Art, Life, and the Pendulum

The Pendulum, 39" x 60", oil on canvas, 2012. 

DJ Pauly D is famous. He made millions of dollars as a character on MTV's reality show Jersey Shore, and he makes millions as a DJ. And like most pop music, his songs have catchy beats and straight-forward lyrics: "I've partied all over the world, but not like this/ This is the night of my life, this is the night of my life..." Fun stuff, I guess.

But I don't consider DJ Pauly D to be an artist. He is a successful businessman and entertainer. His songs, like most pop songs, grab your attention immediately and are easy to understand, like the bling hanging around his neck. The music gets people to take tequila shots, bounce around, and forget about everything.

Likewise, a painting with bright colors, such as the work by Thomas Kinkade (rest in peace) is catchy on its surface and has a decorative charm. But life is not always so happy and innocent, and real art, to me, is not so simple or superficial. Real art should move people on a deeper level.  

Life is full of complexities, subtleties, ambiguities, and contradictions.  This seems to be who we are as people, as it is apparent in each of our individual personalities, and even as we try to make rational sense of the external world, it too is full of irrationalities. It is layers and levels; it is dark and disturbing, or it is bright and joyful; it is hot, or it is cold; it is high, or it is low. 

What keeps a viewer's eye on a painting is a depth of field, an inexpressible ambiguity, a suggestive subtlety, a surreal complexity. Good art should represent the depths of our souls.

The Pendulum, detail:

The Pendulum, detail:

The Pendulum, detail:

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

The Monsters At LACMA, And Chris Burden Art Review

The Inexplicable has prevented me from creating anything worth a damn lately. Maybe it's them dog days of summer that has my bones in a rut. I tried fighting it by going to a couple Los Angeles art galleries for inspiration, but the energy (or lack thereof) in the ones I visited simply got me tired. (On that thought, I wonder if a gallery kept a constant flow of pure oxygen into the display rooms, would this hype people up and increase sales even if the art sucks?)

In another attempt to lift my creative spirit, I decided to visit Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I probably should have started here. It's right down the street anyway. When I arrived to LACMA, I stared at the monstrous fossils of a mastodon in a tar pit just outside the building. When I left LACMA, I sensed that the dog days may be passing...

Chris Burden's Metropolis II is currently on display at LACMA in the Broad Contemporary Art Building. Burden is a Los Angeles artist with international recognition, probably most famous locally for his sculpture, Urban Light, a collection of 202 vintage street lamps tightly positioned in a grid at the entrance of LACMA.

Metropolis II represents a 21st century city and includes 1,100 custom designed cars, 18 highways, and a range of buildings and structures made of various materials. The vehicles and trains actually move, and apparently, every hour 100,000 cars circulate through Metropolis II. 

My first impression of the work reminded me of when I was a kid building my own tracks and environments with Hot Wheels cars or model trains, creating trees out of construction paper, building mountains out of cardboard, and using GiJoes to tear the place apart. What a joy it must've been to be Chris Burden creating this sculpture. But once I got past the "fun" of imagining the creation of the artwork on such a grand scale, I began to focus on the concept.

Metropolis II is a simple idea portrayed in all its complexity -- today's bustling city of roads, buildings, highways, speed, and noise. While it is unclear to me whether Burden himself embraces or rejects the 21st century city, his model reminded me of a title of a famous painting by Paul Gaugin: Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

I don't recall seeing one bush, one tree, or one natural living thing in Metropolis II. In the entanglement of metal beams, structures, and mechanisms, all we see is a mess of human fabrications. The natural world has been forsaken in the 21st century. Yet the piece as a whole resembles a living being with organs and a circulatory system. It is a giant monster...
 

On the topic of monsters, other art at LACMA that inspired me could also be categorized as extraordinarily frightful. The following are images of a skull rack sculpture and a memorial figure created by the Kerewa people of Papua New Guinea in the early 1900s:

While this Kerewa art may be considered hideous or grotesque, they possess the real, the truth, yet they convey the idea of supernatural powers. These were not forced creations, nor were they created for an art market. They were created based on passionate beliefs in life and death, and it shows.

And when I moved on to see some paintings, my attraction to the monsters continued...

