Artistically, we are still doing what they did in the 1960s

click on images to enlarge them

In a new show at the Dayton Art Institute, Changing Times: Art of the 1960s, several pieces from the permanent collection are used to take a look at just how radical and dynamic the changes in art were in the 1960s. The show focuses on pop, figural, minimalist, op and conceptual art movements and even takes a look at some abstraction that carried over into the decade and how abstraction changed from the Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s. 

The recent attack in the art world against “zombie formalism” in contemporary art shows that both the critically incisive attitude and the experimentation that occurred in the 60s survive and even form a basis for much of the work in art galleries to this day.

In the 1960s art changed due, largely, to a dissatisfaction with formalism. The formalist creed was foreshadowed in the famous quote from artist and writer Maurice Denis in the late 19th century:

Remember that a picture, before it is a picture of a battle horse, a nude woman, or some story, is essentially a flat surface covered in colors, arranged in a certain order.

So modernist or formalist artists focused on the process of creating a painting, believing that form and color were the keys to conveying something meaningful and that the subject or thing being painted was extraneous. Painting “things” was, therefore, abandoned for abstraction. This formalist approach was the dominant form of visual art in the 1950s and the early part of the 1960s, before it was found insufficient in light of the revolutionary changes and challenges which developed in society and the world.

Rosenquist

Jackson Pollock, for example, purported that his movement over a canvas, while pouring or dripping paint, was a direct form of mark-making that more closely caught and conveyed what was happening inside of him. Action Art was direct transmission from the inner world to the outer world that, hypothetically, could then be recognized by and deeply affect viewers of the work. Mark Rothko claimed that his paintings were pure spirituality and would impact others without the mediation of human cognition or analysis. 

When Andy Warhol began producing multiple appropriated images from popular culture, this was a complete repudiation of the formalist belief system. The idea that color and form could have a direct impact on viewers, that no analysis was necessary and that folks could just absorb the universal insights of great artists was found to be absurd and replaced with images reflecting our everyday reality and a process essential to our society.

Rothko

To a certain extent, Warhol was sardonically replying to the formalists. Perhaps he was saying, “OK, I am interested in process and form too. But the process I want to use or refer to is mass-production. The form is the repetition of images. If you are telling me that I can derive meaning from your type of brush strokes or geometrical forms or color choices, I am telling you that there’s equal or superior meaning in using mass-produced, repetitive techniques.” 

Instead of making you think of what squiggles of oil paint might mean, he wanted us to think of what mass production can mean. Mass production feeds people. It provides clothing for us all, books, music… virtually everything. It also provides economic exploitation in the world. There is more meaning in mass production than in paint drops. Instead of paint underlying a message, a production technique was now the basis of the image. You had to deal with the good and the bad of this economic process before even thinking of the image.

Motherwell

And there is as much, if not more, humanism in Warhol’s repetition of images than in any Action or Color Field art. He reproduces soup cans that were a staple in the diets of millions of common Americans. He does not reproduce hundred-dollar bills, he reproduces simple dollar bills, used by everyone. He presents common movie stars, a common tragedy (a car crash), a common form of social control (capital punishment). The repetition of the images represents the shared experience that was now possible in a developed society. 

More idealistically, it could have represented a common goal to rise as individuals and as a society through new means of communication. He selects certain images because he knows we all are familiar with them – they can all resonate with each of us and provide accessible meaning. You do not have to stare at a bunch of Campbell soup cans and hope something magically rubs off on you. You are back in control of the process of interpreting art, not a passive recipient of another’s genius. 

As one looks through these pieces by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Dine, Oldenburg, Johns, Ruscha, Rosenquist, Rauschenberg et al., one sees how the mundane is resourced as a means to subvert the intentions of the formalists and involve the viewer in a more active examination of his/her life.

The change away from formalism was also accelerated by the spirit of protest and change in the world at large. The dominant trend in the art of the 50s just was not sufficient to encompass all that was happening in the 1960s. Exploration of the outer world became much more exciting than navel gazing. Indeed, the path back to the inner world was through images from the outer world as art was meant to engage the viewer on levels of conscience and morality and to challenge the viewer to strive for a higher, more humane level of being. 

Michael Goldberg

We see this in many of the figural pieces in the show: the photo of Bobby Kennedy by Craig Hickman, the Civil Rights marchers by JoAnne Schneider, the famous photo of a hippy putting a flower into a National Guardsman’s rifle barrel by Marc Riboud, Newark as the “other” America by Ken Heyman. The pieces that embrace figuration are a complete rejection of formalism and offer the belief that there is still too much meaning to be derived from one’s contemporary human companions to reject this approach.

