Fair Use: Gagosian's Prince

"Prince's bad faith is evident," concluded the judge for the United States District Court, Southern District of New York in 2011. Returning to the law paintings series, this painting is another reference to the contemporary lawsuit, Cariou v. Prince, et al., in which internationally acclaimed artist, Richard Prince, was sued for copyright infringement. Prince appropriated Patrick Cariou's photographs without permission, altered them slightly, and sold them through Gagosian Gallery.

This painting incorporates a portion of the Court's opinion and facts of the case; for example: "Gagosian Gallery sold eight of the Canal Zone Paintings for a total of $10,480,000.00, 60% of which went to Prince and 40% of which went to Gagosian Gallery." While Prince was sued for appropriating Cariou's work, I have appropriated one of Prince's famous nurse paintings here. I do believe, however, that the "fair use" defense to copyright infringement better applies to my work than it does to Prince's in the Cariou lawsuit.

Bad Faith, 10" x 8", oil and paper on wood panel, 2013.

Finalizing the Review: Matthew Ritchie v. Daniel Richter (Part 3 of 3)

In finalizing my review of the work of both Matthew Ritchie and Daniel Richter, several similarities between the two were apparent. Each painting was professionally constructed with thick (two-inch) stretcher bars and high quality canvas or fine linen. As should be expected from such acclaimed painters, their work viewed from all angles has a professional and finished quality in terms of construction and craftsmanship, even though their painting techniques may appear haphazard and rapid.

In their techniques, each artist uses numerous layers of thin washes. This creates an illusion of depth on the flat plane of the canvas, providing both strong and subtle fluctuations and variations in the paint, creating complexities in the overall completion of the painting. This gives the effect that the canvas is a window to a stage, even though the paintings still contain abstract elements. In a sense, their work combines the flatness of early abstract art with the three dimensional illusion of pre-impressionist art:



With respect to the artistic experience, however, their works differ. While Richter comments on current politics, corruption, and warfare, Ritchie explores the nature of human existence.

Richter’s work provides a critical view of world powers, making statements about world leaders…


…while Ritchie’s work has a more organic feel, asking questions and trying to make sense out of life:


As a whole, I thought Richter’s paintings were more interesting than Ritchie’s. This was not because of the subject matter. And as described in my last post, the paintings were not entirely impressive. But it was because, for the most part, Richter’s application of layers created more complexities and subtleties in the paint. And when viewing the paintings as a group, Richter’s provided more of a sense that each painting was unique, whereas Ritchie’s paintings felt that, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

But while Richter only exhibited paintings, Ritchie’s exhibition differed in a positive way by incorporating different media, unifying painting, sculpture, animation, and installation in creating an entire environment within the exhibition space. The ambiguity of Ritchie’s work, his motivation and ideas, served to be more thought-provoking and prompt more questions than some of the spoon-fed statements of Richter.

For these reasons, I cannot say that I enjoyed Richter’s exhibition more than Ritchie’s. Each exhibition was an inspirational artistic experience, with aspects to embrace and some to reject.

Thanks for reading. Hope you're enjoying the reviews, paintings, creations, sculpture, drawings, works in progress, Doodle of the Day, and other art by Los Angeles artist Lucas Aardvark Novak :) To see older blog posts click HERE.

Continuing the Review: Matthew Ritchie v. Daniel Richter (Part 2 of 3)

Yesterday I posted Part 1 of this review of the work of Matthew Ritchie and Daniel Richter, two well-known artists of the international contemporary art scene who recently exhibited their work in Los Angeles. Continuing the comparison...

Daniel Richter at Regen Projects, Los Angeles:

German artist, Daniel Richter’s current exhibition consists of ten paintings [all approximately 200 x 300 cm (6.5' x 10')], the subject matter referencing current events, including war and politics, world powers apparently working in cahoots while engaging in ongoing warfare.

More interesting than the subject matter, however, is how he completed the paintings, such as the numerous applications of layers. Many of the paintings are an adventure of complexities leaving much open to interpretation and completion by the viewer:


At times, however, the cohesiveness of the overall picture is broken by the combination of abstractions, flat shapes, and drippings of color. Richter’s relentless addition of abstract shapes and drippings can get overbearing. Each shape and color loses its power and effect from the maze of numerous other haphazard shapes and colors, as if Richter’s trying to prove sophistication by the sheer number of brushstrokes or applications of paint. Perhaps Richter could benefit from a reminder of the famous quote by Leonardo da Vinci, that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Maybe his work would be more effective had he wholly committed to the maze of numerous haphazard shapes and colors (Jackson Pollock-like). But Richter attempts to simplify the chaos and bring form to the abstraction by representing human forms through flat applications of black paint:


The flat black, however, sometimes feels too heavy and not in harmony with the rest of the picture, as if the black shapes are mere cut-outs, pasted onto the canvas after filling it up with abstract shapes and drippings. And, in anticipating the problems with the flat black shapes, he made sure to use overly bright and vivid, almost fluorescent, drippings and swaths of color:


To me, the bright colors in the drippings and abstractions are too artificial, maybe even decorative and kitsch for such dark themes of war and corruption in politics. I sensed that Richter wanted to comment on such dark themes, but in doing so felt he needed to include very bright colors to holler for the viewers’ attention.

