News
and Views:
Paris
6/3/11
Finally working again
3/6/11
Two months in artist hell 2/1/11
The
10,000 hour mark 7/17/10
Lesbian
Swim 2/16/10
The
creative process 2/10/10
Remembering
Jackie Felix 11/30/09
Style
Jumping: the Beatles White Album 9/16/09
Divine
Beauty homoerotic origins
9/8/09
The
role of Religion in Divine Beauty 8/25/09
My
Studio 8/23/09
6/21/11
Paris
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So
I recently finally got to Paris. My wife and I spent two weeks inhaling
the Parisian atmosphere, and of course I did everything you would
expect an artist on his first visit to Paris to do. I won’t
even try to recount the whole trip, but two moments stand out in my
memory. The first one, not surprisingly, involved a painting. You
often hear that art has the power to move people emotionally. Frankly
I’m almost never stirred by art in the visceral manner this
statement implies. I will get reasonably excited over an inventive
composition—Picasso’s Guernica for instance—and
masterful brushwork has been known to trigger what I call the bifocal
tilt, where I stand inches from a painting with my head tipped back
to focus through the bottom of my glasses, agape at some painterly
nuance. But you won’t catch me swooning the way nineteenth century
audiences did over academic painting at the Salon. Well, normally
you won’t.
For me, art more often inspires intellectual awe, which is more slow
burn than spontaneous combustion. Concepts are my favored source of
aesthetic appeal. But if ever there was a city with the potential
to provide emotional thrills, it’s Paris, with all of Western
civilization’s greatest artistic hits on display. Many works
I encountered in Paris for the first time are among my all time favorites,
though it’s an ironic commentary on the times we live in that
you can actually have favorite works of art that you’ve
never seen. One such painting that has held a special place in my
imagination is Édouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur
l'herbe, which I refer to by its loose English translation, "The
Luncheon on the Grass."
It’s not what Manet did with paint that thrills me—though
there was plenty of bifocal tilting in the presence of his work in
Paris—it’s that he did it at all. The Luncheon on the
Grass, which arguably represents the first glimmer of modernism’s
dawn, is a work of monumental importance that might be considered
the opening shot of France’s greatest revolution. More than
any other, this was the one work I wanted to see in Paris. When I
got to the D’Orsay, where it’s usually on display, it
had been moved to a special Manet exhibition within the museum. Popping
for the extra two Euros and standing in another long line to get into
this show was a no-brainer; I had waited a lifetime already.
When I turned a corner in the exhibition and suddenly laid eyes on
Manet’s game changing masterpiece on the wall in front of me
I wasn’t prepared for the wallop it packed. The thing is stunningly
beautiful. The phrase “stopped dead in my tracks” would
not be too far off. There were about sixty other people standing there
with audio wands pressed to their heads, but the painting and I were
having a private moment.
Photography is different from human sight. When we view things in
life we make constant adjustments for color and value, perceiving
subtle variations equally well within dark and light areas. A camera
on the other hand, tends to either adjust for dark areas while washing
out brighter parts, or capture the delicate brighter areas, while
burying the dark parts. Photography can’t readily pick up the
full value range with complete fidelity, so photographers either sacrifice
darks or lights, or narrow the value range so that both light and
dark areas are reasonably observable. A quick check on Google pictures
reveals widely varying results.
Manet’s painting has much more dramatic contrast than reproductions
reveal. Manet’s central female figure—the one whose defiant
stare pissed everyone off at the time —virtually glows. This
must have added an exclamation point to what was in its day, too-real
nudity. I plunged into Manet’s juicy brush strokes, in both
the luscious and scandalous senses of the word, with their ballsy
lack of “refinement.” There’s a robin flying at
the center top of the composition that I never noticed before, lost
as it usually is within the dark foliage. I looked at the painting
for a long time, crossing from the left edge to the right edge and
back again so I could get close without standing in front of it.
Renee was patient. I wanted to explain why I was reluctant to move
on. I had waited so long to see this, and once I turned the next corner
of the exhibit, that would be it. I would probably never see it again.
I wanted to tell her this, but the words stuck in my throat. I knew
if I tried to get them out the tears in my eyes would explode. This
emotional reaction to a painting was a source of amusement for me.
