Over the past thousand years unusual generations have embodied a distinctive world
view. Sometimes a particular generation will manifest their worldview as a profound
moment of visionary advocacy which resonates for generations to come. I propose
to look at a group of contemporary artists, beginning with North America, who seem to synchronistically
embody this phenomenal pattern of generational creativity.
In "The Shock of the New" Robert Hughes posits an interesting theory. This theory
can provide a backdrop for thinking about the artists we will look at in this book.
Hughes suggests that fresh creative cycles regularly appear after periods of exhaustion
and fall between the calendar years '90 and '30. For example, the Florentine Renaissance
had been created by the time of Masaccio's death in 1428; between 1590 and 1630 Caravaggio
and Reubens would rewrite the language of art; Turner, Goya and Constable appear between 1785 and 1830. The need and pressure for change which occurred between
1890 and 1930 was also extraordinarily intense and engaging. Each period, characterized
at first by a rush of enthusiasm and discovery begins to wind down and becomes academically doctrinaire, stagnating over questions about the role, purpose and survival
of Art. Does our century follow the same pattern Hughes identifies?
Theoretically, between 1990 to 2030 we are in a fresh cycle of creativity. Perhaps
one signal for renewal is the mercantile frenzy of the 1980's followed by economic
and spiritual confusion in the contemporary arts. Characterized by irony, cynicism,
deconstructive strategies, nihilism, and "bad" art, the 1980's suggests complete breakdown
and ensuing unforeseen opportunities. The general tone during these times, exemplifying
true 'visionary' exhaustion, is negative and whining. Darkened viewpoints can be found in books like Suzi Gablik's "Has Modernism Failed?" , a primer on artistic
decline in a capital driven economy. What is more difficult but ultimately fulfilling
is to look for the subtle signs of fresh creativity which are supposed to be emerging
just about now. By focusing on the creative opportunities offered artists by a shift
in the cultural canon, we can identify truly important trends and artists who may
have been overlooked up till now.
As a culture we are drilled to remain young, think young, look, feel, and dress young.
This traps the culture in a permanent and unhealthy adolescence. The degree of hopelessness
in young artists work seems to exist in direct proportion to the abdication of spiritual responsibility and mentorship by their older mentors. Rather then reflexively
looking at the young for direction and thereby crushing them with unwarranted expectation
I will look initially at maturing mid career artists, raised in the counter-culture of the 1960's-70's. This group would be positioned to present new ideas and
approaches as the century turns. I will propose a group of artists who have the
vision and maturity to create the bridge needed to network generations, usher us
into a new millennium, and to transit from collective breakdown to new possibility. After decades
of questioning and dismantling old models, what do artists now propose to reinvigorate
art as a integrative, positive, beautiful and healing cultural force?
THE BRIDGE
The 60's counter culture is a 'transitional' generation, capable of seeing the big
picture by identifying themes of exceptional global significance . Generations like
these come around once every 100 years. It is characterized by an absorption in consciousness expansion and a strong renewal of spiritualism by connecting Eastern philosophical
teachings with it's Judeo-Christian opposite. The results have been an opening of
possibility for Euro-American society to see the world in new ways; listening to
and including voices other than those solely from a masculine Eurocentric tradition;
a profound shift in the accepted level of ecological and feminist thought and practice;
a call for universal social reform and practice of civil liberties; a radical expansion of artistic and cultural activity.
Some of the activities of the 60's generation are not unique. The dialogues in the
1860'-70's of Positivism versus Romanticism come to mind. Artists like Odilon Redon
would infuse art with an invigorated spiritualism and sophistication, prefiguring
much of the Surrealist and DaDa immersion in fantasy .
There are common themes throughout history which are continually revisited, and
are absolutely crucial to revisit if originality is to manifest itself as a bonding
cultural force. In our time, the 60's counter culture inculcated an enthusiasm for
exploration and invention which still informs the mature work of its exponents. Now in
mid life as creative persons, this generation serves to build bridges for future
generations who will actually invent, implement, and maintain solutions for pressing
conundrums previously identified.