Although Pop Art and figuration take up a large part of the show, we also see minimalist, op, conceptual and abstract pieces. Indeed, looking through the various types of movements in the 60s one has to marvel at what an influence these movements are still having on contemporary art in current galleries. One movement that did not have much impact, however, was Op Art. 

It was begun in the 50s but had its heyday in the 60s. It presented visual patterns that disoriented or dazzled the viewer. It was meant to arrest one’s attention and to pleasantly stun one for a time. At its best, it was a statement about perception and the way that aspects of visual reality might be ordered to overwhelm one. Its main influence, however, was in clothing and design.

Interestingly, in the abstract and non-objective selections, we seem to see a more cognitive approach to abstraction developing, abandoning the belief that viewers can be beneficially affected naturally or without effort, without intellectually analyzing work. In many pieces, there is a blend of abstraction and objects and other pieces seem to present visual puzzles. Alan Davie’s Entrance to a Red Temple, Raymond Both’s Landscape, Robert Conover’s Conflict, Grace Hardigan’s Pallas Athene and even Robert Motherwell’s Study in Black and White #2 might fit into this category.

Finally, we have a selection of pieces that fall into the conceptual category by artists like Sol LeWitt, Jasper Johns, Ronald Brooks and Shushaku Arakawa. Conceptual Art was the most “political” of the movements as, at its core, it was non-commercial and often did not produce a sellable product. Instead of being intuitive and produced through deep introspection, the conceptual artist was super cognitive and did not shy away from presenting ideas or using ideas in the creation of a piece. 

There was no attempt to create the beautiful and no attempt to reach the viewer by obviating his/her mind. Engaging the intellect was paramount. Although it was said to have lasted only six years, from 1966 to 1972, Conceptual Art pervades contemporary art galleries.

In the 1960s attempts at engagement diversified. No longer was there a mystical belief that the genius artist could beneficially affect and enlighten a passive viewer. The 60s put the viewer back into the picture as an active participant in the interpretive process as the artist often embraced a common experience, without judgment, to make art more accessible to a larger public.

Jeremy Olson, Sci-fi art, a possible victory won by creatures who savor egalitarian social relationships and cooperation.

click on images to enlarge them

The SPRING/BREAK Art Show, held during Armory Arts Week, is an exciting alternative to the behemoth Armory Show, where an art lover can easily feel like an interloper. At Armory, each gallery pays an enormous amount to sell their wares and they often bring out the glitz and warhorses to do just that. You and I pay for the privilege of walking around and gawking, hoping something might be meaningful enough to redeem the expensive ticket. This time around I overheard a woman say that the Armory Show reminded her of county fairs she attended in her childhood, where a bunch of farmers and ag experts would gather to judge and sell the best heifers and hogs while normal folks paid for the right to view this process. Good analogy.

The analogy does not fit SRING/BREAK, however, where there are no interlopers, artists create for all the right reasons, and viewers are immersed in one experience after the other. 

At SPRING/BREAK the paintings of Jeremy Olson immediately caught my eye. He paints with a diligence and discipline that reminded me of the technique used by someone like Dürer, but each painting seemed its own little narrative concerning alien creatures in another part of the universe. He explained to me that each painting can be considered a type of scene from what might be called a stage of post-collapse rebirth or post-capitalist society. His meticulous technique should not be surprising given his influences include Bosch and Bruegel combined with semi-figurative weird creatures throughout art history, Louise Bourgeois, Duchamp's Étant donnés, sculptors like David Altmejd and Huma Bhabha as well as kitschy sci-fi book covers from the 70s.

Scientists are telling us now that we will find intelligent life in the universe within the next 50 years, and we can probably be certain its mannerisms will be recognizable as fierce competition and tribalism seem to be the core of this universe’s values. Olson, a sci-fi lover, presents the fact that spiritual and social evolution, against the grain of everything this universe is throwing at us, is a core value of the intelligent creatures imprisoned in this galactic system. He shows the revolt against the harsh values of a universe dominated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics and a possible victory won somewhere out there by creatures who savor egalitarian social relationships and cooperation.

