Zander Blom: Monochrome Paintings III by Stevenson

MONOCHROME III THANK YOU GRAVITY (AND STUDENTS FROM HONG KONG)

There’s been a change in the studio. Either it’s a tiny insignificant event, or it’s a seismic shift that will lead in all sorts of directions. I don’t know where I stand yet and maybe it’s too early to tell. I have to paint my way through it. But let’s chat about it because I need a text for the exhibition – like yesterday.

When I think about gravity in a painting, I think about the weight or mass of shapes, and about how they sit on top of one another, how they weigh on or support one another. Forms can be floating in the air, or crashing around in a room, or about to teeter off the edge of a cliff. The possibilities are endless. Shapes can be static or swirling, tethered tightly or loosely or not at all. Something can be light as a feather blowing in the wind, or as heavy as a tank crushing

the world under it. Maybe gravity can even be so strong that it forces a whole composition to implode in on itself? We don’t only see a composition with our eyes but feel it with our bodies. Maybe the art of rock balancing is so compelling because we know what it’s like to fall. Who hasn’t fallen? Down some stairs, off a bicycle or chair. Don’t they also say that walking is just falling and catching yourself? Maybe a pile of rocks can be so beautiful because they return us to the fragile precariousness of our own existence. We feel the gravity in our bodies, retain the memory of falling almost physically inside ourselves. I have a healthy respect for gravity. I’m not very fond of heights. I feel like the edge of a big drop is always whispering, trying to pull a person closer like a siren from a fable.

A month or two ago a group of students came over for a studio visit. I talked to them about the paintings in the room and then paged through some of my books, showing them the evolution of my work over the last twenty-odd years. From ink drawings and prints to photographs of installations haphazardly constructed with cardboard and other cheap materials in my bedroom to various styles of oil painting. Then I did a little demonstration of the monochrome techniques with my silicone tools so they could understand how the paintings are made physically. One of the students asked why I only paint flat on the floor or on a table but not vertically with the canvas leaning against the wall. I explained that my paint mixtures these days are diluted with a lot of turpentine and linseed oil so if I were to

work upright the paint would run down the canvas. I also explained that I have a soft spot for drips and swirls like Jackson Pollock made, where the paint was flung at a canvas on the floor, but didn’t think that I would like paint dripping straight down because to my mind it would have such a specific feeling or connotation. ‘Vertical drips can be quite corny,’ I thought, and maybe said. But then, partly because I was now curious and partly because I wondered whether my answer made any sense to them, I said ‘Let’s try it and see what happens.’ So I attached a small piece of loose canvas to a board and propped it up on the studio bin. I made a few marks, worked into them a bit with my trusty tools and stood back. What I expected to happen happened, yet I felt differently about the drips of running paint than anticipated. I actually quite liked the effect. Once the students left I did a few more experiments. Quickly I stopped limiting myself to my usual silicone tools and started smearing into the paint with pieces of cloth soaked in turpentine, mostly straight down the canvas in a vertical motion from top to bottom. It just felt right, and the cloth gave a much softer gradient/ombré effect than any silicone tool. I could now obscure and reveal marks, creating an effect that sometimes feels like curtains of light in a forest and at other times like vines visible through a waterfall. Some paintings seem calm and soothing, others violent and chaotic. None of them are static, there is so much movement. The new addition of vertical drips and smears allowed for a subtle shift in the monochrome works in general. Despite my preconceived

notions, these drips turned out to be something I can really work with. Looking around the studio now, most of the recent works were made upright with drips and smears, and with each new painting another subtle variation has suggested itself into existence.

Clement Greenberg preached a kind of dogma about flatness in abstract painting. The goal in part was to get away from the old Renaissance idea of a painting being a window onto a world. Piet Mondrian had similar ideas when talking about Neo-Plasticity in art, but Mondrian’s ideas were a bit more contradictory, eccentric, even somewhat crackpot, laced as they were with Theosophy. But Greenberg very clearly and manifestly wanted to do away with any illusion of three-dimensional space, probably more so than anyone else, in a way that today feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It was about paint simply being paint and colour simply being colour. Let’s chuck any reference to the natural world in the bin. It was also about a sort of matter-of-factness with regards to the physical reality of paint and pigment. Take the line by Frank Stella: ‘What you see is what you see.’ I think this emphasis on flatness is misleading, or at least misses the point. It implores us to stop responding to pictures in the way that is natural to our species. As lovers of art, I think that we resonate with abstract works from the canon that seem to be a ‘window’ or vibrate or have three-dimensional qualities, especially when it takes us by surprise, when a painter doesn’t resort to obvious ways of creating these effects. I remember standing in front of two

