NATE STROMBERG'S BLOB

The End of Kodak

2012-01-24T06:55:00.000-08:00

Just saw this week that Kodak declared bankruptcy, bringing an official end to an amazing run. The end of Kodak was inevitable given the rise of digital photography. Still, it seams almost unbelievable to me that such a significant company is going under- It seams like only yesterday that I was dropping off film for processing. In actuality, the last time I did that was probably 8-10 years ago! The landscape of photography changed overnight, and Kodak was left in the cold.

For the last few years I've been using old Kodachrome slides as a starting point for painting, and for each image that I've painted I have probably a through a few hundred images. I'm always amazed at the color and clarity of these images. Kodachrome film somehow manages to capture and harness nostalgia. Only a few years ago I was still taking slides of my art work because that was the required format, and while I don't miss driving to specialty stores to find the film and paying lots for the developing of sometimes bad pictures, I do miss holding those slides up to the light and seeing them right in front of me as opposed to a nuclear glowing computer screen. I suppose that Kodak is to digital photography what LPs and CDs are to digital music these days, a higher quality and equally outdated alternative. Something about that makes me pretty sad, but at the same time I live on digital media too-

The future will certainly be telling. Old slides get thrown into a box in the ally and forgotten, only to eventually be found years later as an incredible full color time capsule. What's going to happen to the trillions of digital photographs out there? How many people even have photos printed anymore, and what happens when the computers crash, all all computers eventually do in short time, and those files are lost and forgotten? Something tells me that we'll always have remainders of our time, but it will certainly be different in the future.

There's a great article on CNN about Kodak- Here's a quote:

"It feels like it marks the end of a major era, even though it's easier to take photos now. The idea of democratization is everywhere, but this bankruptcy strikes a nerve for a lot of people. It's farewell to a certain version of the past, and with that is this idea of nostalgia and what Kodak so successfully sold to the American public."

Check out the article here-

NEW WORK

2011-09-09T08:10:00.000-07:00

Finally, some new images for the blog of some very new work and a different idea.
I've been using vintage newspaper in place of paint for the last few months, making some large scale collages of classic cars. Each one of these takes between 70-100 hours to make. That's why I've only made 6 in the last 4 months. I'll have more on the concept later... for now, enjoy the new work. Comments are appreciated-

54 Chevy Pickup

59 Plymouth Savoy

58 Dodge Pickup

57 Buick 2 door

54 Mercury Station Wagon

58 Oldsmobile

A few Paintings SOLD

2011-09-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

Hi- The following paintings, "Cowboys" and "Business Types/Socialites", have sold the last few weeks at Terzian Galleries in Park City, UT. I'm in the process now of sending a few more out west so if by chance you find yourselves in the neighborhood, be sure to stop by and check them out. Also, have a look at all my work in the portfolio section of my website here: nathanstromberg.com

"Cowboys"

"Business Types/Socialites"

Lucian Freud

2011-07-21T18:28:00.000-07:00

Just saw this evening that Lucian Freud passed away at the age of 88. Lucian Freud certainly painted more than a few nudes in compromising positions, but it cannot be denied that he was truly an original. During my undergraduate days I remember being told by a professor that I should study up on Freud and try to see some of his work first hand. I've seen a few of his paintings since and have had the chance to look close. He has been called the "greatest living painter of flesh" for decades, and I don't see how that could be argued. His use of the brush, his palette, the texture of his paint, and the way he positioned and controlled the figure in surprising and sometimes shockingly different ways makes him a real art legend. He also remained a true realist his whole life, even as he lived through a tumultuous time for pure painters in the art world. I'm certainly grateful that he made so many works in his lifetime. I continue to use Lucian Freud as a great resource for figure painting. Now if I can only be 1% the painter he was...

New Developments. I'm HUGE in Utah.

2011-07-12T07:43:00.000-07:00

It's been months with no posting.... I've found that blogs tend to work that way-

The last few months have been very busy. I led a 16 day art tour of Italy in June, and the prep for that consumed a lot of my time this spring. The trip was wonderful, with many highlights. For me, seeing Caravaggio paintings and Bernini sculptures in secluded churches around Rome was near the top-

As for new art, I've started 5 new paintings this spring, much in the same style of the 2 awkward family snapshots I made at the 11th hour before the big show last December. Those paintings have been tabled for the moment, as I've been taking some much-needed time to experiment with some new ideas. I've been working a lot with collage, treating torn bits of vintage newspaper as brush strokes.

So far, I'm encouraged by the results and it's fun to be doing something really different for a change.

Finally, I spent weeks this spring working long distance to establish a presence at a gallery. I'm proud to say that my work can now be seen at Terzian Galleries in Park City UTAH, so next time you go for a ski vacation be sure to check it out. Their website is here, not updated with my name yet but should be shortly. I will hopefully post some new images soon-

Gallery Shots and art updates

2011-02-28T10:48:00.000-08:00

How time flies.... It's been a few months since the last post. Sorry about that!

The gallery show at the Hopkins Center for the Arts went very well. I only sold a few paintings, but the plus side to that is that I have a lot of work to move forward with. I'm in the process right now of figuring out what that next step is and I have a few leads. I'll hopefully have updates on that soon. The real reason it's been quiet on the art front is that I've taken a self-imposed break from making art the last 3 months... The show was the end of almost 4 years of 20-30 hrs per week in the studio (including grad school). A break was long-overdue. To be honest, it has been very hard to step back. I've been used to working so hard for so long that watching a movie or reading a book feels like a waste of time. I always have that nagging feeling that I should be working. After 3 months off, I finally have curbed some of those compulsive habits and managed to get some sleep here and there. I'm ready to start up again soon, and the creative batteries are fully recharged. I'm really excited to see where the next work goes-

Here's a few gallery shots from Hopkins. Much work went into the presentation of the work and the proximity of works to each other in the space.

Hopkins Show Opening

2010-12-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

Last night was the opening for the Hopkins show- It was pretty busy with lots of great conversation. All in all, quite successful. The show is up till Jan 9. I'll post some photos of the gallery when I can

A little bit of press coverage here: HOPKINS SHOW

Last New Work before the Solo Opening-

2010-12-06T12:18:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks have been very busy with all kinds of last minute work for the Hopkins show- the opening is this Thursday the 9th from 6-8pm. With all the prep for display, a few last paintings were neglected and not photographed earlier.... here they are.

"Sunbathers III" 2010 18"x18"

"Potatoes" 2010 18" x 24"

"Potato 2" 2010 13.5 x 18"

"Chrome Table" 2010 8" x 8"

New Paintings- Grid Squares

2010-10-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

After finishing the car series in June, I wanted to go back and revisit incomplete work. Most of these were small 8" x 8" squares that I made as part of what was originally intended to be a huge grid of cropped snapshots. I figured that finishing these up for the Hopkins show would be a breeze- I was wrong. Without question, working on old ideas and finishing such small paintings was the most painstaking and frustrating exercise yet. Despite being much smaller, they took far longer to complete. Now that they're done, I feel pretty good about them- and I'm really glad I don't have to work so small again.

The following were intended to be shown as a triptych:

I like this grouping- I like the flow of the shapes and colors and the suggestion of a narrative. There are also areas of space to keep it from being too busy. These next ones were also meant to be a triptych:

These three feel far too detailed to work as a triptych. They're so detailed, that they take away from each other. I'm almost certainly going to break these paintings up and intersperse them with larger paintings. More paintings to be posted soon....

New Paintings- Car Series

2010-10-17T21:35:00.001-07:00

In June 2010, I decided to try something different and avoid people all together. This resulted in a series of 8 car paintings originally designed to function in a grouping. In the end, I will probably intersperse these with the family portraits for the narrative element that they bring. I love old cars, and it's amazing how many great pictures of them you find in old photo albums. That's probably because the family car was more than a object back then. These things are beautiful. They just don't make cars like that today.

In painting them I wanted to see if I could incorporate my style into paintings without people, treating reflective chrome and shapes of color in the same way as a figure portrait. These were enormously fun to do- for a month or so. The size varies, from 8" x 8" (the brown/gray 57 Chevy) to 28" x 36" (The Pink Cadillac).

More paintings to be updated in a week or so....

Finally- New Paintings.

2010-10-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

Even though it's been 5 months since I last posted anything here, I have been working hard on new work for my first solo show at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. The show opens Dec. 9 and runs to Jan. 9. I've been so busy working that I haven't been so good about shooting pictures. I'll try to get them uploaded here and to the online gallery on my website (nathanstromberg.com) as soon as I can. I'm tired, but the last few months have seen the best paintings I've made. I started back in the spring with some larger paintings in order to see how the photo-inspired images function on a larger scale.

"Yard Games" 2010

"Family Baggage" 2010

"The Bachelor Party" 2010

"Sunday School" 2010

"Drive" 2010

You might recognize the last one as I repainted one of my first 50s paintings from 2006 with the updated palette. Working larger was a fun experiment. The larger paintings certainly aren't as intimate as the smaller works, and are not so good at referencing the source photo, but they do allow me to loosen the brush strokes and paint differently, which had been a fun change.

Many more images to come...

Three Minute Egg Interview- Art-a-Whirl

2010-05-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

I had a great weekend at Art-a-Whirl in Minneapolis. It was great fun to talk with people and entertain lots of random questions about my work. I also managed to sell a few pieces which was great. Because of the big solo show I'm working on for December, I only put up older work- all of it from 2008 or earlier. It was a little bit of a bummer to have people inquire about it, because in 2 years of grad school I have grown by leaps and bounds as a painter... I managed to give a lot of people my website and talked a lot about the new work, even though it wasn't there for them to see.

One of the unique things that happened was an interview with 3-Minute Egg (threeminuteegg.org), a local arts website run by Matt Peiken. You should check it out and subscribe to it- it's free and it supports the local arts scene. He interviewed me and we had a great chat. Check out his posting from May 17th for our interview. I'm the 3rd of 3 artists here-

EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!! Minneapolis Art-a-Whirl

2010-05-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

Hey there- New updates...

This weekend I've secured a partial gallery space for the Minneapolis Art-a-whirl... I'll be in studio #214 right above Diamond Coffee in the Thorp Building in Northeast Minneapolis- (1620 Central Ave just north of Broadway). Follow the link here for a map and all other info.

All studios in the building and in a lot of other buildings around town will be open, plus there's free food and music in the Thorp building. Come check it out. I am bringing a lot of older stuff (all the stuff I can't find room for anymore) to the studio and am looking to move it. There's paintings, drawings and prints.... all for in-SANEly low prices! Drop me an email if you have questions. Hours are 5-8 on Friday, 12-8 on Saturday and Sunday. I may be there in a checkered blazer doing my best used-car salesman impression.

Solo Show and other news

2010-04-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

Fun news this week- I just learned that I'll be having a solo show at the Hopkins Center for the Arts in Hopkins, MN from Dec. 9 to Jan.9 2011. I submitted a proposal for this venue a few months back. I'll be showing on both floors of the lobby gallery, which is outside of their theater area. I went over there this week to get some measurements and take a few pictures. It's a really great space with wonderful light and my pieces will look great. Only one problem...

The space is aprox. 130 linear ft, or about 100-110 linear feet of actual art space. Much of my graduate work is small, and I figure with new pieces I'm working on I probably have about 50-60 linear feet. In other words, I have 8 months to more or less double the amount of work that I have. Wait for a second while I take a breath...

The good news in all of this is that I thrive when there are deadlines- it really helps me to get working, and I've been feeling much more antsy to paint even in the last few days since learning about the show. It will get done, that's not something to worry about- One thing is certain, it will be a busy summer. Lots of time to paint and lots of time to get better at painting. What could be better than that? The Hopkins Center will be printing up schedules and other assorted promotional materials for the 2010-11 season in the next month or so. I will be sure to relay that info.

I've been busy the last 3 months designing and constructing the sets for a high school production of "Into the Woods", which is a wonderful show. It's just the sort of high-creativity problem that I love, turning the stage into a forest glade with 30' tall trees on a limited budget. I'm pretty proud of it, and assuming the actors and musicians can get everything pulled together its going to be great. It plays April 15-17 and 22-24 at Minnehaha Academy in Minneapolis.

I do have 2-3 new larger paintings completed in the last few weeks as well, so I will post pictures here shortly. I'm still gradually updating the portfolio page on my new website, so click through and you'll see all the images I currently have shot and color corrected. More to come-

re-design and website

2010-03-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

It's been a few weeks of readjusting and I have finally gotten around to cleaning up the blog here. Hope you like the sleek sophisticated artsy new look. The last month has been busy- I have been painting quite a bit, trying to finish up a few incomplete paintings from last fall in order to pull together a whole body of work for gallery submission. I also started 2 large canvases, which is something I've wanted to try for a while now. One is complete, the other at about 75%, so hopefully I will have some new images to post here soon.

The biggest news is that I finally went live with a website, so check it out:

www.nathanstromberg.com

So far, it's fairly simple and I need to upload a lot more work to the portfolio section, but it's a great start. A million thanks to my friend Jeff at Holmberg Design who put this whole thing together. Shameless plug for him here... he makes a mean website.

www.holmbergdesign.com

Done and Done.

2010-01-20T17:11:00.000-08:00

I'm back from Boston and all is well, and I officially have my MFA- needless to say, it feels great.

My artist talk went very well (I've posted a small low-resolution version I made to practice from here- it's tough to read all the captions but the audio will give you a good idea of the presentation). My Thesis defense also went great, not so much a defense as a very cordial talk about my work. After a long week of conducting critiques with other MFA students, I had a big show opening with my work in Cambridge last Friday night. It was lots of fun, and my extended family made the trip which made it even more fun.

Now I am back to normal life and it all seems pretty surreal. I have lots of ideas for painting and more than a few leads for situations to show, so I will be working hard (though not as hard) in the coming months to advance my artistic career. For the sake of friends and family who keep up with this, I'll continue to post here. I'm also working on creating a personal website and will redesign this blog at some point.

To all those who supported me these last 2 years with your time and your words of encouragement, thanks so much.

-Crunch Time-

2010-01-01T21:53:00.000-08:00

This last month has been pretty crazy, but it's all starting to wind down- I go to Boston in 6 days, and then the madness begins. The thesis? Done. The artwork? Made, packaged with 50 miles of bubble wrap and UPS'd to Boston. The Artist Talk? Written and coming along- with much practicing left to do, and it gets delivered a week from tonight. I am scared and really excited- it will be great. When I have the time I'll post a video of the presentation here for viewing enjoyment. I'll also pass on details of the final residency...

New Image Diptychs/ "Fossils" and "Prize"

2009-11-25T13:31:00.001-08:00

Here are 2 new diptychs (or 4 new paintings) made in the last 4 weeks... These will probably be the last new ones in this 50s series, at least during my MFA studies. They need a few weeks to dry and should be good for January, but we'll see. These are larger paintings- "Fossils" is 42" x 18" and "Prize" is 16" x 28". I've been having a difficult time capturing the accurate color of my paintings with the camera, which is making things tough now that I'm preparing an artist presentation and those images will be projected large for all to see... I may have to reshoot pretty much everything. We'll see and if I can get good color I'll post them. These are close but still pretty off... about as close as I can get them with the little color adjustment feature on iPhoto.

New Image- "Driver".

2009-11-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

Here's another new image that has been done for some time but never posted here... Each panel is 12" square and it may be configured in the opposite way- it works both ways.

A Huge Milestone Reached....

2009-11-04T18:55:00.000-08:00

Tonight I finished the final draft of my thesis, and after 5 months of continuous work on this one document I cannot describe how surreal it feels to finally be done with it- wow. I've also been working my tail off the last 3 weeks on a batch of new paintings, all being done at more or less the same time. We'll see if these end up coming with me to Boston in January- My mentor really wants to see new work in December and it has been lots of fun to get away from the late night computer head and neck aches and back into the studio. I have missed it and it will be so great to have that be the 1 thing I can give my time to. Next I send off the thesis to AIB and start turning the entire thing into a 15 minute artist talk with images... I will post some new images soon, hopefully sooner than a month. Sorry about that.

Updates

2009-09-28T21:07:00.001-07:00

-Here's a new one called "Cowboys".

These last few weeks have been pretty frustrating- Images were due for the graduate catalog a week ago and I've hit a little bit of a creative valley as of late. I never sleep anymore- maybe that has something to do with it..... Thesis writing has also been tough. I'm in between drafts 2 and 3, and have felt stumped, mainly because its tough for me to see problems with ideas and flow after having worked so much on it. Anyway, I pushed through and finished the work for the catalog and had high quality pics taken last weekend, so that's done and feels great. I also sent out multiple copies of my writing to trusted friends for positive criticism and that has really inspired me to tackle the thesis this week. I'm making major changes to it now, and can see it really coming together. I'm tired and beat, but I'm starting to sense the end coming....

I also polished my working artist statement- Here it is (comments appreciated):

My paintings navigate and comment on the historical space of 1950s America as seen in discarded snapshots and slides. Paint and brush become the tools for possessing a photograph and the memories of people and places. The camera captures a moment of frozen time, but by slowly remaking the photographic image into a painting the viewer is compelled to reconsider what is depicted and to search for its inherent meaning. In my work, the discarded snapshot is manipulated and given new life in a new context in order to comment on the ever-changing American identity. 1950s images possess a stylistic look bound to a specific and recognizable place in history, a time in our collective American past that made us who we are today.

It is the glimpses of the everyday- the shape of a chrome bumper, the stylized design of kitchen objects and period fashion, or the odd positioning of figures in personal snapshots- that remain connections to real people and speak to a collective national identity born in post-war America. In many ways they are icons; instantly recognized representations of the decade’s ideological connotations. I am actively exploring this ideology as both American history and pedigree. Through painting, archival images of the everyday become a means to explore the mystery of the past and its implications for the present.

Moving Right Along...

2009-09-09T18:38:00.001-07:00

We progress. Things are absolutely nutty right now, but coming along. I'm nearly done with draft 2 of my thesis, which is markedly better than draft 1. I also have 5 paintings done for the grad show and 2 or 3 in various stages of completion. I'll be working hard on those the next 2 weeks so for the late September image deadline for the exhibition catalogue. Here's the only other one completely finished since the last post- another diptych and a reworking of images from last semester's grid. It's 8" x 16". I'm calling it "Mixer/Prescriptions".