So Olson is definitely not a dystopian and can foresee a type of society similar to that in the sci-fi classic The Man Who Fell to Earth as opposed to that of The Three Body Problem trilogy. In The Man Who Fell to Earth David Bowie plays an alien from a planet where aggression has been eliminated and kindness, generosity and cooperation have become a part of the very genetics of these beings. In The Three Body Problem the Universe is described as a dark forest where cosmic civilizations savor their brutish natures and compete with and annihilate each other for shits and giggles. Acts of kindness become acts of weakness in this trilogy, as when a female human refuses to do her duty to destroy Earth to prevent aliens from enslaving humans, only to have stronger, more militaristic humans do her job for her. So Olson is on the side of us who are in the gutter but looking at the stars.

Indeed, Olson mentioned that he now is creating work which expresses a strong degree of hopefulness and sincerity, without becoming mawkish, and the whimsy or even goofiness inherent in this sci-fi type of platform serves him well in this purpose. He has a self-admitted affinity for drawing weird and cute creatures which may have a universal appeal kind of the way Dr. Seuss characters transcend race and ethnicity and can represent any human being at any given time.

So some contemporary artists have attempted to show what a post-capitalist society might look like, and we often see ruins of machinery over-grown by weeds with naked people cavorting about (it is a back to the garden scenario). Using his sci-fi, cute-alien scheme, Olson presents a post-racial aspect to his utopia as well as preserving technology as a tool which can be safely and sustainably used in an egalitarian society. His beings have not chucked technology and gone back to the garden, they have plowed ahead and problem-solved, which is the only choice for us as I do not want to be cavorting naked over rusted subway tracks picking berries someday.

SPRING/BREAK is a fair in which curators and artists work together to present work, and Jeremy Olson’s show was curated by Vanessa Albury, another highly talented New York City artist.

Check out thoughtful essays by Daniel Gauss at The Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/

Revelations Inherent in Patterns of Complexity - Interview with Andrea Kantrowitz

{{{click on images to enlarge them}}}

Andrea Kantrowitz bridges a number of fields and interests in her art. She studied art and cognition at Harvard, got her MFA in painting at Yale and received an interdisciplinary doctorate in art and cognition at Columbia. She complements her intellectual brilliance with a social commitment and has taught art in schools in underserved and underdeveloped neighborhoods. 

She has also done research on the benefits of art education for children born into poverty in the USA. For her current gallery show she focuses on the unfolding of and revelations inherent in patterns of complexity in smaller organisms. It is with great pleasure and honor that I present this interview with Andrea Kantrowitz, the Graduate Program Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Art Education at SUNY New Paltz.

You paint organic structures that develop through accretion, branching and crystallization. This involves the natural or unforced repetition of basic patterns leading to growth. To me this invites questions concerning the mystery of emergent qualities. What does repetition mean to you in these paintings?

The mathematics of natural processes fascinates me. I love this quote from the cognitive psychologist and AI pioneer, Herbert Simon:

For when we have explained the wonderful, unmasked the hidden pattern, a new wonder arises at how complexity was woven out of simplicity. The aesthetics of natural science and mathematics is at one with the aesthetics of music and painting—both inhere in the discovery of a partially concealed pattern.

(Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 1969)

I’m really interested in how complex forms can originate in the repetition of simple algorithms, encoded in molecular structures we cannot see with our naked eyes. If you just study what seems to be impossibly intricate closely enough, underlying patterns slowly reveal themselves. Painting becomes a process akin to reverse engineering.

Your show is called Objects of Contemplation. What might some foci of contemplation be for the viewer?

For me, the activity of painting is a meditation on nature, a form of non-religious spiritual practice. The paintings themselves are meant to help the viewer stay centered and focused on the awe and wonder that is potentially available to all of us at every moment of our lives. Living through a time of profound uncertainty and global crisis, some solace lies in the experience of beauty: color and light captured in paint on canvas.

The names of some of these life-forms come from ancient Greco-Roman mythology. Scylla and Charybdis, Leto, Cybelle, Plato’s Cave are some examples. Should these labels guide one’s contemplation of the organic forms? Are you suggesting already established metaphors or challenging folks to go beyond them?

I make oversized paintings of small objects, depicting them at 10 or 20 times their actual size. Years ago a critic wrote that I make too big a deal over nothing. I am of the school that you can find the universe in a drop of water or grain of sand if you just look hard enough. I aim to draw the viewer’s attention to the beauty and splendor of my subjects by invoking the philosophical and mythological traditions inherited from Greco-Roman times mediated and enriched through the history and culture of European painting.

