Nan Goldin - Art And Addiction

It’s interesting the way some successful artists reflect upon their lives.  Internationally renowned artist Nan Goldin had long berated herself for years of addiction, especially to opiates. “Every morning I’d wake up in hell, waking up to self-condemnation.  And then I’m taking two hours to get up because it’s so awful.”  These comments were made during her session with celebrated physician and addiction therapist Dr Gabor Mate.

Buzz and Nan at the Afterhours, New York City, 1980

Reading of her sessions with Mate, you’d swear she’d never been a ‘creative dynamo’ who has produced a vast body of powerful and distinctive art, exhibiting internationally to great acclaim.  “I’ve missed years of my life, I don’t have many more years to go.  I’ve spent most of my life addicted to drugs and as a result, know nothing.  My knowledge is very limited, I didn’t look in the mirror and deal with myself.  So much has been lost.”  She went on to say that she feels worthless and defective.

Rise and Monty Kissing, New York City, 1980

She was born Nancy Goldin into a middle class Jewish family in Boston in 1953.  She is the youngest of four children and was particularly close to her sister, Barbara, who from an early age rebelled against middle class American life.  This, in a climate of silence and denial.  Barbara spent time in institutions before committing suicide at the age of 18, when Nan was 11.  Speaking of Barbara, Goldin argues that in the early sixties, women who were sexual and angry were considered dangerous and outside the range of acceptable behavior.  She described her sister as being born at the wrong time with no tribe, no other people like her.  It’s argued that the gritty realism of Goldin’s work, the desire to tell it as it is has its roots in these early childhood experiences.

Trixie on the Cot, New York City, 1979

Goldin decided at an early age she would record her life and experiences “that no one could rewrite or deny”.  One of her closest friends was the photographer David Wojnarowicz (see my blog dated 8 May, 2020), and like him, she used photography as an act of resistance.  She moved to New York in 1979 and began producing photographs of those in her immediate environment.  Her most celebrated body of work is “Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, a project which began in the early 1980’s.  

In her critique of an exhibition based around ‘Ballad’, held at MOMA in 2016, Tasya Kudryk argues that Goldin had an intense relationship with her subjects whom she described as her family.  “The artist’s work captures an essential element of humanity that is transcendent of all struggles: the need to connect.”  Goldin claims it’s impossible to capture the essence of a person in a single image, instead she aims to “capture the swirl of identities over time.”  Her images include relationships in transition, of couples drifting together and then apart.  She doesn’t shy away from depicting violence, such as her self portrait showing the aftermath of a battering she received from a boyfriend that almost blinded her.  The message seemed to be that while sex can be a cure for isolation, it can be a source of alienation.

Nan, One Month After Being Battered, 1984

Ballad of Sexual Dependency has been described as a deeply personal visual diary narrating the struggle for intimacy and understanding between her friends, family and lovers.  The setting is mainly the hard-drugs subculture of New York’s lower east side.  (Interestingly, some former inhabitants  lament the gentrification of the area that has taken place recently.)  Goldin wants her work not to be seen in the context of observer, but as participant.  “Ballad” is now regarded as a contemporary classic, raising awareness around issues such as homosexuality and AIDS.  “Goldin's open, frank style of narration and dense colour make the viewer go beyond the surface of the photograph to encounter a subterranean intensity “- Kudryk.  Yet permeating these images is a sense of loss.  "I used to think that I could never lose anyone if I photographed them enough. In fact, my pictures show me how much I’ve lost." - Goldin.

Nan and Dickie in the York Motel, New Jersey, 1980

Goldin acknowledges that her escape into substance use rescued her when she resorted to it at age 18, when going through a painful time in her life.  “Literally, addiction saved my life”, she told Mate.  Otherwise, she may have been driven to suicidal despair.  She wishes that the consequences weren’t so harsh - as other addicts do.  Mate argues that self-accusation is a relentless whip that spurs so many perfectionists to buckle down, do more, be better.  It needs to be seen for what it is - a callow voice that needs to be firmly, but quietly put in its place.

Nan and Brian in Bed, New York City, 1983

More recently, (in addition to dealing with her own addiction) Goldin has engaged in personal and collective activism against Purdue Pharma, manufacturers of the opioid OxyContin which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.  Purdue marketed the product as being a less addictive opioid than other painkillers, whilst suppressing evidence to the contrary.  

