Backyard

I had lunch at Terzo Piano with my very perceptive friend Joanna last Thursday.

The whole new wing at the Art Institute is about light and air, and this room on the top floor allows for a new way of seeing the other buildings facing the lake. I felt I was both bathed in light and emphatically a part of the city - open and in the air but also enclosed by the soul, or identity  of the city as expressed in architecture. And the food was darn good, too.

Joanna had not seen any of the new wing yet, so first thing we walked into the Cy Twombly show, a perennial favorite of mine. Seeing it with Joanna was a wonderful way of escaping my habitual reasons for liking him because she approached the work so personally, and was so open to whatever response she had with absolutely no preconceptions, that the whole experience was a revelation for me. She reminded me I'm a sensate person first and an artist second. I guess I had to reconsider my original reasons for loving his work, and how this work was different.

I realized that what I always liked about him was his intelligent exuberance, his way of placing events in his paintings as opposed to composing a painting - in other words, there is conversation apparent between his mind and his soul, and then between him and the materials and the canvas.

But those earlier works also made me a little uncertain and nervous - off balance, but not in a scary way. I think because of all the white space I felt I had to leap from incident to incident or risk losing my place.

I know I'm making a gross generalization because some of the earlier work (a suite of paintings at the beautiful small museum the de Menils built - to the scale of the work - in Houston) possess this more sensual assertiveness. But all of this work and especially the large pieces positively tremble at the edge of expression and resemblance and the exuberance is all over the canvas. The palettes of these paintings is achingly simple and sophisticated - small changes in value of the dominant hue (over its complement in my favorites) with  large objects  of pure color or white (mainly) placed to  control the space - and his edges are great lessons in how important the edge of a painting can be. Transparency, solidity - and those small ,close changes in value make the space wiggle, but it never retreats.

If you are anywhere near Chicago, you can't miss this show. Especially if you have a perceptive friend to take with you.

I was all set to write about steampunk and then Margaret Cho declared herself a fan in the NY Times today. Almost too au courant for me.

I’ll write something anyway.

My very significant other introduced me to steampunk, announcing that, at last, here was the aesthetic she had been looking for. At it’s most extreme, it’s defined by a kind of decorative hypermania – nothing is too baroque. It never met a geegaw it didn’t like. But in its calmer iterations it also can be a welcome relief to the technological slickness that defines design today.

I haven’t looked at too many sites, but I’d characterize it as VERY idiosyncratic, to say the least. There seem to be no no-nos. The human capacity and need for decoration is fully embraced and exploited – there can be an ecstatic quality. Craft is central. And it’s a celebration of the expressive potential in all materials. It’s a joyful thing.

Oddly enough, my work falls smack in the middle of this thing, I think.

I’m applying for an associate membership – steampunkette?    

If process underpins and figures in a painting’s content, bringing a painting to completion depends on the artist’s ability to juggle competing realities/impulses.

On the one hand, there is the drive toward completion. On the other, the desire to just stay in the process, romping with Ambiguity and her hand-maiden, Curiosity.

It’s the impulse to dream and wander and wonder in the beginnings of a place, with no desire to ever leave. What exactly is possible? Is there something I can discover just for its own surprising sake? (There is a logic here, but it is in constant flux. Think of dolphins.)

Against this care-free, playful alertness is a need to make sense, to finish, to create/find wholeness and meaning. To close the circle.

In the most successful paintings these competing needs are beautifully balanced. Sometimes, this high wire act seems to occur without effort – a gift from nowhere. Most good work though, is the result of a practiced, habitual, disciplined elasticity, the constant flipping between inner states: painter – critic – painter – critic.

In other words, you have to show up at the studio, everyday.

Last week I spent some time with several old friends – 30 to 40 years worth of knowing. I live in Chicago and they still live near the small Texas town I still think of as home. I see them maybe once or twice a year now. There was a gap of at least 20 years at one point where I didn’t call when I hit town and they were busy getting married and divorced and having babies and then raising those babies.

The thing that’s unique and invaluable in our friendship is the sense I have of knowing and being known. It’s not just the childhood history of our relationships, though that’s a necessary piece, but rather our continuing affection for each other, in spite of what seem to be enormous differences in who we are and what our lives look like.

