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2 years ago
EGS Application with Revised Questions B & D (12.11.09)
A. STATE HOW YOU ARE PREPARED TO SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE A PROGRAM DESIGNED FOR STUDENTS STIMULATED BY IDEAS AND NOT AFRAID TO THINK FOR THEMSELVES.
I have been working as an exhibiting visual artist for over twenty-five years. My creative output from the beginning has been multi-platform, multi-disciplinary, multi-media (new and traditional), spanning both solo and combinative projects. I founded my first creative collective (for dramatic production) when I was seventeen. The sources of inspiration for these undertakings have been diverse, from literature to cinema, current events to biography (or autoportrait), art to personal sense-based experience. In some domains, my efforts have proved pioneering, and throughout my career, have involved innovation and origination, technically and epistemologically. Many if not most of these endeavors are documented and published through a breadth of vehicles and available for review online in my archives (www.artforhumans.com) and through other data-sources.
Regarding “stimulation”: as my oeuvre and recent thesis work have demonstrated, the creative process is dimensional, and my prime artistic inspiration is visual. The other components fueling the drivers of my cognitive framework include theory or concept, sound and music, history, dreams, etc., as functional or formal elements. Still, being an artist suggests that my value to the social network emerges from the things I do and make. In the arcing context of normative Western Civilization, the objects I make as an artist will define my importance to the community. Operating as a dimensional practitioner permits me to expand the purview of the traditional WC role of the artist, to encompass other formats, from tribal to tactical.
Further, in this remarkable historical era, as cultural media converts to global wired networks operating on a perpetual electric/electronic cycle, all systems of expressions are in a state of re-evaluation. Throughout the past two decades I have embraced the realities of the age and sought to represent central concerns projected as phenomena, to provide a singular (human) perspective within the environmental context. My aim is to encourage each participant in my projects (from immediate circles of supporters to international constituencies connected via web access) to act as active independent agents beyond the gallery walls by practicing freedom within them, to the extent practicable. A natural collateral effect involves the artist’s (my) illustration of the cultural parameters of freedom within the existing social infrastructure. Essentially, this mapping process becomes a neo-art, a method that has value for the commonwealth. I call the whole mechanism 4D (4th Dimensional) as a practicum or shorthand term. What I therefore “bring to the table” is a body of applied axioms, with a catalog of predictable results. It is now, after more than two decades of consistent practice, properly definable as a method. I have had the good fortune of witnessing how my contributions to the field compare to others’, as the field has progressed (exponentially) throughout my lifetime.
My ultimate goal is to establish a new architecture for effectively transmitting this method (dimensionist) to others, of any and all persuasions. I would contend that the future of humankind depends on how well we recognize and evolve as dimensional agents. We must identify and support healthy relations with ourselves, our fellows, our societies and their traditions, and our natural environment. I propose an art that is capable of accomplishing much towards that sustainable end.
Art by this (dimensional) definition becomes a vehicle for questioning whether one is thinking for oneself, in one’s capacity as maker or participant. Dimensionism questions the cause and effects of stimulation. The 4D Method does so through a set of tools such as systems analysis, data-mining, media interventions and historical review, to name a few. Most importantly, Dimensionism relies on the combinative perceptual [quasi- or trans-anecdotal] experience, as informed by New Media, for currency and realism. As a result, the form is fundamentally open source, transparent, accountable and representative. Art becomes a vehicle for bottom-to-top procedural clarity, although this state is so foreign to most people who encounter it firsthand, that it strikes them as oblique or asymmetrical in application. “Education” is only beginning to acknowledge and respond to the practicum. General familiarity with the strategy and output/outcomes – and art is at the forefront of this revolutionary movement - is changing and improving response, abstractly illustrating the overall social utility of the approach in many fundamental social, economic, academic, political and scientific domains. Art in this manner becomes a vital testing ground for perception, rather than an instrument of propaganda and reinforcement for oppression.
B. NAME A MEDIA PRODUCTION (OF ANY KIND) AND EXPLAIN WHY IT WOULD BE A GOOD EXAMPLE OF HOW MEDIA IDEALLY SHOULD BE.
As a production professional in media arts, I tend to find the analysis of imperfection to be more rewarding than the project of the ideal. In my experience, there is no such thing as an ideal production, except in theory. Production is an applied practice, and as such governed more by techne or the laws of science than the laws of Epistemological Humanism (until after the fact). Media production reveals more about the condition of an arts environment than it does about the perfection of action. Media production also reveals much about the principles, motivations and ideals of the society that serves as context for cultural - especially art - production. In the first draft of this application, therefore, I responded to this question with anti-thesis. I chronicled my attempts to introduce a dimensional approach to the Los Angeles Opera’s launch of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in 2010, through proposals for a collective project in conjunction with the LAO production. That description is available here: http://artforhumans.com/afhblog/?p=807
Recent events have demonstrated the consequences of major organizations operating outside the parameters of sound dimensional praxis – in the economic (e.g., the current recession, its causes and effects) and government sectors (e.g., the Iraq/Afghanistan Wars and their conduct). The nonprofit or social sector is also suffering from its failure to reorient to more effective, dimensional, operational behavior. On December 9, 2009, the LA Opera was forced to appeal to the city of Los Angeles for a $14,000,000 aid package in order to continue operations.
