Thesis Proposal: Annotated Bibliography

Annotated bibliography

1. McEvilley, Thomas. Sculpture in an Age of Doubt. New York, Allworth Press, 1999.

Sculpture in the Age of Doubt is a series of essays on seminal postmodern sculptors set against a really smart analysis of the concurrent decline of the Kantian philosophical tradition. At the moment, the most important insight for me came in McEvilley’s essay of Marcel Broodthaers: “Generally in his work, the alphabet is understood epistemologically and ethically as a grid with which to control perception and reality towards some unacknowledged end.” This remark prompted me to compare and contrast both perception-shaping “technologies” and consider manipulating letters spatially, much the way the grid is explored by visual artists.

2. Shlain, Leonard, The Alphabet versus the Goddess: The Conflict between Word and Image. New York: Penguin, 1998.

Roughly: Shlain, a neurologist, argues that the rise of alphabetic literacy fundamentally reconfigured the human brain and consequently brought about profound changes in gender relations. Pre-literate cultures were strongly informed by holistic right-brain thinking and, Shlain argues, consequently revered goddesses and feminine values as much as masculine ones. Writing -- particularly alphabets -- drove cultures toward linear, right-brain thinking. This shift upset the balance between men and women, initiated the decline of feminine values and the reign of patriarchy and misogyny. This brief summary does not do justice to Shlain’s analysis – and no doubt sounds pretty hokey. But, at minimum, the text serves as a marker for the idea that rape and the silences of alphabetic languages are inextricably linked.

For me, then, the idea is to deconstruct the alphabet visually with the aim to evoke the possibility of restoring the balance between right and left brain thinking and consequently male and female values. Bottom line here: Despite the gains in equality, rape exists – whether as a tool of war or “isolated” crime statistics. To create letter-like shapes or constellations of shapes that evoke the look of trying to communicating something important, something unsaid, something, if said, if sayable, might alter the course of that suffering, remove it. A lot to ask. However, the impulse to create a new language is not a new idea for…

3. Albani, P. and Buonarroti B. Dictionnaire des Langues Imaginaires. Paris: Belles Lettres, 2001.

… contains over 1100 recorded examples of imaginary alphabets and/or languages. It is a fodder of visual material.

4. Empedocles, The Poem of Empedocles: A Text and Translation by Brad Inwood. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.

Empedocles was a pre-Socratic philosopher who offered accounts of the nature of change and the origin of the world, which always spark my imagination about the nature of creation.

The trouble with change, for the Pre-Socratics, was that it seemed to require that existence pass into non-existence, and vice versa. This was to their minds impossible. Empedocles proposed that change is really the result of the mixture of inalterable substances and what we call “coming into existence” and “death” are really only the mixture and separation of what was mixed. The four ultimate elements, according to Empedocles, are fire, water, earth, and air. They are simple, eternal, and unalterable. For change, then, to occur, there must – in his account – be moving powers to bring about the mixture and separation of the elements. These are Love and Strife. In the beginning, there was a time when the four elements and two forces co-existed in a state of rest and inertness in the form of a sphere. The elements existed together in their purity, without mixture and separation, and the uniting power of Love predominated in the sphere while the separating power of Strife guarded the extreme edges of the sphere. Since that time, however, strife gained more sway and dissolved the bond that held the substances together in their purity. The elements then became the world of phenomena we see today, full of contrasts and oppositions, operated on by both Love and Strife. At first, though, as the elements entered into combinations strange results appeared – heads without necks, arms without shoulders etc. Then as these fragmentary structures met, there were seen even stranger things, an ox with a human head, a foot with a mouth. But most of these products of natural forces disappeared as soon as they arose due to their lack of viability; only in those rare instances when the parts were found to be adapted to each did the complex forms last and form the world as we know it.

I can almost imagine an extremely precocious child coming up with such a story. And yet there is also something about those strange failed combinations that reminds of the processes of art-making. They also make me think that perhaps alphabets were also such failed combinations or, alternatively, could be improved upon in like manner.

