Im not sure if its Stendhal syndrome or Stockholm syndrome but its never going to be stockhausen syndrome.
Unfocused? WHat about Pollock?
The thing about Pollock is you cant duplicate it - because no one is the same. I dont know about you but I could not step twice into the same river - and thats why we encrypt our pictures as "cryptomorphs".
Just as quantum factoring is making unbreakable codes, so too are painters creating unbreakable compositions.
I can't seem to 'suspend my disbelief' long enough to enjoy this type of cartoonish work. But painters like Trenton Doyle Hancock for example seem to take this as a reference point and push ahead to new extremes.
I like the edges (on the red). You can do that in photoshop using a brush with "wet edges". the thing about painting is you dont get the backlight like you do on the crt.
Now I remember seeing a show of this stuff in 97. The only reason it sticks in my mind is a friend was excited because he knew him. You know how it is - you see someone doing well and you want to suck up and stuff. I guess dude didnt like my friend so much or whatever. It made me sad. Another time I went on a studio tour down on Essex street and Inka essenhigh had her studio down there and there was a dude doing enamel race cars on flat grounds. WHat happened to him?
The Stendahl syndrome was the answer to the the million dollar question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. That's the only time I knew every answer, all the way to the top.
Has any art catalyzed an intense physical reaction for you--crying, heart racing, hives? Does a gasp count?
What's the opposite of Stockholm syndrome? You know where you enjoy humiliating your captors. I guess there is a genre of work which is a fine art version of more interesting source material like graffiti. Maybe Dash Snow is a better version or at least less high vs. low.
Has any art catalyzed an intense physical reaction for you--crying, heart racing, hives? Does a gasp count? I always hated Matthew Barney until I had a dream about one of his videos.
Clive Bell says theres an art emotion - kind of like a sixth sense. I don't have it, apparently. I don't see dead people, but I do die a little when I see work like this get crowed over. It lacks content. I love content. Who doesn't? thats why we wrap our gifts in packages and then unwrap them. That's why we hide our bodies behind clothes, even in the warmest weather.
If helen Frankenthaler is doing the dance of the seven veils, this painter is doing the dance of the seven squeeze bottles. Yeah, ok its art, but if Im going for modulated squiggles Id rather have pollock, who was alcoholic, and also seemed to be trying. I saw the last retrospective at the old moma, and it was great. i dont think he was lost at the end at all, no matter what he felt or what people thought. I liked the new stuff. I liked the stuff that gets away from black outlines, or "caligraphy" - the old stuff.
Frankenthaler married motherwell. Jesus christ. Motherwell's work is like a cotton rag lollypop. Giles is like a ADHD kid who has the set of 64 crayons but can't decide what color love is. No heart.
"The fact is that most art writers are cold; they're usually people who wouldn't be able to survive writing about anything else."
"As a kid I drew and drew obsessively. I went to museums, but I wanted the story. I couldn't see the art.
-Clement Greenberg
Well Frank settled down in the Valley and hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead he sold used office furniture out there on San Fernando Road and assumed a $30,000 loan at 15 1/4 % and put down payment on a little two bedroom place his wife was a spent piece of used jet trash made good bloody marys kept her mouth shut most of the time had a little Chihuahua named Carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind. They had a thoroughly modern kitchen self-cleaning oven (the whole bit) Frank drove a little sedan they were so happy
One night Frank was on his way home from work, stopped at the liquor store, picked up a couple Mickey's Big Mouths drank 'em in the car on his way to the Shell station, he got a gallon of gas in a can, drove home, doused everything in the house, torched it, parked across the street, laughing, watching it burn, all Halloween orange and chimney red then Frank put on a top forty station got on the Hollywood Freeway headed north
I almost long to believe that nowhereman... Content being so-last-season... Bushy eyebrows are in. Corporeal, messy and primordial. A notion of bodily presence. Like Fried's notion of embodiment... Empathy. Nothing like those fake agenda-tweezed eyebrows of last season.
zip for those who by some chance do not know who Tom Waits is, maybe you should credit him for that poetry.
I'll tip the newsboy I'll get a shine I'll ride this dream to the end of the line I'm goin places I'll take a ride Up to the Riverside I'll take NY I'll let it happen I'll pop the cork tear off the wrappin' I'll make a splash on the Hudson that's how I will arrive Hey, do you have two tens for a five? Roll out the carpet Strike up the band break into the best champagne when I land Beat the parade drum hit all the bars I want the moon and stars But I'll take NY I'll make it happen Blow out the candlels tear off the wrappin' And I know someday they'll have to name a street after me right next door to old Franklin D
Label--date and the usual stuff--(that would be the title), formaldehyde, and put it in a jar!
Content!
I didn't know this but there are five kinds of content. You thoughts are one of them. The others, well, google it! Anyway to get rid of all the plurality stuff you have to get back to nothing. And as nothing is empty all the five come together as one. How about that! And the dude that figured that one out gave up a fortune! Silly!
Zip you brought up a good point: Pollock WAS TRYING. As much as I like to make jokes about him it's funny that his name has come up as an antithesis to lightweight product so often in the last few discussions.
Pleaze, how I can find good, fresh focus groups for pre-testing ingredients in “contemporary art product”? I like to broaden appeal without disturbing existing customers...can u help? Possible without adding new product lines/repackaging??
Add lots of preservatives. This stuff has a shelf life of exactly 5 years. Don't add too many gums and resins, you want your artist's statement short. sugar=sex guar gum=cartoon imagery trans fat= gratuitous brushstrokes vitamin C= cash
My jokes are usually playful not cynical. And wouldn't fiber be flat backgrounds ( you know filler)? There isn't anything inherently gratuitous about any of the elements you mentioned above,(anxiety, anger, masked sexual expression) they are relevant to modern art going back to Romanticism. And I don't think it is impossible to do anything new. Once again back to the question of who is really trying.
