REBECCA WATERSTONE

WRITING

Monument (Requiem)

Occupied Exhibition, Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, 2022

4 Charcoals (4 Voids)

- Eucalyptus - Govett’s Leap, Blackheath

- Eucalyptus - Bell’s Line of Road

- Eucalyptus - Evans Lookout, Blackheath

- Eucalyptus - Bell

Monument (Requiem) is a memorial to collective grief and loss.

Made with charcoal from fallen trees burnt during the 2019/2020 bushfires, applied by hand, ground pigment is pushed into 4 wall-panels, into the very texture of the substrate, creating four voids. The whole-body movement and force required to apply the powdered charcoal facilitates a tactile dialogue between the touch of the hand, the rigid panels, and the materiality of the charcoal - that contains an embodied energy, and residue of the traumatic events that created it). Charcoal is a timeless, primal, elemental drawing material, that carries many layers of meaning and purpose for all cultures.   

In the aftermath of the 2021/22 fires that decimated the Blue Mountains and its communities, along with many other places throughout Australia, a palpable, heavy melancholy falls over us all, in collective mourning for our great loss. We are quiet, contemplative, in shock, consoling each other, coming together to draw strength, and seeking hope from the resilient, regenerating bush. It is eerily quiet – the scale of the loss of lives, homes, flora and fauna, is unprecedented. Places remain barren, apocalyptic, stripped of their ecosystems, reduced to burnt dust. Some places are coming back to life, in luminous green bursts of vigorous renewal. 

It is from four different burnt locations that four different charcoals were found for these works, four different eucalypts. The charcoal remains unfixed on the surface, unsettled, vunerable, and as delicate as we are – it is easily disturbed, just holding on. The scale and blackness of the drawing, suggests a heavy, dark presence. 

The charcoals are transformed trees, dense material, loaded with meaning and history, distilling and describing the immediacy of the bare, scorched, graveyard lands where they were found, where the bush and its inhabitants once thrived. Spending time in this eerie environment, the absence of birdsong was profound. The only audible noise was a few remaining crisp, blackened leaves that clung to their spindly, charred branches, creating a portentous death-rattle. 

By gathering and grinding charcoal, applying it by hand, the making of this work reconnects us with the pure, primal act of mark making. The creation of Monument (Requiem) is an act of honouring and mourning, holding space for the fragility of our collective humanity.

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Drawing in the Expanded Field, Katoomba Falls Kiosk, 3x6 Project, MAPBM, 2017

Curating this 6-week experimental investigation, the second in a series of artists’ and curators’ residencies offered via the Kiosk 3x6 Project, led by Modern Art Projects Blue Mountains (MAPBM), supported the ideas of artists living and working in the Blue Mountains, and Western Sydney, offering opportunities to discover new avenues of creative practice and develop new skills in an open-ended, stimulating and supportive environment.

The artists were encouraged to take an experimental approach to contemporary drawing practices, taking the embodied history, architecture and landscape of the Katoomba Falls Kiosk site and surrounds as a starting point. Located near the Katoomba Falls escarpment and walking trails of the Blue Mountains World Heritage National Park, the building is a rare surviving example of a Federation-era kiosk, one of only four remaining in the area.

The ‘expanded field’, in this instance, refers to the idea of investigating one discipline (drawing), through the lens of another, without limitations of conventional approaches to drawing. The term, devised in 1946 by American artist Robert Morris, referred to three-dimensional practices that stretched disciplines beyond the ‘white cube’ gallery framework.

The project provided the artists with space and time to extend, or make departures from their usual practices, engaging in new activities that challenged, blended, reframed and expanded conventional drawing approaches, both within and outside of the Kiosk’s physical and historical contexts. The artists’ focused on a range of diverse mark-making techniques and media (printmaking, three-dimensional design, ceramics, still and moving images, environmental and performative works, as well as combinations of these).

Working within, around, and on the surfaces of the architectural spaces, the artists considered the Kiosk’s broader context, electing to use and repurpose materials found in, on, or near the site, some using their bodies as tools to manipulate media and produce drawings referencing the unique qualities and history of the building and it’s surroundings. Some responded with durational works, immersing themselves in the materialities of the landscape, or working within the defined edges of architectural spaces, to create interactive moments that responded to the Kiosk’s rooms.

