I visited a museum the other day and read something that was enough to finally get me off my ass and write another blog post. The museum is dedicated to one of southern Sweden's local heroes, Axel Ebbe, primarily a sculptor of the female nude. What caught my eye, and started me thinking, was an explanatory plaque about one of Ebbe's pieces which read:
LIKE A MELODY
"A work of art should captivate immediately. It should speak to the emotions through the eyes like a melody does through the ears." _ Axel Ebbe
Axel Ebbe wants his art to be experienced directly, with the heart. Using mythological motifs and creatures from folklore, he tries to reach into the subconscious to awaken feelings, memories and associations. The works come to him as a sudden vision he wants to share. Based on the initial idea, he creates his work through symbols and metaphors: longing for the fleeting sun is symbolized by a woman with a sad expression who stretches her body backwards, upwards. He creates his own interpretations of well-known myths from the Bible and Norse mythology. He recasts the Greek poet Orpheus as Orphea: a damsel playing a harp made from the body of a hunchbacked troll.
Do you like art when is impacts you immediately and emotionally? Or do you prefer work that satisfies intellectually, even if it sometimes requires reading or other contextualization in order to come fully into focus?
For me the choice is clear; I'm with Ebbe on this one. Ebbe, Jassans, Bacon, Hirst, McQueen, Helnwein... all my favorites hit you hard with the image first. In some cases a little follow-up intellectualization can deepen the experience, but it's not a requirement for the enjoyment of the work.
If you read this blog and you think this all sounds familiar, you're right; I've written about it before. If I have anything new to add, it's this: I wonder if that sort of art... art that tries to speak about universal truths through recognizable forms like the human body, is a bit out of fashion these days? In the "old days" (by which I mean, you know... 100 years ago...) it seemed like it was enough to sculpt a nude figure, give it a wistful facial expression or a or restless turn of the body, and call it something like "The Wind" or "Discontent". Or maybe put the nude on a wild animal and call it "Europe," or "Night." I think this is called Symbolism. It certainly seemed to work for Ebbe. It worked for Jassans too, but Jassans was a superior sculptor and his work would stand apart... get noticed and appreciated... no matter what it was called. Ebbe was not so great a sculptor, in my opinion, but the formula worked for him. He got famous and many Swedish towns have an Ebbe in the town square.
Maybe the world is tired of that kind of thing. It seems to me that these days... in order to get into a museum or whatever, sculpture needs to have an axe to grind, or at least a backstory. Oftentimes the work is "identity-based," which is to say that the meaning of the work centers on a revelation of some core truth about the artist's racial, ethnic, geographic, or socioeconomic identity. Interestingly, the Ebbe museum has been recently renovated to include a new wing to show temporary exhibitions, and the current one features mostly work that needs a bit of reading to really understand it, much of which has been made by members of "marginalized" populations. The museum made no mention of the stark contrast between Ebbe's approach to sculpture, and the approach taken by most of the contemporary artists showing in the new wing, but to me the difference was so clear. I do understand that after so many years of domination of the art scene by white men (and women to a much lesser degree), it's important and valid that members of marginalized groups get a chance to break in. But when the message of the work feels more like a history lesson it can sometimes feel boring to me. Maybe it's just my white privilege / guilt, but I would rather experience a work of art by a Yanomami woman (or other marginalized group-member) which addresses love or death or the struggle for self-actualization from a Yanomami perspective, rather than the experience of being oppressed by the "dominant" culture. In other words, I'd rather see universal human stuff. Of course oppression at the hands of another culture is probably a commanding experience for oppressed communities and any commanding experience is a valid subject for art, but I wonder if work like that will stand the test of time in the same way that art which attempts to address more universal human struggles will, other than perhaps as history lessons or morality warnings? Maybe it's unfair to expect anything other than art about oppression from oppressed peoples until oppression itself is a thing of the past? Maybe that overarching experience needs to be resolved before the way can be cleared for other kinds of art. (And that unfortunately doesn't feel like it's going to be happening any time soon...)
I'm in danger of rambling here, but I'll just bring it back around and say that any artwork that hits hard in the beginning with an emotionally evocative image (or narrative) has... I would say... a better chance at affecting its audience. If that emotional sledge-hammer is enough to get the viewer to read an explanatory plaque or do a follow-up web search about the artist and learn more, then that's great; the artwork will have succeeded even more. But it needs to hit you hard first. If it's too academic or esoteric and relies too much on explanatory text, it is not... in my opinion... successful.
"Postmodernism" isn't a term I use a lot, but I know enough to understand that postmodernism is characterized by the breakdown of widely-held, universally accepted symbols and structures of meaning, and the emergence instead of "the many truths," meaning itself having been fractured into a billion meanings. I'm no fan of modernism, but I don't see much to like in postmodernism either. I think I prefer Symbolism!
OK, enough with all the pompous art-theory mumbo-jumbo... let's make the big leap to the psychology of art!
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Making art is like learning to see. That's my thesis.
In my post way back on June 20th I talked about a grant I'd received to build 2 new sculptures for a festival here in Sweden, and I've now begun to work on those. I'll be building the one I mentioned in June, "Emotions Are Like the Weather," as well as a second one featuring two figures, a man and a woman, reaching for each other across a circle.
Here, once again, is the proposal image for Emotions Are Like the Weather...
...and here is an image of the first face, almost done.
As I write this I am preparing to make the silicone and plaster mold for this first face, which I will then cast in Jesmonite (which is a water-based casting resin... a bit like fiberglass but non-toxic). Once the mold is made, I will then re-sculpt this face into an angry one, make a mold, and then finally re-sculpt it again into yet a third emotion, and then mold and cast that one. (This third emotion is yet-to-be-determined; I want it to be somehow neither at the "happy" end of the spectrum nor the "sad," and so it's hard to figure out what it should be. I think it needs to be a subtly mixed emotion which is somehow also not boring or too arcane to read.) Then of course I will build the steel structure to carry them.
