The Painting in the Painting: Charles Seliger

We forget this.

This thing that can happen in painting. The happen that can happen in painting. It is almost addictive to painters. Finding the painting in the painting, through the painting, with the painting, by the painting. What this means is that the painting is something that happens through the very act of painting, and not the result of some preconceived image that through careful effort produces the desired result. What we are talking about is the painting that evolves, changes, even appears to the painter in the act of painting.

I was thinking about this because I was thinking about Charles Seliger, who was as addicted to this experience as any painter I can think of. At the end of a painting he had arrived somewhere that changed him. That is the addiction. To be changed by making a painting. To learn something, about the world, about art, about ourselves, about the universe.

Because Charles did that as much as anyone. He opened himself up to the universe and said come on in! Make my day! And of course it did! He painted, and he looked and he listened and he mused and he probably prayed in his way, the way that all painters pray, who are looking for redemption and transformation and sublimation and union through the act of painting. It is not because he thought he or the world needed another painting. It is because the act of painting was everything; absolution, affirmation, inspiration, divination, integration, revelation. Through painting Charles Seliger communed with the universe. And that only happens when you find the painting in the painting.

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Forrest for the Trees: Forrest Bess Revisited, Rethought, and Refelt pt2

Having written about Forrest Bess over 30 years ago and wanting to know how my feelings might have changed after all that time because of the recent surge of interest in his work, I find that I need to rethink this complicated artist.

At the time I had immersed myself in everything I could get my hands on. I had Betty Parsons treasure trove of material in my possession, letters, photographs, etc., and some of the paintings themselves.

In retrospect I have to concede that I was probably in too deep, that I was too weirded out, and that I probably lost the forest for the trees. I almost lost my mind, to be honest, and as a result I lost perspective.

In retrospect I find now that I can feel lighter, and less weighed down by the intensity and passion of his quest. I think I failed to give the man as much respect as I gave the work 30 years ago. 30 years ago I was always trying to keep those things separate. Maybe out of respect, ironically, but now I have no interest in separating a person from his or her work. I don't think you can draw that line. A person is their work and vice versa. Richard Tuttle tried very hard to explain that to me just about 35 years ago. Wow!

Forrest Bess had ideas and dreams he wanted the time and space to explore, and Texas gave him that in a way that New York would never have; some artists can never turn off the city completely and just be and work. His paintings were the result of all of that time and space he found on the Gulf. This is a very pure kind of art. Bess was poet, philosopher, scientist, explorer, shaman, channel, vessel, and lone wolf howling at the moon. Visionary, yes, fisherman, yes, in every sense of the word. Primal and divine. Arms stretched out to the universe.

His paintings are inspirations, pictograms, ideograms, diagrams, documents, maps, clues, signs, plans. They take us through his door. And isn't that marvelous? Isn't art marvelous that way? Isn't life marvelous that way?We go through that door and we see life through our brother or sister, even after they've long vanished from the face of this earth. Thank you art. Thank you Forrest Bess.

Long Live The Fisherman King, Long Live Forrest Bess!

30 years ago this month I published a two page spread on Forrest Bess in ARTS Magazine. I've also lived with one of his paintings since then, and am sort of curious to know what I think about it all after 30 years. At the time I had seen a wonderful group of his little paintings, mostly from the 40's and 50's, at the Whitney in a small show on the ground floor curated by Barbara Haskell. I also saw some things at Betty Parsons. Parsons's director, Jack Tilton, let me have all of Betty's letters from Bess, and anything else they had, and for what felt like the entire winter of 1981/82, I lived and breathed this unusual artist. I had the polaroids of his operation on himself to make himself a perfect and complete being. I had letter after letter begging for money because he was broke. You see these kinds of letters at auction by artists like Manet. They are sobering. Parsons was selling Bess's paintings that are all the fuss these days for as little as $45!

