This is the glass bowl of glossy stuck-together hard candy that my grandma had on her living room lightstand for my entire youth. I would always want to eat one but could never break just one off without having to grip the entire mass in my grubby fingers. And somehow I'd still end up having to suck on a clump of three or four at a time.
I would leave the circles (most anyway), and instead adjust those italicized orthodox roods - either slightly fewer, or more regularly placed, or smaller, or something.
i feel like this guy's a good painter and a bad draw-er. i love the super gutsy out there way he paints, but I dont like the "looks like children's drawings" way of drawing.
painter, i dont mean this to move away from brendan who just came on now but may i suggest before feb 25 a posting of carla accardi. there's a show up now at sperone so some of us would go see. could be fun to talk about. is she even still alive? amazing paintings esp in relation to the ps1 show up now.
I would agree, very generic and the Hodgkin reference is apt, Hey Mayberry, but I don't find his work as generous as you do. Not earnest but very arrogant, always placing himself in historical contexts, curating himself into shows of old masters and post-impressionists. Talk about gimmick, his painting over the frame seems like the most self-conscious gimmick I could imagine. As for these, they just seem like they are attempting to fit into the tiny space between one artist or another - expressionism seems to be more in fashion these days and superimposing little marks for a cartoony-existential scale change seems overdone and all too common.
That said, they are not unenjoyable paintings. Just not so special.
Hey May, i can see why you say kilimnik, owens or eastman but i think Cass would really want something more tragic, more REALLY hodgkins, no irony.. but he cant do it, he stops short and stays at a pose. that's why i dont like the "child" style drawing. too easy and cuts it at smugness. but there's something i like at the heart of it. if he WAS more like hodgkin(s?) than kilimnik etc, i'd love it. I imagine him painting these in wraparound glasses, looking like bono.
I want to hear more about what constitutes trendy. There are so many different varieties of trendy. Is it the brushwork, the palette, the cartoony bits?
It's all of it combined perhaps. Don't really know if i can put my finger on it, just know it when I see it. every grad program has a painter doing work like this. It's messy and loose but also formilist and vapid and unimaginative. Safe.
i've checked out his stuff on canada's site before, and always felt there was a silliness about them. not just humor, or fun, but crossing the line into a smug sarcasm - about painting, about imagery, about picture-making. he seems to be thumbing his nose at painting. but then again, i have never seen an entire show of his work; just a few paintings in group shows here and there. maybe they're better in person?
I think fawnpussyass is just plain wrong. Neither this painting nor the ones on the canadanewyork.com site (thanks ringo to russia) look "unimaginative" or "formalist;" and I'm not sure s/he can make a convincing case for "generic" or "grad school" or "vapid," either.
Haven't seen in person, want to. Can't tell just can't tell...the generic seems possible, looming, but I am enjoying the playfulness with smearing. Hot colors. I want to be able to the silliness more. It's kind of a blur to me, a blur of playing with ideas about painting, I agree with that WW. Undercutting seriousness of the gesture with little cutesy bits. More research is necessary. In this case I am curious about the artists' intention. Maybe there is a statement on the website somewhere.
gosh, not sure here either. must see in person. my gut reaction is that while i like the painterliness, the colors, the smears, the childlike-ness of the drawing and imagery turns me off. it doesn't really get me revved up to see it. seems like something i already know... but i know that's not fair. just gut reaction. i question their ambition of something.
Looking out my window I apply my own local color and wow, yeah, "things to come" more than "what dreams may come." But both painterly if you get my drift.
"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause..."
I am most interested in intuitive mark-making, and editing later. Also I am interested in organic forms; they feel loaded with pure creative possibilities to me. Natural power, being so profound, is most exciting to me. People seem to go ga-ga over space shuttles and the stock market, while I am still thinking our universe is expanding and the fact that we are hurling through space. The later is just more fascinating and is a metaphor for my work, to realize profound interest already exists.
