We posted an image from Jane Barrow’s exhibit Air to Air in January. Earlier this month, the artist left a comment here stating that while the exhibit was a real turning point for her, it has also been a cause for frustration. Barrow had been making decent-sized abstract oil on canvas paintings, but, disturbed by the continuing war in Iraq, decided to experiment with forms, scale and materials in way that would allow direct address of the situation in Iraq. Here’s a link to the earlier post.
I know that a lot of you reading this are deeply aware and engaged with these same things. And, I know that those of you who make art, who write, curate, etc. make decisions regarding how directly or indirectly you approach your concerns about current events in your own work. So, after the cut, more images of Jane Barrow’s work and a chance to, please, share your thoughts.
Just to start things off:
-What difference in approach does one see between contemporary artists who deal with the subject of life during wartime as opposed to artists working at other times? I was surprised to talk to the painter Tom Gregg who told me that paintings like Brown Unkown obliquely refer to widely televised beheadings a few years ago.
a related question also came up sometime this winter, when matt ballou (i think) asked whether or not people felt it was possible for work of this nature to also be affirmative and hopeful.
at that point in time, i really didn’t know how to think about that question…or at least, i didn’t really feel that my answer to it would have shared the same optimism that matt’s question seemed to hope for.
when i first started thinking about it, i thought that the inclusion of beauty was maybe on some level my own antidote to the level of orneriness and meanness of many of my paintings. but, the more i step back and look at the paintings, the more i see the beauty as the type encountered in a train-wreck situation. it’s a fascination: risk and vulnerability tied up to engender the strange combination of wilfulness and fragility. humans just seem so dumb and sad sometimes.
there’s a lot of sad stuff going on. i some difficulty getting away from the sad factor.
and it does get to be troubling, when you go to the studio and everything that you create is depressing. depressing to look at. depressing to make. depressing to show.
i’ve never thought of myself as an artist who is overtly political. i do see pervasive anxiety in my work and i’ve come to think of this anxiety as being directly related to the larger world-context.
lately, i also find myself recycling symbols and characters. and i wasn’t sure the first time around what they meant exactly, and i’m still not so sure. but it’s interesting to have the nagging impetus to reuse things and to repaint them. which on some level suggests a lurking lack of resolution.
and that would be the thing that i see in a lot of work that is being made by other people too. the work might be a question or investigation (maybe an interrogation), but the question is veiled within the work in a way that almost makes it nearly unlocatable. the spector question: unasked in certainty; unanswerable affirmatively; a circle. like the work is just sort of holding its breath.
I think our relationship to both the war and 911 has changed so much in just a few years. Or mine has anyway. Currently I only respond strongly to the fate of individual American troups, and not just to their death, but to their life disruption and our crazily lopsided expectations of sacrifice. Earlier I was much more concerned about Iraqi civilians. How dare we not even count their death toll. Then the mf-ers use the opportunity to circumvent the constitution. And why did I have to read international media to know what was going on? All the data that is now finally being reported was available early on, just not being reported domestically. So much was so wrong, and the subterfuge was so aparent…it was just overwhelming to realise everything can collapse so easily. And that it was happening because a majority of the public is willing to be led. Now that some light is being shone into some of the dark places…I feel like it’s almost over. But I’ve got nothing now. I don’t even care about punishing anyone, because the real culprit is the American public.
So what’s an aritist to do? I also felt compelled to deal with the subject of war (for a couple years), but I didn’t do so anywhere near as well as Jane does here. I do really like that last piece. If you do still feel so compelled, keep at it, and maybe also have a second line of work which is as self-indulgent as you can make it?
I’d like to thank the people who have responded so far for not quoting Baudrillard. War as spectacle and such. It may be inevitable if this discussion goes anywhere, but it seems like a good start that we haven’t yet.
Jen, when you talk about the “orneriness and meanness” of your paintings: I’m curious if there is any sort of internal permission-granting to have the paintings be that way?
