Tyrus's Eye on Art

Discounted Transformations

2011-06-06T22:26:00.000-04:00

One of the sources of inspiration for my newer altarpiece constructions is visits to antique stores and junk shops. Since I have lived in various areas of the U.S. I have come to understand that what people believe to be “antique” in some places is considered junk in others. I will not pay top dollar for junk. I find that picking up trash from the side of the road is much more economical. You tend to get the same things for free, but with added character.

I do purchase some items cheaply at antique stores. For instance, the ceramic dove salt and pepper shakers, that I covered in gold leaf for one of my current projects, were perfect additions to that piece. They were inexpensive, too. Still, there is another type of place that I sometimes frequent to find the odd object to include in an altarpiece—discount stores. TJ Maxx and Marshall’s have been particularly helpful. Other stores that carry home decorations are also great. The resin or plastic items often found at those stores can be particularly interesting.

I do not recall where I picked up the resin shelf pictured here, but it turned out to be just the thing I needed to top off one particular work. I had been stumped on how to complete a work whose design had evolved several times and this turned out to be the perfect solution. However, I realized that turning the piece upside down was the best use for my particular needs.

The next alteration was designated for the finish of the piece. Though the patina of the shelf looked like aged metal, I knew that it would not complement the other surfaces of the piece, so I would need to change it. The photographs here show the process of changing the surface. I have written at other times about adding gold leaf to objects, but this will actually show the individual stages.

The surface of the object was first prepared by lightly sanding. Paint adheres best when the surface is slightly roughened. The entire surface was then covered with a deep red acrylic paint. I usually have to apply the paint in several steps since some sections need to dry before I can flip the object over and paint other areas. The traditional color of the undercoating for gold leaf is slightly more brown, but I like the contrast that comes from this more intense red, especially in the instances when I age the leafing.

Next, the surface is covered with an adhesive. It is brushed on as a milky white liquid, but dries to a glossy clear, sticky surface. Again, this has to be applied in stages since the adhesive will either stick to my hands or anything else if the whole surface is covered at once. In the meantime, the gold leaf is applied to the dried adhesive layer. Adhesive and leafing layer s are alternated until the entire object is covered.

The final steps are dependent on whether or not I want the object to be a shiny, pristine gold, or whether I want an aged and worn surface. For this piece the surface needs to be aged. A liquid chemical aging agent is then brushed over the surface. It is actually produced to create a green patina on copper materials. I do not use real gold leaf for this very reason. I use brass leaf that mimics gold. It is not because of the cost of gold—though that can be particularly expensive. The inclusion of copper within brass allows the leaf to be aged in a similar way. Sometimes the leaf all but disappears, making an abstract design in which mostly the red underpainting shows through.

The final stage of the process is the application of a final layer of polymer clear coat. This protects the gold surface from mars or scratches. It also keeps the brass leaf from changing. If it is needs to be kept pristine, it will be kept from any green oxidation. If it has already been aged then the oxidation is fixed at that point.

Still Sorrowful: Passion in Venice at MOBIA

2011-05-05T13:08:00.000-04:00

The narrative of the evolution of Modern art was transformed as the 1960s ushered in a cultural change. Any ideas that pure abstraction was aligned with a utopian ideal that would help us transcend the ills of the world were put to rest. People have not changed over the millennia. There are still good deeds and evil deeds; we hurt each other and may cause immeasurable pain. And while some contemporary people—artists among them—like to believe that we have progressed beyond religion and its “mythologies,” there is no denying that these belief systems point to universal archetypes that have been devised to explain our existence.

One of the most powerful images that crops up again and again is the sacrificial view of Jesus. While the concept of a figure sacrificing himself for the betterment of others is not reserved fully for Christianity, the unique image of the crucified Christ is so powerful that it is still inescapable within Modern and Contemporary art. All one needs to do is look at the work of Modernists during the mid-twentieth century to find that—even though Nietzsche had pronounced God as dead—the figure of Christ suffering on the cross was still a potent symbol. It was used by believers and unbelievers alike.

The current exhibition at New York’s Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA)—Passion in Venice: Crivelli to Tintoretto and Veronese—focuses not so much on the crucified Christ as the suffering Christ. The works in this exhibit range from the fourteenth to sixteenth century and were mainly created in Venice, Italy or the surrounding area. They are not the traditional Pieta’ images that one might associate with an artist like Michelangelo, but a subset that was born out of Venice’s connection to the Eastern church.

This exhibition provides the best elements of a MOBIA show. Rare Bibles from MOBIA’s own collection are paired with works borrowed from other institutions in the city—The Morgan Library and Metropolitan Museum—and beyond—Italian institutions and the National Galleries of London and Washington DC. The curators pulled together an exceptional exhibition that considers not only master paintings but some processional and liturgical works. The consideration of Christ as the Man of Sorrows within the context of the Eucharist and other rituals of the Mass helps to explain why the image of the suffering Jesus, or Christ-like figure, is so enmeshed in our collective consciousness.

One of the prize works from the exhibit, Carlo Crivelli’s Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels, is typical of the minutely detailed work of this master. In this work, God truly is dead. Jesus is being laid in the tomb, supported by two infant angels. His flesh has been drained of all life and displays a rigidity. The wounds of his crucifixion are gaping and prominent. The grief of the angels, however, overshadows the figure of Christ. Their weeping eyes are sore and swollen from the tears. We feel the tragic state of all humanity.

A sixteenth century object within Passion in Venice is surely the most unique item in the entire exhibition. This small wooden sculptured head is considered a Memento Mori—a remembrance of mortality. One side displays the face of Jesus with a crown of thorns. On the reverse side is a sculpted image of a skull. The skull is not only a reminder of our short lives on earth, but a symbol of the crucifixion itself. The mount on which Christ was crucified—Golgotha—was called the place of the skull. However, the most intriguing portion of this interactive work is the miniature Man of Sorrows that pops up from the interior. Christ rises from the tomb of death in an act of resurrection.

One final contemporary addition to the exhibition is the video work entitled Man of Sorrows, by artist Bill Viola. The essential difference between this work and others in the exhibit is the element of time. Viola manipulates time that we might sense the agony of this human sorrow. The male figure—not a Christ figure—slowly sways from side to side. His mouth and eyes open and close in agony. We can share in his emotion. Though Viola is influenced by Christian mysticism, his interests in Hindu and Buddhist practices have also formed his aesthetic. This work, from a series entitled The Passions, shows that the core concepts of ancient Christian works remain potent symbols for us today.

The breadth and diversity of objects in this exhibition are only hinted at here. The catalog for the exhibit provides an excellent analysis of the pieces in the show, along with others. Passion in Venice continues the trajectory that MOBIA has set forth since its inception. It remains a unique institution that is willing to examine topics many other museums may not, in a scholarly way that proves they are a serious institution that has great things in store for the future.

Building Character

2011-03-29T17:09:00.000-04:00

Even though I completed two altarpiece constructions within the past year, it has actually been about eight years since I actually built the structure of one. I had done plenty of work associated with the altarpieces, but I had not been building them. I prefer to use reclaimed lumber from old furniture when I can find it. When I was months away from moving to Massachusetts from Idaho I made a big push to build the structures for five or six of these works from my stockpile of wood, acknowledging that it was better to move half finished artworks across the country than a pile of wood. It then took several years to complete the figure paintings inside the “shells.”

In the intervening years I have worked on the plans for many more altarpiece works. I recently began building the structures for two of these. One is for a benefit for a museum in New York and the other is an older idea that incorporates more assemblage elements, giving a taste of the direction of future works.

I have stated before that I age these works much in the way that Joseph Cornell aged his own box constructions. I have included some photographs of these pieces in progress to show just how much effort goes into this aging process—well before the figurative elements are painted.

One image shows the unpainted state of a smaller construction. The wood is pine, with some additional elements of either aspen of poplar. The surface of the bare wood is usually scrubbed with a wire brush at this point, to bring up the grain. Most of the exposed wood on these pieces was next coated with a solution of vinegar that had a pad of steel wool soaking in it. This rusty solution oxidizes the wood, giving it a weathered, gray appearance.

The exterior sides of the boxes were then coated with a light green colored oil-based enamel paint. After that dried another coat of pink enamel was added. These colors were derived from the countless layers of paint that cover the walls of old American Protestant churches across the continent (although Catholic churches may exhibit the same thing). Growing up, I was often enlisted to help paint rooms in our church whenever some wall color went out of fashion or the use of a particular room changed. I recall many variations of pinks and light greens and yellows. So these colors show up in the altarpieces as a connection to this country’s religious history.

The next step entailed taking a heat gun (used to remove old paint), putty knife, and wire brush to the sides. This actually mixes the two colors a bit, but it also brings up the underlying layers of green paint and gray wood. Another layer of off-white (almond colored) oil enamel was then applied. This was given the same heat gun and scraping treatment. The interior boxes were treated in a similar manner using light yellow and off-white layers of paint.

Trim elements on the boxes are handled in a different way. The bare wood (without coats of the vinegar solution) is covered with a deep red acrylic paint. An adhesive is then carefully applied over the red. This adhesive goes on in a very liquid form—milky white—and dries clear.

The gold leaf—which is really made of brass—is then slowly applied. Large flat areas are easy to cover, but the intricate details and crevices in the decorative mouldings must be filled by pressing bits of the leafing in with a hard bristle brush. A chemical is then brushed over the metal leaf. This turns the copper elements in the brass to green. This may take multiple applications and some areas are still kept as unaltered gold. The final layer of this portion of the boxes is given a polyurethane clear coat that prevents the brass from changing any further.

When all this process is added to the time it takes to construct the boxes themselves, it is no surprise that I say that the painting of the images takes the least amount of time. I am very pleased with the effects in these recent works and will continue to post further updates of their progress.

All the Lonely People, Where Do they all Come From?

2011-03-13T11:49:00.000-04:00

Technology has sometimes been heralded as the great savior for frail humanity. The progress of twentieth century science and technology might now enable us to live longer, healthier lives, but is there a price to be paid for this purported immortality? The post-war population explosion of the “boomer” generation loaded increasing numbers of people into the urban centers of the United States. At the same time, isolation seemed to grow exponentially. Even in a bustling metropolis like New York City, people could feel overwhelmed by isolation in the midst of the masses. The earlier model of extended families living together, or at least in close proximity, gave way to a trend of siblings spreading out across the vast continental landscape with aging parents often relegated to cell-like rooms in nursing homes.

Though not curated to point out this predicament, recent exhibitions at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art seem to align in a configuration that questions the state of human relationships in modern times. The Whitney’s collection of Edward Hopper paintings, as represented in the exhibition Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, establishes a foundation that might consider the rampant feelings of isolation that were already being acknowledged in the early decades of the twentieth century. Though most Hopper paintings highlight single figures in lonely interiors, even signature works like Nighthawks occasionally present groups of figures separated by their estrangement from one another.

Hopper’s New York Interior exhibits the voyeuristic quality in many of the artist’s works. The viewer observes the evening ritual of a woman undressing before retiring for bed; mending a garment in a state of partial undress. Her mostly bared back suggests an intimacy that does not actually exist. The viewer and the viewed remain strangers who maintain lonely, isolated existences within their separate tenement cubicles. This kind of impersonal connection almost foreshadows some current internet-based relationships.

In an uncharacteristic monochrome gray composition—Untitled: Solitary Figure in a Theater—Hopper explores the full weight of isolation experienced in an urban environment. The single figure, alone in a theater that can hold dozens, suggests feelings of insignificance that are sometimes produced in the midst of an enormous crowd. All others melt away and the individual is overwhelmed by loneliness. Even the lack of hue denotes this sadness.

The galleries containing Charles LeDray’s exhibition workworkworkworkwork addressed this concept of isolation from another perspective. While there is a great variety within the show, all the pieces are miniscule representations of actual, real-life objects. Miniature tableaux represent groupings of personal affects—materials such as magazines and items from a purse or briefcase are scattered in piles that recall the careless placement of personal materials in an enclosed private location, like on a nightstand.

These tiny props suggest the activities of a solitary life. Miniature settings—like Mens Suits (2006-2009), which represent what seem to be the interior of a men’s clothing store or a dry cleaner’s—are fabricated from full-sized articles of vintage clothing. They convey the sadness of a life lost. Patterns and fabrics are reminiscent of the clothing given to thrift store after the death of an elderly family member.

The sport coats and ties of lonely, forgotten old men are refashioned to populate a parallel world. The absence of any figures within these diorama-like scenes only underscores the tragic, lonely feeling often associated with the elderly. The stories of the lives connected to these articles of clothing appear to be stunted, shortened, or chopped off. Forgotten.

The most visceral work to approach this topic within the Whitney’s permanent collection is surely Edward Kienholz’s The Wait. Often associated with Pop, Kienholz’s work is sometimes summed up in art history textbooks through a single image of this seminal work. Nonetheless, this multi-dimensional work can never honestly be reduced to a simple frontal photograph. It must be experienced in person to be fully comprehended.

One must move around the work to engage its complex structure. A frontal view reveals a skeletal structure composed of what appear to be cow—or some other large animal—bones. In a photograph, the area of the figure’s head and chest is, however, reduced to a mass of jars with highlights and reflections obscuring their contents. What appears as merely an antique photograph that “represents” the head of the woman in the work is only the most frontal element of that component. Behind that picture is a large glass jar containing a cow skull with life-like glass eyes.

The other jars include memories held close to the heart. Gold painted objects represent elements from childhood, marriage, and long-held faith. However, these golden memories are preserved and frozen in time like the cat, needlework, and photographs and Bible on the end table. All dripping with coats of clear resin that preserve them in this static scene.

The only element of The Wait not frozen in the past is the live parakeet in the birdcage. The droppings left on the end table by the bird may simply be seen as distasteful. They could better be read as an indictment. As a society we have left our elders to corrode in their failing memories. Their lives are prolonged by the advances of pharmaceutical companies as we separate them from the rest of “productive” society.

Few works have ever so forcefully tackled the epidemic of loneliness among the elderly as The Wait. The representation of social topics has a long history in art, but this concept has never been a popular theme. Again, it may be unintentional on the part of the Whitney, yet this configuration of exhibitions is timely. A consideration of the feelings of loneliness and isolation, particularly in difficult economic times, is worthy of artistic and curatorial attention.

Hiding, Seeking, and Culture Warring

2011-01-07T20:42:00.000-05:00

If you came across the recent reports on visual art in the news this past December, you may have considered checking the year on your calendar. Tales of the current exhibition—Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture—at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC revived memories of Jesse Helms and the culture wars of the late 1980s. Whenever sexuality and religion cross paths there is bound to be some commotion concerning national (aka: taxpayer) support of artists and art institutions. As was the case in the 1980s with Robert Mapplethorpe and Andres Serrano, and again in the 1990s with Chris Ofili and Damien Hirst, the yarn spun for the public was not quite a clear picture of the artwork actually displayed.

The National Portrait Gallery did learn something from the mistakes of another DC museum—the Corcoran. The Portrait Gallery’s exhibited photographs by Mapplethorpe are clearly far from controversial. Mapplethorpe will forever be linked with his photographs of S&M acts that led to the cancellation of the infamous exhibit at the Corcoran, after an earlier uproar in Cleveland. Though many in the arts continue to cry censorship, one wonders when common sense and prudence were abandoned. Museums may have substantial private funding, but they remain, essentially, public venues. A curator should probably always ask whether or not he or she would want a five year old son, daughter, niece, or nephew to stumble upon a work on a gallery visit. There will remain differences of opinion, but common sense prevails at some level.

The National Portrait Gallery did not simply suffer from a lapse in judgment in the choice of exhibiting the video, A Fire in My Belly, by the late artist David Wojnarowicz, it did not work hard enough, initially, to explain the goal of the exhibition. Hide/Seek is somewhat like the museum version of Brokeback Mountain—it plays the “Gay Portraits” exhibit to Hollywood’s “Gay Cowboy” movie. These may be catchy descriptors, but they are far from accurate when considering the breadth of humanity examined in each. The exhibition is touted as the first major museum show to consider the role of gender difference in the creation of artwork. That tends to get boiled down to a tagline explaining that the exhibition is composed of portraits of and by gay and lesbian individuals. That is not quite the full makeup of the show if one looks into the artists and works included. (check out the video gallery tour)

Museum historian and co-curator David C. Ward explains the goal a bit better—though after the fact—in a YouTube slideshow of several works. He describes how the exhibition was meant to discuss how sexual ambiguity and ambivalence run as a coded thread through American portraiture, allowing personal nuances that transcend gender or sexuality to get to the core issues of personal understanding and identity. Ward claims that the show attempts to go past a very simple and tired concept that art in reference to sexual orientation is only related to sexual acts, and therefore, explicit nudity.

The other curator, Jonathan Katz, however, does the show a disservice with some of his rhetoric. As the Founding Director of Lesbian and Gay Studies at Yale University, Katz can, at times, come across as militant in his stance. When Katz defines the show as “an exhibition explicitly intended to finally, in 2010, break a 21-year-old blacklist against the representation of same sex desire in America's major museums,” he is drawing a line in the sand with the museum establishment. His charge that “the museum world is and has been systemically and profoundly homophobic since the Mapplethorpe controversy in 1989” may hold some truth. The only problem is that he isn’t a fundraiser at any of the those museums. Museum staff across the nation may very well agree with Katz’s beliefs, but they are still running businesses and know that the American public—sex-crazed though it is—does not generally desire to be challenged with shows about sexuality when visiting museums. If people want that they can go to any number of commercial galleries where this is not uncommon.

Conversely, an enduring problem with the criticisms brought by the Religious Right is that they tend to focus on the wrong problems in the works in these exhibitions. Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary was derided as a dung-smeared Madonna. The elephant dung that was used in that work was hardly a concern if one looked more closely. The painting was covered with images of hard core pornographic photos of women. That was not mentioned by Mayor Giuliani and others when they called for a halt on public funding for the Brooklyn Museum. One imagines most children would have more difficulty recognizing painted elephant dung than graphically displayed female body parts.

A Fire in My Belly was bound to face a similar fate. Speaker of the House John Boehner led the charge in attacking the work because it depicted a crucifix overrun with ants. Many people were likely more troubled with the concept of the “Gay Portraits” show and so Wojnarowicz became an easy target. In fact, his work was always controversial in his lifetime so he was a perfect scapegoat. One would think the appearance in the video of a man stripping off his clothing and then participating in an auto-erotic act, would have caused more alarm. This is certainly one of those things a curator might want to avoid when considering the five year olds. However, this part of the video was never the top concern in the news reports.

Outside of all the excessive press, which should make the curators somewhat happy since the exhibit would probably have never been known otherwise by the general public, there are some works within the exhibit that more fittingly engage the stated theme. Though there are clearly more erotic works by Marsden Hartley, the paintings chosen for this exhibition are more in keeping with the way an early American Modernist could use abstraction as a language to express identity in a time when even the art world was less open about sexuality. Works by Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Cy Twombly skillfully exhibit the “coded language” of mid-century gay artists. Their early postmodern experiments with semiotic and appropriational imagery set the tone for later generations of artists—gay and straight alike. The inclusion of one of Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ candy spill works is a prime example of this continuum.

There are some works that seem more of a stretch. The inclusion of a painting of a proud male nude standing in an open field (The Clearing), by Andrew Wyeth, is a bit confounding. Wyeth was famous for generations though his most public notoriety came with the controversy surrounding his Helga paintings. A more appropriate connection for this exhibition would have seemed to have been the recent photographs by Collier Schorr that place an adolescent male in poses that mimic the Helga paintings. The ambiguity of sexuality is much more evident in those works.

The protestations of Katz that were actually the genesis for the exhibition reveal only a small segment of the current map of the art world. Gender and identity studies now abound in college and university course catalogs across the nation. Though this may be the first major museum exhibition of its kind, there is actually no lack of literature that discusses the role of sexual identity in the creation of art. Many artists showing at the major galleries in this country are now quite upfront and explicit about this fact.

In the new world where pluralism rules, the cacophony of specialized voices assures that no sub-culture or group can rise above the din. The voices that many would claim were the singular voices of the past—like Western Christianity—are now speaking in a foreign tongue. Consider the work of Tim Hawkinson. Many pieces are clearly influenced by the artist’s childhood, in which he was reared in Methodist Protestantism. An installation like Pentecost is equally misunderstood by the contemporary art world as the Hide/Seek artist’s works may have been earlier in the twentieth century.

At the pre-opening gallery walk for Hawkinson’s 2005 retrospective at the Whitney Museum, curator Lawrence Rinder was questioned about Pentecost. His simple response was that the title referred to a religious holiday. That the work taps out the melodies of hymns and references the New Testament coming of the Holy Spirit, resulting in the speaking of unknown tongues by Jesus’ disciples, was either not known to the curator, or more likely, was something he expected a post-Christian audience would not understand. Either way, the preferential position that Western Christianity once held is obviously no more. With this in mind, curators may consider that every new position examined in museum exhibitions will seem foreign to some segment of the viewing public. New viewpoints should be proclaimed but there are sometimes wiser ways to present them than through more controversial works.

Cildo Meireles: Expositor of Brazil's Christ-Haunted South

2010-11-25T17:30:00.002-05:00

Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles’ work, often considers the ongoing confluence of Christian European culture with that of the peoples of South America. Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals), 1987, is composed of a narrow tower of communion wafers that teeters high above a sea of 600,000 glittering coins. The sky above the coins and wafers is a canopy of illuminated large animal bones.

Though mostly unknown to a North American audience, this Brazilian conceptualist’s work has been featured at nearly all the major international art biennials over the past few decades. Each time Mission/Missions is installed in a new location the coins used are drawn from the local currency; always utilizing the lowest denomination, the most insignificant coin. In keeping with the highly complicated relationship between Brazil and Western Europe, there is not an exclusive reading of the work.

When the Jesuits brought the Roman Catholic faith to the tribes of South America in a manner both nuanced and complex. This sometimes bore the marks of syncretistic faith in which elements of the indigenous religious systems were either transmuted or subsumed into Catholic doctrines. At other times Christianity was abruptly foisted upon the South Americans, producing a hybrid culture that remained neither Western European nor native Brazilian. On the heels of this religious conversion came the much darker aspects of colonization. The natives were enslaved as cheap and expendable labor while the Spanish and Portuguese stripped the land of its wealth and resources, often in the sign and name of Christ.

The enduring shadow of Western capitalist traditions stretches even further over the form and materials of Mission/Missions. The pendulous expanse of bones can be understood as a metaphor for the slaughter of the indigenous peoples brought about as a result of colonial enslavement. Yet, a more contemporary reading might connect the bones to the consumerist economics of first world beef production. Brazil has been transformed into one of the world’s leading cattle producers. That beef is raised on the deforested parcels of land that once hosted the Amazon forests. The allusion to death implied by these bones may also signal the larger ecological impact Western traditions and systems have placed on not only the global South, but the entire planet.

Meireles’ message has often been political. The ‘60s and ‘70s found Brazil in political upheaval after a military coup brought to power a dictatorial government in 1964 and kept the population living in fear for over two decades. Meireles always understood that that political unrest was a descendant of colonization and that the adverse effects of early colonial impositions could never be completely separated from the Roman Catholic faith that arrived with that system. The allusions within and titles of the artist’s major works often reflect this.

An example is found in the currency of Brazil that mirrors the entrenchment of Catholicism within the culture. Brazilian banknotes are called Cruzeiro—cross—and this is not lost on Merieles. In the 1970s he produced several works that utilized this currency. The Zero Cruzeiro (1974-8) banknote contains two portraits: a native Brazilian man and an insane man. It is a work that not only makes comment on the economy but on the condition of the intertwining relationship between Brazil and the religion of the Europeans. The figures represent the discarded, those rendered as worthless within the culture. This idea of worthlessness also connects to the hundreds of desaparecidos—the disappeared. These were the outspoken political figures who were abducted by Latin American military governments, including Brazil’s, in the 1960s to 1980s, never to be seen again.

The Zero Cruzeiro project is directly tied to the Insertions into Ideological Circuits projects. For some of these, Meireles stamped messages on actual cruzeiro banknotes and then reinserted them into circulation. Messages such as “YANKEES GO HOME!” implicate not only the Western Europeans but the North Americans. This process was also employed with United States dollar bills. These altered currencies continued to function in their intended ways, yet also acted subversively throughout the culture.

Another of the Insertions used equally common and utilitarian objects: glass Coca Cola bottles. These bottles used the standard deposit system of the period to promote reuse. When empty of their contents, the artist printed similar messages on the sides of the bottles. These remained essentially invisible until they were reintroduced to the Coca Cola factory and then placed, refilled, back on store shelves. The message “YANKEES GO HOME!” was all the more appropriate when visible on a product that remains a potent international symbol of American consumerism. The printing of this message on both the bottles and the dollar bills is an obvious indictment of the Monroe Doctrine and the influence and intervention of the United States in Latin American affairs.

