered by the antiquated vehicle of allegory. I have seen surrealist tactics put to use, but without the inherent strangeness of actual Surrealism. At best, these works are fantasy-illustrative. At worst, they are decorative “put a bird on it” space-fillers. What is missing in these types of works? Simple: a discursive element.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdaaL4FTdJsfECwGu9SkbSElrZTL25gQrEvaJd9sLuPToeYOYbONxx93M-tE9TaSip562mlWbFbDAdqTOgPGG2n4IDiY2vmXlva2C4ieD8BQuqq-609aaPjwpuhAe9f7v3l_qciZKY54M/s1600/cycle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdaaL4FTdJsfECwGu9SkbSElrZTL25gQrEvaJd9sLuPToeYOYbONxx93M-tE9TaSip562mlWbFbDAdqTOgPGG2n4IDiY2vmXlva2C4ieD8BQuqq-609aaPjwpuhAe9f7v3l_qciZKY54M/s320/cycle.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>Graydon Parrish, "The Cycle of Terror and Tragedy" 2006</i></span></div>
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Now, that is also a broad term - but, when applied to representational work (note, I did not use the term “classical” or “realistic” — ossified terms, ossified ideas), this becomes fantastically problematic. Again, I have written about representation and contemporary modalities (<a href="http://www.globalthek.com/e&r1.html" target="_blank">“Representational Painting After Richter”</a>), and this is where the rubber meets the road these days. What can one say in a representational image that your phone cannot after a quick search? Not only does it have to say more, it has to point out painting as a self-referent, as well as its very history. It has to show paint, show object-hood, show an acknowledgment to photography, smart phones, photoshop, film… In other words, it has to acknowledge its place in the discourse of representation, but <i>as a painting</i>. That is a highly delimited space, and to uncritically paint pictures of things without understanding the very nature of how the world perceives “pictures of things” shows up a lack of intellectual (idiosyncratic) skill. In the face of such a deficit, any traditional/ technical skill employed is merely wheel-spinning.<br />
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Again, if you read my thesis, I list numerous artists who engage in the proper practice of representational painting with the contemporary world in mind. I continue to align myself with them, although I am carving my own discursive niche in my own explorations. That is how it should be. As a result, I find myself on the outliers — no fan of the Richard Princes of the world, but certainly not a follower of the Graydon Parrishes, either. Richter had it right in pointing out the dangers of ideological thinking. Those who celebrate and capitalize upon the “low-as-high” zeitgeist of celebutante art are as circumscribed as those who worship at the altar of the Munsell System or Reilly Palette with no thoughts outside formal practice. These are narrow world views for those who would call themselves artists. I subscribe to neither of these, but I do not discount them, either. They are part of the system, as rebellious and reactionary as today’s political climate.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyLVlonoTA1j4rb5Dl7ozRN-9VvHpwAR4Pc8n-ffYokGUCWx5qylq4yHJBmhY3Ol3LTMec8NCsRQM2g1xC5ScLLeFTQJBaMsi7WjUMnu8-FId8HbLw6CM2y637IIHltv5nCpGS-oE0H8k/s1600/richter-titian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyLVlonoTA1j4rb5Dl7ozRN-9VvHpwAR4Pc8n-ffYokGUCWx5qylq4yHJBmhY3Ol3LTMec8NCsRQM2g1xC5ScLLeFTQJBaMsi7WjUMnu8-FId8HbLw6CM2y637IIHltv5nCpGS-oE0H8k/s320/richter-titian.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Gerhard Richter, "Annunciation after Titian" 1973</i></div>
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I am fully aware that my opinions on this matter do nothing to ingratiate me to those who would like to co-opt me into the traditionally-skilled sect. But, my possession of similar hand-skills does not automatically align me with like artists. I prefer to associate myself with those who would think outside such narrow pathways. I’ve never thrown my skill sets under the bus for the sake of intellectual pursuits, and even in the critical theory-heavy crucible of grad school, I found a way to say more with less and still develop as a representational painter. Perhaps that is my idiosyncratic skill. Whatever it is, I’m still, and will forever be developing it along that path. Representational painting has been with us a long time, it has been with me a long time, and it will go on without me. It takes care of itself.Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-21679011521217163032015-11-23T09:33:00.001-08:002015-11-23T11:06:55.576-08:00Religare - A painter's thesis<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;">
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<i>[After letting this settle for a couple of years, I am posting this as a resource. Should you use this material in any way - academic or otherwise - please make the necessary citations. Thank you - RS]</i></div>
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<b><u>Religare:</u></b></div>
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<b><u>Reconnecting to Faith Through Representational Painting</u></b></div>
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by Robert Sullivan</div>
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Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts </div>
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Art Institute of Boston, Lesley University</div>
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Boston, Massachusetts</div>
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January, 2012</div>
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<b><u>Abstract</u></b></div>
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I believe there is a contemporary and profound import in reconnecting to “faith” – that is, faith as a dimension of trust in art, self and society – through a traditional artistic practice like representational painting. The original connection between painting and faith has been slowly worn away since the Renaissance. What was at first religious became romantic, then prosaic, and ultimately, the subject of an ironic cynicism. There is now a conspicuous absence of the faith/art parallel in today's secular discourses. My project is to syncretize painting and its native religious impulse without the burden of the ideologies that have diminished its significance.</div>
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This thesis explores both historical and modern aspects of spirituality and representational painting as they relate to recent developments in my artistic practice. Discussed foremost are the rifts and divisions to which these systems were subject, and the subsequent disconnect from their faith-based character as reflected in the contemporary, secular Western world. Through this lens, I will assess the changes, discoveries, and recoveries I have made in the wake of questioning of my own faith in these once-revered cultural bastions.</div>
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<b><u>Introduction</u></b></div>
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“It is impossible to talk sensibly about religion and at the same time address art in an informed and intelligent manner: But it is also irresponsible not to keep trying” (James Elkins, <i>On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, </i>116).</div>
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Were it not for the book that I've quoted above, I may not have chosen this particular path for this thesis. The former part of the sentiment Elkins expresses here is certainly true: this is a difficult subject to broach. For many, it is far too personal, and thus rendered unassailable and alien to the discursive structure of contemporary art. And so it was that I did not arrive at this thematic immediately, let alone lightly. It was only when I understood my concerns regarding faith and art were reflections of larger discourses that I began to understand the import of their relationship to one another. It became an artistic and personal imperative that I critically engage in a process of syncretization and reconciliation of these significant subjects. The title of my thesis reflects this: I've used the Latin term, <i>Religare, </i>in the Lactantian tradition, meaning, “to reconnect over an obligation.” (Aiken).</div>
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“Faith” is manifold in its definition. It can refer to religion, an apprehension of the spiritual, or a strongly held theory or belief. Ultimately, though, it is a dimension of trust. Trust, of course, holds the prerequisite of fruition, time and truth. But, when trust is undermined – when new information is revealed that compromises perceived truths, leaving the possibility of fruition in fetters – then faith is shaken to its core.</div>
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When important life-events manifest synchronically, it is difficult to not take notice. Only a few years ago, two such events occurred in my life in this very way. In great dismay, I renounced the Roman Catholic faith in the wake of the escalating sex abuse scandals and subsequent cover-ups. Not a few months later, I began a critical engagement with my artistic practice (representational oil painting) at the onset of my postgraduate studies. These events resulted in a major shakeup, shifting my thinking as an artist and as a person of faith. In time, it became abundantly clear that a critical rigor needed to be employed in order to reassemble these components of my personal makeup into a workable and cohesive structure. This thesis documents the conceptual, research and process-oriented methods I've conducted in pursuit of this objective, and ultimately argues the necessity of such.</div>
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I will begin with a brief history of faith and art, noting how these once-linked systems were subject to an inevitable splintering. This dovetails with my preconceived notions regarding traditional painting practices and how they, too, were fractured in a similar fashion.</div>
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From that point, I will explicate the processes by which I have endeavored to re-negotiate my belief systems (a “reclamation of faith,” as it were). This will be done primarily through examining modern discourse on the matter, as well as a practical application through my work as a traditional oil painter.</div>
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Fundamental to to this are my subject-oriented explorations into images of the everyday, or quotidian. My relationship to this particular trope will be discussed in connection to my work, as well as within the modern media construct, as it relates to the changing definition of 'quotidian.' In an amalgam of these concerns, I will show how, through the lens of 'flight' and flying-related subjects, a certain kind of creative liberation is revealed that supports a negotiation with transcendence, and the complications of contemporary representational painting.</div>
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This paper concludes with the contention that painting operates as a distinct space for contemplation in today's high-speed, highly-secularized culture. I will summarize my explorations and show how new approaches have been implemented in my practice, gaining traction in my latest paintings and allowing for future development of faith – in my work and that which lies beyond it.</div>
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<b><u>Historical and Contemporary Foundations</u></b></div>
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Representational oil painting once served as a primary agent of truth. These truths were fundamentally tied to religion. In Western cultural history, the primary motivator in this instance was the Roman Catholic Church. At times, painting provided assistance in exhorting Christian principles, but often the painted works themselves were powerful enough (<i>i.e., </i>sanctioned as sacred) to fully convey the message. For artists, the patronage of the Church signified great success. Western civilization put its faith in the Church and the Church put its faith in painting as its promotional vehicle. However, when Church dogma was called into question via the schism of the Reformation, both institutions began to lose prominence in the wake of escalating secularity. In both society and painting alike, an excursion into a more worldly aesthetic ensued via the vehicle of the Enlightenment.</div>
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Vincent Van Gogh avowed that “painting is a faith” (Lublin, 113). This declaration was made as a counter to the troubling expansion of cultural secularization in the 1880s. A century and a half later, we find that not only has most of the Western world been thoroughly secularized, the scope of painting has also been <i>substantially </i>delimited. With the inclusion of all sorts of radical and contemporary media (digital, video, installation, performance, etc.), painting has been pushed into a very narrow arena. When I entered the crucible of postgraduate study, I was made acutely aware of these closed-down parameters, and this caused me no small amount of concern.</div>
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It was also troublesome to find that not only were my formative Romantic and Neoclassical tendencies rooted mainly in systems of antiquity; the formal aspects and thematic content reflected a kind of 'history painting,' or a nostalgia untethered from contemporary ideas. It was time to understand that my unproblematic perspective was limiting, if not treacherous.</div>
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However, in this attenuated space for painting, the 'truth' of expression may be closer to hand. It remains one of the great epistemic leftovers of art history that painters are impelled and compelled to urgently respond to the “now” with veracity. As an artistic posture, this is not only plausible, but vital. I have thus been encouraged by the still- present practice of representational painting by the following contemporary artists who reflect this mandate in their work:</div>
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<span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Michäel Borremans <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Vija Celmins <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Mathew Cerletty <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Anna Conway</div>
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<span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>John Currin <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Vincent Desiderio <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Peter Doig <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Judith Eisler <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Tim Eitel <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Wynne Evans</div>
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<span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Emily Eveleth <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Eric Fischl <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>April Gornik <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Julie Heffernan <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Kurt Kauper</div>
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<span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Ulrich Lamsfuss <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Marilyn Minter <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Richard Phillips <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Paul Rahilly</div>
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<span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Neo Rauch <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Gerhard Richter <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Peter Rostovsky <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Ed Ruscha <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Jenny Saville</div>
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<span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Serban Savu <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Adam Stennett <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Luc Tuymans <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Paul Winstanley <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Cindy Wright <span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Lisa Yuskavage</div>
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<b><u>Explorations and Difficulties</u></b></div>
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Finding the correct language to reconnect with my artistic practice proved the most arduous task. I had been fortunate enough over the years to gain a solid skill set with regard to the formal, technical aspects of painting, but, my 'worldview' of art had not been moved by anything other than the highly traditional. Therefore, the look of my work was static – physically as well as conceptually. I began to take cues from contemporary representational painters, such as Vincent Desiderio. Rather than expand the dramatic narrative for its own sake, he does so by focusing upon the development of the technical narrative, which Desiderio believes to be “the embodiment of the thought of the painter.” (<i>Art Talks,</i>13:10). But, I also noted that his work was deeply coded in large triptychs using dreamlike, mysterious imagery (fig. 1).</div>
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Fig. 1: Vincent Desiderio. <i>Pantocrator </i>– oil on linen, 83” x 194”. 2002</div>
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In this format, Desiderio strives to further revivify narrativity in what he terms a “cubistic thematic situation.” (<i>Art Talks,</i>12:05). I could not help but consider that, if the viewer of a Desiderio painting does not invest in a highly intellectualized engagement with the work, meaning may well be inscrutable. Nevertheless, through such an influence, I initially fell into the language of allegory, hoping that an encoding of multifaceted concepts within the work might garner interest and conceptual weight.</div>
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Fig. 2: Sketch for <i>Systemic – </i>charcoal on paper, 11” x 25.5” (2010).</div>
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This proved to be a false start, as I soon became mired in allegorical narrative games within the picture plane (fig. 2), and abandoned such projects before completion. The painter Kurt Kauper pointed me to the academic work of Benjamin Buchloh – specifically his 1981 <i>Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression </i>– in which he launched a condemnatory critique of a return to figurative practices in German painting. Many of the artists he denounced worked in figural, allegorized formats, and Buchloh equated this artistic practice with those of the 1920s and 30s, which ran tangentially with emergent forms of fascism and Nazism. Through the connection, Buchloh found this contemporary maneuver highly questionable politically as well as formally regressive artistically:</div>
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“Is there a simple causal connection, a mechanical reaction, by which growing political oppression necessarily and irreversibly generates traditional representation? Does the brutal increase of restrictions in socio-economic and political life unavoidably result in the bleak anonymity and passivity of the compulsively mimetic modes that we witness, for example, in European painting of the mid-1920s and early 1930s?” (40).</div>
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Of course, this critique did not convince me that my penchant for allegorical representation marked me as an agent of reactionary politics. However, I did realize through this essay that the historical tropes of allegory have been fatigued through overuse, encumbered with the weight of sociopolitical and art history. In the wake of this realization, I recalled – with newfound clarity – the remarks of J.R.R. Tolkien:</div>
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“... I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse 'applicability' with 'allegory'; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author” (<i>xv</i>).</div>
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So, then – in hopes of paring my concepts down to their essential meanings, I painted <i>Atelier 2010 </i>(fig. 3)<i>. </i>This self-portrait is decidedly unconventional, as it depicts the artist, nude, shearing a sheep, in a space bound only by an oriental rug. This was an exploration into my psyche at the time, using a simple visual metaphor for the strange and naked discomfort of rediscovering myself as an artist under the scrutiny of peers and faculty. The message is not cryptic, but the image can easily be misconstrued as fetishistic. The neoclassical handling of form and paint lends a kind of irony to the latter perception – a bit of self-referential mocking humor with a deviant twist on the heroic works of Jacques- Louis David (fig. 4) or Jean-Leon Gérome.</div>
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Fig. 3: <i>Atelier 2010 – </i>oil on canvas, 24” x 24”. 2010</div>
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Fig. 4: Jacques-Louis David. <i>Patroclus – </i>oil on canvas, 48” x 66”. 1780</div>
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Inasmuch as this new tack in concepting showed a step forward in my artistic considerations, this direction in my work did not engender further examination. The mild tongue-in-cheek and ironic nature of such a subject did not provide me with the 'truth' I was seeking. I wanted to execute a visualization that encompassed the scope of the viewer's perceptions, not cleverly reflect known tropes back to myself. This presentation would not only create an expansiveness within the work, but would also connect me with that which is 'outside' my own consciousness: the collective consciousness of humanity. Through this connection, I might find that path back to faith.</div>
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<b><u>Religiosity and the Contemporary</u></b></div>
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Inside the institutional canon of contemporary visual art, ideas about religion are generally treated as a matter of antiquity or as a subject of an intense, disparaging criticism. More often than not, however, it remains conspicuously absent – in magazines, in critical texts, and even in pedagogy. The origins of this exclusion are well-documented and undoubtedly well-merited. The ideology of Christian doctrine (not to mention other monotheisms) has arguably wrought more disharmony than it ever intended. This in mind, one may ask: does the complete dismissal of an historical precedent engender yet another ideology? Perhaps, but it may never be fully formed, for a religious underbelly still pervades, as I shall explicate. It has become evident that throwing out the baby, the bathwater, and the tub did not completely expunge the essence of religiosity from the Enlightenment project. Recognition of this may well be the way back to a feeling of belief and belonging, as opposed to individuated, relativistic systems.</div>
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In the seminal 2-volume <i>Theory of Communicative Action </i>(1981), Jürgen Habermas proposed that Western society found its way to modernity through dismantling entrenched ideologies, one in particular being the institution of religion (87). History indeed shows how trending philosophical notions – particularly the postmodern tenet of poststructuralism – have borne this out. Western society (whose practices have been bleeding steadily into the wider world) is now in a heightened state of secularized existence and the discourse of contemporary art reflects this as its primary function. It is very interesting to note, at this rather disjointed (or 'pluralist') juncture in our current cultural model, a self-described 'methodological atheist' such as Habermas has conceded some ground to the essential import of Christianity. In response to a dialogue he'd held with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), Habermas stated, “This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk” (<i>Essays</i>, 149). In this statement, Habermas seems to have located the boundaries of his strategic project of demythologization. He now recognizes that it is possible for religious systems of articulation to harbor an integral cognitive content that cannot be unconditionally overruled by secular renderings. As a result, he is very much interested in a new dialogue in which secular and religious discourses mutually inform and learn from each other.</div>
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Within this framework, consider the discourse of Marshall McLuhan, derived as it was from his adherence to a Thomistic Catholicism. As such, there remained a practical realism in his epistemological strategies in the study of technology and media as a cultural driver; his scholarship was not adversely affected by his belief systems. In fact, it was within these systems that he often discovered a template for his academic work. Catholic traditions hold to the idea that, in a chaotic world of unbelief and sin, epiphany is made manifest through communion (sacramentally, the Body of Christ). In the same fashion, McLuhan posited that through the sound and fury of technological chaos, new order could be achieved by way of communal experience through the simulacrum. He considered this the “new universal community” (48).</div>
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Even as far back as the 18<span class="s2">th </span>Century, the progenitor of German Idealism, Immanuel Kant (Habermas is often referred to as 'Neo-Kantian'), had been making similar connections<i>. </i>It is part of Kant's approach to humanist logic that he privileges thought over religion due to the latter's supernatural tendencies. However, in his seminal work, <i>The Critique of Practical Reason </i>(1788)<i>, </i>he still regarded the core tenets of Christian texts and teachings as material which could support an organic morality regardless of any truth or fiction in the mystical components (61).</div>
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The philosophical paradigm shift that Kant had begun stemmed from the groundwork laid by his development of an aesthetic philosophy, which systematized the notion of the sublime (starting with his 1764 work, <span class="s3"><i>Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime</i>). This notion of 'greatness beyond human calculation' manifested profoundly in </span>painting during the Romantic period of the 19<span class="s2">th </span>Century. European painters like Caspar David Friedrich – and later, in America, the Hudson River School artists (fig. 5) – used the awe-inspiring tropes of the natural world as 'a sublime envisioned.' In some sense, this acted as a surrogate religious discourse, engaging with the divine through a codified structure of natural-world mysticism. As religiosity has withered from modern art since that time, the sublime has strayed into shaky territory. In a contemporary panel discussion, James Elkins warned that it is “... in danger of becoming the most popular (and overused) term for what secular artists rely upon when they want their discourse to remain secular, but it contains parallels to religion” (42:30).</div>
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Fig. 5: Albert Bierstadt. <i>Rocky Mountains near Estes Park, CO – </i>oil on paper, 19” x 14”. 1890</div>
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This is the territory I investigated with the painting, <i>Sublimation </i>(fig. 6) – a commentary and conflation of the past and present uses of the sublime. The background in this painting consists of a traditional, awe-inspiring landscape of the Alps. In the lower foreground there exists a more contemporary idea: a 'commodified sublime' in the form of a Porsche, which has crashed in front of the natural spectacle. This presentation demonstrates an editorial tack, showing the failure of the inauthentic notions of the present-day sublime in the face of the more authentic (original) one. But the presentation here is somewhat flawed: I was merely calling to light the quasi-religious trope of the sublime (albeit in a contemporary mode) – a questionable move considering Elkins' explication of the matter. And the message is still coded and indirect; there remains too much provocative content over which to parse out didactic meaning.</div>
