Response to Vitamin P  

In reading Vitamin P, and in studying the various artists highlighted in this text, I came to several realizations.  I was affirmed in my belief that the contemporary art world has space for multiple styles and modes of communication; however, I was disheartened to realize that the works set forth in this book, and therefor those being heralded by the contemporary art world, were not as varied as I had initially hoped.  This is of corse a singular text, and as such cannot possibly represent the entirety of contemporary art theory and opinion.  I do, however, feel that this book does represent an accurate cross section of international art movements, which I found fascinating.  Not surprisingly, I found that the majority of these artists, and their works, fit fairly neatly into just a handful of categories, and there were several pervasive pitfalls that ran as an undercurrent in many of these paintings.  The introduction, written by Barry Schwabsky, tersely outlines the history of painting, the shortcomings of several major movements and how we arrived at this moment in history.  The author also, rightly, disregards the argument that painting is “dead”, proposing that this is an antiquated belief.  Schwabsky does however support the notion that contemporary art contends with multiple concepts, and therefor the language with which we address these issues must also be varied.  Thus, painting is just one means to an end,  but a critical one nonetheless.  To remove painting from our vocabulary entirely would be to silence a critical population.  I was also initially encouraged when reading Schwabsky’s proposition that contemporary artists are “more concerned with how to make a painting again,” [p. 009] and that many are once again looking to the traditions of painting to inform their practice.  Perhaps it was my misreading of this statement, but I found very few artists within the pages of this book who genuinely took care [in the traditional sense] in the creation of a painting.  I did however, find a handful of artists whose technical prowess [though somewhat sterile] can be referenced, such as Ding Yi, Laylah Ali and Andrew Grassie, but remarkably few, given the above quote.  There were, however, a great number of artists who placed emphasis upon the materiality of the paint itself, which is perhaps the shift being referenced, when put into the historical context and continuum from Modernism onward.  As previously mentioned, many of these works fit neatly within a handful of categories and addressed a handful of topics, none of which were of great surprise; sex, violence, pop-culture/ cartoons, politics and works devoid of all referential subject matter.  I will seek to explore the strengths and weaknesses of a handful of these divergent categories, as well as draw connections amongst them.

The first set of artists that I would like to investigate consists of Angela de la Cruz [p. 064-065], Ian Davenport [p. 072-073], Bernard Frize [p. 112-113], and Avery Preesman [p. 254-255].  The list could go on, but all of these artists share in their practice of painting non-representationally and often for the sake of the paint itself.  De la Cruz uses her paintings as a means of launching an attack upon the actual practice of painting.  In truth, she is not composing paintings, but rather creating props with the intent of violently destroying them in an effort to free herself of the mental anguish she felt upon realizing that she was, “painting the same painting again and again” [p. 064].  These installations may allow select fellow painters a sense of catharsis, but to those who do not share in her angst, these works are a violent and personally offensive attack on a mode of communication that so many are compelled to utilize.  Ian Davenport, conversely, creates paintings as a devotion to the paint itself, rather than an attack upon it.  Davenport uses, “paint to make paintings that are more like presentations of the substance and material of paint” [p. 072] by dripping intensely saturated layers of house paint upon large panels of medium density fiberboard [also used in home construction and finishing].  The result of this process being richly colored, minimalist works, with a shallow surface and little space for interpretation.  Next, we come upon Bernard Frize, whose celebration of materiality is accomplished in a less explicit manner.  While Frize’s works show evidence of the artists hand, it is often actually the hands of many, working in symphony, thereby leaving the viewer with a sense of bewilderment.  That said, once the secret is told, and the novelty has worn off, the story ends; unlike the works of Sol Lewitt [who is heavily referenced in Frize’s work and process], where the story is constantly being retold by his participants.  Lastly, we have the viscerally charged work of Avery Preesman.  Preesman combines thick layers of oil paint, coffee grounds and other foreign objects to create thick, protruding nonrepresentational works that often take on a sculptural aspect.  Devoid of predetermined meaning, these works are meant to allow the viewer a transcendent experience.  While these works take on a very different visual incarnation, they are intrinsically rooted in the work of Agnes Martin, as both walk the viewer through the artists process and simultaneously strive to envelope the viewer in a moment of meditative transcendence.  Like Bernard Frize, I am not convinced that Preesman has succeeded in her intentions with the same valor of her predecessor.  These four artists share commonality, not so much in the appearance of their works, but in their practice; whether it be slow and tedious or fervent and expressive, each of these painters works with great attention given to the medium that they have chosen, which I commend.   As Schwabsky so perfectly reflects in the introduction, “For the viewer painting is a noun: the finished object we see.  For the painters it can also be a verb: the activity in which they are engaged.  When painters succeed in evoking and disclosing painting-the-verb within painting-the-noun... they offer the rest of us a rare gift.” [p. 009].  I do not disagree with this sentiment, but rather, propose that one can imbue a painting of visual depth and meaning with the same level of painterly activity; they need not be separate entities.  

