John Thodos’ architecture expressed a unique minimalist beauty with a distinctive Mediterranean openness. His invention of seamless glass boxes as bay windows brought in glowing light and the Aegean spirit in his design opened up the insides of his spaces to the radiant California sun and nature. These windows were often punctuated by orange-red steel frames that seemed to make the air vibrate, as did the warm cedar wood interiors of his homes. The exterior doorways of his homes reminded me of the column and lintel passageways at the ruins of Phaestos in Crete. I was feeling Minoan memory in these houses of Carmel-by-the-Sea, drawing from an ancient source of pre-classical Greek architecture in its simple and elemental timelessness. These distinctive door openings were specifically inspired by Cycladic architecture that John had experienced during visits to Greece following college in the 1960’s. The simple elemental forms of this architecture, with its clear masses and deep doorways, became imprinted in his visual memory. He incorporated materials from the American Northwest reflected in his use of white oak and red cedar woods and expressing his unique ability to combine an Aegean and Californian material aesthetic. The interior spaces of his homes were inspired by the use of the mathematical golden section, a particular and systematic division of space that has also been noted in the architecture of the Acropolis in Athens.

We will sorely miss the presence of this unique individual who brought depth and meaning to the Modernist architectural ideas which he staunchly supported. I was surprised to find as kin, so kindred a spirit who, like me, believed that true creative achivement came from a deep and meaningful struggle with history and inner vision. It was approximately a decade ago that we first received a call from John. He had been searching for relatives and found us – a long lost branch from his family’s past that had remained in Chicago when his father moved West. I distinctly remember him saying “I knew there must have been other creative people in my family, and now I have found them” – in visual art, dance, and theater. Yet our equally happy acquaintance with him was no small revelation. A dynamo in his own right, he was hardy and persistent, sure of himself, living in complete devotion to creative thought. He saturated his life with all that elated and inspired him to the fullest. Whenever we had performances and exhibitions he was there: loyal and supportive, inspiring and energetic. Some of the memories he related to us reflected his Greek family’s past with struggles that surely forged toughness within him, but also developed an openness of spirit and an upbeat energy that got him through difficult times. He also cultivated a well-noted mischievousness with youthful sense of possibility that many who knew him well remember. John was indefatigable in his political activity as a Democrat and progressive. He practiced passionate engagement toward reform and social improvement which he felt was the obligation of all citizens.

He told us the mysterious story of how he came to live in the city of Carmel, California. In the 1970’s he had wished to go to Greece and buy a house as a place to relax from his intense work, but conflicts in the region changed his mind. Upon returning to Portland and decided to “sleep on it” and had a dream that he should go to Carmel California, a place he had never visited. He called a realtor in Carmel the next day. It became the place where he was to build important award winning homes for himself and other residents of the city. He also built several distinctive office and apartment buildings in and around Portland Oregon where his main architecture design firm was located. He was to win over 15 design awards from the American Institute of Architects, among many others, for his innovative work. Not long after meeting him John sent us a 22-page article from the Italian Magazine L’Architettura published in January 2001 which profiled his seminal building achievements.

From the beginning we sensed John’s dynamism, his drive, and a certain West Coast optimism that was in tune with the sunny California coast where he lived. It was above all his spirit of possibility and creative realization that we were most taken by. His experimental state of mind was also apparent in the many paintings he produced. Most represent a formal play between gridded and curved segments, while are others are spontaneous clusters of gestures, lines, and dots – a reminder of his searching curiosity. He was constantly excited by the challenge of solving problems, particularly ones that others could not. He often said, “I don’t want to hear about how it can’t be done.”

Indeed the quality of light, materials, proportions and space in his buildings, furniture designs and paintings lend themselves to something both ancient and Modernistically democratic; something almost spiritual in its totality. I found symmetry, translucent space, light, and nature that combined Bauhaus purity with a kind of archaic transcendence that took the impersonal edge off the sterility which can often come to characterize Bauhaus architecture. When I visited Carmel in November 2009 following John’s memorial I recall standing in one of his homes and seeing the beckoning glow of California light through one of his glass bay windows. It generously framed nature that seemed to flow from outside to inside. I felt how warm and simply expressive his materials were, and though the proportions of his furniture and rooms were not large they retained a temple- like elemental monumentality. Here in the space between glass and wood, light and space, John was alive and spoke as only the work of true and lasting creative achievement can.

For more information on John Thodos and his work you can visit his website at www.thodosaia.com

Interior – Scenic Drive House, Carmel, California

Bradley and Byrd Residence, Carmel, California

Gallery House near Carmel, California

Gallery Park Apartments, Portland, Oregon

Torres Street Residence, Carmel, California

Diane Thodos is and artist and art critic who lives in Evanston, IL. She is a 2002 recipiant of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and will be exhibiting at the Kouros Gallery in New York City in 2010. She is represented by the Alex Rivault Gallery in Paris, the Traeger/Pinto Gallery in Mexico City, and the Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago.

Recently, Details magazine ran an article on the 10 Coolest Art Galleries in America. All the major cities were mentioned with NYC getting the most nods, of course. When you break it down Top 10 lists and the like don’t mean much but they are fun.

So it got me thinking: which galleries do we think are cool? In Chicago, I think the coolest gallery is Zg Gallery. They always have consistently good shows with a good stable of artists plus the two owners Myra Casis and Meg Sheehy are cool too!

A few weeks ago, Chicago Art Magazine ran an article asking the question, “Are apartment galleries illegal?” The article summarized the troubles The Green Lantern apartment gallery ran into, and documented the issues the City of Chicago has with mixing businesses with residences. A follow-up article dove a little deeper into licensing issues and indicated the City is unfamiliar with the term “apartment gallery.”

