ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some people are drawn to art; some people are compelled to make things. Thank you for this opportunity. The price at which my endeavor be made possible was not slim, so for those who fight, keep fighting and for those who hold a brush, I compel you to reconsider your privilege… How Romantic!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Dedication……………………………………………………………………………vi Acknowledgements vii Table of Contents….…………………………………………………………………viii Chapter Images… ...................................................................................................................... ix 1. HISTORICAL CONFLUENCES…………………………………………………. .1 2. FORMAL/ INFORMAL… 11 3. TECHNOLOGICAL PRACTICES…………………………………………………15 4. TOMORROW’S WORK……………………………………………………………21 References……………..………………………………………………………………...26 viii
IMAGES
IMAGE
1. Peter Saul, Cold Sweat, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 55 ¼ x 66 ¾ inches .2
2. Tavarus Blackmon, What’s More Dangerous: A Black Blood or A Blue Blood (Just Joking), 2015, acrylic, paint stick, charcoal on vellum, 47 x 95 inches…… .3
3. Tavarus Blackmon, Job Hunt/ My Career Is Over, 2015, acrylic, tempera, charcoal on canvas, 69 ¾ x 106 inches….………… …………………………………….5
4. Robert Colescott, Blonde’s Have More Fun, 1990, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 72 inches. .8
5. Tavarus Blackmon, Blacasso Has A Problem, 2015, acrylic, latex, cel vinyl, charcoal on canvas, 71 x 105 inches 10
6. Tavarus Blackmon, Del Shannon, 2015, acrylic on oil-cloth, 54 x 114 ½ inches…………….…………..12
7. Tavarus Blackmon, Cookie Comes Of Age, 2015, digital print, 36 x 72 inches.
8. Tavarus Blackmon, Nothing But A Cookie (Departures), 2015, digital print, 36 x 72 inches……
9. Tavarus Blackmon, Untitled, 2015, digital print, 50 x 90 inches…
10. Tavarus Blackmon, Six Prints, 2015, embroidered prints, t-shirts, wire mesh, 101 x 61 x 127 inches
11. Tavarus Blackmon, Chocologic, artist book (cover), 2015, digital and print editions, 12 x 9 inches
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Historical Confluences
Thinking of the painting, Self –Portrait With Carnation, 1912, Otto Dix, I realize that my endeavor in art is serious business. And that is not to say that art is not full of its pleasures. But, any career endeavor offering little capital reward for extensive work should be taken serious. That is, of course, if you are a person of integrity who can find craft in the studio and in one’s lifestyle. Therefore, understand my necessity to imbibe the sublime in my paintings, and also too, understand, that I am not making beautiful objects. I ride my bicycle. I don’t own a car. The parallels between the way I feel when an angry driver threatens me with their vehicle and the way I felt when being told what being African-American would mean for me by my Irish-Italian mother (because I was raised without a father), is a basic introduction to what supremely influences me. I don’t have to be a genius to understand the implications of global warming. But, I ride my bike. Why should I care? I don’t have to be a genius to understand the delicate threads that bind and ultimately define the relationship of the African-American to America. However, I work, vote and file taxes, so, why should I care?
The German Expressionists, The Hairy Who/ 1960’s Hyde Park exhibitors including Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Roger Brown, Ed Paschke, Don Baum, Peter Saul, Robert Williams, Lari Pittman, Philip Guston, Carroll Dunham and Robert Colescott, all provide a contextual lens through which to view my work. The use of cartoon imagery is something that is evident in their paintings. Like some of them, I looked to images in places like comic books, car magazines, and cartoons with characters such as Donald Duck, Popeye and Woody Woodpecker.
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If you were to see an image of Cold Sweat, 1999, Peter Saul out of context, you could assume it was a cartoon character. But, these artists use cartoon in a manner that could be described as a painting language. And, where Pop Art was cool and detached, with artists like Warhol and Lichtenstein helping to commercialize art, these artists’ cartoons evolve from life experiences such as abuse, the effects of war; and a genuine affinity toward Art Brut, underground comics, other art forms like sign painting and Kustom Car Culture, humor, subversive cultures and most definitely, an extreme interaction of formalism situated in contemporary painting.
