Saturday, January 26, 2008




Right! Well... Here is the first in a line of "Cine Citta" paintings. This one is officially titled Cine Citta: Pollock versus Gorky. It is acrylic on paper for a change. I'm not clear on it's measurements. I think it's roughly36"x60" piu e meno.

You can see it in the flesh if you are headed by the Honfleur Anniversary Gala this evening at 7pm. http://www.honfleurgallery.com/Honfleur/Top/default.htm
It hangs in the first studio on your right after you climb the stairs. You can see it in sittu complete with the Piero reproduction that I took some of the landscape elements from.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Day One

Here is the first day of work on a new painting. I am going to do my best to post each day's image as I go. Could be pretty interesting. Could not.  

Charm City!

**this is not Rachel's picture, though she is responsible for it. actually hers is better, but you couldn't read the bench very well.**

Last weekend I saw the BMA's Matisse Painter as Sculptor expo. There was a lot of work, almost too much perhaps. It was great to see all of that work, as we all come from Matisse's overcoat in one way or another, but ultimately I was perplexed by a few points of the exhibition.

The rub is that the exhibition seemed to want to elevate Matisse's sculptures in to the canon of Sculpture. His sculptures, by being paired with Rodin, Maillol, and another salon-type sculptor whose name I forgot, seemed to make this point. Also the exhibition's focus on how to look at a sculpture at about the half way mark, further insisted that this is Sculpture. (There was a small-ish "How to look at sculpture" gallery.) The presence of Rodin not only a provided context for what Matisse would have seen and been inspired by, but also his shortcomings as a sculptor. Not that he was a bad sculptor, as if I could really make that assertion, but his proximity to Rodin (whose mottled surface Matisse replicates) makes this shortcoming clear. (Okay, okay... Matisse, Rodin ... no fair ... different age, different discourse, different visual requirements, but what we're looking at is to what extent one manipulates space and light through form in the 3rd dimension, no?)

Another issue is that Matisse's paintings were hung near some of the sculptures.  Initiating the conversation that he was drawing connections between 3-D forms and 2-D expression was evident, however the paintings consumed the power of the galleries in which they hung. Matisse's paintings were where his experimentation in 3-D form were realized and having his paintings nearby clarified this point. Granted I am hopelessly biased toward painting

I have to say that I didn't read any of the wall texts and listened to only two of the audio chapters just to hear what they were saying (mainly hyperbole or "process" info). I wanted to deal only with the work in front of me. Would the audio supplements and wall texts have filled these gaps in the mission of the show for me? And is that a requirement of the Art Museum experience, to have to read the purpose of the expo rather than intuit the context through viewing the works?

Thursday, January 17, 2008



I have been listening to Conlon Nancarrow a lot lately. A particular favorite is Tocatta for Violin and Player Piano. It is a riot to hear the violin saw away over the impossibly fast player piano. It makes me giggle like that Zorn piece Tex Avery Directs the Marquis de Sade. Tee Hee! His work is very faceted and contrapuntal. Quite like Jazz actually, and that is something I can appreciate. Also I really like the Study No. 7 on the London Sinfonietta Warp release.

His biography is very interesting. Expatriated to Mexico in the 40's after having fought in the Spanish Civil War! Became a Mexican in '55. That's the legend anyway. I'll save you the effort unless you already know him. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=conlon+nancarrow

I am heading to Baltimore for the Matisse: Painter as Sculptor expo curated by the Phillips Collection's new Director Dorothy Kosinki (while she was with the Dallas Museum).

Oh! Speaking of Matisse! I heard the perfect summation of something that I made an incoherent post about a few weeks ago. Provided by my lady friend while reviewing a Matisse talk she was giving later that day. It is as follows:
"The audience completes the picture."

-Amen.

Saturday, January 12, 2008


I neglected to mention in my year end "Great Things '07" roster the amazing Bill Jensen Show at Cheim and Reid last spring. These paintings snuck up on me in a way. I was unable to come to an immediate conclusion about them. However the paintings and the memory of viewing them springs up in my mind from time to time. "Springs up" isn't actually the right phrase, more like "overtakes". It is like one of those memories that stops your in you tracks. I could go into why I feel this way, but in the case of his work I don't think you really should conclude why this is a positive experience. Like Blanchot, and many others have said (I'm paraphrasing) that to name the event undoes the event. Rather, the name of a thing or an experience, is not the experience at all. I think you have to be content to let his paintings sizzle away in front of you.

I was reminded of this yet again because I recently was toured around the Phillips Collection Library, where I just happened to see the Bill Jensen catalog on the shelf. I believe also that The Phillips owns work of his that is included in an upcoming exhibition of recent, or more contemporary work.

Thursday, January 10, 2008



Barbara Grossman directed me to these paintings by co-exhibitor Susan Lichtman at Gross McCleaf Gallery (heretofore referred to as G Mc C) in their current Rooms and Voices expo. http://grossmccleaf.com/artistpages/roomsvoices.htm

If Hammershoi and Vuillard were to collaborate on paintings I think they would look approximately like these. The spatial constructions are really interesting, being both 2-D and 3-D. I am a total sucker for that duality. I also like how they are their own world and context. All of these closely matched tones seem epic in this work.

I hope to make it up to the show to see them in person.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008


Having a good New Year? Glad to hear it.

This is an image of a painting I finished in early December. When I turned 30 and one month old. I started to break apart this Islamic carpet design into a kind of system that was really interesting. With the design on both the upper right and left I kept thinking of Borromini. There are some drawings in his hand (reproduced in Anthony Blunt's bio of the man I believe) of some ornamentation from S. Ivo. They are like a run of complicated geometry. A series of shapes and curves related proportionally running diagonally across the page. I can't adequately describe the logic of them, it is truly amazing. I had to resist the urge to dismantle that reproduction to the right in the above painting in this manner. The painting wouldn't have supported that decision. I could only handle a more rudimentary dismantling in the reproduction on the left, and have it still be somewhat intelligable.

Immediately following this painting I started painting a cowboy painting that my friend INSISTS that I call Cine Citta. I thought his idea was pretty brilliant, but truthfully it is something I would like to keep doing between still-life paintings, to occupy me during size and ground drying times. I just wanted to shake off some painting orthodoxy. Mainly my own personal orthodoxy. In reality I didn't break out of any of my Piero, Uccello, di Paolo references, hence the perfection of the Cine Citta title. The subject matter is pretty entertaining. Cowboys doing cowboy things. Fires, booze, shooting, the Hand of God. I will post an image as soon as it is in a better state of finish. Yeee Haw!