Comments on: Richard Tuttle Lecture at MAM http://www.artlurker.com/2009/03/richard-tuttle-lecture-at-mam/ A Miami based contemporary art newsletter / blog Fri, 24 May 2013 05:14:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Dan Weihnacht http://www.artlurker.com/2009/03/richard-tuttle-lecture-at-mam/comment-page-1/#comment-8456 Dan Weihnacht Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:51:50 +0000 http://www.artlurker.com/?p=1124#comment-8456 Richard Tuttle's spoken presentation, like his drawings on view at MAM, posed an initial challenge to the listener/viewer who may have encountered confounded expectations. Instead of the usual description of the artist's work with visuals, Richard read a carefully composed tribute to his close friend Herb Vogel. Herb was a postal worker who, with his wife Dorothy, collected small-scale minimal and conceptual art, thereby nurturing many careers. The works now in the MAM collection were from the Vogel collection. Richard's lovingly expressed description of Herb as a compassionate human being (who saved the lives of many cats), left me with an impression of Richard's own character: a thoughtful and sensitive soul witnessing a cruel and absurd world. The drawings may also frustrate viewers approaching them with preconceptions. They require a suspension of the analyzing, judging, categorizing habits of thought. Circumventing the intellect's rigid control, they posit a realm of fragile beauty and wonder. Made of a few-to-several strokes/stains on lined notebook paper, there is an element of nostalgia. The applied color interacts with the predictable order of the blue lines, or "bangs against" the structure of ideas (Richard and Herb's analogy). Sometimes there is an interesting bleed between the watercolor and the single red line. I thought about watercolors of John Cage and the inclusion of chance over control. Taken together with my impression of the artist, the drawings speak of a particular challenge: the conviction to maintain one's heartfelt values and compassion in defiance of the dominance of rational thought as represented by the skyscrapers visible through the nearby window. Richard Tuttle’s spoken presentation, like his drawings on view at MAM, posed an initial challenge to the listener/viewer who may have encountered confounded expectations. Instead of the usual description of the artist’s work with visuals, Richard read a carefully composed tribute to his close friend Herb Vogel. Herb was a postal worker who, with his wife Dorothy, collected small-scale minimal and conceptual art, thereby nurturing many careers. The works now in the MAM collection were from the Vogel collection. Richard’s lovingly expressed description of Herb as a compassionate human being (who saved the lives of many cats), left me with an impression of Richard’s own character: a thoughtful and sensitive soul witnessing a cruel and absurd world.
The drawings may also frustrate viewers approaching them with preconceptions. They require a suspension of the analyzing, judging, categorizing habits of thought. Circumventing the intellect’s rigid control, they posit a realm of fragile beauty and wonder. Made of a few-to-several strokes/stains on lined notebook paper, there is an element of nostalgia. The applied color interacts with the predictable order of the blue lines, or “bangs against” the structure of ideas (Richard and Herb’s analogy). Sometimes there is an interesting bleed between the watercolor and the single red line. I thought about watercolors of John Cage and the inclusion of chance over control. Taken together with my impression of the artist, the drawings speak of a particular challenge: the conviction to maintain one’s heartfelt values and compassion in defiance of the dominance of rational thought as represented by the skyscrapers visible through the nearby window.

]]> By: Richard Haden http://www.artlurker.com/2009/03/richard-tuttle-lecture-at-mam/comment-page-1/#comment-8452 Richard Haden Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:13:50 +0000 http://www.artlurker.com/?p=1124#comment-8452 In the recording that is posted to this article: Tuttle talks about the "middle ground", as he does in other interviews, he is talking about space that is non linear and not confined to "one point perspective". This is analogous to the Cubist idea of broken perspective that enables the viewer to look at reality and social relations from many directions or perspectives at once-as expanded ontology... Another point to consider in Tuttle's talk is when he states at the beginning of his talk: 'I am not going to try to hard'. This is his qualification, his way of saying its going to be "Good Enough". That is such a wonderful and humble attack on commercial art that tries too hard to be over done with polish, gloss and glam as over presented pomp-- Like a lot of art that tries so hard to exist as "Retinal" or eye candy (Duchamp's counter to his dismissal of "Retinal art" being the ready made) art can be as one local curator says so eloquently, "Good enough". I guess that is another subtlety that does not land on many commercial art venues that seem to litter the Miami scene, these days--those Johnny come latelies who advocate and resuscitate through "Corpus delicti" out dated tradition and form-- disinterred modernist form from the Mausoleum. In the recording that is posted to this article: Tuttle talks about the “middle ground”, as he does in other interviews, he is talking about space that is non linear and not confined to “one point perspective”. This is analogous to the Cubist idea of broken perspective that enables the viewer to look at reality and social relations from many directions or perspectives at once-as expanded ontology…

Another point to consider in Tuttle’s talk is when he states at the beginning of his talk: ‘I am not going to try to hard’. This is his qualification, his way of saying its going to be “Good Enough”. That is such a wonderful and humble attack on commercial art that tries too hard to be over done with polish, gloss and glam as over presented pomp– Like a lot of art that tries so hard to exist as “Retinal” or eye candy (Duchamp’s counter to his dismissal of “Retinal art” being the ready made) art can be as one local curator says so eloquently, “Good enough”. I guess that is another subtlety that does not land on many commercial art venues that seem to litter the Miami scene, these days–those Johnny come latelies who advocate and resuscitate through “Corpus delicti” out dated tradition and form–
disinterred modernist form from the Mausoleum.

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