2012 Lecture Notes
The paintings that I’m working on now derive impetus from my ongoing consideration of the history of the Decipherment of Linear B script.
02-10, 22 x 29-3/4“ (55.88 x 75.56cm)
pastel, pencil, pigment, watercolor on paper
Some are done on paper and some on linen with water base paint, raw pigment, at times oil. Often they are mediations of the syllabary, logograms and pictograms of Linear B script.
During the process of their making the presence of a subject (and its sense of meaning) is displaced by a shift to immaterial information – static?, paralleling the working attempts at the decipherment of the Linear B script (with its false starts, made up translations, and the triumph of an amateur.)
01-10, 22 x 29-3/4“ (55.88 x 75.56cm)
gesso, pigment, watercolor on paper
The paintings develop through acts and their displacements, through acts and their subsequent removals. Absence and lacuna contribute to form the image, generally so in painting, and particularly here. Meaning is arrived at through contradiction and subsequent re-grouping.
04-10, 22 x 29-3/4“ (55.88 x 75.56cm)
pigment, pastel, gesso, watercolor on paper
just a word about Linear B:
it is thought to be the beginning of language, a precursor of Greek. in that sense it embodies the relationship of culture to nature in early Greece and western Europe
First thought to be confined to Crete, in1939 a large number of clay tablets inscribed with Linear B writing were found at Pylos on the Greek mainland, much to the surprise of Evans, a professional archeologist who had spent most of his life adhering to the notion that Linear B was confined to Crete.
Evans spent the rest of his life trying to decipher Linear B. He realised that three different writing systems were used in ancient Crete: a 'hieroglyphic' script, Linear A, and Linear B. The hierogliphic script appears only on seal stones and has yet to be deciphered. Linear A, also undeciphered, is thought to have evolved from the hieroglyphic script and was used until the 15th Century BC. After the Greeks conquered Knossos, Linear B developed, probably from Linear A, although the relationship between the two scripts is unclear.
03-10, 22 x 29-3/4“ (55.88 x 75.56cm)
pastel, gesso, pencil, watercolor on paper
As an opinionated old-school academic who was certain that Linear B was Minoan and not a precursor of Greek, Evans prevented further investigation into the possibility that the language on the tablets was Greek. Linear B’s decipherment was subverted further by academics who simply made up what they called translations when they did not know what the script meant.
12-10, 22 x 29-1/2“ (55.88 x 74.9cm)
pigment, watercolor on paper
It’s as much the process of discovery as the notion of the script itself that interests me. Linear B was eventually deciphered by Michael Ventris, an architect and amateur archeologist who had been aware of Linear B from the time he was 14.
22-10, 22-1/4 x 30“ (56.5 x 76.2cm)
pigment, watercolor on paper
Curtain 2, 2011, 59 x 61” (149.9 x 154.9 cm), Flashe, mediums, pigment on linen
Drawing2Gold, 2011, 20 x 26” (50.8 x 66 cm), acrylic medium, pigment on linen
break for comments and questions
I. Living together
Terrains Vagues, 1991-97
I am interested in making art that offers space in which to roam around, space in which to get lost, an uncharted space where time can be wasted, an art in which two opposing forces or several contradictory ways of thinking co-exist.
During his 1977 lectures, Barthes applied himself to clear a path to a living-together (probably utopian) fantasy of society he suggests: a society that would allow everyone to live according to one’s own rhythm inside the community but without being based on an extreme solitude for each individual (hard to reach, except in the case of the authentic ecstatic mysticism and in the case of a deep – pathological - feeling of dereliction), a society that wouldn't be based on the extreme alienation of individuals by a power (whatever its forms) fixing strict rhythms.
The question/problematic of painting after formalism, minimalism, and conceptualism informs my investigations of abstraction. In the wake of modernism’s ascendancy I investigate abstraction in ways that are based in, but also depart from, modernist tenets.
art is about propositions and even when Modernist has the possibility to be about beginnings and not endings.
