the other jack smith...

few months ago i picked up a small 8 page black and white catalog of paintings by jack smith from 1963. before seeing the reproductions, i'd assumed it was the work of the jack smith who made the flaming creatures film and was a compadre of ira cohen and angus maclise; but once i saw the images, i figured these must've been made by someone else, and indeed this jack smith was a painter from england, born in 1928, who began showing in 1952.

after looking at the tiny catalog (and finding a few color images of the same paintings online), i'm thinking that smith's last name was his only "ordinary" characteristic, as the paintings are pretty darn idiosyncratic, and some of them are really really wonderful... and the more i see of british painting of the 60's and early 70's the more i wonder why no one on this continent ever talks about it.

having been immersed in the relationship of sound/music and painting, as well as notation and diagrams, smith's short artist statement in the catalog, was also quite a surprise:

"i think of my paintings as diagrams of an experience or sensation. the subject is very important. the sound of the object, its noise or its silence, its intervals and its activity. when i talk about the sound or music of the subject i'm not always thinking in terms of a symphony, but groups of single notes. the closer the painting is to a diagram or graph the nearer to my intention. i like every mark to establish a fact in the most precise, economical way."

...

last week i was visiting another artist's studio and we ended up talking about paths - life paths, career paths, etc. at one point he asked me if i thought that some artists were not successful simply because their work was just not that good. of course, the easy answer is that at times such things, painful as they may be, are certainly true... but there are clearly so many other reasons why work may or may not be recognized - and obviously, some of them have nothing to do with the actual work itself... from my own point of view, one of the reasons work can be ignored is simply the fact that the artworld is rarely interested in something that isn't compatible with "what's going on".

whenever i discover an artist like jack smith (either of them), i can't help but wonder about the kind of presence, or absence, my own work might have 20, 40, 80 years from now. while smith's work is in the collection of a number of major UK institutions - including the tate - and he is still showing work and represented by a london gallery and "well known", i wonder how much his work participates in the conversation now. do young people speak of it, know of it, or care about it? is it written about? is it making any noise? will he have a "lee bontecou moment"? the work is certainly relevant, and not just as a precedent.

when i was in undergrad school in the mid-1980s, i discovered the work of arthur dove in a library. the funny thing is that i thought because i'd never heard of him, that dove was an obscure artist. dove's "irrelevance" was confirmed by the fact that none of the people i'd mentioned my "discovery" to had anything good to say about him; although for me, in the midst of all the spectacle going on at the time, dove - as well as ryder - felt like an antidote, and sort of saved my life - for in their humble endeavors, i felt a bit of a kinship towards my own quieter interests. the work gave me strength.

by the time i got to grad school, most people were talking about the death of painting, so when i brought up dove, hartley, ryder, and eventually forrest bess, in class, the assumption on the part of everyone else was that these artists were no longer relevant - not because they made work that was more than 5 years old, but because within the overall conversation of the moment, there was no room for work that did not fit in...

without consciously choosing to do so, i have, more often than not, ended up drifting towards what is commonly known as "the periphery" to find the things that move me. perhaps the "periphery gene" is what got me into the la punk scene in 1979, or perhaps it was the punk scene that birthed such a gene within me, but either way, it got me thinking that the outside tended to be a lot more interesting than the inside. i can't imagine anyone deciding to be an artist because they are looking for a lifetime of obscurity, but on the other hand i cannot imagine anyone wanting to be an artist so they can be rich and famous...

when i look at this little catalog of paintings that jack smith made a year before i was born, i get excited for a number of reasons - but most of all because the paintings feel as if they are his own, and as a group of works, they seem to be quietly mining their own territory. of course, there is a level of sadness knowing that in 6 years of art school and 20 years of associating with artists, historians, academics, etc. i've never seen smith's work, nor seen, nor heard, any reference to it - but so many of the artists i'm interested in are also rarely mentioned. i experienced this from the other side of things when teaching last year and my students had never heard of william s. burroughs, brion gysin, harry partch, or even charles burchfield.

smith's painting history - a consistent search through an inconsistent visual language - suggests a continual striving towards experimentation rather than signature, and in that i begin to wonder if such a life plan guarantees the periphery, and hence, a periphery's audience.