Not that I object to the fuss. His work knocked my socks off from the minute I saw it. I just didn't know what to make of it. Still don't. And that doesn't matter. I think my good friend at the time Doug Welch first recommended that I check out these strange little powerhouse paintings by the fisherman savant. Doug had a great eye and was always steering me in the right direction. He was a painter working for the Bernard Jacobson Gallery while I was helping Joe Fawbush at Brooke Alexander. We were always scouting around, mining for gold, and he knew that I was writing for Arts, which was how we met. Bess was the motherlode. He appealed to the painter in all of us. He was a kind of alter ego artist. Someone who brought out the "what the heck" in us. Someone really raw at a time when raw was the order of the day. The word spread and very quickly Bess was the man.

Just shows how crazy things were, and of course still are. Serious. And seriously crazy! Bess was raw and doing his thing. The painting that I have of his sits next to a Marsden Hartley Dogtown painting. Now there is a pair! Two wonderfully strange birds, and great painters! Three cheers for both!

Yes I think Bess is a great painter. I don't care about the other stuff, the strange bird, the private life; I didn't care then and I don't care now. Not because I don't believe there is a connection and not because I love art so much that I can overlook the means to justify the ends. I just believe the work has meaning and power regardless. No one else got hurt. The work transcends the ick! Maybe that is it in a nutshell! The work is as transcendent as transcendent can be. It defines transcendence, which is what every artist strives for. From da Vinci to van Gogh to Kahlo to Hartley!

And of all of them Bess is the purest, rawest butterfly! The fact that he tried to achieve it in real life should come as no surprise.
Forrest Clemenger Bess was unlike any artist before or since. Maybe Roberta Smith is correct to object to a market driven revival, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and the one to heaven with bad. Some people want to make a lot of money. So what else is new? Ultimately it can't touch who Bess was and what he did. He was the Real McCoy. Parsons recognized that. Also difficult, but who isn't?

Richard Tuttle had worked for Parsons and was only too familiar with Bess and his work. When I told him I was shacked up reading Jung and writing about Bess he lamented the advent of psychology. He said that it just opened a can of worms. When I mentioned the Polaroids Bess took of his naked crotch and sent to Betty, he chuckled and remarked that Bess was just some guy who literally wanted to screw himself. For what? For self love? For completion?

Now Christie's wants to screw a lot of collectors and museums for something that can actually be counted and measured. Money. Forrest Bess appealed to all of us young painters because our only hope was that art was something ineffable, that could never be counted and measured, and no artist ever lived like Forrest Bess that was less able to be counted or measured! Art doesn't add up, and no one adds up less than Forrest Bess.

If Richard Tuttle is our greatest living ineffable artist, Forrest Bess was his father and the father of the rest of us. He is Mr Ineffable! The Fisherman King of the ineffable! And that is all I have to say about that!

I've remarked about this curiosity before. We seem completely comfortable about the idea that people can change for the worse. No problem. Happens all the time. But if you talk about people changing for the better? Forget about it! Doesn't happen! Then the concept of change becomes impossible. Change for the worse? Sure. Change for the better? People don't change! Curious. Schopenhauer didn't think people could better themselves. Our only hope was to sublimate that self, bury it; he did believe in music though. Apparently music was us at our best. The exception that proves the rule. You're not going to get an argument from me about that. However I think we do a few other things that are also what I like to think of as transformative. When taking about change I do what we all do, I point to the butterfly! Art is about transformation. Visualizing it, documenting it, wishing it, making it happen! It is change! It is alchemy and it is metamorphosis! From Lascaux to the Brandenburg Concertos. Transformation and transcendence. Any artist who has ever made anything knows this. Change is something we can do. Everyday! It is palpable, it is powerful, and it is possible! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Butterflies!

Musical Chairs

Larry Deyab

All any artist really wants is a seat at the table that is art. What does that mean? Good question.

I think what that means is that every artist wants to be recognized as an artist in the first place, and then have a sense of place, both in terms of their work and also in terms of their voice. They want to be a part of the dialogue.

