At David Kordansky Gallery (in the new Bergamont of Culver City) we are given a decade slice of Lawson’s oeuvre that begins the same year as Douglas Crimp’s seminal exhibition, Pictures, at Artist Space.
Thomas Lawson's Don't Hit Her Again, 1981
In 1987 I was in my third year at CalArts, where faculty as disparate as Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Howard Singerman, Doug Huebler, Catherine Lord, Allan Sekula, and Sande Cohen contentiously lobbed Molotov cocktails of theory at each other. Just to keep things interesting, Robert Heineken, Ashley Bickerton, Mary Kelly, David Hockney, Douglas Crimp, and Jeffrery Vallance passed though the visiting artist lecture series, while Mike Kelley, John Greyson, and Tom Lawson were brought in as visiting faculty. Stridently held positions and philosophical recriminations eventually degraded into Postmodern Fight Night at Plato’s Symposium. The volatile dynamic of CalArts in the mid 80’s couldn’t hold for long, and soon thereafter faculty either left, died, or were pushed out; and (political) passion’s other great killer—age—also took its toll.
Thomas Lawson's He Shot Best Buddy, 1982
The art movements missing from the theoretical disputes at CalArts were being made by people like Sandro Chia and Julian Schnabel—work that could be lumped together as Neo-expressionist. Though their work fell outside the Marxist and conceptual discussions taking place at CalArts, what gave their ugly paintings a cultural toe hold was a return to the oasis of gestural mark-making (lost in the desert wanderings of silkscreened Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism). Also missing from the CalArts quarrel were the OG (Original Gangster) appropriationists like Sherrie Levine and Richard Prince. These are the folks that saw our mediated environment as cultural readymades, throwing up images culled from magazines and art history textbooks, altered only by the pixie dust of irony.
Thomas Lawson's Study: Self Evident Truth, 1986
In his 1981 Artforum manifesto, Last Exit: Painting, Lawson writes:
As it does for many of the artists from that era, art history's strata bear down heavily in Lawson's paintings, like the stone roof weighs on the caryatids in Heaven is a Place. Washed in fields of colors and dry brush strokes, Lawson's monochromes call to mind a continuum that stretches from Mark Rothko's chapel back to Raphael's School of Athens.
[As a critical aside, it seems that today's manifestation of mediated capitalism has become as much of a burden for today's artists as art history's record was to the artists of the Pictures Generation]
I remember a Gilbert-Rolfe lecture where he said that the difference between classical and modernist painting can be seen by watching art patrons view the work. In classical painting, the fixed-focus perspective of illusionistic space works best when the viewer stands a particular distance from the work of art. That illusionism is thwarted in early modernism, then completely ignored by the time we get to abstraction. A viewer of modern art will move in close then away (like a yo yo) first inspecting the brushwork, then stepping back in an attempt to take in the work's gestalt. In Lawson's paintings one can decipher traces of the art historical record, then step back for the re-presentation of appropriated imagery.
"More compelling, because more perverse, is the idea of tackling the problem with what appears to be the least suitable vehicle available, painting. It is perfect camouflage, and it must be remembered that Picasso considered cubism and camouflage to be one and the same, a device of misrepresentation, a deconstructive tool designed to undermine the certainty of appearances. The appropriation of painting as a subversive method allows one to place critical aesthetic activity at the center of the marketplace, where it can cause the most trouble."Lawson's project (and the issues of the era) are far more complex and nuanced than using painting as a trope that allows critique into the art market, like suicide bomber using a burqa to access a crowded market.
Thomas Lawson's Heaven is a Place, 1986
[As a critical aside, it seems that today's manifestation of mediated capitalism has become as much of a burden for today's artists as art history's record was to the artists of the Pictures Generation]
I remember a Gilbert-Rolfe lecture where he said that the difference between classical and modernist painting can be seen by watching art patrons view the work. In classical painting, the fixed-focus perspective of illusionistic space works best when the viewer stands a particular distance from the work of art. That illusionism is thwarted in early modernism, then completely ignored by the time we get to abstraction. A viewer of modern art will move in close then away (like a yo yo) first inspecting the brushwork, then stepping back in an attempt to take in the work's gestalt. In Lawson's paintings one can decipher traces of the art historical record, then step back for the re-presentation of appropriated imagery.
