What it all boils down to was that, firstly, I was observing that Jeff’s comments about the state of “abstraction” at the present moment could apply to another artist (Abts) that I’d seen recently. Jeff replied that although he had omitted to mention her in his post, he definitely had her in mind on top of the other artists mentioned.

Jeff had used the phrase “sitting on the fence” in his first post to describe the activities of contemporary artists who cannot be seen to be strict abstractionists—in a Modernist sense of the term. Stemming from this particular term’s negative overtones I imagined that Jeff was suggesting that these artists had muddied the clear waters of their work with elements which in the past would have been anathema to this style. My second point was that this phrase sounded too negative in the context and that rather than seeing it as an unresolved state (neither one side of the fence nor the other), one can equally see it as a successful (but inevitably contingent) resolution in a piece of work of the continuing battle each artist wages with the history of art. But Jeff corrected my impression of his words, agreeing:

. . . in most cases riding a fence just means the artist is hedging but in my Schellinger review I was indicating that those additional complications actually worked in this case.1

I find the idea of art using “impurities” as a method of “complicating” their meaning and effects really interesting in terms of what that means for the viewer’s understanding of the work and whether in so doing we get a stronger connection to that meaning – the idea that clarity of purpose and meaning is perhaps less effective in the context of art than the alternative. Put simplistically, one aspect of this is that something that makes you think is more valuable than something that thinks for you.

I would have to relate this to my own particular interests in the field of philosophy. There is writing that is straightforward – and that is valuable and worthwhile in it’s own way. But there is also writing that is difficult, and intentionally so because it is forcing the reader to second-guess the writing, to continually try to recreate its meaning and by so doing gain a new understanding of that meaning. Anyone who knows me will be unsurprised that I am thinking in particular here of the work of Deleuze and Guattari, which I doubt anyone would claim to be easy to understand. The point is not that this work should be simple, that it should be a manual that you can follow, step by step. The point is that it is difficult and by being difficult tries to avoid proscribing thinking, but leads to what D&G I think would call “lines of flight,” points at which the understanding jumps out of habitual modes of thinking and proceeds tangentially, to some alternative insight.

At the risk of muddying my own waters, I’ll quote a definition of “lines of flight”:

A ‘line of flight’ is a path of mutation precipitated through the actualisation of connections among bodies that were previously only implicit (or ‘virtual’) that releases new powers in the capacities of those bodies to act and respond.2

This discussion demonstrates, I think, that from small starting points one can gain some big effects, which is one reason I love art!

1. JAHN, Jeff (2007). Interesting combinations & feedback. PORT [Internet] 10 July 2007. Available from <http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2007/07/interesting_com.html> [Accessed 14 July 2007]
2. LORRAINE, Tamsin (2005). Lines of Flight. In PARR, Adrian. The Deleuze Dictionary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 144–146.

Bryan Schellinger seems to be embarking on a similar pragmatic journey away from Barnett Newman’s Onement by complicating his stripe paintings with all sorts of associations, including a false sense of perspective space, allusions to textiles and possibly abstracted veils of drizzling rain? Yet, despite these complications they are essentially process driven formal experimentations. As a painter having it both ways; both purely painterly and complicated through intervening elements is the fence to ride these days.*

Jeff Jahn’s analysis of the work of Bryan Schellinger on the PORT blog struck me immediately as being applicable to the work of Tomma Abts, presented for the Turner Prize show last year.

Abts blend of abstraction with the addition of certain figurative references—notably the spatial references running through the works—seems to follow the movement suggested by the quote, although it’s speaking of a somewhat different style of painting. The artists take these “complications” in differing directions, Abts in a much more austere and restricted way, the activity kept strictly within the frame of the painting; while Schellinger’s seem to be placed to create an awareness and series of connections with the rest of the installation they are a part of. In this respect, the most that can be said of Abts’ work is that they are a series of small paintings arranged neatly in a room.

Although I expect this is just an off-hand comment, and I shouldn’t take it too seriously, I’m not sure I would agree with Jahn that this hybrid form represents a “fence to ride.” It suggests that the artist is avoiding commitment one way or the other. I don’t think this is a necessary requirement of these paintings (or any paintings, unless they are specifically positioned as being like this), or that it is really an issue at this point in time. These artists are positioned at a moment of reflection on the past of painting, through which they are working, and from which these paintings are, perhaps, the (inevitable?) forms that arise.

* JAHN, Jeff (2007). Bryan Schellinger at Quality Pictures. PORT [Internet] 10 July 2007. Available from <http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2007/07/bryan_schelling.html> [Accessed 14 July 2007]