A larger room sized installation, Red Shift, 1967-84, appears to be born out of Minimalist environments. The first of the three rooms in the installation—Red Shift: I. Impregnation—is arranged like an actual living space in a home, except that every object is red. These consumer products and materials were all created red at the factory, they are not simply painted to fit the space. There are variations in the hue, but there is an overwhelming sense of being engulfed in this color. Even the subtitle of Impregnation suggests an encasement within a womb.

As one enters Red Shift there is a sense that there is more to the space than the mere unease related to color perceptions. There is a noise—the sound of constantly running water—yet in this chamber there is no indication as to where the sound is centered. This beckons the observer to move deeper within the environment.

In the second room (Red Shift: II. Spill/Surrounding) one encounters a corridor where a small glass bottle appears to have spilled an unknown red liquid all over the floor. Closer inspection reveals that this liquid would actually fill a volume much greater than that of the small bottle. The viewer is confronted with this inconsistency. The direction of the spilled red liquid then leads into the final room: Red Shift: III. Shift.

Here, the viewer experiences a darkened space with a large porcelain sink, tilted diagonally, with a continuous flow of red liquid spewing and splattering from the spigot. It appears that this is what the viewer was meant to eventually stumble upon. Though his methods and materials are certainly varied, Red Shift is a work that seems somewhat different from earlier Meireles works. The spatial considerations seem to connect it to the rest of his oeuvre, while the strain of Roman Catholic imagery and symbols also connects the works and cannot be denied. Just as there are multiple interpretations of the animal bone “sky” of Mission/Missions, there are undoubtedly various analyses of this bloody fount in Red Shift.

Contemporary art aficionados might connect the sink in Red Shift to the sinks in the work of American Robert Gober. A former Catholic, Gober works out of a similar place as Meireles, wherein the iconography of centuries of Roman Catholicism subconsciously manifests itself in multifaceted forms. Both artists endow ordinary objects with manifold symbolic meanings. Though Gober’s sinks reference concepts of baptism and sexuality, both artists, through the use of porcelain bathroom fixtures, automatically reference Marcel Duchamp’s infamous Fountain.

Since much of Meireles’ work explores the sufferings of the indigenous Brazilians at the hands of their European colonizers, the blood-like flow of Red Shift seems to indicate Brazil’s blood soaked landscape. Whether referencing incidents from the sixteenth century or the late twentieth, the sacrificial tenor of the work may also lend itself to other interpretations. After all, the red flowing fountain in Meireles’ work digs deeper into art historical sources than those of just the past century.

Red Shift‘s biblical allusions are more clearly recognizable in a much earlier pre-Renaissance work by Hubert and Jan van Eyck. The Adoration of the Mystical Lamb is better known as the Ghent Altarpiece. Its central image portrays a scene from the final New Testament book of Revelation in which the hosts of heaven bow down before Jesus in the guise of the Lamb of God. The Lamb, standing on a sarcophagus that resembles the high altar of a church, spouts a stream of blood into a eucharistic chalice. There is something about the purity gained through the messy affair of sacrifice that links the van Eyck painting to the Minimalist scene spattered with blood in Red Shift.

Each artwork mimics the late nineteenth century hymn, Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb?(Elisha Hoffman, 1878):

When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the Blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb?

Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are you garments spotless?
Are they white as snow?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

This is essay is a shortened and edited version of the one that will appear in the Spring 2011 issue of CIVA's SEEN Journal.

I Come to the Garden Alone

2010-10-17T19:21:00.000-04:00

Over the past two years I have grown more accustomed to sharing the stages of progress of my work. It remains somewhat difficult at times to let others see some of the more raw stages of certain pieces. There are times when the unfinished work simply doesn’t look that good. Still, I realize that for many non-artists a glimpse of how an artwork comes to be is quite interesting.

During the past few months I have slowly been working on a mural project for a Central Florida church. I have included a few images here of the early stages of the painting. There is also a short video that shows the preparation of the 6’ x 8’ panel on which I am creating the painting—quite a lengthy process itself. In Florida, it is far easier and more comfortable to produce a work of this size within air conditioning, out of the direct sunlight and humidity.

The church board asked me to consider producing this mural for a garden courtyard. There were not many parameters other than that. My concept for the image was inspired by the intended location of the work and the already established pictorial scheme of the church. There was previously no image of Christ in Gethsemane so this image fit quite well.

I also chose to paint over text, as I have been doing in my altarpiece series and several watercolor works. The text here, though much of it will be obscured, is taken from the Anglican Book of Prayer—the liturgy for the Eucharist. That communal event is foundational to the life of the Church. The image will be obvious from a distance, but the inquisitive viewer will also find nuances within the text when viewing it closely. The combination of word and image is also a direct reference to Jesus himself—the Word made flesh.

As with the oil on book pages works (the altarpieces), I have begun with an underpainting of dioxazine purple. That choice may seems strange to people. It is such a vibrant color. The purple does modify quite easily when subsequent layers of color glazes are placed over it. In these images there are passages where yellow has been applied over the purple. The complimentary nature of these colors changes the purple into a neutral brownish color, bringing out some of the more red hues the purple. On top of that, translucent white is slowly built to form the gowns. The text is more visible in certain areas than others. This begins to give an idea of how the painting will proceed.

While the imagery is somewhat different—more obviously narrative—from many other pieces that I typically produce, I have found the process of collaborating with a community of people an interesting challenge. I have to make the work pleasing to a group of people while keeping an artistic integrity for myself. This is my test for the success of the final piece. Keep checking back to see the progress.

Art Prize: The Popular vs the Progressive

2010-09-22T12:05:00.000-04:00

Today begins the second installment of a unique public experiment. Grand Rapids, Michigan is in the throes of Art Prize. Through October 8, venues around the city are paying host to an array of artworks from artists from across the country. The artwork—both typical and atypical—is displayed in locations and establishments that are also both traditional and nontraditional. In the midst of a still faltering economy, the 2009 Art Prize seemed to add a much needed shot in the arm (not the Chris Burden type, mind you) to one of Michigan’s larger cities. It is no secret that the Great Lakes State has retained one of the worst unemployment rates in the nation. Who would have thought that planning an art event would stimulate the economy? Rick DeVos, for one.

Anyone familiar with Grand Rapids and the surrounding area would certainly recognize the DeVos name. Half of Grand Rapids was built with DeVos money. This family was one of the co-founders of Amway. Luckily for Grand Rapidians the DeVos family is also quite philanthropic. The total prizes equal almost $250,000 and that amount is touted as the highest prize given for contemporary art.

This is an event that is made for the masses. The public chooses the winners. Yet the populous of Grand Rapids has not always had the best relationship with Modern and Contemporary art. In the 1960s the city erected the enormous Alexander Calder stabile sculpture La Grande Vitesse. The public was not pleased. Over time the displeasure was replaced with pride and the sculpture is now recognized as a symbol for the city. In recent decades the city may have gone too far in their “acceptance” of the work since its image not only decorates taxi cabs but the sides of garbage trucks in the city.

This kind of love/hate relationship with art lies at the heart of the tempestuous relationship that the general public has with art. People may enjoy, say, a painting of a recognizable object or scene (such as the large painting of churning water that took the top prize in 2009), but they are less comfortable with work that pushes the limits of traditional art. And while Art Prize has the feeling of an international art fair, in one respect, it is far removed from those fairs in another way.

Sarah Thornton accurately portrays the atmosphere of a typical international art fair in a chapter from her book Seven Days in the Art World. Her discussion of the Venice Biennale—the granddaddy of all the art fairs—gives a glimpse of the interactions among art world elite and wealthy collectors that take place at such fairs. The term art fair, for many, conjures up recollections of arts and crafts fairs found in countless communities throughout North America. The two could not be further removed from one another.

In the United States the only real international art fair that exists is Art Basel Miami Beach—and that is a stepchild of the Basel, Switzerland event that predates it by several decades. Collectors and curators come from around the world to check out the newest works by the leading contemporary artists. It is doubtful that these same folks are hopping on planes to southwestern Michigan to find out what this cadre of mostly Michigan-based artists currently has on display.

The international fairs focus on works that set the discourse for contemporary art. The media and materials are often atypical and the meanings opaque. And the art world seems to like it that way. There is an amount of elitism marked by insulated conversations that leave others on the fringe—uninitiated. So it is just as inconceivable to believe that folks outside of the art world would be interested in attending one of these international fairs.

There is no doubt that the work exhibited in international art fairs somehow impacts and influences the work shown in Grand Rapids. Some of the Art Prize artists may not even realize the connections (I, for one, immediately thought of Vija Celmins work when I saw the 2009 Art Prize winner). The shame is that these two worlds don’t or can’t meet. For all the critical theory that goes into creating and explaining the officially canonized works of contemporary art it would seem that the relevance to the average person on the street should be enormous. After all, the subject and content of these works really does touch on all our everyday lives, even if the economic factors do not.

I expect that I would not truly enjoy many of the works displayed at Art Prize. Yes, I guess I might be in that elitist category, too. Still, I give a lot of credit to DeVos. While the quality and importance of the Art Prize works may not be top notch, and the event may not attract the world’s best artists, Grand Rapids is making an attempt to begin a conversation between the public and the art world. It is like Middle East peace talks. You have to get the major players in the same room and everyone has to give a little to get the desired result. I commend Grand Rapids and DeVos for taking the first step.

And the Text Became Image, and Dwelt Among Us

2010-09-07T15:32:00.000-04:00

A few years ago I began to think about changes I might make to the designs of my woodcuts that would better weave them into the other text-based work I had been producing. Recent intaglio and lithographic works were utilizing text, but the woodcuts remained the same. Of course, there was a good reason for the lack of change in the woodcuts. I am still finishing off a series of related prints and the designs needed to be consistent within the series.

About a year ago I was invited to participate in a print portfolio focusing on woodcut as the process. I always use such opportunities to experiment with something I don’t feel I can readily use when in the middle of a defined series. The print, Blessed, shown here, is my experiment.

The majority of my woodcuts are designed to be printed with two blocks: one in a color and the other in black. I stuck with that concept as I began to design this image. You will notice that this first version is only printed in black and white. I’ll explain that later. The designs for the blocks were developed in Adobe InDesign and Photoshop. I copied a predetermined text into InDesign. There, I was able to remove the paragraph breaks and manipulate the spacing between the letters and lines.

I then exported the text into Photoshop where I could manipulate it more as an image, like a drawing. Using an earlier photo reference as a source, I began to layer the text multiple times to darken areas that needed to be a deeper value. I also erased words, letters, and parts of both until the image of the figure could be discerned.

The image for the second block was developed in the same way. I kept the overall value of the letters at a lighter gray so that I could differentiate between the images for the separate blocks. Yet in the designs of both blocks, the printed area is composed completely of text.

To get the designs from Photoshop onto the blocks of wood I printed them on a laser printer (actually a photocopier) and placed them face down on the wood. I lightly applied wintergreen oil to the back of the sheets of paper and rubbed the paper with a wooden spoon. This essentially melted the toner and transferred it to the surface of the wood. The image is transferred in reverse, so the text is backwards. That is perfect since it will print back the correct way in the final print.

The next part is where things began to get difficult. I think I worked on carving the “black” block over about five months. Of course, I was doing other things as well, but in the last couple months I worked on the blocks for 2 – 4 hours almost every day. My estimation is that the carving took well over 150 hours. It would not have been nearly as tedious in linoleum. With wood you have to work with the wood grain or small pieces chip or tear away. Alternately, in linoleum, you can cut multi-directionally with the carving tools.

Since so much of the wood surface had to be cut away it took a very long time. The work was also extremely delicate and my hand could only take about three hours of work each day. I think I will use this kind of design again, but I will probably produce the “black” block in linoleum. I like the wood grain texture that comes through when there are broader passages of color.

The video below shows some of the carving and also shows a glimpse of the second block. Once I finish off a couple other outstanding projects I will return to this other block and then print an edition with both, as originally intended.

I suppose another thing that caused me some delay was working on the block in public. This practice is debatable. I have carved wood blocks and worked on the sketches and drawings for various projects in public places for about a decade now. I don’t do it because I’m starved for attention. In fact, I still can get annoyed when people stare at me while I’m working. I work in public because 1) I don’t currently have a table at a proper working height at home, and 2) sometimes I just need to get out of the house. I also use this as a way to bring art to people. So few people actually live with art in their homes. The processes of how it is created are fascinating to them. I am happy to explain what I’m doing to people who ask. I do get a little annoyed when people try to slyly catch a glimpse or stare at what I’m doing, but can’t muster the nerve to ask about it. If you can stare you can interrupt and ask a question.

I am not yet ready to definitively state that this will be the new direction for my relief prints. I have been pleased with the response so far. I do still have a half dozen or so earlier woodcut designs from the ongoing series to complete. Keep checking back here to see what happens next.

Tim Rollins and K.O.S: A History

2010-08-22T22:14:00.003-04:00

There has been sufficient literature on the collaborative works of Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) since their debut in the mid-1980s. Still, there has never been a unified source that both provides a solid history of the art and artists along with an analysis. Ian Berry serves as the editor for this new volume that affords a breadth that alludes to the complexity of the works and the artists.

The historical backbone for the book comes partly from the dissertation of James Romaine, who is also one of the contributors. I expect that is from where the bibliography for the book and the list of exhibitions come. Romaine is nothing if not precise and Rollins often joked during the years of the dissertation’s completion that James knew “how many socks I have in the drawer.” The essay by Romaine provides insight into the early years of the art collaborative and some background about Rollins’ early years in rural Maine. It is essential for an understanding of both Rollins and the work of his young students/collaborators.

Julie Ault, a longtime friend of Rollins who met him at the University of Maine at Augusta, and later worked with him in Group Material, yields a brief essay that accurately portrays the artist’s charismatic personality. The brevity of the essay should not invite an interpretation that it is slight. In fact, as the opening text of the book it is a superb piece to set the stage for the remaining essays. Brief inclusions by the late Felix Gonzalez-Torres (also a member of Group Material for a time) and Lawrence Rinder are key pieces that complete the fuller picture of Rollins and K.O.S.

Since much of the work by the Rollins and K.O.S. is based in concepts some would view as political (or even identity based), individual pieces and series are ripe for interpretation. David Deitcher offers some excellent analysis of the collaborative works. His consideration that the “wounds” painted on the pieces based on the text of Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage seem to suggest the lesions of Kaposi Sarcoma—often associated with those suffering from AIDS—is appropriate for works created in the mid-1980s. While this may not have been the full intent of the group, and Tim may have prompted the young artists to consider “the civil war that rages within everyone who chooses to fight life as it is,” there is no denying that the ravages of AIDS in New York at that time were subconsciously on the minds of all the city’s inhabitants.

Indeed, Deitcher’s essay seems to use queer theory as a primary lens through which to view the work of Tim and K.O.S. He extends the discussion of AIDS and its impact on the gay community to the paintings based on Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. The bold triangles that appear in several of these works are noted to be an association with the stigmatic marking of gay men in Nazi Germany—the pink triangle, similar to the gold star that marked the Jews. Of course, the pink triangle was beginning to be used as a symbol of gay pride by the 1980s. This may, however, be an oversimplification of the imagery as the artists utilized the triangular form in works related to Martin Luther King, jr., as well.

Similarly, the use of animal—specifically lambs—blood in some of the Defoe works, but especially in those based on Flaubert’s The Temptation of St. Antony is viewed by Deitcher as an association with the blood borne disease of AIDS. The essay somehow misses the religious connections of lamb’s blood. While contemporary art can often employ Christian symbols ironically, that is never the case with Rollins. It is the essay by Eleanor Heartney that takes up this nuance of Rollins and K.O.S.’s work.

Heartney is no stranger to contemporary mixtures of Christian imagery and high art. Her book Postmodern Heretics is an essential analysis of the topic. Her essay here considers the religious background of Tim, his return to the church in 1990s, and the overwhelmingly Catholic faith of the artists in K.O.S. While she does not detail the associations of blood to Old Testament sacrifices or Christ as the Lamb of God, Heartney does examine further works like the prints inspired by Haydn’s The Creation oratorio. She also suggests the that the triangles of the King works relate to the “mountaintop” that Dr. King mentions in the printed speech.

Heartney acknowledges associations to the religious in some of the most well known works of Rollins and K.O.S. Works based on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man exhibit an enormous IM across pages from the book. The letters evoke several things aside from the book’s title. Dr. King famously stated “I am a Man,” but the name/phrase “I AM” is also the name of the God of the Jews, as given to Moses. It is the complex readings that make the work intriguing.

The interview with Rollins and Berry seems to fill in the remaining pieces of the book and provides a sense of the artist’s personality. Throughout the pages are lush examples of the collaborative works—many that are not even covered in the essays. Additionally, the authors do not hesitate to bring up the controversies that have swirled around Rollins and K.O.S. over the years. Is the work really Tim’s alone and the “Kids” just a tool to receive artworld attention? Why is Tim using traditional western masterworks as the basis for the work? Isn’t that a bit WASPy considering these kids are from the Bronx? Is Tim not just pushing his own political or religious agenda? All of these and more are firmly countered by the authors. The work stands on its own. Its strength lies in the resiliency of the artists who made it.

This book is not for art enthusiasts alone. The story of Tim and K.O.S offers inspiration for teachers of all subjects. The history of this collaboration gives hope to the hopeless and that is a rare thing in this day and age.

Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: A History, Ian Berry, ed., MIT Press

The Artistic Fathers: Masters of the Readymade

2010-07-27T11:19:00.000-04:00

I have a friend who is a traditionalist when it comes to his taste in art. Craftsmanship is an essential element for him. This automatically knocks out of contention anything that is fabricated for an artist by a craftsperson not typically associated with art production; works like Donald Judd’s, for instance. For my friend, it all goes back to Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain. It is as if Duchamp’s urinal was a virus that somehow infected the art production of the twentieth century.

I can’t fully agree with my friend. I join his complaints about the lack of craftsmanship evident in some contemporary art. I don’t, however, think we should solely blame Duchamp for this. The emphasis of content over craft in many art schools during the last four or five decades has done much more to erode the state of craftsmanship and technique than the use of so-called Readymades. Still, I don’t like to narrow art to such antiquated categories as pure painting or sculpture. Or maybe it is more that I make room for a wider variety of non-consecrated materials. The hardware store palette of Tim Hawkinson comes to mind.

However, the exhibition of Duchamp’s Fountain did set into motion a chain of events that altered art making. In the early days of the twentieth century Picasso and Braque had already begun breaking down the picture plane. The use of “real” materials in their Cubist collages paved the way for Duchamp’s Readymades. It was still a great leap from collage to the Readymade and that is the primary reason why it took over a generation for the art world to catch up with Duchamp’s concepts. By that time he was playing chess.

One can’t help but appreciate Duchamp, nonetheless. He challenged the centuries old traditions of art making and essentially took us back the square one. Before humans ever began manipulating clay, stone, or wood—or used pigments and minerals to draw images on cave walls—they did something humans from all times have. They noticed the resemblances of human and animal forms in trees, rocks, and clouds. Eventually they accentuated what they found in nature and that process turned into sculpture.

I’m not saying that R. Mutt (a.k.a. Duchamp) noticed some natural form in a urinal and thus plucked it from obscurity to share his revelation with the world. He did, however, perform that very human act of designating an object as art. In many respects nothing had changed. The designation of art objects has always been about the setting apart of items for special—or holy—use or consideration. All ancient religious practices did just this. The philosophies of the twentieth century merely replaced the old religions with a new one. The cathedral and temple were replaced with the art museum. Duchamp was bold in his statement and his ideas gradually infiltrated the whole culture.

A continuation of this shift in art making came several decades later with Robert Rauschenberg. His “Combine Painting” Monogram is a seminal work because it further initiated the breakdown of art categories and established materials. The use of a taxidermied angora goat—paint spattered though it was—was really a nod to Duchamp’s Readymades. When the canvas, and the goat, came down off the wall and settled on the floor the viewer was forced to consider whether this was a painting or a sculpture. One of the best aspects of these Combine works is that they are neither painting nor sculpture; they are simultaneously both.

The work of Rauschenberg is sometimes designated as Neo-Dada (the movement with which Duchamp was associated), but it could equally be categorized as Pre-Pop. it borrows elements from Duchamp but also prefigures the work of the Pop artists. One automatically thinks of banal, everyday objects when the name of Andy Warhol arises. Though Warhol returned to art with representational imagery, his choice of subject matter obviously owed a great debt to the work of artists like Duchamp and Rauschenberg. Each of these artists based their work in the ordinary and mundane.

Long before any of these artists changed the rules concerning what we consider viable artistic subject matter, the masses had objected to the use of “real,” common subjects or objects. We may recall that it was not the portrayal of a nude in Manet’s Olympia or Luncheon on the Grass that so scandalized the sensibilities of the Parisian bourgeoisie. It was that the model was a common woman—and a prostitute to boot. What remained transformative in the artworks of countless others who followed was the continued use of the great themes found in masterpieces from centuries prior.

That transformative element is why I am drawn to works by artists like Damien Hirst. It is why these earlier artists have been included among the figures in my Saints, Sinners, Martyrs, & Misfits paintings. They moved art forward in a similar way to what the seventeenth century Dutch still life and genre painters had. The stuff of everyday life is reconsidered in light of the big philosophical questions of life. When this happens we are able to encounter the transformative in the quiet, fleeting moments of an average day. If art and artists can cause us to do that then something great has been achieved.

Dick Swift: The Art of Physical Printmaking

2010-07-20T21:34:00.001-04:00

Many people first discovered my artwork through publications or exhibitions that included my printmaking. In truth, I had never worked in any printmaking medium until I was enrolled in my graduate painting program. I appreciated the various techniques as another way to explore the concepts I was developing within my paintings. In my second year of graduate school I was asked to take on a gallery assistant position in the School of Art. One of my main objectives was to design a database and enter records for the 2000 – 3000 artworks in the collection. It was rummaging through the vast print collection there that most peaked my interest in printmaking.

If there was no prior record of a work, I could often figure out the printing technique by some plate mark or lack of one. When I came across a couple different pieces by the artist Dick Swift (who recently passed away in June 2010 at the age of 91) I was at a loss for how he created the works. I pulled in one of my printmaking professors to explain the processes to me. This began my fascination with Swift.

The two works in the Bowling Green State University collection were etchings. One was Station Six (Veronica’s Veil) from Swift’s Stations of the Cross series. The other was a large multi-plate color etching entitled The Prophecy II. My professor told me that much of the work was done with soft ground etching and that the irregular plates for the latter image had been shaped with either a band saw or a jeweler’s saw. The plates were then printed with the viscosity method. I was able to find out more about viscosity etchings through my research into the work of Stanley Hayter—also represented in the collection—but I located only scattered details about Dick Swift. This was in the days when it was still fairly difficult to do very extensive research with the internet. I did, however, make a vow to myself that if I could ever find a copy of The Prophecy II I was going to buy it.

In the year 2000 I asked the members of a printmaking email listserv if anyone had information about Dick Swift. A few members let me know that they had studied under Swift in the printmaking program at California State University—Long Beach. Next I received a message from Dan Lienau of Annex Galleries in Santa Rosa, California. The gallery actually represents the work of Dick Swift. Dan said that Dick had recently brought in some works and that is where I was able to obtain a copy of The Prophecy II. I was also put in touch with Dick; the telephone conversation we had about his work provides the foundation for the analysis below.

Dick Swift was one of several printmakers (including Ynez Johnston and Leonard Edmondson) who worked in somewhat experimental styles in the Los Angeles area in the 1950s and 60s. Swift studied at the Otis College of Art & Design under Ernest Freed, another artist caught up in the revival of printmaking that swept the art schools in the mid-twentieth century. The chief architect of this renaissance was Mauricio Lasansky, the Argentine-American printmaker whose University of Iowa intaglio-based printmaking program produced a generation of printmakers who went on to establish printmaking departments at universities throughout North America.

Printmaking in the United States, like all art in the mid-twentieth century, was largely influenced by artist immigrants from around the world—specifically Europe. Stanley Hayter had initially started his famous Atelier 17 in Paris. It temporarily moved to New York during the period of World War II. Swift studied at Atelier 17 in 1964-65, after it reopened in Paris. Hayter was intent on bringing printmaking into a new stage of development—a period in which it would not be used solely in service of other art forms, like painting, but would be seen as its own creative medium.

Swift favored intaglio, mostly etching, within the studio. While the Long Beach print studio had facilities for intaglio, relief, lithography, and silk screening, nearly eighty percent of the work was completed in intaglio. Dick was drawn to the interaction with the metal etching plate. The tactile, almost sculptural, process of etching shines through in his intaglio works. The use of soft ground etching, especially, became somewhat of a trademark in Swift’s process.

Even though Dick joked about how a printmaker friend referred to the soft ground process as the “venereal disease” of printmaking, he was able to transform the process into something new. The Stations of the Cross prints provide a glimpse into his process. While Hayter’s work, particularly from the late 1950s onward, was almost purely abstract, Swift preferred mixing representational imagery with abstraction. The impressions made in the soft ground on “Stations” plates reveal the use of fabric textures. These do not act purely as decorative elements but as integral design forms. The haloes on the figure of Jesus seem to be lifted from the textures impressed into the ground from a paper doily. The textures in the clothing of the figures seem more natural because it is often based on textures of actual cloth. One can already find elements of the artist’s personal visual vocabulary cropping up in this series.

