What? No people?! 

 

This is very rare.  In fact, it hasn't happened since 1985.  But before 1985 this kind of thing had been an essential part of my aesthetic M.O.  I used to draw highly composed still lifes in my rather unconventional graphic novel.  I hesitate to use the term still life as these drawings were all done from imagination, not life. I used to juxtapose highly symbolic objects in various and  progressing arrangements all as a means of dramatizing the clash of concepts.  Yes, it was all very callow and self important (isn't anything if one looks hard enough?); but it sometimes created some interesting compositions.  As I am finishing Mourning Mörlenbach, I feel like I have almost returned to these roots.

 

Perhaps some back story: Jamie Berger, a former schoolmate asked me if I might ever consider doing a piece based on someone else's photographs.  I think we both looked at this as a collaboration of sorts rather than a commission. I have very firm ideas about what I want to do and what I don't; nevertheless, I knew that there could be some interesting common ground.  I like to think that I would always want to encourage as much interest and participation from others. Jamie's wife, Anja Schütz, is a professional photographer and her website offered an embarrassment of riches to choose from. There were some very intense portraits of Jamie. Features like his hair and beard might have produced some very strong and almost painterly images.  There were a number of novel shots with dogs (I assure you there is no shortage of fur at the Berger-Schütz household out there in Western Massechusetts)  There were many interestingly lit shots.  There was humor.  There was mystery.  But ultimately both Jamie and I wondered what "value added" my drawing these images might offer. These photos were already perfect and complete. Ultimately one more unusual photo did catch my eye.  I thought Jamie might find my choice bizarre; but he too said he found it interesting and (perhaps more important) that Anja might like it too.  We were, after all, discussing plundering her work! And so it began.

 

This came from a series of photos Anja took during a 2015 visit with her grandmother in Mörlenbach, Germany.  The series is interesting in the way that simple arrangements of buildings and objects are foregrounded.  There is a kind of Lutheran, Bergmanesque uncluttered cleanliness to them that made it seem a bit exotic to my American sensibility.  The photo that interested me had all of these things, but it also seemed to have a more personal energy to it.  Anja's original landscape orientation crop shows a long expanse of very clean countertop (almost 3 times the width of my crop here) and a good bit of the upper cabinets. It was in low natural light.  It was all very spare and almost elegiac.  I have since gone over my correspondence with Jamie and I see no evidence to support this thought; but somehow I got the idea that this visit to Mörlenbach had been after the death of Anja's grandfather.  I imagined that this might be a scene after the sitting of shiva, after the wake, after the party trays and drinks for the memorial had been cleared away.  What remains is just the remnants of the cleaning and a few spare objects.  I imagined Anja's grandmother might feel her late husband's presence in this kind of quiet domestic moment. Anja herself might have thought of her grandfather here. For some reason  I had been listening to Patty Griffin's Mary at the time and a lyric kept coming back to me.

 

"While the angels are singin' his praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

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Mary she moves behind me 
She leaves her fingerprints everywhere"

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This was Anja's photo; but these projections of mine were also the context in which I had decided to place it. "Value?" Perhaps;  "Added?" Definitely.

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I liked the idea of a still life immediately.  I associate classic examples of this genre with the nagging awareness of death.  Yes, the sumptuousness of a Kalf or Helda banquet table is almost positively erotic.  It is extraordinary that this kind of peak ripeness is even possible much less able to be captured; but contained within this is also the notion that inevitable rot (and death) is sure to follow.  The cut flower is beautiful; but the clock is ticking.  This is, of course, is what most interests me.  Unlike musicians, (who work with, or within, time) I have often felt that as a visual artist I have been struggling with the notion of stopping time - or, if I were to handle things adroitly, escaping constraining perceptions of time. I liked the duality idea; but I thought I might turn it on its head. Rather than hinting at death in an erotic life affirming context, I thought it might be more interesting to think of this as hinting at life affirming eros in this more overtly thanatos (death) context. The convention may be more "from life I will remind you of death." My game was "from death I will resurrect life. in fact it never died."  High pretense.  Sure.  But off we go.

