October 29, 2005
October 28, 2005
Interview with Tom Moody by Cory Arcangel
An excellent and well-deserved interview of Tom Moody by Cory Archangel is now at Rhizome.org.
Tom: ...The computer still has the shock of the new, or the shock of the bad in some cases. Art world folks know painting, photo, and printmaking lore, but are less secure--myself included--knowing what constitutes talent on the computer as opposed to some easy-to-do technical trick. I thought because everyone had Paint or the equivalent on their computer and had at least made a mark or spritzed the spraycan, they could see that I was doing something more ambitious with it. I was thinking of this guy in New Mexico who made perfect perspective drawings using an Etch a Sketch. If I could draw La Femme Nikita from scratch on this toy program and actually have people (well, guys) say she's hot, then a landmark would be achieved for both Paintbrush and the computer. The problem is I drew her so realistically people assumed I was running a photo though a pixelating filter.
When I talk about craft on the blog, just to make it clear, I'm not talking about drawing ability but things like mosaics and needlepoints that relate to the computer on a much more fundamental image-making level, the grid level. I love the cross-stitch patterns and beadwork you can find online based on MSPaint drawings. In the late '90s I was impressed by the writing of cyberfeminist Sadie Plant, who opened up for me a whole organic, non-analytical way of looking at computation. She traces digital equipment back to one of its earliest uses, as punchcards for looms, and talks of the internet as a distributed collaborative artwork akin to traditionally feminine craft projects At the time I was drawing and printing hundreds of spheres at work and bringing them home, cutting polygons around them, and then taping the polygons back together in enormous paper quilts. In my press release for the Derek Eller show we called it "corporate tramp art."
Steven LaRose Mini-interview
Steven LaRose of Ashland, OR sends an email to his mailing list with a photo attached:
After years of festering and percolating,
My Couplets mature:Left: (above) "Gospel" and (below) "The Blues" (in nascent state)
Right: "Euphoria" and "Paranoia" (not pictured)I hope you are peacefull.
steven
Because there's so little info in this email and I wanted to know more I emailed questions and he answered, so here's a quicky, mini-interview:
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Q: Is this photo taken with a camera phone?
A: Yes. An ancient (3 year old) Audiovox.
Q: Are these in oil?
A: Yes. My first attempts actually. After graduate school I painted with acrylics and varathane. I've attached a jpg of what my shtick was like back then. The finish fetish formula grew old however. I left my Chicago gallery, got married, have a daughter, moved to a tiny town, and find myself with a new finish fetish blossoming.
Q: Who is that laying on/fall off/playing on the table in the painting on the right?
A: That is the aforementioned daughter.
Q: Are you drinking beer while painting?
A: Old habits are hard to break. Although, at 42, I find that I can't do the detail work after awhile so now I've split my routine up (finally a routine is evolving) so that I spend one or two hours in the morning with the details, go to work, pick up my daughter, make dinner, kiss my wife and daughter into bed, and then start painting and drinking. The delusions of grandeur are great motivators, otherwise I'd be hard pressed to see the reason why paint at all. Although I recently read Lawrence Weschler's "Vermeer in Bosnia" essay and felt proud to even TRY to be a "painter".
Q: I can't read the title of the book- what is it?
A: That's David Foster Wallace's "Oblivion"
Q: Do you paint these while they're hanging on the wall?
A: Yes. That's new too. The old varathane gag relied on the self-leveling nature of the paints. I used to have elaborate lazy suzan tables that I could work on 6 foot squares. I always needed big studios. Now I need good arch supports.
Q: How "realist" are these paintings?
A: That's a fundamental question that a person could spin a 3 credit college course around. I suppose it is also the common thread for all my output. Abstraction=Reality. Although, these paintings obviously tilt into the "realist" category from about six feet away. I like the way they are "reading" on first impression from a distance and then unfold as the viewer steps closer. I have been reluctant to read anything about Chuck Close lately cuz his glib genius would be so depressing. That is another common thread from the attached jpg. I used to love watching viewers lean into my paintings and say "No way!" and then back out of them again, as if trying to decipher some magic trick. I must say that I have also been reading a lot about the so called "Uncanny Valley" of robotics which is the space when something artificial becomes so real that it becomes freaky. Too real is bad. That space between Abstraction and Reality. The Liminal space. I know that is why these pieces are in couplets. Since sixth grade I have been interested in comic books and the "gutter" between panels. The time/space between two images is an amazing tool and metaphor.
Q: What's that wooden stand thing next to the beer bottle?