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Fig. 6: <i>Sublimation - </i>oil on canvas 40” x 60”. 2010</div>
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Having established these notions, I understood that in order to create a 'religious' painting without religion, I needed to do so without subversion through philosophical constructs. The work would be better served using the concept of faith as one not blindly (or otherwise) adherent to an ideology, but to a more primeval tenet inherent in the subject and its presentation through painting. This would involve a further 'stripping away' of context and content within the formal space of the picture plane, and a realignment of focus on a more centralized subject. In order to correctly project these notions, that subject would require distinctly recognizable qualities, such as those of the everyday, or, quotidian, object.</div>
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<b><u>The Contemporary Quotidian Image</u></b></div>
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As a project, a presentation of 'the quotidian' assumes that something inherent is being suppressed by a dominant ideology in the image's signification. This is what Gerhard Richter posited with his 'Atlas' of collected imagery, saying, “There is a contrast between the message carried by the text and that suppressed by the illustration” (<i>Text, </i>260). We now live in a time where it is commonplace to associate images with experience, combining the terms "virtual" and "reality.” It is a 'post-<i>Matrix</i>' simulacra, if you will (referring to the 1999 Wachowski brothers' film). Out of the virtual world of the internet and associated digital technologies comes an endless stream of images – are they real or imagined? The writings of Jean Baudrillard address this directly: “[P]aradoxically, it is the real that has become our true utopia – but a utopia that is no longer in the realm of the possible, that can only be dreamt as one would dream of a lost object” (122-123). If we take this theory further, into the realm of objects and their representations, we can assert these two things: first, when a subject is so perfectly realized virtually, it becomes the object experientially; second, the original (the <i>real</i>) object's significance becomes wholly compromised as a consequence. As a result, this problematizes the idea of what is deemed a quotidian – that is, 'everyday' – object.</div>
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Norman Bryson also points out an original distinction regarding objects and their everyday-ness in his essays on the still life painting of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (figure 7):</div>
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<span class="s4">Fig. 7: </span>Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin. <i>The Silver Goblet – </i>oil on canvas, 16 7/8” x 19”. c. 1728</div>
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<span class="s3">“</span>Megalography is the depiction of those things in the world which are great — the legends of the gods, the battles of heroes, the crises of history. Rhopography (from rhopos, trivial objects, small wares, trifles) is the depiction of those things which lack importance, the unassuming material base of life that ‘importance’ constantly overlooks” (61).</div>
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In this moment in history, Bryson's distinction has been rendered unclear. We have come into an era of total visibility and exteriority, and consequently, the megalographic and the rhopographic end up on the same level. The sense of 'quotidian' now anticipates <i>not only </i>a certain domestic modesty (as with Bryson's explication of Chardin's painting as “a studied informality of attention” (91)), but one also infused with the standardized convention of something akin to a Skype screenshare – where everything is accessible. The painting of modern life has to include everything – the modest and the grandiose – because it is all available.</div>
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Should there be such an investment in the nothingness of virtuality? Like other deficient systems, the digital world is one that is highly mediated, and consequently, images have been corrupted. This corruption has brought about a failure to recall attachment and meaning in images due to the immediacy of the (digital) screen. Painting, I believe, is a way to liberate the image, for it is still an honest presentation of image; it is not deceptive. Looking at the subject in a painted format, in its reliable and contemplative sphere, the viewer is reminded how detached they have become from the image, and from there, can experience a newfound allusiveness.</div>
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With these things in mind, I was attracted to the idea of re-presenting the quotidian with representational painting. In order to promote the allusiveness I was seeking, I selected photographic reference from the internet, mostly from amateur stock sites. In such an infinitude of imagery, how does a painter choose 'the everyday' ? This was trial-and-error in nature, and I hoped to qualify my choices in paint. I experimented across a range of subjects and found some were much more successful than others in terms of their ability to sit on the canvas in a visually ambiguous and open fashion. By opting to work with a monochromatic palette, I sought to move the subjects away from their conventional signification. In the same vein, I also worked towards a removal of context – such as backgrounds, horizon lines, or any visual trope that might create unwanted narrativity.</div>
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Fig. 8: <i>Heterarchy – </i>oil on canvas, 30” x 40”. 2011</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaGVTmg2ezDr7ESDW59g2DSfijFMUWHRh0zLl5Oqq1uTjpFI3qhyphenhyphenQNentrV_31YrPNMe93SyclrXI0RWL25bJ3qbL6rZC3bbubU2CdKvb_fAmbOd6VzizBe76oBi_0axyxJuT0L_rktL0/s1600/16_Heterarchy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaGVTmg2ezDr7ESDW59g2DSfijFMUWHRh0zLl5Oqq1uTjpFI3qhyphenhyphenQNentrV_31YrPNMe93SyclrXI0RWL25bJ3qbL6rZC3bbubU2CdKvb_fAmbOd6VzizBe76oBi_0axyxJuT0L_rktL0/s320/16_Heterarchy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Two paintings from this series are shown here as an example: <i>Heterarchy </i>(fig. 8) and <i>Imago </i>(fig. 9). Both of these works compound several notions, the most obvious being the gestalt of 'flight,' but also: abstracted/iconic forms; distilled moments of action; and a 'close encounter' with the viewer, as it were.</div>
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Fig. 9: <i>Imago – </i>oil on canvas, 24” x 30”. 2011</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQs2_I6BylmcAszs9mn6QHPcYY63oz9Yvs61JSvIbMMu0_WTj17UYylF4-Q-94oa8WQWqaaWPX7OuKpqpO7Hy0-P4KMSPvUJxZZRj2bS_XzUOk45XTltJiSQ66Myqxru4rA00-oqe3rwg/s1600/15_Imago.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQs2_I6BylmcAszs9mn6QHPcYY63oz9Yvs61JSvIbMMu0_WTj17UYylF4-Q-94oa8WQWqaaWPX7OuKpqpO7Hy0-P4KMSPvUJxZZRj2bS_XzUOk45XTltJiSQ66Myqxru4rA00-oqe3rwg/s320/15_Imago.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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To foster further allusions, the titles themselves are highly suggestive. In the case of <i>Imago</i>:</div>
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<span class="s5">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>It often refers to the adult cicada as it emerges from the larval stage. This particular type of Bell helicopter bears a striking resemblance to that insect, especially at the angle depicted in my painting.</div>
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<span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span><span class="s4">Additionally, it is a designation co-opted by Carl Jung </span>to describe a way that people form their personality by identifying with the collective unconscious. In this light, is this flying machine made banal, baroque, or alien with so little context available in the painting? What new associations can be made, consequently (if any)? And what do the answers to these questions project back upon the audience?</div>
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<span class="s1">•<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span></span>Interestingly, the term is also a truncated form of 'Imago Dei,' or 'image of God.' With this in mind, the viewer might perceive the helicopter as a Messianic vision – one of rescue and salvation.</div>
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These disambiguations do not have to be stock knowledge for a viewer, but the implications remain there, visually <i>and </i>textually, for the offering.</div>
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<b><u>The Numinous, Transcendence, Flight, and Contemplation</u></b></div>
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“Art is the pure realization of religious feeling, capacity for faith, longing for God... The ability to believe is our outstanding quality, and only art adequately translates it into reality. But when we assuage our need for faith with an ideology we court disaster” (Richter, <i>Text, </i>200).</div>
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The suggested presence of divinity, religiosity and/or spirituality is often referred to as 'numinous.' It functions as a mechanism wholly different from the Sublime, which has, as I've noted, been subverted through morphological deconstruction via critical agencies, losing what essentiality it once had.[<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: x-small;">1</span><b><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">] </span></b>This is to say – the numinous emerges out of the nonverbal, not the textual. It is experiential, an unknowable space. The mystery of such a singularity must be relevant to consciousness, as we are inherently aware of its existence when it manifests. This alone merits investigation through the instrument of the arts.</div>
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Therefore, I believe it is necessary for the numinous to be reinstated in contemporary art, as art has clearly moved away from (if not totally forgotten) transcendental experience as well as mediated theological discourse. That said, it is the latter which may interfere with encountering the numinous, as language has been purported to be distinctly relative to experience. Leon Schlamm infers that the two “are inseparable, each epistemologically contaminated by the other” (169). However, since the primacy of theology has been effectively deconstructed and discarded by virtue of postmodernism (at the very least, watered down by secular discourse), then perhaps a genuinely numinous experience may now be achieved: A revelation can unfold that is, perhaps, a mystical or transcendental encounter that cannot be fully clarified.</div>
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And what of this encounter? Where now is art's place as a privileged space for contemplation? If art no longer occupies this space, where then is that place in our sphere? And, from there – where can resonance and insight remain? Or faith? To be sure, it no longer exists under the yoke of ossified religious traditions, nor within the effacing tropes of postmodern discourse. The straight answer is, it all still lies in an art – perhaps in painting more than in any other medium. It is not so much a failure of language, but a failure of secular experience – or non-experience, if you will. Painting can re-open that contemplative space in which numinous experience can still exist.</div>
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This is, in the realm of the contemporary, a decidedly difficult project. The referentiality in representational painting shows up its own disadvantage. Theodor Adorno refers to this as a 'tendentiousness' of the image, “programmed ever to find what it is looking for” (Wilson 53). This points up an ingrained dialectic that gives a qualified specificity. To fight against the identification of 'what an image <i>is' </i>– that is, to subvert concretized meaning in order to gain resonance and insight – is a difficult and necessary challenge that painting can address directly. My current body of work appears secular; perhaps simply interpreted as documentation. The representational aspect engages the world with a straightforward, perhaps even banal, fashion. But once the conceptual content of spiritual engagement is established, the metaphors of flight and the longing for the transcendental changes the initial reading of the work.</div>
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The insight, resonance and numinous quality that my work seeks to provide has evolved through centering on the postulate of 'what is quotidian?', and that, in turn, has become more focused through the lens of flight. Flying is a premise that can operate not only metaphorically, but as a technical endeavor, an oneiric notion, or a child-like fantasy. Japanese film producer/director/animator Hayao Miyazake understands the power of this premise, as he incorporates dynamic flight sequences in all his films. Miyazake expands on the metaphor in an interview with Jeannine Thorpe, remarking, “I believe that we humans are able to subsist on this planet Earth, yet continue to long for something more – stuck here, as we are, because of gravity. So my feeling is that flight expresses is a liberation from that gravity – so for me really, flight is a form of liberation” (1). I accept this postulate, and am encouraged especially by the concept of 'liberation.'</div>
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Fig. 10: <i>Salutus – </i>oil on canvas, 20” x 24”. 2011</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_gpAv1dFC_O2fjPemq5EmzkrGq9w8Q98ONcyNRQjvNpxuc0ONJTKpm1JhoqGCwD4ihT7aloyo6GSWw2KbXbhN_nOxOWH_2S4Gq9MfSjpFgzFp3Kx3Gq50ieVGmGkjVDont7mIdwxEjFk/s1600/20_Salutus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_gpAv1dFC_O2fjPemq5EmzkrGq9w8Q98ONcyNRQjvNpxuc0ONJTKpm1JhoqGCwD4ihT7aloyo6GSWw2KbXbhN_nOxOWH_2S4Gq9MfSjpFgzFp3Kx3Gq50ieVGmGkjVDont7mIdwxEjFk/s320/20_Salutus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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In my most recent work, <i>Salutus </i>(fig. 10), I have represented a moment from the 'Miracle on the Hudson' – that is, the rather incredible safe landing of a damaged Airbus 320 on the surface of the Hudson River. I selected this particular image for many reasons, but the initial one was a formal consideration that provided greater variation to its signification. In the majority of footage and still photos of this incident, the floating, damaged plane is surrounded by rescue boats, the Manhattan skyline, and a general flurry of rescue activity. This tightly cropped shot removes the context of much of the peripheral theatricality, yet a certain drama remains – the definition of which is not now fully discernible in light of the popular understanding of the event. </div>
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In this salvation (see title), there exists a caesura, an interstitial moment where transfiguration or transcendence may exist. Not only did I wish to encapsulate this mystical notion, but to also explore ideas that move through contemporary realms, such as a rescue becoming a Beuysian metaphor of care. There are many disparate meanings, and I would posit that, with further study, the viewer can easily break from didacticism into a complex, spiritual realm where they may locate a certain kind of faith. This is not an ideologically-based faith, but one borne out of a deeper, introspective contemplation of the unknowable through the vehicle of the known.</div>
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<b><u>Proviso and Conclusion</u></b></div>
<div class="p2">
It is not my intention to now produce work out of a purely conceptual/theoretical proposition. I do not ingest imagery in hopes of illustrating or castigating theory (<i>i.e. </i>- as Mark Tansey is wont to do). My creative impulse comes from a gravitation towards a certain kind of image in a Barthesian-<i>punctum </i>manner; the image “leaps out,” as it were, and the theoretical premise comes out of the analytic process of how/why this discovery is made. It remains an important distinction for me to know that the place for theoretical discourse in painting should not be seen as a conceptual alibi. Far more important for me are processes and formal strategies. An ineffable painting should mobilize <i>many </i>theorizations – as opposed to something so visually impoverished that all the textual antecedents from which it was derived will still not generate discourse.</div>
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In conclusion: My faith has been reaffirmed. I can now hold to a newfound conviction that painting is one of the last bastions of contemplative space. And I believe that I have reconnected to a faith that had gone missing – of course, not in my original, naïve understanding of the term, but in this sense:</div>
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<div class="p2" style="text-align: center;">
“Art is not a substitute religion: it is a religion (in the true sense of the word: 'binding back', 'binding' to the unknowable, transcending reason, transcendent being). But the church is no longer adequate as a means of affording experience of the transcendental, and of making religion real – and so art has been transformed from a means into the sole provider of religion: which means religion itself” (Richter, <i>Text</i>, 34).</div>
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This conviction, combined with today's ubiquitous technological sensorium, places painting in a McLuhanist context: “the medium is the message.” That said, painting is not (and should never be) an ideology unto itself, rather, it should function as the space in which ideology <i>cannot </i>function – where the dogma of theory and religion are displaced by an honest medium.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
As I began this thesis with a James Elkins quote, I shall fittingly end it with another: “The idea that merely looking, and allowing yourself to be moved, might be an act of</div>
<div class="p2">
faith that answers what the painting proposes” (26).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<b><u>Endnote:</u></b></div>
<div class="p2">
[<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace; font-size: x-small;">1</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">]</span> - The 'essentiality' to which I am referring is explicated by Richter, as he looked at a series of Titian paintings: “I don't know what motivated the artist, which means these paintings have an intrinsic quality. I think Goethe called it the 'essential dimension', the thing that makes great works of art great” (Richter, <i>Text</i>, 85 )<i>. </i>These indefinable 'x- factors' in art always delimit a fragile space, for, in the Foucauldian sense, the agents of power (discourse, commodification) will rush in and seek to instrumentalize them. Through such instrumentalization, ideologies spring forth.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<b><u>Resources and Works Cited:</u></b></div>
<div class="p2">
Aiken, Charles Francis. "Religion." <i>The Catholic Encyclopedia. </i>Vol. 12. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 2 Sept. 2011</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Baudrillard, Jean. <i>Simulacra and Simulation. </i>Trans. by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Print.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Bohman, James and Rehg, William, "Jürgen Habermas”, <i>The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. </i>Ed. Edward N. Zalta. 17 May, 2007. Web. Sept. 15, 2011</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Buchloh, Benjamin H. D. “Figures of Authority, Ciphers of Regression”, <i>October, </i>Vol. 16 (Spring, 1981), pp. 39-68. Print</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Bryson, Norman. <i>Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting. </i>London: Reaktion Books, 1990. Print</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Desiderio, Vincent. “Art Talks.” MFA Program at The Art Institute of Boston. Boston University Kenmore Classroom Building, Boston. 11 January 2010. Lecture/DVD.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Elkins, James. <i>On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art</i>. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print."</div>
<br />
<ul>
<li>“Keynote Address: On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art." Biola Art Symposium. Biola University, La Mirada, California. 15 March, 2008. Lecture/DVD.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Freud, Sigmund. <i>The Future of an Illusion (1927), The Standard Edition. </i>New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. Print</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
Habermas, Jurgen. <i>Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity</i>, edited by Eduardo Mendieta, MIT Press, 2002. Print</div>
<div class="p2">
</div>
<ul>
<li><i>Theory of Communicative Action</i>. Boston: Beacon Press, 1984. Print. Kant, Immanuel. <i>Critique of Practical Reason. </i>Trans, Ed. Mary Gregor. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Print</li>
</ul>
<div class="p2">
Kuspit, Donald. <i>The End of Art. </i>New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lublin, Albert J. <i>Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent van Gogh. </i>New York: Henry Holt, 1987. Print.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">McLuhan, Marshall. "Catholic Humanism & Modern Letters", <i>Christian Humanism in Letters. </i>Hartford, Connecticut: St. Joseph's College, 1954. Print.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Richter, Gerhard. <i>Text, Writings, Interviews and Letters. </i>London: Thames and Hudson, 2009. Print.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
</div>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The Daily Practice of Painting. </i>Ed. Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. Print.</span></li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Forty Years Of Painting. </i>Ed. Robert Storr. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2002. Print.</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Thorpe, Jeannine. “Spirited Away: Miyazaki at the Hollywood Premiere.” TheBlackMoon.com 13 Sept. 2002. Web.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Schlamm, Leon. “Numinous Experience and Religious Language.” <i>Religious Studies. </i>Vol. 29, 1993. 169-184. Print.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tolkien, J.R.R. Foreword to the Second Edition. <i>The Fellowship of the Ring. </i>New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993. xiii-xvi. Print</span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wilson, Ross. <i>Theodor Adorno. </i>New York, Routledge, 2007. Print.</span></div>
Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-88018599364462562272013-07-31T19:02:00.001-07:002015-05-18T20:42:13.437-07:00New year, new lookPlease note that this blog has a new name and look. "Differentia Critica" is Latin for "A Critical Difference." I suppose I could have named it the latter, but I have not only had a penchant for Latin titles in my work of late, I like the fact that it has the secondary translation of "a different (kind of) critique." This points up what I'd like to offer in this refurbished blog: a look at representational painting through a contemporary lens regarding art, philosophy, and socio-political ideas.<br />
<br />
Before I launch into this idea more fully, let me get us up to speed since this thing has been on hiatus for over a year:<br />
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Things got awfully busy once I launched myself into my practice post-grad-school. I applied for numerous shows, grants, what have you, and ended up getting not a few opportunities to show my work -- not the least of which was the New England Collective show sponsored by Galatea Fine Arts, Boston. This was a juried show with 500+ entrants. 50 works were shown and one artist was chosen from that show to have a solo show in the next year. That was me. Suffice to say, this was an amazing chance to make new work with a purpose.<br />
<br />
While making work for the show, I had work at Aucocisco and Greenhut (both Portland), as well as a fantastically curated Art Institute of Boston MFA Alumni Show (<i>Objectified</i>) on the Lesley U. main campus in Cambridge. But, the culmination of events was in my suite of 12 new paintings -- <i>The Detached Muse Project</i> at Galatea, which showed in Boston this July. You can go to my website <a href="http://robsullivanart.com/2013-The-Detached-Muse-Project" target="_blank">(here)</a> to view the show's images.<br />
<br />
There's a lot I've learned along the way, and I will address it here on the blog. I daresay that the way in which all these things were handled was not that much different from my MFA program's thesis semester: it was a mental/ physical/ time-oriented struggle. But, I have to thank the AIB MFA people for preparing me for this very thing. If I was able to do it in the name of academics, I should be able do it in real time. Sure enough, I did it. It's equally difficult, but it is not impossible.<br />
<br />
I have given an informal talk on the "<i>DMP" </i>and there is extant written research on the topic. However, I've yet to make it coalesce into an exegesis, but I hope to do so here. And, resultant of my painting and research efforts, I have developed a new perspective on representational painting in a contemporary context. I wish very much for the kind of art that I enjoy and practice to stay relevant in a <i>progressive</i> fashion. It is possible, but there are many mitigating factors -- not the least of which are modern painters who want this mode of working to stay fixed in the past, which is to say, be regressive. I cannot align myself with that. Representational painting has far more potential than to settle for being a kind of historical reenactment.<br />
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But more on this later.... Please keep watching this space, if you're interested.Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-4361239409552297942012-03-08T17:52:00.000-08:002012-03-08T17:52:04.556-08:00New Website is LIVE<a href="http://robsullivanart.com/">robsullivanart.com</a><br />
<br />
Needs a few tweaks and additions, but it's up and running. Take a look.Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-44413001080319472042012-02-19T14:35:00.000-08:002012-02-20T07:44:57.439-08:00Here at the End of All Things<div class="p1" style="text-align: center;"><span class="s1"><u>Final Residency Summary:</u></span></div><div class="p1" style="text-align: center;"><span class="s1"><u>A Master’s Thoughts on </u></span><br />
<span class="s1"><u>The Art Institute of Boston’s MFA Program</u></span><br />
<span class="s1"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">“Well, I’m back” (Tolkien, 1008).</span><br />
<span class="s2"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">And, like a Tolkien character, I have been greatly altered by my experiences. Expectations were such unknown quantities at the start of the program (save to obtain Master status in two years), all I could do was, as I’ve said in the past, remain as objective as possible. Admittedly, it wasn’t <i>always</i> possible, but I can say that I entertained new and difficult material with a great deal of consideration. This mindset helped enormously; it changed me. I’m not ashamed to acknowledge that it effected a maturation - one that occurred at a critical, personal, and especially - an artistic level. In hindsight, this was a very necessary transformation.</span><br />
