The Audacity of Stillness

Two things --

1. Your Bright Future at LACMA – Chance and fate have dictated that I am currently housemates with Korean artist Nakhee Sung at the moment, here at my home, Raid Projects. It's quite serendipitous, then, that LACMA should have an exhibit of contemporary Korean art at the same time. The show is indeed a good time. Christopher Knight has chided it as “90’s festival art”, and though I agree it has some dull spots, overall it made me want to go to Seoul and make video art.

A standout was Choi Jeong-Hwa’s plastic container installation that should have been a few acres bigger, but provided a delightful forest to lose oneself in. It was an interesting contrast to the other “forest” on the LACMA campus – Burden's streetlights – whose permanent status on the grounds served to highlight how disposable Choi’s materials end up being.

Of course, Do Ho Suh’s pieces kicked everyone’s dick in the dirt. His ability to get so much artistic mileage out of the places he has lived as the source for his work is mind bending. His brother’s an architect Nakhee tells me.

Love that Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, wish they would have mounted the monitor in the elevator, to see how they play off of the permanent Krueger installation. My favorite in the whole show, however, was Kimsooja’s unbelievably provocative video installation A Needle Woman. So achingly simple, so hypnotically compelling, so tellingly revealing, she has managed to concisely and articulately show how contrary to conventional wisdom it is to literally take a stand. Kim does nothing in these videos, and yet the audacity of her stillness so quickly instills a similar notion in the viewer. The presentation of multiple videos from all over the world make the universality of her stance (and her stance) visually and poetically apparent. One simple move, or more correctly a lack of moving, and Kim has transformed herself into a force of nature, dictating the direction of the humanity around her, instead of the other way around. An inspiring solution to anyone who has felt caught up in life’s flow.

Plenty of other goofy and great pieces, by other goofy and great artists, an overall paradoxical feeling of a group of artists at different forms of play, yet united by something globally plugged in, but decidedly non-Occidental. A heavy prevalence on video is a badge worn almost patriotically in this show, and a picture of Korea is presented that makes a case for a country whose artistic identity could easily be the meat in an Asian contemporary art sandwich, surrounded by the hearty bread of China and Japan. But only as long as it’s one of those Vietnamese sandwiches. Because those are fucking tasty.

2. I was going to write about Mat Brinkman’s Multi-Force comic book, but Frank Santoro over at the Comics Comics blog has beat me to it. I agree with almost all of his assertions, save for his initial feeling that Brinkman’s most representative output was his “official” art – the drawings, the installations, etc. For me, I’ve always just been waiting around for Brinkman’s work in book form – his comics – and everything else was ancillary to it. At most, I sought to incorporate and connect his other output to what I saw in Paper Rodeo, or Kramers Ergot, or Teratoid Heights. His show at M+B Gallery here in LA a little while back totally confirmed this for me, as it was easy to see those drawings as depicting denizens of Citadel City and the surrounding areas. It seems “cartoonist” is a term that needs re-defining in this new wonderful era of avant-garde comics. The Comics Comics gang seems to be at forefront of articulating this new contextualization, and it is them, frequently, that I turn too when I myself am trying to wrap my brain around the larger picture of what is being produced by fellows like Brinkman. I sort of thought of Brinkman as an artist who has maintained a comics practice, but maybe it’s my problem with the word and not the word’s problem…………

The Perfect Gig

So for the past two semesters, I have taught “Introduction to Art Concepts” at Santa Ana College in Orange County, California. This is a class that is also known at other schools as “Art Appreciation”, among other titles. The SAC catalogue description reads thusly –

“A study of the visual arts in relation to both personal and cultural expressions. Fundamentals of visual organization, color theory, terminology, historical art movements and concepts will be studied.”

It’s a good time. It’s the perfect gig for me. The material is structured in the various textbooks pretty much all the same. Starts with some working definitions or art and why it’s important, its purposes and where it’s found. Next it goes into formal language, visual elements, principles of design, things like that. Then it takes each medium, one by one, and then a fast forward through the history of art. The history half is the standard narrative of the Western tradition with a detour after the 18^th century to cover non-Western art traditions.

It’s a lot of material to cover. 16 weeks to generalize about some 5,000 odd years of human beings doing every visually apparent thing that didn’t fall under the category of “eating” or “fucking”. (Though personally I think all art is about sex and death.) It is up to me what I emphasize, what I leave out, what I include, and what spin I put on everything. Some things I personally try to emphasize are:

-- How to write, speak, and most importantly chat about art intelligently. (As well as how write, speak, and chat well in general.)

