Granddad, April 28, 2005
When talking to James Lavadour, I mentioned my Granddad, who was part Indian. The lore was that he was half, but I think that’s probably pushing it. Still, his mother was offered land in the 1930s from the government. The problem was it was in Oklahoma and you had to live there too. Who would want to be there during the depression anyway?
And in fact eventually Granddad packed up all the kids and wife and came across the country, just like so many did during those times, in search of work. My uncle laughs and insists it was not like Grapes of Wrath when I ask him about it, but I wonder. Both he and Mom were so skinny they were placed in a camp for malnutrition (once again, by the government) during those days.
They even drove through Oregon and he worked in Salem for a spell, but they settled in California where the jobs were. Granddad worked for the Kelly’s of Kelly Blue Book fame, when it was the biggest used car lot in the world. I still wear the solid gold watch they gave him upon retirement in the 50s.
Granddad could fix anything. He worked on Model Ts in the 20s but he could fix anything else – the totally capable man.
He took care of me when I was small and had no dad (didn’t get one of those till I was nearly five). I remember toddling down the big hallway to him every morning.
But he hurt his leg once and so I also took care of him. He was my best friend. All throughout my adulthood, while he was still alive, we were close. I miss him.
When he was in the Navy, his ship had a great photographer aboard who made pictures into postcards. I painted the ship once, all in red, white and blue, sort of like an O’Keeffe. The USS Frederick. He crossed the Atlantic 4 times in it, supplying the Brits in WW1.
The Abstract, April 25 2005
Recently on the art forums of the New York Times I found a singular post on a thread:
Why exactly do historians discourage talking about spirituality in art? I had no idea that this was the case. I have always assumed that art had no other motive.
And let the fun begin. Those who contributed to the forum implied that art would, of course, have absolutely no motive at all.
It seems that abstract art especially has journeyed to a realm of decoration and formal qualities alone, as if other possibilities were unsophisticated or a done deal. I have exchanged several emails with other abstract artists, often in some uncertain struggle about what it all means and a little paranoid to claim why we do it and what we would like out of it.
-- ‘Cause it’s unfashionable I suppose. I don’t mean abstraction, I mean the spiritual in art. Art should be ‘contemporary,’ about the here and now and that sure wouldn’t be it.
I remember when I read an interview with Sarah Morris. From what I had seen in print, I really liked her paintings. Then I found out what they were ‘about’ and it practically destroyed it all for me.
I also remember when I first read Concerning the Spiritual in Art and Reminisces and then the Suprematist Manifesto and then writings by Arthur Dove and Jean Arp. I still have all of those works.
In the 80s a big show happened at the LA County Museum called The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. It was a big deal. My pal Jeffrey from Modernism tried to get me to join him to check it out but I couldn’t go. I still have the button he brought back, a Malevich triangle on a white background. And I still have the fat catalogue, a total treasure, which covers art from mandalas of ancient times to Native American art to Rothko, Reinhardt, Alfred Jensen.
In this book, Donald Kuspit wrote about the problems of spirituality facing contemporary artists. Abstract art was (is) no longer understood as a mystical inner construct, but just another reproducible communication. “The enemy of today’s spiritual abstract art is not simply the ongoing … tyranny of the materialistic philosophy and a society that is determined to reduce art to another ordinary communication, but also the unconscious inclination of much art itself to take the line of least resistance…”
Is this why such imagery is now, for the most part, reduced to décor?
My time with James Lavadour was valuable in so many ways. It was one of the few interviews where they moved me along instead of me moving them. He really gave me something. Like I said before, he observed how artists need to inform and educate. They can’t make their changes and leave the audience out in the cold. I’ve thought a lot about this. I try to communicate as best I can but I guess I need to do more. In the art and in the words and in every way.
Some Inspiration, April 22 2005
In every interview with every artist, there is this core to the individual and their view which I search for, which I want to reveal. For me, it’s the most essential part of the hour – if I can get there. That core statement is almost always really unique but very universal too and it’s often the reason an artist is not just making art, but making great art (if they are).