It doesnt seem like your average cookie blaha could tell the difference between Poons and Lyon. Yet the consensus of the "painters" here seems to be that Larry is the real deal and Lyon is a flash in the pan? What exactly is the difference you see? Dont count the backstory, just with your eyes...
Closeuup the graffiti thing rings bells and I guess prejudices for me. Then I started thinking about Dash Snow who uses the reference in a more interesting way. We were talking about this before with Japanese artists who use cleaned up hentai imagery, the reference being better than the fine art version. I'm not a real "painter" BTW. I could paint in a tuxedo.
the difference is: risk and the result fall short with Lyon, at least on jpeg.
Lyon appears quiet competent: this image a little heavy-handed, the space a little oppressive, like, you know who could breathe in all that... the marks come across as repetitive (a hand that knows what it's doing and too much--perhaps). Now all these little furrows and frowns at Lyon could be turned up. Yeah! (Phew, I was getting all depressed there for a moment) Yeah, me too, but getting back...
There are no rules. There is, however, a voice. And when the voice says 'make a painting' painting gets... somebody makes. When a voice says' take a risk', risk takes. And when a voice says 'up the bar'. And the bar upper ups it, bar gets up.
A guy gets up at the bar. Ok could be a gal (it's hard to tell these days). And the dude sitting next to him or her turns and whips 'Where do you think you're going?' The dude up, stops, grins, eyes narrow, 'I just need go, I need to leave this place. That's all!'. Guy sitting, or 'sitting guy' whatever you like, tells it, ' You going to miss it all'. Standing had already left.
That's another voice.
Why is Poons better? IMO The risks are greater. He's not necessarily making a better painting, in the normal sense, he's risking a painting. And he's putting a lot of knowledge at risk. And he just gets home with it.
Have to admit this is a funny post, and really the Lyon is OK!
P dog Snow is young..too soon to judge and at least he is trying to do something unique with it. Falling flat on your face gets more points from me than sitting on your ass or laurels whatever.
thirty years? who gives fuck? its painting. (and im a hypocrit) people will have retro gif animation projections in their bathrooms. lyons is a player and hes gonna keep playin. i wouldnt expect anything new from him unless he decides to switch to video. painting is fashion is artifact of small increments of time. flashes in the pan are stills of a larger dialogue.
when slumming is part of living and living is part of art. and as to not caring in 30 years people made art when the plague wiped out 1/3 of the population of Europe and we still care about what's left. it's all that's ever left.
#1 To say his photos rock is not to say anything about art.
#2 Everyone who hasn't done it believes they know everything about photography. And believe me. I can tell. It's like roaming through the moma and hearing someone say their 'grandchild can do that'. Don't worry though. Your viewpoint your fault it's fed to you by the photo industry.
#3 back to the first point. Photography in contrast to painting, enjoys the position of a medium that can be enjoyed, read or consumed thru many more channels than the party-line 'but-is-it-art-or-not' culture. It doen't have to be art. (oh my god, it's not art...wtf(!?))
In other words, they can rock without being formally convincing. Cuz they rock in other ways.
#4 I first saw Snow after getting familiar with T richardson... heir to fashion's Helmut Lang. I realized that Snow was the 'real thing'.
Actually, come to think of it, I saw snow before Richarsson. And I remember not knowing how to classify him until richardson (plz not goldin -- that'd be insulting)
I'm not asking is photography art or not. That's an old argument that does not hold water anymore.
But in all due respect Nan Goldin, did this kind of thing over 20 years ago and she did it better and with more soul.
A guy taking photos of his friends being stupid is good photography?
In my opinion its not, I have seen enough of his work and to me its not very well done or interesting. I just don't care about his life or his friends getting fucked up, the work does not even ask me to care or think about it for more than 30 seconds, its so adolescent.
haha I just mentioned her. I'm not a big fan of her work but some of it seems to get past the bad photography aspect and to me it makes you think about the people in the wolrd she is making pictures of.
Snow does not do this, its just 20 somethings acting like they are still 16.
“He seems to be operating on a level beyond his obvious strategy.“ I still enjoy summing it up for myself this way. Because it ain't ABOUT the F’ing Strategy, as far as I can see. ANY strategy can serve as a way to get beyond the strategy; that seems perfectly clear... And what else is a strategy for, anyway? If it’s not about something more than product design, fa’gedda boudit. Maybe Poons’ strategy is less obvious, as well? Maybe his “strategy” can be seen to be evolving as it goes, can be felt to be dropping away now and again... Feels that way to me. I enjoy imagining it coming into being, the more so the more I look; the Lyon eventually just makes me tired. (There are many Lyons’s that hit it better for me than this one...)
“I can't totally articulate it which might be part of the appeal.” Hmmm, I hope so. Isn’t that why it’s there?
Pretty lame as a bit of writing about art, I suppose, but for me, these off-hand comments really resonate. I find them actually handy. They point at the really interesting things in paintings: the stuff that can only be articulated by paintings. The stuff that shuts down endless internal verbalizing. What kelli said works for me as very useful writing about making paintings.
Being ABLE to articulate “why” in writing, or reading anybody else’s writing about it, no matter how incisive/articulate/brilliant/honest/surprising/stylish/whatever..., isn’t going to help me paint any better; at least, it hasn’t yet, even tho it’s often felt as if it might while it was happening; I believe I’ve learned that it can’t. It just adds to my collection of verbal art-nuggets, which I enjoy collecting, to be sure, but they’re ultimately just breaking my teeth, resisting digestion, piling up, getting tripped over, useful only in other contexts. I have to forget ‘em to get on. Because jellied nuggets about why paintings “work” are obstacles to better paintings. They sit like poison toads on top of the tools, trying to lick your hands, leaving blisters...