They defined, or re-defined perceptions and understandings of what drawing could be, expanding practices into new realms. The resulting works, exploratory and responsive in nature, focused on process, emphasising the importance of slowing down, and making space for deep engagement with materials, processes, sites and ideas.

Through this project, the act of drawing has been broadly redefined as ‘a universal human activity with inherent value, without the need for a ‘finished’ outcome’. Celebrated in this way, drawing - making marks in a raw and spontaneous way - enables us all to connect with ancient human activity, as a pathway to engaging with, understanding, expanding, recording, and reframing our world.

My work in this project was defined, and contained by architectural spaces, following an impulse to demarcate and frame areas into contained planar surfaces, bound repositories that harnessed light, shadow, material and colour, alongside groups of found, or repurposed objects.

Referencing Minimalism, Non-objective Abstraction, and The Field, I sought to imbue my works with a quiet, transcendent, meditative quality, concentrating materials into essential attributes of line, tone, shape, surface, mark and pigment. Tactile materials such as beeswax, wood, paper and metal, revealed subtle human impressions, and potent, preserved fragments of historical residue.

I explored the potential of paper, graphite and charcoal via frottage (floorboards), wrapping and binding thread on nails hammered into wallsi, harvesting and encasing local pigments in wax, in an attempt to understand, embody and define the Kiosk’s historical context. I applied materials with my hands, engaging in a sensory dialogue with the building. Taking it’s existing vertical and horizontal forms as substrates, I captured, recreated and repositioned residual floor markings, transferring them to the walls in various linear works.

I define drawing as ‘mark-making in space’. I respond to place and context with a focus on materiality, surface and edges. I reframe, distill, delineate, referencing formal compositional codes via a language of boundaries, found pigments, objects and incidental discovery. 

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here / there, Kudos Gallery, UNSW Art & Design, Paddington, 2017

This wide-ranging, solo exhibition explored the visceral intensity of yearning across extreme distance via distilled imagery, colour fields, sensory materials and found objects. It examined personal experiences drawn from 17 years of living between Australia and Scotland. Works evolved from immersion in the landscapes of the Blue Mountains (Australia) and the Hebridean Isle of Skye (Scotland), transposed into meditative, minimal works that became metaphors for understanding the physical experiences of place, preservation, absence, and the blurring of memory over time. Works included film, sound, scent, photography, found objects, textiles and beeswax paintings.  

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Brice Marden Essay -2016

Witnessing a Brice Marden painting is a transformative experience.

The first visceral response is to its colour. Rich, dense, palpable, ambiguous, evocative and enveloping, it is felt, made physical by virtue of its luminescence and oscillating dance between opacity and translucency. His paintings hum. The more you look, the more you see - a mille-feuille of influences, feelings and material processes.

'...you build up these veils of feelings. It seems as though, because the early paintings were just one color, one could say one color, no feelings - but instead of no feelings they were all this feeling. Each layer was a color, was a feeling, a feeling that related to the feeling, the color, the layer beneath it. A concentration of feelings in layers. The drips memorized the feelings, the layers, the colors.’ - (Marden, Interview in The Bomb Magazine, Issue 22, 1988)

The second impact hits via ,materiality. Subtle, soft, alive, tactile, sensuous. Arcs and lines incised by his palette knife, cutting through the waxy top layer to the many more below, remnant marks left by Marden's hand from working the surface. You feel him making the painting. This is about more than looking. It is a deeply moving experience, a dive down into an abstracted rabbit-hole, into another world. It’s a total commitment to the study of beauty.

Marden’s goal, like his hero Rothko, is to facilitate a transcendent experience. The works resonate and tremble with life, their vibrations transmitted to our nerve endings. Despite initial outward appearances, these works hold a great deal more meaning than the non-objective, reductive abstractions they first appear to be.

The great masters of art history are all present, if you look deeply enough. Zurbaran's rich, velvet, muted colours; Johns' waxy, grey impasto; Rothko's meditative quietude, Giacometti's containment and delineation of space. They nod to, but defy categorisation as mere Minimalism, Colour Field Painting or Abstract Expressionism. They contain elements of Velasquez, Vermeer, Cezanne, Manet, Matisse, Kline and de Kooning. Marden has distilled, re-purposed and merged these qualities and techniques to arrive at his own unique confluence of visual language and process. His singular approach, as un-copy-able as a slick signature, along with his choice of a little-used, archaic medium and process, is combined with a reverence for, and defence of beauty within the robust physicality of his surfaces.

