thinking about meaning
(three pages without pause on typewriter)

        So this is where I talk about what I'm doing...try to summarize, glean some meaning out of all the crap and detritus (ooh, I like that word) and other nonsense that I've been occupying my time with. I guess there are two, maybe three separate questions to answer here. One, what do I want to get out of my work, what are my personal reasons for doing what I do. Two, what do I want other people to get out of it (and no, these aren't necessarily the same thing). Perhaps a third is to discover what people actually do, or will get out of it, but that's more a question for them to answer. So how much do I let that answer influence what I do, and my judgment of its success? If they "don't get it", is that necessarily my fault and/or does that mean that my efforts have failed?
        I never want to think that just because a particular interpretation doesn't spring to the minds of viewers, I am necessarily a failure at what I've done. I guess it is a question that needs to be answered though, isn't it? Aside from why I make something, why am I presenting it? Why am I showing it? Am I making it just to present it? (I think I'm pretty sure that the answer to this last one is almost always "no".)
        In a critique or class or something...no, it was a the beginning of the last painting class that I took, I decided that I had to make my art personal, that I not only wanted it to be about me, but to document the things, people, events, etc. of my life, to highlight (construct?) their importance. No matter how mundane (i.e. consumer goods that I tend to buy), everything in my life was worth documenting and/or making into art. If I couldn't make art out of something in my life or environment, then why was it there? If it wasn't special enough, important enough, or pretty enough for me to either point to it, or to construct an image of it for remembrance, then what was I doing wasting my time? And so I painted the Cherry Coke can, the no-brand vanilla ice cream carton. These were done with an ironic presentation as "serious" still lifes, but for me, the irony did not invalidate the genuine affection I was trying to find and express for these impersonal, objectively worthless objects. I want the irony, the self-mocking semi-nihilism and the sentimental nostalgia to exist side by side. That's how I stay sane, that's how I've decided to cope with a self-aware life at the end of the twentieth century--I've accepted ultimate futility and meaninglessness, while at the same time indulging in personal attachment, longing for, and drive towards all those transient meaningless things. Hence the constant feeling of irony, of a subtle joke perpetrated by reality upon myself, and in which I willingly participate.
        The point is that I can find comfort and beauty in even what we would usually consider to be decayed, or abandoned as trash. There is such solace in knowing that the mere thrill of seeing a piece of rotted wood, of really knowing its texture, shape and color, and of letting your imagination connect it with the complex history that it must have had, that this sensation triggered by such a humble object can truly make you glad you had gotten up that morning. Perhaps it's a modernist aesthetic, however, perhaps I am simply analyzing the world to find in it compositions and relationships of elements that I can distill and focus on. If that is what I'm doing, then I don't know how much I am actually saying then about what can be found in the world, only what we can abstract from it.
        The benefit to modernist pictorial values being used is that even if your message or intent is not read, then the image is still going to keep people looking at it. It runs the risk of only being seen for its formal qualities, rather than its content or context, a risk that is less severe today, when content and context are often analyzed first. Formal concerns are seen as less mature, less important, and soooo five minutes ago. but what's wrong with just making pretty pictures? I'm not going to answer that...
        So I've wanted my work to be personal, to use content from my life. Perhaps I've wanted it to be a vehicle for that content...I think originally that was more the case when all I wanted to do was represent people that were important to me--I think then it was more of a case of relying upon that to fill what I didn't know how to otherwise fill. Or perhaps I was tired with pretensions at grander messages and meanings than the people making them were really competent at, or capable of, given their base of experience (LIMITED).
        In English class, they always tell you to write about what you know. I decided to paint about what I know. Or about what I wanted to be known. I wanted to make myself, my life, important. Painting does that in very particular ways, I think, because of the nature of the medium. Representation is an efforted accretion of physical materials, a time-consuming venture, and an effort of remembering, or evoking what is to be depicted. Photography, it has been said, is performed so we don't have to remember.
        So start with what you know, start with yourself and your own life, that makes sense on a lot of different levels. Especially since I think one of the main reasons that I am doing this is for self-knowledge, and to broaden my perspective of who I am and where I've been. Or maybe just to make myself important, to show off. That is the main reason why people painted, for the most part, a couple centuries ago, to show off their skill at the craft of representation, and to glorify what or whom they were depicting, to create an image to be viewed and reflected upon.
