I pity the fool, Sean Cheetham, 2012
Past Presence: Contemporary Figure and Portrait Exhibition
Look at the modern art movements as a
whole and view the direct lineage from one to the next throughout Art History
from 1850 to the late 1960’s, and in doing this there is one prevailing factor
throughout. That factor is the
growth of the individual artist’s ideas and concepts over their mere
reproductions of prior established “norms” in Art. As we progressed from the beginnings of Modern Art in the Realism movement of the mid-19th
century to the Post-Minimalist
movement over a hundred years later we see the artist’s idea far outweigh his representational
skill. With this creation of idea and concept trumping technical
skill what happened was Artists began to invent, and in their inventions they
would create movements; for example, Picasso and Braque and their inventions of
Analytical and Synthetic Cubism in the early days of Modern Art between
1910-1914. What would
happen shortly after is that the repetition would begin as Artists who were
trained to mimic began to follow the
movements of individual invention and when this mimicry had reached epic proportions
of repetition it called for a new movement in Art. So what we saw is “repetition” or “sameness” became public
enemy number one in Modern Art as Modern Artists constantly sought to re-invent
and individualize their message and technical approach. Always searching for what was new and
what would make an impact.
This seems to have come to a head in the
mid-1950’s with the Pop Art movement,
spear-headed by Andy Warhol.
Warhol added this idea of repetition into his art in order to
sarcastically ridicule the established idea of repetition and its connotation
of the latest Art Movement. In the
Marilyn Diptych Warhol is exposing
the ugliness of the “copy” and he is demonstrating its loss of newness as the
image is repeated and ink changes or smears and diminishes the subject further
with each copy. He is ridiculing
the mass appeal to take something beautiful; such as Marilyn, and to expose it
and copy it in repetition until it loses its beauty and rare newness, which is
what made us love “the object of our desire” in the first place.
The artists involved in this exhibition
are part of a quiet revolution just as Manet and Courbet were when they
invented the Realism movement in the mid 19th Century or Monet,
Cassatt, and the Impressionists were a quarter century later. This revolt against the established
norms in Art is happening once again and these artists are among the forefront
of this exciting movement. This
exhibition includes a group of artists who have used the Figure and Portrait in
their work as a springboard to unleash their ideas and visual communication onto
their audience. These were Artists
who sought to train themselves academically with the figure when such things
were viewed as passé and outdated.
They had to fight the established “norms” of non-representational art
and educate themselves in a world of art, which offered very little technical
training. In doing so they have
played their part in inventing a new movement in art just as their predecessors
always have. This Contemporary Figurative Art movement
honors and acknowledges the past but doesn’t simply derive from the past its questions
and answers. It asks new questions
and challenges the viewer in new ways to answer them.
Throughout Art History the Figure has
been the basis for art as we created our world in our own image, but the
need for the artists idea to become paramount in art brought us away from
representing the figure and toward non-objective Art movements which were
essential in bringing us out of the academia which had gained a stronghold on
artistic expression. There is no
arguing the necessity of Cubism, Fauvism, Abstract expressionism and Post
Minimalism among many other modern art movements. Each brought new developments to the artist’s visual
communication and its overwhelming importance to artistic expression. But the past forty years have brought
about somewhat of a standstill in contemporary art as the “copying” of these
movements has become stale and stagnant. The nature of Modern Art is ideas born out of new
ideas that challenge the old ideas.
If this nature of questioning the establishment as we seek newness and
individuality in Art is allowed to continue by the public and the “Art Establishment”
then Contemporary Figurative Art has
a future. For Art to evolve and to
grow we must always seek to destroy repetition and fight our nature to mimic
success in art around us. The
artists of this exhibition are showing with their work that they value both the
representation of life and their concept equally as they show us new ways to
visually communicate while using Art History’s oldest tool––The Human
Figure.
Thank you to all of the Artists who showed in this exhibit. It really was a great experience for me and this show was done in your honor.
Kent Twitchell, Kent Williams, Sean Cheetham, Natalia Fabia, Aaron Westerberg, Sergio Sanchez, Virginia Broersma, Joseph Todorovitch, Eric Pedersen, Suzanne Unrein, Richard Morris, "The McCaw's" Dan, John, and Danny, Rogelio Manzo, Seamus Conley, Peter Zhang, Rebecca Campbell, DJ Hall, Chris Gwaltney, Marc Trujillo, and F. Scott Hess
