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I was reading a biography on Jackson Pollock a while ago, and it said something to the effect of “when he started to work in circles, that’s when you knew he was going insane.”
In truth, the book was “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga” (by Naifeh & Smith) and the quote comes from page 5 during a scene with artist Tony Smith in it:
“On the floor lay a painting that Jackson had been working on recently, a network of delicate circles painted with a light, tentative brush— unlike anything he had done before. Seeing it, Smith thought of something George Grosz had told him once: ‘When a painter works in circles… he is near madness.” Look at van Gogh, he had said.”
Of course, ever since, I have wanted to work with circles.
As a side note: The bio “An American Saga” is excellent. But to go one better, just the introduction, which is about 8 pages long, is probably some of the best writing, and most insightful work into the character, mystique, trouble and persona of Pollock that has been done.
As a second side note: I share a review with Grosz. A show of his work got praised, mine got butchered. You can probably find it on the net.
Back on track…. dots. I have always believed that the blessing and the curse of Post World War 2 American Art has been the amazing productivity. As a reflection of rapid cultural shifts, and a strong desire to be new and original, vastly different styles, techniques and art forms have exploded into being over the past 60 years.
Abstract Expressionism, Abstract Impressionism, Color-field Painting, Shaped Canvases, Pop, Installations, Photorealism, Minimalism, Earthworks, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, etc., etc… as the art world has whirled from one approach to the next it has created new styles and wonderful expression, but I often wonder if the final chapter for each has been written, or if enough time has really been spent on each major movement.
You might arguably state (Art Historians love to argue) that Impressionism ran from about 1860 to 1920, Neo-Classicism from 1765 to 1830, the Italian Renaissance from the 1300’s through the 1400’s… contrast this with the 5 or ten years given to Abstract Expressionism and you might start to wonder.
So what better place to start than with circles?
I have used circles, or been interested in using circles, for a long time. One of my paintings from about seven years ago “Kiss” is pictured above and was included in a few shows in Missoula, Montana.
At about the time of “Kiss” I’d become fascinated with Barnett Newman as well. For anyone unfamiliar, here is a blurb from wikipedia:
“Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.
In the 1940s he first worked in a surrealist mode before developing his mature style. This is characterized by areas of color separated by thin vertical lines, or "zips" as Newman called them. In the first works featuring zips, the color fields are variegated, but later the colors are pure and flat. Newman himself thought that he reached his fully mature style with the Onement series (from 1948). The zips define the spatial structure of the painting, whilst simultaneously dividing and uniting the composition.”
His famous “zip” paintings were interesting to me as I always wondered what was behind these streams of light, or what was “inside” them. As if a door had opened just a crack and I wanted to open it further. Plus, I loved the idea of the story or the message in these paintings, as with his Onement and Stations of the Cross series.
The notion of enlarging and bending Newman’s zips gave rise to paintings of mine like “Juniper,” shown above.
Also above, see Onement 1, 1948. From the Museum of Modern Art website. This is the first example of Newman using the so-called "zip" to define the spatial structure of his paintings.
Combing these 2 ideas (that is reconsidering an artist’s story or work and circles) brought me to Roy Lichtenstein and his dots.
For anyone not familiar with Lichtenstein, here is a blurb from wikipedia:
“Roy Fox Lichtenstein (27 October 1923 – 29 September 1997) was a prominent American pop artist, his work heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style. He himself described Pop art as, "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting".
Lichtenstein used oil and Magna paint in his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963, Museum of Modern Art, New York). Also featuring thick outlines, bold colors and Benday Dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction.
Benday dots were considered the hallmark of American artist Roy Lichtenstein, who enlarged and exaggerated them in many of his paintings and sculptures especially his interpretations of contemporary comicbook and magazine images. Other illustrators and graphic designers have used enlarged Benday dots in print media for a similar effect.”
Rather than use the “dots” to make up the painting, I wondered what it might be like to see inside these dots (as if opening Newman’s zips a bit wider) and actually having the dots hold an image as much as the larger piece did. Of course, this fit the idea of pulling out the collage elements that had been making up the subjects of my paintings, and putting them on the surface rather than behind the paint (something that likely connects to some ideas I have about Monet and Waterlilies but more on that later maybe).
What else fit the Lichtenstein/circles/dots connection? There was something about taking mass media (internet/catalogs etc.) and reinventing it into art that fit a connection with Lichtenstein and comic books. Like… are catalogs and internet pornography the new comic books? When I think of kids coming home after school with the internet age I really wonder about the second.
Also, when I was working on Summer Clearance, which to be totally contrarian has no collage elements whatsoever, there was a certain light blue/yellow combination that felt like Lichtenstein or comic books (like a superhero uniform). I kept thinking and thinking of him.
I suppose for a poet and a painter, a lover of text and words and images, Lichtenstein is also a magnetic force. Consider the fortune cookies paper slips found in “Choppy-Chop” an homage to him as well. As well as Frank O’Hara and his “Lines for Fortune Cookies,” which is a great poem.
On top of all that, I love comic books. Some of the X-Men comic covers I have are my favorite works of art. And Batman’s “Arkham Asylum” or the Wolverine/Havok “Meltdown” series… amazing.
There is more here on the dots too, I know. More ideas of what looking at print under a microscope reveals, or ideas of the particles that make up everything; visual patterns as melodies, or looking past something floating on the surface to something else… or fragmented reality.
But some combination of Pollock’s insanity, Newman’s beckoning zip lines, Lichtenstein’s dots, and a desire to shift content between the surface, foreground, mid-ground, and background of the painting, accounts for some portion of these new works.
