Going Lee Bontecou

At some point, in the not-so-distant past, I tried to sum up the various categories of subject matter that I typically cover with my blog. In short, it's art and art-making; travel and adventure; psychology and self-analysis; politics; and occasionally some other stuff.

This post looks like it will a bit of all of the above... maybe with the exception of travel and adventure. 

(*EDIT* When I started this post, with the above sentence, I thought this blog would touch more on art-making and a little bit on politics (and I do have some things to say about those topics - in another post), but now it seems like this one is mostly self-analysis. If you don't like psychology and vulnerability, or if you're tired of me whining self-indulgently about my art career (!), skip it.)

Here goes.

I've been mulling over this post in my head for quite a while now - its birth has been slow and painful - and a thesis statement has slowly formed. It goes something like this: 

It turns out that the art-career advice that I managed to put together in my recent post entitled 'Just Keep Doing Your Thing, Man!', inspired by the situation of my musician friend 'Frederic,' was, unbeknownst to me, actually advice that I need to be giving to myself; and furthermore it's advice that I am apparently not very good at following.

In my last post I spoke briefly about trying to get my painting as close to finished as possible in time to apply for an open call at the Harwood Museum. I put a lot of work into it leading up to the deadline date, photographed it, and then set it aside for a while to focus on some other things. One of those other things was the controller for a mechanical sculpture that I also submitted to the Harwood. It felt good to get the controller done, as it meant that the sculpture, which I built in 2016 for Meow Wolf, was finally really finished. 

A few weeks later I learned that the Harwood decided not to select either the painting or the sculpture.

The sad part of this, the micro-tragedy, is that I let this rejection totally derail me. 

I had intended to take a hiatus from the painting for only a few weeks, but after being rejected from the show I had no desire to get back to it and its been six weeks now that I haven't painted.

The natural inclination of the human mind is to look for a reason. But when your painting (or sculpture or album or film or...) is rejected, no reason is typically given. So you wonder, and you start making stuff up. "Oh, the Harwood is too conservative for my stuff," you tell yourself. Or "they couldn't take the risk on something unfinished." Or "they were only looking for artists with proven histories in galleries." Or "They can't handle full frontal nudity." Any of these might be true, but you just don't know. The one reason you don't want to believe is "my work just isn't good enough," but of course that is the reason that actually haunts you. 

Around this time last year my proposal for Burning Man was rejected.

A few months later I submitted two proposals for Electric Daisy Carnival; both were rejected.

No one ever gives you a reason. 

In 2004 I saw a show at the NY MOMA by an artist called Lee Bontecou. I like her work, but what REALLY got to me was her story. I've never forgotten it. 

In the 1950's and 1960's she was very involved in the NYC art scene, frequently showing her work publicly. In 1970 she staged a show that was poorly received and her response was to leave her gallery and retreat from public view for several decades, but to still keep working. For years and years she produced work on her own, listening to only one critical voice - her own. She was 're-discovered' in the early 2000's and her big retrospective was mounted at various major museums across the country, including the MOMA in 2004.

Her story lives in me like a myth. In fact I may have even mythologized (distorted) certain elements of it over the years, as I frequently think back on her story of bravery and independence.

Since I was a child I have been making things, making art.

In 1988 I learned to weld.

In the early 1990's I discovered 'robot theater' through my association with SRL. 

In the late 1990's I branched out by doing my own robot theater shows in LA. Notability and publicity came easily, especially after I began working with Coachella. Shock value and mechanical violence are attention-grabbing; the external validation was abundant. This continued through to about 2005.

In that year I met Christina and moved to Taos, and although I didn't quite see it yet, a new artistic phase was just around the corner. In 2008 that phase began with the Hand of Man, my first big interactive mechanical sculpture. Several more were born over the following decade. Large scale and mechanical violence are attention-grabbing; the external validation flowed. 

But the real meaning of all this work was elusive. Those robots and robotic sculptures... if they revealed anything about their maker, it was precisely through their mechanical shielding of anything personal. Becoming Human might have been the closest I ever got. In 2018, while living in Berlin, the idea of painting first occurred to me... as a medium through which I might be able to say something a little more personal. But I didn't know how to paint then, and even though I'm much better at it now, it does not come naturally. The idea of picking up the paint brush again, after six weeks, seems daunting, fraught with self-doubt. In contrast, the idea of welding or machining or designing something mechanical seems so easy; I could do it in my sleep. Christina calls mechanical design my 'Super Power.' But can I say anything meaningful with that medium? This is one of the questions I currently grapple with. Or maybe, the fact that painting feels so foreign to me is precisely the reason I should stick with it. 

I feel like I need to 'Go Lee Bontecou' for ten years, and figure it all out. 

My proposals for big sculptures are all falling flat. I think they are too personal, too narrative, and in some cases too 'challenging,' (too dark?). The cosmos is telling me to shift gears. The subject matter that feels relevant to me is apparently not well-suited to the 22-year-old MDMA-powered party world of festivals. But... perfect subject matter for painting. Or... for forging some new kind of artwork... some melding of my super-power with the more deeply personal content I'm trying to channel through painting. 

(I sometimes think about those people who trained for years for careers which then went obsolete as the world, and technology, changed around them. Adapt or die.)

As I was advised recently, I will have to cognitively adjust to a reduction in external validation.

I can imagine what it would be like to 'inhabit' that person who just didn't listen to anyone else, who just pursued his own vision... almost in a vacuum. But it seems I am not that person, not just yet.

Have some courage.

Just keep doing your thing, man.

Go Lee Bontecou.

I have actually been doing a little art-making. 20 years ago a friend asked me to custom-build for her a headdress featuring two Barbie Dolls mechanically... 'interacting.' The project turned out to be really fun - small scale, mechanically challenging - on the scale of animatronics, and irreverant (to put it politely.) Over the years I've made a further small number of similar sculptures. I've recently put a little time here and there into finishing another... but they are so spectacularly NSFW that I can't show them here.... or anywhere, really. But they're fun, and they satisfy my drive to create, in those temporal interstices.