Picasso at the VMFA, notes, thoughts, etc

First of all, I'm not entirely sure Virginia is ready for 1910 based on the conversations I overheard. For example: "Well, TO ME, that just doesn't look like it should be in a museum". To me, that just shows that you're completely unaware of what it is an artist is trying to do. Drawing is thinking through the hand. Picasso's drawings are of interest because you can see that thought process in a stripped down form. Also, *BACKHAND*.

This is not to say I don't have questions, concerns, preoccupations with the show also. Unfortunately, I can't seem to separate my personal studio preoccupations with what I'm seeing at the museum. So let me get that out of the way and come back around to the show....

It's a problem of purity, a problem of everything's permitted so therefore nothing seems to matter in particular. This feeling is not limited to the studio. Within the studio, this is translating into a problem differentiating art from fashion. The general distinction is simple and well-understood: art carries meaning where fashion carries superficial contemporary aesthetics. But the specific is tricky, as always.

I'm craving a method, a recipe. I'm tired of what feels like random achievement. At the same time I am wary of abstraction with a system behind it. I'm also feeling very seduced by contemporary fashion. It just happens to reflect back my own sensibilities. In 5 years I'll be out of fashion, it's just coincidence, the wheel turning. Unfortunately, my own yearning for meaning manifests as an urge to mythologize. It's very hard for me not to jump straight from that urge into primitivism and symbolism. I keep hovering around the native american and Ife exhibits at the museum like some kind of nerdy ghost. Of course, this sort of thing happens to be in fashion right now. Are you feeling my frustration yet?? It does seem important not to be reactionary also.

Part 2 after work...where I will bring this all around to Picasso, I swear.

Disciplinarian

So awkward trials gave way to a return to order, or a return to the need to organize thoughts, palettes, methods and the studio. I feel good about this- or I should say, I feel that intuitive pinch that tells me that this is correct. I think there can be this push to throw the baby out with the bath water in studio practice, when things aren't adding up, to keep asking 'why, why, why??' and continually redefining oneself unnecessarily.

Perhaps we do this in an attempt to hide our weaknesses from ourselves or in an effort to get somewhere quickly. Usually it drives us into increasingly tighter circles.

In either case, I'm glad to mix a wonderfully traditional palette with a full range, rediscovering some subtle colors that I appreciate in nature but haven't mixed specifically in a long time. Mmmm...purple. Yellow. And everything in between....

Awkward trials not awkward enough

Letters- not words, he says. And although it did finish with one legible word, he's right. And why it took me 2+ years to try something I wanted to do, I don't know. I only know it has to be a lesson and a command to OPEN up. Yes, it's a mediocre painting but it offers up some possibilities. 

First of all, the world didn't implode. When you go most of your life pinging from thing to thing and then find some measure of focus, it can be scary to throw something new in the mix. In fact, fear has trickled into everything and it is indeed the enemy. 

So, there are some letters in the painting. I guess my fear was masked as an assumption. An assumption that 'why bother it's going to be too declarative, pin it down too much, too grounded, be a red herring, etc' was made. It turned out to be mostly correct. But I forgot all the things you learn on the way- it had been so long since I threw a wrench in my work on purpose (having to dodge incidental wrenches from outside).

I learned that it will be possible for me to work with letters but that it's going to take more time/trials. I learned that using letters could offer yet another tool, another dimension in the painting. If I play with signifiers of space, is it so off-base to play with signifiers of language/sound? And if it is, I need to learn that the hard way. In fact, this painting isn't awkward enough, it's just crap. Really. Garage sale $5. 

be compassionate with your time

I would like to hear something I've never heard before- but I can't go looking for it. I would like to see a place I've never seen but I can't go searching for it. January, I guess, is just a time for biding time and posing questions. It also seems like a time for quick decay, because every word, thought or idea seems to dissolve as soon as it exits the mind. They don't linger like I need them to- in order to move them around and arrange them into something cohesive. Nothing is leading into anything else, everything is self-contained. And that just doesn't work for me. C'mon March- and freedom. 

I will not fight the season but I will try to ride it a little more gracefully. That is my promise to you, January. Febuary, I make no promises. 

On the positive side, I can say that I have been honest with my words, which may explain the quick decay. It's amazing how many opinions I used to back down on just because I wasn't as loud. Maybe January can also be for agreeing to disagree and forgiving. I mean forgiveness in the small sense especially right now- forgiveness of the slightly awkward, strange, inappropriate, slow, dumb, snobbish or biting. I believe that I used to jump at every slight turn but that it really gets us nowhere to do so. The people I really like being around right now understand this or are also trying. 

Now, if I can only escape the Death Star and get back to the studio. The Death Star sure has great health insurance.

Jessica Stockholder

Stockholder!!!!

Here's one image to get you going. I like that she doesn't let people back her into a "junk art" corner and that she's not ashamed of formalism. And that her work seems like it's mad as a hatter but it has such an inner strength/logic that it almost laughs at you if you think, dismissively, "eh, mad as a hatter". It's going to start following you around, forming little clusters in your own home......

Bombastic Fantastic

Just got done writing new artist's statement. It's a delicate balance between sounding like a goober and totally not getting your point across. I have to stop myself from getting sucked into the writing and making some huge arc in my explanation. I always think, "this time I got it just right, more direct and too the point" and then I come back later and read it. Yeesh. It's not that I ever get it wrong, per se...I just always want to roll my eyes at the language just a little. First sentence from my last one:

My paintings are born out of the friction between the epic and the absurd, the

grand and the mundane.

new one:

Through abstraction, I bring dimension to impossible combinations of color and form.

I really do just have to breathe a little before I write and not try to cram it all in one sentence. "Born out of the friction" though...how can you fight a phrase like that when it comes to you? for real though...nobody gets to use epic, grand, absurd and mundane in the first sentence of their artist's statement. Nobody.

Durr

1. Radical Light.

2. In-deep color. 

3. Weirdo sub-reality, sub-consciousness forms.

4. (or maybe =) The possibility for infinite engagement.

What the hell else is so important???

Durr