The Veneration of the Ancestors is another work by Swift that utilizes soft ground etching extensively. While this is a color etching, it was produced more like Hayter’s early experiments with color, or like the methods Lasansky employed. Hayter sought to print multiple colors simultaneously on one plate. Some of his first experiments used color passages that were silk screened onto an inked intaglio plate. It appears that Swift rolled colors onto this plate with stencils. The color fields are broad and pure. The texture, however, is more overpowering. It creates rhythms that draw the eye throughout the composition. One is not able to fully appreciate this work in a digital image or even a photographic print. Swift’s love of the physical possibilities of the plate comes through only with examination of the actual prints.

However, it is works like The Prophecy II, its earlier counterpart The Prophecy, and Oedipus that show Swift’s mastery of the medium. Again, the prints cannot be fully appreciated in reproduction. In order for the simultaneous color viscosity printing to work there must be distinct levels in the plates. This creates incredible texture in the prints. Each of these works used a variation of the soft ground technique that Swift developed (as explained in Leonard Edmondson’s book, Etching). After an initial soft ground texture was bitten into the metal plate Swift “inked” the plate with more soft ground so that the pits and crevices were filled with the soft ground. The plates were then placed in acid once more until the open parts of the plate were at a lower level than the textures created initially.

These works are so intricate that Swift says they took more than a couple months to complete. It is no surprise that they would take so long to create when one investigates the intricacies of these prints. The mixture of representational forms, Hebrew text, and abstractions found in the Prophecy works is mind boggling. Swift felt more could be done to the first print so he worked on a second version. Not only did he leave out one of the original plates, a comparison between the individual printed portions shows that Swift altered the images, adding linear etched passages and textures as he further developed the plates.

One of the more intriguing aspects of Swift’s work is the religious content in so many pieces. The artist was baptized a Roman Catholic, but he told me that he no longer ascribed to any specific religion. Though Eastern philosophies and religious concepts were more prevalent in the art world at mid-century, Swift felt that his connection to traditional Western religious concepts actually helped the acceptance of his work at the time. For him, the myths and stories of our cultures and religions touched on some themes common to all humanity.

These large, multi-plate works convinced me that there were aspects of etching that could compliment my painting processes. The realism embedded in portions of these prints let me know that it was possible to utilize color etching—and viscosity printing in particular—in a way that was not as abstract as Hayter’s work. It took some time for me to figure out how this would manifest itself in my own work. I first employed the technique with the Cathedral Floorplan etching series. Taking cues from Swift’s use of Hebrew text, I eventually began a series that mixed the abstractions of text with representational imagery, all completed with the viscosity technique.

It is a shame that so few people know of Dick Swift’s work today. It has such a unique style that offers something for everyone. If you ever have a chance to view any of his works in person take that opportunity. You won’t be disappointed.

Public Observations of Private Lives

2010-07-04T11:35:00.000-04:00

More and more, I believe that the role of the artist has less to do with the creation of a specific object or thing and more to do with observation. The artwork may be a byproduct that lets viewers into these observations, but the artist has always been an individual with a keen sense of observation. The artwork may no longer consist of a representational image or object, still, the medium will convey unambiguous insights.

When we consider the naturalism of the Greeks and Romans, or the precise renderings of the various artists of the Renaissance, it is the skills of observation that seem to most impress us. And after the invention of the camera caused artists to reassess the nature of their work, observation was still a chief concern. The Cubist abstractions of Picasso may seem far removed from the precisely accurate depictions of a Northern Renaissance master, but the Spaniard’s attention to the objects before him was what allowed for greater understanding of the essence of physical objects.
While I continue to employ naturalistic representations in my work, it is not the close observation and subsequent rendering of the people and objects that matters most. My observations of human nature and personal interactions is what I desire viewers to contemplate.

I find myself fascinated with the interactions of people in public settings and spaces. Our private lives have somehow made their way into the public sphere. Technology is a catalyst, but it is amoral so it can’t bear any of the blame.

Private telephone conversations, that fifteen years ago would have taken place between two people within the privacy of their respective homes, are now on public display. Facebook and Twitter have accelerated an earlier technology—email—by pushing more private conversations, that would have taken place among only a handful of individuals, onto the world stage. Yet these are only the tools by which individuals express their conversations.

There is something at work within the mind of the individual that has nothing to do with the tools of technology. It may be a type pf exhibitionism or narcissism that drives some people to share their lives so openly. For my part, I seem to get sucked into these dramas playing out before me in the same way that many of us find ourselves drawn to the equally inappropriate behaviors of “characters” on reality television programs. After all, most of us have at least one guilty pleasure television show, and we don’t watch these for the insights into the wholesome and good natured lives of the “cast members.”

Again, all these “outer” things that we observe are merely symptomatic elements. The reality television shows are edited so that our opinions of the characters are manipulated into polarized camps. The half conversations that we overhear in the checkout line of the grocery store are also edited. We can’t hear the phrases, emotions, and tone of speech offered on the other end on the line. This is why I don’t trust the single occurrence of private/public behaviors. I seek out patterns of behavior within groups over time, or multiple instances of similar behaviors in anonymous individuals.

A recurring symbol of scrutiny and observation in my work is the “lensed” object. These take the form of magnifying and eye glasses, microscopes, binoculars, film and movie cameras, and even Viewmaster viewers. These objects give us clearer vision. they bring details into focus and allow us to capture moments, both public and private.

Another device that appears (or rather will appear—most of the works including these elements are still in production) is the mirror. While most of my observations are of the public/private variety detailed above, I do not neglect the idea that we constantly need to hold the mirror up to ourselves to assess our own behaviors.

As I stated before, the behaviors tend to be symptoms of things deeper. Often, our most public behaviors—good or bad—are indicators of character. They may also suggest unresolved or unconscious psychological developments. For me, this ties into the use of words and images together. The images may suggest one meaning through a cursory examination, yet they reveal a deeper truth as we “read into them.” It is only close observation that provides a deeper assessment and understanding.

Bravo’s Work of Art

2010-06-27T14:00:00.000-04:00

I think we have all seen enough examples of reality television shows over the past two decades to understand that they might better be dubbed “selectively edited TV.” From MTV’s The Real World to The Biggest Loser and Home Makeover: Extreme Edition, we recognize that producers and editors manipulate viewer emotions through music and sometimes one-sided footage. While the Survivor-style reality TV competition had already been a prime time fixture for several years, it was not until Bravo launched its successful Project Runway that a new sub-genre was born. And since that time Bravo has essentially built its network programming around reality-based shows.

June 2010 saw the launch of Bravo’s newest Project Runway-style offshoot. Work of Art: The Next Great Artist (full episodes available from Bravo's website) follows the same format as its predecessors: Project Runaway, Top Chef, Shear Genius, and Top Design. These competitions among members of the creative class have gained quite a following, both by those who are part of those communities or aspire to be. I was uneasy about the premise of a competition among artists when I first heard the show was in production, but was also interested to see what kind of animal this show would be. This assessment of the show is based only on the first three episodes. My opinions may change as the episodes progress and the first season reaches completion.

The contestants fit the stereotypes that we have come to reply upon for any reality-based contest show. There is a loud-mouthed, over-confident figure who claims to have “already won.” There is also an untrained artist who learned quickly that the cry of, “I’m not trained, so I don’t know all the ins and outs of the artworld,” was not going to fly with the judges. There are older artists, younger artists, a good split between the genders, a mix of ethnicities, artists from various faith backgrounds, and, because this is Bravo, at least one gay artist. This is the tried and true recipe that began with the first season of The Real World. It guarantees that personalities are going to come into conflict, making for more entertaining TV.

There is another stereotype that is perpetuated in Work of Art. It appeared in the first episode when executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker made a surprise visit to the artists. As she encouraged the artists in their quest one particular statement struck me. She wanted them to remember that “This is a competition.” Working alongside other artists can certainly push us to do our best, but instilling the idea that the artworld is competitive benefits no one. There are certainly elements of competition since some artists get that big grant, prize, or exhibition. Yet there always remains the element of subjectivity and the contemporary diversity of styles and materials is matched by the particular tastes of the tastemakers—gallerists, curators, critics.

Still, this is a show has a prize and that is one of the things that makes the premise worthwhile. The “winner” will receive an one-person exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. Perhaps this was seen by the Brooklyn as a good way to repair an image that was sullied by the Sensation exhibition. I suspect that the winner will not provide us with anything nearly as controversial as Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary, though he or she may utilize materials that are outside the expectations of the general viewer.

In addition to the Brooklyn Museum’s role in Work of Art, I was pleasantly surprised at the caliber of the judges. In particular, the presence of critic Jerry Saltz on the panel of judges seems to add credence. In fact, the quality of the comments that the judges make is possibly the best feature of the show. After each competition “project” and its subsequent exhibition by all the artist contestants, the judges speak with the highest and lowest scoring artists. These limited critique events are actually something that I would suggest art school students watch. These comments give some relevant insights into what curators and gallerists are actually thinking when they are assessing the work of artists for exhibitions.

The individual projects that artists must complete are where the competitive nature of the show produces a problem. The artists are coming to the show with pre-established styles, adept at creating with certain materials but perhaps ignorant of the methods needed to work in other media. Most artists will not be overly proficient in a great multitude of media. When some artists failed to produce pleasing results in a competition based on assemblage it was by no fault of their own. Other artists, used to working with specific themes, did not fare well when trying to produce a book cover design—something that is actually considered the work of graphic designer and not a fine artist. There are corporate sponsorships at play here that have more to do with money than with good art. Are we supposed to think that Penguin Books approached Bravo with the idea of having an artist do a book cover for them?

The final decision of the judges in the first episode, wherein the artists had to produce portraits of each other, proved that they believed a “portrait” had to be based in a somewhat representational image of a person. The more abstract images, whether or not they revealed more about the subject than a mere image of that person, were not well received by the judges. Since there was no indication that this was something the judges expected, breaking the traditional mould for portraiture proved to be problematic. As in the actual artworld, the contestants found that it is always a risk to break the rules since sometimes it pay off and other times it does not.

What makes Work of Art more palatable is that the artists seem to have an innate understanding that, though they want the prize money and the Brooklyn Museum show, they are really in competition with themselves more than each other. They are challenging themselves to do bigger, better things. Bravo’s other competition shows seem much more cutthroat. Participants seem willing to sabotage one another. These artists are more apt to—believe it or not—help each other with their projects. The ideas and the images are going to live or die on their own, but the work is so diverse that the artists are more willing to help when they have more expertise with a certain material, offer suggestions (which may eventually lead to sabotage), or simply to help lift some enormous object.

This is the most redeeming part of the entire program. Contemporary art is built upon the art of the past. Each artist is indebted to his or her predecessors and contemporaries. Sharing and borrowing is part of this system and appropriation is at the heart of much contemporary art. Maybe these artists understand that better than the executives at Bravo.

Sean Gyshen Fennell: Fashioning the Facade

2010-06-13T11:45:00.000-04:00

For nearly a half century now the politics of identity have been a staple subject within the artworld. Critical Theory has caused many artists to reassess the cultural narratives that may have left certain persons—because of gender, culture, or race—to have no voice in larger conversations. The resultant art can sometimes be a bit too esoteric or narcissistic, but when the work touches on the universal human qualities we share it speaks to everyone.

Sean Gyshen Fennell’s work is based in gender identity. Many works are highly personal, yet they remain open enough to strike an empathic chord with those who do not share his identical experiences. The self portrait photographs that compose his Sewing the Facade (Sean) series come from a specific back story. One need not know all the details to uncover much of the emotional content.

In the pieces a viewer finds the artist, nude from the waist up, in evocative poses. Facial expressions fall somewhere between ecstasy and grief. The black background and choreographed movements recall Bill Viola’s Passions videos. Both artists are heirs of the postures found in religious art from the Renaissance.

Looking closer one finds that the artist has broken the picture plane. Actual needles and thread are piercing the surface of the work, creating sutures across the artist’s chest and torso. Stitches encircling the artist’s nipples seem at once sensual and painful. They call attention to a highly sensitive area and stir up questions about sexuality. As the chest is pushed together to form cleavage, the artist binds the gap with a seam of cross stitches. Although there appears to be no physical wound here, there is no escaping the concept of healing in this gesture. The placement of the actual needles in the hand of the artist lets us know he is working to heal his own wounds.

A related series of photographs, Sewing the Facade (Nathan), pushes the idea out of the artist’s strictly personal experience into a universal realm. These digital photographs are printed on canvas. That media choice is profound. The texture of the canvas can make the work appear like a photorealist painting. With similar poses, the photos seem even more closely aligned with renderings of mystics and martyrs depicted in Renaissance paintings.

Placing the images on canvas also connects the work to trends in mid-twentieth century artworks. The canvas, again, is pierced with needles and thread. One can relate this to the aggressive and destructive slashes of Lucio Fontana’s canvases. However, Gyshen Fennell is not content to leave gaping holes in the canvas. These pieces offer healing. When we find the double portrait of Nathan, connected by threads from one canvas to the other, we experience the desire to heal the wounds of the self.

The fabric and instruments of sewing also connect to the feminine. These tools were reclaimed as badges of honor for early Feminists. They were the indicators of “women’s work”—tools of the lesser crafts that the artists wore as a badge of honor. For Gyshen Fennell to appropriate these materials in his own work is to question gender identity once again. Is there now any gender specificity to the tools of art? Is anything appropriate for one artist but not another?

Since these pieces are about identity, the double portrait is significant. The images of Nathan appear less like works of healing and more like construction. The individual is creating his identity, fashioning his persona. The exterior facade is a construction based on the interior life of the individual. It is these universal elements that extend the artist’s work past the merely self referential and into a place in which we all exist.

Louise Bourgeois: Farewell to the Spiderwoman

2010-06-03T17:10:00.000-04:00

The world said goodbye to one of the most acclaimed “artist’s artists” on May 31, 2010. Louise Bourgeois was not a household name, but she did influence several generations of artists with her provocative and seemingly contradictory images. Since she lived to the ripe age of 98—working well into her 90s—it is no surprise that multiple generations have looked to her for inspiration. It is hard to imagine artists like Kiki Smith creating such mythical and symbolic works without Bourgeois as a forerunner.

Bourgeois was born in France to parents who worked as tapestry restorers. The mosaic of that household, with all its traumas and dysfunctionalities, was the endless well for her creativity. Her father was a charismatic philanderer who openly carried on an affair with the live-in governess. Though her mother tried to shield the children from the situation, she also acted as if the affair did not exist. The artist, therefore, somewhat loved and distained both parents.

By 1938 Louise had met and fallen in love with an American art historian. They married and she moved with him to the United States. During the next decade she became ensconced in the old boys club of the mid-century artworld. She studied with Stanley Hayter and several of the leading Surrealists at Hayter’s relocated Atelier 17 in New York City. Though Bourgeois denied any attachment to Surrealism, she was part of the influx of European Modernists who had converged on New York, transforming it to the art capital of the world. She had a rather successful career during this time—a period when many outstanding female artists, such as Lee Krasner, were still relegated to the backseat of the artworld bus.

During the next two decades Bourgeois seemed to disappear into obscurity. She continued working steadily as her art, quietly, changed the way women were perceived within art society. The questions she was asking and the ideas she explored were especially influential on the new generation of feminist artists.

It wasn’t until 1982 that Bourgeois was suddenly omnipresent within the artworld. The Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective of her work—the first for a woman at that institution. At the age when most Americans would have been approaching retirement, Bourgeois was just about to begin the most important decades of her career. This is where the contradictions began to be evident. This tiny senior citizen was creating chiseled marble sculptures. This grandmotherly figure often produced overtly sexualized images—like the infamous sculpture tucked under her arm in her portrait photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe. But she also produced sensitive watercolors and doll-like figures sewn from her old clothing. The variety of materials appropriated always made her difficult to pinpoint.

In recent years Bourgeois has most often been associated with her spider sculptures. These tend to be gigantic spiders that hover over the viewer, transforming him or her into prey. Typically exhibited in public settings, these spiders are made on a human scale. The spider image is derived from the artist’s mother and the family tapestry business. Bourgeois saw her mother as a protector and a weaver. Still, the ominous quality of the spiders cannot be fully explained through analogies to the artist’s mother alone.

The marble sculptures of Bourgeois exist singly, but also as elements within larger works. Often, they are in the form of disembodied appendages. The body is always the central image of Bourgeois’s work, even when it is absent. Hands, feet, and headless and armless bodies remind the viewer of the traumas of life and the severings that populate our relationships. Figures exhibit amputations that recall the effects of tattered relationships.

Other marble sculptures mix the sexual characteristics of males and females. The artist never saw herself as a feminist, per se, though the evidence of her childhood experiences and relationships to her parents bleed through in these works. The rounded and organic forms are at once abstract compositions, but they can simultaneously be read as hybridized breast and phallic forms. They are inter-sexed works that allude to the physically complimentary nature of men and women. The red watercolor seen here, with a clearly male figure seemingly carrying a fetus within its womb, creates a similar effect.

The spider is certainly feminine for Bourgeois, but it seems to represent a mixture of the mother and the governess. The female spider is protective, but it has an element of temptress to it. Bourgeois created small room-like installations that she called “cells’ or “lairs.” The latter term relates specifically to the spider. When the lairs are created with wire fencing they have a web-like appearance that doubles as a place of confinement. It is contradictions like these that make Bourgeois difficult to decipher. From one work to another, and sometimes within a single work, the symbolic imagery can read as multiple things all at the same time.

Along with the fearful emotions that are conjured with many of the artist’s works, there is an alternate side of healing that is also derived from Bourgeois’s youth. The doll-like sculptures, sewn from remnants of the artist’s old clothing, relate to the mending of worn tapestries. These dolls, or puppets, are reincarnations and reanimations. The new life found in these works is like the adage of “making lemons into lemonade.” Bourgeois has taken the tatters of the childhood she was handed and turned them into works that go past the hurts of her youth. These were not art therapy for her, but a way to deeply touch these similar wounds in others, that all may move past their common tragedies.

Bourgeois was an artist who adapted to the times. She lived through the days of Modernism, when the Cubist abstractions of Picasso were seen as revolutionary. Unlike Picasso, and many other Modernists, Bourgeois significantly adapted her work in startling ways over her many decades. The message remained the same though she was able to develop new processes to speak to new times, influencing countless younger artists along the way.

Permanent Fixtures II: Further Travels Through the Male Mind

2010-05-26T10:03:00.000-04:00

I have finally reached a point of ambivalence concerning the reception of images and symbols within my artwork. Postmodernist concepts about how we approach both texts and images—with the individual knowledge and baggage that is unique to each person—along with the ramifications of displaying work openly on the internet have paved the way. As an artist, I can never fully manipulate or direct the reception of my work by a viewer.

I actually recognized this fairly early in my career. For a time I was utilizing imagery of rope in my compositions, as a metaphor for being tied to past habits and behaviors. I had several works on display at a coffee shop a few months after my college graduation, including one of the rope works. I received a call with an invitation to meet and talk about the pieces with an area high school art teacher. When we met, he asked me to consider talking with his students about my painting method, since he was primarily a sculptor. In the end, I think he was more interested in asking me out on a date, though he never did and I was oblivious to his motivations.

A couple weeks after I met the art teacher I received a phone call from an area gallery. The teacher had suggested my work to the art gallery director for an upcoming show. I was young and pretty excited about the opportunity which had come out of the blue. As the conversation continued, I discovered that the exhibition had a theme of sexual deviance and apparently, because of the one work with rope imagery that I had displayed, I was slated to fill the “bondage” slot. When I explained what that work was really about the conversation quickly cooled, and though the gallery director claimed he wanted to see more of my work, I never heard from him again.

The following year, as I was further developing the rope imagery in graduate school, another humorous misreading occurred. I was working on a self portrait that contained various draped and looped lengths of rope in the background. I actually didn’t think much about the image—it was more like a study or painting exercise. Several of my fellow grad students saw the piece in my studio and inquired if they should be worried about my emotional state. They thought the ropes resembled nooses and that I might be suicidal. I laughed it off and assured them nothing was further from the truth, and I never exhibited the work.

When I began my recent Permanent Fixtures series I faced the inevitability of multiple misreadings of the work. My ambivalence is now great enough that this doesn’t bother me. In fact, I embrace the existence of multiple readings and the use of imagery on book pages helps support this. Nonetheless, I do wish to offer some limited explanations that might assist viewers as they approach the work.

As I was trying to research some current scholarship on the concepts I am investigating for this series, I realized that even the terms that I had buzzing about in my head were confused and unclear. I didn’t view the analysis of male self concepts in contemporary culture as a category of gender studies. The whole idea of gender studies often seems to focus on feminist issues. The area of gender studies on college campuses seems to often focus solely on feminism. So, I thought the appropriate terminology might be something closer to gender identity. I soon discovered that that phrase is almost exclusively reserved for the territory of transgender individuals—men who are biologically and anatomically male yet feel emotionally and psychologically female, and vice versa. That was definitely not the intended topic of this work.

The American male psyche is a complex thing. It is not some monolithic and homogenized manner of masculinity and self understanding. At the same time, however, cultural expectations partially govern our assumptions of what it means to be male. This is true for what both women and men expect.

For all the challenges that feminism proposed to counter the stereotypes that existed for American women—the demure, defenseless stay-at-home mom and housewife who keeps an immaculate home and has dinner ready on the table as her bread winner returns home from a long day on the job—there has been little reconsideration of the masculine stereotypes. If roles and identities have shifted on one side of the traditional spectrum then alterations would naturally follow on the other side.
The absence of an on-going dialogue on male identity has led to widespread confusion, though one would hardly recognize it because the traditional male stereotypes are overwhelmingly perpetuated through a stubborn male refusal to talk about “feelings” and “emotional responses.” A necessary question arises. What stereotypical male traits are derived from the biological makeup of the XY chromosomes and what aspects of those stereotypes are exhibited purely from the effects of nurture, including the cultural environment? When we consider the variations of accepted and expected male behaviors in non-Western cultures our American ideals are challenged.

These questions are merely a few that the Permanent Fixtures paintings address. Cultural norms are complex things. When they are paired with the infinitely multifaceted personalities of each human individual the configurations can boggle the mind. A urinal becomes much more than a porcelain plumbing fixture.

Arman: The Sum is Greater than the Parts

2010-05-17T14:47:00.001-04:00

The imagery of Pop art was based in the banal—the commonplace items of everyday life. Conversely, the esoteric and existentialist compositions of the Abstract Expressionists did not sit well with the average person. There was little within those swirls and splatters of paint that seemed worthy of the traditional, lofty goals and intentions of fine art.

Pop artists in Britain and the U.S. recovered recognizable imagery, but there was something else at work beneath the surface. Pop’s sister movement in France—Nouveau Realisme (New Realism)—was perhaps a better indication of things to come. The performative nature of art making, by Action Painters like Jackson Pollock, had set the stage for Conceptualism. Yet it was the New Realists who proved to be some of the most innovative transitional figures between mid-century abstraction and process oriented conceptual styles of the 1960s and 70s.

The New Realist artist Arman is not known to the masses like Pop’s Andy Warhol. His individual works are not generally recognized outside of the insulated circle of artists, curators, and art historians who compose the art world. His work, however, contains the germ of transition that formed the foundation for much of the significant work of the later twentieth century.

Arman’s work is mainly composed of collections of ordinary objects. They are certainly the next step forward from the Readymades of Marcel Duchamp. However, where Duchamp’s simplicity was found in the single, unadorned object—the urinal or the bottle drying rack—Arman’s simplicity was often located in his singleness of focus. Arman is primarily known for his “accumulations.” This apt title denotes assemblage collections of similar, real life items and objects.

It was not only the Dadaist Readymades of Duchamp that impacted Arman’s aesthetic. Kurt Schwitters, a Dadaist of a different stripe, composed quite formal looking abstract collages out of detritus. These highly structured and meticulously designed works contain intricate patterns and repetitions. Often, similar items are reused within an individual work. Taken out of their original context, they become non-objective visual elements that enhance the overall impact of the work through a “sameness.” It is that very same element that viewers of Arman’s work find most compelling.

Arman’s art, because of its typical three dimensional nature, can also be aligned with the box constructions of Joseph Cornell. In fact, many of Cornell’s boxes employ repetitions of similar objects, creating an analogous effect. However, Arman should not merely be compared to his predecessors since his relation to his contemporaries is what actually determined his place in art history.

Though both Arman and Yves Klein were both reared in Nice, it was not until they were adults, both studying art, that they became friends and influences on one another. Klein’s work always had a more conceptual and performative aspect, but it originated from a comparable place to Arman’s. Each man studied the martial art of judo (Klein was even bestowed the title of master) and the influence of Asian thinking and philosophies came to bear heavily on many characteristics of their artworks.

