Learn About Jeremy Blake

My first impressions of Jeremy Blake’s work came from within a dark make shift theatre at the Blanton Museum of Art. I sat, bored and yet visually fixated on Jeremy Blake’s “time-based painting” Winchester, a digital video montage of images of the Winchester House, the mysterious Gothic mansion Heiress Sarah Winchester built to defend herself from the ghosts of people who were killed by the rifle. I was transfixed by the morphing images of the mansion, rifles, huntsmen, ink blots and abstracted colors ranges, but after 20 minutes I felt frustrated by the lack of any climatic release. I found the piece to be dreary and slow and likened it to a glorified screensaver.

Then a few weeks later, Jeremy Blake gave a lecture about his piece and his upcoming work on the film Punch-Drunk Love, in which his “time-based paintings” would be used through out the film as “hallucination sequences to represent the main character’s whirl of emotions at key points in the plot.” His explanation of abstraction as a technique of narrative caught my interest since it is not often used in sequential media such mainstream film. He also stated that he preferred to be a called a painter because he feels his paintings have “the sensitivity to form and color that one associates with traditional painting - even if he uses pixels and programs instead of oil paint.” After hearing the artist himself, I decided to approach his art with a different attitude. Unlike film, his time-based paintings have no imposed limitations of a plot or time frame because they are played in a continuous loop and they even transcend the limitations of traditional abstract painting. It is best described by Bill Davenport of Glasstire.com: "In a way, Blake's videos do what abstract painting always wanted to, but better. Relieved of the weight of history and the hackneyed romanticism of high art, they are the realization of Kandinsky's dream: stories told in an abstract language of shapes and colors, free to express mystical, spiritual forces and feelings directly, without the mundane literalness of representation."

Blake’s Punch-Drunk Love abstractions are more than representational imagery; it is an active character in the film, helping set the atmosphere and interacting with the narrative of the film. I came to appreciate Blake’s work by breaking down the limitations of my own expectations of sequential media. It is still a challenge to put those expectations aside from which I can understand why Jeremy Blake would prefer to be called a painter. He wants his work to be seen as an evolution of painting and not to be instantly categorized as another video art piece because then it will be judged as such, disregarding the actual context of his time-based painting style.

Research Sources:
Punch-Drunk Love and Jeremy Blake
Creative Time, Essay by Jeremy Blake
Acrylic: Contemporary Art Criticism
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Personal Note: I wrote this small essay up for my current art course. I thought you all might like to learn about Jeremy Blake. He is not a Valley artist but I think it's also important to keep ourselves informed of what's going on outside the community and step outside the box. I also hope that as I become more acquainted with the Valley art scene, I may be able to write more posts about local artists and their work. If you are an artist and want to see something about you on The Art of Brownsville send a few pictures, a statement and bio my way via email and voila! Until then, I will also continue to share as much information that I can provide about art.