David Mattingly - New Dada Shoe - 1997
David Mattingly
David Mattingly Poetry and Prose booklets 1980s
related pages:
Gabble Ratchet
Active Listener
Bright Too Late
1983 Poetry Readings
David Mattingly Poetry and Prose booklets 1980s
related pages:
Gabble Ratchet
Active Listener
Bright Too Late
1983 Poetry Readings
There was nothing in my family history that would have indicated I would eventually cultivate a life that is intimately related to that of being an artist. My family background was just not formative in this regard. I do remember doing some cartoon drawings when I was in the 6th grade or so. And I have a couple of vivid memories of recognizing very cool art when I was a child, but none of these hazy memories is related to my upbringing. I wrote an essay about 9 years ago about receiving a poor grade for a drawing I did in the 6th grade (Soaring Softly Issue 6 Spring 2006). That was one of my most vivid memories of visual art from my childhood. It was not a traumatic event by any means, just one that I really remember.
If anything, what stood out about my childhood was music and fake performances associated with that music. I used to listen to a lot of Elvis when I was a little boy and I would put on an album of his and sing to his songs and everyone used to gather around and humor me and watch. It was all very silly and brash. I imagine I was about 7 years old at that time. Later, when I was in the 6th grade or so, I formed a fake band with some friends. We would go out into the garage of one of my friends and put on Beatles records and pretend we were actually the Beatles. A few times we would even invite some girls from our neighborhood to come and watch. It was silly performance stuff, like karaoke in a way. It was silly for sure, but at least it was a way to express ourselves.
I started writing poetry in about my junior year in high school. I think only one poem from those years has survived. It was all very bad writing. But at least I was trying something. I continued writing bad poetry for a long time. Like painting, I feel like with poetry I have only figured things out in the last 15 years or so. I write a lot fewer poems but I think they are much better.
I remember stumbling onto cutout copies of Richard Brautigan books in a Zayres store (1977) and I bought a copy of each one. The covers were so cool, I could not resist. This was my first bump into good writing. His writing stayed with me for a long time.
After a stint in the Air Force (1974-1978), I returned home to Indianapolis and began hanging out with Rick Karcasheff. He had a part time job in a record store and we would just hang out at his house or my apartment and listen to music. He was a wealth of knowledge compared to what I knew then and he always had cool stuff to listen to. He also recommended books and films. For a while we were inseparable and had many magical moments together. I would have to give Rick credit (as do a lot of other people) for exposing me to many alternative things. At a certain moment, we even began making music together and did so for 4 or 5 years under several different band names: Gabble Ratchet, Bright Too Late. We would have late night jam sessions at his house that were amazing. There were usually other people who joined us.
At Rick's house too, we had two very important poetry readings: Poetry for a Nude Descending, and Poetry for Monkeys. We also wrote and edited our own zine called Active Listener. I think we put out 6 issues or so before stopping but this zine made a little splash in the DIY movement of that time period. It was circulated around the world pretty well and there are copies of it in the IUPUI archives today.
Rick and I also attended and read a couple of times at the Alley Cat Poetry readings. For one of the readings we did a bunch of shots of tequila and read a poem together at the same time. I think it was not very good. But it was something a bit different than what was going on there, though there were some pretty good writers who attended in those days.
In 1980 or so, I saw a short documentary on the painter Jackson Pollock at Rick's house. It made a pretty big impact. I immediately went out and bought some cheap paints and canvas boards and tried my hand at painting. I have kept it up pretty much since that time though there have been droughts in various time periods.
I would have to say as far as a body of work in different areas, I have done pretty well for myself. I have been involved in the publication of numerous zines, including Active Listener and Soaring Softly. I have published 15 chapbooks of poetry and drawings, written about other artists, participate in making experimental and noise music, made a couple of short films, owned and operated 3 legitimate art galleries and curated and exhibited nearly 80 exhibitions in those galleries.
I am still working today. I currently have a studio in the Stutz Building and recently completed an epic series called the Documentation Series. It has taken me 20 years to finish this obsessive work. I have not shown the series to anyone yet but may exhibit it in the next year or so.
I still listen to alternative and avant-garde music. My latest interest is with the Sex Pistols.
I am constantly reading non-fiction. It informs my work. I read almost exclusively about art history.
I have a concentration on Dadaism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, but I am interested in almost all facets of art history. I authored and teach a high school class called Writing About Visual Art and have a bit of an opportunity to put some of my knowledge to use in a faux academic setting. My library is extensive and very cool. I am also an archivist. I have an extensive file system and have been building it for nearly 30 years.
