Here's a look at some of the work.
Jackson Pollock (no [known] relation). “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” We phrase it as a question, not a statement. We raise the possibility, but we’re unconvinced.We’ve been told to accept this “modern art,” and enjoy it, but we’re not sure how. There’s been some debate in the popular arena since the public began to see the painting. He’s been a sort of abstract expressionist poster boy, the sort of painter people like because they’re told to like him. “Jackson Pollock creates masterpieces. I want to be the sort of person who appreciates good art, therefore I like Pollock’s paintings.” While many people genuinely appreciate his work, and many respect the context and understand the motivation, in the wider category of all people, everywhere, he’s a bit of a lead man in the “my kid could paint that,” school of thought.
Of course, your kid couldn’t paint that. Not exactly. There have been plenty of imitators of the style, and machines have been rigged to replicate the sweep and drip of paint on surface, but they’ve failed to exactly replicate it. Pollock himself described the experience of painting as something felt rather than thought, and most critique of his work—analytical as it may be—uses sensory referents. A balance of elements that is experienced better than it is understood. Recent examination, though, has shown that underlying this sensory experience is, effectively, solid natural law. On a minute scale, Pollock’s slung and dripped paint produced fractal patterns on contact with the canvas, definable orderly schemes which are not reproduced by human imitators or artificial automata, or by “your kid painting it.” These strokes within strokes were the result of the build of his brushes and trowels, viscosity of paint, the basic mechanical proportions and actions of bone and muscle, all translated through the artist’s intention and intuition. That the over-spray and drips on the floor around his canvases do not carry the same markers indicates that it was the man’s own skill and judgment directing marks that followed the same basic rules governing the construction of molecules and growth of seashells. In this case, where balance and brilliance are “felt” by the viewer, it seems to be a result of a subconscious awareness of the underlying structure—in the same way we all perform differential calculus in our heads at high speed, without thinking, each time we toss or catch a ball. The rules can be understood, but needn’t be understood in order to function or be appreciated.
On the one hand, this may lend credence to the concept of the artist as solitary genius, endowed with super-human skill and inspiration. It may even be considered to contradict some of my earlier thoughts on accessibility—this may require clarification, but I don’t think it’s a case of mutual exclusion. But for our current purposes, I’m much more interested in the notion of potential evidence of a measurable, non-arbitrary basis for intuitive decisions. The Bach cantata or jam of improvisational jazz, written and performed by intuition, are beautiful because they artfully employ the physics of harmony and dissonance. The Pollock is a masterpiece while a random splatter isn’t, for similar reasons.
So now you’re saying, “But Scott, right there in the title you told us you were going to talk about Kris Pierce’s work. Why the long love song about Jackson Pollock? If you wanted to give us a lead-in, why not talk about, say, Warhol or punk propaganda?” ‘Cause I’ve been thinking about Pollock lately? No, but seriously, folks, there’s a connection here, about that fundamental art-school question of “intuitive vs. arbitrary,” of inspiration versus imitation. Maybe, let’s see.
I haven’t had an opportunity to examine a lot of Mr. Pierce’s work in depth, or to directly interrogate him much about motivations. I do know he’s not at all shy about experimenting with media: photography, installation, painting, large-scale Xerox collage, electronics. A lot of his work is quasi-political—whether politics on the global, social or personal scale—and has an edge of humor. He’s had an affinity for the grid, and hidden nuance or irony in subtle manipulations of that structure. He also has a penchant for skimming the detritus of advertising culture for material to tweak into ironic or sinister statements. And he has a large black square adorned with white vinyl letters and an iron-on transfer of the Lone Ranger. I’d like to take a closer look at that one.
