Tag: Art

#447 Subsummation of the Human.

This comes as a feeling that pressed to become a thought, or a thought that sought to become an image. I sketched a face in soluble ink. Efaced with watercolor. Still there. Subsummed

#447 Subsumation of the Human
#447 10×8″ water soluble ink, India ink, water color.

I seldom do figurative art. Not in my finished pieces. I draw the human figure… obsessively, from bones to flesh and back to bones–images of the human. But that isn’t what they are–the drawings. It isn’t there, the human, and in my finished work, what is human remains, not quite invisible, most often as little more than an unintended suggestion. Broken into fragments. Or traces and debris of our passing.

That isn’t a plan. I’m not rendering some idea I have… I don’t know what it is, other than it emerges from some primal conflict, deeply, inexorably personal. It permeates my art–how I work, how I think about it. I know that it has to do with how or why I spend so much of my private, internal conversation explaining, justifying–as though I stand before some perpetual tribunal–that has demanded, without asking (I just know)–that I’m called to account for what I make, for the very need I have to make art, in these conversations where I go endlessly back to the beginning. Do I even have a right to call it… art? To permit myself…?

How this is connected with using the human figure, I don’t know, but I know that it is. Had I all the years of a younger man ahead of me, I don’t think that a lifetime of analysis would be sufficient to uncover what lies buried, something powerful enough to have kept me away from the one thing I’ve always wanted to do–for almost 40 years.
But it’s more than personal… or should I say, more than my private demons. As though this most private struggle has reformed itself into the one subject central to everything I make. How I can feel human figures in the most abstract pieces that come from my hand. Has become their struggle. Something pressing to emerge, pressing toward freedom. Or is it the subsummation of the human back into that state from whence we came? My not distant death linking itself to the coming extinction of our species?

Once more: art and capitalism

This is a post I left on Wet Canvas– a great resource if they confined themselves to technical questions, or were free from beholden to the status quo when posts ventured into more substantive questions about “Art” I think my welcome on this webpage is likely going to be short lived.

I know I have to tread carefully here. We have to live, to find a way to support our art. That’s a given. What’s not a given, is how we go about that, and–living in this Empire of Money and Death–what that means. And what it means to be dependent on utterly corrupted and corrupting gallery to investor pipeline.

There have to be other ways. Especially when you think of how that has come to define “success.” A form of success guarded by a system of gatekeepers, programed to exclude all but those deemed, first and foremost, most likely to produce work that will accrue in monetary value–as a commodity. Aesthetics comes in second.

How can one blame the gallery owners? They have to play the game–attract people with the money, the “investor class,” and are pressured to select artists they think will pass that test.

And for artists, the pressure begins with the first sales. What if they want to change course? To experiment? Bring something so unlike what has passed the market test that the gallery has no choice but to politely suggest they do more of … you know, what they’ve been doing.

Unless, for the very few, whose names have become the brand, the commodity.

All of which leaves art as entertainment for the oligarchy that’s won its wealth by exploiting workers, stealing the raw materials from “underdeveloped” nations, and by the profit of endless war. I mean really.. what does it mean to earn one’s living producing work to decorate corporate Human Resources waiting rooms… other than to have submitted to being nothing more than another something-less-than human resource?

Is art only to provide decor to the killer class? And ‘success’ reserved only for those who are willing slaves to their masters?

How do we defy the gatekeepers–all of them? The critics who are no more than servants to this same predatory system? Who have so successfully restricted women, blacks–anyone outside the presumed Western canon?

Capitalism destroys art. Capitalism corrupts and destroys artists. How do we find a way out of this?

Why can’t we pool or resources–draw on, encourage and help to develop the artistic aspirations of our communities? Create collectives where we can control how our art is used, and provide mutual support as we develop alternative ways to distribute our work, and alternative ways to support us?

I have a limited interest in arguing these issue, though I will be patient to explain them. What I would like, is to find artists who get it: who know that the whole “success” system is rigged (like the American USA election process), and any one artist, no matter how talented, has about as much chance of being one of the ‘winners’ as wining the lottery. And the effort to be one of those, means making oneself into a brand, and one’s art into a commodity. A total betrayal of everything that it means to make art.

The only existing alternative.. is… to go commercial.

I would prefer to give my work away to whoever wants it. I can’t. So I offer it on a sliding scale. Art that is only available to the privileged is a perversion. Thing is, can’t do this one by one. We have to create collectives, work together to create a wholly different mechanism. To become a part of the revolution. Cause if we can’t replace this late, zombie capitalist system… we are doomed to extinction. Cause they are hell bent on destroying as much life on this planet their power permits.