New Work/Update

2009-08-17T21:46:00.000-07:00

For those who do check this, sorry it's been a while since the last update- I've been working my tail off this summer to finish as much work as possible before resuming my teaching and my time is stretched. Deadlines are looming for finished work in a month or so, and I'm waiting to hear some feedback on the first draft of my thesis which I sent in a week or 2 ago. I spent most of July working on that as if it was a full time job. August has been all about painting which has been much more fun than writing but no less time consuming. For the graduate show in January I'm remaking some of the grid pieces into diptychs and triptychs. I've been working on about 12 paintings at the same time, and these are the only finished ones so far-

These paintings have been about re-developing a palette that looks and feels vintage. I'm pretty pleased with them. I've also been working really hard on the flesh, which is my biggest learning area. These low-res photos don't show much, but I'm pretty pleased and feel I've made progress. These are both small diptychs at 8" x 16". I'm working on some twice that size too. I should have those done soon. We march on........

The Grid

2009-07-16T16:23:00.000-07:00

My friend Bill Melville was nice enough to take a high quality pic of my grid at the residency.... much better than my little update photos. enjoy

in other news, I am already working my tail off on my thesis for the first draft due in a few weeks- I will do my best to post updates when I can but no promises- things are crazy busy right about now.

Back from Boston-

2009-07-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

I'm back from the 4th residency and things went great. As always, I learned a lot and feel challenged to do better. It would be impossible to report everything from the residency here, so here's a summary: My work was well received and I had many valuable critiques and very useful feedback. The faculty response was consistent- the work is were it needs to be, I just need to back it up with the thesis. As predicted, the grid work seems to be what I'll be moving forward with into my final residency and graduate show in January, though that's still up in the air. Right now, I'm planning on using many of those same pieces and rearranging them into diptychs and triptychs.

I have some important decisions to make soon, and that's because deadlines are looming. My first thesis draft (!) is due August 15 with 2 more drafts due in September and October. The final draft thesis is due in November. On top of that, I need to finish all the paintings for the show in January ASAP because a: I need to write about them, and b: I have to submit pictures of them for printing in the graduate catalogue by early October. It is going to be a crazy few months for sure- I'll do my best to update the blog when I finish new work.

Residency 4

2009-06-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe how fast time has gone- I'm back in Boston. Right now, I'm actually in Cambridge- sitting at a coffee shop in Harvard Square finishing off a few last minute documents for the residency. These next 10 days will be very telling, and hopefully when it's all done I'll have a clear idea for what I need to do the next 6 months to finish my thesis and work for the graduate exhibition. If I don't... well, that would not be good.

Here's a copy of the Artist Statement I'm rolling with for this semester.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work addresses the way we approach history through images. Currently, I’m exploring the American 1950s through the creation of paintings based on vintage slides from the period. My Images are taken mainly from internet sources- in particular, online groups who purchase old slides at estate sales and antique shops and restore them digitally. I am attracted to these images for the distance they represent. They were taken not for commercial purposes but as a way for the unknown photographer to chronicle the time. They are often humorous in their composition and depiction of people. I selectively crop and fragment these pictures to heighten their formal qualities as paintings.

The intended result is a group of works that are visually engaging while retaining a close tie to history. As a child of the 70s and 80s, I cannot experience prior history through memory of experience. Rather, my understanding of the period comes through processing visual information. How we process this information and the impression of history that we get from it is what I am exploring.

Represented are two bodies of work that address the idea differently. The three large paintings were made to harness the awkward composition of the original slides, and then manipulated with flattened color and pattern to accentuate the images formal qualities. The 20 small images were created to fit within a grid, and use selective cropping to function like a box of scattered photos. These paintings are still in progress and contain colors intended as under-painting. The cropping of each image links it to the surrounding paintings through lines and shapes. I view this grid as 1 large work, though am still in the process of determining how best to present it.

Semester Review

2009-06-01T22:02:00.000-07:00

Here is my semester summary on my process- enjoy.

Semester Summary

This semester has been a time of artistic and conceptual growth. I left the last residency in January with specific goals for the semester. I knew that I needed to begin planning for my thesis a year out and return in June with work that would give me options for the final semester. The last thing I wanted to do was narrow down to a limited idea with a thesis to write and final work to be made. My 3^rd residency work was intentionally confusing and open-ended in it’s approach to 50s imagery, so I wanted to find ways to greater explore my source material and give more of my take. I devised early on that that I would make 2 distinct bodies of work that would use the same reference imagery in different ways. I created 3 larger paintings that continue in the same vein as the previous work, and also a grid of 20+ small paintings that utilize the selective cropping of reference images.

I entered the semester eager to start painting and full of ideas. Residency responses from January revealed that my work was mainly coming across as confusing and disjointed. I was initially frustrated with this comment because I was very much trying to harness the random awkwardness found in family snapshots. Most comments seemed to be that the work needed more of the artists take in it. The most common question was “what do the 50s mean to you and why are you doing this?” It’s a fair and essential question to my work that I’ve been looking to answer for some time. I spent time early on sorting through my thoughts in an attempt to figure it out. What really interests me is time and history, the way things change/remain the same, and the changing aesthetic associated with time periods. It made me realize that my perception of a decade such as the 50s comes completely from photos and films rather than actual memory. The way that images speak to fragmented memory, either collective or individual, is that truly interests me. Along with this, I find the idea of America’s self-image fascinating. I think this is a big reason why I was initially drawn to 50s imagery. It represents and idealized past that polarizes people today.

What I realized is that I am not bound only to the 50s. In other words, my desire to reference the awkwardness of the personal photo in composition, color and content extends to other decades as well. I debated including other time periods and going that direction with this semesters work, but ultimately decided that I’ve invested too much into the 50s at this point. I’m now viewing my 50s work as a current faze that I’ll eventually move on from. I’m very interested in investigating other decades and allowing the palette to change along with the imagery. It’s challenging to rein in these ideas for future work, but for the purpose of my MFA I think it’s best to not make the idea any more broad at this point.

I made 3 paintings this semester that continue trends in my previous work. The main idea behind these works is to lift the often-awkward composition of the painting directly from a 50s snapshot. It’s been a way for me to make the paintings seem like enlarged pictures void of context or commentary. I knew this semester that I had to infuse more of my artistic take into them. My mentor Tim Tozer has been helpful. He is very much a purist when it comes to painting, and from our first meeting had a lot of suggestions about the application of paint and the color palette. His main suggestion was to play up the formal qualities of the paintings. He was able to understand why I had created the 3^rd residency works to be intentionally confusing, but also felt that there were other ways to change up the reference image and reveal more of the artist in the work without necessarily addressing a specific issue or inserting my likeness into them. He challenged me to be more deliberate in my color mixing. His suggestion was to go to the hardware store and take as many color reference cards from the paint section as possible. He wanted me to use those cards to mix areas of flatter color instead of feathering colors in. Being more conscious of color choices from the outset was very helpful. I didn’t think that my palette needed improvement, but now I can see a huge difference compared to last semesters work.

In addition to refining my colors, I wanted to play with pattern and repetition and see how much I could insert into a painting before it fell apart. I found that the busyness of pattern really made the paintings stand out. Previously, I had seen my work progressing to an ever simpler style, but when I began to paint this semester I started to use images that were more complicated and detailed. Adding excess detail helped to shift the focus from merely the figure to the entire image. They did take much more time then anticipated to complete, but were great fun to do. The goal of these works was to speak directly to the aesthetic of the 50s through their formal qualities. We’ll see what kind of reaction I get from them.

I realized that another take on the personal photo was to radically crop them and assemble them into a grid. During the course of this program I’ve been frustrated in finding the balance between what I want to make and what I actually have the time, space and money to make. Rather than go large and lose time in exploring new ideas, I decided on a grid of 8” x 8” squares, each containing small cropped sections from larger reference photos and placed in careful relation to each other. The idea is that dominant lines, shapes and colors in each image will relate to the ones surrounding it and lead the eye through the entire work. It also occurred to me that a large group of unrelated images presented together in such a way would invoke the process of memory, in the same way we recall fragments of past experiences or images we’ve absorbed.

With the images in the grid, I looked primarily for reference photos that contained strong shape and contrast. For a while, I’ve been drawn to classic cars, so they made great grid images. I also wanted to add pictures with people into the mix, so I again looked for those images with strong formal qualities. I returned to previously used imagery from older paintings as well. I pondered the inclusion of word and type into the grid for a long time. I decided to add images from 50s signs as they worked well alongside the other images. The sign pictures have great lines and contain iconic fonts that immediately reference the era. I was particularly amused by the words on one sign after I cropped the image: “Thrifty -the Values”- which plays off of the idea of 50s family “values”. I’m well aware that I’ve established criteria for choosing which images are in the grid, which raises issues about the reality of the 50s versus the reality depicted in the chosen images. At the same time, these paintings were all based on vintage slides and personal snapshots taken during the period, and represent the way that I assimilate imagery to gain a perception of past time.

I’ve developed a system of under painting that works well with the 50’s palette. Most of the paint is completely covered later on, but trace amounts show through in thin areas, giving the painting a bit more life and vibrancy and keeping them from becoming drab. The colors I use are yellow ochre, a neutralized purple/blue and bright cherry red. While I was making the grid, I wanted to complete the under painting in order to work out the special relationships between works before adding the final full-palette layers. When my mentor first saw the grid, he commented almost immediately that something about unifying the works with only 3 colors made them work. He encouraged me to make the entire grid before painting the top layers. As of now, there are no top layers, and the work will arrive at the June residency in an incomplete state.

My plan for this residency is to bring both the grid and the single paintings to see how they read in critiques. I have really enjoyed making the grid and while it teeters on the brink of excessive busyness, I like where it is going. I would like to continue work on it into the final semester, perhaps doubling the amount of paintings and adding top colors. Conceptually, I feel that I’ve researched and written enough on the American 50s and artists who work in similar ways to provide a framework for my thesis. This is the first semester where I feel I’ve done all I can do to set myself up for the residency and the following semester.

New Images: "The Joke" and grid row 3

2009-05-02T12:18:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my wife went out of town for the weekend to attend a bridal shower and took the kids too- It was a real gift. I spent the entire weekend in the basement making the most of the time (in all about 25 hours). I finished a new larger painting I'm calling the joke, and also finished under painting a third row on my grid series (five 8"x8" paintings). I'm floating all kinds of ideas on how to finish off the grid, but at this point I'm leaning towards bringing it in it's incomplete state to the next residency in June and finishing it for the thesis show in January. I'll be starting a 4th row this week. Comments appreciated-

May Paper

2009-05-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

Artistic Lineage: Influential Artists

As I further develop my ideas and continue to create new work, I find great importance in researching artists who have already explored and continue to explore common artistic ground. My aim is not to find my artistic identity in the work of other artists, but to bring together those ideas that I resonate with the most in hopes of further defining what I wish to accomplish in my own work. For the purpose of this paper,

I’ve managed to narrow this list down to four painters among many that I identify with visually and theoretically: Edward Hopper, Gerhard Richter, Wayne Thiebaud and Robert Bechtle. This odd grouping of artists will provide a framework for discussing ideas and concepts critical to my work: The use of the photograph as reference, the use of light, shape and color (or lack there-of), and the common theme of isolation and detachment.

Edward Hopper’s work and concepts have been very influential in my work. He remains today among America’s most popular artists, which speaks not only to his skill as a painter but also to the way his images connect with the viewer. Hopper used strong light and shadows to illuminate his spaces and freeze them in time. Hopper used the strong formal qualities of his paintings to imply a sense of narrative, while at the same time leaving them free of commentary. A lifelong fan of theater and cinema, Hopper treated his subjects with cinematic lighting, framing, and angles of view.

The ability of painting to show reality was something that Hopper constantly wrestled with: “I was never able to paint what I set out to paint”, he once wrote. Instead, he altered his scenes by removing the unnecessary details and people, and simplified forms to shapes of color and light. “Among Hopper’s strategies, then, simplification looms large. It characterizes most of his paintings. More than any other quality, these simplifications foster that emotionally charged silence within which Hopper’s suspended visual narratives become so compelling” (Wells 13). Many of his scenes are quite awkward, especially those with figures- and somehow the way they are painted makes their strangeness acceptable and appealing. Through all of his work, there is a sense of timelessness and an appreciative eye for the simple beauty of surroundings that contributes to an overall feeling of isolation and detachment.

Another artist whose work evokes feelings of isolation and detachment is Gerhard Richter. Though very different from Hopper and still very active in the art world, Richter’s approach to images, particularly his use of photography, is essential to what I’m trying to do. Gerhard Richter has been and continues to be hard to define. His body of work is extensive and broad across many themes and media. He has never been content to repeat himself. Despite the scope of his work, Richter’s paintings (according to the artist) consistently reinforce a common dual theme: “That images (and ideas and ideals) are static, superficial, unachievable and are to be doubted; and reality is a process of imagination, material creation and revision. Richter’s subject is the range of relationships between illusion and this reality, his painting” (Adriani 8).

Richter has stated that the use of photographic imagery as a starting point for his early paintings resulted from “an attempt to escape the complicated process of deciding what to paint, along with the critical and theoretical implications accompanying such decisions within the context of a modernist discourse” (gerhardrichter.com). To achieve this, Richter began amassing photos from magazines, books, etc. Beyond using photos as reference to escape meaning, he simplified his painting style to loose brushstrokes and his palette to neutral gray. Most of his works from the 60s were made this way. On using gray he remarked, “‘there is no other color so suitable for illustrating nothing’. He especially liked images from the media because they were available in profusion and, he said, liberated him from personal experience.” (Fineberg 364).

Before I was aware of Richter’s use of photography, I had gravitated towards using 50s photos as reference for the exact same reason- mainly because I wanted subject matter that was distant from personal experience and fun to paint. Richter has rejected those who read into the content of his images as personal, which has also been a challenge of mine. He views photography as the modern sketchbook for artists, and has often discussed the inherent qualities to photography that he finds most appealing: “There are only pictures, which have value to many people or to very few, which remain interesting for a very long time or only for a few seconds, and for which very little or a very great deal is paid” (Obrist 772). This duality of response in photographs is absolutely a draw for me.

While I certainly resonate with Richter’s approach to photos and find his gray paintings fascinating, I would have difficulty in scaling back my paintings in such a way. That’s because I love the formal qualities of painting, particularly the use of shape, line and color, and I see in detached images- particularly from 1950s color photos- a highly desirable aesthetic. For me, no artist embodies the joy of pure painting like Wayne Thiebaud. “The real motives behind Thiebaud’s work are the direct pleasures of looking at things, of analyzing them into patterns, and of handling paint” (Fineberg 212). In his writings and interviews, Thiebaud has often stated that painting is more important than art, a view he formed early in his career after viewing the works of Willem DeKooning.

The influence of Edward Hopper is evident in Thiebaud’s paintings; particularly in the way he depicts painted objects with strong shapes of solid color and cast shadows. Like Hopper, who rejected many modernist ideas and stayed true to his own unique vision, one could also say that Thiebaud is a movement unto himself. People are quick to consider him a Pop artist, mainly for his use of color and depiction of common American objects, but Thiebaud’s work doesn’t have any of the irony present in Pop art and as a west coast artist, he was removed from the New York scene.

Instead, he just painted, and few American observational painters have so wide a range. Even in his old age, he continues to paint storefronts, as well as exaggerated San Francisco landscapes. Much has been written about the meaning of the work to Thiebaud beyond the formal aspects of creating. Thiebaud himself has warned against reading too much into their symbolism. “The symbolic aspect of my work is always confusing to me- it’s never been clear in my mind… I tend to view the subject matter without trying to be too opaque with respect to its symbolic reference, mostly from the standpoint of problematic attractions- what certain aspects of form offer.” (Nash 17).

I have always resonated with Thiebaud’s approach to painting things. Before I ever looked intently at his work, I was far more interested in the process of composing an image than in speaking to an issue. In painting from still photos, I found frustration in the way that objects painted realistically could easily look flat and uninteresting. I began to under-paint my canvases with bright colors, leaving little bits of intense color to show through in the outlining of objects. The result was an infused vibrancy to the still image. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for the discovery, until I realized that Wayne Thiebaud had been doing the same thing much better for fifty years.

One artist whose paintings address both the photographical concerns of artists like Gerhard Richter and the formal/thematic style of Hopper and Thiebaud is bay area photorealist Robert Bechtle. I have only recently become aware with Bechtle’s work, and I see in it a culmination of the previously discussed artists. His paintings center on wide, empty spaces and the urban landscape of San Fransisco. “Bechtle’s flat, sun-bleached palette and his detached mode of recording random details impart a singular sense of alienation to his subjects. His deadpan paintings capture the essence of the postwar American experience” (Auping 3).

Considered a pioneer in photorealism, Bechtle began painting in California in the early 60s and was immediately caught up in the Bay Area figurative movement. A growing number of Bay Area artists, including Wayne Thiebaud, viewed representational painting as an enticing challenge to the dominant, New York-based current of Abstract Expressionism. Bechtle began creating scenes of cars and the streets of San Francisco by implementing a grid and using small random photographs. These photos were amateur at best, taken by other people and often blurry and strangely composed. Betchle discovered in them a way to look at the ordinary in a way that was striking and unique. In time, he gravitated towards taking his own images and projecting them onto canvas for tracing. He continues to work this way.

There is much in Bechtle’s work that I relate to. While I certainly do not view my work as photorealistic, I do share Bechtle’s approach to the snapshot- a photograph taken by an everyday individual to document everyday life- as a viable type of source material. Until the 60s, Bechtle didn’t really see himself as a realist, but rather he was “striving to paint without affection, in a kind of style-less style” (Auping 11). Working from snapshots led me to purge style and meaning from my work, though I found that the actual act of doing this gave the work style and meaning! Robert Bechtle’s work eventually became closer to that of Edward Hopper, in that his street and car scenes were largely void of people and centered on the shapes of shadow and light. I differ most with Bechtle in his process. I have always been apposed to using a projector, in that I tend to manipulate my images in important compositional ways through the process of planning and drawing them. For me, the snapshot is reference, but the goal is not a photorealistic copy.

