both these and the similar collage paintings by Yi Chen just irritate me. They're both fairly skilled as painters, but there's no scarier combination than good technical skill and bad taste.
Yi Chen's subjects look like fashion go-tards... as empty as the advertisements they were cut from- while his backgrounds are tired and lazy. Scott's work has a psychology to it and an investment in the ideas of how a painting is made. I've seen both shows in but I think I'm gonna go back to the V + A thing uptown.
ST's work seems really dated but in an weird ambigious way. I can't see this work lasting very long. I mean, what is his real painting style besides using the cut-up collage elements? Take that out, and what do you have? That's what bothers me about these.
from the jpeg and his blog, I see a francis bacon connection, which kind of troubles me...are these just updates? the immediate correllation of the pope scream and that disconnected smile of teeth may be a little too blunt to point out, but its kind of there, no?
I followed the boesky link to Yi Chen. I remember working like that (cut up collage )about 15 years ago but i couldn't see it going anywhere so i stopped...I don't see either of these guys taking it anywhere either but there is always hope
ST's work seems really dated but in an weird ambigious way
I get that. I want to know if anyone here likes odd nerdrum. Think of it as a badge of honor. I dont like. But I dont really care either way. I'm just trying to be an adult and have an oppinion.
I think about it this way... the more Odd Nerdrum fans there are, the harder it is to find the unheard-of-deals on good Kolinskys.
That, I certainly I don't like.
Escoda has just raised their prices on brushes world-wide. But it has as much to do with saachi as it has with this explosion of figuration in general.
whatever, i like they image sometimes that is enough for something as a jpeg... , i was really drunk last night ... so i forgot most of the details, but i heard somthing last night about saachi dumping the 'triumph' and tanking a bunch of kids markets. be careful out they are jackels...
oh and hint. if your a painter! never approch someone in a gallery with your work on a cell phone - fuzzy and shittty and force them to look at it. they will want to deck you.
i don't see odd nerdrum... "francis bacon connection" yes. the scale from face to body, the disembodied mouth, figure ground backdroppyness - y would that be a problem? look at that bizzare jewelry/bracelet thing whats up with that wedding ring? it so fab. trannyfied. puts off a very different emotion then nerdrum clearly it has a life of its own.
I think the put down is "rock and roll" - like the feeling you get playing a first person shooter or Francis Bacon without the context. In that sense, odd nerdrum with its "weirdness" is essentially tame, not threatening and essentially a fiction without the "truth" of a "real" experience. Its like Mark Tansey - clever but cold.
Its a combination of palette (high contrast) and paint handling (acomplished but predictable).
This is an invented character and I applaud the use of paint as a way of exploring a persona - not a problem. But it looks shallow to me. Maybe thats good?
John Alexander is probably a better comparison? I mean the early work with the masks. Dude can paint, but again, his style is glib - illustrative, and not that exciting after first blush.
hum.. i don't know 'scott's' work, but on this glance it screams 'pop' unlike ON, - who seems endlessly lost in some cheeky foot-dragging backwards quagmire... there is something about the zed is dead, aviator shaded, exuberance that draws me in. it makes me want to know more.
i couldnt find any jpgs that match my memory so fuck it. I dont have a reason, just a feeling. Like Joel Peter Witkin does nothing for me, but Wegee does?
... let me try to understand this string -- because it seems honest, and feels very relevant to me.
The general attitude of this page so far expresses a general distrust in technical savvy when such savvy is used to produce paintings that sell soley on the basis technical savvy, and that the ultimate return is usually void of any conceptual or intellectual merit -- and hence forms a manipulated sense of value for the work because the delivery is not proportional to the return. Got that. I get the sense that nerdrum is the most blatant example of this case because it's empty of conceptual merit by accepted artworld standards.
Rock-and-roll -- a composition of tried-and-true licks, chord-progessions, devices -- that move people, but are usually formulaic --
So Jenny Saville's slab-like technique of using flat brushes to descibe flesh -- a device that seems more like glib licks than inventions? (just curious)
I think of Gillian Carnegie who placed herself on the map by nicely painting her ass, lickable in technique and subject.... but highly suspect because of the glibness of both.
Here's my interest -- Way back in grad-school, a professor blurted that good paintings showed some sort of awkwardness in both painting and drawing -- as sign of true (inquisitive and self-forming) process. A sign that invention is being done out of necessity, no matter how fucked up the product... that good paintings, by the above definition exhibit the hallmark of painterly flaws... Flawed" being the opposite of "Savvy" and 'glib'. I never paid attention to that statement, but I do remember it now.