In reconsidering Question B, I decided to focus on a more positive example of media success, relative to the ideal. My choice is the Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” (WOTW) broadcast in 1938, as the Halloween episode of Mercury Theatre on the Air. This media production is notable for many reasons, a few of which I’ll discuss here. First, Welles’ WOTW demonstrated conclusively the social power of electronic media. The broadcast and its effects have inspired dozens of books, documentaries and studies. Not only did WOTW provide its listeners with outstanding radio drama, the program forced social analysts from every sector to acknowledge the potential of media to affect massive populations and generate collective emotional response behaviors. It is interesting to juxtapose the WOTW phenomenon with the more recent media coverage of the 9/11 attacks, and to consider the congruence of form. The multi-disciplinary features of the WOTW production are also relevant. The script is a translation of the H.G. Wells science fiction novel of the same title. The re-scripting of the fictional text for [hyper-real] performance, the innovative [cinematic/documentary] formatting for radio medium, the imaginative usage of live action within a variable timeline (past, present, future freely manipulated for effect) – all speak to the dimensional qualities of the production, and to Welles remarkable transdisciplinary talent and skill. Welles WOTW serves as an excellent point of origination for multiple dimensional inquiries, pointing to its significance. For instance: To suggest that the WOTW performance influenced the evolution of propaganda or marketing is not at all simplistic. To suggest that the “art” provided the Nazis or other subsequent agencies for economic, governmental or social malevolence a new tool or case study for mass manipulation is incorrect, in my view. If anything, Welles and his troupe gave the world ample warning of what was at that time merely a possible future. 1938 must be recognized as a “hinge moment,” demanding dimensional interventions to prevent transnational social disaster. The opportunity was missed, and the consequences, obviously, were horrific. I would argue that the media agents who have developed and improved harmful, manipulative applications in the social media field have no plausible unaccountability, post-WOTW. Neither do we, who are subject to relentless bombardment from media pushers, have any excuse for not demanding healthy or holistic, and truthful media usage and representation. Of course, art would have to enjoy a more respected position in global society for such dynamics – like the intervention I described above – to be possible… Finally, I would submit that WOTW spotlights the issue of realism – “real” or manufactured - in the domain of electronic media.
C. DESCRIBE ONE OF YOUR OWN CREATIVE WORKS AND WHAT YOU ACCOMPLISHED WITH IT - THEN BECOME YOUR OWN CRITIC AND FIND OUT WHAT YOU COULD HAVE DONE BETTER.
Last night (Saturday, July 19, 2009), I finished a painting. The working title is “Patriot Act,” and it is the seventh in a series entitled 1000 Revolutionary Actions (Images of the painting are here: http://artforhumans.com/afhblog/?p=806). The medium is acrylic and ink on canvas.
The actual title of the painting is “Accomplishment and the Artist/Critic in 4 Iterations Over a 14-Year Timeline (Nashville/Austin/California x2) to Answer Question C.” In other words, the painting – the “creative work” is presented as the solution to the query. Whether the solution is predictive is unknown. It is my assumption, based on long-observed effects, that one’s engagement in the 4D Method improves one’s convergent capabilities. This has applications in many arenas.
Let me begin with a documentation/description of the artwork.
The painting was begun in the mid-90s. In its first iteration the painting was a portrait of my second wife, Sophia (meaning “wisdom”). That portrait was drawn from a photographic portrait of Sophia, posed suggestively in a feminine black dress, revealing her lovely curvaceous figure and expressive, arresting personality. She is clenching a rose stem with her teeth, suggestively, romantically. The portrait, according to some who know her, is a good likeness, if somewhat flat and abstract, almost cartoon-like. The overall finish for the painting surface exhibited a brush technique produced with titanium white and a certain ratio of water applied with a medium round-tip brush pressed with enough vigor to cause the bristles to fan, when the artist’s hand rotated right or left. The semi-viscous load on the brush with the particular brand of pigment (Golden) resulted in an effect evocative of clouds or cauliflower. This cloud/aqueous feature is emphatic in the mid-left side of the painting face, where the pigment is concentrated to form a “raining cloud.” The white in some areas is tinted with light ochre or Hansa yellow hues providing an accent of dimensionality. The abstract expressionist underpainting is semi-visible through the variously-transparent overpainting or surface layer to establish a push-pull effect. Two areas of the underpainting show through to the surface layer: a circular field in the painting’s upper left corner, and behind the figure of Sophia. The circular field is highlighted with bright yellow in part, and the shape resembles a half-sun/half-moon. The construct is a reference to the artist’s historical use of signs to indicate conceptual fields, and this one indicates the Waking Dream state. The area behind Sophia is roughly rectangular and vertical. The rectangular shape relates to other works in the Scotland series to which the portrait belongs, a sequence of fairly lyrical paintings and drawings commenced during my honeymoon with Sophia in Scotland, the home of my ancestors. Specifically, the shape refers to the capstones on Highland graves, especially the burial pits of celebrated warriors and chieftains.
