“Painting; 30% chance of rain” (Thanks A.K.!)
“My position is that we must learn to reaffirm something. In other words, we must not settle for the criticism of others or for negativisms. We need to relearn how to affirm. So, now we are in one of those intermediate periods.”
—— Alain Badiou, Interview with Oliver Zahm. Purple Fashion Magazine Fall/Winter 2010
“Caricature” is a construction in order to affirm a practice.
Started today walking away from home. Cool, misty morning; overcast. Rough start. But it is a start. I set a schedule, and I’m late. A self imposed rush. Long strides to the subway. My back right heel keeps hitting the edge of the studio wheel. Finally wedging it, wobbling it, tipping it over sideways onto a broken curb. Everything spills out into the street. Pick it all up, rearrange it. I hate this. Why am I doing this? Because this is part of a whole. This is a performance, but it’s twisted. This is a construction for affirmation. Graham Avenue subway stairs; down. I’m tired. When you’re lugging the studio it’s much more exhausting then just painting, which alone is still a shit-ton of work. What does it take to make a painting? Find out. Commit. Be patient.
“L” train platform, last car. Empty. A man is slouched over himself sound asleep and face-planted into a pile of plastic bags bungee-strapped to a rolling cart. Can I feel more awful in comparison? I feel homeless. A sort of homelessness comes over me. I guess that the extreme is to just give up. To end up giving up, to fall into nihilism. No, I can’t. I don’t want to. These are real individuals, real circumstances. This man passed out on his plastic bags, his black baseball cap stitched with the words “HIGH LINE” in lime green capitalized serif. Hands folded together in a deep sun tan. Fingernails disheveled and broken, peeling back on the tips like they clawed for a while at something. Worn, weathered claws. Every knuckle adorned with stainless steel rings, various sizes, and ornamentation, plastic jewels. His neck crooked over his chin, back curved and folded in half, head plopped down through long wavy gray hair and scraggly beard as if voluntarily suffocating himself onto thin black matte plastic deli bags stuffed full of rags. Somehow he breathes. The various sized bags on the rolling cart are stacked like a neat bundled totem ascending largest to small, efficient, pragmatic, bound to it with multicolored bungees like the ones used to tether a hood over a lawnmower thrown into the trunk of a car. Black tee shirt with some silk screened scene that looks like a dirty burning landscape or something powerful described by carved stone text. His black jeans are clean. He is groomed. Steel ear studs. New military style boots laced up right tight. He looks about sixty years old. Deep sleep. The train jostles our bodies over the tracks. We have the same black rolling cart. Mine is a mobile studio. His, a pile of plastic bags each filled with something. I park my cart next to his. What if they were switched? I sit down across from him and stare. Is this man more modern than any painting I will ever be able to make? I can’t believe that I’m thinking that.
The Revolution is long over, but is there not something past this non-resolve? Holding this in-between space calls for some kind of action. Ride the rails? Waiting. I hate this waiting “in-transit” time.
I transfer to the “N” train and decide to get out at E57th Street because I can’t take it anymore. Get out and up into the city air. All anxiety evaporates. How does the city do that? I get a coffee. Walking north in an ogling crowd of out-of-towners with the studio bumping behind me rolling over simulated cobblestones. Misty rain. Sea breeze. Horse drawn buggies. $50 passenger fee maximum. I claim a spot on the path next to a woman who is vending these masonite signs that have images printed on them like a caricature of an excited man advocating water conservation through drinking more beer. She is noticeably nervous as I wheel my cart up next to her booth. I’m instantly hyper self conscious and tense. I thought it was a good spot next to a huge oak tree and I like being near the other vendors and artists. She’s eying up my bric-a-brac operation. Compared to her I am an amateur. I blurt a friendly “Hi” and gesture with my hands like I’m drawing on a piece of paper. “Caricature,” I say. This puts her more at ease. She smiles at me, nods in agreement, then gestures down the path to all of the other open vending spots closer to a group of professional caricature artists. I sort of nod, smile, and pack everything up. There are little green plastic medallions set into the composite hexagon stonework paths in Central Park marking where the city prefers vendors to set up shop. I choose another spot and begin to set up the portable studio. Two chairs, a folding TV tray, disposable pallet, brushes, rags, watercolor paper, box of paints, India ink, plastic yogurt container, and my cardboard “Caricature” sign. I’m anxious to start painting.
Overcast, even, dispersed gray light. Some feeling like being somewhere else completely. I don’t know where though. A group of people walk by with clear plastic ponchos over their clothes. They look like a demented expedition of mechanical gnomes. A hired storage container sits on the horse path across from the studio on the other side of the iron fence. It starts to drizzle. I clamp the beach umbrella to the milk crate and open it up. Shelter. I’m dressed in layers. I imagine what is inside the storage container. What is somebody storing here? I don’t care. I think about how to paint it and the idea of storing information, the impossible task that I want a painting to do, to catch and to store everything. Yes I am expecting everything. Can it serve? Can it be in service of an idea and nothing else? Can it hold both relationship and correspondence? Keep a place between body and language? Become a social surface? This is the tension. This is the model.
