What Painting Is: How to Think about Oil Painting ... - Victoria Vesna

THE STUDIO AS A KIND OF PSYCHOSIS 141
The wooden walls seemed impregnated with the color of
clay, almost to the point of being made out of clay. We were
at the center of a world completely created by Giacometti, a
world composed of clay…. There was never the slightest
color accent anywhere to interfere with the endless uniform
grey that covered everything. 1
Sooner or later every one of a painter’s possessions will get
stained. First to go are the studio clothes and the old sneakers that
get the full shower of paint every day. Next are the painter’s
favorite books, the ones that have to be consulted in the studio.
Then come the better clothes, one after another as they are worn
just once into the studio and end up with the inevitable stain. The
last object to be stained is often the living room couch, the one
place where it is possible to relax in comfort and forget the studio.
When the couch is stained, the painter has become a different
creature from ordinary people, and there is no turning back.
No one who has not experienced that condition can understand
the odd feeling that accompanies it. When every possession is
marked with paint, it is like giving up civilian clothes for jail
house issue. The paint is like a rash, and no matter how careful a
painter is, in the end it is impossible not to spread the disease to
every belonging and each person who visits the studio. Some
artists keep fighting it, and they turn up for work wearing
clothes with only a few discrete stains. Others give way, and they
become funny mottled creatures, like GIs in perpetual
camouflage.
Working in a studio means leaving the clean world of normal
life and moving into a shadowy domain where everything bears
the marks of the singular obsession. Outside the studio, furniture
is clean and comfortable; inside, it is old and unpleasant. Outside,
walls are monochrome or pleasantly patterned in wallpaper;
inside, they are scarred with meaningless graffiti. Outside, floors
can be mopped and vacuumed; inside, they build up layers of
crusted paint that can only be scraped away or torn up with the
floor itself. The studio is a necessary insanity. Perhaps writers
have insanities of paper, or of erasers, but they cannot compare
with the multicolored dementia caused by fluids and stone.
Alchemy is the best model for this plague of paint, for the
selfimprisonment of the studio, and for the allure of insanity.
Alchemy, first of all, is a master of perversion. Its deviations