D:\artstatements\whattomaakeoftoday.txt
2:33 AM 1/2/2008
what to make of today????
After looking around the web for art by new artists (to me) (most are much younger than me) and most of these younger artists have a much different take on what art is/was/to be than I do. I really don’t know what this means, this first/last statement. So the new art of today’s youngin’s is different on all points than the art of what I do? Isn’t this always the case? The young are supposed to depose their elders. We called them our “parents” when I was in art school in the 1960’s. There was a presence of mind then, to succeed you had to “kill” your artistic parents and move into your own artistic world. What the hell this meant then as related to the now? I think the meaning is the same now as it was then.
It’s not that I don’t understand what many of today’s young artists are doing –well, yes, I don’t understand sometimes– it becomes a matter of who cares! There are so many more artists working in this world today than, say, in 1945 after WWII. Since 1945 the history of modern/contemporary art has advanced so fast and vast that every possible art rock has been turned over, examined, recorded, dissected, re-recorded, invented, reinvented, ad infinitum. The sheer numbers of art practitioners now allow for simultaneities of discovery, rediscovery, and simply art making to take place between more than one artists perusing the same thing at various places on this planet at the same time. Get it? All of the art isms since 1945 have been placed in the MORTAR & PESTLE of time, digested, reformed, neo’d and re-neo’d. Ain’t life grand? Oh yes, every aspect of our life as humans on this planet is continuously scanned for possible use in making art. So there are also continuous additions to this mix of what makes up our art. And the beat goes on!
In a way, all of this meshing and inter meshing and redefining of art isms goes back to the Armory Show in NYC. [1913 Armory Show: First International Exhibition of Modern Art in America (New York, 1913)] and to Marcel Duchamp, who in many ways, is the great grandfather of anybody calling the focus of one’s making practice = art. Whatever you want the focus to be –an object found in nature, colors mushed on a piece of paper, words describing an event, the thought of an event, ad infinitum– this entity, whatever its form, is art. So what is the big deal? As we enter 2008 all of these isms and the relentless number of ism variations as well as all the anti-isms that are out there, must exist along side, on top and around each other. This is the pluralism of today. This is the globalism of the art world. Meaning. What is meaning and how does it get defined now? Definitions are now left up the individual artist or to whomever wishes to add a definition to the mess, uuuuuhhhh, mix.
In line with the above diatribe, old pigeon-hole ism definitions are now old hat. What I do today that looks and feels like 1950’s AE, isn’t really AE in that time-sense. It can’t be. Why, because this is 2008. Why, because you can’t step into the same river twice. What I do today in my painting conceptually uses some of the original AE devices and connections, but it also uses large doses of intellectual AE construction and chance. What? Intellectual construction of my paintings using AE devices derived from my past work, the work of other artists (old and new), and an intellectual renewal of a making process I call “Purist Automatism” which uses very large doses of chance as a process starter and main mover for change in a specific painting over a period of time. This time frame starts but never ends, really. I stop work on a painting because there no longer are First Solution ideas forming. I address the same painting over time as if it were a brand new event. What is already there is now communicating with my muse and my muse, intuition, intellect, automatism plus other mysterious mental processes are figuring out what to do next on this thing. When all the grinding is over, the first solution idea pops up and is recognized by an element in my conscious mind,; triggers my conscious mind to start opening the paint cans, gather up the application tools, apply the paint or any other elements that are required to satisfy the immediate needs conjured up as the first solution idea. The first solution idea sets into motion the making event. Each session always starts fresh. Even though there are marks on the canvas, the making event for this canvas is constantly starting as if new. Of course what is seen and felt on the canvas during the incubation period becomes part of the stuff my mind uses to create the next fist solution idea/move. And the process repeats it self over and over and over.
I usually write this stuff very early in the am hours when I am about to go to bed. I am so tired that my mind is free to form ideas without any real checks regarding if the thought flow makes sense. Who cares. Just write it down. When my forehead starts to bounce off the computer monitor, the writing gets good (at the time). Tomorrow when I read what was written several hours earlier, it may or may not mean anything to me. So what? It will restart itself later.
dpn3:24 AM 1/2/2008
______________________________________________________________________________________
David Novak - life in flat land 
Leave a Reply