More Play (Pics for my friendz on the East Coast)

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LA WEEKLY BLOG WRITE UP

Amargosa Hotel, Death Valley (Overlook Hotel)

Nancy and I went to Death Valley and lived.

Michael Bell-Smith

Art Tape: Live With / Think About from Michael Bell-Smith on Vimeo.

Mark your Colonder

MAY 7- JUNE 8, 2011
MAX MASLANSKY
BEHIND THE INTERNET
at
EMMA GRAY HQ / EGHQ

Growing Up

This is exactly what it was like growing up in Hollywood.

Jan Steen, The Merry Family, 1668, Netherlands.

Bye Polke

Sigmar Polke was a great artist and one of art's greatest smart-asses. This picture seems to encapsulate what he was all about. I will miss him.

ENRICO BAJ

Enrico Baj

He's a painter from from the early 60s. This one is going to auction at Christies. Pretty awesome.

Alan Cohen

I came across a website belonging to an artist named Alan Cohen. His work is terrible and interesting. I love how he titles the left column somewhat ironically, "Today's Menu", which contains links to his different bodies of work.



Mr. Cohen breaks down the meaning of this painting on his website:

In the picture on the website the father has one hand on the boy's shoulder, as if to comfort him. But examination of the boy's posture and expression reveals that he feels rigid and held back, as if he is angry and blazing with repressed rage but cannot express it; the situation is made all the more complex by the double-bind feeling that the father is only trying to do his best; so the boy feels guilty and angry at resenting his hold. Another hint as to what is really going on is the shadow. In the painting the boy does not have a shadow of his own, which suggests that he does not really exist for the father (and hence for himself). Thus his self is entirely absorbed and devoured by his father. This is also emphasised in the picture by using brighter colours in parts of the picture to which the boy has no access. His life is dull and grey, indeed without love; his father steals the light from him and makes the boy an extension of himself.

Pardon my sarcasm, I love how he felt he had to explain the image to us. This is why I hate narrative painting, yet love it at the same time. You have a poor man's trove of symbols and meanings most people can understand, mostly derived from 19th-20th century psychological theory. They're staid, but cliche for a reason. Yet, the predictability of this approach is boring and without a process of renewal. In other words, layers get thin after repeated reads. I guess narrative painting is like playing James Brown's "I feel Good" at a party.
It's popular for a reason, but most of the time I'd rather be playing something else. This work charms and disgusts me at the same time.

Painter's list of objectives

A good list originally posted by artist Mark Dutcher on Facebook.


Richard Diebenkorn: NOTES TO MYSELF ON BEGINNING A PAINTING

1. attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may then be a valuable delusion.

2. The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued — except as a stimulus for further moves.

3. Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.

4. Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.

5. Dont “discover” a subject — of any kind.

6. Somehow don’t be bored — but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.

7. Mistakes can’t be erased but they move you from your present position.

8. Keep thinking about Polyanna.

9. Tolerate chaos.

10. Be careful only in a perverse way.

Philip Guston @ McKee Gallery, NYC

Guston button

Rob Reiner: Drummer/Painter

Rob Reiner's cool paintings from Anvil: The Story of Anvil

If it doesn't work out for Mr. Reiner in Anvil, I hope he keeps painting.

Joan Brown made sculpture

I did not know that Joan Brown made sculpture. No one told me. Even the art schools I've attended had poor books of Brown's work in their libraries. They were all black white and/or had faded pages. I want a good monograph on her. (hint, hint).
I love her paintings and find her sculpture very charming. That sounds kind of minimizing, but charm is underrated.

She died fairly young at age 51, at a construction site in India, while they (and her?) were installing an obelisk. Stories like these make me think religion (she obviously was attracted to the Far Eastern sort) is a joke.

No matter, long live Joan Brown! LACMA recently replaced their Joan Brown with a John Altoon, another very underrated artist, in their permanent display this year. When is a god damn space gonna give either a full retrospective?

NIGHT STUDIO

I've recently been ensorcelled by the book Night Studio (1988) by Philip Guston's lone offspring, Musa Mayer. It's basically a memoir dealing with her experiences with this complex personality and artist. I originally bought it because I'm fascinated about other painter's processes and the shit they go through, psychological or otherwise, in finding a process. The book details these things (Guston was a drama queen!) in poignant detail, which resonated with me deeply because I am also a drama queen when it comes to my work. But it mostly deals with her feelings of neglect and her complex relationship with her father. Her parents, while warm and loving, also were remote and self-absorbed which is an experience, ahem, I can relate to.

"Usually I am on a work for a long stretch, until a moment arrives when the air of the arbitrary vanishes, and the paint falls into positions that feel destined."

"I never feel myself to be more than a trusting accomplice"

"Art is the axe that breaks the frozen sea within us"
—Philip Guston

"When you start working, everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and, above all, your own ideas—all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you're lucky, even you leave."
—John Cage

Nicole Eisenman make happy

I recently inspected the new Nicole Eisenman show at Susan Vielmetter and it really put fire in my tush—in a good way. Not only as a painter but as a person. What at first seems to be an unfocused bric-a-brac of styles, media, and imagery—amounting to series of one liners—slowly percolates as a whole into a hilariously angry statement on a variety of subjects. They run the gamut from the personal to gender politics. Almost each painting had it's own art historical reference, technique and subject. Eisenman is deft at weaving through them all without making the show look scatterbrained or over-ambitious. As a painter concerned with such matters of style diversity AS a style, my heart was fluttering with joy. I also liked how she wasn't afraid to be silly and slapdash, tottering the line between reverence and irreverence for craft of painting. I realize she's known for painting in the style of the WPA era, among other art-historical idioms, but I see lots of Amy Sillman, her buddy, in her work too. Maybe they hang out too much.
Anyway, the main room was for bigger works which tended to be more 'refined'. The back room was a smattering of drawings and slap-happy paintings cum collages. It was pretty fun looking at them all. The main painting in the small room caught my eye was the one depicting an empty table offering a pancake breakfast. Each of the chairs had names: Sarah Silverman, Martha Stewart, Nicole E., some other women, and finally, Dracula. I think this painting was the index of the show.