Researching this group of artists has helped in understanding the scope of concepts I’ve been exploring. In seeing the way other artists use of the photograph as reference, I’ve become more aware of how my source imagery functions, and more deliberate in my choosing and manipulation of images. On a formal level, artists like Thiebaud and Hopper have shown me how color, lighting and emphasis on shape contribute to an overall feeling of sensory observation. These artists all have found different ways to infuse their work with themes of isolation and detachment. Ultimately, I would like that my images would connect with viewers on such a level- to at the same time seem comfortable and disquieting.

New Image- "Fifth Wheel"

2009-04-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

Finally a new painting- sorry for the delays in posting. I started 3 larger boards with the intent of working quicker, and exactly the opposite has happened. These are taking me forever to do- often I'm working on an a little area for what seems like days. It's frustrating to be working so slowly, but at least I'm somewhat satisfied with the finished product (at least for know). The reference picture for this painting struck me as funny and full of great shapes and colors. My mentor has been encouraging me to be more deliberate about my color choices, so I've tried to do that here. Parts of it are quite flat with thicker paint, which I think does make it more engaging. This next week I plan on working as much as possible to finish a few things and leave the following week to work on my May paper. Is it almost May already?!?

The Age of Abundance

2009-04-01T08:35:00.000-07:00

In gathering information for my latest paper, I read the book "The Age of Abundance" by Brink Lindsey. I highly recommend it. The book basically covers societal changes from the 50s to today and traces the roots of the modern world. It's a book about politics and economics, but manages to avoid being dull. It reads much more like a great work of non fiction. It gave me a lot more information than I could possibly work into 1 paper. Particularly interesting is the way that affluent culture in the 50s created the political right and left. Tracing the affects of post-war America from decade to decade is really interesting.

April Paper

2009-03-31T20:58:00.000-07:00

The Culture of Affluence

As a child of the 70s and 80s, I cannot experience prior history through memory of experience. Rather, much of my understanding comes through processing visual information in the form of photographs and films. The way we process this information and the impression of history we get from it is what I’m exploring in my paintings. Questions can then be raised: Is my impression of the period accurate? Am I taking part in idealization? Most importantly, what are the social and cultural contexts of the images and of my viewpoint today and how do I reconcile the two?

The idea of approaching the perception of historical time is one that I can envision applying to many different time periods and subjects. For the duration of my MFA work, I’ve decided to continue my exploration of the 1950s. This program has forced me to be deliberate and intentional about every aspect to my work, which is why, in addition to creating the painting, I need to understand the historical concepts that inform the reference photo. This paper is my attempt at that. I’ll be exploring the socioeconomic context of the 50s to provide a framework for seeing these images, and what I believe are the deep connections between the past and the present. The key to understanding the 1950s lies in recognizing the monumental cultural shift that took place after WWII- specifically, the way that prosperity radically changed America and created the world we live in today.

I first began using 50s photographs as reference a few years ago. I recognized in those images a simultaneous detachment from and connection to the present. They are humorous and strange, and contain a particular look that lends itself to painting. Initially I incorporated all kinds of photographic reference, including period advertisements, movie stills, posed photographs and personal snapshots. I have since narrowed my use to the personal snapshot only. I am finding the best reference images through groups of people who purchase old photos and slides from estate sales and antique stores. The images are often restored digitally to their original brilliance. They possess a displacement brought about by the anonymity of the photographer and the absence of any verbal or written explanation of intent. What remains is an often-clumsy composition made by someone who at one time for whatever reason valued what he/she saw and decided to capture it. The process of making that image into painting further detaches it from its original context. There is a mysterious distance then between the viewer, the artist and the unknown photographer. For all of the uncertainty with my source imagery, knowing the framework of the time period is a matter of great importance.

I’m convinced that there is great relevance to the 50s in 2009. We’re living in a fascinating time in America. With our current economic downturn, we’re learning the hard way the reality of American Dream. If any good has come from the whole financial mess, it’s that it happens to coincide with my study of mass affluence in post-war America. Everyday we read about people loosing their homes and jobs, all because our financial system is built on careless lending. This system operates to satisfy the American sense of entitlement; the notion that as Americans we feel we deserve to have what we want when we want it (even if we can’t afford it). It’s the logical response to a culture driven by advertising and mass consumerism. All these ideas can be traced to the remarkable boom of consumer culture brought about by mass affluence in post-war America.

The 50s were a complex decade of rapid cultural changes brought about by the abundance of wealth. Post-war America was the wealthiest society in the history of the world. Modern advertising and consumerism can be traced to the early 20^th century and the changes brought about by the industrial revolution, but it wasn’t until the 50s that America changed from “a scarcity-based mentality of self-restraint to an abundance based mentality of self-expression. The aversion to material luxury was the first thing to go, as Americans reveled in wave after wave of new factory-made comforts and conveniences” (Lindsey 62).

In his landmark 1952 book “The Lonely Crowd”, David Riesman acutely observed the rapid changes in the new middle class. He correctly wrote that Middle America was changing from an “inner-directed” to an “other-directed” ethos (Riesman 20). In other words, people were not so concerned about what they had to do to contribute to society. Increasingly, other people were the problem. This represented a huge cultural shift from the previous generation. Riesman saw in the new middle class the dangers of conformity, but he also saw it’s potential: “The more advanced the technology, on the whole, the more possible it is for a considerable number of human beings to imagine being somebody else. [The technology] spurs the division of labor, which, in tern, creates the possibility for a greater variety of experience and of social character” (Riesman 247).

Fifties America is often criticized for being complacent and shallow. While there is obvious truth to that assessment, it’s far too easy to dismiss the period as self-delusional. Americans were living the good life, but they were filled with anxiety. They had known the Great Depression and seen the horrors of war, and now they had constant fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. It was a popular belief among many that World War 3 was inevitable. It’s understandable then they turned to the home and family for stability.

Often seen as a stereotype on television shows such as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best”, the pleasant American family was a new invention. During the war with so many young men deployed oversees, women filled the holes left in the workforce. When the men returned and the baby boom began, things changed drastically. For the first time in more than 100 years, the age for marriage and motherhood fell, fertility increased, divorce rates declined and women’s degree of educational parity with men dropped sharply. Men were now expected to seek emotional rewards from participating actively in the family, but for women the expectations soared much higher. “Being a wife and mother- managing the family’s consumption, attending to the emotional needs of dad and the kids, and generally choreographing and producing the suburban idyll of harmonious togetherness- came to be regarded as the highest and best outlet for female self-expression” (Coontz 110).

Families in the 50s were not so naïve as we often think. Rather, they were living in the midst of profound societal changes and facing challenges previous generations didn’t have to face. Eventually, the 50s family wilted in the reality of daily living, which led to profound changes in the next two decades. Today the image of the 50s family endures as a strong symbol. For many it represents repression and false idealism, and for others a nostalgic lost paradigm of family values. The legendary family of the 1950s was not, as common wisdom tells us, the last gasp of ‘traditional’ family life with deep roots in the past. Rather, “it was the first wholehearted effort to create a home that would fulfill virtually all its members’ personal needs through an energized and expressive personal life” (Coontz 27).

It was only natural that with the shift towards an other-directed philosophy of consumption came a boom in advertising. Advertisement was not new in the 50s, but the demand of an affluent culture transformed its role in society. In his 1956 culture study, “The Organization Man”, William Whyte wrote: “We are now confronted with the problem of permitting the average American to feel moral even when he is flirting, even when he is spending, even when he is not saving, even when he is taking two vacations a year and buying a second or a third car” (Whyte 19). To solve this problem, advertising fused the marketing of products into every aspect of culture. Advertising and marketing had been around for decades, but it wasn’t until Americans discovered television that it began to drive American culture. With television, advertisers were welcomed as guests into millions of living rooms.

Television and advertising have completely transformed the way we function in culture. In the 50s TV radically changed the cultural landscape of America. In his 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” Neil Postman observed the consequences of a world altered by TV, mainly that TV has conditioned us to see everything as entertainment, measured out in doses of time. TV has taught us to process information through privately seeing from a distance as opposed to using language and dialoguing with others. Being bombarded with media has a numbing affect on us. I have never known a society apart from television and mass consumerism. This is one of many reasons why I find the 50s so intriguing. I have never had to process how television and life with all of its comforts has changed me, because it has always been there.

Postman’s writing on photography speaks directly to concepts in my work: “Photographs have the capacity to perform a particular kind of dismembering of reality, a wrenching of moments out of their contexts, and a juxtaposing of events and things that have no logical or historical connection with each other” (Postman 73). What Postman correctly sees as a key problem with TV, mass media and the way we consume (both images and material goods), I see as great potential for making art. With media, we have been conditioned to accept as ordinary truth “a wrenching of moments out of their contexts”. In my paintings I’m attempting to place found images back into a proper context.

What interests me is the way that we approach history through imagery. What that looks like in my paintings is something that I’m continuing to discover. The challenge is to incorporate an understanding of the period into the paintings themselves, a difficult task considering there is no virgin territory with this kind of cultural exploration. The ideas behind my work are not necessarily new, but working with photographs will always require contextual knowledge. What makes my idea different is that it looks to the past when all eyes look to the future. I think that too often we neglect lessons from the past and fail to appreciate where we’ve come from. The American 50s represent the monumental shift to an abundance-based mentality of self-expression, a philosophy we live with everyday. This is what makes history relevant.

Updates-

2009-03-27T21:25:00.001-07:00

March has been a good month- I've been working long hours late at night in the basement on new work while continuing to refine my ideas. Most helpful was a great long weekend trip to New York with Kara. We pretty much walked for 4 days and saw as much as we could- It's been a long time since I was there, so visiting all the major museums was a real treat. I know there's so much more that I could have done and seen, but for a last minute get away it was just what I needed to get a little break from painting and recharge the creative battery.

I've been working on 2 separate bodies of work this semester- one which follows more of what I've been previously been doing with vintage snapshots and another that uses a grid of fragmented images. I've attached a few in-progress photos here. These boxes are 8 x 8" each and I've only made half the grid so far. My hope is to have at least 20 by semesters end, and more if possible with time. The idea behind it is a bombardment of cultural reference points, all of which stand out but also feed into the other images. I've been trying to really push the formal qualities of the work, and it's been a lot of fun to manipulate lines and colors in separate images so that they relate to the others... hopefully with these snapshots you can get a sense of what I'm trying to do. The colors are the under-painting layers that I usually do with ochre, cadmium red and a muted violet. My idea is to work them all with the same palette I've been using, but both my mentor and others who have seen the work think something new might be happening with the altered palette that's working-

we'll see.

New Image- "SMOKING LOUNGE"

2009-03-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

Here's the first painting I've finished- It's a little larger than my last work at 18" x 24". When I think about my attraction to old photographs, it all boils down to the look. I saw this photo (which is a compilation of multiple photos) and was instantly drawn to the crazy bullet pod ashtrays, the goofy guy lounging in the back and the "modern" feel of something that was considered cutting edge in the 50's. The picture is of smoking car from a passenger train. Anyway, because the look is something I'm so drawn to, I've been looking for ways to push that look- Here I'm thinking about how far I can push it before it's too much. I may have overdone this painting with all the patterns and detail, but it was a good exercise. I've started a separate project of small fragmented paintings at the same time- I'll try to post some in-progress pics of those paintings soon.

Paper on Rockwell

2009-02-28T18:29:00.000-08:00

Here is my March 2009 paper on Norman Rockwell. I originally intended to compare him to a few other artists and even read books on those painters but ultimately felt it was best to stay simple.... I've learned from a few past papers that it makes for a bigger headache to try to say too much with 1500 words.

Norman Rockwell and Disavowal

My opinion of Norman Rockwell, until very recently, has been a mixed one. I have always appreciated his amazing ability for visual storytelling and his exceptional talents as an illustrator- particularly the subtle ways in which he stylizes his figures to achieve the maximum nostalgic appeal. On the other hand, his art is one that I often find too accessible. Anyone can understand a Rockwell painting, which is the great predicament of his work. No one was better in making art for the masses, but its commercial nature detaches it from the level of “high art”, or at least that has been the case. At times, I have often felt put off by the sentimental and kitschy nature of his paintings, even while simultaneously admiring his technical achievements.

It came then as a both a great compliment and a frustration to find Rockwell’s name come up so often in connection with my work. In using 50s reference images and balancing the borderline of nostalgia, his works are understandably unavoidable. Five months ago I reluctantly wrote a paper on Norman Rockwell to appease the constant comparisons. It was a frustrating exercise in that every book I looked at reinforced the opinion that Rockwell’s paintings speak only at the shallow nostalgic level. Looking at his paintings left me with a strong desire to purge narrative from my work completely. It was only after writing that paper that I was referred to a controversial new book and current swell of new appreciation for Rockwell that’s gaining momentum today.

Since he remains so essential to the work I’m trying to do, I’ve decided to give Rockwell another chance by looking deeper into who he was and what he means to my work. In his book “The Underside of Innocence”, author Richard Halpern discusses the innocence found in the works of Norman Rockwell as an act of “disavowal”. He borrows the term from Freud, who in his writings on psychoanalysis wrote that disavowal is one of several ways of suppressing something unbearable. In Freudian terms, disavowal is different than repression or denial, or simply banishing unwanted knowledge all together. To disavow something is to simultaneously know and not know something. It involves a splitting of the self. For Halpern, this is the way to approach the works of Norman Rockwell. “Rockwell’s paintings do produce an innocent world, and to that degree they are acts of disavowal. But at the same time, under the guise of innocence, they often present potentially disturbing materials that they then dare the viewer to see and recognize. Rockwell’s work thus lays bare the mechanisms of disavowal. What Rockwell paints is not the innocence itself but its manufacture. And his work confronts the viewer with the ethical choice of seeing or not seeing” (Halpern 6).

It goes without saying that this new theory of Rockwell is controversial. Rockwell’s middlebrow admirers have always loved his work in part because it looks wistfully toward the past. It both partakes of and contributes to the myth that the world was a simpler, happier place than now. Rockwell was obviously intentional in doing this, but he was also much more clever than we give him credit for, and his work is filled with nuances that are easily looked over.

A great example of Rockwell’s deliberate trickery is “The Art Critic” from 1955. In the painting, a young art student in an art museum holds an easel and paints as he leans forward to investigate a painting of a baroque woman, who humorously leers back at him with a raised eyebrow and strange grin. It’s a painting that anyone would find funny for the way the painting interacts with the art student. The picture takes on a completely new meaning when it’s discovered that the boy in the picture is Rockwell’s son Jarvis, and the woman is Rockwell’s wife Mary. In short, the entire painting is an Oedipal joke- one that his family found embarrassing.

In the painting, the young art student gazes through the magnifying glass at a broach on the bosom of the woman, the same broach the mythological Oedipus used to gouge his eyes out upon learning of his despicable actions. A group of men in the painting on the adjacent wall smirk at him in disgust. Through it all, the art student is unfazed, completely unaware of what he is doing. Jarvis Rockwell later recalled, “My father made it very plain that the sexual joke was important to the painting” (Halpern 86). It’s clear from Rockwell’s writings and the work itself that he delighted in playing jokes and in hiding things in plain sight, especially on the magazine covers read by millions. Not all of Rockwell’s jokes are sexual. Uncertain of his place in the art world, Rockwell often makes distinct references to traditional themes in the history of art, which the Oedipus complex of “The Art Critic” also demonstrates.

To the untrained eye, Rockwell’s work is all about innocence. Rockwell knew as good as anyone that innocence is a commodity, a fact he makes known in his book through frequently disclosing how well he was paid. “Rockwell and others such as Walt Disney purveyed a view of American culture that was patriotic, optimistic, and imbued with middle-class values, secure in the virtuousness and rightness of the American way” (Halpern 8). For generations of Americans Rockwell symbolizes a better time when life was simple. He also remains the poster boy for American conservativism. In reality, he was a progressive thinker who often felt stifled in his limitations as a commercial artist. The Saturday Evening Post didn’t allow him to place African Americans on the cover except for rare instances. Only near the end of his life when he was painting for himself did he tackle issues such as racism head-on in his work.

As a well-paid illustrator, Rockwell understood the commodity of innocence and had personal reasons to value it. Rockwell battled feelings of inadequacy his entire life. As a young man, he was gangly and unatheletic, constantly made fun of for his beanpole frame and large Adam’s apple. Throughout his career, even at the height of his popularity, he was banished by the art world for being a commercial illustrator. “That is the essential paradox of Rockwell’s life: he was America’s best-loved and most famous artist but, according to the gatekeepers of the institutional world of art, he wasn’t an artist at all” (Marling 7). These deep-seeded insecurities translated into opposite themes in his paintings; scenes of nostalgic innocence and great humor. There were episodes from Rockwell’s childhood that profoundly shaped his views on innocence and idealism. In his autobiography “My Adventures as an Illustrator”, Rockwell relates a powerful memory from his boyhood in New York City, which continues to haunt him even as an old man:

“The memory is of a vacant lot in the yellow light of late afternoon, and a drunken woman in filthy gray rags following a man and beating him over the head with an umbrella. The man stumbling through the coarse littered grass, his arms raised to cover his head, and the woman cursing and screaming, beating him incessantly until he fell, then standing over him, kicking and striking him again and again about the head and belly and legs. And I remember that we kids watched, silent, from the edges of the lot, until a policeman ran up and grabbed the woman. The man got slowly up and seeing the policeman struggling with the woman, attacked him, swinging drunkenly and swearing. Against this image of the city, exaggerated and distorted as it is, I have never been able to rid myself of it entirely” (Rockwell 31).