Seeing the two pieces together IS really interesting; THAT might help me paint better. Or maybe not. But something seems to shift in my paint-brain as I look at them together. The shift is towards getting busy: Good art leads to more art.
yes, but I also think the aesthetic he is going for is kind of lame.
Its more than me not getting off on them. They fail because they try to hard. He's just not a very good photographer. I'm not sure he cares about that. Does it matter, I think it does. Learn the craft, just don't take polaroids of your friends gettin off. If your in your 20's I guess I can see the attraction. Look at Danny Lyon's work from over 40 years ago, its still fresh, and well done.
Snow to what I can see has not much in the way of chops, and if you look at Clark's work from when he was in his 20's its much more acute, raw and very well made.
-Just paint without thinking. Turn out endless piles of crap because really the art of various cultures and historical periods can be reduced to enjoyable objects consisting of formal elements which answer the burning existential question "does this need more green?" -Stop turning out endless piles of mindless,thoughtless crap to satisfy amorous collectors and fill up shipping containers on the beach in Miami. Mutually exclusive sentiments?
I was just reading about Heidegger. Didn't get that stuff in class - the class being just about the theory. I live in fear of being alienated from the Jungian subconscious.
"Mass demonstrations must burn into the little man's soul the conviction that though a little worm he is part of a great dragon"
Well Heidegger was a Nazi and Althusser killed his wife. Jeannette Winterson is even more anti-essentialist or nominalist than I am. Thinks the whole backstory is garbage.
what's with that didactic moralizing comment that suggests those photos were made to satiate horny collectors in mid-life crisis? Pleaze. leave such tired comments to your PTA meetings. I doubt he was thinking about collectors as he shot them. I think we all have a good enough tiime entertaining our own horniness. Clark? yeah right. Maybe by association of genre, but in style, early informal work of Teller maybe. Lastly, I refuse to think of those photos soley through the framework of art, collecting and historical precedents. His compulsion to shoot doesn't seem generated by such frameworks. -- yielding a freshness that allows for such nice shots as the dog on the trash heap -- an image that it points back to the maker in so many ways-- None of those ways I feel, have anything to do with art.
I get the wole "amorous" collector thing from people too. People who care about money more than I do. "I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too". -Manichean insistence that art should be pure -obsession with the market and collectors Another set of mutually exclusive sentiments And people are just comfortable with Larry Clarke because we've already digested him but if Mapplethorpe were alive he would still scare the shit out of people. Isn't that one thing we want from art- that is has as much power as the day it was made.
“-Just paint without thinking. Turn out endless piles of crap because really the art of various cultures and historical periods can be reduced to enjoyable objects consisting of formal elements which answer the burning existential question "does this need more green?”
True, words take up little room, on a beach or in a mall. But they aren’t the only proof of thinking. Nor are they necessary to a “burning” relationship with art, or to grokking other cultures; they’re a parallel universe. I’m rather fond of ‘em, actually, and always carry some around, even when looking at paintings. But I do also love those experiences that leave me momentarily speechless... Dumb doesn’t only mean stupid; surely a parliament of painters should know this better than most?
But of course, writings about art, about art-making, about reacting to art, are often marvelous, illuminating, artful, maybe even necessary. Personally, I can’t resist ‘em, tho I prefer looking at art, when I’m not actually trying to make some. And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t enjoy listening to painters yammer on... But art writing/talking turns me right off whenever it feels like it proceeds from some hidden or overt terror that, without a buttress of clever, or even better, “difficult,” words, art, esp. painting, all by itself might turn out to be not worth doing, even shameful. When it starts to imply that, without some proof that the painter has a head full of approved words and suitably startling concepts to go along with this slightly regrettable taste for toying with colored muck, he or she is nothing but mindless-decorator-scum, well, I loose interest. Really, are expressions of great loathing necessary to prove great love?
I am totally over the guilty academy-zation of Art/market. The Artworld used to be a place for marginized lifestyles and money to thrive not a dime store.
zzzzzzzzzz. This is coming from someone who acutally knows how to operate a light meter and handle film, grind paints with muller, acidic oil-- all that mess...
And what a democratizing thing it must have been, when the technology unleashed mass-manufactured paint to the throng, and later, mass-manufactured brownie cameras, point-and-shoots, lomos, holgas, polaroids, sensors, et al.
The democratization of any medium demands a change in perspective -- artistic or otherwise. It demands, essentially, a necessity to accept the veracular of the 'amateur' as a formidable mode of 'speech' -- as capable of communicating something essential about humankind as any other mode of speech. 'Amateurs capable of what? Oh my... ' Get used to it.
Weston, and even Witkin makes no sense in a discussion centered around Snow, because the tools are so far apart we may as well be talking about different mediums.
'um they capture light...' Yeah, but that's all there is in terms of similarity. View cameras are completely different tools than polaroids, and both attract or at least, DEMAND, different sensibilities. Hence. Vernaculars are different. The process is different. The opportunities are different. The fact that they both fall under the aegis of photography is an unfortunate misleading conception.
Dorothea Lange is closer to Snow's project, if it can be called that for my purposes -- But, it's essential here, to know the difference between large format photography and polaroid -- in terms of mobility, precision, range of sensitivity, resposiveness, availability... fuck the differences are immense! The difference is not qualitiative. Both simply work within and exploit the traits inherent in the medium. And the vernacular developed around the medium.
