Casey Roberts

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Casey Roberts

December 23, 2007 by Chris

Casey Roberts

39 Responses

on December 23, 2007 at 7:51 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

One other link to follow (for those curious why ‘Indie Rock’ is one of the tags for this entry).
on December 23, 2007 at 11:47 pm | Reply Sam K

Have you ever looked at an outsider painter named Alfred Wallis? This is a little off-topic, but one of CR’s paintings (the one with the sailboats on his website) reminded me of it.
on December 24, 2007 at 5:53 am | Reply Christopher Lowrance

I think it’s on topic. There’s definitely a faux outsider art sensibility.
on December 24, 2007 at 11:17 am | Reply Sam K

“Faux outsider” is interesting–typically the result of appropriating that kind of imagery, if the appropriator has some more informed design sensibility, is an image that is very smartly, pleasingly decorative. In one way, I’d say that puts the “faux outsider” in a camp established earlier by the fauves, as fauvism was also a kind of mixed genre (outsider-esque color, Cezanne-esque construction).

This kind of painting makes me think that somewhere in the world, there is/was a tribe of waifish, soft-skinned androgynous elf-people who have no language or means of communication, other than quirky watercolor drawings and charmingly bizarre folk music. They would hunt fish I think, and be expert arrangers of things like gardens, villages, and their children’s hair.
on December 24, 2007 at 12:23 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more with your assesment of the faux outside-art appropriator–it takes a subtle use of design to clue the viewer in that the artist is fully aware of what he or she is up to. Casey Roberts is a sensitive colorist, that’s the ‘tell’. It’s a fun game (and I have to admit kind of a tempting one sometimes) to carefully balance the pieces that make this kind of work successful.

I like your linking artists like this to Fauvism. I’d never thought of it that way before.
on January 5, 2008 at 5:57 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

It appears that at this very moment there is a new Casey Roberts exhibit opening at the 930 Art Center in Louisville. Looks like the show runs from today, January 5, until January 25. Check it out by clicking right here.

You’ll find a short statement from Mr. Roberts explaining the conceptual basis for the paintings–it seems that Sam only missed the mark by a short centimeter or two. And–for those curious like me just what the hell a ‘cyanotype’ is–he gives a quick description of the process used to make these paintings. Civil War era, huh…
on January 15, 2008 at 11:05 pm | Reply casey roberts

Hey guys,
Thanks for the post, you have a great blog, a real breath of fresh air.
I do like Alfred Wallis, although I haven’t seen a lot of his work.
I think a few of your readers showed up at my show, and I spent half the night defending myself against the appropriation from outsider art.
I have to admit, I have never considered my work naive, so I found some questions difficult that night. That said, it was a great opening, Louisville is a fun town and the people are certainly art savvy. I figure it wouldn’t come up if there weren’t some truth to it.
Could you elaborate on what you see as faux outsider art sensibility?
You have me thinking about my work in a different way.

Thanks for the great blog.
casey roberts

p.s. Sam K, can I get you to write my artist statement, you are super funny, what’s weird is, I do like charmingly bizarre folk music and I am an elf.
I’m not an elf.
on January 16, 2008 at 8:51 am | Reply Christopher Lowrance

Hmmm. I always imagined our readers as kind, sensitive appreciators of the struggle to make art in our complex and confusing times, not as hooligan, miscreant attackers of artists. I’ll know better in the future.
Seriously, though, I started the ‘faux outsider’ line and picked up on Sam’s use of ‘appropriator’ and used it myself, so I’ll start off trying to better state what I meant.

First, I want to make clear that I don’t think your work is ‘naive’. I think it’s sophisticated and subtle. The term ‘faux outsider’ was a bit of a throwaway, too–meant to signal a general idea of context, as in, the work doesn’t bring to mind Socialist Realism, Neue Wilden, or Antwerp Mannerism–and surely an overly broad decription of the work.

I would still say that your work aligns itself with a popular sensibility among under-40 artists that does share a lot with specific examples of artwork made by un-trained artists, or artists whose primary audience is meant to be children. I’d cite the use of smooth, simplified and linear shapes, the rare appearance of rendered volumes, lighter tonalities, beautiful, but un-natural color and the fantastic narrative aspects of the work and say that it reminds me of artists like Radic Pilar, Josip Generalic and the aforementioned Alfred Wallis among others.

