There is a popular word in the art world which has been in circulation for some years now… that word is strategy … by which I have understood to mean the way in which one positions oneself, one’s work, one’s issues within the precise context of the moment, making oneself and one’s work seamlessly at one with that moment and it would be hoped at one with the future … in an attempt to forecast the next shift, to anticipate continuously the next position appearing on the horizon.
A bit similar to wondering whether or not skirt lengths are going up or how low the pants are coming down.
To strategize oneself into that place which cannot be foretold, that which defies definition … strategy in harmony with theory, theory as a means to defining artistic endeavour … one which by definition is incapable of defining itself.
So that’s how I started this text, wanting to be serious before the fact, but in truth knowing full well that I would arrive at some coherent statement sometime after the fact. In short I have no strategy … intentions and results somehow manage to eventually add up to something concise, finding their coherence in the make up of their individual parts.
You see, I know that my personal beliefs and the way in which they find some sort of public expression come together almost by accident. One thing follows the other, through some undefined inner logic, but certainly not through a conscious and objective rationale.
I ask myself some questions, do some research, watch a movie, set up guidelines, get an ice cream, ask the opinion of others, read a book, take some time off to go earn a living, incorporate stimulation from aspects of play and work, while seeking out answers which will eventually make sense … or not … and if not now, then maybe later.
This is not to say that I am relaxed, casual, easygoing, living in the moment, sipping away on my tropical drink (the one with the little umbrella) and playing the fiddle while Rome burns, which of course it is … burning.
I want things to be the way I wish them to be … to be master of my destiny … to be a part of the zeitgeist and so on … but as any rational and self deprecating person acting in good faith knows, wanting and getting don’t necessarily follow one another. I do not have a sense of entitlement.
Actually I am insecure and hope for the best. Oftentimes I feel just like a cook who finds his kitchen stripped bare but for the essentials and then proceeds to make the best of it, given the skills at his command to perform in the clutch.
So what do I do, who am I? … well as I like to say, I am primarily a painter, and along with my girlfriend (wife since 2012) Wendy, we are quick and dirty perfectionists. I am not a specialist nor a careerist, yet I have been involved with the art world by showing my work, and writing about the work of others. In 1985, I quit the scene, left my gallery, although never stopping to paint. By then I had garnered enough of a reputation so that I was able to teach.
For the past 2 years I have been working with the image of a boat. Found in Berkeley, at the studio of an old friend of mine … this boat, measuring about 5 inches long, was made of 3 pieces of wood… has become the inspiration for a multitude of cardboard versions, many drawings, paintings as well as etchings, one actually containing 1000 boats in a chaotic traffic jam.
What do those 1000 boats mean and represent? Are they an image of the current social order, an image I have observed casually and am regurgitating unconsciously? Perhaps, but most likely more. Am I conscious of it? Somewhat, but its meaning does not drive my process of making.
A boat, as in the sea, water, freedom, a house in the middle of the ocean, isolation, safety in the void … most likely … but the making is more interesting than the thinking about it. Instead, I will let the meaning come to me, out of its own creation, with time and with the working out of the image, via any medium I and it chooses for itself.
Last year, after spending a total of 30 minutes at the Whitney Biennale, I then went to the Metropolitan where I spent the same amount of time looking at an 18th century Chinese hand scroll of water hyacinths.
It was then that I realized that I was truly bored with Contemporary Art, that I finally had had it with all the redundant generations of Duchamp clones, and the endless monochromes in search of an illusive perfection based on abstract principles of purity and that what I was looking for I had already discovered whenever I could be honest with myself and therefore with others. Honesty brings about clarity.
I am like you, I think that we are all the same. In the best of all worlds, in these momentous times, we seek nothing more than the lack of tension between artistic intention and artistic production. I feel that they are one and the same.
The work, whatever form it takes, is a reflection of its maker, his travels, her upbringing, his conflicts and her resolutions. Medium is meaningless, attitude and understanding is everything while cause and effect are just the result of not trying that hard.