sarah kramer smpsmp 2009
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Sources Essay / Contextualizing and Further Defining my Work

Through the process of keeping an annotated bibliography and reflecting upon my art-making process I have discovered many interests I did not realize I possessed. It is often hard to properly express my purpose in making art. By looking for artists that I find interesting and being conscious of my source material and decisions, I begin to realize why I am doing what I am doing and what impact that might be having on my audience. Articulating what I like about other artists’ work and why I am using particular sources, therefore, becomes a rather specific means of discussing my own intentions. It is for this reason that I will briefly discuss some historical and contemporary references for my art, followed by a discussion of the impacts of my source material. Explaining the relationships between these references and my work will serve to express many underlying concerns which may not have been articulated in my artist statement.

Historical Context

One of my references is a baroque image by Artemisia Gentileschi called, Judith Slaying Holofernes (1620, oil). Like other baroque paintings, it never offers “perfection and fulfillment, or the static calm of being, but rather only the unrest of change and the tension of transience” (Wolfflin, 1967, p. 62). The figures appear to emerge from the darkness with both a vicious force and a graceful silence. The painting is completely unnatural in terms of the beautiful lines created by the struggling arms, swaying bodies, and the turn of the dying man’s head, yet it feels natural because of their poses, facial expressions, and sense of weight and movement. While the subject matter is extremely unsettling, the beauty of the flowing and intertwining lines keeps my eyes dancing around the page. It is this intense lighting and movement, sense of an unnatural reality, and tension between form and content which I strive to achieve in my own work.

Another artist that parallels my work in multiple ways – at least in his surrealist endeavors – is Wolfgang Paalen. He is concerned with formally depicting the space of the mind rather than physical space (Neufert, 2005, p. 104). His Le Genie de l’Espece (The Genius of the Species,1938, chicken bones) intrigues me in its ability to link object and function, cause and effect, and past, present, and future all by simply piecing together chicken bones so they resemble a gun. A very clear message of warning and death is implied. This concept of giving equal weight to the parts and the whole by using unexpected parts to make an unexpected whole is a technique I often employ in my own work.

I also find interesting Paalen’s, Ciel de pieuvre (1938, fumage and oil) which is an example of the process he invented known as “fumage.” He puts the paper over an open flame and interprets the smoky design created (Selz, 2008, p. 179). This is a rhythmic process which links “moment to moment, [and] perceived image to perceived image, like signals” (Neufert, 2008). The oil paint appears to be an attempt at making sense of the smoke, as images begin to emerge from the abstract lines and shapes. Peter Selz describes the piece as one which “entices the eye while disturbing the mind”—a very beautiful and concise explanation of exactly what I am trying to achieve in my own work (2008, p. 179). I, like Paalen, strive for a sort of rhythm in my work and to formulate and clarify images which are almost subconsciously discovered from elusive masses. Although for me the fumage design would be too permanent and confining, creating and responding to marks with an open mind and minimal conscious direction is exactly the way in which I work.

Odilon Redon is another artist with whom I share many similarities. Redon does not believe in such a thing as truth and sees no purpose in seeking it. He feels, much like I do, that the best way to go about thinking about the world and making art is to embrace subjectivity, while not losing sight of the importance of representation in this process. He believes “the dream must be rooted in nature if it is to compel conviction” (Eisenman, 1992, p. 31). His works, like my own, possess a balance “between presence and absence…solid and void…[and] darkness and light, with the inked areas serving in one instance as mass and another as shadow” (Eisenman, 1992, p. 102). He uses titles as a means to mystify rather than clarify, so as to reinforce the sense that his works are “painted thought” (Eisenman, 1992, p. 102). His images like, for example, The Cactus Man (1881, charcoal), are often melancholic or even grotesque and expressive of corruption, depravity, or human suffering. Although I do not intend for the objects in my work to be paired one for one with specific symbolic meaning, my work is similar to that of Redon in its concern with human suffering and the potential for metaphorical relationships between the various pictorial elements.