Yes. Yes I do. It smells like the foul odor of no sense. I love natural powers too, but this writing does nothing to win me over. I suppose though we can all be quoted out of context to prove our idiocy. Art statements are hard to write. But this one explains little for me. The universe is expanding is not something I am thinking of when I look at this painting. I would like very much to think about that. He needs to try again?
another good quote from cass from the site ww noted:
"I think of light as a life-giving emanation from an immense sphere of fire in the middle of our solar system. My impulse is to paint with immeasurable vibrancy."
I saw this Malcolm Morley show yesterday. Lots of garish passages, esp. in the late 80's paintings. His work is obviously so different but I have to say I kind of fell for the garish over the top quality to the paint - sprays, gestures, messy lines. But there was something epic behind it that this work lacks. Sometimes the epic bordered on macho cock-rocking but sometimes it was pitch perfect - like in his paintings of ships breaking apart in the ocean. I'm just saying. There needs to be something more legibly epic in the work, maybe, if the thought process behind it is about the sun, the universe expanding, the later and the fascination. Maybe he can do it, this Brendan.
Professor Mouth, I feel like I am too a sucker for the Fauvist palette - garish and harsh. Hmmm. I forgot about the Fauves for a few years. Thanks for the prompt to re-look at.
I agree with Mountain Man. If Cass is so very interested in the science of, or the mind=blown psychic contemplation of, the universe, then get at that in the work and not just draw the mundane components of a traditional landscape. I like the acidic color, though.
this is a piece of shit painting. i won't spend six paragraphs explaining why like hey maybeberry i think painter should go ahead and repost some of the original painters she started out with. is this because i'm one of them?
he didnt graduate, he left in a huff! but i get your point Prof mouth. you arent necessarily all that your website implies. sorry: i assumed you went there. and i dont find you snarky either, but i'm a different anon.
"I like the black stroke right in the middle and the fact that the painting is essentially just two striated layers of fat strokes leaning on each other."
I was getting this fat candy cane chain effect out of it.
"But then he tap-dances around with all the goofy little trees and adolescent fantasy bullshit that seems so prevalent."
Still, I kinda like the look-I-found-a-new-galaxy, I'm-gonna-call-it-oompaloompa-VII, thing.
seems like this painting stopped short of something. maybe cass is too quick to accept them and not edit out the fluff, something i'm guilty of too. then you have someone like morley, who manages to make the fluff into something, makes a grand case for it. for me, that's the epic quality MM spoke of.
Fluff and candy can be epic, I am sure of it...this is a problem requiring an ambitious solution. Dare I say, radical. There must be a meandering trail from fluffy to radical.
anonymous, you are technically correct, of course. Descriptions of the work are simply...well, descriptive.
I looked at the thing, assessed it, considered it good, then sought a description that illustrated in words what was good about it. In that order and not the other way round.
But I can see how you'd be confused: it looking like candy, and also being good.
I didn't mean he didn't interpret, just that his bent is from a very formal point of view when looking at painting. Honestly, I didn't mean it in a bad way, it's too bad it's another one of those nasty words that comes across wrong. Not inherently good or bad, but misinterpreted as a judgment, often. Sorry.
i have gone back to re-read some of ahab's recent comments to figure out if i think ahab is a formalist, old-school style. i have decided that ahab is not a formalist exactly, but does have that old school style. i picture you, ahab, as a man w/ a teaching position. you hold your hand out at arm's length in front of parts of the paintings you are critting, squinting your eye to see what parts of the paintings are"working." Dear bloggers, this fantasy is why i DONT want to meet in a bar or have a show with you. As much as i love you i love making you up in my head even more.
yo brah, I totally want to order a pizza but how can I when the world is frozen?
Recently I saw this dude at gallery (boring but not bad place...) and uh it was all photoshop smudge. And it got me to thinking that in jpg form I could aproximate this painting. (using my favorite app, which I don't own, but then who does?) Which got me to thinking - wouldnt it be cheaper if art was jpgs? I mean I'm a lazy faker who can barely tie the shoe on my non-peg-legg (I use velcro) and my color sense comes out of Genera style heat sensitive t-shirts (If you know what I mean, like fat over lean).