The commentators, at the end of the post, voiced disappointment and frustration. One even accused the City of malevolence toward artists and musicians. Since I have some thoughts on the topic, I was going to chime in, but felt I didn’t want to get into a flame war. I’d rather do that here.

While it can be disheartening that the rules can make it difficult or even impossible to legally operate an apartment gallery, it certainly was not born out of some sort of plot to hurt anybody. Instead, the laws governing businesses have two main objectives. One is to protect nearby residents from disruptive activities and the other is safety.

As for combining business activities and residential living, there are many problems that can happen here. Certainly, a steady flow of customers in and out of a business can get on neighbor’s nerves. The increase in vehicle traffic and parking puts a strain on a residential area. In the case of apartment galleries, the openings which tend to be big parties, certainly disturb the peace.

Of course, it shouldn’t be hard to understand the safety issues. There are fire codes to protect patrons. Generally, these are more stringent than residential codes. Though there are occupancy rates for residences, they are a little stricter for businesses. Fire suppression systems are still optional for most type of residential buildings, yet businesses are required to have fire extinguishers and in many cases, sprinkler systems. Also, security for residents is a concern. While taping the hallway door open makes it easy for art patrons to freely come and go during openings, it also allows access for any nut job that has other reasons for entering the building.

These are just a few of the reasons any municipality would want to regulate mixing home and business and since it’s hard to address every single type of business, the laws are kind of a one size fits all. Except for the opening parties, I can see where one might be upset when the regulators clamp down on an apartment gallery. After all, there isn’t that much activity that would differentiate the gallery from the apartment.

So what should apartment gallerists do? Well, one tactic would be to convince the City to make an exception for apartment galleries. Demonstrate to those in charge the differences between a quiet gallery and a busy store and that most of the laws are in place to regulate the busy store. Educate them on the cultural impact of the gallery on the quality of life in the City and the reputation of the City as a global city. Find a way to protect the interests of residents while allowing a business to thrive.

The other tactic would be to embrace the outlaw nature of the apartment gallery. There already is a thriving underground restaurant scene. It’s an easy way for restaurateurs to build a reputation and gain some experience before opening up a public place. These renegade food services have been chronicled in the local media and seem to operate with impunity. The apartment gallery can be the new speakeasy. — Well, maybe that’s a little overboard.

I do know that generally these laws are passively enforced. A complaint has to be filed before a business is shut down, and often times more than once. That means if the activities of the apartment gallery don’t get out of hand, they are usually left alone. Besides, how long should one expect to run a gallery out of his or her home before either taking the step to operating a stand alone space or get out of the biz altogether. By the time the law catches up with the gallery owner, he or she has gone legit or is ready to throw in the towel. If there is a healthy “art apartment” scene, someone else will step in and keep up the tradition.

Back in 1984, as part of the issue that coincided with the Navy Pier art fair, Chicago Magazine published 4 photographs of 159 Chicago artists. The photo essay, "Artists by Number." was a roll call of important artists in Chicago at that time. Do you recognize any of the names or faces? I’m sure you do…or maybe not!? How many of these artists would be included in a 2010 version?

As this week marks the 30th anniversary of the original Navy Pier art fair in Chicago, we thought it would be fun to take a look back.

Chicago Magazine, May 1984
Artists by Number
A Once-in-a-Lifetime Group Portrait of More than 150 Chicago Artists
by David Jackson
Photography by Toni Soluri

Click for larger image.

1-Arturo Cubacub; 2-Buzz Spector; 3-Mary Ahrendt; 4-Alice Lauffer; 5-Anita David; 6-Susan Sensemann; 7-Corey M. Postiglione; 8-Tim Hurley; 9- Paulo Colombo; 10-Charlotte Rollman Shay; 11-Fern Shaffer; 12-Othello Anderson; 13-Agnes McGregor; 14-Arthur Lerner; 15-Herbert Davidson; 16-Thomas H. Kapsalis; 17-Gordon Powell; 18-David Bower (behind 45); 19-Dennis Wojtkiewicz (behind 12); 20-Jerry Allison (behind 7); 21-Ben Benson; 22-Charles A Heinrich; 23-Richard Wetzel; 24-George Klauba (behind 14); 25-Hiram Nuñez; 26-Kerig Pope; 27-Robert Donley (behind 15); 28-Michelle Fire (behind 6); 29-Jeff Colby; 30-Dan Ziembo; 31-Philip Hanson; 32-Linda Lee; 33-Ted Stanuga (behind 21); 34-Dennis Kowalski (behind 47); 35-Estelle Kenney; 36-Kennet Hempel; 37-Derek Webster; 38-Nancy Steinmeyer; 39-Robert Amft; 40-Olivia Petrides; 41-Judy Geichman; 42-Christine Rojek (behind 40); 43-David Simons; 44-Ruth Aizuss Migdal (behind 46); 45-Terry Karpowicz; 46-Diane Christiansen; 47-Linda King; 48-Vincent Dunn; 49-Tom Robinson; 50-Roy Schnackenberg.

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51-Norma Topa Gross; 52-Barbara Rossi; 53-Edward Larson; 54-Evelyn Statsinger; 55-Sylvia Birch Halperin; 56-Julie Richman; 57-Margaret Lanterman; 58-Susanne Doremus; 59-Carol Smith Block; 60-Nancy Plotkin; 61-Claire Zeisler;; 62-Stephen Luecking; 63-Karl Wirsum; 64-Bonnie Hartenstein; 65-Diane Simpson; 66-Irene Siegel; 67-Joan Lyon; 68-Stanley Edwards; 69-George Waite; 70-Judy Gordon; 71-Tony Phillips; 72-Jan Sullivan; 73-Paul Crisanti; 74-Susan Bloch (behind 65); 76-Kim Mosley; 77-Jeanette Pasin Sloan; 78-Bruce White; 79-Jim Nutt (behind 68); 80-Suellen Rocca; 81-Ellen Kamerling; 82-Mary Anne Davis; 83-Paul Martin; 84-Michael Miller; 85-Theodore Halkin (in front of 96); 86-Gladys Nilsson; 87-Virginio Ferrari; 88-Antonia Contro; 89-Don A. DuBroff; 90-Marcia Weese; 91-Ralph Arnold; 92-Paul LaMantia (behind 79); 93-Roger Brown; 94-Christian Ramberg; 95-George Cohen; 96-Dean Snyder; 97-Ken Holder; 98-Jane Stevens; 99-Dan Yarbrough; 100-Tom Scarff.