I looked at some paintings last week. The artist wanted me to say something. The painting the artist did not like was the one I was most able to look at and become involved in seeing. When I said that, she asked “Why?” I said, “Because it’s spatially uncharted.” She said, “The others are about mapping.” I thought, “Why make a painting “about” mapping?” A painting can’t be “about” something, and “why make a painting showing the viewer where to go?”
I am against art that tries to control how the viewer sees the work, where the artist lays down laws about what art should be, thereby limiting the participation and the autonomy of viewer
Koons, Hirst
Counter-discourse, 28 x 25
Here the figure and ground shift and reform continually.
Absence and presence change places.
There is always the possibility of interesting painting, no matter what style the artist chooses, but we must choose, and have an individual or personal way of working through the medium. Looking at a work by an artist I wonder, “What is it that distinguishes this work from earlier work of its type, and is there enough distinction?”
I am most interested in work that is medium-specific.
The following works were made during a period when I lived inside as much as possible. Perhaps as a consequence, I became involved with the possibilities of interior space yet I attempted to make works that provided an open vista. These paintings allowed my sense of interiority, and the world, to remain vast.
Drawing
Reflection of Space, 1, 2002, 26” x 23”
charcoal, graphite, marble dust, matte medium, oil, oil mediums on muslin
Reflection Of Space 2, 2002, 36 x 38” (91.44 x 96.52 cm)
Charcoal, graphite, matte medium on muslin
Reflection Of Space 3, 2002, 36 x 38” (91.44 x 96.52 cm)
Charcoal, graphite, matte medium on muslin
I am interested in art that does not cover over the underside of life.
Francis Bacon is a big hero of mine
Francis Bacon, George Dyer
as is early Malevich
Malevich
Subway (3)
Between the Museum and the School
homelessness between 2 institutions
Garbage on the River NYC
Goya
Mozartstraße (Köln)
The reverence for art and beauty is so strong that streets are named after classical composers. Yet as everywhere racial and ethnic prejudice is endemic. Mozartstraße represents these contradictory elements.
say what the marker says
[The historical marker reads “In Memory of the Dead and a Warning to the Living, On This Site Was the Regional Headquarters of NSDAP in the ‘Braune Haus’ Where the SA and the SS Tortured Their Victims.”]
{Living in Germany, I came to feel that the memorialization of the war period of German history diverted attention away from the underlying causes of the Holocaust and away from the daily racism of the current society.}
The Mob Within the Heart
The Mob Within the Heart exhibition
I am interested in an art in which presence refers to absence
Brussels, my photo
Rachel Whiteread shelf pieces
Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation
from whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir © rufuscorporation 2011
Mr. Holz never imagined the language ration would be delivered upon him – like a person never really believes he will be the one to get cancer. He was not extravagant or verbose. Therefore he was surprised when he woke up one day and had lost the use of a few odd adjectives,
two simple articles: “the” and “an”
one noun: “egg”
and an adverb: “typically.”
He also discovered that the language ration had no regard for multi-linguists. When he lost the word “egg” it was gone from every language in which he knew it. And he could not revive the lost word by learning it in a foreign tongue. The language ration was biological: it had complete disregard for any defining characteristics of his being – it cared only for his species.
He first noticed it when he went to the market. Suddenly he was unable to ask for the thing that he wanted. His lips would not make the word.
“Give me two edible ovals.”
Andreas Gursky, Karlsruhe
Richard Aldrich
Tuck Tuck Tuck "Once I Was..."
2010
Enamel silkscreen on dibond panel
60 x 40 inches
Richard Aldrich
Zig-Zag Cubism #2
2011
Oil, wax and wood on linen
84 x 58 inches
paintings as “props”
I always think of the paintings as a prop in the sense of their own interior specificity in relation to an outward meaning or function, which to me is one of incongruence. The defined logic of the painting’s individuality bears little resemblance nor has much effect on the way in which the painting functions in the larger whole.
Tony Smith, Die
Presence as it refers to absence:
R72, 1999
My altered x-ray series consists of X-ray and MRI films of strangers, friends, and colleagues that I have responded to with paint and chemical and physical interventions. They serve as elegies of those passed, and act as reminders of our own vulnerability and mortality.