I walked away several times, then back. I got almost to the next room,
then went back one more time. It was too little, yet it was becoming
too much; I had to go.
The second moment that stands out as an emotional highlight happened
in the Panthéon. Actually it happened in the crypt below the
Panthéon. This expansive vault with its flaring columns, curved
staircases, multiple turns, copious rooms, and long mysterious halls,
looked like the set from Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy. Entombed
there were many French notables: Rousseau, Voltaire, Victor Hugo,
Alexandre Dumas, and Louis Braille among others. One tomb stood out,
that of Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre Curie.
This was the only tomb that had evidence of visitors having been there.
Madam Curie’s sarcophagus was covered with notes and several
flower bouquets. The mostly spontaneous outpouring of gratitude and
admiration was scrawled on anything people had handy: transit tickets,
business cards, admission stubs, and sticky note paper. “You
are the best woman in the world. We love you. Best wishes,”
read one in English which was signed by two people “From China.”
The notes were written in many languages: I noticed European, Middle
Eastern, Asian, and of course North American. “Merci d’avoir
aider Jean-Charles Fournier a vivre plus Longtemps…” read
one on torn notepaper. Another scrap of paper contained this message:
“Thank you for your contribution. Because of you we have excelled.”
After the signature, squeezed in almost as an afterthought, was the
title, “MD.” One, written by someone who struggled a bit
with English said, “Thank you both for your love for science
+ work Marie, had not it been for women like you and supporting scientists
as Pierre, maybe I (and other women) had not been given the chance
to study physics/science easily. Thank you both.” I began to
get choked up. “Thank you for your contribution to science and
medicine. You have paved the way for many great discoveries to come.”
“Merci Marie for showing us that women can make great contributions
to science.” Several simply wrote, “Rest in Peace.”
It was getting hard to read the notes, with my eyes so watery and
all.
What moved me I guess was the idea of people compelled to write a
personal note of thanks to a dead person they never knew. A bittersweet
human connection. The note-making was a form of endemic contagion,
but the flowers were planned. It was all like the last scene in Schindler’s
List. Maybe it was the idea that our actions can have an impact beyond
our lives. This makes me wonder why people don’t leave notes
of gratitude on the floor below important works of art. If they did,
I might have left one for Manet at Luncheon in the Grass. It would
say, “Thanks Manet, for putting up with the crap, so that we
could all have modern art.”
3/6/11
Finally
working again
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So
there it is. The new studio is finally all done, complete with ugly
couch and blank canvas that's staring me down, daring me to get started.
The last of the Divine Beauty series will be coming back from "Beyond/In"
to the studio later this month. In the meantime I am finally painting
again after a long period of attending to the other stuff we artists
do, the stuff that never makes it to life-of-an-artist bio-pics. I
have two separate “series” going, and I am painting up
a storm as they say, or as David Byrne once put it in a song, “I’m
cleaning my mind.”
Always
liked that line.
One
of the two “series” consists of works in acrylic paint
on paper or small pieces of unstretched canvas. For these works I
am appropriating subject matter from a variety of sources, and painting
very quickly in an expressionistic manner. My intent is to force myself
to be very spontaneous, satisfying my need to paint expressively.
The subject matter is almost arbitrary; or rather I should say that
I exercise minimal consideration before selecting from a collection
of previously found images. Then I paint very directly and quickly—no
stopping to ponder. This results in a string of intuitive responses
to the subject matter, the paint, color, and so on. It’s sort
of like a boxer sparring to sharpen his instincts. My goal is to accumulate
a large number of these and select ones to exhibit later.
I
am three paintings into the second series of works I’m doing,
and I haven’t decided yet where I am going exactly, stylistically
or thematically, though I am using a slower approach here. I’m
usually very calculated about the concepts I build a series around,
but this time I’m keeping it loose. I am thinking about mythology
in art in somewhat the same way I did with religious art, but I’m
using models rather than appropriating imagery. I plan to end up somewhere
in narrative-mythical-metaphoric-allegorical territory. So far the
first three paintings are pretty wide apart stylistically, so I have
to decide where I’m going with that. For the time being, I’m
focusing on the female figure, which is a departure from the homoerotic
overtones of much of the Divine Beauty series. As a result, it’s
been suggested that I call this series the “I was only kidding;
I’m really straight” series.