Her particular targets in this campaign has been the Sackler family, who control Purdue, and her fame as an artist gave her a platform to raise the banner.  The Sacklers have promoted themselves as benevolent art philanthropists among other things, but Goldin was appalled at their callousness and inhumanity.  As a result of her campaigning, some of the world’s most prestigious galleries, including the Met in New York, no longer accept money from the Sacklers and have removed their logo from their buildings.

Tough Sharon

 When Mate asked her about her activism, Goldin responded “you need something bigger than yourself.”  In her case, it was the suffering of others, a situation she could rectify and which helps her to stay sober.  Mate believes that in standing up to a toxic culture, Goldin found herself. 

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I’m a fulltime artist these days and regularly exhibit my work in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com 

References; 

www.sleek-mag.com 

“The Myth of Normal”, Gabor Mate, 2022 

“The Lonely City”, Olivia Laing, 2016

Dorothea Tanning - 70 Years An Artist

‘Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now.’
– Dorothea Tanning, 2002

In 2019, Tate Modern held the first large-scale exhibition of American artist Dorothea Tanning in 25 years, bringing together 100 works from her 70 year career – enigmatic paintings and sculpture.

Dorothea Tanning (1910 – 2012) was born in Galesburg, Illinois, a town where “nothing happened except the wallpaper”, she said.  It’s claimed her childhood was repressed and tedious and it wasn’t until she arrived in New York and fell in with the surrealists that she found her true self.  She wasn’t keen to explain what the inspirations were for her disturbing night fantasies or what exactly was going on.  But she enjoyed an enduring career as a painter, sculptor and writer.  And this despite living in the shadows of her famous husband Max Ernst for 30 years.

Dorothea Tanning with Max Ernst

It was Tanning’s powerful 1942 self portrait ‘Birthday’ that first attracted the attention of Ernst.  Later he divorced his third wife Peggy Guggenheim and married Tanning in a curious joint ceremony with Man Ray and Juliet Browner in 1946.  Afterwards, Tanning and Ernst moved to Sedona, Arizona where they built a house and immersed themselves in their art.  So harsh was the landscape that sunflowers were about the only flower that could survive there.

Birthday, 1942, oil on canvas, 102 x 65 cm

She said she wanted to depict “unknown but knowable states”, to suggest there was more to life than meets the eye.  She wanted to combine the familiar with the strange to create an unsettling surrealist space. Her most famous painting, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) from 1943 got its title from a Mozart serenade and it’s not clear if we are looking at 2 girls, or the same girl before and after seeing the threatening sunflower.  It’s thought that the girls are Dorothea Tanning and that the painting was inspired by a nightmare.  The whole painting reeks of subconscious anxiety and the sunflower is thought to be a masculine presence.  Perhaps some childhood trauma is being remembered here.

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1943, oil on canvas 41 x 61 cm

“Please don’t ask me to explain my paintings, I don’t think it’s possible.  I paint, I can only describe this as a drive.”

It no doubt grated with her that for years she was labelled a woman surrealist. From the mid 1950’s, her work became more abstract reflecting her passion for dance, music and performance - perhaps combined with her earlier love of gothic and romantic literature.

Dogs of Cynthera 1963, oil on canvas, 197 x 297 cm

In the mid 1960’s she and Ernst moved to Paris and she declared that she was “fed up with turpentine” after which she began to produce soft sculptures using her Singer sewing machine.  This resulted in her installation ‘Hotel Du Pavot – Chambre 202’ of 1970-73 which consists of figures seemingly trying to escape the hotel room (perhaps the same hotel from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik).  Furniture seems to be metamorphosing into limbs, thighs and the scene is almost macabre.  “I set myself terrible goals” she once said.  “People said these sculptures are too soft, they won’t last.  They might as well have said they are dead”.  Her message may have been that life and love are soft and won’t last forever hence there is a deliberate fragility in her sculptures.

Hotel Du Pavot, 1970-73, installation, wool fabric synthetic fur and ping pong balls

Tanning believes this work to be directly related to a song popular in her childhood.

      In room two hundred and two
      The walls keep talkin' to you
      I'll never tell you what they said
      So turn out the light and come to bed.

The song was written in the 1920’s and laments the fate of Kitty Kane, a one-time Chicago gangster’s wife who poisoned herself in room 202 of a local hotel.

Like so many artists, Tanning’s art was her means of understanding the world around her.  She continued to write until the end – her last book of poems was published when she turned 100.

“I’ve done everything I could to escape my biography, but I think we’re prisoners of our events.”