Double
Leipzig installation of altered x rays
Köln installation of altered x rays
Seeing ones own work installed is clarifying. The artist’s role as viewer expands when the work is outside of the studio. These installations enabled me to focus the conflict between abstraction and figuration, presence and absence, and seek that in my paintings.
In June 2011 I was invited to do the first solo show of my altered x rays at Insel Hombroich, a sort of utopian Menil-type setting that combines living and nature and art - viewing and making.
3 images of the installation
Strange Fruit, 2004
It was pointed out to me by Barry Schwabsky in relation to a show I did in NY in 2004 that the more time you spend with my paintings, that is, the more chance you give a painting to be a space, not just a surface, the less significant the imagistic elements seem, and the more involving is the experience of viewing the painting.
Those paintings do not interest me these days. I somehow feel removed from the expressive element that was embedded in them. I do think that the affirmation of the sense that viewing is first and foremost experiential characterizes my painting.
break for questions and comments
II. Social decisions
Hive
Beuys used to say, if you want to change your work, change yourself. And I say, when you change yourself your relationship to society changes.
Queen Bee
Portrait of the Artist
What makes work interesting and relevant may be its link to social decisions that we make everyday– how we communicate with each other, thinking processes, people relating to each other. Particularly in this decade of globalization.
Minoan Pot
Acropolis
Loire Chateaux
Nurnberg Parade Ground
Carol’s piece
Köln
is a place that remains a bit less globalized than many other parts of Germany and Europe, a place I return to, my second home
The Rhein
The ring configuration of the streets, the Rhein, and the devastation of World War II determine the physical, social, and psychological parameters of daily life in Köln.
{The form of the ring is palpable when traveling by bicycle. One’s entire body feels the curve that seems never ending. My sense of freedom there derives from the physicality of life in a place that is urban yet down-to-earth, the human-scale architecture, and the respect for visual art as a necessary component of daily life.}
Canal St
Snow
Formlessness, the rhizome, the non-hierarchic
Dan Asher
fautrier
fontana 2
waltemath 2
1,5,6 11... 12 ' x 11' 1991-4, ink, gouache and colored pencil on graph paper, made by taping 18 x 24 sheets of graph paper together.
12358... 1993-5, 10 1/2’ x 9 ‘, ink, gouache and colored pencil on graph paper
the titles of these pieces are the numbers of the harmonic progression on which they are based.
each piece is titled according to the numbers used to construct it. this artist’s thinking is alternative and she believes her earlier existences inform her current one, that she had been a mathematician in an earlier life
prangenberg 2
three water drawings -- being on water
trying to draw the motion of the water while one is feeling it and seeing it simultaneously.
03-04
11-05
04-06
Moon Over Montana 34 x 58”
break for questions and comments
III. The Neutral
In Contingency and Permeability, 71 x 69” the cracks of the raised surfaces operate as drawing yet at times revert to their literal physical nature. They are imbued with color but the color spills out of them and becomes the ground. I am aiming for a deep space that is also virtual with contradictory ordering.
Barthes straightforwardly defines the Neutral (le Neutre) as something that thwarts and dodges the paradigm. The paradigm of this system is based on an opposition between two virtual terms (A and B); the mechanism of this conflict is that it finally has to lead the individual to choose one of these two terms in order that a sense may happen. Neutral, then, stands as a third structural term that annihilates this implacable binarism of the paradigm. The neutral term occurs from the cancellation of the opposition in the paradigm: Neutral, degree zero, is defined as what is neither A nor B.
two paintings of mine in which the figure vanishes into the ground at certain moments of viewing
Orange Spray, 2007, 22 x 20” (55.8 x 50.8 cm),
acrylic, collaged paper, spray paint on linen
The category of the Neutral that Barthes attempts to invoke in his lectures is an effort to evade those structures of language that impose themselves as obligatory. First, it is a refusal of gender. The Neutral is the neuter. It is also a refusal of the rest of the oppositions that align themselves with the paradigm of gender—particularly active/passive and subject/object. But more, the Neutral is irenic. It subsumes "every inflection that, dodging or baffling the paradigmatic, oppositional structure of meaning, aims at the suspension of the conflictual basis of discourse."
irenic- a condition that promotes peace
Lucio, 2008, 78 x 68” (198.12 x 172.72 cm)
acrylic, pigment, studio debris on linen
Absence and presence change places.
