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A favorite excerpt

This is a favorite excerpt from Robert Hughes’ most excellent “American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America”.

“The Taos of 1920 was not the Taos we have today. It had not yet become a high-sierra New Age theme park full of channelers, holistic healers, and matched blond lesbians in Jeep Cherokees.”

Not only does Hughes claim Edward Hopper as the greatest American artist, but he’s pretty spot on for his overview of modern Taos (and Sedona even more for that matter). His views of Mabel Dodge “…a mystagogue and an egotist, a sexual imperialist and much of the time an intolerable bitch…” are quite unflattering. BTW…Hughes should know a bit about being an egotist.  Nonetheless, he has written my favorite treatise on American art.

A Word About Conceptual Art

I have had quite a few people who were quite amused by my recent mixed media piece “How Clever (Hirst Meets Koons)”, but have done more than a bit of explaining the nuances of my title and it’s connection to the work. This work is a reaction to the type of oh-so-clever work being done by conceptual artists. Damien Hirst is the British artist who cut animals such as great white sharks and cows into segments and displays them in vitrines of formaldehyde. This accounts for the segmented part of my piece. Jeff Koons is an American artist who has others manufacture his work. One of Koons’ “artworks” is a 15′ Mickey Mouse that is gold-plated…thus the reference to gold-plating in my work.

I am not a Stuckist, but I do have quite a problem with the direction that a lot of conceptual art is presently moving towards. I enjoy blurring the lines and challenging the reining concept of what art should be…and yet it bothers me that these artists have no technical skill and are basically “taking-the-piss” out of the public at large. I do agree with the Stuckists on one thing…Turner is the only person who couldn’t win the Turner Prize in this current atmosphere. It would seem that being clever has overshadowed the ideal of craft and diligence on the part of the artist. It also is troublesome that dealers such as Charles Saatchi can manipulate the market and curators (see Nicholas Serota) to champion such shoddy work. It seems politics are alive and well in the art world of today. Lots and lots of “empty suits” out there.

In Defense of Illustration

Early in my arts “education” I ran upon the rather curious disdain by the intelligentsia for anything deemed “Illustrative”. While I somewhat understand this distinction…I am flustered by its’ decidedly negative connotation. I remember doing a paper on the most-excellent Mexican artist Jose Luis Cuevas, in which I referred to Cuevas as an illustrator. Of course the TA (teaching assistant) who graded my work was quick to point out that the artist in question “is not an illustrator”. I found this response rather pompous considering the context was in referring to Cuevas’ first introduction to a large audience … his illustrating a re-release of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”. I (apparently mistakenly) have always considered visual artists who illustrate books to be illustrators…that may not be all that they are, but it is something that they have delved into (examples:  Folon, Homer, Warhol).

I have always considered the moniker of illustrator to mean that we are dealing with someone who can actually draw…unlike many who graduated from the art departments at major universities during the 60′s/ 70′s. When I think of illustrative work I think of highly stylized works the likes of Leyendecker (who I love) or Nagel (whom I despise). We can see several examples of “fine artists” who have an extremely illustrative style…the photographer Herb Ritts comes to mind. [Ritts' portraits of the celeb-of-the-day aren't the clever analogies to the com modification of celebrities by Warhol, but the end result is the same for me...although Ritts subjects are quite vapid in comparison to Warhol's.] There are also artists who primarily work as illustrators who seem to supersede the category itself…Ralph Steadman comes to my mind.

It seems that the distinction of degrees comes into play somewhere here. Norman Rockwell is definitely an illustrator, but images such as the civil rights piece  “The Problem We All Live With”  (above) certainly transcend the genre. I would say that Thomas Hart Benton‘s highly-stylized works are definitely illustrative, but they are categorized as fine art. Both of these artists delved into the social upheaval of their times and both have been poo-pooed for their decidedly regional and mundane subject matter. To the other extreme we have “artists” like Damien Hirst who (despite his efforts) can’t paint or draw…and Jeff Koons who has others “manufacture” his repulsively ugly works. Which are the real artists…and who are the posers?