Virtual Reality Art Museum Tour: Japanese Woodblock Printing and the Economics of Art Access

Alex Dodge [00:00:00] There's also maybe some anxiety about future screen time issues with Oh, so there's maybe a little bit of, oh, that's really good. You're

Vance Crowe [00:00:12] Right. That is the look of being mesmerized by a child. That's

Alex Dodge [00:00:16] Right. Yeah. And so it's, yeah. So there's an aspect of, of, of what is probably going to be a, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:00:22] A real issue in about a year. I'm Caleb Zi, a precision ag specialist living in Aurora, South Dakota. And you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can tell that we are not in the studio. We are in the Articulate Ventures Museum. A couple of months ago, I did an interview with a guy named Alex Dodge, and Alex is an artist who was living in Japan. He also spends about half of his time in New York. And we had a great conversation about what it's like to be an artist, what's going on in Japan, what is printmaking? But we were really talking around the edges of what art is. We weren't talking about art. And both of us got done with that podcast, and as much as we enjoyed the conversation, we kind of realized we'd love to have a way for us to actually have a podcast about art. And as we thought about it more and more, we thought, well, we could do it where we just show each other photographs on like a Zoom screen. But then we kind of realized, actually, why don't we make the experience of going to a museum and just talking about our, what does it mean to us? How do the different pieces impact us? And then hopefully Alex can point things out about the way art works that will help us. Appreciate it. Alex, welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Alex Dodge [00:01:42] Well, thank you for having me. I'm very happy to be back here and to do my first virtual interview or pod or podcast. Yeah, so great.

Vance Crowe [00:01:51] How much time have you spent in vr?

Alex Dodge [00:01:53] I've spent a fair amount. I mean, I think that right now I've actually started to incorporate it into my actual creative workflow in, in the way I've been making paintings. So now it's probably only going to get more so, but not so much gaming. I haven't really taken onto the gaming aspect of vr, but, but definitely as a tool, it's been really, I think it's gaining a lot more importance in the way that I work. 'cause most of the work I do is in a virtual space, so being able to use VR as a, as a more direct way of doing that, as it gets better. And, you know, the, the hardware is definitely getting better ground.

Vance Crowe [00:02:27] So when you say you're using it for your work, like what, what apps are you using? How do you use it?

Alex Dodge [00:02:33] Mm, yeah, so I, there's, there's a few different apps that I've, I've used mostly things for, for doing model, like some of the modeling aspects, 3D models that I use to make the paintings that are sort of, you know, in intermediary sort of part of the process before it becomes an actual physical painting again. But most of like, my process will start as like a physical sketch, just, you know, pencil on paper. And then that will u usually be the basis for some kind of 3D model or modeled experience, or simulated experience usually. And then sometimes that kind of work really needs some, some tweaking and some hands-on stuff. So actual sculpting. And to do that, you know, it's much more intuitive for me to do it in vr. Some people are really good with the mouse and keyboard doing 3D modeling and that kind of more conventional workflow. But I really enjoy being able to engage with a model directly like that. So that's why VR has been a really fun way of experimenting. I think it still has a lot of room for improvement than I can, you know, in a more traditional 3D modeling kind of program. So

Vance Crowe [00:03:39] When I got involved with vr, the, its immediate interest to me was that it allowed me to meet with other people. So it was a very social thing. And kinda like you, the games, I played some just to see what it was all about, but it really wasn't of interest to me. But one of the challenges I've noticed is that many of these worlds have glitches or a lot of parameters that make it hard to, to get a group of people together. Somebody's always having microphone problems or other challenges. And so that's limited this social utility of it. But an experience like this where we can work out all the kinks, this is, I'm excited about this because it's gonna give us a chance to be both looking at the same picture and being able to interact with one another. And if you're just listening to this, you don't know that as Alex and I are talking, we have hands and we've kind of got this like chest and then ahead a floating kind of head. And whenever Alex moves his head like up and down or left and right, I can notice that. So when somebody's listening to you talk, they can give you nonverbal signals that allow you to kind of feel that they're there. So why don't we go ahead and get started, but we'll try and describe this for people that have not, that are not actually watching this. So we just wanna Right. Figure out a way to communicate that. Ben, let's move on into the studio. So

Alex Dodge [00:04:58] Let's start here then. Right. So

Vance Crowe [00:04:59] This is Bruno Lucchese. Bruno Lucchese is a sculptor of human form. And so what we are looking at is a mother in bronze, and she's probably like early twenties, and she's holding a little infant baby, maybe, I don't know, six to eight months old that's got a full head of hair. And the thing that's striking, the most obvious part about this is even though they're in bronze, she is like knelt down as though they're just getting done with a bath. And she is naked. So you can see her sagging breasts, you can see that her hair is kind of disheveled. You can see that the baby is also naked or, or kind of looks that way. It doesn't appear to be having clothes. You can't really see it up close. It's a really intimate moment. And that's why I chose it, because the reason that I got into art at all was I met Pete, and Pete had several Bruno Lucchese at his apartment when we would have our first conversations about art. And Pete would ask me if I liked it. I would always be like, I don't know, I don't really understand it. And he, he would ask the question, well, what is art to you? I didn't really have a definition of that. And Pete said to him, art was something that made him feel something. So if somebody could elicit an emotion in him that he could discuss with other people that that was what art was. And I really think that this elicits emotion. It, it makes me feel intimacy in a way that is disarming. And that's why I wanted to start with this. Would you, would you make any updates to the way I described that, Alex?

Alex Dodge [00:06:32] No, not at all. I think that, I think the exciting thing about what we're doing right now is that a lot of this work, you know, as I mentioned, are things that, you know, are, are artists that I didn't know about. And so it's really exciting to be able to come and talk and share, you know, between the two of us work that is, it's new, but you know, the, the, I mean, looking at the Lucchese, it does bring about some feelings in terms of where I kind of started very, really early on as an artist, even going back to my days as a middle school student, where in Denver, Colorado where I grew up, there was a sculpture studio or a school that did, they gave classes that by an artist named Jefferson Rubin. And he was trained and primarily in a kind of a Italian, certainly, you know, the origins of Italian Renaissance and, and Bernini and the kind of high representational Italian sculpture, mostly in marble, not in bronze as much, but this, but very much in the same kind of sphere as Lucchese is kind of coming from. And so it was something that I never, you know, I didn't end up following in that kind of tradition, but it's definitely something that I have a lot of respect for and learned a lot as a young hopeful artist at the time, learning how to sculpt the human form. And ultimately really, I think, you know, so much goes into really being able to understand how to do that, both in terms of anatomy of course, but also the nuanced gesture and emotion that goes into represent representing the human form is, is no small thing.

Alex Dodge [00:08:04] You know, I think there was, there was one time two years ago, it was 2020 when I finally got to come back, you know, in that kind of lull point in the pandemic. And I was standing with my wife and we were going through the Met for the first time as the Met Metropolitan opened up. And we were walking through and I realized, you know, we're looking at all of the, the work, you know, both paintings and sculpture. And it really kind of came down to it's like, you know, people and animals. And that's pretty much what it's about. You know, you look at all of the historical, going back to Syrian sculpture from, you know, all the way through the Renaissance and anything and, and portraiture in the 19th century. And it's basically, yeah, people and animals and the way, and representing those, those things is a, essentially a consistent thing throughout thousands of years of art history, aside from a very brief moment in abstract art, you know, that that has come more recently. That that's really kind of what we do is make representations of, of ourselves and, and other, and other animals. So yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:09:02] Yeah. It, it is interesting, you know, why would you choose a mom and a baby? Which would, you know, that's happened with, you know, everyone. It's such an ordinary thing. And yet, well,

Alex Dodge [00:09:12] I just finished bath time with, with my baby, so Exactly right before this, so

Vance Crowe [00:09:16] Something deeply I did too, just, just right before we started. Yeah. And that this moment in time is almost like, like a flower coming into bloom, right? Like this is just a few moments when that mother and that child will be able to have these experiences. So I had a chance to meet Bruno Lucchese and I asked him, you know, Hey, did you find models that you liked? Or how did you find your models? And he said, well, they didn't, I didn't need them to look like anything. I just needed them to move. And I was like, why do you need them to move? Your, your sculptures are all frozen, right? And he was like, yeah, but like, pausing someone in their motion in order to be able to carve it is actually capturing movement. Just one frame of it. And I thought like that, that makes a ton of sense. 'cause this is, this really does tell a story through movement, even though it's cast in bronze and doesn't move at all. Well,

Alex Dodge [00:10:10] That makes perfect sense to me. You know, I had this experience, I went to the first public, public art high school in, in Denver, and it just opened when I was in a freshman in high school. And one of the aspects of the school, which I don't know if they still do, but it was actually, I think a really brilliant thing is that you would pick a major, which in my case was visual art. And then they would assign you at random a minor. And so it would, every semester you could get, you know, I, I got creative writing twice. I got stage design once, and then I got dance, which was, you know, being, being a shy, you know, high school kid, it's, you didn't, you don't think that that's something that, you know, you'd ever have to endure. But it actually turned out to be a pretty amazing thing because what I found was that if you spend an hour in the morning, which I, which we were, you know, every day in the dance studio learning how to do modern interpretive dances. And in some way or another, I mean, it was even just spending the time that we would do warmup stretches and, and yoga kind of styles exercises. What happens is that I think that there's something about maybe a mirror neurons or that kind of empathic quality is being aware of your own body and then going to do life drawing where you're actually drawing a figure. The drawings were so much better after I'd gone to dance class because there was this understanding, this very intuitive, immersive and personal understanding of the body in space, how it moves. Then when you're looking at someone else's body, maybe there was some kind of connection in that way, but I think that's absolutely right. That made my drawings like a hundred times better than they were if I just, you know, walked into a room.

Alex Dodge [00:11:43] So there's something about that now, like, I find myself doing the same thing, like I'm using a lot more newer technology and, and doing, using different methods of motion capture to capture that motion of a figure, assuming a certain pose. But again, like Lucia was saying, it's really, I mean, I'm only capturing using one frame of that and stopping it and making a painting from that. But you do have to get to that. You have to get to that transitioned motion in a figure to be able to arrive at that, at that pose.

Vance Crowe [00:12:12] Well, and to do it with things that are so highly recognizable, right? Yeah. If you, if you make something abstract and everybody agrees, like, oh, well the edges don't have to be quite right or, you know, it doesn't have to have that form. But like, with this woman, because she is so realistic, anything that doesn't look right would be really pronounced, right? It's like, if I try and draw a human face and I'm really not very good, people could be like, oh, okay, I understand that's a human face, but nobody would mistake it for the actual action. And I think the closer you get to real life, the better it has to be. So that way you stay out of that uncanny valley where it's like, that's

Alex Dodge [00:12:47] Right, right. Yeah. Because there's that, just that that absolute, you know, you know, when something's off and it, and it will, will stand out in a way undeniably. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:12:56] Well, so that was the first one I wanted to start off with this one. I mean, I actually feel a little bit embarrassed that this is one, right? Because it's the human naked form of a woman. And so one of the things that Pete pointed out was that's one of the things that art can make you, you take notice, right? You see something that on ordinary circumstances you wouldn't see it. And I really thought like that's a good way to start off thinking about art. What are the things that stop you in your tracks? And not just because they're like pur interest, right? Not, not because it's a car wreck or because it's something sexual, but something that is pronounced enough to grab your attention. Why don't we head on over to the next piece and, and you tell me why this one arrests you.

