I have a problem with performance art* that relies on doing something outrageous in public. This stuff isn’t any different than stupid radio, game show or reality show stunts. High art…it ain’t. No matter how much philosophical, psychological or sociological bullshit you attach to it, this type of art is just garbage. It’s “attention-getting” nonsense…and too bad that the art world actually gives it attention. To all curators and gallerists: there is good work out there so please pass on the “cherries stuffed in the vagina, tampons in the mouth, sucking your toe, trying to talk while having water in your mouth, etc. etc. etc.

* Not all performance art is bad. I’m just discussing the shitty stuff…you know who you are!

I remember Gail as a slight and frail figure with very long dark curls and a shy, enigmatic expression that made her seem as though she was trying to peer beyond the substance of things. This certainly was true of her art: I witnessed her drawings as she built them up slowly, first as points and dots that were connected by thin and nervous constellations of lines that barely impressed themselves. Gradually a numinous face or figure would appear from the cloud of lines. I always was arrested by the profundity of their expressions and the listening glint that she often carefully placed in their eyes.

She joined our printmaking group at the Evanston Art Center in the mid 1990’s. I was struck by her quiet and intense working methods, and how memorable her images were compared to the works of thousands of artists I had seen as an art student in New York City and later as an art critic in Chicago. Like Giacometti and Morandi here was someone who imbedded an intense stillness of mood; she could freeze a moment of complete sincerity into each of her images. There were depths her work had, especially in how her shadowed figures mysteriously transmuted themselves to paper. Time stood still.

Many remember her as kind, generous, self effacing, and thoughtful of others. She certainly was all these things. Yet I also recall the artist and friend whose delicate line work fused the matter of her life onto paper much like the faint handwriting of Emily Dickinson’s poems bore the tides of deep and uncanny feelings onto tiny slips of paper. One year Gail sent me a card made from pearlescent paper that was folded to look like a small Japanese screen. On it was printed the Dickinson poem:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet never in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Truly Gail was this otherworldly bird. Her deep feeling was her gift – in her being, in her heart, in her art.

Drawing 10 x 7.5

Grandfather (detail) 22 x 12

Eden’s Grandmother 36 x 16

Eden drawing 8 x 5

Roof of a House etching 3 x 4.5

Madeleines etching 3 x 4.5

Beyond etching 3 x 4.5

etching 3 x 4.5

Amsterdam – Lewis etching 3 x 4.5

Pears etching

Eden drawing 39 x 23

Eden drawing 47 x 34

Violin etching

The following are definitions of “Career Levels” taken from the CAAP grant application here in Chicago. These definitions are also used throughout the art world.

New
Those at early stages of development defined as having received no or very small grants, awards, or funding from any source. Although the applicant may have little or no exhibition/performance/production history, there is strong commitment demonstrated by the art with potential for growth. The applicant is at the beginning of professional, or organizational development. Individuals with professional or degree training, self-taught, or mentored artists are eligible.

Emerging
Those with progressive exhibition/performance/production history as demonstrated by resume, grants or funding history. Has received funding from any of these sources: the Department of Cultural Affairs, The Illinois Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts or Humanities, or prizes/awards from local, national/international programs. Organizations will show a board of directors, productive, established management systems, and at least one staff member who is paid either part or full time.

Mid-Career
Those demonstrating an extensive, progressive history in exhibition/performance/production as demonstrated by resume; local, regional, national/international recognition in the field; has professional or commercial affiliations. Includes any or all aspects of the Emerging Level.

I have a few random thoughts:

Concerning “New”, an artist can have 20 years experience at their craft, producing and selling good work, but not have great exhibitions or any grants to show for it…would this artist still be considered “New”? Based on the definitions, this artist is not “Emerging” because of their weak resume and no grant history and certainly not “Mid-Career” so this particular artist after 20 years of working would be considered “New”.

Concerning “Emerging”, how long can one be an emerging artist? Emerging seems to be a one or two year stint. After “Emerging” one or two years does that then put the artist at “Mid-Career”?! or maybe just “Plain Old Artist”…? Can one be labeled an “Emerging” artist after 5,6 or 10 years of experience? Let’s say an artist gets their MFA at 24 and has a great run for 5 years. Based on the definitions, this artist is definitely not “New” and really not “Emerging” after 5 years of an “extensive” history so it seems that this artist is “Mid-Career” at the ripe old age of 29. And let’s not even get into the term “Re-Emerging”.

On to “Mid-Career”. This is easy enough to understand in its purest sense. This artist has years of experience and has an “extensive, progressive, international” resume and some grant history. All understood. My question is: what would this artist want with a CAAP grant?!

My point to all of this is that it would be easier and make more sense if we drop the silly “Levels” bullshit and just ask the simple question: How long have you been an artist?

Donald Kuspit is one of America’s most important art critics. He is a Distinguished Professor of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and has received fellowships from the Fulbright Commission, the NEA, and the Guggenheim Foundation among others. He is a contributing editor to Artforum, Sculpture, the New Art Examiner, and Tema Celeste Magazines as well as editor of Art Criticism. He is author and editor of hundreds of articles and books including The End of Art published in 2004. He frequently writes for Artnet.com

Diane Thodos is an artist and art critic and was a student of Donald Kuspit at the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1987 to 1992. She is also a former student of Stanley William Hayter and Sam Gilliam and received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2002. She has exhibited most recently at the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago and is represent by the Paule Friedland/Alex Rivault Gallery in Paris, The Traeger/Pinto Gallery in Mexico City, and the Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago. She will be exhibiting at the Kouros gallery in New York City in 2010.

