10/28/08
What I Did on my Summer Vacation...
Step One: Operation Food Decompression: Bahn Mi in Sunset Park. MMMmmmMmmMM:
Step Two: Friends!
Step Three: art + trips => Dia Beacon
Step Four: Hair cut, Kentucky Curtis loves Brooklyn, pledges to vote Obama, MG compared to Rachel Maddow, Irish Haven officially named "Best Bar Ever," konfetki are purchased and consumed, E&A officially named "Best Hosticheks Eva"
Step Five: acquiring new "job skills"
And a SNEAK PREVIEWWWWWW!!!!!
Step Two: Friends!
Step Three: art + trips => Dia Beacon
Step Four: Hair cut, Kentucky Curtis loves Brooklyn, pledges to vote Obama, MG compared to Rachel Maddow, Irish Haven officially named "Best Bar Ever," konfetki are purchased and consumed, E&A officially named "Best Hosticheks Eva"
Step Five: acquiring new "job skills"
And a SNEAK PREVIEWWWWWW!!!!!
10/13/08
10/8/08
What About Painting?
Sorry to the innocent bystanders, but this is another day where a comment I tried to make on a friend's blog became so long that it had to turn into a post on this one. My apologies.
Mary Heilmann, Little Three for Two: Red, Yellow, Blue, 1976
Ellsworth Kelly, Blue, Green, Red, 1962-63
Mary Heilmann, Go Ask Alice, 2006
Jasper Johns, Map, 1961
Mary Heilmann, Capistrano, 1994
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park No. 125, 1980
We all know that painting is far from dead; it had the moment of strong return in the mid-80s and is now as equal a player as any in the sisterhood of media. And yet I find it so bizarre that people can still attach the same politics to it as they did in the first half of the XXth century.
And concludes:
1) It's really hard to tell what effect these will have on me without actually standing in front of them. If painting still has any meaning, I think it cannot be decoupled from the actual experience of the painting.
2) While I think some of these works are pretty derivative (and not in a good way) - Johns, Diebenkorn, Kelly...others I really do like: "Little Three for Two, Red, Yellow, Blue"...well, just that one, really.
3) The story in the Times is complete tripe. So, like, she wants to be famous, and her daddy died, and now she looks up at the sky and out at the sunset. And...? There is not one complete thought in that whole review that makes a case for this woman's art. Other than that we should give her due respect because she's a woman. Sorry, people, that's not good enough. Also, this is the kind of crap writing that makes people doubt painting. So, are these paintings about swimming pools and sunsets? Or one-upmanship with your idols/nemeses? Or what?
4) So what am I trying to say? Well, I think painting does and will continue to have an effect, but that effect is in the physical experience of viewing paintings, not in some essential quality of the medium itself. There is something about seeing the traces of human activity wrought on a large or small scale that is really hard to ignore. It's like looking at a baby and realizing that it's human. It's just really hard to deny the traces of human activity, period.
4b) That being said, there is a scale of painting, say, the size that fits right above your love seat or carries well to the market, the kind that was so easily mass produced in 17th c. Holland & Flanders that has nearly escaped the category of "trace" and become instead a commodity. This market scale is, I would suggest, what we have been conditioned through the centuries to recognize as "painting," been bombarded with, been desensitized to, and that has given painting - all painting - a bad name.
4c) My argument in 4 is different from the argument of early 20th c. expressionism or mid-century abstract expressionism or 1980s neo-expressionism that abstract painting is an index of genius, creativity, emotion, subjectivity, history, or any such thing. I am not saying that painting is compelling because behind the painterly mark lies the artist's hand and the artist's genius. What I am saying is that there are certain kinds of abstract paintings that still compel interest because they look unmistakably like human activity - we are drawn to traces of ourselves. Not all paintings. And not all scales. But some. If nothing else, some paintings are still utterly fascinating because they are like discovering someone has been somewhere you are now, and this is what they did, this thing is what they left. All additional content - historical, narrative, decorative, etc. etc. etc. is a bonus.
5a) Some paintings that have made me feel this way recently:
Anselm Kiefer, Andromeda, 2001
Julie Mehretu, Imperical Construction, Istanbul, 2003
These are really hard to convey without seeing them up close. They are huge in scale and minute in detail. They are crafted, and the overall image is just as striking as the little marks and crevasses.
Louise Bourgeois, Fugue, 2003
Even Louise Bourgeois's little old sketches. I mean, Fugue? Fugue?! But still, the lines are enchanting.
5b) The exception that proves the rule. Someone who has NOT made me feel this way recently:
Brice Marden, Attendant 5, 1996-99
Why? Because his paintings are repetitive to the point of feeling mass-produced, and because his colors are straight out of a Land's End catalog. So, the thesis holds.
6) As for politics, well, if you know anything about me, you'll know that I'm a strong believer in the "politics of appearance" - we appear before others and in this we gain agency. This is Hannah Arendt's argument, and I haven't found anything I like better.