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101-Hollis Sigler (behind 102); 102-Claire Prussian; 103-Tom Palazzolo; 104-Susan Michod; 105-L. J. Douglas; 106-Eleanor Spiess-Ferris (behind 120); 107-William Conger; 108-Joan Taxay-Weinger; 109-Frank J. Morreale; 110-Richard Kelley; 111-Mark Jackson; 112-Carol Haliday McQueen; 113-Nina Beall; 114-Steven Heyman; 115-Gary Justis; 116-Wesley Kimler; 117-Thelma Heagstedt; 119-Barbara Blades; 120-Edith Altman; 121-Phyllis Bramson; 122-Nancy Boswell-Mayer; 123-Matt Straub; 124-lorraine Peltz; 125-Harold L. Gregor; 126-Mary Min; 127-Joel Oppenheimer; 128-Michelle Stone (behind 107); 129-Alfred P. Maurice; 130-Richard Loving; 131-Sandra Jorgensen (behind 126); 132-larry Salomon; 133-Dennis L. Mitchell; 134-Steve Stratakos (behind 123); 135-Cameron Zebrun (behind 116); 136-Gaylen Gerber; 137-Susan Mitchell; 138-Gail Simpson; 139-Carl Kock; 140-Dean Langworthy; 141-Roger Machin & Spot; 142-Leslie Wolfe; 143-Fred Gude; 144-Robert McCauley (behind 130); 145-Bill Cass; 146-Don Baum; 147-Michael Zieve; 148-Deven K. Golden; 149-Arnaldo Roche Rabell; 150-Robert Lostutter.

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151-Richard Hunt; 152-Joseph Hilton; 153-Ed Paschke; 154-Peter Hurley; 155-Neraldo de la Paz; 156-Will Northerner; 157-Kenneth Shorr; 158-Maryrose Carroll; 159-Kathleen King; Robert Appel (behind 159)

Photographer Tony Soluri stood on top of a rickety wooden ladder at the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery, waving a camera, shouting instructions, and trying to get a better view. The people Soluri was yelling, 50 or so Chicago-based painters and sculptors, stood in a loose pack in front of him, each holding a numbered card as if waiting for service in a deli. "Number forty-four, " cried Soluri, "I can’t see your face!" The artist holding number 44, Ruth Migdal, looked at her card, then moved her face. "That’s good. Now, one-oh-three, can you step to the left? OK, now ho-o-old it!"

Deciding whom to include in the portrait was an intricate and worrisome task for Robert Post, Chicago’s art director. He contacted various galleries and asked them to give him a list of the painters and sculptors they thought important. Curators, collectors, and critics added names. As word got out, some artists even called to add themselves. Still, it was inevitable that some people would be left out. Some invitations never made it through the mail. And some people showed up uninvited. Fame is a tricky thing. It doesn’t always work out the way you planned.

For most of the 150 or so artists at the photo session, it was a reunion. "It’s a small community, really,’ said Estelle Kenney. "We overlap at parties and openings all the time. i know nearly everyone here. And I’m on good terms with a quarter of them. I think that’s extraordinary."

When they weren’t being photographed, the subjects stood in cocktail party-size groups talking about very normal things. "Artists are normal," explained Joel Oppenheimer. "When we get together, it’s mostly lifestyle talk. Vacations. Cars. You know—food."

Judy Gordon and Ben Benson were talking pasta salad "I use Neapolitan macaroni," said Benson. "It keeps its shape. Rigatoni tends to go flat." He pressed his fingers together. "But this neapolitan stuff is wonderful."

Two conversations down, Tom Palazolo was recalling a childhood snack. "My grandfather was Sicilian," he said, "so there was always a bowl of olive oil in the kitchen. Ehen he wanted to keep me quiet he’d tear off a hunk of bread and dip it in the olive oil. It was wonderful. Like a Sicilian pacifier."

As they talked, some of the artists milled toward the center room, where the photographs were being taken. The artists had been divided, first come first served, into groups of 50 or so. Each group’s picture took about half an hour. Soluri’s two assistants were corralling people for the third shot. Michelle Stone watched. "Artists are funny," she said. "They all look so shy."

Paulo Colombo stood by himself. If you looked closely, you could see that his socks had a leopard-skin pattern.

Edith Altman was peering at the number of the person next to her, Phyllis Bramson. "I’m into numbers," announced Altman. "I have 120. You have 121. And over there are 105 and104. It’s random, but maybe not. Last year I was at a whooping crane watcher’s convention—I don’t know why, but I was there—and I found that there’s often a hidden order beneath the movements of cranes, and all things. And this group: Is it ordered or is it chance?"

Nearby, Agnes McGregor was studying her number—13. "Can you play this number in the lottery?" she asked. "I think maybe it’s lucky."

Un unidentified person in red sneakers, probably a friend of the arts, piped up behind her: "Well, you know sometimes you win," he sang. "And there are times you loose. And sometimes luck as we know it today comes out and smiles on you."

Wesley Kimler, Gary Justis, and Matt Straub hovered on the edge of the group. All three wore black leather jackets and alarmed-looking hair. They were deciding what to do. "Let’s jostle our way to the front," said one.

"Uh-uh. They won’t like that."
"They won’t like us."
"Let’s stand in neat rows then."
"Like bowling pins."
"It’s our fascist heritage."