<span class="s2"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">Before I begin in earnest, I’d like to share this little anecdote: “Journey,” as a word to describe one’s participation in our program, is an insinuated taboo for students, especially when you’re writing thesis and appearing as a Group 5 in the last residency (at least in its first few days). We all try really hard to not say it, for fear of reprisal: “You said the ‘j’-word, you noob.” It <i>is</i> a little trite, perhaps; a little new-agey for a program where critical language is employed. Maybe it’s because the word suggests more of a travelogue than sheer experience? Still, though I did hear the expression bandied about, albeit unintentionally, I always gave the speaker the benefit of the doubt. One can argue that such an excursion is one of the mind - traveling to places in your head that you’ve never been (let alone knew existed). And, truth be told, I personally logged quite a bit of <i>actual</i> mileage back and forth to New York in order to visit mentors, shows, museums and the like. So, despite the mildly illicit nature of the “journey” as a descriptor for one's time in the program, it is somewhat apt.</span><br />
<span class="s2"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">In those travels (speaking of which) I was able to meet and talk extensively with artists who operate on the upper tiers of the contemporary art world. Some of them are now considered friends. I’d never dreamed of such a thing. By virtue of the program, it became a reality. I went to shows that, in the past, would have held no interest for me, but instead, I found great edification in critically engaging with the content. It’s true that I travel with my family every so often to New York, but these visits were nearly monthly, and the need for continued scholarship justified all these trips - otherwise, I would not have bothered... And I did feel that NYC was the only place, really. Yes, I was born, raised, and completed my undergrad work there, but I also knew - inherently - that there is no substitute when it comes to its great wealth of art and artists. For me, in order to complete my MFA work to the best of my ability, despite the 400+ mile removal and the difficulty such travel imposed, it was there or nowhere. It was the best decision.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">Of course, those who set the tone for how to approach and participate in critical thought deserve the greatest amount of praise. I cannot stress the incredible pedagogical strength of the AIB MFA faculty. The diversity of scholarship, the way in which critiques were addressed, the sheer <i>depth</i> of information they all (individually and collectively) hold amazed (and still amazes) me. Their presence was a gift, no mistake. I cannot thank them enough for what they have done for me. If I can remit payment in any real way, it will be through the fact that any achievements of merit in my future shall sit as testament to the quality of these individuals.</span><br />
<span class="s2"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">Yes, I did learn a thing or two. But it was only through investing in the opportunities as presented to me by the artists and scholars I met along the way. Much of what I’ve gained can be found in the text of my thesis. The thesis is, in many ways, cumulative, though not necessarily an aggregate of the texts I’d penned in prior semesters. It marks more of a confluence and fruition of all the thematics I’d been exploring -- and some with which I had not yet come to terms. Research, writing, style, content -- it is all fully actualized in this final document. The latest paintings are reflective of this, too, and are but the inkling of the thesis project as a whole; a new platform upon which I can base many more paintings. This is, I believe, the crux of the thesis -- and any MFA program worth its salt. So, then, I developed: a new understanding of art (cumulating in the contemporary); a richer understanding of my <i>own</i> art as it relates to contemporary art; and through this, established a new and solid base from which I launched a project that reflects these understandings</span>. In other words, the thesis acts as a touchstone to bigger things, post-Masters.<br />
<span class="s2"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">Since this is a pretty informal document, I will be candid here and let the reader know that this program - again, like any program worth its salt - makes high demands of the MFA candidate. That said, in the low-residency format, where one might hope (note the word choice) to fold the required work into one’s daily life, while not in-residence, instead, just adds to the challenge. It becomes an imperative to harness the self-discipline to NOT sink into domestic regularity. I realized that this required, of course, a great deal of effort, and I was familiar enough with the task, having spent a decade as a freelance artist for a New York illustration agency. The routine - or, at least, operating under an art-based sword of Damocles - came back soon enough. The more pressing issue was how to promote the idea that I <i>was</i> actually a full-time student. It is terribly hard for anyone save your AIB peers to understand the reality of the situation. Even close family and friends cannot really fathom the fact that, for two years, you have adopted a <i>lifestyle</i> of art and scholarship, as opposed to a part-time dalliance. But your presence (or perhaps conspicuous absence, since you might be trapped in your studio or library) at the table - yes, your very corporeality - makes it seem as if you are some sort of ivory-tower hobbyist, play-acting at something of tertiary importance. Now, I can’t say that this is the absolute truth of the matter, but, from my interactions with my fellow students, it is not at all an uncommon experience. Relationships can become strained, and feelings of guilt can encumber your process. Sleep gets to be luxury. Stress is your familiar. All you can do is put your head down and work through it all. It’s the only solution, because sublimating your difficulties through any other activity is ultimately a waste of time. Time is in extraordinarily short supply; it's the <i>ultimate</i> luxury. The warnings proffered by advisors and peers (like me, as a recent alumnus) - especially regarding the subject of time - seem like so much rhetoric. They are not.</span><br />
<span class="s2"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">If you heed all this, you will get through it. As with anything, it sounds easy on paper, but the real-time execution is something else. Personally, however, I wanted far more than to merely “get through it.” I wanted to know how far I could push myself without throwing the positive aspects of my art (i.e., my painting skills) under the bus. Holding on to representation and skill was, in hindsight, a harder road -- and I’m glad I took it. But that was not the driver. The driver was, oddly enough, the intellectualization of art and its relation to the world at large. Again, my thesis explicates this more fully, but I still marvel at my naivete coming into the program. When I was introduced (immediately) to all I had missed (the sociopolitical, theoretical, and philosophical components of art), I became extremely disturbed at my lack. This super-motivated me to remedy the situation. I daresay I almost overcorrected in my second semester, but some well-placed admonition set me to rights. Again, in hindsight, I think if I had cruised along semester to semester with little issue, it would have meant I was doing something very wrong. As creative thinkers, we need to go off the rails in order to see where the track lies. Once you re-orient, there is far more clarity and trust in future judgement.</span><br />
<span class="s2"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">If I can give, with this brief essay, some sense of closure to my own experience, then I must conclude with some remarks about my “people” - my peers. Realistically, we do not spend a great deal of time together as compared to perhaps any other program - only 20 days out of the year. But, the crucible of the residencies are truly white-hot and the bonds we form are hard and fast. I’ve gotten to know some incredible people who also happen to be incredible artists. The last residency is truly a gift, in that I was able to be with members of the other groups in the formal settings of critiques and seminars. Also, it needs to be disclosed that the social activity at the bars in Kenmore Square after an ever-long day of residency is an integral part of the experience. This decompression is vital. To suss out, over various libations, the sheer density of the 12 hours of theoretical art discourse in which everyone had just engaged, is perhaps the only way to stay balanced. Without this, I would have hit the wall of non-receptivity pretty quickly. Now, to speak specifically of my own group, the 15th graduating class of the MFA, is to speak of family. We underwent perhaps the greatest personal transformation of our adult lives, and, as mentioned earlier, we were the ones who most fully understood how much it meant to one another. In the loneliness of the semester, physically separated from my art companions, I could still rely on their understanding, compassion and sheer want for my success (as the feelings were mutual) to get me through any dark period. We were all in it together, though apart much of the time. It made the times we <i>were</i> together that much sweeter. I’ve said it before - in fact, I publicly announced it in our final ceremony: I could not be more proud of us, nor be more proud to call myself part of the 15th AIB MFA Graduating Class, January, 2012.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2"><i>Postscript:</i></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">This is not the last of my writing. Not that I am an essayist, but I am also, as it turns out, not merely a painter. I am an artist. The written word is another function of my creative vision, and I will engage in writing when it is prudent to do so. In fact, as long as I am painting, I will no doubt also be writing.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s2"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s1"><i>Citation:</i></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s2">Tolkien, J.R.R. <i>The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. </i>New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994 ed. Print.</span></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-6197174674374986972011-12-22T14:41:00.000-08:002011-12-22T14:42:06.868-08:00Graduate Exhibition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Click to view!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-50152775555000349562011-12-20T14:45:00.000-08:002011-12-20T14:45:54.419-08:00MFA Final Statement<div class="p1"><span class="s1">Robert Sullivan</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="s1">Artist's Statement - 2012</span><br />
<span class="s1"><br />
</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></div><div class="p2"><span class="s1"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s1"><i>Religare – </i>(from L.) 1. To reconnect. 2. Lactantian root word for 'religion.'</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="p4"><span class="s1"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s1">I believe there is a contemporary and profound import in reconnecting to “faith” – that is, faith as a dimension of trust in art, self and society – through a traditional artistic practice like representational painting. The original connection between painting and faith has been slowly worn away since the Renaissance. What was at first religious became romantic, then prosaic, and ultimately, the subject of an ironic cynicism. There is now a conspicuous absence of the faith/art parallel in today's secular discourses. My project is to syncretize painting and its native religious impulse without the burden of the ideologies that have diminished its significance.</span><br />
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</span></div><div class="p4"><span class="s1"></span></div><div class="p3"><span class="s1">Using quotidian images that recall the notion of flight, I endeavor to reframe them as symbols of spiritual yearning and transfiguration. These recontextualizations do not exist merely as representational surface idioms, but also signify an engagement with the transcendental and how it might be expressed in a contemporary vernacular. The construction of my paintings employ a simple rather than a more baroque presentation, promoting a contemplative space where speculative thought and objective observation might happen. It is in this space where that inherent principle of spirituality in art can still resonate, free from dogmatic doctrines, and offer a reclamation of faith.</span><br />
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</span></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-38991920515704352812011-08-16T09:44:00.000-07:002011-08-26T13:27:53.019-07:00Knee Deep in The Final StretchWell, there's been a good break in posting here, but it's essentially because I am now in my Thesis semester and all my energies are being dedicated towards that big 'ol document (there is very little studio time to be had at this point). I had considered posting it in installments here as a WIP, but that seemed a little foolish, considering the major alterations that will take place until the final is released in November.<br />
<br />
I do have some images to post that I didn't get around to before the last residency. Those will be forthcoming.<br />
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There will also be new paintings that will accompany the thesis, but they are only in development right now, and will manifest only after the writing is near-completed.<br />
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In the meantime:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnUfWaWtUhOUYMK8BqbRVgpAjB8idZ7WlY-ibr85kKcI-tVtVT2aF2YiiIu2dWvqKcdHAF0KYfdDK9v3TGeEXWuE2PTUA8hEidFUAUG-vpdrBMcHrPCjxOXSADfP_ESLlDl97Bfh3Tm7E/s1600/ThesisTime.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnUfWaWtUhOUYMK8BqbRVgpAjB8idZ7WlY-ibr85kKcI-tVtVT2aF2YiiIu2dWvqKcdHAF0KYfdDK9v3TGeEXWuE2PTUA8hEidFUAUG-vpdrBMcHrPCjxOXSADfP_ESLlDl97Bfh3Tm7E/s320/ThesisTime.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
(apologies to <a href="http://www.oglaf.com/blank-page/">Oglaf.com </a>for the appropriation -- though it IS appropriate)Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-21492800983045561942011-06-16T17:31:00.000-07:002011-06-16T17:31:30.137-07:00Group 3 to 4 Transition - Semester Summary<i>[note: I am actually in Boston posting this - my Group 4 residency starts tomorrow. I have new work, but was unable to get decent photos of the paintings. I will post them when I return to the studio and can take some good shots.]</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><u>AIB MFA</u></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><u>Semester Summary</u></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><u>January-June 2011: Group 3 to 4 Transition</u></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">It cannot be stressed enough that these last 6 months were an incredibly important time for me as an artist striving towards his Masters. As I had stated in the Residency Summary in the beginning of the semester, this period needed to yield a high level of production and focus. I'm happy to say that I think I've achieved that.</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Of course, this remains to be seen as a <i>fait accompli</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, as I will get many comprehensive critiques on the work at my Group 4 residency. Nevertheless, I feel like I've accomplished something of value in my painting and research and that those two things have meshed in a way they hadn't before. And, the other thing to which I'd alluded in the Residency Summary – the importance of the studio work as a springboard to the thesis – was foremost in my mind. With an amazing assist from my mentor Peter Rostovsky, I was able to craft a series of paintings that have both formal and conceptual cohesion; individually, and as a group.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">I can recall the difficulties of my Group 2 to 3 semester – the lack of surety of direction, the soft-pedaling regarding exploration, and the sticky written work. It wasn't as if I produced poor work, but it lacked true focus technically and thematically. That semester's forays into getting more facture on the painting's surface was something I definitely wanted to take along into the new work. The binary tension between painting's tactility and the photographic gesture certainly lent new interest to my surfaces. But this technical narrative was not fully realized: the painted gesture was too prosaic, existing as it did outside the conceptual directions with which I was experimenting. The conflation of these things needed greater consideration. In many ways, my success this time around was due to looking back while simultaneously handicapping myself to get ahead.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">An introduction to Lars von Trier's film, </span><i>The Five Obstructions,</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> was a fantastic object lesson, showing me that operating within a set of proscribed constraints yields more thoughtful and directed work. As I had discussed in an essay produced this semester, “The End of Art and What To Do About It,” Foucault drives this point home: </span><span style="color: #e1771e;"><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span></span>“Only creativity is possible in putting into play of a system of rules; it is not a mixture of order and freedom.” (Chomsky-Foucault, 29). Not only did this put me in a better frame of mind with regard to the already-shrunken space of painting within contemporary art, but it also gave me the motivation to excise the non-essential in my work. Therefore, based on responses to previous monochromatic works (<i>Pteronychus</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> [the small seagull piece] and </span><i>All Natural </i><span style="font-style: normal;">[the mint ice cream cone]), I decided to execute each painting with a single-color theme. In the same vein, I realized that, in past works, my striving towards opening the vectors of meaning was failing against the didactic nature of the subject matter and/or its conflation with add-on devices (weird backgrounds, collage-like elements, etc.). Again, I was guided by my mentor to strip away all but the fundamental aspects of the reference. For example: In the case of one of the last pieces I executed, </span><i>Magisterium, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">I had painted in a background in front of an unfurled duck wing. It consisted of a photographically blurry view of the pond as told by the reference material. This made the piece, as a conceptual whole, far too prosaic and lyrical, closing down the reading. When I overpainted a flat value on top of it, it moved into a realm where I could see a Ribera, a Caravaggio or an Orazio Gentileschi rather than a recontextualized photo.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Materials became an issue of even tighter focus this semester. Both Peter and Tony (Apesos, my advisor) made me more sharply aware of the need to understand the historical nature and practical application of oil paint and its adjunct mediums. Originally, I had been using a fairly standard procedure in my painting, thinning with only linseed oil, and more recently, with Galkyd products from Gamblin – synthetic alkyd resins with a syrupy feel, but a self-leveling quality. Peter had suggested trying mediums that might give me more lift and stiction to the brushstrokes, so I employed Gamblin's Neo-Megilp. It sure added body – almost distractingly so. But, this wasn't the solution he was hinting at. In our second mentor meeting, he brought out some very traditional mediums: a Venetian medium the likes of which was used by Velazquez; and a glass medium, with glass dust suspended in the polymerized oil. They were beautiful in their own right, and I could see how reflecting painting's history through using these historical mediums was a sophisticated way to expound on the technical narrative. Moreover, in a visit to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts with Tony, he proceeded to point out the use of egg-oil emulsion in much of the Flemish painting – especially in highlight passages. He drew my attention to the nature of how the paint not only had a wax-like sheen to it, but pooled in such a way that made it more of a creamy consistency rather than a spiky, impasted passage or a layered, chalky-cool paint buildup. After seeing these examples, I made an effort to employ polymerized oil in my medium mixture as well as the introduction of walnut oil, as opposed to linseed. It was a struggle at first to produce the results for which I normally strive. I wasn't fully understanding the feel and balance between medium, pigment and surface with these new ingredients in place. But, I pressed on, and I have to say, it made a great deal of difference in how the paintings resonate optically.</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">After completion of my first work this semester – a quasi-drawing/painting on frosted polyester called <i>Catastrophe Paradox – </i><span style="font-style: normal;">I shifted my naming convention for the subsequent full oil paintings. The fact is, I had come into deep conflict with my Catholic faith beginning back at the start of my MFA pursuits in January of 2010. I hadn't written about it to this point, because I had no inkling of how or why I should make it relevant to my art nor my Master's experience. However, it is a deep-rooted discord, and I felt that now, since I began feeling more comfortable in my formal approach, that I should fold this internal discourse into my concepts. The titles reflect Catholic doctrines and rites that, in some discrete or oblique way, sync up with the image depicted. Many of these pairings strike a dissonance once the relationship is recognized, and this is purposefully done, as it is relevant to my disquiet over contemporary Catholic issues. However, I do not wish to delve into a full explication of these meanings at this time. If the relationships are not fully realized by the viewer, it does the work no disservice; there are many other meanings to be had when these paintings are presented.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">With this in mind, after this next residency, my task will focus primarily on the development of my thesis. The nomenclature direction will be further explicated with regard to my personal experiences and development, but again, perhaps not with specific meaning in mind. I have submitted the outline for my thesis, an the thematic focuses on the re-presentation of the quotidian. “The quotidian” does not necessarily mean banal, everyday objects or images only – the contemporary idea of the quotidian has broadened to contain a plethora of images that stem from oft-repeated tropes within high and low media alike. My typical jumping-off point of manipulated photographic reference (from numerous open sources, including my own photography) gives me a huge cache of predictable imagery from which I can paint. I have already made this gesture in the work I've generated this semester (and I'll undoubtedly produce a few more in the coming months), so my premise is established enough physically to write about it as my thesis platform.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The next level towards which I have been striving is here already. It is, for all intents and purposes, the final level in this stage of my artistic growth – and will no doubt serve as a springboard for the rest of my life's work. There are another 6 months ahead in which I will engage in the written aspect of my constructed visual components. But also, there will be new work that will be a direct evolution from these recent pieces. Since I made the point of being particularly reductive this semester, I will become additive from this point. A re-introduction of the figure will be a component, as well as the addition of more color. However, it will be vital to keep my current conceptual principles intact without being circumscribed by something stylistic. In other words, I must stay true to the spirit of the current body of work.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><u>Citation:</u></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Chomsky, Noam and Foucault, Michel. <i>The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature. </i>New York: New Press, 2006. Print</div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-31804648160406749702011-05-17T21:12:00.000-07:002011-05-17T21:13:34.266-07:00Representational Painting After Richter<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN-5xU2QbO5QxeSm-c8l__7-9LZzSNL_SL_Sl_HPmUufPajIoIGmpyzv9AILSnNbDILso6JWHFNatrCfR0DBN_ij5OE1Swp9d6V6f_kSP-EjgNP4Ae0TWiZQGk0kd10ZZQVdRB7a0g-sU/s1600/cloud.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN-5xU2QbO5QxeSm-c8l__7-9LZzSNL_SL_Sl_HPmUufPajIoIGmpyzv9AILSnNbDILso6JWHFNatrCfR0DBN_ij5OE1Swp9d6V6f_kSP-EjgNP4Ae0TWiZQGk0kd10ZZQVdRB7a0g-sU/s320/cloud.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gerhard Richter: "Cloud" o/c, 1970</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy69nVhAAzAI2TQ_008bRGG50kcETn9HcjAz5VbqwSN2Z4qcjfE93SYXDY0hwRURTKFi5fJURDFPK_ULs7pKenlAUK9_iL_yir5PNW5M4ynsV5uNDok2ItrNvy_2DTtUoE7cgplluDiNw/s1600/TPaper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy69nVhAAzAI2TQ_008bRGG50kcETn9HcjAz5VbqwSN2Z4qcjfE93SYXDY0hwRURTKFi5fJURDFPK_ULs7pKenlAUK9_iL_yir5PNW5M4ynsV5uNDok2ItrNvy_2DTtUoE7cgplluDiNw/s320/TPaper.jpg" width="296" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gerhard Richter: "Toilet Paper" o/c, 1965</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJnDiyKCnrUsiVpjs2Y7S7B1oUNqi9TT-eZbxonN-z61vRMz_eKE-_A0KLGWR_OzZMEYDhWOIS7XaE1mQQ36XUAUhMCDLQrplxwWI4rt_VhMpSWfAXz9bIc_Zt3MmMLuKmZa8IgZPs0LA/s1600/Rudi.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJnDiyKCnrUsiVpjs2Y7S7B1oUNqi9TT-eZbxonN-z61vRMz_eKE-_A0KLGWR_OzZMEYDhWOIS7XaE1mQQ36XUAUhMCDLQrplxwWI4rt_VhMpSWfAXz9bIc_Zt3MmMLuKmZa8IgZPs0LA/s320/Rudi.jpg" width="179" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gerhard Richter: "Uncle Rudi" o/c, 1965</td></tr>