In a similar way, my artwork might also be compared to that of Max Ernst. Ernst collages hermetic symbols to construct an image of himself as a hybrid creature (Davis, 2007, p. 38). August Jordan Davis describes Ernst’s work as “man and artist and mystery, pasted together in uneasy fashion” (2007, p. 39). While I am not interested in using my art for purposes of self-revelation, like Ernst, I am interested in the potential for disparate pieces to come together into a seamless, yet disjunctive whole. Ernst believed great art “begins with a search for Primal Matter, that chaotic base material from which gold can be produced” (Warlick, 2001, p. 1). I too feel that it is important to investigate the parts and refine the parts so that the image as a whole can reach its full expressive potential. I do not, however, place so much emphasis on constructing underlying meaning. Works like his, The Robing of the Bride (1940, oil on canvas) are incredibly interesting to me, but not because I want figure out the meaning of the hermetic symbolism. I am interested in thinking about these odd creatures and their relationships based on what they look like to me and how I feel they relate to one another. I am interested in the fact that Ernst is using these symbols with the intention of having the viewer find meaning, but in my own work I refuse to create such clearly decodable meaning.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s work fascinates me as well, but for very different reasons. Much like the objects and figures of my work, the forms in his seascapes and paintings of the late 1870s and 1890s appear to be in the process of either emerging or receding. In his painting, Nocturne in Blue and Silver; The Lagoon, Venice (1879-1880, oil on canvas) we can really see the atmosphere; the boats appear to be in a thick fog. Although it is understood that the image is of ships and smaller boats on the water, there are no crisp details. In images like A Shop (1884-1890, oil on canvas) this is even more exaggerated, as there are still only suggestions of windows and people but due to the warm saturated brown of the image there is no sense that this is supposed to represent a foggy day. While the subtle discomfort and creepiness I interpret in this work may or may not have been part of his intentions, it certainly exists. The quiet, uncertain feel of Whistler’s paintings is what I try to achieve within my drawings. There is a tension created by leaving some details unrefined which can yield an enticing, but somewhat uncomfortable experience for the viewer.

I also love that, through the use of musical titles, like Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1874-1877, oil on canvas), Whistler drew an analogy between his paintings and “a more immaterial, evocative, and nondescriptive medium” (Arnason, 2004, p. 28). This piece reads musically for me because of its variation in marks and extreme abstraction. While we might still be able to see a town or an explosion within the painting, there are no clear details which denote the content. Although I do not explicitly reference music, I do use rhythmic curving lines and combinations of overlapping and mutating subject matter in order to bring about a fluid state of mind, much like that experienced when listening to music. Rather than desperately trying to pull apart a narrative, I want the viewer to be able to simply experience the work and let a narrative develop itself based on the emotive associations he or she has with different aspects of the piece.

Contemporary Context

Although Mary Frank’s works consist of paintings, drawings, and sculptures ranging from the sixties to today, I feel most connected to her sculptures of the late sixties and seventies. Her frequent use of the female figure and the fragmented, yet graceful qualities of these works are perhaps what most captivate me. She draws a clear connection between the figure and the natural world in works like Head in Ferns (1975, stoneware). By manipulating clay so as to create areas of smooth specificity next to less refined areas, Frank creates figures amidst, and even consisting of, turned up earth. Frank is moved by the small moments in life and her process as much as her artwork are comprised of essences, movement, sensations, and the expression and suppression of emotions (Munro, 2000, p. 289-306). The following statement by Mary Frank has served to articulate a rather abstract fascination I too share not only in art, but in life: “I love the gesture of work, watching someone do work they do well or with experience, with certain essential gestures, nothing wasted” (Munro, 2000, p. 290). It is this fascination with essences, emotions, and figures surrounded by and made up of nature which I find emerging repeatedly within my own work.

With that in mind, Matthew Ritchie and I share an interest in revealing relationships between elements in worlds overflowing and exploding with information. He believes “a baffled audience means a failed endeavor” and that art should not display a closed language (Weintraub, 2003, p. 55). Therefore, he takes pains to make his work approachable for his viewer by aligning his characters with elements on the periodic table and writing labels and arrows directly on the gallery walls (Weintraub, 2003, p. 57). I attempt to resolve this same fundamental concern of readability not in such a literal way, but rather by incorporating many figures, textures, and objects so as to give the viewer a recognizable foundation to hold onto in a world of apparent and overwhelming transition. I want my work, like Ritchie’s, to raise the issue of our being constantly “confronted by everything” and still trying desperately to “control that flow” (Information, Cells & Evil, 2007).

