integrity

exactly one week ago today, my friend Marilee said something to me that has stuck with me, and resurfaced in my mind over and over again, and helped me to reflect on my own artwork (as well as the artwork of others) in a variety of ways. I don't recall exactly how the conversation started, but it likely had something to do with some of the newest and freshest ideas that I have for exploring paint and space. Whatever it was, it sparked a conversation about one of my older pieces of work, from when we were both students, and a comparison to other contemporary works we've seen recently. The piece of mine in question was one where I had stacked two canvases together, and cut through the first to make the second visible. Among the other contemporary works that were mentioned were some belonging to Titus Kaphar, who is a promising young, Black artist, who makes intriguing pieces that question and re-shape ,or re-frame (so to speak) Black history. In some of his works, he borrows imagery from art history, then literally cuts into the canvas and (again, literally) re-arranges the elements to give the work different connotations. Some of the re-arrangements are subtle, while others are not - however I find that the shift in meaning and mood of the work is always great. What Marilee said to me that caught my attention was about the treatment and integrity of the surface of the canvas when those of us who are incline to do so, cut into the canvas.

For hundreds of years (perhaps more), artists have been searching for ways to merge painting and sculpture together. Some attempts have been more successful than others. The end result is usually that it looks like a sculpture with color on it, though this is not always the case. I think Marilee felt that some of us painters who cut into our canvas get a little carried away with turning it into a 3-dimensional sculpture, and lose sight of the fact that it is also a 2-dimensional surface with loaded potential for the illusion of space. She felt that mine still honored the integrity of the 2-dimensional plane. I suspect that fact had to do with how 2-dimensional my cut canvas was really treated. Though I did create real space, I still treated both canvases as the 2-dimensional canvas that they were. I am a painter, after all. it's what I do. I also happen to love color and texture; and I also happen to not be a sculptor.

Interestingly, I was first inspired to cut into my canvas by a sculptor. I spent my spring term of 2003 studying art history abroad in Rome. A few months before we left for the program, our professor, Jeffrey Collins, gave us projects to research. I had a villa, and a particular (modern) segment of a museum. The villa was easy enough to figure out how to research, but the museum was another story. I had to first look up what was in the collection of the museum. One of the few things I do remember unearthing and researching was a sculptor by the name of Lucio Fontana. Unfortunately he is not a well remembered artist from the 1930's, but he is far from forgotten. Every now and then I stumble across one of his works in a museum and always feel as though I'm greeting a good friend when I see one. There are two distinct types of works that I usually see by Fontana. Some of them are obvious sculptures that were probably first made out of clay, and then cast as bronze. They range in size, but are usually at least 3 ft tall, rather round, and tend to have large gouges clawed or dug out of them. The rest are on canvas or paper, and have slashes cut into them, or sometimes small holes that look like puncture marks. But don't be fooled by his use of the canvas and paper - though the materials come from a painter's toolbox, he treated them very much like a sculptor. It's not a concept that I fully understood until I tried a master study of one of them. He did use paint, but he treated even the paint as though it were clay. He didn't approach texture the way that I might, by layering and scraping, or splashing and dripping, or heavily brushing at the canvas. He laid on a thick layer of paint, and then sculpted that layer as though it were clay. The actual 3-D effect is fairly shallow (although Fontana played with it extensively - he went to the effort of dramatically lighting and video taping the canvases as he moved the light, to enhance and show off its sculptural quality).

Below are a collection of photos taken of Lucio Fontana by the photographer Ugo Mulas. The photos were staged, but meant to show how Fontana worked. The one in the middle, on the top is one of my all time favorite photos of an artist. Though Fontana is a sculptor at heart, I know that posture well. I've adopted it countless times myself, while facing a blank canvas. It's the posture of an artist preparing himself for the great task of giving birth to a piece of artwork.


Given my conversation with Marilee regarding the integrity of the 2-D surface, I find myself looking back to Lucio Fontana again - at first glance it may appear that he respected the two dimensionality of the canvas - but being a sculptor, I have a strong feeling that he didn't respect it in the way that Marilee and I would as painters. Though the canvas itself is even more intact than my piece is, his is far less about painting, and far more about sculpting than mine is.

I got the impression that the amount of 3-D sculpture that appears in Titus Kaphar's work bothered Marilee on some level. I, on the other hand, found it exciting. I find it to be one of the rare examples where a painter is including sculptural elements in an honest, and meaningful way, while still remaining at heart a painter. Without the two dimensional elements in Kaphar's work, the 3-D elements would not have held nearly the same meaning. Likewise, by cutting them, he was not only revising history, but making a point of doing so. In one large canvas in particular, an entire figure was cut out (sort of like a paper doll, still attached at his feet), and thrown on the floor. The figure himself had been painted as a strong looking fellow, clearly someone "important" from history (I don't recall at the moment who he was), but the canvas looked limp, flat, and flimsy. I felt it made a rather powerful statement about how Kaphar felt about that particular fellow.

In my copious amounts of paid free time, lately, I've wondered just exactly what constitutes a painting. Does a stretched canvas necessarily mean it's a painting? After my description of Lucio Fontana, I would hope that it's clear that my answer to that is no. But how exactly would I categorize someone like Titus Kaphar? Personally, I see him as an artist perhaps alone (or at least fairly lonely) in a small and elite group of artists who seem to have a strong hold in both the worlds of painting and sculpting at the same time. I can't say for sure which camp I would put him in. I think his work necessarily needs both, and wouldn't be nearly as powerful if one were omitted. I see that as a fantastic thing - and something which I think a lot of artists have striven for, but a place in art history that few have actually achieved. All of my musings on the topic make me wonder just where Titus Kaphar would categorize himself, or whether he would bother at all.