There are personal tributes to people (Marden's wife and children - ‘the muses’, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith); places (elusive, undefineable greens seen on a Nebraska road trip, the soft, warm blue skies and sea, or muted grey-blue-green olive groves in his beloved second home of Hydra, Greece), feelings, sensations, moss, poetry, the seasons.

Marden's early wax paintings are also influenced by his time in Paris watching plasterers restore ancient, crumbling walls, sweeping their trowels in large arcs, smoothing, scraping, the thick plaster dripping down. He translates these techniques into a sophisticated material language of highly controlled oil and wax, applied with sensitive vigour to huge canvases with a giant kitchen palette knife, revealing a repetitive process of layering, figuring out and correction, all contained tightly within the edges of the picture plane.

Deep, personal emotions are imbued, transposed and distilled to their essence via the artist's hand (and body - many works are very large, he calls them 'human-sized'), going beyond that which is easily-referenced or conventionally understood, to expand and explore new realms of painting.

His work entices us to look long, take time, slow down. Marden wants us to inhabit, experience, and be deeply affected by the work, for it to resonate, and change us. He gently facilitates our immersion in colour, light and surface, and like Rothko, wants us to get up close, so the panting fills our entire field of vision, completely enveloping us. He helps us notice, and be enriched by the painting’s inherent subtleties, to complete the agreement, and fulfil the work’s purpose as the vehicle that enables our transportation to a state of bliss. 

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Facilitating Transformation: The Importance Of Sublime Materiality And Beauty In Contemporary Art. 2016

Art has the power to transform us. Some artists work with a higher purpose, to elevate us from our daily grind, sorrows, and fears, to a higher state of being. The ‘general public’ know this, as it is witnessed in the masses visiting arts institutions, galleries and events, partly or wholly for this reason.

In the 20th century, the Western artworld shifted from prioritising beauty and the sublime, to anti-aesthetics, remnants of which pervade contemporary art, but now it has reached a zenith of exclusivity and de-skilled artists. In these troubled times, it is time to question the validity of this continued presence and relevancy. Although change can be a positive thing, the pendulum may have swung too far from the vital, life-affirming roles that art, beauty, and the sublime play in providing highly effective ways of communicating meaning, enjoyment and fulfilment. We should all be working to enable people to access an artwork’s meaning and inherent pleasure, and a positive way to do this is through it’s aesthetic qualities.

It is impossible to arrive at an absolute definition of beauty, as it is subjective and constantly changing, We can define beauty in general terms as an aesthetic quality that attracts and pleases the eye, and other senses. Distinct from beauty, and occupying a higher, spiritual realm, the sublime is the vehicle through which one may connect with, or be transported to, a higher state of consciousness.

Brice Marden is an artist who prioritises beauty and visceral, transformative experiences through painting. Over a career spanning five decades, his work has continually evolved. Like many contemporary artists he nods to the past, but reimagines materials, ideas and processes in new ways. Although his work references Modernism, Minimalism, Colour Field painting and Abstract Expressionism, it transcends these to sit comfortably within a contemporary art context. He achieves this through prioritising beauty, aesthetics, materiality, and consideration of the viewer. Meditative and quiet, his work entices the viewer to slow down, inhabit, and experience the work, and for it to resonate with them. Marden noted the potential for a painting to transform the soul after experiencing a Rothko work, ‘...you’re in a space – an indefinable space...it is having an effect on you physically. You feel engulfed, totally surrounded by it…I had...a transcendental experience...I was driving...in California...going through...the artichoke-growing capital of the world. They grow in long rows over gently sloping hills...there was a very peculiar light, and...a storm approaching, and I felt I was in a Rothko painting. I remember the sensation very distinctly and made an etching about it soon after.’ (Marden, 2008)

I subscribe to Marden’s approach when making a painting, and align with his consideration of his audience. He wants you to not just look, but see, deeply, and feel, to have an experience. He is aiming, through painting, to transform your spirit and transport you somewhere beautiful, through the colour, surface and quiet energy of the paintings. I appreciate this as a viewer, that the artist takes the time and effort and care, to want to make your life better, even for a moment. That seems a very noble pursuit. It seems very much at odds with a lot of contemporary art experiences I have had, which feel removed, cold, and disinterested, deliberately aiming to be offensive, or jarring. We are all in need of a balm for the soul, which Marden’s kind of painting can provide.