Photography, just like painting, is best appreciated when it can be appreciated in context.
I know all this, the different between large format, and how technology has affected the medium.
I was not talking about it that context.
Snow's work is kind of boring,and seems lazy.
But, I don't think he cares, at least that's what I get from his work.
I was using Weston as an example of technique, and craft.
I think your leaning to the idea that anybody is an artist. Which I don't agree with, anybody can't be a dancer or musician, so why is art different?
New tools like cell phone cameras and video are changing the way media and photo-journalism is done, that's a given. This is moving into the realm of art making.
I'm talking about learning how to make good images, which from my vantage point Mr. Snow does not seem to do.
I don't know, I have disussed this with a photographer friend of mine and hes on the fence with work like Snow's.
Although he thinks its banal and just not as good as other people doing the same kind of work.
we can stop worrying because pretty soon someone will locate the artist gene and develop a quick and easy way of checking for it///without needles and stuff, hopefully they can do a quick scan. this way we will know who the frauds are without all this endless discourse..
the idea is anyone has the potential to be an Artist but only certain people activate it. also that it can happen to anyone at any time in life, it is kinda biblical. further that people can act as a conduite and that Art can travel with an almost kinetic resonance... also that the ART may be an energy not altogether preceptable in the after Art Artifact to the average viewer.
I was watching a little of band of brothers - had to leave when everybody started getting the thousand yard stare, you know , the shell shock. I used to get it riding 45 minutes home on the school bus. Its a great place to be if you go to the right place.
Then I watched Hostel. Now this painting reminds me of Hostel.
i was looking at the sun set yesterday and it was insane how quick one impression changed into another and i thought i will never see that ever again... as i says - you can count on art..
It was stated at an Art Workers Coalition meeting in 1968 that anyone who calls themselves an artist is an “artist”. Jerry Saltz said during a TV interview that the deal has been made that whatever an artist says is art “is art”. Being an artist I hereby declare that from this moment forward everyone is an “artist”, and everything is “art.”
The above is biggest bunch of BS. Its an obnoxious and condescending statement.
"Hundley could be embracing the avant-garde esthetic of anti-form. Or his free-form assemblages could be whimsical records of a consciousness overtaken by a fantasy world in which all hierarchies have dissolved. The artistic machine, then, produces a product that is unstable to the point of willed inconsequentiality. "
I can't tell if that is serious or not. Maybe its both.
Im gonna call this type of procedural heuristic "cosmic copulation"
Im not sure if its Stendhal syndrome or Stockholm syndrome but its never going to be stockhausen syndrome.
ReplyDeleteUnfocused? WHat about Pollock?
The thing about Pollock is you cant duplicate it - because no one is the same. I dont know about you but I could not step twice into the same river - and thats why we encrypt our pictures as "cryptomorphs".
Just as quantum factoring is making unbreakable codes, so too are painters creating unbreakable compositions.
Big red compositions.
I can't seem to 'suspend my disbelief' long enough to enjoy this type of cartoonish work. But painters like Trenton Doyle Hancock for example seem to take this as a reference point and push ahead to new extremes.
ReplyDeleteI like the edges (on the red). You can do that in photoshop using a brush with "wet edges". the thing about painting is you dont get the backlight like you do on the crt.
ReplyDelete"Poppa's last Party" was hot i would hang it in my disco
ReplyDeleteNow I remember seeing a show of this stuff in 97. The only reason it sticks in my mind is a friend was excited because he knew him. You know how it is - you see someone doing well and you want to suck up and stuff. I guess dude didnt like my friend so much or whatever. It made me sad. Another time I went on a studio tour down on Essex street and Inka essenhigh had her studio down there and there was a dude doing enamel race cars on flat grounds. WHat happened to him?
ReplyDeleteThe Stendahl syndrome was the answer to the the million dollar question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. That's the only time I knew every answer, all the way to the top.
ReplyDeleteHas any art catalyzed an intense physical reaction for you--crying, heart racing, hives? Does a gasp count?
What's the opposite of Stockholm syndrome? You know where you enjoy humiliating your captors. I guess there is a genre of work which is a fine art version of more interesting source material like graffiti. Maybe Dash Snow is a better version or at least less high vs. low.
ReplyDeleteHas any art catalyzed an intense physical reaction for you--crying, heart racing, hives? Does a gasp count?
I always hated Matthew Barney until I had a dream about one of his videos.
player style
ReplyDeletereminds me of funny garbage
I think if you work with rebar you should change your name to steel or forge or whatever.
ReplyDeleteHi Im joe forge, and I work with iron. Catchy right?
sell in baby, sell in
Clive Bell says theres an art emotion - kind of like a sixth sense. I don't have it, apparently. I don't see dead people, but I do die a little when I see work like this get crowed over. It lacks content. I love content. Who doesn't? thats why we wrap our gifts in packages and then unwrap them. That's why we hide our bodies behind clothes, even in the warmest weather.
ReplyDeleteIf helen Frankenthaler is doing the dance of the seven veils, this painter is doing the dance of the seven squeeze bottles. Yeah, ok its art, but if Im going for modulated squiggles Id rather have pollock, who was alcoholic, and also seemed to be trying. I saw the last retrospective at the old moma, and it was great. i dont think he was lost at the end at all, no matter what he felt or what people thought. I liked the new stuff. I liked the stuff that gets away from black outlines, or "caligraphy" - the old stuff.
Frankenthaler married motherwell. Jesus christ. Motherwell's work is like a cotton rag lollypop. Giles is like a ADHD kid who has the set of 64 crayons but can't decide what color love is. No heart.
"The fact is that most art writers are cold; they're usually people who wouldn't be able to survive writing about anything else."
