Did a touch of reading and went round my favourite gallery today...got me thinking, which is always a dangerous thing!
'Visual music'...experimental video and music from the twenties onwards. I was far more interested in the process of creating and transcribing the original images onto film before computer technology. These certainly appeared hand crafted and each frame was so beautifully considered. I was entranced by Oskar Fischinger though John Whitney's later work left me a bit cold; beginning to look like the multicoloured pupenda that is the itune's visuals screen.
I did get a little upset, I always do when I go around good galleries. I feel like I will never be able to do work of such breadth, beauty, spirit and significance. It's all I can do to keep myself in one place right now!
I saw Henry Moore's work again, it's like an old friend; such finesse, knowledge
.....bastard, I had tears in my eyes! William Beckman, Philip Akkerman, Marcel Duchamp's bronze cast portrait, originally done in plaster. I was just totally blown away. Hopper, "Eleven AM", you fucker! These works just ooze spirit; the same spirit that I can't help but torture! I MUST BE MORE!
This got me thinking about something I read today....
Am I in the field of eliciting response much like Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne did by passing electricity into the faces of paralysed old men? I fear that I may be.
If my work is to be as subversive as I would like it to be, then the response of a viewer would be directly coaxed by me. Perhaps it is the power of forcing response that I am attracted to? It certainly seems to have replaced my sex life!
I'll be gone for a while, my plane beckons tomorrow morning, this includes a glorious 5 hour layover in Philly!
Ahh the hills, I can't wait to see them again, go biking and walking in a country where it does not feel like you've wet yourself all over (the humidity, honest guv')! Be good to see what they've gone and done to the Royal Scottish Academy and the National, 'bout time!!!!
Later 'gators
i went to a hopper retrospective at tate modern in london last summer, it it was just fucking invigorating- i came out of there wanting to get back up here and paint. i think that's the thing about going to galleries when you haven't been in a while, you realise you've forgotten just how much of a kick you get out of art in all its forms. . .
As for the production of art, i find the hardest thing of all is to stick to doing stuff you're passionate about without being influenced by the ever present subconsciuous desire to be praised for your work (everyone has it) - i know so many people from my year who basically. . . don't even produce work anymore, and it's sad. of course then there are otehrs who just went down to london and got gobbled up and haven't been heard from since.
i think what it takes to get there (there being, making it, getting recognition) is just enough ego and balls to say 'my art is good and i know it's good'