ArtPrize: What Was The Experiment?

Rick Devos’s ArtPrize, described as “the the largest Art Competition in the world”, was self billed from the start as a “ radically new experiment. The experiment was basically this, could the general public via a majority vote pick ten top works of Art out of a pool of over 1200 applicants and then award the best of the top ten a grand prize of $250,000. The comparison to the television contest American Idol was down played by Artprize organizers by saying that the competition really wasn’t about the money but rather the public dialog that would ensue from having such a competition. The organized spin didn’t of course alter the fact that Artists did not pay a $50 application fee to dialog with their neighbor but rather to enter a competition and a run for a chance at $450,000 in prize money.

As an Artist this was both a fascinating premise for a competition and a infuriating assault against what I know about Art with a capital A. It was something that I wanted to remain open to for it’s new potential and it was something that flew in the face of my belief that if you are going to judge something in life you should know something of what you are talking about. I’m not talking about your personal opinion. I’m talking about your ability to judge.

If I learned anything from my collage science classes it’s that any experiment has to have a theory by which to test your experiment against. What was ArtPrize’s theory? Was it that the average person on the street can pick a top work of Art as good as any professional critic or curator? Or was the experiment actually an attempt at conservative social engineering by the ultra conservative Devos Foundation who funded the prize money?
For all the denying that Artprize had engineered a referendum against the established Art World, the idea remains that this model of Art Competition attempts to replace knowledge with public opinion about what is good Art. How dangerous you believe that premise is might point to which side of the argument you reside on.

The Artprize organizers from the inception of the event seemed invested in the idea of organizing a Art Competition through new technological means. They created a model with exciting sounding procedures that stacked up buzz phrases like “rebooting” and “decentralized curating”. Exhibition spaces were called “Venues” and Artists and Venues were “ matched” online like an online dating service. Cool.

ArtPrize was said to be “open to any Artists who can find a space”. This open call concept ended up not quite being the case and in reality Venues acted as entry jurors selecting who they wanted to exhibited before the public ever saw anything. Some Venues employed professional jurors with curatorial experience and some Venues were “curated” by people or committees that may not have had any Art experience at all.
“Decentralized curating” to AP must also mean mystery curating because the public was never given an idea which Venues were professionally curated nor was there any credit given to who the curators were.
That being said it was easy to tell the Venues that had been professionally curated from those that had not. The best Venues I saw ( I did not see all of AP. It is mentally impossibly and logistically difficult) was the UICA and The Old Federal Building both which were curated by UICA curatorial volunteers. Why these curators weren’t considered important enough to be paid for their services must be part of AP’s new “decentralized curating” model.

I believe Art can be a lot of different things and it can be found in a variety of unexpected and non traditional places. Thats exciting. But that doesn’t mean that anything is Art and that art can exist or be placed anywhere.

A bar propping up a painting in a window like a cheap department store display does not a meaningful Art experience make. And there are certain architectural features inherit in particular Venues that should have prevented them from hosting Artists. The West Michigan Center for Arts and Technology was a awful place to exhibit work. Two artist’s work was stuffed in a stair well in the building and the remaining work is hung wherever physically possible. Armin Mersmann’s formal yet personal drawings and Tim Portlock’s large format prints “Ghost City #1 and #2” suffered from being exhibited there. Plus the place at lunch time smelled like a office workers Spaghetti- O’s.

But good art displayed poorly is still more tolerable than bad art displayed badly and the Venue know as The B.O.B was of that ilk. A three story bar restaurant complex made the Art work seem like bad theme decor and their adjacent parking lot looked like a sad amateur Art Fair after a thunder storm. For all I know there might have been something interesting in The B.O.B but it was lost in a black hole of seafood smelling, canned music banality.

So what was the outcome of this years “radically new experiment”? Was the general public able to pick a fair sampling of at least the ten best works of Art worthy of a cash prize. In my professional opinion no. The grand prize winner Ran Ortner;s “Open Water No.24 was deserved and an easy pic for Michigan -The Great Lakes State.

Who were my favorites? I’ve listed them below and have a sadden feeling when I think of them having been so over looked. None of them made the top ten.

Brooklyn Artist Anja Mohn’s (www.re-title.com/artists/Anja-Mohn.asp) “One Another” a black and white photographic female image embedded into blocks of paraffin wax was reflectively beautiful and seemed suspended in time and should have been given more exhibition space.

Dragana Crnjak’s wall work “ I Thought I Might Find You” was a show stopper. Composed of painted and charcoal drawn shapes. It was one of the finest pieces in ArtPrize. The wall installation painting was done on a wall 12 ft tall by some 70ft long where the actually images and design were well integrated into the physical space. Her use of small oval charcoal shapes with 3-dimensional shadow aspects to them was optically alluring. It was joyous.(www.markelfinearts.com/port.php?id=33)

My very favorite piece in AP and my vote for the best was Ann Arbor Artist Heidi Kumao’s “Correspondence”. Part video image, part sculpture, part theater it was perfectly situated in a small semi dark alcove where a video was projected onto both the back wall and a bell jar on a small metal table. Your eye and attention was led between the action and colorful and animated images on the back wall and a separate world projected onto a sheet of paper in the bell jar. I would have spent a whole day in bed looking at this magical theatricality with it’s visual poetry.