The specific titles are based on the form and feeling of a particular painting once it is finished, its emergent qualities. For example, Cybelle, was the name of an Anatolian goddess, assimilated into Greek culture, was considered to be the mother of wild nature, and was always partnered with a lion. She was understood to both cure and cause disease. I began the painting titled Cybelle just before the pandemic hit, and as I was finishing the painting I was thinking about its spherical leonine form, eerily reminiscent of the depictions of Covid-19, but which, at the same time, seem to radiate positive emotion.

On a side note, I have also been very influenced by Chinese painting; an earlier work was titled A thousand peaks and myriad ravines in homage to the 17th century painter Gong Xian.”

Can you talk about how your painting process mirrors the organic processes being depicted? Was this important to you before you began or did you realize after you started that what you were doing mirrored natural processes?

That’s hard to say. It feels inevitable. Making a painting, any painting, for me, is a mirroring. It is an externalization of perceptions, internal feeling states and cognitive processes, a process of seeing and attempting to understand through repeated mimetic acts.

Can you tell me about your mental state as you created these works? What were the cognitive or emotional processes involved in repeating patterns or depicting these organisms?

Even though I determine the overall form and composition before I begin, painting involves an iterative process of inquiry and discovery, as I look closer and face up to the inadequacy of my understanding. It is a constant confrontation with the mystery of being.

You are currently working on a book called Drawing Thought for MIT press. In a nutshell, what do you mean by “drawing thought”? Do you think that we primarily conceptualize thought as being verbal? What attitudes do you hope to change through your book?

The underlying message of my book is aligned with the purpose of my paintings. I aim to show the reader how drawing enables us, as I write, “to come alive to experience, (to bring what is far away close at hand.) Drawing gives us a way to cultivate deeper relationships to our own internal thoughts and to the world in which we find ourselves. We find out that there’s way more than initially meets the eye. 

We come to realize that we know and understand less than we think we do, but at the same time, we gain access to ideas and perceptions otherwise hidden from our conscious minds. We learn to surprise ourselves. Through a regular practice and reflection we can develop habits of mind, heart and eye so that the journey of life remains ever interesting.”

You have done research concerning how an interdisciplinary art curriculum might beneficially affect students in areas of poverty. Can you tell us about this and the importance of such a curriculum?

I have taught PK-12 art, and now I teach future PK-12 art teachers for the same reason I am writing Drawing Thought. I believe art and artmaking can enrich everyone’s life and should be accessible to all. There is a substantial body of research (including ours) that art, particularly art that is integrated with other subjects in a co-equal manner, has a significant positive impact on the academic achievement and overall school success for children growing up in poverty. 

It has less of a measurable impact on the success of middle-class or upper-class children, and so can be a powerful tool in helping to level the playing field, addressing issues of equity in educational opportunities.

Art can illuminate and transcend academic, intellectual, and socio-cultural boundaries in a wide variety of educational settings. Art educators can unleash students’ self-expression, allowing them to tell their highly personal stories in ways that words alone may not. 

My research, and that of others, also demonstrates the art-making process can be highly effective in cultivating spatial reasoning skills essential to success in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) domains, and in creative innovation more generally.

One of my fourth-grade students in the Bronx once said: “I never realized before how art was not just making things, but about learning and understanding stuff. How everything is connected.” Making visible the specific character and substance of those connections helps tie together the loose ends, reinforcing learning across disciplines.

Buy Dan a cup of coffee for the amazing art reviews you have enjoyed? https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danielgaus6

Read more thoughtful writing by Dan at The Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/

Jean Lowe - Ephemera - from 2014 (previously unpublished art review discovered in old email)

 

click on images to enlarge them

The work of Jean Lowe caught my eye in 2010 when she presented her ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ show at McKenzie Fine Art in Chelsea (so happy to see this great gallery on Orchard Street now). This was the first time I had seen her quite funny papier-mache and enamel (fake) books with titles like: Who’s Who in American Prisons, What Would Satan Eat?, Biblical Family Values (with an orgy depicted on the cover), Something Awesome Is Coming Your Way! (with a medieval vanitas scene of skull and dying flowers on the cover) etc.

I was happy to see there was another of Lowe’s books in this current show: If God Loves Me So Much, Why Do I Have to Use My Vibrator? So she continues poking fun at the delusional self-absorption that she sees in certain strata of our culture and which drives much of the publishing industry. Yet, this show primarily uses a fake auction house theme to further examine the American micro-values that often pervade our daily lives and environment.