5. Wittig, Monique. Les Guerillieres. Translated by David Le Vay. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007 (1969).

A classic. An imaginary, fragmentary account of a race of women warriors who combat misogyny and -- perhaps -- upend the alphabet. In any event, the writing is extraordinarily beautiful and strange – as if it came from another world.

7. Scarry, Elaine. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Scarry not only defends beauty from recent political arguments against it but also argues that beauty continually renews our search for truth and presses us toward a greater concern for justice. She begins by examining the experience of suddenly finding something beautiful – in this case, a palm tree – after a lifetime of never finding palm trees beautiful at all. She found other trees beautiful but not the palm. She really mines that experience, which was mediated by a series of paintings by Matisse. For once one finds something beautiful that one never did before, one realizes the injustice one had done it. At this very moment, however, I am doing her book a grave injustice by making her argument sound trite. It is anything but. It is, for me, the most profound reason to make art, though I had my reasons years before I read it. It is also, I think, a kind of polestar if what you want to accomplish is a change towards truth and justice. And, yes, I believe in those.

6. Kuspit, Donald.“Abstract Painting and the Spiritual Unconscious” in The Rebirth of Painting in the Late Twentieth Century. London: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Kuspit argues that abstract painting conveys in a seemingly cryptic, subliminal way the process of spiritual conversion for good. It begins with eschewing the mediation of the material world in conventional terms and beginning again with pure sense perceptions and replacing representation with presentational immediacy. I see this as an analogy for creating a new, a better alphabet. Of course, I think the same is true for sculpture.

8. Wechsler, Lawrence. Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.

Robert Irwin is simply inspiring in the way he attacks the questions he poses to himself and does not let go. He is also one of the great artists of “presence,” which is ultimately one of the qualities I am after in my own work.

9. Robert Smithson: The Complete Writings. Ed. Flam, J. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996.

At the moment, I am particularly interested in Smithson’s writings about language: “Language to be Looked at and/or Things to be Read” and “A Museum of Language in the Vicinity of Art.” My favorite remark: “My sense of language is that it is matter and not ideas.”

10. Close, Frank. The Void. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

A particle physicist’s explanation of the current understanding of voids, which are not empty but filled with particles popping in and out of existence.

Thoughts towards a Thesis Proposal

1. I am interested in voids, organic or constructed, generative or empty, and the play between holes or space piercing objects and the space – womb or architecture – inside objects, rendering that space visible, a presence. In this regard, the trajectory I see myself working in begins with Barbara Hepworth and the pierced form. Hepworth introduced “the hole” into her stone and woodcarvings in the early 1930s, exploring the subtle play between the inside and outside of her transcendently beautiful abstract figures. By the 1960s, Jackie Winsor transformed Minimalist vocabulary into strange and rich explorations of the exteriors and interiors of cubes as well as finely punctured walls. Sarah Openheimer’s current work not only punctures the wall or floor, it pierces straight through to other rooms or the yard outside while the holes themselves, constructed out of beautifully crafted plywood, effectively become the sculpture. Ultimately, it is this kind of “turning inside out” that I am after.

2. My interest in voids clearly has a sexual dimension or, more precisely, a concern with the particularity of female anatomy as a space of creation, desire or violation depending on one lot’s in life at any particular moment. The void is often understood as “empty space.” For example, Home Bhabha’s essay on Anish Kapoor’s voids is subtitled “Creating Emptiness.” I am concerned with the opposite: I am interested in working with voids as presence, which for women, they clearly are.

3. I am interested in a kind of Minimalist vocabulary articulated by Eva Hesse, Ruth Vollmer, and Jackie Winsor. All three worked with voids in both a gendered inflection which also, at the same time, attains universality.

4. I am interested in “presencing” the space involved with an object. Rachel Whiteread casts the space in, under, around things, which are particularly beautiful and haunting. With Whiteread -- to borrow the language of painting -- the figure becomes the ground and the ground the figure or absence becomes presence, presence absence. In this sense, her Holocaust Memorial, a cast of the inside of a library, is a particularly effective way of memorializing loss. In a different way, Richard Serra’s most recent work at MoMA uses monumental curved “sheets” of steel to create a vaginal, vertiginous experience of space as one moves through them.

