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IMAGES | REVIEWS | WRITINGS | RÉSUMÉ | CONTACT |
WRITINGS
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1. Does the means justify the ends in the making of art? Does a sound theory alone make the object demonstrative? Is the artist a mute data provider and the viewer solely responsible for the revelation? Holding that art is capable of far more than satisfying the urge for decorum and coerced poetics, then perhaps the answer to the questions above are no. Among the varying types of artists, one of these is the scavenging reconstructionist. Sweeping through nature, they set out into the world and see what they can find. Their’s is an eye for the lost, the disregarded, and the hidden strength of misfits. Salvaging the bereft, along with the metaphors they congeal, artists such as these make compositions from our decomposition. Not only the tragic is brought to light but the possibility within the tragedy as well. Enterprising seagulls wash away the tears from material remains as surely as identifying the refuse washed up upon the shore. Embracing the wasted, a way is paved for renewal. Yet, within the realm of these broad winged vultures the possibility for risk, failure, and victory are equal to all other creative endeavors. Artists do not succeed simply because victory is proclaimed. Proclamation isn’t enough. Mere prettified materiality isn’t either. Something more is required. There are two types of cleaning. One is immersed in the life of renewal and refinement. The other is in the business of disinfecting to the point of asphyxiation. Now, here, everything depends upon what is agreed to be the definition of victory. It might be safely said that “victory” depends upon the circumstance. Keeping to the circumstance of art and encompassing a wide scope of interpretation, one would hope that victory has to do with the emancipation of perception. That is, art’s ability to hone our intuitive capabilities while revealing the reasoning power of emotion, which is similar if not the same as furthering the growth of spiritual sense. To nurture spiritual sense is beneficial if, as a result, we can learn better how to differentiate between the subjective and objective and synthesize their consequent polarities. If this definition of victory is acceptable then it would follow that, in art, humanity fails to reach the noblest range when the sense of the spiritual is smothered. How does one determine when art is renewing as opposed to smothering? Through feeling, but not just any feeling. Not, for example, by succumbing to a retardant emotionalism, but, instead by awakening to the harmonics of wisdom. Art of authenticity reveals the surprise of intuitive unfoldment. How to see becomes what we think. And what wasn’t seen is found to be merely what wasn’t understood. Thus, the feeling of surprise to discover what was there all along. And the further blessing of ensuing depth that readies the recipient to receive more. This, of course, must be practiced throughout time and experience like a good marriage. But, in the beginning, we have only the first moments upon which to rely. So the only recourse is to start where we are and let the future experiential determine the effectiveness of our conclusions today. 2. About eighty percent of the writing on the work of Ingrid Calame is spent on her procedural activities. The writers use words like scheme, strategy, and data to explain what they see. Actually, Calame refers to her project as a partial “documenting” of the greater field. She maps the “surface” of the world by tracing the remnants of splashes found on sidewalks and streets. A big too-do is made about the transposing of stains found in the streets of the financial district upon the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. As if the documenting itself is something to be admired. The resulting “traces” are then gathered and arranged upon panels or walls. And since the tracings are “painstakingly” copied there is much applause given for such puritanical task-making. Such is the stuff of “art”. It’s a secular social event of artist, assistants, and site-specific public interaction. So much for Van Gogh making a tree look alive. And what a rosy picture it all makes to see the authorless tracings of splashed coffee and spit. How the shapes tell the story of the “surface” of things. What? You mean to say you didn’t know these tracings were taken from urban settings and transposed upon the floor of the Stock Exchange? Oh, well, you had to read the press release. What? The paintings feel vapid? Well, that doesn’t matter because it’s the concept that counts. You think the concept is rather literal and dictatorial? No, no, you as the viewer are free to bring in your own references. The idea doesn’t have to be demonstrated in the work since everything is conceptual anyway. What’s bothering you? You think the theoretical information is a distraction from the poverty of the painting (albeit with an occasional flare for color)? You think the talk about the artist’s procedure is nothing but an easy way for curators to condescend to what they think is a stupid public? That all the conceptualizing is a means to justify a reason for abstraction that is seen to be too ethereal to reach the “little people”? That the paintings are primarily lame signifiers of community awareness for the walls of the wealthy to ease the underlying suspicion that art is nothing but a farcical construct for their own amusement like Imelda Marcos’ shoes? Wow, lighten up. You’re so intense. What? You say, if you’re so fucking intense then that means that I’m so fucking shallow? Geez, what’s wrong with being shallow if it sells a painting? Well, okay, a copy of a tracing of a stain. But, still, it WAS a stain from the streets of the financial district confined by the architecture of the floor of the Stock Exchange! Isn’t that ironic? 3. It’s essential to remain serious when it comes to art, even in whimsy and humor, because avoiding profundity puts us to sleep, because we are better than that, because others before us have not stooped to such levels, because we have the privilege to follow their example. 4. She briefly noticed the dark spots on the pavement as she stepped up to the doorway. Waving goodbye to her ride, she took out the key from her coat pocket before being aware of the broken glass in the door’s window. She saw her dad inside walking toward her from the kitchen into the living room. He had that dazed look. The look she would understand years later as an indication of being high. He was holding a white dishcloth around his fist. It dripped with the kind of red that comes before turning brown. She couldn’t remember if he let her in or if she opened the door. He kept pacing around and dripping. His tall frame seemed especially protracted to her four eleven and a half. His muscles quivered with excitement like a Thoroughbred before a race. She made an excuse about having to go to the neighbor’s house next door. Later, after homework, she was assigned to scrub away the dark spots from the gold carpeting. At first, the stains would smear which only made matters worse and caused a welling of anxiety from her chest to her throat. But, after awhile the stain would relent as long as cold water was used and not hot. Eventually the task was done and only the occasional yellows of their poodle’s pee remained. Poodle’s pee never goes away. It’s a strange thing to come home after piano lessons when you’re twelve. In the dusk, it’s too dark to tell that the spots on the pavement are blood. It’s too late to call back your ride because they’ve already gone and now you have to be tall when you’re not. There are many sorts of stains in this world - coffee stains, spatters of blood, splotches of oil, seepages of pee, but the ones that have the greatest effect are the ones that ooze and squeeze the heart. No tracings can be made of these. No amount of theorizing can make them just data. 5. Joseph Cornell was a scavenging sort. He could take a piece of nothing and make it something. This is because he saw substance where others see things of naught. He took these evidences of existence without leveling their individuality for the sake of easy acceptance. Far from describing the notion of the surface of the world, his was a social endeavor to “…look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things.”* Sure, he was a reader of philosophies and religion but they were not theoretical diversions upon which to justify an insipid engagement with art. They were sources of inspiration in the way he lived his life and the way he made his sculpture. What he made was an offering, a generous gift of self-reflective experience upon which others might build. His was not a stingy tracing of a nameless splatter on the topmost crust of the exterior world. His was an acknowledgement of the individual scar in the very basement of the heart. In this way, his achievement points to all the stains that ever were, from the infinitesimal to infinity, with the additional savor of hope.
Jennifer Reeves – NYArts Magazine Jan/Feb 2004
Sources: “ A View Finder,” by John Wagner, from catalog, Ingrid Calame: Secular Response 2 A.M., May-August 2003, MOCA. “ Wall Works,” by Dean Sobel, director/chief curator, Aspen Art Museum, 2001. “ Once Removed From What?” by David Pagel, in Dana Friis-Hansen, Abstract Painting Once Removed, Houston: Contemporary Arts Musuem, 1998, p. 23-27. *Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 129. WWW.JAMESCOHAN.COM |