However, clear to most viewers would be affinities I mentioned with a number of under-40 year old artists who borrow many of the same indicators for much the same effect as your work has. Using a ‘style’ suggestive of innocence or blissful simplicity effectively underscores the theme of Humankind not in harmony with its Environment, and transports the viewer to state of mind that accepts viewing such a critical message. There has been some attempt to apply the term “New Sincerity” to a lot of this work, especially in the world of literature, that doesn’t seem to have entirely taken hold there or in contemporary music or visual art–the word “Postmodern” just won’t shake off, even if its central ideas are no more a part of what drives contemporary art than Modernism, Marxism or Humanism (which is to say, that it’s there, it’s just not what I imagine innovative artists like Mr. Roberts here are thinking about on the bus ride home from the studio). There’s also a tendency among these younger artists toward eclecticism as another indicator that the artist’s intentions are non-naive; your work specifically might reference a manner of drawing that I’d associate with 20th Century Eastern European artists, and then a color palette that might seem more like contemporary Northern European design, then occassional text are very much American suburban, the narratives bring to mind folk-tales from the American South or the English Isles, etc. etc.

To name a few of the folks I’d say your work has affinities with: the oft-mentioned Dana Schutz, Brian Calvin, Jules de Balincourt, Keith Allen Shore, Anders Oinonen, David Humphrey, Eric Sall, Logan Grider, Tal R, Mark Grotjahn, Sean Landers. I wouldn’t mistake your work for the work of any of these artists, nor would I say your themes or the general tone of your work parrots that of any of these artists.

Let me quickly site Gombrich’s Preference for the Primitive as another an important text dealing with the tendency for well-trained and sophisticated artists to turn to simplified or ‘primitive’ works for inspiration. It is more specifically an attempted apology for Modernists like Picasso, Balthus or Du Buffet, but I think there’s still a good amount of relevance, even if today’s artists would look at it with more of a nod and a wink. Or at least would like to think that they would.

So, probably both the terms ‘faux outsider’ and ‘appropriate’ were probably slightly lazy or at least informal and shouldn’t be taken as a charge of artistic misconduct on the part of Mr. Roberts. I saw the artist’s first solo show Magma at Harrison Center for the Arts in 2005 and have been pretty impressed by the work all along. (I was at that opening, and the only ones there who looked like potential terrorists were me and maybe Rene Gonzalez.) I do still think it’s fair to associate the work with untrained artists like Wallis or children’s book illustrators like Pilar or even Eric Carle, but it’s also important to get the reasons why an artist would choose to call up these associations–that’s the thing that makes all the difference in contemporary art.

OK. Anyone else got anything? I’ve got to sign off. The baby’s crying, needs some attention, it’s my day to watch him. Sam, you instigated the use of the word ‘appropriator’, you got anything to say on this one?

PS. I think Sam charges by word, but his rates are pretty good. And accepts elvish currency, which is currently pretty strong against the dollar.
on January 16, 2008 at 9:33 am | Reply Christopher Lowrance

PPS. If it really was readers of this blog that accosted the good Mr. Roberts at his opening—-why not use the MW Capacity space to ask these kind of questions? We think, at least, that’s what we’re here for.
on January 16, 2008 at 2:05 pm | Reply casey roberts

Thanks Christopher, I didn’t mean to imply the tough question weren’t called for. I appreciate the opportunity to think about my work in a different way. I realize that I’m only partially aware of what inspires me and what comes out based on all the things I’ve absorbed. I think other people sometimes know more about my work than I do (actually, I’m sure they do). Tough questions are important to me.
I appreciate you breaking it down a little bit for me. I guess I got caught up thinking superficially about outsider art (bottle caps and broken glass with house paint and religion). I’ll certainly pick up a copy of Gombrich’s Preference for the Primitive and you’ve given me a few artists to research.

Sounds like you’ve spent some time in Indianapolis. Did you teach at Herron? I haven’t seen Rene Gonzalez in awhile.

Anyway….