Kurt Perchke’s “Red Ball Project” seemed like a interesting idea and I wish I could have found where the ball was that day because the documentation lacked what the experience must have been like. (www.redballproject.com)

The day I visited The Old Federal Building top ten winners Ran Ortner and Eric Daigh were garnering steady crowds that should have been looking at Chicago Artist J. Thomas Pallas’s “Jordan”. A 14ft by 10ft drawing made directly on the wall in the image of a woman’s face. The image was drawn with a hand inked stamp of Michael Jordan which was pressed onto the wall thousand of times to create the image. It was stunningly epic in scale and purpose. (www.jthomaspallas.com/home.html)

Viewers also should have been paying attention to Reni Gower’s “Papercuts”. Three large sheets of paper cut out of Celtic patterns that hung away from the wall and reflected a colored glow from the painted back surfaces. This was a particularly brilliant installation where the size and objects worked intimately with the space and the lighting of that space. More installations should have been this sensitive to the space given them. (www.renigower.com)

I also loved the personal world expanding Jerry Gretzinger’s Map Project (www.jerrysmap.blogspot.com/) and Megan Heeres “Things that go back and forth” comprised of things that..well… moved back and forth. These “things”, shapes, sculptures,paintings were like new sensory objects to my eyes, seen for the first time. And Grand Rapids artist Sam Blanchard’s David Lynch like roller coaster sculpture sat eerily in a darkened room. It reminded me of both a futurist event and something out of antiquity.

Dennis Michael Jones’s participatory room installation “Sometimes I Wonder” had word drawings that people were invited to add to. It was directly up front and refreshingly dynamic,both seemingly simple and socially complex in context. He should have been given a larger room.

Kudo’s to Yolanda Gonzales’s “Dress like the Sky”, Danielle Roney’s “Cybertourism”, Claire Walkins’s “Think Three Thoughts at Once”, and Erika Blumfeld’s “Apparent Horizons: Antarctica” who made my short list also.

Kendall Collage of Art displayed 5 subtle oil paintings by Jenny Brillhart (www.jbrillhart.com/) from Miami. The paintings were partial views of swimming pools empty of their water. The soft glow of her paint reminded me of old worn pool tiles.
Unfortunately to get to them you had to walk past Paul Kaiser’s large scale photo realistic drawings of portrait busts of American soldiers in uniform which smacked to much of creepy war idolatry and the G.W.Bush years.

As I drove away from Downtown I passed a sad hand lettered sign pointing down a side street. It said something like “ More good Artprize Artists this way” begging for my attention. And while the majority of Grand Rapids natives feel Rick Devos should be awarded a prize himself for bringing a cash cow to this midwestern town it seems depressing that we even have to have an event like Artprize to make people believe they can look at and have a conversation about Art. This would be a myth that I would not want to see future events like ArtPrize propagate. Because you don’t have to wait for Artprize to tell you can look at Art. Art doesn’t leave the City of Grand Rapids, the State of Michigan and the region of the Midwest when ArtPrize closes down this year. Believe it or not it was here before ArtPrize came to town. The great new Grand Rapids Art Museum, the UICA and Grand Rapids Art Galleries, Artist studios work diligently everyday to get your attention to focus on Art. The world class Art center of Chicago is only a 3 hour drive away. New York City is a short 4 hour flight.
You don’t need ‘Sticks’ Furniture on steroids plopped up on a bridge and Styrofoam monsters in the river to make you want to look and think and talk about Art. You can do it on your own. And you should.

Why the Grand Rapids ‘ArtPrize’ isn’t a Prize.

 

When I was young man in the 70’s Grand Rapids, Michigan suffered the decline many midwestern cities did of urban flight and a decaying empty downtown. In 1969 Grand Rapids became the first city in the United States to install a public work of art through the National Endowment for The Arts  ‘Art for Public Places’ program. The sculpture chosen was Alexanders Calder’s  ‘LaGrande Vitesse’. Originally it caused a immense controversy which is showcased in the PBS American Masters Series available on DVD.  Eventually the energy and vitality of downtown Grand Rapids was rebuilt with major contributions by the Devos family. Last week Rick Devos grand son of one of the founders of the Amway Corporation announced ArtPrize “the worlds largest art prize”. A international art competition that will award close to $500,000 in prize money with the top prize being $250,000. The ArtPrize web site states that it’s mission is to..

“reboot a conversation between artists and the public on a grand scale.”

What is unique in Rick Devos’s idea is a international competition where the public will decide the awards similar to the ‘American Idol” talent competition where the public decides who wins the big prize.

The prize money is being funded by the Dick & Besty Devos Foundation, Rick Devos’s parents. The Devos’s have a deep history of charitable and political contributions mostly involving Christian organizations and have been contributors to James Dobeson’s Focus on the Family Ministries and have made contributions supporting California’s Proposition 8.  

“Our family sees ArtPrize as a new and innovative way to engage and support the arts for the future,” said Betsy DeVos. The Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation is underwriting ArtPrize. “Dick and I share our son’s vision for encouraging everyone to explore the arts in a truly democratic way.”                         Artprize website

I’m not sure art has ever been, or ever should be ‘democratic’,  but I certainly am all for  supporting anything that creates a conversation between art, artists and the viewing public. But a conversation, a dialog about art and it’s purpose in society is one thing. Giving the power to the public to be judge and jury to not only the prize money but the entry to the contest is a completely different thing. 