At one point in our conversations someone said, “Oh, you’re just the same,” and someone else said, “No, we’ve all changed”. I think both things are equally true. Our politics, among other things, couldn’t be more opposite, but there is a tolerance for difference born of really wanting to connect with the best parts of each other that made us friends in the first place. (Of course, there’s also a strong whiff of goofy around this group – that’s because we all still like to raise a little hell).

I make a point to call when I come to town because I realize these friends come along once in a lifetime, and I’m lucky to have them.

Yesterday I went to the Chicago Art Institute and saw the show of Jasper Johns grey paintings, a choice of palette he has returned to throughout his career. Seeing this group of works is a lesson in the circular nature of an artists undertaking, and it belies the myth of linear progress – a very harmful myth for young artists, especially.

I had a pretty lukewarm response to the show. I’ve always been an admirer of his work, but the monochromatic theme muffled the content and deadened my response, I believe. The up side of this, though, is that I found myself thinking just about the fact of the materiality of the work. This is a false dichotomy, in a way, if we’re speaking conceptually, but I was thinking like a painter (just an eye).

These paintings are about struggling to find something to hang paint on. (In this day and age I believe this is the primary concern for the serious artist) When he is engaged by a map or the alphabet, the strokes have intention and his method has direction. When he is merely covering space there is nothing there to hold the viewer. The surface looks thoughtless. And there is really nothing there because the space is, well, grey. Some of the encaustic works seemed to suck the light out of the room.

In the works that employ objects (a broom, a ruler, utensils) he’s got a readymade support for the paint, a reason for the effect. And in the final works – the Canternary paintings (probably I misspelled that) the painting supports and string are literally his armature for the paint. And they really encourage long looking.

After my hour or so with Mr. Johns, I fled to color. Bonnard, Matisse, even the silent Morandi reminded me what paint can do.

I’ve been thinking about edges recently.

It all began when I started looking at Gerhard Richter’s paintings of photos and newspaper clippings. I was working on a painting based on an old black and white photo and I wanted the painting to refer clearly to its source as a photo. Sounds easy enough, just make it monochrome, right? Well, no.

Richter paints his edges, whether inside a shape or at the intersection of object and background, with what I can only describe as a kind of precise blurriness. The genius of this technique is that it is a direct reference to the mechanical source of the image’s appearance – ink on paper, in the case of newspaper, and filmic resolution in the case of a photo.

Having been a painter for many years, one would think I had had a few thoughts about edges before now. I have, but only in relation to the limits of my painting surface. (While consistently referential to the world, my interest has always been in mood and atmosphere and has never extended to this kind of specificity of rendering.)

Now I see them everywhere, and I’m intrigued. My beginning oil painting students are a particularly wonderful study in the variety of approaches to edges. Some students have a kind of de-militarized zone around each object – they can’t decide if it’s safe to go there yet. Others work at warp speed. They slap paint in a generalized and vociferous way and just hope they get the shape right on their next pass. Others are just very, very careful and tiptoe right up to the edge. ( These are the students who get a little moody if a little of that red gets in that green.) Finally, some students paint the same line over and over again in defiance of all logic – kind of like the mad dashers in their hope that it will somehow miraculously be ok if they just keep to their course. ( Budding republicans?)

Adios for now.

One of the best parts of my life is having other artists as friends. There’s all that good friendship kind of stuff, (well, duh)  but there’s also the pleasure that comes from watching and sharing (to some degree) another person’s creative process. Over time there’s the added bonus of witnessing how an artist/friend refines and expands  their content, finding the style and/or techniques that best serve their vision. Not a straight road, we all know, but when all the hard work begins to pay off, this is truly a time of beauty.

I’m happy to say that Susan Werner is one such friend, and this is a long overdue appreciation of her newish CD “The Gospel Truth”. (Full disclosure: Susan gave me the title “A Painter’s Ear” for my blog).

Susan trained as an opera singer, got known as a folkish singer/songwriter, added some bluesy roots, investigated the American Songbook style (I could be completely off base with that one) and has put it all together with gospel.

To say Susan has a powerful voice is an understatement – on this CD she employs her voice in a nuanced and expressive way: there is vulnerability and sadness that I’ve never heard before, along with a different kind of passion.

I like the songwriting, too. I’ve always thought her lyrics were primary to the songs; it feels now that the music itself is doing more of the work. There are some wonderful melodies on this CD to go with her incisive take current events.