Sometimes I never get there. Not to say it might not exist, but maybe they can’t articulate it, or they’re not that comfortable with making those larger pronouncements. Or I just don’t work it right. We can talk about a specific body of work and its themes but that is as far as we go.
It doesn’t really matter – I always learn something and hopefully the listener does too. It happens in varying degrees. But it’s not like I walk away from every interview the way I did yesterday from James Lavadour (which will broadcast this coming week). Good God, talk about inspiring. That man knows what he’s talking about.
And that’s not to say that I agree with him completely about painting. Or put it this way: we may not always want the same things out of it. He likes the ‘event’ as opposed to the ‘picture’ and I personally am fine with the picture too. I always was image driven. But it was fascinating to hear him tell it, in his view, like it is.
I thought he was really generous too in his view of how paint works in this world, how it functions, how necessary it is towards an understanding of the universe – almost like photography does not exist. He does not mean this in some literal, strict term of representation, but more in how paint can reveal truths on so many different levels.
Lavadour also spoke about the role of the artist. He says we’re not here to just make art. We are communicators. We need to find ways to function in a bigger world than just the art world because what we have to say is important, no matter how esoteric or freaky it is. And we need to bring people along -- we can’t just leave them hanging out there as we make our changes.
I don’t know that I’ve ever been as articulate about my views, but I think that there were similarities. I didn’t know exactly why, but going into the studio everyday, day after day, having a show every two years or so, this really deep but narrow focus, just didn’t cut it with me. In fact it got kind of depressing. I wasn’t creating change on a level I needed to and in this I mean my own life, first of all.
April 20 2005
My basement has been torn apart by workmen and one of them is an artist, a Choctaw Indian too and deep person. We’ve had some talks. When he asked me about my art I gave him an exhibition postcard, which seemed somehow to change a bit the tenor of the exchange. He shrugged off the whole gallery thing and said: “I just paint for myself.”
-- Almost like I don’t maybe, but I understand how he feels. He then said something to the effect of: “You can get too wrapped up in all of that and it can compromise your art making.”
I’m trying to think of a thing in my life which didn’t, in some way, compromise my art making.
I said I had absolutely no qualms about showing and selling it. I’ve always made art; feel crystal clear that it will not stop if Augen did not show me again. I have big gaps in my exhibition history, but I have art from those times. Slept on a floor through most of my 30s during a time many of my friends (those not artists!) were marrying, starting families, getting better flats and jobs with benefits.
And what else was I doing? Selling shoes, selling suits and handbags, selling a shitload of makeup on 5th Avenue. And none of that was more honorable or noble than selling art.
History VS Style
The deuzy of the day was an artist calling me up and challenging me on my Punk History Lesson of a few entries ago. “Punk is not a time and place,” he said in response to my I don't remember you there. “But a state of mind.”
Well that would be very convenient -- check out the outfits and haircuts and that state of mind and then apply. To those who took it from an avant-garde movement and made it a droning genre, thanks.
Yes, you can make a Cubist painting these days. Plenty of people do. Is it then like 1910? Plenty of us can do beat poetry too but we are not Ginsberg in the 50s. There's a big difference between the innovator and what then becomes established style.
One of my Rejections
My friend Miriam told me how she was taking a museum tour in NYC with a group of fashion executives. The docent gave a lot of time to Matisse but then walked right on by Brancusi. “Hey! Wait a minute,” said Miriam, “You’re not going to say anything about Brancusi?” “Well, no,” said the docent. “What, do you want my job?” “No, I don’t. You’re not paid,” she observed. “Well,” said the docent, “What would you say about him?” -- and then my friend talked for about ten minutes.
This got me thinking about when I tried to be a docent. Yes, me, and I was rejected. Right here in PDX at the Portland Art Museum.
I was at loose ends. It was before I started Artstar or Lovelake but knew I needed to do more with art than just make it. I was also extremely inspired by an exhibition coming to the museum called The Painting Revolution. I even wrote a piece on it which I could not get published here. This show had Malevich and all the great women artists too like Goncharova. So in my wild schemes I saw myself as a docent for this exhibition and after that, who knew?
