Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Residency II Summary
Residency II Summary
Cameron Bennett
Written January 20, 2010
1. Discussion of the critiques of the content, concept, and technique of my work
My work was met with very little enthusiasm this residency. In general, there appeared to be confusion about my direction. The only positive comments I received were very superficial, and they came from two or three fellow students, and visiting artist Vincent Desiderio, who claimed to enjoy the new textures with which I was experimenting. Aside from that, most criticism was that the works looked too much like illustrations or political cartoons, lacked subtlety, that my colors were garish and that, in general, the technique seemed arbitrary and unrelated to the content. Further, faculty and students suggested that the first and second semester were for the student's artistic exploration, not for crystallizing thesis ideas.
My response to this is that the blatantly obvious choice of imagery in the work was entirely intentional, and was intended to lack subtlety. I realize that in the eyes of many of my peers, conveying a clear message immediately takes me out of the realm of “fine art” and puts me squarely into the “illustration” camp. I think this is short-sighted, however, and confess that the easily readable nature of the works were a reaction against the vague quality of contemporary art which truly irritates me. I have written about this “vagueness” in an earlier essay.
I also stand by my use of the textured surface of the paintings as not at all arbitrary. The reason for calling attention to the texture is to state an awareness of the painting as “object.” The heavy facture is intended as a break from an illusionistic style of painting into a handling which calls more attention to the medium itself. Painters always work on a surface which stretches from edge to edge of that surface; I merely magnified its already existing texture.
As for the lack of unification of content and technique, my intent was to make marks which were more abstract, more obvious, more sign/symbol-like, to comment on the use of signs and symbols themselves, another theme of the work. This connection was not made by my critics, or at least not addressed. My colors were also criticized as being garish. The colors I used were, I confess, very much an afterthought, but I think they work after all, however, as the pageantry of religion and sports often uses bright colors. Further, in a critique with Oliver Wasow, comparisons were drawn between my work and the work of sports-illustrator LeRoy Nieman, an artist previously unknown to me whose work uses highly chromatic color and rough textures. This comparison would seem to lend a relevance to the colors and technique of my semester's work.
I give this defense for my work here because I found time would not allow for it during critiques.
Although I made certain decisions for the work with particular ends in mind, I do not disagree that the work could have been more successful in terms of communicating those ends. This is a paradox for me at present: how can I communicate more clearly while maintaining some air of mystery, poetry, and subtlety in the works?
2. Suggestions made by faculty, students, and visiting artist during critiques
Faculty
Deborah Davidson suggested I put the ideas of my work into the paint itself, using Francis Bacon as an example. She recommended looking at the work of Boston painter Emily Eveleth, photographer Dihn Q. Le, and videographer Paul Pfieffer. She felt I should darken my palette. She suggested I use a more fragmentary way of showing the iconography.
John Kramer liked my charcoal exploratory drawings most, saying they “tell less” than the more
finished color pieces. He left me with the question: how to tell less without being vague. He also
warned me not to try to appropriate new philosophical ideas in a pretentious way.
Oscar Wasow challenged me to “say less or say differently.” He recommended looking at the work of illustrator LeRoy Nieman, and to find a better way of “presenting the idea,” saying the texture of the paintings was reminiscent of cheap paintings reproduced on texured paper.
Sunanda Sanyal, my advisor for this semester, felt that my “best bet” is to somehow marry my
illustration techniques with appropriation. He continued to urge me, as he did last residency, to studyRoy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselman, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings, and Malcolm Morley. He also supplied me with a wealth of reading material by Kate Linker, Jean Baudrillard, Silvio Gaggi, and Bradford Collins.
Visiting Artist
Vincent Desiderio urged me to “maintain an awareness of 'kitsch.'” He wondered if I could take my Gibson-style pen and ink drawings to the level of “art” by adding something unexpected to them. He encouraged me to further my approach “via force,” to find ways to make the images more powerful,possibly by using a simpler, muted palette. He encouraged me to “allegorize via optical method,” as he believes Delacroix and Picasso had done. He also suggested me to “escape from facility” by making “more violent marks,” and to try less familiar materials like bee's wax mixed with charcoal, bitumen, and printer's ink.
Graduating Students
Cynthia Hauk recommended “having more intentionality with the materials.”
Heather Hilton suggested looking more at film and photography, not just at painting. She
recommended looking at Fairfield Porter, and suggested finding a mentor who is very much about “paint.”
Nathan Stromberg thought I should do more preliminary drawings for the pieces, plan them more. “Quality, not quantity.” He told me to read about artists Mark Tansey, Gerhard Richter, Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Bechtle, Neo Rauch, and Michael Borremans.
I signed up for a critique with Reed Easley because her work dealt with simulation, and I felt she could give me some good suggestions for whom to read. She recommended Walter Benjamin, Ben Singer, Foucault, and naturally Baudrillard. She discouraged me from “looking for theory” and then “putting myself into it.” She said I ought to “go in two directions at once,” doing two different kinds of work during the next semester: literal and abstract.
Stacey Cushner urged me to paint what truly moves me, to get to the “important idea.” She told me to
do pictures, but to do less conventional pictures, to be “adventurous.” She also encouraged me to
experiment, but to continue to stay in touch with myself and my original vision. She recommended reading “Uncontrollable Beauty,” and “Beauty and Art.”
I was interested in a critique with Mark McKee because his ends as a painter are similar, if not exact, to mine. He had a wealth of reading to recommend to me: “Phenomenology of Painting,” “What Painting Is,” “Phenomenology of Perception,” “Meaning in the Visual Arts,” and other books on American
realism. He also suggested to continue researching logos, graffiti tags, and to look at the history of badges and emblems.
3. Critical Theory course with Michael Newman
Remarkably, the themes of the Critical Study course (semiotics, marks, traces, indexical relationships, blindness) were very much in line with what I had been working on for much of the semester (signs, symbols, mark-making, relinquishing control, allegory). The readings were very dense, however, and I will have to continue to find time to read and re-read them.
My brief presentation before the class on index and palimpsest seemed to go well, again owing to the happy overlapping of my own studies during the semester and the themes of the Critical Theory readings. At least three students in the class discussed palimpsest with me after my presentation.
Cameron Bennett
Written January 20, 2010
1. Discussion of the critiques of the content, concept, and technique of my work
My work was met with very little enthusiasm this residency. In general, there appeared to be confusion about my direction. The only positive comments I received were very superficial, and they came from two or three fellow students, and visiting artist Vincent Desiderio, who claimed to enjoy the new textures with which I was experimenting. Aside from that, most criticism was that the works looked too much like illustrations or political cartoons, lacked subtlety, that my colors were garish and that, in general, the technique seemed arbitrary and unrelated to the content. Further, faculty and students suggested that the first and second semester were for the student's artistic exploration, not for crystallizing thesis ideas.
My response to this is that the blatantly obvious choice of imagery in the work was entirely intentional, and was intended to lack subtlety. I realize that in the eyes of many of my peers, conveying a clear message immediately takes me out of the realm of “fine art” and puts me squarely into the “illustration” camp. I think this is short-sighted, however, and confess that the easily readable nature of the works were a reaction against the vague quality of contemporary art which truly irritates me. I have written about this “vagueness” in an earlier essay.
I also stand by my use of the textured surface of the paintings as not at all arbitrary. The reason for calling attention to the texture is to state an awareness of the painting as “object.” The heavy facture is intended as a break from an illusionistic style of painting into a handling which calls more attention to the medium itself. Painters always work on a surface which stretches from edge to edge of that surface; I merely magnified its already existing texture.
As for the lack of unification of content and technique, my intent was to make marks which were more abstract, more obvious, more sign/symbol-like, to comment on the use of signs and symbols themselves, another theme of the work. This connection was not made by my critics, or at least not addressed. My colors were also criticized as being garish. The colors I used were, I confess, very much an afterthought, but I think they work after all, however, as the pageantry of religion and sports often uses bright colors. Further, in a critique with Oliver Wasow, comparisons were drawn between my work and the work of sports-illustrator LeRoy Nieman, an artist previously unknown to me whose work uses highly chromatic color and rough textures. This comparison would seem to lend a relevance to the colors and technique of my semester's work.
I give this defense for my work here because I found time would not allow for it during critiques.
Although I made certain decisions for the work with particular ends in mind, I do not disagree that the work could have been more successful in terms of communicating those ends. This is a paradox for me at present: how can I communicate more clearly while maintaining some air of mystery, poetry, and subtlety in the works?
2. Suggestions made by faculty, students, and visiting artist during critiques
Faculty
Deborah Davidson suggested I put the ideas of my work into the paint itself, using Francis Bacon as an example. She recommended looking at the work of Boston painter Emily Eveleth, photographer Dihn Q. Le, and videographer Paul Pfieffer. She felt I should darken my palette. She suggested I use a more fragmentary way of showing the iconography.
John Kramer liked my charcoal exploratory drawings most, saying they “tell less” than the more
finished color pieces. He left me with the question: how to tell less without being vague. He also
warned me not to try to appropriate new philosophical ideas in a pretentious way.
Oscar Wasow challenged me to “say less or say differently.” He recommended looking at the work of illustrator LeRoy Nieman, and to find a better way of “presenting the idea,” saying the texture of the paintings was reminiscent of cheap paintings reproduced on texured paper.
Sunanda Sanyal, my advisor for this semester, felt that my “best bet” is to somehow marry my
illustration techniques with appropriation. He continued to urge me, as he did last residency, to studyRoy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselman, Audrey Flack, Ralph Goings, and Malcolm Morley. He also supplied me with a wealth of reading material by Kate Linker, Jean Baudrillard, Silvio Gaggi, and Bradford Collins.
Visiting Artist
Vincent Desiderio urged me to “maintain an awareness of 'kitsch.'” He wondered if I could take my Gibson-style pen and ink drawings to the level of “art” by adding something unexpected to them. He encouraged me to further my approach “via force,” to find ways to make the images more powerful,possibly by using a simpler, muted palette. He encouraged me to “allegorize via optical method,” as he believes Delacroix and Picasso had done. He also suggested me to “escape from facility” by making “more violent marks,” and to try less familiar materials like bee's wax mixed with charcoal, bitumen, and printer's ink.
Graduating Students
Cynthia Hauk recommended “having more intentionality with the materials.”
Heather Hilton suggested looking more at film and photography, not just at painting. She
recommended looking at Fairfield Porter, and suggested finding a mentor who is very much about “paint.”
Nathan Stromberg thought I should do more preliminary drawings for the pieces, plan them more. “Quality, not quantity.” He told me to read about artists Mark Tansey, Gerhard Richter, Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Bechtle, Neo Rauch, and Michael Borremans.
I signed up for a critique with Reed Easley because her work dealt with simulation, and I felt she could give me some good suggestions for whom to read. She recommended Walter Benjamin, Ben Singer, Foucault, and naturally Baudrillard. She discouraged me from “looking for theory” and then “putting myself into it.” She said I ought to “go in two directions at once,” doing two different kinds of work during the next semester: literal and abstract.
Stacey Cushner urged me to paint what truly moves me, to get to the “important idea.” She told me to
do pictures, but to do less conventional pictures, to be “adventurous.” She also encouraged me to
experiment, but to continue to stay in touch with myself and my original vision. She recommended reading “Uncontrollable Beauty,” and “Beauty and Art.”
I was interested in a critique with Mark McKee because his ends as a painter are similar, if not exact, to mine. He had a wealth of reading to recommend to me: “Phenomenology of Painting,” “What Painting Is,” “Phenomenology of Perception,” “Meaning in the Visual Arts,” and other books on American
realism. He also suggested to continue researching logos, graffiti tags, and to look at the history of badges and emblems.
3. Critical Theory course with Michael Newman
Remarkably, the themes of the Critical Study course (semiotics, marks, traces, indexical relationships, blindness) were very much in line with what I had been working on for much of the semester (signs, symbols, mark-making, relinquishing control, allegory). The readings were very dense, however, and I will have to continue to find time to read and re-read them.