In an interview for the Tate Museum, Marden said of his time at art school, ‘we were discussing beauty....we looked at a lot of beautiful painting...beauty was not a verboten subject’. (Marden, Landscapes of The Mind, 2008)

This approach in the context of art schools, has changed. Beauty is no longer prized, but rather the ‘new’, ‘challenging’ or ‘topical’ takes centre stage. I have struggled with this, none of these concepts are foremost in my mind when I am making. The same is true of many of my contemporaries. Our work is personal, material, aims to move and be considered beautiful, creating spaces for quiet contemplation, and transmitting that to others. These are qualities we have found to be frequently disregarded by the current artworld and academia. This raises the question of the validity and purpose of what we are so passionately doing, and our answer comes back strongly, that our focus infuses our practice with a drive and sense of deliberate urgency, a need to communicate these qualities even more than before. We know there is certainly a place for the ugly, the difficult, the challenging, and are open to bringing these qualities into our work – perhaps specifically for contrast, to highlight beauty and sublimity.

Living between Australia and Scotland for the past 17 years, my work investigates personal experiences of time, place, geography, and seeks stillness. Specifically, distilled sensations of colour, weather, landforms, seascapes and atmospheres, are visually and sensorially communicated through the creation of woks that contain tactile, romanticised memories.

Referencing Minimalist Abstraction and Colour-field Painting, muted, chromatic spaces encapsulate a visceral response to immersion in ethereal landscapes. Planes of cast beeswax, found wooden objects, subtle marks, surfaces and colours, act as delicate, but potent fragments, embodying the residue of history and place, and time-weathered memories. The opacity and softness of beeswax is used as a metaphor for blurring and erosion of remembered experiences over time, and their preservation. I use these materials in order to draw the viewer in through their beauty, so they may absorb themselves in the work and the colour and surface, to go deeper and gain respite or a sense of quiet contemplation. Recent works include encaustic painting on a range of scales, found assemblages combined with beeswax and paint, photographs and video/sound works, scent, and materials which embody place such as the Isle of Skye (seasalt, textiles, antlers); Blue Mountains (eucalyptus, water, stone). A video work made up of two large-scale projected videos facing each other within the gallery space (Skye and the Blue Mountains), also involved specially-created sound pieces from the landscape interwoven with original, abstracted instrumental recordings. The works are both accessible, and open for deeper investigation, seeking to resonate with the viewer on many levels. They are intended to provide an environment for the viewer to immerse in the landscapes and spaces created by the works. It is my hope the viewer is viscerally affected, and experience what I am trying to communicate to them.

The multidisciplinary works, connected by the common threads of place, colour and atmospheres, is an immersive experience for visitors, particularly in the space where the films come together with sound, colour, scent and taste, evoking an experience of location, to feel the landscape within, as well as around us, viscerally through weather, scents, colours and atmospheres. There is an experience of being in two places at the same time, made more potent and heartbreaking when we think of important people in our lives who are so far away.

Foremost in my mind when I am making work, is the desire to accurately transpose experience, colour, physical and emotional sensations into beautiful surfaces. Like Brice Marden, I use elements of minimalist abstraction as a way of distilling ideas, making them more potent and sublime, through the removal of extraneous matter. Making them visually engaging by taking time to draw out their beauty, can help people understand the work via the senses, rather than intellectually or through an image. Sensory understanding is more immediate and deep than intellectual understanding, as it is felt in the nervous system, the bones. This is the primary way I experience the world and I wish for others to also experience and share this. In polishing the wax paintings I achieve a glossy, smooth, translucent surface, revealing the layers beneath – this is analogous to the many layers of life and personal experiences we all have.

The aesthetic qualities of beauty and sublimity are powerful sensory and aesthetic hooks, (sometimes deliberate, sometimes not) that at least initially, can engage us in an artwork or experience. Artists have long used these qualities to ensure the viewer invests their time in, and pays attention to the work. In early religious painting, alongside colour and scale, beauty and sublimity created a sense of awe, delivering powerful messages, instilling virtues, warnings, and teachings. Beauty and the sublime infused the decorative arts, in order to create spaces that supported a sense of wellbeing, power or status. With the advent of abstraction, beauty as a focus was either set aside, or arrived in new forms – pure shape or colour, a focus on materiality, or the surface qualities of the picture plane itself.

