so, back to james little...

color. yeah, what of it?? to start, it's rather overrated. white and black hold as much profundity as is needed in painterly expression. but, having said that, color, taken to it's apex, packs the weight of a bulldozer in overdrive. color can be tough. it can be lyrical... it can be anything in between. these are easy thoughts. no big deal. color makes for pretty pictures. it also makes for serious ass-kicking painting... the pink (or yellow) one artist lays down has nothing to do with the pink (or yellow) another artist lays down. in the end, it's about intent and an understanding of the material and nature of what it is that we do. the great colorists understand how one color (and, or hue) relates to the color (and or hue) laid next to it. the truely great, in this contemporary age-- so much history behind us-- twist our notions of color a bit to the side of what we think we know about COLOR... the color of james little is just that-- the color of james little. they are earthy and temporal when you want them to ground themselves in some sort of pastel definition. they are hard and bombastic when you want them soft and powdery... this is his strength, his mission perhaps...

and culturally, intellectually, we are all the better for it.

yeah... paint in NYC.

this afternoon i hung out with troy tecau of 210 gallery in brooklyn. we discussed hunting, motorcycles, violence and art. and then i had to make some art.

but last night was a big night... i remember holly solomon's space on houston street. it still stands, more of less. of course, now, it's a clothes store, or boutique, if you prefer. i remember the scene, not so much the art. bad art is not a new phenomena, much as we'd like to think... but, yeah, SoHo. we would make the scene and the streets would be empty until you neared whatever gallery was having the show. there, a crowd would be hanging out-- smoking, drinking, getting ready for the next show a block or 2 away. even in the early 90's SoHo was vacant and alluring, cobblestones and firescapes and uneven sidewalks and hot chicks puking in the trashcans and turning to you with a smile... what i remember is how silent and peopleless it was, as the sun went down and especially in the darkness. and then, suddenly, it seemed, we were enduring chelsea... yeah. anyways, last night at june kelly gallery, the artist james little unleashed his latest work. to say it was good to be in a SoHo gallery is an understatement. that it was a james little show-- well, fuck it.

i've know james since 2000. we've shown together and been represented together. in chicago, we tore it up-- booze, food, strippers... it was ours. our town, our time... last night, it was all james.

there are 2 artists that i think of when i think of color; james little and pat lipsky. there's an irony there that i won't go into here. both artists deal out tones and hues of understood "color" and then take it a bit farther than most are ready to deal with. in james little's case, he takes it to places where (for me, anyways) you just shake your head and try to understand what (and why and or how) it is that makes it work. little is a hard-edged, unabashed painting machine. he doesn't give a shit. fuck you. he will do his vectors and lay his tape down and nail the wax and oil and leave you guessing about how the hell he came up with this blue next to this grey or orange (if it is an "orange"), or green or red... and the paint lays think and heavy-- flesh on bone, with all the implicit perfections and/or imperfections... i remember, in a bar in chicago, james discussing my own work, saying to me--"...all that shit means something, the drips, the marks...". yeah, you're right...

it's good to know there are masters at work...

it's even better if you've been able to drink away an afternoon or 2 with them.

i raise this glass to you, james.
thanks...

it seems that paint is alive and well in NYC... it's nice to be able to say that.

a few weeks ag0, there was the paintings of michael brennan at brooklyn's 210 gallery, a great space with a strong curatorial program put together by the artist, troy tecau. last year i wrote about brennans' new work, as i saw it at the gary snyder project space. this is the kind of work where you look and, after the initial pleasures, you can't help but try to figure out how the artist does what he does... for me, part of the majesty of brennan's painting is that mystery, that and the firm commitment of the hard horizon line at the bottom of each piece. brennan brings oil to life and seemingly arrests it's motion, creating works that are both lyrical and rugged.

in chelsea, last week we had don voisine exhibiting new work at mckenzie fine art, just across the street from the madhouse scene of chuck close's opening at pacewildenstein. voisine is a master of black. there is a cold black, a warm black, a reflective black... all held tight by his hard edged line and the limited palette of (at times, surprising) contrasts. for my eye, the big thing with voisine's work is the surprise you get with each viewing-- that shape in the middle of the composition isn't what you think it is-- there's that tilt, that corner shaved off just so... at times a willful diagonal cuts across and stops short... and then there's that black....

that i've been so moved by these shows is no surprise in that i've been working black in the brooklyn studio for sometime now. there is an intensity is these labors that i believe comes from the force of the paint, of the black... there is the black of night, the black of water, of oil itself, the flat, sensuous matte of gesso, the grays that darken into tones of a black you just now discovered as you laid it on with the 4 inch brush... and now i get to bring these pieces together in a 2-person exhibit with the sculptor, christine howard sandoval, at the beautiful, newly renovated (and renamed, midstream) 124 performance and art space in brooklyn. and my long delayed solo show at roger ramsay gallery in chicago is set to be installed. and then, last night there was the opening of the james little show in soho's june kelly gallery.

more to come...

i had the great pleasure of attending a lecture by irving sandler, author of the seminal work, The Triumph of American Painting, published in 1970. the lecture was to introduce his new work, Abstract-Expressionism and The American Experience: A Re-Evaluation. sandler was concise and eloquent. his main point in the new book being his idea that pollock, de kooning and interestingly enough, clyfford still make up the most important artists of the ab-ex movement, particularly from the pivotal years of '47-'50. the clyfford still pick was a bit of a stretch to my mind at first, but sandler seems to believe still offered heavy doses of influence to both rothko and newman. he didn't go into whether or not this influence was more intellectual or with regard to formal composition, but it made sense. another premise he pushed was that both pollock and still were from the western plains, and that that experience pushed their vast "landscapes" and vistas-- hence the influence on rothko and newman; 2 very urban artists. makes sense.