My brief presentation before the class on index and palimpsest seemed to go well, again owing to the happy overlapping of my own studies during the semester and the themes of the Critical Theory readings. At least three students in the class discussed palimpsest with me after my presentation.
Artist Statement, Second Residency
CAMERON BENNETT:
ARTIST STATEMENT
Spring 2010
Group II
All around us we see the display of tribal emblems: religious, political, cultural, sexual. What is of especial interest to me is the habit of displaying these emblems on oneself, especially sports emblems.
Using visual metaphor, and working in a style which calls attention to its extrinsic painterly qualities, I am attempting to raise questions about the use of representation, not only sociologically (as in the importance attached to the emblem as a representation of tribal identification) but philosophically as well (as in the drawn or painted mark of the artist as an emblem, simulation, or representation of the visual world).
ARTIST STATEMENT
Spring 2010
Group II
All around us we see the display of tribal emblems: religious, political, cultural, sexual. What is of especial interest to me is the habit of displaying these emblems on oneself, especially sports emblems.
Using visual metaphor, and working in a style which calls attention to its extrinsic painterly qualities, I am attempting to raise questions about the use of representation, not only sociologically (as in the importance attached to the emblem as a representation of tribal identification) but philosophically as well (as in the drawn or painted mark of the artist as an emblem, simulation, or representation of the visual world).
End of Semester I Summary
Fall 2009, First Semester Summary
Cameron Bennett
Written December 2009
One goal for myself for this semester, my first in the AIB MFA program, was to begin to paint in a new way. Happily, this has happened. Another important goal for myself was to better be able to articulate my place in contemporary art using contemporary art language. Happily, I feel, this has also happened. A third goal for myself was to find a painter-mentor who would be able to help me in each of these areas. I feel that this, too, has happened.
I. Studio Component
I began this semester with an urgent desire to break into a new way of handling paint. My plan was to begin this search for what would be a new approach by experimenting with unfamiliar ways of markmaking. This I did, as documented in an earlier paper My New Hat, and when I put the mark-making experiments aside, I had arrived at something rather different for myself: exaggerated surface texture.
The exaggerated texture of my recent work calls attention to the medium of the paint more than my finely crafted paintings had done, thus, calling more attention to them as paintings. My role as mediator is made obvious with these paintings. They are unapologetically what they are.
I also switched to a previously-disliked medium this semester: acrylic paint. Its quick-drying property allowed me to exploit texture much more easily than the oil paint I had been using. In one piece, I also experimented with mixed media, adding paper over painted canvas in places and drawing on the same painted surface in ink.
The paintings done in the second half of the semester, those which relate most closely to my potential thesis, are allegorical, clearly something other than traditional, naturalistic pictures. I will elaborate about my research into the use of allegory in the next section of this paper, but I will say here that one understanding of allegorical images is that they possess meaning. This my works certainly have. I anticipate negative criticism, however, about the lack of subtlety in the messages. At this point, however, I am not sure that my ideas (sports culture replacing religious culture, tribal behavior in contemporary society) need to be more complex than they are. Further, I am not sure how I would make them more complex if I had to. If there is room for the growth of my concepts, hopefully this will occur as I progress through the course of study.
One area in which I feel I have not arrived at a new approach is in my ink drawings. Although I
produced many Pollock-inspired experiments with ink at the beginning of the semester, I found myself focusing more on painting throughout the rest of the semester. In the time available to me, I am not sure how I could have made more time to go further with my ink-studies.
In short, I am generally pleased with the new work done this semester. I have a new approach for painting, and also ideas that I feel have a lot of potential for images. Using this new approach I was able to produce five large, finished paintings, and several smaller pieces. What I am displeased with, however, is my continued reliance on photography, which I feel undermines my validity as a realist painter.
II. Academic Component
My academic goal this semester was to begin the process of defining myself in relation to the issues of other contemporary artists like myself, who are working with similar goals in mind.
One of these issues is the concept of kitsch. I read the essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch by Clement
Greenburg which defines virtually all realist art as kitsch, and also contemporary realist painter Odd Nerdrum's collection of essays On Kitsch, which accepts this idea. There is much more investigation into this theme that I could undertake. I am not sure that I am ready to call myself a kitsch painter.
As mentioned often throughout my papers this semester, I have been eager to begin producing
allegorical paintings. Somehow, I failed to include any writings on allegory in my Academic
Component Independent Study Contract at the close of the first residency. After a mid-semester
discussion with advisor John Kramer, however, it was agreed that during the semester I should also be researching contemporary use of allegory in art. This modified my reading list to include Craig Owens' "The Allegorical Impulse," as well as other essays and monographs on artists R.B. Kitaj, Samuel Bak, and Jasper Johns. I also spent many hours reviewing magazines featuring contemporary artists whose work is allegorical or symbolic. Happily, after this research, seeing that it is alive and well in the current art world, I feel reinforced in my decision to create work which uses allegory.
Although I included it in my academic contract, at the time of this writing, I have not read Donald Kuspit's book The End of Art. This is due to the amount of time devoted to researching works on allegory not included in the original reading list. I also would like to have begun reading works on Structuralist philosophy this semester.
III. Mentor
My mentor, Patrick McCay, turned out to be a very good choice. I chose Patrick because his work contained elements of representation and abstraction. He seemed to me to be a logical choice for someone like myself trying to bridge both realms. Patrick was well-informed regarding contemporary art practice, and being a painter himself, he was able to offer me critical advice relevant to a painter.
Patrick surprised me in his understanding of issues relevant to my course of study. He was familiar with and able to speak about the Neo-Expressionists and the French Structuralists, a group of thinkers new to me since beginning my study at the AIB.
Happily, I found that the theme of sports-fanaticism resonated strongly with Patrick. Based on his experiences at Notre Dame University, he had much to offer me in the way of direction for my thesis.
Although my initial idea for my thesis was sports fanaticism as an example of tribal behavior, Patrick liked the parallels I had begun to draw between sports and religion, and he went a step further than me, focusing on the idea of hero-worship. Here he saw limitless possibilities for expansion on the idea of sports hero as religious authority or priest.
IV. Plans for Spring 2010, Second Semester
At this point, my plan for the studio component of the Spring semester is to continue refining my new approach in acrylic paint. I would like to experiment further with collage. I also would like to devote more time to finding new approaches for my ink-drawings, experimenting with scale, and to possibly carry them into the acrylic paintings. I would also like to do more work without the use of photographic reference, especially as this is an issue I broach in my artist statement and it is one about which I have strong feelings. I plan to continue refining my ideas along the lines of tribal behavior and its visual emblems, composing multi-figure compostions on a large scale.
Plans for the academic component for next semester will be to try to find more philosophical writings on the use of photography among realist painters. At some point, probably next semester, I feel I will need to begin reading about sociology as well, since my thesis is not merely an artistic one but a sociological one as well. Hopefully, sociological reading will help me to refine my thesis. I also would like to begin readings in Structuralist philosophy.
Plans for a mentor for next semester would be to find another realist painter, one who works heavily with allegory. Two possibilities are Paul Rahilly and Samuel Bak, both in the Boston area.
Cameron Bennett
Written December 2009
One goal for myself for this semester, my first in the AIB MFA program, was to begin to paint in a new way. Happily, this has happened. Another important goal for myself was to better be able to articulate my place in contemporary art using contemporary art language. Happily, I feel, this has also happened. A third goal for myself was to find a painter-mentor who would be able to help me in each of these areas. I feel that this, too, has happened.
I. Studio Component
I began this semester with an urgent desire to break into a new way of handling paint. My plan was to begin this search for what would be a new approach by experimenting with unfamiliar ways of markmaking. This I did, as documented in an earlier paper My New Hat, and when I put the mark-making experiments aside, I had arrived at something rather different for myself: exaggerated surface texture.
The exaggerated texture of my recent work calls attention to the medium of the paint more than my finely crafted paintings had done, thus, calling more attention to them as paintings. My role as mediator is made obvious with these paintings. They are unapologetically what they are.
I also switched to a previously-disliked medium this semester: acrylic paint. Its quick-drying property allowed me to exploit texture much more easily than the oil paint I had been using. In one piece, I also experimented with mixed media, adding paper over painted canvas in places and drawing on the same painted surface in ink.
The paintings done in the second half of the semester, those which relate most closely to my potential thesis, are allegorical, clearly something other than traditional, naturalistic pictures. I will elaborate about my research into the use of allegory in the next section of this paper, but I will say here that one understanding of allegorical images is that they possess meaning. This my works certainly have. I anticipate negative criticism, however, about the lack of subtlety in the messages. At this point, however, I am not sure that my ideas (sports culture replacing religious culture, tribal behavior in contemporary society) need to be more complex than they are. Further, I am not sure how I would make them more complex if I had to. If there is room for the growth of my concepts, hopefully this will occur as I progress through the course of study.
One area in which I feel I have not arrived at a new approach is in my ink drawings. Although I
produced many Pollock-inspired experiments with ink at the beginning of the semester, I found myself focusing more on painting throughout the rest of the semester. In the time available to me, I am not sure how I could have made more time to go further with my ink-studies.
In short, I am generally pleased with the new work done this semester. I have a new approach for painting, and also ideas that I feel have a lot of potential for images. Using this new approach I was able to produce five large, finished paintings, and several smaller pieces. What I am displeased with, however, is my continued reliance on photography, which I feel undermines my validity as a realist painter.
II. Academic Component
My academic goal this semester was to begin the process of defining myself in relation to the issues of other contemporary artists like myself, who are working with similar goals in mind.
One of these issues is the concept of kitsch. I read the essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch by Clement
Greenburg which defines virtually all realist art as kitsch, and also contemporary realist painter Odd Nerdrum's collection of essays On Kitsch, which accepts this idea. There is much more investigation into this theme that I could undertake. I am not sure that I am ready to call myself a kitsch painter.
As mentioned often throughout my papers this semester, I have been eager to begin producing
allegorical paintings. Somehow, I failed to include any writings on allegory in my Academic
Component Independent Study Contract at the close of the first residency. After a mid-semester
discussion with advisor John Kramer, however, it was agreed that during the semester I should also be researching contemporary use of allegory in art. This modified my reading list to include Craig Owens' "The Allegorical Impulse," as well as other essays and monographs on artists R.B. Kitaj, Samuel Bak, and Jasper Johns. I also spent many hours reviewing magazines featuring contemporary artists whose work is allegorical or symbolic. Happily, after this research, seeing that it is alive and well in the current art world, I feel reinforced in my decision to create work which uses allegory.
Although I included it in my academic contract, at the time of this writing, I have not read Donald Kuspit's book The End of Art. This is due to the amount of time devoted to researching works on allegory not included in the original reading list. I also would like to have begun reading works on Structuralist philosophy this semester.
III. Mentor
My mentor, Patrick McCay, turned out to be a very good choice. I chose Patrick because his work contained elements of representation and abstraction. He seemed to me to be a logical choice for someone like myself trying to bridge both realms. Patrick was well-informed regarding contemporary art practice, and being a painter himself, he was able to offer me critical advice relevant to a painter.
Patrick surprised me in his understanding of issues relevant to my course of study. He was familiar with and able to speak about the Neo-Expressionists and the French Structuralists, a group of thinkers new to me since beginning my study at the AIB.
Happily, I found that the theme of sports-fanaticism resonated strongly with Patrick. Based on his experiences at Notre Dame University, he had much to offer me in the way of direction for my thesis.
Although my initial idea for my thesis was sports fanaticism as an example of tribal behavior, Patrick liked the parallels I had begun to draw between sports and religion, and he went a step further than me, focusing on the idea of hero-worship. Here he saw limitless possibilities for expansion on the idea of sports hero as religious authority or priest.