I appreciate you taking the time to write such a thoughtful response.
thanks.
casey
on January 16, 2008 at 2:55 pm | Reply Sam K

Dang, I think I need a coffee or a shot or something after all that.

Stay awesome, Casey!
on January 20, 2008 at 2:33 pm | Reply Chad

Hello, and thank you for the thoughtful blog. I am a 31 yr old painter, an Indianapolis native, with a BFA from Herron(’98). I met Casey at Herron in the mid-nineties, and we have been friends since.

I would first comment that in my estimation the sincerity of an artist or artwork is difficult if not impossible to pin down any definitive way, as it depends on the artist’s intent and awareness as well as the context within which the work or artist is being judged. I think Christopher touched on this.

As far as the Outsider Art vs. Faux-Outsider art question:

I think this issue touches a major problem with the growing plurality of art practice in Western Capitalistic societies. The “art world” has grown to such an extent, both backwars and forwards in time, through the sheer number of artists and influences, that the judgment or definition of any work then rests on the artists’ intention and/or awareness.

I would argue that most “postmodern” painting strategies are an elaboration of the modernist strategies of 1. appropriation and 2. self-reflexivity, both brought on by the invention of photography, which pushed painters to explore other modes of representation including non-Western and “outsider” artists, meaning: outside the art world or institutions of art in the West. Appropration has been with us in Westen painting at least since Manet, the difference is in what is being appropriated and why. Peter Halley appropraites Baudrillard to make his faux -Modernist geometric paintings, to give one contemporary example.

I would make the point that self-relexivity may have exhausted itself and that therefore one of the only options left for a painter wishing to be considered valid is to continue to appropriate art “outside” the Western canon.

I do not mean to suggest that Casey is using this as a strategy as such. From our conversations he has stated that he does not think about his work in that way. Of course, philisophically it gets hairy quite quickly to determine what it means to “know” something, as there are many differnt ways and levels of knowing.

The often unintended irony of so much contemporary art is that stategies that were initially used to subvert expectations within the art world or art institutions have gradually become standard strategies used by artists to become accepted by the art world and the institutions of art.

Thus, the readymade, the indexical mark, and appropriations(whether of Baudrillard or African masks or insane art/folk art) over time becomes academic. Many artist appropriate these influences to set themselves apart, out of fear of looking academic. But I would argue that this is(italics) the current “acadmic” art, and the proof can be found in most MFA programs.

In other words, everything gets co-opted over time because we are creatures of imitation, with illusion of value from which we cannot escape. The interesting quality of the postmodern situation is just how plural and yet also self-reflexive it has become. It is an infinite regress of self-consciusness, is it not?

Thank You for your time gentlemen, and please keep up the good work.

Chad Gallion
on January 20, 2008 at 2:39 pm | Reply Chad

PS–

Sorry about the spelling errors, I should have proof-read it before I sent it.

PSS–
I meant to say
“ousider art vs. faux- outsider art” and not “outsider art vs. faux art”.
on January 20, 2008 at 3:16 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

Thanks, Chad. I like what you said about different ways to know things. Visual ideas move through the culture in strange and winding paths. Most of us are exposed to, and probably most affected by, 2nd and 3rd generation versions of anything.

This next bit isn’t an argument with anything you wrote–cause I’m pretty well in agreement with what you write–but you did just jostle to mind a couple questions I ask myself from time to time, and that I’ve never answered very well, so while I’m thinking about it, I just want to put it into the public forum, where maybe smarter folks as I can chew them over. So:

1. The way you talk about the idea of being valid is a pretty common one, but it’s entirely dependent on a 20th century condition that art must be innovative, avant garde or somehow ‘new’ to be valid. I always wonder, can that conditional simply be eliminated?
2. Anytime that anyone brings up irony or self-reflexivity, I always think it’s a shame that Milan Kundera’s formulation of irony and kitsch doesn’t come into the dialogue more often. Kundera, for those that haven’t read The Unbearable Lightness of Being writes about kitsch as a tool of totalitarianism that seeks to deny the shit part of life and irony as a positive force in that it’s the most effective weapon against kitsch.
on January 20, 2008 at 3:33 pm | Reply Sam K

(I edited the post as per your description, Chad)

You’re right on top of a major issue: when one of the chief virtues of our culture is instantaneity, and another is cosmopolitanism, then ‘appropriation’ is a surprisingly unexotic concept. It’s just something that happens, or can happen, one more thing you could pick up or not pick up at the grocery store. So the trick is the same as it’s always been, for any artist: how do you make any of those available options last longer than their shelf lives?

