Voyage dans la lune (CdB)

During the recent media coverage surrounding the mid-career retrospective of Laura Owens’ paintings at the Whitney Museum, there were articles about “rules” she made in order to be successful.  One of these rules was to not say too much about her work.

And traveling back in time a little further, the eternal jester of art glitterati, Mr. Jerry Saltz (c. 2016) mentioned that all the artists he knew was “giving up on technique,” pretending to not know how to paint or draw.

It is somewhat amusing how one has to be a certain way to be noticed.

I do not think that “rebels” per se are truly rebellious.  No, being a pseudo James Dean or Marlon Brando or any of their more current Hollywood incarnations is more than anything, a cop out.  True rebels are painters like Katherine Bradford who keep painting despite it all, who make videos of the Titanic, not afraid of its loaded kitschy subject matter.  True rebels are probably unknown to you or me completely.  Anyway, that said, I have always wondered why these so called “rules” are even made.  Why does an artist try not to say too much about her work?  Is it because there is really nothing to be said, or is it a cop out?  And why throw out all pretense of know-how?  Is it a truly liberating thing to pretend to not know how?  Is the pretense that the true primal self is always embedded in some sort of untrained, uncontrolled and “naive” sign-making?    

How about if artists did say something about their work?  How about if I do paint as well as I know how?  No one here is claiming that in order to be an artist, one must have the virtuosity of a Van Dyck or the impresario know-how of Picasso.  How about just not pretending, just not striking a pose, just not trying too hard to appear, well, cool?

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Voyage dans la Lune (CdB)

2011-2017

Oil on linen, 81 x 60 cm

“Voyage dans la lune (CdB)” is one of those paintings that span many years of work.  Between start and finish, these paintings lie “dormant” in the studio, waiting to find some final form.  At their dormant state, they cause a certain irritation, of not being “right,” even though I can never say during this dormancy, what exactly it is that is not working.  They undergo periodic revisions, they are left aside again, and some of them end up in the trash heap.  Others, well, by haphazard circumstances, they come around and become a painting quite different from where they started though still keeping their original identity.  

“CdB” in the title is the abbreviation for Cyrano de Bergerac.  I had read his political satire “Voyage dans la lune” while traveling last Fall, and was interested in the idea that the Moon, in the story, sees the Earth as its moon.  This sort of inversion was a device used by Cyrano de Bergerac to turn the ideas and beliefs held strongly to be TRUTH during his time, upside down.  

So what would happen if the Moon is not up in the top of the canvas, as this enigmatic presence, full of romance and nostalgia?  What if the moon is the physical anchor of the painting, its root, and all the minutiae that is the landscape becomes this sort of breeze, or transient nothing-something-changing element?

The “nothing-something-changing” element in the painting is the residue of a landscape I had re-worked in the studio.  The text that appears on the bottom of the painting, it is in the characters of Frédéric Werst’s invented language, Wardwesân, and it says, in full romantic poetry, “his body is the azur firmament.”

There, I have broken one of Laura Owens rules and have tried my best to not take unsolicited advice too seriously.