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For my second blog entry, I’d like to present the work of Mark Grotjahn, a painter working out of Los Angeles. He is one of the most important artists to gain prominence in the last several years, and has been trouncing his own auction records, important paintings edging towards half a million dollars each. I think his work will prove to be incredibly important to the current generation of young artists, and I am personally very attached to it.
Like Isa Genzken, the easiest way to understand Grotjahn’s practice is to look at it in terms of loose series. His most famous paintings are quirky, elusive abstractions that he refers to as “Butterflies”, each one composed of a series of lines emanating from a central vertex, the resulting divisions being filled in in various ways. The results are clear, simple, and elegant at first, but the details complicate a clear reading within the frame of abstract painting. Most obviously, Grotjahn often inserts an overly pronounced and usually stylized signature or monogram, immediately disrupting the “purity” of the image and undermining any Rothko-like effect it might have possessed. This approach, though, is inconsistent, and it becomes extremely difficult to understand the autographed paintings in relation to the ones left as they are.
Grotjahn also makes small paintings of masks on cardboard, which have a primitive and immediate quality. These too sometimes sport the artist’s name, but the relationship is just as ambiguous.
In person, the paintings I saw were extremely thickly applied and shiny. Their weight as objects was incredible, but the glare kept the images from fully resolving. The effect is simultaneously marvelous and frustrating.
Grotjahn is also known for a series of small found handmade signs acquired from shop owners in a compelling way: after finding a sign he liked, Grotjahn would paint a replica of it and then trade the shop owner his replica for the original, and then authorize the original as a work of his art. The transaction lends and incredibly complicated and interesting dialogue about artistic authority to the work that has had a huge impact on how I think about art. Normally, we understand the creative act as the painted stroke, the physical execution of the artwork. But in Grotjahn’s case, the object he physically paints is subordinated to the painting he’s copying; the object made by the genius hand is deemed less relevant as an art object than the sign painted out of necessity by a local sign painter. The inclusion of these paintings in his ouvre also has implications for the wider understand of Grotjahns work, but I’m still unsure of how to articulate them.
Also, since it’s a point of interest for some people here, Grotjahn is an avid and competent poker player.
You can buy his new Parkett edition here for a couple grand.
My opinion:
Grotjahn is positioned to be one of the absolute superstars of his generation. He is incredibly inventive and subtle, and epitomizes the ambiguous power that so much of contemporary art seeks to embody. As a collector, there isn’t much I would seek out first if I found 20 grand on the street than a Grotjahn colored pencil drawing. He is an intellectual’s anti-intellectual, and the more successful he becomes the better the art world looks from my point of view.
Mark Grotjahn shows with Blum and Poe in L.A., Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, Anton Kern in New York and Gagosian Gallery in London.
Here are some images:
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That green one's quite pretty 
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If scroll up and down rapidly on his "vanishing point" pieces the lines appear to move and bend. Pretty cool.
On the other hand. This is what I hate about modern art. My initial reaction to the pieces were enigmatic. On the one hand, I felt disgust at human nature's attempt to give something great importance even though there is no distinguishable skill involved. In other words, to me, I feel like people can feel that the paintings are great, and aren't sure if they are or not; but in order to not be wrong or left off the bandwagon, they say the paintings are great. On the other, the paintings do have some potency. They are interesting to look at, and have some emotional resonance with me that I do not understand. There is no identifiable emotion I am feeling besides some medium-strength magnetism. In short, these pieces suffer from the truth that, the explanation is far more interesting than the piece itself.
This is why I like medieval art and renaissance art. Having no art training myself, I can satisfactorily explain to myself why I like or dislike a particular piece, notice certain things that are going on within a painting and generally come to a conclusion about its quality. Obviously, my opinion of quality matters little; but what else am I do at a museum or art gallery? To think about a piece and enjoy it, hate it, marvel at it, be attentive to it and so on. With art like Grotjahn's, there is very little discernible to the lay person and the key to understanding it, I would wager, lies within some byzantine art theory that all invariably seem so far divorced from the human experience it's no longer art.
That said, I'm still curious as to why this guy over all the others is getting attention. I'd be interested in your explanation.
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I only like the baboon faces. The rest of the pieces, I was thinking, were a joke.
I mean, I remember cheap by the mill posters of colored stripes in the 80's for 2.99 a pop baby.
And that robot head thing? I made a better one for 2nd grade.
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On October 28 2007 23:15 A3iL3r0n wrote:
If scroll up and down rapidly on his "vanishing point" pieces the lines appear to move and bend. Pretty cool.
