Lavender
Field
Lavender
Field
about Painting, March 31 2005
After my Lavender Field was done (of which the above is a lousy slide -- The green is not dark), I was sort of at loose ends and have been repainting over a small work (12 inch square) that I was never satisfied with. I enjoy a different sort of dip in the result, in which a repeating band of vibrant orange zooms through the painting, with a fire red square descending into it. The feeling is subtle yet electric.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what painting means/is to different people. Someone stated that Damien Hirst was not really a painter and that got me thinking. He was one enough for me, even if indeed he didn’t really make the paintings.
Some people are ‘seduced’ by paint itself and some of us are ‘seduced’ by the image. (I put seduced in quotes as I think it is sort of a weird word in terms of art but I hear sometimes.)
In general I didn’t think of myself as a painter’s painter at all. My favorites are idea people like Malevich or Yves Klein. I make this distinction because others do. “He’s not really a painter,” I’ve heard regarding some painters, like recently Hirst. I’m not sure what they mean. Are they talking about ideas? Or the fact that someone else painted it?
The ‘seduction’ of paint has a source in Expressionism, where there is definitely a certain romance to ‘just painting’ and looking at all the materials (paint) as just that.
I recall one teacher at the Art Students League telling me: “Now you’re really painting!” when I delivered the messiest, most chaotic work I’ve ever put to canvas. I had an idea of what he meant, though he never really explained it. I just knew that he was chasing the New York School in his own painting and that was what he glorified. I also knew instinctually that I did not want to go there. We remained at an undeclared stalemate the entire time I was at that school. This is the same guy who never bothered to learn my name either. I was always Sweetheart or Honey.
He was the one who told me, when I brought a sketch to class (for a painting idea) that it was literally “flying off the page!” --- as though that was a bad thing. “You can’t do that!” he said. I should have said just watch me. It took me another 15 years basically to get back to that. But now I have a show where it’s all flying. Yes.
a real Genius, March 28 2005
Ever met a genius? There can’t be that many. Still I met more than one fellow at various openings in New York (years ago) who said straight out: “I’m a genius. No, I really am.” I wonder whatever happened to those guys.
To me, a genius might be described as someone who changes the world, or whose influence is unique and vast. So I know one and his name is Luigi. He was my dance teacher and I danced with him once just a week ago.
This is as good a time as any to write about him, as I can link to a piece that was just in yesterday's New York Times. There he was in the photograph, stretched out like I have often seen him. Although he is 80, he is almost unchanged from the man I danced with everyday ten years ago.
Luigi changed New York for me. For a short era in my life, I became a dancer.
Only a man with an incredible capacity for patience, communication and inspiration could do that. It has occurred to me that if I ever had an art teacher half of what Luigi is, what an artist I could have been. I mean it. Luigi taught self- confidence and beauty from the inside-out. Everyone should be so lucky as to have a person like this in their life, who has not just the talk but the walk to back it up. And what a walk. That is something he goes over everyday: just how to walk. He teaches the simple things and that is why great actors gravitate to him.
I love to dance. Once at a disco in Myconos, the owner said: "You seemed like a regular person, Eva, when you first sat down at the bar. Then you started dancing..." I found Luigi right around the time when discos at midnight were no longer so interesting, but dancing still was.
He is a living legend and the creator of the first jazz technique. That is something the New York Times article doesn’t mention and that bothers me. He created a technique based on jazz moves which were still very much in development when he started out. Famous choreographers as well as actors who move (like Travolta) are all indebted to him. Every Christmas I can still watch him, as he danced in White Christmas (and other grand musicals) as a young man.
He went to Hollywood at a young age, fell off a cable car and was paralyzed, was told he would never walk again. He took it all back though and used his own healing techniques in his own dance warm-ups. Still his face was half paralyzed -- he knew that the way to get people to ignore his crossed eyes was to dance so well, to make his body so beautiful that no one would notice his face. This is one reason why Luigi is the most beautiful of dance techniques.
The article reads a little gossipy to me. While it’s true that Luigi knew everyone (the greats like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire) and is a part of dance history, I got the feeling that the writer didn’t know much about dance itself, but was more into the human interest angle.
That’s OK. But don’t leave out the dance. It reminds me a bit of what is happening to art history too. More and more they are leaving out the history in art history classes, with no need to remember dates and events. What I find really alarming though is that they are now also taking the art out of art history. That’s really bugging me! More on that later.
the High and the Low, March 27 2005
One of the reasons I called it Artstar is because I was just as interested in the artist as I was the art -- and not just for myself but for the audience. I knew that the listener would find a conversation about life more engaging than one just about artworks we could not see. And so, the life, that means a lot of things and one of them is the business and personalities of art.
Maybe it’s not the biggest thing you want to get across, but when I did Be an Anonymous Art Critic, I knew I was doing something a little different but somehow wished for and underexposed. People want to critique and they want to complain and put on the front burner that which is generally on the back, though always steaming.
Paul H-O provided more of the same but on a much higher level and of course, not anonymously. While he had this personal story, 95% of it was based in art business and art gossip and the ‘other’ as opposed to himself. This ‘other’ was his work in a way, and it’s the NY art world in a sweeping backward glance, from the viewpoint of both the high and the low.
