Pedestals
SO i'm still doing these painted photos because i feel like it's the most on-track thing i've done. The big thing with these has been the comment i've heard for my whole 15-year painting career: Get bigger! i wanna see these huge!! You should print them out digitally enlarged!!! All of these comments seem very knee-jerk-reaction to me, and in fact the opposite of the point of why i'm doing them. The scale i feel is problematic but the fact that they are original, negative-long-gone, physical artifacts of life is the whole point! What's at stake if you are painting on something that you could just re-print as many times as you needed to? The point here, in part, is sacrifice, giving something up, destroying the reminder, or memory, or all you have left of the event or person.
Anyway, the installation has been the tricky part, but i feel like i'm on to something. thinking about literal pedestals, and the "pedestal" i often use to refer to the art world or art context. And in the last class in which i showed these, just taped to the wall, we went through the whole crit and then AFTER, when i was taking them down, people came up and said, "Oh, can i look at these? Before i just walked past and didn't really look at them." WTF?? Yeah, in my studio often people breeze right by them. I guess the nature of snapshots. Maybe too personal? Anyway, i'm starting to play with the pedestal, to draw attention, to help define the photo, and to add some sort of supportive environment. I like them all aesthetically, but so far the blank canvas seems the most pointed.
I have a whole stack of photos i want to paint. I'm surprising myself with how unique they all turn out being, not just repeated gimmick. Let me know if you want to see close-ups of the photos so far. Also, see previous post for my next emotional feat. Yikes!
Anyway, the installation has been the tricky part, but i feel like i'm on to something. thinking about literal pedestals, and the "pedestal" i often use to refer to the art world or art context. And in the last class in which i showed these, just taped to the wall, we went through the whole crit and then AFTER, when i was taking them down, people came up and said, "Oh, can i look at these? Before i just walked past and didn't really look at them." WTF?? Yeah, in my studio often people breeze right by them. I guess the nature of snapshots. Maybe too personal? Anyway, i'm starting to play with the pedestal, to draw attention, to help define the photo, and to add some sort of supportive environment. I like them all aesthetically, but so far the blank canvas seems the most pointed.
I have a whole stack of photos i want to paint. I'm surprising myself with how unique they all turn out being, not just repeated gimmick. Let me know if you want to see close-ups of the photos so far. Also, see previous post for my next emotional feat. Yikes!
posted by niki at 10:03 PM
4 Comments:
So, I was reading your blog, and thinking about our conversation from last night regarding the display of the photos.
You mentioned last night, and in your blog, that 'people walk right past' the photos. Snapshots are by their nature fairly personal, and therefore hold little interest to people not involved with the photograph or memory that the photo induces. Photos are something that we can bring out to bore people at parties showing them our memories of people long forgotten. So, in their way, a snapshot does not have the ability to grab an outside party, which is exactly why the SHOULDN'T be large, they are personal, and memory, is personal. If your work was about collective memory, then it needs to be large.
So now display. I still hold onto this notion of a photo album, or frame. Again, they are personal, a snapshot maybe shouldn't have a large arrow saying 'look here', we don't normally do that with a personal memory, we present a memory with others privately...so we can tell the story behind the picture...
just some morning thoughts
Your loving husband
You're right on a lot of those points, and it reminded me that much of my past work has had that same "ignorable" quality. or maybe i should say Subtle. Remember my abnsolutely thrilling BFA show project? With work like that it's always been my intention that, 'well, if you don't notice it, too bad for you, you weren't paying enough attention' or something. Is that the right, if unfortunate, stance to take, there and here? These are about subtlty, but only for a minute. then they are about ridiculously clunky intervention.
i say DTAOT (dont trust anyone over thirty)
W>A>L>L>S>T>R>E>E>T>C>O>R>P>S>E
thanks, z
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