Space Oddity, 2014

A step further back to consider these three collages from 2014.

Watercolours of studies of skin are combined with photos of the burnt down buildings of Athens in 2008

They are actually a sort of battle between my painting and my photography and signal a transition to a more complex pictorial space. However, they were an anarchic strand at the moment, still within the time frame of the extreme close up focus period, the period of the That That is Not.

I love the combination of subdued skin tones with the grey tones of the burnt down buildings. The harsh actual composition is compensated by this subtle contrast.
Buildings are torn down by an invasion of flesh.
My idea of a revolution.
Rather spatial or sci-fi

They are all 35x50 cm each.

Picasso's Man with pipe 1915 and the representation of a representation.

While looking at the painting 'Man with Pipe', 1915, by Pablo Picasso, an alternative interpretation occurred to me. What Picasso has created is in fact a painting of an idea about a painting.
Of course, I am not totally familiar with writings on the subject and it is possible that somebody has already put forward such an argument. Nevertheless here it is.
Let's first look at the painting. We see some parts of a man's body. Half of his head and hat, his right arm and his left hand, holding a cigar. Other elements include parts of his jacket and vest, as well as abstract areas of plain colour and dots.  There are also elements depicting parts of a chair and elements that refer to parts of a room. The different painting styles co-exist, in classic Picasso style.
The composition forms a sort of irregular triangle, from top to bottom.
I see one dark blue rectangle cutting the head in two at the top ,  and a brown form in the shape of a greek π at the bottom-center. I see these two elements as the edges of an easle. The rest of the elements can be seen as parts of dismantled paintings, one of them being the painting of a man with a pipe, others perhaps being paintings of a chair, a painting of the  room, and abstract paintings. In my mind, these  fragments  of paintings are reassembled to form a three dimensional picture with irregular edges, supported by the easel that breaks out of the frame of a standard easel painting.  The picture is thus opened up to the space around it. It is opened up perhaps to the real (in the painting) man with pipe, the representation thus merging with the represented.
We can take this further.  If we take the form in the upper right corner to be a keyhole, what we are witnessing is a sneak view of a painter's mind.
Picasso has thus painted his idea of a painting. By confining it to two dimensions, making an easel picture out of it, he preserved the status of this as an idea.  It is not reality, but a construction of reality. Even, a construction of a construction of a constructed reality. (!) Picasso has painted an infinite space.
Perhaps the π  shape stands for man-with-a-pipe's legs, but to me, the easel explanation is much more interesting.

Introducing Mark Bradford.

The devil is beating his wife, 2003.

Across 110th street, 2008

The work of this artist inspired me to start making large scale collages mixing printed advertisements with paint. He therefore deserves an introduction.
Mark is based in the United States (where else?).  In particular, in Los Angeles.
His monumental compositions mix billboard advertisements with paint, resembling giant maps. His materials are found on the street, making his work a kind of street art made by a studio based artist. His relationship to the french 'Decollage' group (Francois Dufrene, Raymond Hains, Mimmo Rotella, Jacques de la Villegle) is apparent, although in Mark's case the work is composed so that it becomes something other than merely a record of the process of the accumulation and destruction of urban posters. Not reality, but a transformation of reality is what he is interested in.
In the resulting compositions, what I find particularly fascinating is the look of a city struck by natural disaster.

Much has been written about his work. For example, the racial issues raised or the mixing of popular culture with high art. What is interesting for me however, is considering his work in the light of what  Frederic Jameson defines as an aesthetic of cognitive mapping in his  "Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism".
In this text, Jameson argues for a kind of art that will raise spatial issues as its fundamental organizing concern. This is in response to the increasing alienation felt in the postmodern city, where people are unable to map in their heads the space in which they live in , or  the sociopolitical totality that organizes and shapes this urban space as an experience.
Moreover, this results in a difficulty to connect private experience to the experience of the city and the difficulty to internalize or make one's own, the problems of our cities or the information about our world provided by intermediary authorities, such as the politicians and the media.
We are not actors in the space we live in, and therefore we are alienated from this space. Disalienation, for Jameson, means "the practical reconquest of a sense of place, plus the construction or reconstruction of place. An articulated ensemble which the individual subject can map and remap along the moments of mobile, alternative trajectories".
Works like Bradfrord's, work towards disalienation, if only in play.  This happens because by collecting, reassembling and restructuring mass media images which make up the public communication of the city, this information is personalized. By appropriation and creation, the role of the passive city-dweller who cannot act to change his/her circumstances is overturned in the artist's case and questioned for everyone.


Mark Bradford's site is really interesting. I have particularly enjoyed the option of zooming in to his works.
http://www.pinocchioisonfire.org/

Jameson, F. Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1991. Available in

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/jameson.htm

 Finally, some more images

Noah's Third Day, 2007.

Orbit, 2007.

May Heaven preserve you from Dangers and Assassins,