sbook 005

watching Lost.





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This post is part of a series documenting my current sketchbook.
Earlier entries: sbook001, sbook002, sbook003, sbook004.

Wiley @ Conner

Over at DCist J.T. Kirkland had a very similar take to mine on this show. Seeing images of Wiley's work in Art In America got me excited to see this stuff at Conner a few weeks ago. His mix of contemporary African-American men with old master paint references seemed smart and tricky.

The problem is the execution. The paint just isn't there. The subject's jeans don't look like fabric - they look like paint. I have no problem with him projecting onto the canvas as part of his process, but in some work he doesn't even bother to erase the guidelines for lights and darks. While Wiley does use scale very effectively to create a confrontation between subject and viewer, the men's faces have a flat, not-alive feeling to them. Only in the pencil-drawing area does he start making more than images - some of the fabric comes to life and has texture and movement.



This criticism is probably beside the point. Wiley "deals" with hot-button images of race and masculinity, fused with an old-school-pleasing devotion to art history and paint. What matters isn't whether what he makes holds up as painting (even though he set the bar by invoking painting greats). What matters is the image, the context, the cleverness and, finally, the press release.

sbook 004

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This post is part of a series documenting my current sketchbook.
Earlier entries: sbook001, sbook002, sbook003.

sbook 003

Stealing from Philip Guston.





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This post is part of a series documenting my current sketchbook.
Earlier entries: sbook001, sbook002.

American pride

To answer Tyler Green of MAN, as of today my favorite painting in America:


Street II, Philip Guston

Because it's the best portrait of an artist I've ever seen.


My favorite American painting:


Landscape with Garage Lights, Stuart Davis

or


House and Street, Stuart Davis

I just can't pick because I like tons of what Davis did. I could easily have put 5 more up here.

sbook 002

Yesterday's drawings:


Added a little since yesterday.



I take back what I said yesterday - the paper in this book isn't very good. It's a nice texture but really thin so pens bleed through. So this book will probably be lots of pencils...




Stealing from Stuart Davis.




Ideas for my show this November.





Waiting for bride outside her work.

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This post is part of a series documenting my current sketchbook.
Earlier entries: sbook001

sbook 001

I've decided to "publish" my current sketchbook as I work on it here on the blog. The plan is to post everyday what I draw in the book.

I filled up my old one yesterday afternoon and started a new one last night, so here are the first few pages. On the cover I stuck a sticker I drew so I'd know which side was the front. The book itself is a 5 1/8 x 8 1/4 Moleskine book - I like them because the paper's good quality, there's a secret pocket in the back and there's an elastic strap to hold the book closed.



Usually I date when I start them.



Daily visual diary page.

mail

Got this postcard with drawing in the mail recently from Toby Craig - see his work here at moderntales.com.

poem/picture

Breathing Rooms IV.

We played jazz,
our small-time group,
in the old house of Donald’s long-gone grandparents.
There,
on the bottom floor, many years ago,
they owned a neighborhood grocery,
where,
in the heyday of jazz,
small-time was all that there ever was.

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Poem by Roger Noyes, picture by me.
From our poem/picture book Other People's Schemes.

sketchbook pages

(for Truly and Gwydion)

last half of a weekend

Andy Moon Wilson

Last weekend was the last big escape for my bride and I before our bundle of joy arrives. Friday night we drove up to Reston to see the great J.T. Kirkland show - I wrote about the show yesterday, but didn't mention a few details of the reception. We met J.T.'s mom, saw Bren again and finally met in person Andy Moon Wilson and the incomparable James Bailey. We drew on the whiteboard in the room with the great food. I gave them stickers, Andy gave me this rad doodle - the text reads:

They are specially programmed to disco dance. On the floor, their moves form a blur of precision in speed. You cannot defeat their funky technique.

Here's the back:



His drawing kung fu is mighty, all hail pen-power.

We left Reston for DC, and the next day, in the company of good pals, ate felafel and saw art at Connor (Kehinde Wiley, which I'll review later), G (where a lady talked to us and was nice and where we got free fortune cookies), Hemphill and Curator's Office (which was a tiny space with really cool stuff hung salon-style, including a kickass Tuttle print). Back at casa de Truly + Gwydion + Helen we had a dance party, then drove home.

Kirkland@ Reston

Last Friday my bride and I attended the reception for J.T. Kirkland's show in Reston and were glad we made the trek up 29 to see the work. Kirkland made the most of a difficult space and presented his subtle and strong work in a surprisingly effective way.

The space in Reston is essentially a hallway with neutral-colored textured walls. Hallways and other functional spaces are terribly difficult to show work in - large pieces can't be seen, and small ones can disappear into the surroundings of light switches, drop-ceilings and exit signs.

