John Kissick:
Abstraction as Appropriation
Jason Lahr
Curator of Exhibitions
South Bend Museum of Art
An instance:
I can remember being
buoyed up, as a youth, by reading about
Jackson Pollock in a magazine and
seeing photographs of him painting.
I
was heartened by the stupid little rule
through which Pollock civilized his
violence.
It’s ok to drip paint,
Jackson said.
The magazine seemed to
acquiesce:
Yeah, Jackson’s right, it
seemed to say, grudgingly, Dripping
paint is now within the rules…Even so,
I had a right to be shocked a few years
later when I enrolled in a university
and discovered that Pollock’s joyous
permission had been translated into a
prohibitive, institutional edict: It’s
bad not to drip! the art coaches said.
It means you got no soul! Yikes!i
Dave Hickey, “The Heresy of Zone
Defense”
John Kissick knows too much and was born too late.
part
of
a
generation
of
painters
educated
by
As
Modernist
artists at the height of early 1980’s postmodern discourse,
Kissick’s paintings reflect a deep unease with the tropes
and ideology of abstraction as formed by Clement Greenberg
and
the
New
abstraction’s
toward
York
history
Kissick’s
shortfalls,
and
School.
turning
exploration
complexities
In
his
inward
of
of
and
the
work,
we
are
inherent
Modernism
we
find
guided
flaws,
through
his
appropriation and interruption of mid-20th century aesthetic
strategies and the articulation of painting as a language
with
constantly
shifting
references, and meanings.
intents,
interpretations,
The paintings collected in John
Kissick: A Nervous Decade function as an acknowledgement
that
the
painting
rooted
forms,
are
in
materiality,
identifiable
our
and
surfaces
collective
encounters
with
of
abstract
cultural
art
knowledge
history
and
the
distillation and proliferation of Modernist visual language
into common experience.
At the same time, the work is
imbued with Kissick’s questioning of his own suspicion and
critique. These are, after all, still abstract paintings,
formed
from
reveal
the
smears,
record
materiality,
and
objecthood.
We
reference—a
skein
landscape,
tangled
an
drips,
of
their
own
articulate
experience
of
Abstract
pastiche
making,
the
the
spills.
revel
They
in
their
physicality
work
as
lifted
Expressionist
and
and
their
paint
schematic---and
historical
gestures,
snippets
from
a
splash,
resulting
uncertain
and
of
Romantic
a
miasma
intent
bit
of
of
a-
is
the
architecture that underlies Kissick’s painting of the past
ten years.
For
laden
Kissick,
with
critique
material,
the
and
and
the
weight
practice
of
abstract
of
its
history
reclamation
of
ideological
conventions.
that
and
painting
the
history’s
At
their
is
ongoing
formal,
core,
Kissick’s
paintings
engage
these
conventions
understanding of painting as language.
through
an
Abstract painting
in particular, consists of an innately symbolic language
that
is
apprehended
Modernism
and
through
the
the
constructed
codified
speech
meanings
of
of
painting’s
materiality.
Through his essays Avant-Garde and Kitsch (1939) and
Towards
laid
a
Newer
the
Laocoon
foundation
(1940)
for
a
critic
theory
Clement
of
Greenberg
self-referential
painting, intended to elevate painting to the position of
dominant
art
form
of
elimination
of
domain
narrative
of
literature)
imagery
and
the
20th
century
(which
Greenberg
cultural
forms
reduction
to
its
through
argued
like
own
was
drama
its
the
and
materiality—those
formal and material elements that are unique to painting as
a discipline.
In Greenberg’s model--which was to form the
dominant
of
voice
abstract
painting
in
the
1950’s
1960’s--meaning is encased in material and form.
Pollock’s
unique
drips
records
and
of
Willem
de
individuality
Kooning’s
and
language
Modernism
itself,
results
the
foundation
from
the
of
Jackson
slashes
become
genius—gesture
material as heroic utterances of Modernist speech.
Greenberg’s
combination
of
and
and
As with
model
of
historical
precedents, arbitrary decision, and social agreement.
It
is
these
attain
semiotic
multiple
underpinnings,
meanings,
which
and
has
their
allowed
ability
to
Greenberg’s
model to be reinterpreted, critiqued, and interrupted.
Greenberg’s model was subjected to almost immediate
scrutiny as artists tested and stretched the boundaries of
his
ideological
argument.
Frank
Ste
lla’s
“stripe”
paintings of the early 1960’s are no less the result of
gesture than Jackson Pollock’s iconic “drip” paintings of
the 1950’s.