Underlying the psychological complexities of this generation is a shared belief in
an idea expressed by Historian George Kennan which goes as follows; ' In our lifetime
we must solve two pressing problems or there will be no future; first, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and second the toxification of the planet.' The pressure and
anxiety created by this belief has driven the 60's counter culture generation to
all manner of consciousness raising explorations in virtually every field of endeavor.
I would say this search has largely been characterized by hopefulness . It can be seen
especially in the painting presented in this book.
It would be a generalization to say that every artist in a transitional era functions
as an advocate or explorer, and even those who do represent such diversity that the
deciphering and encoding of an overall activity can be bewildering. Still, the real
visionaries of any counter culture are artists on 'The Bridge,' actively building lines
of communication and empathy into the future. This book will be looking at a varied
international group of contemporary artists who I believe are the vanguard of re-constructing the visual arts as an exciting cultural force in the years 1990 to 2030.
The motives and means this group employs may surprise, since much of it has not been
seen before. The art I will first present is representational, narrative painting.
This art has a literary basis and is very involved with storytelling by foregrounding
content. The artists employ a visual language suited to communicating globally in
the 21st century. They generate ideas and values of promise that continue to resonate
into the coming century and inform the next several generations. It is a large bridge
being built, spanning the perilous crossing into the 21st century. To look at this group
of artists and determine whether they are the harbingers of refreshment to a world
on the cusp of dramatic and unknown life or death changes, I will write about qualities not normally associated with Modern and Post-Modern art discourse, such as healing,
empathy, compassion, and beauty.
Some of the most exciting and substantial art being made today comes out of chaotic
multicultural environments like Los Angeles, USA. Many of the artists in these hot
spots are politically active and spiritually intelligent. These qualities are hallmarks
of the 1960's and have strengthened over the past 30 years. The 'bridge' that artists
are building seeks to lead to a fusion of two normally polarized arenas, the social
and spiritual. For a variety of psychological and sociological reasons (which I will
examine in discussing individual artists) many of our creative persons seem inspired
and enabled to combine theory and practice in ways that open common ground for those
seeking deeper meaning and broader participation in a globalized community. Bridge
Artists are unashamed to acknowledge the roles played by the world and the unworldly in
their art, and sometimes stand outside the contemporary academic institutions which
hold to a Modernist doctrine which does not easily admit the entry of humanistic
or spiritual impulses. As bridge-builders, they are actively changing the rules of the art
game as it has been played for the past 100 years. I will look at the work of a variety
of visual artists who work in a diverse range of media, finding out what they have
in common, and whether that commonalty may be the building blocks of The Bridge.
DUCHAMPS BLACK HOLE
To begin, I'll review a bit of recent history. I am saying our century follows the
same pattern of discovery and exhaustion Hughes points out as occurring at the turn
of each century. Right now we have the added weight of a changing millennium, symbolically fraught with anxiety of all kinds.
Looking back, 1890 to 1930 was a remarkable period. It may be difficult to imagine
what pre-1890 was like, but suffice it to say radical change would not have taken
place in every sphere of activity if it were not only warranted but inevitable. Artists,
whose job will always be to challenge the cultural canon and keep it moving forward,
were especially brutal during this period. They literally ripped away the suffocating
veils of status quo, and with grand drama threw culture onto the bonfire of change.
Of course this is a bit risky, since alot of good stuff can get incinerated with the
bad. A sad example would be the cultural revolution in China. Another might be the
jettisoning of classical representation and manual dexterity in the arts. Perhaps
the nadir is the strategy of appropriation and found materials, which can trivialize Creativity.
Nevertheless, the genuine enthusiasm, invention, and sense of discovery of the
first half of our century was real, vibrant, and unparalleled since the 15th century.