On the other hand. This is what I hate about modern art. My initial reaction to the pieces were enigmatic. On the one hand, I felt disgust at human nature's attempt to give something great importance even though there is no distinguishable skill involved. In other words, to me, I feel like people can feel that the paintings are great, and aren't sure if they are or not; but in order to not be wrong or left off the bandwagon, they say the paintings are great. On the other, the paintings do have some potency. They are interesting to look at, and have some emotional resonance with me that I do not understand. There is no identifiable emotion I am feeling besides some medium-strength magnetism. In short, these pieces suffer from the truth that, the explanation is far more interesting than the piece itself.
This is why I like medieval art and renaissance art. Having no art training myself, I can satisfactorily explain to myself why I like or dislike a particular piece, notice certain things that are going on within a painting and generally come to a conclusion about its quality. Obviously, my opinion of quality matters little; but what else am I do at a museum or art gallery? To think about a piece and enjoy it, hate it, marvel at it, be attentive to it and so on. With art like Grotjahn's, there is very little discernible to the lay person and the key to understanding it, I would wager, lies within some byzantine art theory that all invariably seem so far divorced from the human experience it's no longer art.
That said, I'm still curious as to why this guy over all the others is getting attention. I'd be interested in your explanation.
This is a pretty common response obviously to a lot of modern and contemporary art. I always make the same simple argument:
I know it seems at first like there is something super complicated and intellectual about them that you can't understand. In some ways, this is true. They are engaging art history in a way that is fairly complicated and that you probably won't understand. But I would say this is about 10% of the meaning. You have access to by far the most important characteristics of all modern and contemporary art: the way it resonates (looks, feels, etc.).
It seems like you would need to do more learning to access the work, but in truth I think it's the opposite. I would wager that if you were able to divorce yourself from the expectation of skill and craft and representation in art that you could see how interesting and inventive these objects are. Try to ask yourself if they are like anything you've ever seen before in the "real world." If they aren't, ask yourself why human society would produce them. If the answer ends up being mysterious to you, you're in much the same situation as me, and if you can feel that such a mystery is really amazing and powerful and hopeful, then you can start to access contemporary art. It's my bet that someone with no knowledge of art would be moved walking into a museum show of Grotjahn's work; it's the people with a little bit of second hand knowledge about what paintings were supposed to look like a long time ago that struggle to engage them.
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On October 29 2007 00:10 SuperJongMan wrote:
I only like the baboon faces. The rest of the pieces, I was thinking, were a joke.
I mean, I remember cheap by the mill posters of colored stripes in the 80's for 2.99 a pop baby.
And that robot head thing? I made a better one for 2nd grade.
happy birthday!
If you could make a better one in second grade then you must be able to make a WAY better one now. This one goes for about $50,000, so I would encourage you to seek a career in art! It will be very easy!!!!
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bine thanks for posting this, I look forward to more, for the sake of this being a blog and not a thread can we PLEASE not have the a third grader could paint all modern art debate
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a3iL3r0n abstract art is the experimentation of color, form, space, etc. A successful artist needs to have extremely good understanding of artistic composition in order to experiment in the first place. And about the content, this Grotjahn does seem to instill a lot of art history into his paintings and perhaps alludes to it. I doubt he could've painted the painting with the dark background and light lines and his signature on top, without having knowledge of Picasso and Basquiat. And ofc Rothko for his large blank ones. He seems to have a very mature and distinct style though I can't say much cuz these images are small and few.
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On October 29 2007 01:32 bine wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2007 23:15 A3iL3r0n wrote:
If scroll up and down rapidly on his "vanishing point" pieces the lines appear to move and bend. Pretty cool.
On the other hand. This is what I hate about modern art. My initial reaction to the pieces were enigmatic. On the one hand, I felt disgust at human nature's attempt to give something great importance even though there is no distinguishable skill involved. In other words, to me, I feel like people can feel that the paintings are great, and aren't sure if they are or not; but in order to not be wrong or left off the bandwagon, they say the paintings are great. On the other, the paintings do have some potency. They are interesting to look at, and have some emotional resonance with me that I do not understand. There is no identifiable emotion I am feeling besides some medium-strength magnetism. In short, these pieces suffer from the truth that, the explanation is far more interesting than the piece itself.
This is why I like medieval art and renaissance art. Having no art training myself, I can satisfactorily explain to myself why I like or dislike a particular piece, notice certain things that are going on within a painting and generally come to a conclusion about its quality. Obviously, my opinion of quality matters little; but what else am I do at a museum or art gallery? To think about a piece and enjoy it, hate it, marvel at it, be attentive to it and so on. With art like Grotjahn's, there is very little discernible to the lay person and the key to understanding it, I would wager, lies within some byzantine art theory that all invariably seem so far divorced from the human experience it's no longer art.