Similarly, Jasper Johns’ Flag is as much an
accumulation
of
painterly
marks
as
any
de
Kooning.
However, contrary to the character of the first generation
of
New
York
analytical,
small,
School
and
frozen
graphic image.
painters,
detached
marks
forms
Stella’s
while
an
Johns’
gesture
is
slow,
accumulation
immediately
of
identifiable
By mutually fulfilling and contradicting
the tenets put forth by Greenberg, both of these artists
(among others) mark a move toward the reading of gesture
and the materiality of painting as fluidly codified signs
open to interpretation and interruption. With Stella and
Johns there is the simultaneity of the painting being both
what it is and what it is not.
They unravel the Modernist
bond between meaning and material and re-present the formal
elements of the New York School as floating signifiers with
multiple meanings, references, and contextual associations.
The absolutism of Greenberg is supplanted by the relativism
of
postmodernity.
The
resulting
semiotic
fluidity
has
informed abstract painting since the collapse of Modernism
and the shift away from Greenbergian dogma.
As a disassembled signification system, the loss of
abstract painting’s rigid ideology has resulted in a field
marked by self-referentiality and the dismantling of the
house that Greenberg built. Under postmodernism’s critical
reappraisal,
the
marks
and
forms
that
functioned
as
dominant absolutes at the core of New York School painting
have become discreet components, poised for recombination
and reassembly even as they resonate with the weight of
their origins. The ideological tether of the “authentic”
has been replaced by the slipperiness of the contextual.
Within
this
shifting
landscape,
John
Kissick’s
overriding attitude is one of quotation and appropriation.
In
his
work,
we
experience
abstract
painting’s
semiotic
instability through the deft integration of a broad range
of
richly
diverse
compilation
paintings
of
that
formal
abstraction
rely
on
elements
that
itself.
In
reference
and
function
making
as
a
abstract
quotation,
Kissick
suggests that abstraction has gone the way of the cultureat-large:
a
constant
churning
in
which
everything
experienced through the filter of the already known.
is
While
the
earlier
works
presented
here
depend
largely
on
the
appropriation of those Modernist tropes that are at the
center of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School,
the bulk of the past decade reveals Kissick’s increasing
reliance on forms derived from the visual culture around
us, including design, fashion, craft, and advertising.
By
expanding his field of reference, Kissick has moved toward
writer
Jonathan
production
Lethem’s
(really
all
argument
human
that
speech
and
all
cultural
thought)
quotation:
Any
text
is
woven
entirely
with
citations, references, echoes, cultural
languages, which cut across it through
and through in a vast stereophony. The
citations that go to make up a text are
anonymous, untraceable, and yet already
read;
they
are
quotations
without
inverted commas. The kernel, the soul—
let
us
go
further
and
say
the
substance, the bulk, the actual and
valuable
material
of
all
human
utterances—is
plagiarism.
For
substantially all ideas are secondhand,
consciously
and
unconsciously
drawn
from a million outside sources, and
daily used by the garnerer with a pride
and
satisfaction
born
of
the
superstition that he originated them;
whereas
there
is
not
a
rag
of
originality about them anywhere except
the little discoloration they get from
his mental and moral caliber and his
temperament, and which is revealed in
characteristics of phrasing. Old and
new make the warp and woof of every
is
moment. There is no thread that is not
a twist of these two strands. By
necessity,
by
proclivity,
and
by
delight, we all quote. Neurological
study has lately shown that memory,
imagination, and consciousness itself
is stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we
cut-and-paste our selves, might we not
forgive it of our artworks?ii
The cut-and-paste ethos to which Lethem alludes appears in
Kissick’s
merging
of
various
abstract
languages
that
articulate the elasticity of painting as a medium.
This
elasticity is a marked difference from the proclamations
and
prohibitions
of
mid-20th
century
rhetoric.
In
the
paintings collected here, we can see a lexicon of abstract
painting elements which fluctuate between those that have
become
canon
and
are
familiar
to
us--lifted
from
art
history--and those that struggle at the periphery of our
recognition--lifted
from
the
world
of
images
and
forms
around us. The shadow of Modernism looms large in Kissick’s
painting,
even
as
it
is
undermined
and
added
to.
In
effect, Kissick’s work looks simultaneously backward and
forward, presenting an overview of abstraction that is at
once
accelerated
interrogate
the
and
role
condensed.
of
abstraction
These
in
paintings
contemporary
painting discourse through the merging of the historical
and the contemporary.
The
appropriation
of
historical
forms
finds
its
initial voice in the body of work that occurs just previous
to
the
period
represented
by
John
Kissick:
A
Nervous
Decade, including the Views from the Trench series from
1997-1998.
