I did not plan on another January post, but Nashville is still acting like it cannot function in snow. Classes are canceled. I might as well write something.
Last summer, I mapped out a timeline for my March exhibition, and it became apparent I had to finish the work before Thanksgiving. If I did not, every decision made between December and February would be compromised. Too many other commitments would keep me out of the studio for long periods. Sitting at home during a snowstorm for an entire week validated my concerns. I have never finished a body of work four months before the opening of a show. This time has allowed me to consider what I want for the next two years. I am comfortable with my studio now. I cannot say that has ever happened. It makes me suspicious. I can continue to explore where I am and push the edges, but I may be approaching a maturity I never anticipated. As a result, I have dragged out the to-do list to see what needs to be checked off.
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My senior year English teacher was friends with my parents. She passed away two years ago, which caused me to reflect on her class. I was not and am not a gifted literary critic. “I’m a visual learner!” Man, I wish I had that phrase in my back pocket in high school. I proved my inadequacies repeatedly in her class. My observations on Hamlet were unique…and not in a good way. My interpretations of fiction are usually out of bounds. We had to write a paper about a poet. I wrote about Bob Dylan. My teacher told me I would have to prove Dylan was a poet. In retrospect, that is an odd challenge. Prove he’s a poet? I think I wrote, “Bob Dylan is a poet. He published a book of poetry called Tarantula,” and focused my efforts elsewhere. Dylan eventually won a Nobel Prize in literature. I won that round even if it took 25 years. Maybe I am not a lousy analyst. Perhaps this is what it looks like to be ahead of the curve? Could I be so inept at something that I am accidentally good at it?
Salvador Dalí was ahead of the curve with Jean-François Millet’s painting, The Angelus. I grew up looking at The Angelus without knowing it. It hangs in Andy Taylor’s den in late seasons of The Andy Griffith Show. Of course, I had no idea what the painting was until college, and it would be a few more years before I made the connection to the show. I assume it is there because, even as a 19th-century French Realist painting, it represents the culture of a rural town like Mayberry, NC: agriculture and faith. The Angelus depicts a peasant couple in 19th-century France pausing for the Angelus prayer at the end of a work day. The church in the background rings the bells to call everyone to this task. They stand, heads bowed, with a basket of harvested potatoes between them. Despite not including the fun girls from Mt. Pilot, suspicious out-of-towners, and moonshine stills, this painting captures what Andy Griffith wants you to think about the Piedmont region of North Carolina.
Dalí saw something different. He did not see a couple offering a prayer of gratitude for the day’s harvest; he saw a couple mourning the loss of a child. To Dalí, those potatoes were not originally in the painting. Something else was there. It did not make sense, and this thought needled him for decades.
Picasso was heard in his studio cursing Diego Velazquez as he painted his 58 responses to Velazquez’s Las Meninas. Velazquez had been dead for 300 years, but that did not stop Picasso from yelling at him. I can imagine the same for Dalí. In the same way that Picasso could not unlock all of the secrets of Las Meninas, Dalí could not crack the code of The Angelus. Or maybe his frustrations lie in the fact that he did break the code, but no one believed him. He painted Millet’s Architectonic Angelus in 1933, Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus, and Atavism at Twilight in 1934. That was not enough to satisfy him. Finally, in 1963, he used his reputation as an artist to get the painting X-rayed. The X-ray revealed a geometric form underneath the basket of potatoes—a box roughly the size of a child’s casket. Dalí probably never slept as well as he did the night he found out the results of that x-ray.
Despite my subpar Dylan paper and complaining that I would rather read Henry V than Hamlet, my English teacher told my parents I should become a writer. I was flattered by that and at least knew I would get a good grade in the class, but I quickly dismissed the idea. There were reasons.
I did not read that much and suffered from poor recall. Seems important. For example, when I took the AP English exam at the end of my senior year, one of the essay questions was to write about a pivotal character in a book. I wrote about Piggy in Lord of the Flies. Why? Because, at that moment, I could not think of anything else. I wrote about a character from a book I read in seventh grade because that is all I could remember. I doubt the people grading these exams are interested in answers that stick to a required junior high text.