For some reason, I’m reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer joins the Lollapalooza tour as a sideshow act, nightly taking a cannonball in his gut. There’s a dialogue that goes something like this:

Angsty Teenager #1: Oh, here comes that cannonball guy. HE’S cool.
Angsty Teenager #2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Angsty Teenager #1: I don’t even know anymore.

To speak to yours, Chris (which I read after posting this the first time), I’d say that irony has a different role in our culture. Ours hasn’t suffered the same abrupt and massive political (and eventually nation-erasing) restructuring, so we still have some sense, however convoluted, of continuity. So, for Americans, irony is a safe way to embrace something–a bit like singing cheesy songs at a karaoke bar.

PS, I think it’s worth noting that in No Country For Old Men, the villain (Anton Chigurh) is totally devoid of any sense of irony. While he acknowledges life’s randomness, he responds with absolute consistency (i.e., no difference in word and deed). You get this sense that he’s been keeping a tally on everything (like certain other McCarthy characters), and no one gets off the hook.
on January 20, 2008 at 3:50 pm | Reply Chad

Christopher, thank you for your comment. In my opinion, postmodern art and theory has not escaped the need to be innovative. I still see the same impulse, though it may be called a new name now.

I find that as human beings we are always confronted with questions of value; I would argue this is inescapable.

I personally do not think art has to be “innovative” in order to be “valid”. The reason I am using the parenthesis so often is because I believe that these definitions are inevitably subjective in nature. The “art world”…does it really exist? What is it? MFA programs and Biennials like the Whitney? In other words, how do we judge art and who should be the arbiter of what is valid?

Perhaps you are wondering….why can’t we just thwoe out this idea od judging validity and just experience art and appreciate it?

I would say this is possible on a personal level, on an individual level, but not on a cultural level. We cannot escape our own cultural constructs, which include judgemnets of value. Even if one is of a Marxist bent- this will influence judgements of value(in tryng to make everything equal, and attempting to take the commodity out of art).

I read “Art Since 1945” by David Joselitt recently. I find him to be a very intelligent, articulate, insightful writer. But I had to roll my eyes when he wrote in the introduction when he named the project of the book as “mapping” rather than “canonization”. I had to laugh, because in my opninion, “mapping” is merely the current fashion for describibg what I would argue is the same thing art historians have been doing for centuries: choosing which art is valid, deciding what should be included or exluded. The only difference is who is being included or excluded. I think this change is healthy, but please, let’s call a spade a spade here. Any art historian or critic who writes a texbook about any ‘history’ of art has the power to decide what is valid, and their political postion will undoubtedly play a part in this.

The difference in the way we judge art now(and since Duchamp) is that intention and context weigh just as heavily (if not more so) as aesthetic judgements. Thus, a work might be championed now primarily for the supposed strength of its critique rather than what it does visually.

I see Western art, post 1960’s as taking an emphatically empirical turn, away from the European Idealism inherited from Kant. Duchamp, Minimalism, Pop Art. We are living in an art world born from these artists, no?

I would argue that judgements of value and the desire for innovation are inescapable, as a cultural phenomenon(italics).

A quick note on 2. :

Kitsch has been used for so long it is difficult to know what it is anymore, or how intelligently it is being used, and for what purpose.

I wish postmodern critics would apply their arguments to their own arguments, and then they would find them to be self-defeating. If truth is relative, than their own arguments are equally so, and the issues they are attatcking must be just as valid. Sorry to leave yo now, I’m being kicked off the library’s computer. Thanks!!!
on January 20, 2008 at 3:56 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

Thanks, again, good stuff! (Were you at the new Indianapolis Main Library? It’s open now isn’t it? How did it turn out?)
on January 20, 2008 at 5:09 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

Hey, just thought I’d throw this in here.
on January 20, 2008 at 8:58 pm | Reply Chad Gallion

Hello again. I had to rush my previous response and I did not catch Sam K. ‘s response, so Sam- I didn’t mean to leave you out, and thanks for the corrections. I love that Simpson’s quote, it is hilarious.