Only a Diary, March 26 2005
One thing – maybe the typical thing – that an art blogger does is record and review shows with others throwing their two bits in. Some might expect this out of me, especially after rounds through Chelsea. But while various shows did make a dent into my memory, what made the biggest impression is the vastness of it all and how it is truly the best of the best while totally feeling humanless and even demoralizing. I mean that as both viewer and artist.
And if indeed a true blog is one that allows from commentary from without, then I haven’t one for sure. Thus, ‘diary’ works for me.
Paul H-O, in his film but also in our conversation, talks a lot about how the art world changed in the 80s and 90s, how the market collapsed and out of it, this stronger gallery grew; more razor sharp and focused, with a whole art town surrounding it in support (Chelsea). Only the strong survive.
When I talked with Bob Kochs about it (who owns Augen) he said: “You’ve got to remember it’s all just commodities. If you can’t deal with that, then you can’t really do it in New York.”
Could that be one factor in how I got lost along the way? For art never ceased to function, in some way, as a spiritual and intellectual safe harbor for me, while I did ‘business’ elsewhere. Not good if you want an art career in New York.
The art and (especially) the presentation are so much better; my hometown could take a note from the installation mavens of New York: that less is more and please take out the kitchen sink.
Shows I liked:
Damien Hirst at Gagosian (some say he isn’t a painter. Images are always what mattered to me, so I don’t care about that at all. Those paintings of gems and pills blew my mind), Thomas Ruff at David Zwirner (pixeled pics of the Trade center on fire); Gitte Schafer presented Magpie’s Booty at Perry Rubenstein, a tiny room a la Lovelake with a collection of both found and made small works, a delight which felt not manufactured nor slick but still unified and well, real. Her first US show, I would visit again. While Eric Fischl would be considered the hottie at Mary Boone, I loved the paintings in back by Eric Freeman more. Ok, I’ve wondered how to just paint a square, one square, in a way in which we could look at it forever. This Eric Freeman figured that out! There was good drawing all over but my favorite was a show by Shahzia Sikander called 51 Ways of Seeing at Brent Sikkema. 51 small drawings which gave you everything you’d ever want to know: like geometria? Done. Perfect elephants dancing? Done. The woman drew everything well, on small sheets you could look at forever.
The Neue Galerie, March 23 2005
There’s much I missed. You have to make your choices. I heard from a couple people that: “You should see the PS1 show, though I heard that some of it is not all that great.”
Hmph. I don’t really have time for not all that great; I’m just here a few days. I can see not all that great in PDX, loads of it. Let’s see, do I want to see not all that great (even if it is just a few, singular examples) or some of the best art made in the 20th century at the Neue Galerie?
Not a tough call. I’ve been lusting after that museum since it first opened a few years ago but have not been able to go. And I love the idea of the commitment, that two men, who had the same tastes and interests in a small but excellent area of art, met in the 1950s and decided to start collecting, with the dream of opening a museum some day. What a gift to the world.
Thirty years is about all the museum expands and in only two countries: Germany and Austria. But that focus will give some of the greatest art and design ever produced. I about died and went to heaven when I walked into that room full of Egon Schiele self-portraits. Is there better drawing, anywhere? I don’t know. Plus the guy was the total punk prototype when it comes to personal style.
Sometime in the eighties Kirk Varnedoe curated a show at the MOMA called Vienna 1900. This show made a huge impact on me, though it is safe to say I was more than a convert by then. I already knew that some of the best design came out of those times, and was just as happy to be in a room full of Josef Hoffman chairs as I was a room full of Klimts. This Neue Galerie operates on the same level. Even a shot glass was a masterpiece.
The museum has a photography show up right now, featuring many heavyweights of the Neue Sachlichkeit. On the ground floor was a black and white photo-booth machine, which I thought was a wonderful addition. I’ve been camping it for the photo-booth since I was a child and dove right in.
The museum has a lovely café, styled like a Viennese tea room. Every chair, table, place setting and tea pot fit the mood, not to mention the food (I had smoked trout and horseradish crepes). I sat there with a Berlin wartime diary, found at their bookstore, written by a dislodged Russian princess, who had eye witness accounts of the plot against Hitler’s life.
the Quiet Life, March 23 2005
My girlfriend, who has been many places and comes and goes as far as NYC is concerned, says: “New York kicks your ass.”
She’s a fashion maven and this was the center of the universe. Here was the work and here was the money, but it is not quite as it was. Things have changed.
I knew people in Gucci, Chanel (where I worked), Ferragamo, YSL, St. John, Prada, Escada, Louis Vuitton. None are making what they were, yet the fashion game isn’t really all that different. Same variation in fabrication or shapes, but no really new revolutions since the 60s (that’s really my own take).
You could say that about a lot of things. Rock or jazz music hasn’t changed the planet in a very long time. And then I thought about art.
Maybe I’m too close to make any assessment. What I do read about is The Market. Not so much style, developments, subject matter or any of that, but the market and how hot it is.
Makes ya feel really out of it, then, to be this artist who isn’t necessarily white hot, who isn’t fresh out of some program, just sort of plodding along and making the work but no hype. Dear Paul H-O actually referred to Cindy as though she was like that, “quietly making the work.”