ReplyDelete"As a kid I drew and drew obsessively. I went to museums, but I wanted the story. I couldn't see the art.
-Clement Greenberg
Well Frank settled down in the Valley
and hung his wild years
on a nail that he drove through
his wife's forehead
he sold used office furniture
out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a $30,000 loan
at 15 1/4 % and put down payment
on a little two bedroom place
his wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
made good bloody marys
kept her mouth shut most of the time
had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had some kind of skin disease
and was totally blind. They had a
thoroughly modern kitchen
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan
they were so happy
One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple Mickey's Big Mouths
drank 'em in the car on his way
to the Shell station, he got a gallon of
gas in a can, drove home, doused
everything in the house, torched it,
parked across the street, laughing,
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red then
Frank put on a top forty station
got on the Hollywood Freeway
headed north
Never could stand that dog
burn!
i did that too. only works once
ReplyDeletecartoons anybody? lets all go watch a paperrad dvd. all paintings are cartoons.
ReplyDelete"no" content is the new content.
ReplyDeleteWhere am I going to stick my content now?
ReplyDeleteI almost long to believe that nowhereman...
ReplyDeleteContent being so-last-season...
Bushy eyebrows are in.
Corporeal, messy and primordial.
A notion of bodily presence.
Like Fried's notion of embodiment...
Empathy.
Nothing like those fake agenda-tweezed
eyebrows of last season.
zip for those who by some chance do not know who Tom Waits is, maybe you should credit him for that poetry.
ReplyDeleteI'll tip the newsboy
I'll get a shine
I'll ride this dream
to the end of the line
I'm goin places
I'll take a ride
Up to the Riverside
I'll take NY
I'll let it happen
I'll pop the cork
tear off the wrappin'
I'll make a splash on the Hudson
that's how I will arrive
Hey, do you have two tens for a five?
Roll out the carpet
Strike up the band
break into the best
champagne when I land
Beat the parade drum
hit all the bars
I want the moon and stars
But I'll take NY
I'll make it happen
Blow out the candlels
tear off the wrappin'
And I know someday
they'll have to name a street after me
right next door to old Franklin D
Tom Waits
Frank's Wild Years
Label--date and the usual stuff--(that would be the title), formaldehyde, and put it in a jar!
ReplyDeleteContent!
I didn't know this but there are five kinds of content.
You thoughts are one of them. The others, well, google it!
Anyway to get rid of all the plurality stuff you have to get back to nothing. And as nothing is empty all the five come together as one. How about that!
And the dude that figured that one out gave up a fortune!
Silly!
oh yeah.......content. like an erik parker?
ReplyDeleteI will chew your arm off
ReplyDeleteZip you brought up a good point: Pollock WAS TRYING. As much as I like to make jokes about him it's funny that his name has come up as an antithesis to lightweight product so often in the last few discussions.
ReplyDeleteAnd Kalm James those sound like the ingredients of Romanticism and Surrealism not contemporary art product.
ReplyDeletePleaze, how I can find good, fresh focus groups for pre-testing ingredients in “contemporary art product”? I like to broaden appeal without disturbing existing customers...can u help? Possible without adding new product lines/repackaging??
ReplyDeleteAdd lots of preservatives. This stuff has a shelf life of exactly 5 years. Don't add too many gums and resins, you want your artist's statement short.
ReplyDeletesugar=sex
guar gum=cartoon imagery
trans fat= gratuitous brushstrokes
vitamin C= cash
better in repro.
ReplyDeleteI really like that Larry Poons. He must be on preservatives.
ReplyDeleteIs that something I can snort?
My jokes are usually playful not cynical.
ReplyDeleteAnd wouldn't fiber be flat backgrounds ( you know filler)?
There isn't anything inherently gratuitous about any of the elements you mentioned above,(anxiety, anger, masked sexual expression) they are relevant to modern art going back to Romanticism.
And I don't think it is impossible to do anything new. Once again back to the question of who is really trying.
It doesnt seem like your average cookie blaha could tell the difference between Poons and Lyon. Yet the consensus of the "painters" here seems to be that Larry is the real deal and Lyon is a flash in the pan? What exactly is the difference you see? Dont count the backstory, just with your eyes...
ReplyDeleteHow's this for new?
ReplyDeleteCloseuup the graffiti thing rings bells and I guess prejudices for me. Then I started thinking about Dash Snow who uses the reference in a more interesting way. We were talking about this before with Japanese artists who use cleaned up hentai imagery, the reference being better than the fine art version.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a real "painter" BTW. I could paint in a tuxedo.
Dash Snow????
ReplyDeletethat hack.
his work is c.r.a.p.
whatever man. his photos rock.
ReplyDeletedrag me through the mud please
ReplyDeletethe dif is quite obvious of course
this kinda reminds me of some christian schuman
fuck it..Im sleepy
the difference is:
ReplyDeleterisk and the result fall short with Lyon, at least on jpeg.
Lyon appears quiet competent: this image a little heavy-handed, the space a little oppressive, like, you know who could breathe in all that... the marks come across as repetitive (a hand that knows what it's doing and too much--perhaps).
Now all these little furrows and frowns at Lyon could be turned up.
Yeah!
(Phew, I was getting all depressed there for a moment)
Yeah, me too, but getting back...
There are no rules.
There is, however, a voice.
And when the voice says 'make a painting' painting gets... somebody makes.
When a voice says' take a risk', risk takes.
And when a voice says 'up the bar'. And the bar upper ups it, bar gets up.
A guy gets up at the bar. Ok could be a gal (it's hard to tell these days). And the dude sitting next to him or her turns and whips 'Where do you think you're going?'