Plus I knew one there already – my high school art teacher! This woman was actually the best art teacher I’ve ever had -- suffice to say I adore her. My high school (Phoenix, Oregon, graduating class of about 150) was a farmer school devoted to football. Our art class was relegated to a trailer, no joke. But I spent many happy hours there.
From the start however the interview was not all that comfortable. It felt like an interview for Saks, something I know all too well. And at least Saks paid me. It felt like cameras were on me and gee, did I meet the dress code? Actually, my dress is not the problem so much as my enthusiasm. For some reason it bothers some people.
It became clear pretty soon too that money was the object (can't blame them). It costs to be a docent and there are plenty of committees to join and they all cost too. I just didn’t have what it took. And as to art and what I liked or what I knew, nary a question. I got my rejection notice, stating I was not what they were looking for.
The Weirdo Makeover, April 18 2005
Recently Modern Kicks had a post about R. Crumb. I’ve been thinking about him lately.
I haven’t seen that film on him and his family – I don’t really know a lot. To me he was the Keep on Truckin’ guy and also, creator of Fritz the Cat.
But I’ve got this other thing – a piece by him – and only recently got it framed. I feel a little sneaky/guilty/I don’t know what, as I never paid for this print and am afraid Modernism will hound me for it if this comes up in a search somehow. I’ve had the piece for nearly twenty years and figure it is time to bring it out of the closet, so to speak.
I used to go out with a man named Jeffrey, who started the original Modernism, an incredible shop of 20th century design in San Francisco. Cups by Kandinsky, chairs by Gerrit Van Rietfeld, forget about it. He then went into partnership with a man named Martin to create a new Modernism, a gallery in South of Market when that area was full of derelicts.
But Modernism showed Warhol, Schwitters, Malevich (and also, R. Crumb). One day when I was visiting SF in 1980, I was walking up Market Street and saw a poster advertising an exhibition of the Russian Avant-Garde. I turned around right then and there and hightailed it to 8th Street.
Years later, when I needed a place to land in New York, Jeffery let me stay in his NY apartment on W 56th. I was only supposed to stay 3 or 4 months, illegal sublet and all. I stayed ten years. Few things were in this flat – a dynamite collection of 30s – 50s hardboiled and smut paperbacks and some good furniture, Bauhaus china, 80s arty clothes for men (big shoulders, weird designs in leather). And this R. Crumb hand colored silkscreen in the closet, from his exhibition at Modernism – the Weirdo Makeover.
It seemed sort of suitable for me in some ways – the girls are all trying to be “New Wave.” And of course the whole makeover thing is something I did for a living for over a decade. I’ve painted literally thousands of faces and it could be a reason I don’t go there at all in my own art. When young, too, I was interested in portraiture and people and could draw them pretty well. But the makeup business pretty much bled me of that.
Age, April 18 2005
Someone recently told me as regards age: “It’s all the same. It really doesn’t matter.” Oh but I do not agree.
Somewhere around 29 I wrote in my diary: “I used to think that age didn’t matter at all, but now I’m thinking that it does matter – a little.’ Well, the more of it you get, the more it can matter and I mean that in positive ways. To me it’s like some way to level the playing field when people say that to me. Sure, we’re all the same.
Save, we’re not. It happens a lot within the context of the radio show. I am open and interested in artists of all sorts. I want to find out what they’re about. Pretty soon they’re using the we word. “Yes, Eva, we’ve both been painting a long time.” In his case, it had been seven years. I’ve been showing paintings since at least 1980.
One time I said: “I was into that singer in the 70s.” Me too, said the artist born in 1975. This is for real!
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Peto from the Met
Peto, April 17 2005
Yesterday I went to Reed College to see Feast the Eye Fool the Eye, a show of still life and trompe de l’oeil paintings. It was a snug exhibition. I learned to look at this kind of work at the Met, which has a nice collection of William Harnett and John Peto.