A: Funny. That's a tiny version of my lazy suzan tables.This one is at a precise angle so that I can stand comfortably and not have any glare or shadows on what I am working on. Recently I have been trying to do a sketch a night. Much like your agenda. . . in fact I wish I could post them on the web, but, alas, time and money, however, I am accruing a weirdly focused pile of fodder. It's all back burner stuff.
Q: Are these on canvas?
A: Yeah, I bought a score of canvases from a dying art store in town. . . and since I didn't have a precise agenda or a gallery to answer to I've been using them. . . but I sense that I might have to switch to an ultra smoothsurface of some kind. Although the tooth of the canvas does add an interesting grid of light and shadow.
Q: Am I asking too many questions?
A: Only if you didn't expect all the answers.
Q: Why is "Paranoia" not pictured?
A: Oh man, if they make a cell phone camera with a wide angle lens, I'd buy two.
StevenLaRose: The Principle Filigree (back to top)
And to top it all off, Steven's fresh new weblog: Fish or Cut Bait.
Notes on Laurie Reid at Gallery Joe
Four watercolors by Laurie Reid, all push pinned to the wall. See better photos on her page at Gallery Joe.
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Please read the revised version, 20051221.
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I know Laurie Reid's work very well, having had many opportunities to see it in the Bay Area. Her most recent exhibit at StephenWirtz Gallery in San Francisco just closed earlier this month, and I saw her work recently in Water Color: Current Views at GalleryJoe in Philadelphia. Her past work is all watercolor on paper. Often the watercolor is heavily diluted and applied to paper so that it buckles and the pigment collects along the edges of the liquid and in the furrows of the buckled paper. Other work is made of drops of much more intense color.
Her work doesn't allow for much correction, and requires concentration and a strong physical presence, action, balance, and decisiveness. Recent work seems to begin by re-using older work on top of which more painting is taking place. This introduces a few things: multiple kinds of structures, greater variety of line, much greater varying of density of color used within one painting, and layering of kinds of structures over other kinds.
I think the newer work looks more relaxed. Part of that I think comes from the re-use of old work, the second-generation of new marks covering over a first generation of older marks, of different kinds of structure layering up. In a way it is destroying old work to make new work, or adding to something that one decides much later is unfinished. I think to do that one does have to be relaxed, to have accepted something as incomplete or perhaps a failure. That requires a letting go, and approaching an old work with a new attitude.
I see in the older work an interesting contradiction or duality— these very liquid lines carry a lot of tension and a sense of relaxed flow at the same time. First, there's a lot of tension in the lines and drops— that comes from the precision, calculation, measuring, and consistency needed to make the work, the need not to screw up, and the difficulty imposed by not being able to do anything over. As a viewer, one feels all of that.
Tension in many of the larger works, some up to six feet or more high or long, is found, for example, in the long strokes that need to cover a very large area. And then there is tension in the relationship of one line or shape to another, how they may be placed alongside each and not touch, each retaining a unique quality. This all requires strength, endurance, a steady hand and eye, care and patience. And part of the tension is also built into the medium of water on paper— you've pretty much got to hit it in one go without correction when you're working with large sheets of nice white paper and each large wet stroke is the image. Reid handles that really well, with strength and consistency.
But then all that tension in these lines as shape is contradicted by the liquid quality of the lines— the somewhat controlled elastic flow of pigment within puddled sections- and by the physical puckering of the paper. This liquidity and puckering creates a feeling of relaxation, of breathing, and expansiveness.
I find that duality between tension and flow really interesting; it is very human, almost figurative- something with a nervous system opened up and laid bare. There is a tremulousness to the images, and if one is quiet and listens there is a hum, either off the work or in the viewer's response to the work.
In the newer work Reid is building webs with new lines on top of old, or filling in shapes that were previously only defined by line with new areas color. This changes the whole dynamic in Reid's work. This new work is more layered, with one approach on top of another approach. Because of this the work feels less process-oriented — less conceptual—and more like someone building a picture. In a sense, the correction she couldn't do on the earlier work is now taking place in the newer work, and old is transformed into new. The tensions have changed a bit, their is a newer density and heaviness.
All of the work I saw at Gallery Joe is in this new same vein as the work in the Wirtz show. I think this direction adds another dimension to Reid's work, and certainly give here something new to wrestle with. I hope she can hold onto the qualities I admire in the older work while adding new approaches. This recent work is a good start.
Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA 2005
October 27, 2005
15th Anniversary of Edition Sp.N.LAUB
Congratulations to Siegfried Holzbauer, who has just celebrated the 15th anniversary of his "Edition S.p.N.LAUB" with a show at Stifter Haus, Linz on Oct.17th.
