In London on Tuesday, as well attending that show in Mayfair I was in, I had a look around the current Royal Academy show of abstract expressionist work, featuring Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko and my fave Philip Guston. My friend Giovanna, who was with me remarked on how the Rothko’s invoke a kind of spiritual purity, kind of like how you may look at and enjoy a sunset. I guess that’s what abstract expressionism was all about – purity. But then Philip Guston got bored of all that and wanted to tell stories again and wandered off and with Jackson Pollock’s death I guess it all imploded and art went off into the next movement.
Later on we also had a quick look at Carroll Dunham’s paintings at Inigo Philbrick, an interesting show, which in a way was a modernist painters amalgamation of whatever was before him. Aesthetically I think Dunham is very much influenced by Guston’s later work and indeed the abstract expressionists. Once again Giovanna pointed out that the reason why maybe we were so attracted to Dunham’s painting of an amazonian woman with a gaping vagina and giant breasts and nipples was not because we were perverted in some way, but because fundamentally we all come from the same thing – our entrance to this world is through a vagina.
I was just thinking about this and so decided to do a quick painting trying to align myself along on the endless path of connections that this life creates.
Adam Crosland 