Escape from Studio Lockdown: Creating in the Multiverse

The best way to make a dramatic leap as an artist is to stop working. After Hilary Harkness' show at Mary Boone Gallery in 2011, she laid down her brushes for a full month and went to southern India. Personal transformation aside, she will never evaluate art the same way again.  Here are some ideas for ways to push your practice forward from the subcontinent.

Creating in the Multi-verse

Imagine yourself scratching out a living in a harsh environment, circa 500 CE. Aesthetics are not a top priority for you, and you may have never seen a painting. You are hired as a laborer and for the very first time, you are brought into a temple…and it’s like a supernatural experience.

 

In 1819, a British officer hunting tiger deep within the tangled undergrowth of Maharashtra discovered a series of twenty abandoned cave temples.

 

In the years 460 to 480 CE, the temples were simultaneously carved into the face of a cliff, most of which were monasteries and sanctuaries. Hundreds of artists seem to have been involved in the work, with possibly a fruitful rivalry between the neighboring construction sites. Many stone pillars within the temples are musical and resonate when tapped, and the acoustics have been engineered to extremely magnify the chanting of the innermost person. The surviving wall and ceiling paintings are intricate, colorful, and shocking in the sumptuous world they create.

So much of contemporary art exists to reflect, interrogate, or respond to culture. Outside a high-art context, a work of art might not have as much resonance. Art that is amusing when installed in one place becomes barren in another. 

What can you make that is like a different universe of images and ideas?....

What system of organizing your ideas will yield the most intense experience for viewers - or even suck them into another, better universe?....

Who can you hire to make it?....

Escape from Studio Lockdown: Tom Cruise has good taste

The best way to make a dramatic leap as an artist is to stop working. After Hilary Harkness' show at Mary Boone Gallery in 2011, she laid down her brushes for a full month and went to southern India. Personal transformation aside, she will never evaluate art the same way again.  Here are some ideas for ways to push your practice forward from the subcontinent.

Tom Cruise has good taste!

Jin Mao Tower

 

I’m a Skidmore, Ownings and Merrill junky!

This architecture firm has brought us the Time Warner Center in NYC, the Jin Mao Tower, and the lovely alabaster Beineke Rare Books & Manuscripts Library at Yale. 

Burj Khalifa, Dubai

They also designed the current tallest building in the world, the heaven-piercing Burj Khalifa in Dubai. You know this building - Tom Cruise climbs it in Mission: Impossible. Sexy assassins cavort in its tight curving rooms reminiscent of mitochondria. The Burj Khalifa is all about the pressure between intricate, minute interior details and the infinity of the desert sky.

Park Hotel, Hyderabad

 I recently made a pilgrimage to the S.O.&M 2010 creation, the Park Hotel in Hyderabad. This Indian metropolis is a hi-tech capitol known for its unbridled love of the clean, the modern and the futuristic. I was attracted to the hotel by its mix of soft-core sci-fi and Indian kitsch (I secretly wished to run into Captain Kirk lounging in Siek attire sipping a Klingon mocktail).  

Carbon Bar, Park Hotel, Hyderabad

Unfortunately, the Park Hotel did not deliver.  Here’s why Tom Cruise passed on the Park Hotel:

Overworked and under-felt: Hyderabad is known as the jewel box of India as it was once the center of the pearl and diamond trade. The hotel’s façade references jewelry designs of the Nizam’s legendary jewellery collection (at the behest of the owner of the hotel). The jewelry box details are too fussy for the strong shapes of the architecture. Inside, elements (such a laser-carved golden coffee table) end up looking cold and untouchable. Decorative wallpapers are visual static – the busyness doesn’t add to the greater whole.

It’s a bad idea to build interior spaces from tableaux. The photos look great, but the interior spaces are clunky.  Two-dimensional tableaux should be products of great 3-D spaces, not the other way around. The photo-op should not be king.

Interiors, Park Hotel, Hyderabad

Two trites don’t make a right. This mash-up of the futuristic International style and historic jewelry bring out the weaknesses in both. The owner of the building should have backed off and let S.O.&M. do what they do best.

