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.