The Thing (Fragment #2) from Wes Stitt on Vimeo.
Untitled, April 2015. Axe, drywall, latex paint.
Prop, April 2015. Cane, gilding wax, steel rod.
After several years working almost exclusively with photography and digital video, I found myself wanting to make something really present in a space. So, after hiding in the closet for a while, the object-oriented sculptor part of my künstlerpersönlichkeit came out swinging.
I’d like to make a sort of documentary or portrait of my classmate Tom Boram. He seems wary, but potentially willing. I spent a little while with him in his studio this morning before class, and shot a bit of experimental footage.
A Few Minutes with Tom from Wes Stitt on Vimeo.
…from an alternative history of art:
“But imagine if the ancient Greeks hadn’t discovered their miraculous technique for powder-coating marble, light-fast and resistant to the elements, what a somber and colorless affair might Neoclassicism have been…”
An aesthetic event that I’ve been anxiously awaiting since I was a boy has finally happened, and somehow it took nearly six months for me to notice. The 1966 Batman television series is commercially available, uncut and remastered, for the first time since it originally aired. It would be nearly impossible to overstate the influence this show had on the development of my personal aesthetic, as well as my sexuality. I’ve been devouring episodes all week, and it looks so good. The colors! My god, the colors! They really pop!
I’ve been reconnecting lately with my childhood hero, Michael Wood. His documentaries, especially “In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great,” were a major influence on my decision to study history, and also on my love of documentary film.
I’ve been frustrated lately, and I’ve started telling people that I’m not going to make art anymore, that for my thesis I will project this episode (“The Classical Ideal”) of “Art of the Western World” in the gallery space, and my committee and I will wear togas to the opening.
The Thing (Fragment #1) from Wes Stitt on Vimeo.
Thinking about the work of August Sander, after a class trip to the Hirshhorn museum last week.
As I enter the Baltimore Museum of Art on a frigid winter afternoon, my first stop is at the coat check. While the young woman behind the counter hangs my coat, I notice a laminated sheet of blue paper lying on the countertop, bearing the printed message, “This is 11” x 14”.” I ask the attendant if this is a piece of conceptual art – I think it’s quite a nice one, actually, one part René Magritte, one part On Kawara, with a dash of Don Judd’s object specificity thrown in for spice. She replies that it’s a visual aid for enforcing the museum’s restriction on bags larger than these dimensions. Flipping the sheet over, she reveals that the other side says, “All bags larger than 11” x 14” must be checked.” In a confidential tone, she tells me that the reason for the rule is that paintings smaller than this in the museum’s collection are not alarmed. I am put in mind of the thought that in the contemporary era, what is not art may be a more significant question than what is, and reflect that even here, in the lobby, the museum reveals some of its underlying tensions – the uncertain form of Contemporary art, the didactic and organizational impulse vis a vis the public, the question of “insiders” vs. “outsiders,” and beneath it all, the power of the market.
Meteors not less than Mountains 