Where Have I Been? Art and Life

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything for this blog and the reason is that Life has gotten in the way of Art. It seems to me the most sensible thing to do when this happens is to bow to life and do its bidding. I have long admired the writing of Clement Greenberg and one of his quotes which always impressed me is “Life before art.” I know there are famous stories of artists of one sort or another who ignore their loved ones in a mania to work, but that was never something I felt I could do. Art is a close second, but first things first.

Early last year my mother died. I had been her principle caregiver for the previous seven years. It was rough going which included lots of responsibility, worry, tension, anger, work and tremendous amounts of time that was unavoidably idle. Through it all I managed to keep painting and enjoying time with my family, but I had to keep my focus on care giving. Work and “career” were a third concern behind family. However, that was not clear from the start and it took me many years to sort out (accept) my priorities. I never felt very satisfied about anything, because everything seemed shortchanged. Eventually, I made some sort of peace with my situation.

As a compensation for not pursuing my career full time I had the opportunity to do lots of reading on art history and lots of thinking. I came to understand the contemporary art scene about as best as I am able to and I was also able to take a very critical look at what I was doing. During my years as caregiver everything about my work changed. I moved through subject matter and, to a lesser extent, styles, very rapidly. Too rapidly, I think, but I was restless. It seems now that everything I learned and did up to my role as caregiver was acquiring skills and that now I was becoming an artist. I still like the work I did back then, it has great personal value, but I do not see it as vital art in a contemporary sense. My work in the past seven years has, at least, engaged with modern culture whereas previously it seems to have been done with my head down buried in the details (sand).

At some point in my sojourn as caregiver someone said to me that when my mother died I would “have my life back.” While verbally agreeing with that kind thought, I knew that I had no life to go back to. The comment actually caused me to have a real sense of dread because having been taking care of my mother for so long I lost my former sense of self. I didn’t know who I was. There is no going back, whatever I had been doing is lost in time. So I move on and am grateful to able to devote much more time to painting – as to the so-called career, we shall see.

It’s Time to Retire the Standard Model

I am tired of “babe” paintings, which are with us in great numbers. How do I describe what I am referring to? You know them when you see them: regular, symmetrical features, perfectly smooth, unblemished skin, long, silky hair and a solemn or blank expression (tattoos and clothing are optional). These models embody the current norm for beauty: the “standard model.” Largely created by the fashion and merchandise industries with the support of the media the models are symbols of desire used to sell products.

Such is our current mainstream culture, but for painting standard models are dull, repetitive and derivative. Lifted from, or perhaps unconsciously reflecting fashion media they appear too often in representative painting. The painters do a lot of things to make their images appear profound by setting up mysterious, symbolic or enigmatic situations, costumes, backgrounds, etc., but you can see little difference from fashion spreads.

It’s not just a guy thing, there are many women painters who also paint the standard model I think it’s great for selling clothes, jewelry, makeup and pretty much everything else, but what does it have to do with the concerns of Painting? Why take cues from an industry that is trying to sell products? The people who design and develop these advertisements promoting the glamor culture know exactly what they are doing. They use beautiful people precisely so that the product is not upstaged. As you watch the runway or turn the pages in a magazine, etc. the uniformity of the models blur and what you have left is the product and its associations with glamor.

Putting these techniques of advertising to work in a painting yields nothing except maybe a demonstration of a certain kind of skill. In standard model paintings any content is zeroed out disappearing into the viewer’s media saturated memory.

I was always pleased to have a good looking model when I was in the classroom. However, when making a work of Art a painter must consider the milieu in which the work exists. The amoeba-like media is obsessed with a look that falls into relatively narrow parameters and has generated images by the millions. They have annihilated the territory for painters by supersaturation and we ought to be wary of mimicking these images unless we’re making a specific point.

It was possible to pursue fashion-driven painting before the 20th Century, but no longer. Even in the fashion-mad Paris of the later 19th Century the meaningful work was in the service of radical painting that reflected a newly emerging way of life. It was new and original, not a reflection of cultural memes. I am thinking of the difference between Tissot and Monet, the former a fashionable society painter, the latter a founder of a new way of painting (really a new way of seeing).

This is not a plea to paint “real” people, but rather a call to rethink our use of subject. Why do we paint our fellow beings? What is our intention? What do we want to convey? It is always a good idea to use your obsessions to fuel your work, but a painter needs to drill deeply into the matter, not offer a mere image.

Since there are no more “movements”, the whole issue of painting figures and portraits needs to be built by each individual artist from scratch. I believe that the figure is an eternal subject that can be taken up by the skilled and unskilled alike. Right now, it seems that the unskilled have the edge and that may be because the skilled painters are trapped like Narcissus contemplating their talent.

Big Paintings for Big Houses

This past winter I had a studio visit from two women who have a long-running business selling art to people who are looking to fill their walls. I was introduced to them by a woman who had purchased one of my drawings and also employed them to help her place some work in her home. I was grateful for the chance to make some sales.  In fact, it was unnerving because I really wanted sales; being your own collector is depressing.

After months of delays, they pulled up in a Land Rover and went to work. I had been waiting for them for so long that I had thought through all kinds of tactics for presentation. I felt I needed to have something intelligent to say about each work even though they are often done instinctively. Well, that was too much thinking. They went through my panels like appraisers and asked no questions. Talking between them they indicated that some might be right for this or that client, but they lamented the small sizes of many that they liked because their client liked them large, although some might do for a bathroom.

As the visit progressed I came to understand that their clients preferred large work and wanted it to be more or less abstract. The women told me that they had not sold a “nature” painting for over ten years and that nude figures were out of the question as their clients had children. I have a couple of abstract paintings, but they were not deemed to be large enough. And my prices were too high.

They encouraged me to do larger paintings or works on paper to be framed in various sizes and configurations, which they would determine.

And they were gone.

In the following week I felt worse and worse about the whole experience. Most of my work is nudes or “nature.” I spent time thinking of ways I could alter my course to achieve some sales, but the more I thought the worse I felt. It was depressing and somehow humiliating. Here these women had access to active buyers willing to spend, and the buyers apparently had no real feel, let alone love, for Art. They wanted to decorate their big new houses and needed big work to do it. And they didn’t want to pay too much either. I suppose that “abstract” art is now the “safe” choice. Who could be offended by some nice color on the wall? Poor Pollack suffered so much to be decoration.

I heard back from them a week later asking just how low I would go on one piece that they thought might interest a specific client. I reluctantly lowered the price by 25%. I have not heard from them since.