I find The Universal Cell (2004, powder-coated aluminum, stainless steel, and gypsum) to be one of his most captivating works for a couple of reasons. First, I am intrigued by its reference to the weighty subject of “the things we carry with us” (Information, Cells & Evil, 2007). Ritchie draws a parallel between prisons and cells. He claims that viruses building up and bursting from cells is much like a prison break, in that we are all just trying to break from the fundamental constraints placed upon us. Pressure and tension are present within my work as well, although I focus just as strongly on release. The idea of memories and fears surfacing and receding is a driving force within my drawings. My works are meant to haunt viewers, pulling them in and pushing them away both physically and mentally.

This piece is also intriguing, however, in Ritchie’s effective use of sculpture, painting, and drawing in order to create an engulfing situation and convey a strong sense of seeping information. The drawings placed directly on the walls seem to guide the viewer around the gallery and connect the paintings. The Cell structure in the middle creates windows through which the audience can view the other works in the gallery, thus both adding to and limiting the amount of information taken in at a given time. I consider my works to be windows to worlds that are composed of many smaller windows, or scenarios. The figures and objects within my works, though very much a part of the same space, often seem divided by the transition of black on white to white on black, or their being framed by other objects. This adds to the sense of my work, like Ritchie’s, being a means of portraying overwhelming masses of information which must be and, to some degree, can be sorted out.

Chatchai Puipia exemplifies not only my endeavors regarding form and content, but also my thoughts on medium. He and I share a common desire to hold onto the more material and physical mediums, like paint and charcoal, in a time when technology is becoming increasingly prominent in art. Although Puipia actively rejects technology in both art and society and I do not, we both feel our hand is a critical aspect of our art and want it to be visible and close to the viewer. The intimate and even confrontational quality of the physical mark is important in our depictions of hysteria, helplessness, eroticism, violence, and individual suffering. We are both exploring means of depicting “human behavior in a state of flux” (Poshyananda, 2002, p. 264). Much like I have borrowed from Rembrandt van Rijn and Jean-Jacques Jack Dauben for formal elements like shape and composition, Puipia has borrowed from Goya, Gauguin, and Velazquez to build the content of his work. We both respond to our surroundings, experiences, and artists who have come before us in an attempt to create a concrete form of the inner being which is both tragic and extremely beautiful.

Cecily Brown’s paintings are quite possibly the best means of talking about both my intentions and my process. Her work is full of energy. Upon first glance, only rhythmic lines and masses of color can be distinguished, but as you look closer, you begin to notice the erotic subject matter. In Barry Schwabsky’s, Vitamin P, Jane Harris describes Brown’s work as “swirling, viscous paintings of dissolving and manifest flesh…like morning-after hallucinations of a spent passion…a shifting blend of recollection and fantasy” (2002, p. 46). Like my drawings, her work is about tension and release, abstraction and figuration. We are making spaces reminiscent of dreams or memories which must be closely scrutinized, but ultimately become very uncomfortable.

Brown’s paintings have much more importance to me, however, than merely their visual commonalities with my work. Because her art is primarily described with words of action, she is confronted with the Abstract Expressionist rhetoric which as Harris puts it, “heroicized the artist who uninhibitedly harnessed his libidinal impulses to muck through the dark, inner recesses of the self and reach therein the horizon of the sublime” (2002, p. 46). Brown embraces this comparison saying, “It used to be said that men painted with their dicks…I’m kind of in that tradition, except I don’t know whose I’m painting with” (Harris, 2002, p. 46). While my work may not have the painterly marks characteristic of abstract expressionism, it does have the energy. The aggression and desire for control by which I am consumed while working shows through very clearly in my work. The physicality of drawing forces me into this one-on-one mindset. The paper is a place for me to really let out my negative energy. It is a place in which I have complete control. Where my work is not being abstractly expressive, it is certainly crying, lashing out, and going mad in terms of subject matter. There are areas over which I obsess, refining the smallest of details, and other areas which I skim across with marks of momentary action. Reading about Cecily Brown and undergoing a long attempt to remove the negativity from my work has finally revealed for me my true and somewhat disturbing relationship with drawing – I draw for respect, for recognition, and for control.