Peto in particular I liked. He created these flat scenarios of collections of postcards, letters and photographs attached to a wall. They often seemed very personal to me and a little bit different to everyone else, like he was taking it a little further. There’s one piece in this show at Reed that’s in a great green with his own name painted across in large letters, like a premonition of Stuart Davis.
Optimism, April 16 2005
Tom Cramer got it right when he said: “Your show is so optimistic.” I’m glad he saw that.
I made pieces like Regenerate (below), towards a future.
This MOMA site will not let me lift any images, but if you've got the time check out that Russian Book show they had a couple of years back. This is a show for me. Many of these books I've read about and seen reproduced in other books. But actually the site is better, because in some cases you can see page after page. Someone observed what heady times they must have been, the Russian Revolution, and heady times have come since--- but why are we in such non-utopian times now? Hope is not the game, not the interest. This question really struck a chord with me. Perhaps utopianism is with tree-sitters, with the anarchists of Eugene.
My Window piece (above) was my postcard image for my collage show at PSU in 2002. It is basically Death as Life. I always recall that quote of Kandinsky: "It's better to think of death as life than life as death, even just once." I agree.
Decadent Dreamers*, April 14 2005
Yesterday I checked out that Pre-Raphaelite show at the Portland Art Museum. The show comes out of a collection in Delaware. There was some nice imagery in the paintings but still I am surprised I didn’t like it more. If I’m at the V & A, I’ll head straight to that stuff (especially the William Morris room) (though he really is in a class by himself), but this show left me not so much overwhelmed but wanting more. A couple of summers ago I took at Neo-Gothic art history class at PSU, which revved my engine for this kind of show but perhaps set the expectation too high.
The actual painting itself wasn’t as good as I some I recall. Also, the subject matter, which could be interpreted as dreamy by some but dreary by others, is maybe wearing on me. One older gentleman turned to me and said: “You could be a model for this show.” This is the kind of comment to impress you at nineteen but looses much of its charm 30 years later. I grumbled an “Uh huh” and kept moving. He looked like an old-world type in hat and overcoat, maybe puzzled or flabbergasted by my response. No “thank you” coming from me today, as I looked at paintings by men of women looking stoned.
My favorite pieces in the show by far were not painting per se but everything else: jewelry, vases, plates, stained glass to die for and a bit of furniture design. One container with a peacock on it was especially nice.
* The name of a book I coveted on the Pre-Raphaelites
The Incarcerated, April 13 2005
“You’re going to spend the rest of your life behind bars,” – is the last line from a Law and Order commercial, quipped of course by Lennie Briscoe. That character means something to me as he was played by Jerry Orbach, who shopped at Ferragamo when I worked there and was an all-around great guy.
What a line to throw out in any casual manner: life behind bars. Yet it shouldn’t seem extreme, right, considering that one sixth of the population is behind bars at some time in their lives. One sixth!
The prison system is a racket I despise. Not that I know what to do about it. But I became a little, just a little, more in touch with it when one of my friends landed there and spent seven years.
This friend was an artist who then produced a body of work behind bars – all portraits of fellow inmates. He sent me a print once during our correspondence. I couldn’t get the image out of my head and knew it would be an unforgettable show, if it could ever happen. When I started Lovelake, he was on the top of the list.
Showing artwork connected to the incarcerated has a group of unpredictable issues unlike other artworks. I couldn’t use one portrait in any promotional material, to avoid exploiting prisoners (or haunting any victims). Every face had a story, a crime, all these extenuating issues besides the typical in portraiture, which is complex enough as it is. Sure, the drawing was spectacular (not too extreme of a word here either) but still, no drawing here was ever just a drawing, or rather, an expression of the artist. You saw all these faces staring out at you and immediately began to ask yourself questions or maybe make up stories, and it all had the potential to not be fiction.
For me it was like a word from the incarcerated, from whom we rarely hear, even though so many of us are there. Everyday that I sat at that exhibition, I became more aware of that fact of life. It became more personal but also more huge and almost overwhelming. The fact that the artist was still in prison while this show was going on sort of drove home that point too.