Anita David stood at the front, with her friend Olivia Petrides. "Oooh, lets pose!" giggled David. "Here comes the picture! Let’s lose ten pounds! Quick, let’s fix our teeth!"

A little to the left, Michelle Fire was wearing a blue Hawaiian shirt. She had plastic starfish on her ears. When the photographer strained to see her number, Fire winked.

Most people smiled or coughed or looked bemused. Then the flashcube popped, and it was done. "Now we’re famous," said Frank Morreale. "What happens next?"

"Everything will change," said Lorraine Peltz, guiding him to the bar. "The way you dress, the way you think, even the way you do your hair. Everything will change."

There is so much art information available on the internet it can make your head spin. If you “google” an artist’s name current articles, past articles, interviews, videos, images, reviews, etc. may all come up in abundance. And this artist doesn’t even need to be famous. Also, many artists blog, many artists write reviews and many artists are writing more overall. The internet has made it all so easy now. If this stuff is worth a damn is another story but either way it’s all out there and available. And let’s not forget about Facebook.

The monolithic art magazines and/or art critics don’t seem to be that important anymore. Not that they are irrelevant but maybe their once big powerful stick has been shortened quite a bit.

So my question is: Where do we get our art news—nationally and locally? Do some of you still read Art in America or Art Forum? Do you still check out your favorite art critic in a particular newspaper or magazine? Do you frequently check out a fellow peer’s artist blog? What are some of the local art websites that are on your feed?

“Think about this: we go to the doctor’s office and an hour or so later we’re still reading two-year-old magazines. Despite the wasted time and the fact that it’s going to cost you, you still patiently wait and at the appropriate time remove your clothes, lean back, and completely submit. We submit in a lot of places in our lives. If you can’t submit to art, to hell with you.” – James Turrell¹

Submission is a Key Aspect of Artistic Experience

One of the thorniest issues with which we must contend in the creation and contemplation of art is the problem of our response to the idea of submission. Submission: to willingly – or under duress – relinquish some determinative capacity within the self, giving it over to the authority of another, be it person, circumstance or paradigm. Submission: to recognize – again, either voluntarily or under duress – the power and prevalence of some significant structure over the personal sovereignty of impulse and will one might normally conceptualize as private and essentially personal.

As a cognitive activity, submission is integral to the full experience of any art, whether in making or viewing. While our initial relationship to works of art may indeed be an intuitive, pre-cognitive movement within us², the deep appreciation of art assumes an intellectual and logistical commitment that is indistinguishable from submission. Any profound knowledge of a work of art, any honest apprehension of its reality, requires significant humility.

If we merely apply our perceptive powers to an artwork and enforce our will upon it, squeezing from it some hackneyed, free-associative, piece-meal interpretation, we limit the potential of any work of art to our own whims. An active knowledge of art is full of pressure, full of change, and these forces hail from outside our own conceptualizations. Knowing art is a challenge to us, an acknowledgement of an energy or evocation to which we come and seek a perspective on what and who and how we are. Making, contemplating, or knowing art all come at the cost of a willing submission.

Yet many who are drawn to art either as makers or viewers are likely to reject the very concept of submission. This is a fundamental paradox of the artistic mind since their artistic endeavors invariably function within that frame of reference. Most artists describe their artistic impulse as something they must follow and have to get out, something about which they greatly obsess, something around which they orient their lives and for which they make sacrifices. They speak of time management, studio discipline and creative practice. When they do not make time for their work, choosing jobs and entertainments over the creative unction, they experience psychological and emotional punishment for their failure to obey the impulses that drive their creative minds. This is the very language of submission. The way we talk about our work is indicative of the reality beneath our talk of self-expression and the transgression of taboos: that submitting is integral to the making and understanding of art.

Authority, Autonomy, and the Jurisdiction of the Self

There are many forms of submission in the world and many levels at which it is manifested. Obvious outward examples are the basics of traffic laws, the various monetary systems we use, and structures of language to which we subscribe. More deeply embedded are the vagaries of social interaction; even those who reject broadly accepted normative structures and average social contracts subscribe and submit to their counter-cultural equivalents. We accept the formats of reading and writing in our given culture with very little grievance. It is surprising that most people fail to question these two extremely influential structures given how strongly tied they are to our ability to know (and the manner in which we know) anything at all. The vast majority of us, even those wishing to pursue alternative lifestyles and practices, espouse countless norms that range from meaningless social conventions to deeply rooted mores. Furthermore, and on a much more precognitive level, we each submit to our body’s requirements for food, drink and sleep and its shifting saturations of dopamine, serotonin, adrenaline and other hormones. Additionally, we have to take the time to learn our bodies, experience what they can and cannot do, grasp these propensities, and shape (or fail to shape) them according to the predispositions of various parts. From top to bottom, from our conscious awareness to our involuntary movements, we are submitting.

Intellectual growth is an area where our willingness to submit is fundamental to development. It is obvious that to know anything one must admit ignorance, submit to knowledge, accept information, and earnestly investigate to discern and parse the nuances of that material. The result of this procedure is an increasing assuredness in the growing knowledge and awareness, even when total certainty is not the goal. Why then is the concept of submission met with so much resistance?

The issue is not one of mere dogmatism alone, since traffic laws are certainly just as dogmatic as the rules espoused by institutionalized religions, for example. The difference is the jurisdiction claimed by each. Your eternal soul does not go to hell simply because you run a red light or commit some social miscue; you pay some cash or feel some embarrassment and move on. Citizens do not have the authority to claim an autonomy that allows them to consistently reject traffic laws or use fake money. When they do, they are punished in more or less effective ways. Most people view the benefits of giving over specific areas of their self-jurisdiction to the state as worth it in that it affords much in terms of stability and security.