We’ll
see.
2/1/11
Two
months
of artist hell
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Click
image to view more pics.
Images from our
"empty" former studio,
to the chaos in our new space.
On
December 1st I received notice from the manager of the recently purchased
building where my studio had been for sixteen and a half years that
on January 1st my rent would increase 70%. This after having been
assured that no such rate hike was imminent. Is there a worse month
than December for this sort of news? My studio partner and I spent
the next two weeks considering our options and looking for affordable
alternatives. The owner would not negotiate. We suggested a gradual
increase. We proposed bringing another artist in and scaling down
our personal space allotments. We got no response and our phone calls
went unreturned.
By
mid December we located a new space that was geographically convenient,
and close in price to what we were paying now. We planned to sublease
a portion of the new space to another artist to cut costs. As we searched
for an appropriate tenant, we began packing our studio. In the end
we loaded three moving vans. We moved our art ourselves, but hired
movers to transport everything else. I put on hold the de-installation
of my Divine Beauty exhibition, which I could do since it's located
in an alternative venue, not an established gallery.
The
physical labor involved in packing and moving was enormous; it took
every free moment of every day of December to get out of our old space
by New Year’s Eve. Then it took an entire month to prepare the
new space, which involved planning, building a massive art storage
rack and walls to divide studios, and unpacking and setting up. During
this same time my parents, who are in failing health, required added
attention. My father went into the hospital, then physical therapy,
and my mother began using the services of hospice. I was also preparing
for another semester as an adjunct instructor at Buffalo State College
and I continued to write articles for publication.
Just
today
I put the final touches on my new space, setting up a printer I had
bought days before I got the rent increase news. My studio is ready,
but my partner and our new sub-leaser will not be fully done until
spring. Meanwhile I can concentrate on bringing the remaining Divine
Beauty work back and tearing down the temporary walls of that installation.
Between this move and the preceding Divine Beauty installation, I
have not made significant new art in four months.
7/17/10
The 10,000 hour mark
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Working on the Divine
Beauty series in my studio.
I’m reading the book
Outliers:
the story of success by Malcolm Gladwell.
It’s about what makes exceptional people exceptional. Gladwell
makes a convincing case that genius has little to do with great success.
He claims that one of the biggest factors determining achievement
is the 10,000 hour rule. And it is a rule that no one escapes. It
goes like this: people don’t become highly skilled at any discipline
until they practice it for 10,000 hours. It takes that long to reach
the excellence threshold in anything. It’s some kind of magic
number that’s biologically programmed into us. That’s
it. Not IQ, not talent. Of course Gladwell states that luck, circumstance,
and reasonable intelligence are also major determining factors in
high profile success—Jeff Coons or Bill Gates for examples—but
exceptional accomplishment itself is all about the number 10,000.
This
concurs with the conclusions of one of my favorite writers on the
subject, Robert W. Weisberg, whose book
Creativity: Beyond the Myth of Genius states that highly creative
thought is no different than ordinary thought. Two things distinguish
extremely creative people from others: tremendous depth of knowledge
in their subject, and very, very hard work. Practicing something for
10,000 hours would seem to cover both.
This
caused me to do some calculations, and I realized that I’m probably
just now approaching 10,000 hours as an artist. My time in the studio
was always limited by my day job and other obligations, and when you
cut out time I spent stretching and priming canvas, making frames,
cleaning up, and other tangential work, I actually think I’m
just about at the magic threshold. Artists that immerse themselves
in their field starting in college, probably reach the 10,000 hour
mark much earlier. Or some who, like me, have other obligations might
just peter out before the 10,000 mark. I've taken the slow but sure
path with a house and a family and side interests. So I’m just
getting there. Meaning, according to Gladwell, I am just approaching
the highly accomplished level as an artist. This seems plausible.
I’ve been aware of improved ability and added insight with each
passing year, leading me to feel optimistic about the future.
I
gave up doing stage magic years ago because I knew I could never spend
the time to become a really great magician, and the same goes for
other interests like science and Frisbee. I've invested time in many
fields: illustration, various forms of performance, gardening, fencing,
music, rationalism/skepticism, filmmaking, and creative and critical
writing, and they all took time away from being an artist, though
arguably they added to my overall breadth of knowledge. I probably
hit the 10,000 mark as a teacher, but when you cut out all the bullshit
that comes with the job, actual hours working at being a teacher are
fewer, and by the time you are really great, the system generally
puts a damper on your effectiveness. I probably have another 8000
hours to go as a writer. But as an artist, I believe I am just arriving
now. Everything before was lead-up.
