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Introduction
Max Podstolski, Fine Arts & Humanities Librarian at the University
of Canterbury, Christchurch, held an exhibition of 'strip' paintings
in Perth recently. This article is a personal reflection on
his art, and on the vicissitudes of combining it with a library
career …
In Max's own words
I've been exhibiting my paintings, as a self-taught artist,
for about a quarter of a century. Since my first show in 1976,
'Seven Young Wellington Artists', I have held or participated
in approximately 20 exhibitions in New Zealand, divided more
or less equally between Christchurch (where my wife and I moved
straight after that first show) and Wellington.
In 1987, having finally completed a Bachelor of Arts degree
(which the title of this article alludes to), I was fortunate
to get a job in the University of Canterbury Library. It didn't
take long to discover just how useful the library vocation can
be for artists, for the easy access it gives to art books and
journals. Gaining a reputation among my colleagues for being
an artist, albeit a decidedly unconventional one, I went so
far as to hold an exhibition in the Central Library in 1988.
I called it 'Sign, Signature, Significance' (the first solo
show I boldly gave a meaningful title to) and had a leaflet
printed for it. There was quite a lot of interest in that show,
and a well-considered review in the student newspaper. I was
aware, however, of the incongruity of a self-taught artist exhibiting
in such close proximity to the School of Fine Arts.
After gaining my Diploma of Librarianship at Victoria University,
Wellington, in 1989, I was re-appointed back at Canterbury to
the position of Art Cataloguer; and three years later, in 1993,
became Music and Fine Arts Librarian, in charge of administering
a physical collection and small staff. When the Music and Fine
Arts Collection was finally restructured out of existence at
the end of the decade, my position transmuted to 'subject librarian',
now with the official title Fine Arts and Humanities Librarian
(as it presently stands). I consider myself privileged that
my profession has turned out to be so compatible with my creative
interests, speaking as a self-perceived humanist as well as
artist.
My artistic life fluctuated a great deal during the '90s, as
art librarian dedication encroached more and more into my leisure
time. There was a whole lot of questioning going on, concerning
the right level of professional commitment. This concern underlay
a paper I presented to the 1995 ARLIS/ANZ Conference in Sydney
(1). The 24-hour commitment claimed by some (assuming that such
unswerving dedication to librarianship is even possible, let
alone desirable!) was not for me, yet even so I gave up painting
completely for quite some time.
Still, I did manage to hold three solo shows during the decade:
'Structures of Identity and Influence: Grid Paintings' (Christchurch,
1992); 'Figures and Lovers' (Wellington, 1994); and 'Revealing,
Concealing: Works on Paper' (Christchurch, 1996). Though with
the last of these it seemed that a significant breakthrough
had been made, it took me a while to pick up the pieces and
take the next steps on my artistic journey, and much longer
to even think about another exhibition. The threat of an organisational
review was looming, with restructuring to follow, and the times
were not only interesting but also changing.
Cut to the beginning of the new millennium, and there seems
to be a positive new energy in the air. For almost a year I
had been crystallising my freethinking views on art on spark-online,
(2) a webzine based in Canada, and had gained, in consequence,
a globalised awareness of being part of the wider world. But
the more I wrote, the more I found myself being drawn back to
painting, and it dawned on me (not for the first time, admittedly)
that I'd rather make my own art than waste precious time writing
about somebody else's.
Finally I wrote about my own art, and 'came out' as an outsider
primitivist, a quasi-follower of the CoBrA movement (3). (Accompanying
the article is a virtual exhibition.) My intention was to stake
out the territory I sincerely believed I inhabit, once and for
all, and stop pussyfooting around. As it turned out there was
far more debate—on the webzine discussion board—about the
heretical 'outsider' tag than about anything I'd written in
previous issues. To claim to be an outsider in the postmodern
art world is supposedly a contradiction in terms, an impossibility,
because it smacks of inverse elitism I suspect, i.e. self-privileging
authenticity.
