Week one.
Write, don’t draw. This is killing me already
My goal : “a thesis discussing my approach to solving the visual problem of interpreting history with paint.”
…Problem of interpreting history of paint. Interpreting history. How do I interpret history in paint.. brain hating words….
OK. So I think the medium of paint immediately takes on the topic of History. Painting is clearly anachronistic. Image development has quicker, cleaner, and more effective techniques. Painting is also fairly off topic with the majority of topics in the contemporary art making vernacular. In that way painting in this day and age immediately interprets History and is enslaved to that interpretation. Nothing said in paint needs to be said in paint unless needing to stay “all in the family” of historical art. So the problem is why paint? I am on the point of history. If discussing history, what do I want to dig up? What do I want my historical dig to uncover or gravitate towards?
The history of painting is a documentation of upper societies’ views on beauty and desire.
The only record of the poor’s painting is graffiti.
I grew up middle class, not exactly sure on which side of the spectrum, but certainly first world. Why is so much cooler to impersonate the poor?
Jake said painting can still do something that photographs and computers can’t, they can be shocking in their break from reality, while the newer mediums are more expected to.
^ in a bout of personal weakness. To make that work. I need large paintings. I need oil paint. I have shaky hands that the other mediums won’t forgive. I could try with watercolor. But watercolor comes out very family oriented in atmosphere and appearance sometimes. Maybe a large watercolor… LARGE WATERCOLORS.
-mroy-
ReplyDeletePaint is historical in so many ways, beginning with current common knowledge of cave paintings. I feel it's also religious in that context as well.
Paint also layers and reacts to light in ways that technologically advanced image creation does not, and our eyes receive the pigment textures.
Don't deny graffiti, or otherwise need to make marks, because the urgency of paint to cover or communicate is in it's application.
Big paintings do sell, and most people will never consider paint with such depth.
-ds-
again, sorry for the slow correspondance. As I have no computer, my only way to get online is my phone, and I hate typing on it.
ReplyDeleteOK thanks thanks thanks for the reply,
Obviously paint is historical. That's kind of the problem, I can't seem to get past the relevance to history. If my topic (the topic of the series) isn't making the historical power of painting relevant, why use it as a medium at all?
It has a very very fecal context. so does religion I'd say. But I think it's getting lazy to call that out as the reason why I paint. "butthole pleasures!" why can all other artists get past that need and make conceptual work detached from their butthole pleasures?
I guess I like to hold on to my butthole pleasures because I feel it's presumptuous to think we can ever let go of them completely. Artist's like Olifer Eliasson certainly don't seem to be ruminating on their butthole, but I have faith that it's there somwhere, no matter how little he touches his pieces or how far away his diary is kept from his studio.
and I'm not denying graffiti. I'm glorifying grafitti. the poor are always the coolest. Look at all those middle class white kids wearing underprivileged fashions in the states. I'm wearing a goddamned FUBU jacket at this very moment.
Big Paintings, by Michael Roy, get left by the trash when I move or given to undergrads for inspiration and for use as beer pong tables.
I think Taylor would agree with me that paintings are considered longer than photographs. And both are considered less than videos... Unless we're talking about Art Gallery video work, which isn't considered at all because of it's general terribleness.
I'm currently at an internet cafe room in Seoul. I haven't drawn as much as possible but they still come out. I have a tattoo commission due in a couple days, and a girl got very stern on me to draw her. Writing about painting is far more useful, I think the assignment is on point with that. I hate the lag I have on completing the assignment, BUT, I feel very positive about getting discussions like this one going on the blog. Maybe the idea can morph to be more of back forth on ideas and not just on building series.
-mroy-
PART TWO
ReplyDeleteSo I need to find topics that are enslaved to their history, and in that way, the action of painting will be less crutched on my own journalistic compulsive habitual nature, and more focused by a metaphysical coupling.
The ideal subject matter is something that is both an endentured servant to it's own history and perhaps and a repetition in it's nature that I can bring out.
So topics... images...
Men who go insane and scribble on the floor forever? That'll do, but maybe it's a bit too transparant.
P.O.W
War survivors.
Trauma Victims.
Repetitive Jobs. Sewing, typing, tiling, digital chip sautering, Ipad building,
^ note how i'm stuck on people still.
what are objects stuck by history and ritual/habit/repetition
rosaries, facebook, phones, MJ Nikes, music, books, trash recepticles, toilets, mmmm help out.
on an updating tip - I bought water soluble oil paints at Nomdaemun Market today. They were expensive, but I'll start playing with them tonight and see how it goes.
ReplyDeleteI too am obligated to apologize for my slow correspondence. I would offer you my excuses but you are too good for them. This is so good. Your are so right and can do no wrong.
ReplyDeletePainting is the dirtiest of and most capable of all inside jokes.
My next piece will be a video. I am going to make it on my ipad so it will be double terrible and perfectly suitable for display in an art gallery.
-continuing with disconnected rants-
ReplyDeleteThis might be a lazy thought, but I want to find a mode of painting that can be done in a one shot, or at least achieve a level of appreciation after one sitting. The style I have had in the last years is one of furious struggle and ends short of goals. I want to find an approach that cuts out some of the protestant fetishing.
I also like drawing out in the public, but that process never ends with finalized piece. can you help give me a suggestions to marry these thoughts?
This means I need to reinvent my strategies, and perhaps a medium mix up a sectioning of the process in general is in order. I find myself attracted to mix up and spontinaity. I find myself OCD about the collage ee ness of collage. I don't like edges sitting on top of edges. I want it to be one surface. and I don't like working on garbage. I don't want some raushcenbergian wall dumpster.
Paper, framed, or cradles. Start wet with awatercolor of sorts, cover lots of area and let it dry over night. begin