Look, See

Untitled 1 (Occidental, Sonoma, California)

HTML, 220 x 720 pixels

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains I-XII

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains I-XII, August 8-19, 2004, HTML, 380 x 340 pixels each (view HTML source)

This series, A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains, is in direct response to the nearly 1,000 yeard old painting of the same name by Wang Ximeng.

Wang Ximeng (1096-1119) Song Dynasty
A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains
Handscroll, ink and color on silk
469 x 22 in.
Palace Museum, Beijing

A number of details of this painting are at a Reed College site. I used a simplified group colors related to Wang's painting, and, interestingly, used a number of motifs from series I've done over the past couple of years. I've never done a series of HTML drawings with a limited palette such as that done here, where every drawing had the same palette. And I've never so self-consciously used these motifs before.

Having just written about George Lawson's San Cai paintings (see below) the idea of working with a set palette was in my consciousness, and certainly intrigued me. Except for black and white, I've never made an extended body of work all using the same colors. Coincidentally, I've been reading Three Thousand Years of Chinese Paintings (Xin, Chongzheng, Shaojun, Barnhart, Cahhill and Hung), in which I discovered Wang's A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains and the style of blue and green painting. I just had to respond to it, and it provided me with a palette: two greens, two blues, and a handful of yellows, which are the silk support. It's a beautiful painting, and I'm happy to get this series out of that experience.

"Painting Conveys So Much Spirit": George Lawson's San Cai Paintings

I wrote this essay about George Lawson's San Cai paintings for his exhibition at Elins Eagle-Smith Gallery in San Francisco, September 9 -October16,2004. (See scan of notes for essay.)

"Painting Conveys So Much Spirit": George Lawson's San Cai Paintings

I first saw a painting by George Lawson in a group show in 1980 at the Shirley Cerf Gallery in San Francisco, which put him in the company of Joe Marioni, Phil Sims, Marcia Hafif, and Max Gimblett. I have seen many of Lawson?s solo and two-person shows in galleries and museums since 1980, following work that, while exploring variations in size, drawing, and medium, always retains a determined commitment to the conception and finish of abstract paintings realized in sensitive yet rigorous approaches to support, drawing, paint, color, and surface. The few years in the late '90's during which Lawson stopped painting -- though never stopped drawing -- did nothing to diminish his grasp of painting's challenges, and instead allowed for observation and reflection leading to an even greater clarity, appreciation, and passion needed to sustain the making of a kind of painting that, to use his own words, "conveys so much spirit."

I refer to Lawson's painting as "abstract" with some reservation because the word implies a bias towards understanding painting as a reduction or simplification, a genre meeting a lower standard of success. This is hardly the case, however: Abstract painting is a difficult thing to do, and an extremely difficult thing to do well. It is a complex undertaking requiring enormous effort and care to navigate an iterative continuum of decisions positioning painting between object and picture, ideas and assumptions, and between sensual experience and decoration towards a holistic, fully realized culmination. When done well, abstract painting is immensely rewarding on many levels. With the San Cai series, Lawson has successfully negotiated the arduous task of using basic materials -- cloth, wood, pigment, oil -- to create abstract paintings that are rich and complex art works that reward long and repeated viewing.

Facts & Observations

Sancai in Chinese means "three color," or "three glazes," a low fired glaze-based style of decorating earthenware primarily reaching its height during the T'ang Dynasty (618-906 CE). The San Cai paintings follow the Jizo series of 2002. The Jizo paintings, the most recent series of paintings made with a brush, are multi-colored, using a paint more finely ground with more oil which is applied in short, horizontal, slightly-arcing strokes that build into six opposing wedge shapes, each a single color, the peak of which is positioned at the support's edges and then points towards and thins out in the middle of the canvas. The 2003 series titled T'ang introduces the use of thicker red, green, and white paint scraped and shaped with a spatula on linen; the central motifs are large blocky forms, each placed in a single quadrant of the painting. The following series of smaller studies and medium-sized paintings in the Lokapala series (2003) introduce the kind of drawing expanded in the San Cai series: improvised shapes that are pre-figural and not quite calligraphic, that somewhat interlock -- though not systematically -- and are distributed across the surface evenly and out to the edges, leaving raw linen exposed between the forms. (Right: San Cai 1, 2003, 70" x 60" oil on linen)

The San Cai painting stretchers are all vertical rectangles- the largest is nearly six feet high, and several reach fifty two inches. These are actually painted on double supports; a cotton duck is first stretched and gessoed, and then greenish brown linen is stretched over this first support and sized in clear acrylic. The paste-like paint is hand ground pigment and oil, mostly matte. The pigments used can roughly be described as olives, brick reds, and white or cream, all earthy hues varying slightly from painting to painting depending on the pigment, how they are ground, and how they are applied. The paint is applied directly with a spatula; it is spread and scraped -- almost shaped and molded -- into larger and more complex red, green, or white shapes similar to those in the Lokapala paintings. The paint, because stiff, has body, almost like low-relief. After the first attack additional painting may take place, though this is not typical. The three colors are distributed among the forms in a way so that no form of one color abuts another of the same color, although this isn't done systematically, and there are instances where this kind organization almost seems on the verge of breaking down. The exposed linen between the shapes creates another set of shapes in negative.