In conclusion, if I thought I could hang with houston I'd try it out, but brah, they are pretty cliqueish I hear. Gnarley!
yes prof moth it would be great if there was a curve toward more articulate, sharp and interesting criticism on this blog. not the dumb heckling and sour grapes. however: it's a new blog and there has been an upsurge of people on here, and it's getting better and better. but it IS a blog about painting so if you TOO are a self-hater, like the unpleasant anon, enough to chime in w/ the cry that painters are "intellectual lightweights" then fuck you too for saying that. the painters that have been presented here include many amazing and deeply intelligent ones. we dont NEED kelsey/harrison for proof, tho they're great too.
i make paintings and sculpture, and i've only found dialog about painting to be provincial when people stop acknowledging how goddamn hard it is. plastic space is tougher to navigate, tougher to make strides in, a bigger challenge always.
saying something as simple as the "painting is essentially just two striated layers of fat strokes leaning on each other" is as valid as anything. for me, the formal is more deeply conceptual than an idea, however well articulated.
Hi, lovefest or no, there are articulate and informative observations all over this blog, since the very beginning. Everyone has their role, no one should think of themselves as the "savior" adding realness and intellectualism where there was none before. It is growing and evolving, that is true...but there has always been thoughtful observations/descriptions/opinions since I've started reading, which was way before I started commenting.
This is the pathetic thing - we are all lovers of artmaking. When you say "painters are lighweights" you are making teams and ghettizing yourself. Painting is a world unto itself with a history that's completely different from sculpture, installation, video...not to say they don't overlap, but please, it's a blog about painting. There is so much to say, formally, in terms of content, context...let's let it flow without critiquing the threads themselves.
You make great points Professor Mouth, yes painting should be kept relevent with other mediums, but does your desire to keep it rigorous necessarily negate the description and metaphor that comes along with a love for painting or a love for any medium for that matter? It's not only painting that elicits metaphorical, emotional description - and by the way, I think description is not neutral, not static - it can lead to opinion and help you to see works in new ways....but I'm an idealist. I'd like to think there is an inherent idealism in all art practices. Why do there have to be camps? Just because there is a blog about painting - why can't there be one about video or installation or whatever? Each medium has its own concerns, this shouldn't invalidate them when their proponents dig in to what makes a given medium tick.
Intellectual lightweights. I don't think so. And if you are under this mistaken impression it's because you're not looking or listening hard enough. Adjust your point of view...just try it.
Just remember that many painters think of painting as a productive anachronism. A limited and rule-driven historical way to talk about contemporary life - it's a challenge.
no Prof, i DONT think that " if painting...shies away from cross-disciplinary dialogue, its relevancy and potential are diminished..." i dont find painting NECESSARILY interesting. and i dont find cross-disciplinary dialogue NECESSARILY interesting. that would just be a flip side of the coin of the original drive-by anonymous, who insists that painting is dumb.
Intellectual lightweights. I don't think so. And if you are under this mistaken impression it's because you're not looking or listening hard enough. Adjust your point of view...just try it.
Hey, I didn't say that. But I don't mind that you did. Just use your own fake name. Lightweights are welcome too.
hey professor mouth you did say you AGREED w/ the original anonymous. so as anonymous would say: own it. the best thing about your posts so far is i think you scared him/her away. so now can we get on to good dialogue among painting lovers?
You all know that the hyperlinked name is no guarantee of genuineness - literally or otherwise? To know someone is the same someone you were exchanging with earler, you'd have to have clicked that name earlier to see the user profile, then click it each time afterwards to check whether it's the same profile. Anyone can make an account under whatever name isn't already taken on blogger.com, and have that account display any other name they choose, commonly used or not. No one is a real person here. That's the charm of it.
By the way, another blogger in another blogosphere just linked to a very pertinent "List Of Fallacious Arguments" for people who like know when they're right (or wrong): http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
(I'd have hyperlinked the address if I myself knew any more than I just wrote.)
