bjorn ressle has taken 3 of my small drawings for a show in december. it's a salon show, of a large number of artists, but i'm in there with beuys, ryman, anastasi, howard smith, etc... it feels good. real good... and right around the corner from the Met. beautiful...

more on the kingston show in san fran...

yeah.

kingston has consistantly figured out how to make a great painting. i'm saying this from the view-point of having seen many of them in his studio. whats interesting is how many great paintings have been painted over, never to see the light of day. this is part (a large part) of kingston's poetry-- he paints. and paints... obviously, there is precedent for such practice (i follow it myself)-- picasso and de kooning both were reluctant to release works from the studio despite crushing poverty. throughout the ages, artists have been in situations where the single canvas represented a lifes work, by form or by function. by necessity or by obsession..

i believe there are times when the artist retreats to a simplicity of practice to simply exist as a working artist. moments lost in the mere application of material on support-- lost in the activity of motion and creation. this is not rosenbergs "action painter", i'm discussing here a tantric, mature approach to creation and a physical necessity and practice of application.

kingston approaches this with his determined re-drafting of composition. in the dolby chadwick gallery, i pondered briefly what paintings lied underneath the paintings i saw. in the end, it didn't matter. whatever had come before had bred the work before me.

and thank god for it...

ok, so poetics and booze-fueled revery aside, a discussion of the kingston show...

i sit in a rarified space, in that i have seen kingston actually apply paint to canvas. we have upturned countless mexican brews as we pontificated on the act and passion of paint. that being said, the kingston show was truly spectacular. i have seen his faults and i have seen his glories-- kingston glides about at times-- but this particular show made any past discrepancies a very moot point. he is a child of klee, de kooning and guston. these influences peak out, but yeild to the single-handedly emotional, yet stoic brushstroke of kingston and his notion of layering forms and mists and files of information. the best of kingston is in the emptiness of space-- an emptiness that is, in fact, quite dense with information, fecund with reference. nothing is left out of a painting-- history, philosophy, geography, etc... the end result is a solidly consistant exhibiton of paintings that meet in a space of beautiful synchronicity.

kingston seems enamored (as i am) by landscape and the mysterious gloss of it's potential. his approach, however, is one of interpreter-- he sees and evaluates according to his practice...

this is painting of a high, high modernist slant, with the salient gist of a man and artist engaged in his time and it's precedents. we need more of this.

much more...

Notes on San Francisco:

* the martin puryear retrospective kicked ass... as with kingstons painting, there was the quasi-literary, or representational quality of the work. shapes and forms (and ideas) that rest in the collective unconcious-- trapped or lost by travel, work, love, life, etc... we lose things and regain them inspite ourselves. in any event, this was sculpture of strength and understanding. as moving a show as one could wish to spend an afternoon in.

* the matthew barney piece at san francisco museum of modern art (martin puryear): this is  drawing taken to a certain extreme of risk and intent. this is art taken to an athletic format of daring adventure. this is art, drawing in particular, not to be missed... Barney actually climbed the turret of the museum and while hanging with carabiners, "performed", if you will, the drawing in question on a wall of the turret. and it's a hell of a drawing, regardless of the physical baggage attached. yeah... indeed, as irrelevant as much of barney's work is, there are elements and particular events and objects that cannot be missed or ignored. much of his work (including his failures) move us forward, as artists and viewers. and it must be stated, in the end, he is a gutsy motherfucker. period...

*with the exception of kingstons gallery, dolby chadwick, the spaces in san francisco aren't very impressive. some in fact are downright depressing-- windowless, cramped cubicles.

* in the secondary gallery of dealer, claire carlevaro, i saw a small piece by the artist renata mclean. it was a violently gestural work, the strokes done in heavy, linear motions, seeming to join in the near middle of the the panel. mclean and her husband moved to nyc in 1960 and there is no biographical data since. a tragic mystery. who was this woman?? in the same space there were strong drawings by james budd dixon, frank lobdell and small works by hassel smith and karl benjamin.

the work of the san francisco school always seemed rather playful to me. too much so, truth be told. perhaps this was the experimental nature of the beats and of the city itself. perhaps it was a lack of seriousness, or a certain all-too democratic nature and pursuit of art. in any event, the work, no matter how inspired, generally fell short for me. the exceptions of course, being diebenkorn and various artists in various moments. but, yeah, it never measured up for me. or for history, for that matter. but here was something to bite into. these works, works on paper, wood and canvas were solid, tough expressions of the time and of the tradition. good to see... i just wish i had a few thousand bucks in my pocket at the time.

* if you're in san francisco, don't miss the de young museum. a strong, strong collection and a view from the top that is worth any number of entrance fees. the whole of the city stretched out before you.

*i bought some earrings from a street vendor. she made them herself that afternoon on that very corner. she told me she was a painter and asked what i was doing in san fran. when i told her i was an artist she asked where i was from. when i said new york, she asked if i sold my work. " as often as i can," i said. she looked at me with a straight face and asked, "are you rich?"

