Homer, Hopper, and Alternate Realists

I landed at the Palmer House in Chicago a few weeks ago. I stayed over the weekend to catch some things. Rather than stop at the hotel restaurant for another $26.00 veggie egg white omelet after spending I don’t want to know how much on Belvedere on the rocks the night before, I headed out for a real egg and real bacon with real butter on real fake enriched white toast. Maybe some real potatoes too. I stepped out onto Monroe and went left, then went left again on State. I decided I would stop at the first real breakfast place I could find. Many blocks, Starbucks, Subways, MacDonalds, Au Bons later I took another left, discouraged and beaten down. I wandered, Jackson, Van Buren, Wells, and there it was. I finally found it a Chicago Institution of artery clogging breakfasts. I stepped into Billy Goats and ordered. I watched the cook pull the cooked bacon off the grill with the same latex gloved fingers he used to drop the raw stuff down. Puerto Rican girls came in asking if Papino was cooking their egg sandwiches. It went on for a while, a dramatic morning treat. I got what I wanted, stuffed the hash browns and toast into my already full mouth like the men in work getups around me. I still did not fit. They talked shop, baseball, and something about used tires. I headed down to Michigan for Homer meets Hopper at the Art Institute of Chicago.
This treat may have been better than my breakfast. There was a line way on down Michigan. The wait was two hours to get in for nonmembers. I tossed members only out in the late 80s and waited my turn. When noon rolled around and I got in for the real show, the line was like the procession at Lenin’s funeral. I shuffled along in line sandwiched between other viewers. I got a look at Homer’s water color work up close and began to appreciate the dabs of the brush. I saw the cut and paste of the figures he used and reused, but no PhotoShop for this guy, so who is to judge?
Homer was self taught and became so adept at his craft that he was illustrating for the biggest New York publications of his time. In an era where people were reading by candlelight at night, not masturbating on the internet, his use of watercolor was the most advanced of its day. Painterly with precision, fresh, spontaneous, close to impressionistic, but never losing its basic naturalism. Not content to merely illustrate and with his penchant for solitude driving him, he spent the last part of his life, living in and painting the coastal wilderness of Maine. His vast subject matter approached all activities of human existence during the 19th century, but his most powerful works convey man versus nature themes. He is still seen as a dominant influence on the American realist scene and was an artist that mastered the nature of his materials in a way that few artists do even today.
Then over to Hopper. This was another treat. Close up the brush work reveals layers of color, twist of brush hairs, to create the sense of light. And maybe not the sense of it, but actual light from the paint. Everyone around me focused on the images, the rooms, the woman. What does it mean? Who gives a rats ass about what does it mean. It’s art. From behind me a heads up: “Oh my God, the famous one. It’s called Nighthawks! Suzie!” Alright already. And at the end of the show, speculation about the empty room, the simplicity. Maybe the guy just got old and tired of people, the figures, the painting. Who knows? And who cares? The real action in Hopper’s work is close up, in the density of paint, the density of colors mixed extraordinarily on the canvas.
Hopper was a truly American painter whose incredibly individualistic works are benchmarks of American realism. His paintings embody a unique American 20th-century sensibility that is portrayed by isolation, melancholy, and loneliness. Perfectly characterized by vacant rooms and solitary buildings...
He made three trips to Europe between 1906 and 1910 (the year Homer died) but remained unaffected by the French and Spanish experiments in cubism going on at the time. He was influenced mainly by the great European realists— Diego Velazquez, Francisco de Goya, Honore Daumier, Edouard Manet and took from these artists what he needed for himself instead of relying on the hype of coming modernism.
Although one of Hopper's paintings was exhibited in the famous Armory Show of 1913 in New York City, his work excited little interest at that show. His paintings were committed to his own form of realism: compositional structure built on basic, large geometric forms; flat masses of color against less controlled paint; and the use of architectural elements in his scenes for their strong verticals, horizontals, diagonals as well as their powerful emotive presence. Hopper’s realism is from a dreamscape but not the unconscious surreal. It's a parallel universe where the content is from our space/time dimension but exists in the paintings as an alternate reality. An alternate realism is felt when viewing his work. And I argue a psycho-perceptual mind state that is experienced when viewing the work of artists that have truly come to understand their own reality.
The mob moved through, among them a few impatient buttinskis, noses in the air. I belched for the good of the order. Nose in the air buttinski backed away. Thank you Billy Goat Breakfast.
It was an extraordinary show. Keep in mind, my sweets, that Homer and Hopper had beginnings too. Hopper hit the sell out at the Rehn Gallery in New York in 1924—a realist of the inter-war period, I’ve read. This makes me really wonder about the San Diego Alternate Realists of our now endless war period. What is their place in history? Is Hutchison the Homer and Barrett the Hopper? The Klee? The Dali?

Who needs New York City when you have events like Ten Years of Dark Vomit in San Diego

The great thing about traveling to San Diego for work is not the part about working but catching up with what is going on and taking off in the San Diego art scene. Who needs New York City when you have events like Ten Years of Dark Vomit at the At Art of Framing. The show is down by now but the address is 3333 Adams Ave. Check them out for the sake of checking them out because they are bound to bring on the art for the sake of bringing on art.

The Art of Framing frame shop has an excellent show space. It is owned and run by Blythe Goodwin and Ryan Campbell who apparently do high quality framing and attract some of San Diego's most interesting artists. This is a place that generates excitement about art and follows through with the goods every time.

