But what if he one day took up crochet?
Thursday, at the Art Institute in Chicago I got to wander, almost alone, through the exhibition of his works. Immediately, the gigantic swirls remind me of tangled yarn, the stamped flowers fabric (indeed many were created with the roller stamps used to paint walls to look like wallpaper, which, if you recall, years ago might have been, silk tapestry.), even the blotches and layered work like projects I have worked with multiple fibers, or reworked over and over throughout the years.
some yarn i have
I sat often, and long, and looked, and drifted within the layers; eyes following the tangles until they were often words or faces, subimages. I was so greatful for the the benches. So often there are only a couple within a large exhibit. I want to spend time with these paintings and cannot stand for as long as I want to. But the benches aren't my only viewpoint. I see the paintings from across the room. I march right up to them and lean in, eyeballs as close as the guards will let me. I take closeup shots with my cheap camera. Then i walk back until I can get the whole painting in my frame. Snap. Its marvelous that I can take these pictures. I'll post them later to my computer and display them in a slide show on my large tv screen hanging from the wall next to the bed.
a small piece of Wool's Untitled, 1995
Infrequently, others drifted by. How an they see these painting without stopping? How can I leave?
They're large. Hundreds of cm tall and wide. Enamel on metal. Silkscreen on linen. Images to remember. To get lost in. They'd make good pictures on sheets.
I read later that he grew up here in Chicago, the South Side in the 60's. Later, in the 70's he went to art school in New York City. His father a molecular biology professor, his mother a psychiatrist. I too am a child who spent her teens and early twenties in that period of social unrest and cultural dissent. Is that why his work speaks to me? Unlike Wool, I had no formal art training until my late fifties. But I knit and embroidered and made outlandish clothes.
The exhibit at the Art Institute also displays some of his iconic 'word paintings', large block letters spell out common words across a substrate without any nod to fitting the word or words as you might on a page. So, a painting might say spokesman but as
SPO
KES
MAN
slows down your ability to read it right? you should see the one's with many words. hard to decipher.
It strikes me that I could do something like that by knitting words into my next garment. I wouldn't worry that you couldn't read them quickly, it wouldn't be like a t-shirt where you wanted to display a slogan, but would be a display on the figuraity of letters and words, instead of their meaning. Of course, you'd try to read them anyways, and that would, like the viewing of Wool's word pictures, pull you into the art, make you part of the performance. My moving in the garment, changing the appearance of the letters and making it even more difficult for you to read it, another dimension.
Would, if I riffed off his swirly, layers, spotchy, erasured bits, and knit over a crocheted motif , crocheted over a knit cable, strung loose yarn about, or painted across it, would I get something that gave you chills as you thought you saw hidden in the bits something else? A dancing ghostly presence, a chorus of wee people?
Untitled, 2009
I'd probably get a mess. 10 times. Maybe 100. And yet, perhaps, one result would be something I cared about, something that might mean something to you. After all, we don't get to see the 100 painting's he painted over or burned at midnight. We didn't sit in his studio day after day to see the painting grow into the marvel hung in the gallery today.
And what might Mr. Wool say about that one hat we like? (and why would I care?)
I've read that he takes lots of photographs. Collects them in his own albums. Some of this pictures are in the catalog. I can see loops of hose, the tangle of wild flowers and their stems, faded ceiling painting, a cat almost hidden by the dark and dirty alley eyes shining in the light, junk overflowing a large truck as it travels down a road, telephone poles and wires.
He captures what he sees, then makes things to be looked at. "What he makes pours over your eyeballs" (Richard Prince) ...and enters your brain, what do you see when Christopher Wool is in your brain...(paraphrased)
Some people, like Christopher Wool, makes the things of our unconscious out of the images of everyday. Some people write about people like him. Some of us our inspired by him.
Would that all our time was there in that space all of the time.
