Spring 2016 issue: The Quotidien

ACROPOLIS ART JOURNAL

Spring ISSUE

acropolis Spring 2016 The Quotidien Editor Linda Moses Staff Caroline Creasey Tabor Chapman Rebecca Schectman Kyle Lopez Miranda Elliott Joseph Malanson Colum Bowyer Chengli Huang Jun Shi Cover art by Margaux Williamson Studio Door, 2014

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Origins of Still Life

by Tabor Chapman

In his essay The Painter of Modern Life, Charles Baudelaire discusses the task of the painter to extract internal beauty from the fleeting moments of everyday life, but before the nineteenth century, capturing everyday life underwent a transition. The practice of naer het leven, or from life, would become popular after the first global age of commerce as it affected the culture and art of the low countries and created a network of commerce in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Along with the changes in the religious atmosphere, art would become a method to document the wonders of the natural world and incorporated still-life elements in order to offer a commentary on morality. The influence of commercial and economic developments as well as changes in the religious atmosphere would create a recurring theme of transience in art from the sixteenth and seventeenth century.

Flanders and Germany. In the 15th century, Netherlandish artists like Jan van Eyck utilized the skill of painting still-life to incorporate in the background of his religious images everyday items.

These items were commonly used in religious images to identify figures and supplement the religious meaning. This can be seen in The Annunciation, completed between 1434-1436, that carefully articulates the petals of the lilies, a common reference to Mary’s purity, the pages of the book of hours and the tiles on the floor depicting biblical accounts. After this, the next earliest records of still-life can be found in Albrecht Durer’s work, which includes Hare, completed in 1502, which shows the artist’s interest in documenting and recording visual elements that surround him. Throughout Durer’s oeuvre there are numerous images of landscapes and natural elements, which reflect his belief and the shifting perspective that truth could be found in nature. The reason for this shift in religious depictions was in part due to the Protestant Reformation, which

Still-life painting fell into obscurity after antiquity and was reborn alongside the Renaissance particularly in areas such as Holland, 3

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Albrecht Durer, Hare 1502

Jan van Eyck, The Annunciation 1434-1436 4

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accused paintings of being false images and individuals of idolatry.

Along with the urbanization of Dutch and Flemish society, which created an emphasis on the home and possessions, still-life elements were no longer solely focused on religious themes.

the growing interest in still-life and was evident in Dutch flower pieces.

Although paintings of flowers were greatly different than the religious paintings of Jan van Eyck they still communicated a religious message to viewers on how they should lead their lives in this new age of commerce. This can be seen in Ambrosius Brueghel’s Vanitas, in which the inscription reads “indeed all things worldly, pass like a flower”. This juxtaposition between flowers and the inevitability of death would be a common theme that would reappear in numerous Dutch flower paintings. The reason originates in the mood of the counter-reformation and how the Council of Trent had stipulated that images should contain clear moral messages that encouraged the devotion of the viewer. Because the explosion of trade had created new manners of leading individuals to folly, these images were meant to encourage a dismissal of worldly materials and the pleasures they offered.

In Abraham van Beyeren’s Vase of Flowers, this message is more subtle and is presented through the inclusion of a watch, which indicates the passage of time that slowly ticks away for each man.

Furthermore, Beyeren’s flowers are not fresh but instead have forsak-

The aristocracy with their privileged status and wealth were able to collect foreign and exotic items through the trading network and as a result, they were able to amass their possessions into collections.

These collections represented the pursuits of the connoisseur, whose vast knowledge spoke to having achieved a balance judgement, and added to the status of aristocratic individuals, who possessed natural wonders of the world. The popularity of collecting was tied to the concept of the book of nature, or the notion that all things are ascribed with a divine meaning from the creator. This notion was appealing because it was separate from the church’s ascribed meanings, anyone could see it, it appealed to the connoisseur who could expand his knowledge by examining nature and finally it gave individuals the ability to handle divine tokens.