I Need More, April 12 2005
Not like I don’t have enough to do, but often I think about art writing in this town and how I wish there were more of it. On the more serious slant please but basically, I’ll take anything. Like Iggy Pop said: I Need More.
Of course I might think of it even more in a time like this, with a show up and all, but it is there all the time somewhere in the background.
Storm Tharp, who I had on the air on Sunday (and was one of my best shows ever) (the interview will be rebroadcast today at noon online) said that he rarely did any kind of interview, as ‘no one ever wants to talk about the work.’ I’m not sure if that was truly always the case with him, but there is definitely sort of this fear of art. Art business will be talked about, art news and art gossip too, but the actual art, that’s another thing.
I put a certain amount of effort into the radio and sure wouldn’t mind being able to parlay that into some published product. I get the feeling though that it’s a lot more work, as the radio can be sort of casual, whereas the published word rarely is.
Deep Dive
People asked me what I would do next. This was the question of the week throughout both openings, like it’s already time to move on. I guess I can see how they would think that way. I do a variety of things. But right now I’m missing painting. Had no idea how much it was a part of my life. I’m holding back for this month while I take everything in.
Over the Top, April 10 2005
A few years back I worked at Keep ‘Em Flying, a vintage clothing shop on NW 21st. My job could be fun as I met different types, but it's not like it's always Avant-garde Central. I recall this shop from when I first lived in PDX in '78. I never shopped there then. I did the windows a few times; I knew the owner and she gave me the clothes too weird to sell.
Basically, once something is at a shop like this, "Vintage" and all, it is an attraction for many. And once the many want it, it cannot "push any envelopes." It is not so "over the top" and the many other phrases heard way too often from those who don't really want it. I was often amused at how often I heard such phrases in a shop like this. You have to look a lot harder than that.
Case in point: young man needs outfit for party, in which he must do above sort of activity. He was looking at various leisure suits in pastel blue and those polyester shirts in shades of peach and tan. But they either don't fit or they cost too much.
When I find out what his mission is, to indeed push that envelope etc., I'm thinking but what he's looking at is the inspiration for Gucci and LV and everyone else who creates a norm. The ‘edgy’ norm, but still a norm. So it's going to cost you and it's not taking you anywhere you haven't been.
I said it might be much easier and less expensive that you think. Find yourself a big, flowing white shirt and a scarf. Or how about one of those triangular jackets with the overpowering shoulder-pads...billowing pants tucked into pushed down ...a large belt with studs, maybe more than one...eyeliner and lipgloss... too bad you have no hair on your head! To which he said "I'll never go there."
-- Which is a pretty good indication of the success of the project! This business of pushing the envelope is lonelier and more singular than he realizes. But with the recent re-emergence of Duran Duran and the like, maybe he did ‘go there’ after all, several years later.
Context, April 9 2005
Carolyn wrote about Fischl’s show at Mary Boone, via the review at the NYTimes. I saw that show. Paul H-O and I spoke about it briefly during his interview.
He had brought up all the bad boys of the 80s that Cindy was (basically) competing with. “And how are they doing now?” I asked. “Well Eric has a show up at Boone,” he says. “Maybe he’s doing the best out of all of them?” – I offered. Silence. Whoa, don’t stick your neck out here! But he goes on to say that the show is incredible.
But I didn’t remember that at all. In fact the most gorgeous paintings I saw at Boone were in that back room by an artist named Eric Freeman.
I didn’t even go into why I wasn’t all impressed by the big paintings of Fischl, but maybe indeed subject matter has something to do with it. Not that I have to relate to everything I see in order to like it, but I wasn’t all that compelled in this case.
Still I can’t help but feel that if this show was in PDX I’d be all over it.
April 7 2005
I read on Anna Conti’s site that David Hockney is donating his theater designs to a museum in San Francisco. This makes perfect sense to me, as this city was where I saw them in a major show sometime in the 80s.