I had friends who wrote as a hobby, and they were much better.
I did not know what I would write about.
I was not smart, possessing the vocabulary of a 4th grader.
I put my teacher’s career suggestion aside and registered for art classes. My rationale was that writing was a significant undertaking, and I was not up for the task. It would take me a long time to understand that most people are not up for their jobs. Night after night, I would watch David Letterman bomb one joke after another during his opening monologue, and it never occurred to me, “Hey, maybe the people writing these jokes aren’t funnier than everyone else. Maybe they just decided that’s what they wanted to do and went for it.” Instead, I thought, “A writer? I can’t be a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer.”
Signs continued to appear, and I continued to ignore them. Upon entering college, my freshman composition class collectively lobbied my professor to give me an A instead of a B+ for a writing assignment. This was not proposed as a debate. That is not how grades work. My professor read my paper to the class. Why? I don’t know. Someone said, “What grade did that get?” He said, “I gave it a B+.” What followed then was a murmur in the class until someone said, “I think you should give that an A.”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too.”
“Yeah.”
The instructor changed the grade. "Cool," I thought. “But I need to get to drawing class."
I took Introduction to Drama. For our final project, we could choose between reviewing a theatrical performance or writing an original one-act play. I wrote a one-act play. My professor asked if he and some actors could perform it on the radio. Something happened, and the play was never performed, but the offer was there. Twenty years later, I found my instructor on Facebook, and the first thing he said was, “I’m so sorry we never got to perform your play.” I do not even remember the name of this play. I never wrote another one. I had to get to painting class.
Those were the wins (albeit minor ones) I had racked up for writing by the age of 21. But that is okay, considering I was not trying to write. My artistic successes until that point were getting rejected from a juried student art show and having an instructor make it a point to say to me in a room full of other art students, “I just want you to know that I didn’t like your work and I voted against you for the senior exhibition.” And yet, my mind said, “Art is your thing. Writing is a hobby.”
As previously discussed, I later developed an audience through blogging, but I shut it down once I became a stay-at-home parent. There is little to talk about when you are a stay-at-home parent other than staying home. The only thing more repetitive than being a stay-at-home parent is listening to other people talk about it. You feel disconnected? Finding out a lot about yourself? Feel like you need to find a community? Need some adult time?
So here I am. No deadline on the horizon with time to focus on something other than the thing I have dedicated the past 30 years to. What is on my checklist? The most time-consuming project is to finish two books. I wrote 90% of a book of essays during the pandemic. I declared to no one in particular that this book would be completed by the end of 2021. It is now 2024, and that book is still 90% complete. The process has been like charging a phone. The first 95% happens in seconds. You wait forever for that final 5%. Once any work of art is completed, it is no longer the artist’s. I wanted to keep it mine for a bit longer. During this period of waffling, my English teacher died, and I realized she would never see me do the thing she wanted me to do. Momentum crashed with her loss. I had not talked to her in 25 years, but you carry mentors’ voices.
My solution to this delay was to start a different book. If I dedicate two months to the first book, I can finish it. It is like a house project you put off for a decade that takes 15 minutes. The second book will occupy the rest of the year. There will be illustrations for both projects. I intend to print both books simultaneously because they are related. I have no objectivity for any of this. It could be good. It could be navel-gazing garbage. But I have exhibited paintings and drawings that I eventually regretted, so why not put some words on a page and see what happens?
In addition to writing, I have spent studio time reviewing the same ink drawings and collages I have focused on for the past year. I have not thoroughly mined them yet. There is a vein waiting to be tapped. I have also started searching through an old dendrology textbook for shape ideas.
