Nelson Shanks

Portrait painting has always been a risky business - personal vanity - family - friends - a few extra pounds? Everyone is a critic and one always has an opinion on what they know. A portrait painted from life is a conversation between the artist and model - both influencing each other's mood; and given the time it takes to complete it there is a real possibility for a representation of the models inner life.

Nelson Shanks has painted some of the most popular people of this time. I am wondering what is it like to be in his presence, what he talks to his models about , what he wears, what he does on the breaks. Is he funny, does he gossip ? Is he so charming that people like the portrait as much for the experience as a beautiful painting.

I wonder why he paints the people looking away - I always want the person to look directly at me.

Theory of Mind according to John Currin

Knowing and Understanding - feeling and seeing are one and the same. A painting as a joke.

I am Understanding that *someone* may be coming from a different set of values and circumstances and I wish to enter in but somehow there is no where to go in this somewhat closeup haptic but flat image. Only those things that are tormenting emerge.

For me this painting has a lot of the charm I would expect from a New yorker cartoon yet, it gives me the willies. Its slick surface, light hearted subject matter, funny drawing dont help me at all. I want poetry - I want information.

If You Think it You Can Do It!

In 256 BC the Chinese engineer Li Bing to stop the catastrophic flooding of the Min river built grass bon fires and poured cold water till the granite cracked. It took decades and after 2300 years it still works. This dam is just a few miles from the school that collapsed . The Djianagyan capital river dam.
To do this he had first to over come the superstitions of the local people. He put on an elaborate duel between two bulls and through the medium of the bull the deity was subdued.

Now in our enlightened times any idea for a building with the aid of computers can be quickly built. Cement that no longer needs to cure for years, new building materials, medals and plastics allow artists to go beyond the limits of art.

Robert Raushenberg said "A lot of people try to think of ideas - I'm not one. I'd rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I cannot ignore." The purely visual pleasure of light and shade is trumped by the Intellectual; consumer glut is celebrated, the highest art is to parody: bits of news paper,cigarette butts, condoms (hee hee) glued to the canvas. Dernier cri : Removing the skills of the craftsmen, "Anything I do will be an abuse of someone else's aesthetics." and "knowing more only increases your limitations."

One knows only their own activity.

Robert Rauschenberg

Yesterday May 13 Robert Rauschenberg died at the age of 82 - described by the NYT's as a Titan of American art - This is one of his quotes ;

"Screwing things up is a virtue. Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she respells my words and corrects my punctuation, I cant read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idle"