The show included a reading of Wolfgang Wiesauer´s work-in-progress Caravaggio, and a duo concert by Fengxia Xu and Giselher Smekal playing a fusion of classical Chinese music and European avantgarde music. Also included were five of my drawings, July Set 4, 1-5, which, as Siegfried writes, were "unframed on a table to let the people pick them up and hold them in their hands to get some haptic experiences, too - right in contrast to your electronic drawings."
On this occasion he published an anthology of the eleven best works published by edition S.p.N.LAUB, including a number of Siegfried's image and text works. I am fortunate to be represented by two of my works: Gallery Views, January 2003, and Regime Change, April 2003.
Below, a still from Siegfried's hürnen seyfrid´s erleuchtung
Tim McFarlane
Tim McFarlane talks about a recent whirlwind of activity that's keeping him from the studio, about my visit there on October 10, and the value of talking with other artists.
I think it's true that talking with and showing one's work to peers is extremely valuable; other artists have insights that non-artists can't have, and the possibility of shared language and understanding allows the conversation to go deeper more quickly. Plus, it is a tremendous treat to see work in the studio.
I took photos in Tim's studio but the pictures of his paintings didn't really come out too well, so see them at Bridget Mayer.
Upending the notion of a bourgeois Matisse
Sadly, I am nearing the end of the second volume of Hilary Spurling's magnificent biography Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954. It's sad because Spurling is such a good writer, has really done her research, has opened different phases of Matisse's work for me in new ways, and because I just wish it was possible for the biography to go even deeper. She takes a very good, close look at many of his works- her description is sensitive and useful, and she is able to tie a work to the times it was made, often to a circumstance in Matisse's life, without overly analyzed or over-reaching meaning or symbolism, a typical biographer's weakness. She understands a painter's problems, and accounts for the achievements, stumbling blocks, and dead ends throughout Matisse's career.
Here's a bit from a conversation with Sprurling recently in the LA Times:
Upending the notion of a bourgeois Matisse
Call them brothers separated at birth.One, raised in a secure part of Europe, was a fair-haired boy praised as a genius from the moment he drew his first picture. Success followed success, the world's horrors rarely touched him, and he was celebrated in death, as in life, as a visionary.
The other, weaned in his nation's armpit, was dismissed from childhood as a fool or a madman — even by his friends. When he began to paint, he was charged by critics and peers with being obscene, and later by the avant-garde with being reactionary. He was tangled in scandal in which he played no part; wars ravaged his hometown and his family. Yet he innovated almost continuously until his death, smashing barriers at each step and summoning courage even as tragedy struck those around him.
And here's the shocking part: This second brother would come to be viewed as a complacent burgher who crafted pretty pictures for country houses.
"It always amazes me that Picasso is the one with the reputation for being the revolutionary," says Hilary Spurling, author of the new, much-hailed "Matisse the Master," the second volume of her life of the Spanish artist's aesthetic sibling, French artist Henri Matisse. "When you think of Picasso, what problems did he have? They were all of his own making, and mostly had to do with women.
"Whereas Matisse was born on the front lines and was always up to his neck in it. He was the first man into his town after [World War I]. Try to imagine it: the dead bodies everywhere, every tree burnt, every town razed to the ground. Matisse, then, had a tremendous, insatiable need for stability and peace. But to say that Matisse was the comfortable one, or the one who lived like a bourgeois!"
October 26, 2005
Untitled 15 (Two Thousand Too Many)
Untitled (Two Thousand Too Many), 2005, HTML, 234 x 180 pixels
October 25, 2005
Untitled 14 (Rosa Parks)
Untitled (Rosa Parks), 2005, HTML, 234 x 180 pixels
October 24, 2005
Raymond Saunders' "Coloring", 2005
Installation view, 20051022: Raymond Saunders at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco
As a former student of Raymond Saunders' (at California State University, Hayward, 1978-80) I think I know his work fairly well, and it had no small influence on my own paintings and collages at that time. I've seen just about every San Francisco solo show of his since around 1980 or so, all at Wirtz. The other day I referred to his "chops and verve," an allusion to jazz that I'm sure Ray would not only appreciate but for which he would take full credit.
I have to confess to sometimes feeling a bit tired of aspects of his work which in more cynical times I would call visual schtick. Typically present is the nearly constant use of allover black grounds, which works so well as a unifying field for just about anything placed on it. He relies on a continual use of primary colors, most especially red and yellow, and lots of white. He recycles a limited set of images, particulary flowers, a woman's half-length profile, and high-shouldered jars or vases, and sometimes makes precious use of found collage material, the meaning of which can seem a little too pat. And finally, there is a reliance on an awesome and natural command of mark and gesture making that seems to flow from his arm so masterfully that I often wonder if he's even trying.
