art Archives

Legacy

With Salarrué.

Like a Polaroid shaken in the light, details of the once-beloved artist emerge. This happens just before the record of his life is erased by time and war. His students remember.

He was called unclassifiable, a sphinx without a riddle, a gentle man uninterested in greatness. He loved invented worlds and claimed Atlantis as his home country.

He loved the people of the land and not its titles. And they knew it.

***

In honor of the birthday of the celebrated Salvadoran painter, writer, and philosopher Salvador Salazar Arrué, better known as Salarrué (1899-1975). Reed Johnson’s 2005 article in the LA Times discusses a recent resurgence of interest in the artist’s life and work.

Unfinished Business

Matters of making sense.

There is a sculpture in the center of our circle. We look, and when the speaking begins, it becomes clear that while we have been looking toward the same object in space, we have not seen the same sculpture.

It has often been assumed that when the eye sees, the spirit will know, but knowing is a palette, not a product.

One of us had a question. When working, how much of a given environment do you censor to meet what demands? He saw no difference between painting and sculpture, the idea being that any picture is a living thing, sculpted by changes imposed from outside, and never done.

***

Inspired by American sculptor David Smith. The italicized question above is his.

Casting the Reach

Bodies in moving clay.

When the artist tunnels naked through clay, one result is this: an elemental frame of bone-white force, stilled in the moment of its most violent eruption. She’s never sure what she’s made.

Not until I remove it from its casing, she says. Here, for example, are some heads. They are made of the impressions of hands. From these, a sculptor thinks. Most of her bodies are headless.

Here is an arm. It points toward a dense nebula, adjusting as the planet beneath it spins, its constant movement borne of an intention to remain still.

***

This post is assembled from phrases and images found in this recent BOMB article by Brecht Wright Gander profiling Juliana Cerqueira Leite, whose DECAPITAR is on view at New York City’s PROXYCO until October 29.

Questions of Measurement

The reach of an image.

How do you find a painting?

There is a process. Look. Cut. Collect. Look. Repeat.

Does it always work?

Nothing does.

Whose dream is this world, and how did we get here?

How do you handle accumulation with care?

How does an image become a backbone,

and how much will it hold?

Consider some rites of passage.

What are the rites of the soul?

When the oracle shares a meal with the nurturer,

what do they discuss?

And who cleans after it’s done?

An architect and a protector meet at a well.

Who is the first to offer?

How do you paint with the materials of a given day?

If the soul is a translucent heart, beating, what is

the reach of its vessels?

***

Inspired by the mixed media art of Amber Robles-Gordon

Interested Party

Notes on the hero artist.

We who knew him called him friend, and we did this with relief, in celebration. Look, we were saying, there are still some who make their own rules. It is still possible to live a dream.

No, he would say, it is not possible. Only necessary. As he saw it, this was the point.

Why would he spend so long, some wondered, in certain conversations? We could not pull him away, and all he had to say for himself was, it was all so interesting.

***

Adapted from comments made by Betsy Sussler in celebration of the life of Michael Goldberg, appearing in BOMB’s Summer 2008 feature, In Memoriam: Michael Goldberg.

In Passing

Overheard between dreamers.

You look cold. Here’s a bonfire. I’ve been carrying in around in my chest all this time.

You sure?

Take it. Really, I have no use for it but this.

Thanks. I keep falling into wells.

But you always climb out, yes?

Yes, but wet and cold.

I am trying to be more of a tree, really. But the fire keeps getting in the way.

Hmmm. How?

I mean to put down roots and draw some order from––everything, which is too much.

That is a lot.

But at the top, see, there’s the crown. The leaves. If I get it right, I could be a sort of mediator between the soil and the leaves.

Huh.

Here. Check this out. It’s my first clear vision of reality.

Um. It looks different. Not like any reality I’ve seen.

That’s kind of the point.

***

Inspired by this feature in Daedalus: Statements and Documents: Artists on Art and Reality, on Their Work, and on Values (Winter 1960).

Sound Painting

Holding beyond reach.

Near the end, you explained that something strange was happening. You had grown accustomed to a powerful presence. One day, without explanation, it left. What followed had more force but no face. You called it sound.

Later, people wondered if you were letting go or just beginning something new. But even when a body means to hold, so much of what happens slips through.

Before you left, you painted reminders. You pulled us into its rough color. You said, listen.

***

Inspired by the sound paintings of Anne Truitt.

Expanded Expansion

The artist makes room.

Your aim was an art that would not behave as art. While dying, you made your untitled rope piece, layering industrial latex like paint over string and wire suspended from the ceiling. It resembled a decimated fishing net after a storm, or the work of an overworked spider gone mad. You welcomed unseen others into a shadowy space, inviting us to attend to what crawled, flickered, and flashed. You did not specify how long to look, or where. How is it possible, we wondered, to feel so in the way in a mostly empty room?

Touch, you said, and meant it. Who could do that now, with all the insurance? Come in, you said. But try another door. You left it to us to find it. There are other openings, you said, and more hollow spaces than we were accustomed to noticing.

What do you know? One skeptic asked and you said Nothing.

***

Inspired by the art of Eva Hesse, and by Mignon Nixon’s article “Eva Hesse Retrospective: A Note on Milieu,” (Spring 2003 in October).

Abiding Patterns

The work of hands and hidden forms.

I am trying to clarify the pattern, the artist said, in reference to the shape of living here. The artist was after this great unconscious form. The artist saw this form everywhere. It wants uncovering, the artist said.

And what will happen when you find it? Someone asked. I can tell you one thing, it won’t be a retrospective. Then the artist posed a question: ever been to a Shaker retiring room? Tell me you don’t see it.

Point being, the ideals of a people are to be found in what they make. To enter the room is to see belief in action. Among these, to work is to pray. Among these, a reverence for simplicity. The wood is pine, abundant and unvarnished.

It evokes the old reminder: never paint a ladder, because you won’t see the cracks in the wood. Here is made by climbing hands. You can see them at work in every joint, in the weave of the seat, the file of the arm of the chair.

Feel them, even in this room empty of all but the furniture they once made, for the living.

***

Inspired by the work of artist Tom Sachs, especially his furniture.

Barefoot Museum

A hall of dream artifacts.

A basket, a wheel, a shield. A barefoot artist enters. Some ceremony begins, an incantation. A spectacular lizard climbs a tree. Whose eyes have looked through these masks?

Do you have any neutral artifacts? Someone asks, but there are none.

The left side of an angel rests on a table: a single wing, once attached. Someone has painted it recently. It is drying. Nearby, the artist draws the anatomy of a seraph, hollow bones radiating from the spine and feathers like fingers, and maybe this is what you came to see, this simple diagram in pencil––down to earth, a practical rendering in painstaking detail, affirming something that otherwise seems to move in and out of spaces like shadow or the morning fog or your next breath.