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