"The sadness will last forever."
Van Goghs proported final words to Theo
This shall be my first Halloween for some time that I am not exhibiting anywhere.
Enough ghosts and demons currently in the studio at any rate.
There's the ghost of Vincent for instance, pinned to my wall, glaring accusingly with one withering eye. The other one-his left one-is looking resigned, filled with marine-flecked melancholy and suffering. That particular eye haunts my own work right now, imposing itself into each canvas like the plucked orb of Horus.
Did Vincent truly suffer I wonder?
The romantique parable is of his self imposed exile in Arles amongst spud headed peasants, harboring Daddy issues and a gradual realization of the gargantuan shadow cast by Rembrandt, whilst his search to capture light in liquescence and Oriental line became the vainglorious quest of a failed alchemist. All on his brothers dime I might add, until he ravaged sibling good will and stipend on Absinthe, harlots and Japanese art prints.
Not the suffering of brokeback tilling of fields from dusk till dawn with the peasants he gilded, or even the nine to five for poor old Vince, just the artifice of the syphilitic Libertine in a garret, the actor slumming it for the Academy.
Vincent the artist messiah, the flameheaded madman suffering needlessly, and dying penuriously wretched to save the future of contemporary Art. Vincent a standard bearer for greatness equated with drug addled, ritualized self sacrifice. Vincent the veritable Lou Reed of Modern Art. Vincent and the second shooter, because a death doesn't truly become a myth without a hefty (over)dose of conspiracy.
Mischievous brats with bad aim or not,there go Rothko,Pollock and his ilk making martyrs of us all.Or at least suffering taken to its histrionic, ignoble endpoint with Granto's trite Eye-jaculations;
The residual misery stain's the 20th century and beyond, thicker than impasto, making soothsayers of passive observers hoping to unravel an element of raw human truth amongst the chaos of stumbled ill rendering, whilst faded print's of sunflower's hang innocuously from a million vestibule wall's.
Fuck you Vincent.
Often beyond the confines of my studio, accompanying the sounds of my own cursing, the voices in my head and whatever happens to be on my playlist, can be heard the diligent chug, chug, whir of my wife sewing.
For let it be known, and make no mistake about it, that Lani is the true accomplished artist in this household.
For years, I've watched in awe, as she manicures the most delicate cloth with silken thread and animate it into being, and often at shows, the last thirteen Halloweens, daily living-I have been the beneficiary of her remarkable gift to give fabric character, as have countless others. Costumes, contemporary clothing, a dizzying gamut of ingenious adornments, no longer shall she be silent all these years, because her talents now have an online presence:Skyflower creations.
Follow the thread- thread and her luxurious needlework by subscribing to her blog.
SKYFLOWER CREATIONS BLOG
Inspired and at the behest of a recent facebook post by my talented daughter-Emma-above is a stack of current obsessions feeding the artistic alchemy.
By virtue of abundance, it's not quite as diverse or impressive as Bowie's top 100 list of books, which appeared this week and which I was happy to note does include one of the tomes on my own current pile.
Depending on the canvas consuming me at the time, the list is generally interchangeable of course, and most of the books are digested purely for invocation, but as latitude and longitute into the geography of the new series, it's a pretty good GPS.
The list from top left is as follows:
Salvador Dali-50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship
Valazquez, the technique of genius by Jonathan Brown and Carmen Garrido
The Encyclopedia of Mythology by Arthur Cotterell
The PreRaphaelites by Trewin Copplestone
The Divine Comedy with Illustrations by Gustav Dore (translation by Henry W. Longfellow)
The complete works of Shakespeare
Images of Horror and Fantasy by Gert Schiff
Creepy presents Richard Corben-the definitive collection of the artist's work from Creepy and Eerie!
On Ugliness by Umberto Eco
Art of the Late Middle Ages by Hans H. Hofstatter
Van Gogh a self-portrait. Letters revealing his life as a painter selected by W.H.Auden
The Devil-the Archfiend in Art from the sixth to the sixteenth century by Luther Link
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri
The Secret Temple-Masons, Mysteries and the founding of America by Peter Levenda
Portrait of the Artist as ab young man and the Dubliners by James Joyce
Like you've never been away by Paul Trevor
Contributing to a little group exhibit later this week-recycling several works from the Man/son thing last year to a showcase at Molotov gallery-here in San Diego. It'll be my first appearance (proper) in my adopted hometown for some time, though as is customary, expect bugger all in the way of fanfare from the usual S.D periodicals.
Still, since it's my only scheduled show until the unveiling of the new series a year from now, it gives those local folk that were sorry not to make it up to the Hyaena last October, a fighting chance to see the leftovers.
That's the new piece propped on my easel, and it strikes me that sometimes, the work I do- for all its predisposition-eerily resounds the now.
That sucking sound you hear is the canvas so dense with dark matter, it's like a black hole reflected in an ebon mirror.
It's the parable of Dante: a veritable
inferno beyond the soaring temperatures and the demons of my studio, beyond the faux outrage over a Disney Monarch shaking her skinny arse on national
tv, and a fallen crop of bloodless children littering the streets to the strains of a news anchors soundbyte. There's another ensuing war brewing like a witches cauldron in the middle east, a reactor in the orient spewing radiation like acid in a well, hubble-bubble, toil and trouble casting the shadow of an apocalyptic endpoint that both feeds the nihilists black imaginings and dismembers the optimists servant. To be an artist sometimes means being possessed with the rage of the aggrieved and the despondency of the paralyzed.