Both Arman and Klein typically provided viewers with an art object, yet each often arrived at that object through some form of performative activity. Klein’s Anthropometries may have gained more notoriety (if for no other reason than their blatant exploitation of the female nude) but both artists performed some destructive acts that ultimately resulted in art objects. Some of the Anthropometries even employed flammable actions. Arman also utilized fire to manipulate objects for his works, such as musical instruments.

Arman might smash or burn a cello or violin and then reassemble the remnants as a new art object. This destruction or deconstruction has obvious connections to the theories of both Jacques Derrida and John Cage. Yet, with all the artists who utilized destructive techniques, one should avoid a simple reading that their intentions were set on completely dismantling the concepts of Western art. The influence of Eastern philosophy was often at work and it brings to mind the Hindu god Shiva. The attributes of Shiva include his simultaneous roles as creator and destroyer. There is a direct correlation to this particular subset of Arman’s assemblages.

Arman’s work also signals the shifts toward Conceptualism through reconsiderations of established cultural boundaries. John Cage’s blending of art forms—music, visual art, dance, and theater—began to permeate the high art culture of the mid-twentieth century. Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine each dabbled in performance art and utilized Duchampian readymade objects in their works, much like Arman. Though mainly recognized as a pioneer in video art, Nam June Paik’s works incorporating violins and cellos are not far afield of Arman’s work with musical instruments.

Often Rauschenberg is seen as an essential bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Pop because his Combine Paintings retained the gestural paint application of the former, while the real life assemblage objects denoted the latter. Arman kept one foot planted in the recent art historical past, too. Examples of this are found in the accumulations that incorporate actual paint tubes, often imbedded—as if in suspended animation—in clear plastic. The concept is not reminiscent of Rauschenberg as much as his colleague Jasper Johns. And the streaming paint brings to mind the soak-stain paintings of Morris Louis more than the drip paintings of Pollock.

For all the similarities with his contemporaries, Arman remains a distinct figure. His style is unique and recognizable. The accumulations, in particular, possess a presence that one is not always able to articulate. There may be elements of humor, as with 1982’s Long-Term Parking, but at the same time there can be underlying political or sociological messages. The abundance of like items or objects within a limited space focuses the attention of the viewer on intrinsic qualities of those objects.

The accumulations recontextualize the materials by stripping away distracting and extraneous elements. The sum of these works is significantly greater than the individual parts. Separated, the objects are often bypassed; combined, the impact of their essential qualities is inevitable. The adoption of installation as the preferred medium of so many contemporary artists shows the debt the art world owes Arman. While there are certainly some artists of a new generation who devise compositions through amassing similar objects in an Armanesque style, the collection of disparate objects within a space is more common. Though this may seem to be a distinct differentiation, the recontextualization of non-art objects finds its genesis in Arman as much as in Duchamp. Arman’s accumulations are thus a hallmark of the postmodern desire to deconstruct and then reconstruct meaning from the remnants of Western history and culture.

What Lies Beneath: Underpainting as a Technique

2010-05-10T10:20:00.016-04:00

The tradition of building up glazes of pigment to produce a rich and subtle form in painting goes back to the introduction of oil painting as a medium—often attributed to the Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck. In the Renaissance, artists preferred to create an underpainting in a single color on top of which they would layer the glazes that completed an image with a finished, naturalistic appearance.

Over time, the use of glazing as a method of painting fell out of fashion. By the time of the Realists and Impressionists (mid-19th century French painting movements) painters were beginning to favor a more immediate approach, with thicker paint application. This resulted in paintings that resembled something other than the photographs that were becoming increasingly more commonplace.

Even though I experimented with a variety of painting techniques when I was in my undergraduate painting courses (including glazing), I ended up preferring an approach that was closer to Realism. I enjoy the freshness and vibrancy of the colors. In fact, when I now paint just for the fun of it this tends to be the style to which I revert.

When I began painting on book pages the approach of painting with a thicker, more opaque paint soon revealed itself as unsuitable. I started investigating the process of glazing once more. The first problem I encountered was the dullness of color that is often traditionally associated with glazing.

Painters in the Renaissance preferred either the dull green, terre verte, color or a brownish pigment (burnt umber) as an underpainting. Starting with a more neutral color allowed the artists to temper the form with additional colors in order to make the image more vibrant, or less, according to their particular needs.

Some artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci, used a combination of brushes and their fingers or hands to produce the underpainting. Examples, like da Vinci’s unfinished Adoration of the Magi, provide a glimpse to non-painters of what an underpainting entails. A painting, at this stage, is actually more of a drawing. It provides a foundational structure in a full range of values. Leonardo’s finished works tend to exhibit little more color since he preferred a smokier, more atmospheric effect that lacked hard shadow edges.

Duccio was producing paintings in the era prior to Leonardo. Much of his work was actually in egg tempera, a precursor to oil paint. In fact, many artists continued to use tempera as an underpainting even though they completed the glazes in oil. The tempera dries to a hard surface and dries much quicker than the oil medium. In Duccio’s work we can see the effect of the terre verte underpainting. Some pigments fade over time when exposed to light. In Duccio’s work we find the green underpainting showing up as the skin color.

When I began to use glazing again I chose to use a color for underpainting that is not typically employed—purple. You don’t necessarily notice it in the finished works, but the underlying values are completed with this dioxizine purple. This forces me to glaze over the purple with other, equally intense colors. Thus, the images tend to retain something of the vibrancy I prefer, but also the transparency that is desired for the works on book pages. The text is still somewhat readable.

Here I have included some photos of one of the new altarpiece constructions in process. Few people ever get to see my work in this state, before I apply the subsequent layers of color. I chose to share these images to provide some additional insight into the process.

Thomas Demand: The Art of Artifice

2010-05-03T09:17:00.010-04:00

The invention of photography forever changed the course of art. While some remain fixed on the old debates on the legitimacy of photography as an artform, the current discussions cluster more around the evolving technologies and their impact on the medium.

Viewers have come to trust the photograph as an accurate form of representation. We know that a camera can capture a likeness in astonishing detail, yet we also know that photos can be manipulated. Even before Photoshop became the dominant digital method for altering photographs, darkroom manipulations were a normal practice in film photography.

Somehow, we like to suspend our knowledge of this fact. We know that adjustments are made to the waists, thighs, and faces of the supermodels gracing the covers of fashion magazines, but we still harbor dreams that their perfection is genuine. If we remove the consumerist element then some doubts about “truth” in other photographs immediately arise. For instance, what is to stop the manipulation of photos used by the media?

When it comes to fine art photography we may recognize that there are manipulations, yet the acceptance of truthfulness as an inherent element of the photograph remains at the subconscious level. German artist Thomas Demand calls our attention to this conflict in his large scale photographs. Demand’s work assesses the unreality of photography. It draws attention to the aspects of artifice that have been linked to photography from the early days of the medium, when portraits were created in a stiff and unnatural manner that spoke more of the slow shutter speeds than psychological insights into the sitters.

As a younger German photographer, Demand has sometimes, inaccurately, been linked to the “Becher School:” those photographers who studied under the husband and wife team Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Dusseldorf Art Academy. Indeed, the immense size of some of Demand’s finished works can favor the pieces of the Becher School, but he should be more closely aligned with the YBAs (Young British Artists such as Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, and Jenny Saville) since he studied sculpture at Goldsmith’s College in London in the early 1990s.

An initial glance at Demand’s work does not suggest the depth of artifice that underlies his work. The images are of simple interior scenes; often rooms that suggest little significance. However, Demand came to photography through sculpture and a close observation reveals the subtleties at the heart of his work.

Each of these interior scenes is a reproduction of an earlier photograph. Usually the original photos are not even taken by Demand but are found in mass media magazines. The artist then recreates the scenes, typically in a 1:1 ratio, using paper and cardboard. It is only after Demand has meticulously rebuilt these scenes that he photographs them.

It is the photos themselves that are the artwork. The paper and cardboard constructions are built in the artist’s studio and quickly dismantled after the photographs are made. The disposable nature of the constructions is similar to the disposable nature of digital photography. With film photography, the artist developed each roll of film and then chose which negatives to print. Sometimes he or she returned to negatives years later, with a fresh eye, and then printed a gem that somehow had been bypassed on initial inspection. Time was an essential aspect of the entire process.

With digital photography, countless “bad” shots are immediately deleted from the camera’s memory. Our need for instant gratification outweighs our patience to find something more subtle. Still, in a twist on this idea, Demand returns to overlooked images and mines them for additional value.

Demand’s scenes are mostly accurate reproductions but not exact reproductions. The most telling and distinguishing features are often eliminated. papers strewn about desktops lack text. Logos and other commercial markings are also absent. This produces generic scenes that would otherwise have specific cultural and historical significance.

A notable exception is the images of the Oval Office. Though titles on the spines of books and identifying facial features from the framed pictures are absent, the familiar colors, patterns, and shapes of the room are true. The somewhat eerie quality of the lighting makes the images seem almost like a 3D digital rendering of the space.

Most scenes seem more innocuous. A janitor’s cleaning closet appears to be just that. One must do some investigation to recognize why the artist would choose this specific photograph. It is one of a series of images that were (originally) taken of rooms at a German pub where a notorious child rape had occurred. The court had restricted photographs of the victim and others connected to the crime scene, so only images of the empty building could be taken.

Demand’s images take the viewer two steps further from the original story. They do, however, retain a sense of the sterility that seems to imply something almost sinister. It is a generic evil that we are not quite able to place a finger on.

A quick glance at Demand’s work exposes nothing special, nothing unusual. The mundane quality of the images can be likened to much of the work of Andy Warhol. Warhol’s “disasters” were also culled from mass media sources. His use of repetitious imagery was a way to comment on our desensitization to the horrors that surround us every day. Many of Demand’s interiors examine a similar theme.

The overwhelming sense within the photographs is that things are not as they appear. Truly, this is a concept that serves the viewer well when approaching any artwork, but particularly contemporary works. There is usually more than meets the eye and only the fully engaged viewer reaps the rewards offered.

In the beginning was the Word

2010-04-26T09:38:00.003-04:00

Two recent conversations have reminded me that, while people are intrigued by my use of book pages as a substrate for painting, that material can be disconcerting for others. The first conversation happened when discussing possible materials for use in a drawing student’s final project. I mentioned book pages and she vigorously objected. She said that, having worked for a library, she had too much respect for books to tear the pages out. I assured her that, having worked for three libraries and a bookstore myself, I had no less respect for books.

The second conversation happened via email with a friend and collector. I was describing the recent 1821 German Bible I had acquired from a local used bookstore and noted that I was excited to start tearing the pages out. My friend has actually purchased some of my works on book pages, but assured me that his fundamentalist upbringing has so marked him that he felt he could never tear pages out of a Bible.

It actually took me some time to warm to the idea of removing pages from Bibles and hymnals—or any other books for that matter. I asked a couple artist friends about their use of Bible pages first. I then began experimenting with work on book pages by using books other than Bibles, and texts that I wasn’t planning to keep in my own library. Eventually, I began to use Bibles, hymnals, and other religious texts. I found these in used bookstores and at flea markets. These tend to be forgotten books that have no remaining connection to their original owners.

This German Bible is a good example. It is one of those old, large family Bibles in which people used to write births, deaths, and marriages—the kind that were passed down over generations. There are many things handwritten—in German—on the front pages. I can’t read any of it. It seems, to many people I know, that dismantling such a book, which must have a rich history, is a travesty. That is one way to look at it.

I see the re-use of this book within artworks in a different way. Yes, there are pressed flowers, prayer cards, and a lock of hair scattered between the pages. However, no one had a lasting connection with the people those items represented anymore, otherwise they would not have given the book away. The book is also somewhat unreadable. The pages are riddled with discolorations and foxing. When I use the pages for a painting they get a new life—they are resurrected.

Not only does the text itself matter in the paintings, the connection with history is important. Since many of my works consider the lives of saints—canonized or otherwise—the continuity with those who have gone before us is essential. The quiet lives of the ordinary folks, unknown by the masses, are equally significant in the scope of things.

As an artist, I wish to invite viewers into my work in as many ways as I can. For some, it is the visual images themselves that draw a connection. For others, the existence of text within the works seems like an invitation to learn some deeper truth about the work that the image itself does not readily reveal. There is even a segment of viewers who, sensing the age of the book pages, feel a connection to a common history. These are all valid approaches. Feel free to pick whichever point of entry feels most logical. The work is multifaceted and open to several interpretations.

The Sacred Body by David Japser

2010-04-20T09:57:00.006-04:00

David Jasper. The Sacred Body: Asceticism in Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture (Studies in Christianity and Literature). Waco TX: Baylor University Press, 2009.

David Jasper’s recent book, The Sacred Body, explores the body through the lens of the ascetic desert tradition, via the forms of art, film, poetry, but especially literature. The author’s background as a teacher of literary theory is apparent in his analysis of all these forms.

While Jasper explains that the text is formed as a continuation of his earlier book The Sacred Desert, this volume, at times, tenuously connects the body to the desert tradition. The reader may easily find herself drawn deeply into what initially appear as various, meandering side discussions only to discover Jasper ultimately forming his connection to the desert through some obscure contextual twist. Since Jasper filters his processing through philosophers from Heidegger and Kant to Derrida and Foucault, it is not surprising that his writing can sometimes read as densely as contemporary philosophy.

Some of the more absorbing aspects of the analysis are revisited throughout subsequent chapters. After an examination of the hagiographical evolution of the figure of St. Mary—transformed over time from Mary Magdalene, to Mary of Bethany, and finally Mary of Egypt—Jasper extends his discussion of the body’s ascetical relevance with an exploration of the character parallel to St. Mary of Egypt in Paul Bowles’ existentialist novel The Sheltering Sky and the adaptation of that work in Bernado Bertolucci’s film of the same title. He rounds out the discussion of the desert life of St. Mary through his commentary on Diego Velazquez’s painting Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. Just as the character of Mary evolves from the historical person(s) to whom she is connected, Jasper’s analysis progresses. The carnal aspects of Mary are tempted and tempered in each art form as her spirit seeks to conform to the guidance of the desert path.

Jasper’s fresh eye on visual art—considering artists as various as William Blake, Hans Holbein, and Vincent van Gogh—is similar to Henri Nouwen’s. It resides somewhere between the explicitly theological and the intimately devotional. He is aided at times by the writings of art critics Arthur C. Danto and Leo Steinberg, which is a welcome supplement to his own analysis. Jasper is clearly more comfortable when he stays closer to his literary roots. His scrutiny of the Hans Holbein painting The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb relies heavily on the discussion of that work within Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Like Mathias Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece—also discussed by Jasper—the Holbein work focuses on the scourged and crucified corpse of Jesus. Both of these paintings establish a transformed understanding of the physical being—focusing on a glorified body. Christ’s taking on of mortal human flesh is pushed to the extreme when these artists examine the death of God and the perplexities and mysteries of the incarnation through the divine Word made flesh. Yet for the flesh to be renewed and resurrected, it must first suffer death. Jasper addresses this significant point in relation to ascetic practices, not simply glossing over the expansive implications of Christ’s incarnation as paralleled in the way of the desert.

It is Jasper’s knack for mingling odd bedfellows that produces some of the most satisfying "perplexities" in the book. The works of Meister Eckhart and James Joyce form the core components of a chapter devoted to holiness and the resurrection of the body. The mystical contemplations of Eckhart may seem a natural match for a discussion on the holiness sought in the desert. It is the pairing with Joyce’s Finnegans Wake that comes as an initial surprise. In Joyce’s work, Jasper finds a parallel to the incarnation of the Word. The reader must be fully present in the text, a text that reveals itself—if somewhat opaquely—through its aural recitation. In both Eckhart and Joyce the reader is lost within the poetry of the words, becoming one with the text just as the ascetic believer seeks to be united with the holiness of Christ.

Jasper concludes his analysis with a chapter that acts as a template for future theological readings—whether pure theological texts or theology nestled within the guise of the various arts. For Jasper, the ascetic tradition is simply a system by which one lives out life liturgically. We may each approach our lives through an ascetic lens if we choose. Jasper offers possibilities of bodily "dwelling" in this life through the ascetic tradition. He suggests dwelling: on the edge, in anticipation, as vigil, with consistency, at the end of history, in dispossession, and in perfect joy. These approaches are meant to act as filters that usher us into the way and wisdom of the desert.

Karma Chameleon

2010-04-10T20:54:00.008-04:00

Having a variety of interests can pose a challenge. For me, it has never been quite like the saying about the Jack-of-All-Trades, but dividing time among a multitude of interests certainly takes time from those things about which one is most passionate.

In the late 1990s, when I was teaching full-time, I tended to use the semesters as a time for reading, research, and sketching. Printmaking, particularly, was accomplished in the summer months. In those months there was plenty of time and no one else using the studio. When I was later working full-time as the director of an art non-profit there were no summer breaks, though I kept generating complex ideas for future artworks.

Having the ability to devote nearly all of my time to producing art over the past year and a half opened my eyes to something. I can never keep up with all the ideas. Even though I am producing exponentially more artwork than before, it takes time to actually create it. While carving a woodblock or painting on a book page a new thought is bound to enter my mind—another rabbit hole is opened and the chase begins again.

Occasionally, the reason I take several years to complete a piece has nothing to do with the time it physically takes to complete it. Many of the altarpiece constructions are developed through sketches and the assemblage items are devised at that stage. I often have some items collected already, awaiting an altarpiece in which they can be placed. At other times I imagine an object I would like to use, but then I have to search to find it.

The hunt is always on. I have previously relayed stories on this blog about my search for chattering teeth and doll parts. My great white whale, for several years, was a chameleon figurine. Aside from eBay and Google searches I have looked at dozens of flea markets, antique stores, and junk shops everywhere from New York City to Los Angeles—I mean this literally. There was a glimmer of hope in New Haven, CT when I spotted a plastic chameleon in a shop window display. It was, unfortunately, there for effect but not for sale.

When I recently stopped into an arts and crafts supply store, for an unrelated item, I spotted a wooden lizard. It was a somewhat generic lizard, but I knew it could easily be transformed into my reliquary chameleon. After I bisected a glass bead, for the eyes, hollowed out some eye sockets, and applied paint and gold leaf, the chameleon was complete. One of the best parts is that it still functions like a child’s toy—giving it a certain Joseph Cornell air.

I imagine that through all this discussion you may be wondering, "Why would you place a gilded chameleon in a reliquary anyway?" Without divulging too much about the work in progress, I will mention that the chameleon reflects the very sentiments with which I began this essay. Many of us live multifaceted lives in which our various interests cause us to become "all things to all people."

Political correctness has so subdivided our society into various, predetermined, sub-cultural roles that we often find ourselves exhibiting one form of behaviors in one setting and a completely different set in another. While I am not implying that we are being untruthful or immoral in any of these actions, I do suggest that this belittles the complexity of who we are as human beings. We cannot be defined by checking off the boxes that best describe our main interests and personality traits.

In order to navigate this complex terrain we have learned to acclimate to each new circumstance. The chameleon-like ability to do this is held sacred to many. Considering that most of us will now change careers nearly half a dozen times in our lives, this might be thought of as an asset. Conversely, we may want to criticize a culture that vigorously opposes any ambiguities or "seemingly" antithetical beliefs or interests held by an individual. Philosophies and ideologies are far from perfect and it will take our entire lives to decipher our personal belief systems. These will also change and transform over time. The chameleon is, therefore, an accurate portrayal of our human growth and self understanding.

Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville: The Full Weight of the Body

2010-04-04T12:08:00.024-04:00

Rumors concerning the death of painting have perpetually surfaced for half a century now. Yet the pluralism of postmodernism has left sufficient room for this more ancient form of art to remain. That being said, the role of the realist figurative painter seems to shrink a little more each year. In Britain, however, which has tended to champion some of the most innovative and non-traditional artists for the better part of two decades, there remains an unbroken line of figurative painters.

This is not an endless chain of teachers and pupils who pass down a strictly academic style of paint application, technique, and style; rather, there remains a continual fascination with the human form and its attendant psychological trappings. The subject of psychology and matters of the mind naturally brings us to the grandson of Sigmund Freud—Lucian Freud. Freud, the painter, has been hailed by many as the most important contemporary figurative painter for the past few decades.

Psychological states are certainly integral to Freud’s canvases, but physicality is really the dominant feature. The painter’s style, which began in a more surrealist vein, progressed to a maturity based on the physical qualities of the paint itself. By the 1980s the paint was not just a tool employed to present a facsimile of a human form on canvas. The encrustations of the medium and pigment on the canvas surface took on a substantial physicality of their own which bore the fullness of human presence.

The broad view of Freud’s work suggests an interest in humanity’s complexity and dignity. Again, as the work matured, the scenes depicted became less like staged theatrical productions—less like historical or mythological scenes of the past—and more like the focused gaze of an artist within his studio. Aside from strict portraits (most notably his 2001 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II), the bulk of Freud’s paintings are quite obviously models posed within the arena of the artist’s studio.

By stripping away the props and accoutrements of some fictional, staged scene—and often the model’s clothing—Freud directs our focus on the person or persons as he views them. These are typically friends and family members. The artist feels a need to know his models. The result is that his familiarity produces such a high level of vulnerability (on the model’s part) and scrutiny (on the artist’s part) that we are drawn past the magnificent surfaces into the hidden psychological aspects below. This forms a grafting of the physical with the psychological.

Freud’s work is often linked to the confident corporeality of his subjects. Rotund figures with excessive mounds of flesh have become a trademark. At times these figures seem little more than an exercise in the mastery of materials. The protuberances of paint are a stand-in for the folds of flesh, though a mere masterful bravado is seldom the end. The starkness of these immense figures within the limits of the studio space provides a glimpse beyond their sheer fleshiness and beyond that sole trait that we most often associate with an obese figure—the immensity of his or her physical body.

One of Freud’s most notoriously fleshy works—Benefits Supervisor Sleeping—sold at auction from Christie’s in New York in 2008 for $33.64 million.The estimated selling price would have made it the highest selling work by a living artist at that time. Yet all the publicity aside, this painting brings several signature elements of Freud’s work into alignment. The fleshiness and encrusted paint surface are coupled with the placement of the figure inside a studio setting, in a pose that heightens the sense of her physical weight with psychological heft. Still, the work is steeped in the tradition of the male gaze and the complicated heritage that that implies after the introduction of feminist theories.

Fellow Brit Jenny Saville approaches the figure with the sensibilities of a younger generation. She keeps one foot firmly planted in the figurative tradition that includes both Freud and Francis Bacon, but she is also ranked among the YBAs (Young British Artists) who rose to prominence in the mid-1990s. Her contemporaries are artists like Damien Hirst. Both artists were included in the infamous Sensation exhibition that induced cultural tremors when displayed at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999. Saville’s work may seem conservative in comparison to Hirst’s, but something more than a cursory glance reveals shared traits with the other YBAs.

Saville’s images are typically viewed through the lens of feminism, but that is too narrow a construction. The paintings that exhibit lines and shapes drawn onto the naked skin of fleshy females (Plan) imply the pre-surgical markings of a plastic surgeon. The artist actually observed plastic surgeries in the year after her art school studies. While there are connections to body image and the pressures placed on women in contemporary cultures—worldwide and not just in the West—the work is more expansive than that.

Saville’s figures do not merely exhibit a density of flesh, they often allude to severe physical traumas. The figures are wounded at times, yet the viewer is uncertain whether these are self-imposed traumas or the results of living in a tragic, broken world. Hybrid (1997) seems like a patchwork quilt of skin—a body mismatched to its ill-fitting parts. And this idea of not necessarily feeling at one with the body is a recurring theme in Saville’s work.

The displacement is most noticeable in the works of transvestites and transsexuals. There remains a uniquely female gaze, even in these works. To take these specific paintings on their own, divorced from Saville’s entire oeuvre, is to misread them. Saville is not simply concerned with issues of gender identity, nor even the finer points of feminism. Her work rings truer when linked to the universal theme of self identity.

Like Freud, Saville is exploring the linkage of body and soul. The physical weight sensed in a representational style and the inflictions enacted on Saville’s figures both allude to the woundings of the psyche and the immensity of existential crises in modern and contemporary human beings.

The adoption of the figure as the primary image in periods following the rise to prominence of abstraction and non-objectivity can be risky. It has sometimes been aligned with a non-progressive traditionalism that has been touted as irrelevant. The Greenbergian criticisms that still echo through contemporary art criticism favor elements of the chaotic and performative. And while analysis of art in these terms has trickled down to our larger culture in diluted forms like "reality television," it only subtly impacts the thinking of the average person. That is a primary reason why the figure has not disappeared in contemporary art. Its presence acts as a necessary ligament connecting the ordinary person to his or her place in the wider world.

In viewing the paintings of Freud and Saville we are each confronted with more than naked humanity. Ultra-physical bodies resonate with our own primal needs to uncover the complexity of being—physically and spiritually—and the implications that hold sway over our every day existence. This is why figurative work will never go out of fashion; our figure-to-figure relationship with artwork is a basic and necessary human experience.