Sam, I will attempt to answer your question, paraphrased as: “how does an artist make any of these available options last longer than their shelf -lives?”, (Or: how does an artist defeat or outlive or surpass the novelties of his era?), by loosely citing the postmodern philosopher Richard Rorty and his idea that commitment makes all the difference in the postmodern world because commitment to one’s task or intention is all one has to hold on to and grow from in a pluralistic, relativistic world. I just read that the other day and I cannot remember where—which Is why I am not a scholar. And I paraphrased it heavily. But anyway. What are your thoughts?

Christopher– I was at the new Central library and I absolutely love it. Being there makes me feel like I am in a city that cherishes learning—free learning, with the most up to date technologies. I was there every day for the the first few days of its opening the excitement was palpable;I felt a Utopian feeling of a city united around the idea of learning…of course this is an exaggeration–most people were just excited about all of the free CPU terminal space, but still, the library feels like a cathedral space, which seems to be the idea…We’re not talking Chartres, but pretty cool for Indy, with a great view of downtown from the top floor.

I think I have met you…at a Halloween party…in Indy, circa ’04 or ’05 at a house Meredith(furniture design) was renting . The last few years have been a blur for me, but I remember meeting you. And, I went to Herron with Rene G. –we know each other.

Anyway, back on topic. I should clarify a section of my first comment which I did not state clearly. When I said “therefore one of the only options left for a painter wishing to be considered valid is to continue to appropriate art “outside” the Western canon” I rushed this thought…..and I agree that this statement implies a 20th condition of validity. First of all, I do not subscribe to the idea myself that a painter must do this or that to be valid, such as appropriate non-western art like Picasso did, or appropriate French post-structuralist theory like Halley has done , or appropriate the indexical mark as Duchamp, Warhol, Johns, and now as Ingrid Calame, has done. I do not think any of this is necessary for a painting made today to interest me. I was trying to say, though, that I do find this thinking…this sort of endgame thinking…to be fairly common among postmodern critics of painting, especially amongst the group of critics at ‘October’. According to this group, easel painting simply cannot be valid because it represents and sustains the illusions of the conservative, advanced capitalist bourgeoise. I would hasten to mention that these very same thinkers are teaching at some of the most prestigious (elitist) universities in the world. Perhaps this should not hurt their ‘marxist’ credibility, I don’t know.

I would fault these thinkers with repeating exactly the errors they feel they are correcting. They talk about the need for erasing hierarchies, but can they do so without creating their own? I would say no. Additionally, I would argue that, as intelligent as they are, their political views prevent them from seeing paintings for what the painter is trying to do, or possibly ‘succeeding’ in doing. They simply do not care. Unless it is indexical(sp?) in some way, and therefore critical of the ‘disinterested’ aesthetic inherited from Kant and promoted by Greenberg, these critics do not see any value in it at all, and view it as worse than shit. I guess this is because they have located their criteria outside the aesthetic. Hence, Hal Foster’s collection of essays, to name one example….I am still trying to sort all of this out(my interpretation of the ‘October’ critics interpretation of art since 1900…and where I stand in relation to their views, and whether or not I should give a rat’s ass what they think, and so on) so forgive me for rambling.

What do you think?

I am still thinking about M.Kundera’s ideas of kitsch and irony from that you brought up. I don’t have a comment just yet–I’ll have to think it over. I’d like to re-read that book now that you have mentioned it.

PS– I have a solo show up right now at Herron in the Basile gallery. I hope this is not presumptuous of me to mention here (I’m not familiar with blog etiquette), but if you are in Indy in the next three weeks, check it out and let me know what you think. It’s up until Feb.10th.

Thanks again for the blog, I have really enjoyed this conversation.
on January 20, 2008 at 9:43 pm | Reply Chad Gallion

PPS — Chris, thanks for the link to the show — I just noticed it.
on January 20, 2008 at 11:21 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

I couldn’t pretend I’ve got any expertise on the postmodernists, either. What thoughts I’ve got would echo things you just said, especially to me, that those types seem to zero in on the Painting as a commodity and Painting as an individualist’s activity, and disregard that Aesthetic aspect–‘what the painter is trying to do’. For lots of us, it’s that experience that the painting provides that is so important.

