Andy Warhol said that he would like to be a machine. I think Andy Warhol with
his iconization of mass media images tried to kill painting and art, in his
glorification of mass media. He then influenced a whole slew of new artists to
continue seeking similarities between traditional religious iconography and
modern idols of the screen and advertising, producing many versions of Marilyn
Monroe and Elvis Presley for example. Also Jeff Koons made remarks about how
Michael Jackson was a lost Christ figure and created statues of him in that vain,
or made Marilyn Monroe look like the Madonna on gold leaf paper, saying these
are our new symbols of spirituality. In some sense that is what mass media was
in fact doing, glorifying the images sold by our industrial corporate society. And
Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons simply brought it to our awareness. However at the
same time they paved the road of art with superficiality, meaninglessness and
plastic kitsch. They were enamoured with what the machine produced and our
superficial, gadget-filled world. They saw that in our market place, spirituality,
deep intellect, philosophy, poetry, simple humanness and soul couldn’t sell
cars, but Marilyn Monroe as a screen sex symbol, could.
Artists began to desperately try to compete with the fast pace of mass media
and often lost themselves in the process. By attempting to be original rather
than speaking and creating from an inner truth, their work began to reflect the
chaos of the modern age with its glut of meaningless and irrelevant imagery.
Painting is the opposite of mass media, it requires slowing down, focus and the
willingness to allow for intuition to appreciate depth, beauty, richness and the
full range of emotions of humanness in a work of art. It is not bound by time.
Artists began to feel the pressure of time, and stopped being interested in
producing quality, which is time consuming, and instead slapped dashed
unfinished work onto large canvasses. Similarly to how we have shortened
words and phrases in language in order to produce text messages faster,
painting began to look like shortened versions of itself…machines and mass
media began to define art and culture in the world instead of art and culture
influencing the world.
Artists stopped communicating with the deeper aspects of themselves, their
souls and like the rest of society simply began to tread water to keep afloat. In
fact art that showed aspects of soul of humanness of any kind was scorned as
not being fashionable. Well I don’t want to be in fashion if Andy Warhol and Jeff
Koons are dictating that fashion. They are not my role models. Paula Rego and
Lucien Freud on the other hand are. Paula tells stories with her art, personal yet
universally true. Lucien’s work is powerful and his figures make you look deeply
at what it means to have a body…They are speaking their truth with their
paintings and that is what makes them great, they are going against the
enormous pull of the mass media, machine wave, and remaining true to
themselves.
In my art I try to remain true to the little truths discovered in solitary moments
which I consciously foster, whatever is of importance in my life and what I have
observed in the living of it, be they stories, feelings or moods. Most recently I
have the sense that we are losing touch with one another as humans, we don’t
hug each other enough or if we do it is quick and in passing. By far we spend
more time touching our keyboards than our loved ones, even our pets, unless
they are sitting on our keyboards. Genuine hugging without an end goal of sex
is a deeply enriching exchange of energy that we need in order to feel human,
as is authentic conversation, slow paced without the intent of disseminating
information. We are glutted with information but poverty stricken of meaning.
We are coasting along the surface of life trying to be as happy and comfortable
as we can, and don’t even realize how empty we feel inside. Armoured with
positive thinking technologies we squelch any uneasiness. In this atmosphere it
is difficult to give birth to great art with depth, when people are afraid of their
boats being rocked. So they gravitate to kitsch because it is safe…and artists
oblige by producing it.