Oh man, he doesn’t know what quietly is!
Well, actually he personally might. He called himself ‘a C-list artist’ before he met Cindy and maybe he still is, though he sure goes to different kinds of art parties now.
Paul Hasegawa-Overacker, March 22 2005
In 1980 I had my first one person show in a gallery. That show had some drawing and painting but was mostly comprised of photomontage and punk poster type work. It was not at a commercial gallery but at this storefront building in San Francisco called the Goodman Building. Many artists lived upstairs and had their studios. This place was eventually torn down, for condos I believe. It was here that I first met Paul H-O.
He was a painter, had a fairly tight, illustrational style as I recall. We saw each other at clubs here and there once I moved down there.
Then fast forward to the early 90s in NYC. He’s in New York too but no longer paints. He’s shocked that I do. It was not a fashionable time at all to be a painter then, the time of Jeff Koons, Ashley Bickerton, et al. He’s making objects. He’s a sculptor, he says, and I remember he had a body of work that was all empty frames.
I also remember very clearly that he told me he never read anything save things to do with art or rather, especially the art career (Art Forum, etc.). This made some kind of impression on me as I was still deep into the novel at the time. And those novels (and other writers) often fueled my imagination and led to subject matter in my painting, no doubt about it. To this day, various thinkers like Wilhelm Reich have had just as much to do with what/how I paint as whatever is happening in painting now and probably more.
I suppose I was also kind of sick of the art world after spending a couple of wrecked years being just plain sick after '90. I got through that illness but never made it to the other side the same person. I had to have health insurance, which meant I had to have a full time job. Yes, I still made art. But the schmoozing stopped. You might say that I had to hold so much together during the day at my job (“Hi. How are you today?”) that I had absolutely zero patience for it once I got out of there. And the art world definitely has that kind of be-nice be-cool be-whatever but pay attention game going on.
Fast forward again to sometime in the late 90s. I’m on the computer and see that Paul is now writing for Artnet. He is also making other forays into art journalism with cable TV shows, radio and so on. We email each other and he tells me that he is now living with Cindy Sherman. As time goes on, he then lets me know that he is making a film called Guest of Cindy Sherman and has formed a film company. So when I knew I was going to visit NYC, I knew he was someone I wanted to interview for my own radio show.
We spent a lot of time on tape yesterday and I’m trying to decide what to do with it all, if I should edit into an hour or let it ramble over two shows. He has some great stories about not only the New York art world, but of his time living in her shadow (his words, not mine). The show will broadcast for sure next Sunday, if not the next one as well.
March 21 2005
On 57th Street, I tried to get into my old school and couldn't. “You need a pass.” A lot has changed in that regard; this is a building I knew inside-out, every nook and cranny I roamed freely, all the way to the top of the roof, where I edged my way out for the view and so much more. Indeed, even at the Met they searched my bag.
Sometime in the late 80s the Met put on a grand show of Sienese painters: small, golden and perfect works, it was a world I didn’t really know much about. I visited that show many times and even bought the catalogue. So yesterday I made a straight beeline to that major acquisition I’ve written about before here: the Duccio Madonna and Child.
Lucky for me I was early – hardly a soul was around. But in the 3 hours or so that I passed at the Met, the Palace filled with the masses. I can hardly recall all I saw in that 3 hours… how about a drop dead Diane Arbus show? Loads of her personal notebooks were included, even her cameras. I was never that into her till this exhibition, a mind blower.
March 20 2005
I wonder how I would feel if I were working in Chelsea. So much about art but not much else. You almost (I say almost) feel weird to walk from art spectacle to art spectacle – it feels a little manufactured. But the idea that art is indeed manufactured is something New York got over a long time ago and so should I.
Remember my pal who asked me if I was a Modernist and if indeed I was (gulp), how could I be one in a PM world? She couldn’t ask that question if she hung out 2 seconds in Chelsea. Everything is there and some of the best of it was what you would call just plain old Modernism, with a capital M.
Jesus did I see some good painting. And also some large scale color photography which didn’t even make a dent in my brain.
What was wild for me was all the familiar faces in the galleries. Some of the people who manned galleries 15 years ago are still there. There was Nick, the lone wolf who sits at Sonnabend for what must be decades by now.
As to handing out my postcard, I did so a few times but to faces unscathed by anything. The general trend is not to look at the image but to immediately flip it over and see who I am showing with. This sort of reminds me of a tough fact I faced here and could never reconcile then: when you meet someone in the art world and tell them you’re an artist, the questions go like this: Where did you go to school? Who is your dealer? Where is your studio?
-- And from this, they know all they need to know about you, how to place you in the universe. Never a mention in what I made or what interested me. The direct glance to the back of the card is sort of an extension of that same milieu. But I also think that people are just too tarnished by it all. What’s another image, no matter how knock-out it is? Images tell just a small part of the complex story they are acting in.
In the evening I was walking through gridlocked Soho (which unfortunately looks sort of trashy now) and stumbled upon an opening at Ronald Feldman: Currency by McCarren/Fine. I’ll post pictures later, but suffice to say right now that the show was all about money, collaged on the floors and walls, and some of the collages just gorgeous. Again, what struck me the most was all the same faces, I swear, some of the same old lechers I met in Soho in the 80s.