When you walk into McKenzie you see that Lowe has painted a fake Persian rug on the cement floor and even has a papier-mache potted plant in a corner. The walls are covered with fake auction posters and ads for auction items along with a few fake auction items themselves.

This particular auction seems heavy on ‘ephemera’ or items that reveal the passing of daily life in America. There’s the poster selling the ubiquitous ‘Lost Dog’ flier – Angus does need his medication so please help us get him back ASAP! There are goofy little poems written on hotel stationary, news clippings that were saved and are now up for sale, personal letters and even silly professional notes (all fake and all satirical).

So the big question is, what does this auction twist give to Lowe’s always entertaining work? Well, she presents stuff that is usually not at auctions – even at auctions of ephemera. She assumes that someone should see greater value in a lost dog flyer or note by a psychiatrist (about a move that a patient put on him) than folks normally see. This insight should, then, give these goofy items greater monetary value, since that seems to be the case in regard to the auctioning of art stuff in general (this seems to be an object of parody as well).

These items provide a special insight into our society that ‘real’ ephemera objects do not. The insight does not seem to be flattering either. The ephemera items at this fake gallery seem to show aspects of a society based on little more than rank consumerism, the indulging of petty whims and the pursuit of completely selfish concerns. It shows a society, perhaps, where we are encouraged to forsake the meaningful for the petty and are encouraged to pursue our own comfort ignorant of the suffering of others.

So all in all this show might make you want to move to a third-world country where more people have to be engaged in more meaningful pursuits and challenges. But, from my daily life of interacting with amazingly kind people who regularly exhibit selflessness and compassion, it might not be time to get your ticket to Laos yet – hopefully the battle between facetiousness and meaning Lowe helps to elucidate has not been completely lost by the good guys/gals of America yet.

Miyanaga Aiko and Albert Yonathan at Mizuma Gallery in Singapore

click on images to enlarge

Coal tar is a gummy, black liquid which results when coke and coal gas are derived from coal - it has medicinal uses for skin diseases and can be used for road surfaces. Naphthalene is distilled from coal tar and it is the material that moth balls are made of. This substance begins to disintegrate at room temperature and as it disperses in the air it can serve the function of an insect repellent. 

For a museum show in Tokyo, Miyanaga Aiko once created a bag made out of naphthalene into which she placed a key. As the days progressed the bag slowly deteriorated, ultimately leaving the key exposed. 

The fact that naphthalene begins breaking down at room temperature is significant for the meaning of this type of piece in that a process occurs with no human effort, thus becoming a perfect symbol for a natural or unforced process of revelation. 

It represents a process independent of the force of human planning, will or desire, where something protective but also inhibiting is allowed to wither away at its own pace and of its own devices.

Currently at Mizuma Gallery in Singapore, Miyanaga Aiko teams up with Albert Yonathan Setyawan, originally from Indonesia, for a show called Radiance, which features a “collaboration” as well as individual works by both artists. There is a piece, for example, in which one of Setyawan’s sculptural works is placed within a naphthalene basket by Miyanaga. As the days go by the evaporating naphthalene begins to collect on the inner surface of the glass case as crystals. 

So ultimately the piece by Setyawan will be freed of the basket and surrounded by the residue of crystals. The naphthalene crystals thus represent the useless but beautiful remnants of a process of disclosure - sort of proof that such a process happened, kind of the way art is proof that a process of humane development can happen. The crystals present a type of via negativa, a way of pointing to or describing something by indicating what it is not.

So you start with coal, get coal tar, then get naphthalene and, finally, all the effort and planning ultimately results in ineffectual but pretty crystals as leftovers of change, change being represented by the creation of liberating space and the disappearance of a man-made object. Thus there is also a Duchampian element here as Duchamp’s pawky definition of art was, essentially, that art is something useless into which meaning can be imputed. 

So perhaps we get a wry twist on Duchamp in Miyanaga’s pieces as she begins her process with representations of ordinary everyday objects and allows them to transform to attain to the meaningfully useless in crystalline form.

Yet, in regard to the shoes that Miyanaga presents casts of, each is based on a real shoe that has been worn. She seems to feel that each shoe takes on the experience of the wearer through a type of contagious magic. Time itself becomes embedded into each shoe, the wear and tear becomes the stories of aging and maturity and the challenges of life involved in human survival. The disintegration might represent the liberation of the accumulation and effects of the experiences the shoe has absorbed - like a shedding of that which can harm, tarnish or corrupt (like the old ritual of placing a community’s sins in a goat and releasing it into a forest). 