In the early 20th century, Anti-aesthetics and Dadaism challenged this status quo, at a time when people were disillusioned from war-torn life, and tired of the inequalities of the social classes. The proponents of this movement felt the art world needed to ‘get real’ about things, and show things as they truly are – which is sometimes difficult and ugly – rather than presenting a fictional image of life as romantic, beautiful, and unreal. They saw that traditional approaches to art, which held beauty as a priority, being for a higher purpose, as being irrelevant to a modern world and something that must be destroyed. This feeling perpetuated in many guises over the years to the present day, through the Surrealist, Abstractionist, Modernist and Post-Modernist movements, via the Conceptual and Pop Art periods, and continues in various contemporary art spheres today.

It remains an impassioned response to a failed society. Every stage of art history has seen the current mode disrupted, dismantled and superceded. There will always be a critical voice aiming to destroy what is, and create the new, regardless of its qualities. Some periods are more brutal than others, and in 2017, this feels like a particularly harsh and devastating phase, not just in art, but in global society.

Of beauty’s place in art, American art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto clarified that,

‘It was the moral weight…assigned to beauty that helps us to understand why the first generation of the twentieth-century avante-garde found it so urgent to dislodge beauty from it’s mistaken place in the philosophy of art. It occupied that place in virtue of a conceptual error. Once we are in a position to perceive that mistake, we should be able to redeem beauty for artistic use once again.’ (Danto, 2002)

His philosophy called for a balanced view of the role of beauty and the sublime in art. Rather than do away with it altogether, he felt all aspects of the aesthetic canon were valid, and simply needed re-structuring, it’s components given equal weight for artists to use, or not use, as was appropriate. In his critique of Brice Marden’s ‘Plane Image’ retrospective at MoMA New York in 2006, Danto locates Marden’s ouevre in a unique space within an art- historical context:

‘Now that space and surface coincide, there is no place left for painting to go. As the ’60s ended, artists and critics could be heard stridently declaring that painting was dead. The first paintings in Marden’s show date from the mid-’60s. The question they ask is: Where do we go from here? What is left after Modernism is over? It ended with the discovery of flatness. Now what? Marden was...unique in realizing...that Modernism was dead. But all around him exciting new things were happening in art, Pop...but also Minimalism, which was closer to his own impulses. (Danto, 2007)

New York art critic Clement Greenberg was highly influential with his writings on contemporary art. His philosophies still pervade the contemporary artworld today. He championed the profound sensibilities of abstract painters, who were concerned with colour, surface and the purity of flatness. He felt this was the next important phase of a continuum progressing from past masters such as Manet. He wanted painting to be about painting itself. This philosophy was railed against by the new wave of Abstract Expressionists such as Pollock, and de Kooning. Additionally, Greenberg’s clinging to Kantian ideals infused the artworld with misconceptions about the aesthetic value of contemporary art, often equating new and challenging works with anti-aesthetics. There is some truth in that, and the blame cannot entirely be laid at Greenberg’s or Kant’s feet. I have felt something of an aesthetic lack when faced with much contemporary art, not because of any influence Kant or Greenberg may have had, but purely based on my own criteria for assessing the value of a work – skill, depth, intent, beauty, the sublime, power, surface and colour. Similarly, it is unlikely the average gallery visitor today has an internalised bias towards this way of thinking based on knowledge of Kant’s or Greenberg’s thoughts, but rather are more likely to assess it by reflecting on their own set of personal criteria – can they understand a particular work of art? Is it enjoyable or challenging to look at? Do they like the colours, or the subject matter or the way it’s been painted? This would account for the crowds at Vivid, or any blockbuster art exhibition such as the current Van Gogh: Seasons show at the National Gallery of Victoria, for example. People seem to want relatively easy access to beauty, skill, spectacle, escapism, and a guaranteed good time, perhaps to ease their burdens, and to be inspired. They also want to be challenged, but without support in the form of explanations or frameworks within which to understand ‘difficult’ work, the result is likely to be less satisfying. Artists, curators, museums and galleries must respond to this to remain relevant. Considering audiences and their needs, Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate Museums and Galleries, UK, states,

