Chapter 9 of my research book about the morality and politics of our time as seen through the subjects of representational art is now available.

What makes a fairy tale resonate?

Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales

I move deeper into social reality to works based on nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Frederick Turner reminds us that fairy tales serve a particular function in tradition. They teach “that your own moral decisions and choices are determining factors in making you who you are.” Paula Rego uses nursery rhymes in narratives to make sense of her childhood in Portugal, a world with dark secrets, compromise and betrayal. “With unforgettable imagery and ambiguous titles, she subverts the family, the so-called traditional role of women, opera, Fascist governments and any institution that the rest of us might confuse with authority,” we learn from the complete edition of her works in print.

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Chapter 8 of my research book about the morality and politics of our time as seen through the subjects of representational art is now available.

Who else has been missing from our view?

Redressing Historic Wrongs

Postmodernists tell us that “The logics of domination structure the world.”¹ Kerry James Marshall makes art that addresses the domination that was exerted by enslaving Africans to build the New World. Voyager depicts the actual event of the Middle Passage across the Atlantic to the Americas. Plunge also shows the Atlantic Ocean, but the “Private” sign on the gate leaves us uncertain about how the descendants of the enslaved have fared in succeeding years. Who is included? Who is excluded? are questions that acknowledge that social isolation, or segregation, becomes a two way street.

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Chapter 7 of my research book about the morality and politics of our time as seen through the subjects of representational art is now available.

What kind of culture expresses itself this way?

Social Awareness

Massively claustrophobic, Dana Schutz’s massive Fight in an Elevator bridges this category and the very large next one, in which we see painters working with traditional forms and social awareness. It is highly likely that you can name at least one of the celebrity fights in an elevator to which she refers. This work refers to impacts of technology today, not just the relentless coverage of scandal but the loss of a presumption of privacy. A girl just cannot count on slugging somebody in private any more.

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Chapter 6 of my research book about the morality and politics of our time as seen through the subjects of representational art is now available.

What might it mean when artists break up surface reality?

Fragments and Instability

The postmodernists speak of deconstructing surface reality, arguing that representations no longer represent anything–that they are a self-generating realm of images, an endless surface with no underlying reality. I am more than likely twisting their terminology to describe the work of painters such as Jenny Saville, Ann Gale, Alex Kanevsky and France Jodoin.

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Chapter 5 of my research book about the morality and politics of our time as seen through the subjects of representational art is now available.

Can we see what they do?

Powers of Observation

Painters who rely on observation take deeper looks at their subjects, more typically still life, interior and landscape. Josephine Halvorson seems to examine the surface of her subjects at a microscopic level; Catherine Murphy, Susan Jane Walp, and Gillian Pederson Kraag represent intensely personal approaches to painting perceptually.

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Chapter 4 of my research book about the morality and politics of our time as seen through the subjects of representational art is now available.

What makes representational art matter? Technique or content?

What We Are Painting

I have examined the content of 21st -century representational art to ask what the choice of subjects tells us about what artists think is important. I am disregarding questions of technique or style to look at the possibility of creating meaning in our fractured age. While the increasing popularity of fantasy and imagined worlds as subjects for representational art suggests they offer meaning to many, I have never saved any such image for future consideration, so these subjects are not discussed.

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Chapter 3 of my research book about the morality and politics of our time as seen through the subjects of representational art is now available.

Have modern ideas rendered representational art obsolete?

What Happened to the Traditional Subjects

Scientific rationalism is one of the reasons cited for the demise of traditional beliefs. Joseph Wright of Derby captured many gripping scenes of scientific exploration in the 18th century, such as An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, 1768, shown today at National Gallery, London.

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Chapter 2 of my research book about the morality and politics of our time as seen through the subjects of representational art is now available.

How was it that art in the past claimed moral authority?

Traditional Subjects

What painters represented in times past quite certainly indicates what was considered important. The mere survival of these works of art testify to their lasting might.

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What can we learn about the morality and politics of our time from the subjects that representational artists choose?

I presented the paper titled “Meaning and Purpose: Morality and Politics in 21st Century Representational Art” at The Representational Art Conference 2015, an international cultural event in Ventura, California. The event included presentations, demonstrations, and trips to five gallery exhibits.

Michael Pearce and Michael Lynn Adams founded the conference in 2012 to provide a place for the discussion of the philosophy and practice of artists in the universities, colleges, ateliers and private studios where the techniques of the old masters are still taught and used in the present day. California Lutheran University Arts Initiative presents the conference to focus academic attention on the work of traditionally trained artists, to identify commonalities and to help to understand the unique possibilities of representational art.

I am now publishing my paper in serial form on my blog. You’ll see a new chapter each week as we delve into this subject.

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On this Easter Sunday, I give thanks for what it is in the human spirit that welcomes the concepts of resurrection and reconciliation. I made this painting with my dedicated models Annie Jefferson and Mona Reeves during a period of a year and a half. In serious moments, we talked about the Emmanuel AME massacre in Charleston. William Faulkner wrote “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past,” in his Southern Gothic novel, Requiem for a Nun. Our American past we must actively shape with hope into a better life today.