Alex Dodge [00:13:39] Oh, sure. Yeah. So this is David Hammonds, it's titled Pray for America. And it was done 1969. Hammonds is an artist. I mean, most of the, i i the same as you. Everything I chose, I kind of, it's either something that is deeply inspiring or something that I have a kind of personal connection to otherwise, and, and Hammond's work has always been very, very inspiring. And I think that there's roots of things that I kind of hope to do in my work that he has been kind of a pioneer in the sense that there's something, you know. So can you

Vance Crowe [00:14:18] Describe the painting for people? Oh, yeah. So

Alex Dodge [00:14:20] You're right, of course. For people who are only listening, the, the work is basically, it's a, it's all, I think it's mostly printmaking and some directly applied kind of a stamp method of his own body. So it, what you're seeing is a figure from the side with his hands up in a praying kind of posture. And the American flag is draped over the head almost like a, a Christ-like kind of figure with the, the stars and stripes sort of hanging and describing the form. The way that this, this work was made, the, from what I, if I remember correctly, the American flag pattern is silk screen, which is a pretty, you know, typical printmaking method. But then the figure itself is actually his bo his own body that has been, he, I think he covered his face and arm with some kind of grease or oil, and then pressed that against the paper and then rubbed graphite dust onto that, those areas so that the graphite would stick to, to that area. So he kind of improvised or kind of in invented printmaking technique in a sense that he was using his own body to, to describe that form. So I think that the, there's two things that I found that is really inspiring in a way, is that, you know, there's something so, such a direct connection to the, the human form. Like literally actually making an imprint of, it's like, not even photographic, but it reads as almost like a photographic kind of image.

Alex Dodge [00:15:53] It's actually a direct print, like a thumbprint or a fingerprint, but actually using the, the, the one-to-one scale of, of, you know, his body and then the kind of stark graphic nature of the American flag. And just using the graphic pattern of the flag to, to distort in that way, describing the form beneath, beneath. And that's something that has been sort of central in the way that I've been working in using a lot of textile patterns. And sometimes the American flag too, as a way is, is a way of describing form. And so it's this, you know, very graphic way of, of interpreting space and playing with color and pattern. And so I think there's something kind of just on, on the formal level, it's just, you know, I think there's something tantalizing about the way that something that is so, so recognizable, like the American flag and seeing how it can be distorted in that way, but still read and we immediately know what that is and what the form is. But there's something so simple and poetic, I think, about the way that he engages with the material and the, and the, the graphic image in that way. So I think that, you know, he is, and his work is, is highly varied, you know, and the underlying ideas that are going on in most of his work has a lot to do with race and, you know, experience as a, a black person in America. This was done right after the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

Alex Dodge [00:17:28] So it's a very, you know, it was a very intense time in the United States and, and what was going on during that time. But even regardless of the underlying ideas, I think that I can relate to it in a purely visual way. It's, it is powerful on, on multiple levels, but so much of his work, I think that he is a master way that he, he jumps from one media to another seamlessly in, in a, in a way. So, yeah. So he's, he's been a, an unlikely place that I found a lot of inspiration from in, in many ways. So, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:17:59] You know, as I look at this, I, I was originally not very interested in this drawing. It, it seemed, when you put the American flag on, particularly with the vibrancy of the colors that he has relative to the rest of the thing, it seemed really aggressive to me.

Alex Dodge [00:18:15] It is. I think there is something aggressive about it. Yeah. Yeah. But it's,

Vance Crowe [00:18:18] And so, but when you describe that this is actually the graphite of his arms and his face, that brings a lot into the context. 'cause I had seen that, but I hadn't really noticed, and I certainly didn't realize it was the artist's arm, right. That, that's like a sense of permanence. But another factor about it is that it's posted on a rectangle, but because of the way that the, the image itself is kind of in a, it looks like you're looking through a keyhole, almost like kind of that oblong,

Alex Dodge [00:18:49] It just has that kind of o yeah, that v almost vignette kind of, yeah, the oval. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:18:54] It kind of feels like you're not supposed to be seeing it, like you're sneaking a look or something. Mm.

Alex Dodge [00:18:58] That's Oh, that's very interesting. Yeah, I haven't thought about that, but there is something kind of, yeah, the voyeur implied, and maybe by that, that framing.

Vance Crowe [00:19:06] So what is silk screening? You, you were, you know, as you're talking about this printmaking,

Alex Dodge [00:19:09] Right? So also call, you know, maybe in a more tech technical term, a graph, but silk screen or screen print, they're all basically the same thing. And originally it was actually a silk screen. So you would actually make, use silk textile and stretch that on a frame. And then you would use a photo emulsion, which basically you'd apply to the, the screen, let it dry, and then expose it to light. And wherever the the light hits it, it hardens and becomes insoluble. And then the places where the light does not hit it are, are still soluble. So you can wash out the other areas with a water sprayer. And then what you have is a, is a basically a stencil that is held in place in, in printmaking. You, you, you call what, what we call the matrix. A matrix is, you know, you know, in, in math it's basically an X and y coordinate kind of system where you basically just have a, a grid. And that's basically what a silk screen is, is it, it's a matrix of little tiny holes between the threads of, of some kind of a mesh. And nowadays it's generally used as synthetic mesh instead of actual silk, because it's a little bit more durable. And you can get a little bit more control on the, the pitch of, of the mesh. But, so essentially you have a stencil and you can then squeegee ink through that. And that's the typical way that you'll see a lot of prints done, a lot of commercial. I mean, it's, it is also widely used as a commercial process for signage. And also most of the t-shirts that you have have probably been silk screened.

Alex Dodge [00:20:42] And so it's a, it's a, a commercial process that has been also used by fine artists widely. You know, especially people like Warhol kind of made, made it more apparent as when, in his work, when he was starting to use it on a more large scale and in, in his, in his work. And, but yeah, so it's, it's been around for a long time. I think the earliest, like many, many things originating in China, I think the early silk screen was actually by, you know, Chinese silk. And I'm not sure the, the year, but probably pretty, pretty early.

Vance Crowe [00:21:13] And when you do these multiple colors, are you, do you have to do multiple pressings of that silk screen?

Alex Dodge [00:21:19] Can you, yeah, so every, so in a, in a silk screen print, every, every color is gonna be a different, a different screen. I mean, there are ways sometimes where you can use a single screen and mask out certain areas if the colors are separated, but generally, yeah, it's gonna be a, a new screen for every color, and those are then registered on top of each other so that the, the images for each color or the each color will line up in a correspond to the other. But,

Vance Crowe [00:21:40] So even making, I'd never really thought about this, like even if you have, I, I kind of think of people can get an original painting or they can get a print of something, and the print is not usually as valuable as whatever the original painting is. But it never really dawned on me that some of these prints are exceptionally difficult to reproduce. And so the print in and of itself is like the original.

Alex Dodge [00:22:07] That's right. So in this case, in the Hammonds, like, this is a one of a kind, I mean, he likely did multiple versions of this, but in this case, it's, it's not gonna be what we'd call an addition. When you're talking about an a print edition, it really means that each print is supposed to be more or less identical in, in a series. So if you're gonna have a, a limited edition of say, like a hundred prints, they really do have to be all the same. Whereas oftentimes in the way that Warhol or, or Hammonds or other artists, contemporary artists are using screen printing a lot of the time, those are going to be really one of a kind pieces. And in the case of Warhol, his, his screen prints were, were not controlled in the way that say like a, a consistent commercial print might be for like, say signage or something like that. They varied a lot. There's a lot of, sometimes the images are blown out or, or, or leaking, or, you know, they're not, they're not meant, they're not intended to be identical. So even though in the case of Warhol and, and other artists like, you know, they, they would oftentimes do multiple versions of the same image, whether it's like a, some of the famous ones like Marilyn Monroe or, or, or Mao or something like that. There would be multiple versions, but they would likely be very different from one to the next. And, and that's just the nature of the way that they were engaging that process in, in, in medium. But yeah, typically, like you were saying, like the, the print print version of, of a painting will be, yeah, it would be less expensive. And that, that's actually one of the, the real reasons why I love printmaking is that it allows people that can't afford the one of a kind, the, the original painting, it allows people to, to have access to something that is more affordable.

Alex Dodge [00:23:45] I think that's a really important aspect of what printmaking allows an artist to do. Because, you know, there's only so many people that can afford a one of a kind painting, but the print allows, you know, like the, that's something that a lot of my friends can, can get my prints, which I, you know, that's, they can't always afford a painting of mine, which is, you know, that's why I love, I love making prints

Vance Crowe [00:24:07] The thing that strikes me. So we're gonna show a print that I have of yours and Oh, yeah. Until we had done this in vr, I didn't really understand the difference between seeing art on a book or in a picture versus actually seeing the art, right? So me telling you about this Bruno Lucchese, even though we can see the, the image or the, the statue, it's just one dimensional. You don't, you're not, you don't walk into a room with it. And the same thing is with this one, right? Like we can get a sense for it, but there's really something to being in the same room as a piece of art print or original, irrespective just being where the artist created that thing's, something truly unique about being in, in its location.

Alex Dodge [00:25:01] That's right. I think that, I really believe that's true, the, the physical presence of the work. Even though right now we're, we're, you know, in this kind of meta space, this virtual space with a, a virtual representation, which is, you know, this is a lot better than looking at things on a, on a normal screen, I think in many ways. Like we have this spatial relationship, so we're kind of maybe halfway there, but the actual, you know, presence of a physical object, being able to see the nuances and, and details of the material and understanding, you know, what that, that feel of, of either the painted surface or the paper might, might have, you know, I mean, when I was in high school, I was interning at the Denver Art Museum and we were re matting some Picasso prints. I remember looking at the back of one, and there was this big black thumbprint, and it's like, you know, there's something pretty amazing to, to see like this one aspect of that work that no one else would see, that is probably, you know, his thumbprint that he, you know, had a, a dirty ink, inked thumb that, you know, that pressed onto the back of that front. And it gives you this kind of intimate relationship with the object in that way. Something that, you know, is kind of moving on in, in its own way that, you know, you don't, you don't really get any other way than being, you know, not everyone can look at the back of a print like that, but, but I think there's something unique about being in the same space as a, as a work of art as well. So

Vance Crowe [00:26:25] I, I think people really kind of long or aspire to be the, oh, I wanna have a piece of nice art in my house, but I could never do that. And I used to be the person that would go to different art museums. But until I moved to St. Louis, I had never been to the same museum over and over and over again. And actually this is a good reason for us to move to the next painting. Let's go over here to the Monet lilies and we'll come back. Sure, yeah.

Alex Dodge [00:26:50] Yep.

Vance Crowe [00:26:50] So this is Monet's water lilies. This is, you know, he's done, I think there are several that are kind of titled that. This one in particular has a lot of hues of purple and yellow. And Monet, if you're not familiar, is things are done abstractly by him. And so while it's really difficult if you're up close for you to be like, oh, are those water lilies? But the further that you kind of move away from the image, the less you have to squint your eyes in order to be able to be like, oh, those are water lilies. And oh, those colors are really amazing. And the reason I chose this one is because at the St. Louis Art Museum, this one has its own wall. And there are many, many times when you come into this room in the museum that children are sitting in front of it, like as part of a field trip. Mm. And they are completely mesmerized by looking up at this thing. And it, because it's so big, it's so rare that you ever see paintings this large. You maybe see billboards, but kids look up at it and it captures their attention in the same way that a video game would. And so I wanted to see what that would be like in vr, because we have the chance to have this giant wall here. We can scoot far away from it, we can get really close. And it, it's really been a, an amazing experience for me to have a museum where I can go and not just experience the art, but the thing that changes in a museum is the people watching the art.

Vance Crowe [00:28:21] So you can look at these different groups of people looking at this art, and that in and of itself is something to observe and a reason to go to art museums. For somebody like me that's not gonna see the thumbprint on the back of the, of the painting of the Picasso.