How to achieve that is one question. There is however, another problem. There are only so may seats at the table. The result seems a lot like musical chairs. There aren't enough seats to go around.

Why? Good question. Why not just pull up more chairs? The answers to these questions means a further examination of human nature as well as the human condition. On the other hand it doesn't take a degree in math to see that there aren't enough chairs and never have been. Apparently we like it that way.

All of this makes getting a seat at the table not only a question of survival, but also one of competition. Then of course there is keeping the seat once you get it. None of this is necessarily nice or fair. It is dog eat dog. Someone is going to come up short; someone is going to be without a seat. A lot of someones. Should life be nice or fair? Should the art world be nice or fair? Does should even matter? Isn't "what's what" what matters?

If you're asking why there aren't enough seats at the table you may be asking the wrong question. Or maybe that is what they want you to think. Maybe they want you to think "how do I get a seat, and keep it," and nothing else.

Change happens when people start asking questions. Questions are a big part of how we learn and grow. Just watch a child.

As an artist, do you even want to play musical chairs?

Addison Parks




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The Natural

Some 30 years ago postmodernism rose from modernism's ashes and Larry Deyab was its perfect child. These three large unstretched canvasses from 1982 and 1983 are monument to that moment.

That Larry Deyab was not hoisted onto the shoulders of the ensuing parade is part travesty, part divine providence. That as a result he was forced to play the part of Cinderella and not only watch as other painters were feted by the likes of Mary Boones everywhere, he cleaned their brushes and mopped their studios(Bill Jensen, Ronald Bladen, Milton Resnick...).

Resnick

These paintings(Larry Deyab/Paintings/early 80s NYC; October 8 - November 6, 2011; Bow Street Gallery, Harvard Square), buried in storage these 30 years, are proof that once again the art world got it wrong. What possible silver lining is there to this sad story? Why was Deyab denied, held back, thwarted, unrecognized? Tell me the good news!

Well hear this! Here it is! Hallelujah! Larry Deyab didn't quit! Larry Deyab kept painting! Larry Deyab was never spoiled by success! He was never changed by the art world! While those other artists flamed out or atrophied or grew stunted or not at all, Larry Deyab kept painting and evolving and growing and learning! Today he is every bit the painter of every star who ever drank from Whitney's cup! That is divine providence!

It is a curious phenomenon. Artist as Job. To have suffered so as others triumphed. Will Deyab ever get the call? Like Tom Brady waited so many years ago for that one chance to shine, to march the ball down the field and score!





Larry Deyab sprang from modernism's foam full grown! These paintings are proof! He spoke modernism fluently, his native tongue! He spoke it with an eloquence that was understood, so that the business of postmodernism was at his feet, and he went about making the paintings that told the story of his time! Our time! It is no surprise that any artist who is of his time always appears ahead of his time to all who are actually looking back!

Dealers who were looking back because that was all they were naturally capable of, never saw him, never got him, or worse, feared him.

But look at these paintings! Almost murals really! Hanging in this abandoned building! They are perfect! They should be in a museum so that young painters can look at them the way they look at Delacroix and Matisse and Picasso and de Kooning and Pollock!

OK. I know full well that by '82/'83 it was like Times Square on the morning of January 1st. The party was over. I know, I hung New York/New Wave at PS1! But that was a free for all. A hundred factions. You had no clear voice. Instead it was Basquiat here, Duncan Hannah there, Haring and Futura over there. I made sense out of it but it was the Tower of Babel, no doubt about it. That was the whole point! Pluralism! Anarchy! Anything goes! It was deliriously breathtaking!




And yes, Larry Deyab was the morning after! Pick up the pieces and make a new world, and he did that. Out of paint! He did what the artist does; he went back to his cave and made cave paintings!

And assimilated it all perfectly! Not in a calculated way, but as natural as breathing! Loving breathing! Larry Deyab paints cave paintings, but make no mistake, they only look crude in that sense. They are high art. The real thing. The rare thing. The original thing. Strange and alien and fresh as it is elegant and thoughtful and whole!