This belief and popularity of the connoisseur’s collection along with the Erasmian notion that complex ideas could be made understood through ordinary things affected 5

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Abraham van Beyeren, Vase of Flowers, 1663-65

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Juan Sanchez Cotan, Still Life of Cabbage, Quince and Cucumber, 1602

en their beauty and begun to wilt.

For contemporary viewers this was supposed to be a reminder that all material things would succumb to decay while Christian values and good works would last eternally while also warning the viewer of how they chose to live their lives.

The effects of the counter-reformation and the growing interest in the natural world changed the manner of how religious images were depicted, and for the Dutch, flowers became a means to portray the transience of human existence.

Around this time the Habsburg dominance stretched far and wide, which communicated resources as well as ideas from other places. The Spanish were especially taken with the North and were influenced by the same beliefs and interests as well as the shifting attitude that nature held general truths.

The Dutch artist, Pieter Aertsen proved to be influential for Spanish still-life as his introduction of the inverted still-life inspired numerous artists in the Habsburg kingdom. Aertsen’s influence be7

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gan with Blas de Ledesma who created a prototype of still-life that was legitimized by Juan Sanchez Cotan. Cotan’s work defined the genre of still-life in Spain and created a style of representation that would be copied by subsequent artists. His Still Life of Cabbage, Quince and Cucumber demonstrates the typical representation of still-life items, in this case a cabbage, quince and cucumber are set against a black background set upon a shallow, framed stone shelf. A raking light strikes across these vegetables and illuminates them but does not penetrate the dark background, which creates a sense of mysticism as well as a divine presence in these ordinary items. It was also around this time that still-life images began to take an account of the imports and exports from the New World along with other trading routes that linked Spain. This celebration of material items corresponded with Antonio Pereda’s introduction of the vanitas to Spanish still-life painting and touches on the transient theme that the Dutch flower pieces depicted. In his Allegory of Vanity, there is an array of ordinary objects including a globe with a portrait of a Spanish king and a tower with a clock. In this painting, there is the recurring motif of the clock or the fleeting nature of time and the transience

of the worldly things laid out before the clock. It also demonstrates through the portrait that even the seemingly omnipotent king suffers the same fate. In two different areas, the still-life genre had come to represent similar themes and direct a message towards the viewer of their mortality.

The invention of Aertsen as seen in Butcher’s Stall, depicts various pieces of meat in the foreground that obscures the religious scene of Mary giving alms to the poor. This was meant to force the viewer to carefully look at the image, see the moralizing message and choose between materiality and spirituality, the tangible and intangible.

Francisco Pacheco criticised the still-life genre and stated that the genre was entertaining at best and was inferior to all other forms of art, but his own apprentice would go on to popularize and paint bodegones, or genre paintings that featured figures and items equally. The theme of bodegones was a re-working of Aertsen’s inversion and was employed in the early works of Velazquez, who seemed to follow this trend of moralizing paintings, while obscuring the religious detail. In Diego Velazquez’s Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, two women stand in the foreground, the older woman gestures towards the younger woman, 8

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Antonio Pereda, Allegory of Vanity, 1632-36

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Pieter Aertsen, Butcher’s Stall, 1551

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who stares directly at the viewer.

These two figures are surrounded by ordinary items including a mortal and pestle, fish, red chili peppers, an import from the New World, and so on, but included on the left section is an image of Christ in the house of Mary and Martha. The story goes that Christ comes to the home of Mary and Martha, who were two sisters.

Martha becomes busy preparing a meal for the visitor and becomes angry when her sister is preoccupied with listening to Christ.

Martha confronts Christ, asking him to tell her sister to help her, but Christ calmly explains that Mary has chosen well as she has chosen to listen to the word of God. Here again lies the idea that the viewer must heed the message to disregard material items and emulate Mary, who chose wisely.

The inverted scene illustrates this biblical story and presents the viewer with the same choice, a choice that is further emphasized by the gestures of the two women and speaks to the theme that mortal life is transient and individuals would do well to remember this.

Although the subject of the everyday seems far away from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, these types of paintings developed from changes in the religious sphere and the establishment of global commerce at this time.