So abideth these three: faith, hope, and… charity?

2010-03-17T09:30:00.006-04:00

In 2009 my series of saints watercolors was broadened to become a series entitled Saints, Sinners, Martyrs & Misfits. Originally, these small paintings on book pages were a simple extension of my altarpiece constructions. Many of the paintings were of figures already found in those altarpieces. When I extended the watercolor series into a broader concept it was, in part, because of the work I was also doing on a series of etchings, in which I have been exploring some ideas that came from my readings of the Desert Fathers.

The broader concept of the Saints, Sinners, Martyrs, & Misfits has allowed me to conceive of some subplots, as it were, within the series. The images included here compose one of those subplots. Having grown up within a fairly strict evangelical setting, my move to the Anglo-Catholic/Episcopal fold seemed quite a leap to many. The Episcopal Church has been in the news for much of the time since I have made this switch. The controversy that has split the denomination has surrounded the ordination of Gene Robinson as a bishop—the first openly homosexual bishop in a relationship with someone of the same gender.

The controversy over the legitimacy of Robinson’s seat is not really my concern here. I have friends on all sides of the controversy. Some of them are in churches that have led the way in realigning Episcopal congregations under alternate Anglican leadership, sometimes under bishops not even in the United States. Others have been involved in church splits where some wish to weather the storm within the Episcopal tradition and others desire to stay in the Anglican communion, though not in the Episcopal Church proper. There are also my more fundamentalist friends in other denominations who simply throw up their hands and say the Episcopal Church is just an apostate organization and Bishop Robinson’s ordination is proof of its heretical theology. Every one of these stances has strong points within its arguments, but certain people on all sides seem to be missing something in their behavior concerning the tempest—charity.

Along with Gene Robinson, I have produced a watercolor of James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Dr. Dobson—from the Wesleyan Holiness tradition—seems to be the polar opposite of Robinson. And while Dobson’s son Ryan was in my circle of friends during my freshman year of college, I’m not championing one figure over the other. Dobson and Robinson, instead, represent the extremes of this controversy and the ensuing debate.

Somewhere in between is Ted Haggard, former megachurch pastor and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals whose fall from grace, because of an extramarital, gay relationship, left him as a pariah within evangelical circles. He also became the laughingstock of the liberal gay subculture who saw him as the prime example of a hypocritical Christian. All three of these men represent the complexity of this issue but also the extended problem.

Some Episcopalians see Robinson as the figure who will move the denomination forward into an enlightened age. He is a saint in their eyes, even though he is still living. The persecution he has received from some individuals in the press and from some associated with organization’s such as Dobson’s Focus on the Family, has landed him in the role of martyr. Yet some of Robinson’s supporters would be equally willing to vehemently denounce the work of Dobson and his organization, as well as any other conservative evangelical group that upholds traditional biblical interpretations on homosexuality.

On the other side are the evangelical masses who see Dobson as a holy warrior, leading the charge against the demise of the Christian church within America. This powerful political and religious segment of the population has, at times, been represented by individuals who have picketed and shouted threats at prominent gay figures such as Robinson. They are often called to action by people like Dobson, and formerly by Haggard, though their sometimes questionable actions remain their own.

Both Robinson and Dobson are simultaneously elevated as saints and the worst of sinners by those who both support them and oppose them, respectively. They are saints and sinners at the same time. Oddly, this is the position that most any Christian would claim he or she exhibits at any given point in time—saved by grace, but also prone to fall into old, sinful habits. It is one of the many dichotomies of the Christian faith. Haggard personified this dichotomy publicly. He was at the pinnacle of evangelical power and progress while secretly living a double life that eventually destroyed his respect and career. Since that fall, he has restored the relationship with his wife, but has found that conservative Christians (including many from his old congregation) have been far from forgiving and compassionate concerning his plight.

These three works and these three men represent the state of affairs in American Christianity, not just the Episcopal branch of the faith. The gay debate is perhaps just the greatest attention getter, though it is far from the only dividing element. The question is, for those of all theological stances, “How are your actions showing the love of Jesus to those you consider to be your enemies in this debate?”

Just over a year before I made my switch to the Episcopal Church I witnessed something that illustrates this problem well. I was fairly new to Massachusetts and had been asked to present an evening series on art and faith at a church in Boston, over a five week period. This was at the height of the debate on gay marriage in Massachusetts, just before it was legalized by the state legislature. I took the train into the city and rode the subway to the Boston Common (Park Street) station. From there I walked a path past the State House to the church. Every time I passed the State House I witnessed two opposing masses of picketers spewing vitriol at each other (and for the television cameras). I know that there were people on both sides who would have claimed that what they were doing was because of their Christian convictions. I just had a problem finding the countenance of Jesus on any of their faces. It reeked of hatred and not love. No matter what I think of someone’s theological stance, I expect to find compassion and love at the heart of his or her actions if that person claims to be an agent of God’s grace.
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Agent of Controversy

2010-03-05T14:27:00.014-05:00

Somehow I allow myself to forget that the audience of my artwork is often going to be offended by its content. This is the problem of residing within multiple subcultures at the same time. The subculture of the contemporary art world will certainly not be concerned with the nudity I often employ, but the subculture of American Evangelical Christianity overwhelmingly is. Since I keep abreast of the new work and newly acclaimed artists of the contemporary art world, I forget that my, comparatively, rather mild work can seem controversial to some.

When I consider how explicit or intentionally controversial some modern and contemporary works might be to a general audience, the nudity in my work seems quite timid. But the subculture of Evangelical Christianity tends not to pay much attention to what takes place in the contemporary art world, though some of those Evangelicals may have exposure to my artwork. So, while my work would be little more than a blip on the controversy screen of the contemporary art world (for different reasons), it could register as taboo within some Christian circles.

I knew this quite well when I was immersed in the Evangelical environment of my undergraduate days, but I seem to suffer from a cultural amnesia from time to time. It takes some murmuring from inside that camp to call me back to the reality of things. I think the first time this happened was when I was about to graduate from college. I was working on a painted portrait of the college president during my senior year. It wasn’t part of my thesis exhibition, but I had spent several hours in my studio with the president while painting it and he was quite familiar with my other paintings that were scattered around. About a month after my exhibition came down the president revealed to me in a conversation that, while my show was up in the gallery, he had received several calls from concerned or irate parents about the nude paintings. There were only five or six out of about thirty works and they were far from what most anyone would refer to as pornographic. But it did create a little disturbance that the president handled with perfect poise. I should have realized this would be the case as my own family was uneasy with the display of these works.

Once I was in graduate school the nude figures were not even a topic of discussion. I essentially forgot that this could be a problem for some viewers. But it did become an issue again once I took a teaching position at a small Evangelical college in the rural Northwest. Two years into that job I became the director of the campus art galleries. There, I was asked to lead a campus committee in drafting a policy on nudity for the galleries (i.e. why we would never exhibit any work with nudity). My attempt was to offer something a little more progressive in nature, but the process finally stalled and the initiative fell apart. However, that meant that the new altarpiece constructions I was beginning at that time would never be showcased inside the walls of the gallery I programmed.

Though the altarpieces have been exhibited in many venues, including the gallery at a more liberal Evangelical college, the controversy has not subsided. In fact, I was asked to speak about these works for an All Saints Day chapel at that college in 2004. I didn’t think much about this until I sat down to write up the talk, then I realized that the nudity in all the works was going to be problematic for some. I was assured that I could proceed as planned. However, for the next several years I continued to be recognized on campus and in public by students as the guy with the “naked grandmother painting.” That is what you see here.

Admittedly, this work took a little processing for me before I finally decided that the figure of my maternal grandmother needed to be nude so that the work would make sense in the context of the entire series. No one in my family has ever seen this work; it would be upsetting for some of them. I finally decided to place it online because most in my family don’t follow this blog all that closely. My grandmother had already passed away by the time I began work on this image and, obviously, I did not use her body as the model for the work—each figure is pieced together from multiple sources. However, like all the figures from this series, she is being revered through the altarpiece format. My grandmother was supportive of my early artistic endeavors and used to tell me that she wanted to find her old chalk pastels in the attic for me to use—thus the reliquary items.

Back to the college where I gave the All Saints talk. A couple years later I exhibited the altarpieces on campus. Soon after that some friends in the alumni and public relations office asked if they could use an image of one of the pieces for the alumni magazine. It looked very nice within the pages, but several months later, when the followup issue came out, I realized that the display of nudity had not gone by unnoticed. There was a letter to the editor complaining about the use of the image, along with a well reasoned response. I believe this was the only time that my work has been referred to as “art”—and it was art in quotations, so the objecting party did not believe it actually was.

The same thing happened with another Christian-based publication this past year. The editors at Ruminate magazine invited me to have some altarpiece images published within their pages. Several months later I came across the online response to a similar letter questioning the use of the nude figure in these works. I have actually explained my use of the nude in various postings on this blog (The Affliction of Job: Hope for the Battered and Bruised, And why are those people naked…?). I realize that my reasonings will certainly not be adequate for some who will see the work as inappropriate, but I’m used to being seen as controversial by now. There are actually topics tackled within my work that are far more controversial in this world than a nude body.

Ultimately, I never create work to satisfy anyone but myself. I know there will be people who do not like specific works for various reasons. Usually this is a surface reaction made by someone who is not willing to take the time and energy to wrestle with the work and discover a connection or observation he or she never before considered. The best art is never tame and the quirks in my work are an attempt to make the best art that I can.

Fluid Flesh: The Body, Religion and the Visual Arts

2010-01-24T14:27:00.007-05:00

Fluid Flesh: The Body, Religion, and the Visual Arts (Lieven Gevaert Series), Barbara Baert (Ed.), Leuven University Press, 2009

One of the things about [Christianity] is, it is a religion that’s about making things physical, about taking emotional and spiritual ideas and making them physical.
Kiki Smith – from "Kiki Smith," Helaine Posner, 1998

Based on an international cross-disciplinary symposium, this slim volume is composed of essays and several response statements divided into four chapters: the visual as a spiritual medium today; iconophilia/iconoclasm: pro-body/anti-body; the human body, religion and contemporary lifestyles; and premodern and postmodern perspectives on anatomy and the visual arts. Adding weight to the discussion is an introduction by James Elkins whose 2004 book, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art, has set the stage for the current upsurge of interest in this topic, from a variety of camps. Elkins offers a set of four questions as a guide to the discussions that follow. They are questions that we would do well to recall whenever we confront the body within visual art.

Jan Koenot’s essay When the Body Speaks Louder than Words launches the first chapter. Though the author begins with a comparison of the tragically peopled paintings of Francis Bacon with the sublimely sparse color fields of Mark Rothko, these are just a starting point for the thesis. A spectrum of twentieth century and contemporary artists—from Matisse and Beckmann to Laib and Viola—is summoned to support the claims of French postmodernists Derrida and Lyotard. For them, the unreliability of texts has been supplanted by the presence (or absence) of the figure. The relation of the viewer to the human elements in art, both physical and perceived, is what Koenot claims provides the religious or transcendent. Jan De Maeyer’s response to the essay probes Koenot’s ideas with a new set of questions; much like Elkins. De Maeyer wonders whether or not the human body is all we have left, after the attempts of philosophers have left us back at square one. De Maeyer even questions if there ever was or could be a true "religious art." The religious framework has more to do with a time and place, but all art consists of elements that reside outside of the religious.

Diane Apostolos-Cappadona leads off the second chapter with a compelling contrast of the role of the body within the Christian religious art traditions of the East and West, through the formats of icons and relics, respectively. In both cases, the presence of the human figure in religious works gains credence from the incarnation of Christ himself. Grace is imparted through the "window into eternity" of the icon, but also through the effluvia (blood, milk, and tears) related to Christ and the saints. These elements run through the entire essay, though related topics of gender conceptions and northern and southern European body images in art are intriguing side notes. The response by Ralph Dekoninck focuses more on the problem of body representation in Judeo-Christian tradition. He also comments on the contemporary uses of effluvia by artists, often in ways that are meant to replace the conference of grace with debasement.

The third section, by Regina Ammicht-Quinn, emphasizes the peculiar relationship contemporary cultures have with the body. The essay starts with an analysis of a couple artworks from the late fifteenth century that explore the dual roles of the body as the vessel of sin and redemption. This moves into a discussion of how the ideas of duality from antiquity impacted Christian thought, which in turn has influenced contemporary views of the body. This vacillates between a disregard for the health of the physical body on one hand, with an inordinate attention to the body through obsessive dieting, exercise and cosmetics on the other. Renaat Devisch’s response pays particular attention the gender disparities mentioned in Ammicht-Quinn’s work, both in contemporary lifestyles and religious traditions.

Catrien Santing’s essay in the final chapter connects the traditions of anatomical reliquaries of premodern Christianity with the work of several contemporary artists. The emphasis on the actual body, as found in the performative body art of Orlan, complements the theories of French philosopher Michel Onfray, whose work Santing claims welcomes the carnal. Santing delves into the relic-like objects by artists Kiki Smith, as well, finding in them a link from our postmodern times to a mysticism long past.

The final chapter is finished, not with a response, but another fresh essay by Ann-Sophie Lehmann. This fascinating text explores the subject of the lack of prominent female genitalia in the Western tradition. Even fully nude female figures, according to Lehmann, lack representative anatomy. The essay, like many in Fluid Flesh, attacks the subject from outside the field of art history. This approach, a cornerstone of the symposium, makes the dialogue of the book engaging and more wide reaching than theories posited solely from the art historical community.

Casein: Shades of Transparency

2009-12-30T10:59:00.011-05:00

Whether they use them or not, most people are at least familiar with the three primary painting mediums: oil, acrylic, and watercolor. They may not be able to decipher the differences among them, and they probably do not know about the technical distinctions that apply to each painting process, but they know that these are the types of paints artists use. In actuality, these are just the three most well known forms of paint. Acrylic is actually quite recent. Before oil paint was used artists preferred encaustic (wax-based), tempera (egg yolk-based), and even fresco (painting on or in plaster). There are certainly other types of paint, too.

There are reasons why an artist chooses a particular painting medium. Sometimes this initially happens by accident. Perhaps this was the medium a teacher in high school or college preferred. It may be the medium he or she learned while taking a community art class. Eventually, an artist most likely uses a specific painting medium because it possesses certain qualities that are intrinsic to his or her painting process.

For me, the use of casein paint was a combination of things. I saw this water soluble paint, mixed with transparent watercolor, used in a demonstration during my freshman year of college. Some watercolor artists are purists and refuse to mix any opaque paints with their transparent ones. I liked the effect produced by this artist’s demonstration, so I purchased a tube of white casein and experimented.

I tended to stick with oil paint during most of my time as an undergraduate. However, I chose to use watercolor and casein for a pivotal work during my senior year. Taking Salvador Dali’s Corpus Hypercubus as a point of departure, I devised a crucifixion that portrayed a Christ not floating before cubes, but, himself, segmented into squares that floated off the gallery wall. This was really unlike anything else I was creating at the time. In many ways it was the impetus for the work I created during graduate school, and much of the work I have completed in the last decade.

What I discovered as I worked on that early piece was that there was a unique, visceral quality to the combined watercolor and white casein. I could achieve that subtle variation of bluish veins just beneath the surface of the skin in oil paint, but had not found a suitable equivalent with watercolor. The process allowed me to create "fleshier" works, but I was still only using it on occasion.

It was not until the end of the 1990s, when I began to paint on book pages, that the mix of watercolor and casein became a more common medium for me. My work with oil on book pages had revealed that a combination of transparency and opacity were essential when creating a substantial figure that still allowed the text to show through. The layering of transparent and more opaque colors was similar to my work in oil paint.

The main difference between the oil and watercolor work is that I am able to paint directly on the book pages when using watercolor. Works in oil sit on the surface of the paper. Pages must be coated with a clear acrylic medium so that the oil does not create a halo around the image and eventually deteriorate the fragile pages. In a way, when the watercolor stains the book pages the image and the page become one. The words and images are combined into a single unit so that they are closer to the incarnational concept that remains such an integral part of most of my work.

Arshile Gorky: Tales of Transition and Tragedy

2009-12-20T15:44:00.009-05:00

There used to be a bias in the art historical analyses of some Modernists. It was a persistent leftover from earlier periods that suggested the evolution of visual art was moving in a straight line, with a somewhat logical progression. Coincidentally, the pinnacle of achievement in this theory was pure abstraction—the very work those Modernists favored. What a convenient confluence.

Luckily, the lenses of critical theory and Postmodernism’s pluralism have shown that history looks very little like a linear route. The interconnections that can be traced across time tend to unravel more like a knitted sweater, heaped in a jumble of looping strands. And yet, there remain some figures in the story of art who are clearly synthesizers—transitional figures who act as a bridge between periods.

Arshile Gorky, though far from a household name, was one of those key transitional figures. He was also quite a tragic one. It may be the adversity that both brought the best out of Gorky and eventually led to his downfall.

In some ways, Gorky was far from significant or original in his early paintings. One finds the mimetic paintings of his early career to be the same fare as his amateurish contemporaries. Gorky made his way through the pantheon of prominent artists and painting styles of the previous fifty years. His works appear as re-presentations of Cezanne and Picasso. Those familiar shapes and color schemes are simply his method of learning the visual language of Modern form and composition.

Though an Armenian immigrant, Gorky was determined to reinvent himself as a previously accomplished Modernist upon his arrival to the U.S. His state-side name change was meant to strengthen the credibility of his claims. His early geometric abstractions were reminiscent of Russian Modernists like Malevich and Kandinsky. The latter he had even claimed to study under. Yet Gorky was not content to import the styles of the Europeans alone.

The American answer to Picasso’s Cubist forays was found in the jazz-like compositions of Stuart Davis. Davis had landed somewhere between Picasso and the late works of Matisse. Gorky picked up on the hybrid of styles in Davis’ work while he was completing a mural project for the WPA. It was one of many brief stops on his way to the creation of a truly innovative and original style.

Gorky was not the sole European of Mediterranean immigrant artist of his age. The wars in the first half of the twentieth century displaced scores of artists. A large portion of them ended up in New York City and it was in that rich cultural stew that Arshile Gorky simmered. The influence of the Surrealists became the primary element that pushed Gorky into original motifs. It was during this period that he finally began to swap roles—some other artists began to emulate Gorky’s work.

While there were still similarities to the works of Miro, Masson, and Matta, Gorky was beginning to craft his something unique. Paintings like Enigmatic Combat and They Will Take My Island even prefigure the earlier abstractions of Jackson Pollock. Gorky was fully intrigued with Surrealism. He association with the artists of the Julien Levy Gallery allowed him to analyze and experience the major tenets of that movement. But Gorky could never completely adhere to Surrealism’s devices. He liked the idea of automatism, but it was too detached for his tastes. Though his late work appeared to be non-objective, Gorky always favored a classicism that actually led to concepts of mythologizing. This linked his work to the past as much as to his own time. It was his melding together of multiple elements that eventually brought forth a visual language completely his own.

The fluidity if Gorky’s paint, as demonstrated in works like Waterfall and One Year the Milkweed, was clearly an influence on the stain technique of Frankenthaler—and Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, in turn. But this is only one aspect of Gorky’s mature work. The haziness of forms paved the way for Mark Rothko. The haphazard, yet controlled, brush qualities were the model for every stage of de Kooning’s painting.

Unfortunately, Gorky modeled not only a painting style, but a lifestyle for some of these same artists. He peaked at a fairly young age and then his life spun out of control. After his father’s death in 1947, Gorky learned that his wife was having and affair with a Surrealist painter (Matta). He first began talking about suicide in that year. In June 1948 Gorky suffered severe injuries from an automobile accident with gallerist Julien Levy. Within weeks he had hanged himself.

These tales bring to mind the stories of both Rothko and Pollock. Perhaps for all of them, the newfound art world fame was more than they could take. Gorky’s work had a dark cast in his later years—consider Agony of 1947—that would once again appear in Rothko’s late paintings. Both artists ultimately ended their own lives. Tales of Pollock’s out of control behavior that led to his fatal car crash are similar. With each artist the existentialist search for meaning in the work itself seemed to come up empty. So, sadly, they all came to profound visual discoveries that balanced themes of mythology and spirituality, yet failed to satisfy their longings. It makes the work bittersweet and reminds us that art may lead us to the profound ideas of life, but it does not provide a sufficient substitute for real meaning.

"Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective" runs through January 10, 2010 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It then travels to the Tate Modern (London) and the MOCA (Los Angeles)

Permanent Fixtures

2009-11-30T10:07:00.007-05:00

It is somewhat intimidating to begin a new series of paintings. This is especially the case when work seems like sure a radical departure from other current or existing work. And while style changes can prove a greater risk than subject matter, the fear of a lack of acceptance by critics and collectors presents itself like that nagging miniature devil on your shoulder—berating you for attempting anything new, different, or otherwise unacceptable.

I willingly admit that that little apparition spent a good deal of time on my shoulder when I considered a new venture in painting. After all, who would accept Tyrus Clutter as something other than a figurative artist? Isn’t that the brand that has been established for nearly twenty years? Then I had a little discussion with said devil that consisted of arguments on behalf of assemblage/construction works (which are increasingly approaching something far different from traditional figure painting), as well as this proposed series which actually alludes to the figure, though it doesn’t depict it. It was all part and parcel of the same agenda, so there was little point in talking myself out of it.

Nevertheless, I knew that I would need to make a case for the work, and that is what I am doing here. So I begin with the subject matter. Bathroom fixtures. Urinals in particular. I first became interested in depicting them when there was a show at my school (Olivet Nazarene University) during my freshman year of college. It wasn’t all urinal imagery. Only a couple drawings in the exhibit displayed them, but the artist took them out of context and allowed one to see that they did have some aesthetic characteristics that made them beautiful, not just functional. The other thing that has stayed with me from that year is the use of casein paint—a medium I observed in that same exhibit or another. I transferred after the one year, but I am glad to have gained something from the experience.

The question arises—why urinals? It may be more difficult for the female of the species to understand this, since she doesn’t use urinals, but there is an intimate relationship that men have with these objects. They directly relate to our anatomy. They fit us. It may seem rather crude, but it is the nature of the relationship. They openly accept us in our most humble state.

It is when standing before these porcelain structures that men are most vulnerable. We are literally exposed and unable to defend ourselves if need be. All our primal fears rise to the surface. Often, there are partitions between each fixture to create a semblance of privacy. When there are multiple fixtures lined up with no separating partitions it is basically a waste of money since most men observe the unwritten rule that they can’t stand directly next to another man in this vulnerable posture. An open urinal must reside between two men.

Even with this allotted space, the proximate presence of someone else may prove so intense that the intended task cannot be performed. Some men blatantly break the unwritten statutes and engage in idle chit chat with their neighbors. This breach of restroom etiquette can be nerve racking on those with the proverbial "shy bladder." It all reminds me of the time I stopped into a McDonald’s in Amsterdam because public toilets were almost non-existent. I knew McDonald’s would not let me down. They did, however, have an attendant who required a monetary tip for use of her facilities. Luckily, I was able to perform my task even though this attendant walked in to wipe down the sink and counter mid-stream. I was protected because my back was to her, but we weren’t in the red light district so I wasn’t expecting to have to pay someone to observe this very private act. It was unsettling.

You wouldn’t think such a variety of emotions would be attached to such a simple porcelain device. The absence of the figures serves to illustrate the male psyche. It shows how connected our minds (spirits) are to our frail human bodies. We are not dualities but integrated beings.

This series is more about the contemporary American male than that gender in a very broad brushstroke. The discomfort with our bodies is not new, but there is a particularly contemporary strain observed here. Only with the removal of the physical bodies in these images is the full weight of the mental and spiritual completely exposed.

The Puritan strain that runs through American culture makes men quite different from our contemporaries in other world cultures, as well as from men of the past. Americans are far more obsessed with our physical bodies while still overwhelmingly prudish about their functions and processes. We are at once overly sexualized and startlingly priggish at the same time.

This series was created to make this point in a somewhat roundabout way. When an object can convey so much about the people in a culture, in the absence of those very people, it may be time to attend to some things.

Robert Gober: There’s No Place Like Home

2009-11-23T08:45:00.009-05:00

It is the universal qualities of art that draw us to it. The ostensible contradiction is that some of the most obscure and highly personal works and themes can allude to this universality. And if the work does not stem from the personal experience of the artist, it will be less likely to deeply connect with viewers. The best work finds a way to subtly bridge the gap.

Robert Gober’s idiosyncratic artistic vocabulary is one of the most unique among artists of the last few decades. His language is not impenetrable, but it tends to be somewhat obscure. Being heavily based in personal experience, it cannot be fully know or completely translated. Yet the overwhelming humanity in the work produces a felt empathy, even when we fail to digest the broader complexities.