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<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Representational Painting After Richter:</div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Critical Issues</div><blockquote style="margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">“<i>I don't know what motivated the artist, which means these paintings have an intrinsic quality. I think Goethe called it the 'essential dimension', the thing that makes great works of art great” (Richter, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Text,</span><i> 85 ).</i></blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">Criticality in painting developed in such a way as to determine the intentionality of the artist, the formal handling of medium in relation to the work and the intrinsic individuality that resulted from a fusion of the two. That said, it would be considered extraordinarily blunt and prejudicial to look at, say, the 17<sup>th</sup> Century Dutch epoch and conclude that the paintings of Vermeer, de Hooch, ter Borch and/or Maes are fundamentally the same. Sure, it's true that within the generalized tenets of art history this era has been rendered into a convention (the Dutch “Golden Age”), but connoisseurs of painting have made the differences between these artists and their works quite clear. Therefore, a superficial convention of flat image alone could be called uncritical. Why, then, is representational painting now only discussed employing the terms of photo-based painting? It seems as if photo-based painting and its critical discussion in the contemporary has been fully conventionalized to the point that it envelops most forms of representation. No one seems to be making a connoisseurial argument in this realm. The kind of sensitivity that used to be applied to discussing painting looks to be completely absent.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">In order to get to the root of this matter, we must look at the most seminal figure in postmodern representational painting, Gerhard Richter (b. 1932). Richter is at once inclusive and divisive when it comes to postmodern theory and painting. His training ranged extensively, moving from a traditional art education in Dresden in the 1950s to his exposure to modernist and postmodernist ideas in the 1960s, meeting and working with Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke and Joseph Beuys. These experiences helped to govern Richter's artistic approaches and thus led to an impressive stylistic diversity in his work. He certainly puts painting through its paces, especially when it comes to his photo-based work, testing the waters of critique with nods to history painting (as in the Baader-Meinhof suite, <i>October18, 1977, </i>[1988]), the Duchampian-readymade (<i>Kitchen Chair, </i>[1965]), and German Romanticism (<i>Himalaya,</i>[1968]). The aporia that erupts within the work (and this is what elicits the greatest fascination in critical circles) is made manifest via a purposeful aridity in his delivery. That is to say, Richter paints – as much as he is able – with a deft, but formally anonymous hand. Employing no idiosyncratic mark-making nor eye-catching surface manipulations, Richter desublimates the tropes of painting and eludes much of its historical associations while simultaneously provoking postmodernist critique by the very use of the medium. He has stated that he paints “to bring together the most disparate and mutually contradictory elements, alive and viable, with the greatest possible freedom” (<i>Daily Practice</i>, 166).</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">As is well known (and obvious in the work), Richter employs the use of photographs: his own; found or co-opted; newspaper and magazine clippings; postcards; and snapshots of screen images. The distortion that results in these photographic reproduction processes is something that Richter has often mimicked – blurring, warping, imitating the dot-matrix of a screen – in the painting itself. One of the most interesting effects of this imitation is that it calls to mind the harmony/dissonance binary of photography and painting: The blur of a photo is due to the lens of the camera and the photographic image can be imitated in a painting via a skilled hand. However, the painted surface is not actually blurred or distorted; paint is paint, no matter how one applies it. And Richter is indeed skilled, well-schooled in the manipulation of oil paint, even in impasto techniques. However, he reserves this for abstracted works, created mainly from 1970-1980. The surface-related activity in these is very much related to the scope of said works, with complex layers and effacements effectuating palimpsest.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">There is something sincerely fundamental in Richter's explorations, and that is a deep-seated mistrust of ideology. [His upbringing under the pall of two dictatorships (Hitler, then Stalin) certainly gives him a strong reason and resolve to question the nature of dogmatic thinking.] He follows the line of a fellow German intellectual, the philosopher Theodor Adorno with Adorno's statement that the “idea of art [is] to gain control of semblance, to determine it as semblance, as well as to negate it as unreal” (78). With this in mind, Richter wishes to continue to imbue, or perhaps invoke in painting and representation that “essential dimension” to which Goethe referred. In doing so, it can be imagined that his art might transcend the conventionalizing nature of postmodern criticality/academia – the preeminent ideology of the contemporary art world. It is easy to note this polarity between artist and critique in Richter's 1986 conversation with Benjamin Buchloh. Here Buchloh postures as a postmodernist ideologue, misunderstanding Richter's intentions at many turns. One particular instance is in Buchloh's mistaking Richter's photo-real painting oeuvre as pastiche, calling it “a cynical retrospective survey of 20<sup>th</sup> Century painting,” to which Richter replies, “I see no cynicism or trickery or guile in any of this” (<i>Daily Practice</i>, 146). Rather, the very linkage of the painted objects – the photos, the images, the likenesses, conflated into one source-point “reality” – reveals not just a didactic lack of continuity, but elemental associations that are almost musical. Look at the sequence from painting to painting: a cloud, a roll of toilet paper, and then the artist's Uncle Rudi in his Nazi uniform – the resonance of the latter work is that much greater in the harmony of the surrounding works. The Buchloh-Richter conversation <i>in toto</i> is vital, as it provides solid insight into the overreaching tendencies of postmodern criticality when confronted with art that subverts and/or expands beyond ideological theoretical modes.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">Thus, Richter has become iconic of “anonymity” in representational painting. And much like Buchloh's misses in his cat-and-mouse with Richter, the trope of the “anonymous hand” has been conventionalized into all discussions of representational painting and is discussed solely on the grounds of photo-based tropes. What was once an indefinable space of experience (the essential) has undergone typical morphological deconstruction through critical agencies and become incorrectly concretized into a canonical model for contemporary painting. “X-factors” in art always delimit a fragile space, for, in the Foucauldian sense, the armies of discourse will rush in and seek to instrumentalize them.* Through such instrumentalization, ideologies spring forth. </blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0in; text-align: left;">So now a certain myopia is prevalent in dealing with contemporary representational painting. Of course, artists are aware of this, and many have aligned themselves with this stunted kind of criticality. “Painting by committee” is fashionable in this arena. It not only fulfills the latest, edgy model of artist as solely Conceptual, but also subverts any emphasis upon skill, leaving the painting job to a studio of “workers”. Postmodern tropes have blunted the edge of representation as it pertains to photography, and the non-styles of the studios of Jeff Koons, Kehinde Wylie and Rudolph Stengel, for example, perpetuates the problem. These works are very different surface-wise than a Richter, being far more “slick”, but they are nonetheless meant to be read as didactically photo-based with no individual “hand” present in the work.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">What is it, then, that can lift a painter such as myself out of these constrained conventions? How would this one painter of the realistic image individuate himself from others? If the nature of the discourse has been blunted, then perhaps the tactics a painter might bring to bear need to be fairly blunt. If I want to function in this strange terrain of generic approaches, it may be time to return to structural roots, that being the very physicality of paint. The aesthetic of painting needs to be re-embraced alongside contemporary conceptual narratives. Why would a painter not want to embrace that part of painting's history that still resonates so strongly even today? Madlyn Miller Kahr, in her essay on Velazquez' <i>Las Meninas, </i>calls the masterwork “a demonstration of the combination of intellectual subtlety and aesthetic sensibility that the best of its practitioners bring to painting” (245). Why can't this sentiment function in this day and age? I believe it can.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">There are a few artists who bring this aesthetic to bear today, about some of whom I have already written: Micha<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">ë</span>l Borremans, Jenny Saville, John Currin, Vincent Desiderio. And there are others – Johannes Kahrs, Vija Celmins, Eberhard Havekost, Lucien Freud, and Ulrich Lamsfuss – to name a few. Many of these artists' paint applications are great examples of a return to a more painting-specific aesthetic. Surfaces can be highly imperfect and erratic, with instances of stray brush hairs lingering in extruded strokes, fingerprints and exposed raw linen. The very textures call to mind a warmth/mystery/myth of the European painter's studio. The straightforward conservative aspect of such historical structural reference serves to distance and positively differentiate itself from the contemporary ideology of representation conventionalized as “photo-real”. Peter Rostovsky, upon seeing a Borremans in person, remarked, “It's like a Sargent with its surfaces, but combined with the content it becomes a Richter with <i>dreams</i>, instead of just photographs” (42:29).</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">It is vital for me to understand and incorporate an aesthetic physicality into my imagery. I have experimented with this, but need to continue in order to make manifest that signature “mark” using the traditional surfaces and mediums in which the paint is suspended. In this, I will be able to find again the dignity of “painter as painter”. That is, in the creation of a painting, the physical and mental are dualistically indistinguishable.</blockquote><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">* <span style="font-size: x-small;">Foucault's attitude in this regard is reflected in this example: “When social and political scientists increasingly claim the importance of categories like “invention”, “fiction” and “construction” for their work, they often double the theoretical attitude they initially set out to criticize... [this] lacks any sense of the materiality of the process of theory production.” (Lemke, 63).</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><u>List of works cited:</u></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Adorno, Theodor W. <i>Aesthetic Theory (1970),</i> trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Print.</div><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left;">Kahr, Madlyn Miller. “Velazquez and Las Meninas.” <i>Art Bulletin </i>57.2 (1975): 225-246. Print.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Lemke, Thomas. “Foucault, Governmentality and Critique.” <i>Rethinking Marxism</i> Vol. 14, Issue 3. September, 2002: 49-64. Print.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Richter, Gerhard. <i>The Daily Practice of Painting.</i> Ed. Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. Print.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">– <i>Text,Writings, Interviews and Letters.</i> London:Thames and Hudson, 2009. Print.</blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: normal; margin-left: 0.01in; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Rostovsky, Peter. Personal Interview. Recorded in Brooklyn, New York. 7 May 2011.</blockquote>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-66376455714012275032011-04-30T11:57:00.000-07:002011-04-30T12:57:57.634-07:00Yes, There are Paintings TooSorry about the delays in posting images. Really haven't had time to get halfway decent photos of these latest works. They really need a pro to photograph them, as they are very reflective. I wanted to at least get them outside, where it would be somewhat easier to get an even light on them. It's been raining a lot over the past few weeks, so the opportunity really hadn't presented itself until today. It was still difficult and they probably deserve better. I did the best I could to get them looking halfway decent for your perusal.<br />
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Well, enough whining - here's some stuff:<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ADXwPddlqXfX9cYUERSLxmG3z3X-Otc0H92NmRNerHP0OvNpxWRVDC4oWhpP1AVtttif56cyvM6OBtqaaR742h0po_Rggtv-MTSPI6mo-VUIje9jx7KXKgr2yK7-nOXhRL_bCYy6Ay8/s1600/imago.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ADXwPddlqXfX9cYUERSLxmG3z3X-Otc0H92NmRNerHP0OvNpxWRVDC4oWhpP1AVtttif56cyvM6OBtqaaR742h0po_Rggtv-MTSPI6mo-VUIje9jx7KXKgr2yK7-nOXhRL_bCYy6Ay8/s320/imago.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Imago - </i>o/c, 24" x 28"</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRJy9mypCbBWGY4jV7vEVzWEvo0BCbz6NqfLDAe7JZzCNXiVgXPJIU9dz4ypOGUw1RLKUS-xh3K-G_IdcUlGqho1_y2Y01H3OqId2Ibs7BsfrhwcRbgoD961zztFaSDQ7SoCHJ4UlB-Zk/s1600/heterarchy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRJy9mypCbBWGY4jV7vEVzWEvo0BCbz6NqfLDAe7JZzCNXiVgXPJIU9dz4ypOGUw1RLKUS-xh3K-G_IdcUlGqho1_y2Y01H3OqId2Ibs7BsfrhwcRbgoD961zztFaSDQ7SoCHJ4UlB-Zk/s320/heterarchy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Heterarchy - </i>o/c - 30" x 40"</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ-W9gOBVx1jqbgUJYEMWgPcgjMxWKSzmjKFDaLilr_mdDCOa9VbZqwTiFmb3viri0z7TWZJrz8PhYsH7Ks7YUpW3K6z8CtCT7n7h3NMQ5-6MtjDbu7k3-dvrQGw8PXFiQiTLaNq3sbGM/s1600/reliquary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ-W9gOBVx1jqbgUJYEMWgPcgjMxWKSzmjKFDaLilr_mdDCOa9VbZqwTiFmb3viri0z7TWZJrz8PhYsH7Ks7YUpW3K6z8CtCT7n7h3NMQ5-6MtjDbu7k3-dvrQGw8PXFiQiTLaNq3sbGM/s320/reliquary.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Reliquary - </i>oil on linen mounted to panel, 12" x 16"</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_eTmOCHQZeNnOvqXbO6b3-2RKayZ0xykAByg-U7Tc6fAzA1Ghbg1cv29BlG03SAM8HWILDaKUL7vSZlhmE3igwoJS0VrTGiKGbavUeHrMmAXkv5h5jTZtsnJTESosFOFnjYPMWX_SMgk/s1600/Rubric.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_eTmOCHQZeNnOvqXbO6b3-2RKayZ0xykAByg-U7Tc6fAzA1Ghbg1cv29BlG03SAM8HWILDaKUL7vSZlhmE3igwoJS0VrTGiKGbavUeHrMmAXkv5h5jTZtsnJTESosFOFnjYPMWX_SMgk/s320/Rubric.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Rubric - </i>o/c, 30" x 40"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-64327090265721707782011-04-18T12:32:00.000-07:002011-04-18T13:08:22.500-07:00The End of Art and What To Do About It<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding-bottom: 6px; padding-left: 6px; padding-right: 6px; padding-top: 6px; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpjoqJ_waik9Yb9EmOKy0TuOUFqsy-JaWvFTYb2JQUejKvwSiD8xj8dAM0oubcurJQyoQWhJDy-OtZL-TDtUYos3IX3OzeYmoc3lozewHpcI8JDgvpHKUrmhug4XFXuyNMW9bV9L9TLn8/s1600/388e4519.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpjoqJ_waik9Yb9EmOKy0TuOUFqsy-JaWvFTYb2JQUejKvwSiD8xj8dAM0oubcurJQyoQWhJDy-OtZL-TDtUYos3IX3OzeYmoc3lozewHpcI8JDgvpHKUrmhug4XFXuyNMW9bV9L9TLn8/s320/388e4519.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">"Reverse" - Jenny Saville, 2002-2003<br />
oil on canvas, 84" x 96"<br />
[<i>An example of a "New Old Master</i>"]</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtq0u9RVLtnNISrux8Rdcz9f6P0DLgKBVvVmzoW_Yn33-2f_mbGnnAu3pnOSbw8JzM02fR5IfMmCQ4B4nee6rZMhTZ4XmV2OVVBueuTDx6v2M9X36ze4FE5PhkuliP2Wd3OfB3FfpPDwY/s1600/Hirst-Love-Of-God.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtq0u9RVLtnNISrux8Rdcz9f6P0DLgKBVvVmzoW_Yn33-2f_mbGnnAu3pnOSbw8JzM02fR5IfMmCQ4B4nee6rZMhTZ4XmV2OVVBueuTDx6v2M9X36ze4FE5PhkuliP2Wd3OfB3FfpPDwY/s1600/Hirst-Love-Of-God.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"For The Love of God" - Damien Hirst, 2007<br />
platinum, diamonds, human teeth<br />
[<i>An example of a "postartist"</i>]</td></tr>
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</div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">In Pixar's 2004 CG-animated blockbuster, <i>The Incredibles, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">there is a scene early in the film in which a mother (Helen Parr) and son (Dash Parr) are arguing over the use of their super-powers. The Parrs are a family of superheroes who are consigned to living a “normal” life due to a government edict (brought on by lawsuits), and Helen is imploring that Dash help retain that facade of normalcy by not using his super-speed in school or any public activity, such as sports. Dash objects:</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Dash: But Dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of, our powers made us special.<br />
Helen: Everyone's special, Dash.<br />
Dash: [muttering] Which is another way of saying no one is. (15:30).</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This is the framework that Donald Kuspit sets up in his book, <i>The End of Art. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">It is the very postmodern notion that (as the Fluxus movement worked to establish) everyone is an artist. If this is the case in the 'postart' world of the contemporary, then it is pointless to call oneself such. This apprehends the title and personage of “artist” from its original standard as social arbiter and relegates it to a post of mere vanity. 'Postartist' is the corrected term, with Kuspit borrowing it from Allan Kaprow, the architect of the 'Happenings' performative works from the 1960s. It was the belief of Kaprow and his fellow practitioners that life was more interesting than art – and this was, as it seems, at the expense of art.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">For Kuspit, the overtly over-commodified, </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-style: normal;">ü</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;">ber-clever, superhyped kitsch, such as the work of Damien Hirst, is the contemporary result of what Marcel Duchamp launched around 1915. He began to purposefully segregate art into a realm of pure intellectualism, abandoning the aesthetic for the anti- aesthetic. His seemingly capricious detachment from art aesthetics was the progenitor of generations of postartists, in Kuspit's view.</span> The European Dadaist movement, once adapted and restyled in New York (much to the credit of Duchamp's <i>Fountain</i><span style="font-style: normal;">)</span>, laid the foundations for postmodern, anti-art movements such as Fluxus, Pop, Performance and Conceptual art. So then, <span style="font-style: normal;">Duchamp's 'willful indifference' evolved with each developing movement into a strict denial of the possibilities of aesthetics and its relation to reality. This is, sadly, a reversal of art's purpose.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">It is a bleak, gray landscape that Kuspit paints for us. Postart has overwritten and overridden not only aesthetics, but also its reflective vitality – its relation to our existence. It is only through 'real' art that we can track life through a “phenomenological reduction of the everyday in and through the aesthetic.” (Kuspit, 132). But where now is art's place as a privileged space for contemplation? If art no longer occupies this space, where then is that place in our sphere?</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The straight answer is, it still lies in art. For what is now deemed 'art' (which is, in fact, Kuspit's postart) has become, through commodification and novelty for the sake of its own self-consuming disposability, an undistinguishable extension of the modern entertainment complex. Postmodern art now reflects consumer culture in an unabashed mimesis of</span> the shallow artifice of the artificial. And with a culturally bereft, winking nihilism, embraces this fact in its own despite. This points up the common thread of cynical irony so common in postart works. It is also insipidly boring; the premise is always obvious, and you 'get it' instantly. What is functional about this? Art always intends to <i>have</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> a function</span> – which is, at the very least, to provide insight.<span style="font-style: normal;"> Non-functionality is synonymous with death.</span></div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Now then, I do believe that Kuspit, despite the inherent truth in his words, may be critiqued for his hyperbole, if not lack of hope. Art's death has been heralded and pronounced far too many times for Kuspit's proclamation to </span><i>also</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> be a literal consideration. Kuspit himself notes these incidents: William Blake's fears in 1820 of an unholy conflation of art and money (162); Gauguin's similar reflections on this topic seventy years later, as he notes how this evil alliance will destroy art in the new (20</span><sup><span style="font-style: normal;">th</span></sup><span style="font-style: normal;">) century (170); Clement Greenberg's view on kitsch in 1939 as the defeating foil to the avant-garde (171); Richard Huelsenbeck's observation and agreement in 1957 with the Dadaist assertion that “art is dead” (170); and David Rabinowich's 1963 critique of minimalism as the death of art emblemized (170-171). Even the very </span><i>idea</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> of the end of art was appropriated in the 1986 Boston ICA show, </span><i>Endgame </i><span style="font-style: normal;">(I discuss this at length in a response to the </span><i>Endgame </i><span style="font-style: normal;">essays from my first MFA semester*). As Kuspit notes in his postscript (which is altogether too short), there are a good number of artists (painters, he cites specifically) still practicing an art that is materially (aesthetically) resonant, while also satisfying modern, conceptual concerns. In other words, there still remain, and have remained, painters who never believed it was a good idea to throw the aesthetic baby out with the bathwater.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Van Gogh declared that “painting is a faith.” (Lublin, 113). Indeed, with all that has transpired, as chronicled by Kuspit, it seems like one would need to have a deep and nearly blind (deaf would probably help, too) faith in order to continue creating aesthetic art-objects such as paintings. Truth be told, the space of painting has been radically delimited; not only by the inclusion of all sorts of radical and contemporary media (digital, video, installation, performance, etc.), but also by the contemporary critics, dealers and collectors who would control the commodified – and rather unregulated – cash machine that art has become in these postart years. As a painter, my realization of these closed-down parameters caused me no small amount of despair, initially. I felt incredibly marginalized by the cold barriers set up by the contemporary art construct.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">Nonetheless, I have chosen to 'keep the faith,' as it were, not only aligning myself with the 'New Old Masters,' as Kuspit names the artists in his postscript, but also looking to other sources for inspiration. In a 1971 debate, Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault discussed ideas and motivations behind creativity in a modern age. At one point, Chomsky talks about the modern suppression of creativity by social institutions and posits that if this chain of oppression is unbound, it will reveal an inherently humanistic surge of artistry. Foucault's reply is not necessarily a disagreement, but it is a practical insight into the modern era. He is far more interested in how creativity can (as it was then, and still is now) operate, and perhaps flourish, within a set of constraints: “</span>It is not a matter of combination. Only creativity is possible in putting into play of a system of rules; it is not a mixture of order and freedom.” (Chomsky-Foucault, 29). This describes a more limited framework giving a more stable creative foundation that would be unavailable if everything was permissible.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">This theme can also be found in the excellent Lars von Trier film from 2003, <i>The Five Obstructions. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">In this documentary, von Trier takes his mentor, the filmmaker </span>Jørgen Leth, to task over Leth's <i>The Perfect Human. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">Despite his deep admiration for Leth's work, von Trier challenges his mentor in a kind of Oedipal duel, daring him to make new versions of this film with particular obstructions in place. The first obstruction, which takes Leth to Cuba (an unknown quantity to him, thus restrictive) with the restriction that he can only shoot 12 frames per shot. While filming, Leth laments his agreeing to this: “It's totally destructive!” and “He's ruining it from the start!” (4:30-4:40). But later, upon seeing the completed new version, von Trier is amazed and remarks, “The 12 frames were a gift!” (15:40). The successes of the new versions were all in thanks to the restrictions put upon the veteran filmmaker. (In an amusing moment, von Trier 'punishes' Leth by insisting that Leth make a free-form version of the film. After the fantastic experiences with prior obstructions, Leth is horrified at the prospect and pleads for another obstruction.)</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">In this age of super-interconnectivity via the digital realm, we have – cliché notwithstanding – the world at our fingertips. For the creative mind, a new dictum has arisen: 'everything is allowed, nothing is permitted.' Such a thing easily neuters our creative impulses. So then, it is precisely through the narrowing of our artistic boundaries (some chosen, some preordained) that we can obtain a more focused – and consequently, more expansive – vision.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">With this realization, I (and others) can herald the downfall of postart. Postart was the easy way out, co-opting anything and everything (the commercial as well as past art movements) in a backhanded, ironic and unsympathetic manner. The postartists' appropriated and deconstructed art reprisals emblemize a lack of artistic courage and conviction. Such spectacles are akin to dressing down a (perceived) weaker rival in public, in lieu of addressing one's own insecurities. However, this act lays those insecurities rather bare in such a way as to incriminate the actor as an unknowing fool.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">The job of an artist is to not be foolish, but insightful. Through searching in earnest for my artistic path, I have jettisoned the notions of postmodern postart insisting that representational painters cannot represent art in any way other than anachronistically. Finding the magnetic North of my aesthetic compass should never have been something about which I felt was a less-than-artistic pursuit. My formalized language of representational painting is the vehicle that allows me to announce my unconscious unconsciously. So then, in pursuing the deviations and visual inquests using my foundational aesthetics and professional skill sets as the basis, I can and will reveal the full scope of myself and my relationship to the contemporary world in my work.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><u>Works Cited:</u></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Chomsky, Noam and Foucault, Michel. <i>The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature. </i>New York: New Press, 2006. Print</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>The Five Obstructions. </i>Dir. Lars von Trier. Perf. Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth. Films Sans Frontières [France], 2003. Film</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><i>The Incredibles</i>. Dir. Brad Bird. Perf. Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, and Samuel L. Jackson. Disney/Pixar, 2004. Film.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Kuspit, Donald. <i>The End of Art. </i><span style="font-style: normal;">New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Lublin, Albert J. <i>Stranger on the Earth: A Psychological Biography of Vincent van Gogh.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> New York: Henry Holt, 1987. Print</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;">* May 16, 2010 entry on the “Studio Berehaven Annotations” blog – http://robsullivanartnotes.blogspot.com/2010/05/endgame.html</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br />
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</div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-13680052972096438742011-03-14T20:11:00.001-07:002011-03-14T20:23:45.576-07:00Inventing Fame, Inviting Problems<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwlKwJ_FTVfDXyoaHLaSTsZ00ERJJlMSh8EhNgYzc-xZOxjyTOHijDJPcv4GbofmcH6IB2PaWg9T0wD90LqO4Jsi7Z9B9RCClMg0O_Xh0zeCURvYR0ZxTvpqCyfIlI8rbsHxVD4QYM8cw/s1600/GauguinSP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwlKwJ_FTVfDXyoaHLaSTsZ00ERJJlMSh8EhNgYzc-xZOxjyTOHijDJPcv4GbofmcH6IB2PaWg9T0wD90LqO4Jsi7Z9B9RCClMg0O_Xh0zeCURvYR0ZxTvpqCyfIlI8rbsHxVD4QYM8cw/s320/GauguinSP.jpg" width="202" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Gauguin, "Self Portrait With Halo" 1889. Oil on Wood 31" x 20"</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr9MDCrYMHHn6lVbiTrEHzcwabgEkYw7aQgt_rjfxUwIl1a3ieVY-lKW3XBUDoQDIkJJfNyAdgOrhyphenhyphenW59VZIt5IvFYcEDAQAOCJ5GdvjCe3G4UYPngeYFzEZwTjJvDVKkaRQfa3dTSork/s1600/Basq_SP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr9MDCrYMHHn6lVbiTrEHzcwabgEkYw7aQgt_rjfxUwIl1a3ieVY-lKW3XBUDoQDIkJJfNyAdgOrhyphenhyphenW59VZIt5IvFYcEDAQAOCJ5GdvjCe3G4UYPngeYFzEZwTjJvDVKkaRQfa3dTSork/s320/Basq_SP.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean-Michel Basquiat, "Self Portrait as a Heel" 1982. Acrylic and Oil on canvas, 96" x 61.5</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Inventing Fame, Inviting Problems<br />
Critical Theory III<br />
<br />
According to Henri Tajfel, "the effects of social identity are driven by a need for positive distinctiveness in which one's own group is positively distinguished from an outgroup." (519). With this in mind, we can easily hypothesize the need for the selfsame distinctiveness for an individual artist to positively distinguish themselves from other artists. There is, as noted in the theory, always a contextual/environmental factor at play. In the the case of the artist, it is the "art world": the studio; the work; the galleries; local culture; the "scene" (receptions, institutional gatherings, etc.); and the individuals involved within. <br />
<br />
In creative fields, the want for recognition is not merely a need based upon inflation of ego - it could also be said that such a thing is beneficial for one's career. Different levels of esteem – or fame – can be achieved with different levels of acclaim. At the highest levels, it will push the artist out into the world beyond art, allowing them to be recognized by the world at large. I will discuss instances of this and the inherent problems that manifest themselves as a result. The first is an in-depth look at the life and work of Paul Gauguin. The second will bring the discussion into the contemporary with related postmodern issues of artist-as-celebrity with a focus on Jean-Michel Basquiat.<br />
<br />
Parisian artist Paul Gauguin was highly steeped in mythologies – one path leading to a furtherance of the artist as native-bohemian (an adoption of the “noble savage” motif) – the other, to an artistic/sociopolitical movement in the discourse regarding primitive people and places. In 1879, he left behind a family and banker's job in Paris for Brittany, where he began to weave a stylized artistic fantasy. He adopted the more antiquated native tropes of Pont-Aven (wearing wooden shoes, for instance) in order to personify his artistic take on the town as an antiquated backwater. It was nothing of the kind in the 1880s; it served more of a tourist getaway for contemporary Paris. Nevertheless, this marked the beginning of Gauguin's excursion in to the promotion of two kinds of falsified “other”-ness: his own and his subjects'.<br />
<br />
Truth be told, Gauguin's rationale for over-exoticising may be traced to his own lineage and upbringing. His mother was half-Peruvian and he spent a few of his young years in Peru. No doubt there was a part of him that sincerely desired to take his “primitive” heritage and integrate it into his art as well as his life. His work reflected an incorporation of simple, outlined and pictorially flat elements found in the older indigenous arts of island and South American cultures into his work. Critics of the time established his modern, post-Impressionist tack as “Symbolism.” An 1891 account of Gauguin by G. Albert Aurier describes this simplification through a process of depicting “multiple elements of objective reality.... [using] only lines, forms and distinctive colors that enable him to describe precisely the ideic significance of the object.” (194). This formal appropriation could be considered problematic in light of Gauguin's French colonial worldview. However, in studying the work, his adoption of this style was a highly original fusion, be it pastiche or no. His work still stands as an original paradigm shift in the formal aspects of modernist painting.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, his life and career in Tahiti proved to be problematic indeed. The decision to embrace his Peruvian heritage could never counter his true cultural background – that of a late 19th Century Parisian banker. This aspect is further underscored by the fact that, prior to Gauguin's arrival, French missionaries had already been hard at work in this French colonial possession for nearly a century. Gauguin's hope for an authentic native experience (much less “going native”) was an impossibility. Despite this, Gauguin applied his life and work towards the archetype of an idealized primitive civilization. His marriage to the 13 year-old Teha'amana was undoubtedly rationalized by the tradition of such youthful marriages in the culture, but it was automatically rendered problematic by his own cultural standards; French society would find such an arrangement criminal and immoral. This is further problematized by what he gained by this union, as he was in straits with regard to food and clothing, as Solomon-Godeau notes: “[B]y virtue of [Teha'amana's] well provisioned extended family, [she was] his meal ticket.” (325). It remains speculation to wonder whether it was Gauguin's inflated appetites – apropos of his “savage” persona - that kept him holding onto the fantasy of a Tahiti long past. His sources were pastiches of tales told by Teha'amana – someone who was already a generation removed from her lost culture. He depicted an incorrect and “innocent” version of this past in his paintings, promoting this misrepresentation to his collectors back in Europe. <br />
<br />
Gauguin was indeed “a reactionary revolutionary, one who placed hope not in the modernist present and future, which he despised and feared, but in an uncorrupted, uncolonized past, a past that had, like a princely birthright, been snatched away from him, and that he ended up spending a lifetime trying to recover.” (Cotter, PC21). His career survived on the myth of the self-exiled artist. And he spent himself on maintaining it – so much so that he had to remain in exile, an embittered expatriate, finding his untimely end via complications with syphilis and alcohol abuse.<br />
<br />
It is no wonder that the artistic evolution from the modern to the postmodern should also encompass an evolution from the “mythological” artist to the “celebrity” artist. A persona that perfectly captured the zeitgeist of the preeminent postmodern decade – the 1970s – was that of the artist Andy Warhol. With Warhol, there was no line between the artist and the work – fame was engendered by name recognition. Other artists were able to capitalize on this mania in subsequent years, parlaying their art careers into financial juggernauts, such as David Salle and Julian Schnabel. New York City was the locus point for all of this. This was the era of artist-as-superstar. <br />
<br />
As the art market moved into highly fertile financial territory in the early 1980s, dealers and artists alike were striving for the “next big thing.” With the paradigm of the celebrity artist now in place – young bohemians flooded lower Manhattan with experimental art in hopes of hitting it big. Anything and everything was up for grabs. A young graffiti artist with the tag “SAMO” began to grab the attention of those close to the “scene.” Through a series of fortunate events, coupled with much help from his enigmatic charisma, SAMO – aka Jean-Michel Basquiat – was “discovered.”<br />
<br />
Richard Marshall recalls that Basquiat “first became famous for his art. Then he became famous for being famous. Then he became famous for being infamous.” (15). The unfortunate circumstance of how this came to be was, in part, fueled by an unshakable drug addiction, born from the street life that Basquiat espoused at age sixteen. The other part was perhaps more insidious, and no doubt kept this sensitive young man from shaking his crippling dependency.<br />
<br />
Similar to Gauguin, Basquiat had an ethnic background that fueled part of his artistic and intellectual makeup. He was born to Haitian parents, but in Brooklyn. Like Gauguin, he spent some childhood years in the country of his progenitors, where he learned Creole and French. Nevertheless, his native soil was very much New York. He was ultimately raised in an upper-middle-class, financially stable household, his father being an accountant. This is a problematic area that does not completely gibe with the “kid from the street” ethos that Basquiat embraced, but he understood the street life and reflected the culture back in his art with a fresh and direct style. He drew upon black historical figures and histories to reflect his Haitian-African roots and how that played into his take on street life. This was all wholly unique to the New York art scene, and he soon garnered serious attention from high-powered gallery owners and dealers. <br />
<br />
As reviews of Basquiat's work mounted, it became noticeable that the neo-expressionist moniker was being paired with “neo-primitivist.” Much of this press hinted at an painter's intuitiveness not born from an attenuation to the culture, but rather a “savage” primitivism that smacked of heavily racial overtones. The art world of the mid 80s, despite all its liberal tendencies, did not yet know how to fully accept a young black man as its new prince, even though all the “right” people had canonized him. His misgivings over this are clear in the highly personal interview he gave to Tamra Davis in her documentary The Radiant Child. (1:03:00 – 1:04:00).<br />
<br />
This misrepresentation of this complex and talented young artist came to its unfortunate head when Basquiat's very hero, Andy Warhol, asked him to work alongside him and produce a show together. It remains speculation to discern whether Warhol was aligning himself with this hot new upstart in order to reinvigorate a flagging career, or that he was trying to bring Jean-Michel past the last hurdle into art superstardom alongside himself, Schnabel and Salle. Unfortunately, the press read the former implication into the show, admonishing Basquiat for “playing the art world mascot.” (Reynor, 91). This had the effect of sending Basquiat into a spiral of heavy heroin use, from which he would not ever recover, dying from an overdose in 1988 at the age of 27.<br />
<br />
It is so unfortunate and unnecessary that problems arose from the mere fact of fame being thrust upon Basquiat so quickly. In a strange reversal of the Gauguin paradigm, where the artist was the sole proprietor of the myth, and ultimately held the power of his artistic fate in hand, the impressionably naïve Basquiat was in the hands of the moneyed peoples of the art world: wealthy, powerful, white men. They sought to cash in on not just his talent, but, in a surfeit of ignorance, his “otherness.”<br />
<br />
Works Cited:<br />
<br />
Aurier, G. Albert. Symbolist Art Theories- a Critical Anthology. Ed. Henri Dorra. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. 192-203. Print<br />
<br />
Cotter, Holland “The Self-Invented Artist.” New York Times. 25 Feb. 2011, New York ed. Section PC, 21. Print<br />
<br />
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child. Dir. Tamra Davis. Perf. Jean-Michel Basquiat, Suzanne Mallouk, Annina Nosei and Julian Schnabel. Arthouse Films, 2010. DVD.<br />
<br />
Marshall, Richard. Jean-Michel Basquiat. New York:Whitney Museum of Art Press, 1992. Print<br />
<br />
Reynor, Vivien. “Basquiat, Warhol.” The New York Times. 20 Sept. 1985: Arts Section, 91. Print<br />
<br />
Solomon-Godeau, Abigail. “Going Native.” Art In America. #77 Jul. 1989. 313-329. Print<br />
<br />
Tajfel, Henry. Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. Eds. David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy, Robert Jervis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. PrintRob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-71492738170301574512011-02-24T13:16:00.000-08:002011-02-24T14:03:27.886-08:00Mentor Visit w/ Peter Rostovsky + Some Time in Chelsea (Part 2)<title></title> <style type="text/css">
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<div class="p1">[<i>here's a link to Peter Rostovsky's site: <a href="http://www.peterrostovsky.com/">www.peterrostovsky.com</a></i>]<br />
<br />
Fortunately, I was able to back right up to the freight elevator to get my work into Peter's studio building (which, by the way, appears on your right as you're avoiding potholes and swerving rigs while Manhattan-bound on the elevated BQE; "KALMAN DOLGIN" is inscribed across its brick facade.). It was far too windy to take the 40" x 60" piece out and try and walk it to the door, though it was maybe only 10 yards away. I would have parasailed right out over the Newtown Waterway in a heartbeat.</div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">I brought what I felt was the most successful work from the program thus far: "Sublimation" (the crashed Porsche); "Atelier 2010" (the nude S.P. w/sheep); "Pteronychus" (seagulls); "All Natural" (ice cream); "Tao of Flux" (the big wave on frosted polyester); and a new work on polyester, "Catastrophe Paradox" - pictured below. [It's actually oil on polyester, as I had trouble with surface scratching on this slightly different brand of poly. Plus, the architecture proved difficult to manage in vine charcoal. I used Gamsol with Ivory Black for the monochromatic passages and full color (for fire, anyway) with Galkyd Lite for the flames.]<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9xV9xw4arDrrQcbK26Ms-bL0bMJMGtkxz-nXtcXbUGAC7Fmn9Q9bxUlJTSWDtoi-f19kimSY6r-uoIbwcqm0MyjLb0SOiJq5lzkPuY_6v-wHSEBcCyS2r5quuG4HLZmwEKbtk-5hTwr0/s1600/Tower_sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9xV9xw4arDrrQcbK26Ms-bL0bMJMGtkxz-nXtcXbUGAC7Fmn9Q9bxUlJTSWDtoi-f19kimSY6r-uoIbwcqm0MyjLb0SOiJq5lzkPuY_6v-wHSEBcCyS2r5quuG4HLZmwEKbtk-5hTwr0/s320/Tower_sm.jpg" width="243" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Catastrophe Paradox" oil on frosted polyester, 36" x 24"<br />
[Sorry for the lousy phone pic. Plus, it's still taped to the board here. Better shot forthcoming.]</td></tr>
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Peter got right to it, identifying his preferences and his reasons for them. Most attractive to him were the monochromatic works, the seagulls being particularly successful in his estimation. He broke it down to a very simple construct: the less number of "moves" one has to make in terms of concept/execution, the more open the work becomes. So, "Pteronychus" is one move, according to this playbook: I made a formal optical shift - that is - I merely changed the palette and tweaked the contrast. "All Natural" is two moves: an optical change plus the conflation of the two elements of sky and ice cream as an odd juxtaposition. "Sublimation" is three moves: The idealized car crash; the idealized sublime landscape; and the meshing of the two to create an open, but distinct, narrative. Now, this is not to say that the latter is an abject failure - it's more truthful to say that, the more moves one has to make, the more you can run into trouble; the "trouble" being that the work becomes too didactic. This is also not to say that a rote formula can take any image and make it a perfect painting. The image itself and its reception need to be taken into account.</div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">I was made aware of even more representational/real painters that are engaging in this practice. Besides Peter himself, there's Michael Borremans, Eberhard Havekost, Wilhelm Sasnal, Vija Celmins, Johannes Kahrs, Anna Conway, Michael de Kok, and Cameron Martin - to name a few. Their kind of operation within the tenets of the "traditionally trained painter" is far different than what John Currin and Lisa Yuskavage do. The latter two have developed a more cynical irony about how they present their subjects, which gives them a certain leeway to paint in a more formally classical manner. It's a little negative at worst, but at best, it is a kind of game they're playing with critique. Either way, I'm less attracted to working in such a sardonic milieu. Peter is in accord, believing more in a visual/optical game with an engaged viewer rather than an expository gambit with a likely pundit.</div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">So, then - it came to the point: what will be the underlying theme that I can get behind for the thesis work this semester? We had talked through the pros and cons of working with (and against) certain tropes and historical mechanisms in painting, especially as it pertained to my work and my engagement (critical or practiced) with those things. In as much as I enjoy the practice of "epic" painting, my visual language has not yet developed over the kind of Baroque lines necessary to pull that off. There just isn't time to experiment with that, so I will leave it as something for the future. But, what I have already done successfully is a re-presentation of the quotidian - it just needs a more streamlined visual course over a series of works. This is my plan. I have already run a number of concepts by Peter, and it became abundantly clear how some work better than others within this framework. </div><div class="p2"><br />
</div><div class="p1">The board is set. The pieces are moving. We come to it at last…</div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-69127554272821071212011-02-21T18:53:00.001-08:002011-02-21T19:13:20.779-08:00Mentor Visit w/ Peter Rostovsky + Some Time in Chelsea (Part 1)The former part of this post's title is the most important thing here, but I did the latter part first - so, for the sake of chronology….<br />
<br />
As much as I wanted to attend Kamrooz Aram's show opening at Perry Rubenstein, I had to teach my landscape class at MECA that Friday until 4, so getting to Chelsea by 6 was clearly out of the question. I didn't make it to Long Island until 10:30 PM, actually.The next morning, I drove to Brooklyn and parked in front of Peter's studio. It's in a warehouse kind of building right on the edge of the BQE - fairly industrial, so the parking was easy on a Saturday. It was a short walk to the L train at Lorimer, so I hopped that to the end stop at 8th Ave & transferred to the C for 23rd. The wind out by 10th Ave was unreal. I had designs on walking the HighLine, but not in that gale.<br />
<div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Perry Rubenstein had just opened (10 AM) and I went in to see Kamrooz' work. I should mention here that he was a speaker in one of AIB's "Art Talks" at the last residency and I was not alone in feeling that it was a terrific explication of his work. As a result, I had a good line on the chronological evolution of his work, both visually and conceptually. And the new work was superb: he definitely went up a level. The growth that he's achieved - so organic and fluid within his oeuvre - is certainly something from which any artist can learn. His <i>Fana' </i> works are my personal favorites, so I've posted some here. Sorry about the lousy phone cam pics.</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5P5E4a7VkHJssua7sVa4nvIH1OUbwcseVoeqk9CF70HpjwEfoyc_L2cWvc1xaf_S28v_Q_0AZFzXcpNcvqoApC5IuhFGcpD0hLa8a4oWM3Ejk4JF-5G-CSdvyvyOQwjcu_ZzPvVElZtI/s1600/Fana6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5P5E4a7VkHJssua7sVa4nvIH1OUbwcseVoeqk9CF70HpjwEfoyc_L2cWvc1xaf_S28v_Q_0AZFzXcpNcvqoApC5IuhFGcpD0hLa8a4oWM3Ejk4JF-5G-CSdvyvyOQwjcu_ZzPvVElZtI/s320/Fana6.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of Kamrooz' "Fana'" paintings. Not sure of dimensions - around 50" x 40" </td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmcbZ1xy38PE7asQ7sn5WCmbzgRT7mG2jrp5lppYe_a0VUTpnAtm_HiNrQYwOjxe5TdV4P3ZtVrupPMI49UEPbz5Tk08ToqtdaWdwyocUltSyhdltGfEdI-AcyKlJqlQLE9Xtg661pB30/s1600/Fana7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmcbZ1xy38PE7asQ7sn5WCmbzgRT7mG2jrp5lppYe_a0VUTpnAtm_HiNrQYwOjxe5TdV4P3ZtVrupPMI49UEPbz5Tk08ToqtdaWdwyocUltSyhdltGfEdI-AcyKlJqlQLE9Xtg661pB30/s320/Fana7.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another "Fana'" piece. "Untitled #6," I think.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikVUNW7r1-8UE98g69TcloI5_lAaeRjmE4HADRvHjc5acxsblaVL6M_Cm-ROYSUt5pHUACeULyS7giKZGqmenoIFKMOpDfCfwu52i4D85c-q7u6JSeeyf3fXamnqKpVjn1LcmhneKGyWM/s1600/flag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikVUNW7r1-8UE98g69TcloI5_lAaeRjmE4HADRvHjc5acxsblaVL6M_Cm-ROYSUt5pHUACeULyS7giKZGqmenoIFKMOpDfCfwu52i4D85c-q7u6JSeeyf3fXamnqKpVjn1LcmhneKGyWM/s320/flag.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A detail of one of the "Flag" paintings. It's a good size overall, maybe 70" x 80" or so.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">I put my head down against the blast coming in off the Hudson and went around and up to 25th, stopping in at Henoch near the corner. Yes, I know: the usual suspects doing the usual things. Still, many of these people have amazing skills - some I couldn't even begin to touch. But, with such common and/or didactic concepts, well… it's a lot of pretty pictures is all I'm going to say about that.</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Marlborough Chelsea is just a few doors up, so I walked into their huge space to find the large paintings of Juan Navarro Baldeweg, the show entitled, "Pintar, Pintar." Baldeweg is one of the foremost modern architects in Spain, so I was interested to see how he incorporated his love of spatial structure inside a flat plane of canvas. Now, I don't mean to sound flip, but I don't think I'm going out on a limb too far when I say that if Matisse were alive and an architect, his paintings would look like Baldeweg's. Even the prodigious use of red was apparent. And instead of print patterns, the patterning used here was derived from fencing, corrugated steel and other building materials. Should I dismiss his love of this very specific formalism? I don't know. Much of it was aesthetically pleasing, but it is definitely hard to get past his pastiche of Matisse's favorite formal moves.</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxs4WwfqsRBrvNBBQUxCmEh3GxEBL4SjdCWHRgguccgrGxDgU5VQ0_rIjilzxzqNQttlyTiiG6i802x6V7VWh3Fa-c2EFcvh-A_O9L9xHtdYGHi32PWs-0FXzKO-634L9HHbYgrDIAc4Q/s1600/JNB_Pintor_II_2010_o%25CC%2581leo_s.tela_200x250_cm_Full_.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxs4WwfqsRBrvNBBQUxCmEh3GxEBL4SjdCWHRgguccgrGxDgU5VQ0_rIjilzxzqNQttlyTiiG6i802x6V7VWh3Fa-c2EFcvh-A_O9L9xHtdYGHi32PWs-0FXzKO-634L9HHbYgrDIAc4Q/s320/JNB_Pintor_II_2010_o%25CC%2581leo_s.tela_200x250_cm_Full_.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Juan Navarro Baldeweg - "Pintor II" 2010, o/c 79" x 98" (approx.)</td></tr>
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</div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Next was a new gallery, though I had been in the space before: Axelle is now Bertrand Delacroix Gallery. Apparently, this is the same owner, but a different venture. And, strangely, I was approached by one of the gallery reps in exactly the same manner as I had when I'd last visited in the space's Axelle incarnation - that being, the young woman thought I was a dealer. I enjoy playing the part, and I suppose I look it in the way I study the works, but I dislike being disingenuous, even if it's harmless, so I excused myself to look at more work in the back. From a contemporary critical standpoint, the work was uneven, but I did think that much of Beth Carter's drawings were really fun and engaging, and Beate Bilkenroth's paintings were very strong. The latter works were of large utilitarian (modernist) apartments/condo-type buildings, and they really "moved" on the canvas. I'd seen the same subject dealt with in a representational fashion at Steven Zevitas' in Boston and it was not as strong as Bilkenroth.</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAplsZWiTADgZ3Nbg_REe36ohyphenhyphen91N_Hc7jQSGQVZa9IHCKNpliDeEqYqKfK1MZilN2uv4whnCMqnWxOqtddmLi1ByXaS-dHd4XsyGR5x22xf9BmGn3N10hH6VnomFxC4bMhVswxxPp6xY/s1600/Beate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAplsZWiTADgZ3Nbg_REe36ohyphenhyphen91N_Hc7jQSGQVZa9IHCKNpliDeEqYqKfK1MZilN2uv4whnCMqnWxOqtddmLi1ByXaS-dHd4XsyGR5x22xf9BmGn3N10hH6VnomFxC4bMhVswxxPp6xY/s320/Beate.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Painting by Beate Bilkenroth in the window of BDG. Didn't get the title, sorry.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
</div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Last, but not at all least is Donald Judd at Pace. I have a strange affinity for this kind of "minimalism" (Judd hated that term), mostly because I appreciate the economy of form engendered in the work. I also enjoy it because, despite his best-laid intentions, I still can derive representation in those minimal forms. The piece, "Untitled" (1989, Cor-Ten steel) was my favorite in this grouping of wood, steel concrete and aluminum structures. It was just a big rectangular, rust-colored steel box on the floor with a thin beam inside the lower quarter and a thin, taller beam running along the top about a foot distant from the first one. At certain angles, this created a bi-level canyon-like effect which reminded me of natural forms in the Utah landscape; natural bridges and the like. Even the oxidized material underscored that relationship. I doubt very much that Judd would have agreed with me. But I wonder if his good friend Rackstraw Downes might…? Downes did spend a lot of time at Chinati. I'll bet there was a bit of this kind of discussion going on between them all the time - you know, non-signification versus representation and the like. Hopefully, Rackstraw might write about that one day.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9SskvXODhAnjnFiTxolEspnJqd3bCUxIH0XSu6ROrNkSi20G9Y9JEMnx33-KTORLZqZRKpQ7YILtbeqJ-VMhEP7LNBYv2mfu96yxVddqQDBsUG1LOfZVSAlRKaA050veLAqGGGRWH_n4/s1600/judd.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9SskvXODhAnjnFiTxolEspnJqd3bCUxIH0XSu6ROrNkSi20G9Y9JEMnx33-KTORLZqZRKpQ7YILtbeqJ-VMhEP7LNBYv2mfu96yxVddqQDBsUG1LOfZVSAlRKaA050veLAqGGGRWH_n4/s320/judd.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Donald Judd - "Untitled" (1989) Cor-Ten steel. 39" x 78" x 78" (approx)</td></tr>
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</div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Anyway, I made my way across town to a Greek diner on 1st across from Stuyvesant Town. Good souvlaki and dolmades. The L is right there at 14th, so I could make the quick trip back to Brooklyn.</span></div><div class="p2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(cont'd in Part 2)</span></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-65916426330598073632011-02-09T11:46:00.000-08:002011-02-21T16:48:11.997-08:00Downes Show Debate!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvstirQhGy1iJDzEFYXsteVBQlr1QOlwgIovBuh5XbtwuJdjnALqkSWyz50WMV-rntDdajlPYoRsQ0msVR0GvAxLHu5kd9ykic_us-0zoNHMMOelE-YM6AOGQIvHYV8A3eYkdqR1oLoI/s1600/k7934.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKvstirQhGy1iJDzEFYXsteVBQlr1QOlwgIovBuh5XbtwuJdjnALqkSWyz50WMV-rntDdajlPYoRsQ0msVR0GvAxLHu5kd9ykic_us-0zoNHMMOelE-YM6AOGQIvHYV8A3eYkdqR1oLoI/s1600/k7934.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div>Here we have a response (in yellow) from Daniel Kany to my rebuttal, and my response (in blue) to Mr. Kany's letter in kind. Make of it what you will:<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232; font-family: inherit;">I read your comment about the Downes review with interest and appreciation - it's nice to be taken seriously.</span><br />
<div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">Have you ever read my criticism? I stand by painting and even people like Robert Solotaire. I love landscapes and plein air painting every bit as much as contemporary art.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">I think most people don't understand how incredibly radical the Impressionists were. Not just for their technique, but even their painting of contemporary life and even industrial landscapes. That was radical. And it was absolutely noticed at the time.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">Downes writes and talks about them and Cezanne and other 19th century greats. They are his target and I believe they are his context now.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">Downes used to hire people, for example, to walk back and forth as models for his city scenes - just like Monet used his wife even multiple times in a scene. For example, there is a 1873 painting of his wife and daughter seen twice in the same poppy field in Argenteuil.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">I think what you might be missing is that I think Impressionism was THE most radical moment in Modernism. Following Manet's lead, they set the process of modernism to chipping away at the very foundations of painting as a cultural practice.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">I believe Downes and I agree on that point and that he has been trying to get past them but doesn't feel he has quite done so. Some of his defining points underscore this - including his long, labored time at the canvas and his arbitrary swoop.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">Who else introduced subtle shifts of the time of day other than Monet? Think of his haystacks and the Cathedral at Rouen. Monet also invented the series and when you think in this light, the 6 sided barn and the 4 razor panels make sense more than anything else as a direct response to Monet.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">The issues of perspective have been used by many artists for interesting personal effect - I even referenced Van Eyck's Arnolfini Marriage of 1434 that makes an incredible deviation from perspective. But for artists from de Chirico to Gregory Gillespie and so many others, this is hardly an issue that belongs to Downes along.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">I make it clear Downes is brilliant, intellectually engaged and can paint incredibly well.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;">I appreciate your comments but I stand in this case by what I wrote.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #f1c232;"><br />