I had gone all the way down to the WTC, where I once worked in the early 90s. It is covered with fences and metal and lights and packs of school children, who, while never having had any real connection to that nasty place New York City when it was vital and whole, seem to relish in sharing its despair, seeing it as the Big Tragedy of their own life. Across the street was Century 21. Like a good New Yorker, I went shopping.
Irregularities, March 19 2005
I had one constant best friend while I lived in New York – Audrey. We met up last night for the first time in over five years.
Audrey was not only here for 9/11 but to get out, she then moved to the Cayman Islands to begin a new life – just in time for their version of a 9/11 (exactly 2 years later), the hurricane. She lost everything (save for what never got moved to the islands in the first place) – a business, computer, stuff. She moved back to NYC with two suitcases. At 48.
We started at Pastis, which while being gorgeous and making you look gorgeous (the lighting is always down at a McNally café – if you don’t look good there, forget it) and having dependable food, looked like it had been taken over by reunited sorority sisters.
After that things started becoming a blur. All the fashionable smoothness in bars brings no irregularities to the memory. Glorious irregularities are what you tend to remember. This is, after all, the meat packing district.
The smooth design, the low-key lights, and worst of all, that low-key loungey, electro, trans-continental fusion shit. People think it is sophisticated but I think it’s just boring now. It is way too utterly (yet not tragically) hip. I used to think that sound was OK for hair salons and bars, but never when I am painting. I like things which move and involve. I am going to a million galleries today and hope to see art which does.
We did hit this Cuban spot that had fabulous music. No one was dancing though. I started, but there really wasn’t room.
photo by Marne Lucas
Living Creatures, March 17 2005
Twice last year I was in the hospital and one of those times was right on New Years. I’m OK but I am still on the drugs that supposedly make you feel that it’s all going away.
Not soon enough though. The drugs make me feel like I am bubble-wrapped, both physically and emotionally. I’m not always quite there, present. And this is what I remember about this photo shoot with the great Marne Lucas. Like I wasn’t quite there and somehow that was wrong. It sure was fun to paint on them though! Today is the last day of that drug ride, for I want to be crystal clear in NYC.
Maybe there is something to what the Indians say about getting photographed: it can steal your soul -- while often not capturing it on film at all.
The bench is by Randy Moe and Stephen Walter. They are getting into the bench business and have many great designs. I showed Randy Moe at Lovelake: the works were all prints from drawings of inmates at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
Portraits by Randy Moe, September 2002
I suppose there is nothing Randy Moe can’t do well – that show was a knockout and so are his benches.
The deck is new too. When Marne and I were talking about where to shoot, I wanted to do some pictures back there, in my backyard, a place where I am happy.
But it’s also about presenting living creatures with other living creatures.
A few months ago I was in a show at PSU called Saturated. There were three artists in this show. We all got together one evening to talk about what to call the show and what we had in common. Color was the uniting factor.
Yes, they too were interested in organic matter, but they both saw it chiefly through the lens of death and decay; they both were interested in that. I am nowhere near that at all and like I’ve said before here, don’t believe in death. It’s nowhere in my view.
60s/ 80s
Wall of Sound, March 16 2005
Yesterday I picked up the postcard for my show in April. Oh God, how beautiful it looks. There’s all kinds of free floating garbage in my head right now, almost resembling the chattering men of Borofsky, save my men scream… but the show card has momentarily silenced them.
My work doesn’t photograph well. Those subtle but electric changes aren’t easy to get right. What I’ve often noticed is that if you get one color right, others will not be. So the slide just doesn’t tell the story of the painting, especially the fact that it’s hand painted and riddled with brushstrokes and imperfections.
That strange pink, more a lavender than pink, unites and divides in the postcard just like it does in real life. I look at the image and know that it is one which will stay, that will come back ten years later and still assert itself. And it is all as it should be -- I thought about this painting for at least 5 years before making it, if not my entire life.
It also has that Wall of Sound that I’m totally after. Sometimes I think of that idea in music and how it could apply to art, namely my art. That organized cacophony, meeting the viewer with no escape, is something I am very interested in.
It’s a reason why I do not use much white -- it tends to milk down color and can give the viewer a way out of the painting. White can act like an escape and so I use very little.
Starry Night
It worked out alright in Starry Night though. The above painting was made with only three colors: ultramarine blue, Prussian blue and white. That’s it. So I used quite of bit of white there but still not as any form of a ‘break.’ The night sky takes over when you are out in it. I'm often happily overwhelmed by it. I wanted to get that across somehow in paint.
The Backyard, March 15 2005
I wake up pretty early – today it was at 5:30am. I like to be awake and aware before the rest of the planet has a chance at me. The only things I engage with, besides my paper diary, are the birds.
There are the usual sparrows and starlings, but also a whole family of northern Flickers, Downy Woodpeckers, Stellar Jays, regular Scrub Jays, Dark-eyed Juncos, wrens, hummers, robins and doves and even hawks, looking for something (or rather someone) to eat.
The jay birds come when I call, knowing that the peanut game will commence. They line up to grab nuts which they plant right before my eyes. Sometimes I think I need an air controller out there, it is so active. Other birds don’t participate but they don’t leave either. They seem to be entertained.
