We are to be 21st century painters, what does this mean? I remember when I was 11 years old; my mother bought a survey book on art history. I was outlining Giotto and Piero della Francesca, and I knew this was what I was meant to do, in my life. I loved the story telling, the beauty, the belief in depiction, and all of the romantic ideas of painting. At the age of 15 I was working in a barn/ studio, painting a still-life with a plumb line, listening to classical music. All at once it hit me; I had been born in the wrong century. It seemed factual and hopeless to me then. I had a passion for the past world that I imagined and I could see no relevance of my interests in the “art world of today.” The sickening feeling I had ten years ago is still with me when I step into a gallery. More recently I was in the Hirshhorn in D.C. I swept through the rooms seeing some beauty and some challenging work but I still felt empty. Then quietness…in a small, unassuming room, three Morandi paintings dominated time. They were so powerful, so seemingly unimportant yet monumental. I felt a sense of fellowship in an otherwise foreign world. How could this man, decades ago have known my struggle so fully? What an alien he must have been, and this was 40 years ago. Where does this leave me?
All of this may seem closed minded. I am capable of learning from many different works of art but some are more distant from my heart. In Leo Steinberg’s essay Contemporary art and the Plight of the Public he writes of this feeling of loss as a previous belief system is torn down. He reminds us that the most critical audience members are the artists who are so fully involved in a passing movement. How should artists deal with the breakdown of their interests? Should the old ideas be abandoned? Should the artist dive into an idea that they do not believe in just to stay relevant? The only part of this essay that comforted me was about Courbet. Courbet did not set out to change painting, but he could no longer identify with the paintings being made, he naturally had to make the change. As painters I believe we have to challenge ourselves and paintings as a whole. This brings discomfort and much frustration. But I have to allow myself to progress in the way that I naturally should. That seems to account for the richness of individuality in paintings history. None of this implies that there is one truth about painting. It does not make (the label of) contemporary, relevant work invalid. It is simply my struggle.
I am interested in a density of mass in Egyptian painting depicting offerings. In these painting, mounds of food are being offered to their gods. While the different fruits and fowl can be identified, the offering is first read as one large object. It has transformed into a whole offering while maintaining the integrity of its parts. The food operates as if stacked one on another, forming a large mound. From this point of view the table operates as a plane at eye level. The density of the mass reinforces the stacking idea while our logic of overlap soon tears this down. The objects are barely touching, sometimes not at all. The viewer is then allowed to view the table not as a plane, but as if from a bird's eye perspective. The Egyptians interest in archiving earthly goods was premier in the explanation for this planer duality. This flipping of narrative and visual space is of much interest to me. It is important that the painted objects reference a presence of life and individuality. Given the Egyptians beliefs of life after death and its relationship to the physical world, it was necessary to maintain a pictorial image of their previous life. 