And this is the first problem I have with ArtPrize. It’s not really what it says it is.  When ArtPrize was announce it was billed as a open art event where the public would decide the prize winners.  But you have to get into the ArtPrize first and your first juror is the venue owners. After applying to ArtPrize ($50 application fee) it is the artists responsibility to contact a venue from a list provided on the website. Or you can contact anyone who owns property within the city of Grand Rapids and “negotiate” a venue agreement. Artists are responsible for shipping, installing and insuring their work during the event,but here is the kicker– the person who owns the venue decides who and what they want in their venue. Good luck finding a public venue in this conservative town if your work is overtly political or sexual or anti- religious. The owners of the venue then become your first juror.  Ok, this is America and you can’t make the religious Calvin College show a painting called “I hate Jesus” if they don’t want to have that hanging in their campus gallery. I can respect that. But then ArtPrize shouldn’t really bill ArtPrize as a international competition open to anyone.

$250,000 is a lot of money. $500,000 in total prizes is a whole lot of money. It’s not play money. The purpose of offering that kind of award I guess, if I can speak for the Devos’s is to show that ArtPrize is serious about attracting great art, and great artists to Grand Rapids. It’s an attempt to bring a high quality art event and showcase Grand Rapids the same way the Sundance  Festival showcases Sundance. So the question begs to be asked- is the public the best  jury for the “worlds largest art prize”.  And subsequently-what is the point of having them do so?  Will it be fun for the public? Absolutely. Will it be interesting to the public. I’m sure it will be. But is it the right thing to do? I don’t think so. Here’s why.

Artists are as serious and professional about what they do as any other important profession. Art has a history.  Art deals with issues of relevance, aesthetics and purpose. Art questions who we are and what we do. There are reasons for why artists do what they do. There are even reasons for the reasons why they make what they make. Some of those reasons are simple, easy to understand and assimilate. Some of those reason are harder, more obtuse, more deeply ingrained in the history of art and the history of why art is made. There are professional experts, historians, critics, art writers and artists that spend their whole lives writing about art, trying to assess and come to a full understanding about the practical and philosophical reasons behind art, what make good art good and bad art bad. If ArtPrize wants, as they say in their mission statement  a “giant conversation ” you need to include this professional aspect of art, not exclude them by a overwhelming vote of popularity. Is the implied professionalism in the the title  “ the largest art prize in the world” compatible with a popularity vote? 

The ArtPrize mission  suggest that we are in a time of great change and we need new ideas and fresh inspiration… 

”we developed a radically open framework for this event, which gives power to everyone’s opinion When everyone’s opinion counts, everyone is included in the conversation.”  

There is a very big difference I feel between a conversation, a dialog about art between artists and viewers, and giving someone the power to decide what is and what is not the best art in the show. I know from my own experience that I approached many artists and artworks over the years not being able to understanding something about the work, not even liking the work, only to have it become some of my very favorite work, years later. I just wasn’t ready for it. I just didn’t have the ability, the knowledge, the patience, to fully appreciate the work. I grew to appreciate it. I became more educated, more knowledgeable. There is a major flaw in the ArtPrize organizers attitude about the public and judging art. Sometimes, as the public, we are just not able to fairly judge what we are seeing.  Should we have the public decide  what books the Grand Rapids library should or should not buy this year? Why not have next years Nobel Prizes awarded by the public? I think most sane people would agree that it would be a bad idea to do so.

I appreciate the ArtPrize interest in a fresh dialog about art. I also appreciate their attempt to bring up for discussion the reality that for a lot of people there is a disconnect between art that exists in the professional art world and art that they would like to have in their homes. But the reality also is that Grand Rapids is a very conservative town. I’m not making a judgement. Just stating a fact. It’s been the lunch stop for every Republican President for years. It’s a highly religious mid-western city.  Is Artprize going to draw enough progressive, art educated, viewers(voters must register at the event in person) to balance out the overwhelming conservative votes?  Or will this simply be  “a conversation” between the artist and those conservative locals who show up? 

National Art Week 1940

 

There is a unknown feeling in the air in the art world. Galleries are closing, art magazines are getting thinner and the future is a scary place for many in the arts. After a decade of abundance maybe todays feelings of uncertainty are more in line with how artists have always felt, outside the mainstream,foraging to make a claim in the world.

 

 In 1940 under the newly re-elected Roosevelt Administration a National Art Week was decreed for November 25- December 1940. A year later the attack on Pearl Harbor would shift the American attention to war and begin the end of the WPA.

In1940 John Marin was asked to write an editorial for the New Jersey Palisadian. Marin’s words often are a jumble of thoughts with the emphasis on connotation but many of his words, written at a very uncertain time in history, apply  today.

 

The the public:

It is Said- We are becoming- Art Conscious- therefore let there be an -Art Week- focused on the work done in – of and by America.

That out all of it will blossom forth – that- worth looking at-

This is the hope-

produce the artist and- presto- realization- not so fast- know you- that the artists is- not too Common- and that produced he must Encouragement- though courageous himself- he must have- like others about him- a good living- to do good work- this  the art conscious public must help to bring about by purchasing that which they profess to love.

For the public to know- to discern the artist- the one who is- from the one who professes to be- isn’t too easy…..

The people must gradually learn to discern the fine things- those sensitive to beauty can- those not sensitive cannot.

Those sensitive will want- and if the want is great enough- the artist will appear to supply that want and- I repeat- he’s to be helped- to withhold that is to disobey the law of human relationships- and rest assured that he being an artist gives as much as he gets- he gives abundantly.

This work, etc.,- this artist is to be found in his-workshop-there seek him-expect him not to play the game social or self advertise-ment- it would appear in his work and the sensitive ones will have none of it. Beware of the ambitious one and the one who works all the time- he hasn’t time to think.

Go to him whose every effort is-the good job-

To him who delights in his living- to him who takes not himself to seriously and who can at times look and make faces at himself.

Don’t rave over bad paintings.

 Don’t rave over good paintings.