Continued from Part 3

Diane Thodos: Do you feel, in reference to Jacque Ellul’s book “The Technological Society”, that technique as an absolute standardization of means also relates to how artists have become these sort of glorified commercial producers of brand name products: in other words formatting the product to streamline the marketing system? For example there’s hundreds and hundreds of these post painterly abstractions all equally looking like slightly decadent wallpaper patterns of some sort or other…

Donald Kuspit: That’s one way of putting it. Let’s put in another way. Let’s take Mr. Koons who is always a good example: a sort of capitalist art about Capitalism. Now here’s a commodity; taking something we know – a vacuum cleaner – and it’s new. So there’s newness, and it’s American, and it’s “art” which is supposedly to “make it new. “ What he is doing by putting it in a vitrine and exhibiting it as art is he gives it this exhibition value, which is the only art value now. What he is doing is highlighting something that is meant to be exhibited, initially, to get you to buy it – and then it has certain use value.

DT: A janitor can use it to clean up the museum later on.

DK: That’s right, but he’s not interested in that. What he is interesting in is the exhibition value – a term that [Walter] Benjamin uses…

DT: …is that the “aura” of an object, or something different?

DK: It is a different theory. It subsumes what Marx called use value and exchange value. The thing acquires its use value and exchange value by being exhibited. The moment it is exhibited it becomes this technique of exhibition, of staging. Think for example of Warhol who begins by doing windows for Bonwit Teller. Rosenquist begins by doing advertising posters. That is staging a product – a commodity – in some way.

DT: Right.

DK: It’s now called “incentive marketing.”

DT: It’s like you could put a pair of shoes in a thrift shop and no one would see them. If you put them in a window for Bonwit Teller and surround them with all the right accoutrements you can sell them for $500.

DK: Right.

DT: So it is all contextually based on how it is presented.

DK: That’s exactly it. There was a very decisive moment in the sociology of art, in our business culture – generally – the Warhol idea…

DT: He said, “Business art is the best art”…

DK: Yes – but remember when there used to be the Soho Guggenheim that was at the corner of Prince Street and West Broadway? It closed and was replaced by a Prada store. It is still there. The Prada store was designed by Rem Koolhaus – a very hot architect – you know who he is.

DT: Yes.

DK: I don’t think they do this anymore, but the shoes are brought out every morning and exhibited like precious objects. Remember [Hiam] Steinbach who showed sneakers…

DT: Yes, garbage cans and masks and things on display shelves…

DK: Well he did sneakers too. He had a whole exhibit of sneakers and I showed this to my class. A student said “Oh God I wish I had those; those are collector’s items.” They were brand new sneakers from a certain period – the 70’s – and they were 50 years old.

DT: A collector’s item – even though they are everyday kitsch stuff.

DK: That’s right. That’s what happens; everything becomes collectable. So the point is here was this place which had been an art site but now becomes, shall we say, another art site that is fused with business and the product.

DT: A quasi museum/store.

DK: Yes, quasi museum/store. I don’t know whether these shoes are worth whatever the price is. Another example; you may remember up in Chelsea there is a Comme Des Garcons store that looks like a hole in the wall from the outside.

DT: Yes, I was in there.

DK: You go in this high tech metal tunnel, and then you enter. There are these dungarees with tears in them for $350 a shot.

DT: You are paying for an experience I guess.

DK: You are paying for aesthetic marketing and the people who are the salesmen are more like Maitre d’s that are doing you a favor by showing you to your table…

DT: It’s extremely pretentious garbage.

DK: Yes, but you see that’s an outside judgment; you are not becoming part of the spectacle/exhibition.

DT: No, I don’t trust it, but it works.

DK: It is the art industry – it works…

DT: Yes, it obviously wouldn’t be there if it didn’t work. It’s all about sales.

DK: Marketing is the term that is used.

DT: Is marketing as you see it – the way this American Capitalist marketing system operates – part of the efficiency of “technique” in a sense?

DK: That’s very well put, yes. I think it is part of the efficiency of technique; but it also may be technique running away with itself. You finally have to ask what’s the value of technique?

DT: Is it a sort of absolutization of “technique” for its own sake?

DK: Well – let’s talk about cameras. Everybody’s got a camera. Taking photographs is useful, but when you think about it you got the camera so you got to take the photograph because if you don’t take the photograph then the camera is useless. So you have to use the technique to get the value. There is the person of the American tourist. They go to Versailles or the Eiffel Tower and they take their photograph. They look at the photograph – not at the building or structure. They don’t see it. They don’t have a perceptual experience.

DT: They don’t linger and wonder about qualities of what is before them.

DK: They say “ I have been to the Eiffel Tower, here is my photograph, I took it at this particular date: look there’s proof, it’s printed out on the side of the film”. So technique takes over the experience when it is meant to serve the experience. You need technique; but if technique takes over the whole process then what is the point of it?

DT: So the question is who is in control, which leads to the next question. Has “technique” become so all encompassing that individual initiative is completely excluded within the context of the art world would you say?

DK: No, I think agency is still possible, but I think the agency has to fight. It has to somehow break the compliance to the technique. That is a paradox because in the Modern Art movement the artists broke compliance to every Old Master technique around – then any piece of junk could become art.

DT: So all the rules were broken and then there were none.

DK: And that was the rule: break the rules.

DT: And then there were no rules. So we now have chaos.

DK: That’s right.

DT: It’s total chaos and it’s all up for grabs.