The series provides context for the individual artwork. The Scottish series was exhibited on the Isle of Skye, in Edinburgh, and in Nashville, at the (now-defunct) Peanut Gallery. The portrait of Sophia was executed for the installation in Tennessee. The Edinburgh show (in 1995) was presented in a short-lived internet café, the Electric Frog on the Royal Mile, one of perhaps a few hundred existing in the world at that time. The Skye show was produced at An Tuireann Art Centre. I also produced a book for the show (“Where My Feet Stick to the Ground”), which was posted in its entirety online and which I recently re-published on the AFH Blog, as an appendix to my thesis paper. The Scotland Honeymoon works in their entirety comprised my first commercially successful 4D productions, although my only collaborator was Diane Barrie, a Scot photographer. The top and bottom sides of the canvas were finished with Pthalocyanine Green (on the top) and Dioxazine Purple on the bottom. The portrait of Sophia was central to the overarching autobiographical narrative of the body of work. The slide of the painting can be viewed in jpeg format on my Flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/artforhumans/3191918709/sizes/o/in/set-72157612340544011/). The narrative trajectory of the Scottish series is the travelogue. Background research was conducted at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. The artist reviewed many ancient examples of travelogues documenting tours through the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, the most famous of which is Samuel Johnson’s (with Boswell), entitled A JOURNEY TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND (1775). Other important inspirations include the great poetry of Sorley MacLean, histories by John Prebble, and the controversial Poems of Ossian by James Macpherson. Another thread, autobiographical in this case, belongs in the genre of “the return to one’s roots from diaspora.” To suggest that this nominates the project for consideration as an “identity” artwork would seem plausible. However, evidently, based on responses like Jerry Saltz’s in a recent correspondence, sufficient prejudice remains to conclude that “mi run mor nan gall” is still vital as an obstacle for cultural equality for those of Celtic descent (ref. Appendices of thesis paper). Finally, the subject of Eros, in its conjugal manifestation, is addressed in the Scottish series, and the post-War American honeymoon experience, projected through photographs for scrapbooks, is represented.
Technically, my relationship with the landscape painting tradition was fundamentally transformed in the Scottish series, as was my understanding of figural representation. The former was dramatically influenced by my emotional response/affinity/affiliation with the experience of treading the ground of my ancestors. The latter materialized through my firsthand encounters with the pictorial stylizations of classical representation available throughout the Highland cultural fabric. Cultural exchanges, derived from the artist’s participation in a diversity of episodes, from country dances on the Isle of Mull to riots in the streets of Edinburgh (i.e., the protest for Devolution at the Scottish Ministry in 1995), too numerous to catalog, informed the artistic output holistically. To say that Meaning became personally relevant for me is no exaggeration. Since then, the Tartan has emerged as a key element in my dimensional practice, especially with regards patterning, as evidence in thesis work between 2007-9, resulting in the breakthroughs constituted by the dynamically reflexive symmetrical pattern designs produced for the Content exhibits. Another facet affected in the long-term evolution of my visual sensibility or style carries over from encounters with runic pictography, and becomes apparent in my woven form practice, especially since 2005. The time factor for creative evolution should be noted here. The arc of evidence points to interesting questions of what one carries forth from one’s natal constitution, what one gains from environmental affirmation, and what drives one to reconnect the two conditions or forces (psyche-foundational/exo-magnetic).
The second iteration of the painting was exhibited in “A Prayer for Clean Water,” the exhibit cycle I produced for the St. Edward’s University Fine Arts Gallery and Pump Project through Shady Tree Studios (Austin, Texas). The portrait of Sophia was basically buried under layers of new paint. The pictorial surface featured the Cyclops, a character that first occurred in my oeuvre in 1983. The Cyclops has served as a generative and animated authorial proxy in the body of work since from that time forward until the present. He multi-tasks as an actor or mime for authorial commentary or socio-topological prognosis within the painting space. Currently, the Cyclops is engaged as both Golem and anti-Golem (ref. thesis paper and recent application to EYEBEAM AiR) in the narrative arc, a formulation counteracting or representing alternately Corporate Hive Mind embodiment and effect. His single horrified eye evokes comparison to the protagonist in Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, when he is forced to watch the maddening reel of institutionalized violence and gratuitous sex/deviancy compiled by his captors from an elaborate excision of 20th Century cinema, for the purposes of experimental mind-control/reformation or aversion therapy in which the protagonist plays guinea pig. The Cyclops’ monoptical lens represents the mediated eye. Exacerbating his condition, the Cyclops’ mouth is sewn shut. He can only see, not comment, cry out, or converse. The Cyclops is the anti-Howl (Ginsberg), and therefore an anti-critic.