I recommend saving your money to visit the future tallest building in the world (soon to be built in Azerbaijan) - it will be 27% taller than the Burj Khalifa!

What is your favorite building, in NYC or otherwise? 
Any disappointments? 
Please feel free to chime in!

Faculty Spotlight: An Interview with Ted Schmidt

by Amanda Scuglia, MFA 2013

Where are you from originally?

I was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and lived there until I was 16. I spent some of my high school years at school in Switzerland. I came to New York in 1964.


Tell me a little about your own personal work..

I had several wonderful teachers who had significant influence on the evolution of my work. Though I had early training in abstraction from Gabriel Laderman (student of de Kooning and Han Hofmann) and Stanley Hayter (Surrealist and teacher of Pollock), I have been strongly figurative for the past 45 years). The several schools I attended in Europe: International School in Geneva, Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Atelier 17 in Paris, and The American Academy in Rome, allowed me to travel widely and to deeply absorb the classical tradition. My focus has always been the human figure. I prefer to work directly from life, sometimes from photos (as an aide-mémoire), and very often from memory and invention. 

You are one of the founders of the New York Academy of Art; Tell me how that came about:

I was the Academy’s first and only teacher when the school began in 1982. That year I was awarded the Prix de Rome, and after teaching for a semester, I left for the American Academy in Rome. I returned in 1984, and rejoined the New York Academy. We expanded the curriculum to include sculpture, anatomy and life-size painting. The reason I was included among those planning the birth of the Academy, was because in 1981, I had a solo museum show and the museum’s director was an important figure in the planning group. He brought me in. 

Andy Warhol was another one of the founders, did you know him?

Andy Warhol was really devoted to the Academy in its early days. Surprisingly, his personal taste - the art he collected and chose to live with - was classical in nature. He actually drew well and considered training in drawing essential for an art student. After his unfortunate early death, his foundation directed its funds entirely to the Academy. For the next two years our students attended the Academy free, under Warhol Scholarships! This ended when Warhol Foundation politics caused a change in priorities. Anyway, Andy was close to our school in the beginning. I did spend an afternoon at the “Factory” and watched him at work. We went together to an opening, and later he visited me in my studio. I remember he said my work was ‘beautiful.”

Since youve been here since the beginning, can you tell me how the Academy has changed over the years?
No doubt, the Academy right now has never been better. The early days were very tumultuous. However, our students have always been talented, and have often produced wonderful work. I think we are doing about as well as possible, with a wide range of devoted teachers and courses, and a philosophy that encourages a wide range of creativity.

What do your think makes NYAA's MFA program different from others?

The NYAA is certainly unique as a graduate art school. Of course, we offer technique and skill-based courses focused on the human figure. Our community of amazing art students, who share so many interests, ideas and creative goals, very much contributes to this special place.


Have any favorite quotes?

My beloved teacher, Lennart Anderson, said to me “An artist has to keep his (or, her) life simple.”

Escape from Studio Lockdown

The best way to make a dramatic leap as an artist is to stop working. After Hilary Harkness' show at Mary Boone Gallery in 2011, she laid down her brushes for a full month and went to southern India. Personal transformation aside, she will never evaluate art the same way again.  Here are some ideas for ways to push your practice forward from the subcontinent.

WHO CAN PAINT?

Jingle truckers, that’s who. Mumbai is swarming with hand-painted vehicles! From three-wheeled tuk-tuks to commercial trucks no opportunity for adornment is lost. The paint-jobs are so elegant that most look like they were done by professionals specializing in custom work.

Surprisingly, each one is painted by its owner, so naturally many of the designs contain personal religious significance.  Nothing is over-worked, each one is unique, and there is no sign that any driver suffered from a lack of ideas.

What can you make effortlessly that is meaningful to you, without being half-assed or obscure?

 

Did you miss Hilary's 2011 posts "Notes from Studio Lockdown?  Read what she had to say in the fall of 2010 while she prepared for her 2011 show at Mary Boone Gallery in New York City.