DK: What is the meaning?

DT: There is no meaning left. On that point, what advice would you give an art student entering a university program regarding what you refer to as the “organic” and “existential” necessity of art? I know this is a very generic question, but in fact I have met a lot of people in art programs who find themselves bumping around lost in a labyrinth without a light. They do not really understand why they are dissatisfied with their school experience.

DK: The only thing you can get out of art school – the main reason art school should be around – is it should teach you every technique that has ever been around; from stained glass to carving stone to working with video. You should learn every technique.

DT: Painting, printmaking…it should be a pluralistic experience of all media.

DK: Exactly – of all media.

DT: And it isn’t anymore in many places.

DK: They want to get rid of the “hand”…

DT: They want to get rid of drawing, painting, and traditional art. So what would you say to a student to be on their guard against the kinds of programs that may wish to have them narrow their scope?

DK: Stay away.

DT: Stay away and don’t enroll.

DK: Unless you want to have success for five minutes after getting out of the program – it’s shorter than 15 minutes these days.

DT: There has been a tremendous degradation in a lot of art education.

DK: Yes. I think it’s a disaster.

DT: And what has brought this about?

DK: Conceptualism.

DT: Conceptualism wants to create it’s own self-fulfilling propaganda and have no dialectical relationship outside of that?

DK: There are certain modes of stylistic dominance as well as technological dominance. I remember [sculptor] George Segal who went to art school here in New York. He was very interested in German Expressionism and figuration. His professor told him “You’re an idiot – you don’t want to go that way; abstraction is the way to go.” It’s the truth. He writes about this. I’m quoting him now.

DT: Incredible.

DK: He just stuck with it and made this special amalgamation of expressionism and the figure – but he had the strength of will to do that.

DT: So you need the strength of will to separate yourself from the things that do not give you the diversity of experience you need?

DK: You cannot fall for any party line. There are always professors who say, “This is the way to do it.” But that’s the way they’re doing it, and usually when they’re doing it, it’s reified. It doesn’t necessarily have to be this way. There are people like Ad Reinhardt who was a professor at Brooklyn College for a long time. He had his own ideas of art but from what I understand he sort of encouraged other modes. I don’t know how it works that way. I have seen a lot of works by one student of Hans Hoffmann, a woman student, and he went over [her work] and in fact turned everything into a Hans Hoffmann – so there’s a problem.

DT: There is the problem of this sort of a dogmatic overlay?

DK: You have professors who are very concerned about their own identities and want…

DT: …the perpetuation of their own system?

DK: Right. Students reinforce it the more students you get – and that will end up with the kiss of death. A famous example of this is Frank Lloyd Wright who developed a school of architecture, but no significant architect of similar stature to him has emerged from it. You got some very good architects working in the Frank Lloyd Wright mode, so it’s very good to have a master but…

DT: …individualism becomes subsumed by the larger purview?

DK: And there is the argument that Harold Rosenberg made in relation to Arshile Gorky, that his apprenticeship was good – Picasso to Miro – and his work was quite different from theirs, derivative but an interesting derivation at that. So it’s tricky. You have to be an apprentice somewhere and learn thoroughly one mode that you are inclined to, but then you have to have the guts to sort of break with it but develop it, move it somewhere else or get to your own creativity on the basis of it. But In art school you also have a great opportunity for a real learning experience: to learn all the media and to learn art history.

DT: So you have to be very selective about the school you choose: that it offers the range that gives you an opportunity to learn.

DK: I think the Bauhaus had a good idea. That seems to be, from what I have read about it, the model. The first year of apprenticeship you had to learn all the properties of all kinds of materials and all kinds of techniques. Then if you finished this you were admitted and you worked with a master – but that didn’t mean you had to work in the master’s manner. He would just sort of critique you, if I understand it correctly.

DT: So we have a problem today with there being this attempt by the art world to canonize the past and rigidify it…

DK: …A certain limited past…

DT: Yes, a certain limited past. There is a lot of censorship which disallows students from going back to learn certain modes of art making. Is this because there are a lot of teachers who don’t know these techniques are just trying to, pardon the expression, “cover their asses” because they lack the knowledge?

DK: That’s one way of putting it but I don’t think so. They just don’t believe in the art techniques.

DT: They don’t “believe” in them?

DK: They don’t believe in them. “Who wants to paint? It’s obsolete. The death of painting. Who wants to paint? I can do it all on video.” I have heard students say this. I have heard teachers say this. You must know this.

DT: We really are in a “post-art” age.

DK: Yes. Exactly.

DT: That is precisely the point.

DK: It’s all conceptual.

DT: Producing pseudoistic stand-ins for what art was.

DK: And also art doesn’t become a learning experience anymore.

DT: No and it’s not connected to life. It really has to be “disconnected” from life for – as you have written – a student to become a card-carrying member of the “contemporary art” party. It has to be “disconnected” from emotional life, which is really the death knell of art ‘s potential.

DK: Or your emotion can be focused through this mode. I think it is still possible for example to make very interesting Abstract Expressionist works today. I have seen some.

DT: I myself as a critic have always tried to find artists who have that emotional connection to what they do, whether it is figurative, surrealist…

DK: And that the emotion somehow comes through the work.

DT: Yes.

DK: There is a transference in fact.

DT: Well, the work can stand on it’s own. It does not need texts. A single image can arrest you and engage you because of the power of what is inherent in it.

DK: I’m with you completely.

