In the June 22, 2015 issue of The New Yorker magazine there is an article critiquing the art of the German painter Albert Oehlen (twenty-seven of his works are now on view at the New Museum in New York City). Peter Schjeldahl calls Oehlen "the foremost painter of the era that has seen painting decline as the chief medium of new art."
Schjeldahl writes, "If Oehlen has a method, it is to recoil, stroke by stroke, from conventional elegance—strangling one aborning stylistic grace after another. He has said that he was fascinated, early in his career, by American Action painting of the nineteen-fifties—a histrionic mode of pictorial rhetoric, specifically imitative of de Kooning, whom Oehlen cites as a hero. (The term was misapplied to Jackson Pollack's drip painting, which exult a canny control.) Oehlen's variant—call it reaction painting—fights back toward the Master's rigorous originality. (Oehlen's one prominently lacking resource is de Kooning's forte of drawing)." Long-time readers of this blog know that I admire Willem de Kooning's work, but find most of Pollack's work problematical and unremarkable. I believe my work is true reaction painting, built, as is de Kooning's work, on a forte of drawing. Oehlen's work is just acting-out. His lack of draftsmanship leaves his work with little more than active play, bereft of emotional depth. I am slowing down and watching more carefully. Call it a move toward mediative reactionism. Gushy paint is being replaced by thinner paint which allows more sensual feel and touch. This means I am still learning the provocation from which my personal craft arises. My pencil line has had this quality of sensual touch for quite a while.
This drawing took me nearly four hours to complete. It is filled with normalcy and abnormality. Nobody has a nose like the man's, but the breast of the woman looks familiar. And so it goes — I am testing the waters of abstraction versus traditional figuration. For me, this is becoming a forever problem. Besides my addressing this issue of abstract forms versus more naturally derivative forms, I would like to point out the complexity of this drawing's space. The drawing, after all, is on a two dimensional piece of paper. Wandering through its space is a deceit, driven by form, perspective, light and shadow, and line. In this drawing, and in the drawing reproduced in my previous blog post, I have used lines to create surface values which simultaneously drive and animate space. The easiest place to see this occur is on the top of the box on which the woman sits.
It is important to me that you look carefully at one minor element: the woman's left hand. I drew that over and over, till it felt right, at least five times. Open and close. Find and lose. Back and forth. Up and down. Form and chaos. Light and darkness. Color and whiteness. Discover and seek. Succeed and fail. Yes and no. Right and wrong. Earth and heaven. Temperate and hell. Good and bad. Acceptance and rejection. Active and passive. Presence and absence. I am here. I am uncovering ways to do all of the former, to deal with all of the latter. Through effort I am detecting, perceiving, and apprehending art that corresponds to myself. Hopefully this art's end is communication with those that view my art.
Who knew? Not me. This stuff I am making looks well defined, but still rough. Rough? Yes, because I am grasping at a set of images that are tumbling around in my confused, yet open, psyche. Art is where the anima and the persona meet. My persona never feels quite right, as if there is a little fake going on, like a running back, whose goal is clear, but whose path in getting there in not. Maybe the reason football is so much fun to watch is its clarity of goal. Art? Not so much! Watching me flail around is probably more fun for you then for me. There are days, like today, that I seriously question my means of getting "there", wherever "there" is.
Reversing my schedule of activities leaves me with less energy to write this blog. Pros: I am showing you the work I completed today. Cons: I have little to say about the work I completed today.
Today's drawing results from a process twisted, bent, curled, and convoluted. It started off simple and bold, then became an examination of minutia. Excellent finger nails. A lot of hair. Breasts are not too shabby. The play of light across the major and minor forms of the face is worthy of consideration. Nice nipples! The right upper arm is truly round and squeezable. Et cetera, et cetera... The consequence is comprehensive. It is, however, blow-by-blow incidentally tangential, albeit informative. This approach I will not emulate. One of the changes that appears today is the manner of reproduction. I began by taking the photos of my work in RAW Format, rather than JPEG Format. This increases the amount of accessable data, but also increases the amount of work I needed to do to prepare the images for publication. But technical problems of reproduction is not the reason I write this blog, so let me get to the important stuff. Most remarkable to me about yesterday's work is the portrait drawing, Untitled Drawing #6 (see below, then CLICK on the drawing to ENLARGE for better viewing). Thus my title. This drawing is emotionally more subtle than any figurative work I have done in the last month or so. Looking at art-making through the lens of abstraction has increased my visual-emotional acuity. I believe it to be one of the best figurative drawings I have ever made. It is filled with emotional subtlety and also with subtlety of light, form, and composition. This is proof I have expanded my emotional range as well as my formal range. My work is simply better in every way.
All drawings are pencil on 14X11 inch paper. I don't care about straight lines on the page, but I do care about getting there directly, without straying too far from an authentic path. Here I am in another struggle to keep on a line to self-expression. This is about clarity and correct measurement, and not about skill and being true to form. Yesterday's drawing feels off. It is too ornate and confusing. It looks like a weird being from another planet is encountering a strange fruit from another planet (the objects may come from two different planets — who knows?).
Today I am back at it again! (Lately, I seem to be loving those exclamation points!!!) I am becoming aware the rotation in my drawings moves from simple to complex and from small to large. In a way, all my drawings are studies for my painting, even though, on the quick look, the subject matter appears distant, or not related at all. My activity in drawing is based upon my queries about painting. Yesterday's drawing is actually a study for the woman in the right panel of the painting Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014. Her sensuality is going up. In the last few states I have been dealing with this change in her personality. Thus comes yesterday's drawing of a sensual female. Yes, the woman in the drawing appears a lot different than the woman in the painting. It is a study in mood, not a simple study of physiognomy.
In 1906 Picasso spent an enormous time on two paintings, Portrait of Gertrude Stein (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) and Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York City). Yesterday I read again about this period in Picasso's life. Gertrude Stein said she sat 90 times for her portrait, then Picasso wiped out the face in the portrait and left for summer vacation in Gósol, Spain. In the autumn Picasso returned to Paris with the finished portrait. Also in 1906 Picasso began a series of nearly 1000 studies preparing his way to Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (completed in July 1907). Methinks I complain too much! It was the intensity and discipline that Picasso poured into these two paintings in the years 1906 & 1907 that transitioned Picasso from a good artist to a great artist. This, 2014, is my year of intensity and discipline. I have complained about the slowness of my transitioning, as witnessed in two recent paintings. I have been substantially altered by the work and time I have poured into Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014 and, earlier this year, into Untitled Diptych-04·15·2014. The focussed, disciplined, and dedicated work of this year, has made me a better painter, and a better artist. It isn't over. I will continue to learn, I will continue to work, but today I am recognizing the profundity of this period in my life and art. Picasso has helped me enormously, not only by his products, which are his paintings and his drawings, but by his example of discipline and belief that the effort of the here and now will bring a proper end.
Notice, please, yesterday's changes in Untitled Triptych-08·13·2014. The man in the left panel is much better. |
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May 2024
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