On the other end of the spectrum, we find an ever expanding population of artists referencing or utilizing cartoon, or more frequently, Manga, in their work.  While I do not find the majority of this work aesthetically appealing, I can appreciate and recognize its place in contemporary art, as it holds such a prominent place in contemporary culture.  It is often argued that society today is lacking the language with which to read paintings.   By appropriating a culturally accepted form of entertainment, these painters are utilizing a fluently spoken language to disarm the viewer, and create works that can be easily read and digested by a contemporary audience.   Not unlike Angela de la Cruz, Manuel Ocampo [p. 236-237] creates aggressively charged paintings that seek to attack the process itself.  Loosely painted, and offensively colored, Ocampo’s overtly grotesque paintings utilize the language of cartoon, and seek to knock painting from its pedestal in a violent jab at bourgeois culture.  The message is one of anger over Ocampo’s experience growing up in a hybridized Philippines, which was arguably raped by a plethora of other cultures and drained of it’s authentic identity.  Ocampo succeeds in communicating the vulgarity and violence of this topic, but fails to create work that is worthy of a second glance due to its complete lack of visual appeal.  Conversely, an artist like Chris Ofili [p. 238-239]  can literally use shit a medium [whereas Ocampo often paints and alludes to it along with other vile fluids and excrements] and create a visually and conceptually compelling work.  Like Ocampo, Ofili also references issues of sex, race, culture and the grotesque, through cartoonish caricatures, yet he does so with skill and precise attention to the creation of a piece.  He draws the viewer in with the sticky sweet syrup of glitter and resin, like a venus fly trap, quickly consuming his prey with a swift and violent snap of racially charged undertones.   Unlike both of these artist, Takashi Murakami [p 228] removes most, if not all, evidence of the artists hand, instead utilizing the “Superflat” style that he has coined, through a Warhol-esque factory production practice. Murakami does, however, heavily reference Manga in his exploration and reinterpretation of historical works of art, thereby conflating the two in much the same way that Ocampo and Ofili collapse contemporary pop culture and sociohistorical injustices.  Lastly, we have Japanese painter, Yoshitomo Nara [p. 232-233].  Nara, like the others, heavily references Manga in the design and features given to his characters, yet his work could not be more different from the glossy, computerized incarnations created by Murakami or the gruesome narratives created by Ocampo.  Carefully composed, aesthetically pleasing, and compositionally satisfying, Murakami’s work may be a bit tame, but painterly and psychologically compelling nonetheless.  These works successfully reference and utilize contemporary pop culture, as a means of exploring the darker undertones of our society, and loss of childhood.