After the reformation and the growing interest in material items, images began to communicate beliefs about how individuals should proceed in this bloom of trade and commerce. From this developed the flower paintings, inversion and the bodegones, which forced the viewer to look closely and make a choice about spirituality or materiality. This choice reminded the viewer of the transience of earthly life and served as a warning to choose wisely. The theme of transience is prevalent in modern everyday painting, but it encompasses a different set of notions about what is good for an individual.

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Diego Velazquez, Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, 1620

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Collin Ginsburg, Shadow Stoplight

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Beatrice Chessman, Untitled

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Beatrice Chessman, Hunter’s Foot

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Rebecca Schectman, Panorama Glitch

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Ren He, The Old Man Comes to the Park Every Day

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Ren He, A Street in Guangzhou, China

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Ren He, Canton Tower, Guangzhou

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Ren He, West Tower, Guangzhou

Jena Gray, Modern Architecture

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Colum Bowyer, It’s Still Green (Series)

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Katie Wood, Untitled Series 27

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Ivan Echevarria, Gallery 31

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Ivan Echevarria,

Ivan Echevarria, Draeger’s

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Ivan Echevarria, Triangles

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Ivan Echevarria, Union Station

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Lucy Copper, Self-Portrait 37

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Lucy Copper, Untitled 38

Chengli Huang, Untitled

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Chengli Huang, Untitled

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Chengli Huang, Untitled

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Matt Arnold, Not Just a Found Object 43

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Matt Arnold, Room vs. Field Equation 44

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Interview with Artist Christian Brahe

by Tabor Chapman

You have described your process as involving both the building up and destroying of moments of consciousness.

Could you briefly describe how this process is carried out in your chosen medium?

in within the same drawing, and as a result those elements are removed, erased, or repositioned.

It’s generally a slow process, but one that is still very active. Like the objects I observe and draw in the studio, things are constantly in flux both in life and within the drawing. For instance, a chair that resides on the left side of the room may be moved to the right.

Or something I might have been drawing for weeks will then be removed and shifted to another section of the space. Accordingly, the drawing then reflects these changes. So in short, there is a lot of addition and subtraction happening. Moments of fluctuation, destruction, and reconfiguration are key to my work.

For me, drawing is not an attempt to capture a single moment, but is instead the culmination of a thousand moments or more recorded on a surface. These moments of consciousness, of realization, clarity, or even uncertainty, are represented by marks on the paper. They are both additive and subtractive in nature. I erase just about as much as I draw with the charcoal; often times the eraser is used as a drawing tool. A large part of my process revolves around a constant revisiting, reexamining, and redrawing of my subjects. Because of this, there are many layers of charcoal that build up over time. This building up of material can be seen in some objects that are described more than others, a result of me observing them very intensely, typically for long periods time. On the flip side, there are also other things that I am not as interested

In your previous answer you discussed the process of building up and destroying and how it is central to your process as an artist. Could you describe where this method originates?

As an artist, the first resolution or conclusion I come to in terms of solving a problem is often not the 45

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right one, so there’s an impulse within myself to dig deeper. This is often why I try to avoid being precious when working. Sometimes the turning point in a painting or drawing for me is when I destroy the “best” part of it, and through that destruction and reconfiguration, I discover what I’m actually searching for. I do think about Cubism a lot, and in many ways it has had a crucial influence in the way I work, especially in its ideas of fragmentation and reconstruction. Although I work perceptually from life, I do see constructing a drawing similar to piecing together a puzzle from many disparate fragments and pieces.

work. I can’t think of anything more mundane than apples on a dish, and yet those paintings are so surprising, sophisticated, and innovative.

What have you learned about the difference between looking and seeing so far in your work? Are there any recurring patterns?