2/16/10
Lesbian Swim
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Scene from Lesbian Swim
I
just had the opportunity to see
Swimming
with Lesbians a documentary film by David
Marshall. It was shot in Buffalo, and features Madeline
Davis, longtime gay and lesbian-rights activist.
It’s been making the rounds on the film festival circuit, winning
awards, and it will be distributed by Frameline starting sometime
in March. Of special interest to followers of my artwork is the long
segment of the movie that was filmed in the UB
Anderson Gallery during my survey show
Bruce
Adams: Half Life. You get a glance of much
of the first floor part of the exhibition, and a long look at the
Tattooed
Women series, which
actually plays a pivotal roll in the film. I’m excited to have
my work included in this excellent film.
2/10/10
The creative process
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“You’re so creative.”
I
get that one a lot. Or, “You have so much talent.” Or
worse, “You're so gifted.” These declarations are made
as complements of course, but buried within all of them is an inference,
the suggestion that the ability to make art just comes naturally.
All a creative person does, the thinking goes, is let that inborn
talent flow and wonderful things happen. And the truth is there might
actually be artists for whom it all comes easily. I don’t know
any myself, but I suppose there are savants in every field. Not most
of us though; not me anyway. I find art-making hard work, and I study
the field, and think an awful lot about what I do. There are false
starts and periods of frustration in the creative process.
I
mention this because I am working now on what might be my last piece
from my Divine
Beauty series, certainly my last major work in that group. (I'll
be putting more images from that series on my website soon.) It’s
a large altarpiece, maybe seven or eight feet tall and twelve feet
wide, in three panels. I plan to have the panels fold shut like altarpieces
often do, so there is some fabrication involved. I’ve been researching
altarpiece themes and compositions. I’m also looking through
hundreds of found fashion images for ones that will work for this
piece. I’m pretty jazzed about it. This will be the most complicated
work from the series, and if all goes well it will see its premier
at the Beyond-In Western New York exhibition next September (see exhibition
dates and locations to the right).
Meantime
I’m also deciding what I’m going to do next. The problem
isn’t thinking of an idea. Ideas come and go like fleeting moments
of sunshine between clouds in a gray Buffalo sky. The problem is settling
on one idea that I’m willing to spend the next couple of years
exploring. I’m leaning toward something less defined than many
of my earlier series. I have more freedom to experiment now that I
am not teaching. I want to move away from dependence on found images,
but that presents its own problems for a conceptually based representational
artist. I'm in the gestation stage now, and it's not coming easy.
Coincidently, I just saw Fellini’s 8½, which is a movie
about a director who is creatively blocked while trying to think what
movie to make next. I could relate.
11/30/09
Remembering Jackie Felix
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It
was a radiantly beautiful early autumn day a couple weeks ago, when
close to two-hundred members of the Western New York art community
assembled to celebrate the life of artist Jackie
Felix. Family, friends, and art colleagues alerted by phone and
email came from as far away as Texas to remember the artist who had
passed away in September. As befitting an agnostic who devoted half
her adult life to the art world, the event took place, not in a synagogue
or church, but at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center. Jackie's loss
may have been felt more acutely than usual by those of us in the arts
community who knew her, because she was such an active and vital part
of Buffalo's artistic landscape. For me, there was the added loss
of a valued next-door neighbor of twenty-nine years, but long before
Jackie moved onto my street, I had admired her work as a painter of
uncommon ability.