That said, I'm still curious as to why this guy over all the others is getting attention. I'd be interested in your explanation. This is a pretty common response obviously to a lot of modern and contemporary art. I always make the same simple argument: I know it seems at first like there is something super complicated and intellectual about them that you can't understand. In some ways, this is true. They are engaging art history in a way that is fairly complicated and that you probably won't understand. But I would say this is about 10% of the meaning. You have access to by far the most important characteristics of all modern and contemporary art: the way it resonates (looks, feels, etc.). It seems like you would need to do more learning to access the work, but in truth I think it's the opposite. I would wager that if you were able to divorce yourself from the expectation of skill and craft and representation in art that you could see how interesting and inventive these objects are. Try to ask yourself if they are like anything you've ever seen before in the "real world." If they aren't, ask yourself why human society would produce them. If the answer ends up being mysterious to you, you're in much the same situation as me, and if you can feel that such a mystery is really amazing and powerful and hopeful, then you can start to access contemporary art. It's my bet that someone with no knowledge of art would be moved walking into a museum show of Grotjahn's work; it's the people with a little bit of second hand knowledge about what paintings were supposed to look like a long time ago that struggle to engage them.
I disagree with the assertion that someone who did not have preconceived notions of what art should and shouldn't be would somehow have more access to these sorts of pieces than someone who didn't. Why? Because you need to have some sort of context in which to understand the art, which any lay person, prejudiced or otherwise, would not have. With more formal art, the context is visual. You can see that the nude lady is weeping under the tree and the imp is hiding at the edge of the scene laughing to himself. With Grotjahn, I need to know how he is engaging the different art theories and art history itself in order to form some cohesive opinion about it. So, back to the topic sentence: I don't see how someone without some knowledge of art theory and/or history could possibly appreciate his art that deeply. His art is too random; appreciating his art deeply at this point, for me, would be like assigning meaning to the phosphenes I see when I press on my closed eyelids. Sure, there's colors and shapes, but what does it mean? Is that valuable? My point is that there's no narrative or context; nothing in his art means anything without prior knowledge and acumen, as with most things I suppose, but especially in this case. So this is the problem I have with modern art: it is not self-contained.
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South Africa4316 Posts
Ok, I'll comment on the paintings quickly, because I'm much more interested in the debate going on here.
I love the paintings. This is my kind of abstract art. Clean, colourful, concise art. I can honestly say that the four minimalist paintings at the bottom, and the green abstract with the red signature are some of the best abstract paintings I've seen in a while. Truly beatiful. I'd buy every single one of them if I had the money.
The black and white stencil (is that what they were? You mentioned his stencil drawings, but the paint splatters makes me think they're oil paintings...) ones I feel a bit ambivalent about. On the one hand I find them slightly boring, on the other hand I like the asymmetry in them.
I don't like the first dragon face, but I like the dragon face with the big signature on it. Very nice, especially the big signature!
The found art pieces are also nice. I'm just wondering, why don't the shop owners sell their paintings as well. I'm sure that they will still fetch a substansial price, even though buying them defies the purpose of the painting slightly, they would still be a collectors piece. "I bought the found painting that Grotjahn painted to replace the found painting he found..."
As to the comments on art:
It seems like you would need to do more learning to access the work, but in truth I think it's the opposite. I would wager that if you were able to divorce yourself from the expectation of skill and craft and representation in art that you could see how interesting and inventive these objects are. Try to ask yourself if they are like anything you've ever seen before in the "real world." If they aren't, ask yourself why human society would produce them. If the answer ends up being mysterious to you, you're in much the same situation as me, and if you can feel that such a mystery is really amazing and powerful and hopeful, then you can start to access contemporary art. It's my bet that someone with no knowledge of art would be moved walking into a museum show of Grotjahn's work; it's the people with a little bit of second hand knowledge about what paintings were supposed to look like a long time ago that struggle to engage them.
I really love the way you stated that. I've never looked at art like that before, and it was a very interesting statement. I don't agree with it, but it made me think a little.
I believe firmly in Hegel's theory of historicism. As Fukuyama explains it:
History proceeds through a continual process of conflict, wherein systems of thought ... collide and fall apart from their own internal contradictions. They are then replaced with less contradictory and therefore higher ones, which gives rise to new and different contradictions -- the so-called dialectic.
Francis Fukuyama, 1990
or, more to the point, as Le Bovier de Fontenelle says:
A good cultivated mind contains, so to speak, all the minds of preceding centuries; it is but a single identical mind which has been developing and improving itself all the time ... but I am obliged to confess that the man in question will have no old age; he will always be equally capable of those things for which his youth is suited, and he will be ever more and more capable of those things which are suited to his prime; that is to say, to abandon the allegory, men will never degenerate, and there will be no end to the growth and development of human wisdom.