one point he made really resonated with me, particularly with regards to my own work. sandler mentioned that, in writing his new work, he wondered why certain artists didn't meet his criteria of the most important art. what was that criteria?? his finalization was that there was great "lyrical" art being done (bradley walker tomlin, was mentioned), but that only the art dealing with the tragic and the "terrible sublime" reached the level of the "most important art."

yes...

i've been looking through some old issues of Artforum. i leaf through the pages and here and there an ad will jump out at me. the text is a non-issue, as is the featured art and the artists involved in the making of said art. yes, we have art from india, south america, africa, eastern europe, the middle east, asia (especially, china, of course...), etc, etc... but are we better for it?? especially considering that the video crap coming out of ghana will look pretty much like the video crap coming out of hamburg, that looks remarkably like the video crap coming out of taipei. the twisted, misunderstood legacy of duchamp mutated with the additions of raushenberg and warhol and we've been living with the afterbirth ever since. and thats what you see in Artforum, or any number of rags with the pretensions of dealing with art. there is the photography, the aforementioned video, installation, actions, conceptions, etc... and at this point, they've been around for a good 4 decades-- time enough to have developed significant variations of language and meaning, both singularly and collectively. sadly, as clement greenberg foretold in the late 60's, the "alternative media", if you will, has become homogenously academic, to say the very least.

by the nature of it's democracies these media are an easy out for those who need it. the juvenile humor takes the place of high seriousness, the video protects from the visceral reality of paint, stone and metal. fine... but the horror of it IS THAT IT ALL LOOKS THE SAME. EACH "ARTIST" IS AS ANONYMOUS AS ANY OTHER FROM ANY OTHER LOCATION ON THE PLANET. IT IS THE SAME LOOK, THE SAME ATTITUDE, THE SAME POLITICS, THE SAME SHOCK TO THE MIDDLE CLASS (OR SOME OTHER DISTENDED ENEMY), THE SAME VITRINES, THE SAME LIQUIDS, THE SAME BODY FLUIDS, THE SAME NUDITY, THE SAME SELF-CONSCIOUS POSTURING AND PROMOTION...

something else i get from checking out these Artforums-- there is some damn fine painting being done in the world. and it looks good and it looks powerful and looks like an individual work of art. and you wouldn't know this by reading any of the reviews or featured articles, you would arrive at this realization simply through looking at the ads. every now and then a few of them will jump out at you. maybe it's only a detail of a particular painting, but it's there nonetheless...

one of the joys of mid-century modernism was how the diversity of international flavors developed and matured. for sure, there was a definitive "american" painting going on. and the same could be said for france in the 50's and 60's... i think it was greenberg who brought up the comparison between the work of kline and soulages. yes, both artists leaned on black and white and, obviously, the abstract expression. but there it ends. and then there were the germans, the other sordid examples of northern european art and, quite romantically the canadians, toiling anonymously and powerfully. a few years ago, on a trip to montreal i was struck by the sheer number of GREAT paintings by various artists from the last 50 years I HAD NEVER HEARD OF... and each one, though (for the most part) sharing the interest and exploration of abstraction worked through very different means, purposes and aesthetics. i won't act like i know much of mid-century art in asia and africa. but i'd guess that there was an aesthetic set of principals and understandings much different than those of the western world. but now? now cultural variation is only in the name on the slide label and maybe related somehow to the various pretensions involved. now, we have a hegemony of poorly realized, international regurgitations of weinerourslermccarthykelly and thats really about it and it's sad and it's futile to worry too much about it and it's more important to just (somehow) make it to the studio and make the work you need to make and maybe read a poem and maybe drink some wine and then come home and cook dinner and go to bed and then it all starts over again and you look back on the yesterdays and smile, having done what you could... add to that going to whatever job is allowing you to pay rent for a studio and buy paint and all the rest and well, my friend, thats life.

there has been a lot of talk and a lot of writing about what the economic shit storm will do to (or for) art and the art world. well, the idea of artists making money on their art is, all things considered, a relatively recent concept. galleries will close. collectors will be a little tighter with their dollars and all of that is fine. artists will keep on with their work.

and perhaps there will be a merciful culling of the herd...

ok... making black (predominately black) paintings can be a wonderful, invigorating experince, or it can lead one into a personal blackness of the soul and intellect. i'm working out these canvases that have been worked on and worked out for years now... and while i'm trying to understand what they try to say i'm reading essays on the late, dark (black) work of rothko. these late works, of course, came to conclusion with rothko slicing his forearms and bathing (in a union suit, it is said) in a widening pool of blood... where am i going with this?? good question. i want my work to be invested with emotion and truth and a somber quiet romanticism... these are heady terms and needs to bring up in this day and age in this time and this art world. emotion is tough to deal with and truth is the truth, hence (we would be led to believe, untouchable) and the quietly romantic, austere qualities of real art and expression are way to hard to come by and deal with-- hence, our state of the art of nonsense and non-art... fine. yeah...

once again, it's been a long time...

so, last week i dragged out a 58x84 canvas that i started 4 years ago. needless to say, it has become something new and important to me. black and harsh... it's going to be a good journey wherever it leads. to paraphrase the eastern sages: the goal is the path... and today i went back into the 60x48 canvas i've been working on since 2001... we'll see. time in the studio has been good, bad, frustrating and invigorating. kind of what one can expect if this is the life chosen. moments in there of complete ennui and then suddenly the drawings are going and the paint flies and hits its mark with aplomb. or not...

a commissioned piece is finished or nearly so, there are possibilities brewing (to be firmed up) and spring is coming sooner or later. and i'm trying to make my work. to paraphrase once again, this time brice marden, "it's not about a single painting, its about doing your work and the evolution of a vision." fuck yeah...