So now I’m going to cause a stink…

So David can draw and so can Barney Bubbles. I checked out Barney B and I see some interesting photographs. Looks like some clever stuff. Here’s my question… is it art?

It has been my contention for a very long time that photography is not a fine art but rather a craft. I think I just opened up a big can of worms.

I have seen some artists who use photography and I have seen some photographers who do some very ‘artistic’ work. But unless you do something with the photographs, manipulate them in some way to create another image is it art or is it technology? I know it takes a great eye to see a great photograph but lets’ face it, it doesn’t take any eye at all to make one. Ansel Adams was a master. Edward Weston was a brilliant photographer. But were they artists?

Photography is a mechanical process. Today with digital formats and computer enhancement all kinds of imaging are possible. These technologies probably make photography more of an art form than it has ever been. But is there a difference between something created by a mechanical process and something created by the hand and eye? And dooes the advanced technological capability open the way for those less talented to be artists just because they can?

I have always questioned whether or not photography is a fine art or a craft. As a student I had the priviledge of studying photography under Susan Kleckner, one of the most brilliant teachers I have ever known and, at that time, the Director of the Photo Department at MOMA. Susan did not just show us the mechanics of the lens but opened us up to new ways of seeing and thinking and that is what I so admired about her.

Here’s an example of what I am talking about. Fot about a semester we were instructed to shoot no less than 8 rolls of B&W film a week which we were to rol ourselves. Furthermore, we were to hold the camera at arms length and never look through the lens. It made for some weird and at times awful shots but we learned the lens like it was an extension of ourselves and we learned to see the shots in a different way – before we took them. It’s very different then looking through the lens and having a constant aspect ratio inform your shots.

After a year of shooting and learning in this way and another couple of years of shooting all the time, including traveling around the world with my trusty Canon FT, I started to lose interest in the format. I had noticed that even my art (drawings, paintings) were done with this rectangular format and I needed to begin to see differently. Eventually the Canon was stolen form my apartment (10th Street was a dangerous place in those days) and I elected not to replace it. Instead I got a small Nikon F (I think it was an F, maybe an A?) which had no lense interchangability and I think had a 24mm lense with a wide angle attachment. Aftyer a while I gave that up for disposabiles. My first digital might as well have been disposible. I believe those snapshots are as valid as any ‘arty’ photos I took with the Canon.

Is photography art or craft? I believe it is mostly craft. Someone said that if you put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters they eventually would knock out all the great novels. At least I think that’s how it goes. Anyhow, if you gave those monkeys a thousand Instamatics would they create all the great photographs? You know what I’m driving at here don’t ya?

I await your reponses.

Art for arts sake

Someone named Mike Frick says that art is not about drawing, it’s about whatever you can get away with. He is not entirely wrong. I certainly understand the concept and in fact at times have supported that premise. The problem is that it leads us too often down the same old path to mediocrity and worse – just plain bad art. Look around, it’s every where.

I can also agree that there is more to art than drawing (and I am going to limit my comments to the visual arts and leave any discussion of music, dance, etc out of this particular conversation) but there has to be a basis, a starting point for the development of any fine art and usually it starts with being able to draw. Most bad art usually is not a matter of concept but of execution. Take Mike Frick for example. I do not know if the Mike Frick I Googled is the artist that commented on my blog but let’s assume he is. The work at www.mikefrick.com is whimsical, colorful and illustrative. There is a definite style and a certain naive quality to it but you can see that Mr. Frick has studied his craft and he definitely knows how to draw. Whether or not you like his style or his images is besides the point. Compare Mr. Frick’s figures to that of Mr. Urban Picasso and you see the difference between a developed artist and someone who is in essence a novice.

Here’s a portrait of Johnny Cash by Mr. Frick and one of my own drawings of the same subject. Completely different styles and technique but I feel confident in saying that the thing we share, besides an admiration for the late great Mr. C, is a lot of time studying, developing and drawing. This is not random work, though it might be produced randomly and in a short period of time.

