A fingerprint reveals an individual by representing the tactile impression left behind when that person touches something. No two people have the same fingerprint.
I think of my paintings as abstract articulations of cultural fingerprints.
Our minds get handled by culture, leaving a signature impression, a fingerprint.
Human fingerprints, randomly unique, identify the owner but nothing about the owner. On the other hand, culture’s essence is the impression it makes; it reveals itself through tactility, its fingerprint. The impression it makes can distort a mind rather than reveal information.
One role of artists and intellectuals is to articulate the impression culture makes. This helps to remedy culture’s act of distortion and thereby empowers the cognoscenti .
An illustration of articulating of a cultural fingerprint was Thorstein Veblen’s term “conspicuous consumption”. To be fair and accurate, especially in a consumer culture, interest group agents use culture specifically to distort and manipulate our minds, but that is not my topic right now.
My paintings rely on layers of visual experience but have a strong sense of design. A casual glance will attract some viewers who will not be wasting their time through more focused study of the composition.
I tend towards two types of composition; one getting its depth through overlays and ambiguity of space and form. The other relies mainly on a surface tension to create ambiguities through color fields and shapes. In both cases the viewer is drawn into an involvement with the compositional process, but in two totally different ways. A viewer might feel a resonance in the paintings and can then either analyze or exercise their imaginations in them. That is where the fingerprint and the articulation meet in the viewer’s mind, that is their option - what to do with it.
My love of art was dormant until I came face to face with Marc Chagall’s The Green Violinist at the Guggenheim during a college museum trip. I was transfixed and then transformed.
The Green Violinist manipulates perspective, size, shape, color, symbol and space in a grand show of the artist’s dominance. Distorting symbol and space with strong figurative colors while maintaining strong compositional coherence makes the painting’s statement. Chagall uses what he wants how he wants. I like that; no element in the artistic domain should get in the way of the artist’s expression. But the artist has the onus of having what to express. And a key element in modern art lies in identifying what the artist perceives as the artistic domain.
In a much more primitive and abstract way my art follows the Chagall lead, except that I strive to deliver my compositions as crudely as possible. And I enjoy inventing my own conventions rather than extending my domain where it does not belong.
My Mechanisms-
I see painting as physical thought, but I understand that other ways of seeing painting are valid. I am both highly analytical and highly creative. Painting offers a way to create a template of expression, follow the problems that that template creates through to its logical solution and then see the entirety of the process and result.
No other medium offers such a platform.
Of the three functions of the intellect - imagination, reason and memory - I attempt to put all three into play in the order stated, using symbol as little as possible. Instead I rely on more artistic conventions, destroying conventional space and using color/ line/shape to make my statements. Imagination and reason hold countless possibilities, which is one reason so many were left behind when art replaced memory as its main obligation. Moving from an illustrative to an active role in culture, the references in art moved from the literally infinite to the actively infinite. The value became unclear because values were now another issue for the artist to dominate.
This allows a secular sense of the spiritual. By circumventing symbol and traditional pathways, more direct communication can take place. The soul abides within the physical body, but the soul is not physical. The same problem exists in creating a communication using physical resources. One advantage the canvas offers is a two dimensional format. Another is the presentation of a self-conscious context that allows the artist to create his or her own syntax.
My art is very raw. I find paintings with great technique are often offensive.
“Secular spirituality”, an awkward term, looks at the most basic levels of communication, stripped of representation or clear meaning. Instead, the most direct elements of meaning connect with the mind to keep the channels of specific reference clear and thereby circumvent emotional defenses, pre-developed routes of communication and cultural vulnerabilities.
An awakening occurs by avoiding routine communication, an awareness develops. Culturally speaking, everything outside the consumer box has spiritual potential. And as Duchamp illustrated, even an object within the consumer box has spirituality once its emotional defenses are destroyed by the artist’s dominating its syntax.
In stark contrast lie Dali and Escher, both of whom are superb draftsmen who do all the work for their viewers, almost insultingly. Dali renders distorted illustrations. Escher, with his clever optical and conceptual illusions, renders a completed game for his viewer. They each turn their viewers into outsiders.
While the viewer might find them clever, the subconscious reaction is “so what?”.
My Background -
I graduated in art with the highest departmental honors given out that year and went on to study American Cultural and Intellectual History under Warren Susman, who encouraged me to become a professor.
My move into history resulted from a growing interest in the social context rather than the painterly considerations of art. I come from the school of thought that sees art as effectuating a praxis. That basic context still exists, but my definitions of praxis have become much more subtle.
By the time I finished my studies I had been asked to bring my sketches to an important New York art dealer who had seen and liked my paintings. Instead of going back, I stopped painting for five years, pursuing essential matters with tenacity, as I tend to do. But my hiatus in no way represented a disinterest in art, rather, it was growing new lifelines.
|
','Image'))
','Image'))
','Image'))
','Image'))
','Image'))
','Image'))
下一位艺术家
回到上面
)
)
)