Small, atmospheric paintings of oil on lead,
the Views from the Trench paintings address the idea of the
horizon
line
and
forge
an
uncertain
balance
between
abstraction and representation, flickering back and forth
between the two until they merge one into the other.
In
their surfaces a certain kind of material effect—that which
is unfinished, unreadable, obfuscated, or overwhelmed with
light—suggests
to
us
the
meditations
on
the
sublime
presented by 19th century Romantic painters and the origins
of the importance of paint as material, allowed to exist as
an unmodified, visible brushstroke.
The choice of lead as
a
work
substrate
further
connects
this
to
artists
like
Richard Serra and Anselm Kiefer as we find in these tiny
surfaces
formalist
Kissick’s
sly
Modernism.
encapsulation
Kissick
gives
of
the
entirety
us
the
surface
of
and
light of Turner while referencing the material purity and
reduction
of
postminimalism
and
the
resurgence
expressionist painting in the early 1980’s.
from
the
abstract
Trench
paintings,
painting’s
history,
Kissick
forms
connecting
of
With the Views
a
its
helix
of
earliest
foundations to its apex, retreat, and reappearance in an
ongoing cycle.
Following
the
Views
from
the
Trench
series
with
a
series of oil and alkyd paintings on copper from 1998—1999,
Kissick
narrows
his
focus
to
deal
directly
with
those
historical conventions that make up what might be seen as
the core visual components of abstract painting language.
In these paintings on copper, gesture and the raw untreated
brushstroke
take
appropriating
center
the
stage.
signifiers
Here
that
are
Kissick
most
is
closely
associated with the Abstract Expressionism of the New York
School.
Painted in earth tones and comprised of weathered
looking marks, the palette and surface of these paintings
achieve a patina of age.
These are less a quotation of
Abstract Expressionism as it appeared, and more a quotation
of Abstract Expressionism as it appears in the present.
The promise of Modernism’s progress becomes antiquated and
fixed in its historical context.
paintings
pushes
them
toward
The small size of these
being
read
as
fragments
wherein the grandiosity of the Abstract Expressionist mark
becomes
stunted
and
impotent.
Flashes
of
underlying
luminescence afforded by the copper panels contribute an
elegiac and funereal mood to the work.
These are paintings
in which Kissick’s critique of abstraction becomes its most
moribund.
The
morose
critique
contained
within
the
works
on
copper brings us to the earliest works collected here in
John Kissick: A Nervous Decade.
Building upon the elements
embedded in the previous paintings, No. 5 and No. 6 from
2001 become much richer in their surfaces and introduce a
palette of muted reds, blues, pinks, and greens.
A broader
range of marks—areas of flat color, looping gestures, pools
and puddles of paint—create a dense surface of layers.
The
layers themselves sit deliberately—clumsily even—on top of
each other, calling attention to their fabrication.
Here
Kissick lays bare the weight of history, as his distinct
strata of paint form a literal accumulation of painting
conventions piled one on top of another.
paintings
the
slightest
shift
in
We see in these
attitude.
The
formal
elements are still very much rooted in the language of
Abstract
Expressionism
painting’s
materiality—the
toward artifice.
artifice
and
might
its
successors,
paint
surface
yet
here
the
itself--edges
While in the earlier work the element of
be
contained
in
the
appropriation
of
historical visual language and the re-presenting of those
elements in a different context, here the materiality of
the
paint
itself
is
revealed
as
false,
fabricated,
and
artificial.
The surface is now as constructed physically
as it is ideologically.
We find a further evolution of materiality evidenced
in the paintings No. 6 from 2002, Untitled from 2004, and
No. 3 from 2005.
Taken sequentially, these three paintings
reflect a ratcheting up of scale, color, and diversity of
painting forms.
In expanding the visual language of the
work, these paintings find Kissick stretching his frame of
reference and edging away from a position of pure critique.
As a result, Kissick’s appropriation of historical painting
language is joined to a sampling of surfaces, structures,
and patterns from the world around us.
Flat shapes are
given cartoon-y drop shadows, coils of ropy gesture pile up
as modeled forms, and hints of pattern peek through the
latticework
of
painting
languages.
With
these
formal
additions, Kissick hints at the possibilities afforded by
abstraction’s
perseverance.
In
contrast
to
Modernism’s
argument that abstraction is comprised of manifestations of
the
innate,
these
paintings
reflect
abstract
painting’s
history as it is subject to ongoing growth and addition.