Which leads to my only other relevant thought on the postmodernists, which is that, from what I’ve read or assimilated of it, at least, it’s mostly a re-take on Marxism with an overtly Existentialist slant. I just haven’t read anything that makes me think of Postmodernism as a total philosophy taking on an explanation of the full meaning of life and human experience. I think that October and even some writers inArtforum and Art in America treat Postmodernism as though it covers more territory than it really does, and as though it were the only set of ideas an artist should be dealing with in her/his work.

So, going back to Casey Roberts’ work, and some of the earlier discussion, I still think that while the Postmodernist ideas have certainly seeped into the collective unconscious, artists today really are thinking about other things. It seems like the idea of Sincerity/Authenticity/Lost Innocence pops up a lot. Beauty, of course. It seems like there are more shows that deal with an idea of Tragedy.
on January 21, 2008 at 11:56 am | Reply Sam K

Some more relevant Kundera:
In two different novels (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and Ignorance), he makes reference to the composer Arnold Schoenberg, the guy who composed in the twelve-tone system. With some of the most brilliant writerly economy I’ve ever seen, he sums up what this guy did and what it means: he devised a ‘socialist’ compositional system, i.e., one which abolished all hierarchy of key. While Schoenberg saw this as the dawning of a new and great era in what we’d call ‘classical’ music, he was actually watching its firework-y demise. He thought what he was doing was ‘deeply rooted’ in ‘German soil’, as if it were folk music or something, when in actuality only a small fraction of the general public would have opportunity to hear it, and of those, an even smaller fraction liked it.

Anymore, a lot of this heroic creation-destruction stuff is old-hat, and I think it’s a good thing. To be a painter is to be a painter. That’s the big heartbreak and the big comfort both. Probably the best thing an artist can do for his/her career is be an unrepentant weirdo.
on January 21, 2008 at 12:06 pm | Reply Sam K

Regarding elitism, progress, painting, etc:

Personally, as someone who took all his art training in the midwest and/or south, for whom trips to our major, mecca-like art museums are pretty rare, who has little-to-no direct connection to the movers and shakers of the top-shelf, highest-dollar art community, and who is from a middle-class family that likes to make stuff, I feel only a marginal connection or obligation to the conservative, elitist, capitalist bourgeoisie and the academic super-elite. I’m only interested in that scene as I would be in the N, S, E, or W of a compass. Anyone who says you can’t make a painting is, at best, just preaching to himself/herself.
on January 21, 2008 at 12:09 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

Right on!
(How come there’s no emoticon for a ‘fight the power’ fist in the air?)
on January 21, 2008 at 12:28 pm | Reply Chad Gallion

Right on. We should all be “unrepentant weirdos”. Well said.

Good stuff, gentlemen. Keep up the good work.
on January 21, 2008 at 3:08 pm | Reply Chad Gallion

I would like to return to the idea of sincerity once more. I have a problem with the equation, naive=sincere. For one, we have already established that an artist well aware of the artworld can choose to paint in a naive or self-taught manner(Henri Rousseau is an early example). So, is an artist being sincere when he or she chooses to paint in a naive manner? Is it possible to choose to be naive? And if naive=sincere, then wouldn’t that also imply that sophisticated=insincere?

Another related question: Can any of us here prove that, say, Jeff Koons is insincere? Personally, I am not much of a fan. But I do not know how I would go about proving that he is insincere, especially in any sort of objective way.

Naive=sincere is just too easy, and I think it is superficial, especially when an artist can choose to be naive in spite of other options/art school training/and knowledge of the art world.

This is not to say that someone choosing to be naive cannot be sincere or have sincere reasons for doing so. I just want to suggest that the problem is much more complex than naive=sincere and probably needs to be thought about on a case by case basis. Perhaps the judgement of sincerity will always be subjective in nature. I think we have already established this.