In the waiting for awakening series Miyanaga presents a napththalene shoe immersed in layers of resin, the layers demarked by air bubbles. The air bubbles represent periods of time as they have been inserted into the resin at differing periods. The shoe lies dormant or latent between these layers of the work until someone pulls a seal so that the process of disintegration will begin and the shoe will transform and disappear.

In another of Miyanaga’s works from the past she created a book of transparent resin with a key of naphthalene embedded in it. Piggy-backing on this, Setyawan, in the current show, created a book of pottery clay with grass seeds in it which will sprout and destroy the book. 

Miyanaga’s piece might be about transformation of the material to the immaterial within something that represents the confines of memory and the visceral effects of experience as our memories and our bodies work together to create a palpable sense of the possession of schemes and patterns of thought and action. Setyawan’s piece might be about the same process in different form, as what the book represents is subsumed by a process lying embedded and inherent within the book, rendering the book inconsequential due to a more compelling development.

In regard to some of his independent work, Setyawan likes the idea of being a type of artist/worker, which reminded me of the work of Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich, who tries to create art that feels good to make and which is therapeutically calming in the construction. The difference is that Pich wishes to create works free of meaning while Setyawan creates works based on concepts of deep religious/spiritual significance first before submitting himself to the pure joy of recreating multiple versions. For Helios he first draws upon a passage in the Book of Revelations in which four animals - in the forms of a lion, calf, human and eagle - proclaim “Holy holy holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.” 

He thus creates the human-like creature with its six wings covering all but one of the multiple eyes. The alternating image is flower-like but based on the concept of light and the sun. We thus get a type of active/receptive theme (like yin/yang or the Star of David), the active element providing the element of passionate expression, the receptive the element of fulfillment. The extreme repetition perhaps causes a loss of meaning within the giant design or creates a super-charged meaning to the huge pattern. To me the pattern becomes like a self-referential binomial sequence where you question the means of communication itself instead of trying to determine the meaning.

In Gnosis mothlike creatures form in an entropy-defying pattern reminiscent of a lattice. In Chrysopoeia, a term used by alchemists to mean the transmutation of lead into gold, we see densely packed knots, like a critical mass of problems which cannot be resolved, cannot be endured and cannot be escaped, only allowing for a submission to a belief in some heretofore unknown solution provided by the problems themselves. In Providentia, a term referring to the ancient Roman personification of the ability to anticipate and provide sustenance, we see a radiating pattern of feathers with eyes. The essence or building block of each abstract pattern is a moth, a knot or a feather with an eye on it. 

We can be affected by the overall structures but simultaneously examining the individual elements comprising the structures awakens the sense that there is some type of extraordinary immanence to be experienced, creating the feeling that we should open ourselves to it. It is also the empty spaces among the moths, knots and feathers which contribute to the sense of transcendence, like the air bubbles of Miyanaga’s work.

If you like thoughtful articles and essays, feel free to read Daniel Gauss' essays on The Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/

Enjoy new and creative ideas for free? Reward the writer with some free coffee. :) https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danielgaus6

Jack Balas - flipping the tables on the prurient interests of heterosexual, male art-lovers

                                                        {{{click on images to enlarge them}}}

Much of the history of Western art reflects the sexual desires of heterosexual, male artists and Edward Lucie-Smith’s Sexuality in Western Art is de rigueur if one is interested in this topic and how pervasive sexual objectification has been. The sexy women depicted can be allegorized a bit, to blur true intentions, but, basically, we are talking about the phenomenon of horny, hetero, guy artists painting for horny, hetero, guy buyers. 

We go to museums all over the world and see paintings in which the male artist finagled a woman to gratuitously disrobe for his prurient interests and this is tacitly accepted as having positive social and artistic value.

A few years ago Jack Balas put a new spin on all this when he wrote a satirical letter to Artforum after he counted the number of images of naked women in one issue versus the number of naked men and found a huge disparity. He mockingly recommended that Artforum do a “boobs to balls” count as gay men and straight women deserved the same measure of titillation the magazine was giving to hetero guys. 

Of course, he was also pointing to the power imbalance in the selection of whose sexuality winds up on museum walls and why heterosexual male sexual desire is often passed off as art with everyone encouraged to ogle it approvingly.