what i love about a periphery's audience, as opposed to a mainstream audience, is that a periphery's audience tends to be like a group of geeky record collectors, arguing over the work and wanting to mine it for all it will offer, and then some. the love tends to be dedicated and long term. a mainstream audience moves from passion to boredom quickly, is dedicated to no one, and tends to be excited by or arguing over one's stature and/or genius...

and so i wonder how jack smith would feel knowing that 50 years later, an artist finds his work compelling enough to spend some time thinking about it, and trying to bring it back into the conversation. over the past week or so, i've picked up this little booklet and marveled at what i can glean of the inner workings of the pictures, and they've begun to seep into me. through these few images, and smith's own text, his work has become part of my own inner conversation, and hence has truly inspired me.

when instruction for construction is beautiful...

mid 1960's marx toys animal cage box back, very small, fits in the palm of one's hand...

and the box front is a nice bit of concrete poetry:

a-ni-mal cage,

snap

fit

kit

set.

when the mind's eye and the eye's eye play with memory...

i picked up this beautiful albumen photograph of an ice formation in the sea at the flea market on sunday (i would highly recommend clicking to see in a larger size!). as i was looking at the photograph, deciding whether or not to buy it, it began to suggest a small painting by arthur dove, which in my mind's eye felt as if it had some sort of formal visual equivalent to the image in the photograph.

when i returned home, i spent a half hour or so trying to find my dove books, and finally uncovered frederick s. wight's book on dove from 1958. this book, which i discovered as a student, in a library in paris, many years ago, was my first introduction to dove's work, and the images, as well as some of dove's own writings, planted the first deep seeds of abstraction within me. it was also in wight's book that i first saw a color image of dove's 1910 painting, abstraction no. 2, which was part of a series of 6 very small paintings, purported to be the first truly abstract paintings made in america.

when i managed to find the image in wight's book i was surprised at how little the photograph and the painting had in common (other than their scale, as i have seen abstraction no. 2 in reality). i had somehow imagined within my mind's eye that the form within dove's small painting had similar tentacle-like appendages growing out of it, and similarly connected those iceberg horns to another of dove's works, which was totally devoid of any relationship to this photograph at all...

in the second image of dove's painting, just above, i have flipped it over, to force the painting into a literal visual relationship conversation with the photograph. of course, the black outline does suggest devilish horns pointing upwards, but the idea of the necessity of flipping the painting to make the connections work becomes too forced, and suggests, rather presumptuously, that dove's work must conform to my mind and an old anonymous photograph, rather than that i must work to get closer to whatever connections exist between two things as they are.

certainly the main form in dove's painting (seen right way up), and the ice form in the photograph, occupy a similar subject/ground relationship, as well as both inhabit a similar amount of pictorial real estate. also the larger black area in the midst of dove's shape certainly corresponds to the window-like cavity in the ice form... but within these few simple, and relatively meaningless, connections, i wonder if this whole situation should even be thought about in relation my eyes at all.

i would like to think of a "connective feeling" as something being birthed from simple gut reaction that moves vibrationally towards my emotions, and perhaps, also working a at times upon my memories - memories that perhaps relate dove's colors to some moment of visited sea, or perhaps, in relation to a time in my life, or to some object or image that holds parts of dove's abstraction and the iceberg within it.

perhaps my insides can sense or see some thing or idea that suggests a sturdy bright pink twine binding these two things together -not just in feeling, but through logic that could be articulated with clarity... but surely, this is not the case. to my "knowing" self, it is really a matter of being just out of reach, where some ethereal and stubborn string, is so invisible to my own eyes, that whatever path i would need to walk to come upon such conclusions, could not be found.

as always, it within this space of distance and disconnect that i find to be the richest. in these spaces, these two images feel connected, regardless of whether or not i can articulate such connections in detail. the truth is that i'm still enamored with the way an image can make one person feel happy or another sad, or how one seems to be good, while another is somehow bad. our response to images is quite subjective, and images generally contain such a wonderful ability to confuse things inside of us - acting as triggers of potential, towards self awareness and at the same time, creating a confused and unresolved situation that one can only really come to terms with through a kind of letting go of rational thinking - to see these things as double sided, one as it is in the world, and the other as it feels inside of us and how it plays upon our memory and mind. this convoluted flux is proof that parts of our insides are continually at work, even though we are seldom allowed to access their secrets.

