Monday, August 11

A rare day yesterday, hours of uninterrupted time in the studio. Two new paintings began, and I went back into an existing one. I was covered with paint still this morning, ruined my Pure Brazil shirt too, drag. I visited Asheville on Saturday, checked out some galleries, didn’t see much to thrill me. Gallery staff (owner? director?) didn’t seem particularly knowledgeable or helpful when pressed but a sweet space. I liked one or two paintings ok, more for idea than execution. Landscape/nature painter meets Agnes Martin. It was really sort of academic and flaccid.

I’m day to day now. Nothing has sold, no real hope for anything big selling until late Fall/Winter if then. No matter, I’m free to do what I want because no one is watching. I like it that way. I wonder if I would cave in under the pressure of success…nah, probably not, not anymore. I re-hung the diptych at home, looks better. M hung the last one I painted in 2007, the most Rothko-like I’ve ever done I think. Totemic, it has almost a shadow of a venerated figure shimmering beneath all the layers of medium. It was ruined to my mind, still sort of is but sometimes when she moves things around I see them with new eyes. There’s things I like about it.

I’ve been thinking about Barnett Newman. A few months ago, I read a terrific piece by the artist Mark Zimmermann on Newman and Mitchell. I’ve always loved Newman; the mythos, the paintings the writings, you name it. I thought the whole legend of him painting his first zip painting, walking out of the studio and not painting for several years was a line until I went through something similar a few years back. There are wonderful moments when we step back from a painting and wonder just what the hell we’ve done. I get those more and more and I have to say I love it.

I guess I was thinking of Newman again after standing in that room of E. Kelly’s asymetrical, solid-color canvases. Color field abstraction is still, to my mind, the single greatest unfulfilled promise of Abstract Expressionism. It got hijacked by the academics and I think it never pulled out of that nosedive. Newman gave the viewer that last lifeline of focus, the zip. But he also gave us the giant, heroic canvases. Pure color which shoots out and engulfs one’s periphery, they are singular in their power and grace. Newman was after the Sublime; I think he damn well got it too. On his blog, Zimmermann spoke of how abstract art loses so much in reproduction. Well said. You can’t look at photographs of Rothko, Newman, Still and grasp them, they have to be encountered and then contended with. In books or slides, Rothko paintings often get a yawn or hostile response from a first year art history class; but anywhere in the world that one stands in front of one, everyone around it whispers. Think about that.

There are some that contend that AE was all about scale, and in fact relied on scale to compensate for substance. I just don’t buy it. The grand scale wasn’t new. Academy painting had us there, and with the exception of a handful of artists, David produced works as large or larger than many modern and contemporary painters.

For my part, I want these current paintings in the studio to be seen in close proximity. I saw the Pollock retrospective about six years or so ago at MoMa (the old location). There was this moment when I rounded the corner and stood in a relatively small environment surrounded by these huge paintings. I couldn’t back up more than 3 or 4 feet because of the room size and crowd and then I realized, that’s how they were painted. I showed M the orange painting and she kept backing up and even asked if I could put on the South wall so she could have more room. It comes at you, pure color. I like the idea of not being able to get away from it.

I’ve got some exciting work ahead this week. The initial under painting should be dry tonight and I can start to go deep. We have family coming into town all month long, but I plan to be scarce. Too much work to do, and my head’s on straight and focused so I have to capitalize on the inertia. I hope to have some images up tomorrow or Wednesday.