im the anonymous who said who fucking cares. and the twenty responses including the 15 from professor ass to mouth are just proof of my original one liner. see i didn't provide more in or un 'truncated' commentary the first time around, because i knew it wasn't needed. you ponces will get all uptight and verbose with very little prodding, so why waste my painting finger on the keyboard. anyway, i'm so sorry! let's all talk about acrylic vs. oil paint, plasticity, stretching your own versus pre bought canvases, iridescent oil paints, rowney vs. gamblin, hodgkins vs. scully, the emotionality of paint! The sensual glory of pushing pigment around on canvas! what about all of the bakery and gastronomical metaphors that can be used?! what about the candy coloured, creamy , lush ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ listening to painters talk about paintings is like going to a fucking first series star trek convention. am i self hating? sure. aren't most people? is this is a fault? i dont care. policing the people i scorn? no, i don't scorn anyone, and i'm not policing anyone. i just think painter started this blog with high minded intentions, and a bunch of self appointed professors and wallowers in materiality have turned it into a big fucking circle jerk about first year art school concerns. thank god i'm not a painter, i'm an artist who only makes paintings. anyway i don't have all the time in the world here like fuckhead link to reena spaulings and bard college. fucking cocksucking pigeon chested college boy. i have deadlines for shows and paintings waiting to be finished. this was fun when it started, like any orgy. now it's sweat and farts and HIV
when I said "dude" I meant dude at 303 gallery - technicly a photographer, but by using digital paint, has become a painter. At least when I use the digital brush it "feels" like painting with Bob Ross Magic White (I got it as a gift) which is so full of extender its sorta transparent.
But I'd like to see more wet into wet painters in chelsea - maybe a new "expressionist" kind of thing where people use whole tubes of cadmium red in an orgy of, well, red.
Gayberry It's true, it's all true. Thanks for keeping it real.
"thank god i'm not a painter, i'm an artist who only makes paintings."
Thank you. I'm only an artist that makes paintings too. It's the key difference, the approach. I love paint but wont be a fetishist like maybe ahab, whose first here post reads "I would leave the circles (most anyway), and instead adjust those italicized orthodox roods - either slightly fewer, or more regularly placed, or smaller, or something" Fuck! Makes me want to TEAR MY HAIR OUT! Whats the POINT?! What is that going to change? Maybe it'll make a bland painting a little different. Wheres the irreverence gone in painting? The radicallity? The mind expanding creativity? This work is revisionist at best. I say have a new vision, and original tough vision.
Good luck with that macho posturing. I'm sure it'll take you far. Makes you seem... 'authentic'. It takes a big man(lady?) to be so 'frank'. Gayberry IS your real name right?
To the victor go the spoils. Enjoy your high-minded dialogue, shitbird.
98 comments:
I agree, ringo to russia, this is good.
This is the glass bowl of glossy stuck-together hard candy that my grandma had on her living room lightstand for my entire youth. I would always want to eat one but could never break just one off without having to grip the entire mass in my grubby fingers. And somehow I'd still end up having to suck on a clump of three or four at a time.
I would leave the circles (most anyway), and instead adjust those italicized orthodox roods - either slightly fewer, or more regularly placed, or smaller, or something.
i feel like this guy's a good painter and a bad draw-er. i love the super gutsy out there way he paints, but I dont like the "looks like children's drawings" way of drawing.
painter, i dont mean this to move away from brendan who just came on now but may i suggest before feb 25 a posting of carla accardi. there's a show up now at sperone so some of us would go see. could be fun to talk about. is she even still alive? amazing paintings esp in relation to the ps1 show up now.
I think I need to see more of this painter before I know what's what. Any links you can recommend?
sloppy Leroy Neiman
what a mess. generic , could have been made by any student anywhere in the world.
I would agree, very generic and the Hodgkin reference is apt, Hey Mayberry, but I don't find his work as generous as you do. Not earnest but very arrogant, always placing himself in historical contexts, curating himself into shows of old masters and post-impressionists. Talk about gimmick, his painting over the frame seems like the most self-conscious gimmick I could imagine. As for these, they just seem like they are attempting to fit into the tiny space between one artist or another - expressionism seems to be more in fashion these days and superimposing little marks for a cartoony-existential scale change seems overdone and all too common.
That said, they are not unenjoyable paintings. Just not so special.
Hey May, i can see why you say kilimnik, owens or eastman but i think Cass would really want something more tragic, more REALLY hodgkins, no irony.. but he cant do it, he stops short and stays at a pose. that's why i dont like the "child" style drawing. too easy and cuts it at smugness. but there's something i like at the heart of it. if he WAS more like hodgkin(s?) than kilimnik etc, i'd love it.