when i try to compare dove's painting and the iceberg photograph, their connections are strongest when i am not thinking, and in a state of unknowing. (and so it must be that it is in that place, within the mind, where one of these two similar, yet dissimilar, things is erased, so that it can become different in mind than it is in reality - transformed, translated, or transcribed - suddenly feeling closer to its sibling in appearance inside, than it is as seen on the outside, only with eyes).

this feeling of connection, outside of logic or visual evidence, is nearly impossible to describe; although perhaps like rorschach blots, some therapist could see in my need for these two images to suggest each other in an almost symbiotic visual relationship, a relationship to some psychological state, a feeling towards a parent, or a key to my own secret desires...

myron stout on josef albers...

"... i suppose albers came to his purism out of de stijl and kandinsky, and with the strong touch of 19th century scientific idealism which brought such a strong pragmatic note to the bauhaus - together, of course, with the german mystical-metaphysical idealism.

the earlier purists were so much more the poets and the mystics in their work than any now practicing and these are the very qualities which gave their work more validity (together, of course, with greater artistry) than that of the ones now practicing. i include albers, of course, with the earlier ones, though i can not feel him the artist that mondrian was, of course. he certainly does have the transcendental ideal, though, and he not only does not lose it with increasing age, but seems to strengthen and clarify it. his work always gives me pause, because the scientifically "measured" quality always stops me (at least momentarily - and sometimes blocks me) on the way "through" his work to what he has to say or present. on the other hand i always come again and again to a great admiration for the consistent and truly integrally held vision which impels him and is, on the whole, revealed in his work. that he can hold it is very remarkable, for it's almost as though he were a man out of his time - he should have lived a generation earlier when the materialism and lack of faith and conviction of today would not have been there to beat on him and his audience. the solitariness of his powerful idealism would have been easier to bear, so to speak, had he come to full flower in 1900 or 1910 instead of now. i think possibly he has not been able to reconcile his ideals with the world he finds himself in - his work is not embracingly "telling" enough. but he still holds to the basic - to the fundamental of what he knows will give expression to what he means."

april 28, 1960

top: josef albers hommage to the square
bottom: myron stout, 1950

painting in the instant...

"the instant is an absolute and thus is honoured with a THE before it, as in the mind, the universe.

the instant does not refer to speed. a slow line or a fast line can both be in the instant. there may be intervals between one stage of a painting and another, and yet the whole is in the instant. the instant is ever - present.

the instant refers to attention. in the instant there is a state full attention to what is happening.

in the instant there is a coincidence of events -

wind blowing, grass growing, brush strokes appearing.

all there is, is in the instant".

a quote from gordon onslow ford's painting in the instant.

today i drive to oakland for the opening of the exhibition LA PAINT at the oakland museum of art.

two voices from the art of assemblage...

"it now seems to me that even striving for expression in a work of art is harmful to art. art is an archprinciple, as sublime as the godhead, as inexplicable as life, undefinable and without purpose. the work of art is created by an artistic evaluation of its elements. i know only how i do it; i know only my material, from which i derive, to what end i know not."
kurt schwitters, 1921

"painting relates to both art and life. neither can be made.(i try and act in that gap between the two.) i am trying to check my habits of seeing, to counter them for the sake of greater freshness. i am trying to be unfamiliar with what i'm doing. if you do not change your mind about something when you confront a picture you have not seen before, you are either a stubborn fool or the painting is not very good."
robert rauchenberg, 1961

two quotes from the 1961 MOMA catalog the art of assemblage.

studio visit...

"there's something for the analyst!" he (pollock) said,"the painter locks himself out of his own studio. and then has to break in like a thief"

before we could stop him he had smashed a pane of glass.

"couldn't we force the window?" i said.

he tried, but without success. there were wedges nailed from the inside.

"damn!" with his elbow he smashed another pane, and then another, tearing away the wooden strips between them. "wait i'll get a hammer and really go to work on this." he ran back to the house while we collected the splintered glass in a pile. returning with the hammer, he finally managed to raise the lower half of the window and, shoving a table covered with dusty sketches out of the way, stepped in. we followed him...