Does this sound like the son attacking the father? Perhaps a bit. The truth is that I am often awed by his physical command of medium, by the absolutely gorgeous things he makes, and by the seriousness of his subject matter that is often as plain as the nose on your face: it's there but you can't see it immediately because you're looking past it into the world he has created.
Sometimes it's useful to refer to other artists to identify what another artist is doing. How about this: Saunders (b. 1932, Pittsburgh, PA) composes freewheeling but meaningful and rhythmic space like Pollock at his 1950 peak. He uses the debris of life as purposefully and sneakily as Rauschenberg. His work has the wit of Saul Steinberg. Romare Bearden's drive, facture, and spirit is never far from the heart of his work. Jacob Lawrence dedication to the story of his people and his crafted, plain images are a model for Saunders. In a just world, Basquiat would be known as a Student in the House of Saunders, and Ray would get triple points along with that title simply for going the distance.
Raymond Saunders, Their Nothing into Beautiful, 2005, mixed media on canvas, 81 x 77 inches
Saunders's latest show, filling both galleries at Wirtz, is a real tour de force. It delivers in ways one has come to expect of him, but he seems to have stepped things up a tiny notch. There are some really large works, and there is a proliferation of flowers; they're in just about every painting, big blooming things bursting forth in pinks, whites, and yellows, many painted in hard attacks of controlled spills and swipes, painted with the directness of Chinese landscape painting. Some of the paintings are so full of different-sized flowers that they hang and overlap, so full and lush that they seem to project from the surface.
All in all, it's a beautiful, solid show-- signature Saunders. But then there is the back room, where I had my respect for Saunders suddenly lifted substantially by an installation on the floor and wall of various pieces of this and that, something he's done occasionally over the years. Instead of doing it on a panel or canvas, he takes it to the wall. In this single large work he stakes his claim as an artist with serious things on his mind, and says it using his familiar method in such a way that it all becomes new again.
Raymond Saunders, Coloring, 2005, mixed media, at Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco
An inventory of Coloring's bits and pieces will get at its meaning:
- A large unfinished, unstretched canvas hangs askew on the wall; it's either been tacked up in a hurry, or it's a picture knocked off-center by a jolt, wind, or violence.
- The shape of a hand has been cut from a multi-layered sheet of black plastic revealing the white of the wall.
- The multiple black plastic cutout hands are scattered on the floor and around a woman's profile on a black ground on plywood- has this slipped off the wall and onto the floor, or was it thrown down and walked over?
- More black paint hands are smeared on a piece of paper on the floor.
- A black hand print is pressed on the wall above a vase of flowers on the floor.
- Next to the hand print is a CD jacket for Something To Believe In, a collection of songs by Black artists: Change Is Gonna Come by Otis Redding, Think, by Aretha Franklin, Higher And Higher by Jackie Wilson, and so on. The painting on the CD cover is by Jacob Lawrence.
- Not far away near the floor a postcard of a Romare Bearden collage of a group of people is taped to the wall.
- A tall wide column made of large sheets of printed paper fixed to the wall rises above the Romare Bearden, flanked on each side by carved wood African masks- the genuine article.
- Near the top of the paper column are printout sheets of Prince Valiant comics and consumer goods, probably from the late 20's or 30's, emblematic of an American industrial and middle class ideal.
- Further down the column are prints of a wordless Mickey Mouse comic, also probably from the 30's, complete with a dark, big-lipped monkey king and a barrel of smaller monkeys drawn in the same cariacaturish way that African Americans were drawn in that period.
- At the lower right is a New York Times page dated October 1 with the headeline, "Another Casualty of Our War." Thunk! It's about the after affects of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, racism in America, the politics of disaster, and haves and have nots.
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Coloring has an assertive truth-telling in its accumulated pieces, but the telling is seductive. It's beautiful, and that's where we often tend to stay, isn't it? But underneath is the story of privilege, segregation, things awry, and racism. That one powerful punch line, "Another Casualty of Our War," hidden down at the bottom of the column, overshadowed by so much beauty and consumerism, makes us go back and look through everything else all over again, reassessing beauty for its meaning. Coloring is both elegiac and accusatory, demanding and sensuous. This is the piece, hidden in the back room, that made me go back through Saunders's large solo show and see the rest of the work with a new, heightened appreciation. Not just chops and verve, but also topicality and editorializing, illustrating and proselytizing, demonstrating and testifying with heart and soul, skill and mastery in the simplest materials: cloth, paper, wood, paint.
Chris Ashley
Oakland, CA 2005