Friday, January 18, 2013
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
'My Own Personal Rebus' statement
‘My Own
Personal Rebus’ is a puzzle. There is no
definitive solution to this puzzle but there is a good way to answer it…
In his 1988
novel, ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’, Umberto Eco tells the story of a group of editors
working at a vanity press that specializes in occult and conspiracy
publications who entertain themselves by creating their own ‘Plan’ connecting
as many occult beliefs and historical events as possible under one grand narrative.
Using a computer program that generates random connections between far-flung
subjects they fill in missing links by liberally creating facts and even take
the liberty to come up with a new fictional secret society. As their ‘Plan’
grows it begins to consume them and the editors find themselves believing it
might possibly hold some truth, even going so far as to suggest the ‘Plan’
responsible for various real life events. The ‘Plan’ eventually finds its way
into the hands of an occult author who does not know it to be a creation of his
editors and he proceeds with the information as if it were actual research. In
due course, one of the editors, Belbo, is kidnapped by a group of people who
claim to be members of the newly created fictional secret society and demand to
know the author and any further information concerning the ‘Plan’.
My paintings
are created in a very similar manner to the ‘Plan’. I entertain myself by
making the paintings I want to make at any given moment. The connection from
one painting to the next relies on whim as much as design. The paintings
originate in various ways: as an imitation of life, or maybe as a wry response
to established systems of art-making, sometimes my work imitates other artists,
and at other times the paintings are completely my own earnest creation. After
working this way for a number of years I began to see a connection among them which
set me to believing that I might be onto something big—a grand theme not yet
discovered! Even knowing that they are the work of my own hands and come into
being without a premeditated plan these randomly created pieces sit next to
each other, grow familiar and become inexplicably linked. It is easy to slip into
the belief that there is something real, bigger and more important than myself guiding
the work. Is it possible familiarity alone be the entire reason these disparate
objects sit next to each other so well? It is a mind game; I want to find a
connection, I want there to be magic, I want it so desperately and then it begins
to actually happen. I am forced to question
whether I am chancing upon a great new truth or forcing it into being.
When it is
discovered that Belbo has been kidnapped his fellow editor, Causabon, breaks
into his apartment. Causabon knows that Belbo has kept a diary in his personal computer
of all the random connections they were creating for the ‘Plan’ and the
accompanying coincidence of real life events. Causabon believes that if he can
read through the computer diary he will be able to learn who has taken Belbo
and where they might be. The computer welcomes Causabon with the prompt: ‘Do
you know the password?______’. And
Causabon spends several days trying all possible combinations of words and
ideas, permutations of the names of God, names of philosophers, occult groups,
secret societies etc. Finally, in a
moment of frustration when the computer once again prompts: ‘Do you know the
password?____’ Causabon types: ‘NO’! --and
upon admitting that he does not have the required knowledge, the computer
allows him access to the files.
Is it the
artist’s job to come up with answers that the people of the world can use to
fill in ‘the blank’? Is the point of producing art to reveal mystic truths? As
a younger artist I think that is what I aspired to. The longer I live and the
more I paint, however, it seems clear that the correct response is to humbly
and gracefully admit that I don’t have answers. And this ‘NO’ is the point at which my work
begins to open up.
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