In literary tastes I was never a fan of science fiction or the horrific tales of Stephen King. Only Realism or so to say the focus on the depiction of the here and now, captured my interest. That is how I started my career as an artist as well. I used the tools of perception: value,color and perspective to create verisimilitude. I found that no matter where I was in time and space I could always set up a still life or pose myself in front of the landscape to find a story to tell. The fact of the matter I have not read much in the realm of realism since college and since the 90’s most of my reading has been in philosophy. At first Nietzsche and Schopenhauer but by the late 90’s the French postmodern and its origin in the work of Heidegger totally absorbed me. The postmodern also had an influence on the art world in its making not just after the fact analysis. My reading of it gave me a linguistic handle on the kind of painting coming out of New York. Initially I had no idea that my blogging was coming to the attention of art critics. I would write a blog and post it on other blog sites or email to friends. For a while when it was a free ezine I commented quite a bit on Hyperallergic. It was there in response to an essay by John Yau on a kind of abstraction coming out of New York that I came up with the moniker Zombie abstraction to describe that art scene(None of the participants accepted the label). Several months later Walter Robinson on Artnet described the work as Zombie Formalism. Due to his establishment as an artist and art critic in the NY art world his labeling caught on and now ten years later AI gives him all the credit. Except for several mentions of my role by Raphael Rubinstein I pretty much accepted being peripheral to the discussion. Followers on my blog pointed out that my writing had been noticed by the art critical community. First in an article Rubinstein wrote on French abstraction titled “Theory and Matter” in “Art in America” where he gave me precedence in coming up with Zombie Formalism before Robinson. Now many years later an Italian PHD student who is studying the whole postmodern phenomena in painting for his PHD thesis and was quoting my work as source material. He pointed out a reference in an essay by Rubinstein to my blogging on the Italian philosopher Vattimo and how Rubinstein himself would have benefitted from reading him due to the resemblance of Rubinstein’s notion of provisional painting to Vattimo’s “Weak Thought”. In the essay He admitted to having heard of him second hand but only on my prompting did he read Vattimo. He agreed on the role Vatimmo could play in explaining Provisional painters and although he didn’t think the provisional artists were “weak” in any way. So unbeknownst to me my ideas had infiltrated the postmodern discussion and were having an effect on how it was being formulated.
Danvers Sanitarium(Arkham)
Having a philosophical handle such as Vattimo’s “Weak Thought” was valuable in my encounter with second generation abstraction. Having a word like Nihilism that allowed me to find connections between Andy Warhol and Flannery O’Connor was indispensable. Words like that could label a whole generation. Lately, I find my own work beginning to make sense in the hands of the master of the macabre HP Lovecraft. Like Stephen King not someone I would go out of my way to read. But a series of encounters and recollections are beginning to haunt me and create a sort of nexus with the world of Lovecraft, a kind of hauntology to use a word invented by Derrida. It started with a book on Lovecraft by Michel Houellebecq from the 90’s. I bought it already some years ago and it has been sitting on my desk, half chewed up by my dog, perused off and on until lately where I am now three quarters of the way through. I was surprised it predated his extremely popular fiction by many years and must have been formative in shaping his world view. It appears the work was published to address the curiosity of a emerging interest in Lovecraft’s work and all things American in France. It included several of his horror stories. Just as Poe found more followers in France among the litterati than in the USA so it would be with Lovecraft. I had bought the book after reading Houellebecq’s “Elementary Particles” that I found interesting especially in so far as it resembled the nihilistic world view of Celine whose “Journey to the End of the Night” is up there on the top ten novels that I have read. The connections to my work I am still sorting out. Some of it is incidental . Considering that Stephen King provides an introduction to the book Lovecraft’s reputation in France was already cemented.
Houellebecq
I read enough of Houellebecq’s book on Lovecraft to learn that the background of his work is 19th c New England but mythologized. It does not take long to peer behind the neologisms to get to the real places. One place that establishes the first connection to me is the world of Arkham that with some probing appears to be Salem, Massachusetts. A suburb of Salem is Danvers where a very gothic sanitarium was built and is referenced in Lovecraft's books. I remembered the building from my childhood as the mental hospital where my grandfather spent time as his mental health deteriorated. I have a distinct memory of his waving to us from his bedroom window as we left the hospital grounds. The hospital that was part of the skyline of Danvers seen from Route 1 has since been torn down.