It was with deep personal insecurities and doubts about potential for the world that Rockwell made images for the masses. Understanding his viewpoint is helpful in understanding his work. The big question remains: how can I use the example of Rockwell’s work in my own? Having researched this new approach to Rockwell, the topic of disavowal is something I am deeply interested in. I’ve always been aware of the duality in my subject matter, and Rockwell’s use of hiding things in plain sight is intriguing to me. I do not aspire to make Rockwellian paintings that so blatantly grasp nostalgia, but I do see commonalities with his work.

If disavowal is simultaneously knowing and not knowing something, I think it’s a proper context to explain how my work functions and a good concept to push in future work. When the viewer encounters my paintings, they know the images on a surface level. With 50s images, there is an undeniable nostalgia that resonates with people, regardless of age and experience. The viewer can understand scenes of families and resonate with the collective idealized American memory of post-war America. Also inherent in the imagery is the reality behind 50s optimism or the “not knowing” of disavowal- the absence of diversity, the differences in family dynamics and domestic roles, and the presence of constant cold war fear. These are a few of the many aspects to the period that get glazed over by idealism. When I confront old photographs of unknown people, I’m interested in who they are behind the veneer. I’d like to think that the viewer is also confronted with this question. I’m also interested in making my painting accessible and visually alluring in a way that speaks to idealism while at the same time saying more. Merely consuming an image- as opposed to confronting it- is what allows disavowal to do its work.

Richard Halpern sums up Rockwell best: “If disavowal bespeaks an inability to bear complication, and if it reacts to its discomfort by splitting and idealizing its subjects, then Rockwell’s lessons about disavowal can never be grasped unless we are willing to see this artist for the complex creature he is: a wholesome pervert, a knowing innocent, and a kitschy genius” (Halpern 52). Rockwell’s work and the concept of disavowal has taught me that I can be more deliberate about introducing those undercurrents to my work. The trick then becomes doing so without tuning the painting into an overly accessible Rockwellian narrative. And so, the work continues.

Works Cited:

Halpern, Richard. “Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence”. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. 2006.

Hennessey, Maureen Hart and Anne Knutson. “Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People”. Harry N. Abrams, New York. 1999.

Marling, Karal Ann. “Rockwell: Americas Most Loved Painter”. Taschen, Köln, 2005.

Rockwell, Norman. “My Adventures as an Illustrator”. Henry N. Abrams, New York. 1988

ROCKWELL-"The Underside of Innocence"

2009-02-20T09:19:00.000-08:00

I've just finished reading a fascinating little book on Norman Rockwell. His name is one that has often come up in connection with my work in critiques. No other artist embodies Americana and nostalgia like Norman Rockwell. For his entire life, he struggled to reconcile his place in the art world and his role as an illustrator. His work was so counter to everything that was happening in the Modern Art establishment that he wasn't even considered a real artist, even though his skills for visual story telling are second to none. Today, there is a new found appreciation for his work and his paintings. In particular, there is a realization that he was a lot smarter than we give him credit for.

case in point: Here's "The Art Critic" from the 1950s. Depicted is a young art student at the museum, closely inspecting a broach on the chest of a baroque woman in a painting, who leers back at him- as do a group of disgusted looking men in another painting. While humorous and innocent in Rockwell's stylistic way, it takes on new meaning when learned that his models for the art student and the woman are his son and his wife. In short, he's illustrated the Oedipus story, right down to the mother's broach that Oedipus gauges his eyes with when he realizes that his wife is his mother. Even the disgusted guys in the other painting can see how wrong the whole thing is. Rockwell loved this kind of subtle jabbing, especially the fact that he could put it on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.

Rockwell also felt deeply insecure about his place in art. He tackles the subject on numerous occasions, but probably most blatantly in "The Connoisseur". For the painting, he mixes his style with that of a Jackson Pollock rip-off, raising all sorts of questions about modern art. He removes the mans face all together, so we can't see his reaction. Instead, the work is a strange mixing of 2 completely opposite approaches to art and Rockwell's way of working out the deep concerns/insecurities about his life's work.

Here's a line from the back of the book:

In this sure-to-be controversial book, Richard Halpern argues that this sense of innocence arises from our reluctance—and also Rockwell’s—to acknowledge the often disturbing dimensions of his works. Rockwell’s paintings frequently teem with perverse acts of voyeurism and desire but contrive to keep these acts invisible—or rather, hidden in plain sight, available for unacknowledged pleasure but easily denied by the viewer.

Rockwell emerges in this book, then, as a deviously brilliant artist, a remorseless diagnostician of the innocence in which we bathe ourselves, and a continuing, unexpected influence on contemporary artists. Far from a banal painter of the ordinary, Halpern argues, Rockwell is someone we have not yet dared to see for the complex creature he is: a wholesome pervert, a knowing innocent, and a kitschy genius.

UPDATES-

2009-02-20T08:46:00.000-08:00

February has been a crazy month-

My search for a mentor artist has been a tough one... I was supposed to have the mentor locked down a week or 2 ago, and am happy to say that today it's finally come together. I'll be working with Tim Tozer, a local professor of painting and drawing at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and College of Visual Arts in St. Paul. He also paints and exhibits at the Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis. Here's a few of his images:

We met for the first time this morning and had a great conversation. He's excited to work with me and had some great suggestions. I'm excited to get to work.

Speaking of working, I've already been putting in serious time in the cold basement studio. I have started the underpainting on 7 (that's right 7) new paintings. Many of them are small, thus the amount of started work. I've started work on 8" x 8" little fragments of old photographic imagery that will come together to make a large fragmented work. I'm thinking its a good way for me to take more of an artistic stand on the imagery with selectively cropping, as opposed to simply copying an old photo. I'm continuing to still do that as well with a series of larger paintings. I hope to have some images to post soon.

RESIDENCY 3

2009-01-30T11:53:00.000-08:00

I had a great time in Boston at Residency 3. I'll post my most recent paper here for those interested.... more images to come

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Residency Summary

My 3^rd residency at AIB in January of 2009 was a time of great learning. I received a lot of great feedback and commentary on my paintings, and left feeling encouraged and empowered in my artistic direction. It’s much easier now to see the progression of my work through this program. For me, everything about the 3^rd residency was approached with the end goal of my thesis in mind. I find this task a little daunting, but all in all I feel confident in where I stand now going into my 4^th residency.

I left AIB last June with a broad range of suggestions and possibilities. It was a tough to sift through all of that information to make the work for residency 3. It’s clear to me now that the body of work from last semester addresses the formal problems rather than conceptual. I feel that the new works are much better paintings in terms of surface, texture, line and color palette. Across the board, everyone seemed to agree. I expected to get harsher criticism this time around (not so much for the work but for being farther along in the program), so I was very surprised to receive 2 nearly flawless critiques to start the week.

Tony Apesos had great things to say about my work, and was impressed at the quality of the paintings. He was very impressed with the new color palette and application of paint. He felt that the work was on a thesis level, and that I should be confident and keep pressing on. On the idea behind the paintings, Tony made an interesting observation. He noted that my paintings manage to carry no personal commentary whatsoever. The figures are not idealized or criticized. They remain somewhere in the middle in the realm of complete confusion. Tony found them “fascinatingly confusing”, and picked up on many of the small linear adjustments I purposely made to guide the eye throughout the piece. Aside from a few suggestions on painting flesh in high contrast, he had nothing but good things to say about the work.

My second round of critiques with Laurel Sparks and my peers went equally as well. I felt very encouraged with all the positive feedback, but also wary of feeling any sort of pride. After all, I do have to carry this idea forward for another year. As in the past, Laurel saw a lot of disturbing elements to the themes of my paintings, and came to her own conclusions to the open ended stories portrayed by the figures. She complimented the unknown and detached aspects to the work, and likened the paintings to those Norman Rockwell, but twisted and completely void of Rockwellian charm. It was not my intent to make them this way, but it’s a lot of fun to see them interpreted and appreciated so differently.

My third critique with Jan Avgikos was more of what I expected initially. She too had good things to say about the formal qualities of the paintings, but was puzzled with the imagery. She noticed the same impersonal qualities to the work that Tony did, but she seemed more frustrated with that than interested in it. She wondered why there wasn’t more of myself in the work, whether through using pictures of my own family or confronting specific issues. She saw as detractors everything that I had tried to intentionally accomplish in the work.

She complimented the “beauty and serenity” in the work, but said it needs to be brought into the now. She also asked the question, “If these represent your parents or grandparents generation, than what will your kids look back to in term of imagery to represent this time period we live in?” This is an interesting question, but much larger than the current work. Eventually, the group ran out of time before we had the chance to talk further about it. After the critique, I felt frustrated. Obviously, her reaction was an indicator that my idea wasn’t coming through clearly enough, and in my reasoning I couldn’t figure out why. It would take a few more critiques and some additional feedback to see that Jan was absolutely right.

Towards the end of the week, I had critiques with John Kramer and Oliver Wasow. They gave me the more or less the same response. John was the one who finally got me to grasp what is missing from my work. He reminded me of a former graduate who made pictures of kitsch cowboys. The problem with his work was not his imagery, but the fact that he couldn’t articulate what his interest in cowboys was beyond, “I like cowboys.” John said that in the end, my thesis defense cannot be, “I like the 50s.” He is completely right. My interest in the period has to go much deeper than even I realize. John said that I need to take ownership of what I’m doing and incorporate at least 1 personal angle.

Oliver added that the very act of trying to be impersonal makes the work an emotional, deliberate act. In making my images impersonal and stripping them of meaning, I’m in effect making them personal. They have to mean something. I have to have a reason. Oliver feels that I walk a dangerous line between irony and nostalgia and need to find the middle ground. His comments made me realize that much of the impersonality in my work is in response to avoiding overt nostalgia. He’s right though, there’s an intellectual problem to my work that has to be solved, and I have to find a way to make them more aggressively located. He said that the work was “almost great”, and that I just need to find something to make them resonate emotionally.

I never expected that my paintings would lead me to extensive self-psychoanalysis, but it’s clear now that determining my connection to the 50s is key. This question is most upon my mind in leaving the residency. I began referencing 50’s photos a few years back mainly because I was looking to paint, and I happened to have that imagery to work from in old photographs. After the residency, I wrote down all my thoughts concerning the 50s and my paintings. I’ve resolved that my interest in continuing to use these images today is threefold:

First, I am drawn to these images for aesthetic reasons.

I was initially drawn to the 50s from the colors found in old kodachrome slides. The colors are bright and bold, but also somehow stately and subdued. The figures are often clean cut and awkwardly posed. Everything about the images- the clothes, hairstyles, buildings, and especially the cars which seem to pop up everywhere, lends itself well to the kind of painting I am interested in, a style that utilizes strong areas of positive and negative shapes of color and light. The images are often quite humorous, which is also very appealing to me.

Secondly, these images feed my need as a history buff.

The 1950s are a fascinating time in American history. Post-War America was the greatest time of prosperity any society had ever known. It was a time when consumer capitalism and advertising became a driving force in society. The imagery from the period projects an idealism of happiness, even though America was deep in the nuclear fear of a Cold War and had yet to confront many of its serious problems, such as racism and sexism. Even today, many Americans believe in the idealized myth of the 1950s and advocate for a nostalgic return, as evidenced most recently in speeches during the 2008 election. I see 50s images as relevant reminders of where we came from as a society and how far we have yet to go. As much as I can try to avoid blatant commentary in my painting, there’s no doubt that my interest in the images is in large part sociological and political. Tony noted that his experience of the 50s was one of fear and paranoia, and that I might want to play on that angle. I am certainly interested in this.

Finally, these images relate to my own family upbringing and current place as a husband and father of two small kids.

My parents were born in the 50s to traditional patriarchal families. I was raised in much the same way. My mother has always been a homemaker, and my father the breadwinner. I married a woman who could not be more opposite in her views on women’s domestic roles. Together, we’ve taken interest in observing the generational differences so evident in our families. Our parents chose to maintain that traditional structure, and today we are choosing a new way of family life and determining how to raise our kids. These issues are apparent in snapshot images from the 50s, both as actual depictions of traditional families and ironic comparisons to today.

I left the January residency feeling encouraged and challenged. I feel secure in my abilities as a painter to make work that is visually engaging, and proud of the progress that I made from the last residency in finding a style that suits my ideas. The difficulty in this semester will be retaining those aspects to the images that appeal to me while at the same time infusing a personal take. This is a delicate balance that I will have to work hard to find. If an idea ever comes across too strongly, I immediately lose the quiet strangeness and detachment that I’ve worked hard to arrive at. The paintings themselves will most likely look very similar to the previous work, but will hopefully function on a deeper level. I have huge question marks about how all of this work itself out, but feel empowered and confident to take my work to the next level.

I'm goin' to Boston....

2009-01-04T18:00:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm off this week for MFA residency number 3 of 5. One year from now I'll be preparing to defend my thesis and hang my graduate art show. VERY strange how quickly this first year has gone- This time, I am incredibly excited to go. This last semester was far and away the most difficult in terms of the creative process, and now that I feel a little more confident in my ideas and direction, I am thrilled to get feedback, even if it's a good shredding at the hand of the professors. For me, this whole residency will be about defining my thesis outline and artistic direction. That way, I'll come home with a clear goal in mind. We'll see if that happens- I just want to avoid another prolonged period of experimentation. More updates to come-

New Image- "SUNBATHERS II"

2008-12-15T20:28:00.000-08:00

Here's what I've been furiously trying to finish before the holiday- I made this painting much faster without the same under-painting as the others, and it's also the first one that isn't a rectangle. The square is pretty simple- I'm 100% sure that I'll push the shapes of my canvases next semester. Cheers-

New Image- "FULL SERVICE"

2008-12-07T20:58:00.000-08:00

Here's my latest.... This picture really caught my eye for the interesting shapes, patterns and bright colors. I'm not 100% on the boys yet but I'll try to retool things a bit before the January residency. As always, feedback is appreciated-

Semester Review Paper

2008-12-02T06:12:00.000-08:00

This semester of work has been very challenging. From my reading and writing I
have learned much about the cultural identity of the 1950s. In the studio,
I've had moments of great creativity and moments of unbearable frustration.
The most difficult task for me has been incorporating the feedback I received
from last semester's work into my new paintings. It took me three months to
discover that I was making work to fulfill those suggestions, and in doing so
had lost the joy in making the work I wanted to make. Ultimately, this
difficulty has made me stronger, and though I am not 100% satisfied with the
body of work as a whole, I feel I'm moving in the right direction.

When I left the last residency in June, I had a lot of great feedback to work
with. Sorting through such a wide range of suggestions was hard because they
concerned so many different aspects to my work. The first aspect was the
content itself. My work from the first semester was scattered, using reference
imagery from both advertisement and candid family photos. I knew that the new
work would need more focus, so I made the decision to avoid advertisement and
posed photographs all together. From an idea standpoint, this forced me to
consider the deeper meaning of my subject and to seek images that were
open-ended.

I started by working exclusively from old family photos. At first, I found it
freeing to work in a way that was at least partially autobiographical, since
these photos depict my extended family in the 50s. However, after a month of
working with them I started to get tired of seeing the same people and feeling
a sense of attachment to them. I felt constricted to the photo and found
myself worried that my family would see them merely as portraits. Through
this, I've discovered that its much more beneficial for me to work from an
unknown source, one which can be altered if needed. I've discovered that much
of my work is about the unknown story behind the characters in my paintings.
Knowing the story somehow takes the fun out of making them.

I worked hard to make improvements to the technical application of paint and
surface. My first semester work was very thin and far too transparent. At the
time, I was painting on store-bought stretchers and using a wet on wet
technique my previous mentor suggested. I liked painting with thinned paint.
It allowed me to work quickly and capture energy in my brush strokes. The
finished product though, was very flat and I knew that I had to use much more
paint and add greater texture. I was encouraged to work on gessoed birch
plywood panels, which I did at the beginning of the semester.

As for my palette, my 1st semester paintings relied heavily on ochre to imply
faded color photos and tie the pieces together. I was challenged at the June
residency to avoid the color this time and look closer at the true palettes of
old photographs. This has turned out to be a great suggestion, as my palette
has become dustier and also more vibrant.

My mentor, Patricia Canney, had some good early suggestions. She agreed that
the ochre in my previous work was too strong and that I needed to use much
more paint. She also echoed a lot of what was said at the residency, namely
that my study works from semester 1 were a lot more interesting than my
paintings on canvas. She felt that the under painting on these studies made
the difference, especially the little bits of rough color that show through
other layers.

I decided early on to paint the surface with shapes of color before adding
thicker paint. On my first 2 paintings, I filled in the surface with layers of
underpainting and then used a palette knife to add textured paint. While I was
pleased with the colors I was achieving and the compositions I was making, I
found that working thick changed everything. My natural tendency with thick
paint is to overwork areas of contrast and detail. The problem is that I just
haven't had enough experience with thick paint to know what to do. My mentor
and I came to the same conclusion: I just needed to paint a lot more to learn
how to do it.

After almost 2 months of work, I found myself very frustrated. Among many
failures, I had two 18" x24" paintings that I found mildly successful. The
rest were stiff and simply didn't work at all. My frustration took a toll on
my creativity, and for a while I felt completely lost. I didn't know what I
wanted to do or how to do it- all I knew was that applying all the new
suggestions to my old ways of working wasn't coming together at all.

In the 2 or 3 weeks that I felt unable to work, I went back to notes from the
residency and pondered a roadmap to my thesis. While the thesis is still not
set in stone, this helped me to see what wasn't working and focus on a new
direction. To start with, the birch plywood panels were a source of
frustration. While far superior to pre-made stretchers, they were heavy and
time consuming to prepare. I was spending a lot of time making them, only to
make bad paintings. I decided to use gesso board panels. Though pricey, they
are a beautiful surface and they saved me a lot of time. The birch wood panels
will eventually get reused.

I also decided to approach scale differently. After the June residency, I was
set on the idea of working at least 18" x 24" if not larger. I agree with
others who have noted that my images would work differently if they could be
huge, and I still see this as a possible direction. After feeling blocked in
my work, I realized that the larger scale would have to wait. Larger paintings
aren't any better if the work is poor. Instead, I went smaller, which I
anticipate will bring a strong reaction in January. The new work is 16" x 20",
and one painting is 9" x 12". I fully expect to work larger down the road, but
for now, I need to paint and advance my ideas, and working smaller has allowed
me to do that. I don't regret the decision in the least.