Ethics (the range of the prescribed choices for individuals, of the responsibilities they have to take upon themselves) currently implies another range in which individuals are tempted to dodge any conflict, any choice, tempted to avoid the sense: that's where the range of Neutral for Barthes lies.
The method that he will apply during this teaching will be the same as the one he applied during the previous year: i.e., defining an object of study, an argument for these lectures, then describing several figures of this object (without defining or explaining them). The figures of Neutral: androgyny, consciousness, tolerance, tiredness, sleep, etc. had previously been chosen with a claimed subjectivity, then brought before the audience in a random order to avoid any creation of sense that would only be an artefact (a real drawback in his teaching (that is, any creation of sense is a real drawback) about the Neutral, i.e., precisely about what thwarts the production of sense). In that respect, the lectures must both describe and exhibit the dimension of Neutral.
this is a model for me -- for my studio practice, how I present, and how I teach.
4 Drawings
These drawings were shown in Berlin in 2007, along with
Writing Nature and
Who Knows, 2007 (a remake of Contingency and Permeability), 102 x 105” (259.1 x 266.7 cm), acrylic mediums, pastel, pigment on portrait linen
another paintings of that time:
Space Has No Shape, 2007, 38 x 48” (96.5 x 121.9 cm), acrylic medium, Flashe, pigment on portrait linen
break for comments and questions
In 2008 I did an exhibition called, Come in a Little Closer, at Michael Steinberg Fine Art.
This was an important exhibition for me. I had left the gallery I’d been with for many years and chosen a less established interim place in which to show a selection of paintings that evidenced my way of thinking.
The large paintings were expansive, free-ranging and diverse.
Curtain, 2008, 75 x 103” (190.5 x 261.62 cm), acrylic, Flashe on linen
The Same Blank Place, 2008, 77 x 84” (195.58 x 213.36 cm), oil on linen
The Grass Turned Grey, 2008, 71 x 69” (180.34 x 175.26 cm), oil on linen
The small paintings were dense, difficult, and gnarly
Brown Object, 2008, 26 x 34” (66.04 x 86.36 cm), acrylic mediums, oil on linen
Turquoise Suppression, 2008, 25 x 29” (63.5 x 73.66 cm), oil on linen
and with the same intent although not in the show:
Rainbow Pour, 2008, 22 x 38” (55.88 x 96.52 cm), acrylic, Flashe on linen
in the show but somewhat isolated from the rest of the work:
Nomad, 2008 (called that in honor of the Nomadic architecture of Jean Prouvé), 38 x 34” (96.52 x 86.36), acrylic, enamel spray, Flashe, wood veneer on linen *
subsequent dense difficult small paintings:
White Object, 2008, 32 x 34” (81.28 x 86.36 cm), acrylic mediums, oil on linen
subsequent Nomad paintings:
Nomad 2, 2009, 38 x 34 in. (96.52 x 86.36 cm), acrylic, Flashe, spray enamel, tape and wood veneer on linen
Little Nomad, 2009, 10 x 13” (25.4 x 33 cm), pigment, spray paint, wood veneer on linen
After this period I wanted to work in a more relaxed, less ambitious way and produced what I called “The Brush Paintings”
And then began to work in a more experimental way again:
Inform, 2009, 13 x 21” (33 x 53.3 cm), oil, pigment on linen
Drawing, 2009, 26 x 28” (66 x 71 cm), acrylic, Flashe on linen
Outside Painting, 2009, 69 x 85” (175.3 x 215.9 cm), acrylic, Flashe, gesso, latex on linen
that title because I made it outdoors at the Albee Foundation
Writing Absence, 2010, 18 x 16