In no small way, I have been working in their shadow, the “oddball,” and the “outsider.” I have always made cartoons because I actually like cartoons. Working in my studio, thinking of affecting someone with what I make, I paint absurd things. Notions of abolition by J.M.W. Turner may have seemed romantic at the time, so using a cartoon to talk politics should not seem so juvenile. I prefer the euphemism, irreverent, and link its heritage to the American comedic traditions, comic strips, literary illustrations and perhaps World War I and II political propaganda.
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Peter Saul, Cold Sweat, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 55 ¼ x 66 ¾ inches
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Vaguely, I believe that if I cannot change the world perhaps I can change someone’s mind. Because, I want to live in a safe, healthy and happy world and since I can’t have that, sarcasm, satire, irony, irreverence and maybe even a little ribald painting is all the agency I have left. Without being too hasty, having a forum within which to insert these discourses is not something to be taken for granted, and painting and a career in Arts instruction will help to support my family. So, I suit-up, say what I feel and the irony is never lost.
Entrenched in the Fine Arts, I like to think the spirit of Muhammad Ali is something that informs me. Something artists like Colescott and Pitman possessed is a strong connection to the unique cultures that inform them. I am not different. Ali could ‘float,’ and ‘fly,’ and in my own way, a confidence, a sense of the brash, is something I bring to my practice. If the work is effective I’m doing my job, if the work has an impact I’m really “doing the dozens.” The psychology of a Mother joke is as such: take something that someone holds dear and, subvert it.
The use of line and the employment of expressive colors is something important to someone like Saul, who is quite effective at subverting the subject. These two formal qualities are the basis for my work. Just like drawing is important to an animator, and elements of design are important to a sign maker, form and space are the ultimate factors for a painter. These artists, and myself, draw a formal, technical and perhaps, philosophical line when it comes to showing/ not showing these forms and spaces.
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They use a fine line, one in polar balance -between extreme exaggerations to Photorealism -to articulate the object/subject. And color, well, they have a strong appreciation for color. Why else use hot pink or complementary pairs like purple and yellow, why else paint a Juke Joint or Dresden in green or use Day-Glo colors if you aren’t utterly compelled to create an engaging space? A masterful use of line is constituent to an ability of drafting. Painting, then, is what makes them such exciting contemporary artists, as color transforms technical ability into an experience based on an interaction of invitation, whereby a space is created within which to enter. Most importantly, the term enter refers to an experience which does not exist on the/(a) surface.
Utilizing the cartoon as a painting language, allows them to reduce or emphasize the qualities of line like speed, rhythm, repetition and contour, etc. All variations have their own specific psychological effect. They exaggerate the qualities of expressive colors. No doubt, color theory from hand-painted cel animation, signs, psychedelic poster art and comics influenced their respective theories, as well as Modernism, graphic illustration, technical drafting and Retablos. Perhaps intentionally doing things wrong was a factor, or the patina of a dark, dank, bloody battlefield made an impression that informed some of their work. The World War I photographs Hugo Erfurth showed Otto Dix must have been cathartic, coupled with his war record Der Krieg seems the predecessor of any visual zombie apocalypse. Powerful. They create experiences. They are unique, irreverent, ugly and beautiful. If ever you were to look, and could in fact move past all the color, or social commentary or
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bloody truth you will see. Cartoons are linked to pulp media, and comic strips and illustration and children’s programming, but the art of the Fine Art cartoon is one that holds no pretentions to expectation. Whereas an art that merely satisfies a formal expectation is not one of daring or invention or risk-taking, only existing ubiquitously as a reflection of those expectations -similar in the fashion of a mirror. The cartoon shatters those expectations because juxtaposed with edgy content, it not only has it’s own way of beginning a discussion yet satiates the eye with an immediate, visually revealing interaction, and is inherently rooted in opposition. Opposition that is, of the mimetic or natural experience.
My art is an attempt in this regard. And, with all the talk surrounding art with little object/subject matter, with all the confounding, and conjecture, obscurant information and literary obfuscation, all the talk of plasticity before the time that plastics filtered into our blood streams, why not? With all the time spent deliberating on the medium, why not enter this space? And, see if all the grand ‘knowing,’ all the postulating, and empty, verbal gesticulations, can stand up to all the things that aren’t being said.
