“The way we come to know a hammer is not by staring at it, but by grabbing hold of it and using it”

-Matthew B. Crawford paraphrasing Martin Heiddegger, “Shop Class As Soulcraft”

Today I found myself in my studio after doing some work for buyers (delivery, basically), and found myself  disengaged, intellectually speaking, with the painting I was doing. For a start, the paintings I do are not particularly “in” with the postmodern crowd, the academic crowd, or the hipster crowd for that matter. Most positive critiques and peer responses I have received are for sculptures, installations,or videos (surprise!).  I do not paint as a ‘hobby’, a common misconception. My hobbies include learning to play the guitar and boxing. Yet I still get the odd request for a painting, free of charge, as if they were asking for a bonsai tree or a knitted scarf. No one, unfortunately, has asked for a “free of charge” sparring session.

People who have an ‘enterprise’, as they inform me ever so constantly (as if repeating the word gives them an air of Donald Trump or Bill Gates)  find my job somewhat fallacious. That is, they believe it is not really work, while checking the odd forwarded email with a blackberry automatically puts them in a realm of business, enterprise, a contender for FORBES magazine cover material. This, I suppose, is cultural, but also somewhat personal, in the way we conceive of work, of ‘making a living’ or of simply having an occupation. I would prefer to be a labelled a tradesman, if I needed to.

But I cannot speak for everyone, or anyone, for that matter. And maybe checking emails on a blackberry is business, after all. What I don’t know is how choosing the right type of wood for a stretcher (not too heavy, not too light, not green), the type of fabric for a support, the type of medium, building a stretcher, stretching the fabric, priming it for the paint, choosing an image, and then painting a picture on top of that, is NOT work. Michelangelo would think work of any other sort was for the, well, the less gfted, and the not-so-talented. So did Chinese aristocrats. It is not a coincidence that Leonardo Da Vinci was also a painter and a draughtsman; he was, after all, the most intelligent person on the planet. How could he not paint? He was an engineer and an architect as sort of offshoot hobbies; his paintings he considered his real accomplishments.

In a very strange way, painting, sculpting, and art became my professions. I was never really sure what I was doing with my life, and felt guilty the whole time I was in university, as if I should at least study illustration or graphic design; how was I going to live? It felt completely self-indelgent, expensive, and abstract.  That was the strangest part, the abstractness of it all. As if we were performing daily nonsensical rituals, and stamping some sort of “theory” (for me it was usually the gist of the book I was reading at a given moment) on why were doing it that was. Furthermore our work became so detached from the realness of the world that it was just confusing and depressing. Ever read Michel Foucault? He’s great for any piece of shit you make that you can’t make sense out of; quote him, you will be lauded. And so but the whole mystical aspect of it all seems now, in retrospect, perfectly tied with the fact that art is uncertain of its status. Since conceptualism, perhaps before (Duchamp, right?) the object follows the theory. Perhaps old news, perhaps not news at all. What the fuck are those Luc Tuyman paintings about? About not-painting, done as a painting. Right. Personally I enjoy some Tuymans’ work, but he seems a little too “out there” in the hinterlands of abstract art theories.

Yet…

I did really like that weird acrylic paint that is called rose (something), which is more like a poster-paint pink. At least I liked how it melted with the rest of the pigments, also acrylic, and so the water I sprayed or splattered over it made it gooey and milky, as it slid down like corporeal fluids down the fabric. It created a strange effect with the bluish green I had underneath. Then I remembered this one art teacher at a less than prestigious art academy in Boston, MA (where I so honorably flunked out of), Charlie (that’s what I called him, but I cannot really recall his name) a color theorist who based his entire work on a more humanized, but not so impressive, version of Josef Albers’ color theories. As in, instead of squares, he painted LEGOS (which are, think about it, primaries) lit by a cool, gray,  bostonian winter’s day, and other such semi-deep vignettes. Charlie taught our class one day about the jarring effect colors give when these are diametrically opposed in the color wheel and then placed together in an image, as in a green with a red; this jarring effect can be intensified by well, intensifying the hue and also the value of the color; the higher(brighter) the hue, the more jarring the effect. Yet having these two “frequencies” exactly the same is somewhat difficult, requiring some mixing, some patience, a good eye. Charlie had a great eye. I had terrible presentation.

So how was it that I had that effect on my painting? Sometimes the brands already have hues that are more than enough of the color wheel and its variations.

I always thought presentation was lame, as in, if I solved the problem you asked for, why does it also have to look presentable? “Because we are in the business of looking”, Charlie would reply, “and if you don’t take the time to do it, why should we?”. So getting the hues right was for me, the biggest accomplishment, but trying to be somewhat clean (having a straight stretcher, the painting not disintegrating in a day or so) has been helpful, because you are reminded that a customer is not so interested in your genius (or lack thereof) but the object you give them, and if it is less than presentable, you look like a dipshit. Especially if you are quoting Foucault.

So every day, I try to do something less than abstract, and let it abstract itself if it wants. I have read too many crappy french post structuralists (read, not understood) and that jackass Derrida. (Shit, he’s dead, I’m sorry). If it works as a painting, and someone buys it, or at least asks for it, that’s good enough for me.

-Fede

This entry was posted on Martes, Julio 6th, 2010 at 22:29 and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.