MFA Final Statement

Robert Sullivan

Artist's Statement - 2012

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

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

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

Knee Deep in The Final Stretch

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

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

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

In the meantime:

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

Group 3 to 4 Transition - Semester Summary

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

AIB MFA

Semester Summary

January-June 2011: Group 3 to 4 Transition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Citation:

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

Representational Painting After Richter

Gerhard Richter: "Cloud" o/c, 1970

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

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

Representational Painting After Richter:

Critical Issues

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

List of works cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, There are Paintings Too

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

Well, enough whining - here's some stuff:

Imago - o/c, 24" x 28"

Heterarchy - o/c - 30" x 40"

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

Rubric - o/c, 30" x 40"

The End of Art and What To Do About It

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works Cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inventing Fame, Inviting Problems

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

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

Inventing Fame, Inviting Problems
Critical Theory III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Works Cited:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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