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, 1688
So basically, I believe that modern abstract art, as it is now, is art that has been developed over centuries of art history. The mind of Grotjahn contains all the information on art of all those before him (whether he is consciously aware of this, or if it has been given to him through the medium of society) and because of this, he is able to create art that is fitting for the 21st century, and that can be analyzed by others that understand the progress of art.
Exact meanings might not be understood in his paintings, but by understanding where he comes from we are given a groundwork from which to experience and interpret his art. Unfortunately information on the history and progression of art is not as easily accessible through society as many other things (liberal thought for one), and so people without an art education have more trouble interpretting the art than those with an education in art
Btw bine, how come you make such nice blog posts and such retarded forum posts? I'm just wondering cause I'm sure I've seen some pretty shitty posts by you in the forums
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On October 31 2007 06:59 PsycHOTemplar wrote:
Show nested quote +
and yes. then there are the bitch shirts. I guess its something that will sell in america since ppl are so ego pumped, i dont see it in china or other places where the average person is more modest. Wearing a shirt that says "Rich Bitch" or "Hottie" or "Gold Digger" really reflects how crude and low you are as a person and I can't believe how popular it's getting.
North Korea has it's propaganda machine, North America has it's media machine. Both make non-cynical/skeptical people do really stupid things. Ever seen people pay $60 for tacky look golf shorts? Some unique person was trying to be different, and wore these stupid looking things, then 'cool hunters' for corporations like American Eagle started mass producing it, and suddenly everyone who thought that guy who first wore them was so cool and unique buys the same thing, essentially defeating the purpose without realizing it. 3 months later it's onto the next retarded mass produced 'fashion statement'. I took a course in the study of this kind of phenom, and let me tell you it was depressing, especially when you could see 80% of your class was part of it.
I think this post from another thread is quite appropiate for some of his work. The second painting reminds me of the panorama of a highway taillights disappearing in the vanishingpoint. The butterflies are like doodles alot of people made during boring telephoneconversations.. I like the 4th and the other abstract face. Making almost white paintings with small nuances devided by lines is nothing new. It is an anti-statement. It is even predictable. Contemporary art seems to be mocking in nature. Mocking intelllectualism that takes itself to seriously. I think in his mind eye he regards people buying his work as clowns.
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Bine, won't you share with us how you interpret Grotjahn's work? I'm interested in hearing an informed opinion on why his art is valuable.
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Daigomi Hegel is a very important philosopher but not many intellectuals today believe in the kind of progression in systems of thought his dialectics describe. In continental philosophy and science everything has changed completely many times with not so much remaining from previous systems. Art History is I guess different and harder to analyze but I don't think you can really apply Hegel to a lot of postmodern art. Everything's just way too hectic. For example I feel like the last four paintings aren't really minimalist at all, the images are too small but I can just make out the extending rays or "butterflies" which makes them really light butterflies which in that context, hints that the artist probably just wanted to do a different butterfly and not make anything decidingly minimalist, that is of course assuming butterfiles themselves arent minimalist, which I don't think they can be called that in the traditional sense of the word, minimalism is a distinct period in art history like art deco, abstract expressionism, etc, it's popular because it's been around for a long time and we have "minimalist" interior design now and "minimalist" cars and it's come to mean everything simple and elemental, which it pretty much is but of course more complicated. I just looked at the butterflies again and yea I'm not gonna call it minimalist, i'll call it a sign or something, but if there ever is the description American minimalist Mark Grotjahn I'll eat my words. I think there's no way Grotjahn can be just a minimalist, he's influenced by it just as he's influenced by other periods of art. The paintings where he signs Big Nose Baby Noose are obv above just being minimalist. He actually looks a lot like Cy Twombly but I really don't know much postmodern art and Twombly is like the only othe artist I know. And yea, like it says in the OP, by signing his name that big I think it's safe to say his paintings are quite some ways above minimalism. Anyways I'm just rambling, my point is, the definition of postmodernism is = incredulity towards metanarratives, so try not to use metanarratives aka history is... this painting is art deco, etc, to analyze good postmodern art.
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and postmodernism has many sets of definitions, that phrase is just from Lyotard
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and lol at him being a poker player, I guess he's at least decent at math then, which I guess I'll take into mind when looking these butterflies
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bine do you have have any like, ultra big sized images of these paintings, and how big are they in the first place
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/socialdiary/2006/03_01_06/images/biennial/CIMG2827.jpg)
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