Tanning at the Tate exhibition.  The painting to her left is 'Tango Lives' from 1977

References;

Dreamideamachine.com

Tate.org.uk

The Art of the Dark, BBC TV

dorotheatanning.org

Paul McCarthy - Art Of The Underbelly

It’s time to look at the dark underbelly of modern art, or perhaps to put it another way, to confront modern reality. The Guardian describes Paul McCarthy’s work as a relentlessly revolting vision of modern America.  He has been at it since the 1970’s.  His art depicts his nation as a crumbling edifice of pop culture, of creeping fascism and depraved, uninhibited capitalism.   “It’s a questioning of our condition,” says McCarthy, “our way of life. Look at America right now with its racism and its violence, and yet we have Disneyland.”  He is regarded as one of the most significant American artists of the last half century.

Blockhead & Dadies Big Head, Tate Modern (2003)

Born in Salt Lake City in 1945, McCarthy was initially a carpenter and labourer who produced art at night.  He describes Salt Lake City as a very patriarchal environment and with a very conditioned reality.  He believed he was abnormally sensitive to the pressure of the patriarchal institution, and by about the age of 20, he realised that he was living in a “fucked up” situation where normality was not what it seemed.  So he left.  He sees the role of art as resistance, to push back against how reality is presented and the image of the patriarch.

Rebel Dabble Babble, a collaboration with his son, Damon

He has produced large scale video works such as the 2013 ‘Rebel Dabble Babble’ which consisted of two derelict houses built inside a vast warehouse with video screens showing hard core pornography, supposedly featuring cast members from the film Rebel Without A Cause.  In 2008 he caused a sensation in Switzerland when his giant inflatable turd took leave of its moorings during a wind storm, bringing down a powerline before landing in a playground of a children’s home.

Complex Pile, Switzerland (2008)

I first became aware of McCarthy through the 1999 TV series ‘This Is Modern Art’ presented by British artist Matthew Collings.  In one episode titled Shock! Horror!, Collings asks “do you like being afraid, fed up with order and harmony and the world making sense (supposedly) and being the right way up, and you want sudden noises, horror and obscenity – try modern art.”  A strange introduction really, as the point of much modern art is that the world has gone completely insane.  Among the artists featured in the program are Tracy Emin, Gilbert and George, The Chapman Brothers and – Paul McCarthy.

A scene from Bossy Burger (1991)

In each episode of the series, Collings begins with a reference to the past.  In ‘Shock! Horror! his reference point is the incomparable Goya.  And that’s the point, if we believe that some of today’s art is pointlessly shocking and has no precedent, we need to look back to Goya – or even further back to Hieronymus Bosch.  To meet up with Paul McCarthy, Collings travels to Los Angeles “where there is always blue skies, pleasantness, bright colours and innocuousness.”  Surely nothing horrible can happen there.  Next we are confronted with McCarthy’s performance piece ‘Painter’ from 1995. Confronting to say the least – “a savage filmic assault on the values of the fine art world”, says Collings.  And then there is Bossy Burger of 1991 and Santa’s Chocolate Shop of 1997.  Watching these films, Collings describes them as “the Magic Roundabout meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre”.  They were, and still are, shocking. 

A scene from Painter (1995)

The themes of violence and fascism, the constant questioning of the state of things have always underlined McCarthy’s work, he simply finds new ways of expressing these themes as the decades pass.  Subtlety isn’t in McCarthy’s metier.  At Hauser and Wirth in London in 2011 he exhibited animatronic sculptures of George W Bush having anal sex with pigs. “Tawdry images for dismal times”, according to the Guardian.

Train (2003-2009)

The Guardian asks has reality finally overtaken his ketchup-smeared visions of corruption?  There is an inevitability to McCarthy’s response.  “How much more absurd can you get than Donald Trump? It’s a really good example of a performance, its theatre. He’s really just manipulating a population……we’re still trying to figure out what the fuck’s going on. Even now. Like, what is going on? We’re so utterly fucked up that, if anything, we really do need these experiments into this reality.” 

WS Spinoffs, Wood Statues, Brown Rothkos at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles (2017)

There is always a constant questioning, and his materials include sex, violence, bodily fluids and sick humour.  It’s a risky business although McCarthy’s son Damon (who collaborates with him on many projects) argues it’s not risky as there is nothing to lose.  Still, McCarthy claims to have been censored four to five times per year.

References;

Paul McCarthy and Damon McCarthy in conversation with Tom Eccles – Hauser & Wirth

The Guardian

“This is Modern Art” – Channel 4 (1999)

Land Art, Art Beyond The Gallery

Beginning in the 1960’s a group of artists based primarily in New York began to take up the land as the subject and the material for their art practice.  Drawing on minimalist and conceptual art they sought to transcend the limitations of classical painting and sculpture in a gallery setting.