Time passes. A light stepping figure enters stage left. He passes once. Passes twice. I’m working and I don’t look up. I notice that his shoes are sort of slip-on light brown leather loafers with zigzag stitching. Third time passing and he speaks. “So what is going on here?” I look up. I tell him that I am making paintings. He is under dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt. He tells me that he is looking to have himself painted as the Mona Lisa and asks if I would be able to do that. I’m fully interested in the idea and suggest that he have a seat. We chat for a bit and it is refreshing. I’m curious to how I will approach this and feel completely relieved to not be thinking about the storage container. Steve Lewis, or shall we say “Mona Lewisa,” is a fascinating and friendly guy. He’s teaching an animation class and building robots modeled with a computer program that he designed. I know I am doing him an injustice here by attempting to describe what he does. He tells me about his daughter who is starting her MFA at Parsons. He was just on his way to Lee’s Art Shop to pick up supplies for tomorrow’s class and just happened to walk past me. He chats on the phone while I try and recall a mental image of the Mona Lisa. I almost don’t want to attempt this imitation, but it’s so mysterious of a thing not to care about.
I talk to Steve about seeing the Mona Lisa behind bulletproof glass in Paris. I think of groups of tourists in sweat pants armed with cameras crowding around the bulletproof glass violently shoving each other out of the way for a better view. After a while, I ask Steve if he is doing okay, he says yes, he’s freezing, but he’s committed. I’m now thinking about the background landscape of the Mona Lisa. I’m recalling how obscure it is with that curvy switchback path leading nowhere specific. I’ve always loved that dirty diluted path and now I can’t stop thinking about it as some kind of specific, mysterious place holder. A paper coaster for a cold beer. Maybe it doesn’t even exist, but I think it’s there. I’m laughing out loud with Steve as he sees me scoop out the neck of the”Mona Lewisa” blouse. The painting unexpectedly rounds third base and I’m reveling in how this interaction has somehow bended “Caricature 2.” Switchback paths.
Gitte arrived during the “Mona Lewisa” session. She waited and read with a smile. Old soul. Ol’ friend. She’s visiting NYC from Berlin. We talked of funeral pyres and current popular burial trends in Germany. Gitte read a book of modern Italian romance stories while I worked. I painted her portrait like how an old soul would be painted. Maybe like someone stoic. Like somebody who has to exist in this world today, living in a city, but really belongs thriving in the past somewhere else, sometime, long ago when the world was a much different place.
I’m a twenty-first century man, but I don’t wanna die here.
“Caricature 2” September 12, 2010. 10am - 4pm.
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…….-XBK
“Caricature” performance announcement.
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Dear Painter, what does it take for you to make your painting? Painter, please find a way to paint what you want to paint! How are you going to learn all on your own!? All alone?! You are not a mime?! Nor a parrot!? You are playing a role in a vast theater of participants. You, the caricature, is performing for us, and for you, in order for you to perform. Well, the studio weather was beautiful today indeed! A solidarity of caricaturists. Plenty of light, color, air….and everything, everybody, all around and it’s nothing at all! Low pressure, high expectation. Shall we take a stroll on this path here? How about you, you, you? You can come too, too, too…………By the way, the Franz West sculpture has disappeared……..
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“…it took about 5 hours for me to even look at those paintings i made. i felt like they were some of the worst, most awful and frivolous things i’ve ever did….which is also a pretty weird intense, and debasing feeling….especially since it ended up seeming like the complete opposite. Where does that come from? Who is that coyote? I realized that for me, by doing this, by putting myself in this uncomfortable situation, exposing myself, embodying this caricature, mobilizing my studio, my nuts and bolts!!! helps me get much closer to what it is that i want to paint - finding a subject that is actually worth pursuing with paint is not easy to do. I don’t subscribe to a dandified painter-pep-pep. I can’t stand the mimicry, but I love vague-ness, which is also not easy to do. Vagueness for the viewer’s generosity.
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His convict benefactor revealed, Pip grows into a class-less existence. “X” What does it take for me to make a painting really matter to me? How do i create situations from which to learn? Cast the net out farther….again. Sometimes locking yourself up in the studio seems SO dead and boring that you gotta bust down the walls and just take it elsewhere for a moment, then return i suppose…
From “Caricature” performance. Central Park, NYC. 8/29/2010.
(fawn and jorg out for a stroll)
From “Caricature” performance. Central Park, NYC. 8/29/2010
From “Caricature” performance. Central Park, NYC. 8/29/2010.
Painting on paper from “Caricature” performance. 8/29/2010.
Painting on paper from “Caricature” performance. 8/29/2010
Painting on paper from “Caricature” performance. 8/29/2010