No wonder then the ensuing emotional crash was equivalent in intensity. Once Marcel
Duchamp summarized the Modernist revolution with an endgame (he was a chess master)
designed to paralyze bourgeoisie attentions for all time by giving anything permission
to be art, the great decline began. His brilliantly cynical gesture of abandoning
artmaking marked a downsizing of Vision. For a while no one understood the profundity
of his achievement. Abstract Expressionism and its multitudinous offshoots crashed
like a giant wave on a beach and then rolled back out to sea to become a kind of genre
painting. Pop Art unintentionally created a frenzied art supermarket consistent with
late 20th century capitalism. Conceptualism and its ascetic adherents threw bricks
from the desert of their arid intellectual redoubts. Popular culture was quickly exhausted
as a source of positive inspiration. Contemporary art is packaged to service an industry
bustling with middlemen, ballooned and bloated by the commodification and bizarre
fusion of fashion and art. It appeared alot was happening, yet through it all, the
shadow of Duchamp, where anything can be art yet nothing is ever new, disoriented
an audience which could not keep up with the pace of artificial change. Finally,
tired of being attacked and patronized, the public simply walked away from the artworld in
such numbers that can only be described as catastrophe. The playing field was left
with a narrow audience peopled by curators, dealers, consultants, career artists,
and an academic system which turned out more students than the field could possibly accommodate.
By 1988, Culture was viewed with renewed suspicion, which gave way to outright hostility
and censorship. National Endowments were curtailed in political dogfights, public monies withdrawn, commerce withered, and Duchamp's paralyzing endgame seemed complete.
His secret intent had all along been for Art to destroy itself as a final pathetic
gesture of resistance to an insensate world. By 1991 Sherrie Levine would replicate Duchamp's urinal in stainless steel and represent her action as a 'subversive intervention'
designed to question authenticity, originality, and the heroism of male art making.
Her gullibility, disguised by a mountain of cerebral baggage, completed the downsizing of Postmodernist thinking. Of course, her objects would be sold for expensive
prices in silly watering holes for a shrinking cognoscenti like Mary Boone's gallery
of the 80's. If Warhol had become the socialite Dark Star of the artworld, then surely Duchamp was its Black Hole. So the 'giants', the 'heroes and heroines' evicted the
art stage, given the hook by jesters and pitchmen. The only artists who weren't sucked
into the gravitational freefall of Postmodernism were those who intentionally stayed on the periphery.
Painting in the 1980's revived a kind of representational format but without the narrative
content which enriched previous periods. Exuberant figurative painting could not
make up for the lack of ability to tell a story well. The reason for this was that
a new way of presenting narrative work was not yet fully formed though numerous artists
were working on just that problem.
Artists began to revisit the past, dusting off
old pictorial narrative strategies and raiding art history for a way out of the Duchampian and deconstructive intellectual cul-de-sacs . Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger,Komar
and Melamid and especially Keith Haring addressed narrative in their work in ways
that began to engage a broader, populist audience.
But in the main, much art of the Postmodern 80's led sadly to nihilism. It was very hard to find painters in the galleries who could be described as hopeful,
positive, or involved in a healing art. Such descriptions would have been anathema
to any careerist plying their trade in the galleries of New York or Cologne. Representational artists who included narrative, storytelling devices in their art, such as
Judy Chicago or Sue Coe, were dismissed as illustrators and shrill, over the top
Feminists who weren't making 'real' art. Critical doctrine reached a point of denial
about Content and stressed the deconstruction of meaning. American popular culture became
a wasteland for starving imaginations, as the last venal Whitney Biennial of 1995
so awfully attested. Art, once able to bring marginilized communities into an equitable
and reciprocal contact, ended by celebrating the clinically dysfunctional as High Art.
And so most intelligent, literate persons who would like to participate in the Artworld
would have no choice but to receive the message that the institutionalized contemporary art business was capable only of supporting 'product' which was dispirited,
bitter, devoid of craft and profoundly life negative. The artists openly avoided
all moral responsibility and played a viciously cynical game of courting the middle
class and secretly coveting it's life style while blatantly despising it in their art. Something
had to give.
Recently, while at the Louvre, I had the wonderful experience of standing in Reubens
'Salon De Medici's'.The gallery was packed with visitors, many of them young artists
and intellectuals. Here was the nourishment they needed. The spectacular tableau
paintings spoke across time and place with a decidedly contemporary jolt. Here was nourishment
for the beleaguered artgoer! Quick cut to a Robert Longo exhibition across town.
