Highest Definition

I recently saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), by Peter Jackson, who shot the movie at 48 frames per second rather than the typical 24.

High Definition. Crystal Clear.  Focus so sharp, it cuts.

It seems that more and more, the public is wanting to view movies, television, and video in the highest definition possible.

We gain a lot by viewing things in HD: vibrancy, clarity, beauty.

But there is something in me that is bothered by this idea that cleaner and clearer is automatically better.

I want to know what it was like before eyeglasses were invented, when you had to do the best you could with the eyes you had.  How much ambiguity was in the world back then?

Our eyes are limited in the kind of information they can provide us.

But isn't that what makes us human? Limitations?

I question how far we should go to make our art transcend the human body it originates from.

When I go to a movie, I want to be enveloped in the story like I was there with the characters when it was shot.  I want to have a shared experience with the film.

If the film looks better than how I see things in the real world, there is a disconnect.

Is it possible for a picture to be too perfect, too slick, overproduced?

When I paint, sometimes I want to hide the brushstrokes.  To make it smooth.  Then I realize that if I don't want to see brushstrokes, I shouldn't be painting with a brush.

Our hands can only do so much with the tools they are given. 

But isn't that what makes us human?

Limitations?

Portrait

Two Calls, Two Painters, Two Reasons

Philip Guston, The Line, 1978. 

1st Call

I called a friend and fellow painter whose New York gallery was greatly affected by Hurricane Sandy. He had just received over 30 images of his damaged paintings. As he narrated the scene in which the paintings were found, and described the paintings' conditions (as it was narrated to him), I imagined the paintings as dead animals. 

He told me these losses made him think about the countless summers in his studio, painting his life away.  "And when I realized it was October," he said.  

Without those paintings, what value do those summers have? 

2nd Call

I received an unexpected call from a painter who left our graduate program after a year. I remember our constant complaining about how we felt like we had to explain everything we painted. She told me about her married life and how she didn't have "a love affair" with NYC--her new place of residence. 

She also told me she went to museums and she wanted to get back to painting. She said, "One day, I told myself, I am going to Michael's and get some supplies and then I will go to Trader Joe's and buy a flower to paint a still life...but then I started to think about what it meant to do that." After a brief pause she continued, "But I don't have to explain what my paintings are about. I can just make them." 

De-Clutter

A watercolor landscape by John D. McClanahan.

Single images have a funny way of sticking in my mind.  In order to cultivate a sense of composure, my brain tends to condense long periods of time, normally filled with endless chaotic details, into just one idealized moment, one blurry freeze-frame to file away into my memory.  

I am then free to pull certain details from any one of these flashcard moments: a texture, a feeling, a color, a mood, a shape.

The few times that I have journeyed across the country by car, I have been struck by the long stretches of landscape zooming past outside my window.  And how much untouched land still lies between the coasts.  As I am about to embark on such a trip next week, I am mentally preparing myself for what could be a tedious drive.  Instead, I am going to try to focus on the landscapes reaching around me, pulling me forward, slowly evolving from farmland to desert and back again to green hillsides.  

Maybe by the time I reach my destination, I will have one of these ideal images in my mind, condensed and perfected and ripe for the picking.

Ritual

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956). Photographer Hans Namuth (1915-1990). Gelatin silver prints, 1950 Published May 1951 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; gift of the estate of Hans Namuth © Estate of Hans Namuth.

Photo of Liam Everett working (2012).

Photo of Oscar Niemeyer drawing (circa 2000s).

The artist—unconscious and dancing—letting impulses take over his body. At first, he moves quickly, as a mechanism to beat his mind. His muscles are loose, his body is thoughtless, his fists are fast, his painting is music. But with time, he allows moments of serenity and pause (when he masters to think of absolutely nothing). He makes reality like a machine, never questioning his primal performance. 

Alexander Mcqueen Summer/Spring 1999 Runaway. 

Looking: A Painting that Is Not Mine / A Painting that Is Mine

Anita Malfatti, A Onda (The Wave), c. 1915.

Anita Malfatti, A Onda (The Wave), c. 1915, (Detail).

Anita Malfatti, A Onda (The Wave), c. 1915, (Detail).

A Painting that Is Not Mine

I first see a painting from the distance. I am far away from it, but I can identify its size and its relationship to other objects and/or people around it.  I walk and the painting moves with my body. I realize my body’s relationship to the painting changes constantly (and so does my perception). Then, I stop. Take it all in. To me, this is the distance that excites me the least—medium distance. This is the place where I “understand” the painting the most because I see its entirety. This distance from the painting feels like I am looking at the painting through a computer screen. I slowly get closer and closer, until I get as close as possible. My nose becomes the only barrier between my eyes and the painting. My eyes wander and I cannot see anything in the corner of my eyes but the painting. I look at each stroke, lump, residue from one corner to the other. While I stare at each corner, I realize the painting is many small paintings. The painting multiples and moves in ways I never thought it would. The painting transforms in front of me—it is not as static as I though it was.

A Painting that Is Mine

When I make a painting, I see it from very close. My first encounter with a painting as a maker is the materials, then the shapes, colors, textures as I create it. Every painting is created very intimately at first. The more I add to the painting, the more distance I need from it. (I am one of those who keeps checking every distance and angle possible). The process of making is the process of detaching. A painting gets closer to being done when I am able to detach my body from it—believing it can live by itself and it doesn’t need me anymore.