For me, the difference between looking and seeing is that a look is like a quick glance, an assumption, or something that you don’t spend much time truly observing. To see entails a deeper element, that through the process of rigorous observation, something that was once hidden is revealed. I’m very much interested in really trying to study what is around me and giving it all the time it requires. As such, my work takes time and is rather slow in its evolution. But that’s absolutely intentional. I’m constantly trying to slow everything down, amidst a world that is so fast paced and multitasking centric where we don’t truly spend quality time with just one thing. So this idea of slowing down is very important to my work, because in turn I also wish for the viewer to takes things slow, and let elements within the drawing reveal themselves piece by piece in time, instead of everything showing

Do you work primarily from an inherent feeling about your surroundings or do you find you are drawn to a particular type of subject matter?

I’m personally drawn to domestic interiors, not only in its accessibility but also its seemingly mundane quality. I like the idea that it is part of my everyday experience that I share a physical relationship with.

And despite perhaps being overlooked or taken for granted, it can serve as a great jumping off point for something altogether unexpected. The ordinary transformed into the extraordinary. Cézanne has had a great influence on my 46

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332 (Detail)

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themselves at once or too quickly.

In terms of recurring patterns, I try to break them when I see them happening, especially in terms of composition. I try not to be so obsessive about neatly framing everything, and its hard to avoid given a painting background. So I let things kind of grow and evolve organically as much as possible.

This is partially why I start a drawing with one specific point instead of sketching out the whole thing, so things don’t close up too quickly via me imposing an order on it too quickly. Instead, I try to listen to what the work is telling me, instead of telling it what to do on the onset. I have noticed though that the drawings seem to have a sort of “rising” quality about them, as if they are being lifted or stretched upwards. Perhaps this is inherent in my own mark-making.

poignant is the moment to moment dialogue between myself, the observed space, and the drawing.

It’s a constant back and forth style relationship that I really respond to, and it’s that conversation that informs and eventually results in a drawing, particularly in terms of what is featured and what is omitted. Some decisions come organically and others are more strategic.

I work with multiple panels and often think of them as tectonic plates that interact with one another, especially in terms of weight and pressure. Their interactions with one another cause change, and I like playing around with them to configure a variety of reactions, some of which transform the whole nature of the drawing, or totally turn it on its head!

In your previous answer, you discussed how your work spans multiple panels, which are part of a whole.

Would you describe your work as attempting to construct your individual works together as a whole?

It seems like you are drawn to the impossible quest of capturing an essence of convoluted visual data within everyday contexts; how do you decide what aspects of the environment or the subjects you observe are most poignant?

Ultimately I think of them as pieces that work together as a whole, almost in a way that a fresco is “stitched” together over time with each gionata. However, I also like the idea of these small microcosms coexisting in a much larger space.

Originally, the multiple panels were a way for me to create a

I think it’s less about assigning value to a subject or particular object I’m drawing after the fact, and more about the experience and process of working as a whole that interests me. What I find most 48

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drawing that was much larger than anything I had ever created. I’ve always been interested in art as a bodily experience, one that transcends beyond simply using your eyes to view a work. This probably comes from my love for Italian painting. You can walk into a church and have a totally different viewing experience with a painting. There’s a strong physicality to looking at a fresco or altarpiece, not only in your gaze upwards and across a surface, but also in the sense of its scale relative to you.

For me, that physical relationship is strongly tied to an emotional response. In a way, I want the viewer to sort of get lost or caught up in the act of looking at my work, slowly moving from piece to piece, panel to panel, until finally arriving at the whole.

Can you briefly describe your background and a little more about your influences?

Regarding artistic influences, the list would be endless, but some who have been very important to

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332 (Detail)

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me are Cézanne, Matisse, de Kooning, Giacometti, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio to name a few. In terms of contemporary painters, I’m greatly inspired by the work of Stanley Lewis, Stephanie Pierce, Ann Gale, and especially my own personal mentors in painting, Janet Niewald, Michael Ananian, and Mariam Stephan. I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember and have always had a keen interest in observing everything around me. My grandfather used to note how I can could just sit and stare out of a window for hours and hours as a young child just looking and studying the things I saw.

Both he and my mother are painters, so I’ve been very fortunate to be have been raised in a supportive home. I did my undergraduate studies at Virginia Tech, where I was a double major in studio art and art history. Being an art history major alongside learning to paint and draw was especially important in my development as a young artist.