Alex Dodge [00:28:37] Yeah. Well, the, I mean, the water lilies are magnificent. I mean, they're, I don't even know where to start. There's so many things to talk about. What the impression is we're able to start doing was start starting to render light and experience of, of a scene that wasn't in the strict tradition of rendering something more or less in a, in a realistic, optically accurate, I guess. But they're, they're trying to capture a different kind of accuracy, I guess, or a different kind of representation of the experience of light in a way. And there's a lot of different things that led up to that. There's a relationship with the, the advent of photography that allowed for a different, a motivation to, to, to render something differently that, that say a camera couldn't necessarily capture. Also, there were, you know, inventions of synthetic pigments that allowed for colors that just weren't possible before. So a kind of representation of light and luminosity of color that was very new. And it was an, and it was a very exciting thing that, that was just be, that, that had just been made possible through the, you know, kind of new chemistry of pigments at that time. So, I dunno, sometimes also when I, when I look at these again, like the way you're describing it, I almost, there's something so yeah, immersive about these that is, you know, almost like the experience of looking at like, images from Hubble, like those deep space images of, of galaxies or, or nebula in a way that are just this vast kind of vastness of color.

Alex Dodge [00:30:14] And I think you can kind of just get lost in them like that there's, there's, even though, yeah, there, there are, there is that, that sense of, of representing you can get this feeling of what those water lilies were, were like to see. And it's not necessarily a, a purely optical sort of one-to-one representation. There's something, something more nuanced and deep going on

Vance Crowe [00:30:39] When, when I think of the emotion it brings out, it's like, if you were going to imagine this in your brain, it would be one part reality and one part the emotion or the things that I was experiencing along with that. So maybe it was that I was in love or things were just particularly good. There's an emotional component to it that, that makes it feel like a foggy memory, that you don't need to be that much sharper because it was more of, more of a feeling than an actual event.

Alex Dodge [00:31:09] Hmm. Yeah. And that's a and I think that that's something that, you know, a after the 19th century onward, you know, as you go through, through modernism and, and the western tradition starts to kind of diverge from the, from that more academic or strict representation of nature and more into, you know, maybe something more parallel to eastern idea of, of representing an expression of, of, of a, of an experience rather than the direct accurate recreation of it. And so in a way, like that's, that we could actually jump over to the Velasquez behind you and talk about that, because I think that that actually has a lot, even though this is much earlier than than the Monet,

Vance Crowe [00:31:59] You're coming closer.

Alex Dodge [00:31:59] So this is Diego de Diego Velasquez. This is a portrait of his assistant Juan de Pera. And this is like 16, 16 hundreds. I think the thing about that I love so much about Velasquez is that, you know, if you come in really, really close, you can look at basically, you know, it's just this incredible economy of brushstroke. You know, we like, you know, you know exactly what that is. It's a, a lacy kind of collar, but when you look at it up close, it's just like these little flicks of, of paint that are so much just the only, like, they're only the most essential kind of marks that are needed to make that, that experience of that fabric or the glint of, of sweat on his, on his forehead or nose. Like, you know exactly what that feels like. You know, you can tell what that, what the temperature in the room might have been. And it's all done with such kind of incredible speed and economy in a way. It's like, there's something very immediate about the way it's painted. And this painting was became so popular at the time. It was just, you know, no one had ever seen anything like it. And actually his assistant was an indentured slave. So because it was so popular, he realized, he, I think out of guilt, he realized that he, he had to free grant freedom to his, as to his assistant after the painting had become, you know, so popular. Yeah. There, I mean there's, I mean, look it in for, for people that are only listening, it's a, a figure sort of on a foggy gray background wearing a black kind of tunic cloak and a white lace collar and, and sort of the, the, the light just sort of illuminating his face.

Alex Dodge [00:33:48] And Yeah. And it's an incredibly, like, you know, this is, you know, it, it has a kind of presence of, of that person greater than any photograph might. I think there's something really incredible about it, you

Vance Crowe [00:34:01] Know? Yeah. I mean, he was even able to capture like the little white.in the i that I know in cinematography is really important to give people that feeling of being alive because that guy does feel alive. Like what, whatever that is, that, that feels like a, like a real human being standing in front of you that is so warm, right? Like the way the the light is on his face, I think in, in cinematography, 'cause I'm learning a bunch about this for our podcast studio. He has kind of a Rembrandt look on his face where there's a so much for sure. Yeah, there's

Alex Dodge [00:34:38] Definitely, it's really,

Vance Crowe [00:34:39] Yeah. How would you describe the light on his face?

Alex Dodge [00:34:42] I think it's, it's soft, but with these kind of glint of, that's why I think it's like, like I really can almost just feel like it was maybe, you know, the studio that they're working in might have been maybe a little hot or something. So it's like this, this soft light, but there's like these glints of, of highlights on the, on the skin. So it almost looks like there's, like, you can really just see that, you know, slight perspiration of sweat there. Yeah, yeah. I think that, you know, oftentimes there, there's something about that showing less, actually is more evocative in a way. Like this doesn't, he doesn't go to the trouble of rendering every little hair or every little piece of, of, of lace in that way. It's almost that by showing just that immediate gesture of it, it actually contains more energy than it might if he painstakingly painted every, every detail there.

Vance Crowe [00:35:35] The precision of this thing, I mean, as you look at this shirt, so it's got all these tiny little buttons to be able to hold the two pieces of fabric across, but he's also got kind of a little bit of a potbelly. And so you can see the way that the cloth folds in and the shadow makes that more pronounced. And you can see all the ruffles. I mean, it really does feel like you could reach out and touch that kind of velvet arm and, and you would actually feel the texture of that fabric.

Alex Dodge [00:36:05] Yeah. And it's amazing though. And then that the, the closer you get up to it and you just see that it's, it's actually like any section of this, you could, you could zoom into and it could be just an abstract painting on its own without any kind of, you know, understanding of, of representation. That there's just something so, so gestural in every little, little moment here that is, I think, incredible. This is, and this painting is at the Met, if anyone wants to go actually see the real thing, which is even better. But I think this is pretty awesome to, to look at it.

Vance Crowe [00:36:38] Let's go back to the Botero. Oh yeah. Because the painting you just showed, that man, although he has a little bit of a belly and you know, he is, he's an indentured servant, he also is, he, he seems like something you're attracted to, whereas this character on the Botero, this is not a, a, a little girl that you're particularly attracted to.

Alex Dodge [00:37:04] So the Botero, this is also really exciting is I did not know, I did not know him very well. I knew I, I'd seen images of his work before, but I didn't know much about him. So actually I, I read up a little bit on Botero.

Vance Crowe [00:37:17] So what this is, is it is a blue painting, and in the foreground is a girl, and she actually takes up the en almost the entire frame of the painting. But she's in front of a blue background. She has red hair and a bow, and she's wearing a blue dress with what looks like polka dots. And the dress has a little black belt around it to accentuate her waist. And you can see that the skirt is actually kind of short. It would be a appropriate on like maybe, you know, like a six or 7-year-old girl. But the thing that is so striking about this is the girl looks to be morbidly obese. So her face and her neck and her arms are really, really large. And I think what's interesting about this was Botero never thought of them as fat. He never listed them that way. He always said they were full, full figured. And, and this was, he was making these 30 years before you ever really very saw obese children very often. And so there's something really striking, and I think the word arresting is, is correct here, right? You see one of these and you're, you know, one instantly who it is. If you've seen one botero, you can, can identify all of them. And then, you know, like then you, it does make you stop and you look and there's some level of humanity here, right? Like, You don't dislike the girl, you just notice her more in a different way because it's so out of the ordinary when, when you see this hanging up on someone's wall and you notice that it is not something you can ignore even if you've been in that room a dozen or a hundred times before.

Vance Crowe [00:39:00] Yeah.

Alex Dodge [00:39:00] It's a striking image for sure. So I didn't know, I didn't know too much about him and I, I re I realized that, you know, he's basically the most, I think of Colombian artists, the most well known within, within Columbia, the most well regarded, but also I didn't realize a lot of his work was also had a kind of a kind of full of political critique sometimes. And he was sort of making a number of different observations or or statements through his work in that way.

Vance Crowe [00:39:30] I am certain many of those go right over my head. I'm sure I've seen them and known that they had,

Alex Dodge [00:39:35] I mean, I think that's a nice thing is that a lot of them you don't, you, you probably wouldn't read that way. I was only, I mean, until I've actually actually read, read up on him a bit more. But yeah, he's an interesting character for sure.

Vance Crowe [00:39:45] It's the first artist that I had ever been able to identify where I could see one, and then if I saw another one, I knew what it was, which then dealt me into the game of art. Because then now you can use it as a way to start conversations. In fact, when I was working at Monsanto, there was a guy from Columbia that I went to visit him in his office. He was one of the senior level executives, and he had a little botero statue on his desk, and I knew it. Oh,

Alex Dodge [00:40:16] Wow.

Vance Crowe [00:40:16] And that instantly bonded us, right? He instantly had a reason to talk, a reason to pay attention. And that was one of those times when you walk outta that room and you're like, man, picking up some of these artists who knew that that would come in handy. But it gives you a language to communicate with people.

Alex Dodge [00:40:33] Oh, very much. I think it's a, it's a deeply intimate con connection when you can both, when you can recognize artists that someone else regards, you know, in that way it's, yeah, that's right. So I mean, second only to, to religion, I think probably, but you know,

Vance Crowe [00:40:48] Yeah. Probably a little less dangerous.

Alex Dodge [00:40:50] Well, for sure. Well, yeah, sometimes. Yeah, maybe. So.

Vance Crowe [00:40:53] So when you look at this, I mean, it, it feels even uncomfortable to talk about, to make observations because the girls seems so tiny. But what do you see? What do you notice here?

Alex Dodge [00:41:03] Yeah, I mean, I think that there's something that he's doing within, you know, a kind of a stylized stylization that is, you know, somewhat speaks within a kind of a surreal, a surrealist.

Vance Crowe [00:41:21] I never noticed until you said the surrealist part about how tiny her eyes, nose, and mouth are. Which I mean, like, really accentuates how large she is relative to the rest of it.

Alex Dodge [00:41:34] Yeah. I would definitely like to see, see more of his work and get to know it better. 'cause it's, it's something that I yeah, hadn't really been exposed to until now. So yeah, thanks very much for, for being the, the, the introduction to it.

Vance Crowe [00:41:49] Well, that's cool. It's fun to, to think that I had introduced one to you. Let's take a look over here. This is, this red piece really stands out to me.

Alex Dodge [00:41:59] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:41:59] But you're gonna have to explain it. You're probably even gonna have to tell me what I'm looking at here.

Alex Dodge [00:42:05] Sure. So this is Phillip Guston. I don't remember the exact date, but it's probably 1970s. And I think that this is titled Smoking, eating, painting or some version of those three, three activities. And so Augustine is a huge kind of, one of my, my personal sort of gods in a way. Like he's just beyond an inspiring, but, so Augusta is an interesting character. He was a high school buddy of Jackson Pollock that you might know is like the splatter painting, basically, you know, people love, people love to say, you know, my kid could do that kind of abstract expression, expressionist heavy hitter, if not like the, the heaviest hitter. And so he was part of that whole crew or, you know, really pretty well recognized in his work that he was making up until really Yeah, about the, in the, the 1970s was in that, in that kind of vein, it was, you know, very much not representational, it was about about paint, it was about the surface, about the experience of being in front of a canvas and just absorbing the experience of what that, that that relationship with paint and gesture was all about.

Alex Dodge [00:43:44] And then really it was this, this drastic kind of shift that he had. And I think that in, in my interpretation. And, you know, I think that the way I relate to that shift happened that all of a sudden he started making these paintings that were very much kind of cartoon-like, and these kind of, you know, they're basically black, black and red and white primarily. And they were almost character like cartoonish representations of, you know, oftentimes himself or different characters, and there's repeated sort of objects. I think he would make lists of things like shoes, cigarettes, bottles, light bulbs or whatever these, these objects that were kind of mundane everyday things. And that he would use those over and over again in, in his compositions. But what I kind of feel is that what happened is that I think he personally felt that the abstract work that he had been making and sort of, he, he liked to call what he, what he was doing as part of the New York School. Other people would call it the abstract expressionist, but essentially I think that he felt that he had hit a dead end. And a lot of other people could say that, well, you know, abstract expression is, was essentially, you know, once you get to this kind of ultimate engagement with the sublime through paint and, and, and, and, and surface in a way like where else do you go?