Don’t everlastingly read messages into painting- there’s the Daisy- you don’t rave over or read messages into it- You just look at that bully flower- isn’t that enough!

25 Things About My Favorite Tubes of Paint

1. Burnt Umber is like cooked mud but in a good way. Hard to find a use for cooked mud but when you need it nothing else will do.

2. Quinacridone Red. I never have been able to pronounce its name.

3. Phthalo Blue. I use to think this color was like poison. Open the tube and it spreads like a virus all over everything. Now I thinks its eye candy. Its like the Altoids of paint.

4. Corbet Green. Is the color of a dank, dark wet basement in July.

5. Cadmium Reds, Oranges and Yellows (all of them). These guys and girls are like the Sex Pistols of paint. They are always clamoring over each other scratching to get to the top of the pile always screaming with spittle coming out of their mouths “Use me you $&#%&@# wanker”.

6.Sap green is the Mezzo -soprano of greens. Mellow, middle ranged.

7.Permanent Green Light is the Lyric soprano of greens capable of high, fast coloratura.

8.Phthalo Green. The Bruce Springsteen of greens. This green puts on a long show.

9. Naples Yellow Light. What can you say about such a versatile color. It is my friend.

10. Naples Yellow. Naples Yellow Light’s big brother. You think you always might need him but he gets in the way a lot.

11. Burnt Sienna. Burnt Sienna is alchemy. Its toast and jam smashed together and baked in a cast iron pressure cooker for 100 years until it crumbles and it still taste good.

12. Unbleached Titanium. Such a unmacho color. Its the color of a Mocha Napoleon at Fabiannes Cafe in Williamsburg.

13. Kings Blue. You may think you can mix this color yourself. Go ahead and try. You can’t. Its the king.

14. Chromium Green. What is up with this green? You squeeze out a dollops, you turn your back for a second and you have two dollops. You dip the tiny tip of your brush in it and touch it on the canvas and 1/3 of the canvas is covered.

15. Cold Black Earth. Carl Plansky got the name to this color wrong. It should be called Fuzzy Warm Cold Black Earth And I Like It Very Much. FWCBEAILIVM for short. Not much harder to say than Quinacridone.

16. Yellow Ochre. The butter of all paint. Anything and I mean anything is better with butter Am I right?

17. Cobalt Blue. She is such a tease. You always think its her but it never is.

18. Alizaron Crimson. Is the MSG of colors. It makes a lot of things look better but your not sure if you should or shouldn’t use it but you always feel ok the next day so you use it anyway.

19. Mars Orange. The trickster. Not really brown. Not really orange and I just found out from a good source that it doesn’t come from Mars at all.

20. Spanish Earth. Ah, yes, the dead soul of the earth trampled with blood and pounded flat by the feet of dancing gypsy women.

21. Violets (any of them). The trans genders of colors. Not really reds and not really blues. I feel ill prepared to use them. I want to but I’m too scared.

22. Pompeii Red. It just runs around singing, “I’m too sexy for you”.

23. Zinc buff. The color of wet beach sand in the late morning.

24. Juane Brilliant. The Javiar Bardem of paints. And he has three sisters No.1, No.2 and No.3

25.Titanium White. The delete key of color.

Self Expression- Peculiar and Unexpected Ways

As a child I place a pencil on the paper and make a mark. No judgment, no preconceived idea, no plan. Is it simple play or something more primordial?

Joseph Campbell said that the folk are led by artists. The people consequently respond to what the artists makes but the artists lead. The mark leads.  As an artist you come to the realization that you either lead with your mark or you are just following the person in front of you. That realization can be either inspirational or painful. Maybe both at times.  What is self expression?  Does the power of art reside in self expression or in the expression of the material itself, regardless of who the self  is?  

We are not  born with material knowledge . We explore that freely as children.  The desire to make something  be ‘special’, the scholar Ellen Dissanayake says, is the reason the world makes art. We intuitively know it is special until we are sadly taught otherwise.  When and how did the statement ‘Art is a talent you are born with’  become an excuse for believing you don’t have talent? 

One does not  have to master  materials before you can create something beautiful. In this sense art has always been about what happens in the process of making. What you have to try to master is the ability to see what is beautifully happening during  the process. This may be what children have and adults lose as they mature. We are taught not to trust ourselves. We judge and are critical of what should be natural.  As a elementary school child I was taught to draw a Thanksgiving turkey by tracing my hand on the paper, the teacher showing me how it was best done.  No wonder I’m such a mess.

Instead of using materials to express our self  we should think in terms of  our self expressing the materials. The difference is subtle and changes the way I think about art. Art is not art therapy.  Art in itself  is therapeutic but not in the sense of a treatment.  In T.S.Eliot’s essay  ‘Tradition and Individual Talent’ published in 1920,  he contends that the best art is art made when the self gets out of  its own way.  “The process of an artists is continual self sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality”.   This seems to be quite a different explanation of the creative process than what I was taught.  Eliot writes, “The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the man who creates; the more perfectly the mind will digest and transmute the passions which are his material.”   Hans Hoffman said that the artists technical problem is “how to transform the material…back into the sphere of the spirit.”  The self transmutes but the material transforms.

Stories abound of painters, writers, and dancers who after  years of practice and struggle break through to something new and exciting.  Their relationship with their medium has gone through the transformation that Hoffman speaks of.  This, as Eliot explains,  has more to do with the expression of the artists use of materials than the expression of the self.  “The poet(artist) has, not a  ‘personality’ to express, but a particular medium, which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impression and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.”   Unfortunately having a great personality does not guarantee that you will make great art.