Widely
exhibited, Jackie was one of those artists everyone knew. She was
actively involved in the art community, particularly as a member of
Hallwalls Advisory Board. She made practically everybody's short list
of exceptional area painters. She was a master of obscure narratives
with an artistic flair for the theatrical; she occasionally even painted
curtains along the wings of her single act canvas dramas. Jackie was
a great observer of the human condition. Her paintings were populated
with men and women, saints, sinners, performers, and lovers. Always
interacting. Even with her paintings of tables that were depicted
isolated in desolate empty space, there was the feeling that someone
had just stepped out of the picture moments before. The primary career-long
focus of Jackie's work was on human connections, how people interrelate,
or don't. To Jackie, even a gun suggested a connection between people,
albeit through violent interaction. Sex, love, lust, relationships
between the sexes; these were the territories Jackie staked out for
herself. "I always have sexual content," she said in a taped
interview shortly before her sudden illness. Indeed, viewing the images
of her paintings flashing on the screen behind the speakers at her
memorial, it was clear that sexuality dominated her work. Her approach
to it was often somber though, even mordant. The dark works of German
Expressionist Max Beckman were one of her influences. But Jackie could
also be wryly humorous and highly inventive.
Jackie
lived one and a half hours past midnight on the day of her eightieth
birthday. She held on weeks beyond her doctors' expectations, predicting
at one point that she would die on her birthday. She was determined
as ever to do things her way, and with a dramatic flair right to the
end. To some people, eighty may seem like a ripe old age. But adjectives
like old didn't describe Jackie. Maybe that's because she only became
the person we all knew later in life. She grew up amidst an immigrant
population on the south side of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Discouraged
by her father from following her art muse, she went to college in
New York City to become an elementary teacher. While in school, she
lived downstairs from struggling actor James Dean and his girlfriend
who she would occasionally have over for dinner. She found Dean to
be lacking personality; vacant good looks were not Jackie's taste.
That was classic Jackie, always bucking popular opinion. She met and
married Philip Fine and when he was drafted she lived on army bases
during his tour of duty. Before long she found herself the mother
of four daughters. Her children reminisce today about what it was
like being raised in a creative household where gift-wrapping paper
was expected to be hand designed, and the kids didn't just color in
coloring books, they made them. But the demands of raising a family
prevented Jackie from any formal pursuit of art.
After
Jackie's husband left the army he found work in Buffalo, so the family
settled here. Jackie remained a devoted mother and housewife until
her husband was tragically killed in an automobile accident. She went
back into education again, this time doing substitute teaching as
a means of survival. Eventually she met Al Felix, who was a widower
at the time with three children of his own. Al was an Orchard Park
English teacher, who wrote poetry on the side and shared Jackie's
love of the arts. They got married, and though raising seven high-school
aged children was a strain on their budget, Al supported Jackie's
decision to go back to school at the University of Buffalo where she
got her BFA and eventually her MFA. At fifty-two, an age when many
artists are coasting on their laurels, Jackie launched her art career.
Jackie
and I had many over-the-fence conversations over the years, often
about art and the art community, our struggles and successes. She
was acutely aware of the challenges older artists face in the youth-oriented
art world. She often commented that she felt her age was a disadvantage,
but she defied stereotyping. She had the spirit of an enlightened
woman in the prime of her life, and hers always seemed like a young
person's art. Jackie once said that when she lectured at colleges
she made sure to use the F-word early on to establish with the students
that this wasn't their grandmother up there.
Jackie
had many other interests about which she was equally opinionated.
For instance, gardening; she was the first one to sell me on the wonders
of the vegetation killer Roundup, and soon after she was the first
to tell me I shouldn't use it due to its impact on the environment.
Jackie was very assertive in her beliefs and did not suffer fools
gladly.
Right
to the end, Jackie's work displayed artistic courage, inventiveness,
even audacity. She was still challenging herself, leaping into unfamiliar
artistic terrain. Her biggest fear was repeating herself. Her work
and thoughts had a direct impact on me, and will continue to do so
in the years to come.
9/16/09
Style Jumping: the Beatles White Album
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I
recently bought the newly released digitally remastered Beatles box
set, and I was reminded of the character Kay in the movie Men
in Black. When Kay, played by Tommy
Lee Jones, acquires advanced alien recording technology, his only
reaction is: "…guess I'll have to buy the White Album again."
The White
Album was always my favorite
Beatle album, and it really holds up in the new remix. I was listening
to it while I was painting a few days ago, and it occurred to me that
the White Album provides a good analogy for one of the most common
questions I get about my artwork: why do I employ various painting
techniques and styles, even within a series? In the Divine
Beauty series for instance, I began with
an almost naive approach, and gradually moved toward stylized realism.
