1. Odd Nerdrum

I was struck by Nerdrum’s technique. He is incredibly skilled with oil paint and I find his colour pallette to be emotive and mysterious. But what I appreciate most about Nerdrum’s work are his landscapes which resemble an surreal void, or a limbo of some sort. It further alienates his subject matter.

2. Peter Doig- Doig has made the biggest impact on me this year for many reasons; his imagery, his palette and his handling of paint. I am at home with many of his symbols: the canoe, the coniferous forests, lake landscapes similar to the Canadian landscape.  He captures an interior world in his exterior landscapes through the mystersious use of washes and eccentric application of electic colour.  I haven’t be able to fully articulate how moved I am by this artist. Maybe after I have seen his work in person, I will be able to better articulate exactly what makes Doig’s work so moving for me.

3. James Jean- I love James Jean’s creativity and ability to capture the figure. His palettes are also so diverse, I could just lick his paintings!

4. Daniel Richter- Similar to the way I feel about Peter Doig, Richter’s interior/exterior landscape really gets to me. More then Doig, I appreciate Richter’s groups of figures.

5. Justin Ogilvie- Although I only worked briefly with Ogilvie in his studio, I was exposed to so many great ways of running an art studio and producing work. Ogilvie let me in on his process, how he conducts his classes and his daily regime of painting and organizing a professional studio. Priceless education I find myself very grateful for. I hope Justin Ogilvie is kicking ass at the University of Edmonton, where he is obtaining his M.F.A. He is an incredible Canadian talent who works very hard at his craft. I wish him all the best.

6. All Citizens-Bruno, Saskatchewan- While researching the idea that Contemporary art is biased towards urban centres, I stumbled across this very special place call All Citizens in Bruno, Saskatchewan. It is providing contemporary music and visual art to the very rural community. They showcase very talented and successful Canadian Musicians who apprecaite art being accessible to rural folk. All Citizens has inspired many ideas for the Little Beaver Cultural Centre.

7. Pat B Allen- After reading these two books, I’ve been open to the idea of art being more then just an academic institiution. There are possibilties of serving humanity beyond the Art World’s prescribed notions, throw theraputic and creative medititations. It provides a visual manifestation of our interior worlds, and offers a great way to get to know ourselves. It has great healing powers. These books introduced Creative Arts therapy as a possible career path for me.

8. Joe Fig- This book is very inspiration for any artist who has spent time in the studio. The book is set up on the “Inside the Actor’s Studio” basis where Joe Fig asks the same questions to a variety of professional artist ( all painters). There amswers give insight to the unique routine of individual artists and how they manage to develop a creative lifestyle. This is a must read for those who are struggling to get into the studio and work.

9. Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture- During my Ayahuasca trip, I saw many visions which looked like designs and figures from the Cucuteni-Trypillian Culture (Ancestors to the Ukrainian People) I am of Ukrainian ancestry and I now find myself very intrigued by the fashion of the Trypillian people. I will be researching more about these ancient people to see if there is any primordial connection trying to find its way into my work.

10. Wangechi Mutu-Using a variety of materials, Mutu collages are disturbing and fantastic and display the vast creativity of the artist. By hybridizing different images of African women in the media she intersects a space of symbols and stereotypes. She also captures an abject and groteseque beauty in her figures. I find her visual assemblages very pleasing and thougth prevoking.

]]> http://www.lindsayjoyhamilton.com/blog/top-ten-influential-artists-of-2010/feed/ 0 http://www.lindsayjoyhamilton.com/blog/talent-talenttalent/ http://www.lindsayjoyhamilton.com/blog/talent-talenttalent/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:54:02 +0000 lindsayjoy http://www.lindsayjoyhamilton.com/blog/?p=1283 Jane Panek and Geoffery Leathwood everybody…

I know these people…its true.