Saul utilizes elements from various movements of Modernist painting: Realism, Futurism, Surrealism, and Abstraction. Representational imagery gets juxtaposed with Abstraction. With Jim Nutt, grotesque imagery can be juxtaposed with the technical touch and media of a sign painter, all under a subversive and comic-like context. I have been exploring similar methods and materials, seeking the look of a sign at times, painting on vinyl and painting on canvas. I use transparencies; I work in oil and acrylic. I
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work on paper. I spend time drawing, drawing, drawing. Not having to look far into art history to influence my work, contemporary artists like Saul and Colescott seem to push the envelope of painting. They show you something you don’t want to see and always follow the rules of good painting, in that all the aesthetic painting mores may not be adhered to, but the formal lynchpins like color, paint handling, form and composition are packed with substantive strength, vibrancy and excitement.
Making painting’s people don’t want to see is something I enjoy, but always in an attempt to paint better, bigger or smarter each time. For Robert Williams it was not enough to just be a painter, he chose to make a statement with his work. And, with his work on the album of Appetite For Destruction, Guns n
Roses became embroiled in a battle with the White House over parental advisories and the underlying implications of censorship. For me, making a statement is guaranteed, but proving my worth as a painter is essential at this stage in my career. In my work you can see representation, abstraction, Modernism, painterly techniques, collage, mixed media, oil, acrylic, spray paint, cel vinyl and charcoal.
Even when everything has been done, you can still throw the sink around. Sometimes what splashes makes a mark. It is not enough to add sugar and spice for me however; I do want to bake a cake. I don’t want to fool around; I don’t want just anything; I want a delicious chocolate cake.
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Robert Colescott, Blonde’s Have More Fun, 1999, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 72 inches
In closing, I notice the sense of sensual detail, so wrought and exhausting that it exists in the Horror Vacui. Thinking of Blonde’s Have More Fun, 1990, Robert Colescott, there is a parallel between his portrayal of American life and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s, Street, Dresden, 1907. A unique personal response to the delicate interweaving of American identities and the social response to German modernity might have informed the expression. Just like the domestic relations regarding urban communities in California during the Regan era might have been influential for Government of California, 1969, Peter Saul.
Here, the sensory and psychological experience is expressed through color, irreverence is achieved through satire and irony, and they attack each edge of the picture plane. What I learn from Pittman is that you dare not stop looking. He is in command at every point of the picture. Being generous, satisfying my urge to indulge my workworking all over -I also aim to please. What I learned from line and color I also learned from composition: extreme sensation presupposes extreme expression; I’m not painting this way. I am this way, every time I paint.
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Formal/ Informal
My paintings drip, much like blood and semen and tears. A lot of sweat drips from my body on any average day in my studio. The spirit inside is something I reveal, however excitatory, much like phlebotomy or ejaculation reveal one’s humanity in a moment of intimacy. But, the search for meaning is never overshadowed by my urge toward aestheticism. One painting can have so much content: social, political, culturalyou name it -but an ugly painting is an ugly painting. Conversely, a painting with no content can really light someone’s fire. I try to make art that is exciting; I try to make art that can kick your art’s ass.
It is thinking about reclaiming the rainbow and reclaiming the kitchen that informs my practice. These things I regard as inalienable gifts, though so far removed from my reality as a hetero American male. What is the representation of masculine vulnerability? Forms from nature, roles of domesticity, compassion; I try to connect to the values and sensations of a nurturing humanity that inspire me. Painting a stove, articulating a beautiful rainbow: I cherish the strength of Mothers, and am proud to love a rainbow for what it is and what it might represent. What about reclaiming the Gingerbread boy, in as much as a cookie is a metaphor for a disenfranchised youth?
Realities are vibrant, chaotic, sublime and violent, but they are never equal.
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Much about my work I can’t control. Using motifs and paints and drawing is how I engage my work, but doing more and planning less has paid dividends. I perceive a certain authenticity in the immediacy of my work. Abstraction, juxtaposed with surrealistic imagery, altered states of consciousness and automatic drawing -the Street -I will drink and dance and stare you down.