DT: Getting back to the issue of exclusion and censorship I remember once you talked about – and I think it’s absolutely true – in the late 80’s how women were starting to enter the art world more and more but their work was very novelty oriented in the neo-conceptual art mode.

DK: I think that has changed.

DT: You have found different types of women artists today?

DK: It has been a lucky experience that I have met women artists in their 60’s who have been working for years and who I think are making pretty profound art.

DT: Wonderful. Name some names.

DK: Lynn Stern is a first rate photographer. She’s done incredible images of death heads in black and white. When she was shown in a New York Gallery the images were too strong. Nobody wants to look at skulls.

DT: Well, I don’t know. For me it was hard to look at the Otto Dix “War” series but the fourth time I looked at them they sunk in. For me his skulls made a reverberation over time.

DK: You have to be in touch with death inside yourself first of all. So she is one. I have supported these people and we just sort of met. Maybe it has something to do with the fact of my age. I am interested in older artists, older women artists, and women artists who know how to work with materials, whatever their material is – paint or black and white photography – and who have a certain serious intentions.

DT: Like Alice Neel?

DK: Some of these people are even more interesting.

DT: Really? That’s good to hear.

DK: That’s my opinion – but Alice Neel is fine. Maybe it ‘s because these are people of my generation.

DT: That is a very important point because their schooling would have dated from a time when you could learn techniques.

DK: Yes. That’s quite true

DT: And now I don’t think you can. When I look at my alma mater Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, students aren’t producing anything like the variety of art that was there in the early 80’s. I was very lucky to get the figure drawing and painting training that I did; it is no longer available at the same school.

DK: What these artists have is also a persistent curiosity about learning and are knowledgeable about many other things. They completely develop themselves. They are not resting wherever they have been. They have open horizons.

DT: So it’s like the stream of life is the effective force that brings the art along, as witness to it.

DK: That’s part of it, but also there’s a very solid sense of what it is to make art.

DT: Yes. There’s no confusion; no jumping on the trend wagon.

DK: No. They know their history and have a certain way of doing things. They keep developing it and the works are fairly stunning.

DT: So there is a concentrated essence that keeps evolving.

DK: Yes.

DT: When I was a student here in New York at School of Visual Arts from 1987 – 1989, one thing that confused me tremendously was how trends occurred in the art world. The artists who would hop on the bandwagon to imitate these trends kept changing their style. Then you’d get weird hybridizations of the last trend with the present one. For example you’d get Neo-Expressionism with some conceptualism mixed in.

DK: They had no identity of their own.

DT: Yes, it was very confusing.

DK: But of course SVA has always been about being au courant about whatever is “hot.” I haven’t been there for a while. There are always certain places that think that it is important to attract students because they are a place that is “with it.” You got to do latest “thing” and this will help you “make it.”

DT: I was in the graduate painting program.

DK: What year were you there?

DT: I was in New York from 1987 – 1992 starting with two years graduate school when you were my teacher. I continued taking your class because I worked for SVA and was allowed one free class, so it was for five years total. Frankly I wanted to continue because you were the only person I knew who could answer the questions I had about what was really going on in the art world. It made a big difference in my life.

DK: That may be before I was disillusioned.

DT: Well, yeah, before the art world completely destroyed itself – before it imploded. I remember you saying back then that the art world was like a jet without a pilot. It had powerful force but had absolutely no steering to determine its course.

DK: The pilots are now people like Saatchi who invent whole movements.

DT: They have hijacked the plane.

DK: Yes. There is a book you should read called Supercollector: A Critique of Charles Saatchi by John Walker and Rita Hatton. It’s really worth looking at. I did a review of it years ago when it first appeared. Walker is a sometime artist and admits that the book is sort of Marxist in orientation; but what he and Rita Hatton have done is an absolutely brilliant piece of investigative reporting and documentation of the Saatchis from the very beginning and with artist’s comments about what it is like dealing with them; just well researched like you’ve never imagined.

DT: I’m going to want to read this.

DK: I reviewed it years ago for artnet.com.

DT: I will certainly be checking it out.

DK: Walker also did a first rate little book about media and art. He has a very smart mind and as researcher is very perceptive. The book on Saatchi is just incredible. Sacchi got where he is through advertising. He invented Margaret Thatcher. Walker documents this.

DT: Yes, he ran the ad agency that put Thatcher on the map.

DK: Whatever you may think of Thatcher, Saatchi understood the connection of art and advertising in a way that even Warhol didn’t – the connection of art and publicity. Did you ever read from the series I have on artnet.com, A Critical History of 20th Century Art?

DT: Yes. I’m about three quarters of the way through.

DK: I have a whole section on publicity. Henri Lefebvre wrote Publicity is the Only Ideology of our Time. It is the quote heading one of the chapters. He’s a French sociologist and very brilliant. He wrote the book Everyday Life in the Modern World. But Saatchi knew how to take over publicity, just like Damien Hirst does.

DT: He’s got his own auction going. You’d think it’s about the efficiency of technique brought to a hyper level of being.

DK: Plus the power of money. I was in Amsterdam not too long ago and I went to the Rijks Museum – a classic museum. The Rijks was being restored and rebuilt but they kept one section where they had a number of their older works. When I went there – and I didn’t know this would be the case – they had Damien Hirst’s diamond skull on display. Not only did they have the diamond skull, but also at the beginning of every room – and it’s no exaggeration – they had a little plaque that said something like “if you keep on going you will get to the Damien Hirst Skull.” I didn’t ever see anything saying “if you keep on going you will get to Rembrandt’s Night Watch.” So then you got to a room that was roped off like for a movie marquee with a velvet rope which you stand behind. Then you went into a room, and there it was alone. I was really irritated by this thing.