massive canvases by Ellsworth Kelly in the Broad Museum in LA. Two separate rectangular canvases, joined together, one blue one red, both slanting towards each other creating a sense of depth and perspective. Both canvases with perfectly flat matt paint finishes like they were made in a factory. No brushstrokes, just pristine expanses of pigment colliding in a corner. I was mesmerised. The canvases seemed to glow and suck you in. I felt like I could swim in them, like I could just take a few steps forward, kick off my shoes, and climb into the work. It was titled simply Blue Red. I’ve had similar experiences looking at works by Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. With Pollock it’s more a feeling of falling through a vortex or portal, and with Rothko, because of the way he combined colours together, a painting can appear to vibrate. Even Francis Bacon used to talk about a desire to make paintings that plug straight into the nervous system almost like an electric jolt to the body, and he wasn’t even into pure abstraction. We live in a three-dimensional world full of colour. We have bodies and eyes, and we experience all kinds of sensations. Gravity is also perpetually at work on us. It seems that the abstract works that really move us are the ones that return us to our essential nature as creatures of the earth, replete with sight and senses that are attached to the ground like magnets to a fridge.

I realised recently that there has been an undeniable relationship to depth, gravity and suggested three-dimensionality in most of my work over the last twenty years. When you consider it from this angle,

everything connects. From the linocut collages of concentric circles made up of targets, to the photographs of black shapes floating in the corners of my old Brixton bedroom, to the abstract paintings on raw Belgian linen with the oil-stain halos around thick chunks of paint and marbling techniques, to the monochrome work. Through all of this I simply haven’t been drawn to pure flatness in the Greenbergian tradition. Perhaps I just couldn’t ever bring a painting to life following this dogma?

I love Peter Saville’s design for the cover of Joy Division’s album Unknown Pleasures. I think there is a strong connection between my love for that graphic simplicity and my desire to work in monochrome. It’s a testament to what can be achieved with the bare minimum. There is also a three-dimensional quality to the image together with a sense of gravity and perspective which makes it so compelling (not to mention that it was a found image simply inverted!). I think of that image as pure retinal candy. The image entertains the eye and remains mysterious no matter how many times I’ve looked at it over the years. It feels universal and timeless.

The painter Laura Owens, in an interview with Peter Schjeldahl, talked about how most painting today is a form of collage. She didn’t mean necessarily sticking things to canvas. She meant that contemporary painting tends to rely on the relationship between various elements or images, often stark juxtapositions of imagery from diverse sources, to make something exciting and new. You could

also say a bunch of quotes mashed together. It’s different, she argued, to the gestalt images of modernism by the likes of Jackson Pollock or Yves Klein or Barnett Newman. This resonated with me and made me wonder if a simple gestalt image in the vein of the moderns could even be possible in the time we live in.

OK, let’s shift gears now and return to gravity and nature and life in general. I’m sitting down to write this in early September. It’s winter in Cape Town. Well, it’s supposed to be coming to an end, but the days are still dark, drizzly, windy and misty. A month or two ago I woke up to find a leak in the studio. I got out the ladder and climbed up into the ceiling of our dilapidated building and found the source. A roof tile had become dislodged. Probably the wind or starlings looking to nest. A while back I was at war with a starling couple who decided to nest in an old air-conditioning unit outside a studio window. I’m on the top floor of the building and the air-con unit is so old and rusted that it looks like it could go crashing down into the parking lot at any second. For weeks whenever I dared even to be in the starlings’ line of sight in the studio they would dart at me frantically, violently, from window to window. I had to keep the blinds closed and couldn’t open a window more than a few centimetres because these things were fearless. I was sure they would just fly into the room and attack. Eventually, the family left the nest and I stuffed the hole up with a piece of wood and secured it by cramming some old paintbrushes in there. (When I say the family left, I mean including

the kids. I’m not a monster, also I’m too scared of getting murdered by those flying devils. Not a pleasant way to go, I imagine.) Mom or dad came back a few weeks later and looked very puzzled. ‘I won this round, angry-birds!’ I said to them. ‘I won’t be hosting you again next mating season.’ Anyway, the leak in the studio was far more unnerving than the starlings. The floor was full of painted canvases at the time. If water were to get to them, they would curl up and be destroyed. It’s at moments like this that I wish my process wasn’t so clean and pedantic. Hopefully the next time I pivot I’ll find a method that can withstand being bashed about by the elements a bit more. At least the new vertical-drip paintings can be looser and messier. But nature seems to want to talk to me. It’s constantly knocking, no, banging, on the door. Maybe I should move to a cabin in the forest or mountains and face this stuff directly rather than act surprised whenever nature antagonises me. Recently I discovered rats living in my car engine bay! I was filling up on petrol and getting the oil checked when I noticed that my once clean engine was covered in faeces, urine and what looked like a nest made of plastic bags and leaves, right on the car battery. ‘The damn rats are having orgies in my poor little car!’ I tried different sprays to deter the rats (thank you for nothing internet, the peppermint spray had absolutely no effect other than to make the engine smell better for a few days). Nor did they try a single bite of any of the five different rat poisons I sprinkled on the engine like an overdressed birthday cake. In the end,