I talked extensively with my mentor about cropping and composing images. She
is quite good at identifying great composition, and she gave me some great
suggestions for zooming in and out to make the images more interesting. I
searched for new images, and from thousands of stock pictures on the internet
and in old books found interesting compositions that worked. Finally, I looked
at a lot of working artists for inspiration. I discovered a painter who primes
his canvas in bright red before painting cityscapes. When he is finished, the
red is almost completely gone, except for small bits that remain in the
outline of shapes. These miniscule areas of red, though almost unnoticeable,
make a big difference.

With these new ideas, I started work on 6 new paintings simultaneously. In the
past, I have often worked each piece to completion before moving on. This
time, I bounced from one to the other, which allowed me to avoid much of the
frustration I had been feeling. A huge discovery from my mentor along the way
has been Galkyd Gel, which increases the lucidity of the paint while allowing
it to retain texture. It also dries much faster than adding oil. Using the gel
allows me make larger easier strokes. This is where my studio work is
currently at. I am enjoying the process of making new work, and had to fail a
few times along the way to understand what I didn't want to do.

In addition to all the work I've been doing in my studio, I've also been
reading and writing for the academic component. I spent most of my first
semester researching contemporary artists that were new to me. This semester,
I was anxious to look at artists I really admire, including Hopper, Beckmann,
Wood, N.C. Wyeth and Rockwell. While I enjoyed reading books and looking
deeper into these artists, it was tough and a little bit of a stretch to apply
their ideas to my work. I learned the most about Rockwell and his way of story
telling.

The best insight came from reading selective essays on 1950's American
consumerism and watching the TV series "Mad Men". Reading "The Man in the Gray
Flannel Suit" was also most helpful. These sources helped me to see the
disconnect of the period; the way consumerism changed people's priorities. All
of a sudden, people in post-war America had money and access to whatever they
wanted. This led to an outward display of contentment and pleasantness that
was at odds with much of life. This disconnect is something I'm very
interested in, not just as part of the American 50s but in how it relates to
our world today. This has added a fresh perspective to my work. I hope that in
some way my future work can speak to this idea in more significant ways.

My work addresses the American myth of the nostalgic 1950s. I'm interested in
comparing reality to that myth and exploring how it appeals to people. I am
not interested in criticism of the period or politics in relation to the idea,
but rather in presenting an image in an appealing yet vague way that begs
viewer interaction. The difficulties I faced in working these last months
have taught me much about the creative process and helped me to further refine
my ideas. I cannot wait to get feedback on these new paintings and start the
process again with a greater understanding of my abilities and intentions.

New Image- "EASTER SUIT"

2008-11-24T21:48:00.000-08:00

Here's another new one just finished- I know it's tough to tell from the photo, but I am most pleased with the texture and thickness of the paint here. My mentor has suggested extending my paint with Galkid Gel, which she uses to achieve lucid paint that covers and maintains texture but isn't chunky. This is the first time I've tried it, and it definitely allowed me to paint in a way that's more natural to my style. It does speed up drying time, so it also forced me to mix all the colors in an area and paint them quickly. It's a fun way to work and a step in the right direction I think. It's way to easy for me to over-work things to death. As for the image, it gave me an opportunity to push the vintage color palette and experiment with some busy-ness in the patterns. I also got some better flesh tones out of it. I'm pretty pleased- it's my favorite painting so far this semester. I have 2 more at about 50% done and another 2 to make by January-

Weisman Show

2008-11-24T13:14:00.001-08:00

So I answered a call for artists and was accepted- The show is a group show at the Frank Ghery designed Weisman Art Musuem at the University of Minnesota. The pieces accepted are from my second semester works- the ochre paintings of the "Buisness Types" and the "Sunbathers". This is a rather large group show of current artists and I don't expect much to come from it, but I am very excited to be able to say that my work hung in the Weisman. It should look good on my art resume.

New Image- "BOARDWALK"

2008-11-18T20:47:00.001-08:00

Here's a painting that I've been working on for 2 months and just finished. I'm not super happy with it, but at this point I'm moving on. The image is from an old family photo and I found it pretty funny. The people were obviously posed to show the ocean but its such an unflattering photo. They seem almost disinterested, and the scenery isn't much at all- just a bar of color across the back and wooden boards. This is a poor photo, but shows a little bit of the new color palette I've been using; almost no ochre and instead dustier colors inspired by old color film. I still have 5 paintings in various stages of completion- more to come.

New Image- "ORBIT"

2008-11-08T22:03:00.000-08:00

After ditching a few total failures I've reevaluated some things and set a course. I have about 6 paintings at 50% complete, so my goal is to finish 1 a week into December. This carnival image was one that I made a study painting of back in February. Based on feedback both at the residency and on my blog it was one of the more successfull images. What the study painting has is an energy and gestural quality that changes everything. It's something that gets lost when I paint bigger and with thicker paint. I tend to over work things until they become a huge mess. That's been on my brain in finishing this painting. It isn't quite there for me yet, but getting it to this point feels good. Comments are appreciated.......

November Paper/ The Disconnect of 50s America

2008-11-01T21:37:00.000-07:00

THE DISCONNECT OF 50s AMERICA

My aim as an artist through my recent work is to view American nostalgia through a 21st century lens and present my images in a way that provokes greater thought and challenges modern perception. For this reason, I am looking deeper into the cultural history of the American 50s in search of a greater understanding of the period. The 50s represent an unprecedented time in history were the idealization of the family and the pursuit of the American Dream were at odds with the reality of daily life. It was a decade of great disconnection, where positive perception of the good life existed in conjunction with the Cold War, McCarthyism, racism, and sexism. It was also a time of insecurity for an America in the midst of enormous changes. The goal of this writing is to examine the relationship between advertising and the ideal 50s in hopes of further defining my work and answering the question, why use 50s images?

Post War America was an era of unparalleled growth and consumption. Personality and the self became commodified products to be bought and sold during the 1950s. America immerged from WWII the richest nation on earth, with 24 Billion dollars worth of new factories and millions of workers to fill them. All at once, the majority of Americans had the money to buy whatever they wanted. All they had to do was switch from making tanks and airplanes to cars and refrigerators. In his memoir about growing up in the 50s, Bill Bryson recalls how his neighbors would sit around for hours discussing new appliances. “There was a wonderful simplicity of desire. It was the last time that people would be thrilled to own a toaster or a waffle iron” (Bryson 6). The rise of consumer capitalism gave birth to modern advertising, which looked for ways to separate the buyer from reality and make them believe there was more to a product.

The American dream is itself already a commercial aspiration. Americans are led to believe there is always more and always better and if they can afford it, and they deserve to have it. In the 50s advertising had a profound affect upon domestic life. The focus on the housewife in advertising wasn’t on the elderly housewife; it was on the young glamorous housewife and all the products that would bring about that kind of idealized world. Adds often featured happy well-dressed women cooking and cleaning. Many housewives at that time were young. Advertisers realized that these women were mainly at home and some not so happy about their lot in life, so by glamorizing products used in the home they were able to infuse mundane household tasks with purpose. The message was buy our product, have a great household, make the man in your life happy, and you will be a very proud and accomplished housewife. “It was all meant to convince women that the role of housewife was natural and fulfilling, and that to step beyond these normative roles was in some way abnormal, even deviant” (Abrams 128).

It’s no surprise, notes Bill Osgerby, that the central figure of Hollywood films in the 1950s was the white, middle-class breadwinner. In his article entitled “Muscular manhood and salacious sleaze: the singular world of the 50s macho pulps”, Osgerby explores the roles of men and women as defined by advertising and products, particularly men’s adventure magazines. “During wartime, entry into the labor force or living it alone as a wife or mother had been an empowering experience for many women. In peacetime, however, such independence was seen as a threat to the stability of the traditional sexual order, and government and industry united in a campaign to return women to the home and the secure confines of the nuclear family” (Abrams 127). The macho pulps constructed a hard-boiled and aggressively masculine universe where wholesome white American men bravely saved scantily clothed white American women, often from Nazis or wild animals.

Osgerby believes the macho pulps were about regaining a position of dominance for traditional American manhood, and were a reaction to a declining patriarchal structure. Conformity was also seen as a challenge to manhood. In his book “The Lonely Crowd”, David Reisman saw conformity as an “emasculation, post-war America seeing the rise of an ‘other-directed’ man who followed blindly the lead of those around him in a desperate search to belong” (Reisman 26). It was this fear of conformity that was seen as a threat to individualism. Indeed, though the 50s were a period of great prosperity there was a deep seeded feeling of insecurity on multiple fronts.

In his book “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit”, Sloan Wilson captured the mood of the generation. The main character, Tom Rath, is a typical ‘other-directed’ New York businessman with a home and young family in the suburbs. In a defining chapter in the book, Tom wrestles to make sense of the society he feels stuck in while suppressing the horrible memories he has of his experience in WWII.

“The trick is to learn to believe that it’s a disconnected world, Tom thought; a lunatic world, where what is true now was not true then; where Thou Shalt Not Kill and the fact that one has killed a great many men mean nothing, absolutely nothing, for now is the time to raise legitimate children, and make money, and dress properly, and be kind to one’s wife, and admire one’s boss, and learn not to worry, and think of oneself as what? That makes no difference, he thought- I’m just a man in a gray flannel suit. I must keep my suit neatly pressed like anyone else, for I am a very respectable young man” (Wilson 98).

Sloan Wilson’s novel was most useful in understanding the heart behind the 50s. There is no idealism to “Flannel Suit”. The characters fit into a world where pleasantness is the norm and wrestle with real life. It was refreshing for me to read a work that while fictional, sheds light on the real disconnect between advancing 50s culture and the day to day lives of people. Tom Rath struggles to appear as if everything in his life fits into the realm of happiness, but in reality, his life is messy just like everyone else.

Bill Bryson talks humorously about the 50s disconnect on the most basic of levels. As a child, he learned to read by reading the Dick and Jane books, which in simple words portray the absurdity of idealized America. In the Dick and Jane books, Father is always called father, never Dad or Daddy, and always wears a suit. Mother is always Mother. She is always on top of things, nicely groomed in a clean frilly apron. “The family has no last name. They live in a pretty house with a picket fence on a pleasant street, but they have no radio or TV and their bathroom has no toilet. The children- Dick, Jane and little Sally- have only the simplest and most timeless of toys. No one ever shouts or bleeds or weeps helplessly. No meals ever burn. No dust ever accumulates. The sun always shines. The dog never shits on the lawn. There are no atomic bombs. Everyone is at all times clean, healthy, strong, reliable, hardworking, American and white. Every Dick and Jane story provided some simple but important lesson- respect your parents, share your possessions, be polite, be honest, be helpful, and above all work hard” (Bryson 146).

In terms of my own personal work, understanding the disconnect of the 50s is enormously helpful. In my previous body of work, several of my sources were from posed photographs used in advertising, while others were candid shots of families. At the time, I almost saw them as one and the same in representing the time period. The posed photos, while not realistic, do speak to the nature of advertising and the idealized view of the 50s. I’ve since changed my photo reference to personal images that reflect a real snapshot of 50s time. I’ve also embraced those images that have a sense of ambiguity or vagueness about them, so that I am not making a personal statement or advocating a specific issue in comparing the past to the present. I am more interested in the open-ended functions of painting. If anything, understanding the disconnect present in every aspect of 50s life brings an entirely new element to depictions of housewives and breadwinners.

In my research, I’m reminded not just of how different things are today but also how in many ways they remain the same. It has been estimated that we are exposed on average to 3,000 advertisements every day. Perhaps we are more aware of the ads, but we still are drawn to those products we feel a personal connection to. Advertising has even turned presidential politics into a visual media, a commercial game of who comes across best and who identifies the most with people as a product. Even now we are living with the consequences of an American Dream where we can have all that we want because we deserve it, even if we can’t afford it. The disconnect is still there for many people in American society, and will remain for as long as people find their identity in products and in denying the reality of life. I hope in my paintings I can address this disconnect as it was in the past and still in some ways is today. I’d like to think that perhaps we are starting to wake up from that dream.

Obstacles

2008-10-15T17:08:00.000-07:00

So I experienced a little bit of a setback this week when the water attachment on the back of our dishwasher in the kitchen blew off. It created a guiser in our kitchen and took my wife completely by surprise. It took her a while to find the turn-off valve through all the water and flooded the kitchen. Incidentally, my basement studio is directly below, and all the water leaked down and ran along a heating vent to a low point above my desk. 35 gallons of water later, everything was soaked, including my recent paintings and a few books. The last few days I've had things drying in front of big fans and it seems like things are fine. Luckily, my work was on primed panels and was more or less dry when they got soaked. A few of my older paintings on masonite panel absorbed some water and bubbled up on the corners, but oh well. The biggest problem will be reading through all my wrinkled crit. theory 3 papers-

As for my work, I havn't posted in a while because I have about 6 paintings going at the same time now. I've decided to spend a lot more time building the paintings up through layers of glazing rather than working 1 from start to finish. I'll post some in progress pictures shortly. My ideas are the same, but my approach has changed a lot.

Mad Men

2008-10-03T11:38:00.000-07:00

After hearing from dozens of people that I should watch it, I have finally seen a few episodes of "Mad Men", which is the big TV show right now- it just won best series at the emmys. The show centers around the high profile world of advertising executives in 1960 New York. There's all sorts of great stuff about advertising, but the real story of the series is that point in history where all the optimism and idealization of the 50s started to change. The characters know how to put on a front, but they are all messed up and wrestling with who they really are versus what they are supposed to be. There are many moments of shocking political incorrectness, especially in regards to the role of women in society. Elements of the story can be a downer, but all in all I am really enjoying watching it. Most of all, it is beautifully produced and shot, and every character is smoking constantly so there are amazing photographic shots. It's all about nostalgia vs. real life, and its convincing.

Paper 2

2008-10-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

Here's my most recent paper....

Rockwell and Beckmann

“If you want to reproduce an object, two elements are required. First, the identification with the object must be perfect; and second- it should contain, in addition, something quite different. This second element is difficult to explain. Almost as difficult as to discover one’s self. In fact, it is just this element of your own self that we are all in search of." –Max Beckmann

When I think about the ideas of artists closest to my work, Norman Rockwell is an obvious choice. His beautifully rendered paintings of children and families speak to idealized American nostalgia like no other. As I am working with 50s imagery, I find his ideas unavoidable. I have recently looked much deeper into his work. I am amazed at his abilities as a painter and storyteller, but often feel put off by the accessibility to his images. Max Beckmann remains among my favorite artists for his raw approach to subject matter and paint. He is the anti-Rockwell: Rockwell allows the viewer to look from a safe distance, while Beckmann’s works ensnare the viewer in a world of chaos. In this writing I will attempt to compare and contrast the styles of these two vastly different influential artists, and dissect 2 paintings from each to get to the core of what their art means to me.

Max Beckmann’s art is undeniably powerful. I am most drawn to his early work made shortly after WWI, where he served a medical orderly and witnessed daily the worst of humanity. This experience forever changed the way he saw space in his paintings. Beckmann “had experienced his own weakness and the irrationality of life. He could not make sense of it, but he could use his art to live within its horrors and to find a way through.” (Beckett 34). His early work is chaotic and pulsing with dark energy. Objects seem dislocated and contorted, and the space appears buckled and illogical.

Beckmann “Descent from the Cross” 1917

Beckmann’s take on the traditional theme of Christ’s decent from the cross is a direct reference to the twisted bodies seen in late Gothic paintings and the carnage of WW1. I am most attracted to Beckmann’s use of line and space in his work. He outlines his figures with strong black line, which gives them an angular quality. He uses the lines to play with the space of the picture. There’s an absence of unifying depth in the background of the work, which leaves the figures as the only reference for space. Beckmann elongates hands and limbs, unnaturally contorts specific parts and dramatically foreshortens the dead Christ’s bloody feet.

His figures are simple and defined by line, but somehow he keeps them from becoming cartoons. There is a confrontational weight to the dead Christ and pained grief on the face of his mother Mary. Even though the painting is chaotic and strangely composed, Beckmann conveys violence and loss through the use of paint. There are portions of the picture where the paint has been hastily applied to fill in the negative areas, and others where Beckmann adds detail to faces and hands. Upon closer look, there are small strokes of bright yellow, blue and red against the black outline of Christ’s body. From a distance this gives the skin a sickly color of death while further accentuating the movement of the line. I am equally drawn to the ways negative shapes are affected by the positive shapes.

Beckmann’s “The Night” 1918-19

“The Night” is a chaotic and brutal painting, depicting the scene of an atrocity. A mother has been tied and raped, her husband strangled, and her daughter kidnapped. Once again, line defines every part of the painting and parts of the figures are foreshortened, but this time the figures are mashed very close together in a tight space where every limb, object and fold of cloth carries the eye across the piece to another point. There are no dead zones in the painting. Beckmann makes the viewer a willing participant in the violence rather than a distant viewer. Extra emphasis is again given to key areas, specifically the horrified face of the strangled man gasping for air and the goofy pipe- smoking man to the right, who seems unaffected by the pain he is inflicting by twisting his arm. Beckman even articulates the veins bulging out of the tortured mans legs. With all the movement in the piece, you cannot help but be drawn into the violence of the situation. I envy Beckmann for the power he brings to painting. His work does not hinge upon the realistic depiction of figures, but rather upon the motion he attains through lines and shapes in the work. I appreciate Beckmann for the way his painting style conveys his views. This has to be the highest goal for a painter- to discover that perfect method in paint of getting your idea across. I think Beckmann’s methods are among the most gripping.

The works of Norman Rockwell are everything that Max Beckmann is not. His paintings are safe, warm and cozy. They are meticulously rendered and tell a self-contained story. Both artists approach space in a unique way. Beckmann allows space to disintegrate to madness- a point where figures become contorted or weightless. Rockwell sometimes flattens the space around his figures, but he always uses the space as a means to tell a story. Most importantly to Rockwell, scenes are idealized and play upon the nostalgic tendencies people have for simpler times. Beckmann presents the truth of human evil, while Rockwell presents an idealized view of perfect human happiness. Rockwell stated, “Commonplaces never become tiresome. It is we who become tired when we cease to be curious and appreciative… We find that it is not a new scene which is needed, but a new viewpoint” (Hennessey 33). It’s the new viewpoint on a commonplace theme that draws me to Rockwell.