If anything, what stood out about my childhood was music and fake performances associated with that music. I used to listen to a lot of Elvis when I was a little boy and I would put on an album of his and sing to his songs and everyone used to gather around and humor me and watch. It was all very silly and brash. I imagine I was about 7 years old at that time. Later, when I was in the 6th grade or so, I formed a fake band with some friends. We would go out into the garage of one of my friends and put on Beatles records and pretend we were actually the Beatles. A few times we would even invite some girls from our neighborhood to come and watch. It was silly performance stuff, like karaoke in a way. It was silly for sure, but at least it was a way to express ourselves.
I started writing poetry in about my junior year in high school. I think only one poem from those years has survived. It was all very bad writing. But at least I was trying something. I continued writing bad poetry for a long time. Like painting, I feel like with poetry I have only figured things out in the last 15 years or so. I write a lot fewer poems but I think they are much better.
I remember stumbling onto cutout copies of Richard Brautigan books in a Zayres store (1977) and I bought a copy of each one. The covers were so cool, I could not resist. This was my first bump into good writing. His writing stayed with me for a long time.
After a stint in the Air Force (1974-1978), I returned home to Indianapolis and began hanging out with Rick Karcasheff. He had a part time job in a record store and we would just hang out at his house or my apartment and listen to music. He was a wealth of knowledge compared to what I knew then and he always had cool stuff to listen to. He also recommended books and films. For a while we were inseparable and had many magical moments together. I would have to give Rick credit (as do a lot of other people) for exposing me to many alternative things. At a certain moment, we even began making music together and did so for 4 or 5 years under several different band names: Gabble Ratchet, Bright Too Late. We would have late night jam sessions at his house that were amazing. There were usually other people who joined us.
At Rick's house too, we had two very important poetry readings: Poetry for a Nude Descending, and Poetry for Monkeys. We also wrote and edited our own zine called Active Listener. I think we put out 6 issues or so before stopping but this zine made a little splash in the DIY movement of that time period. It was circulated around the world pretty well and there are copies of it in the IUPUI archives today.
Rick and I also attended and read a couple of times at the Alley Cat Poetry readings. For one of the readings we did a bunch of shots of tequila and read a poem together at the same time. I think it was not very good. But it was something a bit different than what was going on there, though there were some pretty good writers who attended in those days.
In 1980 or so, I saw a short documentary on the painter Jackson Pollock at Rick's house. It made a pretty big impact. I immediately went out and bought some cheap paints and canvas boards and tried my hand at painting. I have kept it up pretty much since that time though there have been droughts in various time periods.
I would have to say as far as a body of work in different areas, I have done pretty well for myself. I have been involved in the publication of numerous zines, including Active Listener and Soaring Softly. I have published 15 chapbooks of poetry and drawings, written about other artists, participate in making experimental and noise music, made a couple of short films, owned and operated 3 legitimate art galleries and curated and exhibited nearly 80 exhibitions in those galleries.
I am still working today. I currently have a studio in the Stutz Building and recently completed an epic series called the Documentation Series. It has taken me 20 years to finish this obsessive work. I have not shown the series to anyone yet but may exhibit it in the next year or so.
I still listen to alternative and avant-garde music. My latest interest is with the Sex Pistols.
I am constantly reading non-fiction. It informs my work. I read almost exclusively about art history.
I have a concentration on Dadaism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism, but I am interested in almost all facets of art history. I authored and teach a high school class called Writing About Visual Art and have a bit of an opportunity to put some of my knowledge to use in a faux academic setting. My library is extensive and very cool. I am also an archivist. I have an extensive file system and have been building it for nearly 30 years.
three artist statements by David Mattingly
Statement
I have no theories to offer or axes to grind.
I believe that any type of statement by an artist about art is never complete.
I dislike art that is too preachy or direct with a moral message
I do not think it is the job of the artist to be burdened with teaching morality lessons to the masses or the privileged few. An artist is not a street preacher. However, if an artist chooses to take on that responsibility, that is okay.
The idea that the artist has a strong moral obligation to try to change an ineffective, self-serving, corrupt political system is absurd.
I prefer art that is oblique in its critique of society.
Artists know that voting is a waste of time.
Although I am not formally trained, it is not accurate to say that I am a naïve artist or an outsider artist. I do have a fairly competent grasp of modernism and post- modern ideas.
When I first started painting, in about 1980 or 1981, I really admired the Dadaists. I felt like they made good playmates. After them, I fell under the spell of the New York School painters. I also really admired the passion and idealism of the Russian Suprematists. Back then I had a bone to pick with realism. I almost always rejected any representational styles of painting, but within the past five years or so, I have developed a fondness for many other styles of painting, though much of the academic stuff goes in one ear and out the other.
In some ways, I do not even consider myself to be an artist. For me, the term often has too much baggage associated with it.
I have no painterly skills to speak of.
Skill and technique are of little or no consideration when I am working.
I look for immediacy in art and emotion and the primitive.
The communication of directness is very important to me.
My only motive is to create works of art that please me.
