Saturday, March 2, 2013
Art Treasures of New Brunswick- Beaverbrook Art Gallery
"Art Treasures of New Brunswick" , Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Feb.21- May 26, 2013
A week ago an exhibit opened at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, "Art Treasures of New Brunswick", curated by Virgil Hammock, critic, and retired head of Fine Arts at Mount Allison University. I missed the opening and lecture because of other commitments but I saw the show today. It was a thrill to find my work placed next to a painting of a professor and mentor, Edward Pulford, and Saint John painter Jack Humphrey. One thing about museum displays is the amount of room granted to each work. I think another thing is the amount of historical reference, which not only removes the art from the uncertainties of the commercial and/or contemporary world, but provides one with a sense of rest. There is the evidence- that's all there is. I had had some misgivings, having not seen the work since it had been completed, but my fears were put to rest. The painting itself had been difficult, the fact that Alden had died in 1983, and that as he had lived in a time before the ubiquity of digital photography there were virtually no photographic references- some low resolution stills I had taken from a film board documentary, a couple of newspaper photographs, and conversations with his wife, and friends. Plus the memory of the one time I had met him. Still, there is presence, and the most gratifying moment for me was the fact that at the unveiling, his wife, Claudine, was moved.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Fredericton Five
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Art is a Piece of Cake
ART IS A PIECE OF CAKE
What do you call artists who are stuck in the
paleolithic use of unrefined tools- paint, brushes, organic materials? Are they
proto-creators- neo-anderthals- brush age creatures? And what is the nature of
their symbolisms? Ritual- taboo- spiritual guidance? Superstitious spirit world
contact? Worship? Primitive traditions which are genetic and coded like pacer
genes in the development of conditions which maintain base human alignment with
a disease of the mind which limits the attainment of
sophistication?
The impressarios of the art world exist in a melieu
where the cult of celebrity validates and provides meaning to an object in an
advanced position to whatever may exist by divine right. The expectation of
discovery is a more powerful aphrodisiac than, for example, the content of a
book which has perhps lost it's cover and needs to be read page by page. This is
the pitfall of success, if success can be defined as the level of exposure
required to launch the artists iconography and hence career path into public
knowledge. The cult of celebrity creates meaning in such an inductive way-
meaning is a byproduct of visibility. The hunger game for this kind of food is
easily created- there is no need to refine the appetite beyond the basic need to
consume. Smoke, mirrors, technology, magic, phantageon.
The problem with the location of greatness in the
art world is that it needs to construct a continuum in which one can place a
Damien Hirst, say, at one end. There is the need to relegate unwanted aspects of
creative production to the soup kitchen of the soul; to adopt others in a way
that will make the combination of elements manageable, and easily digestible.
Consumption is the game, and hunger is managed in the same way that marketing
creates new cravings. Art in the post-meltdown era- the soup kitchen of the
soul.
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