October 27, 2004

Process Post: Surfacing Drawings


My college psych prof. said, "Free play is the only reliable course to mastery." It's the only quote I ever underlined in the entire notebook.

At the apex of his popularity, New York was awash in de Kooning imitators. But this anecdote from Robert Rauchenberg sums up de Kooning's take on what's required:

"One night, I asked Bill how he felt about most of the New York painters painting like him...He said, he didn't worry because they couldn't do the ones that don't work." p.58

De Kooning knew that the success of a painting project depended on his willingness to sacrifice his own hard-won formulae, to court failure at every turn.

In that spirit, today's post offers up a complete, uncensored sequence of drawings (progressing chronologically from the upper left) whose virtue is: they "don't work." These drawings are "free play" compositions.

This process yielded "flash_oasis_tidings" - the drawing I posted a few days ago that, for whatever mysterious reason, works.

Posted by mark at October 27, 2004 02:09 AM