DT: That is just perverse beyond imagination…

DK: This is not the end of it. The signs lead through a circuit because there was a part of the museum that was cut off. There was one last room where they had arranged a nice selection of old master works, relatively small, with a little text explaining provenance etc. discreetly next to each. Above each of these works in bigger lettering and in a different coloring (I think it was pink) was a commentary by Hirst on each of these works. The most insipid banal crap I have ever heard as comments: so he gets the voice over this old master art and then people read it. When you exited, following the circuit, you noticed on the side there was a big black Damien Hirst tent, and if you liked you could go in there to buy catalogs and write your comments. So I met the director of exhibitions at Gemente Museum in The Hague and I said “what is going on here? Has anyone protested? Is that what the Reichs Museum is about?”

DT: It destroys the credibility of the institution.

DK: Exactly. He said there was a new director and he wants to bring in more people.

DT: What a total joke.

DK: But that’s what it’s about. He told me that Hirst had a contract – something like a hundred page contract – that everything had to be done just so. The assumption is that the museum got a lot of money for this, and they just followed the contract to the letter allowing the artist to control. The artist took control just like he did with the auction. What are we interested in here? We are interested in the demonstration of power. We are interested in the spectacle and what he as done is degrade the other art with his insipid comments. It is not historical interpretation of any kind or critical consciousness. There is a skull with diamonds in it for 20 million dollars: everybody is looking at the money

Continued in Part 6

Neoteric Art: Give us some history on yourself.

Timothy Vermeulen: I was born in Paterson, NJ the son of a funeral director. For many of my formative years we actually lived in a funeral home and had a morgue in our basement. I have never figured out exactly what effect this has had on my psyche.

I also come from a strict, Calvinist background that emphasized our unworthiness and “total depravity.” Once, in a graduate school critique, I said that my work was about life and death; one of my professors disagreed and said she thought it was more about salvation and damnation. Now I see that my funeral home experience, while strange and frightening, has had nowhere near the powerful, daily, sometimes crushing effect that my religious straight-jacket has had on my essential nature.

I have a B.A. in Secondary Art Education from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI and an M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing from the University of Illinois in Champaign Urbana. I currently live and work in Chicago.

NA: You say your paintings are small, figurative, autobiographical narratives. Your narratives, while formed through self-portraiture, are often based on established stories or series from literary sources. How did you get started working in this vain?

TV: This started all the way back in college in a collage course I took. I began to do a series of pieces with images of dolls. This led to a number of paintings about puppets, which led to a series based on a medieval puppet show of Punch and Judy. I started to see that what was drawing me to the established narrative was an autobiographical impulse, so I began to place myself directly in the images and moved from puppets to real people.

NA: Do you elaborately plan out your series before you even begin the first painting?

TV: For a project like Moby Dick, I begin by carefully reading and taking notes on the text and criticism of the text. Then I cull out scenes that most strongly affect me personally and that bring up powerful associations. I then begin making little sketches and gathering source imagery. Finally, I start to collage the images together from many sources and do a rather finished under-drawing in preparation for the final painting. I work on all the images at once so I can keep all the elements balanced.

NA: What does a narrative painting have to contain for you to consider it to be a success?

A strong personal resonance that I hope has some universal significance.

NA: Discuss your current series, “Moby Dick”.

TV: I read “Moby Dick” in college and it has always been a favorite. A couple years ago I was listening to a program on NPR devoted to the novel and I was moved to tears by a reading from the book. I thought it would be worth a reread to see if there would be close ties with my life and work. I consider “Moby Dick” one of the strangest productions in the history of all the arts. This sprawling novel encompasses all of the contrasts of human experience: life/death, salvation/damnation, good/evil, man/nature, etc. Like many of my past projects, I have placed myself within scenes from the narrative and situated them in a contemporary context. The images refer to issues that may be personal, social, political, and/or religious, and the dramas may symbolize internal states, social conflicts, and past traumas. Objects, settings, and human interactions carry symbols of the subconscious and collective memory.

NA: What is your overall painting philosophy?

TV: For many expressionists the action of painting is like flying over a mountain in an airplane. I consider my work a kind of expressionism that is more like a slow, painstaking crawl up and over a mountain.

NA: Who are some of your favorite painters?

TV: Anonymous medieval illuminated manuscript painters, Van Eyck, Roger Campin, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Van Gogh, Gregory Gillespie, and local artist Tim Lowly.

www.timothyvermeulen.com

Justyna Adamczyk: New Paintings
EC Gallery
Chicago
January 15 – February 13, 2010

“I don’t want to communicate directly with the thoughts of people seeing my art. I’d like to provide a road show which allows for personal reflection”, notes Justyna Adamczyk. Her current exhibition, New Paintings at the EC Gallery is a challenging row toward that ambition.

“In my work, for many years, I have tried many media, but over time I realized that I speak sincerely in the media which is painting. Painting gives me the opportunity to comment on my subjective reality. The work connected with the fatigue of everyday life, trivial but inevitable problems.” Theoretically, at least, she holds that in a highly structured world, there is need to experience spiritual growth. “Painting is my valve, which allows escape and turns them into tame pictures.”

“Cannibal”, acrylic on linen, as in her other pieces, appears spontaneous, with the artist being there, not just copying it. Here her pinks and orange are staggering, as if a silhouette’s hair has been set ablaze. The untreated, grayish brown linen hands the paint over to the viewer. It’s a new romanticism.

