I went back to hear Joe Coleman talk, at the Tilton Gallery today, about his art because I did not see him or his wife at the show opening last Thursday. I also went so I could talk with him, introduce myself and see what else I could learn.  I did speak with him and his wife Whitney for a couple of minutes each.

When I interview people, I don’t take notes – they don’t help much; I’d rather concentrate on what is being said and write down what’s meaningful to me later. This is going to be a long post (or maybe I will break it up to 2 posts).

 

When I arrived at the Tilton Gallery and went to the second floor it was packed with about 150 people who came before me.  Here’s what I recall and when I make a comment, I’ll indent.

Joe Coleman does not plan what he’s going to paint ahead of time – he finds the center of each painting and works out, inch by inch.  What he paints is what comes to him, what appears in his mind.  In fact, he sees what he paints as “ideas fighting for his attention”.  Everything that’s in his painting fights to arrive in his consciousness, and then he’ll paint it.  His process is “passive“ - he views himself as an instrument, a channel for these ideas and feelings to work themselves out though his painting – including those ideas that come to him about his subject as he paints.

Comment: I believe artists of my generation, born in the 1950′s (I’m roughly the same age as Joe) have the ability to “tune in”, or “channel” levels of reality (it sounds kinda mystical – and that’s what it is).  About the same time Television arrived in every household – people began to “tune in”, zone out, space out, and receive input - both to TV and to their feelings.  The “input” comes from all levels of being including the spiritual realm, the ego and from repressed feelings.

There’s a natural inclination to let the spirit and ego forces “tell us” what to paint and “how to paint it”, the artist becomes a passive medium for those feelings.

I feel Joe Coleman approaches his work in this way based on what I heard.  

Coleman mentioned he does what he does because he has to – people can call it all kinds of things, he does not care, he still feels he does what he has to, and he has mentioned he did some crazy things as he had feelings he had to express.  One of those “crazy” thing in was working on a corpse in Budapest, under the supervision of a doctor, to look for the soul in the corpse.  He did not find the soul.  Joe also talked about his movies and performances as being outreach work (and having done some crazy things on screen as well) while his paintings are more private, something you must enter into.

Joe Coleman is proud of being in a exhibition with Peter Bruegel, Hieronymus Bosch, James Ensor (all were artistic influences).  From his Timeline Link: (in 1987 Exhibition at Chronocide sells out. Victoria and Albert Museum curator David Owsley buys a piece and hangs it next to a Breughel in his collection. Other shows at New York Academy of Art, NY Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle).

Anaphylactic shock is a  health problem that Joe Coleman has experienced a number of times and one of his paintings (I also wrote about this painting the other day, “I am Joe’s Fear of Disease, painted in 2001) is all about an experience he had with Anaphylactic Shock that sent him to a Brooklyn Hospital a couple of years ago.  Whitney, Joe’s wife, told me how Joe was on the way to the hospital, begining to go into anaphylactic shock, which can be fatal, yet wanting to focus on some detail, an orange light, something for his painting.   No one seems to know for sure what causes Anaphylactic shock, and they are of the opinion it may be an allergic reaction. 

The painting (Joe’s Fear of Disease) is mounted to a hospital gown he wore when he was being admitted/treated at the hospital.  This relates to his need/love for totems. Some of his or Whitney’s blood is also contained in the painting (I’m not sure if it’s his or hers) as is his wrist band identifier and hospital card.  The online link to a detailed imagemap of this painting is available at http://www.joecoleman.com/gallery/fear/fear.html

For the rest of Joe Coleman’s talk, see part 2.