I feel like my own paintings are oftentimes afflicted by this kind of terminal mildness. And, I guess I kind of project that on to Barrow’s work here as well. It may not be the case, but I mean, they are war paintings without the blood and guts.
(This question, though addressed to Jen, is open to anyone.)
chris,
i get the question, and it’s a good one.
honestly, i’m not sure exactly what happens during the process that let’s me make the paintings the way they are. i came from a really academic painting place as an undergrad. and i never touched conceptual subject matter until i was a grad. i remember freaking out the first week of grad school about how far behind the curve i felt…really not mature as a painter. so i took to a blind kind of flailing for awhile. i made some bad-ugly paintings. because i was trying to make them out of something that felt more true to me than what i could get from observation. and they were really dismal. but, for the most part, except when i had to show them in crits, i could get away with just thinking: ‘to f-ck with it’; and go to the studio and keep working without worrying too much about how stupid they looked. mostly that’s my coping strategy. i work, i don’t think, and then i can remain in my safe little bubble (of maybe what is pure self-delusion). i’ve also been lucky to be surrounded by really generous people at the right times. people who seemed to know not to burst the bubble…let me keep going and wait out the crappy stuff.
even now, i sometimes become aware that my perception of the work is really different than what i think other people often take away from it. the sensation i think i most paint about is a type of longing. i think of it in origin as a happy sensation, mostly surrounded by sad contingencies. and it becomes a mean thing because it often leads to depravity and a type of self-torcher. very warlike.
this winter, when i had that show at Ruschman, Mark made some mention about how depressing the paintings were…he thought everyone in them was dying. and i was really surprised. i just thought, no, that’s not dying, that’s just living. but, it did make me really self-conscious for a little while. i don’t like being percieved as a freak or anything. but, i bounced back ok, so it’s all good.
also, i think because i came to painting late, from another academic concentration, i really wasn’t aware of the pastiche (nearly taboo) surrounding melodrama in imagery. i had no idea that it was considered cool, groomed and sophisticated to be dispassionate. and i am mainly, (proudly) way, way uncool in this regard.
Hi everybody….I’m on my way to PA in a couple of days. I’m leaving my native KS (again), and I feel it would be inappropriate to continue posting, even though Sam and Chris have made me feel more than welcome to do so. Anyway, by way of saying so long to the no-coast, I just couldn’t resist piping up on this one.
I think Jane Barrow’s approach is a typical response to this war, a reflection of a reflection of a jpeg. It’s pretty pathetic. Which is to say, she got it about right.
Jen, I hope you never become cool (cold, I mean).
Ciao everybody!
p.s. To anyone who is interested, here’s a link to my own war series from 2006, called Arcadia. I sent all these paintings to a show in Portland, and the show was completely ignored. I couldn’t even find an announcement, much less a review. I ended up giving all of the paintings to charity, to avoid paying the shipping costs back to KS. But hey, every voice counts:
http://www.aaronmorganbrown.com/ambFrameset-arcadia.html
i’m connecting with what a lot of people are saying here.
i think that for me one of the issues that this concern with the global situation dovetailing into our artwork is spotlighting is the matter of effectiveness. when i have concerns i want to make an impact. when i make artworks, it’s because something is affecting me and i need to respond in some sort of proactive way. sometimes this is the sort of constant current of issues and ideas and motivations that i have, while other times it’s more overt socio-political realities that stick in my craw and force me to work out some mode of expression that addresses them, even in the most limited or convoluted way.
the question i always have at times like this is whether my expression and work and ideas and feelings and perspectives amount to any really transformative for anyone or anything other than myself and my own experience of life. i do think that art can really have social and cultural strength, create change and awareness, and stimulate thought. but to what level my works can do this is, well, something i doubt is all that substantive. so there is a sense of hopelessness about it. we’re ramrodded into a war, forced in to practical complicity in it, aware of some of what’s going on and unaware of a lot of the rest, and knowing that while we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on it people are going without clean water, or decent education, or basic medical needs, or, or, or, or… i get forlorn about it. so it comes back to effectiveness. i want my work and my expressions to be effective. i have no answers to this other than to keep on making and being aware and doing my best.