Yet government authority does not constrain the self so much as certain outward actions of the self. Religions and other systems of morality and ethical conduct do, on the other hand, challenge the autonomy of the self by claiming jurisdiction over the thoughts, feelings, conduct, choices, and perspectives of the individual. Nearly all human beings submit themselves to strictures of morality that impinge upon and shape the expressive possibilities of their inner selves. My contention in this essay is that the art is at least as beneficial and necessary as these are and that we may gain a great deal from a conscious awareness of our acquiescence to it. Are we willing to let go of ourselves?

The question of authority in the context of the desire for autonomy is a point on which art pivots. Often seen as the realm of singular, private expression, art is also often dogmatic and strongly ideological, making broad, absolutist statements about the world. Therefore artworks tend to claim a kind of purview of both inward (toward the maker) and outward (toward the viewer) realms. To read art at all the viewer has to be willing to go with it; to really grasp the work the viewer must become a student of it and its context. The very nature of artworks is a demand for submission. This authoritative stance makes art inherently problematic for those who disdain submission.

Furthermore, artists inherently function in a context of submission. In the course of art-making an artist becomes a filter and an inflector, accumulating outside knowledge, skills, and experiences – about the body, historical contexts, socio-cultural modes and legacies, the technical means of expression – and subsuming, transmuting, then transmitting them back out into the universe. A large portion of an artist’s education is given over to this progression. The process by no means results in the outpouring of original or new material – far from it. Instead, it amounts to the funneling and arrangement of information and meanings and evocations present in and available to conscious entities. We begin to understand the truth of submission when we realize that we do not know or create via some singular, special fountain within ourselves that is divorced from the rest of reality, but rather we manifest these things in our own individuality as a conduit through which they flow and are altered by our uniqueness and specificity. This reality of our existence as conduits is the birthright of all consciousness. Through this I know that my artwork is not my own entirely original conception. It is a projection of the vast web of intersubjectivity out of which I come, to which I have been exposed, and part of which I have the privilege to re-present. In giving up any claim to pure originality I gain the joy of essential, necessary participation. This is the amazing, profound gift of conscious submission: knowing finally that I am not separate but am made for relationship, community, integration, and continuity. I find my greatest personal expression in acknowledging this relational truth.

In this conception, the artist’s personality, interests, and facture are not the locus of creative activity; rather, they are the conduits through which a weight of understanding passes. To submit to the lessons of history, to study, to investigate, to find and thus to inform our actions with what is beyond the limits of the self – these are the things that lead to the great, meaningful expressions. This perspective results in the realization that what we need for a life in art is necessarily not inherent within us.

The relatively recent Post-Enlightenment conceit that frames the individual self as source, justifier, means, and meaning for all of life is at the center of the problem. It is not a mistake that individualistic rationalism manifested in other such philosophical arenas as existential nihilism and the denial of the possibility of true communication between entities. Once the self is seen as the central authority, seen as taking no substantive or meaningful understanding from anyone or anything else, seen as without fundamental conceptual or ideational legacies, we lose the ability to grasp common ground. Any commonality (community, relation, shared intersubjectivity) is a priori ridiculous to autonomous entities. This leads the way to intolerance; if I am the originator and arbiter of my values, meaning, and ideas why should I bother with any truly pluralistic understanding of others’ perspectives? Contrary to widespread common opinion, ideological or religious dogmatism is not the core of intolerance or inhumanity, a sense of the self as essentially autonomous and self-justifying is.

Once I sense my own contingency, however, my worldview changes. Once I know that I am a conduit, a passageway, my attitude shifts. Once I realize that all things are in relation, I must acknowledge those around me. Once I grasp the reality that there are limitations to what I know, I can work to align myself to the vast array of knowing and consciousness around me. The sooner I realize my own intellectual, physical, and creative contingency, the sooner I will understand that nothing can be what it is without the contexts in which it lives, moves, and has being. This leads me to realize that what I am is not because of my own self-sufficiency in anything, but rather because of my embedded-ness within a multivalent medium of subjective realities. There is a sense in which I must – amid the realities of any truth and faith I personally affirm – submit in some way to every human being who has ever lived in order to operate in any way at all. They have participated in manifesting the world just as much as I. This decentralized matrix of authority and knowledge may be the very definition of a transcendent human consciousness in which we all participate, to which we all submit in the course of being.

What Submission Brings: Experience, Knowledge, Understanding, and Identification

The preceding paragraphs make several axioms apparent: submission to life leads to experience, submission to experience leads to knowledge; submission to knowledge leads to understanding; submission to understanding leads to identification. Identification amounts to the apprehension and appreciation of what is behind the work of art, as opposed to the mere identification of its constituents; it enfolds a sounding of what is before, within, and beyond the work³. In each case, submission is the essential antecedent and therefore founds the most important activities embedded in viewing art.

The four products of submission mentioned above are key to both the activity of the artist while creating the work and to the action of the viewer in seeing the work. We have covered much of submissive making already, so let us turn to viewing. Encouraging submissive viewing could be said to be the initial and primary goal of any artwork. That is, if the artwork is assumed to convey messages or narratives, it must first be constructed in such a way so as to elicit intentional cognition regarding the work in the mind of the viewer via his or her eye. Here enter the interwoven histories of meaning and value, of techniques and materials, of visual languages and evocative imagery. Just as submission to information is the key to knowledge and subsequent understanding, so submission to the dynamics of visual communication, of cultural expression, of the shorthand in bodily gesture, and of the structure of narrative are key to presenting information worth viewers’ submission. It is certainly plausible that some of the societal reticence toward aesthetic submission is due, at least in part, to the failure of artists to use the tools available to them to construct artwork that either invites engagement or requests submission.