“The Call of Cthulhu” is one of two stories included in the Houellebecq book. The monsters in particular Cthulhu are described in the contradistinction between their weirdness and foulness and the dour and puritanical new England scientists trying with their expertise to put a label on strange happenings that escape the normal events of the New England landscape. It becomes clear that the monsters or “noxious” beings as he likes to refer to them are not divine and Houellebecq insists that they have a parallel existence in relation to us not vertically arrayed as in Christian eschatology but hidden since time immemorial disappearing from our world only to reappear at various times to disrupt the overly civilized world of New England. It appears that the civilizational edge was the border between New England and New York. His recollections of his first encounter of the New York Skyline defines for him the totally “other” as did the masses of immigrants that filled the streets as something he had a hard time identifying with. All opinions based on knowledge of his character point to a deeply engrained racism. Cthulhu and his minions appear for the most part to sailors who encounter them on the edge of the civilized world.
Lovecraft who wrote in the earlier half of the 20thc did not have much success with publishing his writing but in the world of writers of the same ilk he had a following as an innovator and mentor. No sooner did he pass away then the world “discovered” him and brought him to the attention of the general public. His notoriety began.
Heavy Metal Poster
Oddly enough a world within which he has gained a good deal of fame is in Heavy Metal music. Images from his stories appear on their posters and album covers. Considering his proud identification as a well behaved and well-dressed product of New England gentry his resurrection by head bangers is nothing short of bizarre. If you see the heavy metal crowd as wishing to tap into the formless hell that a character like Cthulhu embodies or rather disembodies than it all makes more sense. Their music’s goal is to terrify the audience. Lovecraft’s writing attempts the same with a repetitive incantation of adjectives that tries to give a shape to a rather shapeless identity.
Finally I found that Lovecraft’s writing might explain a period of my work that I produced in the late 90’s into the first millennia. It got a lot of sympathetic coverage by the Boston Press especially numerous reviews by Cate McQuaid from the late 90’s in Provincetown into the first decade of the millennia in Boston where she seemed to understand why I was using three dimensional strokes and pushing beyond the limits of flatness. That sympathy came to an end in 2013 at a show at the Bromfield Gallery that were much more obviously aggressive. She just said it all looked the same. Yet, before dismissing them she did notice something about the strokes that I only noticed recently in her review: ”Some of the strokes looked like sliding snails leaving their glistening tracks”. Displeasing and in contradiction to her statement that it all looked the same. This organic reference is the direction I wanted to work to take. Also, I wanted the meaning of the painting to be embodied in each mark. Is this the first hint of the effect of Cthulhu? Ms McQuaid is not a head banging metal head obviously and would not take a conceptual leap with me to the next level I should say “Down” not up.
Dating from the mid- nineties: this painting came straight out of my head. Strung the ellipses and filled them with stripes. I called it “Mulch” as the ellipses seem to be digesting the stripes. Another title is “Every Body is talking at me” from Nillson. It has a schizoid edge to it
"Mean Clowns"
A reworking of a painting similar to the last one. A title for this could be "Mean Clowns" This is as close to Lovecraft as I get at this point in my painting. I think I titled this "Footprints"
From a show at the Bromfield around 2013. This is where Cate McQuaid stops enthusing about my work when she notices that my strokes look like the tracks of glistening snails.
This is where the painting flips and starts to come out at the viewer. Probably something to do with the liberating effect of the white canvas. Fairly recent around 2022 . Spatially I started seeing strokes and drips as splashes.
Of course my painting is not in the realm of the noxious monsters of Lovecraft but the eventual push of the visual event off the surface seems to speak to a similar aggressive desire to reach out and engage the viewer by the throat. It also begins to abandon the pleasant color field that had dominated my work from the beginning of the millennium.
You’re scratching me where I itch. Every day in Providence I walk the same streets Lovecraft walked. The best cappuccino in town is right near the house that was once his home, near Brown University. To get to my studio I often park near the building Lovecraft was laid out after his death (once a funeral parlor, now RISD housing). His fingerprints are still impressed everywhere on the local landscape. Admittedly, I never quite understood the Lovecraft cult (and it IS a cult- I run into people from all over the county who are doing the local Lovecraft tour). His stories follow a repetitive arc that can only be described as formulaic, but I understand his debt to writers of the macabre.