For the opening, fog flowed from the door as I approached the gallery. It was a cool effect and cleared the mental palate in a way as I passed through the door. Although I was interested in catching this show, I was not prepared for what hit me when I walked into the gallery space. The incredible amount of work packed on the wall made the show feel like a full sized installation. There had to be 75 or 80 original works on two walls and in a window. A disco ball threw motion on the starkly lit walls and video galleries on a large monitor led viewers into inter-dimensional participants.

Kelly Hutchison's work feels like it crept up out of the puke and graffiti filled punk shack and onto the gallery wall. Dark Vomit indeed. The volume of his painting through the last ten years is the living growth of passion and vision. A Van Gogh-like progression from the low to the high brow. His expansive imagery and luscious color, does exactly what surrealism is but it's ever so much more. A complete yet eerily familiar alternate reality. Subtle psychological layers. DiChirico and Magritte-like mind spaces with contemporary icons.
The San Diego City Beat Art writer Kinsee Morlan coined it perfectly with "pop disturbism". His vision is truly unique to himself but the timelessness and popularity of the forms everyone can relate to. Kelly's painting style is direct and references 19th century European painting (partly from his use of elaborate framing) and 1950's commercial illustration. Many scenes are consciously the moment before, during or after action or mishap. Lots of eyes. Eyes on pies, too many eyes on cats, chickens and people. An eye floating in my morning coffee.
Among the many eyed portraits on the walls, which he is famous for, some of the eyes on the portraits seemed to be following me, especially "Mr A. Fish". I thought it was just another visual trick, but lo and behold! The eyes have eyes. It seems Mr. Hutchison has recently been working with Mr. Bret Barrett, a kinetic artist I have been following for some time. The "Toxic Avenger", with one regular moving eye and one super-random moving eye courtesy of Mr. Barrett was mesmerizing for its modeled toxic skin as well as not being able to figure out how that googly eye motion is so random.
A picture of this show could be the pure and true definition of eye candy. Visually and psychologically exciting. Disturbing in only a fun-weird way, unless you are of weak constitution. This show is past tense as in ed, d, or t, but if Kelly Hutchison is showing anywhere you might be, it will be a must see. When I checked the works before leaving there were more red dots. My advice, buy low, sell high for art’s sake.

The Midwest Island for Art’s Sake

I sing a song of myself and my country that amends for the moment a patriotic little jingle to go from California to the Midwest Island. So let us just substitute the Midwest Island of the Twin Cities for that other island—Minneapolis being in my mind just now an island of urbanity and culture in a sea of hard living, hard working, hard drinking rural America. For the moment this island is as east as we need to go from California to discover more art and artful living for the sake of art and artful living.

And what I discover on this island of urbanity is the Rosalux Gallery on Washington Ave and the Criminales di Cromatica, new artwork by Shawn McNulty and Michael Sweere. Actually I saw this show on March 18th, the night that it opened, but life on the road kept me too busy to post. I write this from looking at the digital photos I took opening night with Sweere’s permission. The photos are good, but the work is far more interesting from a couple feet or inches away.

Sweere’s work in this show is founded on reuse. The works are patched together pieces of packaging such as Summit IPA six packs, wood blocks, and old tins secured on a surface with shiny little nails. Sweere's reuse pieces are displayed among some of Shawn McNulty’s Diebenkornesque landscapes of a mind. Michael Sweere's nailed tin pieces cross illustration and sculpture resulting in tight metal worked objects with humorous and thoughtful scenes. The use of former packaging material whose original imagery is usurped for the artist's purpose, wrapped and nailed around a canvas support, produces levels of design, packaging and product interplay that are shiny and fun. "Shooting Arrows At The Sea" is a nice example of the collaged metal and patterned nails creating a new scene that defies painted space. But the figure, color and shapes beckon the viewer in. It is somewhat remarkable for printed flat tin and nails even.

Shawn McNulty's paintings recall Diebenkorn meets Rothko roughed up by Anselm Kieffer without the tar. The color and shape fields work best in my view, when the paint is thick and worked and pushed and textured through the process. A few of these paintings nail it and are thick and rich with layers of work and color. These are the ones where the Push and Pull of foreground/background, space/flatness have the most impact.

The showing of these two artists together is an interesting choice that plays with the whole idea of what painting can be. The non-objective work asks you to enjoy painting as color, form, line, etc. for its own value. The tin pieces, with scenes created from commercially printed material, involving no actual painting, create a story/visual space that is read like a painting. A thought that occurred to me only after viewing my digital pics again.

The work piques my interest. Some at the opening had their interest piqued enough to pull out their wallets and get on with the business of purchasing art for the sake of purchasing, a novel convention at an art opening.

The space itself on Washington Street was a great place for a wandering Bill Grey. At every turn, a surprise, another space filled with work, another corner, another clique of arties looking, sipping, jabbering about the stuff on the walls. And then stairs up and down. Downstairs was beer and art and Sweere himself in his ProDesign eyewear. Upstairs you will find a view into the bookstore, coffee shop next door at the railing. It was a great place to hang and wait for a crowd to clear out from in front of the McNulty paintings on the wall opposite.

And after checking out the show, it was just a hundred yards or so to Grumpy's and the Meat Trivia show. As I discovered, to to Grumpy’s prepared to play, and if you order the tater tots with your local brew, you will need a couple of cronies who are not South Beachers to finish them off for you as they are served by the 3 pound basket. The show is meat trivia in starch in starch heaven.

Art, Meat Trivia, and enough starch to make the Pillsbury Doughboy laugh without poking–a well rounded night on the Midwest Island.