But bright colors do not inherently carry better principles than grayed colors. The impact of any color depends on what is next to it. The attention immediately gained by a collection of bright colors is merely superficial. It is similar to a pop song on the radio that is immediately catchy to the ear but quickly gets boring because of its lack of depth.

It perplexed me that Richter chose to go overboard with the bright colors, mainly because his past work of similar dark motifs does not rely on bright colors as a crutch. It could be that Richter, being from Germany, has the idea that the majority of the Los Angeles crowd, indulging in materialism, suffers from such short attention spans that bright colors are required in order to compete for their attention. Perhaps he’s on to something...

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this post, comparing the similarities and differences of Ritchie’s and Richter’s work.

Thank you for following the reviews, paintings, creations, sculpture, drawings, works in progress, Doodle of the Day, and other art by Los Angeles artist Lucas Aardvark :) To see older blog posts click HERE.

Matthew Ritchie v. Daniel Richter: A Review (Part 1 of 3)

In recent weeks, two well-known painters of the international art scene exhibited their work in Los Angeles: Matthew Ritchie and Daniel Richter. Each is an acclaimed contemporary artist (and relatively young) who prices his paintings for over $100,000. While monetary value is not an indicator of good quality and taste (as demonstrated by Damien Hirst’s “spot” paintings currently at Gagosian galleries), both Richter’s and Ritchie’s names can be found in almost every contemporary art book. They are among the so-called leaders of the international contemporary art scene. So, given the opportunity to see their work in person, within a span of just a couple weeks, I was able to review what they are currently creating, and compare and contrast their work-product and styles...

Matthew Ritchie at L&M Arts, Venice, Los Angeles:
A combination of painting, sculpture, animation, and installation, Ritchie’s exhibition was installed in two rooms: the west room displaying 8 paintings and a sculpture under standard lighting; the east room with 4 paintings and a sculpture, dimly lit to allow for projections of animations within the floor and wall installations.

In the west room, each oil painting was about 8 feet tall by 5 feet wide on fine woven linen, abstract elements hinting at realistic elements like angel wings and biomorphic shapes:


Each painting had numerous layers of very thin washes and glazes. Flecks of paint perhaps sprayed using his finger on a toothbrush:


The paintings all had a clean surface, uniform flat texture and professional appearance, but as individual works of art they lacked a sense of uniqueness or individuality. Each painting seemed to be a clone of the one next to it, a disappointing characteristic of the artistic experience and contrary to his biomorph motif – it causes you to feel that if you've seen one, you’ve seen them all. The paintings made me imagine Ritchie treating his studio like an assembly line – lining up a bunch of canvases, using the same palette of colors and process to fill them up, just enough to satisfy the wall space in the two rooms at the gallery.

On the other hand, the east room displayed Ritchie’s combination of different media. Whereas the focus in the west room was the paintings, the hierarchy for the viewers’ attention in the east room was unclear – the projections and installation were as important, if not more important, than the paintings. The room was a unified artistic experience of various methods of communication, as if walking into Ritchie’s world to see what he sees, rather than moving from one stand-alone clone to the next.

The following 1 minute video shows a glance of the east room experience:



Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post, a comparison of Ritchie’s exhibition to Daniel Richter’s exhibition currently at Regen Projects in Los Angeles.

Thank you for following the reviews, paintings, creations, sculpture, drawings, works in progress, Doodle of the Day, and other art by Los Angeles artist Lucas Aardvark :) To see older blog posts click HERE.

The Hirst Heard 'Round The World

Damien Hirst is currently exhibiting his “Dot” paintings at the Gagosian galleries around the world, prestigious galleries known for exhibiting some of the big names in visual art. I recently visited Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills for a firsthand experience of the internationally-hyped paintings. Mostly on loan from private collections, they are "Dot" paintings – spots of paint aligned on different sized grids:


In recent weeks, Hirst has also been in the news for admitting that he, like many other big artists, has teams of assistants actually physically create the paintings, and this resulted in indirect criticism from world-renowned artist, David Hockney.