They looked to the vast desolate desert spaces of America’s south-west to produce land art on a monumental scale.  The artists saw themselves as explorers, looking for a larger canvas to work on in order to produce an art form that would “end galleries”, or so they thought.  It seemed as if they wanted to subvert the art market.

Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake 1970

The unofficial leader of this movement was Robert Smithson who was an eloquent writer and speaker with a dark, even satanic nature.  Walter De Maria was said to have been rather quiet and he, like Michael Heizer and many others wanted the viewer to enter the work and experience it.  The impact of the Vietnam War must not be underestimated in the development of this art movement, as there seems to be a measure of violence in the production of much land art.  There is a belief that the aftermath of the war is an anxiety that hangs over society to this very day, which is also evident in this art form.

Critic Waldemar Januszczak claims land art could not have happened anywhere else.  You needed big spaces he tells us.  Obviously he’s never been to Australia.   Some of the landscapes that appealed to the land artists seem uncannily similar to the Flinders Ranges.

The Apollo moon missions presented us with a new vision of the world as a sphere and the land artists saw this as an opportunity to shape this sphere, to draw on it at a massive scale.  The importance of flight can’t be underestimated too.  James Turrell often spent days flying at low levels looking for subject matter for his art.

James Turrell, Roden Crater, Arizona commenced 1978

The architecture of the great pyramids is also thought to have been an influence, so we are looking at a confluence of history, architecture and science which inspired land art.

Henry Moore once said that when he made his sculptures he was doing the things he did as a child, and children do have a special relationship with the physical nature of the land.  De Maria once said his favourite paint brush was the Caterpillar tractor.

It was the isolation and ruggedness of America’s south-west that appealed most these New York artists.  “It is interesting to build a sculpture that attempts to create an atmosphere of awe, awe as a state of mind equivalent to religious experience”, Michael Heizer.

Michael Heizer, Double Negative, appox. 460 m wide Nevada 1969-70

Some may regard Double Negative as an ugly gash on the landscape. Waldemar Januszczak argues land art was about adapting the art to the landscape.  Anyway, I would contend that Double Negative isn’t anywhere near as offensive as Mount Rushmore.  Of course, nature will eventually fill in these gashes, but both Smithson and Heizer were fascinated by the concept of entropy, that is; of systems breaking down.

A popular hangout for many (but not all) land artists was a bar called Max’s Kansas City in New York City where the owner loved artists to the extent that they were still welcome, even if they didn’t have any money and they could build up a tab or even swap art in exchange.  Max’s was extremely inclusive, welcoming people from Europe into constant conversations about art.  Carl Andre believes that such openness doesn’t exist today, perhaps because of TV (or the Internet).  He even speculates that drugs may have killed it.

Charles Ross, Star Axis, New Mexico commenced 1976

Of course, all major art movements benefit from a patron and in the case of the land artists it was Virginia Dwan.  She was a gallery owner with an interest in art as installation which had a relationship to the land and architecture, she was also an heir to the 3M dynasty so money was no object.  She was interested in ideas of discovery and would stump up large sums of money for land art projects.

Artist/curator Willoughby Sharp was another supporter of the land artists as they extended their practice outside the gallery environment and he set about promoting their projects by any means possible. He was very media savvy, as evident in his magazine Avalanche which had a European and American art focus.

Nancy Holt and her husband Robert Smithson both grew up in New Jersey and she explained that going back to that state to explore possibilities for future projects gave them a chance to re-experience places they had experienced when children.  “It also gave us a chance to unlearn sophisticated things we had learned in early adulthood and getting rid of a lot of useless concepts and getting back in touch with the land, the physical surrounds of our existence and perceiving it in a new way.”  But New Jersey had little to offer them, so they headed further west – a lot further west.

A breakthrough for these artists was the Earth Works 1969 show staged by Virginia Dwan at her gallery in New York which introduced the public and media to the whole concept of land art.  What followed were major projects funded by Dwan including Michael Heizer’s Double Negative and Smithson’s Spiral Jetty.

Walter De Maria, Lightning Field, New Mexico 1977

In 1977 Walter De Maria produced Lightning Field in New Mexico, 400 steel poles equidistant covering an area 1 km x 1 mile.  In this work the viewer is invited to enter and be part of it, the same applies to Double Negative.  Dwan explained that when you enter the giant cuts, you can see aeons of existence exposed in the rock layers.  She described the experience as lonely, yet feeling at one with nature.  There was an element of danger as well, the same applies to Lightning Field if there were any clouds about.

