Never underestimate the power of thinking out loud - especially with an awesome friend who can catch the one big idea that actually means something amidst all of your chatter.
Today, a fellow artist visited my studio, and after weeks of working alone in the studio, I had no fewer than a million ideas in my head screaming for feedback. As I began to fill the available time with my random, urgent thoughts, I detoured on to various explanatory tangents, and...WAIT! What did you just say? My patient listener stopped me in my tracks. It appeared I had stumbled upon one of those big ideas that makes all the rambling little stuff make sense. And now it's a whole new world...
In the past year, my art has transformed dramatically, and I have understood this new direction to be grounded in my interest in images and the experience of viewing. But I have never really adequately explained my choice of the particular images I have chosen to work from, other than what have been fundamentally aesthetic (and occasionally art historical) explanations. But my choice of images is critical. What I was finally able to identify with clarity today is that my interest in images is not merely as images, but rather is rooted specifically in images that represent a cultural fantasy of self-actualization, a fantasy steeped in narrow, idealized notions of beauty, wealth, and power.
I had been moving in this direction with my increasing focus on issues of glamour. I recently began to read "Glamour: A History" by Stephen Gundle, in which he argues that the notion of glamour is an historical phenomenon that grew from the social mobility created by the Industrial Revolution. Simply put: glamour was never truly glamour until it was aspirational.
And if my life has been about anything, it has been about aspiration. Ambition. Desire and disillusionment.
So much more to come. I have just begun to scratch the surface.
Today, a fellow artist visited my studio, and after weeks of working alone in the studio, I had no fewer than a million ideas in my head screaming for feedback. As I began to fill the available time with my random, urgent thoughts, I detoured on to various explanatory tangents, and...WAIT! What did you just say? My patient listener stopped me in my tracks. It appeared I had stumbled upon one of those big ideas that makes all the rambling little stuff make sense. And now it's a whole new world...
In the past year, my art has transformed dramatically, and I have understood this new direction to be grounded in my interest in images and the experience of viewing. But I have never really adequately explained my choice of the particular images I have chosen to work from, other than what have been fundamentally aesthetic (and occasionally art historical) explanations. But my choice of images is critical. What I was finally able to identify with clarity today is that my interest in images is not merely as images, but rather is rooted specifically in images that represent a cultural fantasy of self-actualization, a fantasy steeped in narrow, idealized notions of beauty, wealth, and power.
I had been moving in this direction with my increasing focus on issues of glamour. I recently began to read "Glamour: A History" by Stephen Gundle, in which he argues that the notion of glamour is an historical phenomenon that grew from the social mobility created by the Industrial Revolution. Simply put: glamour was never truly glamour until it was aspirational.
And if my life has been about anything, it has been about aspiration. Ambition. Desire and disillusionment.
So much more to come. I have just begun to scratch the surface.