Immediately after undergrad, I continued onwards to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where I earned my MFA in 2014. Currently, I reside here in Williamsburg where I teach art history at St. Leo University in close-by Newport News, and am working on new drawings in preparation for a solo show at the Hillyer Art Space in Washington D.C. that will be on view from September 2 to October 1.

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A Game That Never Ends: An Interview with Margaux Williamson

by Ethan Davis

We built a new city with our shadows

Margaux Williamson is a Pittsburgh-born painter based in Toronto. Her book

I Could See Everything is the exhibition catalogue for a fictional show at The Road at the Top of the World Museum. The reproduced paintings at times candidly borrow from popular imagery or seem to be mementos of things deeply personal. Most of the work though, wanders a space where everything seems at once personal and shared. Images as grand Scarlett Johansson or the Moon are so thoughtfully and earnestly handled that I feel I can wrap my arms around them, and pictures of the artist’s own life and imagination are communicated so clearly that it seems possible to take them as my own. In her work is at once evidence of warm feeling and exceptional rigor.

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I’m aware from your book and other interviews that you work from a lot of text sketches. Did We built a new city with our shadows start with the title, and are your titles and paintings generally worked up together?

How do you make sense of these text sketches when you get to your studio?

I worked on those paintings off and on for four years so sometimes it’s hard to remember what came first, or what came together or separately. For that painting, I remember the start. I dreamed years ago that I was making a small city inside a room with my friends.

My job was to make “a distance”.

I thought to do it by making shadows with a sheet and some books.

So then that idea gets separated from its original source and mixed together with other things, and then, with all of the work, there is effort to make things as simple as possible, but also wider. There are a few goals I have but one is to make a painting deeper than the source.

I think the first thing that struck me about your work was its portrayal of memories. What do you consider to be memory’s role in your work? Are there things about memories that are particularly important to you?

I never really understand the word “memory” in relation to art. People talk about memory a lot in art but

memory is just almost everything from one’s life or vision that isn’t future projections and fantasy (which I use a lot of too). There are ideas, thoughts, instincts that float around in a less attached way.

To ground thoughts, ideas and instincts, you have to use your life sometimes, or what you’ve seen in the world.

I’m not so interested in my life or in my memory, but I am interested in using things that are easier to hold onto -- tangible things like Lynn in the boat (which came from life) or At the Park (which I remember clearly from a dream) -- to help hold onto things that are less easy to hold onto. But they are no different for me than using something I see in a magazine or on the internet or on the street.

In paintings like We built a new city with our shadows (Lynn in the boat) or At the Park, I find myself thinking, “I have that memory too!” in a way that’s excitingly specific.

That’s so interesting and nice for me to hear, and hopefully in that it means I am connecting even if I’m using what I know. You don’t have to answer but, what do you think that is about?

Well it’s like there are these images that I have floating around and they

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At the Park

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make up a secret story of myself, and it’s always really startling to see them somewhere else. Do you find yourself having those kinds of reactions, if so when recently?

“easy to hold onto” what do you mean?

I really like when things from “the symbolic real” (abstract concepts with math, ideas, art, etc) are tied down to the “real world” (concrete objects, tangible stories, the past) in some way. I really like Peter Galison for instance who wrote a book called Einstein’s Clocks about how working at the Patent Office -where most of the Patents where about getting trains in on time -really affected Einstein’s work. Of course it did, but we sometimes forget to bring these things back together.

I am always looking for meaning.

I don’t have an easy time seeing meaning so when I do see it, I feel relief. The meaning for me isn’t about the story of myself, it is more just evidence that art is doing something in the world, that humans (along with all the other stuff good and bad) can sometimes produce things that are very mysterious but ring true. I don’t think these things often, so I am glad when I do.

I am more interested when I can see how my instincts, fantasies or ideas can be tied (more tangibly) to the world. It simply makes my instincts, fantasies and ideas seem less arbitrary, like testing them to see if they could be real. I usually throw everything else out.

I can definitely relate to that feeling of relief. I get so tense looking at art sometimes. Why do you think that is?