Artists who felt they had burned their bridges with the gallery system found there was another world to explore in land art.  Dwan admitted that what she admired most in these artists was their obsession.

In her piece Sun Tunnels, Nancy Holt said that when she explored the south-west deserts for the first time, she found it hard to sleep as it changed her life radically.  It gave her a different sense of space, time and light and the power of the sun. 

Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels, Utah 1976

The holes drilled through the concrete pipes are in the configuration of the stars and constellations so that when the sun shines through it creates star light in the tunnels.  The tunnels are oriented towards the summer and winter solstice.

It is sad how the changing climate has impacted on Spiral Jetty, now that the Great Salt Lake in the vicinity of Smithson’s work has turned into a desert.

Dwan speculates that it may take another 50, maybe 100 years before the significance of the work of the land artists is fully appreciated. Smithson died in a plane crash in 1973 whilst surveying an area for a future project.

References;

Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art, Summitridge Pictures 2015

Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art, Made in the USA, BBC 2018

Art Born Of Anger - David Wojnarowicz

“Hell is a place on earth.  Heaven is a place in your head.”  Thus wrote New York based artist David Wojnarowicz in his essay Shadow Of The American Dream.  He was a gay activist, print maker, painter, poet and photographer who died of complications from AIDS in 1992.

It was only in 2018 that the arts establishment decided to afford Wojnarowicz the recognition he deserved by staging a series of retrospectives of his work.  One of those exhibitions was held at the Whitney Museum in New York and was titled History Keeps Me Awake At Night.

Born in New Jersey in 1954, he began creating a body of work in the late ‘70’s.  But given his background it is remarkable that he made it to adulthood at all.  He was the youngest of 3 children, his mother was very young whilst the father was a violent alcoholic.  When David was 2 years old, his parents split up and after spending time with his siblings in a boarding house where beatings were frequent, they ended up with their father and his new wife in New Jersey, the universe of the neatly clipped lawn – according to Wojnarowicz, “where physical and psychic violence against women, gay people and children could be carried out without repercussions.” 

Chelsea Piers, the setting for much of Wojnarowicz’s photography

By the mid 1960’s, the Wojnarowicz children decided they’d had enough of their father’s violence and traced down their mother, but she had only a tiny apartment in Manhattan and was in no shape to be caring for 3 now troubled children due to having problems of her own.

David eventually ran away from home and found himself hustling in Times Square at the age of 15.  He also liked to draw and go to movies on his own.  He briefly returned to his mother’s apartment but she had already kicked out his siblings and at 17, he found himself on the streets for good.  He would sleep in boiler rooms or cars, some men were kind to him, some weren’t.  In 1973 his sister threw out a lifeline by offering him a bedroom in her apartment.

Wojnarowicz, Self Portrait 1983-85

In the late 70’s he began taking photographs of his friends wearing a mask of his kindred spirit Arthur Rimbaud in locations from his hustling days before he fell into the somewhat dysfunctional East Village art scene that included Nan Goldin, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat and Peter Hujar.

Jacket worn by Wojnarowicz at a 1988 AIDS demonstration.

But it was the AIDS crisis that propelled Wojnarowicz’s work to prominence in the 1980’s as, one by one, he witnessed his friends and lovers die of a disease the Reagan Administration refused to name.  Art (and for that matter, sex) provided him with an avenue to escape the loneliness and isolation of his life – to escape the “prison of the self” as author Olivia Liang puts it in her book The Lonely City.

Wojnarowicz, Death Of American Spirituality 1987

In his wanderings around New York he often found himself at the Chelsea Piers which were left in a dilapidated state following the decline of shipping in the 1960’s.  It was here where his erotic and creative juices were fed and it was here where the ravages of the AIDS epidemic took hold.  Photography was to Wojnarowicz an act of taking possession, a way of making something visible and keeping it in storage.  He also produced some short films and his writings included the autobiography Close To The Knives (1991). The title says it all.  After he was diagnosed with AIDS in the late 80’s, his work took on a more political edge and he became involved in public debates around medical research and funding, morality and censorship in the arts, and the legal rights of artists.

Wojnarowicz, One Day This Kid 1990

According to Laing, 66,000 people died of AIDS in New York City alone between 1981 and 1996 when combination therapies became available.  People were sacked from their jobs and rejected by their families, patients were left on hospital trolleys (that’s if they were able to be admitted in the first place).  Nurses refused to treat them, funeral parlours to bury them and politicians and religious leaders blocked funding and education.