Kirkland's work survives this atmosphere - in fact it thrives there. One would think that "organic minimalism" would need a white cube and no distractions to prosper, but this work is hardy enough to hold its own even in a functional corporate space. I was amazed at how his pieces could take the tasteful but bland surroundings and, while integrating and stealing from their aesthetic, transform them into art - from semi-sterile corporate habitat to viewing pleasure. I would guess this isn't something Kirkland intended with his work at all, but it shows the strength of the work that it can stand up to this Reston space.



And the work is strong - better even than when I viewed much of it in his studio a couple months ago and much, much better than the images on his website. Describing the work as "holes in wood" misses all the subtle and careful decisions Kirkland makes - choosing the wood, making precise patterns, deliberately creating relationships among pieces of wood, their scale and the patterns. Kirkland's term "organic minimalism" fits well - this is a thoughtful but playful aesthetic. In (R)Evolve, he "joins" three pieces of wood by "drawing" a circle in holes over all three. In Bulbous he makes a small wood chunk come alive with a simple shape and small hole-size changes. In Bulge he creates one axis with the tilted wood piece and another almost invisible one with the size of the holes. These all have a schemey, sneaky quality - a joy in making something beautiful and fun. I laughed more than once just looking at holes drilled in wood.

A few months ago I emailed Kirkland about how his work is a descendant of cubism and one idea of cubism - that a work of art can be an autonomous object in the world, a point made with Picasso's Still Life with Chair Caning. Picasso was saying "Yes, this is a representation of something, but it's also a thing itself, not just a window." Picasso said he wanted work that competed with the world, that didn't just represent it. Kirkland continues this tradition, passed down through a line of greats like Mondrian, Stella and Judd. This isn't work one enters into, its work one exists alongside.

Kirkland continues another Modernist tradition - the artist as blue-collar worker. The cubists were scandalous when they dressed in work overalls and acted "lowbrow" as opposed to the more genteel "painting in a suit" atmosphere prevalent in European art at the time - picture the photos of Matisse painting in a three-piece suit. Kirkland's method of drilling wood from Home Depot is about as blue-collar as one can get - and as far away from the rarified clouds of hot air that surrounds so much contemporary work. Kirkland only asks us to do the easiest and hardest thing - to look.



We bring to the work our knowledge of art history, of theory, maybe even of woodcraft, but in the end the work is democratic and accessible because it only needs us to look for it to come alive, and by looking we start to see Kirkland's way of seeing the world and all its intricacies and potential, which can then transform the way we see everything around us. Driving up to the show I was concerned that the hallways in Reston would neutralize Kirkland's work but what I saw was the opposite - that his drilled wood chunks transformed their bland bloodless surroundings, charging them with life by showing us another way to see.

Kirkland@University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus

J.T. Kirkland, Basin, Maple, Holes, Lacquer, 11.5" x 30", 2005

Tonight is the reception for J.T. Kirkland's show presented by the League of Reston Artists and the University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus. I'm looking forward to seeing the show tonight - I saw some of the work in his studio and it looked really nice.

Artist, gallerist and writer Lenny Campello of Fraser Gallery and DC Art News has a review of the show here.

Here's the info:

What: J.T. Kirkland: "Studies in Organic Minimalism"

Who: Presented by the League of Reston Artists and the University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus

When: May 2 – June 25, 2005 - Special Reception for the artist: Friday, May 13, 2005 – 6:00 – 9:00pm

Where: University of Phoenix Northern Virginia Campus
11730 Plaza America Drive, Suite 200
Reston, Virginia
For directions, see the LRA's web site at www.leagueofrestonartists.org

Viewing: Exhibition is free and open to the public during regular business hours
Monday - Thursday 9:00am - 10:00pm, Friday 9:00am - 5:00pm, Saturday 9:00am - 1:00pm

Basquiat @ Brooklyn Museum

A couple weeks ago during our whirlwind NC trip my bride and I (along with our hoochi-mama pal) saw the Basquiat show at the Brooklyn Museum. I had seen the last big retrospective at the Whitney back in 1992, and it had been important for me as a baby-artist to see. At that time I knew nothing about Basquiat's work, but had ended up working similarly, using crazy drawing, words, and a whole stew of materials and images. Seeing that show reinforced my confidence, and gave me a few things to steal, but it was also kind of unsatisfying - I felt that he was being puffed up as a greater artist than he had been.