Johnny Cash by Mike Frick

Johnny Cash by Barry Shapiro

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now let’s look at Mr. Urban Picasso’s work which he promotes on ebay. I looked but could not find a portrait of Johhny Cash on his site so I grabbed this image:

drawing by Mr. Urban Picasso

I’m sorry to harp on Mr. Urban Picasso (my wife thinks I’m being to hard on him) but I think this is a fair visual representation of what I am trying to get across. Of course, art is subjective and in the eye of the beholder and all that crap but there is a difference and if you cannot see it than perhaps you never will. And if that’s the case you’ll keep on buying, or worse yet, making bad art.

A final look at Mr. Urban Picasso

Perhaps I was harsh but someone has to say these things. The work in Mr. Urban Picasso’s drawings is just not there. He may love to draw – and there is certainly nothing wrong with that…. I in fact encourage him to continue – it’s just that loving to draw and having a glimmer of talent is a far cry from having honed skills, ideas and developing your craft. The fact that is, Mr. Urban Picasso’s ego is fragile and hence his insistent self promotion is a result of that fragility.

Bottom line, if you love to create, to paint, draw, play music, sing, dance, sculpt, whatever your passion – learn the lessons of the masters that came before you. Study the life and art of a genius like Josef Beuys (Joseph Beuys 1921 – 1986) and begin to understand what the passionate, committed life of an artist is all about. If you want to be a commercial artist than work at an ad agency. If you want to be a painter than you have to work at it, study it, really live it.

Beuys in his hatComposer John Adams

I’ve just been reading an autobiographical story in the August 25th New Yorker by the composer John Adams (“Nixon in China” “Doctor Atomic”) and his story is completely engaging. His passion, his creativity and his innate genius is all brought together by his academic approach. Not that he was a academic in the strictest sense. He experimented, pushed boundaries, made mistakes and floundered for long stretches. But all the while he was engaged in his art. The man who composed some seriously unlistenable music like “American Standard” on wacky instruments he created in his garage was also a student of Wagner, Schopenhauer, Bach and Mahler as well as Cage and Miles Davis. Like the music or not, one hears the genius in it.

I spend one day a week as a volunteer at the Boys and Girls Club teaching art to kids that range form 5 years old to 15. Most are not very artistically endowed. But they all have one thing in common – imagination. They have a need to express themselves. Those that will be able to use art to aid them in their self expression will be all the better for it. Those that cannot connect with that place inside them where art exists will have a shallower, less satisfying existence. You can see it at the earliest ages – art is passion and it makes all the difference. But passion is not enough to become an artist. I hope that Mr. Picasso can understand this.

If that were the case than there would be many more artists. I am not talking about Sunday afternoon painters. I am talking about ar worthy of hanging on walls in public spaces. Unfortunatley we live in a culture today where the keys to success are not talent and study but style, celebrity, marketing prowess and the desire to be famous. Mr. Urban Picasso shares more with Paris Hilton then he does with John Adams or John Currin. Or Elizabeth Peyton for that matter.

There is some realy great art out there. there are some great talents expressing themselves in all types of media. You just won’t find most of them on flicker.com.

Mr. Urban Picasso

Thanks for your response. You not only have limited talent but you also have a limited vocabulary. No surprise.

Who made me the art critic? Well, it’s my blog so I guess I did. That and a lifetime immersed in art, a BFA from Pratt and time spent teaching art. You’re crass commercialized work just doesn’t cut it and your eBay sales site references are sad. As I said before, enroll in a decent art program and learn to draw. Study the real Picasso before you try to immitate him.