I imagine him painting these in wraparound glasses, looking like bono.
no r to r, i think he meant hodgkins in old master shows, not cass. ????
So generic. So empty, so done alreaty 1000 times over. Big deal, not worth thinking about, it's a Twinkie of a painting.
hodgkins and kilimnik both have a sense of ironic humor. This is just trying to hard. I don't like work that looks trendy.
I want to hear more about what constitutes trendy. There are so many different varieties of trendy. Is it the brushwork, the palette, the cartoony bits?
It's all of it combined perhaps. Don't really know if i can put my finger on it, just know it when I see it. every grad program has a painter doing work like this. It's messy and loose but also formilist and vapid and unimaginative. Safe.
It's not worth the time, I'm going to go build a snowman.
i've checked out his stuff on canada's site before, and always felt there was a silliness about them. not just humor, or fun, but crossing the line into a smug sarcasm - about painting, about imagery, about picture-making. he seems to be thumbing his nose at painting. but then again, i have never seen an entire show of his work; just a few paintings in group shows here and there. maybe they're better in person?
as an entire installation, i mean. maybe they need each other to make sense.
I think fawnpussyass is just plain wrong. Neither this painting nor the ones on the canadanewyork.com site (thanks ringo to russia) look "unimaginative" or "formalist;" and I'm not sure s/he can make a convincing case for "generic" or "grad school" or "vapid," either.
Haven't seen in person, want to. Can't tell just can't tell...the generic seems possible, looming, but I am enjoying the playfulness with smearing. Hot colors. I want to be able to the silliness more. It's kind of a blur to me, a blur of playing with ideas about painting, I agree with that WW. Undercutting seriousness of the gesture with little cutesy bits. More research is necessary. In this case I am curious about the artists' intention. Maybe there is a statement on the website somewhere.
Wistful lovers are the stuff of myth and welcome.
gosh, not sure here either. must see in person. my gut reaction is that while i like the painterliness, the colors, the smears, the childlike-ness of the drawing and imagery turns me off. it doesn't really get me revved up to see it. seems like something i already know... but i know that's not fair. just gut reaction. i question their ambition of something.
Looking out my window I apply my own local color and wow, yeah, "things to come" more than "what dreams may come." But both painterly if you get my drift.
"To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause..."
there is more here:
http://glasstire.com/FeaturesDetail.asp?id=84
I found this statement from Cass:
I am most interested in intuitive mark-making, and editing later. Also I am interested in organic forms; they feel loaded with pure creative possibilities to me. Natural power, being so profound, is most exciting to me. People seem to go ga-ga over space shuttles and the stock market, while I am still thinking our universe is expanding and the fact that we are hurling through space. The later is just more fascinating and is a metaphor for my work, to realize profound interest already exists.
Yes. Yes I do. It smells like the foul odor of no sense. I love natural powers too, but this writing does nothing to win me over. I suppose though we can all be quoted out of context to prove our idiocy. Art statements are hard to write. But this one explains little for me. The universe is expanding is not something I am thinking of when I look at this painting. I would like very much to think about that. He needs to try again?
The later is just more fascinating.
That is the part I'm really hung up on. What does he want to mean?
I LOVE NATURAL POWERS
or
THE LATER IS MORE FASCINATING
both excellent choices for a show title.
another good quote from cass from the site ww noted:
"I think of light as a life-giving emanation from an immense sphere of fire in the middle of our solar system. My impulse is to paint with immeasurable vibrancy."
DUDE! (where's my car?!)
an immense sphere of fire from the middle of our solar system....
would that be...
the SUN??!!
sorry... i'm being sarcastic and i really dont mean to make fun of him. just couldnt help myself.
The later is more fascinating. Definitely a good show title.
I saw this Malcolm Morley show yesterday. Lots of garish passages, esp. in the late 80's paintings. His work is obviously so different but I have to say I kind of fell for the garish over the top quality to the paint - sprays, gestures, messy lines. But there was something epic behind it that this work lacks. Sometimes the epic bordered on macho cock-rocking but sometimes it was pitch perfect - like in his paintings of ships breaking apart in the ocean. I'm just saying. There needs to be something more legibly epic in the work, maybe, if the thought process behind it is about the sun, the universe expanding, the later and the fascination. Maybe he can do it, this Brendan.
