By the late 1970's I was straddling the polar opposites of figuration and abstraction which would become the eighties art world.
I'll tell some things of myself to sketch in the time.
Julian Schnabel came to me at a party and said, "I hear you are a figurative painter." It threw me aback as I wasn't sure what he was saying. I guess he was considering himself such-- more in the Guston way, but that comment says alot about the time. As even with Julian, he represented himself as a bull in the minimalist china shop. Then there was Eric Fischl the more obvious figurative artist though at the time he said he was a conceptual artist.
I was painting abstracley all of a sudden, I knew Poons and Christensen and my girlfriend was Frankenthaler's assistant. But I was still more into the contemporary shapes of Katz and how Stella was making similar shapes too though abstract.
It all soon was brought together in realizations that the figure's shape could be seen as abstract. Like stuck on shapes independent of their grounds. This led to a surrealist overlaying and floating. I did a similar thing but kept them in a reality related to a ground where they came from. I guess this was coming back to Georges' observed outer Reality.
My own painting can be seen this way: the inner reality, in the Black and White remembered dreamscape I began painting. This was always on it's way back to reconnect to the outer observed reality I knew from ten years earlier.
Well this was an exciting time and I wasn't thinking about Paul so much any more.
We all hung out at downtown bars and a new spirit evolved. Anne Plumb was opening a new gallery and I was invited to take part.
Paul was asked later to join the Gallery as we knew him so well and he added a older validation to the young Gallery.
I think in those years there was a unspoken competition. I had taken off and was the younger one Paul looked towards to gauge where things were going.
As I said my paintings were all Black and White-- and Paul suddenly showed big paintings with 12" black and white friezes as frames. I started painting sunflowers and Paul did too, as actually they were all Lisette's Jerusalem Artichokes, she grew yearly out in Sagaponac. So it went back and forth.
I'm not sure what happened to all the 70's figurative artists by this time, they were mostly gone. I can hardly remember an instance of one of my older friends coming to see these paintings in SoHo It makes me think that the reality of a lot of figurative art is a conservative bent and few ventured out of that shelter.
Paul saw figuration as radical and all his paintings literally took off into space representing a freedom pictorially and in stance. They did seem contemporary and were thrilling to see, although decidedly old fashioned in certain values. The bad thing about Soho in those days was that what was forward seemed connected with money. We seemed to shun the money, as we had none, and soon looked like locals fighting the Goliaths.
An example of that was, Paul had helped start a cooperative type, Artist Choice Museum which I did think retrograde and I stayed away. That was probably the beginning of my departure.
Paul was moving to Europe as he had fought with Southampton town to make a larger studio, everything was changing. He made these big paintings of his still life table and all the contents of Sagaponac sailing off to Normandy.
In 1987 I went to visit in Europe. It was thrilling and I wished Vogue Magazine had done an article featuring his amazing chateau, La Champagna with its surrounding studios .
I kept telling Schnabel and Fischl how cool he was with his 15th and 16th c barns that he painted in, over in Normandy, and the operatic studio with Don Giovanni blaring down on Walker St, but they didn't buy it. Though years later this Schnabel self portrait could have been Paul.
I'll tell some things of myself to sketch in the time.
Julian Schnabel came to me at a party and said, "I hear you are a figurative painter." It threw me aback as I wasn't sure what he was saying. I guess he was considering himself such-- more in the Guston way, but that comment says alot about the time. As even with Julian, he represented himself as a bull in the minimalist china shop. Then there was Eric Fischl the more obvious figurative artist though at the time he said he was a conceptual artist.
I was painting abstracley all of a sudden, I knew Poons and Christensen and my girlfriend was Frankenthaler's assistant. But I was still more into the contemporary shapes of Katz and how Stella was making similar shapes too though abstract.
It all soon was brought together in realizations that the figure's shape could be seen as abstract. Like stuck on shapes independent of their grounds. This led to a surrealist overlaying and floating. I did a similar thing but kept them in a reality related to a ground where they came from. I guess this was coming back to Georges' observed outer Reality.
My own painting can be seen this way: the inner reality, in the Black and White remembered dreamscape I began painting. This was always on it's way back to reconnect to the outer observed reality I knew from ten years earlier.
Well this was an exciting time and I wasn't thinking about Paul so much any more.
We all hung out at downtown bars and a new spirit evolved. Anne Plumb was opening a new gallery and I was invited to take part.
Paul was asked later to join the Gallery as we knew him so well and he added a older validation to the young Gallery.
I think in those years there was a unspoken competition. I had taken off and was the younger one Paul looked towards to gauge where things were going.
As I said my paintings were all Black and White-- and Paul suddenly showed big paintings with 12" black and white friezes as frames. I started painting sunflowers and Paul did too, as actually they were all Lisette's Jerusalem Artichokes, she grew yearly out in Sagaponac. So it went back and forth.
I'm not sure what happened to all the 70's figurative artists by this time, they were mostly gone. I can hardly remember an instance of one of my older friends coming to see these paintings in SoHo It makes me think that the reality of a lot of figurative art is a conservative bent and few ventured out of that shelter.
Paul saw figuration as radical and all his paintings literally took off into space representing a freedom pictorially and in stance. They did seem contemporary and were thrilling to see, although decidedly old fashioned in certain values. The bad thing about Soho in those days was that what was forward seemed connected with money. We seemed to shun the money, as we had none, and soon looked like locals fighting the Goliaths.
An example of that was, Paul had helped start a cooperative type, Artist Choice Museum which I did think retrograde and I stayed away. That was probably the beginning of my departure.
Paul was moving to Europe as he had fought with Southampton town to make a larger studio, everything was changing. He made these big paintings of his still life table and all the contents of Sagaponac sailing off to Normandy.
In 1987 I went to visit in Europe. It was thrilling and I wished Vogue Magazine had done an article featuring his amazing chateau, La Champagna with its surrounding studios .
I kept telling Schnabel and Fischl how cool he was with his 15th and 16th c barns that he painted in, over in Normandy, and the operatic studio with Don Giovanni blaring down on Walker St, but they didn't buy it. Though years later this Schnabel self portrait could have been Paul.
Money and glamorous success isolated many of these artists and they moved to the "Hamptons" living much as their collectors did. Eric's paintings look much like the magazines of the time, a quick look and swoosh, a turn of the page. I think they make an interesting juxtaposition these years later. Certainly the color was something Paul liked.
The Walker St loft later in 2002.
Funny Paul would rail against brown, and in a gruff manner he would say about a painting "if it is brown flush it" Maybe brown is the stuff of time passing and the fading from the 'now' like color of Pop. Paul's paintings are brown often just as his loft was brown. We were all into making everything white and treys, with color accents.
Paul also would say color over value, value being the adding of white or black into color to make it brighter or darker. This made a kind of illusionistic academicism. Color was flat right on the surface.
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