IV. Plans for Spring 2010, Second Semester
At this point, my plan for the studio component of the Spring semester is to continue refining my new approach in acrylic paint. I would like to experiment further with collage. I also would like to devote more time to finding new approaches for my ink-drawings, experimenting with scale, and to possibly carry them into the acrylic paintings. I would also like to do more work without the use of photographic reference, especially as this is an issue I broach in my artist statement and it is one about which I have strong feelings. I plan to continue refining my ideas along the lines of tribal behavior and its visual emblems, composing multi-figure compostions on a large scale.
Plans for the academic component for next semester will be to try to find more philosophical writings on the use of photography among realist painters. At some point, probably next semester, I feel I will need to begin reading about sociology as well, since my thesis is not merely an artistic one but a sociological one as well. Hopefully, sociological reading will help me to refine my thesis. I also would like to begin readings in Structuralist philosophy.
Plans for a mentor for next semester would be to find another realist painter, one who works heavily with allegory. Two possibilities are Paul Rahilly and Samuel Bak, both in the Boston area.
Bibliography, Semester I
Bibliography
End of First Semester, Fall 2009
Cameron Bennett
Bloomfeld, Maureen. “The Mirror As Muse.” The Artist's Magazine October 2008: 32-39
(Article on artist Alan Feltus)
Brown, David. “Academic, But Alive.” The Artist's Magazine January/February 2009: 37-43
(Article on artist Will Wilson)
Carsten, Robert. “Compassionate Painter of Modern Life.” The Artist's Magazine July/August 2009:38-45
(Article on artist George Tooker)
Diefendorf, Jeffrey M. and Mara R. Witzling. The Art of Samuel Bak, Memory and Metaphor,
The Art Gallery, University of NH, 2006
Grootenboer, Hanneke. The Rhetoric of Perspective-Realism and Illusionism in 17th Century Dutch Still-Life Painting. University of Chicago Press, 2005
Greenberg, Clement. Avant-Garde and Kitsch.
http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html
Meyer, Ruth K. “Beautiful Ambiguity.” The Artist's Magazine September 2009: 28-35
(Article on artists Igor Kozlosky and Marina Sharapova)
Meyer, Ruth K. “Two Roads Converge.” The Artist's Magazine November 2009: 37-43
(Article on artists Suzanne Scherer and Pabel Ouporov)
Muente, Tamara Lenz. “Carnival of Dreams.” The Artist's Magazine June 2009: 42-29
(Article on artist Lani Irwin)
Nerdrum, Odd. On Kitsch. Kagge Forlag, 2001
Novak, Michael. Joy of Sports. Basic Books, Inc, 1971
Owens, Craig. The Allegorical Impulse. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984
Peaker, Giles. Natural History, Kitaj, Allegory and Memory. Critical Kitaj. Ed. Aulich, James and
John Lynch. Rutgers University Press, 2001
Steinberg, Leo. Other Criteria. Oxford University Press, 1972
Theotocatos, Paula. “Facing Life Head-On.” The Artist's Magazine June 2008: 52-58
(Article on artist Terry Moore Strickland)
Weiss, Jeffrey. Jasper Johns, An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965. National Gallery of Art,
Washington 2007
End of First Semester, Fall 2009
Cameron Bennett
Bloomfeld, Maureen. “The Mirror As Muse.” The Artist's Magazine October 2008: 32-39
(Article on artist Alan Feltus)
Brown, David. “Academic, But Alive.” The Artist's Magazine January/February 2009: 37-43
(Article on artist Will Wilson)
Carsten, Robert. “Compassionate Painter of Modern Life.” The Artist's Magazine July/August 2009:38-45
(Article on artist George Tooker)
Diefendorf, Jeffrey M. and Mara R. Witzling. The Art of Samuel Bak, Memory and Metaphor,
The Art Gallery, University of NH, 2006
Grootenboer, Hanneke. The Rhetoric of Perspective-Realism and Illusionism in 17th Century Dutch Still-Life Painting. University of Chicago Press, 2005
Greenberg, Clement. Avant-Garde and Kitsch.
http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/kitsch.html
Meyer, Ruth K. “Beautiful Ambiguity.” The Artist's Magazine September 2009: 28-35
(Article on artists Igor Kozlosky and Marina Sharapova)
Meyer, Ruth K. “Two Roads Converge.” The Artist's Magazine November 2009: 37-43
(Article on artists Suzanne Scherer and Pabel Ouporov)
Muente, Tamara Lenz. “Carnival of Dreams.” The Artist's Magazine June 2009: 42-29
(Article on artist Lani Irwin)
Nerdrum, Odd. On Kitsch. Kagge Forlag, 2001
Novak, Michael. Joy of Sports. Basic Books, Inc, 1971
Owens, Craig. The Allegorical Impulse. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984
Peaker, Giles. Natural History, Kitaj, Allegory and Memory. Critical Kitaj. Ed. Aulich, James and
John Lynch. Rutgers University Press, 2001
Steinberg, Leo. Other Criteria. Oxford University Press, 1972
Theotocatos, Paula. “Facing Life Head-On.” The Artist's Magazine June 2008: 52-58
(Article on artist Terry Moore Strickland)
Weiss, Jeffrey. Jasper Johns, An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965. National Gallery of Art,
Washington 2007
Paper III, Semester I
Palimpsest and Discursivity: An Investigation Of Allegory
Cameron Bennett
Written September 2009
I.
As an artist in the process of creating a series of allegorical works, the question of the precise meaning of allegory is essential, especially as distinct from metaphor and symbol. Hitherto, my use of each of these words was interchangeable and I used any and all of them to describe the same kind of art. The trend in art of using the human figure to represent an aspect of nature, or culture, probably was my clearest conception of allegory, especially as used in the 19th century by artists like Gustave Klimt and Alphonse Mucha. I would have just as easily called the disrobing human figure in a work titled SCIENCE REVEALING ITSELF an allegorical, metaphoric, or symbolic representation of Science.
As I was very surprised to find, however, there exists much complicated philosophical thought on the subject of allegory. So, for practical reasons, I am forced to narrow the scope of this essay and focus on allegory alone.
II.
Interestingly, much of the early influential thought surrounding allegory, comes to us through a German filter. The Romanticist scholars and philosophers Winckelmann (1717-1768), Goethe (1749-1832), and Schelling (1775-1854) all attempted to develop the meaning of allegory. Winckelmann offered an early definition of allegory as every image which contains meaning. His is the simplest and, therefore, seems to lend the most clarity to an understanding allegory. Goethe and Schelling, as philosophers will do, added daunting levels of complexity to the subject. Curiously, they involved themselves in a philosophical pitting of allegory against symbol, ultimately assigning greater importance to symbol. Their influence was so profound that allegory was very little used until the beginning of the 20th century. Walter Benjamin(1892-1940) continued to develop theories about allegory as it manifested itself in German drama, attempted to refute the arguments of the Romanticists, and sought to re-establish its importance. Ultimately, critics such as Paul de Man and Craig Owens wrote about allegory's re-emergence and re-entrenchment in the arts of the later 20th century.
In THE RHETORIC OF PERSPECTIVE, author Hanneke Grootenboer writes:
“Allegory has been defined by Paul de Man, Benjamin, and Owens, among others, as that which emerges under the melancholy gaze, expresses itself in ruins, establishes a distance to its own
origin that it never reaches, and desires to fix the ephemeral in an image.”(136) One key component of allegory as accepted by Owens is the idea of allegory as a reinterpretation of a prior idea, a palimpsest. Another is the discursive quality of allegory, its movement from topic to topic, reference to reference, which often results in the clouding of its meaning. In THE ALLEGORICAL IMPULSE, a highly influential article and the chief source of information on the contemporary use of allegory in this essay, Owens demonstrates that allegory is especially present in postmodern art. According to Owens, allegory occurs anytime an artist appropriates or reinterprets a prior image, physical space, or idea into his or her own work. It is simple to see, then, how much contemporary art could be considered allegorical, especially with the postmodern questioning of the possibility of originality: installation, assemblage, collage, photography, painting, and especially film-making; all require pre-existing phenomena for their own iconography.
Owens writes: “Appropriation, site-specificity, impermanence, accumulation, discursivity, hybridization---these diverse strategies characterize much of the art of the present and distinguish it from its modernist predecessors.”(209) Based on this, Owens considers the site-specific art of Robert Smithson allegorical in its appropriation of the landscape, and also in its transience: “...the site specific work becomes an emblem of transience...the memento mori of the 20th century.”(209)
Interestingly, this idea of allegory as a discursive act is what the German Romanticists saw as a
problem of allegory, that allegory referred to a meaning it did not itself contain, that the origins of its referrals were lost in a mise-en abyme and could never be found or known. Allegory was, therefore, vague. Vagueness of meaning, as I mention in my earlier essay RE-EVALUATING SKILL THROUGH A POSTMODERN LENS, seems to be a desirable quality in contemporary art. Viewers are invited to create their own interpretations of artworks. If vagueness is one of the hallmarks of allegory, one then sees a reason why allegory has returned to popularity in art, as Craig Owens says it has.
Other artists, such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and R. B. Kitaj, contribute works
which deliberately operate on a discursive model. The idea of fragment in allegorical theory is very similar to that of ruin; fragments are residual parts of something which may be reinterpreted. Each offers fragments of images or objects, objects which trace their meanings back to a prior origin, which we can or cannot know. Johns used fragments of the human body in his work, casts of body parts, the residual imprint of his own face on paper, his Skin Drawings. With works like Rebus and Allegory, Rauschenberg is credited with transferring the Western experience of art from the visual to the textual. These pieces are syntagmatic, that is, they resemble a narrative sequence, a procession of pictograms, a text more than a picture. Yet, true to the postmodernist allegorist, it is a text which is unreadable, and Owens himself writes: “...it remains impossible to read a Rauschenberg , if by reading we mean the extraction from a text of a coherent , monological message.”(225) Kitaj, working in a quasi-abstract, representational style, creates fragmentary images composed of other images. He also hyperbolizes the allegorical leap from the thing represented to its distant meaning. “Desk Murder” is the title of one of his paintings, one in which there is a desk, but no trace of murder. Kitaj also alludes to a selfconsciousness of allegory in his work, including an obscured portrait of Walter Benjamin in a figure group in one of his paintings.
III.
If allegory has developed into something which “...emerges under the melancholy gaze,
expresses itself in ruins, establishes a distance to its own origin that it never reaches, and desires to fix the ephemeral in an image,” my question is: Why? Why are these the accepted qualities of allegory?
My own personal opinion about this definition is that it need not necessarily define all allegory. Why must all allegories represent transience, ephemera? Why must the distance between symbols and their meanings never be reached? If it were so, then we ought to feel pathos, which probably we would not feel, at the allegorical representation of happiness with a smiley yellow happy-face symbol. In our example the allegory actually does reach the distance to its own origin; the meaning is perfectly clear.
As long as symbols are part of the cultural consciousness, the distance between the symbol and its origin will be reached. Why the need to embark on this investigation of allegory in the first place? In my most recent artist statement I mention that there is in me a frustrated symbolist straining to be released and that I hope to have the opportunity to create more images which involve the use of visual metaphor. Some would argue that art which uses any allegory and symbolism will be lost on a general audience. In defense of allegory, however, I argue that the goal of the artist is to produce work which operates on many levels. The meanings behind Klimt's Allegory of Medicine, along with John Singer Sargent's murals, The Triumph of Religion, were almost completely lost to their public. Yet, for me and many others, because of their skillfully-painted representational elements, they are a highly pleasurable experience to look at. We may not understand the symbolism, but we recognize and enjoy the depiction
of the symbols. I would also note in a final observation about allegory that one of its intrinsic qualities not mentioned by Owens, Benjamin, Goethe or Grootenboer is that it provides fertile ground for aesthetic variety, for the unusual, the sensational, for arresting visual arrangement. This, of course, is another attraction for many to the allegories of Klimt, Mucha, and Sargent, but also to contemporary painters like Samuel Bak, Jerome Witkin, and Odd Nerdrum.
In conclusion, I state having a personal preference for Winckelmann's simple definition of
allegory as any image which has meaning. I prefer it to the complex understanding of allegory
accepted and developed by Benjamin and Owens as being subject to melancholy and transience.