Here is the proposal picture for the second sculpture, which does not yet have a name (my working title might be too pretentious, too Symbolist!)
The ring in which the figures rest (or are trapped?) will be able to rotate within its frame. These two sculptures are the first time I am combining traditional figurative sculpture with metal fabrication and mechanics... and I am pretty excited about that. It feels like it could be the beginning of a new direction for me.
The process of sculpting the first face has been fascinating to me from a psychological, or perhaps neuropsychological perspective. This face is fundamentally symmetrical, which makes it easier to explain what I mean. As I sculpt the face I am going through a non-stop process of the correcting of errors. I must see the errors, and then correct them. In a symmetrical sculpture like this one, the seeing of the errors often takes the form of the observation of unwanted asymmetry - things like "the left eye is too big," or "the right cheekbone is too high." In an asymmetrical sculpture the process is the same... always error correction... but often even harder because there is no mirror-side for comparison. But even the simple act of seeing and identifying the errors is not always easy! Sometimes it happens like "I can see that there is something wrong with the mouth, but I can't figure out what it is." Then you must look at the sculpture from every angle, look at it in a mirror, sometimes wait a day or two and come back to it... before you can correctly identify the problem. This in itself is fascinating! Why can't we see the errors right away? What is going on in the brain of the sculptor - my brain - that allows me to notice that something is wrong but not be able to pinpoint it? Or to fail completely to notice a problem? As one does this kind of thing more and more... painting, sculpting, drawing... one gets better. One learns to see! To make art is to learn to see.
And then, when the sculpture or painting or drawing is finished... what is it other than a reflection of the artist's abilities and shortcomings? The work of art is a portrait of the artist's brain, their capacity to see and manually reproduce that thing that they want to make into art. If the artist has a neurological inability to perceive proportion, that failure will be in the artwork. On the other hand, if the artist has the imaginitive ability to see 'beyond' reality, to see rhythms and patterns that aren't literally there, or to distort reality in intentional and gratifying ways, this will also be in the art. The face I sculpted above was sculpted without reference images; I sculpted it just from my head... my idea of what a happy face should look like. And it has a certain 'look,' a certain unreality. Where does that come from? Why did I sculpt it that way? I don't know the answers, but surely if those answers were ever uncovered, they would say something interesting about my brain.
I guess this is one of the reasons I think art made by generative AI is so boring. Yes the artworks themselves can sometimes be amazing, but they don't reveal anything about anyone. And so AI art completely misses the exact thing that I find most interesting about art, its capacity to reveal something personal about the artist.
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Sometimes I feel like a retired film star. You know how when movie stars reach a certain level of fame they just sort of disappear from the public eye? Like they don't really have anything to prove anymore. Sometimes I feel that way. I feel more and more these days that I am just making art for myself. Like I don't really care what other people think. Sometimes it seems as if I don't even care if other people see it. I certainly consider myself to be my most important critic; for me the most vital criteria for whether I consider one of my pieces to be good... is whether I like it. Of course none of this is absolute; I will still post on Instagram (although as I write this, I haven't done that in months), I will still try to show my work... especially to people I care about, and I will still try to get grants. But this feeling of not giving a shit, of doing it for myself, is definitely creeping in. And I like it. There's a lot of freedom there.
I often think of the example of sculptor Lee Bontecou (and I think I've even written about her before.) After achieving some fame in the 1960's and 70's she then retreated from public view for about 30 years. But even though she made almost no attempt to have her work seen during those three decades, she never stopped working. When she was 're-discovered' in the early 2000's, she had a huge body of highly personal work. I think that is so cool! I think having the courage and self-confidence to just say "fuck off" to the world and disappear into art-making is so strong. Anyway, that's how I think of Lee Bontecou!
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This next point I want to make is definitely not mine alone, although the kernel of this idea did occur to me all by myself while driving one day.. and it pisses me off! Remember how in the 80's and 90's (and earlier) everyone owned their own copy of whatever entertainment media they liked? If you wanted a particular album, you bought an LP or a CD... and it was yours. If you loved a particular movie, you would buy it on VHS or DVD... and it was yours! Nowadays the big digital corporations just want you to stream everything... and so now instead of being an owner... you are just a renter. Not only that, you're a renter without consistent access to your rented property; what happens when you want to listen to your favorite album or watch your favorite movie, but you have no wifi or network connection? You're shit out of luck! I've heard it called "digital feudalism," and just like ye feudal lords of olde, these new digital corporations prioritize profit above all else, profit earned off your back. And when you think about the fact that they are simultaneously collecting all your data... your likes and dislikes and shopping patterns... just to be able to effectively sell you more shit, it's pretty fucking Matrix. I say: buy DVDs and CDs (or torrent and download if that's your thing) and resist being a cell in the giant battery! (Gotta admit, though... streaming is pretty convenient...)
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I'll be in the States soon. I'm running the Hand of Man at a private event (which I'm not supposed to say much about) in early December. So I'll be in Taos for 10 days in late November, and then in San Francisco from December 5-8, more or less. It will be fun to see old friends, but I'm also sort of scared to go to the US! It seems like a scary place!
It's been so long since I've posted that of course lots of other stuff has happened. We continued our workshop renovations over the summer, built 2 decks affording beautiful views over the neighboring fields...
...and we are making good progress on Christina's studio.
I've also been a few fun trips, like Athens with Kodiak, Oslo with Cedar, and Barcelona with Christina.
My verdict on living in Europe: no complaints.
Cheers