At one point accepting hard-to-swallow truths was a way to overcome the difficulties like a methamphetamine addiction, homelessness, suicide attempts, not having a father, loosing my mind, alcohol abuse, but now, having come so far, painting truthfully allows me to work with dignity and not feel like the Big Truth is lodged in my throat. I feel my painting serves as a reference to what I’m thinking. I hope my painting serves as the start of a conversation: the binary nature of truth is that it remains bound to fallacy.
I’m straight and I want to talk about the rainbow because it is a symbol of compassion and a sign for the disenfranchised and it is important to me. The Mother and child are important to me because the woman and lesbian female influence modeled roles of domesticity in my youth. Cooking for my child and learning to eat healthy are important to me. Being Other is important to me. All my Gingerbread Cookies are important to me. Riding my bicycle and not buying gas helps the environment and my health and is important to me. The Swastika, as perceived from a non-Western perspective, is important to me. Rabbit’s on the moon, fantasy, nature, magic, the secret of The Serpent In The Sky, all are important to me . . .
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Using imagery like this exposes my respect for nature, life, family, Women, healthy lifestyle choices, under-represented individuals, the poor, practical living, green energy, urban and diverse cultures and the importance of the father to the child and family. You can pile up all the heroic marks and heroic gestures and heroic impulses you want, I’m really trying to light a fire. I’m striking a match, and turning up the fucking heat.
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Technological Practices
My work is dependent on technology. I use it either as a sole means to create work or, at the least, I use photography and Photoshop to document my process, and output images for the purpose of promoting my work. My background in Film and Video influence my practice. Having been trained in lighting and cinematography, I feel very comfortable with a camera in my hand; what artist today is not handling some kind of camera? As someone who works with technology, it seems natural to reference it in my work. With my current series, the camera and the idea of the ‘shot,’ and the implications of the aftermath of a shooting, were connected. Consider the ‘shooter,’ then, but for some reason I go back to the camera: a tool, a social art form, and collateral party -perhaps.
You can point and shoot a gun and you can point and shoot a camera. To me they seem to be utterly symbiotic. Could shooting video be as harmful as firing a weapon? Given our sensational media, and film’s history, specifically, The Birth Of A Nation, 1915, D.W. Griffith, not to mention the racist ideologies that perforated cartoons from the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s, a case could be made. Today, violence precipitates the record button, quarrelling is the cue of fledgling videographers and taping the madness is no more the work of cowards, but an attempt to stay with… the shot!
Studying Film, researching photography, and painting for pleasure: what is the point? Many people die on camera and I don’t even own a T.V. Painting, painting, painting. Printmaking . . .
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Working with digital printing processes over the past 4 years has created new avenues for my work. Printing large scale, and then working with paint and collage on top of the print, allows me to re-contextualize the problem of mechanical reproduction. Thus, even if I printed something more than once, the painting on the surface of the print would never be the same. Printing on various substrates: canvas, paper, Dibond, Gatorboard, plastic, and aluminum, while utilizing traditional techniques like lamination, collage, and painting, on top of the print, has helped to create works that are neither all print nor painting.
Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the printed mark and my handmade mark. This is an element that adds mystery to the work. All examples of my printmaking practice are an effort to further understand -with an assumption of pushing the linear boundaries -the limitations of the medium. My background in drawing and my interest in medical illustration inform me. The work of artist’s like Albrecht Durer and M.C. Escher are an influence. Now, through the democracy of digital print media, I have entered the realm of the printmaker without ever having touched a plate.
I recently purchased my first large format printer, so printing at home is allowing me to make art in new ways. Roughing up paper with ashes and sticks and wire, drawing on top of the paper with different sizes of pens and pencils and markers, is now an option. Scanning the paper, importing to Illustrator and Photoshop, then printing from my desk, is definitely assisting me in creating new art.
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Working all-over, in the Horror Vacui, then quickly and non-destructively utilizing design elements like value-placement has benefited my creative process and has been made possible through my digital work. A little access goes a long way, and as a crafty artist, I can make a print, send it to a bookbinder, animate the rig, add audio, have it printed on a shirt and/or send it to a 3D printer. There seem limitless possibilities in a single, unassuming computer file. Access to technology provides more opportunities to create. If I can’t be at the studio, I am working from the desktop at home. I can take my laptop and camera wherever I go. Monet had a little boat; artists today, including me, now have the world.