My Sources

I have made much of my art this year while listening and responding to Pink Floyd’s, The Wall. One reason for this choice is that the consistency and progressive nature of the tracks allows me to maintain an even mood while working. The more important reason for this choice, however, is that its intensity and variation keep fresh my interest in the artwork at hand. The music and lyrics are intertwined in such a manner that neither is more important than the other, much like my use of representation and abstraction. The music is just as alive and expressive as the words. Both are equally distinct and equally elusive, playing off of each other just as people would converse. The album’s concern with frustration, confusion, relief, desire, exhaustion, and tension makes it a perfect source for my work. Although theatrical, it is not ridiculous. It is gentile and it is harsh. It is undeniably intense, but rightly so—it is depicting an internal, and shockingly visual, reality.

At the very peak of my fascination with this album, I decided to watch the movie again. I had seen it once before and immediately added it to my favorites. Interestingly, however, I could not watch the movie to the end the second time around. After having listened to the album free of visuals so many times, I began to associate my own images and feelings with the words. The movie no longer has the impact it once did.

I realized then that this is how I want my artwork to be for others. I want viewers to have their own understanding of my work and, while they may still be curious about my purpose, not feel they must rely on me for translation. That is why I continue to emphasize the importance of my work’s being experienced as opposed to read. I think art can have the same impact on people as music does, as long as you do not approach it so literally.

It was around this time also that I began listening to other music. While this was partially a result of my tiring of Pink Floyd, it was also an attempt to remove some of the moodiness from my artwork. Although I have since accepted the moody quality of my work as an inevitable and persistent result of my relationship with drawing, at the time, I considered it detrimental to the reception of my art and my reputation as the artist. I listened to many different artists at this time, but I found myself primarily interested in Grateful Dead’s, Europe ’72. I enjoyed its overall lightheartedness toward the same existential issues confronted by Pink Floyd in The Wall. The lyrics reflect some pain and embarrassment, but the music reminds us that it’s no big deal.

So while Grateful Dead, similarly to Pink Floyd, places heavy emphasis on the music’s ability to speak – frequently letting it take over with a frenzy of energy or a mellow rolling back and forth – they are not concerned with having the music parallel the lyrics in such a way as to develop within the album a sense of overall negativity toward life (like The Wall’s theatrical downward spiral into madness). Therefore, I could still respond to both music and lyrics in my drawings, without the negative weight to my marks. My responding to the rather explicit content of the lyrics and the abstract and implicit content of the music, kept within my work a strong sense of the recognizable emerging from and receding into the elusive. Although the moodiness did not disappear entirely, my work did become less about negativity and more about bizarre and uncomfortable spaces.

My work is not only a series of responses to music however; music is only a guide. Over the year I have accumulated quite a bit of source material. Initially, I worked from memory, responding occasionally to images in fashion magazines. I found rather quickly, though, that this yielded very superficial and even cliché works. Additionally, the fashion images suggested I was concerned with the female role in society, which is actually only a small facet of my much larger interest in the obsessive and troubled human mind. Although the intensity of the fashion images was appealing and I still use them occasionally, I have turned instead to my own photographs of family, friends, and different places I have been. These offer me a variety of different faces and body types from which to draw, all lit from different angles, engaging in different activities, surrounded by different objects, and within different environments.

While the photographs provide more than enough material, they have a critical drawback. As source material, they are limiting because they only offer what is caught within the frame, at a particular distance, angle, and exposure. Despite the fact that I could scan them into the computer and rotate them or change the contrast, I can never see an alternate side of a particular person or object in an image without taking more pictures. Furthermore, the process of altering pictures, or even taking pictures specifically as source material, is a little more technologically involved than I prefer to work. Instead of allowing me to be spontaneous and just draw what I feel, the process of transferring objects into printouts from a computer forces me to think strategically. My artistic process is very much about me and the paper and the source. I do not like to be pulled from that.