Professor Mouth, I feel like I am too a sucker for the Fauvist palette - garish and harsh. Hmmm. I forgot about the Fauves for a few years. Thanks for the prompt to re-look at.
In Miami at MOCA. I was just there. Well still am, waiting for the airways to open up.
The Fauvists had a difficult pallet. part of what I don't like about this work is theat the pallet is so damm
pretty.
Too pretty, he was too pretty. It didn't work out. If he had more brown smeared on him people would accept him?
I agree with Mountain Man. If Cass is so very interested in the science of, or the mind=blown psychic contemplation of, the universe, then get at that in the work and not just draw the mundane components of a traditional landscape. I like the acidic color, though.
Hey I am so excited about this wireless connection. Otherwise, I'd be decanting, tapping my fingers and reading the wrong publications.
hey professor mouth.
i see from your website that you went to bard mfa.
so did cass.
I didn't find you snarky.
A bit like Simbari? but not Hodgkin
this is a piece of shit painting. i won't spend six paragraphs explaining why like hey maybeberry
i think painter should go ahead and repost some of the original painters she started out with. is this because i'm one of them?
he didnt graduate, he left in a huff! but i get your point Prof mouth. you arent necessarily all that your website implies. sorry: i assumed you went there. and i dont find you snarky either, but i'm a different anon.
well going to bard and not showing at reena spaulings is better than showing at bard and not going to reena spaulings.
Good comments, Professor Mouth:
"I like the black stroke right in the middle and the fact that the painting is essentially just two striated layers of fat strokes leaning on each other."
I was getting this fat candy cane chain effect out of it.
"But then he tap-dances around with all the goofy little trees and adolescent fantasy bullshit that seems so prevalent."
Still, I kinda like the look-I-found-a-new-galaxy, I'm-gonna-call-it-oompaloompa-VII, thing.
seems like this painting stopped short of something. maybe cass is too quick to accept them and not edit out the fluff, something i'm guilty of too. then you have someone like morley, who manages to make the fluff into something, makes a grand case for it. for me, that's the epic quality MM spoke of.
being able to make a painting that reminds someone of hard candy is hardly difficult, never mind being enough to make the actual painting good.
Fluff and candy can be epic, I am sure of it...this is a problem requiring an ambitious solution. Dare I say, radical. There must be a meandering trail from fluffy to radical.
anonymous, you are technically correct, of course. Descriptions of the work are simply...well, descriptive.
I looked at the thing, assessed it, considered it good, then sought a description that illustrated in words what was good about it. In that order and not the other way round.
But I can see how you'd be confused: it looking like candy, and also being good.
Ahab you are such a formalist!!!! Like old-school. Just saying.
You mean that in only the most pejorative sense, right?
No I don't..
I didn't mean he didn't interpret, just that his bent is from a very formal point of view when looking at painting. Honestly, I didn't mean it in a bad way, it's too bad it's another one of those nasty words that comes across wrong. Not inherently good or bad, but misinterpreted as a judgment, often. Sorry.
ahab's not a formalist! he/she's always interpreting stuff.
i have gone back to re-read some of ahab's recent comments to figure out if i think ahab is a formalist, old-school style. i have decided that ahab is not a formalist exactly, but does have that old school style.
i picture you, ahab, as a man w/ a teaching position. you hold your hand out at arm's length in front of parts of the paintings you are critting, squinting your eye to see what parts of the paintings are"working." Dear bloggers, this fantasy is why i DONT want to meet in a bar or have a show with you. As much as i love you i love making you up in my head even more.
who fucking cares. this is why painters are the intellectual lightweights of the art community
Yes, please go to
RadicalNonNYCArtist.blogspot.com
Or if it doesn't exist then please start your own HEAVYweight blog.
yo brah, I totally want to order a pizza but how can I when the world is frozen?