What a knock-out show. I went many, many times. I could not get enough of it and it’s not like I walked in some huge fan of Hockney. But I became one through the power of that show: room after room of full scale set designs for the opera, incredible lights (light as a color source) and beautiful drawing come to life.
That show went into my lexicon somehow; it joined all that dark blue and white I already committed to, to the night sky and white light. Like I said, San Francisco is the perfect place for it to be.
Starry Night
Why Varnish?
The Gamblin site suggests that varnish is an aesthetic choice. But this really isn’t the case with my work. Many different variables led to a dose of varnish over all.
I couldn’t even make it to the photographer for slides without scratching something along the way. At least now it is the varnish which gets scratched, not the paint.
When I worked on representational imagery, I never even thought about it. The eye takes in a story: here is a house and a tree and a sky, this type of thing. The eye reads and unifies the image in a completely different way to what I offer now. How various colors dry down is not such an obvious issue either.
But I don’t want the viewer involved in all that with these paintings, caught up in that kind of variation, at least initially. I want you to be able to take it in as a whole before you start compartmentalizing or figuring it out. The more I realized that the paintings were an experience (as opposed to say, a composition or story), the more the painting became a separate entity and I had to deal with that independence, unify it, find a way for it to maintain its self-assertion. The varnish helped.
....Can you believe the things one can ramble about on a First Thursday such as this?
… but while we’re on that subject….
One artist said to me right at the start of their opening of their show at Lovelake, regarding the fragility of my own work: “The work is so precious yet you call yourself a punk artist. But it’s all perfect, perfect, perfect.”
His idea of punk being basically a mess (or at least very casual and throw-away) is his own buying-in to a story and style written up by the press. I never idolized Sid Vicious. Don’t put me in that ghetto. You go right ahead and be as ‘imperfect’ as you want to be. But as to telling me what punk is, I don’t remember you there.
Throw out that junkie model. Patti Smith is much more my model – smart, poetic, well-read, innovative and by the way, still around.
Vague Update, April 5 2005
It’s hard to stand still and organize it in my head (and maybe scary too). From the preview I had other people to meet and then was out much of the night. Next day I interviewed a young artist named Wesley Younie, who has a show up at V-Gun and then last night, there was a small party for Disjecta.
11AM is for me a rather raw time to greet people about art. Well, they can look at it alright. But the usual carousing and drinking and fun chaos which I am accustomed to was more subdued at that hour. Still it was pretty nice to see who would come out, and it was especially nice to see Carolyn Zick all the way down from Seattle.
The evening provided a strange contrast, as I met up with a woman who works the Lawrence Gallery. She hasn’t done it long and was never into art before, so she comes from a completely different view that we generally expect out of gallerists today. She was once a flight attendant, so she’s got those people skills. After dinner, we were not far from that gallery and she asked me: “Well, would you like a tour?”
I had never even been in there. It is not taken seriously by the regular art world (but I also know that there are all kinds of art worlds, so I’m game) (plus I had 3 glasses of wine at Eleni’s).
This place is huge and covered with a bonanza of styles on every available square inch of wall space. We walked into a large party of people who looked like they came in from the outback to be surrounded by art, wearing feather boas and hats. The men were in black tie and cummerbunds and many looked like lost frat boys from the 80s on an odd night out.
I couldn’t quite place anyone, which was strange and good at the same time. After a morning where you are very aware of where you are in the art universe and surrounded by art gossip, it was refreshing to be around this sort of more naive, open type.
They had one room full of ‘masters’ --- prints of Picasso and Matisse, but everything was so packed, it was hard to tell what was what, real or not real. The best part was a walk down into the basement, which they call ‘the wine cellar.’ It looked a bit like that, with empty wine bottles spread out along cabinets, but the highlight was a large saltwater aquarium, full of plants which move. Are they animals or are they plants? Quivering electric colors and shapes --- chartreuse and orange and blue. One creature was a mix of purple and green, just like my Lavender Field painting.