Ten enduring imperatives of painting

1. Activate figure/ground relationships.

Jennifer Mao Figure Ground

2. Subvert verisimilitude.

Glenn Ligon Malcolm X (small version 1) #1, 2001; painting; paint and screen print on primed canvas, 48 in. x 36 in. (Image via)

3. No line unchallenged.

Sigmar Polke, Over the Rainbow, 2006 (obit here)

4. No dead edges.

Andrew Dadson, Plank Lean Painting #2, 2010. (detail) Oil on canvas. 60 x 60 x 10 inches

5. Color needs a crew.

Robert Ryman (His white on white in white qualifies.) Ledger, 1982. (Image via)

6. How carries what.

Mark Mumford, Hold Still, 2003 Ink on paper

7. Ransack the past (be a chop shop).

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further… And one fine morning – So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

John Currin

8. Let ripe go rotten.

Joan Snyder Rain, 2009 oil, acrylic, burlap, seeds, paper mache, on linen 39″ x 54″

9. Like a thermos, contain heat without radiating it.

It seems to be the struggle of an artist, choosing there medium, over coming technical issues in order to see your visions through. It is incredibly important to know your intention in creating, in order to focus it so the work can teach you something about your intentions. I’ve seen lots of work that isn’t based in some sort of intention and it is read as arbitrary and a bit confusing. Their intention wasn’t to confuse. They “just wanted to make something” which I take issue with. If you “just want to make something” why share it? I am interested in the idea of the art, and rarely the art itself. So keep you thoughtless art at home were it belongs.

Here’s Meredith Monk. She is a singer, director/choreographer and creator of new opera, music theater works, films and installations. A pioneer in what is now called “extended vocal technique” and “interdisciplinary performance,” Monk creates works that thrive at the intersection of music and movement, image and object, light and sound in an effort to discover and weave together new modes of perception. Her groundbreaking exploration of the voice as an instrument, as an eloquent language in and of itself, expands the boundaries of musical composition, creating landscapes of sound that unearth feelings, energies, and memories for which we have no words. She has alternately been proclaimed as a “magician of the voice” and “one of America’s coolest composers.” During a career that spans more than 40 years she has been acclaimed by audiences and critics as a major creative force in the performing arts. (Monk’s site)

Monk seemingly doesn’t singing about anything in particular, her work is about explores ‘the intangible’ with voices, attempting to make things “other worldly”.  Despite the ethereal and abstract nature of her work, Monk is incredibly considerate technically about about her composition.

Off-Topic | Randall Szott February 25, 2010

Off-Topic invites artists, curators, writers, and cultural workers to discuss a subject not directly related to the practice of making art. We would like to welcome Randall Szott as our latest guest with his post, “More Tailgating, Less Curating”. In his own words, Randall  “has described himself as a chef, a merchant marine, or a schmuck with some blogs.” When not spending part of his time at sea, Randall can be found at He Said, She Said.

More Tailgating, Less Curating

Randall Szott

I’m a cook. When I tell people this there are no quizzical looks or sheepish follow up questions. People get it and want to hear more. Sometimes the fact that I have two grad degrees in art makes its way into the conversation and things get awkward. This, to me is a problem, a fundamental problem that I’ve been invited to say a bit about here at BaS. What follows is my highly anecdotal account of why I believe the art world should strive to be more like the culinary world. It is rooted in my experience and obviously suffused with my values. If you don’t share those values (pluralism, flexibility, openness, egalitarianism, inclusiveness, conviviality, approachability, diversity, etc.), find those values misapplied or irrelevant to the context, or if you have had a radically different experience with the art or culinary world then obviously this account will be of questionable value to you. I am talking about the capital A art world – the one that BaS almost exclusively engages itself with – not the immensely diverse “real” art world of sidewalk art fairs, church craft shows, potters in Memphis, painters in Sedona, and the multiplicity of creative artists that work outside the “recognition” of the network of biennials, jet-set curators, international journals, art historians, big city newspapers, and elite colleges/universities.

I went to several art schools as an undergrad, but found them all incapable of or unwilling to answer some fundamental questions about art practice – Why is it important?  Who is it important to? And how does it fit into history, not art history? To put it another way, the schools seemed prepared to teach how to make art, but not why making art mattered to anyone beyond the campus. In fact, most evidence I encountered seemed to imply that very few people felt the type of art being made in art schools in the early to mid 90s mattered at all. For a discipline that prides itself on its capacity for self-reflection and critique, it seemed strange to me that asking what seemed like such obvious questions would be met with such incredulity and would brand me as a testy crank. Maybe I was destined for kitchen work all along given the notorious tempers of cooks/chefs. Maybe art types are the temperamental ones, especially when asked to provide some semblance of proof that what they’re doing matters to anyone beyond their circle of like minded art enthusiasts.