The last category that I would like to explore is figure painting.  I was pleased to see this practice well represented within the pages of this book, as I am also pleased to see it in the galleries as of late.  I was, however, repeatedly disappointed by the lack of technical concern in many of these works; and more precisely, by many of the artists’, seeming inability to paint skin tones with any sort of conviction.  Many of these figures appeared to be either a landscape of spray-tanned orange [Gabriele Di Matteo, p. 080; Vladimir Dubossarsky & Alexander Vinogradov, p. 096; Cecilia Edefalk, p. 102; Richard Phillips, p.248], or ambiguous, chalky, opaque washes of muddled creams and brown [Kai Althoff, p. 032; Verne Dawson, p. 078; Eberhard Havekost, p. 134; Bhupen Khakhar, p. 170; Karen Kilimnik, p. 174; Muntean/Rosenblum, p. 226; Laura Owens, p. 240; Elizabeth Peyton, p. 244], or, perhaps worse still,  evasively painted monotones of gray [Merlin Carpenter, p 058; Marlene Dumas, p. 100; Yan Pei-Ming, p. 220; Wilhelm Sasnal, p. 288; Djamel Tatah, p. 318; Jose Toirac, p. 320].  The painter holds every right to transform, reinterpret and re-imagine their subject; unfortunately, many of the artists mentioned above have done so without intention, and without the skill set to inform this decision.  As a result, these pieces become fatally flawed, as the viewer is stopped at the surface of the painting, too distracted by these technical failures to proceed.  Just as cartoons may allow a viewer a [nearly] universal portal into a work of art, the human figure can allow all viewers immediate access to a piece, and the freedom to intimately explore the concepts presented by the artist.  As painters, particularly as figure painters, our skill set is our vocabulary, and without a diverse vocabulary in this area, our communication skills will become severely limited.  One such example of this pervasive shortcoming is the work of Athens native, Mantalina Psoma [p. 262].  Psoma primarily paints figuratively in a loose attempt at realism, with the intention of depicting moments in the life of upper middle class Europeans.  Psoma alludes to the social and financial comfort of her subjects through subtle facial expressions, attire and background.  Unfortunately, Psoma’s paintings lack a technical understanding of the figure, portrait and color theory as well as paint application.  These formal shortcomings make it nearly impossible to access the intended message underlying this poorly composed work.  In contrast, Massachusetts born, Richard Phillips [p. 248], creates technically immaculate paintings of fashion models and porn stars purportedly in an effort to draw attention to popular culture’s representation of unattainable beauty.  While Phillips it technically skilled, his backstory is arguably a thin guise for creating and selling works that profit off of the exploitation of women.  Phillips’ handling of paint is such that these works, and the women depicted, take on an almost plastic appearance, transforming them into objects void of emotion, thus extracting the human element and making them more easily consumed by the viewer.  Like Psoma and Phillips, German painter Neo Rauch [p. 274] also employs the figure.  Rauch uses these figures [often in his own likeness] as a symbolic stand in for the painter, as well as the practice of painting itself.  Rauch often depicts the painter in a violent struggle, representing the angst that artists feel when placed in constant competition with one another, as well as the constant battle one encounters with the stylistic pressures of the art world.  Unlike the aforementioned artists, Rauch effortlessly shifts among a variety of paint applications and styles within each piece, drawing the eye feverishly from one element to the next, and yet never allowing us to feel disconnected.  These levels of abstraction are skillfully and effectively accomplished, and grounded in anatomical understanding and technical prowess so as not to distract us from the narrative being created, but rather, to enhance it.  In summation, it is not enough to employ the figure as a means of creating a humanistic tie with the viewer, one must use do so convincingly and with conviction.

After some three-hundred pages, I had begun to think that I would not find one single artist in this book with whom I could deeply relate and find inspiration.  Furthermore, I had begun to feel an all too familiar twinge of angst, wondering if my own work is simply too different from that of my contemporaries to be considered relevant.  Fortuitously, page three-hundred brought me George Shaw, of the United Kingdom [p. 300-301].  Shaw’s moderately sized, meticulously rendered, landscapes ooze melancholy, immersing the viewer in a familiar, yet uneasy setting.  While Shaw’s paintings depict eerily vacant buildings, beneath heavy sodden skies, these works feel strangely comforting, causing me to reflect on those perfect moments when I have found myself utterly alone with my thoughts drinking in the cool damp wintery air just moments before the sun slips below barren trees.  Shaw uses model makers enamel, as a subtle nod to his childhood in the town depicted.  I also took great comfort in learning that Shaw shared a near uncanny experience with my own upon completion of art school.  He too had graduated feeling unable to participate in the creation of the “type” of art being heralded by art schools; and he too became paralyzed by the fear that the work he was compelled to create, was not acceptable by todays standards, therefor giving up the practice for many years, and instead working as a special education teacher.  I too gave up painting altogether for a number of years, and I too worked as a special education teacher in the interim.  The biographical details we share are merely a strange coincidence, however, the pervasive fear instilled in contemporary realist painters is one shared by many.  I would argue that today’s painters are being conditioned to believe that displaying a competency of skill will somehow undermine the conceptual clout of their work.  I was once told, by a very wise painting professor, that the technical skills we learn are simply arrows to fill our quiver.  The target may look different for every artist, but the more arrows you have, the better your chance of hitting the target.  

Works Cited:

Vitamin P. London: Phaidon, 2002. Print.