In his many pantomimes within the painting space, the Cyclops has posed as everything from a James Dean-type character to a corporate businessman/drone to an American Revolutionary soldier at the Battle of Bunker Hill. This last iteration constitutes the artist’s first major creative/aesthetic/dimensional breakthrough. The Cyclops and the battleground setting were incised into black screen ink covering the surface of a masonite board, used for screenprinting (silkscreen) tee shirts. The artwork (now lost) functioned as the hinge transitional object in my artist evolution, when I shifted from Funkshunart Wearable Art producer (with clothing sold in Unique Boutique and American Tee Shirt Gallery in NYC, Commander Salamander in DC, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Store in Chicago 1983-86), to fine artist. Although the de-definition of art over the years before and since has sufficiently blurred such distinctions, for this artist, the mediums are pointedly distinct. The Cyclops operates as the Free Radical in my graphic production. He is beholden neither to medium or agency. His animation, although completely dependent on me – he would not exist, if I chose not to draw or paint him – also seems to me in some ineffable way independent of that authority. I am also conscious that should he become a popular figure, the Cyclops might be facilely appropriated by a draftsman of even meager skills. I think this is why I have throughout my career used the Cyclops quite sparingly, almost secretly. I am afraid of losing all control of him. I think someday he must be freed of me.
The Cyclops in his rendering owes much to my early obsession with comic books, or what are now called graphic novels, to add critical gravitas. In my youth no such extra gravitas was necessary. Like many American artists (Lichtenstein foremost among them), the comic book was the popular equivalent of classical visual training in graphic style. That the Cyclops proved to be so unlike the comic heroes I worshipped as child (Sgt. Rock, Conan, Iron Fist, to name only a few), that my graphic hero is so afflicted, such a dweeb, really, probably derives from a Joycean angle, the Irish side of the family (my mother’s, whose maiden name was Clemens, and through whom I am related to Mark Twain, A/K/A Samuel Clemens). My familiarity with the epics (through both literature and “B” Movies such as Ray Harryhausen’s, whose Cyclops from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad deeply registered with me) and popular variations on them was formative. The adventurer and quest schema resonate throughout the framework of my art and imagination.
In “A Prayer for Clean Water,” the painting of the Cyclops reigns over the installation. It is installed on the window shelf overlooking the room, close to the center of the wall connecting the gallery interior with the building façade. He peers indirectly into the room, single eye focused on the elevated portrait of the “American Artist” (To view the installation array with Quicktime VR, see http://artforhumans.com/apfcw/apfcw3QTVR.mov and to view the installation using Pano software, see http://artforhumans.com/apfcw/paulpano1.mov and pan right to just past the tiled vertical column or see http://artforhumans.com/apfcw/paulpano1.mov for an alternate, partially obstructed view). The Cyclops’ position in the array is particularly relevant to the overarching procedural arc utilized for the installation. The space was animated over the course of eight weeks. The gallery array was re-hung several times, referencing a dimensional quadrant or grid system conceptually superimposed on the rectangular architecture. This effect is articulated in the PANO & QTVR representations of the exhibit. Linear versions of the 360-degree environment were output as digital prints. Both representational formats were re-introduced into the actual space, as well as in the virtual exhibit space (which is still viewable online through Rhizome’s ArtBase Collection, now in association with the New Museum in NYC).
In “APFCW” the Cyclops’ animation in effect anchors the animation within the exhibit structure. The conceptual apparatus is in this way translated into the physical space, with the painting functioning as a kind of conductor or conduit. The painting works as a window through which passes the energetic sustenance for a series of movements.
As for the canvas itself, the aqua 0’s of the background activate the 2D space of the flattened landscape, but also cross the boundary of the horizon line (marked by the cross, or Faith signifier, to the right of the figure) to establish a field above and below the sphere of Earth. This feature refers to the water cycle, which is one of the exhibit’s important narrative concerns. The water-bearing clouds above rain through the Cyclops, whose head is touching the cloudline. The reddened face of the Cyclops connotes exertion, or strain on the heart, as in the medical condition hypertension. Hypertension as a metaphor is apt, but more as a reference to chemistry or physics, rather than the surface evidence of blood flow conditions in the human body. The Cyclops is not, in the end, human, only humanoid. The Cyclops is more alien than native, whatever the context.
In “APFCW” Pano 1, the grid immediately beneath the Cyclops’ position displays barcodes (“Barcodes, Rituals + Subliminal Tapes,” Eureka/Loleta, CA, 2004, with AiR at the Morris Graves Foundation and Ink People Center for the Arts) on Metallum, silkscreened or applied as die-cut foil prints. The commoditization of vision is referenced, and the dead or sleeping eye of the Cyclops is described. In the foreground, in the acrylic box marked by a Vision Channel Device, the viewer can see the natural makings of the Golem, a doll or maquette made of sticks and local nuts/seeds. The exhibit prints mentioned above are mounted just right of the bar code grid, to the left of the next column.