Lawson has stated many times that his intention is to make paintings that are, as he calls them, "open images." In a recent statement he wrote, "I've tried to keep these paintings as uncooked as possible, which means I've tried to keep them open to the unpredictable associative content individual viewers will inevitably bring to bear. I think of my paintings as open images." Certainly, this does not mean that an abstract painting is to be so unstructured or full of holes that viewers can take it or leave it; the artist is obligated to provide enough hooks via color, surface, motif, surface, line, and space to create a holistic image that allows a viewer to enter the process of engagement, discovery, connection, and re-engagement. Nor is an open image merely a Rorschach ink blot, a piece of a standard set that is intended to provoke a range of measurable responses in the viewer, and does not necessarily result in the construction of meaning. Instead, the purpose is to allow the viewer to personally construct meaning through a visual experience. As Jasper Johns said in a recent interview with Nina Siegal, "Meaning is something people find or construct or enact more than it is something that is offered to people." For this to happen, however, the painter must offer a hint of meaning, a way into the painting that entices, motivates, or gives the viewer a means to engage in a visual, emotional, and intellectual experience. The challenge is to create an image, through a careful consideration and use of all the components of painting, that does not shut down the painting and make it a vessel of received meaning, but instead leaves the painting open to a variety of experiences, singly and simultaneously.

Seeing & Reading the San Cai Paintings

In "Painting as an Art," Richard Wollheim identifies the experience of seeing-in as prior to representation, which involves the perception of, say, marks on a surface that can also be perceived as things apart from each other. This aspect of seeing-in is called twofoldedness; everyone knows this, for example, from the simple pleasure of looking at clouds and seeing people, animals, cars, etc. Wollheim insists that the experience of twofoldedness is not either/or, a switching back and forth from one image to another. Instead the viewer sees, experiences, and holds these images simultaneously. I wonder, however, if it's possible to experience trifoldedness, octafoldedness, or a multifoldedness wherein an image can provoke a number of simultaneous associations that the viewer holds, cycles through, balances and interrelates. An open image, then, would be most successful not only when it allowed viewers to see-in and experience a range of associations, but when the range of associations are simultaneously full and complex visual, sensual, emotional, and intellectual responses.

A multifolded seeing-in occurs when viewing the San Cai paintings; these paintings prompt many responses and possible readings. In the act of looking, one's interaction with the paintings leads to the recognition and interpretation of possible meanings, and then on to the validation and solidification of these meanings. In the San Cai paintings, where the presentation lays bare everything for the viewer to see, it is possible to retrace a backward and forward continuum from the painting as evidence of action to decision to intention. The San Cai painting successfully work as open images because this tracing back and forth openly supports multiple readings.

As the forms comprising the San Cai motif individuate and interrelate it becomes clear that the associations they provoke are the result of a risky, rigorous process. This process requires many decisions and actions coherently worked through so that many of the painting's components fall into place: size and scale, color and surface, gesture and form, and drawing that defines two relationships: one between each painting?s forms, and another between the forms and the canvases edge.

Again, the forms are each one of three colors -- red, green, or white -- more or less evenly distributed, with no two forms of the same color next to each other. That they are muted colors creates a relationship between the red and green of a kind of shared signaling, that attracts and releases the eye from one to the other. The matte paint pulls the eye in. Instead of competition, the red and green are two thirds of a chord. The white, tending more towards cream, seems as if it includes a touch of the other two colors mixed into it. These three colors make a lively, dynamic trio that is also historically based in the Sancai glazes. Immediately, one obvious but delightful association presents itself: the painting represents a ceramic form, and, more complexly, is also itself an object standing in as a ceramic form: the stretcher defines the vessel, the linen support is dark clay, and the red, green, and white are classic Sancai glazes, perhaps prior to firing. This neat connection turns de Kooning's often quoted line, "Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented," radically on its ear.

