Managing Ideals Seeing my Art From a National Perspective Copyright 2010 Charles Wish
When one looks back on the major social tides of twentieth century America, i.e. the 30’s to mid-60’s demand for traditionalism and the mid-60’s to early-90’s call for revolution and individuality, one could easily reason that America suffers from a cultural personality crisis. However, I feel we are now in a time of digestion; a season where many of us have made the choice to amalgamate the dual ideals of the last century and forge ahead with something new and holistic.
“Consolation from imaginary things is not an imaginary consolation." -- Roger Scruton
The question I’m most frequently asked by those who enjoy my work is: “Why?” Why out of all the art in the world would one choose to expand upon and combine Regionalism: a barely recognized American movement of the 1930’s, with even less mainstream schools of South-Asian symbolism? While there are probably several reasonable answers, I believe the “why” of it has much to do with my upbringing and (more importantly) how I came to terms with it.
Like many of us, I was born into a family of differing sympathies, specifically: the sympathies my parents chose to cite when they would describe what it meant to be American.
My father’s country belonged to Jackson and O'Sullivan. It was a magical place of fantasia farm-scapes, steam-trains and romantic old-timey street corners. When dad stood up to recite the pledge of allegiance, he was rising for the freedom to work and enjoy the land, the freedom to develop and preserve our nation’s traditional aesthetic and functional infrastructure. For him, America was a terrestrial place where fruit and labor walked hand in hand and the fantastic possibilities for outer improvement were endless.
However, for my mother, America meant something quite different. Her country was that of Emerson, Fuller and even Burroughs. In mom’s eyes this country wasn’t so much about the shaping and development of the geography as it was about the freedom to explore and express one’s inner-being. For her, the land should primarily be left to nature, i.e. what needed human correction and courtesy was not the field next door but rather our minds and souls.
With these two very different (and often contradicting) perspectives influencing my formative years, definitions of family and nationality became rather confusing things for me. My initial instinct to deal with this perplexity was to simply dismiss both my parent’s perspectives as ideological hogwash.
By my teens I began to see dad’s America as a frivolous disaster area, bogged to the point of uselessness by physical limitation and industrial excess. And mom’s America wasn’t any better. Her transcendental utopia was nothing more than a delusion, choked with intra-psychic twaddle, whiny loudmouthed protesters and experimental self-indulgence. Nevertheless, somewhere around the time of my early to mid-twenties I found it existentially necessary to grow out of this familial defiance and re-evaluate my position. And it would be this shift in thinking that would act as the drive behind almost all of the art which I’m creating today.
The conclusions responsible for this change in my outlook went something like this: There is no reasonable way for me to completely escape the contrasting values of my parents… they are and always will be a part of me. Despite my naysaying, I was actually starting to like certain aspects of my parents’ standards. I wanted to create positive American art, and nothing defines America’s better nature more than the reconciliations we reach when differences are allowed to collide.
Consequently, I decided that I should attempt to fashion something which faced, harmonized and hopefully quelled some of the cognitive dissonance on which I had been reared… celebrating and pairing the virtues of both sides, but also cautioning against the perils of clash and exclusivity. Interestingly though, in my pursuit to effectively craft paintings that portrayed both sides of my local past, I would end up turning to a culture that was continents and centuries away.
With encouraging insights of acculturation and social ingenuity, fusing the Regionalists’ imaginings (as patriarchal) and the symbolism of South-Asia (as matriarchal) became the answer to fashioning a visual vocabulary which best expressed the dual-faced components of my childhood. From here the formula for my work was clear in its aim: take objects or concepts (which either challenge or interest me) and then reinterpret them through this newfangled vocabulary.
Make no mistake: I’m still convinced that my parents exist in out of touch bubbles of ideology. Furthermore, these ideals (when allowed to run a muck) can be a source of tremendous limitation and dark consequences. But, I am also convinced that there is legitimate splendor in these bubbles.
What's more, ideals are a normal and healthy part of being human: trying to live in denial of this fact is not. Besides, isn’t it how we manage our ideology, not ideology itself, that gets us into trouble?
Even if neither side represents true reality… even if the notions within these ideals only exist as conceptual musings, the idea that freedom to pursue inner growth and spiritual expansion will bring one to a better place still represents something very real to me. And the same goes for the idea of a place where we are free to enhance, preserve and celebrate the traditional faces of our outer lands.
Which leaves me these options: 1) I can cling to a single side of my social inheritance and ignore a major part of myself. 2) I can do my best to detach and entertain an “idealess ideology,” chasing something that a certain consensus might view as more unchained and correct, yet would surely be artificial and restricting to me. 3) I can own up to, explore and put together something which synthesizes the double face of my heritage. As an artist, and more importantly as a human being, the last of these always seems like the most reasonable path.