Another critical point Balas wants to make is that visual depictions of naked males are still shockingly taboo. The American male must, apparently, be depicted in his power suit, dignified, not naked to the world. He cannot be an object of desire – he is the one who gets his desires filled. If you paint a buff, naked guy, this is “beefcake” and you will be labeled and dismissed as a “homoerotic” artist. 

Nobody, however, ever called anyone a “heteroerotic” artist but the number of those guys has been legion. Even these days the idea of presenting full frontal male nudity does not seem fully acceptable, and the idea of gay men painting gay men for pleasure does not readily find a place in the art gallery world. This situation still reflects a deep-seated and pervasive homophobia, even in the art world, despite all the recent legal gains for the gay community.

Balas definitely paints buff, naked guys, but not necessarily for the sake of painting buff, naked guys. Even when the sexuality of a painting seems raw and in your face, it looks as if Balas might be aiming for something else. In his painting First Draft #1707, Balas toys with our desire for visual titillation. 

Why is the football coyly covering the guy’s genitals? What’s going on with the arrow connecting the guy with the window? Well, Balas enjoys using text to add dimensions to the visual elements of his work and, reading his text, we read a story of how someone used to ride his bike past this guy’s window when he was younger. 

The guy would often be in the window, naked, but with the football hiding his genitals. As the days went by, he apparently became more comfortable and he began flipping the football up in the air and catching it.

The image is a first attempt (a first draft) to convey a wry, ribald story, but results in irresolvable ambiguity. Balas points to the fact that we come to galleries, often, to impute our own stories onto visual images and often walk away with nothing. The text resolves any ambiguity and reveals a tale of risky, surreptitious, non-verbal communication and connection. 

Indeed, Balas creates a type of allegory for art here as finding a way to make the ambiguous understood and universal is certainly one goal. Also, to a great extent, Balas, as a gay male artist who does not shy away from gay male themes, is flipping a football up in the air every time he has a gallery show, forced to wonder whether people are going to be cool with his art or run away in total indignation. 

Most of us have probably not engaged in this type of exhibitionism, but figuratively we all know what it is like to be conflicted about this type of football flipping moment. 

Many of us have gotten to the naked with the football moment, but never flipped it. Unlike other folks who use text in art, Balas’s text is often personal and witty, but he strives to make common or universal connections among a general audience. Whether gay or straight, we all have refrained from or taken opportunities to flip the football.

There is, in fact, a huge amount that is both brilliant and enigmatic in the work of Balas, who often will juxtapose differing types of images compelling us to race through interpretations finding connections between the seemingly disparate – Balas seems to be interested in nudging viewers not only toward interpreting but also assessing the interpretive process and our capacities for meaningful or transformative interpretations and what it takes for an artist to really reach another person. 

Balas also seems to use visual and verbal punning at times and this is most plainly seen in Checkered Passed (Tied) (#1574). 

Balas writes that the painting “…touches on race and all of the discussions and controversy in the United States these days. The black model has a white arm and the white model has a black arm. Visually thus, they are tied to one another (my original title for the painting was 'Tied'). Further, note the lines literally tying the two models together. However, there is certainly a lot of wordplay going on. Being in a race is one thing, and tying instead of winning is another. The checkered flag signifies the winner in a race. Here the winning flag has been passed to the black model, which is literally pictured in the image. And, the whole history of race in this country is a sordid (i.e. checkered) past. In my mind the words and the image keep going around in circles—in a great way, and in an optimistic way as well. (It's about time.)"

In many reviews of his work it is pointed out that his buff models are in the prime of youth, during a period of life before major responsibilities or concerns, insouciant, unselfconscious, often engaged in athletics or leisure activities or relaxing after some type of physical workout. 

It suddenly dawned on me that these can, perhaps, be thought of as gay men in the Garden. Not “the garden”, but “the Garden”, Eden. I like to think of these guys as gay men before the Fall. Depictions of Adam and Eve in the Garden are a straight male’s bizarre concept of what the myth of paradise and innocence was like. You get two differing sexes, but in an asexual relationship, cavorting in a hunter-gatherer’s utopia. The woman’s eyes are opened to a knowledge of good and evil, and then the sexcapades begin.

The Western model of spiritual perfection and a fall from perfection is a heterosexual concept often using heterosexual symbolism. In allegorical literature the male represents spiritual desire, while the passive, patient female represents fulfilment of his desire. A gay male has just as much right to wonder what Adam and Steve might have looked and acted like and how they might have handled that tricky snake situation. 