Aside from the discourse, I remained aware that the work itself
has its own momentum, to a large degree independently of how
I communicate about it. The first stage is always the painting
process, generating a work that takes on a life of its own;
only later is a title arrived at which ascribes my intended
meaning.
My first proper exhibition since 1996 was held in June this
year, at the Gadfly Gallery in Perth. This was a joint show
with my sister Julie Podstolski, a University of Canterbury-trained
photorealist who has lived in Australia for approximately 20
years, who now resides in Fremantle. We titled the overall exhibition
'Poles Apart'—referencing our shared ethnic background, widely-separated
geographical locations, and totally opposite artistic styles.
Within that, we each presented a separate body of work, Julie's
'Time and Tide' and my 'Strips'—the latter so-called because
each work consists of horizontal or vertical painted strips,
with the intentional double-entendre of baring one's body or
metaphoric soul.
In his exhibition pamphlet essay for 'Strips'(4), Wayne Lorimer
emphasises the seminal influence of the CoBrA group (1948-51)
on my painting (coincidentally, I was born in the year following
the group's dissolution): its rejection of "surrealism's dogmatic
approach for a more direct expression of subconscious fantasy,
with a style that could be described as spontaneous, instinctive
and colourful." The CoBrA influence became overt in my work
from 1992 onwards. Kindred spirits in Australia include David
Larwill and the ROAR Collective.
Lorimer pinpoints an underlying conflict between human desires
for freedom and for domination—both universal characteristics—as
intrinsic to my work: "Birds, animals, demigods and other recognisable
forms abound, mapping out a pictorial representation of humankind's
most basic desires and fears. We want to fly, we want to commune
with nature, and we want to be free. Yet we also want to dominate
and place our mark upon the land." This essential human paradox
he regards as 'stripped bare', in a literal sense, by the best
of my work: it somehow "'strips' away these layers to reveal
the genetic make-up of our primeval selves, and in doing so,
offers us a chance for redemption through art."
Such a literal exegesis, while thought-provoking and intriguing,
makes a much stronger assertion than I myself had in mind in
using the 'strips' metaphor. I chose titles like Bachelor
Stripped Bare (a pun on Duchamp's Bride Stripped Bare
By Her Bachelors, Even) and Strip Search to suggest
a range of ambiguous meanings, and regarding some paintings,
anyway, Lorimer acknowledges this: "With works like Pictographiti
and Ornithosophy he presents us with a road-map of ciphers
and symbols that we must navigate through, forming our own connections
and conclusions as we go." My intention is to provoke or inspire
viewers to create their own meanings, invoking the same spirit
of free play that the works were created in.
Freedom is the theme that runs through art critic David Bromfield's
review of 'Poles Apart', and two other exhibitions, in the West
Australian(5). Describing me as "essentially optimistic",
he concludes: "Perhaps artistic freedom is only possible for
optimists." Elsewhere in the review Bromfield attacks mainstream
contemporary art's "nauseating practice of seeking authenticity
in institutional agendas, politically correct comments and opportunistic
illustration." The freedom exhibited in my work comes from not
being part of the mainstream, from seeking authenticity on my
own terms.
Freedom (not in any absolute sense) is important to me not only
in the artistic realm, but also more generally in the human.
As Bromfield sees it, I am engaged on a "half-forgotten humanist
adventure [which] is fully present." I take that as a compliment,
though I also quite like the sense, perhaps unintended, of the
quixotic adventurer foolishly tilting at windmills. The freedom
I'm thinking of is the freedom to create individual significance
in one's own life, which is how I see my prime function as an
artist. To achieve this, I'm happy to remain an outsider relative
to the mainstream, contentedly blazing my own quirky trail irrespective
of changing art world fashions. At the very least it's my own
choice of folly, freely chosen.
Donald Kuspit's notion of 'idiosyncratic artistic identity'
comes very close to the way I perceive my situation as an artist:
Idiosyncrasy bespeaks the unconscious isolation
of the artist (and critical consciousness) in the post-avant-garde
mainstream and becomes an ironical way of surviving in it.
