Residency III Summary
Cameron Bennett
7-12-2010
1. Suggestions made during critiques
A. Faculty
My first critique was probably the rockiest of the residency, I think, because I was not practiced in discussing the work. Jan Avgikos lead the critique and had a largely negative reaction to the work. She expressed a concern that I was attempting to make art about philosophy I do not understand. She had a negative reaction to my portrait of Sherrie Levine, feeling, I think, that it was sexist. Of the list of themes I had been exploring, she singled out representation, saying that it is not a theme, it is a style. She also challenged me regarding the possibility that an artist can self-appropriate. I attempted to defend the validity of both of these ideas, and in the case of self-appropriation, cited Richter as an artist who had appropriated his own earlier works for a different purpose later on.
It was my previous advisor, Sunanda Sanyal, who introduced me to the idea of self-appropriation, and the obvious rift between his suggestion that I use it and Jan’s invalidation of it was an unpleasant surprise, and my first real experience with the lack of continuity in the thinking of the faculty. At least, this is how it seemed to me at the time.
Jan also felt I had over-used the sign motifs.
Her strongest reaction to the work came from where she saw the “deficit of human engagement” in the feature-less portrait-paintings, and suggested that that was the real theme of the work. She recommended I look at artist Takashi Murakami.
In my follow-up critique with semester II advisor Sunanda Sanyal we discussed how to not carry theory into the studio, and that a certain kind of “let-go” is necessary for me. He also felt the signposts were too literal, but encouraged me to continue with the idea of signage, saying he thought it was my best bet. He felt the Levine piece was leading somewhere. He also warned that I needed to arrive at a workable thesis soon.
My third critique was with Judith Barry and Laurel Sparks. I explained that I had been having trouble balancing theory and studio practice, and Judith eased my mind by stating that they need not be equal.
In my first critique with my new advisor, Hannah Barrett, we discussed the overuse of the sign motif, that there were too many elements in some of the paintings. Based on a prior discussion in which I shared my conviction that painters should, ideally, rely on their own powers of perception and memory and not on photography to make images, Hannah recommended I attempt to do a series of paintings entirely from life. My concern was that I would not have sufficient time to complete them in one semester.
I wanted a critique with Michael Newman because his Critical Theory Course had left an impression, particularly regarding the semiotics of art, and I wanted a philosophical opinion about the work. His favorite piece was the museum placard “Explanation of an Explanation,” which had gotten no attention during any of the other critiques. He did not care for anything else, though he thought the Levine piece was quite funny. He shared his opinion that I am a conceptual artist, not a painter. He felt that the “art about art” angle of my work was limiting, which I was relieved to hear, and said that a conceptual approach can extend beyond the artworld context. He encouraged me to look at Crimp’s “Pictures”, DeMan’s “Allegories of Reading”, Pierre Bismouth, and Richard Phillips.
Tony Apesos began a critique with me by telling me I talk too much. The painting with the incongruous hand on the head was not seen as humourous by Tony, but seemed to be about a paternal relationship between father and son. He criticized my paintng YIELD as being unpleasant to try to decode. Yes, he said, perhaps several interpretations were available of it, but he felt that it excluded the viewer from the experience of enjoying the painting. He felt that the posts needed to be removed from the pieces. The SCREAMERS piece seemed to him the most successful because it involved the human condition more than YIELD or the twisted photocopy heads, and that, overall, it was simpler, easier to identify with. He thought the Levine piece was funny, but not deep enough. He did not feel that my drawings were more compelling than my paintings, and he thought the limited palette was more successful than the previous semester’s work.
B. Graduating Students
LaDawna Whiteside recommended doing just a few paintings well as opposed to a greater number of dubious quality, citing previous student Stacey Cushner as someone who painted slowly but with quality.
Eliza Burke Greene recommended continuing doing side exercises in abstraction while focusing mainly on “my zone.” She also encouraged me to dispense with the signposts, and she claimed to like “Explantaion of an Explanation.”
Betsy Duzan and I talked about color and the apparent pressure on realistic painters to use less of it. She recommended the book “Chromophobia” by David Batchellor. We also spoke of the relation between image and text and she mentioned I try to find the YouTube video in which Keith Haring references James Elkins. She also recommended the book “Themes in Contemporary Art, Visual Art After 1980” by Jean Robertson.
2. Critical Theory course with Sunanda Sanyal
I enjoyed Sunanda’s course. The most relevant point for me taken from his discussions is the idea of the myth of the unmediated image. The works which I brought to this residency, however, were representative of an attempt to make highly mediated images.
3. “Sourcing and Resourcing” panel discussion with Michael Newman
and Oliver Wasow
Because this panel discussion dealt with appropriation and the concepts of originality and authorship, and Sherrie Levine was referenced by Michael, I felt that my inclusion of a portrait of Sherrie Levine with this residency’s work which addressed these very issues was fortuitous at the least. This connection, though, was never mentioned or questioned during any critique.
4. Conclusion
Criticism of my work this residency was basically directed at the over-use of traffic-sign motifs, and an apparent lack of coherency. This criticism is valid in one sense; I allowed myself to explore a number of issues which were of interest to me during the semester, and naturally, brought in a variety of experiments. I had wanted to experiment with readymades and assemblage, hence the attachment of the signposts to the paintings; I also wanted to attempt painting on less obvious supports, and felt that sign shapes were an interesting compositional break from the conventional picture square.
These experiments were all based, however, on one or two related concepts: one was the readability of art and its reliance on text. Conceptually, the idea of representation and the readability of the representative sign, mark, emblem or picture is still of interest to me, but I was told this is too broad for a thesis. The Greenbergian idea of necessary self-referentiality, or painting about painting was another. I found, however that there was little receptiveness to this latter idea among the faculty, and even less among students, probably because few of them have read Greenberg. This was for me liberating, but also a disappointment in the sense that perhaps I had been worrying about an obsolete opinion.
At this point I am still intrigued by the Iconic Turn and want to research it more, even though I found no one in the program who was as yet familiar with it.
Strangely, because my highly-mediated work was met with little positive criticism this residency, I feel I have been encouraged to return to something less mediated, or at least to make the mediation less evident. In other words, the general feeling among my critics was that my work was too involved, too complicated, too theoretical. I find this confusing. I would have expected that in a graduate program, creating more sophisticated works guided by theory would be the goal. How can I be expected to write a thesis if I am expected to not approach my art with a theoretical concept? Is it just a question of the degree to which one introduces theory? Answering and addressing these questions will be a challenge in the following two semesters.
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