but i think i know what effectiveness looks like. there are a lot of examples. one that sticks out in my mind recently is handel’s “messiah.” i’ve been obsessed with this work for a while – it’s so abstract and simple and varied – so i was doing some reading about it. handel created the piece for an irish charity. the goal was for a performance of the piece to raise money to free people from debtors prison. the very first performance of the work freed 142 men. for decades afterward, “messiah” was used like this. that’s effective. handel had a passion for giving and a social conscience fostered by his own experience of poverty. that’s effective. that’s serving the art and serving people beyond the artist. that’s what i want to do, and it’s what trying to grasp how to deal with war in my work makes me think about.
i think that burtonwood and holmes are great at this intersection of art, cultural complicity, social comment, and effectiveness. check them out here: http://www.burtonwoodandholmes.com/
(i’ve been trying to arrange a show for them at mizzou… )
i like the handel interjection. it is neat that he made it with a very particular objective in mind, and that it was effective. but the objective itself never really constitutes the power of the work.
like, you could have just as easily started researching that and found out he made it for his mom or something…
would that discovery have diminished your love for it?
i guess what i figure is that making pieces that are close to my own experience, because it is what i know, are actually more likely to be relatable because the concepts are universal on an average level. whereas when i try and think about how i might go about making something that could be universal in its ability to cast a larger net outward (as in communicating an idea), things tend to feel washed out and faded, i lose my grasp; i end up feeling like i’m advertising or something.
if the work doesn’t mean anything very specific and real to me, i tend to doubt my ability to make it mean much of anything to anyone else.
Some type of distinction between art inspired by war and art inspired by stories of war (or even statistics of war) might need to be made in order to more deeply understand what exactly is going on in art works that in some ways use the trappings of war.
For example look at how the Vietnam war (it almost seems wrong to explore a huge event of human suffering with only two examples) is treated in Maya Ying Lin’s memorial vs. Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Loss, grief, horror, futility… are all explored but in very different ways.
I think a lot of time when people make art about war, they want to be O’Brien but are really Lin, understanding who they are should shape the work. The Vietnam piece by Chris Burden comes to mind.
I really like the idea of impact or effectiveness and wish I had something usful to add to handel’s “messiah.”
I relate a lot to what Carla said earlier. I feel like we, the people, blew it and are continuing to blow it. Many of us know all we need to know the war is wrong on so many levels. But ‘we’ aren’t being ‘we’ enough. Just a bunch of “me’s.”
I remember being a part of two organized protests on the University of Tulsa campus when I was there, at the very outset of the war. We were so polite! We followed all the rules. We got the proper permissions. Professors spoke, bands played. Looking back on those demonstrations, they were so safe! We should’ve been in public spaces, getting in people’s way.
does making art really fulfill the same function that activism fills? i mean, i know that painting can be a protest of sorts, but i can’t imagine many painters are out there working under the pretense that what they make really has the same immediacy or importance as activism.
then, the question becomes, if you feel really strongly about something, do you sideline some of the ‘art’ in the art in order to make the whole trajectory more mainline?
this would also seem to be where personal indulgence vs. obligation/responsibility get to be cruxy.
also, the intention might shift at this point from long term to short term: making something ‘of a time’, ‘for a time’ vs. the aim at timelessness.
goya seemed to get it right on both counts.
part of me can’t help but feel that trying to talk about the war and about art in a mutual type way isn’t all but a little ridiculous. the war trumps the art. it’s bigger and more scary. but, it’s also this sort of thinking that makes people give up on trying to do or say anything at all. like the issue of ‘permission’ that chris brought up earlier. do we presume to know enough about anything to make work about it? well, hells no, most likely. but, we could say that about most anything. and either we can make a cranky painting or join a blob-like group protest and be polite. i’m not saying one’s better than the other. or that they are mutually exclusive. but, the sense of not being entitled to think or to act with a personal voice can pretty much crush even modest aims.