Recently I saw this dude at gallery (boring but not bad place...) and uh it was all photoshop smudge. And it got me to thinking that in jpg form I could aproximate this painting. (using my favorite app, which I don't own, but then who does?) Which got me to thinking - wouldnt it be cheaper if art was jpgs? I mean I'm a lazy faker who can barely tie the shoe on my non-peg-legg (I use velcro) and my color sense comes out of Genera style heat sensitive t-shirts (If you know what I mean, like fat over lean).
In conclusion, if I thought I could hang with houston I'd try it out, but brah, they are pretty cliqueish I hear. Gnarley!
Taos, too.
yes!
www.hectoring-heavyweight.com
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.artnet.com/artwork_images_183461_171624_Amy-Robinson.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424314545/amy-robinson-john-kelsey-on-rachel-harrison.html&h=480&w=340&sz=20&tbnid=lLeuxol8pzsXNM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=89&hl=en&start=20&prev=/images%3Fq%3DJohn%2BKelsey%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN
John Kelsey or a Rachel Harrison
are they painters?
yes prof moth it would be great if there was a curve toward more articulate, sharp and interesting criticism on this blog. not the dumb heckling and sour grapes.
however: it's a new blog and there has been an upsurge of people on here, and it's getting better and better.
but it IS a blog about painting so if you TOO are a self-hater, like the unpleasant anon, enough to chime in w/ the cry that painters are "intellectual lightweights" then fuck you too for saying that. the painters that have been presented here include many amazing and deeply intelligent ones. we dont NEED kelsey/harrison for proof, tho they're great too.
i make paintings and sculpture, and i've only found dialog about painting to be provincial when people stop acknowledging how goddamn hard it is. plastic space is tougher to navigate, tougher to make strides in, a bigger challenge always.
saying something as simple as the "painting is essentially just two striated layers of fat strokes leaning on each other" is as valid as anything. for me, the formal is more deeply conceptual than an idea, however well articulated.
Hi, lovefest or no, there are articulate and informative observations all over this blog, since the very beginning. Everyone has their role, no one should think of themselves as the "savior" adding realness and intellectualism where there was none before. It is growing and evolving, that is true...but there has always been thoughtful observations/descriptions/opinions since I've started reading, which was way before I started commenting.
This is the pathetic thing - we are all lovers of artmaking. When you say "painters are lighweights" you are making teams and ghettizing yourself. Painting is a world unto itself with a history that's completely different from sculpture, installation, video...not to say they don't overlap, but please, it's a blog about painting. There is so much to say, formally, in terms of content, context...let's let it flow without critiquing the threads themselves.
I meant "ghettoizing." Shit. I hate type-os.
You make great points Professor Mouth, yes painting should be kept relevent with other mediums, but does your desire to keep it rigorous necessarily negate the description and metaphor that comes along with a love for painting or a love for any medium for that matter? It's not only painting that elicits metaphorical, emotional description - and by the way, I think description is not neutral, not static - it can lead to opinion and help you to see works in new ways....but I'm an idealist. I'd like to think there is an inherent idealism in all art practices. Why do there have to be camps? Just because there is a blog about painting - why can't there be one about video or installation or whatever? Each medium has its own concerns, this shouldn't invalidate them when their proponents dig in to what makes a given medium tick.
Intellectual lightweights. I don't think so. And if you are under this mistaken impression it's because you're not looking or listening hard enough. Adjust your point of view...just try it.
Just remember that many painters think of painting as a productive anachronism. A limited and rule-driven historical way to talk about contemporary life - it's a challenge.
no Prof, i DONT think that " if painting...shies away from cross-disciplinary dialogue, its relevancy and potential are diminished..."
i dont find painting NECESSARILY interesting. and i dont find cross-disciplinary dialogue NECESSARILY interesting. that would just be a flip side of the coin of the original drive-by anonymous, who insists that painting is dumb.
Intellectual lightweights. I don't think so. And if you are under this mistaken impression it's because you're not looking or listening hard enough. Adjust your point of view...just try it.
Hey, I didn't say that.
But I don't mind that you did. Just use your own fake name. Lightweights are welcome too.