5. I am thinking a lot about the relation between multiple iterations of the same objects to one another. This is also represents an interest in Minimalist repetition, which heightens the awareness of slight differences in the same form and, perhaps, points to an awareness of the ideal form behind the iterations. I am also interested in thinking about the massing of large quantities identical elements or material such as Robert Morris’ felt pieces, Ann Hamilton’s dreamlike, glittering field of pennies (to name just one example) or Yayoi Kusama’s obsessively covered forms. In particular, how do different quantities of the same material “read”? When or how does a large quantity become something else? When does it become obsessive?

6. I am also thinking about the relation between different objects to one another within a particularly defined space; in other words, investigating the possibilities of installation as a form for “writing” or “composing” with sculptural elements as if they were, in fact, elements in or signs of some kind of lost language.

7. Like a void, the unsayable/unspeakable is a distinct realm, which is not empty but overburdened with too much “meaning”. I am investigating “asemic writing,” a kind of writing-like mark making that has no identifiable semantic content, as a way of visually pointing to the unsayable/unspeakable. Put another way, I am interested in a kind of sculptural graffiti -- an imaginary and, yes, also, confrontational “handwriting.”

8. In a sense, I am interested in institutional critique such as practiced by Marcel Broodthaers and Monique Wittig. The “institutions” I want to “critique” are: (1) the ongoing “practice” of rape and (2) the voids and silences of language. Yet, to my mind, most institutional critiques practiced in the realm of visual art have too little of the visual and too much bankrupt language. I am thinking about institutional critique that is strong on experiential presence, and vision. A possible analogy: Just as when one travels to a foreign country, the differences and thus the structures of one’s home begin to become visible.

9. I am also exploring an “imaginary narrative” that links many of the concerns I described above and which is more fully fleshed out in my annotated bibliography. Grid and alphabet.

Interview with Marie Nyquist

Talking with painter Marie Nyquist was an easy, pleasurable exchange that covered everything from the moment she knew she wanted to be a painter to the work of Bonnard, Enoc Perez, Emory Douglas, and her view of the place of art in the world. Below are some excerpts:

AVR: You paint mostly portraits. They have great color sense and a deft, elegant quality. Can you talk about your work?

MN: I like oil and watercolor. I experiment with different supports. I’ll paint on drywall or masonite. They give a watercolory effect to the oil. That gives me the freedom of oil with the look of watercolor. I did a painting of my roommate on drywall and I was going to cut out a piece of the wall and install it while she was gone. A full painting appears overnight, totally dry. Like graffiti.

AVR: Do you see yourself ever going into abstraction?

MN: I like to mix it up. If I just did portrait after portrait, I’d burn out. Sometimes I just find that a certain motion in paint feels good and then I look at it. Portraiture involves a lot seeing, documenting. And then a certain motion -- that has nothing to do with documenting -- just feels good and looks good too.

AVR: A lot of your paintings are fairly small. Do you prefer that format?

MN: I’d really like to do a full-length portrait. Right now though I’m waiting for a studio. I’m painting in my basement without an easel. I think I have five small paintings going at once. Ever hear the saying “familiarity breeds contempt”? That’s how I often end up feeling about a big painting. By the time I get to the end, I get so angry, like, why did I do that? But with a lot of small paintings, I can switch back and forth, and return with fresh eyes.

AVR: When did you start painting?

MN: I've been painting for as long as I can remember. The first painting that I loved was for pre-school graduation. It was a life-size self-portrait and I was so proud of it. After that, I just always wanted to paint.

AVR: Do you still have it? No. My dad threw it out. It was hanging on the laundry room door and I think he just figured, "What’s this doing here?" I was so angry. I wouldn’t let him throw out my sister’s.

AVR: Which artists inspire you now?

