What follows are excerpts from a conversation with Julie Jacobson about my paintings at the beginning of graduate school. Her questions are highlighted and my answers are the responses.
You talked a bit about the art world having a language that those outside it wouldn't necessarily understand, in your work, you use symbols and icons that many people (possibly a lot of those in the art world) wouldn't understand. What statement are you making with this? (or is this a statement you are making?)
in psychology, there is always a lot of talk about how psychology wants to be seen as "a hard science," as opposed to a soft science. hard sciences are those sciences which rely on concrete facts and "evidence" which have been "derived" from the scientific method. ultimately, the debate hinges on whether or not definitions within the discipline of psychology clarify things within the terms that include it in "hard sciences." Each discipline has their own internal set of language, definitions and symbols, just like cultures. in essence, disciplines are cultures: they maintain strict boundaries of who exists within the "in group" and who is the "out group" and in a way this is defined by the understanding of the social/cultural rules and the social/cultural language. at the time of starting these paintings, i was really upset at how art (despite being a discipline which is supposed to be FOR the masses) couldn't be understood by the masses because of the language and history which had defined art theory outside of the public's understanding. the irony of this situation fueled the use of using abstract symbols from other disciplines to communicate secretly to people who are from those discplines - i especially used symbols from agriculture (farming, animal husbandry) and engineering because in my bias i veiwed these disciplines as being the furthest from "understanding" painting (particularly modernist painting).
Do you make up the symbols you use? Or are most of the ones you use ones that are in some of the material you've looked at (Henry DreHeyfuss)? (by the way, on my painting there is a pink circle with an "R" in it, what does that mean? I was thinking it could possibly be for Rebecca, but I'm not sure. I've had two dreams now where that thing showed up in it! )
now that you mention it, i think i did make up a good deal of symbols. but usually they were just things that were abstractions of basic objects that hold cultural weight, such as pills, or monkeys, robots, or mario - (mario led me into dealing with these "larger symbols" for a different type of culture). the r symbol is in the symbol sourcebook (if i remember correctly, it has something to do with engineering). if you would like, i could show it to you, it is in my studio at all times. it's the same symbol sourcebook that jean-michel basquiat used to make many of his paintings. i've often been told that my paintings remind some people of some of his work: while i admire his work greatly, he and i are dealing with VERY different things, despite using similar source materials.
How do you select the "icons" / characters / symbols you are going to paint? Why only paint the ones you find horrific? (we talked a little about this with Sesame Street, but I wanted to know more about your selection process). Why is it important for them to have a sinister, yet cutesy quality?
a lot of the symbols came from personal selection as being visually interesting. the characters are just personal choice. i wanted things that were very saccharinely "cute," almost naively so. Sesame street is an interesting example of something that i have always viewed as being very honest and not trying to be "cute" to cater to children, at least in a very different way. or perhaps the difference is in cartoon characters versus "stuffed animals." i still don't think i have an answer to this. the bottom line for me is that i never was abhorred by sesame street, whereas pikachu/hello kitty/ the rest bug me for being "uneducational" and mindless.
You said that the work isn't a specific narrative per se. Does the work possess untold hidden depth?
the flash animation dealt with the idea of creating a "random" narrative which can't possibly be random because although the computer is coming up with "random" numbers they have been pre-existingly defined by the programmers who wrote the code to create random numbers. i don't believe anything is truly random or can be. the order for the narrative was built on visual relationships and my intuitive sense for what visually needed to happen between objects, not for the content. this was easier for me because most of the symbols, i couldn't keep track of their cultural meaning. the ones that i did know what they mean probably were selected more often.
Is it important for your work to transcend nationalistic boundaries?
i'd like that, yes.
Questions about line: Why are all the objects in your paintings outlined?
it is a very cartoon-like quality.
Are you using line to divide the spaces?
yeah, this reminds me that i saw some paintings by david salle and i liked the way he broke up space using lines and different structures. but then i realized he was basically stealing his ideas and style from james rosenquist and i've always liked his work, so really i was just reflecting HIS work.
There is a consistency in your line, not varied, is this intentional? If so, why?
you know... i really like "bad" art: art which is really loose and isn't uptightly about the craft of the piece. I mean, basquiat could vaguely be put into the neo-expressionist movement of the 1980's. although i don't like a great deal of the neo-expressionists work from that time period, i appreciate their use of loose line.
In the earlier work, the viewer gets a sense that they are looking into a slice of a world, not a contained world......some of the work you had in Gallery 3 focussed on a single object in the painting. Why the switch from repetition to single icons in the paintings? This seems to be moving away from saturation and going into some sort of glorification or perhaps hierarchy of some of the icons.
yeah, i think glorification is a good word. in fact, it's more of a personal astonishment, questioning why we glorify these characters.
Why did you choose the colors you did?
originally, i was tired (from previous paintings) of trying to work with multiple colors and decide which colors meant and reacted a certain way. i also noticed that "technology devices" such as computers, cellular phones, handheld devices all use a limited grey pallete. so, i tried to incorporate this while maintaining the beauty of a grissaille painting: with the simple underpainting of browns and whites, you can reach both cool (greens) and warm (reds) by the use of location and relationships between values. I believed that these colors gave the paintings a neutral feel so the subject wasn't weighted by the colors but instead on the ideas and the semantic/semiotic value. looking at high renaissance paintings, i was impressed with the simple beauty of the underpaintings.
then i got bored with that and started dealing more with the "figure" and the "cute" characters and so color became more important.
What do the symbols have to do with language?
Jacques Derrida and Wittgenstein - i was reading a lot on these two philosophers while i was working through this body of work. wittgenstein is a philosopher from the 1950s who discusses the nature of language. if you read this article on him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein, specifically the paragraphs on philosophical investigation, you'll get a feel for his work. ultimately, he talks about how language and the construction of grammar lie at the root of the understanding of something. Jacques Derrida takes it a step further (and what more interests me) to the point of stating that a culture's gramatical and semiotical base is intricately intertwined with the philosophical groundwork of a culture. because we have a language that is based in greek/germanic/latin language, we share similar philosophical bases with other cultures of similar sematic backgrounds. the reason for this basis is that language allows a person to "think" about something; wittgenstein and derrida both have this one principle fundamental belief: conscious thought begins with language. language permits conscious thought.
One question is on the email, but I also mentioned it on the phone...seems like the work is going from a lot of information on the canvas to a single image.
earlier in this work, i was dealing with overstimulation, especially as it relates to understanding the language that has developed within a discipline (as an outsider looking in). it is especially apparent looking at our suped-up ADHD culture that we overstimulate ourselves (think MTV and japanese cartoons). i think that for the earlier works, i was really trying to push the envelope in how much i included in the singular image, but these works were also meant to be viewed as an entire body of work, increasing the oppressive nature of the "overloaded" images. the presence of three dozen of these paintings crammed full of symbols and "language" was meant to make the viewer claustrophobic and yet spend hours at a time trying to decypher the messages. now that i've gone into the "cute" stage, i'm dealing with this image-phobia in a different method: i'm trying to create larger images which overwhelm the viewer in their saccharine cuteness; i'm hoping that the scale deals a powerful enough punch - being confronted with a huge adorable pikachu is enough to make my stomach churn.
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