Frozen Brains

Doomed to be Frozen in Time

I was reading through an email sent from Nashville this morning on what is on exhibit during their First Saturday Gallery Crawl in May. If you aren’t familiar with this event, it occurs in the downtown galleries and venues, including a cluster of new galleries all located upstairs in the Arcade Building on 5^th Avenue North. It is a very well attended event and a great party.

What caught my eye was a notation from one of the galleries that they were showing “Abstract Expressionist” work by a contemporary artist. When I looked the artist up, I found he was born in 1969. His work was abstract, but nothing like the work the historic term was referring to. Why use that term? It is an old school. It might make people think he is “one of those” people. You know who they are-artists who are still painting the exact same thing they were working on while they were in under grad or grad school, and it is ten, twenty, fifty years later? They haven’t evolved-not one bit. Hell-they probably are still listening to the same damn music while they work on their (name the decade) radio, stereo, boom box, ipod. Even worse is the army of hobbyist painters that are still producing “Impressionist” art, replete with historically inaccurate ornate gold frames.

Gag. How does this happen?

1. They are boring.
2. They have been forced into rehashing the same thing by their gallery. It sells. It is “what they are known for”?
3. They still hang with the same crowd and never look anything new that is occurring?

I like artists whose work evolves over a lifetime. Warhol was one who was all over the place-not only in his imagery but in constant changing of media. Then there is Phillip Pearlstein.  I loved this painter’s work when I was in school, but he is in his ‘70’s now and still doing the exact same paintings-almost! What he is doing is almost worse. Instead of still doing large, realist nudes as abstractions, now he is adding “junk” to them. He seems to go to yard sales a lot. He still does the exact same nudes, but interjects whatever crap he has picked up at the flea markets with them. It is almost painful. You can almost hear the thought process….”ok, now what can I put in this one that will make it look different”….. What is the point of creativity if you kill experimentation?

Not everyone’s brains atrophy and freeze in time. I was hanging an exhibit this week, and the most attention getting piece in it was an 8’ x 8’ spray painted graffiti work done on luan. It looks like something a 25 year old would do. The artist is more than twice that age. There was another mixed media sculpture that looked like a grad student did it, but was done by a guy in his late ‘60’s. I know these guys, and they both never stop thinking, experimenting, and questioning everything around them. They don’t fear change. Whatever they produce is fresh and dynamic. Seriously, if you are going to do “Abstract Expressionism” in the twentieth century, at least call it something else. Call it “Retro Abstraction” or something. At least that sounds cool.