Alex Dodge [00:45:19] You're kind of trying to have this, this experience with that and that, you know, there's, there's a, I think in his way he felt like, well, it was maybe emotionally you could only go in certain places that, that he wasn't, he didn't feel like there was much, much room left for, for a lot of the people that were working that way. And so, in, in my view, I think what he was doing is that he really didn't stop making abstract paintings, but what he started to do was to introduce representational motifs or, or objects as a way of continuing to do painterly abstract work, but actually being able to play and have and, and inject humor into the work. I think the humor there, it's oftentimes very dark. I mean, this is this guy who's, you know, this is him that's just smoking, eating, and painting, and there's maybe this monotony. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:46:19] Can I try and describe this? And you tell me. Sure,

Alex Dodge [00:46:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:46:22] Yeah. I'm seeing the same thing. If you were looking at this painting, what you would see is the head of a man that's laying down and his head's on a pillow, and it's, the pillow is white and black. And that's kind of different than the rest of the painting. 'cause the rest of the painting are different hues of red, essentially, and maybe just a little bit of yellow, but what, what the man is lying down and out of his mouth, you can see a cigarette with smoke coming out of it, and there looks like a cup that maybe has ashes in it, and the man only has one eye. And, and then in the background there's piles and piles of shoes. Although I didn't realize they were shoes until you mentioned that. Mm. Once you save shoes, then all of a sudden you realize like, oh, that's what those are. And there's a light bulb and a, and like the chain that you would turn it on or off, that's kind of on either side of the painting. It's really difficult to explain, but it does, it's definitely evocative. It looks like he has a plate of food, maybe even meat. It looks like maybe there's, you know, grease or blood or something coming off of that food. So it seems like a really vulgar painting, but you feel some sense of, I don't know, there's nothing relatable

Alex Dodge [00:47:40] About it. There is vul, there's, there's, there's definitely vul, like a vulgar sort of, I mean, I would say that there, there, there are like adult child drawings in a sense that in that way, like there's something very childlike about the way he is just sort of outlining the shape of things, filling it in with color. There's not necessarily kind of modeling of things in a kind of spatial sort of way. It's sort of very much, but there's something so, so direct about it that, that yeah, you, you don't have any question that that's a light bulb that those are, you know, I think that the shoes are, are, you know, these, they're kind of rendered after, you know, maybe more traditional shoe with like a cobbler. Like, you know, they would have like nails on the bottom of the soul or something that we don't really see that often anymore. But, but yeah, there's, there's something like unmistakable about all the things that are described there. It's very, very direct. Certainly you could say vulgar in a way. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:48:39] But it's kind of, I think you feel pity for him, right? Like don't you? Sure.

Alex Dodge [00:48:44] Yeah. I mean, I think there's, I think oftentimes you, you see there's something that's existential sort of, there's maybe sorrow and, and, and, and, and pain in, in different ways that is, is deeply psychological space and that he's describing oftentimes. But I think that the main thing that I wanna talk about with him just briefly is that, you know, he was very well regarded in the New York school or abstract expression expressionist movement. And when he shifted to making this kind of work, he was just flat out panned people, just ridiculed him and, and basically said that he, you know, he was, you know, what he was doing was, you know, not even, not even worth paying attention to that he was kind of had given up on his real work and had, you know, and so, but, but for, for some people who were, were a little bit smarter, who could see what was really going on there, you know, didn't, didn't see it that way. And eventually people came around to the work and realized what he was doing was actually really, really brilliant. And I highly recommend people who don't know Philip Guston's work to look both at the, the early Gustine, which are great, they're beautiful paintings, but then also look at the, the shift that he made. And it, and in, in some ways it looks drastic, but I think that if you see it in a different light, that you can see that what he's really kind of doing is adding a visual language on top of the abstraction to be able to play in ways that he, he felt he couldn't play otherwise.

Alex Dodge [00:50:21] So using kind of this crude representational ways of, of, or representational vocabulary, you know, through different things like cigarettes and, and shoes and, and whatnot to play with, to play between representation and, and abstraction. And I think that that is something that he had a lot of courage to do because it certainly was not the cool thing, you know, to do at the time. The cool thing to do at the time was to, you know, make non-representational big, big paintings that were brushy and, and, and all about paint and color and nothing, nothing directly represent represented. So, so it was a, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:51:06] I think if you're not from the art world, when you see these things on TV or movies where they're like, oh, they were so bold or so brave, you don't really think about that. But I, I, I can see through the story that you're telling here, like, the artist must be in a terrible poi like a terribly difficult position because on the one hand, you wanna deliver people what they expect from you because that's,

Alex Dodge [00:51:30] Mm.

Vance Crowe [00:51:30] I mean, we kind of talked about this. It

Alex Dodge [00:51:31] Takes your podcast, it takes, yeah, it takes an incredible amount of courage, I think, to do, to do what he did and then, and then also to, to stand by it and, and know that it was the right thing for him to be doing. And that there was, you know, you know, incredible value in, in, in, in the work that he was making. And, and, and, you know, to be able to do that and not be afraid to, to not be able to sell paintings for a while. And he didn't, you know, he didn't sell in, you know, you know, it's, it's a, it's, it's had to have been probably a, a scary thing to do in cer in in some ways. I mean, maybe, yeah. I mean it's, I I can definitely, I just, I, I think that, that, that's, that alone, I think that there's a lot of, I have incredible respect for someone who's able to, to, to take that leap and, and as abruptly as he did

Vance Crowe [00:52:24] Well, because it would be difficult because like, you do need to trust people that you show your work to, to be like, Hey, I'm, I'm putting this out there. What do you think? You know, can you provide me some feedback? Yeah.

Alex Dodge [00:52:35] And

Vance Crowe [00:52:36] Like to how, how you would handle that would be very, I, I guess you'd have to have a way to be able to handle it.

Alex Dodge [00:52:44] Hmm.

Vance Crowe [00:52:44] Well, let's keep moving down here because this is a, an artist that many, many, many people know. It's, this is in Ansel Adams. This is in Yosemite. You are looking down in between where there looks like there's two giant mountain ranges. So

Alex Dodge [00:53:05] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:53:05] There's one range and then a big valley filled with, you know, 60 foot pine trees. And there's, in the background, there is a waterfall that's is in motion, and the clouds are thick in between wherever the mountain peaks are. And so it's just a black and white picture, but that black and white is completely controlled by the shades of white and dark and shadow and light, and it, it draws you all the way into the valley. So it's a really profound picture. And I put it up there because this is one that actually Pete had a role in. So Pete's, when he was running a company, he had a chance to donate some money and he decided to donate it to MoMA. And he, which is the Museum of Modern Art in New York and he said, I don't want anything for it. I don't want any plaques, and I don't want to have any influence over the artist, so I want you to choose your curator and go pick somebody that like, should be supported. And they went out and found Ansel Adams, and when they came back to him, they were like, Hey, we wanna put this on. He's done really well in some other smaller shows. And, and Pete turned down all of the, the PR mentions there was no plaque. And so it became this really big deal in New York who paid for that.

Vance Crowe [00:54:37] And it ultimately probably was a PR coup because normally people were putting their names all over everything and taking credit for it. But because it was this mystery of who brought this great artist, it worked out in, in the, in, in his interest. So it was a wonderful story and it always made me feel a connection with Ansel Adams. And I don't think that's very hard. 'cause everybody that sees these feels like some sense of resonance with them.

Alex Dodge [00:55:04] Yeah. I mean, you can't deny, I mean, regardless, I mean, you, you can, I mean, I, I think that you can approach an Ansel Adams work in a number of different ways, but you know, for me it's like, I look at it and actually just talking about abstract expressionism in a way. It's like, you know, there's, I mean, it, it feels like, it feels like an abstract painting oftentimes. I mean, just looking at the way, I mean, you know, I mean him having to, to to trek into some of these places and wait just until the light and clouds were just right to, to get that image probably was, you know, not easy to say the least, but I mean, there's something so incredibly, yeah, I mean, the, the way that something that is an actual captured photograph of natural phenomenon in nature like that, but then to have it be something, it can also just be this play of this masterful play of, of black and white in a way, in a way that, you know, it doesn't, it almost doesn't feel real. I mean, it feels like something that was painted. I think oftentimes I look at, you know, you know, images like this and they almost have also another, another relationship to say like Chinese ink painting as well, where it's just, you know, there's something again like this capturing this, this feeling or expression of nature rather than this accurate, you know, photographic representation.

Alex Dodge [00:56:42] And in this case it's both, you know, because he's such a master of, of light and dark and being able to capture that in, in a way that is, you know, like this is, like, you can't, you don't, you don't see nature like this. This is a black and white representation of Yosemite. And maybe in that way, the way he was able to capture it in, in such

Vance Crowe [00:57:03] Such

Alex Dodge [00:57:04] Quality like that it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:07] You know, you think about he was up there with, you know, film and he had to hike it all the way in there and hike all the way back out. And this is really before the NA National Parks, whereas well built out as they are now. In fact, a lot of

Alex Dodge [00:57:22] In

Vance Crowe [00:57:22] The national parks out there got built were, were because of photos like this. But you think about if you go try to take photos of nature with just your iPhone, or you even go get a great camera, you are maybe gonna get like one mountain peak, maybe, you know, you're gonna like point towards the waterfall and try and take a photo to grab its essence. But he takes so much time and so much knowledge here to be able to capture in the foreground and the background, the, the huge amount of space that is just dedicated to Sky. And yet it all feels like it's cohesive. It's just truly amazing that, that he was able to conceptualize and figure out how to do it. Because just technically how to take these photos is master level work.

Alex Dodge [00:58:12] Of course, yeah. I mean on on, yeah. On a number of different levels and yeah, getting, getting in there often with, with glass, glass plate negatives probably. And, you know, and getting, getting them out and being

Vance Crowe [00:58:25] Able to, are glass plate negatives.

Alex Dodge [00:58:26] I mean, a lot. I think I'm, I'm pretty sure that, that some of his work, I could be wrong, but a lot of the early pho, earlier photographic cameras would use glass instead of acetate film to be able to capture the image. And so, you know, those can shatter. They're, they're very, very delicate. But I'm not sure actually, what

Vance Crowe [00:58:46] Did you learn how to develop, like photographs? Can you use a darker

Alex Dodge [00:58:51] Oh yeah. I, I, that was, I, I built my own dark room in, in my basement growing up. And basically I taught, taught myself how to develop both the film and, and, and then print paper prints as well. And it's, you know, it's magic. It's amazing to be able to, to learn how to do that. There's something so incredible about being able to expose a white piece of paper on, on an enlarger, then put it into the developer and watch the image appear. I like that there's something, I mean, it's, it's pure alchemy. It's amazing. There's something really, it's a different relationship again to the image. I think that, you know, you're talking about an iPhone that's a very different relationship to, and there's something beautiful about the iPhone. There's something beautiful about the, the advent of, of the video camera as well. When it was like before, before video, you know, shooting 16 millimeter film was, it's expensive. You know, you, you know, you have to get it developed and then you have to edit it on a, on a Steinbeck editing console. And it takes a lot of time. And, you know, it's, it's not, it's not easy. And so there's, you know, amazing things that are possible when you don't, you know, it opens up the media medium to people with video or say the digital image now.

Alex Dodge [01:00:22] But there's also something about the fact that you can literally shoot hundreds of images. And you, there's, it doesn't cost anything. You can shoot as many photographs on your iPhone as you can, as you have space for. And so there's nothing, they're not, they're not, there's, there's nothing necessarily costly or, or sacred about, about the medium in the sense that, you know, with film, it takes, takes a lot of time and skill to be able to figure out how to expose and, and develop a print or, or film with chemicals. You know, there's, there's something, and it's, and it's like if you screw it up, then it's all gone. You know, the, you lose, you can lose all of your, all of your hard work. And actually that's, I have a, an old Polaroid camera that takes a certain kind of beautiful black and white film that they stopped making about six years ago. And I've been keeping packs of it. It's a fp 3000 Fuji Fuji film, and it just makes the most beautiful photographs. It's a old style Polaroid where you peel it apart, you'd expose it and peel, peel the, the, the top of it off. And I'd been keeping this film and all of a sudden I, I realized, you know, like, you don't, and like, I've been keeping in the refrigerator for six years and I didn't know why. And then finally after my daughter was born, I was like, oh yeah, that's, that's why I was keeping it. So I've been taking photographs little by little of our experience having a baby and, and doing that.