Determinately, her shades and stain on the fabric, the pastel rose, browns, yellows of varying tones, read aloud from the cloth, as if having been about for ages. It could be dry blood. It could be cancerous blobs. “I have always been attracted to the works of artists who pass themselves and their subjective view of punk”, she says.

One questions, has the artist returned to adolescence in, “ Range of Flavors ”, acrylic on linen. Not stating its inspiration directly, rather it plays with color, with shapes, and sometimes brushes about aesthetic presence with thorny figures, rained upon by Jungian dreams and complexes in the form of a lab experiment run wild upon the work. There is a special, different kind of authenticity in this experience.

In these images the viewer finds autonomy and color associations, visions and insinuations. Some appear soiled, and wander off, but hardly into the mundane. There cycles are short, but in there shortness form narratives.

Adamczyk touts Frida, Mark Ryden, Matthew Barney, and Kim Sooja as influences on her work. “These are characters from whom I have learned a lot. They are completely different, in views of reality”, she says. “In addition to this they differ personally and intimately. An important issue for me is the impact on the viewer. I’m looking for language that allows the viewer to feel my idea. ”

It is difficult to find excess in the paintings. They’re almost involuntary. Adamczyk’s provocation is at the heart of artistic exhibitionism. “Any idea seems to be perfect when I got it in my or on a sketch”, she says, “but the battle begins at the time of transfer…the move to the real picture. I try to be as close as possible to what arises from the first thought or impression.” That, she maintains, is the impulse to the creation of the image.

With her, works are created and driven by a very personal inspiration. They are offerings…to us…and to what remains in each of us individually. This should be appreciated.

The artist’s works has been exhibited in a host of venues including Biennale of Painting “Bielska Jesien 2009, Poland; 9 Contest Gepperta, BWA Awangarda Wroc?aw, Poland; Joung polisch Painters I-XII, Bestregarts Gallery – Frankfurt am Main, Germany; 30 Premio Internacional de Pintura de Caja de Extremadura; More or Less, Musemu da Ciencia e da Industria – Porto, Portugal and Aula de Cultura de Plasencia. She received her MFA from the The Academy of Fine Arts in Poland , Wroclaw in 2007. This is her first U.S. exhibition.

www.ec-gallery.com

Judith Mullen: Aerie
Linda Warren Gallery (Main Space)
January 22 – February 27, 2010
Chicago

Upon entering the Linda Warren Gallery for Judith Mullen’s current exhibition, “Aerie”, the viewer immediately realizes something exciting is gonna happen. It’s a wonderland, one of thrilling, beautiful art. It’s a cotillion of color, of sculpture, of painting of instillation. Here the artist has become dramatist, captivating, with an abundance of works in varying media, and with incredible generosity.

“All of the paintings are done in the fresco technique and I’ve chosen this method for a variety of reasons”, Mullen shares. “Initially I was very drawn to the organic “whiteness” of the plaster, and as I worked over time I began to fully appreciate the materials used to create a fresco panel.” The major influences of Lee Bontecous and Kandinsky are found in these works.

“Homage to Bonteque III”, mixed media, is a “pebbly” painting upon a surface mixed of sand and limestone putty. Its rich earth shades hold the aura of the cave drawings of the prehistorics. The artist imported limestone putty and found river sand, mixing a formula used to create a foundation. She then worked the wet plaster with pigment and charcoal. “In this manner I am very much connected to the history of painting to include the cave painters of 30,000 years ago”, she adds. “I had an opportunity to visit these remarkable works in France (Grotte deNaiux) and they are truly inspirational.”

“In Site IV”, mixed media of pigment, charcoal, wax, ink, tea, as are other pieces in that series, inspired by the presences of birds, as can be seen in the yellow ochre pigment of the work. “The image of the bird has always appeared in my work, however in this series,” says the artist, “I wanted to make it front and center, the focal point rather than the side kick. The bird appears in this piece to be successfully negotiating its way around a complicated environment using it’s own momentum to accomplish this goal.” She continues, “The ideas of courage and fortitude along with adaptability, acceptance and action hopefully are brought forth through this image. Maybe it was the new construction site found across the street from my studio in the city or the telephone/electrical poles that dot the prarie path outside my home in the suburb that displaced the bird and its nest… in either case, the task of rebuilding and adapting was played out. On some level I think we can all identify with the bird in this scenario.” Her vision, the connections, that application and detail traffic between the conceptual, process and endgame is executed perfectly in this work.

Comes now, “In Site XIII” mixed media installation, that daring epic in scale work upon which the show pivots and to which the viewer is drawn as to a bonfire on a distant hill. Centered in the middle of the wall is a huge piece of very worked paper with slashes in it. This piece of tracing paper, Mullen used to embed charcoal into a new fresco piece. “I have been saving these left over tracing paper pieces for years, playing with them on the wall, trying to make some sort of 3-D sculptural piece,” she says. “I tried adding wax, have used all sorts of stiffeners, you name it to make the paper firm. Finally, I decided to use wire under the piece and ta-da…I was off and running.” There are blue rocks, “an idea I had swimming around in my head from a book I read on Thomas Merton and his ideas on spirituality and rocks.” These are at the foot of the installation, carved and shaped from Styrofoam. “I found myself using all the materials I use in the tree sculptures but in a different way…on the wall. My interpretation of the piece is that it’s somewhat of a fight between nature and the man made world, the ying and yang of life, something along those lines.”