The next day I had Wesley Younie on the radio, who has a show up called Magic Kingdom. He is all about animals and used to even work at the zoo. I was curious about how well he took that, as I’m not sure that love of animals = zoo time. In fact I’ve never been to the Portland Zoo at all and it’s been decades since I’ve been to any. They make me sad. But he was fine with them and said that our zoo has a good breeding program for endangered species.
The most interesting thing Wesley makes is bird busts. He makes the mold and all and mounts them on the wall, all brightly painted. The one at his show is of a Bee Eater, an African bird. This interview will be rebroadcast today at noon at www.kpsu.org.
I was back in the gallery on Monday, as works were scratched. I varnish works, so most are easily repaired. But why does everyone seem to think that you can stack paintings? You can’t and in fact you shouldn’t even let them get near each other.
Then last night I attended an elegant little money-raising party put on by Disjecta at Masu. I’ve been involved with Disjecta since about November and have watched them (us?) shape plans for a new art center in town on the Burnside Bridge, and have even watched the plans for this particular party for awhile. The turnout was stellar and I am really proud of Bryan, Chelsea, Paul and everyone else who made the event happen. Hope they got lots of cash.
Chelsea Mosher and Paul Middendorf of Disjecta
Statement (from the show)
My goal in painting could be expressed more as an experience as opposed to a composition. The concerns of Yves Klein, who condemned the line often and treasured an infinite space, rang in my head. I asked myself: “Well, what would you like to see?”
The answer would be -- as close to nothing as I could get: the empty sky, the open space. And because I loved it so, I would paint it many times. And so my grid of squares was born.
Most works of art are in some way a self-portrait. In my case I am one who rarely stands still and this has finally translated into the paintings I make. Some artists are obsessed with death; I don't believe in it. Making my paintings live is my goal.
A hand-painted square can function like a natural thing, uniform on the first take but every single one unique.
The name of this exhibition is Vive Chrome. I choose this name as it translates loosely into "Living Color." In the past I often painted in a representational way, using inanimate objects or architectural settings, attempting to inject the life I saw in everything.
This all led to making the paintings themselves the living object.
Jean Arp
the Natural World, April 2 2005
So today is the preview. They do them on Saturdays at Augen and I have never been to one. I have no idea what will happen or who will come. Gee, I have some friends who aren’t even awake by 11am.
But I am up at 6 these days, outside, listening and looking.
Last night I was thinking that whatever art is, nature is higher and what we as artists aspire toward. Of course that can’t be the case with every artist and I probably didn’t even think about it for decades, but it is glaringly obvious to me now.
It is no doubt not a surprising turn and one many artists, as they age, take. Jean Arp is the first one on my mind, but there are many. Cultural dictums can lose their charm or internal significance, while the natural world becomes more all encompassing.
Picture VS Process, April 1 2005
Last term I had a class in contemporary art history. This was a class which definitely left not only the history out of art history but also the art (more on that later). This is not to say that I didn't get plenty of food for thought out of it.
One thing the Prof mused about more than once was how artists like to go on and on about content, but often will not deliver details on how the work was actually made, the process. I find this to be not true at all but it got me thinking: just how important is the content to anyone else but us?
The reason it is on my mind today is because the Mercury says in its current issue that I make my work: “….in a ‘calculated and compulsive’ manner…” – as if those words were given in a press release. Calculated I am, compulsive -- I don’t think so. Someone is missing out on my meaning.
I am wondering though just how much that really matters. Another local paper today has a quote from Francis Bacon: "The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery." Bacon, who I love, seems to think it's nobody's business what we're really talking about and that it's better if they don't know.
‘Compulsive’ sort of goes back to process in my own mind, that you gotta do it, that you have no choice and so on. This is your process. I remember those Saturated artists saying well, we might all have this process-oriented stance in common.
But I said no way. I don’t care about my process at all. Sometimes it is no fun. Depends on the day. It is what it is. It is results that I am after and I am very clear about this.
The experience that is most important to me is not the one I had making it but the one we have viewing it.
More recent entries: March 2005
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