January 31, 2014

The Burden of Content


Chinese Maple, Catskill, NY, 1981; oil on canvas, 14 x 28 in.


Someone recently asked me why I'd stopped doing complex landscape paintings; I answered that I wanted to get closer to 20th century reductive abstraction, which I love. But that's only part of the story: I also wanted to get out from under the heavy burden of content, the meaning––environmental, sociological––of those paintings. So this post is meant to tell the story of my journey, and it is related to my recent posts on William Carlos Williams, "no idea but in things", and John Singleton Copley, "The Primacy of the Object".

When I was a young artist exhibiting my "portraits" of domestic architecture, it never occurred to me to wonder what my paintings were about, except for the formal aspects of light, color, composition, form, mass and detail. I had studied with Philip Pearlstein, who eschewed "meaning" in his painting. The figures in his work were not metaphors or narratives; they were bodily facts, used to create dramatic compositions. As a full disclosure, I have to mention that for a few years around this time I also painted narrative figure compositions, so whatever yen for story I had went into those.


The Potato Field, Cutchogue, NY, 1982; oil on canvas, 15 x 34 in.


Soon I began to expand my field of vision to include the landscape around the houses. Because I was still very interested in structured compositions, my attraction was to land that had been worked: an agricultural landscape. I slowly began thinking about the meaning that resided in the land.


Tractor and Ag-Bags, Groton, Vermont, 1994; oil on canvas, 30 x 90 in.


I read books in cultural geography, such as John B. Jackson's Discovering the Vernacular Landscape, and John Stilgoe's Common Landscape of America: 1580 to 1845; and books that explored the meaning of art beyond the formal, such as T. J. Clark's The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers, and W. J. T. Mitchell's Landscape and Power. Now the landscape was no longer simply a beautiful expanse of space and light, but carried history and culture; it showed all aspects of its use and abuse. The agricultural landscape became, for me, evidence of the positive and negative aspects of our relationship to the land.


Hay Storage, Central Valley, California, 1995; oil on canvas, 44 x 66 in.


In the early 90s, for three years, I taught in California. Being there was a huge shock to my understanding of agriculture: this was the land of industrial farming, the image above at a dairy where they milked thousands of cows. Single vegetable crops were grown in huge acreages, everything prodded into growth with fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation. As a colleague of mine mentioned, "the soil is just there to hold the plants up". So all these meanings resided in the paintings I was doing; they weren't overt, but they directed my subject matter of plastic and tires, machinery and manure.


White Hose, 2005; egg tempera on panel, 28 x 42 in.


In 2002 my focus shifted again, influenced by still life photographs I was doing with my first digital camera. The landscape left the picture and all that remained was the stuff of agriculture, the machinery, the plastics, the silage, the concrete. At first the paintings were large and complex, but as time went on, I made the compositions simpler as I zoomed in to the subjects. I began to feel hemmed in by my content; what had motivated me before––the difficult environmental and social issues around farming––became extraneous to my concerns, which were formalist.


Opening, 2013; egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.


In 2010 I began to paint very small works on parchment; their compositions have become quite simple and direct...."no ideas but in things"....and the things are in themselves enough. I still find my subjects in agricultural implements; they have such variety of shape and color that they are of continual interest to me. But I don't expect any story beneath them, any social/historical/environmental content; there is enough meaning and feeling and mystery in color/shape/form/light/composition. I know there are many people who wish I was still painting large complex landscapes, but I have to answer, in the immortal words of Bartleby the Scrivener, "I would prefer not to".


15 comments:

  1. Thanks, Altoon, I enjoyed this story of your development in the work!

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  2. Wonderful post, Altoon. You convey the intention behind the path of your work with great clarity. It should be required reading for those people who say, but, but, but why don't ya paint like you used to.......

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  3. Thank you for the comments, Ravenna and Tamar. I am a little wary of showing old work now because many people respond strongly to it, but you both understand my journey.

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  4. Altoon, I can so appreciate your comment about the burden of content. Your large complex paintings were social commentary, environmental statements of the day and yesterday. Your paintings now are personal explorations with gentle quiet solitude. We all have many chapters in our book and it is important to be lead by the heart. You are an inspiration to many.

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  5. Altoon, I am an admirer and a recent follower of your work from UK/Italy. Thank you for this blog post that is inspirational and very relevant to what is happening in my own workright now: a simplification or reduction ( can't find better words) of forms in my still life. One thing that worries me though is the lack of execution difficulty. I'll explain: although simplified forms require a careful composition and some sort of subtle attuning ( listening until it feels right) while planning the painting, as I work on the canvas things proceed suspiciously smoothly, without the huffing and puffing that, say, a portrait takes. Do you have any thoughts on this ?

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    1. Thanks, Ilaria, for your kind comment. For me there is just as much "huffing and puffing" as in a more complex work; it seems less because for me the work is smaller. When I worked on a big landscape painting, a lot of it was dull repetitive work that had to be done: all those hundreds of small brushstrokes for leaves, for instance. I have to take just as much care with my current works with correct color and form. I never did portraits, so I didn't have to worry about likeness, which is maybe all you're talking about.

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    2. Thank you Altoon, yes the strive for likeness is a completely different process that in a way distracts from painting. I understand the journey to abstractions, the abstract bits are often the satisfactory ones in a "figurative" painting. It's a brave step to make!

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  6. loved reading this, Altoon, so concise, like the tip of an ice-berg indicates much beneath the surface....

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    1. thank you, rappel. Your iceberg comment is true; there's so much more to speak of, but being concise is sometimes what's called for.

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  7. Thank you Alton for sharing your artistic journey. It is interesting the arc that painters and artists find themselves on, it was nice seeing your process to date. Thank you for sharing your images over the years, and hearing the story behind them. I have been creating work for about 25 years now and am struck with how the images have developed or changed with time, and yet still hold quality and language that is the same. I also find myself coming back to old themes like old friends. It seems we as artists need to simply serve the work and where it is at in each moment, and trust where it was yesterday, where is now, and where it may be tomorrow. Thanks for the reminder.

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    1. You are very welcome, thanks for the comment. I agree that each of us has an essential style, and continuing concerns, that are part of our art no matter how much it changes.

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  8. This subject has alwasy interested me. Thanks for sharing your engagement with it. Two unrelated observations: 1) Until I moved to SW Pennsylvania I thought Grant Wood was creating abstract landscapes and was fascinated by his vision to draw those rounded, shaded forms from nature. 2) You are still painting agriculture, using egg tempera on calfskin. Is the medium (part of) the message?
    --Judith

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    1. Judith, until I saw photographs of an area of China with strange mountains, I thought the Chinese painters were making them up.
      and oh, yes you are correct, I am still involved with agriculture, and yes, the medium and the size of the work are part of its content. I wanted to keep the post clear about just one issue; it's always more complex than that.

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  9. Wonderful to read about your evolution - thanks, Altoon!

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