In other word's it's enough fuel to stoke the fire and extinguish it, if only because as little air that moves through the studio right now, there is no living in a vacuum at such times.
Perhaps it's jumping the gun, but in my haste I wanted to share this remarkable poster design by Kevin Stone, for the forthcoming documentary release of Serial Killer Culture. Chosen following a competition for the best submission that will accompany the cover of the DVD release, It has a gorgeous retro feel which-although incongruous-when one considers the meat of the matter, perfectly encapsulates the tenet of Borowski's purpose.
Having long dabbled in the arena of design for the occasional tossed bone, it's a welcome and refreshingly intelligent, reminiscence of era's past.
"Nothing is true, and everything is permitted"
William Burroughs
I've been thinking about William Utermohlen a lot lately, and contemporary art and my 'place' in it. I do that periodically, and Poor Williams story is none better than a yardstick to beat one's self with. William-for the uninitiated- was an artist who continued to catalog himself throughout his twelve year descent into the hellish grip of Alzheimer's.
All the works above are by William-first to last , a period between 1967 and 2000. Hard to believe isn't it? You can see all the progressions (or regressions) in
between. The last one looks like the scrawls of child, or even Modern
Art. What does that say about Contemporary Art then? That it is a self
conscious affectation at portraying an unraveled mind? That it is the
self imposed attempt at naivety? That it is the deliberate nihilism of
virtuosity? All those questions share something in common. They are all
predisposed intentions-a luxury poor William didn't have. Instead, he
could only watch the years of bravura technique he had developed trickle
away to the abstract resonance of dying brain matter, to formless,
hollow shapes barely comprising substance or meaning.
The
uninitiated for Post Modernist sake, might want to wank on and argue
that the later renderings display more of a kind of tortured tumultuous
vitality than the first portrait. Not poor William though. He would know
such posturing was a lie, Sadly,William can no longer argue at all.
I
ask again then, what does that tell us about Contemporary art? About
the people who paint it? About the people who buy it? About the curators
who peddle it? You see, I believe there's a perpetual lie being told in "Modern
art" and it goes deeper than the con of the contemporary, and the sin of
the cynical dollar value. It is one that forgoes suffusion for suffering.
The telling for technique. What it doesn't do, and what it doesn't want
you to do, is look deeper, to think beyond the designer paint spattered
facade and your home furnishings.It doesn't want you to be propelled by
the rich magic in allegory, to become attuned to the symbolism of rite,
because the historical power encoded in classicism,the veiled
aspiration of heightened reality has been designated to become a relic
collecting dust and trustees in museums and stately mansions. It is the artifact of privilege, the heritage of elite lineage.
Why did this happen? Could it be that there is something else going on beyond the hustle of the Emporer's new clothes?
If
you will indulge me for a moment longer... there's a scene in
Polanski's movie the 9th Gate (based on the novel The Club Dumas) , in which Johnny Depp comes into possession of a grimoire (said to
be written by old Nick himself) which contains illustrations imbued
with powerful totems,capable of manifesting Satan (the light bringer) on
earth.
It's a poor movie, made by a Director in recess, jaded by
his own dark dabbling's no less, but my point is this-there is power in
Ancient symbols. In well constructed, beautifully rendered, analogous
images. One need only seek out the work of Bosch, Raphael, Carravagio,
Goya or Blake to see the alchemy of inherent hermetic symbols expressed.
Where
is any of that in Modern Art? If Modern life is a construct of our
times, then so is the culture that informs it. But who exactly informs
it? Who evaluates its worth? Is it the collectors? The so called 1% with
warehouses of Hirst's and Warhol's? Is it the media, bought and sold by
corporate advertising? Who are the arbiters of taste? You or I? What
cereal do you buy and where did you hear about it?
Do you see where I am going with this? As my old friend John Liddy used to intone through white knuckles;
"Whats the fucking point damn it!?"
You see, I believe the depiction of anything beyond surface has become a problem, or at least diminished to the fuck you moniker of low
brow or a Billy Childish ism. The other side is that the value of Art is now designated by the sterotypical notion that there are idiot savants in the gutter, comprising wizened kids under the delusion that scrawling on a wall is anti-establishment, when the irony of course is that their heroes are as entrenched in establishment as it gets and laughing all the way to the Banksy.
For that matter, isn't it also the case that if graffiti is the provenance of the street, with that democratization comes the terrible equation that skill no longer has any cachet, art no longer any value? Whose laughing then?
Bottom
line, you are being lied to: Duchamp was a chump. Pollock was bollocks.
Rothko was bought by Rothschild. Your pristine hotel boardroom, Ikea
Scandinavian model, with it's matching curtains and "edgy" Rothko
reproduction is a crass lie and you are lying to yourselves and your
notion of high art intelligence if you buy into it, because minimalism
is as minimalism does-an empty shell in a vacant lot, with nothing
beyond the incoherent blurt echoing the self proclaimed white box. It
asks you to be a reflection of the same blank drivel, to look for
relevance in the nothing and be content in its hollow. It has no cachet,
no reference, no aspiration. It is the masturbatory scrawl of
diminished intelligence with grand pretension. It is keeping you 'down' and it is the death and dearth of the magic and alchemical rite of artistry.
An insult in fact to the life's work of artists like William Utermohlen.
Mischievous brats with bad aim or not,there go Rothko,Pollock and his ilk making martyrs of us all.Or at least suffering taken to its histrionic, ignoble endpoint with Granto's trite Eye-jaculations;