The very human characteristics in Gober’s work are often found in the wax body parts that populate his environments. Legs, injected with real hairs, produce an eerie likeness to actual human legs. Placed in corners or protruding from walls, they draw associations with Dorothy’s visit to Oz (minus the ruby slippers) as well as with dismembered corpses.

In Gober’s figures we tend to find only bits and pieces, never complete bodies. Placed in odd diorama-like settings, these produce dream-like dislocations in which the elements of the bodies elicit recollections of persons or experiences, nearer to flashes of suppressed memories. The dismembered figures signal the traumatic. When one considers that most of the work also contends with domestic life, the work is even more unnerving.

The domestic arena, for Gober, presents a contradiction to our concepts of security. The home is the place when children crave safety and form their understanding of life’s systems from what is lived out before them. The security in Gober’s works is skewed. It can sometimes mutate into a form of containment. Often, we find the adult, the parent, or the guardian presence compromising the safe haven.

Gober’s X Playpen provides an obvious example of this contradiction. A playpen is produced as a structure of safety that inhibits the range of movement of the child, so that he or she does not come to any harm. Gober’s structure of restraint not only inhibits movement, it suggests a prison and an apparatus that might even inflict harm. Still, this is a very physical example of what Gober more often advances through clever psychological means.

The disembodied wax legs touch on various psychological traumas based in the domestic realm. They come in many formats. Sometimes clothed with trouser legs, socks, and shoes, at other times they are bare. The separation of the limbs from the body can be conceived in several ways. The head is almost never present in Gober works. If the family is viewed like a body—a living organism whose parts are dependant on each other—then the absence of the head can be seen as an absence of the authority in the family. The deficiency of direction normally provided by the head leaves the remaining members lost.

The dismemberment may also be read like the psychological phenomenon of splitting or suppressing memories. Multiple personalities are the extreme of this, but we all do this compartmentalizing to some extent. When trauma is present the individual may dissociate the event or black it out. This becomes the security for the wounded or injured psyche. Psychological splits—severings—are the coping mechanism.

On the other side of this dismemberment of the family lies the tragic instigations by the guardian figure. Gober’s reconsideration of traumatic domestic settings reveals a dereliction of duty. The parent figure, the one entrusted to provide security, has abdicated that role. Instead of self-sacrifice on behalf of beloved offspring, the authority figure has chosen self-preservation (consider Gober’s image of a fireplace fueled by a set of child-sized log/legs). It is this dynamic that provides a recurring theme for Gober’s work, though the intricacies and personal provocations manifest themselves in a variety of iconographic forms.

This dismemberment coincides with a concurrent track within Gober’s work—Roman Catholicism. The Catholic faith, like several other belief systems intermingled from his youth, is something the artist has jettisoned from his life. Still, it provides a structure on which he rebuilds. The inconsistencies of the institutional faith are critiqued, yet held in reverence.

A 2005 installation by Gober, at the Matthew Marks Gallery, is a primary example of his strained relationship with Catholicism. The central element of the work is a life-sized, crucified, cement Christ figure. The figure is not only "broken" because of its crucified state; it is beheaded. This brings to mind the beheaded statues from the Protestant Reformation. Like the iconoclasts of the 16th century (and the practitioners of countless ancient religions) Gober has rendered this deity mute and powerless. Like the family analogy above, the Church has been likened to a body, with Christ as the head. Here, the authority of the Church is, at the very least, brought into question. The real presence of the institution’s actual power is gone.

The other startling oddity in the Christ figure is that the nipples are open and act as spouts for a continual flow of water that empties into a hole in the floor. The imagery is as paradoxical as Christ’s statement that he is "living water." This fountain relates to many other Gober works that also utilize water—or even bring water to mind through that element’s absence. Like the sacrament of baptism, the water in a Gober work is connected to a ritual cleansing or purifying.

The difficulty in assessing Gober’s full body of work is figuring out if this is a mute symbol—an ironic nod to the futility of a ritual act of cleansing—or an honest grappling with the form. Of course, it may be both. In the myriad sink sculptures (fabricated from enameled plaster with hand-crafted, cast pewter or bronze faucets and drains) many of the sinks lack plumbing. Their convoluted basin configurations often preclude the containment of water. They hint at the transition from dirty to clean—death to life—but they lack the means by which to enact this transformation. Again, they are flawed objects from a domestic setting/system that fail to live up to their promises.

Elsewhere, the presence of water provides further contradictions. Water is a key element in Gober’s 1997 installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (now in the permanent collection of the Schaulager Museum in Switzerland). The central image of this installation is a nearly life-sized figure of the Virgin Mary (again, in concrete, like the image of Jesus—concrete defined by its cold, immoveable, and unforgiving nature) with a drainage pipe bisecting its abdomen, and standing over a large storm grate. There is no actual water present within this figure, but it is still part of the equation. Mary is literally a conduit. But of what? The gift of the incarnate deity? Grace? Our prayers and supplications? It is hard to know.

Water is, however, an active part of the rest of the installation. Inset in the wall behind Mary is a doorway that reveals an ascending wooden staircase. Rushing down the stairs and emptying into a hole in the floor are countless gallons of water. Is this a stairway from heaven that represents Christ’s journey from heaven to earth? Ascent of the stairs is treacherous, if not impossible. Maybe the cleansing act is found in the near impossible journey heavenward. But if our ascent is blocked by water, so is our descent.

On each side of the statue of the Virgin is a vintage suitcase, open. Peering into these we find storm grates in the floor. Beneath the surface can be seen aquatic plant life and a partial view of a man and child. All of these are submerged in water and all are studio fabricated elements. The scenes appear somewhat Edenic, but our full visual access is blocked by the storm grates. These are surely passages. They allude to a journey through their access via the suitcases.

We find wondrous things when looking beneath the surface. It is a world teeming with life. It is almost untouched by the hands of humans. Still, this is also a sewer. The water runoff surely contains all the impurities washed from the surface above. It is difficult to discern which environment is better—the one above or below. And this uncertainty is a reflection of Gober’s investigations of the domestic environment. Often, what first seems true and right might contain inconsistencies and vagaries.

Gober’s iconography draws enough associations with reality that we can decipher some of the artist’s intent. His exhibitions are like a Rosetta Stone, providing a key to translate the language of our contemporary culture and the obstacle course of the domestic setting. Gober’s work is not didactic. It reveals inconsistencies and uncovers our common questions. It does not seek to answer those questions, but reveal them. The answers only come when we begin to ask the right questions.

Travels Along the Road of Life

2009-11-16T12:32:00.005-05:00

The spike in gasoline prices over the past couple years has certainly put a spotlight on transportation costs. Those living in major metropolitan centers have long been accustomed to mass transportation. While some of the debate includes proposals of alternative energies and less individual automobile use, the reality is that some parts of the U.S. will simply cease to be inhabited if we have to cut back on automobile use (not to mention pickup and SUV use).

These places are just not walkable. Personally, I like to live in a walkable area. This is one of the things I love about Boston. Whether I would drive into Boston and park or take the commuter train, I would usually walk from place to place and take the T (subway) if I had to go very far. Once, when my cousin was visiting, we ended up walking most of the Freedom Trail, starting in Boston Common and walking to the North End and back, then to the South End and back. It was a great way to see the city and I never would have found one of my favorite bow ties if we hadn’t passed an out-of-the-way men’s store on foot.

I will confess, however, that my primary joy in walking is the discovery of odd stuff along the way. I’m not an outdoorsy person, so my walks do not typically involve any investigations of the wonders of nature. I prefer walking through urban areas where I can come across some of the strangest objects you can imagine.

This scavenging for trash started at an early age, much to the dismay of my parents. We lived two houses down from the elementary school where my mother taught. Once, just days after school let out for the summer, my sisters and I happened upon an overflowing dumpster at the school. I no longer recall what we brought home, but something beyond repair, which had once, no doubt, been in my mother’s classroom, was probably among the newfound treasures. It was matched the excitement of a trip to the candy store and toy store rolled into one.

In Florida, I have to wait until the winter months to go on these trash hikes. It is not as enjoyable to search for these items drenched in perspiration while developing a severe sun burn. I did manage to pick up a few items on a recent walk. I have been considering incorporating a mosaic made from the shattered remnants of taillights and turn signals. which tend to collect at intersections. I did find some bits for that on my five mile trek, but I need to clean up several accident sites before that project can go into production.

The best find on that journey was parts from a couple different cell phones. They are obviously a little beaten up, as one would expect with something found on the side of the road. I always imagine a scenario that accompanies roadside cell phones. It involves a teenage couple—or perhaps a very immature couple in their twenties—in a heated argument inside a car. Likely, one is jealous and when that one wrong person calls, the phone is apprehended by the jealous party and tossed through an open window of the moving vehicle. Maybe this is another indictment against our gasoline powered culture, but I think it has more to do with selfish people who can’t manage their relationships.

Cell phones are a nice convenience and I am grateful to have one on a long roadtrip, as insurance if anything goes wrong. However, cell phones are one of many elements that comprise the broken state of contemporary interpersonal communications. We do not connect deeply and effectively in our relationships. Quick, needless cell phone calls and many text messages often do more to erode our relationships than strengthen them. And I’m not even touching on the inherent problems of email.

Even the best advances of technology become mute hunks of plastic and metal when they end up under the tire of a car. Quick, short communications have become commonplace. These virtual conversations often take place in public settings and tend to cause the persons involved to momentarily abort their in-person communications. How often is a Twitter message more important than a business lunch or the one-on-one conversations people have on a date?
It seems that many in our contemporary society fear real intimacy. It takes time, effort, and concentration to really get to know another person. It takes the same effort to be known by another. Communications technologies provide the illusion that we are deeply communicating. However, quantity of communication should never be confused with quality. And the very private details of a life that are sometimes broadcast on Facebook and Twitter are a far cry from true intimacy.

Maybe all this is why I like to walk. These days walking is intentional. We often do it because we want to, not because we have to. We move at the pace of the natural world. Perhaps it is time to remember what a human pace really is. Living in our physical bodies is not convenient, but it is a life based on the parameters that we have been given.

Frances Trombly & Conrad Bakker: The Value of the Overlooked

2009-11-09T11:17:00.007-05:00

For centuries, two primary and essential qualities of artworks produced in the traditions of Western cultures were that they were highly mimetic and well crafted. For many, these still remain definitive elements for any artwork. Once artists began measuring the quality of a work by additional and alternative standards, however, the game changed. Materials came into question. An intentional, apparent lack of craftsmanship held weight as a legitimate conceptual concern. And, of course, representation became only one of multiple options.

Some contemporary artists have brought these traditions full circle. For them, the irony associated with a return to the representational, through high levels of craftsmanship, results in a fitting commentary on culture. Two American artists, one female and one male, are currently utilizing this approach as a way to call the viewer back toward an attention to detail.

Miami-based Frances Trombly produces work that is firmly rooted in the Feminist art of the 1970s. Her materials and processes are an extension of that aesthetic. For earlier artists, such as Miriam Schapiro, the utilization of fabric, sewing, and embroidery was directly tied to the traditional place women were assigned within society. These female artists used processes considered to be "women’s work" as an avenue to call attention to the lesser state to which women had been relegated. The intricacy and attention to detail of such works proves that these, and the works of their anonymous forebears, deserve equal scrutiny and accolades among the traditionally accepted artworks within the canon.

Trombly employs similar processes as the first generation Feminists, yet her considerations cover a broader range. There is a tinge of environmentalism, though probably a deeper concern with consumerism. The artist relies on processes that would traditionally be placed within the category of craft. She weaves the cloth that composes the substrate for additional embroidery work. In other works she knits or crochets non-utilitarian forms that appear, at first glance, to be consumer goods.

Consider both Garden Hose and Extension Cord. Each crocheted tube is produced as a stand-in for its namesake. The reproduction of a mundane, practical object, through time-intensive and craft-oriented means, is a nearly opposite strategy than that employed by so many other contemporary artists. Tim Hawkinson, for instance, has used actual orange extension cord—woven together—to create a pair of shorts. Both artists are fashioning somewhat innocuous items to be designated as objects of fine art. Trombly, however, seems to establish objects within a more camouflaged, everyday experience and environment.

Many of Trombly’s other works bear witness to the disposable quality of contemporary culture. These works may be camouflaged even more successfully because they initially appear as cast-off items--debris. Their placement is an essential consideration for their success. Paper Corner consists of what appear to be more than a dozen sheets of lined notebook paper, crumpled and tossed into the corner. In reality, these are sheets of fabric that the artist has woven on a loom. The likeness, in both thickness and coloration, to actual notebook paper disguises the work so effectively that one would likely bypass it if not for its location within a gallery. Receipt (Publix) exhibits the same properties. In this instance, not only has the artist woven the thin length of fabric, she has also meticulously embroidered the tally of supermarket items on the faux receipt.

It is in works like these that Trombly best calls into question the perceived disposable nature of our culture. What else do we bypass in our daily routines, considering it as unimportant and of no value? To press the issue further Trombly has produced several garbage bags or trash can liners. These drawstring bags are composed of hand-woven fabric which is then sewn together into fully functioning objects. She goes so far as to place one inside an actual garbage can (Trash Can)—making it ready to receive authentic trash.

The subject of trash receptacles and garbage bags manifests itself within the work of Conrad Bakker, as well. Bakker’s work fails to exhibit the qualities of Feminist ideology so integral to Trombly’s, though concepts of consumerism and commodity are a priority. Bakker seeks to camouflage his works, too, but he often places pieces into situations and surroundings of everyday life so that they may be used or "consumed." But these are mute items that fail to function as their prototypes. Under the general heading of Untitled Projects, these works turn the concept of consumerism upside down.

Untitled: [Dumpster] is a full-sized construction dumpster sculpted from wood and painted to look exactly like the real thing. Placed outside of the School of Art building on the campus of the University of Illinois-Chicago, the sculpture was ultimately treated as its prototype when refuse was tossed into it. Again, as with Trombly, it takes more than perfunctory recognition to understand that this object is not what it seems.

Bakker’s garbage bags appear in the guise of a box of "Hefty" trash bags, again, sculpted in wood and painted to appear to be the genuine item. The artist retains a certain amount of the hand crafted in these works. They are not quite as slick and smooth as mass produced products would be. These "commodity" works are placed on store shelves next to their real life kin, photographed, and left. So the unique object, considered as culturally and economically valuable, is offered at the price of the mass produced consumer good.

More pointed references to the consumerist basis of a capitalist society are found in a more recent work entitled COMMODITY [Capital]. This sculpture mimics a volume of "Capital" by Karl Marx. Interestingly, this work, shown at the exhibition The Irresistible Force at the Tate Modern, finds its placement in one of the world’s most elite contemporary art venues. The Tate’s role in the rise of the YBAs (Young British Artists) through the Turner Prize provides an evocative foil against which to consider Bakker’s work. The trends toward excessive pricing and realized auction amounts, so often associated with YBAs like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, is countered by a work that calls our systems of valuation into question.

One final work by Conrad Bakker fully exhibits the playfulness and generosity that resides at the heart of the Untitled Projects. REFRESHMENT [Art Chicago] was equal parts installation and performance. Produced for the Art Chicago art fair, the work consisted of a simulation of a child’s lemonade stand. The card table, sign, cups, and Kool-Aid were all carved from wood and had painted to mimic a refreshment table for the wandering art connoisseurs and collectors.

Bakker sat at the table and sold individual cups of painted, wooden Kool-Aid to passersby for twenty-five cents each. There is obvious humor here, as there is in Trombly’s work. Refreshment provides an interactive component that more fully engages Bakker’s target audience. Those in attendance at a contemporary art fair know the rules of the game. They get the ironic references in contemporary art and are aware of the enormous sums paid for some of those same works. In a system where the middleman—the dealer—is often the contact person for the collector, Bakker has removed a layer and provided a confrontation that is not simply between the art and the collector, but with the artist himself—the originator of the idea.

In all the works discussed the hand crafted, representational nature is employed to hide the work from view. The viewer is caused to question not only our systems of valuation in the marketplace, but our unconscious valuations of life’s intangibles. The exquisite properties of those things that do not shout loudly for attention are possibly those things we most need. Family, friends, and those people who perform the lowliest tasks of life are truly the needful things.

The work of Conrad Bakker is also discussed, along with the work of several other artists, in Tyrus Clutter's essay Material Presence: The Sacramental in Art, featured in the SEEN journal, volume IX.2, 2009.

The Affliction of Job: Hope for the Battered and Bruised

2009-11-02T18:01:00.004-05:00

I began planning my Affliction of Job series in 2003. That was the year I took the reference shots for the paintings. I didn’t actively paint works for the series for several years. I drew the images but time constraints kept me from completing them. I have recently been finishing up this project and have been able to digest the concept more thoroughly. The ideas always evolve over time.

I have been painting on a variety of old book pages over the past several months. The way each book’s pages reacts to the watercolor is unique. Some pages are slick and the color sits on top of the words, pooling up in halos of pigment. Other pages are over-absorbent. With them, it is difficult to control the intensity of the color and retain precise edges.

The Hebrew Bible pages used for the Job series are brittle with age (printed in the 1880s). They can crack or chip. They are also yellowed from time which causes the outer edges of the pages to produce a duller color than the one applied. The fragile quality of the paper is a perfect match to the story of Job. Our frail physical bodies are pushed and pulled in this world, showing the effects of time and wear to all who observe.

This series was always about suffering. And while the human body is utilized as the primary vehicle for the expression of that suffering, the works do not solely reflect the physical. The full anguish of Job was presented in the entanglement of his physical pain, along with the losses of material possessions and beloved family members. It was psychological and spiritual grief, too.

The solitary images of the Job figures, shrouded in darkness, convey his lonely plot in life. He suffers alone. His wife and friends abandon him. They cease to console him as insult is added to injury. At last, Job is isolated in an abyss where he finds that it seems even God is mocking him.

Job is that first literary figure to experience a dark night of the soul. He is the shining example of one confronted with the inevitable truth that we are utterly alone in the universe. Well, maybe not fully alone. You see, Job realizes that, while he needs people, he can’t ultimately count on them. He also understands that he is more than a mere physical body. When his frustration gets the better of him he presents his argument to God. God’s response is that Job is not the Creator nor the Sustainer of life. His mortal existence cannot fathom the intricacies of the universe and the reasons why life might seem unjust.

One thing that marks this series is that Job, as a figure, is never fully separated from God. Like the pigments on the paper, he is pushed and pulled. His form becomes misshapen, flattened, wrinkled, and flattened again. His form bears the marks of this abuse and in his torment and shame, he hides his face from view. Yet Job, like all of us, is never abandoned by God. The very words of God are woven through his being. And this is the hope of the story of Job—no matter how abandoned and dejected we feel, we are never really alone.

Subdodh Gupta: Reflections of a Culture in Flux

2009-10-26T11:59:00.003-04:00

The global economy is here to stay. Often, we are unaware of just how much globalization impacts nearly every hidden corner of our lives. While we all became more cognizant of the effects of a world market on our individual lives and fortunes when the stock market took its massive dive, most people are unaware of how globalization has impacted the contemporary art market. The steady growth in the importance of contemporary Asian art has been a prominent topic within the art world for a decade. Most of the conversation tends to focus on art from China. Even though China is the recognized economic powerhouse, the economy of India has seen a similar expansion.

A popular theme for many of the contemporary Asian artists is the rapid industrialization and Westernization of these cultures, along with the impact that has had on societies that were overwhelmingly rural until quite recently. These are also societies that were steeped in philosophical and religious traditions far different from their Western counterparts. The ensuing culture clash has placed these societies on somewhat shaky ground, while the art of these cultures has been catapulted to an almost equal footing with that of leading Western artists.

Subdodh Gupta, an Indian artist of international renown, produces work that traverses this tightrope of a culture in continual flux. Gupta, now in his mid-forties, grew up in a more traditional, rural village in India. The span of his lifetime has witnessed incredible shifts and changes in Indian society. Gupta uses the language of contemporary art, along with materials from traditional Indian life, to weave together works that investigate these cultural paradoxes.

The tradition of the Readymade—popularized by Dadaist Marcel Duchamp—is often referenced when critics discuss the work of Gupta. Duchamps’s Readymades, which brought into question the suitability of materials and the choice of the artist in the designation of an object as art, set the agenda for much of the work produced in the twentieth century. It is Duchamp who is ultimately responsible for the abundance of contemporary artworks that, in the eyes of many viewers, do not actually seem to be "art." Because Gupta incorporates everyday objects into his sculptural works this is a fair assessment. However, Gupta’s penchant for compiling multiples of similar objects is better compared with the works of Arman. And like Arman, the masses of everyday objects take on a heightened sense of significance within Gutpa’s sculptures and installations.

One of the perennially favorite objects that Gupta places in accumulations within his works is the metal cooking and storage vessel—the tiffin pot. The vast majority of contemporary Indians have carried their lunches in these pots while growing up. They are also used for food storage within the home. In many ways the pots act as an equalizing element within the artist’s work. Indian citizens from all different classes or castes would have a personal relationship to these pots. The mass quantities allude to the burgeoning industrialization of the Indian society. Their shiny metal appearance—in stainless steel, aluminum, copper or brass—is more in keeping with a technologically advanced society than a rural, agrarian life.

That reflective surface is not just a seductive aesthetic element but the mirror that Gutpa places before his fellow Indians. What does the contemporary Indian see when gazing into the reflections of these vessels? Images act like a house of mirrors at the carnival—they are distorted and seemingly unnatural. The images bear a resemblance to things known but they are cast into new and unfamiliar forms. Indians see their not so distant past in light of a rapidly transforming present.

Many assemblages of tiffin pots are simple recontextualizations of the materials. Like Tracey Emin’s infamous bed, Gupta’s pots bring the contents of the home into the gallery. Unlike Emin’s work, the pots are void of personalized nuances. These are not Gupta’s private cooking pots but the kitchen utensils of the millions. They are blank canvases upon which each individual Indian places his or her own memories of a life that is disappearing and a culture that is in a constant state of flux.

While Gupta may incorporate pots into assemblages that appear like transplanted corners of a modern Indian kitchen (similar to Damien Hirst’s Pharmacy works) others transcend the day-to-day utilitarianism to become something else. Cheap Rice gathers dozens of tiffin pots with another familiar object from Indian society—the rickshaw. The seat for the passenger in this rickshaw is overflowing with pots. There is barely room for someone to even pedal the mass of pots to a destination. Again, thoughts of caste are brought to mind. The wealth and position of those in a higher caste—those who have the means to possess an overabundance of food—is pitted against the poorer, lower caste worker who would provide this kind of transportation. Yet the rickshaw can also be seen as the vehicle of modernization that is pulling the masses within Asian cultures into an industrialized, mechanized, and technologically advanced world.

Very Hungry God (2006) may well be Gupta’s answer to Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God (2007). Instead of creating a skull from diamonds, Gupta, once again, utilizes the tiffin pots. The concept of vanitas is part of the theme of both works. Interestingly, Gupta is co-opting this concept from the West. True, the skull makes appearances in Indian art from the past several millennia, but the use of a sparkling skull made from reflective surfaces cannot be separated from the history of art in the West. This is one of the aspects of the global art world that is being worked out day-by-day. Postmodernist theories had already begun to break down the barriers between cultures over the past few decades. The internet and the world economy have diminished further distinctions.

Art and artists of the West began to highly value elements of Eastern culture and society in the twentieth century, and even as early as the mid-nineteenth century. Artists like Mark Tobey studied Asian calligraphic techniques as they perfected their own brands of abstraction. And now the reverse is happening as the East has opened more and more to the West. The hybridizing may be pushing us to a "world art" that lacks the distinctions that were natural when physical borders kept cultures in isolation. That isolation is all but forgotten now. The click of a computer’s mouse puts people from around the globe in touch with elements of cultures that were overwhelmingly unknown decades ago.

What Gupta’s work is able to do is focus on some questions. Like the best art in any culture, it doesn’t answer questions so much as ask the right ones. Is this rapidly changing world where cultural distinctions blur good or bad? Does the homogenization allow us to take the best from each society to make a better overall human experience, or does the loudest voice with the biggest bank account win out? It doesn’t matter so much whether be reside in the East or the West, these are the questions that need to be considered as we move forward in an ever-changing world.

Saints, Sinners, Martyrs, & Misfits

2009-10-19T11:27:00.004-04:00

We don’t hear much about saints anymore. Every now and then we hear about someone who is considered a hero. For instance, a common citizen may risk his or her life to save another in harm’s way. Though we are more likely to hear about a figure in the world of sports who is a hero to young children, most of those “role models” do not accurately fill the role of hero. Still, in a world where few figures seem to don the attire of the saintly, we would do well to consider what a saint actually is.

I began investigating the concept of the veneration of saints about a decade ago when I was in the planning stages of my altarpiece constructions of personal saints. Not having been raised in an environment where the idea of canonized saints was ever entertained, I had to do a bit of research. The definition of veneration is: “to look upon with deep, honor, respect, or reverence.” As I looked at the lives of the traditional saints I began to understand that these were folks who were equally flawed as the rest of us. They were not some race of superheroes. The canonized saints were simply people who had aspects of their lives that were considered holy or “Christ-like.” Those are the attributes that we should be considering and striving to emulate in our own lives.