These are virile, rippling young men who do not derive a sense of shame from being naked. It could be that you can be gay in the Garden, or Balas may be reading Hegel these days and predicting that there will be a future social bliss for all of us.

When Norman Lewis began doing abstraction, and became grouped with the Abstract Expressionists, he was criticized for politicizing art that purported to be universal by including references to the African American experience in his pieces. Ironically, by focusing on his identity, his time and the social circumstances of his people, many feel that his art is more accessible and impactful these days than the work of most Abstract Expressionists. 

I think Balas might also be in a similar situation. Piquant, insightful, humorous, complex and thoughtful, he may be thought of as a gay artist, when, in fact, he is an artist referring to his identity, his times, his aspirations for himself and his companions. I feel that when all is said and done, Balas will be recognized for his significance and considered a trail-blazer on many levels.

If you like super-thoughtful articles, read Daniel Gauss' essays at The Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/

Dan needs caffeine. Buy him a cup of coffee? https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danielgaus6

Entropy and Grace: Martin Honasan at YOD

{{{click on images to enlarge them}}}

Like most countries which suffered from colonial domination, once the Philippines achieved a nominal independence, it was very weak and lacking in infrastructure and economic production capacity. The resources and economy of the Philippines had been pillaged so badly over several hundred years that approximately 10 percent of Filipinos currently work overseas and attempt to send remittances back to family members. This often leads to horrific abuse and exploitation, as was evidenced by the story of a Filipina maid recently murdered in Kuwait along with numerous other stories of how Filipina women are horribly mistreated in attempts to sustain their families through overseas work.

One can think, perhaps, of the yearly flooding of the heavily polluted Marikina River, which runs through the city of Marikina in Metro Manila, as a type of symbol of the harm caused to the people of the Philippines. Indeed, one might even think of the Marikina River as a type of open wound which periodically flares causing pain throughout its region. 

Most of Metro Manila floods when it rains heavily, and destruction often occurs during the typhoon season. The flooding of the Marikina River each year, however, goes above and beyond. Poor planning, lack of funds, insufficient drainage systems, the clogging of floodways and the effects of industrial pollution, all legacies of the Philippines’ past, contribute to the immense damage caused to the city of Marikina each year. What was once a major transport route has become a yearly type of pestilence which must be endured by the people of Marikina. Once the flooding is over the people are faced with utter devastation. This has become part of their lives, year in and year out.

Honasan, a resident of Marikina, uses the annual devastation of his city as a starting point for his deeply humane work. The chaos of annual flooding is approximated by a frenzied process. He starts with a large sheet of canvas which he soaks in a basin with water and acrylic-based paint over many days until the paint becomes a dull muck and ashen color, approximating the polluted mud which covers and clings to large swaths of the city after the flooding. 

The force of the river on the city is approximated through the puncturing and shredding and crushing of the canvas bearing this manic and uncontrolled muddle of paint. Pieces of previous canvases along with fragments of the newly weathered canvas are made into a large collage on a new, unstretched canvas. Emerging, as it were, from this impasto of paint, as residents of Marikina literally emerge from their homes into the aftermath of a yearly environmental disaster, one then sees faces that are of relatives and close friends of the artist.

So on one level, Honasan represents an absurd and terrifying environmental ritual, exacerbated through the neglect borne of a history of economic misuse, that innocent people are subjected to continually. On a still deeper level, to me, Honasan’s works are about the discovery and acceptance of the type of grace written about and imagined by the most profound theological thinkers – from Augustine through Bonhoeffer. 

To a great extent his two-part process of feverish destructive activity followed by compassionate creation mirrors that of the discovery of grace where the frenzied and flawed activity of the human will is ultimately and painfully abandoned for a humble receptivity of what the divine wishes us to have.

All effort becomes impasto. The frenzied activity in which Honasan creates chaos ultimately leads to an intuitive and constructive process. The slowly developing faces which show defiantly and fantastically through the damaged canvas/collage represent what might be called grace – the slow and deliberate revelation of the truly sublime within us. 

Note: I saw Honasan’s work at the Volta art fair this year in New York City – great thanks to the folks at YOD Gallery in Osaka, Japan for participating and for helping me to better appreciate the work of this highly significant artist, who takes a traumatic local experience and turns it into a universal statement of the possibility and need for grace in our lives.

Read the religious writings of Daniel Gauss at: https://progressivechristianity.org/author/daniel-gauss/