Exhibits Archives - Page 6 of 9 - DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt DRAWING LIFE by fred hatt

2010/12/02

The Portfolio Problem

Filed under: Art and Society,Autobiography — Tags: Art & History, Art and Society, Exhibits, Philosophy, Process, Shows — fred @ 00:34

Artist's Portfolio Pages, 2000, by Fred Hatt (click to enlarge)

I’ve been focused recently on selecting portfolio samples of my work. Last week I put together the 2011 calendar featured in the previous post, and this week I prepared my regular application for the NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowship, in the “Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts” category. Nearly every artist in the State of New York applies for the NYFA Fellowship, since it’s a relatively simple application and if you get it it’s a few thousand bucks you can spend however you see fit. I’ve applied many times over the years and never gotten it, and the same is true of most of the artists I know. (One of my friends, figurative artist Susan M. Berkowitz, won the award a couple of years ago.) The odds are a bit long, but not as long as winning a big Lotto jackpot.

Anyway, for the NYFA Fellowship in the visual arts categories you submit eight jpegs that the panel views four at a time, projected on side-by-side digital projectors. The artist selecting work has to decide what kind of presentation will work with this viewing format, while taking into account that the panelists will be seeing thousands of images in a first-cut round that must be rather grueling.

The standard advice is to show a highly consistent selection of pieces. Too much variation will probably be seen as “student work”. Now this is exactly the opposite of the approach I took in selecting pieces for my calendar. There I selected for diversity. My idea was that by showing a variety of media and styles together, the underlying approach, the sense of energy that all the pieces have in common, would shine through. [I took a similar approach in the two-page portfolio and statement from ten years ago, pictured at the top of this post.]

I’ll let you tell me whether you think that strategy worked in the calendar selections. I’m fairly certain it wouldn’t have worked for the NYFA application. They segregate by medium, for one thing, so photography and drawing are seen by different panels, and I don’t think body painting really fits into any of their categories. For NYFA, I selected a coherent and stylistically unified set of large color drawings. Whether they’ll make a good impression when they come up in the numbing procession of images, and whether the particular panelists will respond positively to them, is anybody’s guess.

Picasso desktop wallpaper from brothersoft.com

Going through these decisions got me thinking about the question of diversity of style and media in an artist’s work. Many of our most revered artists crossed those lines all the time. Picasso changed style and medium more often than he changed mistresses. Cocteau, Warhol, Kiki Smith, and just about every really interesting artist you can think of refused to be boxed in by notions of consistency. All of them wanted to show that the essence of their work transcended medium and style.

Somehow, though, the institutional art world wants to define things by exactly the same lines these artists insisted on coloring outside of. Grants, group shows, festivals and arts organizations are nearly always defined by some combination of medium, nationality/ethnicity/identity group, and/or some notion of genre such as “minimalism” or “outsider art”. An artist who paints, makes films, does installations and writes songs risks being seen as a dilettante or as undisciplined.

Some of this is unavoidable. “Art” is such a nebulous and ever-expanding field of human experience that you have to draw some lines somewhere if you are going to study it or curate it. I’m just one of those artists, and there are many of us, who naturally respond to boundaries by wanting to cross them. Indeed, “blurring the boundaries” has become one of the enduring clichés of contemporary artspeak.

In recent decades high-end contemporary art has been increasingly marketed as an “ultraluxe” fashion statement for the fabulously wealthy, that also happens to be a potentially lucrative investment. Dealers and collectors of important contemporary artists want something readily identifiable, a clear and unmistakable signature style. Why pay the big bucks for an original Koons if everyone that walks into your place doesn’t immediately recognize it as such? And of course the dealers lower down on the art food chain aspire to emulate this approach and tend to discourage broadness and experimentation in the artists they represent.

Michael Jackson and Bubbles, by Jeff Koons, 1988

I just don’t roll that way, and maybe I do lack the discipline and persistence that some of the big name artists bring to their work. I’m in awe of the amount of work and networking it must have taken Matthew Barney to create the Cremaster Cycle, consisting of five very non-mainstream feature films plus performances and sculptures and an elaborate personal mythology. He sold his boundary-crossing mega-opus by making it so big and compelling it couldn’t be ignored.

I’ve pretty much done art for my own pleasure and satisfaction. I’ve never seen a clear path to making big bucks or getting a big name without somehow betraying what I feel is the essence of it. It’s my path, my exploration of the world. For me it’s more about asking questions than it is about making big statements. It’s important to me to keep pushing it in different directions and manifesting it in different forms.

This blog is the best venue I’ve ever found for sharing my work with anyone who might be interested in it. Here I can show the full diversity of my practice. I can present it in different ways and highlight different facets of it every week. I can put drawings, photography, video, and ideas in one place. Of course it doesn’t make any money, but it doesn’t really cost much either, except for a significant investment of my time.

I appreciate all of you who read this blog, because art can be a solitary pleasure but it gains an absolutely essential dimension when it becomes communication. Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, and thank you for sharing my work with others!