Hirst states that he gets bored easily, so after he thinks up the idea, he has his assistants create the work. But Hirst's idea to create color grid paintings was not his own - color chart/grid paintings were explored by abstract artists such as Ellsworth Kelly over 50 years ago, and Gerhard Richter started doing them in the mid 1960s. Here is an example of Richter's work from c.1974:


So what is the profound difference in Hirst's paintings? Well, instead of rectangles, his color grid is comprised of...CIRCLES! Or, instead of hanging a picture conventionally, sometimes he will hang it like a DIAMOND!:


The circles are painstakingly drawn with a compass and filled in with color, the paintings being advertised that no color is ever repeated, thus amounting to a collection of many different colors. (Here's one way to never "repeat" any color: pay a visit to a Lowe's Home Improvement store, go to the painting section, and grab any one of the thousands of color samples available along the wall to be mixed and made by a machine. I'm not saying that this is how Hirst's assistants made each color, but the details of each painting do provide that they were made with household paint.)

Hirst has also gone big – GIGANTIC. Some paintings are more than two stories high containing dots each with five foot diameters. (He is also currently having his assistants work on another huge painting containing 1 million dots.) The enormity of the formulaic work reminded me of the endless string of blockbuster superhero films in theaters over the last decade, engaging the desire to be superhuman, entitled, or larger than life, and perhaps an example of Hirst's pharaoh-like power and pursuit to make metaphorical pyramids.


I need not describe in detail my satisfaction or dissatisfaction of Hirst’s work currently exhibited at Gagosian Gallery, but I'll throw in the phrases: “remarkable phenomenon” and “mysterious art world”.

Interestingly, as I was driving away from the Hirst exhibition, I happened to pass by a liquor store with a forsaken window decoration not so different from the million dollar paintings less than a mile away...

The Bergamot Station Experience (Santa Monica, CA)

The practice of an artist requires that he study what others are creating in order to compare his own work and art theory to others. It allows the artist to understand current trends in the art world while also getting a sense of the regional art market.

This is not to say that the stuff currently displayed in galleries is good art or what needs to be followed, since galleries are in it for the business, and the driving force behind capitalism is not directly related to quality product. And those who can afford to collect art - those driving the market - are not always people with good taste in art. Nevertheless, just like any industry, it is important to study the work of others in the field, as it is the essence of how society develops and advances, the stepping stones and building blocks to new ideas, precedents, and ambitions.

I recently visited Bergamot Station in Santa Monica at the "30 open doors" shows, where the community of art galleries participated in art openings showcasing the work of dozens of artists. Certainly with the crowds of people and walls teeming with art, there was a lot to sift through, some worth seeing and some worth ignoring. I documented some of the work that made an impression on me.

Work that caught my attention conceptually was that of Milton Becerra, a Venezuelan born artist, at the Latin American Masters Gallery. I interpreted his work as addressing physics, matter and the universe, a network and connection of space and time. In his installations, he uses gravity, strings and stones, creating geometric planes within a space (the strings) connected to centralized matter (the stone). The work prompted me to question energy and physics, and I pondered this relation to ongoing contemporary scientific studies with the Hadron Collider, studies that will theoretically "take physics into a realm of energy and time where the current reigning theories simply do not apply."

Here is a picture of a portion of Becerra's work:


As I continued into another gallery, I stumbled upon a painting by Dan Quintana, a local artist living in Redondo Beach. While probably all of the work in this particular gallery would be written off as "low brow", Quintana's painting intrigued me by its craftsmanship - I admired his crafting a group of flawless images with vivid colors. So many times artists attempt to take a similar route and so easily fail. Although not a very intellectually thought-provoking work of art (which in the long run will prove its demise in artistic standing), like a centerfold, Quintana's piece stood out:


With respect to other paintings, Richard Heller Gallery exhibited some work by Spanish artist, Paco Pomet. His monochromatic wet into wet techniques, along with thick layers while still showing blank white canvas in certain areas, created dialogue among the viewers. Here are some examples of his work:


I enjoyed Pomet's work for the sake of "how" he painted it (shades, composition, texture, shape, line, etc.). But my biggest criticism is that some paintings seemed too obviously concerned with subject matter or wanting to reference pop culture. This caused them to feel as if they lacked confidence in the "how", thus attempting to compensate in the subject matter by including references to familiar characters. For example, a unique monochromatic representation of a rural laborer was ruined by the inclusion of Yogi Bear peeking from behind a tree in the background, as if Yogi had been included as an afterthought. This implied that the subject matter was more important than the "how", when it should have been the other way around.

The Daily Doodle

Beverly Hills is known for its fashion and starting trends, often the center of unbridled materialism. Recently I attended an art opening at a gallery there. At some point my friend texted me, and I pulled out my phone to text him back. As I stood there punching the numbers on my trusty ol' FLIP-PHONE, I had the uneasy feeling that I was being judged. (As if I was in Court, lol!) I felt stupid that I cared what people thought about my "ancient" phone.

Why did it bother me? Not sure. The phone gets the job done. So I don't have a GPS on it -- that's fine, I have a good sense of direction. So I don't have internet on it -- that's fine, I have a computer at home. Nevertheless, I admit that I felt like a dumb dinosaur that day, embarrassed by some insignificant product I owned. One day I suppose I'll have to get a new phone. But not today!