I have concurrently worked on some portraits of “non-canonized saints,” painted with watercolor on book pages, and with gold leaf halos. This started as a different avenue to consider some of these “personal saints” but began to evolve, as art is prone to do. I wanted to branch out into some new directions with the series. However, some of the people I began to consider were going to be a stretch for many. They seemed much less saintly, sometimes even to me. That is when the idea of Saints, Sinners, Martyrs, & Misfits came to me.

Some of the figures are people that I have recognized many Protestants unknowingly venerating. Take C.S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, for instance. Evangelical Christians hold the same kind of reverence for these two figures that many a Roman Catholic or Orthodox Christian would for the canonized saints of the past. And that isn’t a bad thing, but let’s call a spade a spade, here. We all have people in our lives that we look up to—people we wish we were more like. I don’t mean those people who are wealthy and seem to lead “the good life,” but those whose character is something that truly impresses and inspires us.

So when I start featuring figures like Andy Warhol, the plot thickens. Much has been written about the place of religion and faith in the life of Andy Warhol. The big picture of his biography does not suggest that he was the most saintly man, in the traditional sense. Still, there is something intriguing about his regular attendance at church services. There is also something endearing about the way he seemed to be a father to the rejected and dejected individuals who made their way to his Factory. In a certain way, he was a bright spot in the art world for several decades.

Without spoiling the surprises of future subjects for this series, I need to offer some comments on the Sinners and Misfits portion of the title. The individuals all fit that description to a certain degree. None of them were or are perfect. None of them were fully comfortable in this world. This is all part of the scheme. None of us feels like we really fit into this world, and we all know the mistakes we make, the wrongs and hurts we inflict on others. The Sinners and Misfits are equally the Saints and Martyrs, and vice versa. These people bring us all hope. The hope based in the fact that we are not in this life alone. There are others who live in some ways better than us, but in other ways worse than us. We muddle through together, and sometimes we are the saint to someone else.

God in the Gallery: Dan Siedell's Thoughts on the State of Modern Art

2009-10-12T17:59:00.006-04:00

Daniel Siedell’s recent book God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art (Cultural Exegesis)is based on a premise that has been, in his opinion, largely overlooked within the field of art and faith. According to Siedell, the Christian community has tended to offer scholarship on art and faith from primarily two perspectives: theology and philosophy. While these are both valid lenses through which to view modern and contemporary art, the author argues that the rift between traditional Christian faith and the contemporary art world is in large part due to the lack of engagement with the art world by Christians via the established structures of the subculture of the art world (i.e. art criticism).

Siedell grounds the discussion in an evaluation of the enigmatic figure of the “Christian artist.” He suggests that the term, as it is currently understood or misunderstood, arose out of the work of Francis Schaeffer and Hans Rookmaaker in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. While not diminishing the importance of these men in reengaging evangelicals in the Christian calling to the arts and culture, Siedell argues that the result has been a parallel “Christian art world” that offers an alternative to the presumed destructive Modernism of which Schaeffer and Rookmaaker were so critical. This alternative art world, safe within the embrace of the church, has been nurtured and expanded, in Siedell’s estimation, through institutions such as Christian college and university art departments and organizations like CIVA.

The author suggests that there is indeed an auxiliary route that artists and scholars within the church may pursue than this parallelism. The production of artwork and criticism using the vernacular of the art world, without the caveat that it must serve a specific evangelistic purpose, is one possibility. In terms or criticism, Siedell offers an overview of the two main paths of criticism that have continued since the mid-twentieth century, those of Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg.

Refreshingly, Siedell advocates an art criticism that is nourished by Nicene Christianity. Using this approach the critic may acknowledge the transcendent qualities of works that, while not necessarily created by professing Christians, may function as a window to the eternal, much in the way that a Byzantine icon does. In fact, Siedell draws this very comparison and gives a stirring commentary on just how similar ancient icons are to many forms of contemporary art. Among the numerous examples of this practice is a chapter based on Siedell’s 2005 presentation at the CIVA biennial conference on the artist Enrique Martínez Celaya.

While this is essentially a book on and about art criticism, it is also a book that is somewhat critical of the current state of Christianity in relation to art. Siedell offers more questions than he answers but this is indicative of this period in which a shift is beginning to take place within the so-called “Christian art world.” Whether or not one agrees with his hypotheses, this volume is a welcome and essential addition to the literature on art and faith that has been written since the days of Rookmaaker and Schaeffer.

Daniel Siedell’s God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Arts was published by Baker in 2008. This book review first appeared in the CIVA SEEN journal, volume VIII.2, 2008.

Floating to Earth: The Multifaceted Art of Carolyn Shadid-Lewis

2009-10-05T15:36:00.005-04:00

Art exists to put into visual form something that words alone cannot express. Sometimes it is actually a combination of elements that come together to create this expression, but when the various pieces are amassed, something much larger is uncovered. It is a privilege to see those elements coming together. Few have the benefit of observing this somewhat private practice. I had the opportunity to view the various stages of production of a recent work by Carolyn Shadid-Lewis. The following is a glimpse of her creative process.

Shadid-Lewis is an interdisciplinary artist. Her background as a child growing up in a military family weighs heavily on her art production. Particularly during a time of war, this insider’s view provides a tenderness that is often overshadowed by artists who are prone only to protestations of military action. While the work may expose the devastating toll that war takes on individuals, it does not dismiss the magnitude of the honorable service provided by those same persons.

A prelude to the recent piece was a site-specific installation Shadid-Lewis created at the National Cemetery at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. In this work the artist gleaned from her background in music, as well as from her religious heritage. Extended on a Cursed Tree (2006)—the title of the piece—is an excerpt from a hymn. The artist hung various texts, outtakes from hymns that were stamped into dog tags, on the branches of a tree in the cemetery. The text-based work is reminiscent of works by artist Jenny Holzer. Both artists take snippets of longer texts out of their original contexts and require the viewer to rethink their meanings in light of a new context. In the distance of Shadid-Lewis’s piece are the endless rows of white grave markers. They are similar to the rows of white crosses one conjures up when thinking of the National Cemetery in Arlington.

In the video footage of this piece, dog tags sway gently in the breeze as rows of graves assume the role of an audience in the background. Each grave is a symbol of sacrifice. Like Christ, these service men and women were willing to be placed in harm’s way—willing to be sacrificed for the good of countless others. Christ and those represented by the grave markers are the appeasement that purchases the freedom of others.

It is in From Twilight Til Dawn (2009) that Shadid-Lewis is able to show the fullness of her interdisciplinary talents. The installation is one part drawing, one part music, one part documentary, and a whole lot of ephemerality. The work was created while the artist was working on her MFA at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. I visited her studio as the piece was in progress. Small portions of the project were in various states of completion about the room, but the room itself was a determining factor in how the piece was eventually resolved. The room was draped in ripstop—the fabric from which parachutes are constructed.

Even at this stage of production a video was a major part of the concept. The artist wondered whether or not projecting onto the fabric was the way to go. I assured her that it was an important consideration. The wispiness of the fabric was an indicator of the ephemeral nature of our existence. The billowing of the fabric, produced at the slightest movement of air currents, was like the pulsating of blood through the body.

At the core of the video is an interview with a WWII era paratrooper. His stories are interspersed with interviews with the artist’s father and vintage footage of hundreds of paratroopers wafting toward the ground. There is a stillness and serenity that comes from observing the earthward journey of the jumpers. But there is also a tension. The viewer recognizes that this is a time of calm before the storm. Once on the ground that serenity will be rudely interrupted.

In the final state this video is projected onto a plastic screen adjoining the ripstop fabric. Again, the peaceful though fragile state of human existence is mimicked through a room draped in parachute fabric. The fragility is enhanced through the blackboard style drawings that are interspersed with the shots of paratroopers and interview footage. The animated stop-action drawings bring to mind the work of William Kentridge. Shadid-Lewis relies on the ephemeral quality of these drawings to bolster the message running throughout the work. A particularly poignant segment comes near the end when the retired paratrooper fades from the screen. After emotionally stating his perennial question, "Why me? Why did I survive instead of others?," he fades from view. The chair where he was sitting comes into focus as a chalk drawing and that drawing is slowly erased to nothing. Though he is an elderly man, the viewer realizes that life is a fleeting thing, no matter how long we live.

The rewind effect that takes place in this segment, and in others near the end of the piece, is highly effective. We rewind scenes from our lives over and over in our minds. They are always with us, yet they are also fleeting moments in a timeline spanning much more than our solitary lives. The time-based nature of the installation, coupled with the presence of the flowing fabric, produces a more physical reaction to the work. Shadid-Lewis is able to utilize the inherent qualities of several media into one overwhelming and powerful message. One message that would be muted without the support of various elements together.

Art: Not Just for the Fun of It Anymore

2009-09-08T17:45:00.006-04:00

The romanticized concept of the isolated artist, misunderstood by society and toiling away during fits of creative ecstasy and inspiration, has been equally damaging for both our broader society and artists. I have often had conversations with students concerning this misrepresentation of the life of the artist. Their preconceptions frequently provide a seemingly satisfactory scapegoat when a given project for a class is either stalled or unfinished at the time of critique. The excuse comes in the form of blaming the muse—i.e. they didn’t “feel like” creating at that particular time; there was no inspiration.

Art school provides a slap in the face to some, or at least a wake up call. The making of art is like the other things people go to college to study—it is work. Being an artist is like being an accountant, a doctor, or a lawyer. It is a job and you do it even when you don’t “feel like it.” Once the convenience of that excuse is gone an artist can finally get on to business. The hard work, day after day, starts to reveal that real art is serious and not just for the fun of it, not just for the enjoyment of the art maker.

This always leads to the next logical conversation with my students. At this point they question my authenticity as an artist. “Don’t you enjoy making art? Isn’t it fun for you to make it?” Evidently, that is why one wants to be an artist—it is fun. I have to explain that it is work. And while I can’t possibly conceive of another vocation that would ultimately bring me the same kind of satisfaction, the making of art does not always provide hours of pleasure, or fun. There are some boring and tedious tasks that must be performed. Sometimes the work leads you into modes of working that are not “fun” but are essential for a body of work to be completed. Such was the case when my work shifted style when I was in graduate school. And this is the example I always share.

I never lacked an intense work ethic as an undergraduate student. I was an overachiever and was constantly working on my own side projects in addition to the ones assigned for my classes. When I settled on painting as my area of emphasis it was, in part, because I really enjoyed the process. Painting was a natural fit for me. During that period I was painting in a more pre-expressionist or post-impressionist system. These terms really only pertain to paint application. The color was mixed on the palette and applied fairly thickly to the canvas without much blending after that. It was a use of “juicy” paint, as my painting professor always stated. I love to paint this way and if I am painting just to paint, with no preconceived objective except to paint the object, person, or scene before me, then this is how I paint.

In graduate school my paintings eventually were composed of multiple segments instead of single canvas images. The first few remained life sized, but then they all shrank to small canvas panels. (Some of these images can now be seen on my website) When this happened I ran into a problem. The smaller scale prohibited me from painting in that beloved style. Instead, I began painting with a more traditional glazing technique. The technique isn’t nearly as immediate and it provides me less instantaneous pleasure, but it was necessary for this type of work.

Those segmented works were difficult to hang on a wall and I soon realized that they were somewhat impractical to continue, even though I liked the effect. At the same time, I decided that the varying depths could be extended by going deeper into the wall space. I achieved that by framing the works and creating a backing or “wall” within that framed space. All this construction was so far afield of “painting” in the more traditional sense. I liked the end results but some of the points in between brought me less pleasure. They were the sacrifices made for the sake of the work.

My students can start to comprehend at this point. Like most things in life, you have to go through some unpleasant portions to get to the best parts. Otherwise there is no way to tell the difference between the two.

From the segmented works my progression soon turned to the altarpiece constructions. This has provided a better example of what I am trying to relay to students and others. It takes years to complete these works. I had to teach myself techniques in woodworking and antiquing and aging objects. The actual painting is a minimal part of the whole process. The box constructions go through several distinct stages and the processes are extremely tedious, though essential for the intended end result. But there is that end result. Though style may changes over time, I feel like I am in the place I am supposed to be with these constructions. Their completion brings great satisfaction, as does the way things are uncovered in the process of making them. They aren’t fun, but they are achieving the things that make the vocation of artist worthwhile.

The Blessings of Self-Imposed Restrictions

2009-08-31T16:38:00.006-04:00

In an era when freedom of expression is valued above many otherwise essential things, the notion of limits and parameters in art can be considered taboo subjects. This seems illogical since the very existence of limits is what leads to creative solutions. If there are no boundaries to bend then there is little need for innovation. I have often found that working within certain parameters--whether self-imposed or external restrictions--allows me to seek solutions I would not have otherwise imagined.

This type of limitation is what led to my first experiments with watercolor on antique book pages. I had already been painting with oils on book pages (covered with clear acrylic medium) as part of my altarpiece constructions. To paint directly on the pages was intimidating. There wasn't much margin for error on these fragile pieces of paper.

Here was the circumstance. While I was teaching in Idaho I spent three years as the director of the campus galleries. The region is quite conservative overall and the climate of that campus was even more so. After a bit of on-campus political jostling, I was fittingly fatigued as to seek no further battle over the appropriateness of displays of nude artwork within the galleries. The problem was, when my solo faculty exhibition came around, I simply had no new work that could suitably be exhibited in the galleries.

My solution was to create an entirely new body of work--in the span of three months. The exhibit referenced a bifurcation that I was feeling. I decided that I wanted to continue the work on book pages, and that I would attempt it through a more spontaneous method with watercolor. With such a small annual budget there was certainly no way I could justify using gallery funds to frame the show. I wasn't about to foot the bill myself, either.

That is when I decided that this provided an excellent opportunity to push the boundaries of the region's conservative gallery-going public in another direction. These galleries had never hosted anything remotely like an installation. I devised an installation that would still be comprised of fairly traditional painting. Representational painting.

No work was hung on the walls themselves. In fact, a good two thirds or more of the gallery space was not utilized at all. Instead, muslin fabric was hung from ceiling to floor in the central interior of the gallery. The individual book pages incorporating watercolor self portraits were floated on the fabric, adhered with linen tape. The fabric walls billowed in the breeze created when viewers walked through. One side of the narrow corridor consisted of images on pages with Hebrew text, the other with images on Greek text.

I tend not to divulge the full meaning of this show. It represented a deeper analysis than a mere critique of censorship of the most mild forms of nudity in art. The simple fact that the full impact of the installation was lost on large segments of the viewing public was part of the point. Attitudes and understandings of contemporary art were at the core of this show.

The most unusual piece in the exhibit was also a self portrait, but it observed a different set of limitations. Like the portraits on texts from two languages, this double self portrait referenced the same bifurcation. The piece is completely composed of my old, cast-off clothing. The backing panel of this quilt-like object is white undershirts. The two portrait busts are formed, on one side, from cloth in solid colors, and on the other side, in plaids. The intimacy of clothing--something alluding to both our physical bodies and personalities--is most fitting for a self portrait. The hand-sewn panel was like a physical proxy of the artist within the exhibit.

It is highly unlikely that I would have ever chosen to turn my old clothing into a work of art had an obstacle not been placed in my path. Once the medium presented itself I had to develop my own set of limitations so that the work made sense within the context of the larger show. This is what art continues to be: innovative reimaginings of the elements and materials of design to express some of the same age-old questions that still need asking.

Ann Hamilton: Changing History One Book at a Time

2009-08-25T14:29:00.003-04:00

You hear it all the time. People are outraged to discover that American children are being taught “suspect” or “alternative” accounts of American historical events. The stories many of us grew up reading in our history textbooks are now vigorously debated and sometimes swapped out for transformed accounts. Having a broader historical base is a great thing, but we all seem to recognize that time marches on, adding to history, and some events are ultimately going to be covered less thoroughly because there is only so much space in a textbook and time in a school year.

The impetus for many of these changes comes from the philosophical precepts of Critical Theory. Most folks outside of academia have no idea what critical theory is, yet it impacts us all in nearly every facet of our lives. The art world is no exception. The various viewpoints of many contemporary artists are indebted to their study of critical theory, and the acknowledgment of that fact provides an enhanced understanding of the art of the moment.

The work of Ohio-based artist Ann Hamilton stands as an appropriate primer for those seeking a visual route to understanding critical theory. While Hamilton’s non-conventional media and materials could be suspect to those accustomed only to traditional art forms, analysis of the varying components of her work provides a nuanced discussion that is deeply informed by critical theory.

Having studied both fibers (or textiles) and sculpture, Hamilton soon expanded the scope of her work to include the contexts of larger installation settings that often include performance aspects, as well. The questioning of our accepted written historical accounts is at times a thematic element within the works.

Indigo Blue, an installation originally conceived for a location in Charleston, SC in 1991, is an extensively referenced Hamilton work which exhibits the artist’s tendency to question how those in power choose the way history is written. Indigo Blue was one part of Places with a Past, a larger, city-wide exhibition showcasing various artists. Hamilton had initially intended to produce a site specific work that addressed the specter of slavery in the American South. She changed her mind when she came upon an old auto repair shop located on Pickney Avenue—named after the woman who introduced the cultivation of the indigo plant to the U.S. This shop became the initial site for the work.

Aside from the primary color, the term “blue” had the additional connotation of “blue collar.” This was represented by a massive pile of 48,000 neatly folded shirts and pants. Yet the reference is not simply to the working men whose physical labor is the back bone of industry in this nation. Hamilton goes past the nameless, faceless male physical laborers to the support system behind them—an equal number of nameless and faceless women who mended and laundered the clothing of those blue collar laborers.

The artist enlisted a number of women, including her mother, to meticulously fold and stack the enormous pile of clothing. There was an additional performative element each day of the exhibition. A woman sat before the pile of clothing erasing words from an old history book. Not only does this reference the secondary coverage of women in recorded history, but the fact that the stories of these women, with each passing year, are forgotten and erased by time.

Hamilton employed a similar system of historical erasure for her 1993 installation, Tropos, at the Dia Foundation. Tropos provided a more transformative environment. The space was converted into a type of sanctuary, similar in conception to a gothic cathedral. The windows of the exhibition space were draped in a deep magenta colored silk. Not only did this provide a darkening, a quieting, of the light in the space, the pinkish hue also referenced the feminine. (note: the images shown here with silk covered windows are from Hamilton’s 2004 installation Corpus at MASS MoCA)

Visual cues were not the only indicators of a space set apart for “sacred” acts. The floor was covered with animal fur. The material tied the installation to the natural world and the soft undulations of the ground underfoot expressed something far afield from mere carpeting. The relation to animals, almost sacrificial in nature, again expressed a near religious environment.

Sound was also implemented in Tropos. It was the first form of language that one encountered. The recorded voice(s) broadcast through speakers were at times audible, though in this setting they came across in muted tones like chants or prayers. The other component of language, again, appeared in the form of a woman erasing words from a book. This time an electric tool was used to singe or burn the lines of text from the book.

Tropism, the term that provides inspiration for the installation, refers to our innate inclinations to react in particular ways toward certain stimuli. It is seen in plants when they lean toward a source of light . For Hamilton, this is exemplified by her greater trust in our “physical knowledge” than in our mental reasonings. Our bodies both learn and know how to respond over time. Those immediate responses—our natural responses—can often be trusted more than our mental gymnastics, employed to solve a problem or resolve a situation.

In Tropos the performing figure was doing more than merely erasing or changing historical accounts. Her actions were shamanistic or priestly. She was symbolically standing in for those history has forgotten. The smoke that rose from the ritual burning of the text acted as incense that cleansed us and our forebears from our sins of omission and commission. It is the ritual act—this very physical experience in a specific, almost sacred space—that speaks to our senses in a way that all the theoretical jargon of critical theory can only suggest in abstractions.

All Hamilton’s installations are meant to transform the spaces they occupy and transport the viewers past the thinking of our ordinary lives. In the fall of 2005 the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden presented the installation Palimpsest (originally produced in 1989). It was contained in a smaller space than other Hamilton works, but the transformative quality was just as great. To enter the space one was required to remove shoes and then place sanitary medical footies over bare or stocking feet. A guard positioned at the entrance ensured that no one entered without succumbing to this ritual. Before ever seeing the interior of the room the viewer was prepared to enter an alternate realm.

Like the supple floor of Tropos the floor in Palimpsest was more like earth than concrete beneath the observer’s feet. The walls of the room rippled with loosely adhered newsprint sheets with handwriting scrawled across them. The floor contained “tiles” of similar newsprint sheets, but these were encased in beeswax. The use of beeswax acted as both a form of preservation for the fragile messages, but also obscured the messages and created a buffer between the viewer and the work.

A palimpsest refers to a manuscript that has been written, erased, and written upon once more, with traces of the original text still visible. The exhibit literally displays this, but does much more. With only a few visitors allowed to enter at any given time, the space, like most of Hamilton’s works, seems quietly sacred. The other element included in this space was a glass vitrine with two heads of cabbage slowly being devoured by twenty snails. This slow process of eating away the vegetation left paths and traces, as well. The slime trails of the snails covered the sides of the vitrine, and the paths they took while eating the leaves were very present, too.

Palimpsest is perhaps even more telling a work. It expresses, via somewhat odd elements, Hamilton’s response and relationship to historical accounts. History leaves a variety of messages for those who come after. There are many trails to follow and bits and pieces of many messages compose the fullness of what has transpired. History is written and re-written as new stories come to light. In the end we have a ravaged corpse (the cabbage) but that is the closest thing to truth we can conceive. No one person (or snail) possesses the complete, true path of history. Hamilton masterfully challenges us to consider the various viewpoints that compose our past.

How to Make a Spectacle of Yourself

2009-08-17T12:32:00.005-04:00

There was an instance when I was in high school when I skipped classes for a day. I acknowledge it as an instance because it was not a common occurrence and I was always the type to strictly follow the rules. I had an orthodontic appointment early in the day and just didn’t want to return to school. I stopped by my mother’s kindergarten classroom on my way and actually asked permission. When she was satisfied with my answer, that there were no tests or pressing assignments, I was allowed to skip.

So what does a teenage kid do when skipping school? Head to the mall—the temple of American Consumerism. The purchase I made that day caused a certain amount of tension within my family unit. I had purchased a pair of non-prescription glasses. The rest of my family has to wear glasses. I, however, chose to wear them, more like a fashion accessory. "Why," they demanded, "would anyone choose to wear glasses if they didn’t have to?"

I only wore the glasses intermittently over a period of about three years. The taunts from the rest of the family persisted long after. "You’ll be sorry. One day you’ll have to wear glasses." I was constantly reminded that, "When I was your age I had perfect eyesight, too. Just you wait." I still have perfect vision as time marches on. They still have to keep getting their prescriptions changed once or twice a year.

The further torment for them will be when the assemblage/altarpieces with antique spectacles reach points of completion. Maybe the laws of God and nature will have caught up with me by then, but I doubt it. Accumulations of wire rimmed spectacles might suggest a slight mockery of their degenerating sight, but I have better reasons to use them than that.

The proposed accumulations are somewhat reminiscent of the assemblage work of Nouveau Realiste artist Arman. He was part of the French equivalent of Pop art. Arman is best known for his accumulations of identical objects. I don’t recall if I’ve ever seen a piece of his incorporating eye glasses. I do acknowledge that my use of these will bring, to some, associations of Jewish Holocaust photos. There are several historic images of piles of discarded glasses, shoes, and other personal items of victims of that genocide. I assure you, this is not my goal.

The mass accumulations of objects more forcibly assert the presence of the object. The viewer then is confronted with the importance of that object within the assemblage. Because my constructions contain additional objects, text, and painted passages, connections among the disparate elements need to be made by the viewer.

Glasses are worn to help us see more clearly. They help us, literally, to focus. While many people wear glasses to correct general vision problems, others are known to wear "reading glasses." For this very reason, there remains the unconscious—though sometimes openly stated—stereotype that people with glasses are bookish and somehow smarter. Of course, the derogatory concept is that those with glasses are "nerdy."

In the instances where I have chosen to incorporate eyeglasses and other lenses (magnifying glasses, cameras, movie cameras, Viewmaster viewers, etc.) the viewer needs to pay closer attention. More "reading" needs to be done. Perhaps that reading is part of what is being regarded within the piece as a whole. It is a signal as to how the viewer should approach all the works, not just the ones with the lenses. To understand—to enjoy the work—is to interpret it, to read it.

James Ensor: Toward the Absurd

2009-08-11T11:14:00.004-04:00

The exhibition "James Ensor" is on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, June 28–September 21, 2009

How do we know when a culture truly values its art and artists? This can be a difficult thing to gauge. Is it generous arts funding? National support of museums? A prominent role of the arts in school curriculums? These may all be indicators, but value is the key word here.