        So start with yourself. Explore your perspective. ok, that's certainly neat and all that, but I think perhaps all artists do that. But starting with yourself is an important piece of advice. It keeps you grounded without really limiting you, it gets you to focus on what you are not only capable of saying, but what might be your unique contribution to the dialogue.
        An instructor of mine told me that my photos seemed to all be pointing out that something was wrong, and that there was a taunting, or mocking quality about it. I want my work to not only say that something is wrong. i want to to say that things are still ok. I want it to say that, despite the pathetic, degraded surroundings of contemporary life, it's still damned interesting, and meaningful.
        Then there's the nostalgia...I think it comes from experiencing a fragment of a context that no longer exists, something anachronistic that makes you wish for the whole scene to be put back together--a memory might do this, or something that evokes a memory, but it is also possible to feel nostalgia for a time or place that you have not experienced. All you need is that fragment, that hint of incompletion or displacement, that evocation of something that you are not, can not be part of. With that is also the sense of layers, of a past, an accretion of wear weathering an object, if only to immerse an aesthetic style in decades of subsequent meaning of quotation. I think this all became important when I was trying to figure out why I felt so drawn to old brick farmhouses, particularly if they had some evident quality of wear over time, such as fire damage or dark erosion marks. Or how could I feel sentimentality for commercials that I remembered from when I was around two (like the Crush commercial where all the people are jumping and playing in the lake, and I think the VU song was playing--total '70's in lighting and direction), or how could I feel what I did about the objects in my grandmother's basement? I wasn't even born when any of those were originally in use--I had experienced them only as relics, or leftovers. I have sometimes justified that feeling from the fact that I grew up in a house like that, but that could be wrong. In fact, I remember always being mystified by the artifacts that I'd come across.
        So there is some nostalgia there. That's obviously what's caused me to select most of the subjects that I have for my photos--old signs, a gutted grocery store, urban decay... Longing for the materially worthless, the decrepit ruins, and the mass-produced. An experience of the beauty in the unique existence of each.
        And then there's just simple longing... Especially if it is for something flawed (and oh, it always is, isn't it?), because then there is this wonderfully pained, bittersweet beauty pervading it; it is all the more delicious if it is a longing for the unattainable, for the destructive. Love, love is the greatest of these, the most potentially destructive. Longing for a flawed love, for a flawed, dangerous lover, hope for a nonexistent god, admiration for a vulnerable hero. Perhaps deep down, everyone knows that their gods are not real, that their heroes aren't perfect, and that there are no miracles, only hard decisions and proximate judgments.
        And that's the beauty of it, the harsh, glorious truth of our natures. We all know this, and yet we still care. We still try that which we know is going to fail. Somehow, it would be even worse not to.
        Maybe it's all a desire to experience loss. Or to be aware of what has been, is lost. Loss can make us feel more alive; you can only lose what you had in the first place, what was worth having. Nothing else will make an impression, least of all a lasting one.
        Is my art about loss? Is all art about loss? Representation makes present what is not there, and, if not at first, then definitely in time what can NEVER be there. A painting constructs an image so that we might view its contents without the original having to be there, or even having to be there in the first place. A photograph uniquely captures a direct impression of a fleeting moment, forever gone, and forgotten if not for the documentation, but now forever detached from its surrounding context.
        I play at detachment, and perhaps occasionally succeed at it. I try to be the distanced observer, the smug grin in the corner, reflecting on everyone else's flaws, but (of course not) never participating in them. Perhaps that's where the ironical, personal cynic perspective comes in, through the simultaneous experience of life from both within and without it, from both laughing and crying, from both being repulsed by human nature, while trapped and even willfully participating in its folly.
        So how does this all translate into art? Is there a required course of action that will naturally suggest itself from these musings? I think that's what I'm looking for, or perhaps a statement of principles, or a manifesto. A roadmap. A distillation.
        Maybe what I need to start with is reflecting on what I'm trying to get out of it.
        Legitimacy. That word has been creeping into my thoughts for awhile now. What separates me from the names in the textbook, or even just from the people "teaching" me how to do art? What is the line separating artist from nonartist, or artist from student? When should I begin to take myself seriously?

postdlf
1999

In Love And Reason I Trust © 1997-2006 postdlf