The third iteration of the painting. “Untitled: LIGHTED IMAGE,” was exhibited in “Re-Fused,” the salon-as-studio CODA for Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown (October 2007). The overpainting of the Cyclops was executed using German expressionist painter Christian Moeller’s leftover hand-mixed titanium white. Christian’s on-site painting project was documented extensively in the AFH Archive on Flickr. His white now served as the substrate for a new ink painting, which would act as the armature for the critic figure of the 4th iteration (http://www.flickr.com/photos/artforhumans/1707904294/in/set-72157602636840805/). Installation views can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artforhumans/1754910019/in/set-72157602714354431/ (LIGHTED IMAGE) and http://www.flickr.com/photos/artforhumans/1778884414/sizes/o/in/set-72157602742353154/ (DARKENED IMAGE). “Untitled: LIGHTED IMAGE,” for the “Re-Fused” installs, was paired with “Untitled: Darkened Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/artforhumans/1707914434/sizes/o/in/set-72157602636840805/.
The stylistic approach employed for the ink figure in “Untitled: LIGHTED IMAGE” relates (with respect to its function as armature) to a series created in 2004 at a friend’s place in Tecolote, New Mexico (“Bones, Entities, Shells” http://www.flickr.com/photos/artforhumans/sets/72157594337865314/). The notion of ink providing the structure for additive elements in the sculptural sense is rooted in lessons culled from The Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting. The representation of movement in Eastern painting is a vital subject relative to Western approaches to the same end, in both traditions prior to the invention of the camera. The former requires familiarity of the viewer with stylistic convention, and the latter requires suspension of disbelief to be effective. The former incites recognition through remembrance; the latter transmits meaning by dint of associative deduction. In “Re-Fused” “Untitled: LIGHTED IMAGE” can be defined somewhat in terms of projection. A projected image is “thrown” as light in a darkened presentation environment. A traditional painting reflects light. Both rely on light to function, albeit in divergent capacities. Arranging both in the same environment generally (for the preparator) entails compromise, failure or very advanced lighting technique and gear.
Other influences for the “Untitled: LIGHTED IMAGE” include Franz Kline, street art and the Lo-Brow movement, the trajectory of which I have been able to follow with some depth over the past several years in LA and through my web networks. My MFA Thesis Exhibit trajectory should be noted here, as should the environmental context. “Re-Fused” coincided with the preview for “©Murakami” at MoCA. The preview drew many of the world’s top collectors, many of whom visited Chinatown LA on their way to the event, and therefore passed by or entered my gallery that day (according to my neighbor, gallerist Mihai Nicodim, who roundly upbraided me for not opening my doors earlier in the morning). The preview for “Re-Fused” was titled “YOU CAN’T BUY THIS.” The work at AFHGC during this period was created to not-be-seen in my MFA show at CGU, “CONTENT,” which was comparatively slick and refined. “Re-Fused” therefore was ostensibly a broadside against both academic and institutional art maxims. It was a violent argument against the suppression of anti-war sentiment in both milieus, against the Louis Vuitton store, against critical neglect or market-driven prioritization in mass media, and subsequently an assault on contemporary art collector sensibilities. It was a warning against globalist free market tendencies towards cultural excess and control in the Art Palace venue and the educational forum, and a rejection of expert critique as an indicator of artistic success or failure. Subversively, however, “Re-Fused” was not at all a protest show. It was a celebration of artistic failure and anonymity.
The final iteration of the painting, “Patriot Act” or “Accomplishment and the Artist/Critic in 4 Iterations Over a 14-Year Timeline (Nashville/Austin/California x2) to Answer Question C,” took two days to complete. It bears mentioning that for the nearly two years prior to its finish the painting hung in my bedroom. Every day I would consider it.
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Regarding the question you pose, I cannot adhere to the notion that the painting evidences “accomplishment,” at least not in a conclusive epistemological sense. In every respect, the “life” of this painting points to a sequence of actions contingent for meaning on space and time and context. Epistemological “accomplishment” infers completion, but it also suggests the manifestation of “acquired skill or expertise,” according to Answers.com. “Completion” implies the result of directed labor, as in a managed outcome, an expectation of results. The painting did not happen that way, which the above narrative should convey.
In fact, this particular painting indicates in its evolution a tactic for sparring with the epistemological premise of conclusion. The painting cannot be correctly interpreted in any way other than as a dimensional phenomenon. As a proof for the 4D Method, and as a demonstration of the validity of the painting medium for the purposes of dimensional exploration, “Patriot Act” functioned from start to finish more as an animation still than as a conclusion to a process, even though it appeared as such several times throughout its production life. The painting’s viewer post-“conclusion,” in effect, participated in the arc of this painting the way a snapshot participates in the existential reality revealed by light at the moment the camera shutter opens and closes. The suspended state of the painting ends when it will leave my possession for the last time, in an exchange of one sort or another, or when I leave it (as in death).
