Painting in and out of a corner

I had a late night conversation with another artist friend the other night. We were discussing didacticism in painting. He had another artist critique his current work and she warned him of didacticism. It instantly made sense, as this friend's paintings are heavily loaded with narrative and images of his childhood and the like (as a Diebenkorn-influenced abstractionist, this is something I don't worry about too much in my own work), and it is easy to cross the line into trying to paint some sort of polemic when this is what one is doing.

I realized that we tend to think of didactic art as just so much agitprop, but I think that is the wrong way to identify the error of didacticism. So I came up with what I think is the simplest way to describe it: An attempt to use the pictorial medium of painting primarily to convey an argument (or subject) that is better made with words.

Didacticism is an error because it wastes time. Why risk the ambiguity when one could make a clear argument in writing or speech. I see Judy Chicago and giggle. A feminist with integrity sees Judy Chicago and rolls her eyes. A feminist who does not understand art or who lacks integrity says "right on!" An anti-feminist who does not understand art sees Judy Chicago and calls his favorite am radio talk show. Judy Chicago's work is the epitome of preaching to the choir (although I know of a church where the choir should be preached at - the danger of a professional choir).

Same with Thomas Hart Benton. Without the verbal arguments being made, all you have is incredibly poor illustration. However, with both Judy Chicago and Thomas Hart Benton we are still dealing with agitprop. Didacticism can be manifested even in the banal. Our dismay at how our siblings are living their lives, our likes and dislikes of avocado ice cream, all of this can cause the error of didacticism in painting.

Once we start trying to say something that can be better said in words, we are wasting energy trying to do with paint what words are better suited to do.

The second problem with this error is that didacticism begets didacticism. Once we are trying to make verbal arguments with paint, we end up wanting to reject our work if we change our minds. I might realize that I was wrong about avocado ice cream or wrong about Roosevelt, and if the painting is PRIMARILY about my argument against avocado ice cream or for FDR, then I am stuck with the temptation to change the painting or to destroy it.

Now, we can fight didacticism by attempting to reduce the argument to something that can be realized in paint, but then we either are back to preaching to the choir or we are in the dangerous territory of emotionalizing important issues without dealing with the rational basis of them. Purely emotional responses to anything, from politics and religion to how we FEEL about the way our parents' treated us tend towards a swamp of more emotions. I have yet to find that a purely emotive response ever solves any deep-seated issue.

So my advice to my friend was to pick subject matter that is completely without any sort of narrative loading. I told him to go buy $10 of fruit and a stack of cheap canvas boards and spend the next two months on quantity, to produce a lot of quickly-rendered paintings that have almost no deep emotional value. Basically, I think that any artist who risks getting bogged down in story-telling or political argument needs to forge for himself a retreat and get back to the basics of painting. Then, one may judiciously reintroduce the dangerous stuff. Otherwise the temptation to make poor arguments with paint always lurks.

A similar problem is found in conceptual art. When the concept is greater than the aesthetic experience of the remnants of the piece (here I allow my admiration to show for conceptual art that leaves behind beautiful photographs or other such relics), what we have tends to balance between bad art and bad literature. Heap political argument on top and all you do is plaster on a veneer of shoddy politics.

I realize that the standard retort to this is that apolitical art is inherently political, and I say AMEN. The only thing that art can successfully argue is the richness of the aesthetic experience itself. I have never had my mind changed by a work of art, and I find myself generally embarassed by didactic art that I agree with: "Gee, he's making a point, but by reducing the point to pictoral and emotive content, he is blowing any chance of generating a strong philosophical argument. I wish he had left this to writers."

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