-- How you “have to get smart to get art” and how knowledge of it can give one a creative edge in any discipline or walk of life.

-- That the story of art used to be just be the story of white, (seemingly) straight European males, and that contemporary art today cannot be understood without knowledge and reclamation of artists from formerly marginalized groups (females, people of color, queer, “outsider” art) and non-western traditions.

-- The ideas of the avant-garde eventually trickling down to mainstream society; art as the “R&D department” of culture. Specifically how many of the prevalent digital methods of information consumption and production today (like the website you’re reading right now) are products of ideas first put forward in art.

-- Art history as a history of reactions, and the external (non-art) circumstances that dictate particular movements and trends.

-- How formal language, knowledge of relevant contexts, medium-specific associations, and art history can all be used to conclude content and/or meaning from a particular artwork. (The last two is more generally referred to as “critical thinking” to use pedagogical language.)

What I want to know is what else should be included? Or more correctly, what shouldn’t be excluded? During the history phase of the class, it’s a pretty fast rundown of the greatest hits of art, and many artists fall through the cracks to present a more generalized story. What are the most important art concepts that should be taught in “Introduction to Art Concepts”? If you could teach anyone without an art education only a handful of things, what would you show them?

Untitled Avant-Garde Comic #1

Bas Jan Ader Was an Exception to Lots of Things

So as an artist and teacher, it occurs to me often the larger question of ‘Why is art important?’ I imagine it is obvious to many who would even be reading this, but I feel that articulating it is another matter entirely. Then I imagine there are those that feel art is not important, but that’s why it is important, that sort of thing. As a community college instructor, the obligation falls upon me regularly to explain why an art education can be beneficial to several different walks of life and disciplines. And I honestly do believe it is. Much of the conventional wisdom around this is centered around the idea of creativity, and indeed I spend some time going into what that is and means with my “Introduction to Art Concepts” students early in the semester, as do the texts associated with that course.

I fancy it a sublimation of the survival instinct; if your life depends on it, you will get real creative, real fast. Artists are people who attempt to engage in creative processes without (usually) being in unforeseen life-threatening situations. I know what you’re about to say, but Bas Jan Ader was an exception to lots of things. But perhaps it is an instinct that needs expression in order to be a healthy, happy person….maybe.

One of my other sales pitches for the importance of art is referring to it as the “R&D department of culture”. Sometimes I like using THE MAN’S corporate lingo -- sometimes I even preface it by saying “If culture was a corporation, art would be the…”. Having insight into the strategies behind artworks and artists, with whom creativity is their business, can give one an edge in any discipline, over those who are not art educated. For many of us this is painfully obvious. The avant-garde does indeed trickle down to the mainstream, where it creates totally boring things like jobs, capital, supply, demand, products, etc. Don’t believe me? Reality TV? 70’S PERFORMANCE ART. Ikea furniture? MINIMALIST SCULPTURE. Photoshop? RAUSCHENBERG. Hipsters? WARHOL. I actually think that’s the litmus test for the avant-garde to cross over into “history”, but that’s another topic altogether.

We currently are all feeling the burden of those boring things I spoke of earlier, and there is a scramble for solutions towards relieving that burden. In many ways creativity is at a premium right now. However it gets solved, it will be a solution that has existed before, in some way; as any artist will tell you, originality is just a myth.

Artsy-Fartsy

So I’ve seen this, that, and whatnot lately. But really, I just have had blogger’s block lately, and don’t feel like anything needs to be expressed of late, at least through words. Just been in the studio, or at least in the studio in my head, and maybe my radar is just receiving and not broadcasting right now. I will go into this, though: A viewer of one of my paintings began to ask me about how I know when a painting is ‘finished’? I know for some artists there are obvious answers, depending on the project, but me, and some others, have at least some part of the process that has no set parameters for when it is over.

Let’s all stop and take a deep breath now – things almost got really artsy-fartsy there, and I really do think it’s an interesting, productive question. I’m aware of responses that read like the goofiest new age metaphysical malarkey / boloney / hokum you could only hope to come across in one of those magazines that only head shops sell. My response to the original question was something along the lines of when ever I notice I haven’t worked on it in a while. That usually means, for me, the painting’s done. That’s sort of the definition of “done” actually. Maybe that’s why I like that method.