what resolved the issue was simply to park the car at the other end of the parking lot. We seem to be safe now that we’ve moved their sex hotel to a different location. My wife is clearly a genius. When I asked around about this problem, no one seemed to know what the hell I was going on about, not even the people at the car dealership. I only got bemused faces staring back at me. ‘Am I the only person in this whole city with this problem?’ I thought. ‘First the starlings and now the rats? Has nature turned against me?’ To make matters worse our building is in a constant state of decay. Every week there is a new issue. You fix one thing and the next moment something else breaks or falls apart. The top hinge of our kitchen window rusted and snapped, the window almost went crashing to the ground the other day when I tried to open it. Since it’s too expensive to get scaffolding involved, the powers that be opted to have the window glued shut permanently. Then the geyser above the TV room burst, water pouring through the ceiling like an afternoon rain storm in Joburg. Entropy is everywhere, but also life. Shortly before the geyser burst I heard a chirping above my head in the shower one morning. I opened up the ceiling only to have a little Egyptian gosling jump down onto my chest. WTF?! I put it in a box for a minute and then climbed back into the ceiling with a torch to find its family. But nothing, just the sound of pigeons pattering on the roof and light shining through all the holes in the broken tiles and dust and bird droppings everywhere. I walked outside and around the building, no

mom or siblings in sight. What do you do in this situation? We got someone to pick up the vulnerable lively little creature and take it to a sanctuary somewhere. I don’t know much about these things but surely Egyptian geese don’t nest high up in old buildings? I’ve told some people about this event and I get blank stares back, like I’m high or have lost my mind. This really happened! I have witnesses! Well, one witness, my wife. We can’t both be losing our minds. Maybe it’s the mould that started appearing on the ceiling of our bedroom. I should really get someone to have look at that soon. Maybe I’ll just wash the ceiling with dish soap or bleach and repaint? I’ll see what the internet says and then I’ll know exactly what won’t work. If it’s not the wind smashing a window to bits or a banging pedestrian gate with a busted lock or the forever faulty motorised parking lot gate, then it’s bad plumbing above my wife’s studio on the ground floor causing leaks and stains and peeling paint and mould on the backs of her canvases. I think of the pigeons perpetually congregating on top of another air-conditioning unit on the other side of my studio. It seems the birds have different turfs. I see you pigeons. I don’t mess with starlings either. I think of this winter in Cape Town and the rain and the wind that can drive one crazy. Sometimes I feel like I’m on a ship at sea when the wild weather starts. As I’m writing this, I look at the towering Ficus (or rubber tree I think) in front of my window as its sprawling network of branches and leaves are thrashed about by the gusting wind. When the wind blows this violently it can rip

open the cheap office ceiling boards above my head, banging them relentlessly, up and down and up and down. The whole building rattles, all the old, rusted fittings and broken doors and windows and gates banging together in a discordant symphony. Technically, none of this should be my problem, because I’m renting, but the property managers are never in a hurry to fix anything. I just have to calm myself down and think of the Stoics ‘This is not happening to you, it’s just happening’ or something to that effect.

Anyway, that’s just a little vignette of life at home. All I really want is to get on with the business of painting. But maybe all this mayhem and general weirdness is the universe’s way of trying to tell me something. Instead of being at odds with my environment, I should rather embrace this chaos, allow it to flood the studio. By now, it’s probably obvious to the reader that it’s all there in the work already. In the daylight streaming through the holes in the ceiling, in the drips and smears and the waterfalls when I think of the leaks and the mould and the burst geyser. Was it just thanks to a prompt from the students or was it a perfect storm of mishaps and circumstance? And what about the starlings and the gosling and the rats? Are they in there as well? I can’t tell. I’ll have to keep my eye on the studio as the seasons change. That is to say ‘to be continued’ as is always the case around here.

My wife says I’ve ended this piece too abruptly, I need to dig deeper and bring it home now, so let’s give it a try:

The wind and the rats and the rain and the bird wings flapping at the windows and Mondrian and Pollock and Malevich forever on my mind

The grey sunlight streaming through the holes in the broken roof and the cracks in the kitchen running up the wall

The warping of the floor after the lounge flooded and the tape on the ceiling to cover the hole and Agnes Martin painting with her back to the world and the water in the buckets drip-drip-dripping

The broken lights in the passage and the rotting counter in the kitchen and the glass falling crashing to the ground and Ellsworth Kelly with those beautiful little postcard collages and the wet carpet and the puddle on the linoleum floor and Brancusi with the gorgeous black and white photos he took of his own sculptures and the playful Paul Klee

Seinfeld saying ‘Your blessing in life is when you find which torture you’re most comfortable with.’ and the words of some famous soccer player ‘It’s super hard almost impossible to compete against someone who’s having fun.’

and Logan Grimé the underlick guy ‘You can’t compete with someone who is not trying. Whatever you have an endless supply of –do that.’