Finally, as an artist currently undertaking the creation of a body of allegorical works, any lingering doubts about the relevance of allegorical art in the contemporary art world have been dispelled by the writing of Craig Owens, who has shown that allegory is firmly entrenched in it.
Works Cited
Diefendorf, Jeffrey M. and Mara R. Witzling. The Art of Samuel Bak, Memory and Metaphor,
The Art Gallery, University of NH, 2006
Grootenboer, Hanneke. The Rhetoric of Perspective-Realism and Illusionism in 17th Century Dutch Still-Life Painting. University of Chicago Press, 2005
Owens, Craig. “The Allegorical Impulse.”Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation.” Ed. Brian Wallis. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984
Peaker, Giles. “Natural History, Kitaj, Allegory and Memory.” Critical Kitaj. Ed. Aulich, James and John Lynch. Rutgers University Press, 2001
Weiss, Jeffrey. Jasper Johns, An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965. National Gallery of Art,
Washington 2007
Cameron Bennett
Written September 2009
I.
As an artist in the process of creating a series of allegorical works, the question of the precise meaning of allegory is essential, especially as distinct from metaphor and symbol. Hitherto, my use of each of these words was interchangeable and I used any and all of them to describe the same kind of art. The trend in art of using the human figure to represent an aspect of nature, or culture, probably was my clearest conception of allegory, especially as used in the 19th century by artists like Gustave Klimt and Alphonse Mucha. I would have just as easily called the disrobing human figure in a work titled SCIENCE REVEALING ITSELF an allegorical, metaphoric, or symbolic representation of Science.
As I was very surprised to find, however, there exists much complicated philosophical thought on the subject of allegory. So, for practical reasons, I am forced to narrow the scope of this essay and focus on allegory alone.
II.
Interestingly, much of the early influential thought surrounding allegory, comes to us through a German filter. The Romanticist scholars and philosophers Winckelmann (1717-1768), Goethe (1749-1832), and Schelling (1775-1854) all attempted to develop the meaning of allegory. Winckelmann offered an early definition of allegory as every image which contains meaning. His is the simplest and, therefore, seems to lend the most clarity to an understanding allegory. Goethe and Schelling, as philosophers will do, added daunting levels of complexity to the subject. Curiously, they involved themselves in a philosophical pitting of allegory against symbol, ultimately assigning greater importance to symbol. Their influence was so profound that allegory was very little used until the beginning of the 20th century. Walter Benjamin(1892-1940) continued to develop theories about allegory as it manifested itself in German drama, attempted to refute the arguments of the Romanticists, and sought to re-establish its importance. Ultimately, critics such as Paul de Man and Craig Owens wrote about allegory's re-emergence and re-entrenchment in the arts of the later 20th century.
In THE RHETORIC OF PERSPECTIVE, author Hanneke Grootenboer writes:
“Allegory has been defined by Paul de Man, Benjamin, and Owens, among others, as that which emerges under the melancholy gaze, expresses itself in ruins, establishes a distance to its own
origin that it never reaches, and desires to fix the ephemeral in an image.”(136) One key component of allegory as accepted by Owens is the idea of allegory as a reinterpretation of a prior idea, a palimpsest. Another is the discursive quality of allegory, its movement from topic to topic, reference to reference, which often results in the clouding of its meaning. In THE ALLEGORICAL IMPULSE, a highly influential article and the chief source of information on the contemporary use of allegory in this essay, Owens demonstrates that allegory is especially present in postmodern art. According to Owens, allegory occurs anytime an artist appropriates or reinterprets a prior image, physical space, or idea into his or her own work. It is simple to see, then, how much contemporary art could be considered allegorical, especially with the postmodern questioning of the possibility of originality: installation, assemblage, collage, photography, painting, and especially film-making; all require pre-existing phenomena for their own iconography.
Owens writes: “Appropriation, site-specificity, impermanence, accumulation, discursivity, hybridization---these diverse strategies characterize much of the art of the present and distinguish it from its modernist predecessors.”(209) Based on this, Owens considers the site-specific art of Robert Smithson allegorical in its appropriation of the landscape, and also in its transience: “...the site specific work becomes an emblem of transience...the memento mori of the 20th century.”(209)
Interestingly, this idea of allegory as a discursive act is what the German Romanticists saw as a
problem of allegory, that allegory referred to a meaning it did not itself contain, that the origins of its referrals were lost in a mise-en abyme and could never be found or known. Allegory was, therefore, vague. Vagueness of meaning, as I mention in my earlier essay RE-EVALUATING SKILL THROUGH A POSTMODERN LENS, seems to be a desirable quality in contemporary art. Viewers are invited to create their own interpretations of artworks. If vagueness is one of the hallmarks of allegory, one then sees a reason why allegory has returned to popularity in art, as Craig Owens says it has.
Other artists, such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and R. B. Kitaj, contribute works
which deliberately operate on a discursive model. The idea of fragment in allegorical theory is very similar to that of ruin; fragments are residual parts of something which may be reinterpreted. Each offers fragments of images or objects, objects which trace their meanings back to a prior origin, which we can or cannot know. Johns used fragments of the human body in his work, casts of body parts, the residual imprint of his own face on paper, his Skin Drawings. With works like Rebus and Allegory, Rauschenberg is credited with transferring the Western experience of art from the visual to the textual. These pieces are syntagmatic, that is, they resemble a narrative sequence, a procession of pictograms, a text more than a picture. Yet, true to the postmodernist allegorist, it is a text which is unreadable, and Owens himself writes: “...it remains impossible to read a Rauschenberg , if by reading we mean the extraction from a text of a coherent , monological message.”(225) Kitaj, working in a quasi-abstract, representational style, creates fragmentary images composed of other images. He also hyperbolizes the allegorical leap from the thing represented to its distant meaning. “Desk Murder” is the title of one of his paintings, one in which there is a desk, but no trace of murder. Kitaj also alludes to a selfconsciousness of allegory in his work, including an obscured portrait of Walter Benjamin in a figure group in one of his paintings.
III.
If allegory has developed into something which “...emerges under the melancholy gaze,
expresses itself in ruins, establishes a distance to its own origin that it never reaches, and desires to fix the ephemeral in an image,” my question is: Why? Why are these the accepted qualities of allegory?
My own personal opinion about this definition is that it need not necessarily define all allegory. Why must all allegories represent transience, ephemera? Why must the distance between symbols and their meanings never be reached? If it were so, then we ought to feel pathos, which probably we would not feel, at the allegorical representation of happiness with a smiley yellow happy-face symbol. In our example the allegory actually does reach the distance to its own origin; the meaning is perfectly clear.
As long as symbols are part of the cultural consciousness, the distance between the symbol and its origin will be reached. Why the need to embark on this investigation of allegory in the first place? In my most recent artist statement I mention that there is in me a frustrated symbolist straining to be released and that I hope to have the opportunity to create more images which involve the use of visual metaphor. Some would argue that art which uses any allegory and symbolism will be lost on a general audience. In defense of allegory, however, I argue that the goal of the artist is to produce work which operates on many levels. The meanings behind Klimt's Allegory of Medicine, along with John Singer Sargent's murals, The Triumph of Religion, were almost completely lost to their public. Yet, for me and many others, because of their skillfully-painted representational elements, they are a highly pleasurable experience to look at. We may not understand the symbolism, but we recognize and enjoy the depiction
of the symbols. I would also note in a final observation about allegory that one of its intrinsic qualities not mentioned by Owens, Benjamin, Goethe or Grootenboer is that it provides fertile ground for aesthetic variety, for the unusual, the sensational, for arresting visual arrangement. This, of course, is another attraction for many to the allegories of Klimt, Mucha, and Sargent, but also to contemporary painters like Samuel Bak, Jerome Witkin, and Odd Nerdrum.
In conclusion, I state having a personal preference for Winckelmann's simple definition of
allegory as any image which has meaning. I prefer it to the complex understanding of allegory
accepted and developed by Benjamin and Owens as being subject to melancholy and transience.
Finally, as an artist currently undertaking the creation of a body of allegorical works, any lingering doubts about the relevance of allegorical art in the contemporary art world have been dispelled by the writing of Craig Owens, who has shown that allegory is firmly entrenched in it.
Works Cited
Diefendorf, Jeffrey M. and Mara R. Witzling. The Art of Samuel Bak, Memory and Metaphor,
The Art Gallery, University of NH, 2006
Grootenboer, Hanneke. The Rhetoric of Perspective-Realism and Illusionism in 17th Century Dutch Still-Life Painting. University of Chicago Press, 2005
Owens, Craig. “The Allegorical Impulse.”Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation.” Ed. Brian Wallis. The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984
Peaker, Giles. “Natural History, Kitaj, Allegory and Memory.” Critical Kitaj. Ed. Aulich, James and John Lynch. Rutgers University Press, 2001
Weiss, Jeffrey. Jasper Johns, An Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965. National Gallery of Art,
Washington 2007
Paper II, Semester I
My New Hat
Cameron Bennett
Written August 2009
I.
What would you say if I told you that for the last few months I had been donning a hat previously owned and worn by iconic modernist painter Jackson Pollock? That alone might be impressive, but if you consider that this same hat was also owned by another icon of modern art, the sculptor Richard Serra, then what I am suggesting has begun to sound totally unbelievable. What I am saying is true, however, and here's how I came to have this remarkable hat on my own head.
As a traditional realist painter, I have always had an attachment to a naturalistic depiction of the world. Painting in this way demands of the artist much concentration and control. In my most recent artist statement I mention having a desire to introduce a richer level of artistry to the formal qualities of my work, one which makes more visible my role as an artist who mediates a visual message, doing more than merely copying the visual properties of nature. It seemed to me that one way of attempting to introduce this quality to my work was to strike out into less familiar territory for a while, to relinquish the conscious control over my medium which had always been so important to me. I would have to try following in the footsteps of Pollock and Serra and fling my medium at a surface, as both men had done. I would have to switch hats, so to speak, to don that hat mentioned above, that of the experimental, non-objective mark-maker.
If you want something you have never had before you must do something you have never done before. This saying is an important one for me, and it's one of the reasons I began to undertake my mark-making experiments. So, for the past few months, I have been trying to strip away usual comfortable, controlled habits, and I have found it thoroughly exhilarating. Working like Pollock, off the easel and often on the floor, I initiated a series of experiments, drawing inspiration from Pollock himself, but also from Richard Serra. My idea was to relinquish to a great degree physical control of my mediums, ink and oil paint, while simultaneously attempting to maintain some level of analytical control of the process.
Very much along the lines of Richard Serra, who compiled a list of actions possible for manipulating a medium in his “Verb List”, I compiled my own “Mark List.
TO DRIP
TO RUN THE DRIP
TO SPLATTER
TO USE THE HAND
TO USE THE FINGER
TO SLAP THE INK-SOAKED RAG
TO SLAP THE PAINT-SOAKED RAG
TO RORSCHACH
TO ROLL THE BRUSH
TO MIX ALL OF THE ABOVE
Also, I refrained from using my familiar tools in familiar ways as much as possible. I tried not to touch them to the paper or canvas except when doing something new such as rolling them across a surface, or using them to fling or splatter the paint or ink. My new tools were paint and ink soaked rags, the palette knife, and my hands and fingers themselves.
In my artist statement and in my last essay, I mention frequently my attachment to demonstrations of skill. My goal during these experiments, was to leave things open to chance, to not draw on conscious skill. Not so surprisingly, I found myself identifying with Jackson Pollock as described by Leo Steinberg in his essay “Pollock's First Retrospective.” “For the man mortifies his skill in quest for something other than accomplishment. From the first to the last the artist tramples on his own facility and spurns the elegance that creeps into a style which he has practised to the point of knowing how.”(Other Criteria, pg. 295) Steinberg also writes:
“And so the artist, in the excellent words of Parker Tyler, 'charges the distance between his agency and his work with as much chance as possible, the fluidity of the poured and scattered paint placing maximum pressure against conscious design.' ”(ibid.)
