We, that great gray mass, despite our national identity seem to suffer a cultural homelessness.
We drift anxiously in a bureaucratized, urbanized maze, pushed this way and that by a left – right struggle whose proponents glorify individuality without doing much about it.
Paintings become symbols of life in a world gone bland beneath the surface of distinctive cliché. As an artist, each time individuality is pushed to extremes, there is a return to figuration.
Polemic, critical, this current figurative trend could I suppose, be interpreted in two absolutely contradictory ways: as a reactionary, regressive rearguard that is nostalgic for outmoded values, or as a renewal that will finally liberate from a dominant, academic and moribund existence.
Sitting in the studio at this late hour, I have to wonder if irony pushed to the point of dilemma is not, for all its emptiness, the only alternative to esthetic naiveté. Who could know?
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I too see this. Its very alarming. Once our scholastic honeymoon has ended there are no more teachers to tell and no more paper precedence to follow. No beaten paths; a cause for worry. What to do with time? New comers are urged to fall in line or fear being left standing on the side. This is movement in lieu of contemplation which is of course the initial stepping stone to cultural homelessness. How about America the great Salad Bowl of culture; no more melting pot or assimilation – but instead regional segregation, similar to how a chid will minimize the impact of left-over peas on their plate by changing their presentation for favorable approval.
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