The show in Brooklyn now was well-done, and I saw lots that I hadn't seen. Especially great were his massive head painting and a suite of drawings all hung together. I was troubled by the decision to really obscure his drug probems and his weird relationships with dealers. Barely mentioned in the wall- or audio-text were drugs but you could see them in the work, sometimes in the incredible kinetic quality of his mark-making, but also in the limp and crappy pieces that dominated the end of his life. I think this glossing over the drugs might have been a condition of his father's participation in the show - apparently he's very reluctant to speak publicly, but interviews with him were on the audio-text.



Seeing the show was, like the earlier Whitney retrospective, two-sided for me. On the one hand I was reminded of the energy and craziness of my own earlier work, and I saw many ways that he used drawing that I can steal from him. In his best work he creates a fantastic confusion that somehow adds up, like an Ashberry poem. He also has a direct and powerful way of drawing - a bombastic and confident barbaric yawp.

On the other hand, many of the pieces weren't great at all. He seems to have one way of drawing, one line to use, and everything gets processed through that single line. His compositions can work, but often don't, and while I've some to appreciate the crazy color he uses, at times it's not delicious bafflement, it's cacophony. It's really hard to make great work with a seat-of-your-pants method - I know, I've tried. Like most of us, Basquiat goes back to what he's comfortable with - for him it's cartoony lists of images and words. When I see a De Kooning, a Guston or a Picasso I see that same reckless improvisation, but with a wealth of moves at their disposal to make the piece work. Basquiat seems to have had one, maybe two tricks.

What's so frustrating is I can see an intelligence, both conceptual and mark-making, at work here that only sometimes comes through all the way. It could be his early success didn't let him have any time to self-criticize at all, and the drugs coupled with the rapacious dealers he worked with probably reinforced that. Of course he also died very young so had no chance to mature.

But in a way that doesn't matter - the work is what it is, and the vestments of genius still being woven around him are bunk. In essay after essay, article after article he's puffed up as Modernism's savior, as a master equal to the greats. He's not. He was a good artist with lots of drive, talent and potential who made several great pieces (and lots and lots of not-so-great ones) before dying. I think many curators respond so well to him because he gives them a double-shot - a multicultural artist who also provides them with lots of textual fodder to pore over and parse. They get their theory and they get to feel good about it too.



Despite all my criticisms of the work and the whirlwind around it, I do thinks it's a timely and good show. In a way Basquiat's short and uneven career can be seen as a plus for art - by pushing in the ways he did, but not dominating them, he's left open a lot of paths for us younger scribblers and drawers to explore.

Duncan@Billis and Moody@some cubicle

Brooklyn painter (and former VCU comrade) David Duncan has a show opening in LA:

The George Billis Gallery, L.A. is pleased to announce an exhibition of oil paintings by painter David Duncan. The work will be on view from May 10 - June 18, 2005, and a reception for the artist will beheld on Saturday, May 14, from 5 - 8 p.m.

David Duncan's paintings depict scenic locations often known before experienced, and the activity which occurs when one visits these locales in person. Headlamps, English Breakfast Tea, Post-it Notes, and Halter Bikinis are integrated into scenes of American natural splendor, with results conflating the private and the commercial.

I saw one of Duncan's paintings last year in Richmond and it was really good. He's a thoughtful, patient and quietly fantastic artist and I wish I could see this show in person.

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New York artist Tom Moody (of the great blog fame) will be part of a drawing/digital/performance in an old office space:

Tom Moody, "Office Reality: Channeling My Art Life from 1995-2000," performance work, 2005. Moody will keep "office hours" while the exhibition is open (Tues 9-5; Sun. 12-6 from May 10 to 31), and will sit and draw on an old computer. Portraits, abstract art, and tasteless cartoon imagery will be pinned up in his cubicle as he works. All will be drawn using MSPaintbrush (precursor to Microsoft Paint); Moody's attire will be "business casual."

He's part of "ART)@*!WORK", taking place in a 16th floor office suite at 8th Ave and 36th Street:

ART*!(%WORK, 520 Eighth Avenue Between 36th and 37th Street. Suite 1602; opening reception with live performance by Irene Moon May 10 2005 7-9 p.m; regular "office" hours: Tuesdays 9-5 and Sundays 12-6

May 2005, New York City—Ignivomous, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to nurturing and developing new genres, art forms and mediums presents ART!@*<>WORK, an art exhibition exploring the tension between the art of doing work and the work of doing art.

This show will take place in the cubicles of a midtown Manhattan office space. Fifteen artists will transform and exhibit projects inspired by the act of doing work and the spaces created for working. Visitors will be invited to explore and interact with the space during "office hours."

Moody's workspace reminds me of my days in a cubicle in a converted warehouse full of cubicles (like a forest of them) secretly making art. There should be a grant to set up a permanent office full of cubes for artists to make stuff while in business casual attire.

cassie