Rockwell’s “Going and Coming” 1947

In a career that spanned over 60 years, Norman Rockwell almost never painted a picture that wasn’t intended to be an ad or magazine cover. “That is the essential paradox of Rockwell’s life: he was America’s best-loved and most famous artist but, according to the gatekeepers of the institutional world of art, he wasn’t an artist at all” (Marling 7). Today his works are appreciated for the works of art that they are. What I appreciate most about Rockwell is the way he stages his compositions with expressive figures and unique viewpoints.

One of my favorite Rockwell images is “Going and Coming”. The painting is equally divided into two panoramic scenes depicting the same family of 7 people and their dog going on and coming back from vacation. Between the two scenes the work is all about observing the changing expressions on their faces, with happy excitement above contrasted by fatigue below. Only grandma in the back seat remains unchanged. Around the family are objects that give clues as to what the family did. What makes the work particularly engaging is the obsessive attention to detail. I am particularly drawn to the piece for the way Rockwell frames his figures within the geometric shapes of the car windows. His choice to crop in on the car is unconventional, which catches the viewer off guard at first before inviting them to piece together the story of the picture.

Rockwell’s “Christmas Homecoming” 1948

“Christmas Homecoming” is an example of Rockwell at his most nostalgic. In the center, a man with his back to us is welcomed by a large group of elated family members young and old. Only the presents under the man’s arm and a small glimpse of a Christmas tree in the upper right corner speak to the title. So strong is Rockwell’s ability to tell a story, that we instantly know this homecoming was a complete surprise to the family. The look on their faces is pure joy. Rockwell arranges the composition with the man dead center. Every other figure fits within this space, even if it means that their heads are cropped off at the top of the picture. It brings the viewer to the center of the happy reunion.

I really admire Rockwell for way he communicates through paint. However I find myself tired by the sentimentality of his work. There’s only so much Rockwell I can take. There are works of his that force you dig deeper for details in the story, and then there are straightforward images like the “Christmas Homecoming”. At times, I almost feel insulted by them.

For my work, Rockwell is an essential example of paintings ability to provoke nostalgia and longing. I like to think that I reject sentimentality in my work in favor of vagueness to make things more open ended than Rockwell. Still, I have much to learn about composing an image to tell a story, even if I wish to leave that story open-ended. Beckmann truly inspires me, not so much in the violence and darkness of his subject matter, but in the way that his style allows him to bypass realism in his figures in favor of paintings that have a life of their own. This strange coupling of two such different artists begs an interesting question. Could there ever be a Beckmann painted by Rockwell, or a Rockwell painted by Beckmann?

I don’t believe Max Beckmann ever had the capacity for nostalgia or sentimentality. Everything about his work is dark and brooding, so I cannot picture a Beckmann Rockwell. However, Norman Rockwell did work with disturbing and violent imagery towards the end of his career. Paintings such as “The Problem We All Live With” (1964) and “Southern Justice” (1965) depict the violence and madness of civil-rights era injustice in the classic Rockwell way. They too tell stories, but also confront the viewer with the madness of humanity. So perhaps, Rockwell made his Beckmann after all.

Works Cited

Beckett, Wendy. “Max Beckmann and the Self” Prestel, New York/Munich. 2003.

Hennessey, Maureen Hart and Anne Knutson. “Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People”. Harry N. Abrams, New York. 1999.

Hughes, Robert. “American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America”. Alfred A. Knopf. New York. 1999.

Lackner, Stephan. “Beckmann.” Harry N. Abrams, New York. 1999.

Marling, Karal Ann. “Rockwell: Americas Most Loved Painter”. Taschen, Köln, 2005.

Rainbird, Sean. “Max Beckmann/Museum of Modern Art”. MoMA, New York. 2003.

Rockwell, Norman. “My Adventures as an Illustrator”. Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1988.

Blockage.

2008-09-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

I've just about reached a breaking point. For weeks I've been making stuff that I hate without any sort of breakthrough. Last night I sat down with my notes from the last residencies and went back over everything. I know what the problem is: I'm making work that fits the suggestions of professors, advisors and mentors, and I'm not making what I want to make. What I really want to do is just paint, but time wise that is proving to be a problem because every bit of time needs to go to my idea. Tony suggested that I always ask the following question: What is the end result? What do I want to see when I'm done? I need to worry less about the process and start thinking thesis now, because if I keep putzing around hoping that an idea will come to me, things will only get worse. Maybe I need to starve myself for a week and go live in the woods until I see a vision.

New Paper: Influential Artists

2008-08-31T08:47:00.000-07:00

Christian Schad, N.C. Wyeth, Grant Wood, Edward Hopper

Here is my most recent paper on influential artists- more new images to be posted shortly...

Painting Reality: Influential Artists and Movements

In my first semester research, I focused on working artists using the human figure in order to understand current trends in painting. I learned a lot about modern approaches to the figure and representation, which challenged my thinking and my work. It also inspired me to revisit the work of influential past artists in search of helpful concepts and ideas. I’ve decided to set aside an entire paper for the work of Max Beckmann and Norman Rockwell, so I will not discuss them here. Instead, I’ll discuss a group of influential artists working in roughly the same 20 year period: the New Objectivity painters of Weimar Germany in the 1920s, and the work of N.C. Wyeth, Grant Wood and Edward Hopper. These artists all manage to capture a sense of nostalgia and longing in their work through their uniqueness of vision and use of stylization.

The painters of the New Objectivity movement never set out to explore nostalgia and longing. Instead, they were participants in an exciting decade where art and culture boomed in Germany. It all came to an abrupt end with the rise of Hitler and the Nazis, when nearly all of the artists fled the country or were killed. Today, their paintings remain as relics of an era distant from a post WWII world. New Objectivity was a return to representational art, and arose to counter the emotional color-driven works of expressionism. Most of these painters had fought in WWI, and carried deep emotional scars. They had seen hell with their own eyes in the trenches, and in a fragile Germany after the war had great distaste for false optimism.

Artists such as George Grosz, Otto Dix and Christian Schad set out to portray “real life” as literally as possible. For Grosz and Dix, their paintings became the grotesque caricatures of the high-class German elite. Schad explored themes of loneliness and uncertainty through his quiet portraits of German nightlife. “His sociality is that of private and semi-private relationships governed by sexuality, even if the public content sometimes appears to conceal this” (Michalski 46). One thing all of these painters have in common is a stylization that extends beyond reality and yet somehow captures more of it. I find this work fascinating. Though often brutal in content, these works manage to capture the human condition in a way that still speaks today. Knowing the outcome of Germany certainly changes the way these pieces are viewed. They become romanticized reminders of an era lost forever.

N.C. Wyeth was an artist who made his career portraying idealistic views of the past. Well known for his many paintings reproduced in classic children’s books, advertisements and government war posters, Wyeth was a giant in American illustration who knew how to tell a story better than anyone. He based all of his paintings in what he perceived as reality, tirelessly researching each image for historical accuracy and painting outside in nature to capture vibrant colors and atmospheric effects. He was a master at projecting himself into the scenes he was painting, giving them truthfulness and accuracy that few others would accomplish. “There is a romanticism and idealism to most of his works: the heroes are strong and virile, the flags wave majestically, victory is always at hand” (Smith 26).

Despite his enormous success, he was unhappy as an artist because people in the art establishment looked down on him as being too commercial. He once wrote, “There is a very depressing belief in artistic circles, particularly among the painters themselves, that illustration is not art but a craft, that it is not conceived from inspirational sources- The painters opinion of the illustrators profession as compared to his own, if often very near that of contempt” (Allen 179). Wyeth spent his entire career trying to gain artistic recognition as a painter, and didn’t receive a one-man show until 1939. He had been painting mass-produced illustrations loved by millions for almost 40 years. Today, there is a renewed interest in the illustrative paintings of N.C. Wyeth. When I saw a show of the paintings he created for the classic book series, I was amazed at the power of his figures and his use of color. They speak to an idealized/romanticized past filled with great adventure. It’s easy to be completely drawn in by them.

Another artist I have come to greatly admire is Grant Wood. He was a painter who had great understanding of subtle stylization and humor in his figures. He was also the driving figure in the American Regionalist movement, which began rather suddenly when Kansas City art dealer Maynard Walker coined the term and introduced Wood (along with Thomas Hart Benton and John Steuart Curry) to the art establishment in 1933. Said Walker, “Here is a real American art, an indigenous art expression, which really springs from American soil and seeks to interpret American life” (Jennings 26). At the time, there was a great desire in American art to break away from European traditions.

Said Wood: “Because of this new emphasis upon native materials, the artist no longer finds it necessary to migrate even to New York, or to seek any great metropolis. No longer is it necessary for him to suffer the confusing cosmopolitanism, the noise, the too intimate gregariousness of the large city” (Wood 131). It’s clear from Wood’s writings that he is objecting not only the physical act of traveling to Europe or New York, but more importantly the journey through popular artistic trends centered in those places. Instead, Wood believed that the artist should draw upon their home to find inspiration. It was this uncommon rural perspective, he believed, that was needed in places like New York.

These were big ideas in America during the Great Depression when Americans were nostalgic for a rural Eden were life was good and morals were strong. The only problem was that there was no real rural Eden. “It was the kind of image that one looks back on with the nostalgia and yearning that, in times of stress, became confused with a sense of history- rather as the wholesome, un-conflicted image of America generated by network TV in the 1950s became a “real” but lost America for right-wing fantasists like Newt Gengrich in the mid-1990s” (Hughes 439). Grant Wood’s work appeals to me for this reason. There really isn’t anything special about his subject matter, but his images of awkward and rather plain people and landscapes speak to a simpler time and a sense of longing for something now unreachable. This approach to art is counter-cultural in an art world always looking to a future and an art that is cutting edge.

It’s now known that Grant Wood was closeted homosexual. Knowing this ads a whole new element to works like “American Gothic”. In the strange posing and composition of the painting, was he trying to take a subtle jab at the people who didn’t understand him or was he praising idwestern virtues? Either way, this duality is what makes the works of Grant Wood intriguing to me. In using 50s imagery in my paintings, I’m attempting to create an art that does more than mock the subject or praise a virtue; one that suggests both but also completely relies on the sensibilities of the viewer.

Like Grant Wood, Edward Hopper became well known as a symbol of an original American art. Hopper had a long career stretching into the 1960s, and was openly resistant to the abstract trends of modernism. He later became something of an outsider to the art world as a has-been representational painter. His work has been very influential to me. Hopper uses light, shape and color in his work to bring ordinary objects and surroundings to life in a most unusual way. Not unlike the other artists I’ve discussed, there’s an illusiveness to Hopper’s work that makes it appealing. “Hopper offered a brand of realism not bound by reality. His work appears at once traditional and modern; his women both erotic and puritanical; and the places he depicted are familiar and foreign, comfortable and disquieting. While Hopper insisted that it was himself he was after in his painting, a part of all of us resides in these quiet spaces” (Barter 11).

Hopper paints each picture with a sense of detachment; he leaves the scenes open ended. Each composition possesses a “self-contained autonomous reality” (Kransfelder 44). The ability of painting to show reality was something that Hopper constantly wrestled with: “I was never able to paint what I set out to paint”, he once wrote. Instead, he presented what he saw in a completely original way. He altered his scenes by removing the unnecessary details and people, and simplified forms to shapes of color and light. It gives his work a stillness and serenity unlike any other. These moments of frozen time also make the strangeness of Hopper’s paintings acceptable. For example, his female figures are often awkward, but their placement in the picture turns the role of inadvertent voyeur onto the viewer. Through all of his work, there is a sense of timelessness and an appreciation for the simple beauty of surroundings.

What draws me to these artists is the way their images engage the viewer. New Objectivity paintings transport the viewer to a bygone era, while the works of Grant Wood and N.C. Wyeth speak of an idealized historical past. Edward Hopper managed to freeze time all together in his works. Ultimately, I feel that my work is about time as it relates to viewer perspective. Working with images from the 50s is a way for me to do this, but I’m aware that this idea is much more complex than images from one decade. I hope to progress to the point in my work were the time period is less noticeable, so the works become more about memory in general than a specific point in the past. The works and ideas of these artists have been invaluable and will continue to be the basis for my paintings.

what about diptychs?

2008-08-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

I won't lie- I can't remember the last time I've felt so blocked. Through my frustration I somehow managed to finish 2 paintings, but I'm having mixed feelings about them. I think they look okay but I had zero fun making them and I think I'm thinking too hard. I'm also trying to follow every suggestion from June which means these paintings are turning into something else entirely. Tonight I sat and stared at an empty

white panel for 2 hours before searching for more source material. I managed to find some obscure websites where people scan old photos. One of the photographers arranges his photos in diptychs like this one....

This really stands out to me, not only for the great lines between the 2 photos but for the fragmentation of time that it shows. It also somehow tells a story between the characters or speaks to 2 separate memories in one image. I'm going to make a few studies in the next few days and see if I can't combine an image this way.

Finally- some new images

2008-08-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

Here are 2 pieces I've been working on for a month now.... I've been making lots of studies as well. I'll include a picture of the studies here so that you can see my thought process a little better. It's hard to tell by the photos, but I've been using much more paint- these are quite thick and almost sloppy in areas. I'm still pushing the stylization of the figures, and to be honest, I'm not there yet. I've been as blocked as I've ever been and I'm hoping these are the start of something. I'm trying to stick with old family photos instead of those from advertisement. Notice too that with the advice of professors, I've banished ochre completely. I must say I do miss it, but its absence has forced me to make all of my colors dustier and think about colors in a very deliberate way. The palette is still progressing. I'm still playing with large shapes of flat color, only now the red and green are taking place of the ochre. I've got 2 new ones to start this weekend and many more studies to make.

"Marty" and "The Wild One"

2008-08-14T07:15:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching 2 iconic 50's films, both of which show a 1950s perspective in characterization that makes you ponder how much things have changed.

"Marty" won the Oscar for best picture in 1955 and was the most popular picture in America. It's a very simple love story about a lovable 34 year old loser finally finding love. It's filled with old-fashioned politeness, and you can't help but pull for Marty. It's great to watch the way the characters relate and socialize, so different than today. It's such a simple movie- but it works really well.

I also watched "The Wild One" with Marlon Brando from

1953. This movie was highly controversial at the time for depicting the antics of an outlaw biker gang. It was even banished in the UK. I found the movie hilarious. These bikers are supposed to be dangerous (in 1953 they were), yet they joke around and use phrases like daddy-o. They wear silly leather jackets and act juvenile. It's impossible to watch the film and not see the absurdity in it. Still, it shows what "outlaw" meant to the 1950s. The film was so popular that Brando started the fashion trend of black biker jackets and created an iconic image of the "rebel without a cause", even though the movie by that name was made 2 years later.

I have 2 paintings at about 80% complete- I will post those images soon (hopefully).

Plays adapted to Film

2008-08-07T06:20:00.000-07:00

I've been using these last few weeks until I resume teaching to work as much as possible. I've also resumed my viewing of films from the 50s. I recently watched 2 classic films adapted from popular stage plays: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor and Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder". The staging of the actors is very theatrical, and the scenes of dialogue are often long and uncut. Both stand out as quite counter-cultural in 2008. "Cat" takes place on a southern plantation with happy black servants, while "Dial M" portrays female characters as week and needy. Still- these were good films to watch....

Both movies have a great 50s look to them in the costuming and sets. "Dial M" is a far superior film with some great Hitchcockian suspense and some great camera angles. "Cat" is interesting as a 50s film because its all about a disfunctional family coming to grips with the their problems. New images to be posted soon...

Residency Summary

2008-08-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

Here's my residency summary paper from Aug. 1st. I should have new images to post soon.

My second residency at AIB was a very informative time. I received a lot of great feedback and criticism, and left with many possible ideas for artistic direction. Those ideas are scattered across the spectrum of possibility, so my current challenge lies in determining a route towards my thesis work a year from now. In general, most suggestions I received concerned one common question: what is my personal take on the subject matter and imagery? I need to push that issue further to take my work to the next level.

My first semester work derives from photographic reference from the 1950s. I presented 2 bodies of work. The first was a series of smaller study paintings on paper, and the second was a group of 5 larger oils on canvas. The consensus from critiques seemed to be that there was an energy and an awkwardness to the study paintings that advanced the image, whereas the oil paintings looked too refined and smoothed. John Kramer told me that the oils were dead to him, and suggested that I refer back to the studies as I make my next work. Instantly I knew he was correct. The oils are more polished, and they do loose something that the studies have.

Hannah Barrett commented that stylistically my work is stuck between being a social critique of the 50s and participating in it. How do I make a 50s images mine in 2008? What’s the distance from the period and does that visually translate to a change in surface or a more graphic image? These are good questions that I’ll be asking myself. I also need to cater more to my strengths to a painter. Tony Apesos correctly pointed out that I am better at painting objects and surroundings than faces. I realized that while I have embraced the role of a figure painter, I have much more skill and interest in painting areas of stuff. Some people asked if I intended to paint the faces awkwardly or if I just wasn’t there yet as a painter, and I think the answer is yes and yes. I had no intention of painting photorealistic faces and I am still learning a lot about painting flesh. This was an important realization for me. It opened my mind to many ideas aside from the figure.

I also realized that I need to advance the image much more. The works either need to be more realistic or more stylized, and now they are somewhere in between. I can safely say that I do not want to make them realistic, so I plan on experimenting with different levels of stylization. Hannah went so far as to suggest the work of John Baldisari, who removes faces all together with colored dots. While some level of simplification might come into play, I do not plan on going this far. Still, it’s helpful to understand that an image can speak through what is left out as much as what is depicted.