The cooking world doesn’t share this burden. People get it. Now don’t get me wrong, the foodie/wine connoisseur crowd can be as snobbish and condescending as the ArtForum/Sotheby’s set to be sure. But, despite this, what follows is my bullet point summary of why the art world would be better if it was more like the culinary world. To make it easier for myself, I’m going to limit my discussion of U.S. culinary culture as it is the one I know best and some limit in scope is necessary given the length.

Diversity of diffusion

The multiplicity of centers, or points of culinary interest are staggering in culinary culture. That is to say, in contrast to the art world, a much broader cross section of America invites exploration and discovery -  farmstead cheeses of rural Vermont, shrimp and grits of coastal Carolina, the various regional barbecue styles (Memphis, St. Louis, Texas, Carolina, etc.), seasonal Pacific Northwest menus, clambakes and lobster rolls of coastal New England, and on and on and on…You can find great food outside of the major urban centers, food made and consumed with great regional pride by people who do not look to national or international tastemakers for validation. If you want to experience art “that matters,” you have a very limited travel itinerary ahead – Los Angeles, New York, and *maybe* San Francisco or Chicago. Of course you can throw Miami in, but you’ll just be looking at stuff trucked in from the other urban centers.

Participation

Obviously this is related to the previous item. The main thing I’m looking at here is the range of individual participants, the variety of socio-economic classes, educational levels, race, (as per above) regional distribution, age, gender, etc. Essentially everyone cooks, and this means that the pool of available knowledge, approaches and practices is staggering. Because of its integration within everyday life, food opens up conversation rather than shuts it down (see my anecdote above). Of course food is politicized and has immense points of controversy, but if you were to make small talk with someone on a bus, in a taxi, at the gas station, the laundromat, the DMV, or the bank, aside from the weather, what easier point of reference would there be than food? To be able to talk about *something* deeply connected to history, identity, culture with a complete stranger is an amazing thing. Go ahead ask someone what their favorite holiday meal is, or what their grandmother used to cook, or (often funny) about their worst food experience. Then ask them about art and see where that conversation goes.

Star System

Again related to the previous item, is the way in which cooking “stars” figure in popular culture. Mario Battali is a well respected chef within the “high” culture of the culinary world (I use scare quotes because as this section hopes to point out high culture in cooking is not nearly as removed from low, or ordinary culture – unlike art in which they pretend such distinctions have collapsed, but the evidence to support the claim is basically nonexistent), but is also widely known among ordinary people. Let’s contrast this with say, Ann Hamilton whose resume is chock full of pinnacle achievements in the arts, but is basically unknown as a public figure. Perhaps that comparison isn’t fair, Thomas Keller is one of the most highly regarded chefs in the U.S. and remains obscure too. The fact remains though that many highly accomplished professionals in the field of cooking (Anthony Bourdain, Wolfgang Puck, Alice Waters, etc.) are known to the public. Thus, the divide between those who are “experts” and those that are not is not nearly as steep at least in terms of a basic who’s who of the field.

Media

Take a quick look at all of the snarky hand wringing going on amongst the art chattering class (and its wannabes) regarding Bravo’s upcoming art reality series to see how important the traditions of rejecting the”masses” and the cult of genius remain in the art world. Reality cooking shows are everywhere and there are very few cries of “that’s not really cooking” or “those aren’t really chefs” among the food crowd. This relaxed, open, and fun orientation is another strength of the culinary world. On Top Chef, truly “top” chefs participate with little fear that it will hurt their credibility with some food intelligentsia. Even on the more campy and flamboyant Iron Chef top tier chefs eagerly embrace the opportunity rather than avoid it to maintain their “serious” cooking practice. Aren’t there oodles of essays about how distinctions between pop culture and art culture have collapsed? Ah, but in the culinary world we have living proof of this, not just some catalog essays and edited academic volumes. Where is the Art Network? Where is Top Artist? Each with accomplished artists participating in pop culture, not just commenting on it, or using it for source material? To continue this line of thinking, where are the copies of ArtForum or frieze at the checkout stand, the dentist’s office, the insurance office, or drug store? I have found Saveur, Gourmet (R.I.P.), Food and Wine, etc. in these places. There is a Food Network whose viewers are not just insiders (critics and chefs), but people like my mom and even my dad. Wouldn’t the art world be well served by having various media that at least approached the broad demographics of food media?