If a work of art is well-made, evocative, and resonates with the deep subjectivities and multifaceted potentialities of human understanding – anything from classic meta-themes and values to the banal, small-yet-redeeming realities of day-to-day existence – I, as a viewer, will be called to submit to the contemplation of things beyond myself. However, if I reject the submission, I will be offended by the work because it is, by its very form, attempting to call me away from my infatuation with myself. It is calling me to submit to a higher, broader, less singular perspective. I will reject the work out of a need to justify and maintain my own viewpoint, my own orientation to myself as the center of my universe. As a lover of the singular, autonomous self, I will feel attacked by any artwork created for the expression of any value that seems to claim supremacy to the self – my self.

Yet we must recognize that to fully appreciate art – any art – one must be ready to move down that path from experience to identification, aiming toward an identification of not only of visual languages, cultural conditions, and historical legacies, but also of the person behind the expression. Seeing is a relational activity, and in it we move from identification of formal or conceptual elements to identification with the human condition generally and other individuals specifically. To dismiss any work out of hand is to misunderstand the procedure of seeing in art. Even worse, it is to misunderstand the reality of other people as such.

Similarly, the artist mistakes the procedure of making when he views the self as the instigation, means, and end of an artwork. This perspective results in a representation primarily of the self. The self, the ego, the personality, can only reflect itself. When we artists focus on ourselves we drown in murky circular logic. Likewise, when viewers refuse to stretch themselves, refuse to make themselves vulnerable to the power of images, objects, and ideas, they deny themselves great avenues of understanding and enjoyment. When viewers are so closed that they look only for themselves in a work of art, to the rejection of all else, they lose a chance to experience the sort of cathartic epiphanies that only art can offer. Pulling on the thread a good work of art offers is one of the best ways to get past ourselves and go to a place we could never have imagined, learn things we might never have considered, and become more than we thought possible.

Conclusion

In the end, submission to artworks is something that cannot be expressly measured nor fully related between individuals. To be sure, we are subjective and elaborately so, embedded as we are in so great an overlapping stratification of physical and metaphysical realities. Perhaps it may be too much to expect that submission to experience, to understanding, and to identification might be embraced (or recognized as part and parcel of what artists are doing every day) in a sufficiently broad and meaningful way. Yet one can certainly hope that each of us might find the strength to let go of ourselves long enough to appreciate and truly know works of art – to know consciousness and being, even – so that they might reveal an evocative, transformative reality to us. Ultimately, we must submit to them in order to reap their fruits.

This is a call for experience, knowledge, understanding, and identification. This is a call for openness, for evocation, and for resonance.

This is a call for submission.

¹Turrell, James, Quoted by Elaine King. Into the Light: A Conversation with James Turrell. Sculpture, November 2002. Volume 21, Number 9. Page 29. ↩
²See the works of Rudolf Arnheim and George Santayana for more on this contention. ↩
³“Before, within, and beyond” could be said to correspond respectively to context (historical legacy and presentation, as they apply to meaning), formal realities (media, subject matter, manner, as they inflect meaning), and implications (application, interpretation of potential meaning). ↩

There is an interesting article in this week’s Chicago Reader: The Endangered Coyote: After a disappointing benefit, the Around the Coyote arts org contemplates extinction by Deanna Isaacs (here) which states that the 20-year-old organization is in dire need of money and will probably face extinction. I say what’s the big deal if Chicago loses ATC? I was part of one of their fall exhibitions many years back but always thought the ATC was full of mediocre artists with mediocre work…at best. So I would like to ask a question to all artists, curators, etc. that have been or still are associated with ATC: How have you benefited from ATC and what has ATC done for the Chicago art scene?

A while back, a friend and I were discussing music that had been overplayed over the years and had determined that some of it should be locked up in a vault; to be released at a later date when it might be fresh again. We both agreed that the Beatles should be vaulted.

Well, the same is true of the art world. There are aspects of it that, due to ubiquitous, do not have any impact anymore or have lost their importance. It’s not necessarily that they are bad. It’s just that they have been played out to the point of being a cliché. By placing them in a vault, we can make room for something new and make them appear to be fresh when we’re ready to release them from the art world time capsule again.

I’m listing what I’d like to put in the vault for future rediscovery. This is by no means an exhaustive list and does not reflect a hatred toward anything, just that these subjects have lost some of their importance due to overexposure.

Andy Warhol — He set the art world on its ear when he hit the scene, but his repeating images and colorized black and white prints became old 30 years ago. His stuff has appeared on every kind of object you can think of and mimicked by graphic designers for so long that his work is as about as interesting as a section of sidewalk. Time to put him in the vault and by the way, he can take the Velvet Underground with him.

Keith Harring — A one-trick pony to begin with, his Barrel of Monkeys-looking figures have adorned marketing material for fund raising events for the last 25 years. To the vault with ye!

Jackson Pollack — Often imitated by lazy designers, splatter paint is used to break up the monotony of long hallways, and bolts of fabric. It’s no longer exciting to view one of his paintings. I can get more out of observing the sparkles when I grind my fists into my eyeballs. By the way Jack, there is no smoking in the vault.

Jerry Saltz — On the one hand he brings to attention many of the ills of the art world, which is good. On the other hand, he embraces many of the goofy stunts that pass for conceptual art. I believe he does this to be around young artists. By doing so, they keep him young. He’s a vampire! Throw him in the vault so he can’t suck the life out of any more recent grad students!

Video installations that have a TV set on the floor of a gallery — I don’t want to bend over and look at a loop of nonsensical imagery coming from a monitor on the floor. Make a film and have a proper screening in a theater, for crying out loud! Take your blabbing heads and pretty girls with paper maché animal heads dancing through the forest and stuff them in the vault. Besides, CRTs are so last century.

Well, anyway that’s a start. What are your contributions for The Vault?