Wojnarowicz, Green Head 1982

In Close To The Knives Wojnarowicz wrote “My rage is really about the fact that when I was told I had contracted this virus it didn’t take me long to realize I had contracted a diseased society.”   He died 22 July, 1992 with his lover and family beside him.  The expression triumph in the face of adversity is a tediously overused cliché, yet it seems to describe his life.  In spite of everything he went through, he was able to so intensely and eloquently express his inner most feelings through a variety of media.  And act as a passionate spokesman on behalf of others.

Chelsea Piers

References;

The Guardian

The Lonely City – Olivia Laing, Picador Press, 2016

Taking On The Corporate World - Ron English

He’s been referred to as a guerrilla artist and his practice described as “culture jamming”, the practice of modifying billboards or other advertisements to change their corporate message to a radically anti-capitalist one.  Since the 1980’s, American artist Ron English has been tackling consumerism, corporate America and politics head on.  His targets include fast food, liquor and cigarettes.  Strictly speaking, he is defacing public property and this is a second degree felony in the United States.  “Right up there with bashing someone over the head with a baseball bat”, he claims.

I first became aware of English with the 2005 documentary “POPaganda – The Art and Crimes of Ron English” produced by Pedro Carvajal.  Declaring that ordinary people deserve free speech and corporations do not, English and his crew hijacked billboards across New York City, either repainting them or more often posting their own signs which were a scathing attack on the original.  This was done in broad daylight – English argues you are more likely to be considered a legitimate employee than if you did this at night – then high-tailing it out of there before the police arrive.  Usually the operation takes about 7 minutes if all goes well.  Occasionally he has been arrested.

He coined the term POPaganda to mean a combination of pop art and the public being force fed information which he reinvents into something perverse.

Usually the billboards got de-hijacked within a few days but the operation generated enough public interest to make the operation worthwhile.  And besides, English was ensuring as many people as possible were able to see his art whereas most artists’ work rarely leaves their studios.

Born in Illinios in 1959, there was always something of the prankster about English.  His mother once made him an Evel Knievel costume, so he borrowed his little sister’s bike and rode over some matchbox cars.  He later made several insanely dangerous home movies with some mates before going to college to “save himself”.

A response to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

In the Carvajal doco it is stated that when you live in a world so dominated by an endless stream of commercial images, where kids are growing up with their entire visual landscape being bought, sold and co-opted, you can either acquiesce to it and be passive about it you can confront it.

A reinvention of the famous Marlboro cigarette logo.

English says that one of the joys of this form of art is that he can have an idea today, paint the poster tonight and have it up on a billboard tomorrow.  He feels a little like a political cartoonist except that he doesn’t have a disapproving editor to deal with, let alone a major corporation who owns the newspaper.

English’s wife, Tarssa Yazdani, who has often collaborated with him in his projects believes the most destructive aspect of advertising is the direct marketing to children.  She sees Ron as at the forefront of a movement to take back the message and the media.  And this brings me to his campaign against Camel cigarettes and his horror that the company would create a cartoon character called Joe Camel to market their products to children.  English went after Joe Camel with a ferocity that probably led to its demise.

Another target was Apple computers and their ‘think different’ campaign where they appropriated images of some of the worlds greatest minds (including Einstein) from the 20th century.  English argues that Apple have no right to assume these people would have approved of their products because they are dead.  His response was to feature images of Charles Manson and Apple’s arch enemy – Bill Gates.

One criticism of the Carvajal documentary is that it contains no response from the corporate world.  English claims they were invited to respond, but declined.  One of English’s collaborators, Shepard Fairey believes English is challenging the whole concept democracy and free speech in the USA and to undermine the symbiotic nature of consumption is very dangerous to the powers that be, whilst the average person does not have a voice.

In 2005, McDonald’s restaurants celebrated its 50th anniversary and became an obvious target for English.

English’s character MC Supersized later featured in the film Super Size Me.

Inevitably, English became a victim of his own success, at least in regards to his billboard art.  He became so recognisable it got to the point where he could barely put a foot on a ladder in public without attracting the attention of the police or the billboard owner.  In recent years, English has produced designer toys, album covers, collaborated with musicians and others in various projects as well as holding exhibitions featuring his richly coloured and textured oil paintings.  This is much to the relief of his wife who expressed concern at the impulsive nature of his poster art, which involved many hours of work but didn’t appear to be doing anything that would enhance his career or meet their financial goals.  She wasn’t alone in this belief – a gallery director expressed the same concerns.