Eliot’s  “experiences” combined in “peculiar and unexpected ways”   helps me explain in simple terms the act of  painting.  Painters explore new combinations, treatments of paint, brush work and compositions in “peculiar and unexpected ways” that they may not always understand. You are led to something new and exciting by not knowing where you are going. We enter the unknown, where things get both frightening and exciting.  This is counterintuitive to what I was taught as a child.  I was shown it was important to plan, organize, test, reassess, and have a back up plan.  I do some of that also when I make a painting but I  want to be willing… no I want to be brave enough, to chuck all of it and fly blind.  It is only in this type of  foggy consciousness which hovers just above what is subconscious that poetry is formed.  Its our primordial soup.  Its the swampy bog of  possibilities which we crawl out of  to join those who have come before us.  Eliot believed that the poet is formed by the “peculiar and unexpected ways”  of  the generations that have come before. And when the modern poet or artist puts their mark down they effect  all of the history that came before them as they, in turn, were effected by all who proceeded them. It’s like adding your building block to a continuum of changing and growing consciousness. You are formed by what has come before you and you will form those who come after.  Its a big beautiful cosmic art plan. A big, world changing  plan that your -self and my -self can participate in.  And you get to make a turkey picture  anyway you want to.

 

 

 

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Aesthetics

 

“Aesthetics is what connects one to matters of fact. It is anti-ideal, it is materialistic. It implies no approval, but respect for things as they are.’

Fairfield Porter 

 

I have always, it seems, done battle with personal taste in art. Either I’m trying to figure out just what I think about art or I am trying to understand someone else’s ideas. What has helped calm my mind is understanding the difference between one’s taste or opinions about art and one’s aesthetics about art. My opinions are simply that- opinions. My aesthetics are how I go about thinking and looking at art.

My first big battle with taste was in undergraduate school  during the early 80’s when I was a ceramic major. The department was split into two factions. There were those who made functional pots and those who made ‘art’. As a student there was this underlying  pressure to pick a camp and commit to its ideology.  If you were a ‘clay artists’ making pots was too old school and lacked the room for creative self expression. The potters, on the other hand, saw themselves as part of a valuable tradition and thought it sacrilegious to make something out of clay that wasn’t part of that tradition. Taste it seemed was both a personal judgment and a sociological concept. We were young, impressionable and frankly did not know our heads from holes in the ground. Neither did our instructors who were guilty of fueling the whole stupid debate. We were being taught taste.

Off to graduate school I went where I was exposed to more new things in the world than I could imagine but where I had to start making limiting choices. I had to choose the classes I wished to focus on, the teachers I wished to work with, the material I thought was interesting with the ultimate choice of writing a dissertation and orally defending the choices I made. We bolstered our own opinions about art by rejecting other people’s ideas. We were there to develop our own ideas. The problem was we were still all young and impressionable but were beginning to think we knew it all. We were developing our own taste.

Then it was off into the real world after graduating where I had my first exhibition at Northwestern Michigan Collage of a series of drawings I was doing at the time .  I thought I was radical in my desire to hang these drawings  unframed in the exhibition area, which was basically the hallway in the art building. The response from some of the art students was  to draw on my drawings and write on them how much the thought they were crap. I was even chastised by the administration for leaving myself open to such a reaction by not ‘properly framing” my work. They were expressing there personal taste.

Taste is ones opinion. There can be good opinions or bad opinions. The opinions about art I learned as a young student seem subordinate to the ‘aesthetics’ that Porter talks about. Porter’s idea of aesthetics implies a philosophy, a tool by which you sense things. A procedure by which you look. How you look and how you think about what your seeing is going to control what kind of taste you end up having.

It was the philosopher David Hume who believed that aesthetic judgment had to have both the ability to detect things with your sight and a emotional sensitivity to what you detect. You have to look first and be able to feel something about what your looking at. And it was Immanuel Kant who believed that  to aesthetically judge something depended on ones ability to be reflective on what you are seeing. All three of those qualities; sensations, emotions and intellect vary between people and are decisive factors how people decide what they like and don’t like in art. If you accept the notion that beauty is in the mind of the beholder then you also have to be willing to agree that not all of those minds may be firing on the same number of cylinders. The ability to see things varies from person to person. 

Fortunately there is a quality of being that isn’t solely dependent on how much you know. That quality is openness. Remaining open to the possibilities of art is what I believe Porter is referring to when he says that aesthetics “ implies no approval, but respect for things as they are.” You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to be interested in anything you don’t care to be interested in but you don’t get to automatically judge it as bad either. Aesthetics allows you to look, to inquire, to investigate. If you are going to be aesthetic about something it requires you to be respectful. If you  are going to make  judgments right away based on what you say your taste in art is you arr going to miss the whole experience. Here is a little test to use next time you are looking at something you may not understand – If It is easier to simply say you don’t like it than it is to explain why you don’t like it, you are probably not being aesthetic.

There is immense pleasure in going to a museum or an art gallery and simply looking.  Looking with the idea of beauty in your mind. There is a great sense of freedom to look and not be required to make a judgment. No one is going to give you a test. You don’t need to leave an opinion before you go out the door. You can form that later if you want. But the aesthetic experience can only begin if you are open enough to look.  And the joy of the aesthetic experience continues when you can later contemplate and think about what you have looked at and compare and contrast that with all the other things seen in the past.  Soon you have a history of looking and thinking about what you have seen. Possibly you will want to read about the artists and what they were thinking. You’ll want to read art history, buy art books, travel to cities just to see a exhibition. Its addictive. Its pleasurable. And if  you do so aesthetically you won’t have to fight with yourself so much anymore.