In other news, the active engagement of culture continues to collapse. Have musicians and journalists taken the hardest hits in the new landscape? It looks that way from where I am standing. Maybe there was an explosion of journalism jobs with Web 2.0, and everyone realizes that we do not need that many journalists after all. I do not have access to data like that. A benefit of being a painter is that you always protect yourself by having low expectations of success. First, the new order came for musicians, and now it has arrived for music journalism. Seeing the collapse of Sports Illustrated and Pitchfork over two days was concerning. I know the canary’s writing has been on the wall of the coal mine for years. The demise of these two publications is hardly the first sign of the decline in people’s interest in journalism, which is, in some way, indicative of people’s level of engagement in their culture.
Is Sports Illustrated finished? It is too soon to tell, but the publication has already become a shell of its former self as it has tried to adjust to the digital world. I am not a reader of sports journalism. I like sports, but my interest starts with the opening whistle or pitch and ends with the final buzzer or out. That said, I prefer that people engage with thoughtful journalism instead of a goofball on YouTube making “50 Sickest Dunks of All Time” videos. You will never believe what dunk is at number 36!
We had a subscription to Sports Illustrated when I was a child. My aunt renewed it for my father every Christmas. Did he read it? I rarely opened it. I had little interest if James Worthy, Michael Jordan, or the North Carolina basketball team were not on the cover. I assume the swimsuit issue went straight from the mailbox into the trash can. I read the 1987 issue dedicated to pit bulls when the panic about them started—terrible cover.
Some issues left a positive mark. A 1981 cover with Dean Smith and the Tarheels changed how I think about the use of line as an artist. I found a 1967 issue detailing an exhibition basketball game played with 12’ goals. The cover for that issue is astounding. The design of the first issue in 1954 was probably not used much after that initial launch, which is a shame because it is a beautiful photo, and the type is on point. But the image does not zero in on a star, and I assume they did not make that “mistake” again.
Soon, AI will be doing all of this, and our cultural poverty may be something we can not overcome. Sports Illustrated is guilty of this very thing. They were caught creating AI-generated writers and publishing AI-written articles. But as I have been saying since this season of Fargo aired, I highly doubt that AI can write the line, “Does my discussing matters of state in moist repose bother you?” Humans have a lot left in the tank in terms of creative output.
I still own the 1967 Sports Illustrated issue, the 1982 UNC championship issue with James Worthy on the cover, and a Kirby Puckett issue from 2003 because my father is in the crowd of a photo of a UNC basketball game. I also have a 1988 issue of Mike Tyson versus Michael Spinks, the reason for which will become apparent on the first page of my book if I ever finish it.
Despite not being a dedicated reader, Sports Illustrated felt like an institution. This is one more line in the “con” column of the internet. Free is not free. The media is taking it on the chin, and it does not seem like it will end there. Web 3.0 was supposed to be about autonomy over your personal information, decentralization, and blockchains. So far, no good.
My sympathies go out to the writers at Sports Illustrated, Pitchfork, and whoever else got laid off this month. Although Sports Illustrated and Pitchfork had lost sight of their missions, they needed a reset, not an implosion.
Artists know more than most that people must buy their work if they want artists to continue making it. People around Nashville complain that there is insufficient institutional support for the arts. That is not the problem. There are not enough collectors of local art. Collectors keep artists fed. The Renaissance did not occur because the Uffizi Gallery gave artists institutional support. The Renaissance happened in Florence because wealthy people wrote artists checks to do their work, which led to the eventual creation of the institution, the Uffizi Gallery. Buy art. Buy music. Buy a book. Go to the movies. I am not stupid, and I know that not everyone can do all of those things, but do what you can and stop being a passive receiver of “content.” Invest.
I agree about Dali about not quite unlocking The Angelus, but I didn’t know that story about getting it X-rated. Hilarious, and fascinating. I do think he killed it when it came to Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory…
Great read, Rob. The part about Dali getting that painting x-rayed after all of those years was pretty funny. To me, it can be a weird feeling when a mentor or teacher had a major stake in something that you did years ago and it still being on their radar so many years later. Especially if, like your play, the original cause is long gone and you've moved on.