Alex Dodge [01:01:57] And there's something about that physical process of, and also, you know, it's like, in this case, like, there literally is no, never, there will never ever be this film again. It's, it's, you know, Fuji shut down the factory that used to make it, and it'll eventually expire and no longer work 'cause it's chemical based. And so there's something truly, it's very, very special and, and, and limited and scarce. There's a scarcity to that. And that makes it all the more valuable. And, and in, in the quality of those images, there's also a single one of a kind. I mean, of course you can take a photograph on your iPhone of the print and then send it to someone, and that's fine. But there's something about the physical object of those prints that is really incredible, you know, and the same with an Ansel Adams, seeing the, the real print is going to be a unique experience.

Vance Crowe [01:02:55] Yeah. The, I mean, I, I think the idea of having limited film to be able to film your children is probably a wonderful thing in, in some way it's maybe liberating, right? Like, mm, I think people have this sense of, oh, I have to capture this moment. I mean, I feel myself doing it of like, oh, I'm gonna wanna remember this. And so instead of being embraced in that moment, you go and take those photos and you have so many photos that it becomes noise. And knowing, being able to go back 10 years from now and saying, what were the really special photographs? I mean, you're not just getting out shoe boxes full of photographs to look through. You're, you're getting, you're going through like libraries of the, of congress, you know, levels of photographs. So it's just so much noise. So those Polaroids will likely help be a, a strong sorting system for you?

Alex Dodge [01:03:44] I think so. And they, they're become incredibly meaningful, you know, it, it's, it's a, i I think I remembered, I remember hearing somebody say once that in many ways, like this could be the least, the least photographed

Vance Crowe [01:04:01] History. Yeah, we talked about that on the podcast. Oh, that's

Alex Dodge [01:04:04] Right. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, friend,

Vance Crowe [01:04:05] My friend Lyle Benjamin talks about that. And I That's

Alex Dodge [01:04:08] Right. Yeah. Taken

Vance Crowe [01:04:08] That to heart.

Alex Dodge [01:04:10] I think that's right. Yeah. I think there's something about that that could be really true. And there's something about the physical, these physical prints that might actually be even more important because of that. So we'll see. But

Vance Crowe [01:04:22] Well, let's keep going. We got another wall outside, and then we'll go actually look at some of your art. So what are we looking at here?

Alex Dodge [01:04:30] Okay, so this is a friend of mine, Cynthia Talmage, and she is an artist in New York. And I think there's a, a number of things that we could talk about her work. I mean, I love her work so much. This is a, an ongoing series I think that she's done of the Frank E. Campbell funeral home in, in Manhattan. And her work touches on a, a number of things that she's, she has a lot of interest in kind of, I would say maybe. So essentially the, the, the Frankie Campbell funeral home, this is one of, it's, it's, it's the, the place where some of the, I guess the, the upper echelons of New York society, this is their, their exit door to, to life in a way. Like, so this is, you know, where a lot of high society hold their funeral service. Could

Vance Crowe [01:05:34] You describe it? It's

Alex Dodge [01:05:35] A closeup, I guess, cropping of a, of a building facade. It has sort of a pediment and the name Frankie Campbell above it with a kind of a, an awning that comes out onto a typical sort of Park Avenue style awning that comes out onto the sidewalk. There's a, a parking or a, a traffic cone that is out in the street. But the main thing that I, I I, you know, think about, you know, Cynthia's work is that she is a, a pointer list in the tradition of Syrah, which is, you know, this a different method of representing, representing an image is, is by sort of a collection of, of tessellation of different dots of color. And so it's really just almost, I think there, there's, it's a, maybe you could think about it as an organic kind of pixelation, probably very close to the way that the human eye actually arranges your opsin sort of pigments in the way that an image is probably rendered on, on a sort of biological level. But, but it's, yeah. So basically up close, you're going to see this kind of noisy array of, of dots of, of different, different hues of color. And together those form a very, a very subtle, and in my opinion, very beautiful rendering of a, of a building in this case, which is, you know, has, has a underlying sort of significance like I was saying, in terms of society and class and, and what's going on and on those levels in, in New York City of maybe an older, older generation of, of society and the kind of lore maybe around that, that element in, in New York, in New York life.

Alex Dodge [01:07:49] But yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:07:49] As, as I get up real close, right as you're describing it, it's, it's like little teeny tiny dots, and they're made up of purple and blue and yellow. And because we're in these VR goggles, we can get like right up next to it. And it's amazing that as you step back, you can see this, you know, giant, what would be like a marble or granite facade of a building and to, to, if, if the only thing you were doing was just looking at a cool, you know, fancy New York building, and it really clearly looks like that New York upper Manhattan kind of look. But then when you describe that it's a funeral home and that, that's kind of the exit door to the wealthy, that's like a devastating description, but also makes this whole thing be like, whoa.

Alex Dodge [01:08:40] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:08:41] Imagine taking the time to put all those dots on while thinking about the exit door of the wealthy, right? This, the artist itself had to put some real proof of work in here,

Alex Dodge [01:08:51] Very much. I mean, Cynthia is a, is a brilliant, has a brilliant sense of humor. It's also, you know, in, in, and also, you know, I think that the other, the other aspect is that the, she typically will also paint the, the physical frame. So this is a phy, a framed painting, and she'll actually continue the on continue that, that pointless treatment onto the, the frame itself, even around the edge. So there's also this objectness that is kind of emphasized in that, which I think is, you know, an important sort of detail. I think that that's the thing that I find is very important is that paintings are really in my, in, in the way that I feel about paintings is that they, they're, they're highly structured forms of, of sculpture, really. And so that you can't deny their objectness in a way. Like they, they have, they have depth usually as well. And so it's like, you know, there's presence to a painting regardless of how flat it might be. And I think that in her case, she accentuates that by really making, making note of, of the, the frame itself.

Vance Crowe [01:10:07] Yeah. You really feel as though you could see the shadow of the, the blocks being stacked on top of each other, or the way that the awning comes out over the street. You, you feel like you're standing on the opposite street and you could expect somebody to walk right underneath that. It wouldn't, it wouldn't, it wouldn't surprise you at all because of the three dimensionality that she has through that perspective. It, it really is. Yeah. I mean, and even something as small as the two bushes that they have there that are clearly manicured, almost like a, a poodle would be, and how they're slightly different shapes, you know, that because you're dealing with botanical and they're, you know, they're, they're probably meant to be as close as they could, but she catches that not everything is perfect there, right? Like, and Oh yeah. And to have this very formal thing with that orange traffic cone all the way in the foreground. Is it, it is like there's a humor here when you know what's

Alex Dodge [01:11:02] Going on. Oh, yeah, no, it's, yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:11:04] Well, let's go check out this one. So this is one you were familiar with, the Waters of the Oblivion and the name of the, the artist, what was his name? You remember?

Alex Dodge [01:11:13] John Martin. So he, so he's a, a romantic of the British romantics. I didn't know as well, but I knew about him. And this is a pretty, pretty famous painting. I know.

Vance Crowe [01:11:25] So there's a man in the very, very foreground, and he's lit up with that kind of Rembrandt lighting where you can see his skin and you can see where the light is coming from. And he is clinging for dear life to try and climb up to this flat plateau where it doesn't look like he's got very many places to go. But it's, he's trying to, it appears as though he is trying to climb upward across this entire series of mountains and water flowing over, and the colors all the way at the top. There's like a heavenly glow that comes down, but that heavenly glow lights up all these mountains that are painted different shades of red, which makes it really feel imposing and dangerous and, and scary. And even the man who's like almost completely naked, he's just wearing like kind of a red pair of underwear or something. It's, it's, so, you can tell as you orient your eyes all the way up this painting, that if he's really climbing up here, he has a tremendously long way to go and it will not be an easy journey. So that's what I see when I see this. It's Rob Long is one of the people that pointed this out to me, and so I've always kind of admired it, but I don't know anything about it other than the way I've just described it here. I think

Alex Dodge [01:12:43] That's a beautiful description of it. Yeah. And I love the romantics. I think that, you know, you know, typically whether you're talking about Byron

Vance Crowe [01:12:55] Or it makes somebody a romantic, what does this mean?

Alex Dodge [01:12:57] Well, I think that, I think that there's a few ways that you can kind of talk about it, but the, the movement, whether you're talking about the writers like Byron and Shelly and, and, and those guys, or, or some of the painters like John Martin, is that they're, I guess the easiest way to say is that in the, the kind of wake of the enlightenment when it really felt like, you know, the world was going to is, was, was being, you know, and basically after, you know, you have Newton and the Enlightenment and basically it just feels like the entire world is going to be figured out through, through science and technology in a sense, or the, the dawn of, of the industrial revolution. And that, you know, there that we are, we are gonna be able to tame nature completely figure out how to, you know, this is obviously in, in a, in a western European kind of context, that in a, in a sense that the artists were saying holding their hands up and saying, but that's not it. That there's still something that's missing. You can't, you know, there, there may be, you know, science and empirical method may be able to do a lot, but it, it doesn't satisfy the human, the human need for say, a spiritual connection to nature or something like that. And so there's a lot of talk about the sublime, this power of this, this, this deep power of nature, you know, this sublime that you can kind of see, and this, yeah, like you're, as you're describing this, this divine sort of light kind of being cast down from above on the mountain and illuminating, and it's this o overpowering sort of, you know, spirit of nature in a way that is being described in that.

Alex Dodge [01:14:39] And I think that that was something that, you know, the, the, the romantics in, in, in the, in the, the romantic poets say like, like Byron, we're we're describing this, this powerful, oftentimes dark, but larger than, than human part of nature. And that that was sort of a, not necessarily in opposition to the empirical approach or the enlightenment, the project of the Enlightenment, but it was saying that there's something more to life and and experience that can't, you know, that that, that, that, that approach is, is missing out on. And so I think that, you know, and there's a lot of, I think, powerful things and important things that happen during that time. If you have people like Keats, who I think is a really important, he sort of founded that i, this idea of negative, I think what he called negative capability, which is this ability to, essentially, I think what he was saying is that, you know, that things are not always clearly black or white. You know, there's oftentimes being able to hold at the same time, almost like this, I guess in, in physics you would, you would call it a super position, you know, like the, is the cat dead or alive in the, in the, in that sense. And then simultaneously both. And then being able to, to have the capability to negate, to have something that is both one way or the other way, basically.

Alex Dodge [01:16:16] He was, i, I think arguing for nuance and for why that was important and that things are not necessarily always provably false or positive in that way. And so I think it was, yeah, there was this, it was a, it was a, a, a yearning for, for something that science alone was not able to, to offer. And so, and I still, I still think that, that that's something that we, you know, we, we can still learn a lot from, from that. I think there's things that probably the romantics, you know, were, I mean, they were, they were very romantic in that sense. They didn't, they maybe were short shortsighted in other ways, but I think that there's a lot to be learned from that. That there's something that isn't always described through technology. That technology is a great, could be a great tool, but NASA doesn't necessarily offer meaning in, in its, yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:17:09] I think, I think that's what this thing is capturing, right? That's, that's

Alex Dodge [01:17:13] Right. There's

Vance Crowe [01:17:13] Only, only something that would drive a person, only something they truly cared about that they would be willing to endure the thing that this man is clearly embarking on. And there's something that is beyond science in that, right? It's something human spirit, divinity, there's, that's, that's, and this is captured in this, in this painting, so well like,

Alex Dodge [01:17:36] Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:17:37] With just a few colors, right? That there's very, very, it's really limited. And then what they do with the, the light inside of those colors really makes this whole thing have so much emotion. Well, speaking of emotion with very few colors, you, this is kind of a, is this a photograph? What is this? This is, this is a,

Alex Dodge [01:17:58] Just a photograph of a Stewart Sherman who was a performance artist, mostly, I would say. I think he, you know, I think he died unfortunately, maybe early two thousands or late nineties even, but mostly in the eighties in New York. He was doing a lot of performance work and, and I really wanted to include him. 'cause I've been thinking about him a lot lately. I've always been really interested in him, but the way, so he would

Vance Crowe [01:18:30] Things, so that's what we're looking at. Yeah.