ReplyDeleteI always remember a conversation I had about your work with Janet Cavellero. I talked about an experience of childlike sublime sensuality; contrarily, she saw in your work a rawness that is similar to what you might find in decaying flesh (her words, kind of). Of course, they’re two sides of the same coin. A child experiences the world as both playful wonderment as well as threatening menace (clowns are a great example). Your work balances within that space between the two experiences. It’s a fruitful space, capable of generating mystery, wonderment, and terror. One thinks of Paul Klee’s “Twittering Machine”, or any late Bonnard.
Thanks for the kind words.I like being in the company of Klee and late Bonnard.Another Mugar/ Providence connection is my grandparent's house on Pratt St which was moved there in 1984 by Al Wunderlich head of the RISD art department from the banks of the Exeter river in NH. It had suffered smoke damage and my mother wanted to finish it off(burn the rest down). It is a colonial house and I had fond memories of summering there. I put an ad in Yankee magazine that anyone could have it if they rebuilt in its original shape. He loved the place. The interior has since been rebuilt but the exterior is identical. I was told that such structures rarely have a second life.
ReplyDeleteHey Martin, Thanks for inviting comments. It is interesting that Zombi Abstraction originated with you. That and Zombie Formalism was accurate if less than adequately defined in the long haul. Today seeking a terminology is frustrating because of that lack. On a side note, I could care less what AI credits as it culls net sources. And I can see where non-human entanglements could lead to an idea of Zombie this or that. Could we as you suggest make a tracing of Vattimo's 'weak thought' as related to provisional painting -- an interesting claim -- sure we might, as we could relate it to PoMo and thingsl like D&G's 'lines of flight' or even Eco's 'open work.' I too might suggest that the provisional painting is not weak from one point of view, in the way that surrealist writing, or writing of Ron Silliman in say The Age of Huts while appearing provisional is not weak. Although if the argument is that the idea of Painting proper, big P, whatever that means, is somehow diminished over time with provisionality, then I can be persuaded to consider the lens. According to the net, the English version of the Houellebecq didn't come out until 2005; you're right it predated (in French) the authors known works. You have here then an interesting germ of a relationship between Lovecraft and H, as an influence, nihilistic or whatever it is. In each of these claims, there is a lot that could or even should be more deeply fleshed out and developed, at least according to my taste for depth in such things.
ReplyDeleteI don't quite follow you with Cthulhu and Metallica. I never found their work anywhere near a goal "to terrify the audience," rather I view it as middling mass market likable heavy metal. For me, much more provocative were investigations in contemporary classical music, electro acoustic music, noise music, post-cagean music and so forth, none of which I believe was designed to terrify. And as for Cthulhu, with what Graham Harman says is Lovecraft's aversion to describing the monsters in his works, sometimes true, sometimes not so true, the lurking only imagined form to me seems to relate to that strange cultural lurking behind Houellebecq's characters in later works, that he never comes right out and particularly names. Again, there is a lot here that could be developed.
As for your work and it's shift from a more formal, gestural form into what appears to be more process art, that's a whole different discussion. In order for me to comment on this change, the relation to Houellebecq or Lovecraft, or it's embodiment of nihilism, I'd probably to see a clear artist's statement and more work.
All in all I enjoy people taking strong opinions, and making interesting associations between the arts. So that is appreciated, even if for me the superficiality begs for more. Cheers.
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Martin Mugar
3 hrs ago
I am always pleased with comments and especially when coming from literate people they help me fill in the blanks. I know little about Heavy Metal and now have read only two works by Houellebecq (the lovecraft book and Atomized)and at this point one of HP Lovecraft's stories. Here is the blog that started zombie formalism.
Cate McQuaid comments on my work in the Boston Globe:
ReplyDelete" Mugar applies thick squiggles of candy-colored paint directly to his panel. They look like half-chewed wads of taffy, leaving glistening tracks in their wake like snails. The colors and the sheer materiality make the works hard to resist, although one is enough. Several, and they all begin to look alike."
She got it but recoiled from what she saw
DeleteFun read. Love that blue ellipse painting. Do you still have it?
ReplyDeleteI like the thread you’re pulling on about the parallel attempts in his writing and your painting to engage the audience.
No doubt your work has always had a visceral quality to it