Morandi at the Met

       On the train coming back into the city from the Dia Museum in Beacon I overheard a woman tell her seat mate, “Everything is going every which way”.  That seemed  a perfect summation of New York City.  F Train UpTown  to Manhattan/Queens transfers to the A, C,  4, & 5 Train. ‘Watch the closing doors please’. Downtown 6 train stops only on the weekdays. East bound L train to Williamsburg – West bound back into the city.  Everyone…everything… is going every which way. People coming down stairs and going up elevators; delivering, buying, selling, doing things respectable and unmentionable. Grand dames in long fur coats of every color and naked men relieving themselves in parks.  Polished granite buildings and store fronts tended by doormen and facades of glued bill postings and graffiti paint with doors that haven’t been opened in years. Smells of french brioches, steam vents, noodle shops and urine. A continuous exhale of steam and sounds.  New building and  old structures on streets both random and patterned. Restaurants that prep, cook, and wash dishes in spaces no larger than my closet. Trees, trash, trains, topiaries, gold, silver, brass, chrome, and beautiful women from around the world. Fourteen dollar glasses of wine and ninety nine cent pieces of pizza. Sushi and  pork shanks, italian sausages and french pastries. You only need to decide when and and how much you want. 

 Everything is going every which way and then you step into the institutions that for years have collected, cataloged, cared for and exhibited the greatest art works from around the world. You step in and things feel different.  You feel the presence of the art.  One of New York’s largest art institutions is the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Visiting it one first needs to accept that it is impossible to see everything you might want to see in one visit. Even if you limit it to just paintings, one should not try to see it all. Best to pick some of your favorites and spend time with them. Visit them like you would a wise sage or mentor.

 For most artists great museums are our churches. A place to regain spirit and to stand in awe of something. The sculptor Michael Heizer states that, “Awe is a state of mind equivalent to religious experience”.  A sense of awe certainly is felt in front of Claude Monet’s mural sized painting, “Reflections of Clouds on the Water Lily Pond”, (1920). Painted late in Monet’s life when he was 80 years old its as modern and energetic as Joan Mitchell’s paintings being shown at Cheim & Read in Chelsea. Monet painted ‘Reflections’  some 60 years before Mitchell’s  energetic work and both seem to be singing the same hymn in the same church.   Even harder to comprehend historically is J.M.W. Turners “The Whale Ship”. Painted in 1845 a full 75 years before Monet’s painting, “The Whale Ship” is a gnarly mass of paint marks, glazed exaggerated shapes and the blackest coal black I have every felt on a painting. It presence almost makes Monet’s painting seem conservative.

One of the largest in effect yet smallest in size paintings in the Met is Picasso’s  “Study for Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” (1907). The finished larger work is Picassos’s most famous and seminal work but on the same wall is this little simple study, one of  hundreds he made in preparation for the famous work. Its as large as the big one.

Like a fish swimming up stream I was drawn in themes and interest to Cezanne’s “The Bather”(1883) and then to Matisse’s famous “The Red Studio”(1911) before being pulled to the modern rooms to stand before Philip Guston’s beautifully monstrous red in his “Stationary Figure”(1973) and “The Street”(1977).  I remember first seeing these paintings years ago and not knowing what to make of them because I wasn’t willing to be open to what they did. I just didn’t have the language.  Now I can hardly control myself from grabbing people as they casually pass by to say, “Ya but look at this”!  Almost directly across the room from the Gustons is Howard Hodgkin’s “When did we go to Morocco” and David Hockney’s “Large Interior” (1988) demanding their fair share of your attention. Two small Robert Ryman’s, typically all white, slam you aside before you want to jump back in time and space into the many wonderful Bonnard’s in the collection. I realized on this pilgrimage that Bonnard really just wanted to paint abstractly. He just could not let go of painting all those “things” he needed to paint with his colors and shapes. But beautiful ‘things’ they are.

Melanie and I spent several hours at the Giorgio Morandi Exhibition. This is a  painter’s painter exhibition that only comes around one is a great while. A monumental collection of the Italian painter who spent his life living with his sisters and painting his assortment of bottles and jars in his tiny studio. The paint seemed like ground italian earth (which I’m sure some of it was) blended to a rich butter creaminess. His body of work is a testament to an idea and a message to all artists that a simple idea can be explored for a life time. They beckon you as a painter and one can almost hear Giorgio say to you “See this is how I did it” as you look at his culmination of paintings.

And then its almost to much. You reach a saturation point. Too much beauty, too much inspiration. You have to retreat back outside onto the streets. Buts its not really a retreat. Its just more things moving, pulling you every which way. Excitement at what one both expects to happen and the joyous experience of the unexpected.

A new Fall

    Lets start again. From the beginning again with more emphasis. More complete with purpose. Better “throw’ as the painter Sam Scott says.

    A  painters work is cyclic like the seasons. I start a painting, work on it and eventually finish it to start something new again.  A new canvas, new beginning, new ideas.

   The geese are honking as they fly above my studio, headed to warmer southern climates. This really signals the coming of winter. The end of the busy summer season and the start of the short days of winter. Its November and there is the weight of snow in the air.  It has always been my favorite time of the year. As a boy I loved these dark days, the crispness of the outdoor air contrasted with the warmth and smells of indoor cooking. Now I like it for those same reasons but its also the time of year when the distractions of gardening and other outdoor activities has ended and the focus is on my studio. I was born in the fall and every fall I feel like I want to start  over.  Its not that what I did previously is wrong but its not where I want it to be.  I am coming to understand these thoughts more and more and now even welcome them. I realize that its the thread shared with all artists who have come before me. That longing for more, bigger, better.