Alex Dodge [01:18:31] Yeah. So basically the way that he would do his performances, oftentimes he would, he would set up these TV trays. So in this photograph you can see a TV tray with some different objects on each one there's a maybe a, a white hat and I can't tell, maybe a box of something and maybe some toys on the other. And he's holding up a, a picture frame to his face and maybe blowing a party, a party kind of horn. So basically what he would do is that he would sometimes set up at Washington Square Park and perform what he called spectacles. And the best way to describe them is that some people would call them magic shows without magic. And I would describe them more as magic shows with only magic. And no trick in the sense that he would do these performances with objects and the gestures would be very much like he's doing a magic trick, but nothing happens. He would kind of maybe take a, a, yeah, he would take like, you know, like a toy car and place it in different configurations on top of like a box, or maybe he'd put it under the hat or, and, and they're all silent, you know, he wouldn't say anything, but they were very, very deliberate the way he performed with objects. And, but it was within a gestural language that was very much like a magic show or some other kind of severe and very calculated, almost, you know, ritualized movement.

Alex Dodge [01:20:08] And I think that, again, going back to John Vicki, who we, I mentioned, I think the last thing is that I think that one way he talks about, like, say religious ritual and is, is a way that he describes it as serious play. And I think that that is really what Stuart Sherman does. And I think that is a way of thinking about the way that we, we engage in with religious ritual is that it is serious play. Like even though we become adults, we, we should never stop playing. And I don't stop playing. I'm an artist. And I think that, you know, for those of us that are really engaged in whatever work we do, it is a kind of serious play. We, we take it seriously in a different way because we have, you know, an adult maturity, hopefully maybe. But, but it's, but there's something about Stuart Sherman during that time in the 1980s in New York, there's a kind of playfulness that was

Vance Crowe [01:21:01] Really

Alex Dodge [01:21:01] Wonderful in the way that he was engaging with just everyday objects. I mean, this, you know, it's just like he would, he would come up, come to a performance with a suitcase and two TV trays set up and just, you know, and, and, and because of that, there's not that much documentation of him. There's some on YouTube, you can, you can find some videos of him doing some performances. And there's just something so genuine, honest, and, you know, it may not be for everyone, but I think if you watch it, you'll see that there's something truly magical about the way that he is engaging and, and playing. And, and, and, and, and, and he was, and he insisted on never really giving any, any interpretations of his work. He really wanted it to stand on his own, be interpreted however people wanted to. And there's, you know, there's a, you can, you can interpret the way that he performs with different objects in highly metaphorical ways, or you could just see it as being, you know, more or less playful and not having any, any deep meaning either. But I, I think that there's something really wonderful about him. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:22:13] You know, performance art is probably, again, one of those things that when you see them, when you see it, when it's being done, it's a different thing than watching a film or seeing a photograph of it being done. I think that's true. Yeah. I had a chance to go see who is the woman that sat, and you could sit across from her and yell at her. Oh, marina

Alex Dodge [01:22:32] Vic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:22:34] So I saw her at either the Met or MoMA, maybe MoMA

Alex Dodge [01:22:38] MoMA. It was the artist, the artist is Present. Yeah, that was, I think it was like 2010 or something like that.

Vance Crowe [01:22:44] Yeah. That, yeah. So I saw, I saw that exhibit with Pete and Oh wow. There were things about that, that when I first walked in, because it was gonna be this performance art, I really thought negatively of it, it, it seemed like, Hey, you know, I didn't, I'm not going to see a play. What are you doing here? Like, you, you can't have performance be in this art museum. And that sounds kind of dumb, I'm sure, but like

Alex Dodge [01:23:12] From person that's, yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:23:14] You've got this Midwestern sensibility. There's gonna be people that are like, you know, standing and doing things awkwardly. And so as you described this, I, I can feel that Midwestern kind of practicality emerge in me where I'm like resentful of somebody that would go waste people's time with magic. That's not real. But the exhibit that I saw at MoMA where, where you're watching people sit across from this woman and just start crying because they can sit across from her. Or there was, I think we spoke about this before, they had two naked people and you had to walk in between them or you, you could, if you wanted. And they were uncomfortably close. It was like sitting in a doorframe. And, and you know, you do that. And if we go back to my original description of what is art artist, something that makes you feel something, you really felt something by being in the presence of somebody putting on a performance that they made just for you or, or just for their audience, right?

Alex Dodge [01:24:16] Yeah, I think so. And you know, I understand, I think that, you know, there maybe, maybe in the way it might be described performance, performance art kind of maybe has a, a caricature of, of, you know, sort of a kind of of art that maybe from a Midwestern perspective might be pretentious or, you know, not representative of something that is, that feels accessible to a general audience in a way. But I think that, you know, it's that, that that's totally understandable. And I think there's nothing, and you know, there's, you know, there's no reason why you know, that that can't be the case. Sometimes that's probably true. There's a lot of performance work that I think that is not accessible that maybe asks a lot of the viewer and rather than bridging that gap. And I think that, you know, that work has to, has to figure out how to sustain itself.

Vance Crowe [01:25:18] Why don't we head down to the Terry Redkin here. So this is a painting for anybody that's just listening. Terry Redkin is an artist everybody has heard of. If you live in the United States, you have encountered one of his photographs, even though you might not know it by name because he's the guy that did all the Ducks Unlimited, the outdoor scenes, a lot of them are nature. There's deer in the front and there's snow. And so you've, you've definitely seen them whether on a postage stamp or something. But the one that I chose is, it's clearly a picture of a fall scene, probably in the 1950s. And you can tell that by the make and model of the trucks and tractors that are in the, in the picture. And so it's the fall, you can see geese flying in the direction that you have to assume is south. And it's, you can see the moon has come up, it's really bright. It's probably like a harvest moon. And all around our tractors that are filled, like with all the beds of trucks and trailers are filled with corn and they're standing outside of a mill and it looks like, you know, they're all just wrapping up and talking before they hop in their trucks and head home for the night. And so some of them have dogs and some of them are drinking something, and there's a little boy looking up at all the old men with their suspenders and their hats and jeans.

Vance Crowe [01:26:50] And there's, your eye is drawn to the center of the picture because you can see where people's headlamps are, and the light in the mill that's clearly gonna run for the next few hours getting ready. So that, that way tomorrow when they go back to the fields and harvest, they'll be ready to go. And so it, these paintings are brilliant because not only are they huge and make you feel enveloped by it, like you're just dumped right in there. But it's also a scene that you would want to be at, right? Like everybody there seems like a nice warm person that it, it, everything feels very comfortable. And you know, the, the, the, the title on top of the mill is Heartland Grains. And it's just, it's very homey. So I like this. I had a good friend Brian Mos, who I visited up in South Dakota, and he took me to a Terry Red Lynn Museum. And I was just bowled over by looking at hundreds and hundreds of paintings that he did that are like this with all different scenes. And I thought it'd be a great thing to share. 'cause I think that the comradery that the men are experiencing as they're sitting around before they head home is the type of comradery that all men, maybe all people long to have. And it's something we don't have in, in today's day and age in the same way. So I thought it was kind of a, a very emotional, yet approachable painting.

Alex Dodge [01:28:13] Yeah, I mean, I, I have definitely seen his work, but I don't know it very well. And I'm really happy to be able to, to hear your description of, of this painting. It's a wonderful painting. I love it. And I think I kind of wanted to mention at one point during this whole, this whole experience that, you know, when I had, you know, even in, in the New York art world where I had worked, you know, in the gallery side as well, I think that there's this phenomenon oftentimes where, you know, when I was, this was back in like say like mid two thousands or early two thousands to mid, and, and there were literally thousands of galleries, I think in New York. I think that in Chelsea and, and the whole all of Manhattan there was, but, but I certainly didn't know more than, you know, maybe a dozen of them really, really well, or at least maybe less than, less than 50. Really, really Well, so what, what were all the other galleries? And I think that that's something that I was, became really increasingly aware of is that from wherever you're standing in, in the, in any art world, whether you're a southwest, you know, landscape painter or you know, representational painter of one sort, from where anyone is standing, it oftentimes feels that that's the center of the world. Like that all of the other parts of the world are some other kind of strange com community of, of artists that is, that are, that are not the real artists.

Alex Dodge [01:29:52] And and I think that oftentimes in New York, there could be this kind of elitism oftentimes where, where it, you know, it felt like, well, New York is the center of the world, and so obviously this is where all the, the real, the real art is being made. And I think that that's something that is really sad and unfortunate is that there is so much richness just in the United States within, you know, you know, you know, numerous communities and traditions and audiences of work. There's so much stuff going on that is all beautiful and rich and, and and equally valid. And it's kind of, I I feel oftentimes there's a sense that it is kind of segregated in a sense that there's not easy passage between these different, different regions of, of American art and certainly not. And, and just as much in the world. I think the internet has helped that change that to some degree. But still, you know, why not? I think that, like, why, why is there there not as much cross dialogue? And I think that there's, that's only shows that the possibility of so much more that we can all learn as artists and, and also viewers of art. And so I'm really, I'm really happy to see, to see this painting and I that you did a wonderful job describing it.

Vance Crowe [01:31:20] It was an experience to go to the Terry Redland Museum because I went there with a whole family. There were a bunch of little boys there that were with this family, the MO'S family, and Brian and his wife and my friend Christina, who's also a farmer, but she's from New York. And as we walked around this museum, you would see other farm people and you knew 'cause they were wearing a seed hat or they had boots on or the, the knife they had in their pocket. And what I noticed was the people, Christina and Brian that were the, the farm people, they would go up to the painting and observe these like tiny details that I would not have seen. Like what exact model of tractor was that? Like, oh, what, what is, what is the deal with the hydraulic lift on that truck? And that's just a, you know, random example. But you noticed how complete strangers could interact with one another on details that were way, way deep, but yet that made them be able to communicate with one another. It was like, right, yeah. Almost like going to a church in a way that museum,

Alex Dodge [01:32:24] I can imagine that, you know, I mean they're seeing it. This is their, their world and they, they see things that no one else can see because they, they have a different lens to see, to see these works. And that's, that's really, that's really wonderful.

Vance Crowe [01:32:39] Well, I love Autumn. It is my favorite season, so I'm a sucker for mine

Alex Dodge [01:32:42] As well. All these, because

Vance Crowe [01:32:43] All the, well, why don't we move on down here and see this last one before we go do some of your artwork. This was very avant garde for me. I, I

Alex Dodge [01:32:54] Sure. Yeah. I

Vance Crowe [01:32:55] Steered at this for quite a while.

Alex Dodge [01:32:58] So this is an artist named Isamu Gaia, and he's a Japanese artist. Full disclosure, I own his work and I wanted to include him because I don't, I'm not really a collector. I do, I do have a small collection that is mostly through trading with other artists. You know, I don't, the, the, the sad and unfortunate thing is that most artists can't afford their own work. If they're, if they're able to survive on by selling their work, they probably can't afford to buy their own work. So most of the time artists make grow collections of their own just by trading with the contemporaries. And that's a really wonderful thing that can happen. But in the case of Gaan, I discovered him while living in Japan, and I just fell in love with, with his work, basically. He does a small painting ink, a pen and ink every day. He does at least one or two drawings, and they're small. They're probably, the actual drawings that I have are probably maybe by six by eight inches. But they are so playful and have oftentimes kinda a dark sense of humor about them. They're, they definitely informed by, by Japanese manga comic books or in anime. There's definitely nuances there. So

Vance Crowe [01:34:26] Let's describe it, like how would you,

Alex Dodge [01:34:27] Yeah, how

Vance Crowe [01:34:28] Would you describe this?

