ART, WHATEVER IT TAKES

Since the early pandemic in 2020, Rome Art Program has conducted a series of interviews, “Art, Whatever It Takes.”
Artists, Art Critics, and Art Historians living in Italy, the U.S., and U.K., share their insights during these powerful times.

Interview with Don Kimes

Don Kimes work has been included in more than 150 exhibitions internationally since the 1970’s. He divides his time between Washington DC, New York and Italy. Known for his mixed media paintings based on images salvaged from a flood that destroyed much of his life’s work in 2003, he unearths the beauty in tragedy, and rebirth from catastrophe.

RAP: What is your definition of “art” today?

Don Kimes: Cezanne said “Art is a religion. Its aim is the elevation of thought.” 150 years later that still works for me.

RAP: Art is dynamic and regenerates itself… how does it change, and how did it change us?

Don: Art takes the sum of our experience and adds to it in a meaningful way. In doing so, it deepens our understanding of that earlier experience.

RAP: When (and how) did you understand that art was becoming very important in your life?

Don: I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t important. As a small child I remember my grandfather, an insurance salesman, had reams of paper forms that were blank on one side. I would go to his house at 7:00 a.m. every Saturday morning and draw on them until dark.

RAP: What role does art play today? What are the “great figures” who have recently changed it? Do you feel close to any of these figures?

Don: Since the cave, art has played a primary role in discovering who we are, in elevating our consciousness and discovering our humanity. I saw a bumper sticker on a car that read “Life without art is stupid”. Simplistic? Yes. But I can’t argue with it. There are many artists I feel close to whose opinions I respect. The connection is less about the work and more about the sensibility. They are artists with whom I never find any transactional superficiality. These are the people who I can talk with about art and life for hours, and never once mention the art market, galleries, art fairs, careers or real estate. I don’t think we can see our own time because we’re immersed in it. Great figures for me arrive via the distant past. Maybe that’s because I know that I can be influenced by say, Raphael, or the frescoes in Pompeii, but it would be impossible to mimic them since I live in a different time. When I was younger I was impressed by some recent artists, but now I get more from spending time with Piero, Caravaggio, ancient art, Greek ruins and so on.

RAP: Are there still traditional figures such as collectors, muses, mecenate and patrons, in today’s art and society interaction model?

Don: We all have muses (the people, experiences and ideas that drive our work) but the rest of the question addresses the “art world”. The “art world” and the “world of art” are two entirely different beasts. The art world is the place where business happens. It blows with the wind and shifts as quickly as high frequency traders on Wall Street. It’s not bad or good. The world of art is where there is a connection to who we are as human beings, the place where art actually happens, sometimes in the surface wind, but more often it’s removed from that surface. It’s where everything of significance takes place: from the cave paintings at Chauvet to the frescoes in the Villa of the Mysteries, to the most meaningful artists working today. These two worlds are constantly being confused, but they are two different worlds that occasionally overlap. I hope that what happens in my studio sometimes bumps into the art world. There are tangible rewards when that happens. It can be a long, sometimes dark time between bumps, so a little attention feels good. It’s not about fighting against the art world. If one is lucky enough to have them overlap, that’s great. But if the work is to have any root in authenticity, the ability to last longer than the next change of art world weather, then it must be rooted in the world of art, not in relation to today’s societal interaction model.

RAP: How have the new technologies and media culture changed art today, improving or worsening it…? What do you feel are your biggest challenges?

Don: New technologies are just new tools. Would Leonardo have thought they worsened things? We get a lot from talking with other artists. That dialogue has become more frequent in this age of lockdowns and the cloud of wannabe fascism. I now talk with other artists in different parts of the world daily. That could never have happened pre-pandemic. My biggest challenges are common ones – The exigencies of day to day existence. Dealing with health issues, paying the bills and so forth. The bigger challenge is not to be isolated; to get the work seen; to talk with other artists about the work; to remain rooted in the world of art, while working to participate in the art world without being swallowed up by its more vacuous propensities.

RAP: Art as a mirror of man, in this moment of emergency seems to be shattered …what do these fragments reflect now?… Shadow or light of the moment?