The images in this post that are not my own were found on the web. Clicking on them links to the sites where they were found.

Comments Off

2010/10/14

My Art Can Be Yours

Filed under: My Work for Sale — Tags: Collecting, Exhibits, Shows — fred @ 12:59

Fred Hatt at the opening of the group exhibition "Lineal Investigations" at Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 2007. Fred Hatt's large drawing "Mesh" is seen at right. Photo by Susan Berkowitz

I still sometimes show my work in art galleries, but this blog has become my best venue. It allows me to present much more work to a much larger audience, and it’s freely accessible almost everywhere.

I won’t criticize galleries here, as they can perform vital functions in promoting and legitimizing an artist’s work, and of course viewing artwork on the web in no way equals the experience of seeing the original work. But I often have more visitors to this blog in one day than visitors that see my work in a gallery during the entire run of a show. For the art lover, the blog is always open, doesn’t require walking a mile from the nearest subway, and instead of being eyed disdainfully by a gallery attendant hiding behind a computer monitor, you get to hide behind a computer monitor yourself!

The price of work sold through a gallery must usually cover a large gallery commission, as well as the cost of framing the work. This can make it very expensive.

I grew up in Oklahoma and didn’t have much access to art galleries. I was introduced to the arts through art books, periodicals, PBS shows, and other such relatively populist media. I’ve always seen art as something that should be shared broadly. I’ve never really identified with the elitist high-luxe commodity culture approach that’s behind the marketing of today’s art stars.

So today on this blog I’m launching my Purchase page. It’s really simple. You can order inexpensive prints of any of my work that I’ve posted here or on my other websites, or you can get original artwork direct from me for less than you’d pay at a gallery. In either case, just email me.

I expect the Purchase page to grow over time, with the addition of books, DVDs and other original media. I’m also open to commissions, suggestions or requests, so don’t hesitate to contact me.

Comments Off

2010/09/09

Matisse the Deconstructionist

Filed under: Homage: Visual Artists,Reviews: Art Exhibitions — Tags: Art & History, Exhibits, Henri Matisse, MoMA, Painting, Process, Sculpture — fred @ 20:16

Portrait of Yvonne Landsberg, 1914, by Henri Matisse

The exhibit “Matisse: Radical Invention 1913-1917” is on view through October 11, 2010 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show features work from a brief period in the middle of Henri Matisse’s long career, roughly coinciding with the first World War. It shows the artist engaged in a heroic struggle to transform his “decorative” style into something hard enough and grand enough to stand out in the twentieth century.

Traditional painters start rough and then labor to make their work more polished, more developed, more elaborate. Matisse worked and reworked his canvases and sculptures to strip them to their structural essence. He had no interest in smoothing the brushstrokes or making a more convincing illusion of reality.

View of Notre Dame, 1914, by Henri Matisse

Matisse was born in 1869, when photography was already ubiquitous, and came of age in an era when the most interesting movements in art explored liberation from visual realism. His early work was a kind of post-impressionism, traditional subjects loosely painted with a sensuous approach to vivid colors.

During the time period this show focuses on, Matisse was determined to take his work to a new level. Perhaps he was challenged by the impact made by the cubism of Picasso and Braque. Perhaps his previous work began to feel too small and genteel in a time of war. Many of his sculptures and large canvases of this time were repeatedly and heavily reworked, becoming in the process more austere, more bold, and more abstract.

Even as the size of the works expanded towards the monumental, as Matisse’s early rounded, cloudy forms gave way to angular slabs, and his sweet candy colors to fields of blue, black and gray, the images remain sensual and inviting – Matisse could not obscure his inner warmth.

Goldfish and Palette, 1914, by Henri Matisse

Matisse knew that the process of working towards greater abstraction was as interesting as the final works. Photographers documented incremental stages of paintings that were revised over a period of years, and his sculpture, “Back”, was repeatedly altered by reworking plaster casts, retaining the molds of different versions. Even where earlier states of the paintings are not documented, Matisse left pentimenti clear enough to invite the viewer to try to penetrate the development of the work by examining the layers of paint.

“The Back”, four versions, 1908 through 1931, by Henri Matisse

The curators of this exhibit have used digital tools to analyze these stages of development, and one gallery presents this analysis in an animated display. If you are not able to make it to the Museum of Modern Art to see the exhibit, this exposition of the successive changes in “Bathers by a River” and “Back” is presented in the excellent website on “Matisse: Radical Invention” hosted by the Art Institute of Chicago, where the exhibit was initially shown. For anyone interested in the creative process of visual art, this website is worth perusing.

Another great example of Matisse’s work from this period is “The Piano Lesson”, recently compared with other artists’ treatment of the same theme in this post at my friend Claudia’s blog, Museworthy. The original painting is in this show. It’s eight feet tall and all that gray is surprisingly luminous.

I also recommend matisse.net, one of the best websites out there devoted to any artist’s full career.