Thomas Lawson's Spirit of the Museum, 1987In addition to the larger paintings, Thomas Lawson: 1977 - 1987 also gives us insight into his artistic process; we see how felt marker on Xerox or spray paint on postcards transubstantiate into oil on canvas.
In a coda to his essay Last Exit: Painting we are shown a handful of images by artists whose work would fall loosely under the umbrella of painting: the cast Surrogates of Allan McCollum, Jack Goldstein, and Lawson's own painting. The works on paper can be seen as not only fueling his artistic production, but informing his writing practice as well.
In a coda to his essay Last Exit: Painting we are shown a handful of images by artists whose work would fall loosely under the umbrella of painting: the cast Surrogates of Allan McCollum, Jack Goldstein, and Lawson's own painting. The works on paper can be seen as not only fueling his artistic production, but informing his writing practice as well.
Thomas Lawson's Luxury Goods 2, 1987
In other works on paper, found images of luxury goods are layered with space-flattening capsule-shaped blobs. Like the irony-soaked appropriation of commodity culture by Lawson's contemporaries, are we to see consumerism as replacing religion as the opiate of the masses? Lawson has argued that the marginalized position of his "institutional critique" peers makes their work less effective. But how are images of expensive jewelery read when they hang over the sofa in a Manhattan co-op?
The large-scale paintings offer a complex mix of contexts—both commercial and historical—and their size lets them speak with authority. While the smaller collages are interesting for what they reveal about process, they may suffer from being seen as a product of Madison Avenue, without the critical filter of the artist's studio.
The large-scale paintings offer a complex mix of contexts—both commercial and historical—and their size lets them speak with authority. While the smaller collages are interesting for what they reveal about process, they may suffer from being seen as a product of Madison Avenue, without the critical filter of the artist's studio.
I'm interested in your reading of Lawson's work is affected at all by knowing him personally as a dean/prof. I'm not saying this would be negative; I reviewed a show by Kaucyila Brooke and I knew a lot more than the average viewer because I talked to her about the show but was up front about that in the review.
ReplyDeleteDuring my time at CalArts I got (what I thought was) an undeserved reputation for hating painters, simply because I asked, "Given what you're trying to say or investigate in your work, why is the idea being manifested as a painting?" When I write about painting (this review being an exception) I'm usually left with an uneasy feeling from ignoring the elephant in the room, that is, the question of painting. that being said, I like Tom's work for not ignoring those kinds of questions.
ReplyDeleteTom has said that he's making new work, and I would have liked to have seen more recent stuff, rather than paintings and ephemera from the halcyon days of the Pictures Generation. I don't know if this is true for others, but I never spent that much time talking to faculty about their own work.
In the case of Tom's practice, I probably have a stronger relationship with his writing than his visual production, so I was mostly seeing the work though that context. I don't know if it's the same for you, but I usually have a stronger affinity with the work of artist-writers.
I would say that his dual practice had a stronger effect on my thoughts than being Tom's TA. Do you thing I should have mentioned it in the review?
No, I don't think "full disclosure" is necessary, it's just that you have a tone of familiarity when talking about Tom that comes through in the post, but on second read does seem to be more about familiarity with his writing vs. the man himself.
ReplyDeleteBut artists teaching artists always has a weird haze of disclosure to it. Some teachers are very secretive about their work, and I've always wondered why.
on contradiction I've always found in Lawson's "criticality" was made evident by an editorial note added to Lawson's "Last Exit" coda, where it noted that all of the artists reproduced were represented by the same gallery...criticality as market opportunism?
ReplyDelete