Above, see Lichtenstein’s “M-maybe” from 1965 as found on http://www.leninimports.com/
And of course, Dots, from www.oldtimecandy.com/dots.htm
In truth, the book was “Jackson Pollock: An American Saga” (by Naifeh & Smith) and the quote comes from page 5 during a scene with artist Tony Smith in it:
“On the floor lay a painting that Jackson had been working on recently, a network of delicate circles painted with a light, tentative brush— unlike anything he had done before. Seeing it, Smith thought of something George Grosz had told him once: ‘When a painter works in circles… he is near madness.” Look at van Gogh, he had said.”
Of course, ever since, I have wanted to work with circles.
As a side note: The bio “An American Saga” is excellent. But to go one better, just the introduction, which is about 8 pages long, is probably some of the best writing, and most insightful work into the character, mystique, trouble and persona of Pollock that has been done.
As a second side note: I share a review with Grosz. A show of his work got praised, mine got butchered. You can probably find it on the net.
Back on track…. dots. I have always believed that the blessing and the curse of Post World War 2 American Art has been the amazing productivity. As a reflection of rapid cultural shifts, and a strong desire to be new and original, vastly different styles, techniques and art forms have exploded into being over the past 60 years.
Abstract Expressionism, Abstract Impressionism, Color-field Painting, Shaped Canvases, Pop, Installations, Photorealism, Minimalism, Earthworks, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, etc., etc… as the art world has whirled from one approach to the next it has created new styles and wonderful expression, but I often wonder if the final chapter for each has been written, or if enough time has really been spent on each major movement.
You might arguably state (Art Historians love to argue) that Impressionism ran from about 1860 to 1920, Neo-Classicism from 1765 to 1830, the Italian Renaissance from the 1300’s through the 1400’s… contrast this with the 5 or ten years given to Abstract Expressionism and you might start to wonder.
So what better place to start than with circles?
I have used circles, or been interested in using circles, for a long time. One of my paintings from about seven years ago “Kiss” is pictured above and was included in a few shows in Missoula, Montana.
At about the time of “Kiss” I’d become fascinated with Barnett Newman as well. For anyone unfamiliar, here is a blurb from wikipedia:
“Barnett Newman (January 29, 1905 – July 4, 1970) was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.
In the 1940s he first worked in a surrealist mode before developing his mature style. This is characterized by areas of color separated by thin vertical lines, or "zips" as Newman called them. In the first works featuring zips, the color fields are variegated, but later the colors are pure and flat. Newman himself thought that he reached his fully mature style with the Onement series (from 1948). The zips define the spatial structure of the painting, whilst simultaneously dividing and uniting the composition.”
His famous “zip” paintings were interesting to me as I always wondered what was behind these streams of light, or what was “inside” them. As if a door had opened just a crack and I wanted to open it further. Plus, I loved the idea of the story or the message in these paintings, as with his Onement and Stations of the Cross series.
The notion of enlarging and bending Newman’s zips gave rise to paintings of mine like “Juniper,” shown above.
Also above, see Onement 1, 1948. From the Museum of Modern Art website. This is the first example of Newman using the so-called "zip" to define the spatial structure of his paintings.
Combing these 2 ideas (that is reconsidering an artist’s story or work and circles) brought me to Roy Lichtenstein and his dots.
For anyone not familiar with Lichtenstein, here is a blurb from wikipedia:
“Roy Fox Lichtenstein (27 October 1923 – 29 September 1997) was a prominent American pop artist, his work heavily influenced by both popular advertising and the comic book style. He himself described Pop art as, "not 'American' painting but actually industrial painting".
Lichtenstein used oil and Magna paint in his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963, Museum of Modern Art, New York). Also featuring thick outlines, bold colors and Benday Dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction.
Benday dots were considered the hallmark of American artist Roy Lichtenstein, who enlarged and exaggerated them in many of his paintings and sculptures especially his interpretations of contemporary comicbook and magazine images. Other illustrators and graphic designers have used enlarged Benday dots in print media for a similar effect.”
Rather than use the “dots” to make up the painting, I wondered what it might be like to see inside these dots (as if opening Newman’s zips a bit wider) and actually having the dots hold an image as much as the larger piece did. Of course, this fit the idea of pulling out the collage elements that had been making up the subjects of my paintings, and putting them on the surface rather than behind the paint (something that likely connects to some ideas I have about Monet and Waterlilies but more on that later maybe).
What else fit the Lichtenstein/circles/dots connection? There was something about taking mass media (internet/catalogs etc.) and reinventing it into art that fit a connection with Lichtenstein and comic books. Like… are catalogs and internet pornography the new comic books? When I think of kids coming home after school with the internet age I really wonder about the second.
Also, when I was working on Summer Clearance, which to be totally contrarian has no collage elements whatsoever, there was a certain light blue/yellow combination that felt like Lichtenstein or comic books (like a superhero uniform). I kept thinking and thinking of him.
I suppose for a poet and a painter, a lover of text and words and images, Lichtenstein is also a magnetic force. Consider the fortune cookies paper slips found in “Choppy-Chop” an homage to him as well. As well as Frank O’Hara and his “Lines for Fortune Cookies,” which is a great poem.
On top of all that, I love comic books. Some of the X-Men comic covers I have are my favorite works of art. And Batman’s “Arkham Asylum” or the Wolverine/Havok “Meltdown” series… amazing.
There is more here on the dots too, I know. More ideas of what looking at print under a microscope reveals, or ideas of the particles that make up everything; visual patterns as melodies, or looking past something floating on the surface to something else… or fragmented reality.
But some combination of Pollock’s insanity, Newman’s beckoning zip lines, Lichtenstein’s dots, and a desire to shift content between the surface, foreground, mid-ground, and background of the painting, accounts for some portion of these new works.
Above, see Lichtenstein’s “M-maybe” from 1965 as found on http://www.leninimports.com/
And of course, Dots, from www.oldtimecandy.com/dots.htm
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