After generating a number of black and white and color pieces, the next stage was to photograph them, and then use the computer as a tool for enlarging and cropping their details in search of interesting compositions. This was the most magical part of the process. Here, beautiful chance arrangements of value, shape and color were at work, arrangements I myself would not have thought of. These croppings I catalogued and filed away on my computer, with the intention of developing them further with conscious design.
It is here that I ran into trouble. My plan was to examine each cropping, and to look for recognizable shapes that suggested representational imagery, much the way one begins to see familiar shapes in random natural patterns, like cloud formations. Let me say that I actually did see plenty of things in these chance arrangements. This part of the job was relatively easy, and fun. The problem arose when I attempted to replicate the spontaneous beauty of these croppings in separate paintings; I found I simply could not do them justice with my conscious-design frame of mind. After several attempts, which were met with negative responses from my wife and mentor, Scottish-American painter Patrick McCay, I abandoned the entire approach.
The high hopes and excitement that I initially felt when embarking on these experiments were met with disappointment in equal measure. I found myself mildly depressed, believing myself to have failed. My original plan was precisely to get away from myself, precisely to go far afield. Having done this, I was irritated to find how difficult it was to make sense of my journey. Perhaps I had gone too far afield with the mark-making experiments. Perhaps I had gotten away from myself too much. What I hoped, however, was that I had had some success in creating a new kind of process for finding a spontaneous beauty, and that perhaps these more successful mark-making experiments would be there for me to draw upon in works done with a different approach.
In any event, I had to push on, and what was left for me, then, but to try a new approach? I decided that, because it was mandatory to press on, I would change direction and return to what was familiar to me. Why not? My struggle with the unfamiliar had been unsuccessful; I might as well use something familiar, at least to see what happened a second time around. So I returned to the figure.
Where the goal of the last experiment had been to start with a non-representational idea and end with a representational painting, this time my goal was to begin representationally, but then to try taking the imagery to a much more abstract level. What had interested me in the earlier mark-making experiments was the visible multi-layering of paint layer breaking through paint layer, made more visible through the enlargements of the details of the photographs I had taken of them, which also made the canvas grain and texture of the paint marks much more apparent. I attempted to recreate this effect of the heavy surface texture in my new approach by switching to acrylic paint, and by mixing the paint directly into acrylic gesso. This gesso was applied very roughly with high , exaggerated impasto. The quick drying acrylic paint allowed me to get the effects I was after much more quickly than oil paint. The roughness of texture was one way of breaking apart the familiar realism with which I normally paint, allowing me from the first stroke to achieve abstraction, to transform my subject and not merely copy its visual qualities. Here, my experiments were met with more positive feedback, and I was confident I was having some success.
Back to my hat for a moment. Because of the lack of success I had while wearing it, I found that I had to take it off. I'm not sure how well it fit me, even though it was exciting to wear for a while. I'll keep it, however, and if the shape of my head changes, then I will try it on again and hopefully find it a little more comfortable next time. In the meantime, having switched it for my old hat, I have had to return to the representational world for a time.
II.
Some might call the realm of representational art that I generally inhabit a realm of “Kitsch.” I had never understood that the term was so generally applied to traditional realism in art, until reading from contemporary painter Odd Nerdrum's book “On Kitsch.” Essentially, Nerdrum points out, many critics, artists, and members of the public have attempted to stretch the meaning of the word, which once applied only to the worst, most tasteless examples of traditional painting, to entirely encompass the whole world of traditional painting, the best of it included.
Rather than rebel against this paradigm shift, Nerdrum accepts it, even embraces it. He apologizes for ever thinking of himself as an “artist,” for trying to take his place in the world of “Art,” and has resigned himself to the role of “Kitsch-painter.” In Nerdrum's art-world-view, because he allows the modern critics of representational art to color his own interpretation of Art and Kitsch, he moves almost all, if not all, of his favorite paintings (many of which happen to be my favorites, also) into the Kitsch category.
Here is where I have a problem with Nerdrum's point of view. First, Kitsch is generally defined (check your dictionary) as garish, vulgar, and tasteless. I have always subscribed to this idea; Kitsch is Elvis on black velvet, Kitsch is dogs playing poker. Kitsch is not a sublime landscape by Bocklin, a brilliant portrait by Zorn, or a mural by Abbey. Secondly, if we subscribe a little more to Mary Anne Staniszewski's definition of art as an autonomous creation by an individual gifted with genius, that genius standing largely for skill, then many, if not all, of Nerdrum's favorite paintings, including his own, rightly belong in the “Art” category after all. And as is pointed out by Norwegian critic Sindre Mekjan: “Is there anyone who recognizes Nerdrum's desolate, timeless, nightmarish landscapes...anyone who feels that Nerdrum's hermaphrodites, half-naked wanderers, mutilated figures and defecating beings are directly beautiful or natural images of the world?”(On Kitsch, page 15)
As I argued in my last essay “Re-evaluating Skill Through a Postmodern Lens,” the artists, those who paint representationally or otherwise, influence culture. They achieve the right to call themselves artists as soon as they define themselves as such. This is the stance I have taken, and it is one I would encourage Nerdrum also to take. His quest to redefine and popularize the term “Kitsch” with its new meaning is completely unnecessary; let him call what he creates, and what others before him through history have created, “Art.” I would argue that Nerdrum's “personal mythology” is intentionally outlandish and bizarre for the sake of actually appealing to the modern, or postmodern, art-world's enjoyment of the new and shocking. Ultimately, however, I consider Nerdrum to be a contemporary master of painting, regardless of his imagery. In my own work, I aspire to paint skillfully, like Nerdrum. On the other hand, unlike Nerdrum, my wish is to create art without using bizarre and shocking elements, which I consider to be a gimmick.
III.
One possible idea for my thesis, one with which I walked in the door at the Art Institute of Boston, was the examination of tribal elements in current culture, and their visual emblems. Sports fanaticism taken to a religious extreme is one such focus, a phenomenon entirely alien to me.
The importance attached to sports by many people has always smacked of tribalism to me, a modern outlet for a primitive need to indulge in warfare, tribe pitted against tribe. I suspect that without sports (a societally accepted form of violence) we would be a much more violent culture.
Sports fanaticism seems also to fill a spiritual void with which people are left after the much shrunken influence of religious governments and growth of secularism. The book “Joy of Sports” confirms this. “Sports is somehow a religion,” author Michael Novak admits, “...a gift of faith” some have and others don't. Those who don't are the “non-believers,” who hold the prejudice that “...to love sports is the lowest common denominator, to be lower-class, adolescent, patriotic in a corny way. The intellectual thing, the liberal thing, the mature thing is to set sports aside.”(p. xii)
My wife and I discuss the public fascination with sports, noting with amazement each time we see a Boston Red Sox emblem on a passing car, article of clothing, tattoo, or perhaps best yet, in a stained-glass window in one of the more elegant homes in our neighborhood. Now, my personal style in life is to try to find some common ground between myself and the thing I consider alien. What occurs to me is that sports fans enjoy in sports the same thing I enjoy in art: a demonstration of skill. I do admit, a display of athletic skill is wonderful. But unlike sports fans, what one sees much less of among art fans is the need to display a tribal emblem. Although you may see the odd t-shirt with an image of an artist or one of his or her works, you will not see this kind of thing in nearly the abundance that you will see sports emblems emblazoned across every area where there is sufficient space. Clearly there is a cult element to sports which does not exist in the same way in the art-world, something more visually tribal.
In my early search for meaning in the non-objective paint experiments, I was able to find what looked like shouting silhouetted heads, mouths wide open. Here I saw feverish fanaticism, sports or religious, perhaps something which could be titled “The Fanatics” or “The Screamers.” In another mark-making experiment I began to find wild beasts on top of wild beasts. A bison appeared next to a serpent, a lizard next to a crocodile, an elephant next to a water buffalo. This image might have been named “The Mascots,” a statement on the pent-up wildness of the sport.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, the idea of assigning representational elements to nonobjective smears looks better in writing than it does on canvas. So, because I have abandoned these attempts to recreate or redesign these beautiful paint-accidents, either temporarily or permanently, “The Screamers” and “The Mascots” have been put on hold for the time being.
References and Readings:
Fabozzi, Paul. “Artists, Critics, Context.” (Prentice Hall) 2002
Nerdrum, Odd. “On Kitsch.” (Kagge Forlag) 2001
Novak, Michael. “Joy of Sports.” (Basic Books, Inc.) 1971
Steinberg, Leo. “Other Criteria.” (Oxford University Press) 1972
Cameron Bennett
Written August 2009
I.
What would you say if I told you that for the last few months I had been donning a hat previously owned and worn by iconic modernist painter Jackson Pollock? That alone might be impressive, but if you consider that this same hat was also owned by another icon of modern art, the sculptor Richard Serra, then what I am suggesting has begun to sound totally unbelievable. What I am saying is true, however, and here's how I came to have this remarkable hat on my own head.
As a traditional realist painter, I have always had an attachment to a naturalistic depiction of the world. Painting in this way demands of the artist much concentration and control. In my most recent artist statement I mention having a desire to introduce a richer level of artistry to the formal qualities of my work, one which makes more visible my role as an artist who mediates a visual message, doing more than merely copying the visual properties of nature. It seemed to me that one way of attempting to introduce this quality to my work was to strike out into less familiar territory for a while, to relinquish the conscious control over my medium which had always been so important to me. I would have to try following in the footsteps of Pollock and Serra and fling my medium at a surface, as both men had done. I would have to switch hats, so to speak, to don that hat mentioned above, that of the experimental, non-objective mark-maker.
If you want something you have never had before you must do something you have never done before. This saying is an important one for me, and it's one of the reasons I began to undertake my mark-making experiments. So, for the past few months, I have been trying to strip away usual comfortable, controlled habits, and I have found it thoroughly exhilarating. Working like Pollock, off the easel and often on the floor, I initiated a series of experiments, drawing inspiration from Pollock himself, but also from Richard Serra. My idea was to relinquish to a great degree physical control of my mediums, ink and oil paint, while simultaneously attempting to maintain some level of analytical control of the process.
Very much along the lines of Richard Serra, who compiled a list of actions possible for manipulating a medium in his “Verb List”, I compiled my own “Mark List.
TO DRIP
TO RUN THE DRIP
TO SPLATTER
TO USE THE HAND
TO USE THE FINGER
TO SLAP THE INK-SOAKED RAG
TO SLAP THE PAINT-SOAKED RAG
TO RORSCHACH
TO ROLL THE BRUSH
TO MIX ALL OF THE ABOVE
Also, I refrained from using my familiar tools in familiar ways as much as possible. I tried not to touch them to the paper or canvas except when doing something new such as rolling them across a surface, or using them to fling or splatter the paint or ink. My new tools were paint and ink soaked rags, the palette knife, and my hands and fingers themselves.
In my artist statement and in my last essay, I mention frequently my attachment to demonstrations of skill. My goal during these experiments, was to leave things open to chance, to not draw on conscious skill. Not so surprisingly, I found myself identifying with Jackson Pollock as described by Leo Steinberg in his essay “Pollock's First Retrospective.” “For the man mortifies his skill in quest for something other than accomplishment. From the first to the last the artist tramples on his own facility and spurns the elegance that creeps into a style which he has practised to the point of knowing how.”(Other Criteria, pg. 295) Steinberg also writes:
“And so the artist, in the excellent words of Parker Tyler, 'charges the distance between his agency and his work with as much chance as possible, the fluidity of the poured and scattered paint placing maximum pressure against conscious design.' ”(ibid.)
After generating a number of black and white and color pieces, the next stage was to photograph them, and then use the computer as a tool for enlarging and cropping their details in search of interesting compositions. This was the most magical part of the process. Here, beautiful chance arrangements of value, shape and color were at work, arrangements I myself would not have thought of. These croppings I catalogued and filed away on my computer, with the intention of developing them further with conscious design.
