Twentieth?century artists transformed the subject of painting into a self?referential narrative in which painting itself became subject matter. Modernists reveled in the materiality of art, making brushwork, canvas and paint their field of exploration and point of departure. Artists of the 1970s became critical of the modernist perspective; they rejected the idea that any art could be completed in an isolated or entirely self?referential way. Postmodernists saw contemporary art as inevitably repeating the past and inextricably tied to the present.
Contemporary artist Cheyney Thompson frames his artwork within this postmodernist critique. Although painting is Thompson's subject matter, his work is also critical of the isolationist perspective of the modernists. Through his work, Thompson examines the role of outside factors in shaping artworks and the creative process such as technology, history and the commoditization of art.
Thompson's work is on display at MIT's List Visual Arts Center in his exhibit "Cheyney Thompson: metric, pedestal, landlord, cabengo, recit" now through April 8. As the title suggests, Thompson's exhibit is less a coherent whole and more a presentation of various threads connected to his own personal creative process and influences on creative art.
One of the objects included in the exhibit is a bound book of all of the references and materials Thompson collected while putting together the pieces in the exhibit. A diverse array of materials is in the book, including a description of the "Munsell System," a system for categorizing all colors and then assigning each color to a particular hour of each day. 19th?century advertisements and physiological analyses of various types of people are also featured. The variety of materials in the reference book reinforces Thompson's assertion that his art is at the center of a web of influences.
Thompson's oil?on?canvas piece "Detail" (2008) examines the role of technology in art. "Detail" is a set of four canvases. On each canvas Thompson has painted over an enlarged image of a brushstroke in grayscale. The zoomed?in image of a single stroke is painted in as if it were a paint?by?numbers. Although the digital image below is no longer visible, Thompson's brushwork acknowledges the structural importance of the underlying photograph. In "Detail," Thompson suggests the structural role of non?artistic processes in contemporary artistic creation.
In his "Chromachrome" series (2009), Thompson revisits the influence of technology on image making, but puts this in dialogue with art history. "Chromachrome" is a group of canvases set on two adjacent walls. On one wall are three canvases: One is diamond shaped and separated from a second circular canvas by a long, thin canvas in the shape of a diagonal line. On the adjacent wall are 13 rectangular canvases of varying widths arranged so that they resemble a bar code. Each canvas is again overlaid with a digital image - this time an enlarged image of canvas material - and painted with different colors from the Munsell System.
Although the diamond? and circle?shaped canvases, as well as the series of rectangular canvases, refer to classically Renaissance painting formats such as the tondo and diptych, "Chromachrome" is also shaped by the Munsell System's modern rationalization of color. The barcode?like arrangement of the second set of canvases, placed in conversation with the classical shapes of the canvases themselves, further suggests the commoditization of artwork.
By completely rationalizing his own artistic process through the "Munsell System," Thompson dismisses the romanticized "master?artist?creator" figure of Renaissance heritage, suggesting instead that art and artists participate in the unromantic economics of creativity.
Thompson's work is a complex examination of the modern forces shaping contemporary art. Thompson's "Metric, pedestal, landlord, cabengo, recit" critically examines the role of the artist in the modern era, while skeptically suggesting that the fantastical view of the artist may always have been a figment of the modern imagination.
