the poetry of motion

In physics, motion means a continuous change in the position of a body relative to a reference point. Newton's third law of motion, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, is common knowledge. If we can consider an accumulation of smaller actions one large action, such as the creation of a work of art, then it only makes scientific sense that the following work of art would be an opposite reaction to it. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but it feels that way to me. I mean this isn't an ADD thing. It seems to be a part of a natural order that when I finish a piece the next one must be contrary to it somehow. Why am I having trouble with this situation one may ask. Well, because people tend to distrust an artist who moves around a lot. It's taken as a sign of indecisiveness or immaturity. Like just about everything else in America(the whole concept of suburbia) this situation seems to be directly linked to war. It doesn't seem to be until after WWII that this idea of the artist brand comes into play. It has been conjectured that after the war American artists, in order to separate themselves from European artists, began to paint in a solid identifiable style revolving around common imagery or concept. Whether this was consciously done or not is beside the point; it happened, it was the sense of the times. Take two of the patriarchs of their eras as an example. Picasso painted two very different paintings(on display adjacent to one another at MOMA)in the summer of 1921: Three Musicians and Three Women at the Spring.



Willem DeKooning spent the majority of his career making biomorphic paintings. Certainly everything he did after 1945 applies to this description.


Woman 1, 1952-3 / The Visit 1966-7 / Untitled XXIV, 1983

It's pretty obvious that there is more variation in Picasso's two works painted at the same time than in the three DeKooning's spanning thirty years. Of course this idea of the brand and American consumer identity was taken head on with the advent of Pop Art. If it was a national sense of solidarity due to America's enormous economic "success", having virtually a monopoly on manufactured goods and agricultural exports, after WWII that was part of this consistency in artists' practice what's in store for the America of today? The America that is virtually split in two because of war. The America in which the dollar consistently declines in comparison to the English Pound and the Euro. The America in which the average person spends 10% more than they earn with 70% living paycheck to paycheck. Keeping Newton's ideas from 1687 in mind might be a pretty progressive idea.



Newton, Painted C-Print on paper, tagged pinecone w/seeds, 2006 © R.Sullivan