Larry Deyab is all observer, and he pays attention. His paintings, then as now, are made of the stuff of life. Like Mary Shelley's monster they are fashioned from the bits and pieces he picks up in his travels about town, about the country, about the world. They seem like disparate parts, but under his expert guidance they come together in a swirl of paint, in an epiphany! Alive!





The new paintings bear this out! They would have been hanging now had Bow Street not closed. They are painted a little differently. Spray paint and enamel instead of thick oils. But the vision is the same, steadily forged by time and experience. At first glance they are nothing, a bunch of paint, and then they start to coalesce, and then just when they seem to make sense, they evaporate and we find ourselves at the bottom of the hill.




This is what he shared so well with Resnick, his paintings never stand still. They are always moving, changing, always showing you something new, something different. Then when you find them again the next day they are reborn! Remade! Alive! Ready for another dance!


Addison Parks,
Bow Street
Harvard Square

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The Horse's Mouth!

It is that filter that I am wondering about. The filtering of everything! The second handness of things. The loss of first hand experience. The fear of the power of the horse's mouth! The muzzling of the horse's mouth! We love the filters! We don't read so much as we read about! Virtual reality! The most insidious of all oxymorons!

I was reading an article about the philosopher Derek Parfit. My faith in The New Yorker had previously been shaken by an article I had read earlier about the photographer Thomas Struth. In that case the author had inserted herself so far into the article that I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that the asparagus she had enjoyed at a meal with the artist had given her gas. I had the sense that Struth probably changed his cell number to be rid of her.

So what of this author? How was she inserting herself into this article on Parfit? Twisting? Distorting! Both authors seemed perfectly comfortable that every word they wrote and that every detail they included was not only necessary but gospel. I was reminded of my mother who never let the facts interfere with a good story.

I kept telling myself "just go get Parfit's book; get it from the horse's mouth!" The author definitely colored my feelings about Parfit. It is this curious thing. My wife does it. She tells me about something that happened and leaves me to connect the dots. It is the illusion of some objective experience without the subjective response. We have to supply that.

The author in this case detailed how Parfit's sister died and how he found her daughter a foster home. I was left to conclude what a son of a bitch he was for not taking her in. Instead the author moved on to a dialogue of him and his wife parsing the minutiae of some tail-chasing philosophical argument over breakfast! Something akin to debating the arrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic! I was manipulated into concluding that philosophy was not just devoid of humanity, but also impotent.

Today I was reading Baudelaire's Intimate Journals(deck chairs!) and even this, as raw and unfiltered as it might seem, was translated by Christopher Isherwood! Not exactly a disinterested bystander or a neutral frame!

I found myself wondering what Isherwood was bringing to the table. Translation is far from exact science. Everything is affected! The meaning perhaps affected above all, but just as much the power, mood, texture, sound, cadence, speed, sensuousness! The everything!

Reading Baudelaire translated into english is more than just drinking a wine that does not travel well, it is like going from a fresh French farmer's cheese to something that's been processed, sliced, and sitting on the refrigerator shelf at Costco! They just aren't the same! You might as well look at the Sistine Ceiling as painted by Thomas Hart Benton or that "painter of light" guy! As interesting as that might sound, and maybe it does, it won't be Michelangelo! It won't be the real thing!

As real as Isherwood's translation sounds, I have decided that I can't trust it. What was lost? What was filtered out? What was distorted? T S Eliot in his introduction argued that the bulk of Baudelaire would get through, and that that was enough. Like the cream rising to the top. Well? Maybe? Can I buy that? OK, I can buy that. Better than no Baudelaire!

Everyday I want what little I have to be real. Real mozzarella. Real conversation. Real lemons. Real emotions. Real art. Real opinions. Without filters! My mother told us as children to make our own movies! And we did! But I also have great memories of her taking us to see To Kill A Mockingbird, and The Birds in a little American theater in Rome! She also argued with an Athens theater manager to get me into see Moulin Rouge even though I was under age. And I'll never forget seeing El CID in a smoke filled theater near Trastevere, where the roof slid open for ventilation, the smoke filtered into the night, and you could see the stars!