Each San Cai painting is first an object, a shallow box that is wrapped in cloth, marked or decorated with paint, and hung on the wall. They are handsome and formal, present and commanding. Looking at these objects on the wall we want to see not only what is on this object, but how this object shows us other things. At the same time that the painting is an object we want to look at it as a picture full of forms that represent something else. We can see the painting as a picture, a window, a mirror, or a body. We look at the painting at the same time that we look into the painting, and we scan the surface, meet and pull back from the canvas edges, and physically respond to what we take in. What we see and respond to might begin to prompt a number of questions. Are the separate forms fully independent? Are these forms pieces of something larger that has cracked and is pulling apart; are the forms aggregating into a larger whole; or, instead, are these forms suspended in a space that keeps them apart? Will they ever meet? Are they fixed in the shape we see, or are these bodies forever positioned in this way? If these forms are representations of a positioned body, can I imagine the forms taking a different shape? Are the forms of the same color a family apart from the others, or are all the shapes, no matter what color, part of the same family? Are the shapes meant to interlock as pieces of a puzzle might, or are these positions arbitrary? What is the significance of the exposed linen: is it the background, or is it just unpainted cloth? What if instead of focusing my attention on the painted forms I concentrated on the forms created by the unpainted areas; do these spaces define forms that represent something, too, and are the red, green, and white are instead the background? Why don?t any of the forms run off the edge to continue outside the paintings, but instead are contained with the four sides of the canvas, strongly suggesting that the painting as a complete and whole object? There really are no simple or verifiable answers to these questions. In formulating and pondering these questions, however, the viewer senses how a painting begins to breathe and engage, thereby opening a range of observations and responses essential to "Art." (Left: San Cai 3, 2003, 52" x 46", oil on linen)

There is incredible movement and energy in the San Cai paintings. The shapes stretch, turn, leap, gesture, hang, and flip, while some rest, sit, fold in, and recline. In these forms there is a kind of life energy, an animal energy, wild but not threatening, ordinary yet graceful, and though the forms seem familiar it is impossible to pin down and name them. I see these forms as having a consciousness and spirit, a freedom to move and be themselves, while at the same time demonstrating social awareness and good behavior by not intruding on each other. These paintings are fields of strong and equal individual beings that belong to a collective society, fitting around each, considerate and accommodating, diverse yet unified. Some forms loosely share attributes that encourage grouping and categorization, cross referencing and analysis. One looks at all of these forms and feels a sympathetic movement in the body: the shoulder turns and head tips; the back arches and arms reach out; the pelvis shifts and the heel lifts. This dual experience of seeing movement and responding in kind strikes a deep emotional core that is primal, yet far form simplistic. It is based in the knowledge of the body, and connected to the process of seeing and being in the moment, which is immensely satisfying and regenerative, even necessary.

The San Cai paintings are truly successful open images, and immensely successful paintings. They hold up to the viewer's deep looking. The viewer reacts to the paintings emotionally and physically, makes observations and asks questions, verifies responses, and returns for more. The paintings prompt a multifolded seeing-in that leads the viewer through a complex encounter. It is a significant achievement that the San Cai paintings consistently sustain such important and meaningful experiences.

Meaning

That the San Cai paintings engage the viewer in a multifolded seeing-in without closing down into simply a representation of this experience is evidence of the painting's success as open images and works of art. Out of this personally intense and complex viewing experience comes one of the primary meanings of these paintings: seeing as a sensual and intellectual process of exploration, discovery, understanding, and renewal.

Wollheim identifies several types of primary and secondary meanings in paintings. There is the primary meaning I have already described in the viewer's understanding of the painting as a unified body of images meant to visually stimulate both sympathetic and personal responses that the viewer acts on. There is also historical meaning in how the San Cai paintings borrow the idea of three colors from Sancai glazes. Expressive meaning is found, in particular, in the energy of the painting's forms: a kind of joy and exuberance, freedom and recognition of interdependence. Textual meaning is read in each painting's content as a text; for example, Lawson applies the ethic of diversity, equality, and continuity -- openness -- in the making of the paintings and in an attitude towards the viewer's experience.