So, what are your thoughts on naive=sincere? And, is it possible to truly choose to be naive?
on January 21, 2008 at 3:25 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

I think it’s more that Naive is a Signifier of Sincerity. It is. It by no means has to be, but I think it’s commonly accepted. And it’s an approach to sincere that gives one a little more protection than other strategies (i.e. followers of Stanley Lewis come off as pretty sincere, but also a little square). I do think that there is a lot of gray area here and that there are a lot of sharp artists working it–I’ve already mentioned Sean Landers, and there’s Lamar Peterson, various LFL/Zach Feuer Gallery types, etc.
on January 21, 2008 at 3:33 pm | Reply Sam K

I imagine the word ‘sincere’ with a circle drawn around it.

‘Sincere’ is not the same as ‘naive’. ‘Naive’ describes a state without self-awareness. Sincerity could be either. You can be sincere and aware of your sincerity.

It is not possible, in the most fundamental sense, to choose to be naive, once you’ve learned otherwise. That would be an affectation. BUT for practical purposes, life isn’t so black and white. We emerge from our naivete(s) gradually, partially, incrementally. Think of the grade-schoolers thrust into disturbingly adultish beauty pageants and body-building competitions. Too bad we can’t get Caleb Weintraub in on this one, too…
on January 21, 2008 at 3:48 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

I want to push people back to the Lester Goldman post here, too. I still maintain that guy had really mastered the art of painting in a way that seemed sophisticated, sincere, hip and fun all at the same time, and in light of so much dialogue on the subject on this blog and in the art world today, I just think the guy deserves more attention than he gets. It shows not only in Goldman’s work but even in the work of the students most closely associated with him, like Eric Sall and Lynus Young.
on January 21, 2008 at 5:07 pm | Reply Chad Gallion

I guess I have a problem with naive being a signifier of sincerity, because it can be so easily ‘affected’–it can be chosen, as one strategy among many. And if the idea of naive is a signifier of sincerity, then it would follow that sophistication equals insincerity, and I have problems with both.

A big part of the problem here seems to lie in language. For one, there are different ways and levels of being naive. One level of being naive is being unaware/unconerned with an audience. Another way of being naive is being unaware or unconcerned with formal issues in any ‘academic’ sense.

My personal definition of a naive artist is one that is unaware of the art world, isolated from an audience, unconcerned about judgements of taste besides his or her own need to make something, an obsessive need to make marks.

I think an artist can be naive and self-aware. He or she might be an isolated individual, naive in social skills/situations, and yet inventive and sopisticated in their art, and imaginatively self-aware.
on January 21, 2008 at 5:21 pm | Reply Chad Gallion

Perhaps another way to think about the ‘naive’ is to think of intention and execution seperately for the sake of argument.

An artist might be naive/unaware of his intention, and of any supposed critical audience, and yet quite sophisticated and inventive in his execution or technique of mark making.

Conversely, another artist might be sophisticted in his intention/conception of his artwork and aware of a critical audience, and yet naive in the execution.

Actually, I do not know if the second example is possible. It is so easy to mixed up with these terms…there is so much gray area..and this is probably a good thing…it keeps things interesting.
on January 21, 2008 at 5:22 pm | Reply Chad Gallion

PS– Thanks for the Eric Sall link. I had not heard of him. I like the images…some of them remind me of Juan Usle.
on January 21, 2008 at 11:34 pm | Reply casey roberts

I strenuously agree that Eric Sall is a great painter.

Can you really choose to be sincere? It seems to me that if you have to act sincere, you aren’t.

I don’t claim to be a naive artist, but I did skip over half my classes at Herron, so I’m probably at least half naive. Does that count as a reply?
on January 22, 2008 at 5:51 am | Reply Christopher Lowrance

Those Juan Usle are fun! I’d never seen those before.

You know, there’s that idea that an artist steps into her studio and, maybe just for a moment, allows herself to pretend, to be someone else, to be making someone else’s painting. It’s a conceit taken from JL Borges, right? The forgeries and write-ups of imaginary works. I think that Barry Schwabsky’s intro to Vitamin P discussed it as an artist’s “enabling device.” And it seems like ‘overly sincere, to an almost campy extent’ is one of the character traits that a lot of artists go with.