At times I reference illustration, Medieval art, the late Renaissance,
and with the most recent work (to be added online soon) pop/baroque.
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So
why do I do this? The short answer is, because that's what I do. Underlying
each of my painting series is a conceptual framework that I adhere
to pretty tightly. That's the constant. From there, I explore different
approaches, often referencing historical painting styles, because
my work is always at least partly about the act of painting itself.
In the White Album the Beatles bounce between light pop, blazing heavy
metal, ragtime, dance-hall music, show tunes, wistful ballads, classical
chamber music, and scorching blues. Inspired by Yoko Ono, John even
contributes a little John Cage-like sound art with Revolution #9 (which
I actually like). Some music critics complained about this diversity,
but I think the album is so good precisely because it jumps
from style to style. It's also ranked by most sources as one of the
best albums of the twentieth century.
Using
diverse painting styles in my art is like the Beatles using various
music styles in the White Album. Except I have a unifying theme. So
unifying in fact, that exhibiting single pieces from a series often
feels inappropriate, like they're fragments of an unapparent greater
whole. In my
Research
and Development series, I took this idea
to the limit with a body of work that intentionally appeared to be
done by a variety of artists from different periods.
There's
another factor at play here too. To illustrate, imagine you discover
the best food ever; let's call it Creplaque. Now imagine that for
a couple years Creplaque is all you eat. No matter how good it originally
tasted, you'll eventually grow to hate Creplaque. That's how I would
feel confined to a single painting style. The closest I ever came
was in the
Paintings
of Pictures of People with Paintings series,
and that wasn't easy. Having said that, I really don't think there's
as wide a range in my work as people sometimes think. It's mostly
figurative, nearly always with a flattened picture plane in which
negative space functions as an abstract counterpoint to the figures.
I usually employ a limited palette, rarely more than four colors,
white, and black.
9/8/09
Divine Beauty
homoerotic origins
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A
recent conversation with a friend about my Divine
Beauty series led me to reflect again on
my intent. I have an artist
statement, but artist statements are, by
design, brief and to the point; much gets left out.
The
origins of the Divine Beauty series goes back to a conversation I
had with an artist named
Sadko
Hadzihasanovic at his exhibition opening
in the first year of Beyond-In
Western New York. Sadko (as he's known professionally)
told me that he is often mistaken for being gay because he deals with
the male figure (he references a variety of sources, some of which
no doubt do have homoerotic undertones). This annoys him, because
the male figure, and particularly according to Sadko, the male chest,
has a long tradition in European art. I was intrigued by the idea
of a straight guy making homoerotic art. I saw it as something of
an artistic challenge; am I capable of dealing with male eroticism?
Is it really about light and shadow, paint and brushstrokes? I left
the exhibition that evening energized. As I exited I told curator
Sandra Firmin that I had just decided the artistic direction I wanted
to take next. Actually though, I only had a vague idea.
To
some degree this elusiveness of purpose has never completely abated
because, as in all my work, there are multiple layers of intent, some
conscious, some not fully conscious. Even within the framework of
the series, the work keeps sidling off in diverse directions. Different
layers of intent are emphasized to varying degrees within each piece.
In the past I've used my work to comment on the "male gaze"
as it pertains to the female figure in art, subverting the conventions
of the nude in historical painting, so I wanted to do the same here
with the male figure. Religious iconography seemed to be the ideal
vehicle for this. One reason is that depicting biblical scenes and
the martyrdom of saints was for a time during the middle ages the
only opportunities many Western artists had to portray the human figure.
And it occurred to me that fashion advertising today often gives off
the same vibes as religious art in a world where the male figure is
still something of a taboo. Ad art and iconography might even perform
similar functions in their individual fields.
Some
people have expressed difficulty getting a bead on what I'm doing,
which makes me wonder if there's something about this series that
causes some sort of cognitive dissonance. In an email exchange with
my friend (and former Buffalo News art critic) Richard Huntington,
he reacted to my concerns that the intended effect—especially
the homoeroticism aspect—might be incomprehensible: "Martyrdoms,
St. Sebastien the most obvious, have been given homosexual emphasis
since the renaissance and before. Posolini's film, "The Gospel
According to St. Matthew," has played in church basements for
decades without any of the uninitiated noticing that it is gay-themed.
