historicism cont'd...

Got let GO from CIBT. have some $ from severance and savings. feels good to be free, did drawings below but still not working for cash. looking forward to really investing myself in the ouerve I am creating with the new sketches below. That's the way to go. to find an ouerve that's really your'n like Miro, Basquiat, de Kooning and Dubuffett..
Is this it though? I need a job now, that will allow me to work and stay in NYC, that will justify spending money on framing, oil paints, canvas and stretchers..

Abnegation

Historicism

So.. I work at the CIBT day job, I have 557 friends on FB, I am organizing a group show this Spring in an off the radar LIC gallery, I intend to take classes at Natl Academy of Fine Arts...what's needed to make this thing REALLY happen?

1. Show in April
2. Register for classes in Mar
3. Set myself up to make more paintings on large board and stretched canvas

The "Artworld" as constitutive field

"Everbody" draws, paints, sings or writes poetry, but for our purposes for a work to become "officially" recognized it needs an "artworld". In the 80's there was a specific transformation of the modern "artworld" as such. The Basquiat, Keith Haring stories are indicative of those changes. The idea of the charismatic outsider who "accidentally" makes it in on sheer genius and charisma alone is long gone. Now artists "know" they want in and invest themselves financially and diligently to amassing their credentials.

The Space of Possibles

I think I am going home tonight to work on ink drawings. I want to initiate the theory of chelseaism. It's the feyish viewpoint of the leisure oriented design savvy international style..but it's not an ethno centric black position taking. Basquiat, Iona Rozeal Brown, Chris Offili, Leonardo Drew, Kara Walker, Glenn Ligon, David Hammons, Gary Simmons , Lennon Baptiste..all came up with a workable position to take them to the top THAT FITS WHO THEY LOOK LIKE..mine is like a woman painting about..I don't know..football.

The Chelsea Manifesto- The Pure Gaze cont'd.

Matthew Marks was a classmate of mine at Dalton. I remember reading about him in New York Magazine back in like 1993 I think. I thought, gee, my buddy Matthew has a gallery how nice. I put together a book of snapshots of some drawings and paintings I had hobbled together and sent them to him. After a long while I called him because I didn't get a response. I got hold of one of his assistants and he sort of politely said "We don't show this kind of thing.." I mean I was really clueless. Later I ran into Matthew on Madison Avenue after a Tony Bennett opening and he invited me out to the Carlysle Hotel to hear Bobby Short. I got drunk and argued with one of Matthew's buddies, probably some famous artist now, about the Pop artists, then I got up and started banging on the piano in the bar..the maitre de politely asked me to stop. Matthew hasn't spoken to me since. Whenever he sees me he hides.
I once asked Cecily Brown if she was a painter.

The Pure Gaze

I was selling portfolio cases in 1994 at Sam Flax on like 20th Street in the Flatiron District. I worked for like $6 an hour, union wages. I hated it. But I was there to witness the rejuvenation of the Flatiron District and the subsequent emergence of the "Chelsea" scene.
Chelsea was more than just a new "art" neighborhood, it represented a succession in attitudes about art, artists and presentation. Chelsea of course is synonymous with "gay" culture. But not the "downtown" and "downscale" scene of Stonewall or Al Pacino's "Cruising". It is a high toned, buffed, professional gayness, and perfect for the new art world and new art attitude.
Gone is the Basquiat, de Kooning paradigm of "look what the cat dragged in"..art now is made and sold by professionals in a professional adult atmosphere..to be cont'd.