   I have become more  of a studio painter over the last years. I’ve learned there is no automatic magic just because a landscape is painted outside.  I can’t call anything that I’m working on in the studio now completely new because the work is always a continuation, whether you realize it or not. Nothing  then is really new its just the next step. I’ve found old canvas from several years back that miraculously seem to have the initial seed of  current work in them. The future never seems planned but the past always feels meant to be. Its always the next group of paintings I’m excited about. All artist  feel hopeful about the future. Its where our best work resides.

   Melanie Parke, my wife and partner, tells me that astrologically I’ve started a ‘building year’.  Its a year where I’m to learn from the past and  construct something from those lessons learned.  Given the unpredictability of  life I’ve come to believe that astrology is just as dependable as anything else. At least it has plenty of potential built into the system. 

   Painting is a type of construction. A building upon action and reaction using pigments and mediums. Its not really about what we are painting. Its about how we are painting it. The subject is just our rationale for painting.   I like to paint  because it is the one act I can do where I don’t get to know where I’m going.  That can be both terrifying and terribly exciting.  Similar to the act of traveling – if you have to stay on schedule your just not going to have a very good time.

So I’ve stored the completed paintings in the studio, turning them to face the wall so as not to be distracted by their presence. I’ve cleaned my desk of paper work and bills. I ‘m starting a New Years resolution and its only November. My resolution is to throw all the crap out of my life the minute I deem it to be.  I’ve swept the studio floor, buttoned up the windows against the cold and rearranged the layout of my painting tables. I stopped listening to the news months ago. I’m eagerly awaiting the day in February when, I have been told,  something sinister is suppose to happen to my television and I won’t be able to get my local channels.  I see it as Gods recent gift to mankind – not being able to watch any type of  television news coverage of which we are told we can count on.  I’m emptying my head of useless facts and making room for useful ones. The artist, Agnes Martin went a step further. She said she gave up on facts altogether because they couldn’t be trusted. (Maybe we should tax things that can’t be trusted? Who would complain?) 

   Grace Hartigan one of the second generation Abstract Expressionist painters died this week at the age of 86. She once told an interviewer, “I didn’t choose painting, it choose me. I didn’t have any talent. I had genius.”   I don’t think Hartigan was referring to genius as ability but rather another definition of the word meaning “the prevalent character or spirit of a nation or age”.  She was referring to her good fortune to be a part of  a new movement, a new age in art. The hopeful excitement of the new.

Richard Kooyman

November 2008

Letter to Students

 

What makes a good  landscape painting?  What are we trying to do out here in the sun and the wind?  What is it we are trying to capture with paint?  What makes a painting beautiful?  These questions and more define the landscape painters quest. Hans Hoffman in one of his famous classes summarized the problem by saying, “The artists technical problem is how to transform the material with which he works back into the sphere of the spirit”  The most interesting word in that statement is ‘transform’.  The focus being on transformation.  What Hoffman is talking about here is poetry – visual poetry. Technique is only the important first half of  the picture.   Frederick Von Schelling the 18th century philosopher said that art is made by two processes. “ Art is brought to completion by two thoroughly different activities…one part of art,namely, the part that is practiced with consciousness, deliberation ,and reflection, which can also be taught and learned..on the other hand, we must seek in the unconscious,which also enters into art,for that in art that cannot be learned, cannot be attained by practice or in any other way, but can only be inborn by the free gift of nature, and which is what we may call in one word the  poetry in art” 

So how does an artist combine these two processes?  After we have studied the masters and watch the way our peers tackle certain problems there comes a time where we have to add something of ourselves into the equation. We have to add our  own poetry to the mix. Easier  said than done in a world where poetry is hardly ever taught. That is not to say you just start slopping paint around hoping that it is being controlled by some inner poetic genie.  The American Painter Wolf Kahn early on in his career said “ ..accidental process are often superior to willed ones, but the framework in which one works is formal intentionality”.  We have to be intentional in what we do.  We have to use our experience and our technical knowledge but at the same time stay open to what is happening on the canvas that our conscious mind hasn’t intended. This is the door to the poetic. Think of it as a part of your subconsciousness. That little voice that so often gets shoved aside.  Ask yourself often while  painting,”What mark is this brush I have in my hand making?”  Is there  something great happening on the painting surface that you hadn’t planned on?  This is why I love using brushes that really seem bigger than they should be for the job. You just never know what it is going to do. It makes you not expect everything you are doing. The act of painting is a relationship, a dance between what you are thinking that you’d like to see happen and what does happen. Be direct in your intentions but leave the window open to the unexpected. The unexpected is also what makes oil paining so wonderfully special. Oil paint  can stain a canvas. It leaves tracks where the artists has been and what he/she has changed and gone over with a new idea or passage. Oil paint drips, smudges, runs ,bleeds into the color next to it on the surface. It can be gone over with a heavier thicker coat of a different color or  veiled with a wash of transparency. It lends itself to the unexpected. It can be a tool to the poetic.

Take the time to look at what is happening. Step back often from the canvas. Walk around it. Look at it from the side angles. Squint at it. Look away from the canvas and then sneak a quick look at it as you walk by it. This way you see things differently or what you might have missed when you are standing right in front of the canvas.  The obvious is sometimes the most obscured.  When you do see what you need to do, do it with conviction and great intention. Take that brush full of paint and make that mark.  Make it like you mean it. And if its wrong don’t be afraid to change it. I can’t tell you how many times I have spent hours diddling around trying to carefully fix a little part of a problem on the canvas when in my heart I knew what I should do is grab a big rag, wipe it off  and start over. Better to start fresh and build on what you now know what not to do. 