Participation II

Finally, I’ll leave you with a bit about cookbooks and the participatory ethos of the culinary world. One of the most inspiring things I found in my experience as a professional cook (in high end fancy pants restaurants) was the egalitarian attitudes of chefs I worked with. They often looked to street food (“common” cooking) not in irony, not merely as inspiration for their own more “refined” dishes, but as some of the greatest achievements in culinary culture. Most chefs I know believe that there are grandmothers the world over that are equal to, or greater in cooking ability to themselves or are at least capable of creating a few amazing dishes. I have rarely encountered artists who think that a housewife in North Dakota or a construction worker in Mississippi might have something to add to art, or that a sidewalk art fair in Oak Park even might have anything there that would merit attention. Yet, we have someone like the aforementioned Mario Battali releasing the cookbook “Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style” not as a wink wink “gesture,” but out of a real appreciation for, and respect of, the cooking practices of ordinary people. Not only that, but this creative back and forth between highly accomplished professionals in the field and ordinary people happens daily in newspapers, call in shows, street fairs, and cooking demonstrations. We have someone like Rick Bayless issuing cookbooks for you, me, anyone -  to make and alter his recipes. Now I know Fluxus adopted the recipe model a bit, but it is by no means mainstream in the art world. There are community cookbooks, chili cook-offs and other forms of ordinary cooking that chefs look to for crafting recipes. This dynamic, participatory ethos in which school teachers, mechanics, brokers, nail technicians, etc. rub against professional cooks and food critics creates a vibrant, dense, and democratic culture that the art world can’t do anymore than pay lip service to.

Now as I mentioned, this whole line of thinking is predicated on a certain set of values – that cultures are better served by: increased participation, broadly composed publics, egalitarian social relationships, power widely distributed across stakeholders rather than concentrated amongst a few elites, and shared points of contact/vocabularies. Let me also stipulate that there are highly specialized, and elitist practices in the cooking world as well – molecular gastronomy being among them, but this does not change my basic points. I’ll close with one of the major things I’d like to see the culinary world emulate from the art world. To experience the very top tier of cooking is insanely expensive. In the art world, you can stroll into any gallery free of charge. Similarly museums provide access to, and educational programming for, art free of charge (at least on certain days). The culinary world needs to figure out how to replicate this – create “museums” wherein people can taste food for free prepared not only by chefs, but also by home cooks and create programming that contextualizes it within broader historical/cultural currents.The culinary world is ahead on many counts by my estimation, but it is glaringly behind the art world in making its achievements available to those with limited economic resources. I might have veered onto a snarky path in parts of this post, but I truly offer this in the spirit of constructive criticism, and as someone who wants art to be relevant, to be able to talk as readily about it with my neighbors and the folks back in my hometown as I can about cooking. I want people to be as hungry for art as they are for al pastor, dal, pot roast, and fried chicken. That’s a huge, probably impossible ambition, but I’m a romantic through and through -  Bon appétit!

About the poster: Randall Szott embodies the spirit of an old Dennis Miller joke in that he doesn’t know enough about anything to impress strangers and just enough about everything to annoy his friends. Or is it the reverse? He spent 11 years in college at 7 schools in 5 states and has 3 degrees. He has been cooking professionally for around a decade and has prepared everything from Thanksgiving dinner for over 300 to multi-course wine tasting menus for 12.His life is a series of three week cycles on land and three at sea working as a cook aboard the largest U.S. owned hopper dredge. Inexplicably, institutions occasionally invite him to present his thoughts and activities in a public setting, even ones that should know better like SFMOMA, basekamp, The University of Houston, The California College of the Arts, threewalls, and The Skydive. There is no quick explanation as to what the hell he actually does or why anyone should care, but if you have some time, stop by He Said, She Said and he’d be happy to talk.

but she is working only for the Future
she is missing all the information
being given
to her
knowledge that could never fit in her knapsack
or be captured with flash photography

can’t even write it down

for it moves faster then reiteration

this moment cannot be salvaged
stop trying

breathe in breathe out
experience now

This ceremony was held in the dark and everyone brought bedding and a small bucket in case of the need to purge. (Ayahuasca can induce purging.) I did not experience this on my trip, but others did. No one complained of it being an uncomfortable purge, but more of a spiritual release, or freeing of some sort of personal or emotional block. I had a moment of intense nausea, but the shaman, knowing my trepidation about taking the medicine, came to me and sang a song and brushed my face with feathers. He placed his hand upon my head and held it there for a moment. Immediately he spun around and purged into a yogurt container. My nausea subsided and I felt relaxed and at peace. I believe the shaman took that purge for me.