Eleven years ago, I read the Chicago Reader article “Kimler’s Complaint.” At the time, I only had a vague notion of how the Chicago art scene worked. I knew there was a lot of conceptual work out there. I frequently read New Art Examiner, with all of its pseudo-sociology. I was also aware of the trend toward mimicking outsider art, which seemed to grow in popularity in the ’90s. However, I still thought that the Imagists and abstract artists that ruled the day in the ’80s still held sway and that the reason why the art scene in Chicago was lame, was that it never fully recovered from the art market crash.

I had no idea what really happened, behind the scene. I was busy puttering around in the minor art league in this city, showing in storefront galleries, Around the Coyote and in bars, hoping that someday I would be called up to the Majors. I had become ignorant of what really made the Chicago art world run. Not ever having any real connection to it, it’s no suprise that I didn’t fully grasp what Wesley Kimler was saying.

In recent years, I’ve become more in tune with what is going on in Chicago. I’ve also noticed that “Kimler’s Complaint” is referenced every now and then, so I decided to re-read this article. Now that I have a better understanding of the Chicago art world, I can more fully appreciate what Wesley Kimler was saying. He blasts the takeover of the Chicago art world by academia. He names names and calls people out. After reading it, I realize that nothing really has changed in Chicago since then and doesn’t look like it will. The institutions will still crank out artists that will dabble in conceptual nonsense for a few years, then go on to teach or sell real estate. There will always be more of them.

It’s now obvious that “Kimler’s Complaint” was never answered. Maybe it’s time to escalate this matter.

Read the Chicago Reader article:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/kimlers-complaint/Content?oid=896646

When Norbert asked me to present some writing on Neoteric, I wanted to make an attempt at something a little different. I feel like blogs – and really all media – are so tuned to an at-the-moment kind of content that, perhaps, seasoned contemplation of past events is less valued. But as an instructor I find that one of my best tools is the evocative retelling of previous art world experiences: what it was like to see a da Vinci Annunciation at the Uffizi, to stand next to Antonio Lopez Garcia in Boston, or to wander through the Philadelphia Museum of Art to find Lord Leighton’s La Nanna. So here is the first in a series of contemplations on some shows (or generally art-type events) from the last few years.

The piece below was not meant for publication. It was just a reflection on the show that I sent out to colleagues, friends, and former professors – now you’re in on it, dear Neoteric readers. I’ve decided not to spruce it up; I hope you’ll enjoy it warts and all.

Visions of Violence and Pleasure: Cecily Brown And Linda Nochlin At The Des Moines Art Center

I attended an open conversation between Linda Nochlin and Cecily Brown at the Des Moines Art Center on September 14, 2006. Roughly 250 students, teachers, and others came to hear the discussion and take in Brown’s show before it makes its way on to the east coast (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 18, 2006 to January 15, 2007). It was an eye-opening event in several ways.

First, getting to see Brown’s work without the proxy of the flat, glossy, printed page was very helpful in actually understanding what she’s trying to do. Obviously, this is always the case, but I was surprised by how much my assumptions changed while in front of the works. There is an immediacy in how these paintings can be read, first in terms of the speed with which the eye may travel about them, but also in terms of what resolves from concentrated viewing of the works. This resolution arises almost instantaneously as a sort of flipping of the viewer’s apprehension of the images, similar to how one may see an optical illusion.

Secondly, this discussion – particularly on the part of Linda Nochlin – was in part an inversion of certain aspects of feminist theory, at least to my mind. This inversion is connected to a natural shift between the values and stances of older feminists and those of younger women who have grown up with some notion of advocacy present in the culture. As Nochlin observed, commenting on conceptions of fashion and beauty that distinguish younger women artists from older ones: “I can wear lipstick and I can also still be a great artist today.” Furthermore, the pair’s exclamations regarding Poussin’s “Rape of the Sabine Women” made for an interesting moment. Both proclaimed the work as an “ideal painting.” This estimation was based both on the overall form and internal syncopation of the work, as well as on (but not necessitated by) the function of the painting as a totemic reflection of the European mind at the time. This, joined with a jocular discussion of the main subject matter of the painting, seemed to stake a claim that a good work is a good work, regardless of its social milieu, its creator’s beliefs, or it’s subject matter. This pro-painting, almost anti-theory reading of the work was very refreshing. And really, it wasn’t at the expense of a real desire for female representation, equality, and dispensation in art. It was rather a resetting of the issues that these two prominent women feel are necessary to approach art and art making. It was very, very intriguing.

Thirdly, I found the tone of the discussion invigorating in spite of its weaker moments. Brown talked about painting as painting. You can tell she’s passionate about making the work, about exploring it, and about finding strategies to get the images in her head out. It’s that fundamental relationship between the artist and her material that seems to come out again and again in her statements. She’s not concerned with justifying or defending painting, and she (as well as Nochlin) openly chided the constant questioning of painting. They both agreed that the historical position of painting as a form, with its established arenas and legacies where any new work is instantly connected with what has been and what presently is happening within the discipline, lends it to be the easiest target for iconoclasts.

Their lucid, easy dialogue was illuminating without being pretentious. Nochlin’s reputation is secure, and you get the feeling that she knows she doesn’t have to ramrod arguments – she can make a statement and let it settle. Her humor was a high point of the night. Brown is tremendously engaging and, like many artists, she loves talking about the work, delving into it readily and informally, and letting a few discursive sentences elucidate things rather than spouting pat answers. I found this unassuming manner continued when I chatted with her for a few minutes at the end of the evening. Both Brown and Nochlin, perhaps sensing the many undergraduates in the crowd, made their discussion more fundamental than theoretical. This made for an accessible, clear presentation.

But was I convinced that Brown is really onto something with her work? That she’s pushing some boundaries in the discipline of painting and making a real contribution? The answer is both yes and no.