Hannah noted that my paintings are unpredictable because they don’t play to viewer expectation. She encouraged me to capitalize on that, or take that as a cue to radically crop, fragment areas and make the composition go off the page. I am very interested in this idea. I have worked hard to avoid obvious meaning and interpretation in my work, so this came as a great compliment. I am very interested in the idea of cropping and will certainly approach reference imagery differently. As a photographer rather than a painter, I found Oliver Wasow’s take on my work very insightful. He asked me how I engage nostalgia without going down the slippery slope of kitsch. To him, that’s an interesting question and he feels that so far I’m doing it successfully.

This is an essential question to my work. Because the imagery predates my life and thus can never be my personal experience, I am re-representing a corporate American nostalgia. It’s a subject matter that can turn kitsch very easily. Oliver noted that I could throw the 1940s, 60s and 70s at this idea because it’s about period as defined by photography and media. What I’m saying through a family portrait is that family is family, not a specific family. That means the works are generic, and I find great interest in the idea that a work can speak to a wide range of viewer sensibility.

Another option is to turn autobiographical in my work. John Kramer called me on my use of the imagery, and tried to get at the heart of my interest in it. Because I absolutely see a connection with the 50s through my family and the continued questioning of domestic roles, these images do have the potential to be much more personal through the use of family photographs. Currently I’m wresting with this idea. I am open to the use of any image that will make an interesting painting, and until now have not looked to create meaning through the subject matter. I would rather, as Oliver noted, explore American nostalgia from a distance and let the viewer derive meaning.

I received a lot of feedback and suggestion concerning the technical aspects to my work. My work from semester 1 was in large part experimental. I played around with areas of flat color vs. rendered objects in my compositions, and I made the backgrounds simple and complex across the work to see how it would change the figure. The only variable that stayed the same was my palette, which contains a lot of yellow ochre. The palette came out of my desire to find a group of colors resembling faded color film. Hannah and Tony found the ochre overwhelming and encouraged me to change the palette. Both John and Oliver said that they didn’t pick up on the colors of faded film at all, but Oliver added that the brightness of the palette made it something else, which he found interesting. This semester I will look to scale back the brightness of my work through including more subtle browns, but I won’t all together banish the ochre. I consider my palette as a work in progress.

As for the surface of my paintings, comments across the critiques were more or less the same. I need to use a lot more paint and take more time preparing the surface with layers of gesso. I also need to paint on portrait linen or birch plywood. I’m considering now how to make the best use of my time this semester. I plan on using panel, but will probably make many more compositional and color studies on paper for each image. Some professors suggested working on a much larger scale, even life size. Having done large murals, I am intrigued with the idea. I think that my paintings would be much more effective on a large scale, but for logistical reasons I am pushing that idea to the back burner for now. Perhaps I’ll concentrate on making a large work for my thesis. Right now I still have too many other questions to resolve in my work.

My biggest challenge for future work will be finding a level of stylization to the figures and composing my images with detail and flatness. These were areas of extensive discussion in critiques, and while the comments I received contradicted each other, I have a better idea now of where I need to go with things. In trying to make my work more painterly, I’ve discovered a fondness for negative shape and areas of flat color. In my canvases from semester 1, these negative shapes became areas of ochre. Hannah noted those areas of great detail and areas of flatness. She suggested that I go either way with it or do both and push the contrast much further. This is what I want to do, and I think it will be an ongoing issue in my work for some time.

As for the level of stylization, I have many ideas. There are many artists that work with stylized figure, and I will be looking closer at their methods. I was often asked in crits about the artists I wish to emulate. I’ve long been fascinated with the work of the German New Objectivity painters and specifically the work of Max Beckmann. The professors agreed that these would be great artists to look at, and suggested others. Among them, a closer look at the work of Norman Rockwell was a common suggestion. Rockwell’s work encapsulates American nostalgia better than anyone. He has often been dismissed as being an illustrator over a fine artist, but his use of storytelling and figure stylization is remarkable. I certainly don’t wish to create Rockwells, but I will absolutely look closer at his work this semester. Tony suggested that I compare and contrast the form and content of Rockwell and Beckmann. To me, this sounds like a fascinating paper topic.

The broad range of comments I received from my second residency called into question my intentions for everything in my work. I left the residency with a lot more questions than answers, and many possible and often conflicting directions to take my idea. Having sorted through that, I have a renewed understanding that everything I do has to be intentional and thought out. It’s easy for me to feel stressed by the huge task of creating this next work. Tony asked me, “What do you want to see? If you went into a gallery and wanted to see something that speaks to your vision, what would it be?” This encourages me to think less about the process and more about the end, and makes me want to get back to work. This semester will be about progressing the idea of American nostalgia while trying to arrive at a look of stylization that compliments the idea.

Some Serious Blockage/New Mentor

2008-07-23T17:58:00.000-07:00

I've been working hard to pull together all my thoughts from this last residency for the last few weeks, all in hope of arriving at some point of departure for the next semester. I left Boston with many good ideas, but have yet to decide a course of action. It's been very frustrating to feel that I need to be moving ahead with something now and I don't know what that is. To stay creative I've been filling up a sketchbook with little watercolor/ink drawings, studies for bigger paintings. I feel light years away from where I should be and that's pretty scary. I can't remember feeling so blocked before...

On the positive side, I have decided on a mentor and things should work out great. Patricia Canney is a Twin Cities oil painter whose work I've seen around town at galleries and the Minneapolis Art-A-Whirl. In her recent work, she has concentrated a lot on groupings of objects with interesting shape and light. She also manages to harness a feel of past time, which of course is something I'm more than a little interested in. I'm questioning my route as a figure painter and I think working with her will be very beneficial. We'll hopefully have our first meeting soon. Here's a few of her images:

BOSTON residency 2

2008-07-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

Residency 2 is in the books and it was a great time. As expected, It was 10 days of art overload filled with critiques and conversations. I now have at least 12 possible artistic directions, so my main task in the next few weeks is to collect and sort through all of those ideas and choose a course of action. My first paper of the next semester is a semester summary due in a few weeks, so I'll wait till then to post those ideas. I can say with confidence now that I will still be working in the same vein, but I'll be pushing the idea and the stylization quite a bit further to make it more unique to Nate Stromberg style, whatever that may turn out to be... thats a little scary to think about now. In only 6 months I'll be back in Boston again with a whole new set of work. I've still got a long way to go. I didn't have a lot of time to enjoy Boston, but I did get a morning to walk the city. It's a great place and this time it did feel like returning home a little bit. AIB is right by Fenway Park, so I got to experience the crazy Red Sox fans. One of these times I'd like to go to a game... I also missed the Celtics victory parade by a day, oh well. It's good to be home and I have lots to do.... As usual I'll post my thoughts and pictures of my work here.

Semester wrap up

2008-06-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

So it's been a little while since my last post-

The end of the teaching year was very stressful and time was difficult to find. I have still been working, but mainly on some additional study paintings on paper. It's been strange to step away from polished pieces on canvas, but here's a few reasons why:

1. I still have many more ideas than time will allow. I went to my wife's grandparents place in South Dakota for Memorial Day weekend and found some incredible photo albums from the 50's. The photos are exactly what I'm looking for. I have even more material to work from now...

2. I'm really still trying to learn about compositional possibilities, so there's still experimentation going on.

and 3. I have had major problems with drying time and I'm starting to worry about transporting them. It's been a cold wet spring and a cool summer so far (that Al Gore is full of it man) and my canvases won't dry! Pieces I made in March were still tacky last week. I took them outside to sun-dry and the wind blew all sorts of dirt, dandelion seeds, dust and little bugs into them... I spent an afternoon meticulously cleaning them off. Since then I've been running fans and lights 24 hours a day to get them dry and it seems to be working. The paper studies are made with thicker paint and they seem to dry faster.

I'm also working on all of the readings for this upcoming residency. Most are quite difficult. It's a lot of artsy philosophy that I can't get my head around. I'm going to push hard to get through it this next week and hopefully absorb the main points.

I'll post my semester summary here for your reading pleasure-

_______________________________________________

Semester Summary

When I began my first residency, I knew that I wanted to use vintage imagery from the 50s. I was also aware that those images contained a power to speak in a variety of ways to different people. My biggest challenge in starting a new body of work was to clarify that idea, both with the subject matter and the method of painting. I’ve learned important lessons, and I’m still very much trying to figure things out.

When I began, I had a large pile of reference imagery. I had too many painting ideas, and I had to consider a practical way of working that would allow me to discover new ways of realizing them without taking too much time. I knew at the outset that working exclusively with oil on canvas would be time consuming and keep me from experimenting. I decided to start with smaller study paintings on paper. These were intended to be quick and somewhat spontaneous. I felt confident in my color palette from previous work, so I used the studies mainly as a way to explore composition and shape.

I started each with the random application of acrylic yellow ochre. I worked quick and scraped the surface with a putty knife, leaving subtle streaks. This idea came from analysis of discolored old photos, which often are due to poor film. After sketching the main shapes, I used a dark neutralized violet for areas of darkest contrast. I also used light washes of rusty red to balance the color scheme. From there, I used undiluted oils to fill out the picture. I would consider the result to be quick and sketchy. Usually my work would be much more refined, and these studies helped me to work through compositional challenges.

Two of the studies revealed something unexpected. The first is called “Dishwasher”, and was an early attempt to harness the feeling of 50s imagery. I’m very proud of the piece, and went to great lengths adding areas of detail, down to individual floor tiles. My mentor suggested that it was simply too busy, that I didn’t need to add so much detail to imply that that detail was there. Since then I have been conscious of my tendency to work things to death, and I’ve tried hard to hold back on the unimportant aspects of the picture. The second image to surprise me is called “Orbit”. It was an attempt to bypass the figure and focus on shape as the vehicle for nostalgia. The image shows a corny 50’s carnival ride with large areas of color. At the time, it was pure experimentation. Since then, I’ve learned that the figure doesn’t have to be center. Many fellow students have said it is their favorite of my images. Before making it, I was focused solely on the figure, and now I look closer at the entire image.

In April I began a series of 24” x 20” oil paintings. About the time I started working on canvas, my mentor suggested I try my hand with a wet on wet technique. I tried it and it was a real disaster. It proved to be very frustrating and a total failure. However, failing at wet on wet led me to experiment with more viscosity to my paint. In the past, I worked primarily with thick undiluted paint, which meant smaller brushstrokes and a greater attention to minute detail. Adding more oil to loosen the paint has allowed me to work quick and with bigger brushes while concentrating on shape and composition. I’ve been very deliberate in treating the negative shapes around figures with ochre and tan.

A common suggestion from the first residency concerned the infusion of greater meaning into the paintings. I received a lot of feedback about using allegory to tell more of a story or make a statement through the work. I’ve long been resistant to this, because I can sense that the work could easily become trite. I enjoy the distance between the viewer and my subject matter, and I like the way vintage images can seem unresolved or vague. However, I have looked for subtle ways to say more, and my painting “the New Pastime” is the farthest I pushed the idea. In the picture, a family sits staring at the television, while above the TV a clichéd painting of a praying man on the wall is all but ignored. The painting, TV and family create a triangle of movement. As a 50’s image, the family has shifted their collective gaze from each other and their faith to unnatural green glow of the TV, which is not so much a statement about TV being evil as it is a statement about family life today. Kids are raised in front of the TV and people plan their lives around their shows. It’s changed everything. I’m pleased with the way the image turned out and am anxious to see if people can pick up on the meaning at the residency. I would be thrilled if people don’t notice it.

Another major development has been the use of violet lines to define the picture. The bright line can make the picture very vibrant, and it also can flatten the image and make it feel a little like a coloring book. Part of me likes the artificial flatness and plasticy feel of the finished works with the violet line, but I anticipate that this is an aspect to my work I will be wrestling with for a while. I do not want to achieve realism, and at the same time I do not want to draw cartoons. Somewhere in between lies the level of stylization I am after. For now, I am embracing the flatness and considering ways to minimize it in the future with deeper shadows and brighter areas of light.

My mentor Michael Carson has been a great help to me. He is very good at implying information with simple brushstrokes instead of adding unnecessary detail. His figures are fleshy and elegant and exist in another time. He had some great suggestions about minimizing detail and picking reference imagery (He turned me onto the Library of Congress photography source, which is vast and free). He has shown great interest in my current work on canvas, and I feel like one semester is not enough time to learn what I can from him.

Viewing the work of other artists this semester has been helpful in understanding my place. Edward Hopper has been a huge influence for his use of light and composition. His palette is bright and his figures often awkward, but they occupy a space where light is coming from somewhere else and the context of the image is unknown. In this way, he turns buildings, landscapes, and people into fascinating shapes. I went to Chicago to see his show at the Art Institute. His images explode when first seen walking into a room, but upon closer look appear quick and sometimes messy in the application of paint. This was surprising and a reminder that I need to be conscious of how my works read at a distance as well as up close.

In researching working artists I discovered painters who make the idea of reproducing source imagery their idea and their art. This was something I hadn’t considered. Of these artists, Micheal Borremans was most impressive to me, his paintings haunting and beautiful. He manages to reproduce an image with alterations that change the way the viewer perceives. Since viewing his work I have looked for subtle ways to alter my reference imagery.

Reading Mary Caputi’s “A Kinder, Gentler America: Melancholia and the Mythical 50s” opened my eyes to all that 50s imagery can mean and say. I realized that my work cannot help but be political, no matter how much I resist it. I also learned that in dealing with nostalgic imagery, what is left out of the picture can say just as much as what is included. To get a real flavor for the period and further understand the look, I used the semester to view 14 classic films from the 50s. It was a real treat to watch these films and analyze them for their artistic content, camera placement and directorial brilliance.

Films like “The Searchers” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” perfectly captured the American identity of the time, one of subtle paranoia that outside forces might destroy all that is good in life. The best of these movies, “Rear Window”, “Ace in the Hole” and “A Face in the Crowd” used the artistry of film to speak on issues way ahead of their time. These directors understood the ways television and consumerism where changing American culture, and it’s impossible to watch the films and deny their prophetic nature. I hope to watch many more period films in the coming semester.

Maintaining a working blog and a studio schedule has been very helpful. I have regularly posted images and thoughts on the web and the feedback of other graduate students has been great. Working throughout the week and often late into the night has been a challenge with all of my other responsibilities, but it has changed the way I view my work. I am constantly thinking about my work and what I want to do next, and this has been huge. The pressure of getting this work done and writing about it has ultimately been great. I am working and developing my ideas and have learned so much. I cannot wait to be bombarded with ideas and feedback once again at the next residency.

New Painting: "Toaster"

2008-05-22T20:09:00.000-07:00

Here's my newest painting. I've been playing around a lot with the compositions of these canvases, and until this one, trying to simplify. Specifically, I've been working the ochre and brown shapes around the figures to enhance the composition. My mentor is thrilled with those paintings that are most simple and contain the most implied information, and I agree. Still, I wanted to see how far I could push the shape and movement of the piece. This is sort of what I'm thinking here. I saw the vertical and horizontal lines of the blinds and drapes contrasting and framing the rounded shapes of the people and dishes. Is it too busy? Probably, but I think I have a better understanding of where I can take shapes in my pictures.

Art-a-Whirl / Rauschenberg

2008-05-21T08:39:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the Northeast Minneapolis Art-a-Whirl, where artists open thier studios to would-be art buyers. It's a pretty big event. I used the opportunity to check out a few possible mentors and get some ideas. I found 2 artists that may be possibilites, and had the chance to talk to the artists. There is a huge amount of crap art out there, and its always uncomfortable to walk into an artists studio with the artist sitting there waiting to see what you think. I got a few leads and feel much better about the whole mentor process going into residency #2.

On another note, I just heard that Robert Rauschenberg died last week. Rauschenberg made art out of everything and harnessed materials into pieces that were thought provoking, visually compelling, and completely original. I've always loved his work. It's a read snub at the notion of fine art that I find humorous and beautiful. In his later life he transformed the entire notion of printmaking as well. Art will never be the same after Rauschenberg.

"Touch of Evil"

2008-05-13T07:36:00.000-07:00

If there's a common trend to the 50s films I've been watching its long uncut scenes of dialogue. The actors do more because they have to. Quick editing doesn't dominate the way it often does today. "Touch of Evil" absolutely floored me in it's complexity. Long seen as the last classic film nior, Orson Welles got so creative and artsy with his shots (and took so much studio time and money) that the studio booted him after the shoot and altered his vision. He left for Europe and his career as a director was never the same. 10 years ago the studio re-edited the film in an attempt to recreate his vision. The movie starts with a 3 minute long tracking shot that moves from a close-up of a mans hands down an ally, backwards and up over the roof of a building and down the street past cars and pedestrians. I have no idea how he did it. Other scenes contain back and forth editing past characters in conversation, each shot composed to the maximum power of photography. It's an unbelievable film. Oh, and the story is pretty good too, with Charlton Heston in dark makeup as a Mexican cop and a very porky Welles as crooked American police chief. The story is secondary to the look and composition of the film.

New Painting- "The New Pastime"

2008-05-11T21:08:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is: my first deliberate attempt at visual storytelling. Till now, I've left the images open ended with characters looking off into to space beyond the viewer, which allows for an open interpretation. This one has all the information self contained. I think the line with metaphor is a thin one- If I push it too far it could get stupid pretty quick. There's more to read into this image, but at the same time it might go unnoticed, which I think is great. I had a lot of fun composing this picture. The way the figures and furniture are situated created interesting shapes and movement through the piece. It was also a challenge to play with 3 separate light sources and different colors. It's not my favorite, but I'm pleased and it should lead to some interesting feedback. I'm interested to know what you think about it so leave me a comment if you have the time....

I'm moving very quickly to my next canvas painting as I've realized drying time is becoming an issue. I leave on June 19 for Boston, and my paintings from a month ago are still a little wet. I've got a lot of ideas so we'll see where I end up. More to come-

"Ace in the Hole"

2008-05-08T06:55:00.000-07:00

Last night I watched Billy Wilder's "Ace in the Hole" aka "Big Carnival" from 1951, and was amazed at how the film held up half a century later. The film was a critical and commercial bomb at the time, and for the last 50 years it has been a very hard to find cult classic on many top 100 all-time lists. Watch the film and you can understand completely why the film failed to connect. "Ace in the Hole" is a scathing indictment on the negetive powers of big media. It's no surprise that the critics felt insulted and shunned the film.