Maybe there is some hope out there…

In response to my posting I received an email from one Stephen Lang, apparently an aspiring artist who likes portraiture. He was kind enough to send some examples. He is obviously  not without talent and it seems that with study and work he has some great potential. I know nothing else about him but I am happy to post his notebook sketches here. Don’t know if they are pencil or charcoal but I think you will agree they have an intensity about them.

sketch by Stephen Langsketch by Stephen Lang

Journey to the New – why art sucks

Well, I did make it to the city and I did go to see the Elizabeth Peyton show at the new New Museum. First I have to say that the New Museum is one of the best places to view art anywhere and the fact that it is on the Bowery, an area practically synonymous with extreme poverty and disenfranchisement is even more amazing still. 30 years ago when I’d go down to the Bowery it was to buy some junk or supplies in one of the old restaurant supply stores or to see an artist friend who was living on the cheap in some run down loft building. I remember Charlie Yoder had a loft right next to the Bowery Mission and you had to trip over the bums and their puke just to get in the building. Today it’s so trendy I thought I was in another world.

This is the best designed new museum I’ve seen including galleries in Washington, DC, Seattle, New Orleans and Denver right down to the bathroom tile. Bizazzi did the tile and signed their work. They also did the tile in the building lobby of my friend Andy Silverman so that must make his place a real work of art.

Nevertheless, the New Museum building is an absolutely phenomenal space for viewing art. It’s just too bad that the art that is there for viewing is not as interesting or as well executed as the building itself. The museum has not progressed much in that regard from it’s old SOHO days when it was championing the obscure and the marginally talented. The fact is that the chairs were more interesting examples of contemporary art than the art on the walls, especially the small ‘patio’ chairs on rollers on the 3rd floor, though I am not sure who designed them. I also liked the colorful Franz West chairs in the cafeteria. Nothing like comfortably sitting on your bum and looking at bad art. And that brings me to Elizabeth Peyton.

This is a pretty big retrospective covering about 100 small paintings and drawings of  rock stars and friends. Ms P is confusing to me – at first her work looks thin and sketchy, as if these are not finished pieces at all. On closer observation her work requires more of your attention. Her subjects want you to look at them and so you must. They are thin, shallow and vain – just as the paintings are. After a while the sensation of looking at them (the subjects) wears thin too and the experience fades. I was left just looking at not so well painted portraits of rock stars, dead artists and skinny boys and I saw no depth, no intellect, no life force, no real reason to see any more. the real audacity here is not in the work but in the fact that they chose to show the photographs that the paintings were derived from. EP has talent no doubt – an eye for finding images – but her visionis covered over like gauze and the only thing I was left with was “who cares!” Who cares about Kurt Cobain? Who cares about Sid Vicious? Who cares about Tony Just? Who cares about paintings that are not so interesting illustrations from less interesting magazine photographs? Who cares? Obviously the answer is downtown gallery dealers, the New York Times and some very unknowledgable collectors.

painting by Elizabeth Peyton

Elizabeth Peyton

EP Reading by Peyton

 

I will say this for Peyton, she is consistent. The show covers a 15 year span and you can’t tell where she began from where she is today. In the catalog available at the show, the Curator Laura Hoptman calls Peyton “a painter of contemporary daily life, seen in sum, (giving) us an idea of the kind of people who have created our popular culture, and thus, an idea of our world over the past decade and a half.” Huh? Who’s life is she representing here? I don’t even think it is the lives of the subjects she paints. Probably it would be closer to say that what she is painting is an absence of life, a copy of a copy of some life she might have glimpsed while waiting in the dentists office. No soul, no mystery, no statement.

Well, maybe the collectors are just being smart and they are recognizing a trend toward the mediocre. Are we coming to a point where there just isn’t any emphasis on real skill? Have we lost the concept of the artist as gifted, as special? Has our mass consumer, computer generated society led us to a new kind of art for the masses? Was Andy Warhol right and everyone will be a star for 15 seconds regardless of talent or intellect?