Don’t put off the hard parts till later. If possible do them first. The  painter Fairfield Porter said, “I made the mistake of thinking that I could do everything later instead of at the beginning.” Each painting is a record of a moment, a time and a place. What and how you do something is recorded on the canvas for that moment of time.

Don’t get buried in the details. Try not to get too caught up in  all the descriptive incidentals of the scene. You don’t need to paint every leaf of the tree. we tend not to even see them in real life anyway. Instead focus on the shape of the tree.  Its better to be suggestive than too descriptive. Its more poetic to be connotative(suggestive) than denotative(specific).

No one can really teach you how to paint.  They can teach you how they paint but whats the point in that?  We can talk about art, the reason for making it, the different styles of art and how others make art, but each person contains their own seed for making original wonderful art. Its that seed you really want to work at.  The ways may be individually many and seem confusing in scope at times  but there are great possibilities. I think it was the writer Jim Harrison who said that “Life is short but wide”. 

So how does one become a good painter?  The million dollar question. I think it takes two simple things. The first is that  you have to align yourself with what good painting is really about. Its not about making decoration. Its not about recording what is in front of you like a camera would record it. Painting is an act, like in”action”. The result of your action,(what color went first, which big or small sized tools did you use, what did you leave out, what did you put in) is the painting. If your action is hesitant,fearful, confused, you are going to produce a painting that has those qualities. If you paint willfully and boldly you going to produce that type of paintings.

I’m not saying you should paint like me.  All of the painters I mention above are very different in STYLE of painting but they all share what it is that makes a good painting.

The second thing you have to do is paint. It’s as simple as that. You have to make a place for your work ,a studio or extra room, where you can treat painting seriously and then…paint. Look at painters,  buy books, go to exhibitions, museums, immerse yourself in the art world. Its an educational quest just like learning a new language. You are learning the language of paint. You have to invest your time to learn anything in the world. Painting is no different. And if you do invest the time, create a space for your art in your life not only can it be rewarding it can be your livelihood. It can be your life.

Richard Kooyman 2007

Good Painting

 

Recently while on a painting trip in Abiquiu, New Mexico I was questioning myself how I could explain to others just what I am doing with this brush in hand. I assume that many painters would explain their painting process in terms that you read about all the time: light, value, color, hue, composition. Frankly, I’m not sure what any of those terms really mean. Ok, I’m exaggerating a bit, but I do so intentionally. The ‘craft’ involved in painting employees these terms seriously, and while at times useful, they don’t fully explain the ‘art’ of painting. To me they are words that best describe a painting after the fact. And even then they fall short of explaining what a good painting is truly about. 

 Being from Michigan, painting in NM can be completely disorienting. The high desert just isn’t anything like Michigan, so it is a perfect place to ask questions about process and purpose. Lately when I have been painting I have this welled up feeling that what I want to be able to do is simply scoop up the key colors and shapes of the landscape and throw them in a pile onto the canvas. Francis Bacon once said he thought painting was throwing paint onto the canvas and hoping something interesting stuck to it. I relate to that statement. I’m not at all suggesting painting is some accidental act, but it should involve the subconscious. What makes any good art form interesting is the aspect of controlling the uncontrolled. Having one foot in the conscious, deliberate realm and the other stepping or at least sticking a toe into the less controlled subconscious; all the time walking a line between chaos and control. Our modern day reasons for boundaries always being pushed lies in the nature of art making itself.

So I’m out in the high desert wanting to scrape up ochers shaped like rocks and pale turquoise strips of sediment and deep purple shadows and a even deeper sky blue and whirl it with one brush stroke onto the canvas.  Wiping or carving or conjuring enough of it away to regain some resemblance of a landscape that daunts me, I’m hoping for something good to come of it all. 

I think of good painting in terms of, feeling, weight, poetry. Good painting has to work at least on some poetic level. T.S.. Eliot said that poetry often ‘communicates before it is understood’. Eliot is talking about art that is connotative rather than denotative. Eliot even went as far as to say he believed that good art isn’t about expressing ones own personality. “Poetry is not turning loose of emotion; it is not an expression of the personality, but an escape from personality”, he said. He felt that the individual poet or artists work stemmed from history and perceptions rather than personality. “What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable”, Elliot contended.

Good painting, can be at times understood by a better understanding of what bad painting is. Russell Chatham says bad drawing or painting “is recognized by timidity, indecision, insensitivity, conventionality and of course in a larger sense by the absence of soul and heart”. Chatham could be accused of being subjective but there is no crime in a subjectivity that remains open to possibilities. 

My best efforts often happen when a painting session goes bad. What I’m thinking I want to happen – doesn’t happen.  My first reaction is to chuck the whole thing and start over but usually if I make myself stop and really look at what I am doing on the canvas it takes a turn and often becomes one of the better efforts. What happens in this instance is that the painting started out in my mind as a idea but a painting isn’t solely an idea in the mind. Its a physical result of a act and if you pay to much attention to what you had thought it should be, at the expense of what it is turning out to be,you’ll lose every time.

This is why you can’t teach painting like a recipe (unfortunately people do it all the time).  You can be taught to follow someone else plans and ideas but then you end up judging everything you do by what they do or have done. What’s the point of that?

Richard Kooyman   May 2008