As you may have read on my About Page, I’m not especially keen on artist statements. I’d rather say it’s all about the art and leave it at that. This holds true for my work and as a spectator/collector of other artists as well.
That said, I understand the value and often times necessity of an artist statement in terms of offering the viewer background and other relevant information that would add to the overall enjoyment and understanding of an artists work.
Herein lies one of the main goals behind some of the articles I will post, so that you might gain better insight into what my work is about, a sort of real-time artist statement so to speak, published, almost at the same time as it’s revealed to me.
In this article I’ll touch on one of the major themes that is involved in my current portraits and just a tich of background behind it. Bare in mind, all of this may be obsolete as early as next week for the artistic process can be a squirrelly critter, hard to pin down on paper and always subject to evolving circumstances.
In lieu of daycare, I spent most of my early childhood in church. My mother was a choir director/cantor at a number of churches throughout Minneapolis. Between the weekly masses, weddings and weekday funerals she would sing and direct for, I found myself constantly surrounded by religious architecture, art and symbolism (and incense). I’m sure this is where my interest in classical art first began, as well as much of the early childhood trauma that can foster an artistic mind; did I mention they were catholic churches? (Smiley face goes here).
While the techniques and skill demonstrated in much of the art objects were more than impressive and I was drawn to the idea of symbolism, I didn’t feel a personal resonance with the subject matter or symbolism depicted in the work.
It wasn’t until I was introduced to the history of Byzantine iconography while at the University of Minnesota, that I found connection with some religious art. But this was just a seed of interest that wouldn’t ultimately bloom until years later, after I had completed classical drawing studies and delved into abstraction, cubism and expressionism, all which served as groundwork for techniques I would later employ in my current work.
For the first few years that I owned the Rogue Buddha, I continued to play with cubism and abstraction. While I was happy with the outcome of a lot of the work, I still felt that much of it was disconnected from what was really inside of me, trying to get out. The challenge was in attempting to represent in two-dimensional space what I thought about the world and my relationship to it, not to mention the emotional whirlpool that swirled around in my stomach.
I was fortunate to have a girlfriend at the time that had an immense talent for art history and art criticism, even though I often found myself at the loosing end of many of our debates, I mean discussions. We had met at the Atelier during night class where we were both learning to draw plaster casts in charcoal. Jennifer had an acute sense for art and provided me with a lot to think about in terms of what I was making. It was partly out of these arguments, I mean discussions, that I turned to the portrait and the idea of painting somewhat realistically, abandoning much of the abstract and cubist directions that I had been steering towards.
Another influence at that time was my ability to watch as patrons viewed various works on exhibit at the gallery from a wide range of artists. I watched how they interacted with the work, how much time they spent with any particular piece and what seemed to grab them the most. It had always been important to me to make work that touched people and stuck with them. What I noticed was that the human figure was a stand out in terms of grabbing people’s attention. It made sense in that the figure is arguably the the easiest subject to identify with on a personal level.
As a young artist soaking up whatever I could in terms of art history and current trends, I was dismayed by what much of the art establishment had pawned off as great art. The contemporary museums where full of works from the past 50 or 60 years, the vast majority of which, from my point of view, lacked the one thing that I wanted to feel from a work of art and also express in my own, soul. It simply didn’t speak to my gut, but rather, tried to appeal to my brain and sense of reason, something I found to be the antithesis of what art should do. It wasn’t just the museums either. Many of the major galleries and art publications also touted, and to a great extent still do, the ideals of reason and intellect behind art objects.
As a spectator, I thought of art not as an intellectual pursuit but as an emotional one, something that transcends thought and reason. Perhaps this is where much of my dismay for overly complicated and “high-brow” artist statements began, as much of the modern and contemporary art relied on the statement, didactics or criticism to explain the art through intellectual processes rather than relying on the art to speak for itself. The writing itself often reflected the lack of feeling and emotion in the art. All this would greatly influence how I would present the Rogue Buddha Gallery, forgoing white walls and the sterile atmosphere that is still prevalent in many of today’s contemporary museums for a more intimate and inviting atmosphere.