* 3 nights i had dinner at la fina stampa and enjoyed the marinated beef heart and broiled tripe, with numerous negro modelos and shots of cuervo. the intensity of these meals cannot be overstated...

* there are men ( and some women, though seemingly far fewer in number) who scurry about the streets in worn clothing and dirty shoes, lacking teeth and bathes and haircuts or shaves or meals, for that matter. they aren't the homeless you see in nyc or LA, in fact, they are (many of them, i'm sure) not homeless. they are the casualties of the 60's and the promises and missteps of a certain segment of a certain part of the american left in a certain part of late 20th century history. they are the casualties of MFA programs and acid, literature and buying into your own (or another's ) romanticism.

they were looking for something.

i hope they remember what it was...

as usual, this is late in coming... but san francisco was quite a trip. the robert kingston show at dolby chadwick gallery was nothing short of a triumph. that first afternoon, the day before the opening, i cruised in and checked things out. in fact, truth be told, i cruised in and got blown away by serious kick-ass abstract painting. this was the show kingston could have done years ago, but, saddled with a passing fancy for geometric abstraction, didn't. this was the art the 2 of us have discussed in studios from nyc to LA, over beers and over mexican food in both cities. this was the art that any true painter should aspire to. this was the art that should be made. there was the heartily consistant, ballsy quality to each piece. the pallet limited to earthy tones and bone whites. there was the ubiquitous kingston moves-- the semi-literate sketches, the cross-hatching of brush strokes, the newspaper pull off of passages of color. and there was the sure handed strength of an artist at the ready. this was the show that artists long to see on those nights out to the galleries. this was the show that was so needed today. today and any other day for that matter...

as for the city itself-- san francisco still has it's whores and junkies stalking downtown. my hotel, mere blocks from the gallery and union square was surrounded by them. but it's a different take on the seedy nature of urban america. this wasn't the land of the walking dead that downtown LA was and (for the most part) still is, this was a living, working, disordered level of society and, indeed, america. this is the seediness of being on the make, looking for the next move, the next outlet. furtive, endangered and dirty...

and there were the numerous pints of stella in the vesuvio cafe, ducking into city lights bookstore to read pages of poetry and criticism, back to vesuvio to talk to the aged beat poet, her hair long turned gray, but still turning it on. she spoke of the main men-- kerouac, ginsberg, mcclure, snyner, rexroth, etc... life is good.

but sometimes it's better then we think.

more to come...

so, yeah, richard serra... what can you say?? at beacon, i walked in and among the series of torqued ellipses, musing that it was an experience that can't be described. serra's achievement is one on the order of nature itself. by that i mean that he has surpassed the experiential facet of art and elevated it to the the level of the natural world. i've been caving and i've seen some spectacular caverns here and in europe. i've had lots of time on lots of beaches and in lots of boats, big game fishing. the feeling i get in these intense natural settings is very similar to the feelings i get while enveloped in serra's spaces. it's a sense of awe and, indeed a feeling of one's own insignificance in the scope of certain realities... this had been acheived, to a certain degree, in the painting of newman, pollock and rothko. it was the goal of clyfford still and perhaps motherwell. 

what sets serra (and heizer) apart is the unnerving ambition and final realization of an art that goes beyond what we know as art... 

next week i fly to san francisco for the opening of robert kingstons solo show at dolby/chadwick gallery. i haven't been to san fran since i was a child, so this is pretty exciting. and it's always good to meet a new dealer. we'll see what happens...

last week i drove up to millbrook, new york, to hang out with my friend and former dealer, andrew miller. he renovated a stone barn a few years ago and it's a truely awesome space. we ate giant ribeyes and went through 3 bottles of good st.emilion. and a few martinis. next day after bacon and eggs, we drove down to beacon to check out the dia center. in a word: amazing...

if you don't know much about michael heizer, try to find out as much as you can. the man's vision and his art is as profound as his ambition. of particular note, his piece magalith #5, rates for me as one of the most important sculptural statements of this century. the work includes a vertical recession into the wall of the gallery, maybe 18 feet high and lined with steel. inside the recession is anchored a boulder filling the vertical space. you can't really write a description about something this intense and pass it off. yes, i've written before about first hand experience with art, but this is taking that idea to a new level... i'll get back to this, not to mention the awesome holdings of serra, agnes martin, bob ryman, etc...

40 something degrees this morning on my way to the dojo... fall in nyc.

to 20x20's are looking good. 3 of them are now a very strong tryptich, horizontal, a rich, opaque black. now i'm trying to figure out the alignment. spent several hours the other day moving them around and just checking them out. but, yeah, it looks good... multi-panel works have always excited me and i haven't done one in quite a while. the multi-panel work demands a different viewing practice. the eye moves differently and the space between each panel is so important-- breathing room, etc...