The jays love to plant. I have watched a jay drill a perfect V into the ground, expertly lodge a seed and then cover the whole thing up with the side of his beak. They say that blue jays could be responsible for many forests.
Many are pregnant now. I’ll never forget my first spring in this house (last year), when I was bombarded by naked looking baby jays, so green they could not keep balance on anything but delighted in squawking away.
People have suggested that I go here and there to bird watch, like birders do. But I have very little interest in that. What I want is a personal relationship with a wild animal right at my home. My happiest time right now is when I am in the backyard.
For awhile now I have entertained ideas about collaging with birds. I know Cornell and Ernst mined that area very well, but there still might be more to say. I have an image of raptors especially in my head, with a third eye like I gave George Harrison.
New York, March 14 2005
Later this week I am going to New York. I haven’t even thought much about it till just lately; I’m not sure what I am expecting out of the trip. I try to not have expectations.
I lived there eleven years, all of my thirties. And I haven’t been back since 1999, which is like a lifetime. There were a lot of reasons I kept away. And art (or rather, an art career) had everything to do with it.
When I first moved back to Oregon, I kept going back to visit NYC. It was still my home. But I found that if I kept going back, I never really moved here. I wasn’t invested in this place and it probably showed.
But the biggest reason to stick around was I couldn’t afford a big trip after I committed everything to getting an art career back. And this was very much a conscious decision. (Yes, I know that some people say ‘career’ with a sneer, when it comes to art.)
I was working at Hamburger Mary’s (RIP) and as it was closing (1999), I got laid off. It was the first time in my life (then at 44) that I could collect unemployment. And just make art. So I went for it. I stretched out that moment of total commitment for as long as I could and all of my money went into a studio and materials.
As I got closer and closer to some kind of life as an artist, New York, at least in my mind, changed. It was not just this fabulous town I lived in for a long time. It was a place of so much challenge, where I entered a vibrant young woman and left an exhausted one. The longer I’ve been away, the more complex the whole thing is in my head.
And I wouldn’t be all that aware of it if not for my diaries, which I started to reread in 2000. After awhile it became clear to me that a return would mark something, maybe inexplicable but still something. I chose to go right before my show at Augen because I wanted that high point right on the horizon, an occasion which might color everything in a positive way.
No More than Décor, March 13 2005
Not long ago I watched the Truffaut film the 400 Blows. I loved the movie and still think of the boy, maybe 13, who is alienated from his parents and school and runs away.
It's the typical response to hate his mother (I sure did), who is not much of a mother at all. But from this distance of nearly fifty years, I see some things in his mother, some reasons for her resentment and behavior.
By 1958, the sexual revolution is well on its way. With her pointy-bra and bleached hairdo, she's built for speed. But there is no pill. I see my own mother, just a bit, in this character.
She lived in a time when women weren't really supposed to be anything but mom. She had a real problem seeing that I had a lot of things in mind for my own life, and I now realize that it wasn't all personal, it wasn't about me---it was about her.
There are the photos of the platinum blonde in the tight skirt, hair swept like Kim Novak, right handbag and shoes. There's one photo in particular where she is looking out over Grand Canyon, looking so carefree, one year before I was born. I used to think as I looked at the picture: "Soon all hell will break loose. Soon her freedom is over."
But Mom had already had one baby out of wedlock, staying with a distant cousin, delivery at some Salvation Army ward, a pregnancy so secret that her own father never knew. The picture doesn't tell half the tale of being a modern woman of 1955.
That woman knew Rosie the Riveter, if was not one herself. She knew some form of independence and can-do attitude because of the war. Then in came the girdle and the heels higher than ever. Where once we had Rosalind Russell and Kate Hepburn, now we had Marilyn Monroe and Doris Day.
My mom had one drawer full of falsies alone. All different thicknesses and kinds of points, depending on the garment no doubt. When the 70s hit, she gleefully threw out her brassieres. When I got into 50s fashion in the 1970s punk era, no doubt she thought I was insane. All that trying to fit into molds made generally by men -- how could one see the romance or art in that, if you've experienced the pressure firsthand?
In 400 Blows, the boy cannot forgive his mother as he knows she wanted an abortion. Well, it didn't happen and he got life instead. She has little patience and is painted as the mother from hell in the film, and it's all supposed to be autobiographical of Truffaut's life. She's having an affair too, deceiving his stepfather and checking out her makeup and seams. Way too occupied with her looks, that's how she comes off.
But I can tell you from personal experience that I often felt like no more than decor to many in the 80s and 90s---what must the 50s have been like?
She's disappointed and confused and just plain tired. Nobody really told her what she could be. Talk about 'just say no'---I'll bet she said no plenty of times. Just not enough.
Line and color, March 12 2005
Yesterday I checked out Michael Brophy’s work one more time before his interview tomorrow. One thing which struck me was how dead-on he is with his line. This show isn’t about color and doesn’t need to be, but I do remember one show where he had all these deep reds and subtle yet strong greens going on. The result reminded me a bit of Edward Hopper, an artist I enjoy to no end.