Alex Dodge [01:34:29] So I would describe this as a astronaut with sort of a, a, a reddish orange astronaut suit and wearing a, a helmet, an astronaut's helmet that is specially equipped with a compartment above that has a secondary glass sphere with a head, which I think that's his hedgehog, or no, it's a, it looks

Vance Crowe [01:34:59] Like a hamster.

Alex Dodge [01:35:00] Hamster, yeah. So it's his, which he, he actually has, so the artist is obsessed with his, his, it's a Guinea pig and he's obsessed with his pet Guinea pig and has a very deep relationship with his pet Guinea pig. And so he is, but he is also play holding a, a game controller, it looks like a, a, a PlayStation game controller, and he has some PlayStation gaming Xbox insignia on the side of his helmet. So this is a very serious game gear that he has. And I know that, that he does, this is a, a large part of his life, daily life is also playing games, making, making his artwork and playing games. And his Guinea pig are pretty much consuming most of his day. I think those, those three things. And I just fell in love with his, the, his, his quality of, of rendering and, and his, I mean, he's just a, a beautiful draftsman and he also does make larger paintings and they're great too. I love them as well, but the small drawings that he does, his daily drawings are, you know, they, they were, I think that they're, in my opinion, and I don't, I don't want to, I mean, for, for his sake, I do wanna say that they're, they are underpriced and, you know, people should, should buy them if they, if they are interested because it probably won't stay that way for long. And I think that he's a, a great artist and he deserves every bit of attention and success, but I really do like, I really do love his work a lot and he's a, a very wonderful person that I was able to meet as well while, while being in Japan.

Alex Dodge [01:36:40] And yeah, so I, the

Vance Crowe [01:36:42] The whole thing really tells a story, you know, and you don't exactly know what the story is, but the boy, which I assume it's a boy that's playing a video game, he's got like greenish hair and he's got kind of a, I don't even know, kind of like a cloak underneath the, the helmet that he's wearing.

Alex Dodge [01:37:00] Oh yeah. It's kinda a cowl.

Vance Crowe [01:37:03] Yeah. And his, the seriousness of which he's looking at, or at least the focus that, that his eyes have towards the, what you presume is the screen is, is, would, would seem completely normal. You wouldn't even question that. This is like absolutely what he should be doing, except for with the hamster on the top and the logos, the steam logo and the Xbox

Alex Dodge [01:37:26] Logo

Vance Crowe [01:37:27] On the side, the

Alex Dodge [01:37:27] Steam logo, right? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:37:29] Yeah. All of a sudden you're like, wait, some, it, it looks like the hamster is maybe driving the sky somehow or it's, it's, you know, along for the ride. And so I think what's so amazing about this is that yes, while it's, it it looks cartoonish or like, like you were saying, like a comic book kind of esque look at the same time, it's, it's almost like a movie that you're dropped into.

Alex Dodge [01:37:54] Yeah, I mean, so he, I mean, the ongoing theme that I think that is he's constantly drawing, like they're all forms of self-portraiture and whether it's this, this kind of boyish character or there's another young, young woman character, but they're all representing him himself in some kind of relationship with his, his Guinea, his Guinea pig, and in various kind of states off u usually there's like a real kind of humor and playfulness, which I just love so much. I think that there's something really, really free about them. And yeah, I, I, I've owned, I think about three or four, four of his works now, and I'm always, I have to stop myself from buying more of them, but

Vance Crowe [01:38:44] Well, thi this is intriguing and compared, when you think of the, you know, we go, we step back and we look at like the Terry Redkin and then his, those two right next to each other are totally different cultures, right? Oh yeah. And I think

Alex Dodge [01:38:58] This,

Vance Crowe [01:38:59] This has been a really interesting art museum, but before we're done, we have two pictures remaining that I want to go upstairs. So if you're just listening in the VR space, we've been inside the, the book club, then we've gone into the art studio, and then we went outside and now we're upstairs on a little patio and we are looking at art that Alex put together. And Alex, I'll let you go ahead and explain this one, unless you want me to say what I see and you can tell me more about it. Oh,

Alex Dodge [01:39:31] You, you, why do, why do I think that it, it's actually sometimes it's better for you to maybe describe what we're looking at because I, you know, you're, you don't have as much at stake maybe as I do.

Vance Crowe [01:39:41] Yeah. Okay, well, let me, let me try. So, so in full disclosure, this is a print that Alex sent me, and I was moved, this was an arresting moment. You open it up and it's an elephant, but the elephant isn't like a full on looking like exactly like it's out of the zoo. It's a little bit more cuddly because instead of having gray skin, it has like a polka dot fabric. And as you look at the fabric, there's slight folds in it that represent kind of where the knee would be or where the ankle would be. But because they're folds in this polka dot fabric, it seems much softer. It seems like a giant stuffed elephant that, that a child would have. And as you look at it, you can tell that this is not like a full grown elephant. It's, it's definitely looks a little bit younger, even though the elephant takes up almost the whole frame. So you don't have much of a frame of reference as to why you think it's not that big. It just doesn't look that big except for the fact that it has like tusks and a little tail. And, but the elephant in its trunk is trailing along the foreground, but it looks like it's pulling it a, a blanket, then the blanket is made of stripes. And it is, it's interesting because the stripes are both yellow and like a purplish color, and it, you can tell it dragging against the ground. And so when I got this, the title of it was Come Walk with Me and, you know, interpreting it to mean like a little, a little child that is engaging with, its, its outside world and it's so playful and alluring that it's trying to draw its parents in or somebody that it wants to pay attention to it.

Vance Crowe [01:41:35] So, mm,

Alex Dodge [01:41:36] That

Vance Crowe [01:41:36] Was my takeaway from it. What do you, what, what, how would you update

Alex Dodge [01:41:39] Change? I, I think that's change it. I think that's, I I'm so happy that you described it because yeah, I think that that's a, it's a great description of it. Yeah. So this is a, this is a really special print for me that I made. This was the first. So I was, I was approached by a, a print institute in Tokyo, Japan called the Adachi Hong Institute. In Hong is means ba basically, it's a, a form of woodblock print known as Ichie. And it's says it's a, you know, this is, these are, this is the, the technique that has been used by, you know, a lot of people will know probably most famously things like Hokusai, his, his giant, his, you know, wave print or you know, Hiro shige. These are, these are the, the prints that, you know, they have the signature gradient sky. Oftentimes, this is an element that I was really drawn to called, this is called a Boi, which is this, this gradient fade is oftentimes used as a sky element in the more traditional works by hoai and kiddo SiGe. But, so basically I was approached by Adachi and they, they have been printing for nearly a hundred years original and reproductions of famous works like Hokusai.

Alex Dodge [01:43:17] And they approached me with a project with a number of different contemporary artists, and they wanted to start working with contemporary artists to make contemporary quie prints. And I never thought I would have the chance to do something like that because, you know, it takes, it would take years to learn how to actually do a real quie. The the process historically, you know, in the case of someone like Hokusai is that, you know, back then there were no copy machines. And so he would, you know, he would be the, the master painter, he would make a, a painting on with ink on, on rice paper. And that would then be, you know, sometimes copied or in the copy itself would be glued down onto a piece of mountain cherry, a board, a plain piece of mountain cherry, a very dense kind of wood that's really good for carving. And so they'd glue the paper directly down and, and that would be carved onto, so the actual drawing and or copy of the drawing would be just destroyed in the process of carving out the wood around it. And again, like the silk screen that we were talking about, each color would be a different block. So if in this case there's probably, I forget exactly how many blocks they did, but probably about four or five blocks.

Alex Dodge [01:44:53] One for the shadow, one for the, the red reddish orange on the elephant's body, and then two blocks for, and they had to carve all of that, all of those circles. Yeah. And so, so oh my god, the process of, oh yeah, so the process of, of Uwe, there's the master painter who makes the image, then there's master carvers. And at, I think at, at who's height, they probably had maybe five or even six full-time master carvers who are carving the blocks. Now they, they have two. And this is, you know, very typical in Japan right now, a lot of the traditional crafts are, are dying out because there's just not, it's, you know, they, they are keeping it alive. That's the point of adachi is that they are, they have, you know, a younger master carver who's in, who's learning, being trained by the, the older carver. But, so there's two carvers who will carve these, these blocks. And so I came up with the image, that's the easy put. And then these guys will carve out these blocks of cha of mountain cherry. And then there's a, the master printer who is going to be the job of inking these blocks and registering each, each page on there. They're all printed by hand and it's all water-based inks. So they, they will ink each block for each, each impression, and then they have what's called a burn, which is a round kind of disc that is used to rub the back of the paper on making pressure onto, onto the sheet.

Alex Dodge [01:46:36] And that has to be done, you know, you know, it's, this is all, this is not like a, a normal printing press where you can just like set the, the, the pressure and run it through. This is all done by hand, and that that fade, that occi is actually done by hand as well. That blend is not done with a, a block or it is a block, but it has to be that, that, that blended gradient color has to be done. And so this is a, you know, this takes years to learn the skill to do the printing as well. What,

Vance Crowe [01:47:04] What,

Alex Dodge [01:47:05] What

Vance Crowe [01:47:05] Order do they do this in? Because there's so many colors and there's so much

Alex Dodge [01:47:11] I, well, there's, how does that work? So that's does, so typically there's going to be what's called the key block. And so it may a little hard to see here, but on, on this image, there's a, a, a faint outline, and that is going to be the, the line work on each of that. So I figured out that's another block. The key block is the most important block because that outline will basically be the registration for everything else that will lock everything into place. And, and so that might be, if, if I'm, I might be wrong, but I think that the key block is going to be the first block, and then these color blocks would be done next, and maybe the shadow would be, would be done. I, but in the background, I am not actually sure if that's the last or the first. It could be either the last or the first element that that is printed there. But it's a remarkable process. I mean, that you could watch YouTube videos of these guys doing what they do, and it is breathtaking. It's, it's kind of insane. And I was, I just felt like I couldn't believe it. I mean, it's like humbling to be able to work with these people and you know, I mean, I, I never thought I'd have the chance to do this, to make, make a print like that. So, you know, it's a, a huge, a huge honor. These are, I mean, these, these guys are what they call, you know, I, I don't know if they're officially living treasuries in Japan. They have like this idea, this sort of, you know, designation of a, of a living treasure, cultural producers of different sorts.

Alex Dodge [01:48:48] But I, you know, it's, it's just a, in insane honor to be able to make something like that. So yeah, this pret though, like the, the thing I think in a way was sort of a foreshadowing, you know, we were trying to have a baby, and I think that in a way this was sort of a premonition of perennial problem of putting your, putting your, your kids down to sleep. And in a way, this is sort of this, this character, this elephant, which is a recurring thing in my work. I love, I have this, this obsession with elephants in general. And so, but I, this one in particular was sort of a, a character that was going to help, help take the, take a child and to go to, to go to sleep for the night. So this is, come walk with me into the night this, this kind of dream dreamy landscape with a, this elephant and, and blanket going to bed. So

Vance Crowe [01:49:59] It's, it's surprising. I think one of the reasons this is arresting the term I've been using this whole time is because it could have just been a gray elephant, right? And that could have looked cute and you could have done, but the fact that it's fabric and you can see this texture inside of it, and the way that the polka dots and the spots where the, the joints are, there's so much complexity to making those polka dots Oh yeah, look like they belong in that way. And, and it really gives the whole thing a, a softness and then, and like a reminiscence of my 1980s, you know, Eureka Illinois being raised, it really like the fabrics feel comfortable to me. And I think it's just an interesting way to make this so soft and approachable.