I was the only person in the gleaming, well appointed gallery. On view were drawings traced from film stills (slightly reworked to give them some feeling of maybe having
been drawn) of his recent "Johnny Mnemonic" science fiction film. Once I had viewed
Longo with anticipation. But in looking at his meager efforts, his inability to visualize, to dream, to draw with dexterity, I could only mourn at how far we have fallen
from the standards in painting set long ago. I think it is time to try and measure
up and accept that there are existing standards to be met and exceeded. It is time
to turn off the TV, stop poking around the gutters for assemblage junk, stop using other
peoples efforts and calling them your own. Imagine that perhaps the Artist is not
a cynical, irony laden anti-hero , but a healthy, happy whole human being. It's time
to find a different kind of edge from which to create. The model is changing.
POST-DESTRUCTIONISM AND RECONSTRUCTION
Throughout the deconstructive tailspin which possessed the artworld and coincided
with the general collapse I have outlined, an active school of reconstructive, representational
painting was developing and forming. This is one arena in which we will find Artists on the Bridge. These painters recognize the experience of receiving a representational
image was radically different from photography and film, mediums which dominate
postmodern artmaking. Their painting is a contemplative experience, meant to be experienced over long periods of time. It is not the game show TV painting sensibility
of Robert Longo , the TV remote control cruising sensibility of David Salle nor the
in your face mentality of billboard, magazine advertising. It can still be rough,
make you uncomfortable, and challenge every fiber of your being. Jersy Growtoski, an
avatar of the 60's counter culture, admonished artists in his 'Poor Theater' philosophy
not to compete with film. Most artists did not understand his message, or care to,
yet he remains prescient in his warning that stepping beyond the limits of a discipline
can often lead to aesthetic psychophrenia.
Narrative art is not the quick read like most of what we have been receiving through
contemporary art. In the competition fostered by a Western capitalistic art environment,
Style predominates over Process and Content and Art history begins with Duchamp!
And so, for a 're-constructive' artist, it meant it was going to take longer to develop
their art in the crucible of time necessary to approach discredited Beauty.
I define the effort of reconstructive artmaking from the 1960's to the present as
Post-Destructionism, referring to art made after the destruction, or rupture of Modernism's
initial brilliance. It's definition is 'An activity by artists who are making a mythic, historical investigation into the connections within global culture, and accept
personal and moral authority for the condition the artist gauges the world to be
in.' 'Mythic' refers to the rituals and narrative stories of humankind, how knowledge
is transmitted and passed down either orally or through imagistic mediums. 'Historical'
refers to the social affairs of humankind. In other words, the joining of social
awareness with spiritual intelligence.
Reconstructive artmaking can be reactive to the excesses and tyrannies of Modernism.
After all of the pulling apart, dismembering and trashing of Culture during the Modern
era , artists naturally react to a legacy of indulgence they are expected to accept. For instance, we have come to assume that experimentation is always 'good' or that
art can exist independently. Reconstructive artmaking questions these modern assumptions.
It is proactive in the direction of mentorship and generativity, mining the fields of psychology and myth, the healing arts, the ephemeral nature of the spiritual universe
and the politics of ecology, gender, class and ethnicity. It could be viewed as a
full blown revival of shamanism in the arts. Bridge Artists are very much engaged
with the world, involved in global viewpoints, and are not retreating into an ascetic
or fetishized vocabulary available only to the initiated. They seek to synthesize
the best of what has been discovered by their predecessors into a numinous level
of artmaking. Artists on the Bridge are no longer foregrounding formal modernist artmaking
concerns. The formalist vocabulary of artmaking has been integrated into a broader
human scale vocabulary.
Significantly there is Meaning in reconstructive art, and as C.G. Jung points out
the power of Meaning is inherently curative. Artists (to paraphrase Lucy Lippard) working with meaning and content act in the spaces of the
old and new, the classic and the modern, experimenting with possibilities that are
not yet socially realizable.
Meaning exists when it is shared, and in global culture, the language of meaning often
rests in the representational image, a visual language accessible to a majority of
world peoples. Bridge Artists are visually sophisticated image makers who are fully
aware of the myriad discussions in the intellectual ethers of the artworld. Their concerns
cause them to move away from non-objective art form because of its inability as a
visual language to cross over into as many cultures as possible. This populist impulse is a shared characteristic of many emerging artists.
