Exhibit A:  Quote from a statement by an artist who will remain anonymous:

“Many of the patterns seem to reference specific modes of abstraction typically associated with High Modernism…the site of the pattern, is banal and nothing more than ephemera—transitory, mechanical, mass-produced, and not intended to be retained. I am currently interested in the idea that when removed from their common, everyday usage these patterns could be mistaken for serious critical investigations of abstraction.  Through works ranging from traditional drawings and paintings, to meticulous, serial installation, the displacement of the patterns is one of mindful fragmentation, redirecting the attention focused on the pattern away from [its] context of to reposition it in the rubric of abstraction.”

Exhibit B: A well-known Banksy quote:

“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.”

I don’t know about you, but both of these combined make me want to grab a spray can and hit the streets.

Hello 2010! In honor of fresh starts and all that I have updated my drawings page and created a much more elegant image gallery. So please check it out if you want to see what I’ve been up to (along with my coaster series, of course, which is going nicely).

I forgot to mention that I saw the Tim Burton exhibition at the MoMa in New York during Christmas week. It was packed, which made it difficult to linger over his work (including the cookie-making robot from Edward Scissorhands(!) but it was certainly the most fun I’d had in a museum in awhile. The last exhibition I saw that was so squashed was Edward Hopper at the National Gallery a few years back, where I learned that it was very difficult to fully appreciate paintings depicting the day-to-day loneliness of man if you’re surrounded by swarms of DC tourists. It’s true what they say, kids–context is everything.

I’m going to jump on the bandwagon with the whole non-issue-issue snafu that’s erupting over Mera Rubell’s visit to randomly selected DC artists (my name not selected, sadly, especially since I’d planned to meet her in a bar rather than my teeny living space where she’d probably bump her head). In a nutshell, the renowned collector decided to visit DC to select random studios to visit, talk to artists about their work, and select a few pieces for an upcoming show at the Katzen Art Center. Somehow this experience has opened the floodgates on whether or not DC is taken seriously as an artistic hub, and how tired it is of being compared to its artsier older sibling, New York.

If you’re a local artist, like I am, it’s an interesting mini-drama to watch unfold, although lots of the criticism over DC’s local coverage strikes me as bit misguided. DC is small, and its artist population is smaller, the fact that critics, being critics, are going to have the odd negative comment should be expected. I personally hate the idea of local critics deemed “non-supportive” when they don’t say nice things, and I get the impression that a lot of DC artists constantly have their guards up, ready to cry foul if a writer doesn’t happen to like something. It’s shooting yourself in the foot, really. The best critical writing tends to be the stuff where the critic is very discriminating, and the only way to know if someone honestly respects your work or not is if they are able to point out its successes and failures alike.

I have put together a small book edition of six, inspired by both Jason Polan and Louise Bourgeois, available to whoever would like one, hand-signed, with a message in the back, for $2.00.

Dedicated to?

From French lessons 11/19/09 4:12 AM

I wonder how ex-pats do it. Real ones, I mean, who can scurry off to glamorous foreign countries and spend days writing or creating art and reading good books. Do they actually exist? Do they all have trust funds? Or cushy jobs with the State department? Either way, the idea is intoxicating.

I’ve been thinking about this of course, because I just came back from France, where I went for a few weeks of language classes and travel. I stayed mostly in the south in Aix en Provence, and don’t think I’ve seen too many places in my life that were more beautiful.

And just as I’d hoped, I learned a bit of French, got lost on many confusing rues, drew in cafes while sipping wee cups of coffee, saw magnificent ancient towns, and had thoughtful conversations over three hour dinners with the clever Anglophones I met in my class. In all, the perfect vacation. And now it’s back to real life, with its morning jogs and long commutes, and all of the day to day annoyances that aren’t nearly as much fun when they’re experienced in your homeland, and not a foreign country.

Hello, bragging rights! Today I won a House Hunt DC prize after a Da Vinci Code-esque hunt through the National Gallery. (This is the contest created by Andrew Wodzianski in which clues are placed all over the city.)  The prize includes free tickets to the House fundraiser and what I presume will be a delightfully weird after party, a painting from the show(!), soap on a rope noose, and this spiffy little number:

I adore the current William T. Wiley retrospective at the National Museum of American Art, partially because I’m a sucker for all things cartoonesque, but also because he nails what absurdist art should be–namely, an engaging romp through someone’s head, nonsense, contradictions and all. Even the exhibition title, “What’s it all mean?” doesn’t come across as a challenge to the viewer to come up with a plausible answer, but a question he’s been mulling over thoughtfully.

One of the treats of the exhibition are Wiley’s notes to himself–most of his work contains some sort of text wherein heated, and not-entirely legible debates with himself occur. “No one is going to read all of this!” he proclaims in one piece. In another painting, he chides the viewer for looking at a particular spot on the canvas: “Why are you looking at this? There’s nothing here!”

I read the above out of context quote from the DC Art News blog, which inspired me to look up its source, a snappy little Guardian article by Jonathan Jones. Critics, Jones argues, don’t have to explain their opinions. They just have to “innately know” that something is good.

It was funny to see this in print, since it essentially nails down my problem with most art criticism. I’d like to be a critic myself, because it sounds vaguely glamorous and I enjoy talking about art and all its nuances, but my sticking point has always been explaining why I like something. Nine times out of ten, I don’t know. I have the same problem with music—my default requirement for liking a song is that it’s “catchy,” but that can mean a number of things. Perhaps I’ll think the lyrics are profound as an afterthought, or that the song made me feel hopeful or sad, but beyond that, I don’t know what to say other than a statement so general I might as well not say anything at all.

This isn’t to say that I haven’t seen a piece of art and felt absolutely certain I was looking at a masterpiece—simply that I never knew how to properly explain why it was a masterpiece, without simply describing the qualities of the work itself. And according to Jones, lot of critics face the same problem–they just choose not to see it as one. Most art reviews say an artist is important because he has historical relevance, or that the work is about some sort of big idea that can only be expressed in a certain medium, or simply because they find it beautiful or moving or grand. But the reason your brain thinks a piece of art possesses those qualities and—very perplexingly—why someone else may not, remains a mystery.

A few weeks ago I purchased a business-card Andy Moon Wilson drawing from the Curator’s Office, which is now sitting on my desk. I was going to try to figure out a way to frame it, but instead decided to keep it propped up against the Ikea glass I’m using to hold pens. It’s the kind of art you want to pick up every so often and study: