Currin Quotable Quote + a Query

YT Night Before DUMBO Show, 12.6.10  Photo: Kunji

The people I paint don’t exist. The only thing that is real is the painting. It’s not like a photograph where there’s another reality that existed at a certain moment in time in the past. The image is only happening right now and this is the only version of it. To me, that’s fascinating. It’s an eternal moment.
--John Currin

Here: a quote about Art and its place in the temporal from primo Currin, who Yours Truly has been following - and admiring - for ages, first seen by YT in our fair Nation's capital a decade or so ago. This quote is like ever so many on the topic, yet Currin slices right to the crux. Crux of the difference between the media, and their ability to document time.

On an unrelated matter, YT was about to think - and is now writing & reporting - how, in this undisclosed luncheon location where YT could easily let fantasy meander to the compact and rockily-substrated isle of Nippon, how wonderful it is to eat Asian as it's free of pesky and hive-raising tomatoes. When, suddenly, YT bit into what was erroneously believed to be a slice of daikon. Wrong. Tomato, sliced paper thin. So perhaps the minimal tomato molecules will whoosh on by without a hive.

What is the age-old dialogue between photographer and painter, You might ask.

It usually begins with a painter in a tinge of disdain stating the obvious difference between the media. But there are those painters of yore who did employ the camera obscura to make copies of work. But each of the media, no matter how painters would like to argue, move simultaneously within and against time.

Onwards.

At my 12/7  DUMBO opening one of the several surprise guests was the mentor of YT, Jim Ramer, of Parsons and beyond. I was thrilled to see him meander as only JR can, into the joint, and it was wonderful to talk with him. Amongst other things discussed was a recollection, by YT, of the moment when YT stood in front of the then Chair of the Photography Department with JR by my side. YT was debating with the Chair over a meager grade as YT was penalized for being a realist. The assignment had been to knowingly, as an exercise, infringe upon a copyright - and to defend our action. It should be mentioned that the Chair was also acquiring her law degree.

Not only did YT receive a good old-fashioned cease and desist letter from a humorless classmate, but the Chair and I scuffled over the concept of infringement for educational purposes, versus what the copyright law is. She was impassable. I was passable, and I did pass. The End.

For the next show thinking of making one-off prints of digital images, along the idea behind the prints on steel that YT made years ago. Have always wanted to print on copper, but also thinking of works on fine paper, and, possibly, duotones. Time to consult with TTreat and Sherven again.

This is a working lunch and now it is time for YT to turn from You, to pixels that need to be pushed and delivered. Of a smiling man who is straddling life between the Middling City, and the Shiney Apple. A situ that YT knows and has known oso very well.

Straddling Love.