Zip and No-Where, any thoughts on such a statement? And is this from where the nerdrum saville tansey string of thoughts spring?
I didnt see these works in person but this type of technique can seem really generic and redundant... can't anyone with a marginal amount of talent spend a few years in the art students league and come away with paintings that are this technically savvy? The collage element make them somewhat interesting but its just a small injection of contemporary into a modern formula. There is room for potential but I dislike the problem-solving feeling to the enterprise of these paintings. wear your ambitions more on your sleeve please
i do see the sampling of Saville but i see allot of uptown sampling techniques in this one. i understand the painterly flaw argument but feel it is a very 'painters' 'painter' conversation and prob. bingo on the 'the string of thoughts' - as i mentioned earlier i am reading the image as folksy 'pop'. One would hardly apply the 'flaw' argument to that pantheon. i can understand that there is a sort of 'whimsey' about it that could really chafe. for me this image does not come off as forced just fun, - maybe that is just spring talking.
i just thru out a gut response to this one, (which i have not seen live). i was questioning the validity of that response earlier - am i allowed to just respond positively to an images subject ?. .. or is that a slippery slope to pedestrian reasoning. When i know more about the Artists work and see it live we will see how far this knee jerk reaction carries.
Anon, your rhetorical question sounds like it's coming from a non-painter's perspective: "... can't anyone...." Your use of 'marginal' sounds rather glib.
The awkwardness v accomplished argument. I think it comes from Cezanne. He built his perception from the ground up at the same time photography replaced painting as documentary. That gave painting new psychological significance and urgency . It also led to the dismantling of academic skills throughout the 20th century, until (in the NY art world) reappearing in the work of Yuskavage, Currin c. 1990s. Then there is Nerdrum, who appeared mid-80s. At first his painting (Cain and Abel) amazed me--the huge vista, two figures, mastery) but seeing too many more, I have to agree with comments above that his painting is predictable, "weird" but conservative. But he would be the first to question why predictability is bad. He maintains kitsch is exactly what the mainstream responds to, and getting them to respond through the quality of his work is the point of painting. He feels an insistence on alienation or viewers "doing the work" is modernist claptrap, Cezanne at the expense of facility. It's not a bad argument but his paintings don't hold. He would argue they do and as jaded viewers we can no longer discern quality. Collage is interesting maybe, I love the idea of wet paint licking up against cold images but will have to see the show before judging this work--from the jpeg I'm not sure of the quality of intersection between the two.
"So Jenny Saville's slab-like technique of using flat brushes to descibe flesh -- a device that seems more like glib licks than inventions?"
I saw JS's billboard sized paintings at Gago, and instutional scale is great and all, but in the end I think gee, why not make a small version and then print it out? Because from a distance who can tell? My vision is 20-30 so I get a bit of the optical blending standing back.
Institutional in the same way that this painting could adorn the pages of rolling stone...but then again look at Harpers magazine and Science? Harpers used Gerhard Richter as color...or to underscore the mutability of text and meaning or something.
So in this sense illustration and then even glibness seems to be more a matter of context and interpretation than style at this point in the game.
Odd Nerdrum sounds like a bozo - but maybe that's his schtick? But then are we to say that Hitler was just an artist doing his thing? At some point we are allowed to "take the piss" - and of course no one need buy bad paintings.
I heard John alexander talk, and he talks a great talk, and all the upper east side ladies must love him? But in the end hes painting flowers. Thats all I'm saying here - theres some nice stuff about this painting and its a fine line betwen album cover Juxtapose style and knockout.
Any one element in this painting could be separated out and used to effect. Otherwise I am confused, and I dont think its a question of post modern ambiguity.
39 comments:
V & A and Galerie Mourlot present
"sweet dreams"
March 11 to April 1
opening March 11 6-10
16 East 79th Street
The artists include Scott Taylor, Matthew Abbott, Ryan Hixenbaugh, Jason
Sleurs, Koji Shimizu, and a few more artists
Refreshing!
looks fresh, but i am only a j-peg critic. Is this a painting of collage elements? oil ? what size?
I was just looking at satchi's bog, and then you post another jpg. I dont even have to go outside.
For a blow by blow report we can go
here
and
hasn't this been done to death?.... still, it holds my attention...odd.
Yay, for cut-n-paste
I think it is all oil paint. Reminds me of John Currin.