If others are moved to label this approach self-indulgent or retarder, that is their business. It doesn’t matter. There is enough bad art to go around for everyone.
The problem with art critics and academics is that they make the criticism more important than the actual art.
The best art critics are artists.
Where creating art is concerned, I believe in the three Ps: pillaging, plundering, and plagiarism.
I am very big on the modernist strategy of appropriation.
Most of my work has an element of free-association.
I like to give the impression that my work has some deep, underlying meaning when really it doesn’t.
I seldom work at themes or motifs, though if you look at my work it may appear otherwise. For example, I tend to use a lot of fish, birds, and butterflies. But for me to say I do it for a psychological reason would be misleading.
Mainly I do what I do because it pleases me, not because I am driven or possessed or pissed or inspired by the mythical muse.
I am against tradition for tradition’s sake though I respect what has come before.
I am against flimsy stereotypes of culture and cultural identity, especially as THE primary means for building individual identity.
The individual should come before the group.
The ideas of roots, ethnicity, and culture are not of much use to me. I believe these ideas build walls instead of tearing them down.
I prefer universal ideas over ideas that are particular or peculiar to a single culture.
We live in such a diverse world that today anyone can do almost anything he chooses, where art is concerned, and it is valid.
Here are several statements by artists I admire that have helped me along:
“Technique is only a means of arriving at a statement.” Jackson Pollock
“Art can’t save anyone from anything.” Jasper Johns
“I dislike art that is too finely finished or too suave.” Robert Motherwell
This statement was written sometime in the early 1990s, I think. It has since been revised several times.
Statement
The emergence of abstract art is one sign that there are still men able to assert feeling in the world. Men who know how to respect and follow their inner feelings, no matter how irrational or absurd they may first appear. From their perspective it is the social world that tends to appear irrational and absurd.
---Robert Motherwell, from What Abstract Art Means to Me
I have been a painter for over twenty years. I believe that I approach art from a pure perspective. As an artist, I am untrained in the conventional sense. But I am not an outsider artist because I have been influenced by modernism, especially by painters in the first half of the twentieth century. Maybe I fit into a new genre of artist, the insider artist. That is, one who is not formally trained at an art school but who has a working knowledge of modern art vocabulary and ideas. I am not interested in learning or executing formal techniques. My training takes the form of reading art books, looking at pictures and visiting museums and galleries.
My main goal is to use the gesture to demonstrate feeling. I am not interested in illustrating or copying from nature. I use the gesture, mark, or rub to create sensitivity.
Robert Motherwell has said that part of the artist’s attitude “arose from a feeling of being ill at ease in the universe…” He believes that creating art is, at least in part, an attempt to “wed one’s self to the universe, to unify oneself through union.” I try to absorb these words so that they become meaningful. I the past, I rejected the idea that my art was a response to a mood or experience. Now it seems more likely that what I create is a response to a personal experience.
The paintings in this group grew out of a response to the passing of my dog Jasper. They are visual analogs to the range of feelings I experienced with his death. At first, I felt silly acknowledging this but gradually grew to accept that it was appropriate to express my feelings about losing him through this group of paintings. I am reluctant to claim that these works are therapeutic, but they are very personal.
I hope that embedded in my subjectivity is a universal spirit. This spirit, which I claim is a nuance of my work, embodies warmth and sensitivity.
January 20, 2005 (from the Jasper Series shown at Galerie Penumbra)
Statement
“Those who are unable to understand are requested by me to adopt an attitude of complete submission and inferiority.”
---Erik Satie
“As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good. I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it.”
---Marcel Duchamp
“If you meant it enough when you did it, it will mean that much.”
---Franz Kline
“Art is a productive thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.”
---Tristan Tzara
Guideposts
Probably the less I say about my work, the better off you will be. Artists hardly ever know when to shut-up. The drone on and on and on about how important their work is but in the end they have said very little.
Just try to enjoy, make your own connections, form your own opinions, and above all else remember: it’s not that important, really.
August 7, 2009 From the show 31 Objects at Hidden Noise Art Space
Statement
I have no theories to offer or axes to grind.
I believe that any type of statement by an artist about art is never complete.
I dislike art that is too preachy or direct with a moral message
I do not think it is the job of the artist to be burdened with teaching morality lessons to the masses or the privileged few. An artist is not a street preacher. However, if an artist chooses to take on that responsibility, that is okay.
The idea that the artist has a strong moral obligation to try to change an ineffective, self-serving, corrupt political system is absurd.
I prefer art that is oblique in its critique of society.
Artists know that voting is a waste of time.
Although I am not formally trained, it is not accurate to say that I am a naïve artist or an outsider artist. I do have a fairly competent grasp of modernism and post- modern ideas.