I remember reading that the retrospective Hopper had recently (last year at the Tate) in London was the most attended show ever in the history of that museum. More people lined up to see Hopper than for any other artist. It doesn’t surprise me.
As to the line, to capture something dead-on is incredibly satisfying. I went into the intense journey of drawing while I lived in New York City. But I do feel that part of the reason I did that was because New York City is so unsupportive of color. I retreated into the line. No regrets at all; this is just a backward glance and observation.
But a huge part of me was held back. NYC often labeled me as a Californian (that didn’t bug me, yet I knew it was dismissive) and as a colorist. It seemed to imply that I was lightweight somehow, or that I had little (if any) content. That was the part that bothered me. It was almost like anyone really adept at color must think of little else.
I think of plenty but WTF. Since I am adept at color, I’ve found I could use it to get across ideas that a line alone could not.
Someone asked me yesterday how I felt about my show next month – was I nervous? It would be nice to sell and so I am nervous about that, but as to critical response (from the viewers or whoever), I am not worried at all. I feel confident about the paintings.
If anything, they are fun. If you can’t have fun with these paintings, then you might have a problem. In my mind’s eye, I saw them lined up in a room, or rather, lit up in a room. Because that is what they do. There is sheer joy and fun in them, even though that’s not exactly what I felt while painting them! But I also realize that for some reason, many people’s idea of art doesn’t include that.
Just Stay Put, March 9 2005
Wow, I just read a long repartee in a blog about Monty Cantsin (AKA Istvan Kantor).
I think what blows my mind the most is the debate about whether he is inside or outside the ‘establishment’ and what that all means. What I’m getting, if I understand it all correctly (and I may not) is that if he’s a rebel, he can only be one in a certain way. He can’t show in a museum and then be critical of the art world, for example.
But I don’t know that I agree with that. Mind, I have not been following Monty and his every art move the past 15 years or so. We became friends in 1980 and eventually sort of lost touch. But I do know that he has been active through it all and for me, that means something. Most of us, without some kind of material reward, stop making art in our 30s.
To stay ‘sincere’ and ‘alternative,’ I wonder just what it all means sometimes. Like how low to go and how long must you stay there? And if indeed you do get the opportunity to show in a regular commercial gallery or a museum, does this mean you have ‘sold out’ or are no longer reinventing what art is?
I ask these questions right now because certain people see me a certain way --- and that is, not in a commercial gallery. But next month I will show in one and already I’ve gotten some shit for it.
Students in my contemporary art class glorify an alternative way to show and share art. I can dig it. In fact I can dig it a hell of a lot longer than they have been alive. My very first show was in an airport gift shop, sometime in the mid-70s.
Even when I returned to PDX in 1997, where do you think my first show was? In a church. No, the cooler, alternative art world, the one which condemns the commercial system, they didn’t exactly flock to that show! And then a year later, when I showed in a hair salon, where were they then? Then there was that show in a real estate office. But now they tell me how uncool it is to show in a regular gallery space. Uh huh.
When I first started this class, it had occurred to me that I would give out postcards for my show when they came out (which will be soon). But now I’m thinking that I will not even share with them that I am having this show. After all, it’s in the type of space they abhor. The feeling I get is that only when I’m about 80, or better yet, just plain dead, will it then be OK for me to show in a place like that, or especially in a museum.
Burnside
1980 by Rupert Jenkins
The Mountain Again, March 9 2005
I already described last October what the blow out of Mt St. Helen’s was like in 1980: a lovely ghost town -- so much ash, no one could drive. Its influence was all-pervasive, save to those of us who never drive. Even then it was hardly business as usual. Ash followed us everywhere, into our sheets, into our clothes and then eventually found itself in all kinds of weird tourist amusements and products.
“Turn on the TV,” said a friend on the phone today, but I didn’t have to this time. I could walk across the street and get a roadside view of the smoky cloud of steam and ash billowing from the mountain.
What struck me more though was the parade of flashing blue lights which covered the city today. Police cars on every bridge all lined up, one after another, bridge after bridge. How easily and how quickly it became a police state, able to control any move. Someone suggested they were only there to keep the traffic moving, but it actually made the whole situation more alarming than it was.
Freedom of Speech, March 6 2005
Today’s broadcast of Artstar Radio was one of the very few where listeners called and quizzed me about it. In the past, someone has called only when provoked, when I asked for input and these were regular listeners. Today was remarkably different in that people called who had picked up the broadcast from random listening. They had no idea what they were listening to, had never heard Artstar before, weren’t big art fans but found the broadcast interesting enough to call up KPSU and ask: “Yes. Just what are we listening to?”
One caller was an older man who said he wanted to find out what young people in particular were thinking. When I told him that some of the young people in my class were offended by the idea of giving a platform for opinion, he was alarmed. But if you’ve grown up in an era of political correctness, this just might be the outcome.
This almost too neatly coincides with a small piece by Fred Furedi in the Week in Review section of today’s New York Times called Freedom of Speech? Not on My Campus, which was actually reprinted from the online journal Spiked. In a nutshell, Furedi states that educators in high places such as Harvard are learning to watch what they say because a student might be offended. More and more, controversial subjects are avoided at the places which used to embrace them: the universities.
