On the Topic of Modernism

I often define my painting as Modernist. Not in the furniture, architecture, or literature sense, but it's Modernist in the sense that I aim to express on canvas what my relationship to it and to the world is, and incorporate formal aspects of painting in with.

Modernism is not a word used frequently in contemporary art, but I feel that with the outrageous and overwhelming volume of post-modern art that's out in galleries now, I must intentionally steer the viewer away from inferring any of his or her preconceptions or ideas about what the average contemporary artist should be.

I proudly take the stance that painting is, in its own right, still pure and modernist, in this very Postmodern world. Even artists like Cecily Brown and Dana Schutz deal with paint on canvas, whatever the subject matter they express, it comes down to the pigmented textures, expressions, form, shape and color.

Postmodernism states that everything has been exhausted, explored and acheived in modern art, therefore it's open season on anything: copying, appropriating, even stealing is a-okay. Postmodern visual art became popular about forty years ago.

I think this painting by Degas is as poignant today as it was when it was painted. And so, that's how it goes when one focuses on the human form and the human condition. There's nothing Postmodern about Birth, Life and Death.


Edgar Degas, "L'absinthe", 1876 Oil on canvas, 92 x 68 cm; Musee d'Orsay, Paris

The Handmade vs. The Brainmade (Idea)

I like to build my own stretchers, stretch and size my own canvas, frame my own work. I like my work to be mine from start to finish. There's a real satisfaction in becoming the process of your work. When you get your hands dirty, you become invested in what you're doing. I also really like to get my brain involved, and the result is usually a muddled, twisting, wrenching argument with myself.

On May 20th I went to an open house and day of demonstrations at the Berkeley Art Museum. The open house went in conjunction with Allison Smith's Notion Nanny exhibit, which I stumbled across a few days prior. The primary message of the exhibit was a study in the idea of the "itinerant apprentice": someone who travels from town to town, learning the skills and crafts of the local tradespeople, and offering up his/her creative ideas in turn. In this case, Allison Smith, a Brooklyn artist was the Itinerant Apprentice, who offers an exhibit of a collection of handmade objects, on display at BAM until August 12, 2007.

I found the collaborative nature of the show to be the most thought-provoking, although there were times that I felt a sense of ambivalence. The woven tapestries were exquisite, and on the placard it read "Allison Smith", and below it read the name of the artist who actually wove the piece, thus giving a somewhat secondary credit to the contibuting Artisan. This leads me to the ever-pervasive debate between Idea vs. Craft; Conceptual vs. Modernist. When the two are polarized as they are in Contemporary Art, it's usually the Idea or Concept that wins favor in the eyes of the critics. But then, I do tire of the "Wow - all those dots and lines must have taken days" - OCD-style works that are "so hot right now". Again, this is an argument I'm having with myself, and this show was a great catalyst for further exploration, polarization, and perhaps the discovery that I have multiple personalities. And we are IN Gemini, and I AM a Gemini after all.. whoa!

Meanwhile, the vast range of exhibitors at the open house were kind, open and earnest in their love for their Craft. I think that was the most inspiring aspect of the show, and I'm really glad I went. Here are some photos I took:


Ehren Tool, an ex-Marine and MFA from Berkeley, makes ceramic cups with grim images of war.


Jeremey (last name?) works with a Letterpress


Travis J. Meinolf works on a loom. He's in the MFA program at CCA in textiles, and his wool blankets are something to see!


If you caught the CCA MFA exhibit, you probably couldn't have missed the giant fence covered in hot-pink knitted I-cords. Here's the artist, Lacey Jane Roberts demonstrating her technique.

One of the most fascinating and beautiful aspects of the open house is that some of these poeple just give their product away for free. Ehren was giving out his ceramic cups, and Travis gives away his wool blankets during his exhibits. Jeremey had GLOBAL WARMING prints to hand out, there were samples of homemade cheese, and free cookies. Amazing.

Hans Hoffman: 1880-1966

I've gotten a chance to look at a lot of work by Hans Hoffman lateley, as I have visited the Berekely Art Museum twice in the last week. His paintings are really, really good - I guess that's putting it a little simplistic, but it's true. He was a great painting teacher too, and pushed his students hard. Sometimes it's those teachers, whose work is not of "star" status in their own time, that make a bigger imact on their students. Apparently he made Wolfe Kahn have a nervous breakdown when he was studying under him. Hoffman taught summer sessions at UC Berkeley, and later donated a huge portion of his body of work to the Museum. There are about five or six huge paintings always on display.

Also, new to the BAM collection is a piece by Jennifer Bartlett. The sculpture by Maria Porges is always fun to visit. In the "Measure of Time" exhibit there's a wonderful painting by the legendary Jay DeFeo.


Nocturnal Splendor, 1963


Equinox, 1958


Ecstasy, 1947


The Golden Wall, 1961

The bad news is that last night we tried to go to Moma for the Picasso show, but it was sold out. Better luck next time.

Next Up: my re-cap of Allison Smith's Notion Nanny Open House Day of Demonstrations at the Berkeley Art Museum.

red cross building, Broadway and 40th

Form (capital F) is as important to modern figurative painting as it is to sculpture and architecture. Naturally, I am focused on the form of my surroundings and my landscape. I address my life and express myself by painting not simply WHAT I see, but also that which captivates me and occupies my mind through living here. As painters living and working in an urban environment, we have to filter what's around us in order to gain more closeness to it, and in order to express that much more of the reality in which we live.

The Ashcan School (as mentioned earlier by Alika Cooper, thanks btw!) provided a foundation for all American painters with that sensibility. They painted their surroundings as they were, as industrialization had taken hold nearly all over the Western World - the natural landscape beginning to only be attained with an "exodus". Adopting and painting the cityscape along with all it's interesting industrial objects, thus rejecting the escapist and romantic notion that landscapes must be nature, is one of the very seminal foundations to our current approach to form and composition in modernist painting.

It is interesting to look back to the turn of the century photos that show more than ten times the amount of open space we have today, just one century later. Whoa!

Which brings me to my new series of works: The American Red Cross Building at 40th and Broadway. I have a view of the side and back of the building, lying just behind the abonimable 76 Car Wash. I'm taken in by it's magnitude, it's harsh shadows, high contrast and few windows. Here are some sketches and studies of it: