In creating,when one's work reaches that 'BANG"point, for me, it
becomes the most difficult moment.
One becomes protective to maintain that feeling to it's completion,
without destroying it. Often It's lost
mando
On Aug 20, 2009, at 5:59 PM, William Conger wrote:
What I mean by do or die...mania is the sense for the artist that
the work underway is far more important than he or she and more
important than anything else. The work is demanding, compelling,
and the psychic state is such that the art object becomes the
active partner in its making and the artist just "takes orders"
from it. Goofy, I know, but that's how I see it. I like a work
that BANG, hits you before you begin looking at it seriously. A
good piece of art is like a bandit, a mugger, who surprises you
before you realize what's going on.
The notion of necessity that I know of comes from Kandinsky and I
realize that he was affected by theosophy but we can forgive him
that enthusiasm for an odd idea, popular at the turn of the 20C
because, after all, whatever his muse, he made great art. I don't
think art comes from theory. I think it's the other way around and
in that case, theory does help to explain the context of art, if
not art itself.
As for the Elm Lesters gallery, I only glanced at the other artists
there and felt that a few of them were pretty good: Jose Parla,
Dalek-James Marshall, Futura, for instance. There are plenty of
contemporary figurative artists that impress me but none of the
artists in the Elm Lesters Gallery are among them, I don't think.
You know, I'm not an abstract expressionist, even though it was the
work that most affected me when I was an art student in the 1950s.
I did do my share of AbEx work. Pop art also affected me, much
more for its formal attributes than for its popular imagery subject
matter and ironic content. So did minimalism and even conceptualist
stuff. I do think modernism is a complex enough dragon to keep
showing new fins or claws above the water. Because I've been an
active, artworld-conscious artist for so long, almost every turn of
art since the 50s has affected me, and for that matter, even work
from the 30s and 40s.
Given that most art is bad, and most of the bad stuff is terrible,
and so very little is any good and almost none is really good, I'm
always ready to be impressed by those rare examples of really
good. None of that has much to do with how I work, or my still-
developing idea. I mean I don't go running to the studio to try to
copy something that just knocked me down with its aesthetic power.
I have my life-long project, as it were, and it is contemporary, of
today, and I hope it's not transient. But I look at everything.
wc
________________________________
From: imago Asthetik <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 9:47:57 PM
Subject: Re: Rand Chapter One: Psycho-epistemology of Art
Mr Conger,
Would you care to elaborate on the 'do-or-die-it's gotta-be-done
mania'? Is
this a version of Hvlderlin's claim that every artwork exhibits a
necessity
to be?
Could you also say a little more please about the other artists
showing at
Elm Lesters Galleries. For the most part, I am less impressed with
the
preponderance of figurative works. And I was wondering what an
Abstract
Expressionist like yourself would have to say about this, as well
as the
return of pop art.
Many thanks
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 9:27 PM, William Conger
<[email protected]>wrote:
I agree with Imago. However, the work is not authentic outsider
work, in
my opinion, but does seem to exploit some of the traits common to
outsider
art, such as the ephemeral materials. Leaving his work on the
street for
anyone to take is not so uncommon anymore. It's one of the fairly
well-worn
methods by which artists try to attract attention.
For me, mosto f his stuff is ho-hum, not because of his methods,
subject
matter, or even his late cubisto-Bacon manner, but because the
works seem
to
have no compelling energy. They are too complacent despite the
tricky
designs. I mean where's the do-or-die-it's gotta-be-done mania?
I think there are better artists in the gallery he shows at.
wc
________________________________
From: imago Asthetik <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, August 18, 2009 7:52:54 PM
Subject: Re: Rand Chapter One: Psycho-epistemology of Art
Mr Miller,
My point was not that Neates work ought to be considered great art
(actually
I find the palette and figuration to be derivative of Francis
Bacon and not
as interesting), but simply that an artist to whom one would apply
the
label
'modern (if not contemporary) artist' is working within the well
defined
codes of iconographic representation. Everything from the relief
created by
the cardboard, to the pose of the figure, to the facial
expression, would
find a home in the cottage industry of outsider art which is icon
painting.
I am by no means an expert, and perhaps someone here could say
something
more intelligent than I am able to on this subject.
On Tue, Aug 18, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Chris Miller
<[email protected]
wrote:
You may want to have a look at the work of Adam Neate
http://www.elmslesters.co.uk/index.php?pid=13&subid=26
He has done some work that focuses on this.
Thanks, I.A.
Here's something like an icon from Alexander Dubovyk:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_u_KW4nuKg9k/SoqheIarsvI/AAAAAAAAKsA/
bKFMayqZf9U/s16
00-h/alexander.jpg
If he had thrown a few saintly figures into that "Golgotha", it
would
belong
in a church.
But the Neate pieces, even the figures with halos, would be much
better
located in a bar somewhere between a college campus and a maximum
security
prison.
The two artists express a very different "sense of life" as Ayn Rand