It is for this reason that I have been collecting objects and bringing them to my studio. I have things like shoes, shells, coral, dried flowers, cloth, and wood. I am interested in texture and organic forms. However, like photographs, these objects have their cons. While I can really scrutinize the surfaces and different shapes formed as I view them from different angles, it is much more difficult to draw from objects than from photographs because there is no frame. Every time I need to consult my source, my eyes have to search vigorously for where they left off. There is no consistent angle of perception and if the object is moved, the shadows change. But because crisp detail is critical to the sense of tangibility I so want my work to possess, this exhausting process of looking back and forth is worth while. I can attain a level of detail from observing actual objects which my photographs simply do not provide.

The works of other artists are also extremely important sources for me. I have borrowed from artists such as Jean-Jacques Jack Dauben, Rembrandt van Rijn, Antonio Pedro, and Richard Oelze. Sketching the darks and lights of other artists’ compositions is an effective means of helping me create drawings which are visually interesting and complex. They keep the viewer’s eye moving around. Plotting the darks and lights first forces me to be more selective in the figures and objects I draw, but it gives me a foundation which ultimately keeps me from getting overwhelmed. I can just step back and start seeing things emerge in my head, rather than aimlessly drawing objects onto a blank paper.

My best work, however, comes from the reproduction and elaboration of my own drawings. I start with a smaller piece of paper, drawing and responding freely to another artist’s work, the music I am listening to, photographs, and various objects. When I am happy with the piece, I use a tracer to make a larger version. I quickly sketch in the darks and lights, but since the source is now my own work, I allow myself to include much more of the detail. When I turn off the tracer, I am faced with a very different looking work, full of movement and interesting little shapes. I step back and let new images emerge from the charcoal masses. The second version of the work therefore can end up very different looking from the first. I love this process because it allows me the freedom to make a piece over again, altering and refining where necessary. Yet it also provides me the comfort of knowing that even if I did a literal duplication, the work would still be my own. That balance between freedom and comfort has been very difficult to find and come to understand, but it is extremely critical to my work.

My mass of source material is reflective of my borderline obsession with movement and transition. Not only are my sources swirling all over my drawings, they are lying all around my studio. My process of making art is just as active and spontaneous as the artwork itself. I need music going. I need books of images. I need lots of things around from which to draw or gather inspiration. I need to stay stimulated. If I find myself working primarily from memory and consulting objects or photos only periodically, that’s fine. My process is one of response, not observation.

Bibliography

Arnason, H. H. History of Modern Art. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, Inc., 2004.

Davis, August Jordan. “[Max Ernst].” Art Book (London, England). May 2007: 38-39

Eisenman, Stephen. The Temptation of Saint Redon. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1992.

Harris, Jane. “Cecily Brown.” Vitamin P. Ed. Barry Schwabsky. New York: Phaidon Press, Inc., 2002. 46-49.

“Information, Cells & Evil.” Art: 21. 2007. PBS. 4 Sept. 2008
<http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/ritchie/clip1.html>

Munro, Eleanor. Originals—American Women Artists. New York: Da Capo Press, 2000.

Neufert, Andreas. “Art and the Science of Conscious: Contributions of a Lesser-Known
Surrealist.” Art Journal. Summer 2005: 103-104.

Neufert, Andreas. “Art Space.” Paalen-Archiv. 2008. Paalen Archiv Berlin. 25 Mar. 2009 <http://www.paalen-archiv.com/en/kunsthalle/wolfgang-paalen-12.php>

Poshyananda, Apinan. “Chatchai Puipia.” Vitamin P. Ed. Barry Schwabsky. New York: Phaidon Press, Inc., 2002. 264-265.

Selz, Peter. “Wolfgang Paalen at Frey Norris.” Art in America. March 2008: 179-180.

Warlick, M. E. Max Ernst and Alchemy: A Magician in Search of Myth. Austin: University of
Texas Press, 2001.

Weintraub, Linda. In the Making. New York: Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2003.

Wolfflin, Heinrich. Renaissance und Barock. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967.