Before the introduction of the Euro as the monolithic form of continental currency, Belgium placed one of its most famous artists, James Ensor, on its paper currency. This was only fitting since Ensor was a master etcher and the method with which currency is printed employs similar metal plates.

Ensor is an artist’s artist. In other words, his work is known and respected by artists, historians, and critics, but he is virtually unknown within the general population. Like the Norwegian, Edvard Munch, Ensor was an artist much misunderstood in his own time, but highly revered by artists in the decades following his most important period of production.

Narratively and symbolically Ensor’s work continues to befuddle viewers. One can only imagine what his contemporaries first thought of his painted accumulations of masks and skeletons. While these were not entirely new elements for paintings and prints—Renaissance and Baroque compositions had no lack of them—their use in the era of Realism and Impressionism was confounding.

The deception and trickery associated with masks marks the work of Italian Mannerists such as Bronzino (consider his Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time). Yet skeletons and skulls are equally significant in Flemish art of the same period, and that is the tradition which Ensor continued. The etching and woodcut series prints, by Northern artists like Hans Holbein the Younger, depicted the theme of the Danse Macabre (Dance of Death) in which Death, as a skeletal form, comes to individuals of all walks of life, not respecting their, age, gender, class, or station.

Skulls and masks are also evident within the tradition of the still life as memento mori. This was a major sub-genre of Dutch and Flemish still lifes of the seventeenth century. An overwhelming array of objects found their way into these still lifes, not merely for their interesting shapes, colors, and textures, but as symbolic references to the brevity of life. The skull even shoes up in unexpected places in seemingly straightforward paintings of the period. Again, Holbein is a fine example as his portrait--The Ambassadors--contains a prominently displayed anamorphic image of a skull in the midst of an otherwise typical scene.

But that was all closer to the age of Rembrandt than the age of Monet. The symbolism of Ensor's work predated the Symbolism (as an art movement) of artists like Paul Gauguin and Ferdinand Hodler. As the color explorations of the Impressionists were beginning to find traction within the broader population, Ensor was turning the painting style on its ear by revisiting ideas and imagery of the past. Because of the shifts in themes in art over the preceding century, Ensor's work stands as one of the earliest examples of the appropriation that has marked so much twentieth century and contemporary art.

One cannot neglect, however, the reason that these objects originally made an appearance in the artist's work. He lived nearly his entire life in the rooms above his mother's curiosity shop in Ostend. Aside from the skeletal forms and masks, shells and Chinese porcelain make recurring appearances in Ensor's work. His skill was in recognizing the importance of the objects and their continuity within his cultural artistic lineage.

Again, like Munch, Ensor predated the work of the German Expressionists, as well as other continental forms of Expressionism. The Expressionists had an interest in more primitive forms of art, which for them included medieval imagery. Artists like Kandinsky, Heckel, and Nolde gained a certain permission to embrace the more macabre imagery that Ensor had developed with his skeletons and grotesque masks. And while the Expressionists were obviously the rightful heirs of Ensor's legacy, they were not the only group of Modern artists who benefited from his precoscious talents.

Both Surrealists and Dadaists found an ally in Ensor. The Surrealists deepened Ensor's forays into earlier forms of art by seeking to distill the essential, primal elements of art within our common human psyche. The Dadaists, on the other hand, took the absurd nature of Ensor's images of skeletons--apparently conversing or performing some dramatic act--to a higher level of absurdity. Dadaist dramas and imagery pushed the illogical to a level that was not reached again until the late 1950s and early '60s.

For Ensor, the appearance of stage-like settings and carnivalesque imagery were equally natural as the appearance of objects found in his mother's curiosity shop. The artist's hometown of Ostend still plays host to the carnival the artist frequented more than a century and a half ago. The swirl of activity accompanying a carnival is mimicked in the pulsating crowd that fills the streets of Ensor's most recognized work--The Entry of Christ into Brussels.

This work, and others from the last decade of the nineteenth century, owe a debt to the English painter JMW Turner. Turner was also an anomally within the field of painting in his day. He was not exactly what one would consider an Impressionist, but his atmospheric effects certainly owe a great debt to the French painters who were his contemporaries. The swirling, undulating scenes that Turner masterfully depicted share similarities with Ensor's pressing crowds. Even the loose drawing quality of Ensor's etchings exhibits Turneresque compositional elements.

While Ensor's work may seem little more than weird, slightly off, to the contemporary viewer, it is essential to place it in the context of the late nineteenth century. Flanders may have been a fertile region for artists centuries earlier, but other than Rene Magritte, most are hard pressed to name another renowned Belgian artist from the past century. This is why Belgium justly celebrates Ensor. He was such a unique and quietly influencial figure and a figure worth reconsidering in today's art world.

Life Among the Thistles: A Prickly Proposal

2009-08-03T15:17:00.013-04:00

When it comes to woodcut imagery there are really two artists who have had the greatest influence on my style. The first is Albrecht Durer. He certainly set the high bar for all Western style woodcuts. I've even had some people tell me that my prints remind them of Durer's. That is quite an overstatememt of my abilities. If I spent the remainder of my career devoted solely to woodcuts I still doubt I could compete with Durer.

The second artist is a twentieth century master--Leonard Baskin. The darker, more tragic themes that run through Baskin's work were a barometer for the absurd and catastrophic events that marked the past century. Baskin, in my opinion, was the main reason that relief prints retained a viable place within the late twentieth century (that is relief prints of the more classical, highly crafted variety, not the cruder forms favored by the German Expressionists, which have their own aesthetic charm). The most prominent contemporary printmaker to continue Baskin's legacy is my friend Barry Moser. His style is somewhat different, but Barry learned the craft of wood engraving directly from the master.

Some of Baskin's large scale woodcuts, like Hydrogen Man and Man of Peace, are no less compelling today than when he created them six decades ago. The line quality in these works and others seems to mimic the circulatory or nervous systems of the figures, making them appear flayed and in a more heightened state of torment. Aesthetically, the themes are certainly positioned on the sublime end of the spectrum.

The second piece of art I purchased for my collection was actually a Baskin print. This wood engraving entitled Death Among the Thistles evoked the same sublime cultural and spiritual angst as the above mentioned works. The agony of the moon-like face in a field of thorny thistles alludes to a torture and pain far worse than mere physical anguish. Baskin was able to present the intangible spiritual weight of the past century in pieces like this.

I have contemplated this piece for about a decade now. I would look at it almost daily to study both the deftness of the artist with the medium and the aching quality of the tortured figure. I always thought that thistles would be an interesting subject for a print, but never knew when I would really make that happen in my own work.

Recently, I came across a spare piece of linoleum in my studio and thought that it would be a good time to try my hand at some thistles. Wood engravings and linoleum blocks print the same way, but they are carved with different tools. Wood engravings can utilitze very fine lines that are simply not possible with the softer linoleum. So, with a small block of linoleum it is more difficult to produce a greater range of values. I decided, halfway through designing this piece, that I would produce it as a reduction block. This means that I cut away some areas, printed the block in gray, then finished cutting the remaining areas on the same block, and printed black on top of the gray. It allowed for more subtlety.

I decided that I would call this piece Life Among the Thistles. Baskin could get us to feel the weight of the tragedies of the twentieth century in his works. The desperation is right there on the surface. What I wanted to show was that life is really a huge field of metaphorical thistles. The events of our lives produce moments of deilcate beauty coupled with pain. We get pricked, scratched, and scarred. That is part of what it means to be human. Without those painful times to contrast with the joyful times, the joyful times would not be so precious.

Cy Twombly: Words for a New Generation of Artists

2009-07-28T09:35:00.004-04:00

"Cy Twombly: The Natural World" is on exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago May 16 – September 13, 2009

Allan Kaprow famously stated, in his 1958 essay entitled The Legacy of Jackson Pollock, that artists after Pollock either had to continue on with the famous Abstract Expressionist’s dance-like, subconscious, gestural method, or abandon painting altogether, in favor of a an art that was more like the experience of life itself. Kaprow chose the latter. But what of the artists who chose the former? How could they continue the traditions of painting in original and innovative ways?

As the prominence of Abstract Expressionism began to wane, the existence of one dominant movement within art ceased, as well. The age of pluralism had arrived. Artists of the next generation floundered as they attempted to retain elements of Abstract Expressionism while seeking alternative methods of working in an age marked by nuclear proliferation and a Cold War. Second generation Abstract Expressionists and those not of the New York School, like Mark Tobey, sought inspiration in the calligraphic gestures of the East. The artists attached to Black Mountain College (Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, John Cage) concurrently opted to transform the stuff of everyday life into art for a new world.

The artist Cy Twombly somehow made his way between these two streams. Twombly received his foundational training in painting while at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Next, while working in the ferment of the Art Students League of 1950’s New York City, he made the acquaintance of Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg, in turn, insisted that Twombly take some time in the more experimental atmosphere of Black Mountain College. But it was Twombly’s travel grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, in 1952, that made the greatest impact on the artist. He and Rauschenberg traveled throughout the Mediterranean (Italy, Spain, France, and North Africa). The history, geography, poetry, and mythology of this region has marked his work ever since.

Though the gestures of Tobey were indebted to the calligraphic writing of Zen Buddhism, Twombly retained elements indicative of Western cursive writing styles. At times legible, Twombly’s looping scrawls are often more suggestive than representative of actual texts. The highly energetic, tactile line quality, mixed with masterful coloration, alludes to the myths and locale of the Mediterranean. This underlying Classicism has positioned Twombly’s work squarely within the Western tradition as Postmodern shifts have drastically altered the fabric of the art world over six decades.

The work’s coloration is served best in its simplicity. In pieces that are nearly monochromatic the elegance of line and gesture are allowed a more dominant role in the composition. They approach the poetic, near musical quality of Whistler’s compositions which often incorporate the appropriate word "Harmony" in their titles. One also thinks of the early monochrome paintings by Rauschenberg such as 22 the Lily White.

In every stage of his development Twombly has fused together various media into cohesive works. His use of paint, pencil, and crayon, along with manipulations by his hands and fingers, has produced a unique style—a hybrid of painting, drawing, and writing. The graffiti-like mark making is indebted to his early affinities at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts with the painting and drawing of Alberto Giacometti. His interest in text may also be linked to the collage work of Dadaist Kurt Schwitters, for whom he had a similar admiration during his time in Boston.

The series of paintings often called Blackboard Paintings (1966-72) reveals Twombly’s continuing engagement with the more conceptual currents of the art world. These white on gray works bear a resemblance to texts written, erased, and overwritten on chalk boards. As text was quickly becoming a stand in for the visual image in conceptualist circles (see Joseph Kosuth and Art & Language), Twombly’s acknowledgment of this shift, while still utilizing the traditional medium of painting, is a sign of his deft use of appropriation.

One is also reminded of the blackboard works of conceptualist Joseph Beuys when viewing Twombly’s paintings of this era. The obvious difference between the two is medium. It seems that Twombly took Kaprow’s words to heart. When Cy came to that crossroads he recognized that the tradition of painting was not yet dead. His work resuscitates painting’s proclaimed corpse, proving that there is still unexplored territory to cover.

In recent years, as represented in the current show at the Art Institute of Chicago, Twombly’s work has swung in the direction of a more traditional format. To qualify this, it must be acknowledged that the tradition is Abstract Expressionism and its roots in Surrealism. Both Paul Klee and Robert Motherwell, early influences on Twombly, had retained links to Classical Western art. Twombly’s newer works, while not actually representational, provide clearer visual cues to themes of landscape and flora.

This move from non-representation to semi-abstract forms is not unusual. One is reminded of the artist Philip Guston—a notable Boston painter—who gained his initial acclaim for his Abstract Expressionist era works; dubbed by some as Abstract Impressionism. His final decades were imprinted with a change of style that incorporated cartoon-like figures and imagery that still retained his former pastel palette. The shift signaled a return to figuration for several artists who rose to prominence in the 1980s.

Producing mural-sized canvases, Twombly’s recent works recall hues and forms of flowers. He seems captivated by the medium of painting. In his final years, no longer fearing the need to remain relevant, he engages the canvas for the pure love of working the medium. While previous works may have engaged and utilized texts from epic poetry and ancient mythology, these late paintings approach Classic forms with his signature mark making, but through a symbolic visual vocabulary.

Over the course of several decades Twombly has achieved what few artists could. His work is firmly entrenched in the tradition of Abstract Expressionist painting through his autographic, gestural style. At the same time, he has honored the new traditions of textual criticism found within Deconstructionist approaches to art making. This bridge-building posture places him as one of the few Modern painters with ability to carry painting into a new realm, keeping it on par with newer media at the dawn of a new century.

Interactivity: The Give and Take of Artwork

2009-07-28T09:24:00.006-04:00

My major attraction to the work of Joseph Cornell is the potential for interactivity within the pieces. The book Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay...Eterniday(Hartigan, 2003) includes an interactive DVD that serves as the next best thing to actually handling the works themselves. Video clips show the moveable parts working as the artist intended. Aside from a few major collectors and conservators, most people never get to see this in person.

Once I discovered it, the work of Cornell only reinforced some of my natural tendencies. My childhood was marked by intense creative endeavors that I never acknowledged as "artistic" until I was in college. These creations were not "art" in the traditional sense, so I discounted them until I could comprehend their place within my art making.

As a child I tended to construct devices to enhance play. For instance, there was a period during the time that Lynda Carter starred as TV’s Wonder Woman (as campy as it was) when my two younger female cousins and I would always play Wonder Woman when we got together. My lack of foresight ensured that I would always be the villain and never the hero. I fashioned aluminum foil into star studded Amazon headbands and bracelets for them. We even utilized some of that gold cord used for gift wrapping as the magic lasso. I know, this isn’t overly creative, but this was just the beginning.

This was in the early 1980s and well before every household had its own computer. One of the most memorable items was an ID scanner made from paper and cellophane tape. My maternal grandmother worked at State Farm and she always had an abundance of some oddly sized, perforated paper that evidently had some function within the insurance industry. I usually just drew on it in church. The ID scanner—again, long before we were all accustomed to debit card swipers and PIN codes—was amazingly functional.

It consisted of a small box that was taped next to a bedroom doorframe. There was a slot in the front where our ID cards were inserted to gain access to our top secret offices. This was not just a hole cut in the face of the box; it was a slim interior compartment that only allowed the cards to be inserted a certain distance, so they wouldn’t get stuck inside. On the top surface was a keypad with dimensional keys that could actually be depressed into the main box. All in all, it was fairly advanced for a paper and tape device that mimicked something we, as a general public, had only seen on TV programs with futuristic plotlines.

In the years just after the ID scanner I moved on to bigger and sturdier objects. There was a cardboard computer panel with multiple screens and keyboards. This was colorfully painted in poster paint and could be conveniently folded up for under the bed storage. The computer panel was accompanied by a red convertible sports car. It was just a profile view—kind of like those character screens at amusement parks with holes for people to poke their faces through for photographs. But the door functioned and I think the steering wheel did too, somehow. I know we had fun with the contraptions, though they are now compost.

I wouldn’t want anyone to have saved one of these things to hang on the wall in her home. Once I started to paint in high school I gave away several sad little canvases to family members, and those are things that I also wish would no longer hang on my relatives’ walls. All of these things, spanning about an eight year period, make up my early unconscious strivings to become an artist.

The painting was officially sanctioned art and the odd constructions were the early stages of viewer participation. Just as text and images are two connected sides within my current work, paintings and interactive constructions are another pairing. This came about quite subtly, but it was always there.

The pop sculptor Claes Oldenburg had a famous quote, in his 1961 manifesto, about how he felt art should function:

I am for an art that is political—erotical—mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing that it is art at all…
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.

That is part of what I am about, too. If art is simply going to hang on the wall or sit on a pedestal and look "nice" then I don’t have nearly as much use for it. My paintings require the viewer to not only interact with the images but with the underlying text. If the paintings are part of an assemblage/construction then even greater interactivity confronts the viewer. The element of play is once again present.

Part of this may stem from my slight aversion to Modernism’s pure aesthetic aims. There has only been a brief period of time when art for art’s sake was seen as valid. For most of human history what we now term as "art" had a function outside of pure aesthetic contemplation (Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Art in Action gives an outstanding analysis of this). I respect and acknowledge the significance of multitude forms of modern and contemporary art. What I desire for my own work is to have viewers physically, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually interacting with it. I want the work to meet the viewer halfway, expecting something in return, but meeting the viewer wherever he or she is at in a given moment in life.

Jenny Holzer: A Word by Any Other Name

2009-07-14T14:57:00.003-04:00

The words we don’t use are just as important as the ones we do. This concept has appeared as a major tactic and practical policy of politicians for years. The public implementation of politically correct speech is an obvious example. In the 1990s, particularly, there was a push to phase out certain words that were deemed offensive to ethnic groups or other portions of the population. And politicians on both ends of the spectrum are acutely aware that what reaches the ears of the masses either by omission, or strategic changes in terminology, influences public opinion.

Jenny Holzer was one of the first visual artists to understand and utilize the written word as a powerful medium within visual art. Though Holzer began her career working in the media of painting and printmaking, she shifted to the use of words in the late 1970s while taking a course through the Whitney Museum of American Art. The contextual meanings revealed when examining texts through semiotics and deconstructionist philosophical inquiry became her primary focus.

From the first, with her Truisms project of 1977/78, Holzer has brought attention to the plight of the oppressed or disenfranchised. Truisms consisted of phrases that at first appear to be advertising slogans. This style displays both a familiarity of form and a subversive undercurrent to the viewer/reader. Do the messages of a consumerist culture offer truth or are they merely manipulations that conflate want with need? Are certain popular notions that seem innocently acceptable actually a subtle way to oppress or subjugate a particular population?

Holzer is not simply didactic and preachy, she devises phrases that may seem like truth, but are actually prone to initiate an analysis of our preconceptions. Consider this selection of Truisms:

Any surplus is immoral.
Morality is for little people.
Everyone’s work is equally important.
Humanism is obsolete.
Men are not monogamous by nature.

Holzer plays both sides of the fence, but to the same end.

Context has also been a significant element of her work throughout every stage of its development. The early Truisms were printed like posters and placed, like posters, in a guerilla art fashion. In fully public, non-artworld sanctioned locations, the Truisms were shocking to stumble upon. They were shocking in the sense that viewers did not expect to be confronted with these topics in the course of everyday life experiences.

The medium for which Holzer became best known in the 1980s and 90s was far more technologically advanced. Having already utilized the assumed truthfulness inherent in bronze wall plaques and the obvious consumerist associations of billboards, she moved to electronic LED reader boards—Spectacolor boards. The medium’s tendency to convey the most current information (i.e. temperature, time, and upcoming events) ensured that viewers would naturally gravitate to the messages displayed.

While Holzer put the boards to use in the typical art settings of museums and galleries, her co-opting of public message boards for her art was more prescient. Messages like "Protect me from what I want," running on boards in New York’s Times Square or on the Las Vegas Strip, jarred viewers into considering their various unanalyzed motivations.

The artist has always been aware of how the message and the medium need to align. She is not enamored with technology for its own sake. When one considers he exhibition—More Cliches—at the Guggenheim Museum in 1990 this becomes evident. By this time, Holzer’s electronic reader boards could have been considered a cliche. They were the medium with which her name had become synonymous. Of course, cliche had to do with the text based works in general, too. She meant to challenge some long established cliches.

More Cliches incorporated LED boards by spiraling them around the interior wall of the signature Frank Loyd Wright structure. Three hundred thirty messages chased after one another in a brilliant blur of colored light. These phrases were countered with a ring of marble benches on the floor below. Truism-style Holzer phrases had been carved into the top surfaces of these seemingly eternal, immovable benches. The play of the permanent against the ephemeral presented a challenge to viewers. Does the way messages are marketed to us, the medium employed, influence our belief in the reliability of those same messages? Are we subtly manipulated without recognizing it? Do long term assumptions have to remain "set in stone?"

Holzer’s method of composing thought provoking messages to be introduced into the public realm, by whatever means, essentially went along in a logical progression for a couple decades. Certainly, the media changed many times. Messages printed on condom wrappers were produced concurrently with xenon light projections. The latter allowed text to be directly projected onto the exterior walls of buildings, bypassing the earlier need for Spectacolor boards.

Something happened in the mid-1990s that changed Holzer’s art. It had always had a political bent, but this was enhanced after she read accounts of atrocities against women during the Bosnian war. The high occurrence of rape/murders (Lustmord, in the German) caused her to produce texts based on such an event, though written from three perspectives: the victim, the rapist/murderer, and the witnessing child of the victim. The intermingling of viewpoints within the work produces disturbing and unsettling juxtapositions.

One of the first "exhibitions" of this work was in the printed format of a German-language magazine. Included were photographs of these varying textual phrases written directly on the skin of several individuals. Cropped so that the text laden persons remain anonymous (even the locations on the bodies are unidentifiable) the quilt of images announces that this is a crime against humanity and that we are all culpable for allowing it to continue. However, the greatest controversy at the time was the ink used to print text on a card attached to the cover of the magazine. It was an ink that contained a small percentage of human blood. Accusations of health risks along with allegations of a waste of human blood were part of the firestorm.

Holzer weathered the initial controversy and has continued to exhibit the work. Most recently Lustmord was part of the exhibit PROTECT PROTECT at the Whitney Museum. Aside from the text on skin imagery there were LED display boards and bones with attached metal bands imprinted with text. While this recycling of earlier work is typical of Holzer’s shifting style, it should not be assumed that completely original work has failed to come to light over the last decade.

War, again, was the impetus for Holzer’s most recent body of work. It could be argued that this is some of Holzer’s best work in decades (I first viewed in at an opening reception with the artist at the Barbara Krakow Gallery in Boston). It finds her returning to an earlier medium—printmaking—and focusing on the omitted word over the readable word. The subject of the works is declassified documents detailing reports concerning prisoner detainees in the War on Terror.

Holzer has made photo-silkscreen enlargements of the declassified documents which she, as a U.S. citizen, easily obtained from the Library of Congress. Essentially, these are instances of prisoner abuse, on the part of the American military, which the artist perceives are indicative of the policies of the Bush administration. What one can read in the documents is gruesome at times, and unjustified at most any time. Much of each document has been blackened out, rendering words unreadable. It would seem that these omissions, though often meant to protect identities, are hiding even more heinous information.

Throughout every phase of Holzer’s work the words she provides (or doesn’t provide) us are a call to question all the information we receive. Unquestioned ideas can easily become the accepted beliefs of a culture—whether they are true or not. An understanding of Jenny Holzer’s text based work provides a useful foundation in concepts of Critical Theory that, in turn, opens up much of the art work created over the last three or four decades.

Here’s to You Reverend Robinson

2009-07-14T14:50:00.006-04:00

The subject for the final work in my original series of altarpiece constructions is supplied by a familial myth. My mother’s mother used to tell the tale of her mother’s ancestor. It is believed that that family is descended from the Englishman John Robinson. Robinson is not quite the household name that, say, Myles Standish is. He was one of the Pilgrims, but he never made it to the Plymouth colony.

Robinson was actually the pastor for the Pilgrims. He traveled with them to the Netherlands, but he stayed there when the Mayflower sailed. Not everyone made that first journey and Robinson, as a pastor, felt he could not neglect his flock. He died there, never having seen the New World.

It is a great tale. No one in the family has ever verified the ancestry, but it does seem feasible. Robinson’s son did eventually make it to the colonies and he had descendants. For my purposes I just assume I am one of the Robinsons.

I began work on this altarpiece several years ago. Probably seven or eight years. Production stalled at one point because I needed a good image of the Mayflower to incorporate into the pictorial scheme. I did finally find something in a book I ran across while on a visit to Florida. The irony being that I was living in Massachusetts at the time. The next problem came when I was trying to decide which text to use on the panels.

For many of the "saints" in this series the incorporated text comes from their published or private writings. This has included, poetry, journals, letters, and non-fiction of various kinds. I try to use the actual handwriting of the person if at all possible. The problem with John Robinson is that these are almost universally unavailable—in his own hand or otherwise. While considering all this, other projects took precedence and I left the piece on the backburner.

Recently, I decided that I might as well try to finish off the Robinson piece and another altarpiece, each of which is fully constructed and only awaiting the final process of painting. I was forced to consider what text would need to be adhered to the panels before the painting could begin.

I started considering my own recent life in connection with Robinson’s. He exemplified the life of the "pilgrim." He was left roaming from land to land, with the hope that he would eventually reach the "promised land." And that hope was really enough to sustain him, even though he never saw the Massachusetts shoreline. As I am awaiting a new destination I am reminded that our courses sometimes change. Nevertheless, we make the most of the intermediate circumstances.

As I considered all this I was reminded of another family of pilgrims. The first two books of the Bible are largely devoted to the long journey of Abraham and his descendants. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and even Moses were all pilgrims seeking a land promised by God. None of them ever possessed that land. They wandered around it and learned some great lessons along the way. But they hoped, and that was enough. It is enough for me, too. This thinking gave me the text on which to paint this St. John altarpiece. An altarpiece of hope.