“Of course words can offend. But one of the roles of a university is to challenge conventional truths - and that means academics questioning the sacred and mentioning the unmentionable. A proper university teaches its members how not to take hateful views personally, and how not to be offended by uncomfortable ideas. It also teaches its members how to deal with being offended. And it never turns to the Inquisitor or the Censor for the answer.”
This is exactly what happened to me at PSU in my class presentation of this project and idea. Students were offended by enabling opinion and discussion. While I knew that Be an Anonymous Art Critic might lead to some wild ride, would be a learning experience of some sort, I would have never guessed that it would lead to questioning the basic right of freedom of speech.
The Happy Time and Duran Duran, March 5 2005
I used call this specific time “the Happy Time.” Right before a show. Nothing wrong has happened yet, no mistakes have been made. It's the anticipation which makes one happy. A perfect example of how the goal is really not a goal or end-point, but a journey.
But you don’t even have to wait till after the show has come down -- sometimes even right after the opening there can be some vague (or not so vague) psychological let down.
There's been times that once the party starts winding down, I can actually feel my body start to ache. I must have been ridged the entire time, yakking my head off to strangers, maybe held my body a certain way, for as soon as I can start to relax, I feel like I've just worked out many hours and now the pain gets to set in. Truly, that is nerves for you!
So now I’ll be frank: I am just not so sure that this time around is indeed a “Happy Time.” More like it’s an intense time that goes up and down like a roller coaster.
Two years ago I was preparing for OPEN studio. Open studio was about the beginning of these open spaces I am painting but also just a comment on the space itself, Lovelake, which was always my studio first and an art gallery second. I wanted to remind people of that.
That show was pretty low-key all around. The canvases were (for the most part) small, so the effort felt small. It took me only three months to make that show. And after all, since it was in my own space, there was no outside applied pressure regarding selling. From my own experience at Lovelake, I knew that some shows sold well and some did not but I liked them all and felt they were all comprised of interesting art.
Since the work and the effort was small, so were my prices. But I’ve always felt way undervalued here in PDX. My prices in the 80s in NYC were higher than here, until now with this upcoming Vive Chrome.
Me, maybe I haven’t changed, but somehow ‘things’ have. Somehow there are voices which demand or doubt roaming freely in my mind (if not elsewhere). Which I openly confess is twisted. I’m not saying I’m sane or anything! Perhaps this BAAAC taxed me more than I counted on.
.....On a less serious note, I see that Duran Duran is coming to town. Just thought I would share with you that I did their makeup back in the 80s or rather, one of them.
They were staying at the beautiful Clift Hotel, which has that Redwood Room, an old bar once filled with gorgeous fake Klimts. Not long after I received the call for the gig, I had a slew of phone calls from various makeup artists (word gets out fast) who said they would work for free if I needed an assistant for this job. But one hardly needs an assistant to do one man’s makeup.
Huge rooms, fabulous chandeliers and supermodels everywhere. Which is basically all they wanted out of me as a makeup artist – just make him look like a model --- gorgeous in that 80s way (see Donna Mills in my February diary for more details!).
But what do you think the conversation was about? Blow. How to get it, how much they did last night and how much they were gonna do tonight. They were real happy to meet the mayor, implying that she might be useful at a later date.
Conversation, March 4 2005
This past week I gave a presentation to my class about Be an Anonymous Art Critic.
The idea I have kicked around since 2002 but the class (contemporary art history at PSU) spurned me on to finally do something about it. Every student who has a class project must give a presentation about it.
Several students doubted the worth of my idea. One said my karma was not very good as I was opening the door and giving a platform for negativity. How is asking someone who they would put into the Biennial a negative thing?
“No matter awful it is, someone made it,” he offered. I was not sure whether he had problems with my project per se or just didn’t like art criticism in general. He was definitely for censorship though, sort of like if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. When I told a friend about that response, he said: “Has he seen the news lately? Talk about negative. Where is a sense of humor?”
But I guess some people want only warm and fuzzy. No wonder Thomas Kinkade has the audience he does!
But as to art criticism, I know something about his stance because I had it myself. Back in 1980 I made a collage which had a big slogan: Art Criticism --- Kill Kill Kill. It was in response to being dismissed by a critic (who never even went to the show).
At that time, I felt like the big art world didn’t address at all what my life was about as an artist. My thing didn’t happen in commercial galleries and when I would look at magazines like Art Forum, it seemed to have very little connection to anything I was doing. So I can see where this young man may be coming from.
But 25 years later, I am here to tell you that hanging shows which are never discussed has an empty feeling. Without art writing and opinion, there is no real conversation. Hanging it in your flat for your best friend to see is safe but doesn’t really go anywhere.
I am someone who has shown in my flat, in a hair salon, in a church, in an old prison; I’ve had plenty of shows that were never listed, much less reviewed. The lack of participation of ‘the other,’ this thing you scorned at 23, becomes a completely different animal by 45. At this point, I am not even sure how much I would count on what the critic would write or comprehend, but by now it is almost beside the point. Let’s just get the conversation started.
Brophy, March 3 2005
Last night I went to two openings: Michael Brophy at Laura Russo and then a large group photography show at Mark Woolley.