Meaning also rests in the spheres of politics and the spirit, two fundamentally moving
forces and acts of faith, innovations nourished by tradition and personal experience,
often completely unscientific and opposed to the rationalistic dictates of Enlightenment. Meaning leads to conviction and belief, especially the belief that positive
change can occur in one's lifetime. Without this conviction the only place to go
is around in circles, and for global cultural to circle itself in the 21st century
means certain suicide.
There have been generations throughout this millennium which have functioned primarily
as 'bridges' to the future, providing a transitional ground or bridge without which
art could not evolve. Eric Newman points out repeatedly in his Jungian based writings that it is the "job" of the artist to keep the cultural canon moving along. The artist
is supposed to question, not rest in the explorations into the meanings of being
Alive. He did not suggest that to keep things moving Art, as a barometer for civilization, needed to be at a state of readiness for constant intellectual warfare and destructiveness
or that it obsessively had to reinvent its form. Art must be at the service of humanity
if it is to regenerate itself from generation to generation.
In 1905, during a collective burst of transcendent creative energy, a small group
of German artists established Die Brucke (The Bridge) . One of them, Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner, said, "We carry the future and we want to create for ourselves freedom
of life and movement against the long entrenched forces of seniority. Everyone who reveals his
creative drives with authenticity and directness belongs to us." Modern history is
filled with Utopian manifestoes and initiatives, calls to reform or overthrow. Rarely
is there a call for Consolidation of the best Culture has to offer. This call is the
gateway to our Bridge.
Obviously alot has happened between 1905 and now which would radically alter our view
of the future than the one Kirchener had. 1905 seemed to promise a renewed world
aided by beneficent
technologies. However, as we approach the year 2001 there are few who do not feel
skepticism and dread. Our ancestors saw ever expanding rational horizons while we
shrink daily from the litany of dire nuclear, environmental, economic or criminal
news. Collective fear is a hallmark of cultural exhaustion, the shared feeling that the future
will not be an optimistic one. 'Artists on the Bridge' however, do not have an exacerbated
sense of irony and denial about the limits of art and life. They are essentially hopeful while refusing to sugarcoat what they are seeing. I propose to examine some
of these artists who are waiting in the wings as they have been at the turn of every
century for the last millennium. Is it possible that these artists, slowly maturing
and testing their imaginative visions, will be able to overcome the contemporary orthodoxy's
of their time and construct the bridge over which the next generations shall cross?
And on the other side of the Bridge, who yet can know what is to be found for sure?
The beginning chapters will look specifically at the art of six contemporary painters
living in North America; Mark Spencer, R. Lee White, Zara Kriegstein, Kathleen Morris,
Stephen Curtis, Mark Tansey, and Clayton Campbell. They are linked by their representational style of painting, and reference each other with their investigations in
the social, philosophic, spiritual realms of human experience. They also share a
love of drawing, and the ability to demonstrate high levels of proficiency with technique
and tools indispensable to the narrative painter and available only through a long
apprenticeship of diligent practice. Their themes range from the mythic/poetic to
the socially assertive, usually incorporating the two in a variety of overlaps that
provide unusual food for thought. But above all they approach different visualizations of
Beauty with intractable single-mindedness, and a generosity of spirit which invites
the viewer into the worlds they evoke.
The introduction for Artists on the Bridge will be up on this site for a few months,
to be followed by chapters on each of the artists represented here. I encourage you
to download this book as it is built at this site. If you miss anything you will
be able to purchase each chapter on file. I also encourage you to contact me and share your
thoughts on my e-mail at 18th Street Arts Complex.
In future chapters I will be providing e-mail addresses for the individual artists
so you can contact them directly.
Clayton Campbell is an artist, Los Angeles reviewer for Flash Art Magazine, and Executive
Director of the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica, California. Thank you to the following: James Ballinger, Director of the Phoenix Art Museum and James Beck, Chairman of Columbia University Department of Art History, The Electronic Cafe International
directed by Kit Galloway and Sherrie Rabinowitz and Fahreneit Studios.