Is this a painting of Hopey Atherton?
somewhat tired of seeing a figure and nothing else-kind of lax in the "tension"department,tho the cracked out feeling of this figure expands it a bit-
both these and the similar collage paintings by Yi Chen just irritate me. They're both fairly skilled as painters, but there's no scarier combination than good technical skill and bad taste.
http://www.marianneboeskygallery.com/artist/YiChen/index.html
that nice. i bet jer gets his pulizar this year ;)
IT would be interesting to ask (this) painter(s) if they liked odd nerdrum, HR giger, Frank Frazetta and so forth.
FF is like a god to my adolescence.
Zipwung do you want to ask Scott Taylor or Painter?
Yi Chen's subjects look like fashion go-tards... as empty as the advertisements they were cut from- while his backgrounds are tired and lazy. Scott's work has a psychology to it and an investment in the ideas of how a painting is made. I've seen both shows in but I think I'm gonna go back to the V + A thing uptown.
Extreme and insane. I love the darkened hairy face.
http://www.scotttaylorpainting.blogspot.com/
check it out gang!
where are these up?
i do like the image.
ST's work seems really dated but in an weird ambigious way. I can't see this work lasting very long. I mean, what is his real painting style besides using the cut-up collage elements? Take that out, and what do you have? That's what bothers me about these.
from the jpeg and his blog, I see a francis bacon connection, which kind of troubles me...are these just updates? the immediate correllation of the pope scream and that disconnected smile of teeth may be a little too blunt to point out, but its kind of there, no?
I followed the boesky link to Yi Chen. I remember working like that (cut up collage )about 15 years ago but i couldn't see it going anywhere so i stopped...I don't see either of these guys taking it anywhere either but there is always hope
ST's work seems really dated but in an weird ambigious way
I get that. I want to know if anyone here likes odd nerdrum. Think of it as a badge of honor. I dont like. But I dont really care either way. I'm just trying to be an adult and have an oppinion.
I think about it this way... the more Odd Nerdrum fans there are, the harder it is to find the unheard-of-deals on good Kolinskys.
That, I certainly I don't like.
Escoda has just raised their prices on brushes world-wide. But it has as much to do with saachi as it has with this explosion of figuration in general.
whatever, i like they image sometimes that is enough for something as a jpeg... , i was really drunk last night ... so i forgot most of the details, but i heard somthing last night about saachi dumping the 'triumph' and tanking a bunch of kids markets. be careful out they are jackels...
oh and hint. if your a painter! never approch someone in a gallery with your work on a cell phone - fuzzy and shittty and force them to look at it. they will want to deck you.
odd nerdham, hmmmm technical masterbation
odd nerdrum fan cannot be serious or know anything about painting...they shoudleave this blog immediately and never come back(just kidding)
good advice
i don't see odd nerdrum... "francis bacon connection" yes. the scale from face to body, the disembodied mouth, figure ground backdroppyness - y would that be a problem? look at that bizzare jewelry/bracelet thing whats up with that wedding ring? it so fab. trannyfied. puts off a very different emotion then nerdrum clearly it has a life of its own.
I think the put down is "rock and roll" - like the feeling you get playing a first person shooter or Francis Bacon without the context. In that sense, odd nerdrum with its "weirdness" is essentially tame, not threatening and essentially a fiction without the "truth" of a "real" experience. Its like Mark Tansey - clever but cold.
Its a combination of palette (high contrast) and paint handling (acomplished but predictable).
This is an invented character and I applaud the use of paint as a way of exploring a persona - not a problem. But it looks shallow to me. Maybe thats good?
John Alexander is probably a better comparison? I mean the early work with the masks. Dude can paint, but again, his style is glib - illustrative, and not that exciting after first blush.
here
hum.. i don't know 'scott's' work, but on this glance it screams 'pop' unlike ON, - who seems endlessly lost in some cheeky foot-dragging backwards quagmire... there is something about the zed is dead, aviator shaded, exuberance that draws me in. it makes me want to know more.
so what is the 'likeabilty' factor, like say i certain imagery as pedestrian as that is....
i couldnt find any jpgs that match my memory so fuck it. I dont have a reason, just a feeling. Like Joel Peter Witkin does nothing for me, but Wegee does?
Jenny Saville fits my definition of "rock and roll"
... let me try to understand this string -- because it seems honest, and feels very relevant to me.
The general attitude of this page so far expresses a general distrust in technical savvy when such savvy is used to produce paintings that sell soley on the basis technical savvy, and that the ultimate return is usually void of any conceptual or intellectual merit -- and hence forms a manipulated sense of value for the work because the delivery is not proportional to the return. Got that. I get the sense that nerdrum is the most blatant example of this case because it's empty of conceptual merit by accepted artworld standards.
