In today's post, the contrast in style between the painting, and the drawing, is dramatic. As good as the drawing is, it looks and feels more like an exercise in an alternate reality than it feels authentically mine. I will place that drawing in my X-Files. So much so for the influence of Egon Schiele. I am moving on.
"2016 No. 1" is very close to done. Yes, I am ready to move on. Paintings, as well are drawings, are becoming more about research than about completely finished forms and compositions. This is instructive. I have often wondered why Picasso left so many partially finished works. Many of these unpolished works are highly regarded despite their looking incomplete. I enjoy them, as do others, because they are full of startling invention. With Picasso, the preponderance of unfinished work occurred most often when he was in transition, from one visually commanding idea to another. The painting "2016 No. 1" may share this transitionary questioning. I show two examples of unfinished works by Pablo Picasso ("Hairdressing", 1906, and his most famous unfinished work, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", 1907). The time proximity of these two wonderful paintings visually exhibits one of the greatest years of transition in Picasso's oeuvre. I know, my art looks nothing like Egon Schiele's. I have no ambition to make art that looks like Egon Schiele's. However, every once in a while, there are elements within my drawings that remind me of Schiele's work. It is in the touch and feel of the surface. Schiele can leave the paper, outside of his form, blank, without touching it. His forms (as in the drawing shown below) are touched everywhere. He relentlessly, caressingly, feels the form. This gives delight to viewer. Such surface enhancement makes a viewers feel as if he were in the room when the drawing was made. The viewer feels like he sees the same thing Schiele saw. My work is not so real. My work does not reflect an actual person in a room. This is my separation from Schiele.
I am honing in on the motivation of me. Personal refinement does not come quick and easy. I continue to be surprised that it requires such vast commitments of time, energy, and rumination. After all these years of effort my work continues to relentlessly brighten and clarify. My surprise may be a statement of naïveté. Is it just me, or are these images, which appeared yesterday, truly exceptional?
Drawings from 1/20/2016, pencil on paper, 16X20 inches There is nothing like an encounter with an alien world to cause me to pause and ask questions. Mostly these questions are about the world I live in. The alien world remains alien, but the contrast of circumstances, alien versus my world, clarifies where I live. I wonder if you feel the same? I think this clarification by contrast is one of the reasons Science Fiction films and literature are so popular. The topic does not have to be one of Science Fiction. Last week I wrote about the film "The Apostle". This week I watched the film "Monster's Ball". The worlds depicted in both of these films are, in many aspects, alien to that which I have experienced. However, humans, rational-emotional beings, react similarly in all situations, alien or not. This is made apparent in films such as these. Can an alien visual image do the same? I think so.
Amazing it is that getting better is simple. It is a matter of going, doing, making, feeling. I am not saying this isn't hard work. I am saying that the more I show up and put in an honest day's work, the better my work. What is "better"? Better, to me, is analogous to singing more truly. The images I show today feel authentically mine. They speak for me in ways I cannot verbally speak. This is visual art acting as it should. It is communicating to me. Hopefully, it is communicating to you!
Confusion and chaos is not my thing, but that does not mean I can escape it. My daily travels through time and memory, now and before, does not give solace. The ultimate ultimate questions remain. Is it right? Is it true? Does it speak correctly? The only way I can determine the different between right and not-so-right is through practice. This is not about morality. This is about the nuances of reality. It happens to me in the same way my heart beats. It just happens. Is one beat more right than another?
It felt right! Yesterday's studio work came like sawdust on the floor after a perfect cut. It just appeared. After the process of making it was there when I looked. The give and take of making occurred seamlessly, without worry or concern. The route followed felt preordained. Similar it was to navigating a ship through the necessary route to avoid foundering. Enjoy these works! I believe they are exceptional, one in its beginnings and one in its final form.
In yesterday's post I showed a reproduction of a painting by Carroll Dunham. That painting of Dunham's is similar to many of his recent paintings. Dunham's color scheme is repetitive. Dunham's imagery is repetitive, including the use of the backside of a woman with large buttocks (take a look at Dunham's website for more of the same: Carroll Dunham's website). Yesterday a woman with large buttocks showed up in my drawing. This drawing is influenced by Carroll Dunham, but it is obviously quite different than Dunham's work. Most interesting to me is my vastly dissimilar approach to drawing. In everything I do, it is me I am interested. It appears, however, that I am casually interest in Dunham. Comparing Dunham's approach to mine is instructive. I am all about being playful with forms, creating interesting compositions based upon forms in space, and scratching the surfaces of those forms with pencil or paint. Contrasting Dunham's works to mine makes my own approach so apparent to me. In contrast to Dunham, my work is non-repetitive in its use of imagery, form, space, color, and composition. Carroll Dunham does appear to make many more paintings than I. So sticking to one idea that strikes one's fancy may help produce a large volume of work, but is it good work? I will not answer that, but I will say that Dunham appears to have "made it", by which I mean his paintings are bought and possessed by collectors, one after another. That has not happened to me. My work is not about producing a large volume of work. Is this a problem? This question I will not attempt to answer.
The more I am aware of that which is going on around me (in art, politics, and life), the more I know I am on my correct path. Unbelievably, I fit into it all. Continuing is most important, because knowing can be delusional, even when one feels clear in the here and now. Only through work can one test one's delusions and thus separate the false from the true. Yesterday announced a new painting. Yesterday, as well, came the newest issue of "Art in America". On its cover was a detail of a painting by Carroll Dunham (a reproduction of a work by Carroll Dunham appears below my work). Dunham happens to be the father of Lena Dunham, well known for her TV show, "Girls". Carroll Dunham and I also happen to be born in the same year. No surprise here, since his work and mine, though vastly different, share similarity in its interest in the abstract versus the concrete. This from Wikipedia: "Carroll Dunham is known for his conceptual approach to painting and drawing and his interest in exploring the relationship between abstraction and figuration. Of his body of work, Johanna Burton writes, 'Dunham’s career can be characterized by its rigorous indefinability, as his works dip freely into the realms of abstraction, figuration, surrealism, graffiti, pop, even cartoons, without ever settling loyally into any one of them.'"
Drawings from 1/6/2016, pencil on paper, 20X16 inches Yes, it is me, the dog! I am back and doing what dogs do. Like a habit unbroken, I will follow my master. The problem is... I am still learning about that which my master demands. I have written this before: Perhaps painting will sort this out more efficiently than drawing. My reasoning? I find that the longer term give and take of the process of painting, and its larger format, causes me to pay more attention to the thoroughly authentic. This is in contrast to the transient ideas I sometimes entertain in my drawing.
Yesterday's images were all over the place, but they are united in their acceptance of my internal reality. I live in place far away from the hubbub of humanity. This allows me to dwell, to contemplate, then make an effort to unravel my confusion. Confusion is born of past experiences misunderstood, or never fully understood. I have taken upon myself the job of exploring this vast, untidy, mystifying ocean of bewilderment and wonderment. |
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May 2024
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