7) And as for Mary Heilmann, I would have to see her in person, but I'm not sure I'm so into it. She's not appearing as much as performing, and it's kind of repellant. Also, I feel like this kind of "play with sources" is overdone and pointless at this point. I hate to do this, but...
But I honestly can't figure out anymore if earnest political claims can be made for painting anymore. Though more importantly, we first need to sort out whether any sort of earnest political claims need to be made for art at all...Okay, I'll bite. (I'll post pictures, but check out the slideshow for any of this to make sense.)
1) It's really hard to tell what effect these will have on me without actually standing in front of them. If painting still has any meaning, I think it cannot be decoupled from the actual experience of the painting.
2) While I think some of these works are pretty derivative (and not in a good way) - Johns, Diebenkorn, Kelly...others I really do like: "Little Three for Two, Red, Yellow, Blue"...well, just that one, really.
3) The story in the Times is complete tripe. So, like, she wants to be famous, and her daddy died, and now she looks up at the sky and out at the sunset. And...? There is not one complete thought in that whole review that makes a case for this woman's art. Other than that we should give her due respect because she's a woman. Sorry, people, that's not good enough. Also, this is the kind of crap writing that makes people doubt painting. So, are these paintings about swimming pools and sunsets? Or one-upmanship with your idols/nemeses? Or what?
4) So what am I trying to say? Well, I think painting does and will continue to have an effect, but that effect is in the physical experience of viewing paintings, not in some essential quality of the medium itself. There is something about seeing the traces of human activity wrought on a large or small scale that is really hard to ignore. It's like looking at a baby and realizing that it's human. It's just really hard to deny the traces of human activity, period.
4b) That being said, there is a scale of painting, say, the size that fits right above your love seat or carries well to the market, the kind that was so easily mass produced in 17th c. Holland & Flanders that has nearly escaped the category of "trace" and become instead a commodity. This market scale is, I would suggest, what we have been conditioned through the centuries to recognize as "painting," been bombarded with, been desensitized to, and that has given painting - all painting - a bad name.
4c) My argument in 4 is different from the argument of early 20th c. expressionism or mid-century abstract expressionism or 1980s neo-expressionism that abstract painting is an index of genius, creativity, emotion, subjectivity, history, or any such thing. I am not saying that painting is compelling because behind the painterly mark lies the artist's hand and the artist's genius. What I am saying is that there are certain kinds of abstract paintings that still compel interest because they look unmistakably like human activity - we are drawn to traces of ourselves. Not all paintings. And not all scales. But some. If nothing else, some paintings are still utterly fascinating because they are like discovering someone has been somewhere you are now, and this is what they did, this thing is what they left. All additional content - historical, narrative, decorative, etc. etc. etc. is a bonus.
5a) Some paintings that have made me feel this way recently:
Anselm Kiefer, Andromeda, 2001
Julie Mehretu, Imperical Construction, Istanbul, 2003These are really hard to convey without seeing them up close. They are huge in scale and minute in detail. They are crafted, and the overall image is just as striking as the little marks and crevasses.
Louise Bourgeois, Fugue, 20035b) The exception that proves the rule. Someone who has NOT made me feel this way recently:
Brice Marden, Attendant 5, 1996-99Why? Because his paintings are repetitive to the point of feeling mass-produced, and because his colors are straight out of a Land's End catalog. So, the thesis holds.
6) As for politics, well, if you know anything about me, you'll know that I'm a strong believer in the "politics of appearance" - we appear before others and in this we gain agency. This is Hannah Arendt's argument, and I haven't found anything I like better.
7) And as for Mary Heilmann, I would have to see her in person, but I'm not sure I'm so into it. She's not appearing as much as performing, and it's kind of repellant. Also, I feel like this kind of "play with sources" is overdone and pointless at this point. I hate to do this, but...
Mary Heilmann, Little Three for Two: Red, Yellow, Blue, 1976
Ellsworth Kelly, Blue, Green, Red, 1962-63
Mary Heilmann, Go Ask Alice, 2006
Jasper Johns, Map, 1961
Mary Heilmann, Capistrano, 1994
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park No. 125, 1980Why?
10/7/08
* * *
In a feverish dream, I suddenly had trouble breathing. I was choking on the cold air coming in from the window, and I saw in the not too distant future the slick black pavement under the orange cast of streetlamps of winter. It's getting darker earlier, and I'm sick in bed. I think the wet black streets I am remembering come from some place where I am smaller and the pavement is vaster. The winter is coming, and with it, artificial light, soggy shoes, and the gusts of wind. The darkness making envelopes to travel in. The yellow light and swirls of soggy snow.
Goya, Blasts of Wind/Tale Bearers, 1799
UPDATE: Okay, my Soplones are almost over. Now if I could only find the text of Heidegger's "Was ist Metaphysik?" online. I thought the Germans were all about sharing their Kulturalheritage. What gives?!?!
Goya, Blasts of Wind/Tale Bearers, 1799UPDATE: Okay, my Soplones are almost over. Now if I could only find the text of Heidegger's "Was ist Metaphysik?" online. I thought the Germans were all about sharing their Kulturalheritage. What gives?!?!
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