welcome

introductions, jim steg, nola

At a loss for options in a new city I usually end up at the art museum. New Orleans was such a case. No prefatory work was done. It was June and the biggest draw was practical; air conditioning.

I’m starting this site to record transient musings and build a platform for whatever else occurs. The aim is to better justify time spent excavating the abyss of our so-called problematic art forms. An amateur practice, to be sure.

Jim Steg was on display when my friends and I arrived at the New Orleans’s Museum of Modern Art. It was an exhaustive retrospective spanning all phases, varying in medium. Details of his remarkable life are readily available. The only thing I’m concerned with, mainly, are a few pieces completed in the mid 50’s.

Call it dread, awe or simple morbid curiosity something glows within these rooms where workers and their task are hard to distinguish from their surroundings. The pastel and itch work imply angst in the face of routine. In a factory, a ray of light cuts through the space, giving uncanny life to the bizarre handiwork of man. I was on-board instantly.

Steg’s grasp on the human experience stretches from the obvious to the more elusive. The latter is represented with his preoccupation on the stimuli found in urban settings; something as inhabitants we can take for granted, like fish in water. Here norms and conditions merge with identity. In time, change seems unthinkable to the most determined. Figure A. gives us the anxiety of routine. I’m really not sure if anyone is in Figure B. In the last one something down right giddy and frenetic is on Steg’s mind; preference goes to the depth and scope of the room, whereas his workers remain mere outlines with their heads down. The indication seems to be, for better or worse, that no matter how bleak things gets the system will continue press on in its own whimsical fashion.

These works are a stark contrast to more conventional depiction of strife — that is, portraits Steg completed during his up-till-recently top-secret WWII campaign known on the sly as The Ghost Army; a unit who’s sole objective was deceiving the enemy with smokescreen tactics. In between creating inflatable tanks and leaking false radio intel, Steg found time to compose a series of studies: rural folks, towns people, fellow soldiers, those who witnessed high-scale violence and long-term uncertainty.

Perhaps I find these works less interesting because they don’t go beyond the obvious; that is, a young artist trying to move an uniformed public to sympathize with those living with war. Then again, it’s hard for me to imagine living in a time when that wasn’t an already-over-familiar ploy. Instead I gravitate towards Steg’s indictment of a more sly form of dehumanization. Though even here, in his salad days, it seems like he’s courting the shadows. The warm blooded faces all seem to be anticipating a foreboding twilight.

NOMA was making up for lost times when I arrived; this was Steg’s first solo retrospective since 1978. Story goes he traded a life of parlor games and self-promotion for a more comfy gig as professor at Newcomb College. Unfortunately, the local conservative taste-makers had their own agenda; despite previously garnered acclaim, at home Steg’s continued output largely went unnoticed. Once ranked among the likes of Andy Warhol for his innovative work in screen print, Steg’s second act ended in obscurity.

If the common man struggles to separate himself from his task, why should the artist be spared? Hip to the trends of his era, Steg eventually turned inward(see the self-portraits above). When asked to comment on his body of work, he called it “forty-six years of exploration into technique, into history, and into myself.” Not a bad line. Likewise, I opt to lay myself into these writings. The little I have to offer works best from an empirical angle. Hopefully this keeps things engaging and somewhat honest.

A.G