I'm writing this for those of you who missed both Dark Arts talks at Conde Contemporary in Miami last weekend (you poor bastards). It was a thing to behold. Friday night was booked to capacity and a Saturday day night talk, added by popular demand, was also full. The talk itself, as people who follow me have come to expect, was dynamic, participatory, and fun.
For me, the thing was a blessing. I met Stacy and Andres Conde, damned good people who deserve their hard-earned, spotless reputations. I also saw some old friends and met many new ones. And I got a bit of redemption after being ignored for too long in the city where I was born.
But what was it all about?
First, I wanted to deal with the "dark" thing. For as long as I've been taking and sharing pictures, my work has been tagged with that word and I'm not happy about that. Some of it is indeed pretty dim (as is some of life). A lot of it is colorful, whimsical and strange. Such as this photograph of a girl and a tractor.
I chose the Dark Arts title, in part, to embrace the word, toss it back in the faces of people who overuse it out of misunderstanding or ignorance of what I do, and to be a pain in the ass.
But more importantly, the best art, Modern or not, is created out of darkness and often expresses a sense of the same. That's obviously true for the older Francisco Goya, most of Shakespeare (which was pretty much written by committee, anyway), everything by Tarantino and even some magazine covers by Norman Rockwell. Pollock's work was as much about escaping his own demons, brought on by alcoholism, insecurities, and brain-damaging electro-shock therapy, as it was about re-directing the energy, style and palette of Monet's water lillies. Picasso's women were monsters. Warhol made prints of dictators and electric chairs, among other things.
One reason people make art is to take the nasty, disparate experiences of everyday life and turn them into something singular that can be grasped by the eyes and mind - something tangible that has a social function (Beuys would have said a biological function). Art is magic. Artists are not like Disney's interpretation of Tinker Bell, who sprinkles glittery star-stuff across the surface of the world. They are a bit closer to J.M. Barrie's original incarnation of that little fairy - inquisitive and helpful but also ill-tempered and vindictive (sometimes but not always).
Artist's are probably closest to the Sorcerer's apprentice, playing with energies we don't fully understand. We're definitely cut from the same cloth as the alchemists of every age up to the 18th Century when that early form of science was abandoned for chemistry and scientific method. Alchemy arguably culminated in splitting the atom - the darkest achievement of all time - and a terribly fascinating metaphor for Modern art.
My new work is about changing simple things like lead and atoms into gold, explosions, or ritual objects rendered in two dimensions on paper, or whatever ingredient is required. I haven't quite nailed it yet, but I will.
My laboratory is dark, and alchemy, traditionally delayed by false starts, wrong turns, and the limits of the brain and spirit, takes a very long time to get right.