Rock-and-roll -- a composition of tried-and-true licks, chord-progessions, devices -- that move people, but are usually formulaic --
So Jenny Saville's slab-like technique of using flat brushes to descibe flesh -- a device that seems more like glib licks than inventions? (just curious)
I think of Gillian Carnegie who placed herself on the map by nicely painting her ass, lickable in technique and subject.... but highly suspect because of the glibness of both.
Here's my interest -- Way back in grad-school, a professor blurted that good paintings showed some sort of awkwardness in both painting and drawing -- as sign of true (inquisitive and self-forming) process. A sign that invention is being done out of necessity, no matter how fucked up the product... that good paintings, by the above definition exhibit the hallmark of painterly flaws... Flawed" being the opposite of "Savvy" and 'glib'. I never paid attention to that statement, but I do remember it now.
Zip and No-Where, any thoughts on such a statement? And is this from where the nerdrum saville tansey string of thoughts spring?
I didnt see these works in person but this type of technique can seem really generic and redundant...
can't anyone with a marginal amount of talent spend a few years in the art students league and come away with paintings that are this technically savvy?
The collage element make them somewhat interesting but its just a small injection of contemporary into a modern formula. There is room for potential but I dislike the problem-solving feeling to the enterprise of these paintings.
wear your ambitions more on your sleeve please
i do see the sampling of Saville but i see allot of uptown sampling techniques in this one. i understand the painterly flaw argument but feel it is a very 'painters' 'painter' conversation and prob. bingo on the 'the string of thoughts' - as i mentioned earlier i am reading the image as folksy 'pop'. One would hardly apply the 'flaw' argument to that pantheon. i can understand that there is a sort of 'whimsey' about it that could really chafe. for me this image does not come off as forced just fun, - maybe that is just spring talking.
i just thru out a gut response to this one, (which i have not seen live). i was questioning the validity of that response earlier - am i allowed to just respond positively to an images subject ?. .. or is that a slippery slope to pedestrian reasoning. When i know more about the Artists work and see it live we will see how far this knee jerk reaction carries.
Anon, your rhetorical question sounds like it's coming from a non-painter's perspective: "... can't anyone...." Your use of 'marginal' sounds rather glib.
Thanks no-where!
The awkwardness v accomplished argument. I think it comes from Cezanne. He built his perception from the ground up at the same time photography replaced painting as documentary. That gave painting new psychological significance and urgency . It also led to the dismantling of academic skills throughout the 20th century, until (in the NY art world) reappearing in the work of Yuskavage, Currin c. 1990s. Then there is Nerdrum, who appeared mid-80s. At first his painting (Cain and Abel) amazed me--the huge vista, two figures, mastery) but seeing too many more, I have to agree with comments above that his painting is predictable, "weird" but conservative. But he would be the first to question why predictability is bad. He maintains kitsch is exactly what the mainstream responds to, and getting them to respond through the quality of his work is the point of painting. He feels an insistence on alienation or viewers "doing the work" is modernist claptrap, Cezanne at the expense of facility. It's not a bad argument but his paintings don't hold. He would argue they do and as jaded viewers we can no longer discern quality.
Collage is interesting maybe, I love the idea of wet paint licking up against cold images but will have to see the show before judging this work--from the jpeg I'm not sure of the quality of intersection between the two.
'Jenny Saville fits my definition of rock and roll'
---James Taylor
"So Jenny Saville's slab-like technique of using flat brushes to descibe flesh -- a device that seems more like glib licks than inventions?"
I saw JS's billboard sized paintings at Gago, and instutional scale is great and all, but in the end I think gee, why not make a small version and then print it out? Because from a distance who can tell? My vision is 20-30 so I get a bit of the optical blending standing back.
Institutional in the same way that this painting could adorn the pages of rolling stone...but then again look at Harpers magazine and Science? Harpers used Gerhard Richter as color...or to underscore the mutability of text and meaning or something.
So in this sense illustration and then even glibness seems to be more a matter of context and interpretation than style at this point in the game.
Odd Nerdrum sounds like a bozo - but maybe that's his schtick? But then are we to say that Hitler was just an artist doing his thing? At some point we are allowed to "take the piss" - and of course no one need buy bad paintings.
I heard John alexander talk, and he talks a great talk, and all the upper east side ladies must love him? But in the end hes painting flowers. Thats all I'm saying here - theres some nice stuff about this painting and its a fine line betwen album cover Juxtapose style and knockout.
Any one element in this painting could be separated out and used to effect. Otherwise I am confused, and I dont think its a question of post modern ambiguity.
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