We
recognize
the
persistent
language
of
Abstract
Expressionism but also recognize the language of the visual
culture that surrounds us.
In conversation Kissick speaks to the influence of the
supergraphics which dotted the outskirts of Toronto as he
was growing up.
that
Vestigal tails of Modernist visual culture
proliferated
these
the
pre-digested
suburban
and
landscape
distilled
of
versions
the
of
1970’s,
Modernist
avant-garde forms manifested themselves as public murals,
civic
signage,
supergraphics
and
served
architectural
as
general
adornments.
signifiers
of
These
utopian
suburban progress, even as the drips and geometry of the
1950’s had been supplanted by the soup cans and pop culture
ephemera of the 1960’s. As egalitarian artforms--detached
and unaware of the changes and transformations of the art
world--supergraphics
history
of
function
abstraction.
While
in
terms
their
of
a
appearance
parallel
seems
to
grow out of Abstract Expressionism’s capture of the popular
imagination (as well as its institutionalization and entry
into the academy) they can just as easily be traced to the
Russian avant-garde of the 1920’s wherein painting, design,
textiles, and architecture were equal endeavors with shared
formal
conventions
and
aspirations.
For
Kissick
the
supergraphics of his youth provide a model (and historical
precedent) for his integration of visual elements from the
world-at-large
and
allow
the
paintings
to
vernacular of the culture that produces them.
speak
in
the
Over
the
past
appropriation
has
world
us.
around
three
years,
increasingly
In
this
Kissick’s
shifted
shift,
its
attitude
voice
Kissick
to
of
the
articulates
abstract painting’s continued relevance through its ongoing
reinvention.
Pop
Song,
With titles like Re-Mix, Three Paintings on a
I
Groovefucker
Feel
Better
(which,
(Than
incidentally,
James
may
Brown),
be
the
and
greatest
series title in the history of painting), Kissick directly,
and self-consciously, links his most recent work to the
wash
of
cultural
forms
that
make
up
our
everyday
experience. Given the degree to which digital technology
has allowed for our common experience to be passed along,
reconfigured, and stitched together into alternate forms,
the reference to music contained in these titles is perhaps
Kissick’s most revealing tell.
If the limitations of the
twelve tone scale in western music can give us cultural
forms as varied as Beethoven, Queen, and the Wu-Tang Clan,
can’t the same expansive utterances be possible in abstract
painting’s
recent
limited
paintings,
visual
the
stitched
landscape
that
enriches
underbelly
that
sits
on
vocabulary?
our
the
With
together
everyday
surface
and
these
pop
most
cultural
lives
is
the
we
arrive
at
Abstract Expressionism’s mash-up with contemporary culture.
The question that we are left with then: how are we to
ultimately
decade?
pastiche?
read
John
Kissick’s
paintings
from
the
past
Do they function as earnest attempts or ironic
The
answer
is
probably
both.
And
neither.
Instead, they trace a path between Modernism as articulated
within Greenbergian formalism (with its romance, dogma, and
baggage), its disassembly at the hands of postmodernism,
and
its
present.
subsequent
reinvention
in
the
post-postmodern
While the physicality and “look” of a mark and
the action of a gesture remains the same, what the mark
signifies (and how it signifies it) has undergone a seismic
ideological transformation.
Those visual signifiers that
were once meant to reveal deeper meaning accessible through
the efforts and machinations of the artist now take on the
position of quotation, reference, artifice and imitation.
The layers pile stubbornly on top of each other, denying
any real depth and calling attention to their materiality
and history. They form a congested and confusing picture
plane that seems to collapse under its own weight.
Yet the
most recent works also contain passages of lyricism and
whimsy—looping
ribbons
of
paint,
scabby
pools
of
pure
color, accumulations of dots and patterns—that suggest a
joy in making. There is an easing in the seriousness of
both
Modernism
and
its
critique,
arrived
at
through
Kissick’s insertion of forms derived from the world around
us.
We have, Kissick would seem to say, moved on.
the
very
decidedly
least,
if
we
different.
As
haven’t
the
work
moved
on,
flickers
Or, at
things
are
between
the
ponderous, dogmatic weight of abstract painting’s history
and its collision with contemporary culture, the anxiety
sets in.
i
2
A nervous decade indeed.
Hickey, Dave. “The Heresy of Zone Defense.” Air Guitar:
Essays on Art and Democracy. Los Angeles: Art Issues
Press, 1997. 156-157.
Lethem, Jonathan. “The Ecstacy of Influence: A
Plagiarism.” Harper’s Magazine Feb. 2007: 68.