I would like to further my understanding of these and other new developments in technology such as 3D printing, image recognition, GPS applications and digital installation within the context of social media. I want to clearly establish that I am not merely playing with toys, but take access to technology very seriousy. I understand the cost of one lowly Smartphone, not to mention the entire tech I consume. It is important to realize that for every new gadget in the store, a significant human, biological and environmental price be paid. At the least, in using it’s resources, I feel a social responsibility regarding the content/context of my work. To me it seems consumer technology is no more a record of society than it is one of consumer trends. But, an artist makes a record of culture. I use technology to this end.
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Tomorrow’s Work
Thinking about Art History, like the brooding tenebrism of a Caravaggio, the socio-political implications of The Third of May 1808, 1808, Francisco De Goya, and the Black paintings that covered his home, I am humbled. From the World War I informed prints of Otto Dix to the cultural cartooning of the Hairy Who, cultural, political and social contexts in art are still relevant. Referencing passages from painters passed, looking at art, being present in the studio, teaching students and raising a family, my work in the future will become more interdisciplinary. Planning work for 3D printing, printing on garments and large format printing, reflect a trend toward commercial practices backed by the formalities of Fine Art. Initiating dialogues within my work about the similarities between consumer culture and art is important. Continuing to work with transparencies and painting mediums, working with collage, mixed media, and drawing: my time in school has given me the ability to be fluent in cross-disciplinary approaches to art making.
I was taught that film is a business. Then, through studying art, the question of whether film is art is apparent. Now, questioning art: artists today think and view their practices in similar fashions as artists from past movements. I appreciate intellectual approaches to discussing art, and thinking about this profession in a serious, critical way. This is what interested me about art to begin with. But, what interests me most, is finding a way to satisfy my urge to create something that is unique to me, however ugly, or illustrative or colorful or detailed or maybe even sublime. I also want to creatively produce ways to deal with
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the questions, mysteries and illusions of the 2 Dimensional plane that have intrigued and ignited artist’s throughout time.
Creating an art practice until now consisted of painting and print media and drawing. Working 3-dimensionally gives me the ability to challenge my mind in a different way. Learning a little about casting, creating assemblage, gluing layers of paper, and cloth assist my process in this endeavor. Moving the print from paper or canvas, to a t-shirt or artist book or 3 dimensional print help inform my work in this realm. Thinking about sculpture more critically enables my practice to be visualized in multiple dimensions, multiple platforms and with an engagement with materials defined by expression in space.
I plan to create art from all sides: working traditionally with painting, sculpture, and printmaking; working digitally, promoting work through social media, and finding ways to make art from my laptop. Creating a practice, for me, has always been about showing something about myself that could only be said in paint. Learning how to be an artist, however, means developing many skills. In the studio or in the lab, in the woodshop or in the classroom, as an artist, all elements of my creative and technical faculties are at work. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be a musician, or writer, or Director, intellectual or Bad Ass, or addict. It’s that being an artist, for me, is a way to funnel everything that inspires me into the creation of original Art, whatever form or file or discipline that means, whatever Apollonian or Dionysian vice that is prescribed.
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In closing, my family and the artist’s I mentioned, and the artist’s surrounding me, humble and inform my practice. I couldn’t be more honored, more privileged, to do something that is subjective, arbitrary, unforgiving, pretentious, pointlessly beautiful and at times, inspiring. The darkness is indeed, filled with the bellows and cries and wailing of injured folk, but the light that shines out is gleaming with the luminescence of a transcendent kind. I try to take those to the place they need to be, for the wanting of the flock is outshined by the few who ache and moan and transgress for something beyond the state of the comfortable.
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References
Cameron, Dan. Peter Saul. Newport Beach, CA: Orange County Museum of Art, 2008.
Crumb, R., and Robert Williams. Zombie Mystery Paintings. San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1986.
Roberts, Miriam. Robert Colescott: Recent Paintings. Santa Fe: United States Pavilion, 47th Venice Biennale, 1997.
Koestenbaum, Molesworth, Phillips, and Storr. Lari Pittman. New York: Rizzoli, 2011.
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Student: Tavarus Blackmon
