On Thursday, September 10, 2009, human being Joshua Hagler meets with painting “Trial of Hags the Dancing Clown” at their mutual studio to discuss life, art, and the upcoming group show
“Echo” at Frey Norris Gallery in which Hags the Dancing Clown will be on display.
Joshua Hagler: Clown, after spending the past two weeks with you, I have this burning question I’ve been meaning to ask, which is this: Are you a self-portrait of me?
Hags the Dancing Clown: Hm, good question. I don’t think so. I’m more of a caricature, a cartoon, a parody. I think a proper self-portrait must make more of an effort to be accurate and sincere, don’t you?
"Trial of Hags the Dancing Clown"
Joshua Hagler, oil on canvas, 95 x 77 in. 2009
JH: Well, I was trying to be conscious of the fact that for the upcoming group show, I was to make a painting that was informed in some way by Leonora Carrington’s "Red Mask." So I wanted you to depict a mask of my likeness, one step removed from achieving my more human likeness.
"Red Mask," Leonora Carrington, Mixed media sculpture (tanned leather, metal, feather, painted mirror & , Sculpture-Installation , 2x22 1/2x21 5/8 in, 5x57x55 cm, 1950
The Red Mask is only one of many masks Carrington made. Other masks show up in her paintings from time to time. The figures wearing them seem in most of the paintings to be presiding over rituals or ceremonies. Anyone in a mask is a priest, a judge possibly, an M.C. They require an audience, they have something on their minds, they have something behind a curtain that needs presenting, a thing of some nature that will persuade its audience one way or another.
Leonora Carrington
Clown: Is that what you intended me to be, Josh? A priest? An M.C.?
JH: Maybe a game show host.
Clown: A dancing clown?
JH: If a bullet through the head can be considered a dance.
Clown: It’s an unexpected relief to find myself very much alive. Why hasn’t the bullet killed me, Josh?
JH: The same reason the bullet didn’t kill Dr. Harold Edgerton’s apples.
Clown: Who is Harold Edgerton and who shot his apples?
JH: Harold Edgerton pioneered the use of stroboscopic light. He is often credited with inventing high speed photography. His apples were targets for speed trials being conducted.
Clown: Speed trials for the bullets, Josh?
JH: No Clown, for the camera lens, for the light, for everything that’s not seen. A bullet travels at about 1900 miles per hour, did you know that? Dr. Harold made visible for the human eye that which is not usually seen. Haven’t you seen the famous photos of the bullet passing through the apple and other fruit?
Clown: I’ve only been on planet Earth a fortnight now. I have much to learn. But let me see if I can put this together despite my recent inception. Basically, there is a cognitive illusion that takes place in the photos you found; we perceive the visible object as that which is being judged, when, in fact, the camera lens is what we must consider. The director is on trial, not the actor. The gawkers, not the car wreck or its mangled drivers. All the pacifists, the non-participants, the luke-warm, the uncommitted who, conveniently unseen, expect not to be judged, they are this time tried.
JH: I am one of them, and I am on trial.
There’s something I didn’t mention about why I became obsessed with the bullet-through-the-apple photo though. I had recently attended my uncle’s funeral, my uncle being one of my favorite people. I took a couple of his things as keepsakes, among them a .30 calibre bullet. I had used the bullet in my wall sculpture, “I am Ready to Believe” and had it in mind. The bullet in the photo looks exactly the same, and caused me to look at the photo in a new way. That’s when I discovered the subject of the photo to be the photo itself.
Clown: And how does that tie together with the 3D model, Red Mask, Dr. Harold’s apples?
JH: Who can guarantee it does?
Clown: But you can’t argue the natural proclivity that humans have for making connections. People will talk, Hagler. You know how much they hate it when you’re not clear.
JH: If clarity were my first concern, I would write instruction manuals.
Clown: Stop being dim. Look, Hagler, plainly when you look at the 3D models that
Andrew Klein made and that you used as supposed reference, I look almost nothing like it. Is your experiment a failed one?
JH: Maybe. I’m not sure. Painting from the model was too restrictive. It didn’t lend itself to my natural tendencies. I had no choice but to improvise.
Clown: So, finally, does the 3D model have anything at all to do with me?
JH: Yes, I think so. I mean, objectively I stayed very near the exploding head parts. But beyond that, the 3D model gave me the proper distance from myself. In the end I made a painting loosely based on a 3D model based on a photograph of my likeness. It was important to get away from the direct material.
Clown: That’s conceptually thin.
JH: I take issue with that accusation, Clown. The central problem addressed is something I think essential to anyone who wants, in some way, to find justification for the undertaking of any Sisyphean work, which, with enough distance from which to view it, is any work at all. But in communicating the ostensible value of the work, one risks misunderstanding, even resentment, but, most often, simple anonymity, alienation, desertion. In fact, so rare is this kind of understanding, this kind of reciprocity, that we feel a kind of communion in any circumstance allowing finally that our work be accepted, our minds to be at ease in knowing that permission is finally granted to push forward with acknowledgment from an audience.
In Carrington’s paintings, the mask wearers try to communicate, but what, specifically, they communicate is ambiguous. I interpret the mask as metaphor for external perceptions imposed on the individual by others, and by the individual toward himself. Much like the bullet is not the subject, the mask is not the subject. The subject is never seen because it exists between the artist and the canvas. The subject is the trial, the judgment, the proceedings themselves. The mask, at its best, is a reflection of the proceedings.
