“Rome Belvedere (Remembering
Kitaj)” is the first painting I executed upon returning
from Rome in 2008. The Belvedere Torso dominates the center:
embodiment of the Greek idea of harmony, beauty and perfection
of the human form. It is juxtaposed with the kind of frailty
we can encounter in the real world, the club feet of a Rome
beggar. A large dog is an earthly embodiment of a kind
of perfection possible in real life, a state of grace in
its animal life force and physicality. Italian glass
chandeliers inhabit the same picture as repeating shapes,
grapes, breasts, plenty.
The Rome experience demanded a solution to a problem- how
to assimilate myriad sources of information and stimulus
into a coherent and contemporary response. I hadn’t
gone to Rome to be a tourist or to feel reverence for the
art of the past. I realized, once there, that I was
looking for something much more elusive and vital: sources,
connections, links to my own personal artistic world view
amid the larger human narrative. I also thought of
R.B. Kitaj, with whom I corresponded. He had passed
away the previous fall, and the solution to the artistic
dilemma I faced dove-tailed with my thoughts on his work
and our conversation the last time I saw him. For me
to use of the Rome experience, everything had to become raw
material- the Belvedere Torso, a street beggar, a gum wrapper,
a Velazquez , a tree, a street sign, graffiti... all became
interconnected. I had never been interested in such a framework
of ideas and overlapping imagery before, but it was time
to open doors. To do this required new vocabularies,
and this painting is a reflection on Kitaj; the confluence
of imagery, the playfulness I allowed myself both creating
and negating space, the free-flowing approach to ideas and
complexity. |