...

as we walked toward the window to climb out, he took a look back into that lair of creative devastation.

"these paintings, the ones i've kept, are my securities. they're all i've got left." he leaned out the window and looked at the view of the distant pond.

"painting is my whole life..."

from seldon rodman's conversations with artists, 1961

an abundant harvest of sun...

some images of a small 1950 catalog of the work of lee mullican, from his first new york show, at the willard gallery. the essay was written by fellow dynaton painter and publisher of dyn, wolfgang paalen... here are some excerpts from his text:

...it has been a fecund year for mullican, an abundant harvest of sun... one of the most inspired of these pictures is called 'ascension'. it makes me think that there ought to be an angel for painters. not a guardian angel nor the final one of the very last judgement; in any case, this angel would not carry a trumpet. for all i know, he might not even be on the very best of terms with the high brass of heavens - and i would believe him equally indifferent towards the run of the mill saints and sinners. he would travel ever incognito, a kind of 'eminence grise' of the spirit. some evening, he might be seen in a silent country, looking over the shoulders of men who sit around the late glow of dying embers. when the embers crumble, one of the men, without a word, would let drift an eagle-feather into the warm air over the ashes, where it would stay afloat for an unforgettable moment. and i dare to think the angel would smile in his wisdom, how well this gesture weighs on the scales of eternity... that angel might also be seen walking in and out of certain paintings, at dusk and dawn.

there's a great interview with mullican here.

as relevant as ever...

yesterday morning, while searching for an article on hans jenny, i got sidetracked by an article on the british painter paul huxley from a 1969 british art mag. i have to confess knowing absolutely nothing about his work, but being completely bowled over by the two images in the article. huxley, born in 1938, has had an illustrious career, is a member of the royal academy, has work in the tate's collection, and is still painting and exhibiting... but here in los angeles, i've never heard him mentioned.

coincidentally, i went out to see a number of gallery shows yesterday and there was a lot of painting. the problem was that i couldn't get huxley's works out of my head; and i kept feeling that the paintings above seemed fresher and more inventive - and potentially more genuine - than much of the recent painting that unknowingly references this work. along with huxley, i saw a lot of paul feeley (who matthew marks recently put back on artists' radars) and another british painter from the late 60's, robyn denny.

i really wonder why it is that at this particular moment in time, the flat spare abstraction from the mid 60's and 70's has returned to painting, with, unfortunately, none of the substance, and all of the style.

huxley's work - and feeley's - are not refined, as much as they are exploratory. sure, they are consistent, but not at the expense of making an awkward one, a pathetic one, or an incredibly beautiful one.

i think it boils down to the experiences an artist is after - the experiences the artist wants from the making, and the experiences the artist wants to offer a viewer in the exhibiting.

here are some of huxley's words: "paintings today should be about question making, not story-telling... the sermon and the conducted tour have been dealt with and painting can only be enlightening by posing questions and making reconnaissance trips rather than supplying answers. we become more wise by by not knowing. if i were asked to give a guide as to how my work should be understood i would remember mailer's quote from gide: please do not understand me too quickly..."

perhaps huxley's words are the keys to the difference. a lot of the work i've seen lately has no room for "not knowing" in it. there is no way for me to step outside of the "conducted tour" and fall into quicksand, and i am rarely allowed to "not understand too quickly". most of the work offered no questions, and in many cases the answers were just not evocative enough to set one wandering.

bryan robertson ends his article on huxely with a quote from eliot's four quartets:
we had the experience but missed the meaning,
and approach to the meaning restores the experience
in different form, beyond any meaning
we can assign to happiness.
like huxley's painting, eliot's words are simply a number of small parts arranged on a plane. like huxley's painting, eliot's words suggest that their form is fixed in space and time. and like huxley's painting, these fixed things can be read and re-read to reveal multiple levels of thinking, reading, and meaning - they offer experiences of slowness and they reward questions with more questions.

paintings within a painting...

three details from the background of georg achen's 1901 painting "det gule chatol" from the funen art museum, odense. smaller than postcards, larger than postage stamps, i suppose they are supposed to read as reflections of realistic imagery when seen from a distance... but with one's nose near the canvas, they are certainly wonderful little abstract paintings...