16 June 2021
Sol LeWitt, leaping to conclusions
Although I’ve enjoyed Sol LeWitt vicariously for many years I’ve never really been emotionally moved by his work. He’s a conceptual artist and his work doesn’t pretend to be touchy-feely. Although I was born in New York, I was only a sometimes resident over the years, and yet I was infected at birth with an ironic spirit. So thus it wasn’t difficult to appreciate his mind even if I didn’t always follow his cerebral peregrinations up and down, and along the curvy ceilings of his installations.
He once famously said, “the idea becomes the machine that makes the art.” In a way, I kind of agree, except only partially, even if I could be sure to understand his meaning, because it’s a declaration that might need to be parsed open by a neurosurgeon with a special skill in semantics. But yes, the idea in any creative work is pretty paramount. Ideas, like rivers, are after all, the source of everything, even our emotions. So, though I could quibble with the word ‘machine’, it’s still an interesting proposition, albeit on the dry end.
But it leaves out the execution of ‘art’, what I would deem to be craft. And being a painter, I am primarily invested in how an idea is executed. How could I not be? I’m a Romantic not a Conceptual artist. What interests me is how an idea is expressed successfully in a creative work. This a huge discussion, bigger than I can address here, but I think as a painter, it lies in both realms of creative intelligence and craft within any artistic profession, and so I owe it to Sol Lewitt for provoking such a hot topic for any artist to think about.
In this series of pictures at Brunswick Heads for example, the ‘idea’ isn’t complicated, it’s simply to follow the colour wheel into the Twilight. But working from a seacape as I do leads to a pretty open field and allows for a wide variety of ideas to pursue within this ‘idea’. I’ve chosen a painterly one that allows me to explore colour, but there are any number of ways, including conceptual ones that can open up new avenues to explore.
My pathway out at the beach at dusk is not a conceptual process but one that takes perseverance and a little discipline to show up to see if my craft is up to the task. Besides, it’s also a lot of fun, something I imagine LeWitt would equally appreciate.
I also share with him a love for a vast array of ecletic kinds of Art, notably in his case, work oriented towards a sensuous design. A key into my understanding of his aesthetic came when I understood that he was crazy for the paintings by the Aboriginal painter Emily Kame Kngwarreye (among others), whom I had never heard of before arriving onto these shores. For myself, it was a giant revelation to discover her work, so when I learned this about him it further opened my interest in him. This even revealed to me that though he was maybe not a Romantic, at least he appeared to be a sensualist at heart, and indeed, an artistic hedonist hiding behind the alter of Minimalism.
My knowledge of Minimalist Art was minimal too, limited almost exclusively to the artist Richard Tuttle whom I discovered after seeing a show at the Whitney a long while back. At that time, I didn’t get him at all. His work appeared too cute and whimsical, and truthfully, when I first came upon his work I was far too serious to see it, or find the whimsy elegance in it. I was basically stuck up and my head up my own behind. I had too many ideas already in my overworked mind to allow me to play freely in his work. Looking back at that period of my life I’d say that my serious nature was intellectually agoraphobic.
But like all new and original art, Tuttle’s sensibilities asked me questions which much later on I became ready to open up to. Years later when I went to Japan I thought a lot about about him because I saw him everywhere.
So when Sol Lewitt says that “the idea becomes the machine that makes the art” I’m reminded of how much I think about Painting from all periods in art history. For me, it’s seamless slide show that runs in loops around me, such that history is always ever-present when it comes to the craft of Painting.
When I speak with young artists today I’m astonished at how little interest they seem to have in our culturally diverse collective past. I don’t want to be critical of them per se, because I think it seems to reflect more upon art education in this period of our contemporary time. And like all periods, or chapters of art history, art education has always been slanted towards any number of institutions that share control over the intellectual zeitgeist of each century, some freely, but most, like the Church, and politically repressive states, through propaganda. Let's face it, art has never been free, although today is about as good as it gets. And yet it is still under the yoke of powerful establishments like museums, art schools and the gallery systems. So, it all comes down to money, the newest religion. Big surprise.
But my small chagrin comes from the fact that today, though there is no apparent shortage of fantastic ideas, students are taught these ideas as being almost entirely separated from the craft, so as a painter, I lament this.
Me, I see the craft of Painting to be a great and honourable one with a long history, one assembled from many different traditions. Today inspire of that, it appears to have little or no memory of how to integrate ideas into its tactile and sensual intelligence of form. Is this by design, or just forgetfulness? It’s like there was a divorce, and because of that, the children got a bit lost. But regardless, it's the way it is now, so we live with it. One thing I know is that Painting always survives in many forms during these chapters over the longer arc of time.
But back to Sol Lewitt, another thing I really like about him is that he took photos of everything it seems. I like this obessesive curiosity in his oeuvre. His documentation of things around his home and studio via the camera I think reveals his soul. It’s where he shows us his spontaneous nature unlike so many of his Installation works which feel cerebral, though playfully so. If I am not mistaken there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of photos he took of his bookshelves and various objects around his apartment. He had a great eye, and despite what one might take away from his conceptual premise that it's the 'ideas' that become the ‘machines for making art', he was still, after all, a visual artist and self-proclaimed mystic. And in this light, I would interject that it's “curiosity is the machine for making art” because it was his unrehearsed, spontaneous eye that took so many photos.
Another quality I appreciate about him, an element, though not essential for an artist, was his humour. He wasn’t a serious, solemn or sullen, Conceptual Artist like so many others who came to art through the sciences and engineering. I think he was a merry-maker in his art form in the style of the writer Ken Kesey.
And to be honest, I don’t know what I’m trying to say about any of this in regards to my picture from the other night. These Evening Prayers, so far away, not only from Sol Lewitt, but from the soul of New York too. They are also messy examples of creativity at the extreme opposite end of so much ‘contextual ideology’ in our Contemporary world of Art today. But hey!
In this series, when I am out at the beach, I generally go into a state of no-mind, no-thought, no ideas even, and I do this by habit, not really even by choice. This almost hypnotic effect of working from the same motif out in Nature, over a long period always at the dusk hour, has put me into a cycle of automomous productivity almost as if it’s my ritual that is the machinery making the art.
The other night the air was chilly due to a breezy south wind, and the sky was as clear as it can ever get around here. No moon, and a magnificent ‘bloom’ blossomed open. Nice!
This was the last of three studies. It was a festival of colour. So unlike the oeuvre of Sol LeWitt, and though not a Conceptual artist, this small souvenir from the other night reveals that I’m more mystic than rationalist. I’m also asking viewers to follow me off a cliff to experience Nature as I have, but this will only happen if the pictures are successful enough to seduce the viewer.
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