Kill The Brain

Ok, first things first. Durden and Ray. This is who I'm with in LA, they're a fine group of guys and dolls. We're having a little thing in Long Beach starting this weekend. If you're in town for the TED Conference you best stop by. We'll be maintaining regular gallery hours until the end of February. I have two paintings in the show. You know them, you love them. This one below is not one of them:

The Answer To All My Questions

2010

oil on canvas

40" x 40"

If I may continue to shamelessly plug a bit more, D n' R is producing a book, which will be available online soon. It's a catalog of the current roster. I've seen some preview images. It's a thing of beauty.

I got a book in the mail called Painting Today. It's a giant tome that reiterates my assertion that, like the undead, the only way to kill painting is to kill the brain.

On my bookshelf is one of the nifty-est looking copies of Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan I have ever had the pleasure of perusing through. I got it years ago when I lived in Texas from an Amazon marketplace seller; it couldn't have been more than two dollars. Its got underlining and notes and shit in it, all from a fellow named Fred Woerner. I know this because he signed and dated his copy – December, 1966 – as well as stamped his address on it. He lived in LA. If I go to the address today, what should I do when I get there?

I have completely fallen down a rabbit hole because of my obsession with the Legion of Super-Heroes. I've started to read some of the original Adventure Comics stories, starting with the Jim Shooter written issues. The first one, #346, from July 1966 (the same year Fred inscribed his copy of Understanding Media...curious) has a particularly delightful moment during the introduction of potential Legionnaire candidate Princess Projectra:

My Overriding Goal Of Becoming A Force Of Nature

Happy New Year. So can we start the 90's revival already? I suppose I have some irons in the fire, but some are secret. The econopocalpyse has slowed my artistic production, though a shift is immanent. Let's just say it's about to behoove me to do smaller, more easily transportable works. I will never be free of an unfinished big sexy painting on my wall, but it's time to dust off the drawing board, eh?

So it seems my teaching career is on hiatus for now. I don't know what those kids are going to do. They were already robbed of my Bauhaus inspired digital media curriculum, and now I don't even get to teach Intro to Art Concepts anymore. I have to go back to self-rightously rambling about what art is to strangers at after parties. When you get paid to do that, you're a professor. When you don't you're just an asshole.

I painted my father, and a family therapist bought the painting. I figured my mother would get jealous so I started a painting of her. It was originally going to be a painting of a giant shark with a naked woman in its jaws, taken from a Spanish men's (read: fucked up violent porn) magazine. But I decided to paint my mom instead. I'm keeping the original title though, -- Tiburon.

So this Saturday at the Torrance Art Museum (all the cool kids who eat together at lunch call it the TAM) are some sexy shows that I'm involved with in various ways from tangential to directly. You should go to their website and try to find me, Where's Waldo style. I'm trying to figure out a way to show up in people's dreams next. Not necessarily that way.

I feel closer to my overriding goal of becoming a force of nature more than ever these days, though I can't exactly explain why. I have begun helping to facilitate some outside exhibitions for RAID Projects, so if you are one of my international fans, let me know if you know of any groovy art spaces that would like to do an exhibition exchange with us. You know, if you like being in shows and stuff. Still a ways off, but we here at RAID are consolidating our mafia and are poised to strike.

Anti-Christ by Lars Von Trier is the greatest date movie ever. Take your partner, parents, and clergy to the best feel good family film of '09. Seriously it's good shit. Hard to recommend without fully interviewing the recommendee, but if you think you like film, (as opposed to just "movies") get involved. Saw The White Ribbon by Hanenke the other night. Again, not for morons. I think he's giving a talk tomorrow. Must queue up Funny Games. The original. And the remake.

There's a whole gaggle of new cats here at RAID now. As soon as I get to know them and we share links, I'll be spreading the love, probably on the RAID blog. The only way I make friends is if they live in the same house with me. Seriously, my anti-social behavior is only evolving as I get older.

Saturday and Sunday

DO THIS --

www.artrala.org

Hashbrown Lightning

Hashbrown Lighning, oil on canvas, 48" x 60", 2009

See it and more at Here and Now -- Artra at the T-Lofts Nov 14th and 15th in LA.

Not Out Of The Woods

Phone pics taken by Ashley Poole

So that's how some of the magic happens. Still not out of the woods with this painting yet. So tomorrow you can come by and get up close and personal with it at the RAIDers Art Walk Group Show during the Brewery Art Walk. And while you're at it, check out the other blog I'm the benevolent god of.

I've decided I want to teach more. Know any LA area colleges that could use some more art professorin'? Me neither. No, but seriously....