For me I don’t get so tense, just bummed out. The relief for me is in seeing a little bit of evidence that art can be great. I started out far away from art so I never have a natural trust for it, I have to work at it. But I guess I can get more tense when I see the art that does make me feel better not getting as much attention as the does the art that bums me out. It’s usually a pretty equal divide which seems ok, a race.

I like that you mention math there, I always have trouble convincing people that it’s all made up, and the beauty of it is that it can be tethered, or that it can rhyme with real things.

I feel like it’s similar to art in that way.

That’s so nice. Yeah, it’s pretty weird how math gets taught in grade school for instance. Can you imagine just one little course that

When you talk about things that are 59

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Studio Door

is called Math; The Big Picture?

But then people teaching it would have to understand the big picture better in order to share clearly.

Keeping people mystified about math can be pretty similar to what happens in the art world -- those in the art world who act as priests, or mystifiers, between the art and the audience verses those who think with a little bit of clarity on the bigger picture everyone could be let in.

What do you mean you started far from art?

When I was young, I didn’t really see or understand that artists could have a meaningful role in the world, and didn’t understand that art did. I just started with a natural love for, but prejudice against, art. I’ve come much closer to the other side of that, but am grateful for my start as it helped me work a little harder to prove something 60

I thought I saw the whole universe (Scarlett Johansson in Versace)

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to myself.

as real and feasible a way of going about making and showing art as any I could think of.

On the subject of art priests, I feel like there’s a lot of rhetoric of institutional critique going around in the art world right now. In I Could See Everything, Ann Marie Peña curated an exhibit of your work for a made up museum. I was really pleased by how fun and observant your creation of that museum was, free of any kind of venom. How did it feel to have a museum put on a solo exhibition of your work?

To me, your painting “Studio Door” is a delightful departure from and anchoring point for the rest of the book which has a really strong sense of the image. There’s a wonderful kind of reticence in that painting. I found myself going back from there and finding all this harmony and balance. What are your feelings toward that painting?

I’m so glad you said that, free of venom. That was really important to me, to make sure it wasn’t a snarky joke about museums. I feel a lot of freedom as an individual artist -- not tied down or invested in too many institutions. I feel a lot of freedom in picking and choosing the forms and methods for how I do things, things that make sense to me, especially in the specific culture we have now.

I actually love museum catalogues.

Making a catalogue was much more interesting to me than having a show. I didn’t like the idea of having a site-specific museum show and having a lesser (but more mobile) object that sort of represented what was site specific.

I wanted the catalogue to be the art. The project to me, with the help of both an accomplished and serious curator and publisher, was

That is really great to hear. For this show, I was actually working on an enormous painting called “Studio”. It was a long painting, it had a door and the universe and a million pictures in it -- Manet, William Morris, science diagrams, shark attacks, tennis courts. But I think there were so many pictures in it that people would try to “read” it. I wanted it to be the landscape, the location -- I had not intended it to be a painting that people had to puzzle out. I wanted the Manets to be more like the bananas than a Manet. At the end, I threw it away and made the painting “Studio Door”. Much more simple but more right. It is so great you saw that in the painting. It is always exciting to hear evidence of things working. I can say, plainly true.

You mentioned in an interview with 62

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Kenneth Goldsmith that you were interested in bringing together the realism of the day and the abstraction of the night. That seems to result in a fascinating kind of atemporality in your work -- a feeling more of eternity than a moment -- which is kind of the opposite of how we often consider an image. How do you think about time in your work?

That’s very interesting that you connect that. And again, glad that you see that in the work. I’m very interested in time, so much so that half of what I read are books about time, yet still wouldn’t know what to say about it. Timelessness, Real Time, the Now -- all still just outside of our reach. I don’t think of timelessness as much as I think about the now, but I will think about that.

One thing I can say is that I am, with all of my work, interested in “documentary”. But I am just as interested in working towards never making a “document”, always trying to figure out how to tie, whatever may come from experience or the imagined to “now”.

It is great to have a game that never ends.

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