It is here that I ran into trouble. My plan was to examine each cropping, and to look for recognizable shapes that suggested representational imagery, much the way one begins to see familiar shapes in random natural patterns, like cloud formations. Let me say that I actually did see plenty of things in these chance arrangements. This part of the job was relatively easy, and fun. The problem arose when I attempted to replicate the spontaneous beauty of these croppings in separate paintings; I found I simply could not do them justice with my conscious-design frame of mind. After several attempts, which were met with negative responses from my wife and mentor, Scottish-American painter Patrick McCay, I abandoned the entire approach.
The high hopes and excitement that I initially felt when embarking on these experiments were met with disappointment in equal measure. I found myself mildly depressed, believing myself to have failed. My original plan was precisely to get away from myself, precisely to go far afield. Having done this, I was irritated to find how difficult it was to make sense of my journey. Perhaps I had gone too far afield with the mark-making experiments. Perhaps I had gotten away from myself too much. What I hoped, however, was that I had had some success in creating a new kind of process for finding a spontaneous beauty, and that perhaps these more successful mark-making experiments would be there for me to draw upon in works done with a different approach.
In any event, I had to push on, and what was left for me, then, but to try a new approach? I decided that, because it was mandatory to press on, I would change direction and return to what was familiar to me. Why not? My struggle with the unfamiliar had been unsuccessful; I might as well use something familiar, at least to see what happened a second time around. So I returned to the figure.
Where the goal of the last experiment had been to start with a non-representational idea and end with a representational painting, this time my goal was to begin representationally, but then to try taking the imagery to a much more abstract level. What had interested me in the earlier mark-making experiments was the visible multi-layering of paint layer breaking through paint layer, made more visible through the enlargements of the details of the photographs I had taken of them, which also made the canvas grain and texture of the paint marks much more apparent. I attempted to recreate this effect of the heavy surface texture in my new approach by switching to acrylic paint, and by mixing the paint directly into acrylic gesso. This gesso was applied very roughly with high , exaggerated impasto. The quick drying acrylic paint allowed me to get the effects I was after much more quickly than oil paint. The roughness of texture was one way of breaking apart the familiar realism with which I normally paint, allowing me from the first stroke to achieve abstraction, to transform my subject and not merely copy its visual qualities. Here, my experiments were met with more positive feedback, and I was confident I was having some success.
Back to my hat for a moment. Because of the lack of success I had while wearing it, I found that I had to take it off. I'm not sure how well it fit me, even though it was exciting to wear for a while. I'll keep it, however, and if the shape of my head changes, then I will try it on again and hopefully find it a little more comfortable next time. In the meantime, having switched it for my old hat, I have had to return to the representational world for a time.
II.
Some might call the realm of representational art that I generally inhabit a realm of “Kitsch.” I had never understood that the term was so generally applied to traditional realism in art, until reading from contemporary painter Odd Nerdrum's book “On Kitsch.” Essentially, Nerdrum points out, many critics, artists, and members of the public have attempted to stretch the meaning of the word, which once applied only to the worst, most tasteless examples of traditional painting, to entirely encompass the whole world of traditional painting, the best of it included.
Rather than rebel against this paradigm shift, Nerdrum accepts it, even embraces it. He apologizes for ever thinking of himself as an “artist,” for trying to take his place in the world of “Art,” and has resigned himself to the role of “Kitsch-painter.” In Nerdrum's art-world-view, because he allows the modern critics of representational art to color his own interpretation of Art and Kitsch, he moves almost all, if not all, of his favorite paintings (many of which happen to be my favorites, also) into the Kitsch category.
Here is where I have a problem with Nerdrum's point of view. First, Kitsch is generally defined (check your dictionary) as garish, vulgar, and tasteless. I have always subscribed to this idea; Kitsch is Elvis on black velvet, Kitsch is dogs playing poker. Kitsch is not a sublime landscape by Bocklin, a brilliant portrait by Zorn, or a mural by Abbey. Secondly, if we subscribe a little more to Mary Anne Staniszewski's definition of art as an autonomous creation by an individual gifted with genius, that genius standing largely for skill, then many, if not all, of Nerdrum's favorite paintings, including his own, rightly belong in the “Art” category after all. And as is pointed out by Norwegian critic Sindre Mekjan: “Is there anyone who recognizes Nerdrum's desolate, timeless, nightmarish landscapes...anyone who feels that Nerdrum's hermaphrodites, half-naked wanderers, mutilated figures and defecating beings are directly beautiful or natural images of the world?”(On Kitsch, page 15)
As I argued in my last essay “Re-evaluating Skill Through a Postmodern Lens,” the artists, those who paint representationally or otherwise, influence culture. They achieve the right to call themselves artists as soon as they define themselves as such. This is the stance I have taken, and it is one I would encourage Nerdrum also to take. His quest to redefine and popularize the term “Kitsch” with its new meaning is completely unnecessary; let him call what he creates, and what others before him through history have created, “Art.” I would argue that Nerdrum's “personal mythology” is intentionally outlandish and bizarre for the sake of actually appealing to the modern, or postmodern, art-world's enjoyment of the new and shocking. Ultimately, however, I consider Nerdrum to be a contemporary master of painting, regardless of his imagery. In my own work, I aspire to paint skillfully, like Nerdrum. On the other hand, unlike Nerdrum, my wish is to create art without using bizarre and shocking elements, which I consider to be a gimmick.
III.
One possible idea for my thesis, one with which I walked in the door at the Art Institute of Boston, was the examination of tribal elements in current culture, and their visual emblems. Sports fanaticism taken to a religious extreme is one such focus, a phenomenon entirely alien to me.
The importance attached to sports by many people has always smacked of tribalism to me, a modern outlet for a primitive need to indulge in warfare, tribe pitted against tribe. I suspect that without sports (a societally accepted form of violence) we would be a much more violent culture.
Sports fanaticism seems also to fill a spiritual void with which people are left after the much shrunken influence of religious governments and growth of secularism. The book “Joy of Sports” confirms this. “Sports is somehow a religion,” author Michael Novak admits, “...a gift of faith” some have and others don't. Those who don't are the “non-believers,” who hold the prejudice that “...to love sports is the lowest common denominator, to be lower-class, adolescent, patriotic in a corny way. The intellectual thing, the liberal thing, the mature thing is to set sports aside.”(p. xii)
My wife and I discuss the public fascination with sports, noting with amazement each time we see a Boston Red Sox emblem on a passing car, article of clothing, tattoo, or perhaps best yet, in a stained-glass window in one of the more elegant homes in our neighborhood. Now, my personal style in life is to try to find some common ground between myself and the thing I consider alien. What occurs to me is that sports fans enjoy in sports the same thing I enjoy in art: a demonstration of skill. I do admit, a display of athletic skill is wonderful. But unlike sports fans, what one sees much less of among art fans is the need to display a tribal emblem. Although you may see the odd t-shirt with an image of an artist or one of his or her works, you will not see this kind of thing in nearly the abundance that you will see sports emblems emblazoned across every area where there is sufficient space. Clearly there is a cult element to sports which does not exist in the same way in the art-world, something more visually tribal.
In my early search for meaning in the non-objective paint experiments, I was able to find what looked like shouting silhouetted heads, mouths wide open. Here I saw feverish fanaticism, sports or religious, perhaps something which could be titled “The Fanatics” or “The Screamers.” In another mark-making experiment I began to find wild beasts on top of wild beasts. A bison appeared next to a serpent, a lizard next to a crocodile, an elephant next to a water buffalo. This image might have been named “The Mascots,” a statement on the pent-up wildness of the sport.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, the idea of assigning representational elements to nonobjective smears looks better in writing than it does on canvas. So, because I have abandoned these attempts to recreate or redesign these beautiful paint-accidents, either temporarily or permanently, “The Screamers” and “The Mascots” have been put on hold for the time being.
References and Readings:
Fabozzi, Paul. “Artists, Critics, Context.” (Prentice Hall) 2002
Nerdrum, Odd. “On Kitsch.” (Kagge Forlag) 2001
Novak, Michael. “Joy of Sports.” (Basic Books, Inc.) 1971
Steinberg, Leo. “Other Criteria.” (Oxford University Press) 1972
Paper I, Semester I
Re-evaluating Skill Through a Postmodern Lens
Cameron Bennett
Written July 2009
In evaluating my own art in relation to the art discussed in the readings and lectures of the
Group I Critical Theory course, that is, avant-garde art largely made since 1900, I will focus on
particular aspects which relate or resonate especially with me. I will strive to do this by articulating my
interpretation of the events in art history which have shaped current notions of art practice, as well as
offer a possible outcome of current trends in avant-garde art. In doing this, I plan to view my own
beliefs through a contemporary lens, and ultimately address the issue of my own relevance in the field
of art.
Clearly, to understand one's place in the realm of art, one ought to have an understanding of
what the word “art”means..For better or for worse, the words “art” and “artist” seem to mean different
things to different people. In Mary Anne Staniszewski's book Believing Is Seeing, she attempts to
clarify the meaning of the word “Art.” How Art has come to be understood and defined, she explains,
is in this way: Art is an autonomous creation by an individual touched with genius (pg. 111).
Ultimately, this is the opinion of some, perhaps of many, but it remains opinion.
What is my personal response to Staniszewski's definition of Art? Let me begin with my own
opinions about the concept of “autonomy” and how it relates to the concept of originality.
Staniszewski rules out almost all work created before the Romantic era, arguing that truly autonomous
“art for art's sake” art was not born until the early 19th century, or thereabouts. My own conception of
art is broader; there are definitely works created for patrons or works commissioned by the state which
I would consider art. According to many, if a work is commissioned it is automatically an invalid
artwork, something not having sprung from the artist's creative font, something lacking autonomy. I
reject this notion for at least two reasons.
The first reason is that we, the culture, impose our own ideas of worth on objects; we decide
what is art and what it isn't. The honor of recognizing the “Art-ness” of a thing could very well come
long after the creation of the thing, regardless of the conditions under which is was created or its
reasons for being created. Isn't this what Staniszewski points out in Believing is Seeing? The
“artification” of the products of non-Western cultures, such as the Venus of Willendorf, is a prime
example of an imposition of “Art” on a thing. I believe that much of my better artwork, plenty of
which is portraiture and illustration commissioned by others, is perfectly valid as art in spite of its lack
of autonomy, because I and others appreciate it as such.
Secondly, I feel that the technical aspects of a work do much for its ability to resonate with a
wide audience. There is something about a high level of skill which demands a kind of reverence.
This level of craftsmanship is to be found in abundance in the realm of art, art not meeting the criteria
of art as posited by those like Staniszewski. I would argue that if one were to give a look into the
ouvres of portrait painting and illustration that one will find what I believe to be positively triumphant
demonstrations of skillful artistry, which qualify the work as “Art.”As a painter who does portraiture
and illustration, I strive to imbue my work with the technical attributes which help make it art,
regardless of its lack of total autonomous conception on my part..
Interestingly, this idea of autonomy seems to have become irrelevant among postmodernist
thinkers anyway. To question the autonomy of a thing, one must question its creation, its origins, its
originality. Autonomy implies ownership, authorship of the origins of something. As we learn in the
readings and Critical Theory course, the idea of the existence of originality is being called into question
by many artists. An attempt at making an original work is an impossibility, as artist Hans Haacke
argued, because artists working within a certain culture are programmed by that culture and its
inescapable ideology. “There is no non-ideological position!”he says in his 1979 interview with Robert
Morgan. (Artists, Critics, Context, pg.309) So, if there is no getting away from the programming and
indoctrination of one's culture, then there is no originality, no autonomy. If there is no autonomy, then
all creations of art are brought to the same level, in a sense, as being authored by something other than
the artist. This would appear to legitimize to a great extent works of art commissioned by someone
other than the artist, as in the case of portrait painters and illustrators
A by-product of the loss of the possibility of originality has been the legitimizing of
“appropriating” other aritsts' works. Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein,
and Jeff Koons are well known for their appropriation. Other artists have unabashedly reproduced
other artists works in their own with virtually no alterations, as in Sherri Levine's rephotographing the
work of Edward Weston. My personal reaction to appropriation is negative, and when my artwork was
stolen from the internet and used by tatoo artists on at least two occasions, I was left feeling violated.