I don't buy the Globe. I don't watch the news! Well, maybe just a little sometimes, just not as a rule. I haven't the time to filter the filters. When I watch a movie I know it is fiction. Artful filter! If I watch sports I can trust my own eyes even if I can't trust the commentary! And I can read Baudelaire in french! Sort of. And learn more spanish so that I can really appreciate Love In The Time of Cholera(El amor en los tiempos del cólera) as Marquez wrote it and meant it! I can't wait! In the meantime I have an excellent translation!


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Appreciation War and Peace

I've said this before: art is the appreciation business. I said it to make a point; that art is all about appreciation, from beginning to end. It is a circle of appreciation. It just goes round and round. The artist makes art as a result of what they appreciate; the viewer appreciates the art, and by doing so appreciates what the artist appreciated, and that appreciation reinforces that appreciated thing, which causes the artist to appreciate it again and so forth!

These days, however, appreciation is in short supply. It is not just that there is not much of it to go around, it seems that the very idea and existence of it are under attack!

I haven't been here long. Just 58 years. So I'm just figuring some things out. Appreciation is in grave danger. Like climate change it threatens our very way of life.

You don't have to look far or hard to see the signs. Never mind that art is off our cultural radar. Look at Congress. Record low approval! And nobody gets along! Democrats and Republicans don't only not appreciate each other, they don't appreciate their own parties! We seem to be threatened with an ice age, a dark age, an appreciation funk!

Yesterday the guy that brought the Red Sox their only two World Series in the last hundred years was let go because they missed the playoffs on the last day of the season--with a nasty bit of help from the Yankees I might add. What do you get when appreciation goes out the window? You guessed it!

I recently read an article on Rimbaud in the New Yorker. By the end of it the author revealed that he wasn't really a fan! He really just enjoyed tweaking the legions of Rimbaud lovers haunted by the question of Rimbaud's self-imposed exile from literature! He liked rubbing salt in the wound!

But the author really missed the whole point! It didn't matter that Rimbaud bailed. It didn't change anything! It is the work that mattered! You wouldn't have that question of repudiation if you didn't have the amazing poetry in the first place! AND! You still have that! Rimbaud's contribution to poetry isn't going anywhere. This New Yorker author not only doesn't appreciate this most obvious and important fact, clearly they are the on who is haunted because they will never be the recipient of that kind or level of appreciation!

People who feel unappreciated often seem to turn to un-appreciation as an answer. They start appreciating things less as they feel less appreciated when more is what would save then! The more you have to appreciate in life would seem to be the obvious path to happiness!

Being unappreciated is what makes people mean.

I'm close to an individual who struggles as an artist. The art world is not giving them a parade. But they somehow manage to scrape up enough appreciation for what they do despite the overwhelming lack of it from the outside world.

Artists who keep working are like that. They like what they do! That is not just really important, it is insanely critical! Critical doesn't even begin to describe just how important that is! Insane might! Because you just might be a little crazy to care so much about something no one else cares about!

I am close to another artist who can't muster up quite enough appreciation for what they do, and I couldn't figure out why, because from where I stand their work really has it going on!

What I discovered was that this person had never had someone in their life that they could count on to appreciate what they did. Which meant that when they faltered, they didn't have enough of that insane appreciation to pick them up when no one else would! I also discovered that this person had a person in their life that was the opposite of that, someone who kept poking a hole in their tire, making sure that it was always flat. A parent no less! A permanent fixture in their life! A person who could with a single phone call could slash all 4 tires!

Having no built-in support is one thing, having built-in opposition is quite another!

Rimbaud didn't get support from his mother, and his father had long before abandoned him. Baudelaire's father cut him off when he quit law to become a poet. The appreciation thing is strange.

