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Central
Paradise,
detail, 98 x 60, 1997-98
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Picasso's
stylistic sequences
resemble his serial relationships, indicating that there is something
different but repeated about each stylistic segment. (This circularity
interests me.) Style is summed up as a material expression of sensibility.
Sensibility is defined as a shifting synthesis of allowables and disallowables
nested within a greater structure of allowables and disallowables. In
other words, a shifting framework of possibilities within another shifting
framework of possibilities. Artists historically unite theory and practice,
and operate out of a sensibility rather than by mechanically applying
theory to practice. In
my project, I find that I have to create very
much ( quantitatively ) in the way of artwork to keep the various styles
robust, that I have to tolerate a degree of toxic misgiving as I view
one style from the standpoint of another, and that I must tolerate categorical
dismissal from an artworld that is keyed to "signature style" for purposes
of academic, critical and commercial niching. Still, in this project,
each of these stresses is also positive: a high level of production is
facilitated by the multple personality approach as "a change is as good
as a rest." And because a creative block in one "personality" does not
affect the others, day-to-day confrontation with misgivings leads to
deeper self-examination and psychological endurance ( I look to Philip
K. Dick, Salvador Dali, and Edvard Munch for help in navigating the psychological
hazards, as well as Kaye Redfield and John Nelson, and stay in close
communication with a psychiatrist), and I can manipulate critics, rather
than be manipulated by them, and also become a critic myself, as well
as one who has to struggle harder for acceptance in any niche, thus gaining
further endurance.
La
Vista Totale
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Central
Paradise,
detail, 98 x 60, 1997-98 |
Still,
there is the project of establishing a comprehensive view, and I have
forced this by seeing a single slowly developing narrative through the
assorted styles in a long term series, originating in 1980, titled
La Vista Totale: a partial view. This series emphasizes,
as vehicles of comprehension, David Bohm's "holomovement," Maturana's
ideas about "structural coupling" and "structural drift" and Maturana
and Varela's "autopoesis," as well as organizational principles from
cybernetics, and makes room for eccentric models from Philip Dick and
Terence McKenna, while drawing inspiration about defining the mission
of the artist from Blake, Munch and Dali.
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La
Vista Totale:apv VI, 1994-95, detail
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My fundamental text, from which all LVT work emerges is a set of unpublished
books, of which I am the author, comprising a fictional narrative
that includes speculation in the above mentioned areas. These books,
titled Out of Jeweled Chaos, Kali Rules, Age of Infirmation, Nearer
the Trivial Core and Delphi in Snow, are at present a work-in-progress,
remaining roughly half-written and comprising about 1300 pages of text.
My paintings draw from these books in general, and contribute to them.
The continuing image of La Vista Totale: a partial view, is manifest as
depictions of a contract of some kind enacted between two figures, both
female in most paintings. While elements of imagery: a Chinese hat, Indian
pipe fungus, lilies, an orb, snakes and particular postures of supplication
and giving characterize these paintings, the styles in which they are
painted shift dramatically through time, as from identity to identity,
while the narrative of the contract moves very slowly. Stylistic shifts
oscillate between regressive and progressive historical styles so that,
seen as a totality, some characteristics of wave patterns may be revealed.
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