‘...the gallery experience lies with the promotion of different modes and levels of `interpretation' by subtle juxtapositions of `experience'...in this way we can expect to create a matrix of changing relationships to be explored by visitors according to their particular interests and sensibilities.’ (Serota,1996)

In many contemporary gallery settings, people feel hindered - not by any unwillingness to be open to new ideas, but by artspeak-laden ‘explanatory’ text, or no text at all (supposedly in deliberately non-didactic interests), which is ultimately unhelpful and alienating. Unless the viewer is armed with a context, viewing artworks that challenge them can be a frustrating experience, an approach many find particularly unappealing when faced with intentionally repulsive, or poorly-made work, and dismissive gallery staff. They are seeking art to enliven and enrich their lives, not make it harder. Therefore we see the rise of the blockbuster exhibition and public event. It is witnessed in the masses visiting arts institutions, galleries and events (such as VIVID), partly or wholly for this reason. Large cultural institutions take a more democratic approach, enticing the widest possible demographic in order to remain viable, whilst keeping accepted art-historical virtues and values alive.

The artworld still has a problem with beauty, and crowd-pleasing exhibitions – ironic, as these works were once highly desired and deemed cutting-edge by the social elite. However, public places like the Art Gallery of New South Wales, or the Museum of Contemporary Art, have harnessed something arguably more valuable and vital than the exclusive white cube galleries, the ability to lift the human spirit, educate and inspire, en masse. We need that today more than ever.

In Modernity Versus Postmodernity (1981, p10), Habermas locates the move by the avante- garde towards anti-aesthetics, in the period that pursued the destruction of beauty in art. Stating, ‘Nothing remains from a desublimated meaning or a destructured form; an emancipatory effect does not follow.’, he predicts the common experience of the often-alienating aspects of contemporary art.

This feels like a particularly harsh and devastating phase, but it is not new. There is a place in art for exploratory and experimental work that disrupts and challenges, this is important in order to move forward, but a positive take on this is avoided by an self-focused culture whose modus operandi is commerce-or-fashion-led exclusivity, repelling commonly-held standards of beauty and skill. Artists and galleries have a responsibility in these situations to ensure accessibility and a fulfilling experience for the viewer. This is often lacking.

Cultural spaces must provide opportunities where, ‘...the urgency and complexity of our times may be contemplated and addressed. Here our desire for understanding...connection and beauty may be fed, even in the midst of horror. It is impossible to...assume...culture is a common good: it must be constantly argued.’ (Croggan, 2016)

Much like the pop star who attains overnight success on a reality TV show, rapidly ascending into public life in an unformed state without the experience, sensitivity or rigour to give a strong foundation to a long-term career, these ‘flavour of the month’ artists present work that can superficially be characterised as anti-aesthetic, but lacks a firm grasp of the art-historical context with which to ironically employ this rebellious approach. It is at times lazy, and empty. They run the risk of disappearing from view along with their work, only to be quickly replaced by the next crop of ‘talent’. Nothing lasts in this fast-paced, shallow world. The saturated, constantly changing production-line leaves little to no room for those artists who put the hours in, working rigorously, striving for beauty and meaning, hoping to inspire, transform, and endure. The far-reaching and potentially damaging consequences of tastemakers turning their backs on well-crafted, beautiful, positive, memorable, deeply transformative works and artists, comes at the expense of our collective and personal cultural wellbeing. Paradoxically, although I saw very little painting when visiting many galleries in Sydney throughout this past year, I did notice a strong focus on it at one event - The Sydney Contemporary Art Fair. There was a lot of very ‘beautiful’ painting. This seems to be one sphere in which beauty and skill are still prized.

‘What is defined as ‘beautiful’ changes.’ (Keldoulis, 2013)

In contemporary art, it is still frequently the case that the audience’s needs are ignored in favour of making and presenting work that is ‘cool’ or deliberately obtuse. Viewers are rather excluded, offered little or no ‘way in’ to understand the work. We are all the poorer for this approach. Artists and galleries have a responsibility to make, exhibit, and enable public engagement with all kinds of works, including those that challenge, and those that seek to transform us through beauty and the sublime.