What are your thoughts? Again, I’m not into arguing this. If your only take is defending the status quo–pass go, go directly to EXIT. But if you have some inkling of what I’m saying here, and share my discomfort… maybe we have stuff we can talk about.

The Biology of “realist” Art

imagesIf humans didn’t have binocular vision, how would Brunelleschi have come up with the principles of linear perspective? There would be no foundation for western “representative” painting. It would have been pointless. The Quattrocento as we know it would not have happened. And all the art after would be utterly different, as there would not have been the limitations of that boxed reality and it’s spurious claims to ‘realism’ to challenge. There would be nothing remarkable or revolutionary about Manet’s fife player… or Matisse, or Picasso.
One eye or two–different ways of fooling ourselves about the look of the physical world.

I highly recommend Hubert Damish’s A Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting. First published in 1972, not translated till 2002, I so wish I had this book when I was taking courses in art history almost 50 years ago.

Dense reading… but if you keep ploughing ahead, understanding becomes cumulative as he returns again and again to the examples on which he builds his argument.

The advantage of reading it now (unless you are able to travel the world to see all the art he cites), is that reading in front of a computer, you can quickly Google images you are not familiar with, or remember only vaguely. Richly documented. THIS is what art history should aspire to.

Imagining Posterity

imagesOne response to the End of Posterity–making art on the brink of human extinction, is to deliberately make work that is fragile, perishable–even to incorporate its destruction into the art.
In thinking about doing silverpoint, I felt a small bubble of elation, in realizing I was doing just the opposite. Silverpoint is one of the most durable of mediums. It’s metal embedded in powdered stone, and can be done on wood or Masonite. It will hold up for centuries. Long after the last human as turned to dust. How satisfying!

I will make art for the posterity of my imagination.

Silverpoint

This is such a natural, inevitable transition–from my ink and ink wash drawings to SilverPoint. I’m too old, the learning curve is too long, and I’ll never have access to press and facilities, the acid baths … no way, or I’d be into etchings. But SilverPoint opens to the kind of effects I’ve been in love with since I first saw reproductions of Piranesi’s prisons.  Work I’ve done with pen and ink are suggestive in this direction. I especially like the Silverpoint will endure for centuries… when there’s not much hope human life will be around even for another 100 years. Kinda like, Fuck you, capitalist pigs! I’ll just make up the “posterity” you’re working so hard to kill off. #396

 

#399

#335 Sidewalk 2Or from my pavement series
#347 12x9 pavement pen & ink

So I spent my food money for Silverpoint ground and a stylus. I have more than enough excess weight to get me to my next SS check!

 

Silverpoint

In two earlier posts, HERE and HERE.

I wrote about my search for a clay coated paper I used some 40 years ago, and have searched for in vein. I realized at some point that this had probably been made for silverpoint. I still couldn’t find that paper, but have become intrigued with the thought of doing silverpoint.

I found a wonderfully informative web page, SilverPointWeb.com. It seems there is a Japanese made paper, called Karma, but only available through a NYC supplier, and they don’t ship. I’m waiting for a reply to a question I left about using Golden SilverPoint ground (another recent discovery).

Whoops… mildly embarrassing. I diligently scrolled through the FAQ looking for reference to the Golden ground, so I wouldn’t be repeating a question that had already been covered. … then going back to the site, I see this on the Page One:

Golden Artist Colors’ new Silverpoint / Drawing Ground is a recent development and is an excellent acrylic formulation, providing ease of use without the problems associated with other acrylic-based products; I not only highly recommend it but also now supply it, in the Complete Kit and separately.

If you Google, Silverpoint images contemporary artists, this is what you’ll see. Though how Dürer and Du Vinci rate as ‘contemporary,’ I don’t know. But so many rich possibilities. I’m so excited to get started with this… waiting from my silver stylus to show up in my mail box. Read everything I can get hold of while I’m waiting.

#445

#445

View GALLERY HERE.

32×32″ Acrylic on canvas
There were two figures when I began, heads and torsos, one behind the other facing opposite directions. The canvas was reversed from what you see here, top to bottom bottom to top. When I finished, the figures had vanished, and I decided it worked better when I flipped the canvas. I like the predominately upward sweep. I worked very quickly in 4 stages, spending no more than 10 or 15 minutes at each stage, layering, laying in colors–almost all with palate knife, scraping through flat edge to canvas, then with a nail. I thought there would be one more pass, and took it upstairs to my bedroom to look at it, see it in my dreams. This morning I thought–whatever else this needs, what I feel to be missing, I’ll have to find in the next painting. That’s something I learning in writing poetry.