I give this CD 4 ears. www.susanwerner.com

***If you have a chance to see her live, run, don’t walk. She puts on a great show. ****

One of the best parts of my life is having other artists as friends. There’s all that good friendship kind of stuff, (well, duh)  but there’s also the pleasure that comes from watching and sharing (to some degree) another person’s creative process. Over time there’s the added bonus of witnessing how an artist/friend refines and expands  their content, finding the style and/or techniques that best serve their vision. Not a straight road, we all know, but when all the hard work begins to pay off, this is truly a time of beauty.

I’m happy to say that Susan Werner is one such friend, and this is a long overdue appreciation of her newish CD “The Gospel Truth”. (Full disclosure: Susan gave me the title “A Painter’s Ear” for my blog).

Susan trained as an opera singer, got known as a folkish singer/songwriter, added some bluesy roots, investigated the American Songbook style (I could be completely off base with that one) and has put it all together with gospel.

To say Susan has a powerful voice is an understatement – on this CD she employs her voice in a nuanced and expressive way: there is vulnerability and sadness that I’ve never heard before, along with a different kind of passion.

I like the songwriting, too. I’ve always thought her lyrics were primary to the songs; it feels now that the music itself is doing more of the work. There are some wonderful melodies on this CD to go with her incisive take current events.

I give this CD 4 ears. www.susanwerner.com

***If you have a chance to see her live, run, don’t walk. She puts on a great show. ****

Last night on “Dexter” (Showtime) we were given more information about his creepily seductive sponsor at the AA-like group he attends for his “addiction”.  She’s a visual artist.

Of course she is. And of course she exhibits all the signs that she is Dexter’s soul mate in pathology.

I understand that to make her a visual artist gives the writers a simple short-cut to her psyche. But give me a break, fellas (and I’ll bet some $ that it is fellas), could you be MORE ham-fisted with her work’s content?

But I digress.

 As a rule, the writing on this show is fairly subtle and intelligent and recently has explored the cross-over between Dexter’s “coping mechanism” and the role of addiction as a default position in our culture. HOWEVER, the choice of a visual artist (and our immediate belief in this character and her dreadful work) serves to reveal just what a marginal place artists occupy in our culture.

The reasons are many and varied, but ask yourself this; When was the last time you saw or heard a thoughtful piece in the mainstream media on a visual artist or artwork? (Sorry, NPR doesn’t count).  

How to think about abstraction?

I’ll start with Webster’s definition: 1. the act or process of removing or separating. 2. The act or process of separating the inherent qualities or properties of something from the actual physical object or concept to which they belong.

My personal introduction to abstraction was as a kind of holy grail. I think I was a freshman or sophomore in college. My art professor pulled another student and myself into his office to show us a painting, figures in a landscape, I think. “This is my last realistic painting, “ he announced proudly. I didn’t know what to say, but I could tell he felt congratulations were in order. The implication was that if you wanted to be a serious artist, you HAD to make abstract work. Unfortunately, he also believed an artist was supposed manifest the romantic ideal of the suffering artist as well (a good friend noted all the artists he revered had offed themselves) and died a very premature death, following in those artist’s footsteps.

The confusing thing about abstraction for an artist is how individual achievement and voice have been put in boxes, packaged, if you will, by art historians and critics. For heaven’s sake, Agnes Martin with the minimalists?

I think abstraction is the result of asking,  “What is really essential/what is it about this thing/view/object that carries meaning? How much of its capacity to mean/signify is wedded to the physical presence of this thing in this particular space with this specific light and space? Or is it the light or color in and of itself? (I’m not talking about symbolism or narrative, cause and effect)There are degrees and kinds of abstraction of course (and I also might go so far to argue that all good painting involves some degree of abstraction and use of memory – could the two be closely related ?) but what interests me is work that begins in close observation of the physical world and doesn’t stop there
 
In her wonderful biography of Matisse (Vol 2, The Conquest of Color) Hilary Spurling discusses his  understanding “that the secret of painting was to reconcile theory and practice, thought and instinct, to appease the exacting, analytical side of oneself in order to gain free access to the depths and power of feeling”. (p. 172)

Matisse conceded that Delacroix had been wrong about how          
useful the invention of photography would be to painters: “Its
real service was in showing that the artist was concerned with
something other than external appearance,”… (p. 148)