I am beginning to understand. My paintings are bon mots. They are witticisms thrust upon the world, each an equivoque of reality. Everything I make has more than one meaning. The very idea of creating a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional canvas is an equivoque, having two meanings, 3D-space and 2D-space playing upon one another, having two simultaneous meanings. Some may call my ambiguity of space more akin to malapropism; is it not incorrect to create the artifice of the third-dimension on a flat surface? The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or figurative language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism is an incorrect variation on a correct expression, while a pun involves expressions with multiple (correct or fairly reasonable) interpretations. Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, especially as their usage and meaning are usually specific to a particular language or its culture. I have often referred to the feigning of the third dimension on a two-dimensional surface as artifice. Here is it again, in a new painting, and in a new drawing; both are products of yesterday's studio session. The painting is aptly entitled "Clever Liars"; its third-dimension is a lie. My quotation is an old one, one with no known author. The idea is "details" diminish the cleverness of a lie. Too many details in a lie diminish its acceptance in marriages, business, and politics, not so in art. The more detail in a drawing, or a painting, the more the viewer accepts the artifice. If you don't believe me, or if you don't see this in the work I post today, view the 2014 watercolor painting by Anselm Kiefer, below; you can feel your eye fall into Kiefer's painting, scoping back until the eye hits the artifice that appears to be a sunset. This use of the third dimension is very important to me. I find an image which engages the viewer because it insists upon being seen with a third-dimension, a grandly accepted lie; the lie of depth on a flat plane, forces the viewer to think actuality, i.e., the viewer has an additional incentive to believe the image before them mimics reality. They fall into the artwork as people fall into a con job. I have been told the greatest cons are those the "mark" believe they have determined to benefit themselves; the mark determines they will benefit by causing a loss to the con-artist; the "stooge" thinks the "grifter" does not understand how he, the "confidence man," will lose when the "sucker" goes ahead and takes the bait. FYI: A confidence trick is also known as a con game, a con, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko (or bunco), a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, or a bamboozle. The intended victims are known as marks, suckers, stooges, mugus, rubes, or gulls (from the word gullible). When accomplices are employed, they are known as shills. The drawing I post today exhibits an intellectual and emotional jump. Here are kinetics, here are all kinds of space, from three dimensional and two dimensional space to negative and positive space. This drawing encounters every sort of space a viewer can perceive.
"Something Else Entirely" (2019 No.4, state 21), oil on canvas, 38.5x62.5 inches {"And you’d spend years trying to decipher the sentence, until finally you’d understand it. But after a while you’d realize you got it wrong, and the sentence meant something else entirely." - Tadeusz Dąbrowski, from the poem "Sentence"} I do not know what I do not know. There are all kinds of ways to create depth and internal energy on a flat surface. I am working toward that, but look (below) at this painting by Julie Mehretu! Mehretu condenses and releases form. Her work is a revelation to me. In my drawing, the one I show today, I play this way too. However, the depth in Mehretu's "Stadia II" is far greater than that which I create is either of my works shown in this post. In "Stadia II" Mehretu creates depth by use of perspective lines at the bottom of the canvas, and smaller forms at the top. Depth is forced in other ways too. The clogging of darker forms at the top forces the eye to think hanging banners (like in a basketball stadium); the eye passes underneath those banners, back to the gray forms that reside (artificially) behind them. This is an exciting, masterful vision; one that creates a robust vision of three-dimensions on a two dimensional surface. To see Mehretu's mid-career Retrospective, visit the Whitney Museum of American Art (June 26 — September 20) or the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (now through May 17). Part III: Wall with Objects OR WallpaperPaintings and drawings are flat, two-dimensional surfaces. If an artifice of the third dimension is created there are two choices. In order to deal with the inherent two-dimensionality of canvas or paper an artist can... (1) create a box, or landscape, by using a ground defined by a horizon, or (2) hang forms from a flat wall (the wall being defined by obvious positioning of the forms on the wall). There is third way to deal with two-dimensional canvas or paper: Float flat objects in an amorphous space. This third option, flat on flat, is always unsatisfactory. It is decoration. It is merely wallpaper. It cannot be art! Decoration is nice and pleasant, it may fill a void on a wall, but it cannot speak deeply of the human spirit, complex as the human spirit is, with intellect and emotion. Joan Miró tried doing both; he made paintings with the artifice