The 4D Method rejects one’s knowing everything from a dead fragment of the whole. Dimensionism does however encourage one to pick a starting point, and proceed from there. Depending on one’s perseverance and capabilities as an analyst, one will inevitably learn more (more or less) than one knew at the outset of the procedure. Does this position affect the painting’s reality or realism?
Given the choice, among the definitions of accomplishment, I would choose to focus on the secondary meaning (acquired skill or expertise) then. With respect to expertise, I would ask, “Who is the art critic willing to recognize that the material and immaterial share the same matter?” Physics and Mathematics in the past hundred years have clearly proved this to be true. Why will the contemporary critic refuse to acknowledge these advances, with respect to perception, or its proxy, Art? Does the question of shared matter obviate assumptions of Good and Bad conclusively, much less the determination of expertise? How did expertise or its cousin genius come to be divorced so effectively from the time-/space-/contingency-line of the singularly created object? In dimensional practice the object made is largely responsible for establishing the maker’s genius or expertise.
So, I attempted to parse the painting. My failure then was manifold throughout the making of it, and disassembling of it, or killing of its animation to satisfy an epistemological mandate. I failed to recognize its sentience, in the manner of convergent agent. How could I have simultaneously represented both my relationship(s) with it, and its relationship to contemporary critique? What preceded this revelation of failure is not a deconstruction of the painting, although I used the problematic term “parse” above. A painting is not a letter in a word, is not a word in a sentence, or a phrase in a paragraph, or a paragraph in a novel, or a book on a shelf in a library.
What Question C seems to ignore is the cost of self-awareness and the failure of other-awareness to produce the objective representation that dimensional analysis provides. No construction of a co-existing dual nature from historically oppositional roles (artist versus critic becomes artist/critic in Question C, but this is not what Don Judd demonstrates) can truly achieve anything more than temporary detente. Having performed both tasks, I am aware of some of the inherent conflicts, as well as potentially complementary or utilitarian dynamics, indicated by the activity of presuming to act as agent of creation and mediation concurrently.
I have been trained in the field of criticism, both literary (John Matthias, at Notre Dame, a proponent of Yvor Winters) and aesthetic (David Pagel, at CGU, known for colorful reviews for the LA Times). That said I believe a dimensional analysis of the painting will provide more information on the painting’s value, but such an analysis is not a form of critique. The dimensional analysis describes a “meaning” that represents a richer objectivity, of realism, than an ordinary application of critical theory to the object in question can establish, even when matter and anti-matter occupy the same ideal space.
On the other hand, from the referential or relative perspective of techne, I can comment on my prowess as a painter, displayed in the painting. For example, I can suggest the viewer look at the canvas in verso, and note that the stretcher bars of my painting are of fine manufacture, fabricated from aluminum and wood, that the canvas is of dense-weave cotton duct, and that both stretcher and canvas were assembled and prepared expertly by the artist. Although the movements assailing the value of craft among aesthetes and artists have enjoyed great successes over the past century, I do not adhere to those schools. I learned to stretch canvas in the 80s in Santa Fe, New Mexico at Artisans de Santa Fe and studied/worked also with Marty Horowitz at Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe in the 90s. In the dimensionist approach, this anecdote is pertinent, because it verifies the fact of living, inculcating the object created as a life function.
As for the psychological implications of the painting, I will leave that to psychologists. To make a painting is an inherently complex enterprise. While the field of psychology is appealing as a subject for dimensional analysis – and I have conducted some excursions in that direction before – I do not hold that I possess the means to contemplate a psychological self-analysis, much less a secondary one that appropriates something I have created that arguably has animated features independent of any aspect of my cognition.
In fact, I am not prepared to abrogate attribution to forces beyond my ken, either mental or spiritual or some combination. What do I know? Perhaps the painting possesses a quality of psychological accomplishment, or not. I do know that during the execution of the work, I have experienced many feelings and thoughts. I listen to music while painting and this also may have influenced the results. My goal in painting is not therapeutic. My aim is to paint the best painting possible at the time, in the space, relative to everything.
This is the crux: a real dimensionist painting reads like an obituary, but exists in spite of that. The real dimensionist artist can no more critique his painting than critique his death after the fact. The painting itself no more feels the artist’s inner experience than does the wall upon which the painting is hung. Nonetheless, the dimensionist artwork is a container of sentience, and a sentient animation of many elements, including the sentience of the painter who made it. The artist’s many failures – for what is a perfect life (?) – are grist for the mill of reflection, and the studio is like a graveyard for such reflections. But that is not enough to qualify the painting as accomplished, nor is it enough to prevent trans-thesis, or the ambition that a painting function as a perfection of the artist’s life. Therein resides the terrible drama of the artist’s ultimate conundrum. A dimensionist critic realizes this, and is wary to not damage the authenticity of the painting by authenticating its value as a document, good or bad. He simply states whether or not the painting tells the truth. Everyone, since the Greeks, knows that the artist is a liar many times over. If only once he could communicate truth in life, that would be a great painting.