The dude up, stops, grins, eyes narrow, 'I just need go, I need to leave this place. That's all!'.
Guy sitting, or 'sitting guy' whatever you like, tells it, ' You going to miss it all'.
Standing had already left.
That's another voice.
Why is Poons better?
IMO
The risks are greater. He's not necessarily making a better painting, in the normal sense, he's risking a painting. And he's putting a lot of knowledge at risk.
And he just gets home with it.
Have to admit this is a funny post, and really the Lyon is OK!
I was going to answer my own question, things-that-go-brent-in-the-nite. But you said what I was going to say, i think, space and voice. ok. thanks.
ReplyDeleteP dog Snow is young..too soon to judge and at least he is trying to do something unique with it. Falling flat on your face gets more points from me than sitting on your ass or laurels whatever.
ReplyDeletethirty years? who gives fuck? its painting. (and im a hypocrit) people will have retro gif animation projections in their bathrooms. lyons is a player and hes gonna keep playin. i wouldnt expect anything new from him unless he decides to switch to video. painting is fashion is artifact of small increments of time. flashes in the pan are stills of a larger dialogue.
ReplyDeleteyou got that kind of cumpulsive shutterbug finger
ReplyDeleteand access to the goods? Letz see your collection.
Anyone who's delved in photog knows how precious
both can be; they shouldn't be belittled.
Framing is just art cum icing on the cake.
Imagery is sometimes nothing but bravery.
But better.
pictures of your friends throwing up while slumming is not art.
ReplyDeletewhen slumming is part of living and living is part of art. and as to not caring in 30 years people made art when the plague wiped out 1/3 of the population of Europe and we still care about what's left. it's all that's ever left.
ReplyDelete#1
ReplyDeleteTo say his photos rock is not to say anything
about art.
#2
Everyone who hasn't done it believes they
know everything about photography.
And believe me. I can tell. It's like roaming
through the moma and hearing someone
say their 'grandchild can do that'. Don't
worry though. Your viewpoint your fault
it's fed to you by the photo industry.
#3
back to the first point. Photography in contrast
to painting, enjoys the position of a medium
that can be enjoyed, read or consumed thru many
more channels than the party-line
'but-is-it-art-or-not' culture. It doen't have to be art.
(oh my god, it's not art...wtf(!?))
In other words, they can rock without being
formally convincing. Cuz they rock in other ways.
#4
I first saw Snow after getting familiar with T richardson...
heir to fashion's Helmut Lang. I realized that Snow was
the 'real thing'.
Actually, come to think of it,
ReplyDeleteI saw snow before Richarsson.
And I remember not knowing
how to classify him until richardson
(plz not goldin -- that'd be insulting)
I'm not asking is photography art or not. That's an old argument that does not hold water anymore.
ReplyDeleteBut in all due respect Nan Goldin, did this kind of thing over 20 years ago and she did it better and with more soul.
A guy taking photos of his friends being stupid is good photography?
In my opinion its not, I have seen enough of his work and to me its not very well done or interesting. I just don't care about his life or his friends getting fucked up, the work does not even ask me to care or think about it for more than 30 seconds, its so adolescent.
Jim Goldberg is the 'real deal'.
haha I just mentioned her.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a big fan of her work but some of it seems to get past the bad photography aspect and to me it makes you think about the people in the wolrd she is making pictures of.
Snow does not do this, its just 20 somethings acting like they are still 16.
Why is Poons better?
ReplyDelete“He seems to be operating on a level beyond his obvious strategy.“
I still enjoy summing it up for myself this way. Because it ain't ABOUT the F’ing Strategy, as far as I can see. ANY strategy can serve as a way to get beyond the strategy; that seems perfectly clear... And what else is a strategy for, anyway? If it’s not about something more than product design, fa’gedda boudit.
Maybe Poons’ strategy is less obvious, as well? Maybe his “strategy” can be seen to be evolving as it goes, can be felt to be dropping away now and again... Feels that way to me. I enjoy imagining it coming into being, the more so the more I look; the Lyon eventually just makes me tired. (There are many Lyons’s that hit it better for me than this one...)
“I can't totally articulate it which might be part of the appeal.”
Hmmm, I hope so. Isn’t that why it’s there?
Pretty lame as a bit of writing about art, I suppose, but for me, these off-hand comments really resonate. I find them actually handy. They point at the really interesting things in paintings: the stuff that can only be articulated by paintings. The stuff that shuts down endless internal verbalizing. What kelli said works for me as very useful writing about making paintings.
Being ABLE to articulate “why” in writing, or reading anybody else’s writing about it, no matter how incisive/articulate/brilliant/honest/surprising/stylish/whatever..., isn’t going to help me paint any better; at least, it hasn’t yet, even tho it’s often felt as if it might while it was happening; I believe I’ve learned that it can’t. It just adds to my collection of verbal art-nuggets, which I enjoy collecting, to be sure, but they’re ultimately just breaking my teeth, resisting digestion, piling up, getting tripped over, useful only in other contexts. I have to forget ‘em to get on. Because jellied nuggets about why paintings “work” are obstacles to better paintings. They sit like poison toads on top of the tools, trying to lick your hands, leaving blisters...
Seeing the two pieces together IS really interesting; THAT might help me paint better.
Or maybe not. But something seems to shift in my paint-brain as I look at them together. The shift is towards getting busy: Good art leads to more art.
Obvious, I’m sure. But thanks anyway!
Pdog,
ReplyDeleteUm... are you sayin that you can't get off
on snow's photos?
Cheers man.
yes, but I also think the aesthetic he is going for is kind of lame.
ReplyDeleteIts more than me not getting off on them.