of the third-dimension, and he made paintings that have flat objects on amorphous backgrounds. Miró's paintings with the third dimensional deceit mostly succeed, Miró's flat on flat paintings mostly fail (they are decorative and may fit well as decorations in a home, nothing more). Below, look at two paintings by Joan Miró. I admit, the second painting, which is flat on flat, exhibits Miró's effort to define the ground by using uneven areas of paint (in this way a viewer, at least, is cognizant the painting is on a flat surface). Henri Matisse did both. He created flat on flat works (e.g., his late paper cuts), but most of his career was spent making drawings and paintings with an exuberant questioning of color and three-dimensional space. I will discuss Matisse's work tomorrow. In yesterday's drawing I experimented with the lack of a horizon line; however there is an obvious horizon and an obvious ground. I have many artistic ambitions. I worry I have too many objectives. I aspire to make art that functions well through many means: value, form, negative space, three-dimensional space, two-dimensional space, composition, and much more. I worry this may lead to confusion. A good work of art must show it itself through initial simplicity. A simple entry entices the viewer to become engaged, to pay attention, to look deeper, to see more. Complication is enriching only if the viewer hangs in there to absorb it. I think yesterday's drawing achieves this fullness; simplicity first, then satisfyingly complicated. This drawing is the last I will frame for my one-person Bromfield Gallery exhibition, opening June 5. Enjoy here! But please, see it in person at Bromfield Gallery. It is better than its reproduction.
Never! Always! The edge of description is life as animated joy. Henri Matisse did it before anyone else. Matisse's Joy of Life is a grand display of compositional stress and color invention; it depicts the joy in creation. Joy of Life is reality itself. Joy of Life is based upon that which we see, i.e., the reality we know; the flat plane of the canvas is respected while three-dimensional-perspective is forced and enforced. Around and around we go, in and out we see. It is more than a test of compositional possibilities; it plays with simple contrast too, light to dark. Joy of Life is one of Henri Matisse's most important contributions to painting and the visual arts. I set about yesterday's drawing with Joy of Life in mind. My drawing achieves a high level of compositional energy, and rigor; in two-dimensions and in three-dimensions. Also, it runs with wild circles around its solid, anchored center. The wounds due to being human keep happening. They do not stop happening. To be human is to be at the mercy of entropy: Impossible to win. This is the Third Law of Thermodynamics. It conquers everything. Art is my refuge. No matter the cause of worldly uncertainty, I keep making art. Art-making is the consistency within the inconsistency of my living and my social behavior. Without art-making I would be sludge. Yesterday's drawings continue my efforts to see forms more clearly. Perhaps they are too sculptural for painting and drawing. This is a major concern with images on two dimensional surfaces. One must not go too far toward the artifice of the third-dimension or the reality of the two-dimensional surface is uncomfortably disrupted. This is me questioning. My current work is pervaded by research. The specular spot is useful in portraying the third-dimension, as seen in yesterday's drawings. INSIGHT: My art is about disruption. I wish to disrupt the ongoing decay of being human. I fight the dictum, The Third Law, that entropy in me is increasing. My little effort is me disrupting the two-dimensional surface with the artifice of the third-dimension. I am fighting for solidity in a liquid state.
Yesterday's drawing is centered by a black ovoid with a specular spot. My specular spotting goes back to my earliest three-dimensional abstractions. A friend of mine noted the painting "2017 No.3" has specular highlights, he thinking this unusual for my recent work. Not sure about that, but his comment did give me pause. I love specular highlights. I don't use them enough. I enjoy what a specular highlight can do for the third dimension of a form. As you know, the artifice of three-dimensions on two-dimensional surfaces is very important to me. Yesterday's drawing is a reaction to my friend's comment about the specular highlights in "2017 No.3," thank you very much! Definitely more specular highlights are coming! There are things about an advanced Van Gogh painting, or drawing, I really like. The representational quality is good, but it is the abstracted visual play which engages me most. While making yesterday's drawings I was occasionally reminded of Vincent Van Gogh's use of line and stroke. As Vincent marked his drawings, and his painting, he thought rhythmically, always cognizant of the overall music within forms and the surfaces of everything, from the three-dimensional quality of the forms themselves to the two-dimensional marks on the surface of the paper or canvas. These drawing's echo Vincent's quality of mark. They make me realize that I am very engaged by the abstraction in his best works. I am constantly involved in similar qualities, but I will not go so far as to say I emulate Vincent Van Gogh's mannerisms.
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March 2024
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