Secondary meanings in the paintings arise from discerning the painting's meaning to Lawson, which he discovers through the act of creation and is left in the painting as evidence. The viewer observes the finished painting, notes how it is made, and works backwards to interpret the artist's intentions and wishes. The San Cai paintings are fully exposed; nothing is hidden. This willingness to expose the pieces of the painting, and the way it is made, creates a generous and welcoming opening for the viewer. The artist's intention, I think, is to sincerely involve the viewer. Referring back to Johns's quote, rather than offering a meaning to the viewer, Lawson method is to make paintings that engage people in finding, constructing, or enacting meaning. The San Cai paintings engage me in cycle of moving through: a preverbal visual experience, where words are inadequate; a middle experience of intellectualdiscovery and synthesis; a post-verbal experience, where words are exhausted but meaning remains; and then back again to the painted object. I return to make meaning over and over. (Right: San Cai 6, 2003, 52" x 46" oil on linen)

Value

Paintings are real things. We regard them in the world, and, if we're paying attention, they regard us. I can't agree more with Lawson's statement, "We are exposed to a lot of digital imagery now that tends to break down upon close examination, while painting has such a high degree of resolution, it seems to just keep on giving the closer you get. Painting's unfolding continues beyond any scrutiny." This statement easily applies to Lawson's paintings.

The San Cai paintings are the result of clear vision, conception, intuition, and concentrated, focused action. Painting is such a flexible, strong medium, and Lawson employs it so well. These are powerfully crafted objects, real and humbly made using, basically, earth and plant byproducts: minerals, oil, wood, woven fibers. It is astounding to realize how these paintings, hanging on a wall for unmediated viewing, hold up under close inspection, catalyze such complex experiences, and stimulate so much meaning. The value of the work is in the experience of discovering, identifying, and knowing meaning, and in how the paintings set a high standard for what a painting is and does. These works buoy an opposition to a cynical surrender to things apart from us, such as the digital image and the mass produced multiple. They work to connect us to ourselves and each other, rewarding prolonged and repeated viewing. George Lawson?s San Cai series are exceptionally beautiful,meaningful, and important paintings.

Chris Ashley

Oakland, CA

August 2004

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains XII

HTML, 380 x 340 pixels

Willem de Kooning: Content is a glimpse...

I think back frequently to this statement by Willem de Kooning. Content - subject and meaning - is something that we fleetingly catch and try to hold on to. The full meaning of something shifts, is caught in peripheral vision, is something we can ignore and then quickly respond to and try to recognize. I've never seen anyone describe this quite as directly as ol' Willem, the painter whom I consider to be my "artist-father."

I bought this book, New York School, an anthology edited by Maurice Tuchman, sometime in late summer or early fall of 1976 at Moe's Books in Berkeley. This is before Moe's was remodeled, when it resembled so many other used books stores of the era: poor light, books piled everywhere, shelves groaning and bowing under the weight, jazz and blues over funky speakers, a filing system just barely good enough to find what you might be looking for. I can pinpoint the era because I remember who I was there with: Randy Dutra, who went on to do animation on a number of films, such as Jurassic Park, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Robocop. He grew up down the street from me; we went to the same high school, and occasionally we drew each other. He liked to play Led Zeppelin and Cat Steves real loud. He had no sympathy for a book about abstract painters, but we were friends, so, you know, whatever.

New York School is cloth, out of print, and cost me $7.50- that's 1976 dollars, a pretty penny. At that time I had just finished my second summer season as a Teamster working at United Can Company's factory in Hayward, California. I remember that I made exactly $7.50 an hour that summer, a mighty sum of money. 1976 was the second summer season that I worked there. I worked there five seasons, putting myself through school. The first couple of summers - which typically spanned somewhere from late spring to early fall - I worked graveyard and swing shift. Eventually, I had enough seniority to work the day shift, 7:00 am to 3:30 pm.

There is another milestone by which I can remember buying this book: at the end of the spring semester of 1976 I was hurrying to to get to work after school, the swing shift, 3:30 pm to midnight. My car, a Datsun 210 sedan, was running hot. It had been sitting outside for awhile, so I went out, opened the hood, and carefully took off the radiator cap to fill the radiator with water. But even though the car had been sitting for half an hour it was still hot enough to blow the cap out of my had and send a stream of steam and hot water blowing out, grazing my hands. I saw it coming, and turned my head, but I still took a big hit on my forhead. I ended up spending several days in the hospital with serious burns, and the rest of summer out of work away from the sun and any environment in which I might risk infection.

What did I do all that summer, instead of work? Well, I collected worker's comp, and I spent three months becoming a serious abstract painter. The time was a gift. I discovered a large book about de Kooning at the San Lorenzo library, and he became the artist through which I saw the rest of 20th century art.

New York School has a few critical pieces, but mostly it's reproductions of Abstract Expressionist paintings and artist writings and statements. The book is a little treasure I have. Many times over the years I've opened it to read the de Kooning statements. The one above is one of my favorites.

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains XI

HTML, 380 x 340 pixels

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains X

HTML, 380 x 340 pixels

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains IX

HTML, 380 x 340 pixels

A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains VIII

HTML, 380 x 340 pixels