More from CAA

Last Friday's programs at the CAA Conference included a panel discussion of current practices in painting, a presentation of global opportunities for artists who want to work outside the US (and for artists from away looking to come here to work), and finally, an interview with Mel Chin.

There's a unresolved conflict between the modernist notion that paintings are objects, and post-modern practice which posits that paintings are events that take place over time, and that the resulting image is simply the residue of those events. When I'm working, I like knowing that the essence of change is always implicated in the painting, and that paintings come out of doubt rather than out of historical certainty. The unresolved conflict bit comes in when, in spite of the painter's doubts and uncertainties, the paintings themselves are inevitably resolved not only as objects, but often even as uncomplicated objects of beauty.

One of the presenters - my notes don't record which one - spoke of the computer as offering a new complexity for painters, a new way toward the sublime. I like that idea too - that the sublime as located by the Hudson River Painters for instance, and as run to ground by the Abstract Expressionists, will now have a 21st century residence.

And then, Mel Chin. Since the early 90's and Revival Field, I have been in awe of his decision to move away from making discrete objects and toward implicating all of us, whether we are aware of it or not, in taking responsibility for the things that are wrong with society. In awe too of his ability to put ideas into practice. Using imagination and humor rather than ham-fisted accusations achieves much. Have a look at his Fundred project for cleaning up the lead pollution in New Orleans. Make your own Fundred Dollar Bill and send it in. I have my template ready to color in.

Image: Geologics, oil on canvas, detail, has absolutely nothing to do with Mel Chin, but very much to do with paintings as objective accretions of process, and a whole lot more to do with Google limiting today's image choices to its surreptitious storage on Picasa of my own work.

Some Answers, Some Questions

In Maine, where I spend most of the year, painting is still the gold standard. In New York, the ARTSEEN editors at The Brooklyn Rail write that followers of post-modern theory have created "a ghetto into which painting, drawing and sculpture, along with certain kinds of film and photography have been driven, the door locked and the key thrown away." Personally, I like a balance between content and form, and in thinking about why both are important, have come up with some answers:

Art is an object. Art has no physical form.
Art is presented in special places. Art is everywhere we look.
Art is made by talented people. Art is made by everyone.
Art exists in a vacuum. Art exists in the interaction between the object and the viewer.
Art is the interaction between participants.
There is no message without a sender.
There is no message without a receiver.
Art is always static. Art is always moving.

And then some questions:

Where does art start and where does it stop? What is the vantage point from which art can be seen, practiced and acted on? When is an artist not an artist? Questions of permanence/ephemerality and of commercial value are secondary to the consideration that art is a noun for which there is no verb. The verb is "to make." If I jump on a pedestal and proclaim myself an artist - that's art. If I put a pile of sofas in the middle of Second Avenue and sit there - yes, I am an artist. What makes the sardine packer different from the canner of s***? The difference lies in the ability of the artist (in this case Manzoni) to take a concept, that of putting something edible into a can, and twist the concept for his own purposes, whatever those may be. The art lies in the transfiguration of action into idea into objectification, the creation of the moebius strip that unifies the three.

A Welliver Sky

Scrolling through my collection of notes for blogs-in-waiting, I’ve turned up this quote from Peter Schjeldahl in the June 9 New Yorker: “Painting is a medium of concerted imagination, symbolizing consciousness. It’s not a flat dump for miscellaneous ideas.” This is an accurate assessment, and it strikes a chord with everyone who loves painting. Independent Curator Suzette McAvoy incorporated it into her lecture last week at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. She was talking about the simple act of seeing, as it relates to Lois Dodd’s paintings (whose exhibition remains on view through July 19).

Making a painting remains the solitary pursuit we've always thought it to be, and it is a complicated one, too. Cognitive theories are not much help to the painter confronted with a subject, a blank canvas, and a palette full of paint. If there is no subject, as is the case for pure abstraction, the complications multiply. So how is it that the viewing of a painting is a simple act, and one to which we must bring an open mind empty of theories?

Painting appeals to the senses. It’s visual, it evokes both sound and smell, it’s tactile (too bad that in galleries and museums we are not allowed to touch). I have a friend who once licked a Van Gogh – giving him perhaps an enhanced understanding of the painter’s struggle. Our sixth sense, intuition, or instinct, tells us whether we like the painting or don’t, but it also does much more. It brings up a host of visceral associations, and it is to this conciousness that we should listen first.

What a painting means in formal terms or in light of its subject matter and narrative, are layers to be discovered as one’s sophistication increases. But the simple act of seeing opens the door, makes the connection between the lived world and the depicted one, so that walking outdoors one fine day, with sudden insight we may see a Welliver sky or, driving through the city, come upon a Hopper row of buildings. It’s our imagination plus the artist’s skill that makes these moments happen.