The first is by Philip Guston and the second is by Willem de Kooning. Each artist is classified by art historians as abstract expressionist painters of the mid 1900s. In the choice of color and thick swaths of paint, these paintings are morbid, but when I came upon them, I stopped and stared. Something about the morbidity seemed natural.

Perhaps it was my mood, but I can't explain why I tended to gravitate towards the monsters. It seemed to be the theme for me, as these were the artworks I found to be inspiring. Maybe a byproduct of the Torment? I don't know.

Oh, and by the way, the most overrated piece at LACMA? Andy Warhol's tomato soup can. It's stupid.

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

Doodle of the Day - The Tormented Artist Cliche

somewhere in los angeles among the mix of actors, stereotypes, and expectations, there are creatives who think they need to play the role of crazy tormented artist in order to succeed. i suppose if you can play the part and mold yourself into that perfect cliche, people might follow to embrace you as an artist. but for the rest of us normal-looking folks, we're just tormented. lol.  

i don't mean that we talk to little birds on our shoulders that only we can see, or that we cut our ears off and mail them to past lovers -- i mean tormented in that we are consumed by creation and destruction. put aside common money sob stories or substance abuse which may apply to people in any profession. art is not a "fun" pastime; it is a person projecting his anger, frustration, compassion, and love.

artists ponder their creations everyday, even during mundane daily tasks. they think about the next steps to take in the current pieces they're working on. they contemplate destroying their work. they struggle with insecurities about whether they have any talent at all. they question what the heck is the point of creating art anyway. they fight their feelings when the feelings disrupt the flow of a piece. or they barf up their emotions in the form of scribbles in their sketchbooks.

tormented in that sense.

i suppose a lot of my recent work isn't quite the eye-pleasing decoration that people like to put on their walls. fuck it. if i wanted to decorate i'd be a party planner.

New Work, Nietzsche And The Snakecharmer

When I was a kid I wanted to be a snakecharmer. Something about the danger, society's unexplained phobia, and the mystery of snakes enchanted me. I roamed the California hillsides looking for snakes and found several. Somehow I avoided the toxins of rattlers and only suffered superficial bites from nonvenomous serpents.

Years later I remain enchanted by snakes, but I suppose it is of a more distant respect for them. They remain mysterious. What they represent symbolically or metaphorically to people and in art and literature, throughout the centuries of our existence, continues to fuel my intrigue for the creatures.

Snakes have been the subjects in art around the world since primitive times. What is it about snakes that has bewitched our cultures? Perhaps it is that snakes are primitive. But I think it is also more than just that - snakes are symbolic of the truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "The truth is ugly: we have art so that we are not ruined by the truth."

The Snakecharmer, 45" x 36.5", oil on canvas, 2012.

The following are details of the painting, click on image for larger view:

And this is what the painting looked like at a very early stage:

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

Doodle of the Day - Love In An Elevator

Last week I experienced a very awkward moment, standing next to a woman with a poor pussycat clamped in her armpit. And although I do enjoy a good classic rock song every now and then, in some situations it should be avoided. A perfect example is in the elevator music! Have a good work week...

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

Doodle of the Day - Fourth of July Aftermath

In the days following Fourth of July, the fireworks continue to discharge in my neighborhood. Over the last couple weeks, the fireworks stand down the road next to the Food4Less has done well in terms of business. But I live in Los Angeles, a place where disputes are sometimes resolved in the streets. And I've come to realize, that if you plan on settling a score on your own terms, this time of year might be a good time to do it...

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

New Work, and the Kandinsky Observation

Metamorphosis, 25" x 40", oil on canvas, 2012.

The great Wassily Kandinsky once stated: "The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being."

Kandinsky's convictions are most easily demonstrated when visiting museums - certain works of art seem to be human and radiate immortality. These are the timeless pieces that have transcended subjective appeal, becoming globally accepted as great works of art over the decades and centuries.
 
Over the past decade of art making, I have felt that my own creations have detached themselves from me and taken on their own lives and personalities. I operate like I am a portal and allow the work to be completed through me, taking on its own form and making its own conclusions, even if I begin the painting with a vision of what I think the end product should be.  But rather than the Heavenly "mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creations ... animated with a spiritual breath", perhaps my creations can be better described as little monsters, rejects, or riffraffs.

It fulfills the creative drive nevertheless.

Metamorphosis (detail):

Metamorphosis (detail):

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