I saw many things, and learned about the universe and myself, but what leaves the biggest impact upon me was the delicacy of Ayahuasca. Mytrip unfolded itself to me,  and respected my intention of taking the medicine. I prepared myself sufficiently, I believe. It took me 2 weeks of cleansing, and a few days of strict diet and fasting. Also I had to prepare myself mentally.   I was very scared of taking Ayahuasca because of the thought of giving myself over to a plant and to God. I don’t let myself get too out of control (or so I like to think) and taking this brew forced me to let things go. I allowed myself to relax, have no fear, and  be an observer. I placed myself into the hands of the Universe and hoped it would be kind. It was an amazing experience.

Virtudes Espirituales by Pablo Amaringo

Forget Shorter Showers: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change

by Derrick Jensen

Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.

Or let’s talk water. We so often hear that the world is running out of water. People are dying from lack of water. Rivers are dewatered from lack of water. Because of this we need to take shorter showers. See the disconnect? Because I take showers, I’m responsible for drawing down aquifers? Well, no. More than 90 percent of the water used by humans is used by agriculture and industry. The remaining 10 percent is split between municipalities and actual living breathing individual humans. Collectively, municipal golf courses use as much water as municipal human beings. People (both human people and fish people) aren’t dying because the world is running out of water. They’re dying because the water is being stolen.

Or let’s talk energy. Kirkpatrick Sale summarized it well: “For the past 15 years the story has been the same every year: individual consumption—residential, by private car, and so on—is never more than about a quarter of all consumption; the vast majority is commercial, industrial, corporate, by agribusiness and government [he forgot military]. So, even if we all took up cycling and wood stoves it would have a negligible impact on energy use, global warming and atmospheric pollution.”

Or let’s talk waste. In 2005, per-capita municipal waste production (basically everything that’s put out at the curb) in the U.S. was about 1,660 pounds. Let’s say you’re a die-hard simple-living activist, and you reduce this to zero. You recycle everything. You bring cloth bags shopping. You fix your toaster. Your toes poke out of old tennis shoes. You’re not done yet, though. Since municipal waste includes not just residential waste, but also waste from government offices and businesses, you march to those offices, waste reduction pamphlets in hand, and convince them to cut down on their waste enough to eliminate your share of it. Uh, I’ve got some bad news. Municipal waste accounts for only 3 percent of total waste production in the United States.

I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.

So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.

Besides being ineffective at causing the sorts of changes necessary to stop this culture from killing the planet, there are at least four other problems with perceiving simple living as a political act (as opposed to living simply because that’s what you want to do). The first is that it’s predicated on the flawed notion that humans inevitably harm their landbase. Simple living as a political act consists solely of harm reduction, ignoring the fact that humans can help the Earth as well as harm it. We can rehabilitate streams, we can get rid of noxious invasives, we can remove dams, we can disrupt a political system tilted toward the rich as well as an extractive economic system, we can destroy the industrial economy that is destroying the real, physical world.

The second problem—and this is another big one—is that it incorrectly assigns blame to the individual (and most especially to individuals who are particularly powerless) instead of to those who actually wield power in this system and to the system itself. Kirkpatrick Sale again: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

The third problem is that it accepts capitalism’s redefinition of us from citizens to consumers. By accepting this redefinition, we reduce our potential forms of resistance to consuming and not consuming. Citizens have a much wider range of available resistance tactics, including voting, not voting, running for office, pamphleting, boycotting, organizing, lobbying, protesting, and, when a government becomes destructive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have the right to alter or abolish it.

The fourth problem is that the endpoint of the logic behind simple living as a political act is suicide. If every act within an industrial economy is destructive, and if we want to stop this destruction, and if we are unwilling (or unable) to question (much less destroy) the intellectual, moral, economic, and physical infrastructures that cause every act within an industrial economy to be destructive, then we can easily come to believe that we will cause the least destruction possible if we are dead.

The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

© 2009 Orion

Derrick Jensen is an activist and the author of many books, most recently What We Leave Behind and Songs of the Dead.

The one thing Jensen forget to mention is the military responsibility contributing to environmental decay.

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