Arturo Herrera / Come / 2008 / Collage, mixed media, graphite on paper / Triptych, each part 79.72 x 57.09 inches (202.5 x 145 cm) / sikkemajenkinsco.com

http://sikkemajenkinsco.com

(via Paintings and Drawings)

THAT BOOK on colour

The Wake of Art

Philosophizing Art

The circumstance of having had advanced training in philosophy before going on to become a painter, and indeed a great painter, is almost certainly unique to Robert Motherwell. But he carried his philosophical knowledge so casually that other than in the autobiographical mode that came easily to him in later years….In our numerous conversations, from 1985, when we met [he was totally cheating on Andy for 2 years], until the year of his death, philosophy rarely came up in a way that made me feel that he brought with him from his graduate years any special grasp o the world that an exposure to philosophical disipline might explain.

Now that’s just gross. Here I am looking for some colour and all I find is gay porn erotica, I could have accomplished that just as easily on this internet. And I would have gotten pictures, video, and live webcam too!

But I digress, you are not here [that's right you idiot no one is here reading this garbage] to listen to me name drop and tell you about how big my philosophy is because I’m like super insecure about being one of those reactionary painter types who clings to a dead art form that uses oil instead of just walking into the Whitney Museum, taking a dump in the corner and wanking on the walls and ceiling to electronica in front of a digital video cam every couple of years, like all the real artists from Yale and Columbia. You are here because I talk with dead people, which is what psychic automatism, i.e. automatic drawing, seance, ouiga, masturbation, whatever you want to call it, is all about, as told to us by Mr. Danto tells us in this essay.

I bring all this up because on Sunday, I was talking with a couple of painter friends of mine, one of whom is really stuggling because life sucks and her partner just up and died like that and shit this past year and she is really struggling draw and to paint, as we were walking through the Miro at MoMA.  Anyway, I am a big proponent of scribble drawing, especially when stuck, and do it all the time, for example, when I wake up, or before I go to sleep, or when I am bored and nothing is on the teevee. I find it to be a really good practice and tool. I would tell you why but this post is already way to long and I haven’t even given you any pictures, which means you haven’t even read this far, and besides I have to go see my therapist and then go to work for the man. Anyway, if you don’t believe me, and especially if you do, you should read this Danto essay because there is some really good stuff in it, and I’m not talking about the gay porn erotica, though that is good too!

Katy Moran / Carla’s Garden  / 2007

Coming back to a contemporary abstract painter I have written about before, and whose work I was struck by back in the spring at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, I was google-stalking the London based painter Katy Moran. Hoping to find some new work or upcoming shows or something, I came across a video interview on the Tate website for an exhibition back in Feb-April 2008 called Strange Solution. Anyway, I thought Katy had some interesting comments on abstract painting, issues that Paul Ching-Bor and I, along some other painters, have been discussing recently at the Art Students League, particularly working from photos and images and pushing toward abstraction. Around the 1:05 mark she comments that for her it is about finding an image that is interesting enough to get started and then leaving that image at the right point. Check out the video here since I can’t post it to the blog. Below is a snippet of what she had to say.

‘They’re finished when I can see a figurative element in them … through the paint I’m searching for the thing it reminded me of, or suggested to me, and trying to get close to that thing.’ The exuberant spontaneity of the gesture is genuine rather than contrived, Moran comments, ‘When I’m making a painting, I get quite excited by how close to awful I can push it, while getting something quite lovely from it as well’.  {Read More…}

A straight line is in love with a dot; however, the dot finds the line too plain, unimaginative, and rigid. She would rather spend her time with an undisciplined squiggle who is much more fun. The dejected line later realizes that he doesn’t have to be unbending. With a little concentration, he forms angles and various shapes. They are two-dimensional at first, but after much practice, he can form many-sided solids, and even curved figures. When the line demonstrates his abilities to the dot, she realizes that true beauty comes from discipline and that the squiggle is not for her.