Anywho, this is what I’ve been fiddling around with lately:

And this:

I Made These Marks When I Knew You 2009

Where The Magic Happens™

Latest and greatest --



That is Unquantifiable --


Twice as Beautiful Are the Rings of Saturn --


A Thunder Between Us (IN PROGRESS)

The Comedian is Dead

Allright, so, the Watchmen movie.

Let me begin by saying, “Relax. Calm down. Breathe.” Many of you, like me, have been engaged in a protracted effort to eliminate one’s expectations for the event in question, and I think I succeeded. I feel I went in to Zack Snyder’s film last night as impartial as one such as myself could be, at least on a conscious level.

For starters, any movie that has a scene with two superheroes fucking while a Leonard Cohen song plays in the background warrants at least 3 stars out of 5 for that scene alone. However, Watchmen the movie as a whole never really transcends that moment, though it does warrant further analysis. Comparing Snyder’s version with the original comic book, while inevitable, is ultimately counter-productive in judging the merits of the film on its own. While comic-book superhero movies of late generally deal with characters and premises that have seen many different versions and interpretations printed up over the years, Watchmen, as we all know, was a finite 12 issue comic book series with a definite beginning and ending. So this 3 hour movie was more of an adaptation of a novel more than an interpretation of a character or characters that have been interpreted many times. For many of us Watchmen, the book, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, represented a high point in what stood in for punk rock for the sexless and uncool adolescents of yesteryear. Like me. No film adaptation of a conventional novel is ever given this sort of scrutiny; but because the source material here is a comic book, what any other version of it may look and feel like visually is already laid down. Fortunately, Hollywood has quickly established a cinematic language for the genre of comic-book superhero movies, much of it established by a film that wasn’t even originally based on a comic book, the Wachowski bros. film, The Matrix. In Zack Snyder’s film adaptation of Watchmen, he uses this language without reservation; it is indeed, typical of most “comic-book movies.”

And that’s the problem. If Christopher Nolan can generate an artful, deep, hypnotic spectacle like the Dark Knight, then it stands to reason that the artful and deep source material of Watchmen would lend itself to being adapted to a film that rises to such heights. While still an ambitious, enjoyable film, Snyder’s Watchmen has more in common with Favreau’s Iron Man, Raimi’s Spider-Man films, and Singer’s X-Men movies than anything as inviting of serious critical attention like the Dark Knight. I feel comparing Watchmen to other films of the genre is the way to go; Snyder clearly was given the task of making a “comic-book movie” (as his previous film, 300, was) and he did not feel the need to do too much more than that.

Now it is ambitious, in its length (almost 3 hours) and complexity; however the moments I appreciated most is when Snyder chose to take liberty with the source material. His adherence to the plot, imagery, and details of the book felt at many times restraining, an exercise in dork satisfaction. The possible ire of message board comments, I feel, have never been more influential on the making of film before, and it shows. When a different take on one of the novels ideas or scenes came up, it was like a pressure valve being released, and a brief moment of Snyder’s interpretation was witnessed. His streamlining and simplifying of the story made sense, what he left out made sense – you cannot put a book on screen without changes; i.e. the film of a book is about the changes. Part of the production of comic-book movies typically involves internet research into what the fans expect and want. Unfortunately, at this point in Snyder’s career, I don’t think he is capable of crafting a film that invites the criticality that Moore and Gibbon’s book warranted and balance the essentials of why the source material is so revered. (For starters, he could lose his fetish for slow-motion action scenes. How he could film a story that is ostensibly about confronting clichés and un-ironically fill it with them is beyond me.) The book wasn’t a big deal because it was “badass”. It was a big deal because it was art. Art in the most unlikeliest of places: A superhero comic book.

So, 3 stars out of 5. Like I said, its not bad. It’s fun. It’s cool. It’s neat. It’s sexy. Some good performances. Some amazing imagery. Within the genre of comic-book movies, its ambition and scale put it a bit of a notch above some of the above mentioned movies. Did Nolan raise the standard on comic-book movies with the Dark Knight? Maybe. But Moore and Gibbon’s book Watchmen created a new standard back in 1986, and now a fun, cool, neat, sexy movie has been made of it. Go see it for yourself.