To quote my favorite quotemaker, Ad Reinhardt:
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
They’re not the same thing, but I think that there are some parallels worth considering.
Another body of work that may be of interest as per this discussion is that of Kim Rugg, shown last year at Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica.
http://www.markmooregallery.com/exhibitions/2007-10-06_kim-rugg/
This work goes straight at these questions of efficacy, specifically addressing the issue in terms of media’s willingness and ability to confront realities of war, and also implicitly questioning how art can be a force in such circumstances.
efficacy is tough…i’m always a little suspicious when it comes up in discussions about politically motivated art. i haven’t had time this week to look over the link to Kim Rugg’s work, so i won’t over presume. but i do think it’s important to bear in mind that art’s ability to effect change is one thing, and that funneling social concerns into effective expression is very much another.
Here’s an Otto Dix quote I love: “I did not paint war pictures in order to prevent war. I would never have been so arrogant. I painted them to exorcise the experience of war. All art is about exorcism.”
(and have used before, I know–but recycling is another social concern, right?)
“Everyone works as he can. I am simply satisfied for my art to have a purpose. I want to be effective in this time in which people are so perplexed and in need of help.” – Kathe Kollwitz
i agree that effectiveness is a difficult concept – as every element of the issues we’re bringing up here is – so it can seem like we’re talking at cross-purposes here. but i also feel like there’s two sort of effectiveness that i think kollwitz was aimed at there.
there’s practical effectiveness – the transformation of policy and action via activism or lobbying or bribery or any manor of other means that breaks into the political realm. then there is intellectual effectiveness. did dix stop war? did kollwitz stop war? did goya stop war? did golub stop war? did paul nash or siegfried sassoon or any of the others stop war? not really. but what they were able to do is mediate a kind of expression of experience that created resonance – the emotional and intellectual contexts of identification and reflection. this is a different kind of effectiveness that is not merely about making others think or act as you wish them to but instead strives to reach toward inspiring contemplation of the issues. the effect is that thought, feeling, consideration, and empathy take place. this is what i’m hoping for when i talk about effectiveness. it’s what i feel in kollwitz or goya and in so many others. and yes, we think about this in the context of war, but i feel like this kind of effectiveness is what makes powerful works in general have their power.
for kollwitz that purpose of which she spoke has to have been the picturing the effects of different horrors in the hopes that viewers would respond in humane, thoughtful ways. not that i’m didactically forced into commiseration with the message of the work but that the work draws out contemplation which may or may not bring me to the end the artist desired…
…but then that hits on the nature of propaganda… another can of worms.
but, propoganda doesn’t really leave the breathing space for contemplation and reflection.
it seems more about submission.
i think ol’ mr. lennon has something to say about all of this…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jmR0V6s3NKk
an article from the NYTs on this stuff:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/arts/design/09rock.html
I’m really sorry that I didn’t have time to dig into this post like I would have wanted to. You’d think that I was a pro at city-to-city moves by now, but I still got off track. (I got a call from U Haul in Omaha the other day, apparently the truck that I left in the lot after hours didn’t get checked in right and someone took it Nebraska. They wanted me to come in and give them $900.)
A couple of last thoughts: there is a lot of work that depends on an ethic of some sort that the maker possesses. I see that in Barrow’s stuff the same way that I see it in Leon Golub, or Antonio Lopez (a different sort of ethic informing the work).
One last thought: the gallery space. That gallery that most of these shots are taken in: it’s weird. No natural light. Low ceilings, dim wide expanses, broken by pillars. It looks like the shoe section at any department store: JC Penney’s, Saks, Dillards, Heers, whatever. I don’t know that the space didn’t totally work against the piece in a strange way.