Alex Dodge [01:50:51] Well, that thank you. I, I hope so. And yeah, I think that, and again, going back to the, the one of the first works we looked at the Hammonds, it's, you know, it's a very similar way of describing that form. I think in this case though. Yeah, it's supposed to be this stuffed kind of flesh kind of pillowy elephant and yeah, the dots kind of describe that in this very direct and, you know, like, you know exactly how that feels. It's this, you, you can, you know, really have, I think that convey that sense of, of, of softness and, and sleepiness maybe.

Vance Crowe [01:51:31] Speaking of textures, I want to go to the first painting that I ever saw of yours. And I saw it on your website after you and I had been introduced, and I just thought, man, let's definitely talk about this piece. So if, if you don't mind me again describing this one and then we'll,

Alex Dodge [01:51:49] No, please, by all means.

Vance Crowe [01:51:51] Yeah. So this is surprising. I think you, you kind of referred to them as like, like a knockoff muppet. It's a character made as like with fuzzy little fur that you can feel, I mean, almost like you could reach out and touch it. And when you get up close, you see that the fur looks matted on this kind of Muppet character, but it's because there's all these different textures going in different ways, different colors of white and the, this like Muppet figure has these big eyes that are staring down at what looks like a tablet. It's got a pink smile and little pink ears that are sticking out of it, and it's wearing a blue shirt that's got stripes. And so it's different colors of blue with, you know, some kind of writing on it and little paws that you see tucked up underneath as he sitting kind of Indian style. Or maybe on his knees you can see the foot pad, which is made of like another pink, what looks like soft material. So you can almost see this character like standing up and, and handing you something or being excited. And the look on its face is just real excitement and happiness. It's very approachable. And you can tell that there's light coming from the top left hand corner of the screen because the background is this like pink, then it turns to red, and then that red turns to a violet and then the violet turns to a blue and the blue washes out almost to a white at the bottom.

Vance Crowe [01:53:24] And the, because you have this point source of light, in addition to having all this texture, you also have shadows that run through the foreground. So it just gives you this sense of perspective and dimensionality that really makes it kind of a fun thing. Almost like you know him. He's very comfortable.

Alex Dodge [01:53:42] Well, I, I really love that description. That's really wonderful. This is a, a preview for, for anyone that's not able to go to New York City next month, April 28th, 2022 is a, is a two person show that this painting will be shown at. And so no one's actually seen this painting in real life, but so we can see it, see it here. And yeah, so the, the character, this is sort of an ongoing series of characters that I've been working on. And this one, yeah, Muppet, like maybe also I would say that there's some maybe DNA taken from if you're, you might remember if you're, if you grew up in the United States, especially during the eighties or nineties, snuggles

Vance Crowe [01:54:37] Oh my God, you're right.

Alex Dodge [01:54:40] So snuggles the bear for the fabric. Was it? Is it

Vance Crowe [01:54:45] Yeah, fabric softener. I used to walk

Alex Dodge [01:54:47] Around

Vance Crowe [01:54:48] Grocery stores clutching the fabric softener, hoping my mother would clip the UPCs for it.

Alex Dodge [01:54:55] Yeah. So that was, so that was definitely where aspects, I mean, if you look at it doesn't look exactly like, it's not a, it's not a one-to-one snuggles, but there's definitely some snuggles in there. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:55:08] The, the fur kind of Yeah, the texture.

Alex Dodge [01:55:10] Yeah. Yeah. For Oh, for sure. Yeah. And struggles is is, you know, less expressive maybe than, than this, this character. I'm, I'm calling this guy Nigel for some reason. And yeah, so this, I think that in a way, so this was some of the first work I made after my daughter was born. And I think that maybe there was, you know, again, there's this like a, a real, I'm a lot of it's just, just having a lot of fun playing with these, these characters in, in different ways. There's also maybe some anxiety about the future screen time issues with

Vance Crowe [01:55:55] Oh,

Alex Dodge [01:55:57] So there's

Vance Crowe [01:55:57] A of Oh, that's really good. You're right. That is the look of being mesmerized by a child, and that actually makes that character become more childlike.

Alex Dodge [01:56:07] That's right.

Vance Crowe [01:56:08] Yeah.

Alex Dodge [01:56:08] And so it's, yeah, so there's, there's probably, that's, that's some, some real, some aspects of, of, of what is probably going to be, you know, a real issue in about a year, a year from now or, or, so maybe, maybe more hopefully of, yeah. How this relationship we have to screens. And so there's something like, you know, both playful and kind of serious in a way. Like, I think if you care, it's not a detail that everyone may pick up on, but this is, you know, the, the text on the, the actual screen in, if you see the painting in real life, that is actually printed in a very similar way that the, the last print that we looked at was made. It was, it's made with a block, a block print, and it's inked and then pressed onto the painted surface. And so there's a high detail of text on there and, and what it is, it's a sort of like these, you know, the, these kind of like Easter eggs that are, that I like to kind of plant sometimes in the painting, but in this case it's actually the, the, the output of a, of a Python program that I wrote, a very simple Python program that just causes what's called a infinite recursion or stack overflow that just eats up all of the memory in the computer and crashes, crashes the program. So just to, you know, just thinking about that sort of phenomenon maybe in a more metaphorical sense of, you know, using, you know, using up what precious attention time we do have in words.

Vance Crowe [01:57:41] But Yeah. And what do what, what is the writing on the shirt?

Alex Dodge [01:57:45] Oh, yeah. So I wanted to kind of echo this idea of sort of this, this in infinite sort of loop that, that just consumes all of the resources in, in the, in the program and sort of like a, a, a graphic sort of t-shirt. And so the, so this one, there's two versions of this painting. One is, is is this one nan, which is a not a number, which is oftentimes the, the result that you'll get if you're working on a spreadsheet and you enter in something if you divide by zero or something like that. And then you'll, you'll result oftentimes in a, in a, in a n declaration. And so I, I thought that, you know, that was just a kind of a, a, a playful way of talking about something that is, that is, you know, very serious on one hand, but you know, also being able to, to have fun, fun with it as well. And also play with, you know, color and texture and, and all, and you know, nuanced textiles in different ways. But, you know, have fun, fun with having, there's, there's always something serious in all jokes, right? So maybe that's, that's a, a part of it is good

Vance Crowe [01:58:58] Have, I mean, you really have rocked my world with this. I've probably seen this picture 30 or 40 times, and I, I really, like, I found myself shortly after we met, coming back to your website and checking out again and showing people and, and, but I had, it had never dawned on me. And as soon as you said that about the tablet, I mean, like, that actually has like, it's almost a black mirror risk type

Alex Dodge [01:59:25] A little bit. Yeah. Hopefully not that dark, but Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:59:28] Yeah. But I, and I don't mean it in, I mean, like, I think it's

Alex Dodge [01:59:31] Fascinating,

Vance Crowe [01:59:31] Right? Like only a child can be that delighted with a, with a tablet, right? Like I've seen that on violent space. Oh, it's pure,

Alex Dodge [01:59:38] Pure, yeah. Pure innocent delight, you know, and it's like, I think, you know, the, the first podcast, well, not the first I, I listened to to many other of your episodes, but the one that actually made me reach out to you was the one that you were talking about your experience in fatherhood and the whole idea of if you want to engage your child, it's like they will pay attention to whatever you're paying attention to. Why do they have this magnetic attraction to screens is 'cause they see us looking at them all the time. So it's like, you know,

Vance Crowe [02:00:09] Oh, and Violet used to, when, when we first had her, she would see, you could tell when we got engaged in our phone because she would start crying instantly, and you started being like, oh, I wonder why that is, why, you know, that you're pulling attention away from her. But you would watch, like, I would watch Anne's face or she would watch mine, and you realize when you put your face down to that thing, you become totally absorbed in it so the baby can feel that instantly and wants that for herself.

Alex Dodge [02:00:35] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vance Crowe [02:00:37] Well, man, I, I love this painting even more like you just added on dimensions to it. So, and I just want to, I, I, I wanna wrap up and, and talk about the experience of doing a, an art museum tour in vr. What did, what did you think of this experience?

Alex Dodge [02:00:56] I loved it. I think that this is, I mean, you know, this is the first time aside from some very brief experiments that, you know, we did just introducing this kind of space and this experience. But I have to say, it's really, there's nothing quite quite like this. It, it, it goes beyond, as you were describing it before, we, you know, we did this, which, you know, it's, it's very different, radically different than a, a, you know, a normal like Zoom chat or something like that. You know, there's, there's something nice about being able to see facial expressions in a Zoom chat, I guess. But there's also, you're never looking, you know, you're looking at the screen so you never look, feel like you're looking directly at someone. Right now we have these avatars, but there's actually, with the spatial audio that you set up, and just being able to see, you know, subtle head movements, the way that things, things can be gestured with your hands and being able to really have the feeling of being in this space, even though it's not, you know, perfectly realistic, it doesn't matter. There's something really kind of profoundly, you know, you know, different about this. And, you know, it's, I I think it's only gonna, this, this, this stuff is only gonna get better for sure. I think that, you know, yeah,

Vance Crowe [02:02:13] I think the experience of, of hearing your voice, so for the, for the outsider that many people is to tell this, like we are sitting with our headsets on, and if I turn my head and Alex, so that my left ear is facing Alex, then I hear him in my left ear and I can kind of hear him in my right ear, but not as much. And so that experience of looking at something together and having the sound reflect that change that we're both looking at, something really gives you the sensation that you have when you're standing next to somebody e even more so than your facial expressions, which, you know, I, I, I love facial expressions. I think they're really important. I pay a lot of attention to them, but the sound really makes a big difference here. And I think when we ever meet up for the first time, I don't think it'll feel like it's the first time that we've met up. I think that this kind of,

Alex Dodge [02:03:07] I, I don't think so either. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that, you know, there's, yeah, there's something about just yeah, the, the spatial aspects of, of the sound and the distance between, you know, you know, us in the space that, you know, this is the stuff that you don't notice in real life, but is actually so, so important, you know?

Vance Crowe [02:03:27] Yeah. I mean, I think if I, I, there were a couple of times when, you know, you accidentally clicked the wrong button and I end up being too close to you. Right. And if you get really close to somebody in vr, you have that sense of like, Hey, I'm gonna take a couple steps back. Like, it's uncomfortable, right. But it shouldn't be because it's not like I can smell you or have to worry about you smelling my breath or something. But there's a lot of social conventions that go into it that I think make,

Alex Dodge [02:03:51] Make

Vance Crowe [02:03:52] It feel like a more holistic experience.

Alex Dodge [02:03:55] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. This has been such a great first experience for me. I I can definitely see doing more of this, for sure.

Vance Crowe [02:04:05] Well, Alex Dodge, thank you so much for coming on. If people wanted to look up your stuff or thought that they could be in New York, when is your, your show and how can

Alex Dodge [02:04:14] More about

Vance Crowe [02:04:15] You?

Alex Dodge [02:04:16] So if you're hearing this in before April 28th, 2022, then yeah, you can go to Miles McHenry Gallery and I will be in a two person show with Tom LeDuc, another great artist who also works, who, you know, making makes paintings, also using a lot of virtual sort of workflow like I do. And yeah, so that will be April 28th, 2022 until, I think it runs until June 4th if I'm not, if I'm not mistaken. And then other than that, my, my main gallery is Klaus by Nick Sogan Gallery, which is just moving to a new space in Tribeca. And there'll definitely be more shows there. If you're in Asia, you can find work at my gallery in Tokyo at Machi Fine Arts, and you can always look me up on Instagram, Alex Dodge Studio or alex dodge.com for my website, which is sometimes updated, you know?

Vance Crowe [02:05:20] Well, fantastic man, Alex, you are always welcome on here. We'll do this again.

Alex Dodge [02:05:25] I'm, I'm so psyched that we did this. It's really awesome. Thank you so much for having me, and this was so much fun.

Vance Crowe [02:05:31] Loved it.