Case in point is the other artist featured at the New Museum also with two floors of recent and not so recent work. Mary Heilmann, who is also featured in the recent Style Magazine in the Sunday New York Times, is very different from Elizabeth Peyton in terms of style, age and palette but very much like her in terms of how marginal and unremarkable her paintings really are.

painting by Mary Heilmann

painting by Heilmann

Heilmann has been on the scene for a very long time but has never received the kind of acclaim of many of her contemporaries - until recently. I can understand why. Over-hyped? Overrated? Heilmann is a survivor. She’s hung in but does that make her a worthy example of the great abstract art tradition? Hell no! Her work cannot measure up to a Rothko or a Newmann say or a Flavin or a Judd for that matter. Or a Paul Levitt, another survivor who struggled for recognition in the cruel New York gallery scene for years. Levitt eventually succumbed to the financial realities and left for Hawaii. Heilmann stayed on and now has hit some sort of payday. Her exhibit is called “Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone” but who is she? By the way, I think those rolling chairs I liked so much may have been designed by her in which case I think she should stick to furniture making and leave painting to others more skilled with a brush.

But how did we get here? How has our evaluation of art become so degraded? Is it the computer that did this? If you call a pig a duck is it really a duck? Or is it a pig? Is it all really just a matter of agreement? We agree that this is good so therefore it is good. If enough people agree than that is the law of the land. Are we victims of art dealers who know nothing of art and everything of marketing and critics who know what sells magazines and can spin but have never experienced creating art?

On one hand my journey to the New was enlightening and enjoyable and on the other it was disturbing and disappointing. My feeling about Peyton was confirmed and my experience of Heilmann was kind of shocking. I won’t be running back there on my next trip to the City. Instead I will be scowering the galleries in places like Savannah and Sarasota and Portland looking for new art that fertilizes and inspires   the imagination.

Draw this for me…

It’s hard for me to publicly bash a fellow artist but I am going to do that here. It’s not meant to be mean spirited and it’s not personal. It’s just a peeve I have had going back to my days as a student artist and later as a working artist in New York. It is simply that most of the successful gallery artists who make it in New York today are just not that talented. What makes an artist today is as much about politics and marketing as it is about talent – actually much more so.

My case in point is the canonization of Elizabeth Peyton by the New York critics.  Peyton is currently the subject of a “mid-career survey” at the New Museum on the Lower East Side. I must state here that I have not seen the show in person yet but I intend to do so when I visit the City in a couple of weeks. I tend to get a little behind in my reading and I stack up newspaper and magazine articles I want to get to in my bathroom for when I can get in a little throne time and this morning I picked up the Weekend Arts section of the October 10 Times. The big bold story was a review of the Peyton show by Roberta Smith. The Times and Ms. Smith obviously sees Peyton as one of the most important artists of our time. They must because they’ve committed a huge spread to her review. I just don’t get it. Elizabeth Peyton is a very nice,  minor artist. Her work looks great when reproduced in periodicals but does not stand up when you see it in person. She may be prolific but she is not substantial.

Peyton

 

 

 

 

 

I first encountered her work when one of her portraits entitled “Live To Ride” was featured in the Whitney Biennial. I saw a photo of it in a magazine and was intrigue enough to immediately head over to the Whitney to see it in person. It left me scratching my head as to why this womans work had even made it to the exhibit. My thinking at the time was very much in line with a post by Harry on the Daily Gusto at the time http://www.dailygusto.com/blog/archives/features/000070.php. Shortly after that viewing I learned that Peyton lived in my then hometown of Southold, New York and that again peaked my interest in her work. I began to look for her wherever I could and what I found was a nice person with what I considered marginal talent who liked to paint rock stars and had a lot of friends in the art community. But I found her work to be uninspiring and lightweight.  My view hasn’t changed over time. That Elizabeth Peyton could be mentioned in the same breath with artists like John Currin or even a artist/cartoonist like Lisa Yuskavageis beyond me. I believe she is the creation of her dealer Gavin Brown and the New York critics who suck up to those gallery owners who shop the trendiest boutiques in Soho. It’s all about the show and notabout the work.

I know this sounds like a rant against Peyton but it’s really a rant against an art scene that is devoid of real art. Peyton should be illustrating articles for Rolling Stone, not hanging on the walls of the Whitney. I used to sit in the Soho studio of my friend Paul Levitt, an abstract painter who made quirky lamps and sculptures on the side. His studio had windows that looked out into a large air-shaft and opposite his place was the studio of another, more successful painter, whose name I cannot even remember now. We used to peer in at these amazingly large, awful paintings that weer so amateurish it was laughable. The colors were muddy and thin. The imagery was childish and not well thought out. The main topic was sex but there was no sensuality or eroticism or even a sense of proportion. It was if someone had told a 11 year boy old to go play with paint on a giant canvas. Yet this person was selling these grotesques, really ugly images for thousands.