As far as originality goes in my own work, I have always felt liberated from the very notion of
trying to be original. My real passion in art focusses on the human condition, which for me and many
artists, is an unending source of material and inspiration. Pictures of people involved in the various
aspects of their lives have been the subject of art since the dawn of art itself? Has this stopped artists
from depicting people as such and has the audience for this kind of art disappeared? Of course not.
Some things in existence never change; we do not avoid these things in life, and I see no reason why
we ought to avoid them in Art. There is a peace which comes from not worrying about grasping for
originality. I can not recall if the idea of producing something new or original was really ever a
concern of mine, at least until beginning graduate school. What matters to me, and still does, is that the
artwork be done well, with craft, but more so with skill.
Few people, even postmodernists, would deny that skill is important. What, after all, is the
“genius” that Staniszewski necessarily includes in her definition of Art if not the quality of doing a
thing very, very well, or skillfully? A re-evaluation of the meaning of “skill” and a re-investigation of
specifically which skills are important in the arts of today is underway, however, and has been at least
since the 1960's, especially with the advent of “performance art”.
And what are the new skills expected of the artist of today? Some might say that the most
celebrated or hotly contested artists are those who are able to attract attention to their work and also, on
occasion, engender controversy. Many critics look at this in a positive light, giving the artist the credit
of being able to generate important “dialogue.” I am personally skeptical of this at this point as being a
worthwhile skill because it appears to me to be too easy to do. There can be a vagueness to the art of
today which is also cast in a positive light as inviting the interpretation of the viewer. At present, I feel
that attempts at clarity require more skill than vagueness and merely stimulating dialogue.
How, then, as an artist for whom traditional skills in painting and drawing are of paramount
importance, am I expected to feel when I am confronted with the newer ideas of “de-skilling”and “reskilling”
in art? Ultimately, I feel that too many people are working in the mediums best reserved for
visual artists. In my opinion, their attempts as mediators in this field may be misplaced. In Toward a
New Laocoon, critic Clement Greenburg touches on this idea of the misplaced mediator, using the
different mediums of the arts as his example, explaining that certain art forms, due to their intrinsic
limitations, are plainly unable to emulate the qualities of other art forms. Is it so different when
individuals with no training or little to no ability in the medium of the visual arts attempt to use it as
their medium, as their means for communicating an idea? How many people will understand the
messages behind the intentionally child-like marks of painters like Cy Twombly, or the baffling
performance art of Chris Burd who has himself shot in the arm?
What is it about the word “skill” that would appear to offend so many contemporary artists?
What is it about traditional art-skills which have become so distasteful that whole factions of artists
have virtually made them anathema? One might note that in Staniszewski's definition of Art, the word
“skillful” does not appear. Perhaps this is because “skill” for many represents the old, oppressive
ideologies of the dominant European male. This ideology is distasteful for some because it reserved
roles of power solely for the upper classes and restricted access to culture to men, especially in the art
academies, as Linda Nochlin points out in her article Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?
And, if one understands the history of art of the last one hundred years or so, one will understand that
much of what has been created in the name of art has been a reaction against the the ideology which
controlled the arts for so long..
Even as late as the mid 20th Century, as Carol Duncan points out in her MOMA article, the
avant-garde artists trying to overthrow these conventions were still very much subject to their
mentality, especially in the sexualized depiction of women in their art. These artists, like their cultural
forefathers in thelate 19th century, subscribed to the myth that men are the creators of culture and
women the embodiment of nature. This fallacious myth, as explained in Carol Duncan's essay: “The
MOMA's Hot Mamas,” manifested itself in the artistic idea that representational, naturalistic art, since it
depicts nature as it appears, is ultimately a celebration of the feminine. This idea was completely new
to me and at first I was excited by it. One moment later, however, I came to my senses and saw the
fallacy of it. What could be seen as being more masculine, if we view the term through a 19th Century
lens, than manipulating raw materials in a way which makes them appear to be something other than
what they are? Has this not always been the old idea of masculinity, that it beats nature into
submission, makes the female submissive to the will of the male? If so, then one could not hope for a
better example of a product of masculine culture than realist, illustionistic painting!
Ultimately, however, from a 21st Century perspective, these extreme assignations seem
outdated. Clearly, in our day, we do see women evident in culture-defining roles, especially in the arts,
just as we see men with greater roles in the home, as in my own instance as a stay-at-home father.
Further, looking back half a century, was it not Jackson Pollock himself who said that he IS nature?
We all shape our culture and we are all products of nature. The “Post-Academic” artist, that is, the
artist who believes in skill but does not equate it with oppression, also understands and rejects the
myths of that old ideology.
The cultural confinement imposed on the visual artist by the established institutions of Art
(galleries, museums, and academies) began to be challenged throughout the 19th and twentieth centuries
when artists began to create alternative spaces for the appreciation of their works, challenging the
notion of the accessibility of Art and its control by the establishment. In the 19th century Gustave
Courbet, frustrated by the limits of the official salon, constructed his own pavilion for the viewing of
his paintings, and in the 20th century artists like Robert Smithson literally and figuratively brought their
Art into the world by using the landscape itself as the Artwork. The artist Claes Oldenburg stated: “I'm
for an art which...that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum,” (Artists, Critics, Context,
pg.56) and he and artists like him attempted to raise the ordinary, unglamorous elements of everyday
life to the once restricted level of high art, as in his own monumental clothing pin public sculpture.
Unlike these artists, who see traditional forums for the display of art as prisons, as cultural
confinement, I see galleries, but more so museums, in a very positive light. For me, they act as places
which are important exactly because they are removed from daily life. Entering a museum is like
making a retreat to a sacred, spiritual place. Art, in my opinion, works very well in the role of offering
the opportunity for reflection and contemplation. What better place for it then, than the Museums
which house artwork, like churches; making it clear that once inside them, one is in a unique space.
Further, I feel, bringing art into the so called “real world”, as the mass media does when it ruins the
impact of original artwork with photo-reproduction, deadens the need for art.
With “happenings” and “performance art,” the lines between the idea of art as an object and art
as performance, activity, or process began to blur. Often this activity or process has taken the form of
political or social activism. Hans Haacke is known for just this kind of art-as-activism, and in his work
he has exposed a slumlord trustee of the Guggenheim museum, a German museum's censorship of
artists, and the questionable involvement of the Mobil Corporation in South African politics. Along
these lines, Staniszewski points out, organizations like Group Material, Act-Up, WHAM! and WAC
have all used art exhibits as a means for social activism, addressing issues such as gay rights, women's
rights, and the United States' involvement abroad. The question remains for me, however: are artists as
activists misplaced mediators working in the mediums best reserved for visual artists?
Now, if we carry this idea of art as activism to an extreme, we might have a sense of where
trends might lead us in the future. Imagine a science fiction-like scenario in which bombs shatter daily
events such as social gatherings and survivors crawl from the wreckage muttering these words: “Damn
artists!”
This film-like scenario is a science-fiction-style near-future I once imagined while an
undergraduate student surrounded by other young art students for whom the role of artist very much
meant “activism.” Confronted with this mentality on a daily basis, it was easy to envision the futuristic
scene described above, one in which a paradigm and linguistic shift had occurred. The concepts and
words for “activist”, “revolutionary”, and “rebel” had vanished from western language to be replaced
by one word only: ARTIST.
With the visible breakdown of traditional concepts of art and their replacement with a
broadening context and redefining of art as a tool for changing culture and the world around us, how
large is the leap to a future in which art becomes merely changing culture, regardless of the means?
The question seems less absurd when one considers the popular notion that great art challenges social
institutions and conventional thinking, and that popular culture, which is considered by many to be the
new “high art,” is rife with calls for “revolution.” Claes Oldenburg called for an art which is “violent”
in his 1961 manifesto “I am For an Art...” Even artist groups like Guerrilla Girls sport war-themed selfappellations.
So, in my future, the avant-garde artists have abandoned traditional mediums of selfexpression
and cut to the chase. Their medium of choice for changing the culture becomes direct
physical activity, often manifesting itself as mere terrorism.
Now, in such a future, what would my role as a traditional artist be? Still present in my
futuristic scenario, what words or concepts would remain to describe such artists like me who painted,
drew, and made pictures, after clearly no longer fitting the new definition of the word “artist”?
Monikers probably something like: “picture painter”, “image maker”, “illustrator,” or even “easel
painter.”Some of these titles are already very much applied to my kind of artist, often in a disparaging
way, illustrating the notion that even today we are seen by some as backward looking, non-progressive,
and irrelevant. So, in my imaginary future, it becomes simple to see how very different I am from the
“real” artists who have been “re-skilled” to change culture with a different tool-kit. It is interesting to
observe this phenomenon, already at work in the art realm of today.
In the last paragraph of BELIEVING IS SEEING, Staniszewski writes:
If we accept the fact that everything is shaped by culture, we then acknowledge
that we create our reality. We therefore contribute to it and can change it. This is an
empowering way of living and of seeing ourselves and the world. (pg. 298)
The conviction among many that “painting is dead” is not at all new. However much some may
wish that painting were dead, it is clear that painters still paint for an appreciative audience. Whether
the appreciation is what sustains traditional artists or the artists sustain the appreciation is unimportant.
The importance lies in the relevance of the obvious survival of both artists like me and our audience.
True to Staniszewski's own language: we have been shaped by culture and we continue to shape
culture. As a traditional artist, I am creating my reality and changing my reality, and I empowered by
this. I am, therefore, relevant.
Reference and Readings:
Believing is Seeing, Mary Anne Staniszewski,(Penguin) 1995
Artists, Critics, Context, Readings in and Around American Art Since 1945, Paul Fabozzi, (Prentice
Hall)2002
Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Linda Nochlin, from the book Art and Sexual
Politics, 1971
The MOMA's Hot Mamas, Carol Duncan, from Art Journal 48, 1989
Cameron Bennett
Written July 2009
In evaluating my own art in relation to the art discussed in the readings and lectures of the
Group I Critical Theory course, that is, avant-garde art largely made since 1900, I will focus on
particular aspects which relate or resonate especially with me. I will strive to do this by articulating my
interpretation of the events in art history which have shaped current notions of art practice, as well as
offer a possible outcome of current trends in avant-garde art. In doing this, I plan to view my own
beliefs through a contemporary lens, and ultimately address the issue of my own relevance in the field
of art.
Clearly, to understand one's place in the realm of art, one ought to have an understanding of
what the word “art”means..For better or for worse, the words “art” and “artist” seem to mean different
things to different people. In Mary Anne Staniszewski's book Believing Is Seeing, she attempts to
clarify the meaning of the word “Art.” How Art has come to be understood and defined, she explains,
is in this way: Art is an autonomous creation by an individual touched with genius (pg. 111).
Ultimately, this is the opinion of some, perhaps of many, but it remains opinion.
What is my personal response to Staniszewski's definition of Art? Let me begin with my own
opinions about the concept of “autonomy” and how it relates to the concept of originality.
Staniszewski rules out almost all work created before the Romantic era, arguing that truly autonomous
“art for art's sake” art was not born until the early 19th century, or thereabouts. My own conception of
art is broader; there are definitely works created for patrons or works commissioned by the state which
I would consider art. According to many, if a work is commissioned it is automatically an invalid
artwork, something not having sprung from the artist's creative font, something lacking autonomy. I
reject this notion for at least two reasons.
The first reason is that we, the culture, impose our own ideas of worth on objects; we decide
what is art and what it isn't. The honor of recognizing the “Art-ness” of a thing could very well come
long after the creation of the thing, regardless of the conditions under which is was created or its
reasons for being created. Isn't this what Staniszewski points out in Believing is Seeing? The
“artification” of the products of non-Western cultures, such as the Venus of Willendorf, is a prime
example of an imposition of “Art” on a thing. I believe that much of my better artwork, plenty of
which is portraiture and illustration commissioned by others, is perfectly valid as art in spite of its lack
of autonomy, because I and others appreciate it as such.