The act of making paintings does not allow me to see paintings so statically. 

Bruna Massadas, The Giant's Eye, 2012. Acrylics on canvas,  10 X 14 inches. (Detail).

Bruna Massadas, The Giant's Eye, 2012. Acrylics on canvas,  10 X 14 inches. (Detail).

Bruna Massadas, The Giant's Eye, 2012. Acrylics on canvas,  10 X 14 inches. 

Interview: Jake Ziemann at Tartine Bakery (San Francisco)

Jake Ziemann, Pull no. 1, Acrylic, spray paint & collage on paper, 2012, 15" x 11" (unframed).

the face painters:  Congratulations on your show, Pull, currently up at Tartine Bakery!  It seems like you haven't slowed down a bit since graduating from California College of the Arts in May.  How do you think your work has evolved over these last few months since completing your MFA?

Jake Ziemann:  Thanks.  It's true, I was in a high-paced rhythm near the end of my MFA, and one of my goals I set for myself was to continue this momentum after graduation.  Sort of "hit the grounding running" if you know what I mean?  When I took a step back from the body of work I came out of graduate school with, it was clear to me that my work was edging into a more non-representational realm.  I began the series of paintings thinking of each one as a different landscape scenario, but it was apparent that with each new painting I was less interested in the landscape and more concerned about the formal aspects within the work, i.e., the shapes and forms I was creating, the way the paint was interacting on the surface of the canvas, and the color relationships that I set forth.  My new work embraces this lack of subject matter, and in most cases source material, and is blatantly about the formal decisions I make in the studio.  The work does not hold onto any particularly subject or theme, yet there are forms and colors that get recycled and reused throughout the show.  The work has essentially begun to reflect what has been occurring with my painting process, and visually depicts the breaking down and building up of formal layers, teetering the line between structure and debris.

Jake Ziemann, Teeter, Oil & acrylic on canvas, 2012, 53" x 53".

tfp:  I'm interested in the relationship between your small-scale drawings and larger oil paintings.  What amount of influence does each have on the other when you're working in the studio?

JZ:  I think the smaller works are a way for me to get the ideas out more quickly, a way for me to use the process of translating cut-up old work and found forms to create fragmented sections of what appear in the larger paintings.  In the smaller drawings, I limit myself to only a few gestures, whereas in the larger paintings, I usually labor over them and use many methods of applying layers of pigment over the surface.  I think of the smaller work as extractions pulled from the larger pieces.  I take a single thing I see present in a larger oil painting, for example a cutout form, and make that the main focus of a drawing.  My works on paper are refreshing to make and act as a reprieve from over-thinking and over-working.  I foresee them influencing my paintings more and more as methods of isolating potential solutions that could in turn help me un-complicate the irresolute mess I make on the canvas.  They ultimately help me make decisions and become less hesitant with the brush, which for me is not always an easy task.

tfp:  Where do you think your paintings will go from here?  Will you stay on your current path or shake things up even more?

JZ:  It's hard to say.  I'm quite enamored with the process of formal translation and extraction I've begun, and by no means have any plans to stop it.  I can envision getting more entrenched into my method of rebuilding and breaking down forms to a point that it implodes.  I don't know what the resulting work would look like or have any clue how long this would take, but the possibility of taking something so far that it almost obliterates any sense of lucidity within the work truly tempts me.  I do, however, always have grand ideas and plans for the next big project.  For the moment I've written them down and decided to focus on diving headfirst into my current method of making.  I'm sure I will get restless, but I think I'm going to let the work lead me blindly into an uncertain terrain for the time being.

tfp:  Do you have anything else exciting coming up on the horizon?

JZ:  No upcoming exhibitions; I, however, am going to Vermont Studio Center for a four-week stint this winter.

tfp:  Thanks, and congratulations again!

If you would like to see more of Jake's work, check out his personal website here: www.jakeziemann.com.  

And if you're in the Bay Area, don't forget to come to the opening reception of Pull on September 19th from 8 - 10PM at Tartine Bakery (600 Guerrero Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110).  See you there!

Sincerity in Art

Bruna Massadas, Studio Model (A Charcoal Drawing a Day Project), 2012.  Charcoal on paper, 14 X 17 inches.

What is my process of making work? Why do I choose this process? And, most importantly, why do I make work? In graduate school, I had the opportunity to experience different approaches to art and see how other artists relate to their work. This exposure stimulated questions about my process.

At first, while in graduate school, I was doing what I thought I was supposed to do: make art with my head. I made artworks as assignments, which others would check on to determine how well I was communicating a specific idea. This mode of art making relied heavily on explanations and research. The truth is I was neither good at those things nor liked making art this way. At the end of my first year of graduate school, I reacted against that. It was now all about the gut. The gut, however, implies a violence that I am not interested in. YES! POWER! CONTROL! AWARENESS! And what now? Do I want art making to be a reaction to something? It was still about the head since it was a reaction to it.

The problem to me was neither the head nor the gut. The problem was I was making art with the same unfulfilling purpose—to build a reputation (as an academic who makes art or a badass who makes art against something). I was more concerned about how others saw me than how I was experiencing the work. 

Lately I have been making a charcoal drawing a day and painting occasionally. No one comes into my studio but flies. My drawings are of things that happen everyday. There is absolutely nothing else to them than what you see. There is so much beauty in that.