</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;">And my response:</div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><br />
</div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;">Thank you for responding in kind. I have not ever openly questioned a published critique, so if my tone was anything other than academic, I apologize. My reasons are far from personal. I have no personal connection to Downes, nor does an artist of his stature need any defense from me. After all, he is a well-established critic himself. </span><br />
<div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;">I don't doubt that you stand by painting. I find your emphatic fascination with the importance of Impressionism to be well-warranted; it was indeed a huge leap for painting as a herald for Modernism. And I don't underestimate this movement, either. If you read my comparative essay regarding Vincent Desiderio and John Currin <a href="http://robsullivanartnotes.blogspot.com/2010/04/comparative-john-currin-vincent.html">(click to read)</a>, you'll see that I give Manet full marks as the progenitor of modern painting.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;">Believe me, I know well all of what Downes does in order to achieve his pictures. I've seen his journals and sketchbooks at the Aldrich alongside "Under the West Side Highway." It's quite an undertaking. And I wouldn't call the perspectival tropes that Downes employs an "arbitrary swoop." His essay, "Turning the Head In Empirical Space," shows that this is anything but arbitrary. He's explicated his processes regarding this topic in numerous lectures.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;">I think this is where I need to cite the more important reasons for my response. I don't wish to bandy our art history knowledge about like a tennis ball. I am not an historian, anyway - I am a painter, so that is not really my purview. A contention of mine is that I found your review was, on the whole, sorely negative -- unnecessarily so. I understand that you felt beleaguered by a "cold intellectualism" that you derived from his work. Your opinion is your own, of course. However, your opinion remained rather unexamined and far too empirical in tone. Many of your compliments were backhanded and/or tempered by dismissiveness. You tell me Downes is an incredible painter, yet also "workaday"? What's more important to me - in fact, MOST important - is that this is a major show of an important painter here at our little PMA. Anyone who reads your article will be left with the impression that if they decide to see this show, it will leave them cold, unimpressed and perhaps <i style="font-style: italic; line-height: 17px;">de</i>pressed by intimations of apparent bleakness. Consider this: At a wine tasting, a server pours someone a red and says, "This medium-bodied Tempranillo is redolent of black cherries and earth, with a hint of mild vanilla in the finish." If the taster knows little about wine, they will think they are tasting those basic descriptors (whether the pourer knows what they're saying or not). The power of suggestion is very strong. Why saddle a very worthy show with such joyless opinion?</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;">For that's all I could read in your article. And I have to take issue with that - especially since you heralded the publication with a Tweet that you were "taking a great one to task." Really? And did you? As I'd said earlier, your opinion is your own, and you can certainly stand by it, good or bad. But that can't be all there is in a critical essay; there is no critical rigor to be found there. And those who can't tell the difference will read your review and think that Downes is not worth their time. This is a great disservice to the reader, the Museum and the artist.</span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;">You have written what you have written, and I understand that. However, I hope you might come around to enjoy what Downes is REALLY trying to do in his work. I highly recommend his essays in "In Relation to the Whole" (it's in the MLA of my essay on Downes). I found it very edifying as a painter, but also historically fascinating, as each of the three essays encompass three distinct decades of Downes' career. I'm more than hopeful that you will eventually come around, for I can cite your very essay: You found Downes' work to be "gritty and workaday," and so, too did the French public initially find the work of the Impressionists "gritty and ugly." </span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 17px;" /></span></div><div style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #3d85c6; font-family: inherit;">And they came around, didn't they?</span></div></div><br />
<br />
There may be more to come - who knows?<br />
<br />
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />[edit: 2/15/11 - Mr. Kany and I came to an agreement to disagree via private emails. Frankly, he was fairly intractable and "didn't care" about Downes' acceptance within the contemporary. I find it fascinating and heartening on the other hand. Should that color one's view? I think it's case-by-case. In the case of, say, Damien Hirst, it's clear that the art is more about gaming contemporary critical systems. With Downes, it's much more about effort and diligence, making it far more sincere and, in my eyes, far more laudable.]Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-47862139850456743892011-02-07T10:52:00.000-08:002011-02-07T11:38:02.395-08:00Rebuttal to Daniel Kany<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2gYJGis8VuoxaPzxSMnVv9bUVQsNpFOYRZ42zqbexCDCy1x3NPL6kSzh7e2Lw2YOTzz5HS5NEW9x1J4eNuZtujykzOnZ-h1e0XEGniAsRX14CmqIYwQ1fkLc2aKk5uSRPi_hARCE9Vo/s1600/downes_rzr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil2gYJGis8VuoxaPzxSMnVv9bUVQsNpFOYRZ42zqbexCDCy1x3NPL6kSzh7e2Lw2YOTzz5HS5NEW9x1J4eNuZtujykzOnZ-h1e0XEGniAsRX14CmqIYwQ1fkLc2aKk5uSRPi_hARCE9Vo/s320/downes_rzr.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Panel 4 of "Four Spots Along A Razor Wire Fence/ ASOTSPRIE"<br />
by Rackstraw Downes</td></tr>
</tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span">Here is the article in question: <a href="http://www.pressherald.com/life/audience/downes-paints-brilliantly-but-misses-on-visceral-connections_2011-02-06.html">http://www.pressherald.com/life/audience/downes-paints-brilliantly-but-misses-on-visceral-connections_2011-02-06.html</a></span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">You may recall the review that I wrote about this show when I saw it in Southampton, posted in this blog in October of last year <a href="http://robsullivanartnotes.blogspot.com/2010/10/show-review-rackstraw-downes-onsite.html">(click here to read)</a>. I knew virtually nothing of the man when I wrote this essay, and in immersing myself in his life and work, I became a huge admirer. I have no personal connection, nor ulterior motive in defending him. In fact, he needs no defense from me; he could far better handle a poorly conceived article than I ever could, as he is also a distinguished critic and critical thinker. Nevertheless, I cannot let a review such as Kany's stand without question. If you read my review and his back-to-back, you can see how informed research stacks up against unexamined opinion, respectively.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;">Here is my rebuttal: </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span">I feel like this review is the thing that's missing connections - numerous ones, in fact. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />
</span></span><br />
<div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;">For one, Downes as a "child of impressionism" is a bit dodgy considering he was actually an artistic product of mid-60s Yale along with Richard Serra, Chuck Close, Janet Fish, Nancy Graves, Brice Marden, etc. --- not exactly a bastion of impressionistic painters, let alone thought.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;">And if by "impressionism" you mean that Downes is primarily concerned with the optical effects of on-site painting - well, that's shortchanging his work by a long shot. The idea of turning one's head in empirical space using plein air painting as a format is solely Downes' province. You did mention that, but you left out the most significant part. Downes' practice is perhaps the first "humanistic" usage of perspective in painting in a long, long time. It is perhaps the only instance of this ever seen in plein air painting. Representational art hasn't seen a change in this arena since the purely mathematical treatises by Ficino on Brunelleschi, which have been the standard since the 13th century. This is important, because the viewer is truly experiencing the "painter's view" with Downes' works as opposed to a classical, math-based rendering.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;">And what of narrative? What is the "cold, unappealing message" about which you write? My most recent visit to the show (my 4th, counting the Parrish Museum's exhibition in Southampton) was on a Friday, when the PMA waives its fee (a wonderful thing). This brings in a broader viewership - one that is maybe not so "intellectually elitist" as it were. I overheard numerous conversations in front of such works as "U.S. Scrap Metal Gets Shipped for Reprocessing in Southeast Asia, Jersey City" and noted many mentions of words like "environmentalism" and "ecology." This may not hit the nail on the head, but so what? There is indeed narrativity within Downes' work, and for some reason, you either failed to see it or failed to mention it. Don't even get me started on the time-based elements of his work (see: "Four Spots Along a Razor-Wire Fence"), which in and of itself implies narrative.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;">The most uncritical part of all this is the very fact of Downes even maintaining a presence in the contemporary discourse. If his work were as disconnected and intellectually anxious as you claim, how is he a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award winner? Those don't get handed out to artists who speak in intellectual monotone only. Not just that - but he's a painter! A plein air painter! A representational, realist, dyed-in-the-wool, outdoor painter! Contemporary critics have - for decades - relegated this kind of art and artist to the realm of the "Sunday Painter" with all of the pejoratives that entails. Have you not given thought to the fact that Downes' rising far above this must resonate with some kind of historical significance? Perhaps he's doing something not only right, but bringing something new to what had been (maybe unjustly) dismissed as hackery. And in terms of criticism, there is none more critical of representational realist art than Peter Schjeldahl; in fact, he's on record as "having scant use for it" ['True Views.' New Yorker, Oct. '04. p 208]. Yet, even this respected (albeit ruthless) critic reserved praise for Downes, which speaks volumes.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6fa8dc;">You can't dismiss these things in the name of uncritical opinion. It does a disservice to the artist, the museum and the reader. If you are to "take on the great ones" (as you Tweeted), you may need to research the greatness of your subject more thoroughly. I've already done that (with citations to back my claims), should you care to take a look: http://robsullivanartnotes.blogspot.com/2010/10/show-review-rackstraw-downes-onsite.html</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><br />
</span></div><div class="p1"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span">Not sure what to expect in return, but I stand by my words as something that's far more fair than slapdash opinion.</span></span></div></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-57274194791988665652011-02-04T18:59:00.001-08:002011-02-04T19:04:48.800-08:00Gonna Need a Bigger Easel<div><i>[Sorry, blog's getting too serious - time for a bit of fun]</i></div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyj1rBbunorkd1iiTNZeiWBbVNWMptsS4hlPFgQa40zVpnmSw8t5izi1pPs8PAaSU9rJzDbtSRGw2LpgV1bbt0QGERpbN0rs2U6DEq7Uretvdn33xohs1PgC1rnja2LPUzG1f-rDxM1w/s1600/Quint.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 212px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyj1rBbunorkd1iiTNZeiWBbVNWMptsS4hlPFgQa40zVpnmSw8t5izi1pPs8PAaSU9rJzDbtSRGw2LpgV1bbt0QGERpbN0rs2U6DEq7Uretvdn33xohs1PgC1rnja2LPUzG1f-rDxM1w/s320/Quint.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5570034892504937714" /></a><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'. I'll paint this masterpiece for you, but it ain't gonna be easy. Bad muse. Not like going down the Met chasin' Degas and Tiepolo. This art, swallow you whole. Little recontextualizin', little mimesis, an' down you go. And we gotta do it quick, that'll bring back your patrons, put all your galleries on a payin' basis. But it's not gonna be pleasant. I value my process a lot more than 20 thousand bucks, chief. I'll conceptualize it for 20, but I'll paint it, and frame it, for 150. But you've gotta make up your minds. If you want to stay cultured, then ante up. If you want to play it cheap, you'll be lookin' at giclees of Monet's "Water-lilies" the whole winter. I don't want no installation types, I don't want no curators, there's just too many artists on this island. One hundred fifty thousand dollars for me by myself. For that you get the canvas, the frame, the whole damn thi</span>ng. <p></p></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-86306679967549532192011-02-02T12:15:00.000-08:002011-02-07T12:37:08.514-08:00Residency 3 (Jan, 2011) Summary<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr-L5nkI7U_iMmV_sgxLxV82dTY8dzYsfgtY6Igc_MTyQELnYwn8ch3HtZtQxVcGL8MoAbF9uLXxdyZFE0eBswonDQR4vl24fW7HyNU4R4QOU0V_DJ_uN9reNVetafc70iB1L3qqPdJrk/s1600/Synchretism.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569190291466510402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr-L5nkI7U_iMmV_sgxLxV82dTY8dzYsfgtY6Igc_MTyQELnYwn8ch3HtZtQxVcGL8MoAbF9uLXxdyZFE0eBswonDQR4vl24fW7HyNU4R4QOU0V_DJ_uN9reNVetafc70iB1L3qqPdJrk/s320/Synchretism.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 242px; width: 320px;" /></a><br />
<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr-L5nkI7U_iMmV_sgxLxV82dTY8dzYsfgtY6Igc_MTyQELnYwn8ch3HtZtQxVcGL8MoAbF9uLXxdyZFE0eBswonDQR4vl24fW7HyNU4R4QOU0V_DJ_uN9reNVetafc70iB1L3qqPdJrk/s1600/Synchretism.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a>"Synchretism" oil on panel, 18"x24"</div><div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh4W7rxfGa9N4NxU7DtnlOi0ftDldEIwH-4W2VbQ138RiVG_fVUAaYm_2Sy7CUWyvPNSnaiLiUiY9In_LOEy9cmyxOrcVsBC1bB36Qi4w2Ou5h4cxghushqFlTjikW-zvB6bQr1NNniG0/s1600/Sublimation.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569190282902786914" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh4W7rxfGa9N4NxU7DtnlOi0ftDldEIwH-4W2VbQ138RiVG_fVUAaYm_2Sy7CUWyvPNSnaiLiUiY9In_LOEy9cmyxOrcVsBC1bB36Qi4w2Ou5h4cxghushqFlTjikW-zvB6bQr1NNniG0/s320/Sublimation.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 254px;" /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh4W7rxfGa9N4NxU7DtnlOi0ftDldEIwH-4W2VbQ138RiVG_fVUAaYm_2Sy7CUWyvPNSnaiLiUiY9In_LOEy9cmyxOrcVsBC1bB36Qi4w2Ou5h4cxghushqFlTjikW-zvB6bQr1NNniG0/s1600/Sublimation.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a>"Sublimation" oil on canvas 60" x 40"</div><div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwr5L4bFkxj2Cg9szlpG_0x1EyI_Inq2MO2IPU0t1aKpO2vEjErC6k2CRtcfTD4sYImnsm0nObV6wy8bGVxwrpUO7r98D4-BijpM1IrjyrYnYms6qsi-GGswUafn0FOSwTnZS19Q08BB8/s1600/FossilRecord.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569190280160051682" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwr5L4bFkxj2Cg9szlpG_0x1EyI_Inq2MO2IPU0t1aKpO2vEjErC6k2CRtcfTD4sYImnsm0nObV6wy8bGVxwrpUO7r98D4-BijpM1IrjyrYnYms6qsi-GGswUafn0FOSwTnZS19Q08BB8/s320/FossilRecord.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 317px; width: 320px;" /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwr5L4bFkxj2Cg9szlpG_0x1EyI_Inq2MO2IPU0t1aKpO2vEjErC6k2CRtcfTD4sYImnsm0nObV6wy8bGVxwrpUO7r98D4-BijpM1IrjyrYnYms6qsi-GGswUafn0FOSwTnZS19Q08BB8/s1600/FossilRecord.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a>"Fossil Record" tar and household enamel on canvas, 24" sq.</div><div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllfnChFLiyOd8OYMX26op8u3ePry3v8uQj4j3uop9TTYCH9SzklIHRB6fjTe8FWIJc8eEWZFYcJ2z7QgoMCt-YnaNDyXjXHKQOW3qMOlwBVlmDTJFn1sC8VcqOU0r0Kp3W2Vub84uidw/s1600/AllNatural.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569190276662809138" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllfnChFLiyOd8OYMX26op8u3ePry3v8uQj4j3uop9TTYCH9SzklIHRB6fjTe8FWIJc8eEWZFYcJ2z7QgoMCt-YnaNDyXjXHKQOW3qMOlwBVlmDTJFn1sC8VcqOU0r0Kp3W2Vub84uidw/s320/AllNatural.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 320px; width: 214px;" /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhllfnChFLiyOd8OYMX26op8u3ePry3v8uQj4j3uop9TTYCH9SzklIHRB6fjTe8FWIJc8eEWZFYcJ2z7QgoMCt-YnaNDyXjXHKQOW3qMOlwBVlmDTJFn1sC8VcqOU0r0Kp3W2Vub84uidw/s1600/AllNatural.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a>"All Natural" oil on panel, 36" x 24"</div><div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO0dx5wJekVuGY3GVWfeSVE3Wrn_N8ACmG6DsJnVsB8CpAKZ9fC_bsg6QRrAnqNxjgapd9DtaE6cZ1K8kS3WvI7Van0aa_3YYkxeS7RRrhotdutdhC0Cjl6-tZ7-EZgY8EaAi9n-RbsqQ/s1600/Alcyone.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569190270428435058" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO0dx5wJekVuGY3GVWfeSVE3Wrn_N8ACmG6DsJnVsB8CpAKZ9fC_bsg6QRrAnqNxjgapd9DtaE6cZ1K8kS3WvI7Van0aa_3YYkxeS7RRrhotdutdhC0Cjl6-tZ7-EZgY8EaAi9n-RbsqQ/s320/Alcyone.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 319px; width: 320px;" /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO0dx5wJekVuGY3GVWfeSVE3Wrn_N8ACmG6DsJnVsB8CpAKZ9fC_bsg6QRrAnqNxjgapd9DtaE6cZ1K8kS3WvI7Van0aa_3YYkxeS7RRrhotdutdhC0Cjl6-tZ7-EZgY8EaAi9n-RbsqQ/s1600/Alcyone.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a>"Alcyone" oil on panel, 18 " sq.</div><div><br />
<div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibsMgcxPI_Pw1QSV0n1f4krZC1IOFmjc-EVLHEFrtwMWklTgMPXmGRBvriPqou9C0Xfn3rD-jf7llK_SOp0sLlKCdwP6R-94UzAViuCKhQB7p3OhoCSEcc3fAq9Sa5ii3HMp8BnpHySh0/s1600/TaoOfFlux.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569190550505039378" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibsMgcxPI_Pw1QSV0n1f4krZC1IOFmjc-EVLHEFrtwMWklTgMPXmGRBvriPqou9C0Xfn3rD-jf7llK_SOp0sLlKCdwP6R-94UzAViuCKhQB7p3OhoCSEcc3fAq9Sa5ii3HMp8BnpHySh0/s320/TaoOfFlux.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 226px; width: 320px;" /></a></div><div>"Tao of Flux" charcoal on Mylar, 20" x 30"</div><div><br />
</div>AIB MFA Group 3 <br />
Residency Summary – January, 2011 <br />
<br />
I am now one full year into the Graduate Program at the Art Institute of Boston, and it has been a hugely edifying experience thus far. A few weeks ago, I returned to a snow-laden Boston for my third residency as a Group 3 student. I brought the six new works that I had completed over the semester and hung them in my new crit group space with a little bit of jury-rigging in the lighting department (it turned out fine). Again, I openly welcomed any and all kinds of critique with an objective attitude, knowing full well that the crits from this residency would inform this new semester's work – a vital period in which I will be executing the bulk of my thesis artwork. <br />
<br />
As noted in the semester summary, I had experimented quite a bit with concepts, materials, size and paint facture. This no doubt made for a little confusion with regard to formal critique; it still read on the whole as a “sampler” rather than a cohesive body of work. Nevertheless, I knew this beforehand, so an initial incertitude on behalf of the critic was expected. My ultimate hope was in finding out which piece(s) worked best so that I might move in that direction for the Group 3 semester. This is not to say that I was conducting some kind of democratic “vote for this painting” kind of study, but rather, I was trying to gauge the visceral responses of the faculty and students across the breadth of work displayed. <br />
<br />
Rather than engage in a dramatized soliloquy of the critiques, I will instead list each faculty member and bullet-point the vital considerations they offered: <br />
<br />
Nuit Banai: <br />
<ul><li>Explore cinematic tropes of screen and rupture</li>
<li>Push formal qualities of realism: foreground vs. background and their respective clarity</li>
<li>The “heroism” of quotidian objects</li>
<li>Read: Roland Barthes – The Reality Effect</li>
</ul>Hannah Barrett: <br />
<ul><li>Effects of displaying as group and/or grid</li>
<li>Push burgeoning idea of synthetic vs. naturalistic</li>
<li>Exaggerate illusionistic space</li>
<li>Push textural interest</li>
<li>Look more at Van Ruisdael (appropriation?)</li>
<li>Look at filmic/photographic idealizations of landscape</li>
</ul>Kamrooz Aram: <br />
<i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Look at painters:</i> <br />
<ul><li>Peter Rostovsky* (post-Richter photographic realism)</li>
<li>Inka Essenhigh</li>
<li>Verne Dawson</li>
<li>Anna Conway</li>
<li>Ed Ruscha</li>
</ul>Oliver Wasow: <br />
<ul><li>Broaden thematics of the narrative works</li>
<li>Play with photographic effects (replicate in paint)</li>
<li>Cameron Martin</li>
<li>Don't get too hermetic; mix it up</li>
<li>Explore Baroque in narratives</li>
<li><i>look at</i>: Neo Rauch, Peter Doig</li>
</ul>Stuart Steck: <br />
<ul><li>Make more work! [“The artists that make the most work make the best work” - John Cage]</li>
<li>Explore cinematic scenes, swap out the dramatic elements with something unexpected</li>
<li>Keep it simple: employ single structural device in the work</li>
<li>Revisit Matthew Barney's “Cremaster Cycle” - look at stills</li>
<li>Increase tactility/ enhance visual pleasure</li>
<li>Employ collage into concepting process (look at Ellsworth Kelly's <i>Tablet</i> – postcards)</li>
</ul>Tony Apesos (my academic advisor SP/11): <br />
<ul><li>Work with “overlapping mythologies”</li>
<li>Q: What are the essences of painting?</li>
<li>Q: What painting do I want to see? What is vital to me?</li>
<li><i>look at</i>: Damon Lehrer, Paul Rahilly</li>
<li>Try surrealist “automatic” drawing in concepting process</li>
<li>Find ways to use “illustration” in own idiom</li>
<li>Be open and directed simultaneously</li>
<li>Connect imagery from one work to the next</li>
<li>Tolkien: Bible/LOTR | William Blake: Bible/Book of Job illustrations</li>
<li>Use collage in concepting process</li>
</ul>*[Peter Rostovsky has agreed to be my mentor for this Spring semester] <br />
<br />
There are clearly a number of overlapping critiques here, and those are always the ones not to be cast aside lightly. Some ideas dovetail nicely with themes that I was already trying to establish, such as playing with cinematic/photographic tropes. I think the motivating factor behind those suggestions was that I hadn't been pushing those ideas hard enough. Hannah's recommendation regarding an amplification of the synthetic/real binary struck a chord. I've always been operating in that zone, but haven't given it full rein. This gibes well with Nuit's allusion to the “heroism of quotidian objects.” Most interesting is the notion of collage as a way to find my way into a concept. The fact that Tony and Stuart suggested this same thing on separate occasions is notable; I think they both know me in very different ways (Tony, through my painting; Stuart, through my writing and camaraderie), so there is something that they are seeing that clearly necessitates using collage in some way. <br />
<br />
As my advisor this semester, I was hoping Tony would challenge me during the crits, and he did. He made some formal painting suggestions, as is his wont; he is an accomplished painter, so such things are welcome. But, beyond that, he handed me some tough self-reflective questions. The “What painting do I want to see? (then paint it)” question seems rhetorical at first, but he assured me it was not. This is still something to wrestle with. My feeling on it right now is that I'm not particularly beholden to any image, but perhaps a series of images dealing with a specific problem. That may well be conceptual or implied, I don't know. The idea of narrative is still within me, but one image may not be enough to hold the narratives I have in mind, whatever they may be. Also, “What is vital to me?” is an equally difficult matter. I tend to enjoy the “clever” aspects of painting: mastery of the technical, leading the viewer to question what they see, using representation in a funny or surprising way. There is no one thematic that specifically lends itself to this way of thinking, though – and I need to decipher what that is in order to create a cohesive body of work. This resonates with Tony's advice to “connect one piece to the next.” <br />
<br />
In addition to the critiques was the Critical Theory 3 seminar led by the estimable Sunanda Sanyal. The crux of our (lively!) discussion was around awareness of Western mythologies regarding cultural norms, especially as it pertains to art and art history. As artists, our awareness and empathy with a world that is becoming increasingly more connected on the global level can only begin to take root in our work if we work to understand cultures on their terms. We also worked to dispel the unfortunate conflation of “universal” and “global,” as the former term is merely a facade for a passive-aggressive form of colonization. Knowing how the Other has been repressed throughout history can help us better recognize injustices at the local as well as the global level. Even a venerated institution such as the Museum, as we learned, has not been immune to the Western myth of monoculture. <br />
<br />
Also very fruitful was Laurel Sparks' seminar on Professional Development for the Artist. She supplied us with a fantastically helpful document that tracks everything from how art dealers operate through comporting yourself properly when the drinks are flowing too freely at an opening. She explicated this packet step-by-step, and took questions as they arose. The specifics of how the professional art world works has far more depth than I'd imagined – yet – the art world itself is far smaller than one could ever believe. “One or two degrees of separation at the most” is how Laurel put it. <br />
<br />
And once again, the faculty put together another enlightening panel discussion. Sunanda and Hannah were the duo on this particular occasion, and the subject was irony. Sunanda's half of the talk dealt with historical aspects of the ironic in visual culture, and cited such significant works like Velazquez' Las Meninas as an example of the artist using the ideals of representation in an ironic way. Hannah dealt with irony in its contemporary context, noting a dramatic shift in its intended use and how it is now rife with cynicism and sarcasm for the most part. But, in the question portion of the program, it came to light that perhaps the perception is that the art/artist seems cynical – however, they may just want to be indulgent. Nevertheless, it remains, as Sunanda concluded, a useful pictorial device in these times of doubt. <br />
<br />
So here I am on the cusp of doing some of the most important work of my artistic life. In no way am I indulging in hyperbole here – the program dictates this, and I want to step up to that level at long last. Rather than succumb to the perceived pressure over this new reality, I will take my friend Stuart's advice and just generate a lot of work in the studio. It was enough to be hesitant with my “pulled from the Matrix” shock of the first semester, and then indulge in time-consuming and/or technically strange experiments in the second one. Now is the time to pull it all together in a cohesive, coherent series of works. My definitive intent is to not only have these works serve as the linchpin of my thesis, but also as the foundation upon which I can build a successful oeuvre. <br />