Secondly, I feel that the technical aspects of a work do much for its ability to resonate with a
wide audience. There is something about a high level of skill which demands a kind of reverence.
This level of craftsmanship is to be found in abundance in the realm of art, art not meeting the criteria
of art as posited by those like Staniszewski. I would argue that if one were to give a look into the
ouvres of portrait painting and illustration that one will find what I believe to be positively triumphant
demonstrations of skillful artistry, which qualify the work as “Art.”As a painter who does portraiture
and illustration, I strive to imbue my work with the technical attributes which help make it art,
regardless of its lack of total autonomous conception on my part..
Interestingly, this idea of autonomy seems to have become irrelevant among postmodernist
thinkers anyway. To question the autonomy of a thing, one must question its creation, its origins, its
originality. Autonomy implies ownership, authorship of the origins of something. As we learn in the
readings and Critical Theory course, the idea of the existence of originality is being called into question
by many artists. An attempt at making an original work is an impossibility, as artist Hans Haacke
argued, because artists working within a certain culture are programmed by that culture and its
inescapable ideology. “There is no non-ideological position!”he says in his 1979 interview with Robert
Morgan. (Artists, Critics, Context, pg.309) So, if there is no getting away from the programming and
indoctrination of one's culture, then there is no originality, no autonomy. If there is no autonomy, then
all creations of art are brought to the same level, in a sense, as being authored by something other than
the artist. This would appear to legitimize to a great extent works of art commissioned by someone
other than the artist, as in the case of portrait painters and illustrators
A by-product of the loss of the possibility of originality has been the legitimizing of
“appropriating” other aritsts' works. Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein,
and Jeff Koons are well known for their appropriation. Other artists have unabashedly reproduced
other artists works in their own with virtually no alterations, as in Sherri Levine's rephotographing the
work of Edward Weston. My personal reaction to appropriation is negative, and when my artwork was
stolen from the internet and used by tatoo artists on at least two occasions, I was left feeling violated.
As far as originality goes in my own work, I have always felt liberated from the very notion of
trying to be original. My real passion in art focusses on the human condition, which for me and many
artists, is an unending source of material and inspiration. Pictures of people involved in the various
aspects of their lives have been the subject of art since the dawn of art itself? Has this stopped artists
from depicting people as such and has the audience for this kind of art disappeared? Of course not.
Some things in existence never change; we do not avoid these things in life, and I see no reason why
we ought to avoid them in Art. There is a peace which comes from not worrying about grasping for
originality. I can not recall if the idea of producing something new or original was really ever a
concern of mine, at least until beginning graduate school. What matters to me, and still does, is that the
artwork be done well, with craft, but more so with skill.
Few people, even postmodernists, would deny that skill is important. What, after all, is the
“genius” that Staniszewski necessarily includes in her definition of Art if not the quality of doing a
thing very, very well, or skillfully? A re-evaluation of the meaning of “skill” and a re-investigation of
specifically which skills are important in the arts of today is underway, however, and has been at least
since the 1960's, especially with the advent of “performance art”.
And what are the new skills expected of the artist of today? Some might say that the most
celebrated or hotly contested artists are those who are able to attract attention to their work and also, on
occasion, engender controversy. Many critics look at this in a positive light, giving the artist the credit
of being able to generate important “dialogue.” I am personally skeptical of this at this point as being a
worthwhile skill because it appears to me to be too easy to do. There can be a vagueness to the art of
today which is also cast in a positive light as inviting the interpretation of the viewer. At present, I feel
that attempts at clarity require more skill than vagueness and merely stimulating dialogue.
How, then, as an artist for whom traditional skills in painting and drawing are of paramount
importance, am I expected to feel when I am confronted with the newer ideas of “de-skilling”and “reskilling”
in art? Ultimately, I feel that too many people are working in the mediums best reserved for
visual artists. In my opinion, their attempts as mediators in this field may be misplaced. In Toward a
New Laocoon, critic Clement Greenburg touches on this idea of the misplaced mediator, using the
different mediums of the arts as his example, explaining that certain art forms, due to their intrinsic
limitations, are plainly unable to emulate the qualities of other art forms. Is it so different when
individuals with no training or little to no ability in the medium of the visual arts attempt to use it as
their medium, as their means for communicating an idea? How many people will understand the
messages behind the intentionally child-like marks of painters like Cy Twombly, or the baffling
performance art of Chris Burd who has himself shot in the arm?
What is it about the word “skill” that would appear to offend so many contemporary artists?
What is it about traditional art-skills which have become so distasteful that whole factions of artists
have virtually made them anathema? One might note that in Staniszewski's definition of Art, the word
“skillful” does not appear. Perhaps this is because “skill” for many represents the old, oppressive
ideologies of the dominant European male. This ideology is distasteful for some because it reserved
roles of power solely for the upper classes and restricted access to culture to men, especially in the art
academies, as Linda Nochlin points out in her article Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?
And, if one understands the history of art of the last one hundred years or so, one will understand that
much of what has been created in the name of art has been a reaction against the the ideology which
controlled the arts for so long..
Even as late as the mid 20th Century, as Carol Duncan points out in her MOMA article, the
avant-garde artists trying to overthrow these conventions were still very much subject to their
mentality, especially in the sexualized depiction of women in their art. These artists, like their cultural
forefathers in thelate 19th century, subscribed to the myth that men are the creators of culture and
women the embodiment of nature. This fallacious myth, as explained in Carol Duncan's essay: “The
MOMA's Hot Mamas,” manifested itself in the artistic idea that representational, naturalistic art, since it
depicts nature as it appears, is ultimately a celebration of the feminine. This idea was completely new
to me and at first I was excited by it. One moment later, however, I came to my senses and saw the
fallacy of it. What could be seen as being more masculine, if we view the term through a 19th Century
lens, than manipulating raw materials in a way which makes them appear to be something other than
what they are? Has this not always been the old idea of masculinity, that it beats nature into
submission, makes the female submissive to the will of the male? If so, then one could not hope for a
better example of a product of masculine culture than realist, illustionistic painting!
Ultimately, however, from a 21st Century perspective, these extreme assignations seem
outdated. Clearly, in our day, we do see women evident in culture-defining roles, especially in the arts,
just as we see men with greater roles in the home, as in my own instance as a stay-at-home father.
Further, looking back half a century, was it not Jackson Pollock himself who said that he IS nature?
We all shape our culture and we are all products of nature. The “Post-Academic” artist, that is, the
artist who believes in skill but does not equate it with oppression, also understands and rejects the
myths of that old ideology.
The cultural confinement imposed on the visual artist by the established institutions of Art
(galleries, museums, and academies) began to be challenged throughout the 19th and twentieth centuries
when artists began to create alternative spaces for the appreciation of their works, challenging the
notion of the accessibility of Art and its control by the establishment. In the 19th century Gustave
Courbet, frustrated by the limits of the official salon, constructed his own pavilion for the viewing of
his paintings, and in the 20th century artists like Robert Smithson literally and figuratively brought their
Art into the world by using the landscape itself as the Artwork. The artist Claes Oldenburg stated: “I'm
for an art which...that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum,” (Artists, Critics, Context,
pg.56) and he and artists like him attempted to raise the ordinary, unglamorous elements of everyday
life to the once restricted level of high art, as in his own monumental clothing pin public sculpture.
Unlike these artists, who see traditional forums for the display of art as prisons, as cultural
confinement, I see galleries, but more so museums, in a very positive light. For me, they act as places
which are important exactly because they are removed from daily life. Entering a museum is like
making a retreat to a sacred, spiritual place. Art, in my opinion, works very well in the role of offering
the opportunity for reflection and contemplation. What better place for it then, than the Museums
which house artwork, like churches; making it clear that once inside them, one is in a unique space.
Further, I feel, bringing art into the so called “real world”, as the mass media does when it ruins the
impact of original artwork with photo-reproduction, deadens the need for art.
With “happenings” and “performance art,” the lines between the idea of art as an object and art
as performance, activity, or process began to blur. Often this activity or process has taken the form of
political or social activism. Hans Haacke is known for just this kind of art-as-activism, and in his work
he has exposed a slumlord trustee of the Guggenheim museum, a German museum's censorship of
artists, and the questionable involvement of the Mobil Corporation in South African politics. Along
these lines, Staniszewski points out, organizations like Group Material, Act-Up, WHAM! and WAC
have all used art exhibits as a means for social activism, addressing issues such as gay rights, women's
rights, and the United States' involvement abroad. The question remains for me, however: are artists as
activists misplaced mediators working in the mediums best reserved for visual artists?
Now, if we carry this idea of art as activism to an extreme, we might have a sense of where
trends might lead us in the future. Imagine a science fiction-like scenario in which bombs shatter daily
events such as social gatherings and survivors crawl from the wreckage muttering these words: “Damn
artists!”
This film-like scenario is a science-fiction-style near-future I once imagined while an
undergraduate student surrounded by other young art students for whom the role of artist very much
meant “activism.” Confronted with this mentality on a daily basis, it was easy to envision the futuristic
scene described above, one in which a paradigm and linguistic shift had occurred. The concepts and
words for “activist”, “revolutionary”, and “rebel” had vanished from western language to be replaced
by one word only: ARTIST.
With the visible breakdown of traditional concepts of art and their replacement with a
broadening context and redefining of art as a tool for changing culture and the world around us, how
large is the leap to a future in which art becomes merely changing culture, regardless of the means?
The question seems less absurd when one considers the popular notion that great art challenges social
institutions and conventional thinking, and that popular culture, which is considered by many to be the
new “high art,” is rife with calls for “revolution.” Claes Oldenburg called for an art which is “violent”
in his 1961 manifesto “I am For an Art...” Even artist groups like Guerrilla Girls sport war-themed selfappellations.
So, in my future, the avant-garde artists have abandoned traditional mediums of selfexpression
and cut to the chase. Their medium of choice for changing the culture becomes direct
physical activity, often manifesting itself as mere terrorism.
Now, in such a future, what would my role as a traditional artist be? Still present in my
futuristic scenario, what words or concepts would remain to describe such artists like me who painted,
drew, and made pictures, after clearly no longer fitting the new definition of the word “artist”?
Monikers probably something like: “picture painter”, “image maker”, “illustrator,” or even “easel
painter.”Some of these titles are already very much applied to my kind of artist, often in a disparaging
way, illustrating the notion that even today we are seen by some as backward looking, non-progressive,
and irrelevant. So, in my imaginary future, it becomes simple to see how very different I am from the
“real” artists who have been “re-skilled” to change culture with a different tool-kit. It is interesting to
observe this phenomenon, already at work in the art realm of today.
In the last paragraph of BELIEVING IS SEEING, Staniszewski writes:
If we accept the fact that everything is shaped by culture, we then acknowledge
that we create our reality. We therefore contribute to it and can change it. This is an
empowering way of living and of seeing ourselves and the world. (pg. 298)
The conviction among many that “painting is dead” is not at all new. However much some may
wish that painting were dead, it is clear that painters still paint for an appreciative audience. Whether
the appreciation is what sustains traditional artists or the artists sustain the appreciation is unimportant.
The importance lies in the relevance of the obvious survival of both artists like me and our audience.
True to Staniszewski's own language: we have been shaped by culture and we continue to shape
culture. As a traditional artist, I am creating my reality and changing my reality, and I empowered by
this. I am, therefore, relevant.
Reference and Readings:
Believing is Seeing, Mary Anne Staniszewski,(Penguin) 1995
Artists, Critics, Context, Readings in and Around American Art Since 1945, Paul Fabozzi, (Prentice
Hall)2002
Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? Linda Nochlin, from the book Art and Sexual
Politics, 1971
The MOMA's Hot Mamas, Carol Duncan, from Art Journal 48, 1989
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