Two Faced
The thesis of my artwork is fairly simple and straightforward. It wasn't always so, and it's always worth recounting the stages it went through before arriving at the present state. The starting point was recognition of the face as a carrier of emotion—not necessarily of identity—as in traditional portraiture. The succeeding stages in my work's development were to bring-out the feeling expressed by the face's expression. The look that held my attention—without letting go—was that of the hapless bum.
My “portraits” of bums are not portraits in the traditional sense. It can be as literal as a “portrait” aspect ratio, as opposed to a “landscape” aspect ratio. The difference is in physical distance between the viewer and subject, of intimacy—already a suggestive predicate with wide connotations—before qualifying favorable and un-favorable, and degrees thereof. To some, it might have a confrontational effect. What a portrait is not is a landscape in which the viewer can get lost.
The name of the subject of an antique portrait may be unknown, but what all true portraits attempt is to flatter the subject. The portrait work-of-art is never disparaging, regardless of the portrait painter's personal feelings about the sitter. Portraits are the most commonly found type of painting in art history. For reference, the nature landscape was an invention of a certain date (which is subject to debate). It it has been estimated that before photography (the Daguerreotype) portraits were produced in the hundreds of thousands, in Europe.
Corporate executive portraits may change with each change of board of directors. Last year's portraits are then consigned to storage. The portrait may no longer be considered a work of art. It is artistic, not the standard of Art as a whole. At the same time, a portrait may be enjoyed without certain knowledge of the subject's name. The painting's technique is exquisite, done in a style no longer practiced, lending the work the dignity of oldness. The artistic merit of an unknown subject's portrait must be considered aesthetic criteria.
Needless to say, there's a great deal of difference between the painting technique of a classic portrait, and the expressionistic style of my bum “portraits.” The implicit middle term—which is the essence of both—is the artistic merit of a painting regardless of subject. It's a conceit of mine, which I indulge in spare time, that my figurative art is abstract. My training in art was heavily influenced by abstraction, and abstract artists. I developed the bad habit of making excuses for figurative painting going against the grain of the abstract establishment.
My second primary criterion is not a new and different one, but that of the many. It is the limitless manifestation of all conceivable subjects, abstract, figurative, or in-between. My absolute artistic concern is not with who (or what) is represented, but with what feeling is expressed by the work of art. My preference tends towards the pathetic, the misguided loner, the type of the loser. The risk is in being taken for a hard-hearted person, myself. “Give up hope all ye who enter here,” would have to be the moral of the story of my art.
The preceding is practice prefacing the tough choices that have to be made when looking at my art. To put the argument in context, it is the historic problem of the so-called "criminal" physiognomy, the defining features of the born criminal. “Criminal” is written between quotes, but it is the queer pseudo-science of physiognomy which I struggle with, and which had so powerful a grasp on the minds of cultural anthropologists, for so long. What I got stuck on in my search for meaning was the visual taxonomy of criminal mugshots, presumed proof of the born criminal.
Cravenly, I can only plead it wasn't my idea. I recognized immediately that it's a wrong-headed notion, a fascination for freaks of natural history -monstrosities. Consider the related Down Syndrome physiognomy. It's most obvious feature is not the disabling condition. Megaloencephaly is a symptom—not the cause—and certainly not sufficient as diagnostic. Analogously, the physiognomy of the criminal head is irrelevant to criminal pathology. What about the many convicted criminals that don't "look" like criminals? (whatever the “typical” criminal may, in fact, look like.)
I struggled with the artistic depiction of criminals for a long time. It would be a rash over-generalization to say that they don't make interesting artistic subjects. The main objection was personally subjective. The allegedly criminal subjects I studied were not sympathetic as subjects of art. They all look too cunning for sympathy. Perhaps that in itself is a prejudice, but it's one that I couldn't deny, and therefore grounds for avoiding the subject altogether. An artist with a colder heart than mine is welcome to take on the subject.
The homeless face tests my compassion. He looks helpless, not cunning. How he survives and for how much longer one can only imagine. That's really the abstract concept within my artwork. The homeless face, imploring human understanding, is the metaphor for my own emotional needs. I see need on the face of the homeless subjects of my painting. Try to understand that when the homeless person looks at you with need on his face it's not you he implores. It is humanity as a whole he implores. It's the look of the forsaken I can't resist. The only way I can deal with the emotion is by spreading the guilt around.