Mixed Media

I went to see the exhibit That's Women's Work at the Freight Street Gallery and was really struck by a mixed-media painting by Pam Bogert.

At first glance, I thought I didn't like it. I thought it was too crude, too grungy. Then I looked at it closely and realized that I love it. It's fantastic. I love the cartoonish depiction of Torrington, the caricatures of familiar sites, the playfulness of the depictions.

I'm inspired to do something similar of Waterbury, but I know it will be hugely challenging for me. Which is probably all the more reason to try.

Now for procedural questions. Do I try mixed media, like Bogert did with this work? When I was a kid, I loved playing with paper dolls and paper cut-out buildings. I used to take huge sheets of paper, lay them out flat on the floor or table, draw roads on them and then place the paper buildings I had made on them. Maybe I could do some sort of complex high-relief mixed media image. Something to think about!

"Urban"

I was recently browsing the shelves in the Barnes & Noble at Yale and was intrigued by a sign for section called "Urban Fiction". Now, since I consider myself to be an urban artist, painting scenes of city life, I was a little excited to think that maybe there was a larger trend going on, that authors as well as artists were exploring life in cities.

I was disappointed when I took a glance at the books in that section. "Urban" seemed to be a code word for African American trashy novels. As if the only African American experience is that of the city, and as if only African Americans live in cities.

I've done some research since then, and I see that there is a decades-old history behind this literary genre, and that there are some good novels within the genre, but something about it still doesn't seem right.

It seems like there is a sort of segregation going on in the literary world. Take, for example, one of my favorite authors, Tananarive Due. I have not read all of her books yet, but the ones that I have read are clearly of the horror/suspense genre. Try to find her books in the horror, or thriller, or even mystery or fantasy sections of a bookstore and you'll be out of luck. Her books are always in the African American section. Why? Because she and many (but not all) of her characters are African American.

I guess I'll have to stick it all in the category of things that don't make sense to me. My image of "Urban" includes everyone, of every color and nationality, because that is what cities actually are--a place where everyone comes together. Cities are the melting pot of the world.

Technically Proficient, But Lacking a Soul

I've been working in NYC this week and last, and this past weekend I came down with a bad case of the common cold (how I hate thee, common cold!), the combination of which has left me without the time or energy to do any art. However, working in NYC means I get to walk past galleries on my way to/from work.

Last week while walking to work, I came to an abrupt stop in front of the Hammer Galleries. They had placed a large and very eye-catching painting in one of the windows. At first glance, it seemed like the artist was pursuing similar interests to my own--realism and urban genre. But after a moment of looking at it, I discovered an instinctive dislike for the painting. My basic thought was "it's crap!", but I couldn't figure out why I thought it was so terrible.

Here's the painting, Louvre, Pyramid by Robert Neffson:

There's a lot of important detail that you can't see in the small photo. I wish you could see the actual painting, as it would make it easier to understand why I think it's crap.

I spent most of the day puzzling over my reaction to the painting. The best explanation I could come up with was "it has no soul". Technically proficient, yes, but lacking in some fundamental quality to make it great art. This bothered me largely because of the similarities between Neffson's painting and what I am trying to achieve with my own art. What is that fundamental quality that elevates art to greatness?

The trend throughout much of the 20th century seems to have been the belief that "great art" does something new and different, but that's just gimmick marketing. Truly great art, that continues to inspire awe in the viewer for centuries afterwards, has a sublime, inspirational quality.

That still didn't answer my question about why I felt such a strongly negative response to the Neffson. Plenty of paintings aren't great masterpieces, but they're still good. I showed the painting to a friend, and he hit the nail on the head: Neffson's painting isn't art, it's what an architect or interior planner would create to show a client what their proposed design would look like, complete with museum visitors carefully arranged throughout the space in staged poses showing the many ways in which visitors will interact with the architectural space.

It's not art, it's engineering.