Paul’s work, though intellectually superior and vastly more ‘painterly’ could not find a buyer. The difference? One difference for sure was that the guy across the hall was a showman and had dealer support. Paul was  not a Soho character, controversiall or flamboyant. In fact he was a normal suburban kind of guy who had a very Academic approach to painting which no one on the Soho scene really cared about. What they cared about was flash. 
                           Paul and his wife, filmmaker Robin Lung in Honolulu

I felt the same about Basquiat. From the first time I saw his work I thought he was a bum without talent yet he was hugely successful. Drive and ambition for sure but very thin on talent. He was, in the end, exactly what he started out to be – a graffiti artist.  Theh real talent was Mary Boone. Which is why I was really turned off by Schnabel’s film, even though it was really well done. The film was good, the artist not so.
When I see an artist like Currin I get excited. When I see an artist like Peyton I get depressed. I know it takes all kinds but do we always have to elevate the mediocre? I know I will sound sacrilegious when I write this but I always felt the same about Keith Haring. He was a graffiti artist who made some very colorful cartoons for subway station walls and later on T-shirts and sweatshirts but really nothing more. I could never consider him a real artist in the classic sense of the word.

portrait by Basquiat

 So what’s it all about? I hate to be so cynical about art but I just feel that the really good art is not getting seen. It’s all buried in some loft somewhere in Cleveland probably. Sour grapes? I don’t think so though I do take great pride in my own ability to draw. Drawingis the basis for all fine art as far as I am concerned and if you can’t draw then I feel you cannot be an artist. that doesn’t mean everyone has to draw like Raphael but you have to be able to draw.

Katherine by Barry Shapiro

 Paul and his wife now live in Hawaii where he teaches art and has taken to a more representational style of painting. I am living in Florida doing work in pastel and crayon. I am awaiting the next generation of portrait artists to impress me and I hope they do. Ms. Peyton does not. Send me your work.

Nelly

Most of you don’t know Nelly Charbonneaux so I’d like to introduce you. Nelly and I go way back to our days at Pratt Institute and she went on to be one of the best illustrators in the history of France – and that’s saying alot! Nelly is witty, gifted and, I must say it: adorable. We love her. Check out her work at http://www.veer.com/products/artistgallery.aspx?artist=2492.

Nelly has a blog she does for her students. I have no idea what she is writing about because I don’t speak French but I am sure it is somehow about illustration and illustrators and so I encourage you who do speak French or know how to translate French or really love French Fries to check her out cause I am sure she has something brilliant to say!

http://nelly-charbonneaux.blogspot.com/

Viva la France! Viva les arts!

A cute idiot

My cousin Deb just sent me an email in which she describes Sarah Palin as cute but an idiot. I guess a cute idiot would be more interesting to have around in Washington than the ugly idiots we have there now. I wonder where Sarah stands on funding for the arts? I wonder if she thinks that a stuffed moose head is an object of art? We know where she stands on the NRA but what about NPR?

One thing that is not high on the list of talking points is what will happen to the already diminished funding for arts education. I realize that with a deficit in the skizillions and war being raged on 2 fronts, funding for the art’s is low on the totem pole of concerns in Washington but please let us not diminish the importance of culture in our society and the special impact of a free, unfettered and thoughtful public forum like NPR and PBS. We have to ask and have a right to know were the candidates of both parties stand on funding for the arts.

