Giacometti in NC

Made a little Thanksgiving trip to Charlotte, NC to check out the city and to visit some of the art venues.  One of my stops was the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art to see their exhibition "Giacometti: Memory and Presence"on view until February 8.  Comprising the entire fourth floor, the show highlights their considerable collection of his work, as well as loans from Zurich and Paris.  Considering the most Giacometti I have seen in a day has been 3-4 pieces, the 60+ works on display were easily worth the pilgrimage from Pembroke.  I've always enjoyed his work, and reproductions of his paintings were always particularly comforting to me as a student in contextualizing my own process.

Simply, Giacometti was reluctant to finish a painting, often working over the same face for many days. (A excellent account of his process and thoughts on art is described by James Lord in A Giacometti Portrait.) Giacometti's paintings reveal a deeply scarred surface of countless layers that evidence the intensity his of investigation. They evoke a strong presence and are objects as much as image.  We are left with the mystery of what is under the final layers.  In art classes we often stress achieving clarity of communication, but Giacometti reminds us that ambivalence and uncertainty can also be evoked, and remain a powerful aspect of the human condition.  

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, Study for Head of George Dyer, 1967
 
I recall reading an article a couple of years back during the time of the big traveling Francis Bacon retrospective.  In it, a bunch of art stars were invited to comment on how Francis Bacon influenced their work.  I was really quite dismayed at one contemporary figurative artist, who paints distorted figures in variety of intense colors, who saw no connection between at all between Bacon's work and her own.   She never really looked at Francis Bacon.  While is certainty within the realm of possibility that a contemporary artist can be ignorant of such a big twentieth century figure, I don't think that anyone working with the figure today hasn't been touched by his influence, either subconsciously, or through second or even third generation sources.  Influence travels freely across the history of figuration, and Bacon quoted freely by many contemporary artists. Yet the issue at hand is why do I like Bacon's paintings?

Many of Bacon's paintings are horrific.   They have this tremendous, dark, looming presence.   While some may not go for his imagery, every painter should seriously consider and respect artwork that can evoke something from the viewer.  While I may not aim for overt horror in my own work, I do strive to create a sense of presence, and this phenomena is difficult to describe without sounding a little kooky.  For some, figures seem alive, but even non-image abstractions can facilitate a sensation of their being through color or scale.   The painting becomes a physical encounter with the viewer that cannot be simply translated as an image; you have to be there. In the capacity of experience, Bacon continues to act as justification for making singular, private, work in digital age.    

Official Site of the State of Francis Bacon

Bacon Wikipedia Article

Parmigianino

I attribute my current and abundant love of violet to one painting, "Virgin Mary with Baby and the Saints Margaret, Girolamo and Petronio." I had the privilege of seeing it as part on an undergraduate research trip to Italy quite a while back.  There were several things that struck me about it, and that have stayed with me through the years.  First, it is rarely reproduced and I stumbled across it for the first time in person.  The figures are elegant and beautifully modeled, but Saint Margaret is most exquisitely rendered in the foreground right. My mind was blown by the amount of violet in her cheek, which I recall being in delicate contoured in slightly raised ribbons of paint.  I had never seen so much violet used in flesh before.  A little unnatural, but oh so brilliant!  Another curiosity of the painting was that the circular halos of some of the figures (I can't recall exactly which or how many) were incised deeply into the panel itself, and then painted over.  This, in addition to the violet, remains invisible on the reproduction on the museum's website, which I liberally color-adjusted here to jive more with my memories.

Parmigianino, most commonly known for his very conspicuous "Madonna of the Long Neck" was one of the of the Mannerist era following the Renaissance.  For generations of art history, this period was viewed as a fall from the naturalism of the high Renaissance of Raphael and Leonardo to a more artificial mode of painting where artists looked to other art and artists as reference.   Followed by the Protestant Reformation, and the austere realist paintings produced by Baroque artists in reaction, the Mannerist era was viewed by many as a bit of a puzzle, a decadent blip in the march of four centuries of realism before Modernism.

More on Parmigianino:
Bologna National Museum
Wikipedia
Web Gallery of Art

Influences

A common feature on many an artist's blog is the shout-out to other artists, alive or historical.   It's been a pretty great temptation to get on my soap box and share, but I've resisted it so far.  I wanted to keep the focus narrow and about personal process. After a couple of years doing this though, my studio floundering has been tough to keep interesting day to day.   So, after some musing, what could not be more personal than mentioning artists who have influenced my own work, views, and perceptions? 

Some artists like to imagine themselves born from the head of Zeus like Athena, fully formed and ready to roll, but its a bit disingenuous.  A big part of what an educated artist thinks about in the studio is how their own work fits into the wider context of contemporary art and art history. For a figurative artist in particular, thousands of years of humans depicting themselves is never far behind. The canon is quoted, played with, reinvented by every generation.  There are works of art that have affected me deeply.  Some I have learned techniques from, some whose images come to mind as I make my own. 

My latest series, which I have been labeling the "Kracow Cycle," accordingly quotes history, indirectly through influence, and directly through allusion.  I described it flippantly to another artist as "Lady with Ermine" filtered through Picasso's rose period.  I had been painting so many blue-violet paintings in the Nocturnes, that a switch two shifts over on the Newton color wheel, to red-violet, was significant. The style, subject matter, context, has almost nothing to do with Picasso, other than the simple idea of a dominant palette shift.  As far as the Lady... which I do quote directly, I'll have to leave that to the forthcoming artist statement.  A Picasso-Leonardo fusion may be a useful label, but really only scratches the surface of whats going.  Influences are rarely that superficial, or clear in the studio or the mind.  It's like isolating bits in a blender after the cocktail is made.

If this sounds complicated, I have only been speaking in reference to "fine art." Sculpture, photography, theater, dance, film are in the cultured mix.  Not to be snobbish, television, magazines, comic books, and video games have also warped my brain more than juts a little.  How has travel affected me?  Nature, a specific tree? I also have a strong memory for faces.... It would be ridiculous, if not altogether self-obsessed, to sort it all out. So, to keep things simple, I start off with some specific paintings I really love, things I want to share, shout-out.   And for lack of a better word, I'll tag it "influences."

With Picasso

Back from Poland last week, I'm just now posting some installation shots of the "Lust and Desire" show  ongoing at Susan Maasch Fine Art.   As you can see, my drawing has prime placement in the front window (and has already sold as a result.)  Two paintings are still available.  Here you can see me hanging with Pablo Picasso (left) and Tim Clorius (right.)  Just out of frame to the right is an awesome little Mapplethorpe Polaroid, going for the price of about four of my paintings. (Being alive=priceless.)  As the show goes into it's second half, things will get rotated around a bit, giving someone else a shot at the window.  The revised installation will be open for this Friday's Art Walk and I'll be sure to stop by.