The pendulum has swung too far from art’s original role in communicating meaning and providing fulfilling experiences. The baby has been thrown out with the bathwater, in terms of enabling wide access to an artwork’s meaning via it’s aesthetic qualities. Some galleries and certain sections of the artworld still cling to the anti-aesthetic approach, perpetuating a culture that largely rejects beauty and the sublime, and instead champions an often-alienating, unhelpful climate of elitism and deliberate obfuscation. In trying to remain ahead of the game, and legitimising ‘bad-art’, they are in fact complicit in the destruction of accessible culture.

A significant painter who successfully straddles both worlds, forging her own path with great effort, regardless of fashion or beauty, is American artist, Amy Sillman. Although she renounces beauty as a driving force, her works are beautiful. By ‘beautiful’, I mean they are balanced, unified, have integrity, and are masterpieces of contemporary colour and meaningful composition. She explains her approach,

“I don’t care about beauty at all, not one tiny bit. In fact, I don’t like it. I’m interested more in ugliness.” ....“I’ll go over something that looks perfectly good — it looks beautiful, there’s nothing wrong with it, and I completely wreck it,” (New York Times, Loos,T., 2013)

SIllman states, ‘Art school used to be where you learned how to make things well, but most people nowadays are masters-of-none. On the other hand, the ‘deskilling’ discourse just doesn’t account for what I’m talking about. There’s this diligence...to the search; it is a demanding job to attempt ... I started to be invited to panels about ‘beauty’ and ‘visual pleasure’...I would find myself quiet, sullen... blurting out...that I couldn’t give a shit about beauty. They would look at me: what, then, was I looking for? I came up with the idea of hatred...I just knew that attractiveness was the enemy....we want...art...animated by ugliness, destruction, hatred, struggle. Punk seems as close as one can get to describe it, but what could be less punk than staying up late in a studio trying hard to make a ‘better’ oil painting?’

As a painter in a contemporary art landscape, Amy Sillman found she needed to justify her work, locating it in a space of animated energy, in an abstract expressionist framework, but with a nod to figurative, landscape and narrative painting. Despite a generally unsupportive climate for this kind of work, she kept doing it, quietly honing her craft over 30 years. This is a good lesson for myself, and my contemporaries. She makes her own rules, bridging the traditionalist and contemporary painting worlds, holding both beauty and ugliness in play in her work, always with great intent, effort and skill. Looking for the thing that feels right, which might be something that actually jars, and therefore animates, the work. I would like to explore this approach further in the future, to be able to hold both beauty and it’s opposites in balance. She references previous generations of abstract painters, infusing the works with semi figurative elements (reminiscent of – but brasher than - Richard Diebenkorn’s pieced-together abstracted representations of landscapes and forms, she pushes the idea further).

‘The proof is in the paint, as opposed to in the accompanying essay or press release.’ www.thewhitereview.org/art/amy-sillman (Bradley, P.K, 2014)

Some art is lazy. Mimicking what’s accepted as being cool, non-making, de-skilled ‘bad-art’, rebelling for rebellion’s sake, going for what Marden calls ‘...the cheap shot. That thing that's a little too easy to do.’ (www.interviewmagazine.com/art/brice-marden)

Sillman has been ‘getting away with’ being a painter through drawing (with paint) in a climate where there is little support for painters. At this stage of her career, the work is so refined, it transcends fashion, she has carved out her own niche, is aware of art history and her work’s place in it, as well as the need to challenge and draw out the ugly. Not to repeat, or rebel against the past, but to acknowledge it, without throwing it all away. She still relies on paint itself, colour, shape, composition, scale, skill, effort, and wants the audience to engage, often on a humorous level (she is a cartoonist and stand-up comic). She doesn’t take ‘the cheap shot’. This is a good way to move forward, fusing the past with the now, keeping what works, re-working what doesn’t, without removing all aesthetic considerations. It is an approach that enriches, includes and uplifts everyone – something that art has always done, and should be able to continue to do.

It is vitally important to ensure the quality and purpose of art, for beauty or not, remains steadfastly championed by all those in the arts. There is undoubtedly a place for anti-aesthetics, the ugly and difficult, provided it’s rooted in integrity and rejects weak skill, or a laziness of mind, in favour of effort and rigour. For me, beauty wins, as its the one sure way to bring people to the table. Once they’re there, you open a space for all kinds of dialogue. This is the true purpose of art.