Thaddeus Strode: Absolutes and Nothings at the Mildred Lane Kemper Museum of Art at Washington University in St. Louis, until April 21, 2008. Strode is a 40something painter living in Los Angeles. From the catalog essay, by curator Sabine Eckmann: “Everything that painting ever promised seems to have gone wrong in the canvases of Thaddeus Strode.”
Colescott + Zak Smith, Disney to flavor?
oh, please, please, please,
if i am born again in another lifetime as a boy,
i REALLY hope my parents name me Thaddeus.
for real.
when i was in ninth grade, i failed out of algebra class. and it went down something like this:
you know, i had come in there with this really scant grasp on the notion that numbers, in some abstracted sense, represented something quantifiable (possibly even real?), but, recontextualized as symbols. and then, WHAM, suddenly X and Y get in there and everything goes all to hell. and once you get behind in algebra you’re pretty much dead in the water and must resort to hiding your homework and pretending that everything is cool.
looking at these paintings is really not all that dissimilar of an experience.
Do you mean Strode is hiding his homework?
nope,
i mean that i can’t make any sense of this through any of my normal filters, and the more i try the more incompetent i end up feeling.
the hiding of the homework would be if i were to try to say something intelligent about this without having anything intelligent to say.
I don’t really think about the work in terms of Strode at all. it becomes my own responsibility.
I have to say: I think he just doesn’t get it.
Strode’s paintings have a lot in common with a lot of painting that I do really get, and enjoy. Somehow in Strode’s hands it all just feels like empty gesturing. And it’s not that Strode is somehow failing to make a convincing case for bright, drippy washes and crudely drawn imagery; it’s that there is actually something insipid and offensive about his whole reason for making these paintings.
I admit this is the first thing that I put up that I actually feel like I hate, and had no questions about it. I’m ony curious because I can’t quite say the reason I hated this show and enjoy late Immendorf paintings, or Daniel Richter’s.
yes.
in a way, i feel guilty having the reaction i do. it’s not that dissimilar to the standard conservative reaction to any new art, repeated over and over throughout the last 160 years. i even remember leaving the gallery thinking that curator, sabine eckmann, really ought to be given the pink slip.
still my gut instinct is that strode is really up to a big nothing.
anybody have any thoughts about what makes good Bad Boy painting vs. what makes shit Bad Boy painting?
Maybe I haven’t given Strode a totally fair investigation, but his paintings seem dispassionate, or disconnected.
Related note: a friend of mine uses the phrase ‘word soup’ to describe underworked, uninteresting song lyrics. Engagement offers no reward.
I think the question explains itself. There are likeable bad boys and then there aren’t. I think to make a successful ‘bad boy’ painting, you have to promise a certain amount of ‘good boy’.
Strode’s have the structural appeal of one of those computer-generated websites full of links to products.
Maybe I’m a hung-up luddite, huh?
i’m pretty sure that if you begin any painting with such a question in mind, you aren’t going to make much of anything but shit: good/good or good/bad. paintings be not made of ideas or questions…they be made of paint. tricky.
Isn’t that like saying a book is made out of ink and pages?
well, yeah, i guess it reads that way, but what i meant to convey, is the fact that i really enjoy the idea that paint and content have to work together in some fashion for the whole thing to have any sort of convincing umph. and that either:
the’good ugly’ paint thing that seems to be so popular now,
or, paintings that read like hodgepodge slogans…
if these are only intentions the artist has for the making of something, then it seems so sad.
i guess it is about the idea of ‘craft’, and even more importantly, ‘honesty’. which are both sketchy words. but, things that i still should be important.
which, you’re right, are exactly what seperates Strode’s work from Bok’s.
i sort of get the feeling that this guy actually would ask himself the question that you brought up.
as in: ‘how can i make a great bad ass painting’
and he applies the painting in a way that feels like a parody or an affectation of paint application.
whereas, Bok just seems to be doing his thing and it works.
Chris, Do you know why he makes the work, or are you guessing?
What makes you really think he thinks he’s a “bad boy”?
Mr. Big Nothing–I’m definitely just guessing. I think that throughout the comments thus far, I been stating my reaction and then pretty openly questioning it. And asking others to help me question it. I can’t deny that my reaction to the work is negative, but my only knowledge as to why Strode makes the work comes from Eickmann’s catalog essay ( a source that may also be questioned).
What’s your take?
absolutes and nothings