I didn't think that sounded like you, painter!
hey professor mouth you did say you AGREED w/ the original anonymous. so as anonymous would say:
own it. the best thing about your posts so far is i think you scared him/her away. so now can we get on to good dialogue among painting lovers?
dont worry painter we cant mistake you because if it's not you it doesnt have a blue line under it!!!
You all know that the hyperlinked name is no guarantee of genuineness - literally or otherwise? To know someone is the same someone you were exchanging with earler, you'd have to have clicked that name earlier to see the user profile, then click it each time afterwards to check whether it's the same profile. Anyone can make an account under whatever name isn't already taken on blogger.com, and have that account display any other name they choose, commonly used or not. No one is a real person here. That's the charm of it.
By the way, another blogger in another blogosphere just linked to a very pertinent "List Of Fallacious Arguments" for people who like know when they're right (or wrong): http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
(I'd have hyperlinked the address if I myself knew any more than I just wrote.)
There's no way to know if they're just pulling your leg.
im the anonymous who said who fucking cares. and the twenty responses including the 15 from professor ass to mouth are just proof of my original one liner. see i didn't provide more in or un 'truncated' commentary the first time around, because i knew it wasn't needed. you ponces will get all uptight and verbose with very little prodding, so why waste my painting finger on the keyboard.
anyway, i'm so sorry! let's all talk about acrylic vs. oil paint, plasticity, stretching your own versus pre bought canvases, iridescent oil paints, rowney vs. gamblin, hodgkins vs. scully, the emotionality of paint! The sensual glory of pushing pigment around on canvas! what about all of the bakery and gastronomical metaphors that can be used?! what about the candy coloured, creamy , lush ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
listening to painters talk about paintings is like going to a fucking first series star trek convention. am i self hating? sure. aren't most people? is this is a fault? i dont care. policing the people i scorn? no, i don't scorn anyone, and i'm not policing anyone. i just think painter started this blog with high minded intentions, and a bunch of self appointed professors and wallowers in materiality have turned it into a big fucking circle jerk about first year art school concerns. thank god i'm not a painter, i'm an artist who only makes paintings. anyway i don't have all the time in the world here like fuckhead link to reena spaulings and bard college. fucking cocksucking pigeon chested college boy. i have deadlines for shows and paintings waiting to be finished. this was fun when it started, like any orgy. now it's sweat and farts and HIV
when I said "dude" I meant dude at 303 gallery - technicly a photographer, but by using digital paint, has become a painter. At least when I use the digital brush it "feels" like painting with Bob Ross Magic White (I got it as a gift) which is so full of extender its sorta transparent.
But I'd like to see more wet into wet painters in chelsea - maybe a new "expressionist" kind of thing where people use whole tubes of cadmium red in an orgy of, well, red.
Gayberry
It's true, it's all true. Thanks for keeping it real.
"thank god i'm not a painter, i'm an artist who only makes paintings."
Thank you. I'm only an artist that makes paintings too. It's the key difference, the approach. I love paint but wont be a fetishist like maybe ahab, whose first here post reads "I would leave the circles (most anyway), and instead adjust those italicized orthodox roods - either slightly fewer, or more regularly placed, or smaller, or something" Fuck! Makes me want to TEAR MY HAIR OUT! Whats the POINT?!
What is that going to change? Maybe it'll make a bland painting a little different.
Wheres the irreverence gone in painting? The radicallity? The mind expanding creativity? This work is revisionist at best. I say have a new vision, and original tough vision.
Tear away, fawnpussyass, tear that hair away and your inner fetishist will come alive - then paint some art about it.
Or nevermind all the deranged spazzing and just make a relevant comment of your own about the painting that is posted.
hey professor, why so regretful that you had to delete all your past posts? embarrassed by your frankness? i'm not embarrassed by mine.
Good luck with that macho posturing. I'm sure it'll take you far. Makes you seem... 'authentic'. It takes a big man(lady?) to be so 'frank'. Gayberry IS your real name right?
To the victor go the spoils. Enjoy your high-minded dialogue, shitbird.
Sincerely,
Pat Palermo
Hi Pat, you rule.
xox
Professor Mouth, please do not go.
not the best i've ever seen. not sure there is really anything behind it at all.
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