The story follows an immoral newspaper reporter named Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), who works for a small paper in New Mexico. In the middle of nowhere he stops for gas and learns of a local man recently trapped in an old mine cave in. He sets morality aside and jumps on the opportunity to exploit the situation for a major news story. Within 2 days, the entire country is following the story of the trapped man and the tiny town becomes a media circus, with thousands of reporters and people wanting to whitness the rescue first hand. Even though it's a terrible tradgedy, people in the won are reaping the benefits of all the people. A carnival even comes to town to take advantage of the people. Douglas's character controls the whole thing, and is willing to draw the situation out as long as possible by taking a round about way to rescue the man. When the trapped man dies, the whole thing crumbles. It's a prophetic tale about the power the media has to create the news, all to make a buck.

At one point Tatum states to his cameraman, "Who cares about 10,000 dead in China? People read that and pass right over.... If you want a big story, give the people an individual in crisis and tell them everything you can about the situation, then they're hooked and will buy every paper they can get thier hands on." With 100,000 killed this last week in Burma and Britney Spears constantly in the headlines, its hard not to get the point of the film. "Ace in the Hole" belongs next to "A Face in the Crowd" as 50s films with a prophetic understanding of future troubles. At the time with the rapid rise of TV and mass media, people were only beginning to understand the negetive consequences. Today, we are manipulated by the news all the time...

This is a film everyone should see. It's nearly perfect (aside from Kirk Douglas' enormous chin dimple, which dominates the movie as much as his character).

Another new image should be posted within a few days....

New Painting- "Sunbathers"

2008-04-30T22:18:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest painting. I've been experimenting a bit with flattening the backgrounds instead of filling them with detail. I have a real tendency to overwork things, so it's been fun. I'm not totally sure about the finished look yet... For this image, I wanted to bring the ochre fro

m the bottom of the picture instead of the top, and this image looking down at the sand workedperfectly. It also forced me to work on much larger figures than previously. I took a few nights off to work on my May paper at the halfway point of the piece. Since it's been a cool spring, the cold basement were I work really accelerated (or froze) the drying of my paint, so I had to rework almost the entire picture. I ended up spending

much more time that I should have on it, and I also found myself blending a lot more. Up close, it's much more meticulous. Somehow I need to find the balance between efficient working and interesting brushstroke. Comments appreciated-

The Look and Meaning of 50s America / May 2008 paper

2008-04-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

Here's the better part of my most recent paper, entitled "The Look and Meaning of 50s America".

My goal as an artist through my recent work is to view American nostalgia through a 21^st century lens and present my images in a way that provoke greater thought and challenge modern perception. In my opinion, images from the 1950s are unique in their ability to elicit a wide range of viewer response. Early on in my exploration of these images I was more concerned with finding a neutral image to paint from and less concerned with the meaning of that image. I’ve since come to understand how deep these images go. They represent an unprecedented place in history that shaped the American identity into what it is today. Through an exploration of 1950s images and films, I am gaining a greater understanding of the artistic possibilities. The goal of this writing is to examine these sources in hopes of further defining my work and answering the question, why use 50s images?

Post-War America in the 1950s was a time of unprecedented economic prosperity. Millions of young families had children and purchased land to build houses, effectively creating suburbia. The men went to work while the women stayed home to raise the children. America became the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen, and people had reason to be optimistic about life. Few visual images capture this sense better than the paintings of Norman Rockwell, which record happy families and safe neighborhoods, and the idealized homespun quality of simple American virtues. “The minutest detail of Rockwell’s charmed vision reaffirms America’s greater purpose. Rockwell himself stated that ‘even if it wasn’t an ideal world, it should be’” (Caputi 6).

In reality, the decade had an equally ugly side. In these early years before the civil rights movement, white America generally pushed aside the growing issues of racism, while black Americans struggled to find equal opportunities as second class citizens. Deep beneath the happy exterior there was a growing paranoia that shaped the decade. America’s fear of communism and an escalating cold war with the Soviet Union led to US involvement in the Korean War, a brutal conflict that resulted in 2 million total deaths, 37,000 of them American. At home, fear of communist influence spread like wildfire. Senator Joseph McCarthy led an all out attack on communism, blacklisting prominent American citizens and further spreading the message that communism was out to destroy all that Americans held near and dear.

This paranoia is reflected in the themes of 50s films. “It has been estimated that no fewer than five hundred science fiction movies were made between 1948 and 1962, many of which fall into the category of “alien invasion film” (Caputi 15). The idea that sinister outside forces were out to infuse and destroy goes much deeper than science fiction. In the classic 1956 sci-fi horror film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”, alien life forms secretly invade a small town. Growing in mysterious pods, they steal the bodily forms of good-natured Americans, and render them emotionless. The film has been read as both an allegory for the perceived loss of personal autonomy in the Soviet Union and as an indictment of McCarthyist paranoia about communism during the early stages of the Cold War.

While it’s true that the 50s were by no means a time of national perfection, I do not desire to necessarily address the true 50s in my work. In 2008 a viewer can understand the irony and humor in an image of a seemingly perfect nuclear family, and wouldn’t need a picture addressing racism, the Korean War or the Rosenberg executions to understand the true 50s. Because I see humor as an essential element to working with these images, I try to avoid overt exploration of social and political issues. This is not to say that the paintings do not speak in these ways. They certainly can, but how they are read depends on the viewer.

Even still, images from the 50s cannot help but be political. In her book “A Kinder, Gentler America” Mary Caputi explores the myth of the 1950s and examines the way nostalgia has infused and transformed partisan politics. She argues that the political right advocates for a return to the 50s as a time of wholesome American family values, while the left sees the decade as a time of cultural censorship and ignorance of social justice. It would be hard to argue against her assessment based on historical fact. I think it would be easy to draw comparisons and make strong political statements with images from the 50s, which is the very reason I try hard to avoid it. I personally find those avenues to be dead ends, even if I strongly agree with the political position.

I’ve come to discover another fine line between irony and kitsch within the subject matter. There are aspects to the 1950s that I abhor. When most people think of the 50s they immediately center on the stereotypical: poodle skirts, saddle shoes, greasers, soda fountains and young Elvis. All these things are the 50s for sure, but I see them as clichéd 50s nostalgia in light of shows like “Happy Days” and movies like “Grease” and “American Grafitti”. Those images speak immediately to a greater 50s collective stereotype, and have a hard time being interpreted in any other way. To me they are as empty and undesirable as the doo-wop music of the day.

In more candid images of families and people interacting, I am able to explore the issues I am really interested in and have only recently been able to articulate. The first concerns mass consumerism, which began in the 1950s and permeates every aspect of life today. I have yet to explore this strongly in my work, but I see great potential for it. In a pivotal scene from his 1957 film “A Face in the Crowd”, director Elia Kazan points to the con artistry of mass media to sell products. In a time of unprecedented wealth and success for the white middle class, media and advertising changed everything.

“Through television, Americans now led a mediated life, interrupted by the gentle (or not so gentle) urgings of advertisers, helping them see their lives in special ways, requiring special needs” (Jennings 334). Today our world remains dominated by advertisement and product, and we continue to spend our money on stuff to bring us happiness. I am very concerned with the extent that American’s find their identity in the products they buy, and there is ripe potential in the 50s images to explore these issues.

“We are now confronted with the problem of permitting the average American to feel moral even when he is flirting, even when he is spending, even when he is not saving, even when he is taking two vacations a year and buying a second or third car. One of the basic problems of this prosperity, then, is to give people the sanction and justification to enjoy it and to demonstrate that the hedonistic approach to his life is a moral, not an immoral one. This permission given to the consumer to enjoy his life freely, the demonstration that he is right in surrounding himself with products that enrich his life and give him pleasure must be one of the central themes of every advertising display and sales promotion plan.” –Dr. Ernest Dichter, Motivations, April 1956. (Ewing 36).

The key issues I’ve explored thus far concern gender and domestic roles within the home, an area of 50s life that has changed dramatically. I’ve come to understand through dialogue concerning my subject matter with friends, family and especially my wife, that my interest in 50s imagery is much more personal than I originally thought. I have been married for almost 8 years, and with young children now occupying our house I’m learning as I go what it takes to be a parent. The process had caused me to often consider my own upbringing.

Author Mary Caputi sees the mythical 50s as a veneer for a more ambiguous reality. “Is it possible that the era of the 1950s itself utilized visual culture in order to project the image of wholeness? Was the era so contented, so happily self-contained to those living in it, or do we tend to misread what is simply the look of completion?” (Caputi 113). This idea of false perfection vs. the reality of day-to-day life as a dad and husband lies at the center of my interest in 50s imagery. For me these images are somehow part of my identity as a privileged white American, whether I like it or not. I do not wish to go back to those times in the least. Rather, I see them as a humorous reminder of how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go.

GIANT

2008-04-25T21:57:00.000-07:00

Tonight I watched the epic Texas film "Giant". This film has the look and feel of a larger than life old style epic with hundreds of extras (both people and livestock), big name stars, grand locations and a running time of almost 3 hours. This was the first movie from my 50s film list I had a tough time getting through. It is very slow with many long uncut scenes of dialogue. The story also takes place of 35 years, so the actors age and there are lots of establishing scenes that could have been cut but weren't. For 95% of it the film feels like an epic romance about Texas, but in the end it builds to a anticlimactic ending about racism against mexicans in Texas. It's weird. I'm glad I watched it, because it is a much beloved film from the time, but like "The 10 Commandments" and other historical/biblical epics from the 50s, it just keeps going and going. The premise of the film could be a great remake today with some scene restructuring and drastic editing. The slow pace was all I could think about as I watched it. I can't say I was crazy about "Giant", but it absolutely spoke to a 50s mentality so it was worth it.

Lonesome Rhodes

2008-04-21T10:08:00.000-07:00

Of all the 50s films I've watched so far, 2 of the best have been from director Elia Kazan. The first was "On The Waterfront", which is among the best movies I've ever seen. "A Face in the Crowd" (1957) was Kazan's next film. It was widely ignored when it was first released, but has since risen from obscurity to be considered one of the most underrated films of all time. It stars Andy Griffith as a loud laughing alcoholic musician/hobo named Lonesome Rhodes who becomes a famous TV personality after being discovered on a traveling radio show. He possesses an infectious personality that people are drawn to, and he soon becomes a egotistical monster at the expence of his rapid fame, turning on everyone who made him a star. It's very strange to see Andy of Maybery in a serious self-distructive role, be his personality fits. At the time Griffith was a comedian with little acting experience. Oddly, his lack of acting prowess adds to the film because his character is a pretender, a man who is constantly putting on a front and playing the crowd.

In the special features of the DVD, there's a great extra about "A Face in the Crowd" explaining the deeper meaning. Elia Kazan was an early member of the communist party in the 30's (as were many in Hollywood who saw communism as an answer to social justice), and during McCarthyism he became a key figure in the infamous trails. He ratted on other Hollywood communists because by the 50s he had come to believe that communism was evil, and the next day he took out a full page ad in the New York Times encouraging others to come forward and defending his actions. This backfired in a huge way, and overnight he went from being the most respected director of his day to public enemy number 1. His career was never the same. The success of this movie no doubt suffered huge Kazan's reputation at the time. What makes the movie great is the core prophetic message of the dangers in mass media. Kazan is absolutly taking shots at Joseph McCarthy and the emergence of the modern political system through scenes with Lonesome Rhodes and prominant politician.

The scenes depict the characters working out a strategy that includes appearing on TV holding a dog, acting laid-back and approachable, and publicly using the nickname Curly to appear normal to the masses. Kazan is saying that in the TV age, getting elected is all about looking good on TV, gaining mass appeal, and associating ones self with popular figures. Does this sound firmiliar in 2008? If it doesn't, perhaps closer attention needs to paid to the election. This strategy of TV appeal is core to modern electioneering. These were issues that were new to people in the 1950s with the boom of mass media and consumerism. Kazan's method of working with emotions in his actors plays perfectly to his point, and makes this film way ahead of it's time. Now that I've told the entire plot and meaning, I suppose I've given a little bit away- oh well, go watch it anyway. It's great, and it looks fantastic shot in glorious black and white.

New Painting- "Businessmen"

2008-04-16T06:16:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest painting that I've been working on this last week. I was drawn to this photograph for several reasons. First I thought it was funny how these businessmen are all standing and taking notice of something we can't see through huge awkward dark-rimmed glasses. Second, I was drawn to the complex shapes created by the fabic of the suits. It turned out to be a lot more difficult than I thought, and I ended up treating it more as a practice painting for faces. There's a good chance I'll go back in and alter a few things....

"That'll Be the Day..."

2008-04-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on my next canvas and things are progressing. I also watched "The Searchers" (1956) last night. No viewing of 50s films would be complete without a western. The genre was huge at the time and few stars were as big as John Wayne. "The Searchers" ranks in the top 15 on most all-time greatest film lists. It's full of typical 1950's western stuff, including brightly colored costumes and lots of Indian war-wooping. The portrail of the Indians is very stereotypical. Still, as a period film it reflects the 50s understanding of the historical epic. The locals are impressive, even if the opening title says "Texas- 1868" and then immediatly shows the bright orange rock formations of Monument Valley Utah. As Westerns go, it does stand out because it departs from the formula a bit. Instead of the lone hero riding in to save the day and riding off into the sunset, we have John Waynes character, who is a bitter old racist bent on revenge. He's the anti-hero we can't quite figure out. Overall, the film is a good one, though still full of the mythical west.

Yet Another Insightful Posting

2008-04-12T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'm hard at work on my second canvas now. I told myself after painting the desert lady that I should try to avoid complexity. After hours of looking for just the right image, I settled on a picture of a group of businessmen. It's a great photo, but very complex now that I'm into it. It's coming nicely but taking a lot of time. I should have it posted sometime next week. I also watched "North By Northwest" today, the last Hitchcock thriller on my 50s list for this semester. It's been great to have an excuse for watching old films I never had seen. Hitchcock's movies are truly amazing- there's not much more to say. This one fits the action movie mode, but it full of great suspense with stunning visuals/camera shots. It's still hokey in a way that all movies from the period somehow are, but it manages to still work in 2008. I couldn't help but notice the abundance of sexual innuendo in this movie. In the context of the squeaky clean 50s, it took me by surprise more than a few times. Look for a new image soon.

Rebel Without a Cause

2008-04-08T21:35:00.001-07:00

I watched "Rebel Without a Cause" tonight. While it falls far short of other films I've watched recently (except for "Bodysnatchers") in terms of the camera placement, lighting and color, it's a film that's more about the era than anything else. There is also no denying the star power of James Dean. Half the time he looks like he doesn't even care and yet he's the entire picture. He really is great- I can't tell if he's trying to underact or not. Either he's a brilliant actor or he is who he is on screen. The story line is sometimes silly and the fact that the whole film takes place over 24 hours ads to that. It's an interesting character study film, because pretty much everyone is in the wrong. There really isn't anyone to identify with, and that's kind of the point. In the end, it's a picture about irrational kids and the dumb stuff they do, and it's become iconic for 50s Hollywood. On the DVD there are some old Warner Bros. promotional films from 1955 including an interview with James Dean. He talks about the dangers of drag racing and reminds the "youth of today" to be careful behind the wheel. Slightly ironic.

Returning to Canvas

2008-04-05T21:19:00.000-07:00

After 2 months of making study paintings on paper, I finally took to canvas again this weekend. The whole idea behind making the studies was to focus on the purpose and composition of the imagery over the time and effort of making substantial pieces. I'm glad I trained my brain a little bit to make a vintage image before using canvas. Making this piece was a crazy amount of fun, and while it's miles from perfect, I'm pretty proud of it. It's my first real attempt at subtle distortion of the figure with the use of elongating the neck and arms compared to the photo. My mentor has been encouraging me to at least try what he does with a real wet on wet style of painting with tons of paint and black as a base. I made some little studies and they were really awful. No one will ever see them and they will haunt me forever. What I did take from those experiments was a better understanding of paint viscosity, so I used that here. I also substituted the black for my favorite violet, which works great with ochre in a vintage color scheme. It feels like I'm on to something- I can't wait to start the next canvas!

Two very different kinds of suspense...

2008-04-01T21:07:00.001-07:00

After spending a lot of time working on my recent paper, I watched 2 films to get back into creative mode. "Vertigo" is an amazing movie- to say Alfred Hitchcock was ahead of time is a gross understatement. The story, the characters, the way he structures a shot, the incredible opening credits and dream sequences- this movie is the complete package. It's every bit as exciting today as it must have been in 1958. It also features stunning on-location shots of San Fransisco, and I will definitely re-visit the film for specific stills I can use. As for "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", things couldn't be more different. It is everything Vertigo isn't, but at the same time, it really does represent everything about the 50s. The story is fast paced and filled with outlandish dialogue, but the look and feel is everything 50s. Even though it's very corny, I'm really glad I watched it. It's much better than a lot of B movies and is the definitive sci-fi film of the day.

Hopper and Homer in Chicago

2008-03-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

I had a great Easter weekend down in Chicago with family and on Friday I went to see the Edward Hopper and Winslow Homer Watercolors show at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was a real treat. I've long been a huge fan of Edward Hopper's work, mainly for his attention to light and shape. I had seen many of Homer's watercolors in reproductions, but in person they were truly amazing. Homer's attention to detail with a fine pencil and skill with a brush is unbelievable. I've done a lot of watercolor work and could tell by the boldness of his brushstroke and the quickness and gestural quality of the painting that his skills were off the charts. Plus, Homer's work is much brighter than in reproduction and even more impressive the closer you get to the painting.

Hopper's work is the exact opposite. When you first see his paintings from around a corner in a well lit space, they really do pop and take you completely by surprise. Upon closer inspection, they are very loose in brushstrokes and look almost incomplete in places. I'm working now on my April paper on influential artists so this was a great exhibit to see at the perfect time.