<i> <br />
Artists:</i> <br />
<ul><li>Paul Rahilly</li>
<li>Damon Lehrer</li>
<li>William Blake</li>
<li>Matthew Barney</li>
<li>Peter Doig</li>
<li>Neo Rauch</li>
<li>Cameron Martin</li>
<li>Peter Rostovsky</li>
<li>Inka Essenhigh</li>
<li>Verne Dawson</li>
<li>Anna Conway</li>
<li>Ed Ruscha</li>
<li>Van Ruisdael</li>
<li>Ulrich Lamsfuss</li>
</ul><br />
Research/Reading: <br />
<br />
Barthes, Roland. "The Reality Effect." The Rustle of Language. Trans. Richard Howard. <br />
Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. 141-148. Print.<br />
<div><i> <br />
Cremaster 3</i>. Dir. Matthew Barney. Perf. Richard Serra, Aimee Mullins and Matthew Barney. Palm Pictures, 2002. DVD</div><div><br />
Elkins, James. <i>Six Stories From the End of Representatio</i>n. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. Print</div><div><br />
Godfrey, Tony. <i>Painting Today</i>. London: Phaidon, 2009. Print</div><div><br />
Pethö, Ágnes. “(Re)Mediating the Real. Paradoxes of an Intermedial Cinema of Immediacy.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 1 (2009) 47-66. Print</div><div><br />
Storr, Robert. <i>Gerhard Richter: Doubt and Belief in Painting</i>. New York, MOMA Press, 2003 Print</div></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-35154687942871702432010-12-24T19:57:00.000-08:002010-12-24T20:16:33.945-08:00Second Semester Summary<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjteDhoBwWj7mOFNAR2OZwGVtXSP5pgf0i7Bv7iVLbPp0ABWJz09jI4hdCk_MMqWYhtsrsuIy83HUHecD07ihMxvL2_wNkKonSdjN-Dnue2o2WJeNczoeNejaK5EADH1EzINVaFmM_l5CE/s1600/vermeerwholdbal1664.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 284px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjteDhoBwWj7mOFNAR2OZwGVtXSP5pgf0i7Bv7iVLbPp0ABWJz09jI4hdCk_MMqWYhtsrsuIy83HUHecD07ihMxvL2_wNkKonSdjN-Dnue2o2WJeNczoeNejaK5EADH1EzINVaFmM_l5CE/s320/vermeerwholdbal1664.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5554464619570306818" /></a><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjteDhoBwWj7mOFNAR2OZwGVtXSP5pgf0i7Bv7iVLbPp0ABWJz09jI4hdCk_MMqWYhtsrsuIy83HUHecD07ihMxvL2_wNkKonSdjN-Dnue2o2WJeNczoeNejaK5EADH1EzINVaFmM_l5CE/s1600/vermeerwholdbal1664.jpg"></a>Johannes Vermeer: <i>Woman Holding a Balance - </i>1664</div><div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvFzWbMdXQPQGU4kQyPXj67YrWdRhabtWz_0KOTuMdu-6SSO0w6aIbb13aYlSUI-LS1kGh6IAmDbK9Mn0bB4JKdZtNZ8StK5eyaHhZo2eSF6F3HNz75VKSY0VvAyGSA8s2H8pPretc6H8/s1600/tb_ladseatholdwinegls1665.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 284px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvFzWbMdXQPQGU4kQyPXj67YrWdRhabtWz_0KOTuMdu-6SSO0w6aIbb13aYlSUI-LS1kGh6IAmDbK9Mn0bB4JKdZtNZ8StK5eyaHhZo2eSF6F3HNz75VKSY0VvAyGSA8s2H8pPretc6H8/s320/tb_ladseatholdwinegls1665.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5554464613601501554" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Gerard ter Borch: <i>Lady Seated Holding a Wine Glass</i> - 1665</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Semester Summary</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Group 2 to 3 Transition</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>June, 2010 – January, 2011</b></div><br />Regardless of a program of study, consultants, tutors, teachers, mentors and what have you – an artist's education relies a great deal upon self-assurance. One's ability to move ahead in the learning process (or learn at all, for that matter) becomes greatly impacted by circumstance and daily life as it is lived. Clarity is often needed to gain insight, but such lucidity is routinely unattainable, a seeming luxury item. So it was for me this semester.<br /><br />As predictable and cliché as it may seem, I spent a great deal of this second semester in what I felt was a sophomore slump. It may stand to reason that since I ended the first one on such a confident high that I had set myself up for a downturn. Sure enough, the first research paper showed my overeagerness up to a harsh light, as I delivered an over-reaching, near-incoherent pastiche of ideas that never meshed. I received a proper upbraiding over this, which was no doubt necessary. However, I never fully recovered my self-belief regarding my research and writing. A good case in point is in how the following essay came together – that is – the Rackstraw Downes show review. It goes without saying that I have become a huge admirer of the man and his work (more on this later), and one would think that a rigorous study of his oeuvre would yield a fluid, gratifying writing experience. Instead, a hyper-awareness of my predisposition to over-write kept any flow at bay. I wrote insecurely, with a huge degree of self-skepticism. It didn't matter that that piece turned out “acceptable” (as it was deemed), I had lost confidence, and frankly, I felt rather crestfallen about the whole thing. A sense of detachment from the program began to seep into my state of mind.<br /><br />How do you learn in this situation? How can you process new input and make sense of it when you are already riddled with looming doubt? And, for me, as a painter, how could I create anything feeling like this? Well, the first thing I found out was how not to handle the situation. Better judgment in fetters, I allowed this situation to place undo strain on personal and professional relationships. This only served to splice my problems together, forming a tragic loop. This may seem self-evident, but it is slow in coming when you are inside these predicaments: When you become so sure of weaknesses, you begin to concretize failure into inexorability. It dawned upon me that I was placing an overbalanced import on the academic side of things and losing sight of my primary goal – making paintings. So then, I needed to set the scales aright by directing my focus towards my painting goals.<br /><br />I consider myself extraordinarily fortunate to have had Emily Eveleth as my mentor this past semester. Her quiet, thoughtful approach was much appreciated and very much needed. As her oil paintings involve not only large imagery, but definitive impasted passages of mark-making, she fully supported my foray into this technique. As I'd stated in my last residency summary, the most common observation of my work was that the surface was too even. Some felt that it did not engage their vision with tactility, while others noted that my sleight-of-hand style of neoclassical manipulation failed to acknowledge the medium's natural properties. As much as Emily could reveal to me in her studio, and as much as I understood the information – coming back to my workspace and applying proper technique was something else entirely. It very much felt like experimenting. I wasn't afraid of failure in this case, oddly enough. Perhaps my mastery of “clean” technique in a medium that is inherently messy (try putting your coat or bag down in a BFA painting studio, and you'll see what I mean), allowed me to understand that in order to get a definitive mark, all I had to do was leave it alone. But, would my eyes accept it?<br /><br />One difficulty that became rather evident was scale. I began a 48” x 60” canvas in order to break new ground in this area. This is not necessarily “big” in the world of painting, but it's not exactly small, either – and honestly, it was big to me. The subject matter lent itself to a greater scale and, in hindsight, could have been executed even larger, promoting greater visual impact. However, the technical challenge of engineering this size painting consumed a great deal of time. I was truly in a “learning-as-you-go” mode. As the painting neared completion, I was very concerned about the time frame.* It was unacceptable to take this long, as it was eating into the time needed to complete other works. My intention to use other media (enamel, to be exact) on this large work had to be set aside. I would have to experiment with materials and facture on a more reasonable scale.<br /><br />The notion of experimenting with new media was still very strong, and an earlier attempt using roofing tar and rustproofing enamel was fairly successful. While wearing chemical-resistant gloves I applied broad applications of tar. By thinning it right on the canvas with mineral spirits, I found that I could control this unwieldy-looking medium with my fingers. The addition of enamel required speed and good planning. Designated areas had to be free and clear of the tar for the enamel to not only stick, but also, the drying time is so fast with enamel, with tar forever workable, the two needed complete segregation. It took weeks for the tar to really set up, and any contact with mineral/petroleum spirits would re-activate it easily. Varnishing was dicey. And my last piece for the semester was a full digression from this: charcoal on Mylar. Dry and delicate, the black dust skated across the surface, held only by the frosted veneer on the polyester sheet. The surface is eminently re-workable, as the 3 millimeter Mylar can be erased over and over without textural compromise. In fact, the oils from my hands and fingers left more telling marks. But even these could be effaced with no trace.<br /><br />My push into new techniques in traditional oil came about in three medium-sized works. Two of these pieces play off the contrast of impasto and the “licked finish” of illusionistic painting. The third is an exercise in directional brushwork throughout, using visual reference material that would generally call for smooth, blended paint. Something interesting happened in terms of my vision: When the heavy marks were applied, it became difficult to “see,” and I had to not only back far away from the work with each mark, I had to take pictures with my cell phone every so often in order to “unsee” the marks and make sure something was taking shape. Truly, it was something that I had to get used to.<br /><br />None of this formal technique, however, would take hold properly if I didn't make a point of applying reading, research and theory together in the conceptual execution of the imagery. The suggested motifs of concepting had been proposed at the end of the last residency. One was figurative, specifically – nude self-portraiture. The other was the exploration of quotidian objects along more ambiguous, yet dynamic directions. Despite all the attention paid to the nude self-portrait I'd shown in the June residency, <i>Atelier 2010</i>, I didn't feel like the theme for its own sake was a realm that I could really sink my teeth into. Plus, it seemed too weighted with sociopolitical concerns, which, for good or ill, is something upon which contemporary viewers can get really hung up. This seemed a bit stifling in the face of needing to experiment. Topically, I realized that non-figurative concepts would better serve my needs at this time. I tried to pull a little more from the vernacular in terms of iconography, playing with composition, palette and point-of-view. Also, as mentioned earlier, paint facture, unusual media, and mark-making played a significant factor. The ideas themselves range quite a bit – from a contemporary prod at the Sublime to visual metaphors of painting itself. However, I have found that presenting a visual “straight reading,” especially after exploring the bald specificity of much of Mark Tansey's art, is detrimental to the work. I believe I have made some gains into new and open ground in this respect, as I am trying to allow for multifacteted interpretations of the work according to the viewer's discretion. Sure, there is intentionality, but it is not meant to be fully cogent nor empirically understood. If the latter ideas were my primary purpose, then the "vectors would meet.”**<br /><br />Interestingly, Rackstraw Downes seemed almost omnipresent in the periphery of everything I did this semester. He factored in conventionally as the Parrish Museum show was the direct subject of my second research essay, as stated. However, this traveling show ended up in my local museum not a week ago, and I had been counting the days of its arrival since I had learned of its winter destination. In the interim, I visited the Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut and found a room dedicated to a specific triptych of Downes', replete with cases full of preparatory sketches and journal entries. Needless to say, this man's work ethic, technical prowess, willingness to improve, and persistence of vision (pun apropos) is something to which I should truly aspire. He sets the bar high in many respects. It would serve me well to hold onto this aspiration and inspiration not just for the duration of the MFA program, but deep into the future of my artistic life.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><i>* <span class="Apple-style-span">The notion of time and effort came up in a more concrete fashion when I read a recent article by James Elkins, “Are Artists Bored By Their Work?” (posted December 15th, 2010 on the Huffington Post website, huffingtonpost.com). Elkins explores the marked difference in the time it took to create representational works (citing many Baroque pieces) versus works in the Modernist era. The slant of the essay moves towards the hypothesis that artists who work/had worked in realistic styles became bored by the amount of time and effort required. This is interesting, but I found this passage to be far more engaging: “The relatively short amount of time modern and contemporary artists spend on individual artworks cannot be explained by the fact that we're no longer interested in realistic depictions...” Perhaps in a time when consumption and processing of information is faster and more disposable than it's ever been, I feel that, as an artist, I might want to reflect that notion back to the contemporary and perhaps turn it on its head. Elkins tells that Arthur Danto warned of Elkins' near-fetishizing of “slow looking” in reference to a previous essay. I contend that perhaps there is no greater gift to give than “slow looking” in this age of micro-instant gratification. And this could be engendered by engaging in and embracing “slow painting.”</span><br /><br />** <span class="Apple-style-span">This term is co-opted from a segment (13:00 – 15:00) of Vincent Desiderio's presentation at the Art Institute Boston's Art Talks, January, 2010. Desiderio offers a comparative look at the work of Johannes Vermeer versus that of Gerard ter Borch. Their paintings use similar iconography indicating similar thematics, however, Desiderio feels that there is a markedly different result due to the execution of Vermeer's technical narrative. In ter Borch, Desiderio describes the intent of the painter as “vectors of visual thought” moving into the “vortex” (or thematic center) of the work, but ending at a specific, predetermined meaning. A Vermeer, on the other hand, starts with seemingly comparable intentions (using equivalent Dutch iconography), but “the vectors miss” as they come to the thematic center. Desiderio submits that this action serves to amplify different and varied associations regarding definitive meaning in the work. In his estimation, this is what makes for great painting.</span></i></span></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-73465792299101786912010-12-19T18:52:00.000-08:002011-01-20T12:39:28.879-08:00Painting People (selections)<meta charset="utf-8"><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh51jzAO1JDqWfQRc9QmsB9qWd0P2dPRzxQJcnCKu5D5IJuyDPB9oWtFG2rWNCBdL0aqWp0NnhTM2oRE6GZqEu_85arGYcbqgXWRLHM6wUwZd7Ph4eW8rS9BJQ6w5duFJTu8kKPTkKmsSs/s1600/borremans1.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh51jzAO1JDqWfQRc9QmsB9qWd0P2dPRzxQJcnCKu5D5IJuyDPB9oWtFG2rWNCBdL0aqWp0NnhTM2oRE6GZqEu_85arGYcbqgXWRLHM6wUwZd7Ph4eW8rS9BJQ6w5duFJTu8kKPTkKmsSs/s320/borremans1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5552592436089045298" style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 216px; " /></a></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh51jzAO1JDqWfQRc9QmsB9qWd0P2dPRzxQJcnCKu5D5IJuyDPB9oWtFG2rWNCBdL0aqWp0NnhTM2oRE6GZqEu_85arGYcbqgXWRLHM6wUwZd7Ph4eW8rS9BJQ6w5duFJTu8kKPTkKmsSs/s1600/borremans1.jpg"></a>Michaël Borremans: "Four Fairies" (2003)</div><div>
<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xJvEdHMU2Wu_jbqKTiquDUCEkVQvTO9IV7KyxZ_iczFP5DXlrVvC_ByMucieqQIl0V3x7irHUfi3ALNOfczcWHtTusQ_Lm5ixorPLkxQNf0vaBFXuiQsuXpuWRrQjGtt1PLhi2h_9NM/s1600/CLOSE_pic.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 263px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xJvEdHMU2Wu_jbqKTiquDUCEkVQvTO9IV7KyxZ_iczFP5DXlrVvC_ByMucieqQIl0V3x7irHUfi3ALNOfczcWHtTusQ_Lm5ixorPLkxQNf0vaBFXuiQsuXpuWRrQjGtt1PLhi2h_9NM/s320/CLOSE_pic.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5552592432808002162" /></a></div><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6xJvEdHMU2Wu_jbqKTiquDUCEkVQvTO9IV7KyxZ_iczFP5DXlrVvC_ByMucieqQIl0V3x7irHUfi3ALNOfczcWHtTusQ_Lm5ixorPLkxQNf0vaBFXuiQsuXpuWRrQjGtt1PLhi2h_9NM/s1600/CLOSE_pic.jpg"></a>Chuck Close: "Self Portrait" (2004)</div><div>
<br /></div><div><meta charset="utf-8"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8yKwRlNYvWpAQPeFGRjclCfHwaZMXUuGNZfS7TYbkQ5xCXSLzJyqesmR5L6P2ZmMj0qhmUCS0OyTFwo7f_26To-kYml3A3HDB5_kJtGP0MvlL2eI1IyK2yADJDpuCN-7jziiJb3SwEc/s1600/jenny_saville+2.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8yKwRlNYvWpAQPeFGRjclCfHwaZMXUuGNZfS7TYbkQ5xCXSLzJyqesmR5L6P2ZmMj0qhmUCS0OyTFwo7f_26To-kYml3A3HDB5_kJtGP0MvlL2eI1IyK2yADJDpuCN-7jziiJb3SwEc/s320/jenny_saville+2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5552592437687420498" style="cursor: pointer; width: 256px; height: 320px; " /></a><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq8yKwRlNYvWpAQPeFGRjclCfHwaZMXUuGNZfS7TYbkQ5xCXSLzJyqesmR5L6P2ZmMj0qhmUCS0OyTFwo7f_26To-kYml3A3HDB5_kJtGP0MvlL2eI1IyK2yADJDpuCN-7jziiJb3SwEc/s1600/jenny_saville+2.jpg"></a>Jenny Saville: "Reflective Flesh" (2002-03)</div>
<br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Borremans, Close, Saville: Selections From
<br /><i>"Painting People – Figure Painting Today"</i> by Charlotte Mullins</span>
<br />
<br />The strange cycle of painting in modern history – its rise to intellectual prominence, its self-reflective deconstruction, its disappearance, and its subtle return to the discourse – can be tracked most effectively through the subject of the human figure. From Picasso's cubistic treatment of the female form in <i>Les Demoiselles d'Avignon</i> to Barnett Newman's “zips” as minimalist signifiers for the figure in works like <i>Vir Heroicus Sublimis</i> (Man Heroic and Sublime), the painted representation of people has cycled through innumerable permutations for the sake of advancing the meta-narratives of artistic progress.
<br />
<br />The very existence of this book and other contemporary tomes (e.g. <i>Vitamin P</i> and <i>Painting Today</i>) demonstrates a new vitality in painting. The circular argument of painting's demise has become a closed circuit, obscure, and relegated to the past. Now is the time in which the familiar and resonant subject of the figure can be re-investigated using a familiar medium. Just like people, painting has survived despite the vagaries of time and the meandering nature of theoretical crises.
<br />
<br />Painting People features nearly seventy artists whose representational painting styles range from classical realism (John Currin), to graphically flattened forms (Laylah Ali), to the boldly expressionistic (Cecily Brown). I will be narrowing this rich field down to a selection of three, the choices reflecting (to a degree) a formal resemblance to my own painting sensibilities. But even within this tighter parameter, the range is diverse.
<br />
<br />Jenny Saville (b. 1970) uses oil paint as her primary medium, but it could be argued that it is flesh itself that forms the scope of her work. The paintings featured in Painting People are <i>Reflective Flesh</i> (2002-03), <i>Entry</i> (2004-05) and <i>Stare</i> (2004-05). Ranging from 7 to 10 feet in height, the sheer scale of these works clogs the viewer's vision with impasted, energetic marks of fleshy tints. The array of skin tones moves jarringly from subtle grays to blood reds to shocking blues across the surface of her canvases. Saville's mark-making is strong and highly directional, building form in broad passages using large brushes. But a great variety and vitality is maintained as she often changes the viscosity of her paint mid-form, adding oil as if it were sebum leaking from overactive pores. Abutting the harder marks, she may slide tone into tone in a slippery passage using a dripping mixture. The resulting effect manifests a tension akin to that of living tissue.
<br />
<br />The earliest of these works, <i>Reflective Flesh</i>, depicts the artist herself, nude and barely contained by the framework of the canvas. Her figure is surrounded by mirrored surfaces, so we see multiple views of the figure with cubistically repeating body parts filling the entire canvas with flesh. This “de-centralizing” of the body destabilizes what is compositionally central in the painting, and that is the openly displayed female genitalia. But even this is destabilized with a kind of sensorial overload, as the mirrored surface upon which the artist squats doubles the view of her vagina. This control Saville exerts over our gaze is underscored not only by her deft, directional mark-making, but also by the gaze of the artist-as-subject, as her eyes confront the viewer directly. The phallo-centric notions of a woman on display, engendered in painting history by such works as Courbet's <i>Origin of the World</i>, are fully subverted in this bravura piece by successfully re-appropriating the controlling gaze of the painting patriarchy. This period of work served as an establishing point for Saville, as she understood the historical baggage that came with being a woman who paints. Taking control of her own work through re-engineering painting's male-oriented traditions allowed her to find freedom within her chosen medium. “The ideas, for me, wouldn't be as strong without using the traditions of painting as an institution” (Saville 7:10).
<br />
<br />Working at a similar scale to Saville, but with a nearly opposite formal and conceptual quality is the painter Chuck Close (b. 1940). Close works exclusively with the portrait as his subject matter, the head generally cropped at the shoulders. Along with self-portraiture, his sitters mainly consist of family members, fellow artists and curators – people with whom he has had personal and/or professional relationships. Painting People features two oil paintings from 2004-2005 – <i>Self Portrait</i>, and <i>Andres II</i>, the latter bearing the visage of the artist Andres Serrano. The photorealistic style of Close's work is consistently represented through three-plus decades, but the formal tactics that he brings to the canvas are ever-changing. Over the years, Close has moved from tri-toned acrylic paint and airbrush to paper collage, to ink thumbprints, to oils – and is currently working with daguerrotypes and tapestries. Relying solely on photo-reference, he uses varying forms of grid systems, reiterating the mechanical accuracy of the photo in paint. This imitation of the photo is not intended to copy, but to recontextualize the flattened reproduction into an object of illusion. Close professes his affection for this particular charm of paint media in an interview with Charlie Rose: “[Painting] transcends physical reality... it's a magical window built out of colored dirt” (10:00-10:45).
<br />
<br />In <i>Self Portrait</i>, and <i>Andres II</i>, we see Close's grid-work very distinctly, the difference being that the painting of Serrano shows the grid tilted at a forty-five degree angle. The large scale of these works, at close range, reveals a highly controlled handling of paint. Kaleidoscopic marks of muted (for Serrano) or complementary (for the self-portrait) color render self-contained mini-abstracts within their grid-form confinements. Facial recognition at this level of study is impossible. But, as Lisa Yuskavage notes, “...your work, like most good work, is full of contradictions. It implies intimacy, yet, in order to look at each painting, you are forced to step way back” (33). It is only at a distance that a likeness can be seen and, in fact, an extraordinary level of facial detail is made manifest. In this way, Close is controlling the experience of the viewer, putting them in an odd position to confront the subjects on a proximal level of privacy with which only the artist is familiar. His didactic, formal tendencies seem perhaps counterintuitive as tools to create such compelling personas on the canvas. Yet, instead, those constructive elements foster the illusion, turning the physicality of the optical around on us.
<br />
<br />The figural works of Michaël Borremans (b. 1963) feature an austere palette and spartan compositions. People depicted in his paintings seem very non-contemporary and their attire suggests they may be transplanted denizens from the 1930s and '40s. The artist also employs the use of stock and/or found photography for his figures, and plays this up with washed-out skin tones and soft-edged brushwork. With this general schema, Borremans removes the figure not only from contemporary associations, but also disallows the viewer from imposing any individuality upon them. They have become almost purely symbolic – mere signifiers for “a figure.” Fully cognizant of painting's historical connotations – that it is not only a medium, but a channel of discourse between a painter and the history of painting – Borremans uses the symbolic quality of subject and paint to foster the idea that paintings are indeed objects. But for all these formalities, the strange displacement of spaces, subjects and atmospherics moves the work out of its seeming stillness, suggesting a kind of tableau vivant. So then, a dichotomy arises through the embedded atemporality: despite their object-ness, they can theoretically move in real-time. Borremans states that “[paintings] are mental things, they’re not objects. They have this mental vibration, and they are here now. A painting is always now” (Ribas 2).
<br />
<br />The selections <i>One</i> and <i>Four Fairies</i> shows female figures in contemplative poses, enveloped by their dun-colored environments. One depicts a lone woman in a half-length profile, her head and hands evoking the only substantiality in the painting. Her white blouse is diaphanous, transparent through to the briskly painted ground – a brown and gray reminiscent of a late Mark Rothko. She is still: her head bent with eyes downcast, luminous in a light gray expanse, while her clenched hands at rest in the umber lower third of the canvas. Four Fairies has a very similar feel, but the canvas as well as their upper torsos are divided by an inky block of paint. The four women also look to their hands, their gestures suggesting a half-engagement in some menial, factory-like task. Yet there is a sense that they are also contemplating this dark, horizontal obelisk into which they are thrust. Its surface is minimally reflective, however, its solidity is called into question. Runnels of paint cascade downward from the dark form, dripping onto the nearly raw canvas directly below. The environments in both these works are more paint than defined space. Is it all fictive? “Fairies” are out of folklore – so is Borremans couching his work in the realm of the unreal? “Borremans draws an intellectual line between art and reality, but then he takes a truth about painting and treats it as a truth about life. A painted figure will only ever be paint, it will never capture the individual essence of some person, place, thing or time” (Ribas 2). His human figures contemplate their meaninglessness in a seemingly meaningless world in an effort to find resolution. Can this desire be realized? Ambiguity implies a directive: the viewer is held responsible to answer this question.
<br />
<br />List of Works Cited:
<br />
<br />Close, Chuck. Interview by Charlie Rose. PBS. WNET, New York, March 13, 2007. Televison.
<br />
<br />Glueck, Grace. “Of A Woman's Body Both Subject and Object” <i>New York Times</i> December 6, 1996. p. C29. Print
<br />
<br />Prater, Elizabeth “Michaël Borremans – A Victim of His Situation.” <i>The Ember</i> January 7, 2010: n.pag. Web. Nov. 2010.
<br />
<br />Ribas, João. “Michaël Borremans – the AI Interview.” <i>Art Info</i> March 14, 2006: 1-3. Web. Nov. 2010.
<br />
<br />Saville, Jenny. Interview by Elaine C. Smith. “Smith and Saville” <i>Arts and Parts</i> S01 E01. STV. Pacific Quay, Scotland, October 20, 1996. Television.