Sarah takes aim on the NEA

Future Shock

Tuesday mornings I volunteer as a art teacher at our local Boys & Girls Club and it is a truly eye opening experience. I must say up front that I never had kids of my own so believe me when I say I do not purport to be an expert on child rearing. That said, I have seen many examples of great child rearing over the years and I have seen what, in my opinion, are less than stellar parental approaches. The fact is, in most cases, the children of friends and relatives I have known and watched grow have all turned out pretty well, with only one or two sketchy exceptions. That is not to say that some of these kids did not get into some sort of mischief at some point. In the end, they all seemed to straighten out. And the young ones still in process seem to be doing OK too.

That is why the B&G Club experience has been an eye opener. I have learned 2 things: 1. By the time kids are 5 or 6 their adult personalities are just about set in stone, and 2. There are alot of unhappy, angry kids out there.

The second part was the real kick in the butt. Though the majority of the kids were seemingly normal and well adjusted, there were several boys and girls who had huge chips on their shoulders and wanted to fight, argue and resist no matter what they were presented. At one point I broke up a fight between a 6 year old and an 11 year old tussling with a pool cue. Seems that the older boys were allowed to play pool but the younger boys were assigned another activity. Jonas, the younger boy, wanted to play pool, so he just went over and grabbed the cue stick from the older boy. When the bigger kid went to grab his cue back little Jonas wacked him with it and then took off. With the older boy in hot persuit, Jonas ran into my room and prepared to fight the bigger kid. When I tore them apart and commandeered the pool stick it became apparent who the aggressor was and so I told Jonas to report back to his group before I turned him in for fighting (an offense that probably would have sent him home). On his way out the door he intentionaly gave the big kid a shove and an elbow to the stomach. I was pretty shocked at his brazenness and would have done something about it except that for the reaction of his victim, who simply shrugged and said to me that the little red headed Jonas was always doing things like that. Of course that was just one small incident and by itself not a major deal. The problem was that it was just one of dozens of incidents every day.

Some of the kids could break your heart. Once you gained their trust they’d open up to you, sometimes more then I would like. There was one 9 year old girl who would skip out from other activities so she could come to art class all morning. She became my unofficial assistant. On my last day she spent the morning working with me but uncharactistically began to tell me about how unhappy she was at home, her parents divorce, her fathers laundry list of new girlfriends, her mothers lack of attention. This went on for a while until I was able to change the subject. I figure that, realizing it was the last art class of the summer session, she wanted to take  advantage of the opportunitiy to let me know about her life. I was moved that she felt comfortable enough to share with me but I have to admit it was a bit frightening as i have no training in how to handle kids in this way. I felt for her but at the same time I wished she had never mentioned it at all.

And this kid was one of the seemingly happiest and most participatory of the lot. I began to wonder what was going on behind the scenes for some of the less jovial. Keep in mind that this is Sebastian, Florida and a pretty middle class environment, not an urban ghetto or poverty stricken West Virginia mining town. I can only imagine that my experience is carried out every day in thousands of towns, schools and clubs just like this one all over America.

The undermanned staff at this B&G Club spent more time as disciplinarians then as teachers and their frustration was clearly evident. They seemed to get little support from the parents. I witnessed a few ugly incidents like the cue stick altercation but mostly it was a lineup of seriously angry and dispirited children who would create a minor brouhaha that would develop into a mess that would drive the other kids to distraction. The attitude was not limited to boys either. Chaos would often ensue until a staff member brought down the hammer.

As I was there to teach, and as I was not given a supporting staff person or aide to help keep them in line (they are very short handed), I spent most of my time acting as a disciplinarian too. It wasn’t what I had signed up for but I was at least gratified that I was able to have some sort of positive impact on at least a few of the kids in my time there.

I am not trained in art therapy. I signed on to teach art to the older kids but wound up working with kids of all ages and doing my best to keep them interested while keeping them in line. One thing that was obvious is that we need more volunteers, more parental involvement and we need to look at the influences our children are exposed to and see how it is affecting their nature. I have a new found respect for elementary scholl teachers and anyone who works with young kids. I will be studying up and returning to the Club in the fall. Perhaps I can make a small difference. I figure if one kid gets to tap into his inner artist or learns to appreciate Picasso or Van Gogh or Monet then it will all be worth it.