What incredible work Brophy is making! And in his case, it was not just the paintings which have evolved. He installed his work so well that he recreated that gallery to a certain degree.
Michael Brophy is an example of how the same time/ same station can work against you. By the time I had lived here 4 or 5 years I had already seen probably three one person shows of his at Laura Russo. While the work had changed and always advanced, it was often hard to tell because of environment: same walls, same crowd, same dealer.
What he did this time was hang a whole wall of smaller works tightly, so they functioned almost like a collage. And then across the room he had this large triptych (above). It is a big commitment.
Michael will be my guest on the radio March 13th.
The show at Mark Woolley had perhaps the opposite approach: 90 photographers. That is overwhelming. But I always have a good time. He puts on the best parties.
Some Maniac, March 2 2005
I received an email in which several people were asked to contribute to a project: ‘What is the art collective’ and basically, is it important?
There is a movement here and elsewhere in which the group precedes the individuated voice. I could list them for you but I refrain. Jeff Jahn has called them ‘the Hug Mes,’ in reference to an art show which happened here a few years back.
You know what? These people can be just as ambitious for themselves and just as bitchy as the rest of us. It is the hypocritical aspect I do not like. There is one artist here who was quoted as saying: I could never make art about myself.
It seems to me that the greatest contributions in art, ones enjoyed universally, come from some driven maniac. They’re going to enlighten and share with us, sure, and maybe change the world, but their first priority might be the enlightenment of themselves.
I confess the nature of the mass email bugged me. It was aimed at several people at once and began with: “You’re all so hard to get ahold of…” and ended with “…please don’t slack off on this…”
I haven’t changed my phone or my email in over five years and I am beyond available. And check out this website: I don’t slack off on shit. Not exactly a way to woo me. I called her up immediately and told her so. I don’t think she expected that.
This was the same young woman who, as an artist – and a damn good one at that --- had, as a part of her bio which she submitted to me for the interview, an alliance with a group who stated:
“We believe in the collective over the individual.” …
-- I asked her about that on the air. That’s a heavy statement and as an artist who has been around, I am here to tell you: it won’t get you out of bed 20 years later. You’ll need something else. Like your ego and your own personal drive and this thing which eggs you on. (And while we’re at it, what is wrong with having an ego? As a woman artist especially, I am going to defend mine like a mother bear with her cub.)
But guess what? Right on the radio she told me that well, she really hadn’t thought about it. I’ve got it on tape.
Just a slogan I guess!
But hey, I guess that serves the collective. And when it is all for the collective, no one particular individual has to step up and give a solid answer to that question.
No doubt I am the wrong person to ask. People often say to me: “You’ve done so much the community.” They don’t really understand at all why I do what I do, why I opened an art gallery or started a radio show. The quote unquote community has very little to do with it and I don’t really believe in it per se.
Believe it or not, I wanted to change my world. And maybe I could bring along some interesting people with me, but my own world was primary in the scheme of things. In the end, this might become some kind of community - but I see a list of individuals when I look at my radio show. I most certainly do not look for a consensus of any kind and think it can be destructive to real art statements.
When I announced the closing of Lovelake, I remember someone in a bar telling me that “You just can’t close your gallery --- it’s so important to the community.”
I then asked her what her favorite show was. She couldn’t say. I already knew she had never been there at all, being the one who opened those doors and sat there. Every single day. Oh but she can hide behind the ‘community’ since she didn’t check out that space for herself.
And I’ve got no problem with that! Just don’t talk to me about what I owe the community! What I owe is a vision I can develop for myself. And if you can get into it, I’m glad.
White Noise by Tom Cramer
What would you like to see? March 1 2005
The other day I finished up what will be my last painting as regards this upcoming show. I thought it would be this marvelous release but what it feels like is actually kind of strange and empty. Yes, works need to be varnished and other pre-show details face me. But of course this is not the same as painting.
I always say that painting can be hard for me, the way I go at it, but now that I don’t have to do it, I realize that it provides this daily focus I need.
This is the first time I haven’t had to paint since 2002. The ever quotable Tom Cramer once told me: “You’ve got to know when to not make art.” He’s right for sure.
The last big body of work was Axis and I was sort of fed up by the time I got to show it at Ogle. Those paintings were transitional in many ways. People knew me for more representational works (if they knew me at all), like my chairs and bridges. I had a really hard time finding someplace to show them. So hard, I decided to open my own exhibition space. By the time I got to show them, other things were going on in my head, but I didn’t have it all articulated yet.
from Axis
at Ogle, July 2002
Of course eventually Ogle said they would show me (thank you, Valentina) but by that time I was hooked on the idea of showing others and doing more than just being an artist. The next seven months were a whirlwind of other artists and their needs and I did not paint at all.
I got back into it by buying tiny (6 inch square) canvases to paint on as Christmas gifts. I had no idea what would go on them and started out with compositions similar to where I left off months before. This was completely unsatisfying.
I guess I was sick of the line and composition in general. The words of Yves Klein, who condemned the line often, rang in my head. I knew that what I was really after could be expressed more as an experience. I then 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.
I don’t think it would have come to me so easily if I had not taken that time off painting. That break gave me the clarity, the distance to be able to give myself permission to ask the question: What would you like to see?
More recent entries: February 2005
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