The work is startling. It is art having shed its skin, dancing and delighting as if leading the viewer about by lantern. There’s the street…the wrecking-ball…street cones…fallen branches…things, caught in chaos. Mullen’s tree sculptures are new additions to her package. She continues the use of things natural and un-natural…broken branches, rice paper, wire, plaster, paint, Styrofoam, studio rags, etc., etc. and of course, birds. Here are more of her inner-thoughts, her firefly hunting. “The sculptures evolved out of the painting process, about 2 years ago. I’ve always been drawn to the poetry of the ‘naked winter’” she says, “tree branches and began collecting broken ones found as I walk. So, each piece begins with a branch which is then sometimes attached to a base or is hung from above.”

Judith Mullen received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited throughout the Midwest, including shows at the Chicago Cultural Center, Evanston Art Center, a recent solo exhibition at The Contemporary Art Workshop in Chicago and is currently having a concurrent solo exhibition in Los Angeles at JK Gallery. She also will be having a solo show this year at The Krasl Art Center in Michigan. She was the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship. Her work is also on display in the Drawing Center of New York’s artist’s registry.

“Along with my stated inspirations, I find all of my inspiration from routines, rhythms and travels of my own life as it intersects with those around me. I live in a suburb surrounded by forest preserve and travel to the city each day where my studio is located”, she notes. “It works for me. It is where nature and the man made world intersect and the various ways this plays out that I find myself drawn in to wander around.”

There’s no dominant color in the show. It all works together, yet it’s almost out of control, like a spectacular, contemporary fireworks display, soon to be fabled. It wrings out every sense of the imagination. “Where do I see myself headed from hear? For me, it’s always been about the process so hopefully that will continue to be the case. I’m open to wherever that will lead me.”

www.lindawarrengallery.com

Art Shay’s True Colors
Thomas Masters Gallery
Chicago
January 15 – February 15, 2010

Art Shay’s photography is brilliant. And should one be in search of art as solely objects of, and for, aesthetic enjoyment, the exhibition, “Art Shay’s True Colors”, opening Friday, January 15 at the Thomas Masters Gallery, is not that experience. It is not an imagined dream life. It is a collection, an exhibition of the works of a photographer who has managed to crystallize defining moments in the American experience in bright colors, without a bypass, on archive rag paper with digital print.

For the artist, simply telling a story is too easy. Shay’s photos appear to tell a story behind a story. There is a pattern of capturing his subject sans posing. There are athletes, and movie stars. There is Khrushchev in Iowa, and Johnny Cash, Daleys and Jordan. There is Warhol and Jack Nicholas, Vince Lombardi and Bart Star and other luminaries out of their usual. There are protestors and police faced-off tango style in Grant Park in ‘68…the viewer can practically whiff the tear gas and refer and hear the chants. There’s the Nixon, amped up with arms in that ‘v’ before the looming, “Goddess of Grain” in the background.

Some entrances and exits flow in this exhibition. In 1964, two years prior to returning to participate in an open housing campaign, Martin Luther King, Jr. visited Chicago and spoke at a rally for racial justice at Soldier Field. Shay was there, and captured a youthful civil rights leader being greeted by both police and the assembled masses, “King at Soldier Field”. Moving deeper into the exhibition there are more King photographs, King smiling, King speaking, King dead…in an open casket with his followers appearing stunned and in tears. Shay captured the riots following the assassination and the drama of the police search for the killer in Memphis with a dramatic and searing intensity.

“Photography has been my love since I was 12 and my Dad lent me his folding Kodak. I immediately began to shoot but also develop other peoples’ rolls of Verichrome in the coal bin that made up part of the modest Bronx four family home we lived in,” says Shay. “I built my first enlarger out of a Maxwell House coffee can that slid up and down on the sandwiched 2 x4’s I found in a junk heap. The sliding wood pieces came from the bottom of a long abandoned dining room table.”

The exhibition brings the viewer shots of Nelson Algren, (a friend of Shay and god father to one of his children) on the gritty side streets and back alleys of Chicago. Shay had followed Algren with a camera, shooting photos for a piece he was pitching to Life. It’s been written that they were, “masters chronicling the same patch of ground with different tools.”

Back to his early days, Shay continued in his ribald fashion, “When I was 16 an ancient divorcee of 35, professing interest in my work, professed wanting to learn enlarging, and in the process enlarged me sufficiently in 5 seconds to capture my virginity. This influenced me greatly as to the value of photography.”

Sharing more of his history, “I took a Leica into WWII and used it during combat flying of 52 missions. Just after the war, when I was thinking of becoming a professional writer… I was an English major in my only nine months of college before enlisting at age 20 in 1942…and the Washington Post took to printing Sunday features I wrote.”

Shay was soon hired as a staff reporter for Life Magazine. “It was my job at one time or another to schlep camera equipment around for perhaps 20 of Life’s fotogs. Life reporters were verboten from using a camera under pain of firing, but in my three years as a staffer I must have had 20 pages in print under other (real) photographers’ bylines- while carrying their spare cameras” It was at this point Shay opted to leave Life, going freelance, shooting mostly his own ideas and crafting his own stories, as well as shooting them in Chicago for Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated and other outlets.

The photographer holds the camera is an extension of the eye, but also the humor and world experience behind that eye as well.