In 2018 he held an exhibition in Montreal called “Universal Grin”, and was asked about the title. “The grin treatment is akin to a political or corporate logo. If you want people to feel good about what your organization is doing you don’t need to engage in practices they will approve of, what you really need to do is front with a happy face…  This show is on some level about being so totally consumed by the cultural circus you can no longer be objective about it, just fall in love with its sublime perfection.”

Ron English - Universal Grin

It was also inevitable that a guy like English would be asked for his opinions on Donald Trump:  “He has the single most important human insight. Command all attention. No one cares if you are lying or not, no one cares if you know what you are talking about, they care if you are loud, proud, self-assured and entertaining. Great hair works too.”

As it did for Margaret Thatcher.

“Abraham Obama”, produced by English for the 2008 presidential elections.

References;

Juxtapoz Magazine

The Guardian

“POPaganda, the Art and Crimes of Ron English” - 2005 documentary

Cindy Sherman - Holding Up The Mirror

Blogging about an artist as prolific and enduring as New York based Cindy Sherman is a challenge.  Where to start? Where to finish?  Listening to Sherman talking about her work doesn’t help a great deal.  She once claimed that she has no idea what her work is about until she reads a review of it. She works intuitively and it’s not always clear to her what she aims to achieve until she sees the final image.

What is clear is that she is one of the most significant American artists of the last 40 years.  She just keeps going on, this portrayer of alienation, of oddity (with a twist of humour), of what it’s like to be a woman in contemporary America.  And her medium is photography where she is not only the photographer, but also the model.  She painted whilst at college but found the process too laborious, she wanted to spend more time focusing on the composition and then get an instant image.

Untitled#92, from Sherman’s Centrefold series, 1981

In her studio there are drawers crammed with props including false teeth, noses, eyeballs, boobs, makeup, clothes, masks etc. which she uses to disguise herself to the point of being completely unrecognisable in some of her imagery.  As a child she enjoyed dressing up, but not to look like a stunning model or prima ballerina, but quite the opposite.  Her aims were rather perverse, looking older even decrepit and not wanting to be recognisable. Needless to say Sherman spends a lot of time in clothing stores, but not before deciding what character type she is buying for.

Cindy Sherman being interviewed in Art 21, 2009

She rarely titles her photographs for 2 reasons.  Firstly she says she is not a wordsmith (which suggests she must have hated art school, if her experiences were like mine), but also because she doesn’t want anyone to approach her work with preconceived ideas of what the characters are meant to be.

It’s been argued that Sherman’s work anticipated the selfie era, but I’m not so sure of that, although it could be fairly argued that the selfie era has made her work more relevant than ever.  Yet the selfie culture is “it’s all about me”, and I see Sherman’s work as “it’s all about them”, or “it’s all about a certain character”.  A recent exhibition of her work in London was titled “Cindy Sherman – the Original Selfie Queen”, a marketing strategy perhaps?

Her oeuvre encompasses so many themes that to cover them all would require a novel, so I’m going to focus on just a few.

Untitled Film Still, 1978

In her movie stills series she wanted to explore character studies that also tell a story.  She didn’t want to produce something that looked like “art” or based on art theory but something that looked mass produced, like a movie and preferably a European movie.  She has found more inspiration from movies than anything else.  But TV has also had an influence (especially trashy TV) given that, like me, she is from the first generation to be brought up during the TV era.

Untitled, 2004

In her clown series, she wanted to explore the sense of unease a clown’s makeup can create, a questioning of what motivates someone to be a clown. 

Untitled #468, 2008

But it’s her society portraits from around 2008 that I want to focus on.  She has received criticism for some of these portraits which include what she calls her Hollywood Hampton types for supposedly poking fun at them, as in “she’s come from the east coast and who does she think she is?”

Untitled #475, 2008

In his review of this series, Paul Moorhouse sees these women confronting the issue of their age.  “Rather than attempting an air of youthful attractiveness, they are preoccupied with their own status and sophistication as the means of preserving personal and social credibility."  He makes reference to a neurosis, a chilling self-absorption which lies beneath “a mask-like veneer of charm”. Moorhouse also makes reference to the “frosty surface that is their solution to age” and an impression of “poignant frailty.” I particularly like the comment “these images are about the failure to deceive and the compulsion to do so”.

Untitled #477, 2008

These portraits deal with the issue of the passage of time and how each individual must confront his/her own mortality, an issue that Sherman was by now also confronting.  She was born in 1954.

