Can do anything

Roy Lichtenstein, and Pop artists in general, use a vocabulary which is both very culturally dependent but very universal within that frame. Bombshells (of both the exploding and blonde types), brooding dudes, primaries and flesh tones, halftone patterns, melodrama and speech bubbles are used... I don't really want to talk about him as critiquing the art world, mass entertainment and so on. Instead, I'm going to focus on my favorite element, the speech bubble and text. I imagine what the images would be without the contextualizing words; the inner turmoils and angst become externalized and smack ya. Text in artwork is a kind of funny paradox; it conveys more complex and subtle emotions but in a very direct way. Speech bubbles have a great, specific purpose, and when are put in different context do crazy things. Rivane Neuenschwander is an artist from Brazil who removed the context of a nationalistic Brazilian comic strip from the speech bubbles, leaving abstracted forms and colors. Text that is meant to be read as coming from some entity within a piece of art is a lot more interesting; there are implications of what the artist knows versus what the character knows versus what the viewer knows.


Top: "Ohhh... Alright" by Roy Lichtenstein, 1964. From a blog called the Swipe Files, which looks at similarities between elements in cartoons, comics and graphic novels through the issue of plagiarism, homage and reappropriation.


Left: "Zé Carioca no. 4, A Volta de Zé Carioca [The Return of Zé Carioca] (1960)" by Rivane Neuenschwander, 2004. From an article in This Week in New York.

Please look above

I've been thinking about camouflage patterning, particularly the use of camouflage by humans. The defining characteristics are interesting, especially considering what appears (to me) to be common perspectives of such. One, the specific aspects of camouflage are quite different from those in other patterns. It inherently doesn't have a definable overall structure, because then what's the point, and it does typically have a definable color scheme, because that is the point. Traditional fashion patterning can be executed in any palette. What interests me most is perhaps the necessity of a particular environment for the patterning to be effective, as well as knowledge of what viewers (the audience) knows. Total awareness of the surrounding, unpredictable yet a pattern... Site specific? It's clear why it's not used in much or any ornamentation, but it also seems to have a lot of substance (and I'm also interested in removing the militaristic connotations, sort of. I was totally into military history as a kid and running around in the woods, still, so I can live with it.)
The question then becomes, what are effective and necessary means of incorporating the elements of camouflage into what I'm making? As I said, site-specific artwork is an obvious answer but doesn't interest me much. It does rely totally on the illusory and making one thing look like another. Mixed media, or something. In the meantime, and for your consideration, here's one of my favorite patterns (flecktarn, from Germany).

From wikipedia.

I am separate

Before I could work through my list of ideas I thought would be useful to do so I could best communicate about my work, something came up (my show). I'm completely happy with how it went; thanks to everyone who came and to Jenn and Courtney and Liz. Today it hit me mid-shave that most of my time this semester I have devoted to last night, for better or worse (and a case could be made either way). All I know is for the rest of the semester I'm not using any more damn cream heavyweight paper. Probably pencil work drawn from real-life referents. Maybe some more painting, I wonder how much I can apply what I learned over the past several months back into painting, which I feel pretty incompetent with still.