In the wings...

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I’ve been reading Rick Ruben’s book The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It’s a wonderful book filled with ideas and thoughts about the creative process, ideas and idea making, and art. It’s also been inspiring. A lot of the work I have been exploring lately is based in repurposing and experimenting with ideas from many decades ago… taking ideas that are floating about and seeing how they want to live on in new ways. For the longest time I woudn’t allow myself to even explore a thought if it was remotely tied to an idea that’s already been made. Fears of copyright, many rules from art school, things I have heard or had conversations about with other friends and artists, news… So many RULES!

Once I started making in private and removing myself from selling art, showing art, and thinking about how something I made could be presented after it was made…well, it’s felt very liberating. I realized that so much of my life has been tied to rules and what acceptable behavior requires. I just want to play! Art should be fun. Ideas want to be made - They want to EVOLVE! A hundred years ago, 500 years ago (!) playing with ideas and learning from those who came before (as well as from contemporary makers) was common. It wasn’t until art became “modern” and marketable that copyright became so taboo and such a frightening circumstance. To be clear, I am in no way implying that what someone makes should not be credited or that what someone creates should be taken and claimed as another’s idea. But what I am trying to at least have a conversation about, to make people reexamine, is the idea that no one idea is so precious that it cannot be explored further. Or as Rick Rubin states, “A point of view is different from having a point…Great art opens a conversation rather than closing it.”

“In the Wings, the Story Changes”, Photograph, repurposed imagery using multiple pages of a 1920s VF Magazine, 2023

 
“In the culture, there’s always a dialogue between the past, the present, and the future, even when it’s not clear what the influence is. As creators and enthusiasts, we share and receive points of view in order to participate in and further this exchange.”
— Rick Rubens, page 181 of The Creative Act

About Gregor

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Lately I have been thinking about Identities in new ways; perhaps splitting it up into two different groupings. Upon further reflection, the images within the series seem to fall within two different facets- Identity and Persona. For now, thinking about all of these ideas together still makes sense to me. But I can already tell that with further exploration (just like with self reflection) these ideas will shift, combine, and separate- they will become something else. I quite like that these images are taking on different meaning for me as I explore the series… There is some sort of connection in that.

“Gregor, the Romantic”, 2023.

The idea of Persona vs. Identity came up while reworking and further exploring the image to the left, “Gregor, the Romantic”. Originally assembled in 2022 as an analog collage, I updated this collage using a a digitally altered image of Gustav Courbet’s “Mère Grégoire” (image below).

Gustav Courbet’s “Mère Grégoire”, 1855-59

A couple of interesting notes about this piece (Courbet’s, not mine):

1) In painting “common, everyday people”, Courbet earned himself the nickname, “The Apostle of Ugliness” (Band name anyone?) Sadly, the judgment and scorn that Courbet was making a commentary about still feels pervasive. As does the anger that follows such commentary. Courbet took brush to canvas. Nowadays this plays out via the internet.

2) I love that we know the inspiration for this painting! Courbet was inspired in one way or another by the French musician Pierre-Jean Béranger. His popular song (which you can listen to here) is what is described in various polite terms as being quite scandalous in its sexy nature. Whether Courbet was inspired to write about the character, Madame Grégoire mentioned in Béranger’s poem/song or it was a political commentary on how that song and subject matter were received is not clear, but both seem to have played into the portrait.

Isn’t it interesting that by simply exchanging out Courbet’s torso for this man’s, one can alter the entire narrative? Gender alone seems to hold a different meaning altogether about ideas of sex, romance, love. Just sayin’….

Inside the Pink Palace

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A great friend of mine recently gifted me sets of vintage Saturday Evening Posts. It’s interesting to look back on older ads, marketing, types of articles and interviews… Some really fantastic images. It’s also difficult to read without seeing extreme thoughts regarding gender roles and how extremely different races are portrayed. I suppose it’s an obvious lens of what is still prevalent but in some cases whispered discreetly. But it often gets me thinking which I think is a bonus - Where do we still need to refocus our understood norms? Why do we still think about behaving in certain ways that are antiquated to our lifetime? That kind of thing…

Before making this collage above, I was reading Ninth Street Women, and trying to find abstract art made by women in a book all about Abstract Expressionism for a collage I wanted to make. The challenge was frustrating. I ended up purchasing a slim copy of Frankenthaler’s work so that I could see more of it in a timeline…to explore her ideas as she explored them… to get into the mind of where she was coming from, to find context. It was an interesting exploration but bothersome that it took so much work to do so. People I discuss this frustration with often cite that there is at least a conversation starting to happen that is trickling to more and more people. I agree, it’s a start. But I don’t think I agree that it’s happening in a way that can affect change in big, meaningful, long lasting ways. Having a retrospective of Lee Krasner is great, but what now?? Mentioning that Hilma Af Klimt is in fact the original parent of Abstract art and not the step father, Kandinsky as we have thought for more than a hundred years is all great and the right thing to mention. But, knowing this now, how do we go about re-writing history’s timeline to reshape how that omission not only impacted the future of the movement and spoke to the larger issues at hand but, even more relevant, how are we going to change/alter/add to the official discussion of art history? What are we going to teach in schools and how? What are we going to display and how? Lots and lots of answerless questions…. And, yes, for now, we discuss and hope that discussions lead to something else. What that exactly is may be what we don’t yet understand fully enough to be able to ________.