Don: Both. It’s impossible to understand anything holistically. We always understand the world through fragments and layered bits of information. We put them into a pile and from that we abstract meaning. There is a lot of shadow, and a lot of light out there. The pandemic has led to millions of deaths worldwide, including too many close to me. But it’s also created “The Great Pause”, the opportunity to reassess our priorities, the way we do things. Shadow and light.

RAP: Understanding, interpreting, and then possibly judging the work of art; which is the right path when we are in front of a piece of art?

Don: Art is not fast food. It requires effort, a willingness to be open, empathy and awareness. There is no shortcut to those qualities. As Fats Waller said about jazz, “if you don’t get it, you ain’t got it.”

RAP: Which is the real role of Academies and Art schools today? What can artists learn from these institutions today?

Don: It’s the community, your peer group. In an art school the faculty has a new group of students every year, hundreds upon hundreds of former students, who they help in many ways during their early years. But for a few, they eventually forget most of their names. As a graduate student you only have the one or two dozen people with whom you went through art school. If it’s a good program they become your community, the artists you still talk to twenty years later when no one is looking at your work, you lost your gallery, your adjunct position was cancelled, the studio rent just doubled, and the abyss is looking ominous. At their best art schools can create a community that supports you in the good times and carries you through the dark times.

RAP: Art too has undergone a complex process of globalization; can having an authentic and genuine style be an advantage or a drag for an artist?

Don: It’s important to be aware of as much as one can globally. But if you set out to create a personal style, which is what a lot of current education is about, you come up with an academic artist statement and a superficial imitation of what you think is a personal style, but is really just an illustration of things you already know. Art isn’t about what you know. It’s about taking a chance on what you don’t know. It’s a long distance marathon. When I look at early and late Titian there’s clearly a kind of style that emerged over the course of his life. He didn’t decide to do that. It happened because the language that he developed early in his life allowed him to become Titian late in his life.

RAP: How do Art Galleries and Museums position themselves today, and, in your opinion, how should they?

Don: The pandemic changed everything. Except for the top secondary market galleries, nearly all brick and mortar spaces are now struggling to survive. Artists are beginning to find that they may not need the gallery model to survive. “Saleable work” is a small fraction of the kinds of work being done. Museums are increasingly dependent on ticket sales (translated: No risky shows). We are in the middle of a seismic shift in the “Art World” and galleries will need to adapt to survive.

RAP: “Figuration” vs “Abstraction”. Which of the two is better descriptive of the period we live in? Which one will have a better future?

Don: I’ve never accepted the whole “abstract/figurative” binary. As soon as we enter the world of thought everything is abstract. If I look at a Lucien Freud I don’t see an actual person. It’s flat. It’s made of oil and dirt mixed together. It’s a combination of colors, tones and line. My dog would not bark at it if it showed up in my living room. Titian, Rembrandt, Piero – these are some of the greatest abstract artists to ever walk the earth. They’re full of light, drama, tension, spirituality. In that sense they share the world with Mondrian or Hilma af Klint, as much as they do with figuration. The reason Goya is powerful isn’t because of the story he tells. It’s because of HOW he tells it. It’s because the form, the color, the light and the surface all come together in an inexplicable way that elevates the emotive quality of the image beyond the story itself. It’s all real, and abstract.

RAP: Today we often speak of “emerging artists”; what advice based on your experience do you feel you can give to young artists?

Don: If you think you know the answer you’re dead. Humility as well as confidence, and a willingness to change, are your allies. Build your own community. Then broaden it. Discover who you are by making art, not by talking about it. Choose people who choose you.

RAP: Art as a lens for reading the present, can it modify the space and time we pass through? …will art save us?

Don: All we have ever had is the present. Art can’t save us. Only “us” can save us. It feels good to send out virtue signals and preach to the choir, but that is empty satisfaction. If you want to save us you must get involved in the world. Live in the world. Experience it instead of just passing through. And after that, if we do save ourselves, art can help us find a higher level of what it means to be human.

www.donkimes.com