Images in this post were found on the web. Clicking on the images links back to the sites where I found them.

Comments Off

2010/09/03

Faces of the People

Filed under: Figure Drawing: Portraits,Movement Drawing,My Past Events — Tags: Chashama, Exhibits, Experimental Performance, Figures, Installation, NYC, Portraits, Process, Shows, Sketch — fred @ 22:50

“The Active Mirror”, 2002, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

New York City is a magnificent environment for people watching. On the streets, manual laborers mingle with capitalist big shots, celebrities blend in with the masses, and economic refugees share the sidewalks with tourists on spending sprees. I know of no other city that compares with New York for ethnic and cultural diversity. If you love humanity for its endless variations, New York is a sumptuous banquet.

“The Active Mirror”, 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

Of course, once you leave the street or Subway and step into a culturally specific environment, most of that diversity disappears. Unfortunately, that is true in the galleries and performance venues of the art world. The art world in New York is not all white or all American, but it is almost entirely populated by people with a certain kind of education and upbringing, with certain well-defined ways of speaking and acting and dressing.

“The Active Mirror”, 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

Those who work in arts administration are united in proclaiming the value of diversity and have been trying for years to reach out to “underserved audiences” and “underrepresented populations”. Their efforts have been somewhat successful – I think art audiences in New York, especially for large, well-publicized events, are clearly more diverse now than when I moved here two decades ago. Still, it doesn’t begin to compare with the diversity on the streets. Art galleries in New York are all free to enter, but the vast majority of people never do. Unfortunately a lot of art is pretentious and unfriendly to the uninitiated. This attracts an audience of initiates, whose aura of exclusivity tends to deter those who do not see themselves as art world insiders.

“The Active Mirror”,2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

A few years ago I took advantage of an opportunity to use my art to connect with people on the street. Chashama is an arts organization that has special access to the asset that is most problematic in the dense and expensive city – space. Chashama’s founder and artistic director, Anita Durst, is a member of a legendary real estate dynasty family. The Durst Organization develops skyscrapers in Manhattan. Properties that are condemned or transitional are made available for the arts through Chashama. I’ve been involved with Chashama events since the mid-1990’s. They have a great track record of supporting all kinds of artists, including some that most of the institutions would consider too underground or outsider or offbeat to present.

“The Active Mirror”, 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

During the early 2000’s, Chashama had a whole block of storefronts on 42nd Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway, while the Durst Organization was constructing the Conde Nast Building at the corner of Broadway and 42nd, the southern end of Times Square and the Theater District. They hosted a huge festival of theater and dance, performance art, visual art and installations called “Windows on 42nd Street“. In April, 2002, and again in July, 2003, I presented a drawing performance called “The Active Mirror.”

“The Active Mirror”, 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

A sign on the window read: “A reflection is the view of a virtual eye behind the glass. Look at your reflection in a storefront window, and you see yourself and your surroundings, superimposed over the merchandise on display. But in this window, on this day, the view you see in the window is that of another subjective eye, an artist who sketches what he sees through the window, on the window. Stop to watch, and your portrait may appear there on the window.”

“The Active Mirror”, 2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

I lined the inside of the window space with white fabric and the inside of the plate glass with clear acetate. I hung some of my portraits in the window space, to prove, I suppose, that I was a qualified portrait artist. I stood at the window with my black Sharpie and sketched the urban landscape until I could attract passersby to stop for me. If anyone paused to watch, I quickly began sketching a likeness, starting with a recognizable detail of attire or hairstyle so the subject would know that I was drawing him or her. I had to work quickly, as I couldn’t expect anyone to have the patience to give me a prolonged pose. Other passersby would stop to watch the action, and I would quickly move on to the next subject, since if my audience would disperse I would face the difficult challenge of gathering a new cluster.

“The Active Mirror”, 2003, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

Visual art is usually considered an indirect form of communication. You make a painting or whatever, and later, people look at it and try to imagine what you were thinking or feeling in the act of creating it. For a long time I’ve had an interest in the potential of visual art as a more direct way of relating to another person. This interest has been explored through a highly collaborative way of working with models, through the idea of art as a ritual or experience (such as body painting), and through treating the act of drawing or painting as a dance or performance, for an audience.

“The Active Mirror”, 2002, by Fred Hatt, performance photo by April Panzer

In “The Active Mirror”, my offer to strangers was to share with them my way of seeing them. I could not speak to my subjects, nor they to me, through the thick plate glass. My sharpie sketches were my only way of relating to people. Around the corner in Times Square, there are portrait and caricature artists who make a living sketching the tourists. My sketches were not for sale, just for public display, and I think many of the people who stopped for me were not tourists, but New Yorkers who would never think of sitting for a street caricaturist.

“The Active Mirror”, 2002, by Fred Hatt, detail of acetate drawing

Everyone is comfortable looking at something in a store window, even people who would never enter an art gallery or performance space, so by the end of five hours of sketching, the windows were covered with images reflecting the wondrous diversity of the New York street.