Different people need different amounts to get by. Different people need different amounts to flourish! A little can go a long way for some, while others need vast amounts just to get through the day! Still some can hoard enough for themselves, and don't need to go out there looking for it. A few don't seem to need any at all! Sounds a lot like a drug!

I know someone else who went back to school to get it, essentially paying for it, and now they are back out and forced to ween themselves off of it. But they are setting up a new studio and feel better! Sounds a lot like love!

Like I said, I've only been here a short while! I don't quite get it. I realize that I am very lucky and have that built-in supply/support system: children, the family; but they are all teenagers or older now and I am at risk.

As an artist you need to keep yourself pumped up enough to keep working. Whatever it takes! I know my brother and I spent our lives proving my dad wrong, so as an artist sometimes that can work. Maybe we were really trying to earn some appreciation, at least that is what it felt like. Still, neither one of us has made a painting since he died. We never did get that appreciation.

It is worth mentioning that as I write this I have just received a letter from my brother telling me that he has set up a new studio by the water where he can see boats, and that he has just started painting again and feels better. It is also worth mentioning that recently I have been making sculpture, my first love, and am also setting up a new studio, and also feel better! Both of us in the last few weeks three thousand miles apart!

Some times it feels like you're trying to blow up a balloon with a big hole in it, other times it just seems like the sun comes out and your balloon simply soars! it might take forever to explain how to protect our balloon from puncture, and then we still get blind-sided. Still, we all get better at this. We have to!

To me it is something like climate change, we're all going to live or die depending on whether we get this right. It starts with each one of us! What goes around just might come around after all! Being an art lover always seemed to me to go hand in hand with being an artist! I still believe this! How could it be any other way?

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Is there someone else I can speak with?

I recently watched Michael Palin, no relation, as the chaste Sir something or other, standing with the Knights of the Round Table outside a castle wall while insults and farm animals were being hurled at him, ask the simple question, "is there someone else we could speak with?" I've seen the movie a thousand times but it only just hit me like the Holy Grail that this is the question I have been wanting to ask!

Usually I just have a question I ask myself that helps me through the day, like "what was I thinking?" it works for about a year until I get it through my thick head. There are questions you could ask other people, like "what's your problem?" but they sound rude. "Is there someone else I could speak with" sounds polite, especially coming from Michael Palin.

But the real point is that when we ask that question, we are trying to change the situation. We are trying to put ourselves in a better situation. We are trying to improve our lot in life!

How many times do I wish I could have just asked, "is there someone else I could speak with?"

How many rude, unpleasant people and situations from cradle to grave could be solved so sweetly with just this question. Especially if it worked! It didn't for Michael Palin.


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Wider Eyes!

You see it in sports. A guy is standing at the plate and the catcher is sizing him up and the pitcher is bearing down on him, getting ready to make his life a living hell! He opens his eyes wider. He looks harder. All the while he is trying to make the pitcher think he isn't paying attention maybe, or maybe he wants to make the pitcher know full well that he is his worst nightmare, that it is the pitcher who will know living hell thanks to him; he shows him his wide eyes!

There are those among us that got the wrong memo. When thrust on the rocky cliff of life they choose to close their eyes, and the worse it gets the tighter they close them.

Stop! Open your eyes wider! That is the only hope you have! Across the board!

When life is too much, don't care less to ease the pain, care more! Caring less is like closing your eyes! I know too many people on medication to dull their pain. This is suicide! Nothing less! Like closing your eyes to an oncoming train! When you see that train coming, open your eyes wider and you can get out of the way!

If you can't navigate your way through what tastes good and what tastes bad in life, don't cut out your taste buds! Get good at navigating! Taste more! Learn the difference between shit and fresh cream! Your taste buds will tell you the difference between fresh and rotten, vital and rancid, healthful and poison, and so on. Your life depends on it!

Art is not superficial. It is a world rich in feelings and ideas, a story told with color and shape, mark and space, speed and light. It is an eyes wide open world! And when that world cares less? Care more! When that world feels less, feel more! When that world see less? See more! Your life depends on it!


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