Take our conversation for instance. In my narrative, I am the protagonist and you the antagonist. We collaborate, but not really, because you don't exist; you exist only as a concept that I can use as a vehicle to engage in the proceedings. Even though you are a character in the narrative, you are not the subject anymore than I am. You’re a decoy made to seem equivalent to a painting, which is our subject of discussion, but you are not a painting at all. You do not even exist. The subject here is really the metaphysical space between storyteller and reader. In this case, and in many others, they are the same. The fictional pretense of our encounter is the mask I, as the author, wear. And this mask is a blank screen on which our narrative is projected; it is not the narrative itself. The narrative beneath our thinly constructed plot, that is you, a painting, antagonizing, me, an artist, is actually the narrative of how I imagine myself judged in undertaking the task of creating you.
Clown: So even this blog entry, this discussion, it’s phony? A series of self-indulgent diversions?
JH: Even if the painting and this discussion are alike in that they operate deceptively, they are deceptions that can still express something truthful.
Clown: You stole that idea from Picasso.
JH: Only sort of.
Clown: You steal everything. You don’t understand authenticity.
JH: What choice, Clown, have I otherwise?
Clown: So you accept yourself as inherently insincere? I knew it. Charlatan!
JH: I can perceive myself as sincere, but the perception, the mask, is what I’m occupied with. A mask worn for long enough becomes cliché. To be sincere about cliché is naïve indulgence. Many artists are sincere about their clichés. This is the embarrassing condition of immaturity. To comport oneself as incorruptibly sincere is to be seduced by one’s own unperceived cliché. To use your methods and tools to manipulate innumerable perceptions, that’s awareness.
Clown: Why do you give yourself the best lines?
JH: Why do you think?
Clown: I think it’s because you’re vain and insecure.
JH: You came from that vanity and insecurity. You should be thanking me for it.
Clown: I’m not letting you off the hook so easily. I find it interesting that in the case of the 3D model, we have an ephemeral device constructing something that doesn’t even exist in a physical sense, but exists nevertheless. The software can house your likeness but isn’t even conscious of your existence.
JH: Yes, I find that uncomfortable.
Clown: As I suspected. And I bet I can guess why. It exposes your own feelings of powerlessness and insignificance. You, as a human being, exist so briefly, whereas I will persist long after you’re gone. In your brief time here, you are so easily captured, but not easily understood--easily identified, but not easily remembered. Long after you’re gone,
the computer will contain a version of you visible in 360 degrees, to be molded, changed, projected, disassembled, reassembled all with complete indifference. Neither the computer nor its user will assist in accommodating your dying wishes. They will not even revolt against the fulfillment of such wishes. They will simply not be aware of them, as if you never existed at all.
The inclusion of your own vanity and insecurity are of no interest to me anymore than they would be to the computer, to the 3D model, to the hypothetical future computer user.
Just as you stole everything else, you stole Narcissus and Sisyphus and Carrington’s ideas and Andrew Klein’s honest labor. You stole the word “Trial” from Kafka, Sisyphus from Camus.
What else did you steal, Hagler?
JH: I’m not sure.
Clown: What about your uncle’s bullet?
JH: Probably. I didn’t think of it before, but yes, I suppose I did. He was only 49. He was not known to the world, but he was my uncle and I related to him strongly even though I only made rare visits.
Clown: You think that we should care more about your painting because your uncle died? You think your mourning interests people? Are you even really mourning?
JH: Not really. I would say I’m panicking.
Clown: Panic. You always panic. Each of your paintings was made out of panic. That’s all that informs you.
JH: Maybe. But I’ve learned to be exuberant in my panic. I’ve learned to celebrate it.
Clown: What about your audience?
JH: What audience?
Clown: Those reading this right now.
JH: It would surprise me to find many who have read this far.
Clown: Why should they? You expect too much from your audience. You want justification for your work, for your life, but you simply don't deserve it. You fail to relate, to involve yourself in the proceedings, to commune with people on their terms instead of your own. The inventions of your mind are of no utility for the proceedings of the everyday. You are not saving lives. You are not making a difference. The world is not in need of your undertakings. Tell the jury what they usually tell you about your art.
JH: They usually tell me it scares them.
Clown: Is that what you want?
JH: No.
Clown: What do you want then?
JH: I want to inspire them.
Clown: Really? Is that one of those clichés you say artists are often sincere about?
JH: Yes. I didn’t say I wasn’t one of them. I admit I can be sentimental. I don’t lament that my work is challenging but I would prefer to communicate rather than frighten.
Clown: But originally, you wanted to get under the skin of a few specific people, isn’t that right? You were one of them, a born-again Christian, and you felt disillusioned and you wanted to prove something.
"The Same Every Christmas"
Joshua Hagler, 22 x 22 in., oil on wood panel, 2006JH: Maybe I did once. I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think my will has turned inward. I am all too aware of the absurdity that comes with my propensity for dramatic tension. I always have the sense that I’m on trial. Perhaps that comes from my history with religion. But that’s why I made you. Even now you are doing exactly what I hoped you would. That’s where vanity and a sense of uselessness come in.
Clown: Because you’re full of yourself and repeat the same pointless task day in and day out.
JH: Narcissus was cursed to obsess over his reflection; it wasn’t a choice he woke up and made one day. Neither was it the choice of Sisyphus to repeat himself beneath the burden of his own pointlessness.
Clown: And the trial?
JH: It’s still ongoing. The bullet through the mask isn’t the result of the verdict, isn’t the punishment for guilt; it’s a hint of the procession of the trial itself. It asks you to look beyond the frame. It’s the one clue I give in the painting to the trial that’s going on between myself and you, and between them and you--you who might be confused for me. The evidence presented to the jury is in the diminishing mask. When there is no more mask, the presence of authenticity will, by the jury, which is history, be found or not. All that can be said for now is that I am a clown who dances, and, like Kafka’s Joseph K., you are the cartoon character who will withstand it on my behalf.
"I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it much like myself--so like a brother, really--I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."
--Albert Camus, from
The Stranger.