A personal example of an artist that I had looked to for inspiration in this pursuit of expressing emotion was Francis Bacon. I’ll never forget the first exhibit of his that I saw, and the emotion that the paintings drew out of me as almost every painting weeped from the wall. But no matter what I read about him by historians and curators, I always felt that they missed the mark simply because his work couldn’t be translated into the written word. Any remarks, no matter how poetic, would fall short when simply confronted by the paintings in person.
So that became the first declaration in my artist statement and my first intention as an artist, to make work that spoke to the gut. To find resonance within the viewer’s soul as I attempted to make work that resonated with mine.
At around about the same time that I was researching the artwork of Gustave Klimt, another inspiration, I came across an old book on Russian iconography. While I’m not a historian or an expert on Klimt, I couldn’t help but see influences of the icon in his work, primarily by his use of repetition of patterns and how elements seemed to encapsulate his figures. This little tid bit of serendipity came at a perfect time as I was slowly developing my own sense of symbolism that I would imbed in my portraits. The rekindled interest in the icon would ultimately help crystallize what I considered to be the potential for a work of art and my goal as an artist.
While the specific symbols embedded in the icons where interesting, neither they nor the subject matter were the focus of my curiosity. Initially drawn to the composition, structure and design of the icon, all of which were rigorously defined within the iconic tradition, it was the symbolism inherent in the object itself that ultimately spoke to me.
Within the Russian tradition in particular, icons were given a place of prominence in the home, or hut as the situation may be, in the “red corner”, the corner of the room that caught the first rays of sun in the morning. In the bleak winter months of the Russian landscape, peasants turned to the icon as a beacon, an intercessor for wants and needs of survival and for consolation.
“Turning to icons helped man to forget his miserable existence, so full of privations, his aloneness in the hostile world around him. Benevolent, yet at times quite wrathful, the Saints were always there beside him, taking a concerned interest in all his daily affairs.”*
Most interesting to me was the almost magical or mystical role of the icon, that more than a painting or object, it was a tool for the observer, one which allowed them access to something greater than themselves while at the same time provided a means for a deeper understanding of their lives.
This idea, that an object of art could play such a vital role in the daily affairs of people set in motion the underlying objective of all of the work I have made since, to model the idea that art should not simply add beauty to an environment but should be a means by which the observer can come to terms with their own reality. Rather than simply being one of many design elements in a home which all fall prey to becoming background noise, I want my work to act as a focal point in its environment, to be useful to the viewer as a sort of mirror to themselves and a means of daily contemplation. I think I unknowingly represented this idea in my artist statement early on in my art career as “I don’t make sofa art.”
This relationship to the icon became the second major theme for my artist statement and has been a driving force behind the work I make and how I relate to it as it’s being created.
Finally, I found it important that I not paint people of contemporary “iconic” status or the preordained “holy” people of history whether they are religious, political or cultural figures. For me the beauty in the portrait is that the subject can represent anyone, allowing the viewer the opportunity to see themselves as the focal point rather than giving energy to someone outside of themselves. Today’s culture leans heavily on obsessing over cult figures, from the Anna Nicole Smiths and Lady Gagas to the Barack Obamas, the spectrum holds somebody to idolize for everyone and every personality type. (I myself gravitate to Ralph Nader, and don’t even start in on he was a spoiler or it’s on:-). I find this to be a distraction from getting to the core of why we might actually exist in the first place, namely to know ourselves, at least that may be a good reason if we are in need of one.
I have to admit that I am toying with the idea of painting some of the cult figures whom I have idolized or been captivated by over the years as a personal means to come to terms with the role that they have played in my life, or rather, the role I have allowed them to play.
One such portrait that I painted a few years ago as a test subject is Sirhan Sirhan, the lone man found guilty for killing Robert Kennedy, strange I know. But for me he represents my interest in history and the search for what is true and what has been fabricated and to what end has it been fabricated. While I don’t believe in the X-Files slogan “The Truth is Out There”, I believe that my interest in the pursuit of truth is just one part of my journey that has affected my work and added flavor and texture to my life and my painting.
SIRHAN by Nicholas Harper
To sum it all up in one cozy sentence, in referencing my paintings as icons, the intention is that you, the viewer will see yourself as the prime subject and the key player in the painting and ultimately in your own life and culture.
Cheers!
* The History and Art of the Russian Icon by Lucy Maxym |