I took down notes as I spent a couple hours in the exhibition of her work prior to going into the conversation. A number of major things leapt to me within a couple minutes of being with the work, but perhaps the first thing I became aware of is the way she’s putting down the paint. It’s a facture that is almost annoyingly spare in one moment, and dramatically dense and active in another. Certain areas are open, knifed, left with very little or no paint, while other areas are a cacophony of flicked, tufted, and rendered paint. The give and take that happens on the surface of the works is exciting to look at – those small, tentative, descriptive, delicate flourishes versus the long, overarching, compositional marks – some of which travel 6 or more feet.

The nature of the mark making shifts often, usually riding some line between drawing with paint and painting with paint. Almost every piece evinces a grinning, glinting, all over force. There is an immediate chorus of mark and form that coagulates and dances on the surface when you view it from a foot or two. The paintings exhibit explosiveness in how, at one spot, almost nothing happens, but the speed of the overall shaping shoves the eye to other areas that are practically jumping with color and mark. The syncopation of rest and activity, boiling, roiling surface, and resolving image is where the value of these works resides. That aspect of an image resolving from the bombastic picture plane is part of the fun of viewing the pictures. What pulls out from that field of intense colors and marks, and how that happens to the eye, is what is exciting. The blurring of the forms seems to come from a constant rearticulating of those forms in space. Her best works display that investigation from the first moment. It’s certain that the images are meant to function within the precedent of abstraction, but they also evince the figurative elements in a willful way; the viewer is definitely meant to suss out the representational aspects.

At this point, however, I am led to ask a simple question. Is the facture that she uses really necessary to the ideas and feelings that inspire the works? Is this mode of putting down paint specific to the sorts of things she’s aiming at, or could she hit on them in another way? Will she progress, change, alter these methodologies? Obviously her way of working is resonating with certain aspects of the painterly marking of early Rothko, de Kooning, Bacon, and so many others; one could say she’s utilizing the whole history of mark making. Just walking around the museum’s holdings after seeing Brown’s work caused me to make those historical connections (seeing something she got from Bacon, something in a George Bellows work that rings with Brown’s own hand, etc). The interesting thing is that her hand doesn’t really just appropriate these old dead guys’ signature marks – she transforms them. Her hand never really seems too derivative to me, never really seems old. When I ask if her way of working is necessary, what I’m really asking is “is that all you got?” If anything I want her to do more, to gather an even larger range, to find more explosions and more subtlety.

All that said, however, I really find her compositional strategies fairly weak. When she’s looking to history, giving certain pictorial cues, she does fine. This holds for the classically inspired works (like “Bacchanal” and “Figures in a Landscape 2”) as well as the AbEx inspired works (such as “Lady Luck” and “Tender is the Night”). But she creates a third type of work with a frontal yet ambiguous room-space that exhibits an awkward, unbalanced layout (“Black Painting 1,” “These Foolish Things,” and “Tales From the Vault”). The awkwardness doesn’t appear to be arrived at through a process – it seems instead like a default, tentative situation. Given than she produces these paintings again and again, they most likely appear to her to be valid explorations. I find them mostly uninteresting as pictures. Almost none of her exciting mark-making or color situations occur in these works – often she’s using a very limited pallet. Thankfully this is not the primary direction of her painting.

Not the least of the things I noted while taking in the paintings was the question and implication of violence. Living in a world at war really makes me a little impatient with works that use violence in a frivolous way. I think the intersection of frivolity and masochism in many of Brown’s paintings can play against them because of the moment in which we’re living. I had to ask myself while walking around the room – what does she think about the war? Is she concerned? How does it come out? I don’t want to be moralistic about it, but the questions did come to my mind. Does our work HAVE to reflect our time in such a straightforward way? It’s a question I ask myself constantly, and it’s still up in the air for me. They are exciting images, both in how they are created and in how they function visually, but I’m often looking for more in my experience of art.

Overall I was impressed, but I’ll not jump on the bandwagon to canonize her work so quickly. That the wagon has already left doesn’t alarm me all that much – there will be time to gain perspective on these works over time. I don’t expect them to seem particularly important or paradigm shifting from a vantage point of 10 or 20 years, since they really don’t seem to be so right now. But they are fun, sometimes exciting, sometimes intrepid works, and Brown deserves some kudos for that. Anything that brings the spotlight to painting seems like a good thing to me.

And getting to see her talk about the work made an impression on me such that I found more in the work that maybe I wanted to on my own. Before the talk I was more dubious about some aspects of the painting, while afterward I found myself more accepting. Her tentative earnestness and almost naiveté (both affected?) lent, in retrospect, a kind of presence to the works that tempered their chaotic sadism with a touch of innocence. Sure, she knows the history of painting, she knows the history of abstract mark making – but she also just loves to mash that paint around. I think that stands for something. The joy of working with the paint is evident in her work and how she represented it in words. That expression of joy alone makes viewing her works a winning proposition for me, which is striking since I’m someone who might inwardly reject works such as hers outright.

There’s always something to be said for just submitting to the experience of seeing a work of art.

P.S. – By the way, the Des Moines Art Center itself is a great museum. It’s a little jewel of the Midwest. It’s got some good major holdings – not a lot of the filler-pieces-just-to-say-we’ve-got-one type of thing (though there are a few of them). It’s nice to see the canonized works from Richter, Johns, and Diebenkorn mixed in with Mehretu, Gursky, and Alex Brown. Their Kiefer is astounding – his work always has a way of making everything around it seem trivial. They have some really nice Sargents and one of Bacon’s screaming-pope-after-Velasquez paintings. A very nicely executed Sol LeWitt wall piece dominates one area of the museum, and below it sits several nice Judds. The place is worth a visit if you are in the area.

More information:

The Des Moines Art Center:
http://www.desmoinesartcenter.org/

Cecily Brown:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/cecily_brown.htm
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/cecily-brown/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecily_Brown

Linda Nochlin:
http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/fineart/ifa/faculty/nochlin.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Nochlin