D. NAME YOUR FAVORED PHILOSOPHER / THEORIST AND ELABORATE ON ONE THEORETICAL TEXT YOU FOUND MOST INTRIGUING (JUSTIFY YOUR CHOICE).
My choice is Eugene V. Debs, and the focus is his text Walls and Bars.
Walls and Bars begins with this quotation:
“The social environment is the cultural medium of criminality; the criminal is the microbe – an element that becomes important only when it finds a medium which will cause it to ferment. Every society has the criminals it deserves”. –Lascussagne
I chose Debs over a top ten list of candidates of distinction: Donald Judd, “Specific Objects;” Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Yvor Winters, In Defense of Reason, to name a few. I noticed that hardly any of my choices included theorists or philosophers who were not applicative in their practices. An exception is Paul Hertz, whose only work I know is “Art, Code, and the Engine of Change,” an essay I found to be brilliant (CAA Art Journal, Spring 2009) for its thorough treatment of contemporary artists’ progress/issues in the field of dimensional aesthetics through the digital medium, although that was not how the author framed the discourse. I also considered Lao Tzu and his Tao Te Ching. Sorley MacLean’s From Wood to Ridge, and Grigori Perelman’s historic solution of the Poincaré Conjecture. Special notation is afforded Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium Is the Massage. The last slot on my top ten list changes almost daily, depending on my research. At present, the 10th position is held by Harold Rosenberg and his The De-Definition of Art.
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I first discovered Debs’ searing account titled Walls and Bars on my mother’s bookshelf. She was a labor historian, whose focus was Mother Jones, the labor activist. At one time, my mom was the foremost expert on Jones. My mother’s small collection of research-related, mostly out-of-print or small-run texts contained books that eventually would significantly shape my social conscience. Mom’s books (like Matthew Josephson’s 1934 The Robber Barons) were and are divergent in their perspectives on society, economics and politics than what I have been assigned to read in school studies like civics or economics. Mother taught me books can package and inform meaningful and necessary dissent.
Growing up in the coal fields of southern West Virginia, I was exposed to unfolding labor history in real time, as ambient social or environmental experience. I also received a more mediated labor history of the area through my mother. On occasion I accompanied her on research excursions, to interviews with miners, to explore graveyards and active or abandoned mines, and even to attend “hoe-downs” in the “hollers.” Collectively, these experiences verified for me at an early age a central notion: that ideas are functional. The American “Coal Wars” had not been forgotten by the people of the region in which I was raised. For the people of West Virginia, that history is not abstract. This is because the history is still unfolding – as in the current struggle over “mountaintop removal,” the mining practice that is devastating the natural environment of the Appalachian Mountains. Mother’s subjects recalled from experience the “company store” and “scrip,” Pinkerton agents, gunfire in the middle of the night, the power wielded by the owners in collusion with the government over the lives of workers and their families, and the human cost of fighting for change, which was often counted by graves. Capitalism and socialism were not philosophies. They were ideologies with real effects. On both sides of the conflict – and my father’s family were Company men - frequently, ideas (whether political, economic or moral) were used to explain or defend social positions, policies and actions. As the oral histories of mother’s interviewees demonstrated, however, the reality these ideas and their proponents sought to shape contained experience in fact and dimension.
“I was shown the cells that had been occupied by the Chicago anarchists who were hanged, and was told that the gallows awaited the man in this country who strove to better the living conditions of his fellowmen.” –E.V. Debs, Walls and Bars
Theory and philosophy, I came to realize eventually, contain a social energy that can deeply impact the lives of people, people who may or may not have read the document issued by the theorist or philosopher. The Epistemological Humanities center by definition on the formulation of thought constructs, which can be documented and categorized. To be collectively valuable – speaking from the artist’s perspective, now - then art can or should “better the living conditions of his fellowmen.” Of course an artist in any civilization should strive to be a fluent theorist and philosopher, if for no other reason than to understand his dualistic enemy. But the artist must also be fundamentally concerned with application, the realism of production. This realization has certainly informed my artistic motivations and practice. As a dimensionist practitioner, I have explored how society operates in faceted layers, which are integrated, or composited, as in Photoshop. Theory/philosophy is only one of the substrate components. Capitalism, as argued against by Debs, is a good example of the complex nature of ideology, since ideas exist to incite response. Theories promoting or defending capitalism abound. Some are now ancient. Theories promoting or defending Marxism (a response to Capitalism), socialism and democracy are also plentiful. Understanding how those respective theories intersect and repel one another is vital to the artist working in a society driven by the forces that are in turn underpinned by an array of economic, political and social theoretical constructs. In America, AM band talk radio, for instance, has been cited as one of the prime movers of the Conservative movement of the past several decades. Certainly, any contemporary American artist of the New Media era would be foolish to not take interest in the multi-faceted dynamics or forces at play in the field of electronic communication, of the political kind. Rush Limbaugh, as a social, political and economic effect, is certainly as interesting as recent innovations in commercial paint technology! The ultimate artistic issue is how one applies the paint, and the information. I would suggest that this indicates one of the distinguishing characteristics of the artistic enterprise: if one assumes commonality of access or exposure, one becomes inherently responsible for one’s response. Life becomes a question of tools and purposes – argument, or ideology, is the process by which usage is ratified.