Not Sh*tting Where You Eat

Minnie Minoso, oil on canvas 2009

So it has occurred to me already that blogging about what I teach for my Introduction to Art Concepts class for Santa Ana College is terribly didactic and, well, kind of boring for the audience I hope is tuning in. And I use the term “audience” pretty much euphemistically, because, well, lets face it, this blog is basically a conversation with myself, isn’t it? I was hoping for some feedback about what and how I teach, but without that I’m just talking about fire, the wheel, and not shitting where you eat in terms of art. Important stuff, no doubt, and there’s some choice stuff I think, but I’ve put out the call to what all you out there in internetland think, and have heard the cyber-equivalent of crickets. In a classroom I can wait this out and have a captive audience, but this internet’s a tougher room. Right now we’re covering formal language and principles of design, as well as terminology like “representational”, “abstract”, and the like. I get a real sense of the excitement level dropping in the students with this stuff; referring to things like line, shape, color, unity, scale, emphasis, etc., can suck the poetry right out of a room.

The next thing we begin to go over is a bit more interesting, the specific mediums of art itself. What does “drawing” really mean? Or “painting”? Or “photography”? Like I said, ground level stuff, but still worth returning too. Not so much categories, as sets of issues; I try to show sculptures with drawings issues, photos with painting issues, paintings with sculpture issues, video art with drawing issues...you get the idea.

Besides all that, the new art season is upon us. Saw some stuff. Best so far? Baker’s Dozen at the Torrance Art Museum. Galleries? Francesca Gabbiani at Patrick Painter. That’s just so far. But you know what event I’m looking forward too? This:

And you're required to attend. This will be on the final.

12 Hours a Month

First things first:

Picture of My Father Modeling Jackets, 2009:

So summer is over, and the new school year has begun, and for 12 hours every month, I have the privilege of teaching Introduction to Art Concepts at Santa Ana College again, for the third time now.

Beings that that is my only official obligation for the time being, I have much time to think about the class and even more time to prepare for it. I have decided to use the blog here to post my thoughts and strategies on how I present the information of the class, in the order I typically give it. Now I understand that for many of you out there (all 4 of you that actually read this) this information is as basic as it gets when thinking, chatting or writing about art. What I’m hoping is for a dialogue to occur that will help me fine tune my approach to the class, or at the very least, my personal thinking about the topics discussed.

So what is this class? To begin with, it is a lecture class, frequently an option for filling a humanities requirement, and is often referred to as “Art Appreciation”. I never took it myself in college, as taking two semesters of art history survey was the preferred option for actual art majors. In some schools it is viewed as “diet art history”, i.e. for non-art majors, though the content as I teach it I could see as very valuable to beginning art students (though the overwhelming majority of my students in this class are not art majors. Not yet, anyways.). In the class we discuss topics such as what art is, why art is made, how art is talked about, what the different mediums of art are, and a brief survey of the history of art all over the world, though from the general point of view of the Western tradition. The meta-structure of the course is basically two tiered, split at the midterm, with the definitions of art and how it is talked about coming first, and a fast forward survey of art history coming second.

I begin by trying to get an idea of what the students think art is in the first place. The inevitable first response when I pose the question is “paintings”, with sculptures and other general disciplines following . I try to show how while music, literature, and theatre are indeed art, it is visual art specifically we deal with. I show them the following series of images, discussing with them on each whether they think it is art or not.

Some of them will catch on and notice that the things that I lean towards being art in the sense that pertains to the class have labels, while the two that aren’t exactly what were talking about (Wolverine and the Aqua Teens) don’t. I use the metaphor of a scale with art being on one end and “not art” being on the other and try to get the students to place the things on the scale. This is all on the first day, and it gives me a good idea of their preconceived notions, and them a good idea of what it is were going to be looking at during the semester. Issues of art verses entertainment comes up, as does art verses illustration, art verses commerce, art verses advertising, art verses function, art as a designation of value and art verses craft. I try to explain that if culture was a corporation, art would be the research and development department. Things that are artful but not vying for the critical discourse of the institutions of fine art (or have been recognized as having a place in it) could be described as the marketed products of the corporation of culture; i.e. having been influenced and heirs, perhaps, of the developed research from art – culture’s R&D department. I also try to stress the point that declaring something as art is not a value judgment. In other words, it’s ok if something isn’t art in the sense that we’re talking about, its value may be judged in some other context. If art was good and “non-art” is bad, then what does the phrase “bad art” mean? Another example I make is of a Venn diagram of sorts where a big “art” circle representing the major painting / sculpture expanded paradigm is overlapped with to varying degrees with other circles such as photography, architecture, film, and others. Everything within the big circle including the overlaps is what we look at during the semester.

Next: Aesthetics, the Western tradition, and what do artists actually do, and the idea of creativity.