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I cropped very tight to make the soap bottle the star.  It's just dishwashing liquid but there is an almost sapphire jewel like quality to it.  The "thermos red" really pops. Rather than the sumptuousness of flesh it is the lifeless sheen of plastic and stainless steel.  It is a symphony of the fake, the product, the manufactured.  Nothing here came out of a womb or a seed.  Perhaps even that wood cabinet is merely a form of pressed particle board.  And, perhaps most important, those flowers and leaves on the tiles are not even close to life like.  Those aren't really flowers.  Those are hieroglyphs depicting the IDEA of flowers. Quick aside: Anja has two very striking tattoos. Large versions of the international symbols for male and female (think airport restroom doors) are on Anja's shoulders where military rank or insignia might be.  Stripped down and monochrome, these symbols are not so much mimetic pictures of men and women but hieroglyphs depicting the idea of them.  Again - a bit of the duality thing is going on.  LOVE/HATE on Robert Mitchum's knuckles in Night of the Hunter, or Radio Raheem's rings in Do the Right the Thing. Matthew Modine's helmet in Full Metal Jacket with "born to kill" written next to the peace sign.  Yin. Yang. Male. Female. Life. Death.  Blah. Blah.

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I also liked the intensely constructed look that the tiles have.  The massed produced baroque curls (especially the way I went after them) give the picture an intense busy-ness.  The emphasis on the caulk makes me see the tiles as individual units held together in a forced construction.  I also liked the little crack in the formica bottom that reveals the material beneath.  I actually began to think of this image as a kind of Frankenstein, a creature that was stitched together from distinct and different parts.  The green slash of formica counter (that I riotously exaggerated) was meant to be a dramatic slice that severed  the composition and called attention to its fractured quality. I incuded the  dishwasher and its disruptive brightness for similar reasons.  And finally the wooden cabinet seems almost bursting into flame. It is SO distinct from the other areas.  At first I was appalled at the effect.  True, I had been going for this; but I didn't anticipate just how out of control it would become. I briefly considered "fixing" it - muting it; but eventually I decided I preferred the visible fault line. 

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I thought of a remark I once heard Eric Fischl make (I think about David Salle). I am paraphrasing.  "He says painting is dead and then he goes and makes dead paintings in an effort to prove it."  No, the cabinet door (or it's depiction) is not "dead." It is just slightly out of balance with the other elements of the drawing.  Our job: put them together? Tikkun olam? Find just the right electricity to bring Frankenstein to life…?

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I still struggle with the idea of color. I sometimes think that value is real but that saturation and hue are merely accidents (illusions) brought on by our retina's 3 arbitrary color receptors. Nevertheless, I like the unit creating clarity of the markers that I use.  I like how stubbornly they refuse to genuinely blend.  But I am often frustrated by how difficult it is to restrain their intense color vibrancy.  I have 48 different shades of gray that I add to almost all the colors.  I add again and again and STILL the drawing seems to transform of its own accord into a stain glass window.  I think I thought that this stain glass luminousness might be this kind of transformative energy. Is it? I am still deciding; but that was the initial plan.

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As for the title: Why not "Mourning IN Morlenbach." This was the idea; but then the cadence of Joni Mitchell's song "Morning Morgantown" came to me.

 these are the song's final words.

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"But the only thing I have to give
To make you smile, to win you with
Are all the mornings still to live
In morning Morgantown"

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It is not objects, or riches but time.  

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Yes, it's a dead seeming picture.  None of the things I have been going on about seem remotely obvious; but perhaps the grandfather's presence is somehow detectable in this simplicity of objects, this construction.  A grandfather and a grandmother. A man and a woman.  Anja's shoulders.  Jamie. Anja. This emphasis. This context. That might be value added.