18 x 20 Oil on Linen
I was lying awake in
bed last night thinking about how to teach my students to create atmosphere in a painting. Painting something you can't see is much more difficult than
painting the observed physical forms in front of you. Perhaps if I presented it
as painting a concept, as opposed to an object, I might be able to break
through. I went to the computer to see what I could find about conceptual art,
hoping to find something useful for my lesson. The definition of
conceptual art is a rather free floating concept itself but basically any work
of art where the original idea, the concept, is more important than the actual
work qualifies. Then I went to my website and reread my artist's statement, I
use still lifes and landscapes and figures to explore the possibilities of
light and space and mystery in a painting it said. I clicked on the image of my
Bread and Eggs painting which is not
at all about bread and eggs and fruit but rather is about luminosity and
atmosphere, design and color. That sounds like conceptual art to me I thought so I went to see the exhibit at the Tate, a comprehensive history of
conceptual art starting with what they call preconceptual art, Turner's late
seascapes and Whistler's arrangements and symphonies, and then moves on to
classic conceptual pieces like Duchamp's urinal/fountain, and there are
installations of course, one with a room full of people seated quietly in the
middle of the room examining their reactions as lights of varying color and
intensity and duration flashed around them, and another where everyone walked
through a collection of objects from the life of the artist, again in silence, installations almost always require silence, and observed their
feelings about those objects and then discussed those feelings in front of a video camera as they emerged on the far side of the room, thus participating in and becoming a part of the work, then postconceptual work like
Damian Hirst's bisected and dissected animals in formaldehyde and Tracy Emin's
bed and the last room labeled neo-postconceptual art is filled with my
paintings and there is Damian Hirst standing in front of my Bread and Eggs saying "I don't get
this stuff", paintings do not require silence, and Tracy Emin bent over reading the curator's text on the
wall trying to find out why this is important since has nothing to do with her life or who she has slept with and then I hear
music, a Beethoven string quartet, one of his
Razumovsky quartets, and I think what an interesting choice of music
for this exhibit, then realize it is my alarm clock, set on the radio mode. I got
up and showered and headed out to catch the train to the NY, to try to explain
to my students how to create atmosphere in a painting.....