<br />
<br />Yuskavage, Lisa. “Chuck Close.” <i>BOMB 52</i> (Summer 1995): 30-35. Print.</div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-43252872693205084682010-11-15T12:36:00.001-08:002010-11-15T13:11:03.402-08:00Some New Semester 2 Work<div style="text-align: left;"><i>All Natural</i> - oil on birch panel, 20" x 30"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ14UrCPLLNd8Ym8yxMXDGr2z5BfwEeRUBugN1VTHbn7wiXUko5pOBpBVHu5llTa2wzX2p6gCJVfTeQwc73FE2ztK0s3pkaZYFrzd4PP0RPwmSHkezmlSxj22KjcqawoPnaaukB_dQnw8/s320/allnatural_e.jpg" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 218px; height: 320px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539882141944545650" /></div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8">And a close up:</div><div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZoAFDqkkI3l33yXme54LyQx93i6iZCd3zx6wX4cfmOR6Ojv4PNln10VcjwjC4DZz9yArMzoSdIC8Te3srFEEGVPf1dLTW4KAtTF7RHh09u4Km5SEQ_ti_ZnsPuXGU-mVsxcHzeyBsGUo/s320/allnat_CU.jpg" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539882329028637362" /></div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><div>
<br /></div><div><i>Alcyone - </i>oil on birch panel, 18" x 18"</div><div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-TA22TuQBR-pJBsYJwzZPf7a858YFyN2c44Ujsqb3cUib5EsLNzX0ypILvXIUqhBU-hsMv0JUZFItxs5cN9lO_8dqaL7KlPs2vco4Hp-wmC0vcdl5WcV1mChxFKAznUGFBCmrNlked_Y/s320/alcyone_e.jpg" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 316px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539882826661509314" />
<br />Close-up:</div><div><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZxdHdA-9vc39bUWnt4EGXTXreVI-dBa4ESDQ7_GHqdKZzsX_CoD5vataCfVepCOpOBQCTdRqzJZ1m4_aVJvclkQZ81uaT_V6JT0A8-jJVXaljKxQ_i4he7xSt6ZGrDXl5j0Hd1_anQKk/s320/alc_CU.jpg" style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5539883688913196850" />
<br /><span id="goog_512096551"></span><span id="goog_512096552"></span>In my very recent visit with Emily, we both agreed that this was a successful venture into creating facture on the painting surface. It was highly experimental for me, but I was able to develop a decent technical facility with bigger, juicier marks of paint in a fairly short period. The use of panels rather than canvas was a big help, as the paint truly sits up on the primed birch, as opposed to sinking into the weave (and more absorbent commercial primers) of stretched canvas. I'm proud of the fact that when it came to using just pure layered wet-into-wet paint, I stuck with large (#12 and up) bristle brushes, and kept the blenders in a drawer. The only blending (purposely done) was the no-texture cloud background of <i>All Natural.</i></div><div>
<br /></div><div>Again, as far as discussing conceptual aspects, I have to leave that between Emily and me, and give full disclosure at my Group 3 residency in January. I <b>am </b>happy to tell that Emily felt these were very solid pieces as far as the direction I'm looking to go conceptually. Let's go out on a limb here and say that things are slowly coming together.</div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-62905697346206810992010-11-14T19:00:00.000-08:002011-02-07T12:41:13.613-08:00The Picture In Question<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>A Response to</u></span></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>"The Picture in Question:</u></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u> Mark Tansey and the Ends of Representation"</u></span></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>by Mark C. Taylor</u></span></span></div><div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“</span></span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real” (Stevens 6).</span></span></span></span></span></i></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The historical criticisms that have arisen from 'picturing a text' are as ancient as the philosophies of Plato, declaiming artists as “tricksters” and “magicians” (Taylor 8). The evolution of this can be tracked through Structuralism and Clement Greenberg's prescription of Formalism to the Expressionists, followed by the postmodern, Post-Structuralist assertions of philosophers and theorists like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. </span></span></span></span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Picture in Question</span></span></span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> follows the painter Mark Tansey as he systematically deals with the problems inherent in these criticisms by way of his paintings. The author, Mark Taylor, guides us along in a textually illustrative chronology of the painter's oeuvre, and explicates much of Tansey's process throughout.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I feel fortunate to be a representational painter in a time in which Mark Tansey exists and works. He wields a technical brilliance with oil paint that is on par with the acumen of his conceptual thinking. With these skills, he has boldly confronted the philosophers, historians and critics who, for decades, insistently provoked an end to representation in painting. In doing so, he has taken the front line of a new vanguard of representational painting, clearing the way for a long overdue reinstatement of this honorable practice back into the discourse. </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Unfortunately, the book contains no images, and the author asks that his audience overlook this glaring omission. </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The justification for this is that Tansey revoked permission to reproduce the work due to his fear that Taylor's take on his paintings and processes would further the dominant criticism of his art as illustrative. This rationalization almost subverts Tansey's </span></span></span></span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">r</span></span></span></span></span></i><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">aison d'être, </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">in that his work primarily argues that text is </span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">not </span></span></b></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the dominant force in representation and that the visual (his paintings, specifically) renders it with greater efficacy. His pictures are, of course, the proofs of his arguments, and I would have liked more inclusive and immediate reference points than the visual source list in the index.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is a mistake to look at the earlier works of Tansey and write them off as smug, anti-establishment visual puns. There is a great deal of thoughtfulness to the nature of Tansey's questioning. The fact that he does this via image is, in itself, a nonstandard stratagem. His images are so technically (formally) superior, that it compels the viewer to engage beyond what seems like “surface cleverness.” However, as I read further into Taylor's explication of Tansey's paintings, I wondered about the level of engagement required to decode the metaphors he puts forward.</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">An accessible quality of his work is his use of a monochromatic palette. Rather than undertake the codified allusions of color, he focuses sharply upon on form and content. These elements comprise the visible 'text' with which he develops the themes and narratives in his work. The nature of his palette is also helpful in developing one of his more common motifs: ambiguity. For instance, in the painting </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">White on White, </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(1986) [</span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">fig. 1</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">], the wind-blown atmosphere in which the Inuits and Bedouins meet is either a snowstorm or a sandstorm. Due to the lack of color, the clarification is withheld, and it becomes both at once. This, of course underscores and subverts the binary opposition inherent in the subjects – a clever critique of post-structuralist thinking.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnqCBfwVLwebWreGDj46QqLvkPSKTiV2y6pvt5iOgM2rPSrfn7k5z7R8AyMaOgQVwkIjuvMf42VQPQbpjcSpCPMe_xt0eHtz9CQ_Ko9Co98C_FvS1v8tbvRnU_PE_j5Nhh8ckbuvSW4ZE/s1600/Fig1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnqCBfwVLwebWreGDj46QqLvkPSKTiV2y6pvt5iOgM2rPSrfn7k5z7R8AyMaOgQVwkIjuvMf42VQPQbpjcSpCPMe_xt0eHtz9CQ_Ko9Co98C_FvS1v8tbvRnU_PE_j5Nhh8ckbuvSW4ZE/s320/Fig1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Less accessible is the content of </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Myth of Depth, </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">(1984) [</span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">fig. 2</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">]. Taylor does well to set up the cast of characters and the scene: Jackson Pollock walks on a turbulent ocean surface, while in a nearby dory, Clement Greenberg lectures to a coterie of Abstract Expressionists (Helen Frankenthaler, Arshille Gorky, Robert Motherwell and Kenneth Noland) (10). Once this is established, it is clear from the title (text) and the cast that Greenberg is showing the group that the realistically depicted water is not real and therefore has no depth, so it is perfectly safe to walk upon. The Ab-Ex 'messiah,' Pollock, demonstrates this with typical bravado. The argument is two-fold: Is depth in painting a myth? In the modernist, New York School of the 1950s, it most definitely was. But what of this scene? It may be 'just' a representational work, but it clearly depicts depth. So, pictorially, we see the binary opposition of Formalism versus Content. This dovetails into the second part of the argument – an historical one. The era of Expressionism was primarily about stifling representation via jettisoning content and painting experientially (expressively). However, the visual depiction of the feeling of painting is, in itself, a representation. So perhaps what Greenberg is pointing to is not Pollock, but maybe the necessary end of Expressionism, as it cannot free itself completely from its own subjectivity.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzcYYYtOur9eRfRZ-7zCXAMZP60wC4YhbTrfWEkadmYpyHZk31a7_aSNr8-kwxzjam8rCmMbMxtTK95dvbtxZvYa2zlkD-FqKttn4sqcocADZT2WhGfH7XL4FaAp-OD6pUqGQ77Z6LubI/s1600/Fig2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzcYYYtOur9eRfRZ-7zCXAMZP60wC4YhbTrfWEkadmYpyHZk31a7_aSNr8-kwxzjam8rCmMbMxtTK95dvbtxZvYa2zlkD-FqKttn4sqcocADZT2WhGfH7XL4FaAp-OD6pUqGQ77Z6LubI/s320/Fig2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is a difficulty here regarding the density of metaphor and encoding that takes place. What kind of viewership is conversant with (for example) the teachings of Greenberg, the philosophies of Derrida, the arguments of Foucault, their respective relationships to modern art history, </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> is possessive of a visual familiarity with the physical likenesses of these very individuals? Clearly, much of Tansey's work is for the visual consumption of an academic audience, and a very particular one, at that. In fact, I would contend that the primary audience for the bulk of the paintings (with a few exceptions) described in </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Picture in Question</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> are the very individuals (and/or their acolytes) depicted therein. This predilection can be better understood through Taylor's admission in the book's preface that Tansey's thorough investigations in modernist/postmodernist philosophies and criticisms paralleled his own. (Taylor </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">x</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">). But this does little to alter the fact that most viewers are not privy to such great depths of academic knowledge and understanding.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another debatable aspect of Tansey's work is not his use of (and subversion of) binary opposition as a critique against postmodernism, but how many of these concepts were fashioned via his “Color Wheel.” He created a table-sized wheel comprised of three nesting wheels which turn on the same central point [</span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">fig 3</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">]. Graphed on the inner ring are nouns; the center, participles; the outer, nouns or noun phrases. This “wheel of language” gave Tansey textual referents for titles with which he might create more than five million possible images/combinations. There is a humorous aspect to this, as this process bears a resemblance to the “exquisite corpse” Surrealist word game. Titles like </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Pathologists Demonizing the Prophylactic Eye</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> represent a typical combination. Taylor's support of this “gaming” tactic is clear: “As Tansey spins his wheels, the questions his paintings investigate proliferate” (53). This may be so, but the initial texts generated must be held up for questioning first, since, as I've illustrated, they may be rather questionable. This gamesmanship may bait critical thinkers in the know, but I would argue that this places some of his work even further away from the reach of a larger audience.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCnJlTKdaJIuVkbCooCYeXrbngD_DPELwgd1f85kX1l_pPQE7KklrmpH8A1FrBQZBex3T3wMHZPlfNOy_iRqf7wlIBJOoqhQJfRM_Vsk8qpbnF1PpcPU2C4CHqBYkg3uWDqLIDF0ZEU04/s1600/Fig3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCnJlTKdaJIuVkbCooCYeXrbngD_DPELwgd1f85kX1l_pPQE7KklrmpH8A1FrBQZBex3T3wMHZPlfNOy_iRqf7wlIBJOoqhQJfRM_Vsk8qpbnF1PpcPU2C4CHqBYkg3uWDqLIDF0ZEU04/s320/Fig3.jpg" width="315" /></a></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The explicit chronology that </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Picture in Question </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">employs shows the necessity of Tansey's experimentation with conceptual mechanisms like the Color Wheel (the artist calls such devices “technophors”) as he was consistently striving to visually reconstruct that which had been deconstructed via modern critical thinking. Since many different strategies of critique had been used over time, Tansey had to change up his visual tactics with each historical encounter. By the mid-1990s, he had visually demonstrated faceted, flexible responses to much of art history's important modern critiques. His limited but learned (not to mention influential) audience witnessed an emboldened, informed questioning of modern art discourse using the unlikely vehicle of representational painting. With this as a bulwark, he turned his incisive mind to its future.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Using the newer scientific studies of catastrophe theory, chaos theory and complexity theory, Tansey charted a new and highly ambitious course for his work. To my mind, and in this book, these advanced modes of concepting culminate in 1994's </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Water Lilies </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[</span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">fig. 4</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">]. This is a contemporary take on Monet's paintings of the ponds at Giverny. The figure of Monet himself is visible as an inverted reflection in the upper middle section of the painting. However, unlike the art-theoretical contexts, philosophical premises and specific personas depicted in many earlier works</span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, Water Lilies</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> functions in a pictorially rich, but textually free dimension. Every visual is seen a state of “punctuated equilibrium” – the tipping point at the edge of chaos. The water cycle is depicted in flux between its primary states of solid (ice), liquid, and gas (clouds), and the very growth of the water lilies out of the thawing pond's surface is under imminent threat of the rushing water coming in from a breach in the pond at the right. Between these elements, there is a space of tension where the water is glass-smooth. However, in this space lies the reflection of storm clouds, foreboding that perhaps this calm is just a transitional moment, and that disaster may, in fact, befall the threatened lilies. There is no visual cue to onto which one may hold, nor with which to bring closure to the meta-narrative. The flux of time and the interstices of space are seen in a perpetual state of change, ever perpetuating new changes.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0MemXxzmK6iArDSPuaNyNRGBCPWOxzj1FchGF7Dit2U7nBl9zuN00FbS8INIW93LkjB73WnmvXHhXPR0I8o1dv-3Y8CPAk3_2pFvjJbjYNjK0Q3mqvnGzcS_rrCz9IViJMgH4DzJbJqA/s1600/Fig4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0MemXxzmK6iArDSPuaNyNRGBCPWOxzj1FchGF7Dit2U7nBl9zuN00FbS8INIW93LkjB73WnmvXHhXPR0I8o1dv-3Y8CPAk3_2pFvjJbjYNjK0Q3mqvnGzcS_rrCz9IViJMgH4DzJbJqA/s320/Fig4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At length, </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Picture in Question </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">shows Mark Tansey initiating dynamic changes in his art, probing different visual strategies to reveal the endless transitions of being, nature and time. This reflects Werner Heisenberg's principle of visualization: </span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">” (78).</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><u><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Works cited:</span></span></span></u></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Heisenberg,</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><b><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></b></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Werner. </span></span></span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science. </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">New York: HarperCollins, 1958. Print.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Stevens, Wallace. </span></span></span></span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Necessary Angel.</span></span></span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> New York: Random House, 1946. Print.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Taylor, Mark. </span></span></span></span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Picture in Question: Mark Tansey and the Ends of Representation. </span></span></span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #bf9000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Print</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-846469594426320958.post-21123357946590313402010-10-14T09:20:00.000-07:002010-10-14T16:20:49.312-07:00Show Review: Rackstraw Downes - Onsite Paintings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtN61sIxPB0ZPSs_Z-FbezyCTNjrCQreltpKpGyPIE_iLewTWDqFt5x-csbLPCaulzT_ab0B9s07t3ua8xBsFI_YORG0ccV-yhrVPyNZT9QGhV8NObmlKm3EuRwnLM5LIT7edm-m47zBw/s1600/downes1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtN61sIxPB0ZPSs_Z-FbezyCTNjrCQreltpKpGyPIE_iLewTWDqFt5x-csbLPCaulzT_ab0B9s07t3ua8xBsFI_YORG0ccV-yhrVPyNZT9QGhV8NObmlKm3EuRwnLM5LIT7edm-m47zBw/s320/downes1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the Confluence of Two Ditches Bordering a Field with Four Radio Towers (1995), oil on canvas, 46" x 48"</span></span></span></i></div><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rackstraw Downes (b. 1939) has been practicing his finely tuned craft of outdoor (and indoor) painting below much of the contemporary art world's radar for some time. I was surprised to find that this is his first retrospective in a forty year career, despite a steadily growing representation in major museum collections. It was only after receiving a MacArthur Fellowship last year that serious recognition has come to this most deserving, hardworking artist. The reason for all this may be that Downes' oeuvre exists in an atypical, singular relationship to modern art's critical ideology. That is – he may well be the only practitioner of representational perceptual landscape painting that is recognized by the contemporary discourse. Critic Peter Schjeldahl notes: “Tactfulness like Downes' is so rare today, it's exotic</span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">” (Wilson 100).</span></span></span></span><br />
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">His very history seemed to resist the typical trends. In 1961, leaving his native England and Cambridge (he majored in literature), he came to the U.S. to study painting at Yale. Minimalism was the </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">cause </span></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">célèbre</span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> of the academic art world at this time, exemplified by the </span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">pedagogy of his teacher, Al Held. Downes</span></span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> expressed his disenchantment with the tight boundaries of pure abstraction, stating that “...the arguable and inconsequential theoretical basis of it, and the narrow specialization of the artists created an atmosphere in which art as I understood it could hardly breathe” (16). He began to gravitate towards a more representational language of painting, following the tutelage of Alex Katz and Neil Welliver. The influences of the latter two artists prompted a move to Maine, and in doing so, Downes left behind the tropes of abstraction for the rigors of representation.</span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Despite a lack of practical training in the craft, Downes strove to hone his representational painting skills. It was not without difficulty, as he recalls, “Why had I not learned to draw, and how do you match the colors out there?” (25). Yet, his persistence and inborn observational skill enabled him to eventually capture the soft and trembling edges of foliage in New England's atmospheric light. </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dunham's Farm Pond (1972),</span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> the earliest work in the </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Onsite Paintings</span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> exhibition, serves as a good example of Downes' attention to Welliver's painting methods, but it also shows a definitive shift away from flattened, modernist surfaces. The glow of the summer haze he observed and captured here was achieved through careful tonal adjustments, enveloping the natural forms of the landscape in softness. This early work perhaps represents his first foray into an organic idea of vision, playing down traditional, mathematical perspectives with a perceptual, atmospheric one. These notions become distinctly more significant in future works.</span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Unfamiliar with Downes' process, I speculated about it while perusing the show. My initial assumption was that he was using photography of some kind to support his detail work. For example, the phenomenal clarity with which </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">110th</span></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> and Broadway, Whelan's from Sloan's (1980-81) </span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">is so painstakingly rendered must have required some kind of photo reference that he took back to the studio. Surely, it would be a necessity to employ such a tactic in order to render the dozens of trucks, the hundreds of windows, and the scores of figures moving to and fro in this bustling Manhattan intersection. Surprisingly, Downes does not even own a camera, let alone use one. From the preparatory drawings to the final chip of concrete, thatch of weeds, distant parked car, or incidental passerby – he is on site, recording it all, often taking a year's worth of multiple visits to achieve his vision.</span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In </span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The View North from Washington Bridge on the Harlem River (1983)</span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">, it is evident that Downes is investigating the complexities of capturing perspective as the truth of an observed</span></span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> experience – that is – what the human eye sees when turning the head in a vast space. In this painting (and others after it), there is a sense of the urban landscape wrapping across the field of vision. A deep diminution of space occurs as the head turns left-to-right from the central point – which, in this case, are prominent apartment towers. As they advance towards the center, they bulge outward, as other elements fall away obliquely as the canvas extends laterally. The artist comments upon this particular aspect of building the work by identifying a “clothesline construction... which means that all of the events in the painting [the changing forms] happen in a one-by-one order along the horizon, which is a surrogate for a clothesline” (Skowhegan 6:40). There is a heuristic quality to this, as the expansive quality of the space becomes actualized for the viewer, as it was for the artist at his easel.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Within these elaborate constructions lies a strong narrative. Downes is very interested in the environment; the neglect of nature through urban “progress” is his most poignant thematic. However, he presents his views unsentimentally and evenly with no inclination towards drama. In fact, he finds most Hudson River School paintings to be “theatrical in concept and calculated in execution” (Ottman, 19). For Downes, the true wild is not the modern notion of wilderness – the protected, well funded and “approved” tracts – it is land that has been neglected, trash riddled, weed infested, and unceremoniously disregarded: “[W]eeds interest me more than ancient redwoods; they are the vanguard of nature's forces as she wages her war back on us” (58)</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These attitudes towards nature are evident in paintings such as </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">U.S. Scrap Metal Gets Shipped for Reprocessing in Southeast Asia, Jersey City (1994), </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">where the vista stretches from the almost amusement-park-like Port Liberte Condominiums (left) to a fully operational, coastal scrap yard (right). In the space between lies an unnamed cove, where egrets feed in the shallows amongst rotting piers, and the wreckage of barges is strewn throughout the tall marsh grasses. As my eyes moved across the breadth of the canvas in a more careful inspection, a narrative unfolded. A tiny ferry coming into the landing at the condominiums is undoubtedly a commuter ferry, shuttling residents across New York Harbor to and from work in the financial district (the Twin Towers can be seen in the distance, extreme left). The financially bloated, theoretical trading that takes place in those pristine halls of commerce is reflected back in its counterpart across the cove: the gritty, physical reality of the commercial scrap metal facility. Here, the castoffs of consumerism are harvested and sent to Southeast Asia where they will be imported back and re-sold as new consumables... and the cycle continues. But, beneath the artist's unsparing representation is a suggestion that there might still be hope for this shrinking world. By virtue of his empirical methods, Downes offers an encouraging thought: “there is so often this incredible adaptation on the part of the wildlife” (Spears). It is in the marshy cove, there within the interstices of the urbanized terrain, that the artist finds the true wild somehow hanging on in the wake of human commerce. </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The exhibition includes several interiors. For one such piece, the title alone, </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Untenanted Space in the World Trade Center, Winter Sun (1998), </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">gives the picture great significance. However, it may be the unfortunate facts of history that charge the painting with a funereal quality. Nevertheless, the sheer weight of emptiness in this huge, abandoned office space is palpable. But, even in this most synthetic of spaces, nature is still active, represented by brilliant gold bars of sunlight. They strafe the floor in long diagonals, owing to the low angle of the winter sun. The outdoors is brought indoors with a new twist – the low, oppressive ceiling replaces infinite sky. The artist emphasizes this downward pressure, forcing our eyes to follow the patterns of light into the foreground. Here, Downes revels in his paint, capturing the morphology of the floor.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is one particular painting in this show that, for me, exemplifies the qualities of this excellent artist: </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At the Confluence of Two Ditches Bordering a Field with Four Radio Towers (1995).</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> The format is “non-standard Downes” in that it is nearly square – but that is the only anomaly. In this scene, located somewhere on the periphery of Galveston, Texas, four radio towers recede in closely spaced verticals from the middle distance. Power lines rush in from the lower-middle left and sweep upward in a synchronous lyrical curve across the background webwork of the towers' guy wires. Their parallel profiles suggest musical staves across the score of an overcast sky. These lines are remarkable, as they are etched into the facture of the sky's impasted surface, yet are still precisely painted in an unbroken, calligraphic gesture. Below, two drainage ditches, beautifully articulated with their patchwork greenery, triangulate towards us, not quite coming to a confluence in the bottom center - for this is where the artist is standing. It is also where, as the viewer, I am standing. With skill and aplomb, he takes me to this spot, this unprepossessing vista with its secret beauty, and exhorts me to </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">look</span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">... and </span></span></span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">see.</span></span></span></i></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The curator at the Parrish Museum, Klaus Ottman, sums up my own conclusions about this show, this artist and his work: “Rackstraw teaches us to see” (Spears).</span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">List of works cited:</span></span></u></i></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Downes, Rackstraw. </span></span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Relation to the Whole. </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">New York: Edgewise, 2000. Print.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><ul><ul><ul><ul><li><div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">“</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rackstraw Downes (Skowhegan Lecture Archive).” The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine. 2002. Lecture/Audio CD.</span></span></span></span></span></div></li>
</ul></ul></ul></ul><div align="LEFT" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ottman, Klaus. </span></span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Rackstraw Downes. </span></span></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">London: D. Giles Limited, 2010. Print.</span></span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Spears, Dorothy. “Street Life as Still Life.” </span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">New York Times</span></span></span></i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> 25 Jul. 2010, New York ed., AR19. Print.</span></span></span></div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span> </div><div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wilson, Malin, ed. </span></span></span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Hydrogen Jukebox: Selected Writings of Peter Schjeldahl. </span></span></span></i><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #e69138;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Print</span></span></span></div>Rob S.http://www.blogger.com/profile/09189372586918106258noreply@blogger.com4