Debs’ quotation of Lascussagne has always rung true for me. Fundamentally, the statement presumes much about the nature of self-determination and societal effects. Still, whether or not such a contention is or can be conclusive, to insert the word “artist” for “criminal” has for me seemed correct, with respect to Lascussagne’s analysis, and in terms of my own experience/analysis.
To understand mass media, especially corporate media attempts to shape public discourse, and by extension, the medium of free speech, and by further extension, the output of the artist, who is I would suggest the foremost practitioner of free speech, one must study the Mass Media’s techniques, apparatuses and effects. A dimensional approach in my estimation is the best analytic method. One aspect of the dimensional approach entails the study of historical data in search of patterns of progressive (or technical) evolution in a system. Media is in essence a form of delivery system, at least in part, and that delivery system has evolved over time. Debs’ experience with the series of articles that comprise Walls and Bars provides an illustration:
…in some instances the papers struck out parts and paragraphs they not like on the ground that they were “propaganda” or “too radical”, thus withholding from their readers the very points of information and the very vital passages to which the writer was most anxious to give publicity for the end he had in view.
Certainly, this passage is as relevant today as it was at the time of its composition, if not more so. While blogs and blog writers produce a massive volume of commentary on a tremendous number of subjects, the distribution of ideas on a mass scale for alternative perspectives has never been more effectively stymied by ideological (political, economic and social) agents. Witness America’s current effort to reform the nation’s medical care system. While vast majorities of citizens clamor for humane, economical and adequate care, the discourse is largely defined by massive corporations and their media vehicles, reinforced by huge contributions to a largely colluding, even corrupt, political apparatus. In my lifetime the nation has been, as in this example, systematically appropriated by consolidated interests who control not only the political process and the economic infrastructure of the society, but the cultural distribution apparatuses as well. This subtle and methodical oligarchic coup was foreshadowed by the cessation of individual artist grants through the National Endowment of the Arts in the early Reagan era, through a campaign led by Senator Jesse Helms. I believe how a society treats art and artists reveals in direct proportion the extent to which it will protect and promote free speech. Similarly, I believe how a society treats crime and criminals reveals in direct proportion how it will protect and promote freedom, not as an ideal, but in fact, in reality, in life. In a dimensional analysis, both crime and art are closely intertwined in their functions as indicators of the health or wellness of the society in which they occur. When one asks whether a not a society is just, one has but to review the society’s treatment of artists and criminals for an answer. This is why tyrannical regimes will put on great shows of art and pantomime their kindness to criminals. This is why Auschwitz had orchestras.
The prison as a rule, to which there are few exceptions, is for the poor. –E.V. Debs, Walls and Bars
The quote above is interesting in that it can be modified this way, to present a point of departure for a useful dimensional analysis: Contemporary art as a rule, to which there are few exceptions, is for the rich.
Theory does not predetermine outcome, except when force is (artificially) applied to produce the “predicted” results.
In both art and democracy, freedom is an essential element. This is true of philosophy, but not necessarily theory, which can veer into technical concerns that prima facie have nothing to do with real world outcomes. But is this true? Perhaps a relevant case is E=MC². Einstein’s equation is beautiful. Its theoretical elegance is indisputable. However, Einstein’s discovery led to other scientific revelations, that in application yielded an atom bomb that destroyed 150,000 people, few of whom had probably ever heard of Albert Einstein, much less studied his theories.
Where is the theory that will abolish prisons of the kind E.V. described in Walls and Bars, along with the vertical hierarchies Debs descries? The loathsome prisons Debs railed against in effect still exist today in the United States as an expanding hybrid industry, It is my contention that dimensional theory is not really capable of fixing social problems like these. People are. Because crime is a social, political and economic problem, but as Debs posits so beautifully, it is at root a moral problem. People driven by moral imperative effect broad change in social systems. Theory fails to create actionable and permanent change every time. As a theory that insists on perceptual freedom in expression and creation, dimensionism (which features a moral component) can create the environment that demands action against the forces that oppress freedom, however. As a final comment: Debs’ Socialism, at least in America, has failed til now at this task, and individuals, such as former Vice President Richard Cheney, continue to prosper by the incarceration of their fellow citizens.