On the one hand it makes a kind of sense–if your artistic strategy is to make a painting that is inherently insincere, as if it were by another artist who in reality doesn’t exist, then making one of that artist’s chief character traits “overly sincere to the point of campiness” seems fitting. This is where the idea of the untrained, naive or outsider come in–who is more simple and sincere? (In addition to those already mentioned, Jason Fox’s work and Marcel Dzama’s are jumping to mind here.)

I don’t think that the strategy is necessarily a cynical one. Schwabsky’s characterizing it as an ‘enabling device’ is more accurate–this one conceit allows artists to step outside of more official art theory that has questioned style, authenticity, expression, technique and the idea of ‘the hand’ out of existence (or at least relevance) to make works that are painterly, technical proficient, funny, beautiful and as near to authenticity as any other mode of working. It’s a defensive strategy, surely, but not a cynical one neessarily. As in most fiction the best protagonists are one part reality, one part ideal.
on January 22, 2008 at 3:13 pm | Reply Chad Gallion

Christopher, I would agree with the last statement, and I would echo that statement with :

The very fact that we have so much choice, in our identity and by extension in the look of our artwork, for me means that illusion and reality are inextricably connected to identity( identity is an illusion….we are illusions ‘made’ real). In other words, we are all pretenders, to some degree, no? I guess it is a question of awareness, ultimately. And there is so much paradox tied up in awareness (the more you learn, the less you know–being one example).

With the imagination, we have the ability to create facts; additionally, we have no choice but to interpret facts. Thus, facts and ideas are inseperable in human awareness( ideas can become facts, and once a fact is interpreted, it becomes an idea).

Thus, even though we can talk about the factual reality of a person and his or her output/artwork, I feel we must recognize that these facts have been formed out of illusions of value, and are known or interpreted also through illusions of value.

This is my ‘working thesis’ anyway. What do you think?
on January 23, 2008 at 3:31 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

I have one for anyone who’s still reading: does anyone think that, recent interest in ‘slow culture’ or the emergence of ‘craft’ forms in ‘high’ art contexts have any effect on any of these issues? Those areas are mercifully devoid of the nagging and possibly un-reconcilable questions of innovation, authenticity, etc…
on January 27, 2008 at 11:05 am | Reply Angela

I’m not convinced ‘craft’ is ‘mercifully devoid’ of questions of innovation. It’s something that comes by way of new applications of technique, as well as the makers reason behind the production of (the techniques used to create) an object.

I’d like to think it doesn’t matter what material an artist chooses to work with — oil paint and brushes, traditional photo or digital, or thread and needle — it’s the artists hand (and concept, with a little process thrown in for kicks if it’s applicable) and all-important skill that’s most important. So that’s where I find authenticity.

I think it’s more complex than saying it’s solely a new-found interest in ‘slow culture’ that’s driving things. We are a popular culture living in a designed world that we’re becoming ever-more aware of and educated about (design-wise). ‘Good’ vs. ‘bad’ (with no real safeguard against ‘trend’ or ‘popular’) has become a large marker of how we distinguish ourselves as ‘fashionable’. The ‘high’ vs ‘low’ sets are very much aware of each other and the wants of the culture are just as likely to be influence/be influenced by and play with/off this whether it’s paint, craft or that toaster from Target.

What’s having an effect on what? I’ve always wrestled with this and am still trying to figure it out…
on January 27, 2008 at 12:05 pm | Reply Christopher Lowrance

Good to have feedback from some different voices. I’ll concede the point on craft and innovation, what about craft’s relationship to authenticity?
on January 28, 2008 at 1:43 pm | Reply Sam K

Maybe that a lot of ‘craft’ genres are not open to intellectualizing, and most ‘high art’ is?

So, you make something that looks like a craft object, but present it in a way that not only invites but requires intellectual analysis to fully ‘get’ the meaning, then you’ve gone and made yourself a ‘high art’ object. Something along those lines?

In a field where tradition is not often scrutinized, and where innovation is at least mostly discouraged, ‘authenticity’ could be pretty easy to identify. You followed the rules, you made the thing accordingly, congratulations, you’re authentic.

I’ve said this elsewhere, but for me the line between something craft (or ‘folk’) and something ‘high art’ is that folk art is an entirely affirmative act.

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