Balthus Lighting

Who Do (I) Love?

A few years ago I hosted a panel series called, "Who Do You Love" where I asked artists and writers to talk about the artists who inspired them.  My idea was that most artists create, (at least in their heads) their own artistic genealogy, based around some idea that runs from one artistic generation to the next to the next, right up to yours truly.  The panels generated some interesting discussions and also confirmed my theory that I'm not the only artist who does this. Most artists see themselves as connected to a self-defined artistic lineage.

That said, it occurred to me today that I never shared my own artistic fore-bearers.  So here they are, along with a word or phrase that comes to minds when I think about their work. As you might expect, many of them specialize in drawing.

Ike Taiga - small things make big things, not the other way around
Watteau - don't hit your subject smack in the face
Giacometti - analyze, the rest will happen by itself
Van Gogh - see the less important parts all the way through
Warhol (the Screen Tests) - do as little as possible
Balthus - the space is a character
David Hockney - the artist is a character
Alice Neel - if the truth is cruel, be cruel
Käthe Kollwitz - draw what you care about, not just what you like
Gengoroh Tagame - go to your most fucked up place
Frank Auerbach -  no such thing as overworking something
Dürer - grass
Saul Steinberg - I'll never be that good.

 

(I realize, my phrases are more aphorisms than ideas.  Not sure how I feel about that.  I'll post something about it once I decide.)

ROBERT GOBER @ MOMA

First of all, I want to get this out of the way.  The title of Robert Gober's retrospective at MOMA, The Heart Is Not A Metaphor, is one of my favorite exhibition titles of all time. 

My reaction to the show itself is a little more complicated.  Gober's modus operandi is to take a familiar, primarily domestic items (sinks, doors, drains, newspapers, kitty litter) and painstakingly recreate them by hand; the "by hand" being the important part of the art making equation. The objects are carefully arranged in the gallery.  As often as not,  surrounding walls covered in wallpaper designed by the artist.

The effect, (some, not me, might say, the magic) is to make ordinary both unsettling and seemingly full of private meaning. Hints of childhood trauma and physical decline,  (homo)sexual longing and Catholicism seem, at least to me, to be the dominant themes.

 

Having seen Gober's work for many years, what leaves me scratching my head, is how these once mysterious objects became a lot more metaphoric and a lot less uncanny, than they were in the 90's.

So, here's the question: is Gober's "new" decipherability a result of the curation, or what might be called the "Artist Restrospective Effect" or has it more to do with Gober's evolution as an artist.

I'm still working on that one, but I will leave off with something I've been thinking about since seeing the show.  The act of transforming mundane, highly personal brick-a-brac into something more meaningful, is a strategy that seems pretty well understood by the art-going public.  I'm wondering to what extent Gober should be credited for edumatcating all of us about that strategy's potential.  Is it possible that the uncanny has been uncanned and that the reason that Gober's work seems more readable is because Gober himself gave us something particularly interesting and timely to read?

Show closes Jan 18.  This and Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs are reason enough to visit MOMA over the holidays.