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.