For some strange reason, whilst writing this blog I found myself watching a documentary on the wonderful British comedy actor Peter Sellers for the umpteenth time.  Sellers was famous for completely absorbing the characters he portrayed, and was regarded as a human chameleon who could transform himself into any role.  Many who knew him well spoke of an inner darkness or intense loneliness that haunted him, and that performing these roles may have provided an escape or sanctuary.  He once claimed to have no identity of his own.

Untitled #474, 2008

Not that I’m suggesting that Sherman is the female equivalent of Sellers, after seeing her being interviewed a number of times over the years, she just seems like a very talented artist.  But she once said she wants to lose herself in the imagery and her figures to look like real people.  A 1994 BBC Arena program on Sherman is titled “Nobody is here but me” which says it all really.

Perhaps what we need is a male equivalent of Sherman, someone equally adept at portraying in the same dispassionate and probing manner various male character types.  Us guys need the mirror to be thrust in our faces.  If such an artist exists, please let me know.

At the end of an Art 21 documentary, we see Sherman leaving her exhibition at the Metro Pictures Gallery in New York on a pushbike.  She’s different.

References;

American PBS Art 21

Paul Moorhouse

BBC Arena

Mrs Hopper

“Isn’t it nice to have a wife who paints?”  A rhetorical question asked by Jo Hopper of her illustrious husband, Edward.  “It stinks”, was the reply.

According to critic Waldemar Januszczak in his TV series ‘Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art, Made In The USA’, Jo once said that talking to Eddie was like throwing a stone into a well, except you don’t hear the thud when it reaches the bottom.  Alas, it seems their 43 years long marriage was not a happy one, or was it? 

Josephine Nivison Hopper - Self portrait

Edward came across as a dour, reticent, towering figure who constantly belittled and denigrated his assertive, diminutive wife, who responded with verbal assaults of her own.  Sometimes those assaults became physical with cuffings, slappings and scratchings between them quite common.

An article by Stephen May in Artnews suggests that their hostility towards each other was based on resentments; Jo because her own artistic career (she studied under Robert Henri) was overshadowed by Edward’s, and Edward because he felt Jo was an inadequate wife.

Sometimes, in the wake of an argument, Edward would dash off a quick sketch when Jo was out of the room and leave it on the table for her to find when she returned.  At their 25th wedding anniversary, Jo suggests they deserve a medal for distinguished combat.  Edward’s boyhood home in Nyack, New York is now the Edward Hopper House Centre and contains an exhibition documenting their feisty marriage under the title “Edward Hopper’s Caricatures: At Home With Ed and Jo”.

Edward Hopper - The Sacrament of Sex (female version)

At the time she married Hopper, Josephine Nivison was 41, still a virgin (and possibly him too) and had an arts career going back 16 years.  She had exhibited alongside Mogdigliani, Picasso, Man Ray and Maurice Prendergast.  In 1924, the year they got married, she exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum together with Georgia O'Keeffe and John Singer Sargent and was singled out for praise.  Jo recommended Edward Hopper's work to the curators of that show, and when they bought one of his paintings after the exhibition had ended, it was only the second he had sold in 10 years. As a result of the exposure she had secured for him, Hopper was given a sell-out solo show by the gallery which would represent him for the rest of his life.

Jo Hopper - Gloucester Railroad Gate 1928 - Watercolour

Their marriage was described as hermitic, and as Edward’s painting flourished, Jo’s waned. She became so involved in her husband’s work that she came to see it as a collaboration, and she insisted on being the sole model for every woman he painted. Her previous training as an actress may have helped here.  Speaking to a curator once, she referred to her own paintings as 'poor little stillborn infants, too nice to have been such friendless little Cinderellas. I don't much like them, but how sad for them if even I forsake them!’

Jo Hopper - Self Portrait, 1956

She kept careful records of every painting Hopper produced and sold, she wrote practically all his correspondence, and she began writing her diaries just months before his first major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.  It is thought she perceived this as a ticket to posterity.

Jo died in 1968, a year after Edward, having bequeathed the entirety of Ed’s work and hers to the Whitney Museum of American Art. The gift of some three thousand pieces was without precedent in the history of museums at the time.  The Whitney decided to keep just 3 of Jo’s paintings and supposedly trashed the rest, keeping only a list. 

But not so.  To be found in New York City hospital lobbies, reception areas and waiting rooms are Jo Hopper’s paintings, entrusted to the Whitney but regifted to spaces where women wait or pass through.

An exhibition of both the Hoppers’ work was held at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in Massachusetts in 2017.

References;

The Paris Review

Artnews.com

The Guardian

Waldemar Januszczak - Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made In the USA