Drawings, 1980

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“A compressed lesson in Western Art”
Pencil/paper
8.5” x 11”
1980

This is a pencil copy of Picasso’s “Le Demoiselles D’Avignon.” But what is more interesting to me is all the scribbling and notes on it. It reminds me of those scenes in movies where it becomes apparent someone has an obsession with someone or something. It’s as though I am unpacking everything I leaned in a survey course on Western Art from this one painting.

By the middle of my first year of undergraduate studies I fell into a very impactful mentor-mentee relationship with an art history professor who was working on her doctoral thesis on this painting. Dr. Helen Woodal. Her thesis was basically that Picasso had based this painting on the theme of the Judgement of Paris, a Greek myth that among other things declares that Love is superior to beauty and brains. For a more in-depth understanding of the myth I recommend a few moments on Wikipedia.

For whatever reason this brand of intellectual art speak was exactly what my young mind and soul craved. And I was all in. I was also inspired by Picasso’s hunger for new ideas and his ability to quickly absorb and express what he was digesting. I felt compelled to swallow all of that as fast as I could. The mad impacted notes on this drawing are tiny testament to that.

Dr. Woodal had a huge impact on me that shaped my passion and direction in art that continues to this day. Her commitment to basic classical principles of what makes art great and lasting has provided a helm for me through the very challenging life of being a contemporary artist. She also held fast to the idea of genius as the ability for someone to bring into this dimension something from other dimensions so that others could experience it. She was unabashedly elitist and I was among her chosen ones. I can still remember her declaring with absolute certainty when she saw my first drawing and paintings, “you have something to say.”

By the time I was finished with my undergraduate studies I had come to question the exclusivity of some of these ideas and was interested in learning about Eastern art that to my view was at the core of many of the more interesting intellectual and cultural movements of the 60’s and 70’s.
She disagreed and felt I should go straight to New York to fulfill my destiny as an up and coming enfant terriblata … a young rising star.

But I had other ideas and so we had a huge fight like many mentors and their mentees have when the mentee is ready to take flight and go their own way. Dr. Woodal was my intellectual mother. Plucking me from my hopelessly middle class mundanity she set me on a course of rigorous artist expression and execution of my full potential. Once that was fully awakened I knew I had to go to my own way … not to New York…but to China.

 

A Compressed Lesson in Western Art

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980

Pencil/Paper
8.5″ x 11″
1980