When I first started painting, in about 1980 or 1981, I really admired the Dadaists. I felt like they made good playmates. After them, I fell under the spell of the New York School painters. I also really admired the passion and idealism of the Russian Suprematists. Back then I had a bone to pick with realism. I almost always rejected any representational styles of painting, but within the past five years or so, I have developed a fondness for many other styles of painting, though much of the academic stuff goes in one ear and out the other.
In some ways, I do not even consider myself to be an artist. For me, the term often has too much baggage associated with it.
I have no painterly skills to speak of.
Skill and technique are of little or no consideration when I am working.
I look for immediacy in art and emotion and the primitive.
The communication of directness is very important to me.
My only motive is to create works of art that please me.
If others are moved to label this approach self-indulgent or retarder, that is their business. It doesn’t matter. There is enough bad art to go around for everyone.
The problem with art critics and academics is that they make the criticism more important than the actual art.
The best art critics are artists.
Where creating art is concerned, I believe in the three Ps: pillaging, plundering, and plagiarism.
I am very big on the modernist strategy of appropriation.
Most of my work has an element of free-association.
I like to give the impression that my work has some deep, underlying meaning when really it doesn’t.
I seldom work at themes or motifs, though if you look at my work it may appear otherwise. For example, I tend to use a lot of fish, birds, and butterflies. But for me to say I do it for a psychological reason would be misleading.
Mainly I do what I do because it pleases me, not because I am driven or possessed or pissed or inspired by the mythical muse.
I am against tradition for tradition’s sake though I respect what has come before.
I am against flimsy stereotypes of culture and cultural identity, especially as THE primary means for building individual identity.
The individual should come before the group.
The ideas of roots, ethnicity, and culture are not of much use to me. I believe these ideas build walls instead of tearing them down.
I prefer universal ideas over ideas that are particular or peculiar to a single culture.
We live in such a diverse world that today anyone can do almost anything he chooses, where art is concerned, and it is valid.
Here are several statements by artists I admire that have helped me along:
“Technique is only a means of arriving at a statement.” Jackson Pollock
“Art can’t save anyone from anything.” Jasper Johns
“I dislike art that is too finely finished or too suave.” Robert Motherwell
This statement was written sometime in the early 1990s, I think. It has since been revised several times.
Statement
The emergence of abstract art is one sign that there are still men able to assert feeling in the world. Men who know how to respect and follow their inner feelings, no matter how irrational or absurd they may first appear. From their perspective it is the social world that tends to appear irrational and absurd.
---Robert Motherwell, from What Abstract Art Means to Me
I have been a painter for over twenty years. I believe that I approach art from a pure perspective. As an artist, I am untrained in the conventional sense. But I am not an outsider artist because I have been influenced by modernism, especially by painters in the first half of the twentieth century. Maybe I fit into a new genre of artist, the insider artist. That is, one who is not formally trained at an art school but who has a working knowledge of modern art vocabulary and ideas. I am not interested in learning or executing formal techniques. My training takes the form of reading art books, looking at pictures and visiting museums and galleries.
My main goal is to use the gesture to demonstrate feeling. I am not interested in illustrating or copying from nature. I use the gesture, mark, or rub to create sensitivity.
Robert Motherwell has said that part of the artist’s attitude “arose from a feeling of being ill at ease in the universe…” He believes that creating art is, at least in part, an attempt to “wed one’s self to the universe, to unify oneself through union.” I try to absorb these words so that they become meaningful. I the past, I rejected the idea that my art was a response to a mood or experience. Now it seems more likely that what I create is a response to a personal experience.
The paintings in this group grew out of a response to the passing of my dog Jasper. They are visual analogs to the range of feelings I experienced with his death. At first, I felt silly acknowledging this but gradually grew to accept that it was appropriate to express my feelings about losing him through this group of paintings. I am reluctant to claim that these works are therapeutic, but they are very personal.
I hope that embedded in my subjectivity is a universal spirit. This spirit, which I claim is a nuance of my work, embodies warmth and sensitivity.
January 20, 2005 (from the Jasper Series shown at Galerie Penumbra)
Statement
“Those who are unable to understand are requested by me to adopt an attitude of complete submission and inferiority.”
---Erik Satie
“As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good. I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it.”
---Marcel Duchamp
“If you meant it enough when you did it, it will mean that much.”
---Franz Kline
“Art is a productive thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.”
---Tristan Tzara
Guideposts
- Ambiguity is not only okay, it is desirable.
- Alfred Jarry maintained that all meanings that can be discovered in a text are equally legitimate.
- Ambiguity aims beyond vagueness at inclusiveness.
- Animism is alive and well for the artist who uses found objects.
Probably the less I say about my work, the better off you will be. Artists hardly ever know when to shut-up. The drone on and on and on about how important their work is but in the end they have said very little.
Just try to enjoy, make your own connections, form your own opinions, and above all else remember: it’s not that important, really.
August 7, 2009 From the show 31 Objects at Hidden Noise Art Space