They fail because they try to hard.
He's just not a very good photographer.
I'm not sure he cares about that.
Does it matter, I think it does.
Learn the craft, just don't take polaroids of your friends gettin off.
If your in your 20's I guess I can see the attraction.
Look at Danny Lyon's work from over 40 years ago, its still fresh, and well done.
How about UK photographer...www.dannytreacy.com. "them" series.
ReplyDeletehere
ReplyDeleteReminds me of the quilts of gees bend - or genremany :
here
high baroque
pattern
colonoscopy
and finally fractals
I like patterns.
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ReplyDeleteI was thinking of Clark as well.
ReplyDeleteMy point is that these guys took their craft seriously.
Larry Clark and Danny Lyon are both self taught, meaning they did not go to art school.
Lyon has a degree in history.
Clark school of hard knocks.
My point is that they both have chops and care about the craft side of their work.
didacticart your comments are very on point to me, could not have said it better.
Snow to what I can see has not much in the way of chops, and if you look at Clark's work from when he was in his 20's its much more acute, raw and very well made.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why he's still around.
colors and shapes
ReplyDeletemmmm
-Just paint without thinking. Turn out endless piles of crap because really the art of various cultures and historical periods can be reduced to enjoyable objects consisting of formal elements which answer the burning existential question "does this need more green?"
ReplyDelete-Stop turning out endless piles of mindless,thoughtless crap to satisfy amorous collectors and fill up shipping containers on the beach in Miami.
Mutually exclusive sentiments?
I was just reading about Heidegger. Didn't get that stuff in class - the class being just about the theory. I live in fear of being alienated from the Jungian subconscious.
ReplyDelete"Mass demonstrations must burn into the little man's soul the conviction that though a little worm he is part of a great dragon"
Well Heidegger was a Nazi and Althusser killed his wife.
ReplyDeleteJeannette Winterson is even more anti-essentialist or nominalist than I am. Thinks the whole backstory is garbage.
what's with that didactic moralizing comment that
ReplyDeletesuggests those photos were made to satiate horny
collectors in mid-life crisis? Pleaze. leave such tired
comments to your PTA meetings. I doubt he was thinking about
collectors as he shot them. I think we all have
a good enough tiime entertaining our own horniness.
Clark? yeah right. Maybe by association of genre,
but in style, early informal work of Teller maybe. Lastly,
I refuse to think of those photos soley through the
framework of art, collecting and historical precedents.
His compulsion to shoot doesn't seem generated
by such frameworks. -- yielding a freshness that
allows for such nice shots as the dog on the trash heap --
an image that it points back to the maker in so many ways--
None of those ways I feel, have anything to do with art.
I get the wole "amorous" collector thing from people too. People who care about money more than I do. "I'll get you my pretty and your little dog too".
ReplyDelete-Manichean insistence that art should be pure
-obsession with the market and collectors
Another set of mutually exclusive sentiments
And people are just comfortable with Larry Clarke because we've already digested him but if Mapplethorpe were alive he would still scare the shit out of people. Isn't that one thing we want from art- that is has as much power as the day it was made.
This is truning into photographersNYC.
ReplyDeleteAnyway Mapplethorpe was not only challenging us he was also a great photographer.
There is also Joel Peter Witkin to ponder.
I don't think people are to comfortable with Clarke just yet, his film Ken Park, 2002 was banned in Australia in 2003.
Ouroboros on a plane.
ReplyDelete“-Just paint without thinking. Turn out endless piles of crap because really the art of various cultures and historical periods can be reduced to enjoyable objects consisting of formal elements which answer the burning existential question "does this need more green?”
ReplyDeleteTrue, words take up little room, on a beach or in a mall. But they aren’t the only proof of thinking. Nor are they necessary to a “burning” relationship with art, or to grokking other cultures; they’re a parallel universe. I’m rather fond of ‘em, actually, and always carry some around, even when looking at paintings. But I do also love those experiences that leave me momentarily speechless...
Dumb doesn’t only mean stupid; surely a parliament of painters should know this better than most?
But of course, writings about art, about art-making, about reacting to art, are often marvelous, illuminating, artful, maybe even necessary. Personally, I can’t resist ‘em, tho I prefer looking at art, when I’m not actually trying to make some. And I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t enjoy listening to painters yammer on...
But art writing/talking turns me right off whenever it feels like it proceeds from some hidden or overt terror that, without a buttress of clever, or even better, “difficult,” words, art, esp. painting, all by itself might turn out to be not worth doing, even shameful. When it starts to imply that, without some proof that the painter has a head full of approved words and suitably startling concepts to go along with this slightly regrettable taste for toying with colored muck, he or she is nothing but mindless-decorator-scum, well, I loose interest.
Really, are expressions of great loathing necessary to prove great love?
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteA breakfast fractal for zip’n’Giles
ReplyDeletesnakes on a blog - that phone app. is killer...
ReplyDeleteI am totally over the guilty academy-zation of Art/market. The Artworld used to be a place for marginized lifestyles and money to thrive not a dime store.
Lets!
ReplyDeleteDon't forget to invite the milfs from PTA.
hum, that sounds like my summer. minus the camera and the gallery. party for partys sake - ever try it. glamor is freedom.
ReplyDeleteMilf always sounds filthier than it is.
ReplyDeleteEdward Weston, so we seem to be on a theme...
ReplyDeletedeminishing talent.
Weston is a icon of modern photography.
Mapplethorpe was good, the ass shots not his best moments.
Weston was better, but he was there first, as was Dorothea Lange.
A man in a class of his own, Robert Capa. Now that guy could party.
zzzzzzzzzz. This is coming from someone who acutally knows how to operate a light meter and handle film, grind paints with muller, acidic oil-- all that mess...