MN: I liked the Enoc Perez show. I liked the colors. I never used those colors. That turquoise and bright yellow. I don’t know how to use those colors. I like Bonnard. Richard Baker, my Painting II instructor, introduced me to Bonnard. He said, "I wanted you to see this." Richard is the best. He sees what you are thinking about and knows what you need to be thinking about next. And I want to be painting like Bonnard.

AVR: Do you look at a lot of other work? What did you think of the shows at the New Museum, for instance?

MN: Sometimes looking at a lot of work feels like too much inspiration. I need to be working instead. I liked the Emory Douglas show a lot. I thought about whether an art museum was the right place to see his work, because his work is more like an artifact or historical document of a political movement. But I remembered what the dean said at graduation last year. He said that even though it might seem hard to choose to be a starving artist in a recession, civilizations are remembered for their art not their war plans. Little sculptures excavated centuries later give us insight into what earlier civilizations valued. Some things may not have started out as "art," but they are how future people will come to know us. So in the end I think it's good that Emory Douglas was shown at the New Museum. That quote from the dean is really important to me.

AVR: You’re graduating next semester. What’s next?

MN: I don’t necessarily need a job in art, I just want to be able to be able to make art. As long as I can make my art after work, that’s all I need.

First Year MFA Show

I am going to confine my remarks to some problems I found in the manner in which the works were exhibited.

First, the hanging wall is a potentially helpful device but I don't think it was used to its best effect. While it doesn't block the view of the large-scale painting on the gallery's far wall when one is out in the hallway, it immediately blocks one's view as soon as one enters the door. Once inside the door, all one really sees are a few, very small painting sketches. This might be fine if it were a show devoted to such material but there was a lot of work that was more considered and developed in the show. For that reason, it seems a bit unfair to put small, sketchy work, so to speak, first. One possible solution might have to hang the hanging wall in a straight line (rather than a L-shape that blocks one's entrance), perpendicular to the door and several feet to the right of the door. Then the view of the large-scale paintings would not be blocked and the hanging sculptures on the far side of the hanging wall could be seen better and in relation to the large-scale paintings at the back wall. I think that could have been a really interesting juxtaposition. It would also give more viewing room for the other large-scale "night" paintings on the left wall, which they need. Lastly, the small painting sketches could be hung facing the other larger painting sketches on the right wall, with which they have a greater affinity.

The next really big problem is the room on the left. The large plastic-flower installation totally dominates the room and is unfair to the other work shown there. The fairly large predominantly white painting can barely be seen at all since there is no room to view it except to put your nose in it. The other three works fair somewhat better since they draw you in close, but the loud music of the installation interferes with experiencing their quietness and delicacy.

The hanging papier-mache paintings are also not displayed to best effect, in my opinion, because they have to negotiate too many doors etc. The next room, further back, is also problematic because the paintings -- by two different artists -- are too similar in scale and palette to be seen to best effect. The room just feels crowded. Lastly, the "Feel the Wall" pieces don't strike me as properly displayed either, although I may be misreading the artist's intentions here.

In sum, I would have liked to have seen the show hung differently. I can think of a number of possible changes besides the ones already mentioned but, then again, what's done is done.

"The Fair"

1. "... emergent art, a term that is indicative of changing times. In the 1980s, when people started to feel uncomfortable with the word avant-garde, they adopted the euphemism cutting edge. Now, with emergent art, anticipation of market potential replaces vanguard experiment." "Uncomfortable" is a euphemism. The various avant-garde made the "next," "new" "move" in an intellectually rich, disciplined, visual "discourse." Then market forces colluded with cynicism and simply bet on newness for newness' sake. Donald Kuspit argued a few years back that the only "move" left is to play one's own idiosyncrasy; i.e. artists no longer participate in a "discourse" or dialogue larger than themselves and their own doodlings. Or, said another way, wanting to participate in a discourse larger than oneself has now become some kind of idiosyncratic desire. I rather think this is the corroding effect of market capitalism on art rather than art's necessary endgame. The above comments pertain to the remaining highlights below as well. I refuse to give in to the depressing conclusions it would be easy to draw from the text's sustained attention to economic aspects of art -- I refuse!

