OK, I’ll Write About Art (or “Nozkowski vs. Heilmann”)
March 8th, 2006A couple days ago a Mary Heilmann post was placed on Painters NYC, sparking a debate regarding the merits of her work, compared to that of Thomas Nozkowski. While everyone seemed to gush over Nozkowski’s work, many were turned off by Mary Heilmann’s stuff and that led me to think that there is an unsettling Cult of Nozkowski afoot in New York and beyond. Go into any art program (especially at Rutgers, where he teaches) and you’ll see tons of Nozkowski-like paintings, quirky intimate abstractions, obsessively labored, always with a few gauzy washes, always with some colorful foreground shapes.
And of course, you’d really have to be a cold-hearted bastard not too like a Nozkowski painting. Look at this one from his show now up at Max Protech:
It’s incredibly sophisticated and lovely—that soft navy wash across the background, overlapping the outside blobby shapes—terrific. And the blobby shapes themselves, each a different color, are so subtle and precious, it really takes you aback. And the size of his paintings—that un-hip “couch” size that no self-respecting artist works in—is great.
Here’s another one:
And another:
So what’s the problem? No problem really. But Nozkowski’s strengths—his gentleness, his intimacy, the endless revisions his canvases go through—are also his weaknesses. You want to say, “Jesus, Tom, stop being so lovely.” You look at the above painting and you know that he must have changed the color of those squares 87 times and it just makes you depressed. Maybe you think about yourself endlessly mixing colors, fiddling with color relationships, thinking to yourself, “God, I’m such an asshole, just put a color down and be done with it.” Nozkowski lives in this world, this world of painters obsessions; it’s why so many painters love him.
Compare that with this painting by Mary Heilmann:
Bam! This painting would punch a Nozkowski painting right in the face. It looks so effortless; it probably was effortless. And it has a really charged “dumbness” that Nozkowski would never allow. It says to you, “look, I’m a ‘geometric abstraction’—my colors are orange, red, yellow, black, green and blue.” This type of semiological approach to painting is also very un-Nozkowski and it pushes Heilmann into a conceptual realm that most painters dare not tread. And still the paintings are very arresting, gorgeous even.
Like this one.
And this.
So I’m down on painters who don’t like Heilmann. But, I’m also down on clever types who can’t find joy in Nozkowski.
March 9th, 2006 at 2:08 am
From these samples, I like Heilmann’s stuff better.
But I like even more the subtle self-consciousness of the last sentence of this entry.
March 9th, 2006 at 11:38 am
the self-consciousness was purely accidental.
I like Nozkowski. I guess by “clever types” I meant the type of artist who would dismiss his work as meaningless decoration (at best).
March 9th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
is “look, i’m an abstract painting!” really a conceptual realm where most painters dare not tread, or one where they dare not NOT tread?
I am thinking particularly in combination with making a lovely painting.
I guess I’ve received a bit of flack lately for painting and “painting” at the same time, like it’s a weak, ass-covering move. The flack-givers inevitably point to laura owens, who heilman i think taught, as an example of the untenableness / softheadedness of this position.
Anyone with anything to say re: Laura Owens, and pastiche?
March 9th, 2006 at 12:27 pm
on second thoughts, scrap the “pastiche” part since that doesn’t apply to heilmann. maybe THAT’s the difference- sticking with a language- even if the distancing from the language is the same in both Owens and Heilmann cases?
help me out, bloggy readers! (you teeming millions…)
March 9th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Would Tristan Shandy be a better novel if it were less self-referencial? If it didn’t make clear how the novel is constructed? (I’ve never read TS, but I know it’s one of your favorite books, K)
Heilmann’s (and Owens’) paintings are doing the same thing, they are in some part meditations on “meaning.” This doesn’t seem like a copout.
The copout may be the painter convinced of his/her work’s complete autonomy.
Although worse still is the painter who won’t address the language at all, whose paintings only “point to things.”
March 9th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Another example: is Rushmore a bad movie because it’s so theatrical, using a series of framing devices to call attention to itself?
On Pastiche: I think people want to read this as cynicism when it’s really a way of understanding how information is received.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
I love these art posts, but I never respond because I feel so dumb. But I have a little tiny bit to say on this. (Note: If you’re familiar with Brecht, then stop reading, as my very slight familiarity will expose itself as slight and maybe plain wrong, and you’ll just think I’m an asshole.) As I understand it, Brecht was big into this idea in theater that the goal should not be to get the audience to identify with the protagonist. This, he claimed, led to getting emotionally involved, when the real interest should be in getting people to think. So, he did all these things to force the audience out of that identification, to stand up and shout “Hey! This is a play you are watching!” If you read a theater review that uses the word “Brechtian”, it usually means that the play in question had some of these elements. I don’t really get it all conceptually, but I do know that it does create a different effect, and I like that effect sometimes. The basic idea seems right: when you’re knocked out of identifying with the protagonist, your brain starts whirring. Sometimes, that’s perfect. What really sucks is when some idiot says, “Hey, I’ll go all Brechtian on this,” but with nothing to say and no understanding of the theory, and you end up with something empty and horrendously masturbatory.
Anyhow, what you said about Rushmore calling attention to itself brought this to mind, so I thought I’d share this bit from the theater side of things with you folks on the painting side of things.
Two great movies out right now seem good examples of the extremes on this: on the non-Brecht side, Brokeback Mountain, and on the Brecht side, Cache.
Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t have posted this. I still feel kind of dumb.
March 10th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
You, Doc? Pretty damn smart if you ask me.