ReplyDeleteAnd what a democratizing thing it must have been, when the technology unleashed mass-manufactured paint to the throng, and later, mass-manufactured brownie cameras, point-and-shoots, lomos, holgas, polaroids, sensors, et al.
The democratization of any medium demands a change in perspective -- artistic or otherwise. It demands, essentially, a necessity to accept the veracular of the 'amateur' as a formidable mode of 'speech' -- as capable of communicating something essential about humankind as any other mode of speech. 'Amateurs capable of what? Oh my... ' Get used to it.
Weston, and even Witkin makes no sense in a discussion centered around Snow, because the tools are so far apart we may as well be talking about different mediums.
'um they capture light...' Yeah, but that's all there is in terms of similarity. View cameras are completely different tools than polaroids, and both attract or at least, DEMAND, different sensibilities. Hence. Vernaculars are different. The process is different. The opportunities are different. The fact that they both fall under the aegis of photography is an unfortunate misleading conception.
Dorothea Lange is closer to Snow's project, if it can be called that for my purposes -- But, it's essential here, to know the difference between large format photography and polaroid -- in terms of mobility, precision, range of sensitivity, resposiveness, availability... fuck the differences are immense! The difference is not qualitiative. Both simply work within and exploit the traits inherent in the medium. And the vernacular developed around the medium.
Photography, just like painting, is best appreciated when it can be appreciated in context.
I know all this, the different between large format, and how technology has affected the medium.
ReplyDeleteI was not talking about it that context.
Snow's work is kind of boring,and seems lazy.
But, I don't think he cares, at least that's what I get from his work.
I was using Weston as an example of technique, and craft.
I think your leaning to the idea that anybody is an artist. Which I don't agree with, anybody can't be a dancer or musician, so why is art different?
New tools like cell phone cameras and video are changing the way media and photo-journalism is done, that's a given. This is moving into the realm of art making.
I'm talking about learning how to make good images, which from my vantage point Mr. Snow does not seem to do.
I don't know, I have disussed this with a photographer friend of mine and hes on the fence with work like Snow's.
Although he thinks its banal and just not as good as other people doing the same kind of work.
So hes kind of half off the fence I guess.
Get used to what fucking bad crap passed off as art because everyone and there mother has paint and cameras.
ReplyDeleteI don't think so.
Art needs some criteria to stand on.
By your definition everyones home movies is great cinima.
Democratization comes with responsibilities.
Without this its anarchy which I am sure some people think is a great thing. But it gets boring after a while.
we can stop worrying because pretty soon someone will locate the artist gene and develop a quick and easy way of checking for it///without needles and stuff, hopefully they can do a quick scan.
ReplyDeletethis way we will know who the frauds are without all this endless discourse..
the idea is anyone has the potential to be an Artist but only certain people activate it. also that it can happen to anyone at any time in life, it is kinda biblical. further that people can act as a conduite and that Art can travel with an almost kinetic resonance... also that the ART may be an energy not altogether preceptable in the after Art Artifact to the average viewer.
ReplyDeleteback to my point #1, above:
ReplyDelete>> #1
>> To say his photos rock is not to say anything
>> about art.
Alright then, to put an end to this conundrum:
I'm into dogs on trash heaps.
There. I've said it.
I think I broke my vernacular.
ReplyDeleteI was watching a little of band of brothers - had to leave when everybody started getting the thousand yard stare, you know , the shell shock. I used to get it riding 45 minutes home on the school bus. Its a great place to be if you go to the right place.
Then I watched Hostel. Now this painting reminds me of Hostel.
"Nature abhors a vacuum"
as Jerry Saltz says.
"as above so below" as Martin Kimmelman says
ReplyDeletei was looking at the sun set yesterday and it was insane how quick one impression changed into another and i thought i will never see that ever again...
ReplyDeleteas i says - you can count on art..
don't snort the brown powder Hermes Trismegistus says
ReplyDeleteIt was stated at an Art Workers Coalition meeting in 1968 that anyone who calls themselves an artist is an “artist”. Jerry Saltz said during a TV interview that the deal has been made that whatever an artist says is art “is art”. Being an artist I hereby declare that from this moment forward everyone is an “artist”, and everything is “art.”
ReplyDeleteThe above is biggest bunch of BS.
Its an obnoxious and condescending statement.
"Hundley could be embracing the avant-garde esthetic of anti-form. Or his free-form assemblages could be whimsical records of a consciousness overtaken by a fantasy world in which all hierarchies have dissolved. The artistic machine, then, produces a product that is unstable to the point of willed inconsequentiality. "
ReplyDeleteI can't tell if that is serious or not. Maybe its both.
Im gonna call this type of procedural heuristic "cosmic copulation"
here
Cosmonanism
ReplyDeleteOnan the Contrarian
ReplyDeletehard to disagree. sarah tsetse sze wins in a battleroyale. in the steel cage match- i put my money on bullmarket stockholder.
ReplyDelete@#%*@#$%+**#@!!!
ReplyDeleteThrong and me.
ReplyDeleteMe, and a throng.
Me, in a throng.
Join me, painterdog.
Jeez I tend to agree with U'sD ... word joke
ReplyDeleteI have a sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteI also have some strong opinions on some subjects.
The idea of anything an "artist" decides is art is therefore art is silly to me.
It's old dogma from the 60's and its a failed one at that. Like marxism.
You don't have to agree with me james, as I don't have agree with you, its called having a conversation.
Oh no sarcasm... sorry its the lowest form of humor, but it is humor.(more sarcasm) have to stop...
If I hear any good jokes I'll let you know.