So, in the movie Desk Set, Spencer Tracy’s Richard Sumner is interviewing Katherine Hepburn’s Bunny Watson, and asks, “What’s the first thing you notice in a person?” Her reply: “Whether the person is male or female.” So obvious it’s played for comedy, right? But the obvious often escapes us, and I like to be all analytical, so I’ll break it down for you like this: The first thing we notice when we look at a painting or other piece of art is whether, on a basic level, it’s an enjoyable physical object. In the case of canvas painting, is the stretcher straight, the canvas tight? Are there elements of the construction that interfere with the experience of the content?From there we can get a feel for the material application, whether it appears skillfully and intentional or careless and sloppy. Or intentionally sloppy, for that matter. Our first half-second of experience of the work is letting the background of our brain decide if it’s worth taking a closer look. And then we move on to the details, the content, the specifics of application and execution, the appearance of awareness of the historical and cultural context. And whether or not, frankly, we like it. We see it in sequence, then look at it back-and-forth and talk about it all at once.
Beat City is a work on stretched canvas. Visually, the structure feels clean and solid. Very nearly centered on the composition is an image of the Lone Ranger. (The point of his chin actually falls at the geographic center of mass.) The found graphic was printed in black-and-white on an ink-jet transfer sheet, and applied by heat to the canvas. The weave of un-primed canvas can be seen through the transferred ink, asserting the painting-ness of stretched canvas through this new technology typically used to produce do-it-yourself graphic T-shirts and other icons of pop domesticity. The remainder of the canvas has been painted solid black. It’s painted with a brush, by hand, and not perfectly smooth. Streaks and strokes are still visible, again claiming to be a painting, informing the viewer that this is an object made by hand. Layered spray paint would have smoothed things out, fallen more in line with the cultural referents the piece brings up. Hand-painted smooth and even would have had a similar effect, while pulling in minimalism to have a conversation with pop and punk. Black dye would have emphasized the textile nature of the canvas. And the same image, produced on a computer and printed as a glossy giclee would have nudged the whole thing farther into the realm of commercial, pop, ad-space. The hand-and-brush work is the strongest assertion in the piece that this is, in fact, “a painting.” (Whatever that means anymore…) But it’s also in conflict with the other elements. There’s graphic contrast of solid black against solid white, and technical contrast of the crisp vinyl letters overlaid on the painted surface. There’s a tension I’m not positive is fully resolved, and I wonder if it would have been more effective for the lettering to reference vinyl graphics without being vinyl graphics. I’m thinking about Kirk Hayes, how he manipulates oil paint to appear for all the world like scrap-paper collage. There are two separate worlds at work here (in both Mr. Hayes’ work and Mr. Pierce’s). Is an appliqué of “new” on top of “traditional” enough to integrate the two into a cohesive whole? Or is the beat city booty music floating on the surface tension of the painting beneath? We’re either experiencing a fusion that explores new interpretations, or getting the visual equivalent of somebody’s boom box in the Rothko chapel. My general feeling is that the decisions out of which this work is constructed were thoughtful and directed. The use of stick-on letters and iron-on transfer could be seen as simply labor-saving devices, but I believe they were chosen for their relevance to the main idea, the bringing together of three different concepts and contexts. Still and all… I feel that they need another indefinable nudge of integration in order to be completely successful, and the first three paragraphs I wrote above (though I’d have to terribly butcher my own line of reasoning to say so) suggest that I ought to go with that feeling. That the idea is relevant and interesting, but the execution just maybe a hair shy of on-target.
And I haven’t even gotten into the content contained in that construction above. We’ve got an over-sized LP cover. It wouldn’t be a CD. We’ve got a hero of the Depression-era radio fan who became a hero of the Eisenhower-era television audience. The strong, silent white-hat archetype out for bloody revenge in a very clean-cut white guy awe-shucks kind of way. We’ve got a title for an escapist crossover: a raunchy underground hip-hop dancehall raver feel. Big “Olde English” text: “Fantasy.” All in clear black-and-white, framed by the presence of stretched canvas. It’s an ad for the commidification of comfortable apathy: the vicarious thrill of somebody else’s adventure translated through sex, drugs and rock’n’roll dreams. A controlled complacency that prevents the asking of too many questions or any real investigation. The new opiate of the masses?
Totally.
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