Steven Mack did his undergraduate degree at an institution, and at a time, when the object/process reigned. The best parts of formalism were still visible through the oxygen tent, and his instructors were just painters, who passed on their craft in what was almost a guild environment.
His moved on to an institution, in a city, and at a time when the message was master. The object (painting) was the symbol/simulacrum of something more important. The object was only the carrier of something outside itself, or made cynical reference to the practice itself.
To mix metaphors, Steven found himself with one foot on the dock, and one in the boat. While periodically this condition stalled him, he finally made it the content of his work.
Kenneth Clarke, in Looking at Pictures, describes stalking Velasquez' Las Meninas by walking towards the painting until the figures dissolve into paint-strokes, then backing-up until the figures reappeared - much in the same way we used to focus a camera - too far to the right, too far to the left, back to the right, etc. Trying to find the place where the marks and figures approach each other from either direction until they balance - a place where they can be both/neither. This is the place that Steven seeks: the spot where the representation and the represented cannot be separated.
This is also the rationale for his subject matter. Predominantly He paints nudes and modest still-lives. Not grand objects loaded with symbols to represent the world, death, Buddhism, etc. but rather simple, small, common subjects that would fall into the school of Intimism. The strategy is to make subject so tedious, so ordinary, that the process and the brushwork become that much more important. The scale, literally and metaphorically, draw you into the process.
With the nudes the strategy is similar. The nude provides Steven a perfect subject for an investigation of the process of painting as Sherpa versus painting as object. Someone once went through the labourious process of deconstructing one of his works. Explaining each object, each figure until the work unfolded like a comic strip. Steven pulled out another painting and asked for a similar analysis. "Oh that's just a nude" was the reply. Steven uses this baggage - the nude as such an old chestnut of art history - to try and maintain the balance between the subject and the object. The nude is, rationally, the most intimate, most loaded subject you can suggest. It is also a subject that has been Haystacked to death (Monet).
Everything is 'hidden in plain view'. |
Hoops - 2004
oil on canvas, 48 in x 36 in
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