2. "Unlike other industries, where buyers are anonymous and interchangeable, here artists' reputations are enhanced or contaminated by the people who own their work."

3. "More and more collectors are opening their own exhibition spaces. Their official reasons are philanthropic, but their covert motives have more to do with marketing. The work of living artists needs to be promoted to generate consensus."

4. "... there's still an ideological antithesis between art and commerce, even if the two are inextricably intertwined and even when artists make the market an overt or ironic part of their practice. In a world that has jettisoned craftsmanship as the dominant criterion by which to judge art, a higher premium is put on the character of the artist. If artists are seen to be creating art simply to cater to the market, it compromises their integrity and the market loses confidence in their work."

5. "The amount of art in the world is a bit depressing. The worst of it looks like art, but it's not. It is stuff cynically made for a certain kind of collector." -- Jeremy Deller.

Chelsea Galleries 1

I visited about ten galleries on my first trip to Chelsea this fall. I like Maya Lin's new work but thought the pieces were not displayed to their advantage: Too cramped. James Turrell's holograms were endlessly engaging and prompted reflections on the difference between the illusion of space and the creation of space. Enoc Perez' paintings of architectural landmarks were strangely haunting, and Mark Bradford's abstract "paintings" composed of found paper from discarded billboards and posters were terrific. But, to my mind, the best find was a small show of Vincent Fecteau's inexplicable papier-mache forms, suggesting some kind of pile-up of alien 3-D typographies or car parts run through a blender and re-assembled.

Chelsea Galleries 2

I saw several shows that pushed my thinking about both the sculpture installation I envision for thesis exhibition as well as some paintings I am currently working on.

Prior to the gallery visit, I had been puzzling about how -- or whether -- to relate the somewhat sexual, though still geometric, forms I showed at the BA/BFA Open show to the cinderblocks I have been casting in semi-translucent, candy-colored resin. It occurred to me that dropping the color would let me let the forms interact, and I began rethinking the installation in terms of forms that spanned the spectrum from clear to white. I wondered, though, how clear or transparent forms would fare: Would they be invisible or close to it?

Serendipitously, I stumbled upon the David Kennedy Cutler show at the Derek Eller Gallery on Friday. Cutler manipulated 8' x 4' sheets of clear plexiglass with 2 heat guns and the twists, turns and tension of his own body. The result is a series of large, clear forms that suggest, faintly, the figure and yet also some kind of clear skin of vision. As noted in press release, when the forms are installed in the gallery context, " these 'invisible' sculptures present the paradox of emptying a space and filling it up." Because my interest in the forms I use is focused on the voids they present, the use of a clear material adds another dimension of "emptying" which I have to consider and, if I use it, activate as I develop my work.

The other serendipitous sculpture show I saw was Rebecca Warren's Feelings at Matthew Marks. Warren showed both overtly sexual forms as well as nearly pure abstract welded forms -- but for the occasional pom-pom she added here and there. Nearly all are large scale and made of either steel, bronze or unfired clay. The show is quite funny. As the press release notes, she often manages to both invoke and skewer familiar male artists like R. Crumb and de Kooning with her forms. For me, though, the show served as an example of what it might look like to display female sexual forms with abstract forms together. I'm not sure yet what I think. My feeling is that the success of the show rides more on her humour rather than the successful interaction of the forms. While humour is also an aspect of my work, I want my forms to interact well -- synergistically -- so this is something I'm keeping an eye on now.

Lastly, I spent over an hour at the Linda Christensen show at J. Cacciola Gallery. There were about a dozen gorgeous paintings the careened between figuration and abstraction. I am working with figuration and abstraction in my own painting, albeit in baby-steps. In front of her paintings, though, I felt I could see how to go, how to continue and how to grow along that path. It was an amazing instance of paintings talking to me -- discoursing! -- without words, on and on. The show closes on November 28th. I'll be back before it does.