Indeed, art survives only because it is idiosyncratic: it
exists only to allow us to be idiosyncratic—as an escapist
space for idiosyncrasy in a crowded, conformist world. Idiosyncrasy
is an expression of discontent with the all-encompassing mainstream—with
the whole collective situation of art…. Idiosyncrasy, then,
is a last-ditch defense against the prevailing decadence:
an assertion of personal values when there are no general
values worth the trouble. It is a way of precisely being oneself
in a situation which has no room for the self. The idiosyncratic
artist is trying to make sense to himself in a situation in
which he makes no sense to the collectivity of art and society
(6).
Another reviewer, Judith McGrath, describes 'Strips' as referencing
symbols from the ancient past—what I think of as 'desert(ed)
signs'—but doing so indirectly and suggestively, making them
new: "The artist adeptly taps into our subconscious levels and
communicates with us in the ancient language of symbols and
mystery. We're not sure if we are viewing carved glyphs from
a Toltec temple, or drawings on rock walls, or inscriptions
on a pharaoh's sarcophagus but it doesn't really matter. We
don't have to interpret the pictographic text to appreciate
it, all we need do is respond to the feelings and moods the
imagery evokes…. One could look at these works [such as Bird
People and Ornithosophy] every day for years and
find something new to see or feel or consider every time they
are viewed."(7)
Art can become personally significant when one finds life illuminated
by it. While touring Western Australia, a number of my paintings
seemed to become vividly real to my wife and me via experiences
we had. One work, Outblack, a pun on 'outback', came
to mind repeatedly because the evenings were so short, growing
dark much more quickly than we were used to—like a sudden negation
of the continent's colourful vibrancy, an unexpected premonition
of its dark side.
We were reminded of the painting Desert(ed) Signs several
times when the road signs (or our challenged navigational skills)
seemed to desert us, and we got lost. More than once we became
unnerved by the experience, sensing the limitless expansiveness
stretching away to nowhere. Later we heard of similar sagas
of people going astray, sometimes dangerously so, through taking
just one wrong turning. Australia's incomprehensible vastness
fascinates those from a small country like New Zealand, and
you could say that all roads lead to the desert, the interior,
the dreaming, the forgetting. Characters at the top and bottom
of this painting point in opposite directions, and scattered
signs throughout might be hieroglyphics long ago bereft of their
once authoritative meanings.
I regard Desert(ed) Signs, and the desert, outback or
wasteland itself, as a metaphor for the human predicament. The
desert is like the void within everyone—the part of us that
is 'stripped bare'—that we try to 'a-void' through all varieties
of activity. My preferred activity is painting, through which
I make sense of my own void, and come to terms with what may
be seen as the ultimate futility of life. In painting I find
it necessary to grasp—in the double sense of both clutching
and comprehending—these ancient signs that have been deserted.
But by creating them spontaneously, for the first time, I make
them uniquely my own.
References
(1) Podstolski, Max. What does it mean to be a 'professional'
art librarian?: 'existential' versus 'ideal', in: Art Libraries
Journal, vol. 21 no. 2, 1996, p. 4-8.
(2) http://www.spark-online.com/
(3) Podstolski, Max. Steppin' out: insights of an outsider artist,
spark-online issue 16, January 2001, http://www.spark-online.com/january01/miscing/podstolski.html
(4) Lorimer, Wayne. Max Podstolski strips, exhibition
catalogue pamphlet, May 2001.
(5) Bromfield, David. As seen in London and Paris, West Australian,
June 23, 2001, 'big weekend' section, p. 6.
(6) Kuspit, Donald. Idiosyncratic identities: artists at
the end of the avant-garde, Cambridge University Press,
1996, p. 4.
(7) McGrath, Judith. Review of Poles Apart: Julie Podstolski
& Max Podstolski, 7-24 June, 2001 at Gadfly Gallery, http://www.artseen.vbw.com.au/podstolski.html
Copyright © 2001 Max Podstolski. All
Rights Reserved.
Max Podstolski is a New Zealand based painter
and has contributed to *spark-online since its inception.
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