There is an emotional heart to the exhibition. The iconic photos of JFK and Nixon prior to there now famous televised debate. King’s casket being unloaded from a plane from Memphis . Inner-city Chicago children playing in run-down playgrounds. There’s Jack Kennedy appearing in conference with a Native American chief, “Two Chiefs”. And there’s Jimmy Hoffa, in a suit, behind bars. “It’s called, ‘Hoffa in Jail’. I knew Hoffa,” Shay says, “We used to play handball in Detroit . Hell of a handball player. It’s in Lewisberg Prison, and he’s holding the coat to hide the handcuffs.”

The talent and skill of the artist appears through the passion, humor, and history of the show. In, “Masai Spear Thrower”, the photographer catches the hunter’s spear in flight, on it’s arc, the second it leaves his hand in Nairobi. All of the work at the exhibition is done ‘in-camera’.

“I am not an agonizer. I work in the equivalent of bolts of controlled lighting, getting ideas and varying the themes that make them publishable.” Shay explains. “In covering JFK addressing 100,000 farmers live in North Dakota, I didn’t like the composition of Kennedy at one side—so I had the sponsors move a flagpole with flying pennants of different colors on it so it composed well across from Kennedy. I had just purchased the then new Widelux camera—140 degrees—and my first picture of JFK with it ran in Time across two pages.”

For Art Shay, a chance to show “Art Shay’s True Colors”, “is an important segment of my life’s work—at last.” And for others, this show provides lessons, and yet for others still, remembrance.

www.thomasmastersgallery.com

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?

Daniel Kim and Michael Parker: Structure and Space
David Weinberg Gallery
Chicago
January 8th – February 20th, 2010

Poise appears conscientiously injected into the current exhibition at the David Weinberg Gallery. The abstract paintings of Daniel Kim, combined with the photography of Michael Parker make for a very impressive introduction to the new year, stepping from the holiday vestibule into a pantheon of sometimes sharp-edge, yet eloquent art. It’s a fine gathering of work.

“In my work, monochrome paintings deal with very important aspect of painting”, says Kim. “In order for a painting to be successful I believe 3 things have to work together, and that’s color, image and the paint application. If the 3 work, it’s like flicking a switch and activating a painting to make it come alive. I do this to speculate what beauty might look like.” His work is not shy. Early on in the show the viewer catches his erudite use of basic grays, of fundamentals, of shadow and of space.

In speaking to his own work, Parker holds, “Architecture begins on paper. Photography is the method by which it returns”… my official slogan. I honestly believe the relationship between photography and architecture is a unique one. Architecture, being such a detailed medium is best recorded with photography for most purposes. Be it for commercial use, fine art, or historical record, photography is really the only way to put an immense physical structure into your briefcase or on the wall.”

Curator Aaron Ott has consciously ‘zig-zagged’ the works early on in the exhibition. Ott appreciates mixing mediums in joint shows, and in this instance pieces settle, more than dominate in such fashion.

In many of Kim’s paintings the viewer is introduced to cloud shapes, to explosions of chaos and areas of the larger works appearing to be paintings on their own. “Oil paint for me has enough range that I almost feel its part of who I am, and the paint becomes a tool to complete my other half,” he says. “The decision I make with the paint is personal and very much reflects who I am as person.”

Moving deeper into the exhibition, one comes upon large color works of Kim’s. Here the dialogue continues with traces of pastel whispering on the canvases of brilliant color. “Color paintings which are bit more challenging to make is also driven by my speculation of beauty, using the formal elements I know and composing them to become a interesting visual stimulation. In a simple term I try to make interesting paintings, because that is what visual artist do.”

Many of Parker’s works approach the mystical. The stark, geometrical designs freeze in camera. His, ‘Disney Concert Hall, LA, CA’, Pigment print, sweeps and slashes and swoons with the titanium of the structure itself. “When I step back from my work,” he says, “I realize that I am working with three elements that everybody loves…photography, architecture, and travel. The questions of “where? how? and what?” are easily answered… so the work is very user friendly. I purposely shoot with traditional B&W film in order to commit the images to a life of fine art. I considered shooting digital photos in order to maximize the value for various stock photo purposes but abandon the idea in order to preserve the integrity of the black and white.

Both artists share the trials of their work. “I wrestle with my work there are times in my studio where I spend more time starring and thinking about the paintings then executing” says Kim. “I actually enjoy the times when I am wrestling with my work, I feel that’s when I use my brain the most and try to squeeze out all the knowledge I have about painting and apply it on to my paintings.”

Parker adds, “Life is a constant struggle. Photography is no different. There are photos I love and there are photos that sell. Its pretty obvious, when you see the show you’ll see a few images of trees that are stretching the theme of the show, we sell so much of this work for its aesthetic appeal. The only problem I have with these images are that they overlap a bit with other photographer’s work, as an artist I really want to create something new and distinct.” He concludes, “The good news is that my abstract architectural work does well. I really believe that I’m on to something new.”

What now? Parker says, “I’m sticking with the plan. I’ve have standardized sizes, frames standardized sizes, frames, and printing methods, which has helped to make a recognizable a piece in such a crowded genre.” Sharing, “I simply intend to continually travel and expand my archive. I had a wonderful installation in Atlanta composed of fifteen wall size murals, all in black and white. Since I shot everything on medium and large format film the images were very sharp in the grand scale.”

“I use to be very inpatient after graduating from school, thinking I have to show in New York or LA”, says Kim, “but now I realize patience isn’t such a bad thing. All I can do is try to make good art and hope people will notice, so my answer is I am not really sure where my art is headed in the future, but I am very ambitious.” With many of his works, ‘untitled’, the show calls for revisits and imagination to roam and name them.

www.davidweinberggallery.com