The scattered ceiling tiles above you on the landing and the door off its hinges lurking around the corner and the huge brown eagle in the tree feasting on some house pet reminding me of Canyon 1959 and the mist around the mountain and the patter of the birds above and the rats running along the wall outside and the ombres in the sky as the sun is setting magenta-orange-blue-purple-pink all blending and Schjeldahl on Matisse: ‘(He) raises decoration to a level of panic... seeming nonchalance... drugged on rapture, decorum and suppression...’ and the dust and the mould and the bubbles of paint peeling off the walls and the stupid pigeons and slow rats flattened by cars like red city schnitzel burger patties on the tar (You would have loved the flatness Clem!)

The engine with the shit and the piss and peppermint spray and the steel bars of the broken gate and Barney Newman with his ‘zips’ and Franz Kline with the broad brushstrokes that were supposedly painted very meticulously and the nest of leaves and the green and blue poison and the little teeth marks around the holes in the bins and Christopher Wool’s spraypainted circles or were they silkscreened? and a note stuck to a big empty canvas saying: ‘This one is just for fun/play!’ and another note: ‘Respect the negative space!’

Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler

The Ninth Street Women, written out of history maybe Joan and Helen not so much and the ceaseless chirping of the babies in the aircon and the midnight-blue flying devils with bloody murder in their eyes and Lee Krasner at home putting up with all of that shit and the dead white squirrel with its delicate fur and its empty eye sockets and Twombly with his scribbles and Robert Ryman and the collapsed sewerage pipe in the alley

and Cezanne and Picasso and Braque with the tubes and cubes and the influence of silent films and the rusted locks and the snapped hinges and the owl in the tree and Josh Smith starting from a bad idea and the yapping hadedas

The windows that can’t open or won’t close properly and Rothko with his chapel shutting down after the hurricane and Ad Reinhardt with more black paintings and Albers with the squares in squares and the maggots in the light fixtures and the ever-dripping tap and Kandinsky who I don’t get I’m sorry I saw a bunch of them and there was no energy too many diagonals that just seemed kind of silly and the constant banging of the gate that sits in your body all those tiny sharp pangs in your back

The electricity tripping from the kettle and the dryer and the laundry room under water and the fly tape looks like dots by Bridget Riley and this press release keeps getting longer and longer and the canvases are calling I really need to get back to painting!

but Brice Marden with the webs or nets or whatever you want to call them and the brown stains running down the walls and the fascinating life of Warhol as told by Blake Gopnik and the radical impact of Campbells Soup cans without painterly drips and David Salle reminding us that ‘Comparison is teaching’s shorthand.’

The tiny black beetles in the drawer with the knives and forks and Hilma af Klint who communed with the spirits they say she was first the useless intercom and the cars hooting at the gate and the soaked towels on the floor and Francis Bacon returning us to life more violently and Michael Peppiatt in your blood and Tal R on painting: ‘Banalities... you don’t need to tell very complicated stories... it’s how you bend it.’ and Rothko: ‘The familiar identity of things must be pulverised.’ and Lisa Yuskavage: ‘Be your own person, make a fuck you painting.’ and ‘Be willing to be disliked.’ and ‘Weaponize your shame.’ and CAConrad: ‘Don’t let your spirit guides go elsewhere.’ and Michael Raedecker: ‘We’ve all seen and experienced so much

and therefore you don’t need to point things out, you need to leave blanks and open spaces.’ and Alex Katz: ‘No noodling... if you don’t noodle it gets fresher... De Kooning noodles too much.’

The dark green mould spots growing above the bed and on my suit jacket for special occasions and Tom Keating showing us how the masters painted and Giorgio Morandi with his wonderfully unassuming little pots and the neighbours feeding pigeons from a second-floor window why would they do that? and the peace of painting in the quite of night and Arthur Jafa discussing Peter Saville and Peter Saville discussing Richard Hamilton and Richard Hamilton discussing Duchamp and Duchamp discussing the Dadaists who saw the world burn twice and the ladder disappearing into the filthy ribcage roof like the inside of some magically sinister Louise Bourgeois and the lost little gosling with no mama and Rachel Whiteread reminding us about the space beneath chairs

The End

Published on the occasion of Monochrome Paintings III

2 November – 13 December 2024

Stevenson, Johannesburg

Published by Stevenson

Design Gabrielle Guy

Photographs Mario Todeschini

Studio photographs Zander Blom, Dominique Cheminais

Printed by Tandym, Cape Town

Buchanan Building

160 Sir Lowry Road

7925 Cape Town