Art School Confidential: MFA’s at The Henry
June 2006

When you get a PhD in History it is assumed that you can step in front of a class and explain the origins of World War One or when you get an MD you should be able to perform an appendectomy; and by the same token, when you get an MFA you should be able to make some pretty damn good art. Without a national board of art cops who is to say whether the annual MFA shows across the country are producing first-rate work? While SAM remodels, this show is some consolation. Conspicuously absent are black and white photographs, prints and drawings. Old hat I guess.

Although inconsistent, the painters seem to show the most artistry. Carly Sloan loves Phil Guston (who doesn’t?) and engages us with her guns and tanks and lovely painting but does not quite reach the mark when it comes to passion; she is angry but afraid to let it all out preferring to show us some nice brush work and marks, but, the fact is, when I see a gun I want to see blood; you know what I’m sayin! The thing is, these are good paintings which make me want to see excellent paintings.

There is some wallpaper on the other side of the room which is underwhelming. In the next room are some abstract paintings by Stephanie Pierce. These are interesting because they illustrate what can happen to an otherwise good painter when she gets confused (goes to graduate school?). I wish somebody would put an ax through the legacy of sad, androgynous Mondrian (see: Arnold Newman portrait of 1941). Mondrian was a guy who stumbled on a cool thing in the early Twenties and never varied much more than a few colors from one grid to the next. Twenty years of grids! Give me a break please! But grids are simple and full of intellectual obliquities, which every academic painter loves. You get tenure and settle down to try to solve “the problem of the grid”. I happen to know that Ms. Pierce was sort of a virtuoso painter before coming to Seattle and now she paints grids. In the central painting she seems to invoke some interior spaces, her studio perhaps, with hints of doorways and bookshelves. In the other three paintings she is just doing some artful brushwork over a standard grid resulting in work that would not offend the hall of any hospital. At the other end of that room there are some objects on the wall and floor which are not worth remembering.

In the next room is a display of color photographs so puerile they should be given a special prize for getting an MFA having done the least work possible. There was a guy in my photography MFA program thirty years ago who didn’t even own a camera. This guy is almost as good. He went out the weekend before the show and shot a roll of film, made two 16x20’s and a bunch of 5x7’s, didn’t even mount the stuff and shoves it in our face. He has developed artful sloth to a high art and I would love to hear his post-modern, academic “kunstsprache” about why these snaps deserve space at The Henry.
Moving on we come to some dreamscape paintings of a circus performer which are rather engaging, in particular the one of the girl sitting on the couch. The right half of the couch is relatively normal rendering while the left half morphs into a kind of Munch-like swirl which is quite unsettling. I think this work would be excellent if the painter had the dexterity to make the figure look even more disturbed. As Napoleon said, “it is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous.” There are things going on in these paintings which need clarification. I was just standing there thinking to myself that these paintings exude a tentativeness when somebody standing next to me said that these were painted by a Photography major! Interesting, and I shall come back to this later on.

The main gallery of this MFA show holds the work of two very interesting artists. On the west wall is a six panel series by Shane Walsh. This show is worth paying the six or eight bucks just to see these six panels. These six amazing paintings alone should make the U-Dub Art Department very proud of itself. This is a department which, it is no secret, makes a big deal about studio practice, systems and abstract thinking (a quick tour through the Mary Gates Building where several dozen undergraduate painting majors have work hanging will prove the abstract bent of this department). Most abstract work however is a “sham” (Guston) pretending to be a manifestation of vast empires of erudite cogitation. Shane Walsh however, has achieved an exquisite zenith in these six panels by taking the figure to a barely, and disturbingly, discernable degree. In the first blue panel he gives us a figure boldly, unafraid, in your face so to speak. In the next panel he explodes it in a myriad shades of deep, visceral red. Moving to the right we come to an evanescent figure which is skin color but only knowable as a figure because we started with the blue one. By the time we are at the last two panels we are practically in tears because we know we are looking at Death. This is poetry, this is art at its finest, this is like listening to Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique symphony, which as you all know ends on a diminuendo leaving us stunned with bereavement. I have an old friend who said once that he aspired to make paintings which were as complex, delicious, troubled and magnificent as a Beethoven symphony. What a fantastic idea. Like every boxer wants to have fights like the “Thriller in Manila” or every golfer wants to win the US Open by 17 under par. Wow! Shane Walsh. Buy now!

The other interesting painter in this gallery is Kimberly Trowbridge. While Shane gives us death Kim gives us life and procreation: sex in a boat in fact. She has some silly names for her paintings but the two big ones are about people fucking in a boat. You have to look carefully but its there; arms legs, penises and gunwales awash with prurient brilliance. This is quick painting unlike Shane’s across the room. Kim dances over the canvas with big, celebratory washes of joyful, sexual color. This is wonderful painting.

This large gallery is shared by a third artist, Timothy Brown. Here we have another problem. I happen to know that this guy is a painting major. So why is he doing sculpture? A plywood piece hangs out from the wall with a cutout area. It is indifferently made. As far as I am concerned no good art is badly made. (I know, I know, there is a whole vast school of “bad art” but so what) Don’t put a piece of plywood on a museum wall which has chips broken off. You wanna see how to work with plywood, go downstairs and see how Maya does it. The chair in thick epoxy is good but the idea is thin.

Why are these artists abandoning their métiers when they come to U-Dub? Why does a painter sculpt and a photographer paint? What is going on in those art seminars to drive these people away from their chosen disciplines? It is strange to think that somebody would come to graduate school to study the fiddle and then have a Master’s Recital playing the drums. I know what is going on of course. People switch because they weren’t what they said or thought they were. The switch might be good or it might be a cop out. The thinking at Yale is to beat you down and then grow you up. Here at “Yale West” they probably do the same thing and some people just can’t take it and slide over into another discipline because then who is gonna critique work outside their métier and tell them not to chip the plywood or dig deeper into the painting.
Speaking of switcheroos, on the wall of the next room is a disturbing lollipop snake. It is beautifully crafted and evokes everything we learned about original sin and creepy scaly things. Is it craft or is it art? It is the work of painting major Chris Carter. Alongside are some Plexiglas cutouts enhanced by some nice spotlights. Cute. I can’t help but wonder why this guy stopped painting and turned to popsicles for satisfaction.

Off to the side is a darkened room with a couple dozen plastic nodules resembling the backsides of TV sets glowing blue. All art takes a lot of work but a lot of work don’t necessarily make art thank you.

Towards the end of this exhibit is a large wall piece made mostly from scrap material. Metal clouds hold fire sprinklers above a crudely painted forest over desiccated planks with half-driven nails. Global warming 101? I have no problem with rough pieces but I do get upset about an obvious lack of thoroughness in a project. First of all, sculpture has to be made to stand the test of time. The world does not need any more waste which wreck havoc on museum curators a decade down the road. This cloud piece is sloppy. I cannot help but wonder if it is poorly made because its maker is a ceramicist rather than a sculptor? All the switcheroo pieces lack polish in my opinion. I think these people need to know the old swimmer's adage; no pain no gain. Don't switch to water ballet just because you don't want to swim a few more laps.

The last thing I remember is an innocuous video piece accompanied by a lovely piano etude by somebody I should know. Okay, so anything would be appealing as we listen to Handel or Scarlatti.

See the show and decide whether you too made the right decision to be an artist or not.