The guy off the street might be befuddled [by your work], the Jesus
star-struck born-again might be confused and offended, a gay man might
mistake it for actual gay depicted salivation over sexy guys, but
the rest of us smart asses shouldn't be having any trouble. It might
have been befuddling if you had done the ads straight (sorry) without
all the embellishments that ring bells that you are totally aware
of what you are doing and clear-cut in your relationship to your subject."
As I mentioned in my last entry (below), Catholicism played a big
role in my development as a child. It left its mark and there's no
escaping that fact. Today I look back at my religious rearing with
a combination of bemused detachment and incredulous affection. I am
an unbeliever with nostalgia for belief. As a skeptic and humanist,
I have issues with religious indoctrination of any kind, but that's
not at the heart of this series. I just really respond to religious
imagery, and of course religion plays a huge role in Western art.
Part of what this series does is ask the question, what if we retained
the conventions of religious iconography, but transferred them to
fashion ads? Part of what I'm saying is maybe we did.
I've
had people tell me they didn't even realize the paintings were riffs
on religious imagery, and I've had one visitor to my studio name most
of the saints in the paintings by their symbols (where I use symbols).
I'm interested in artistic and cultural conventions; where they originate,
how they develop and change, and how they reveal the predilections
of the cultures they emerge from. I started this series by referencing
art styles of the middle ages but with a loose, expressive painting
style. Gradually I drifted into stylized realism, and baroque and
renaissance art. I've included a few women in the work. Lately I'm
changing directions again, employing glazing to give the work a sheen
and luminous quality like old masters. I'm also thinking of transitioning
to mythological subject matter (the other great theme of European
art), but with a new approach, no more fashion models. I may go back
to using live models. Or I may drop the figure entirely. Who knows?
8/25/09
The role of Religion
in Divine Beauty
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My
recent series of work called
Divine
Beauty deals with religious iconography.
I was raised Catholic and for most of my elementary school years I
was required by the Catholic school I went to--St
Leo's the Great--to attend mass daily. I
accepted this as my lot in life. The parish was an early product of
suburban sprawl, having quickly acquired a large congregation long
before it had a proper church. Services were held in the basement
of the school, though on Sundays you could also attend outdoor mass,
which was like a drive-in movie except you sat in your car facing
an elevated glass-enclosed alter with your windows open listening
to the proceedings over loud speakers. It was especially enjoyable
in the rain because you had to close the windows and watch the action
through water-streaked glass, leaving no clue as to what was going
on. As the congregation rapidly grew, the school's gym/auditorium
was pressed into service as another makeshift auxiliary chapel with
worshipers sitting on the basketball court in metal folding chairs
facing a stage. It was like a high school play performed in Latin.
But the cavernous L-shaped basement chapel was the primary house of
worship. It was a mid-twentieth-century concrete version of the Roman
catacombs: dark with heavy poured-concrete columns, low ceilings,
orange painted pews, and rows of flickering votive candles. The few
existing metal grille-covered windows were at ground level well above
worshipers' heads. Next door was the school's cafeteria, and next
to that was an 18-lane public bowling alley--all subterranean.
Framed
paintings representing the
Stations
of the Cross were spaced evenly around the
basement perimeter. Once a year we would endure the hour-long reading
of the Stations, a thankless job relegated to second-in-command Father
Knalber. The boys would wait with anticipation for station number
13, "Jesus' body is removed from the cross," because the
reading included the words "...and she pressed him to her bosom."
It was all we could do to conceal our laughter from the piercing gaze
of the ever vigilant nuns. Other religious art was distributed throughout
the church and school. The parish pastor, Father Snider, had quite
an art collection, and during his years at St. Leo's there was always
something interesting on display to capture our imaginations. There
were also religious images in our catechisms and on the holy cards
(like baseball cards only with saints) the nuns gave out as rewards
for good behavior. Years of daily indoctrination left me with a genuine
deep-rooted attraction to religious iconography. I didn't realize
this when I started the Divine Beauty series, but an exhibition I
recently had at the Center
for Inquiry in Amherst NY, caused me to
reflect
on the role religion has played in my artwork over
the years. I hadn't previously noticed this, but certain themes and
stylistic conventions reappear with some regularity.
A view of my studio:
Another view:
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