Micha
Patiniott
The Anxiety of Creation: The Work of Micha Patiniott
Micha Patiniott dedicated his 2007 collection Broken Stereo to “[the] ability and failure of the human voice.” In his new collection, a series of paintings composed at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, he continues to consider this idea of human ability and failure, particularly as it applies to art. This new series focuses on the imagery of the book: the book as object, and the act of writing. The pieces are ultimately meditations on the unknown, as well as the special vulnerability, and the ensuing anxiety, involved in the creation process.
The pieces The Full Story and Paper Cut each illustrate Patiniott’s attitude towards the mystery with which artists must engage in order to create successful work. In The Full Story, we see a book in motion. (Has it been dropped? Is it on its way somewhere?) The simultaneous openness and fullness of the book, the sheer texture of pages (though we cannot see its text), suggests vitality. Patiniott as always is interested in objects and how they relate and move in a realm accessible to human mind and experience, and also how they move in a realm unknown to and inaccessible by us. What supernatural identity are we to grasp from the physicality of objects, their visual cues? The book in The Full Story offers no clue—that is, no text—apart from its motion. And—it is difficult to explain why this is so—such motion, to the eye, expresses particular joyfulness. The unknown is credited with a joyfulness we cannot explain but only sense in the instant before the book falls.
In Paper Cut, the object depicted is a stationary, open book. The texture wrought by the image of the cut paper draws our eye down into the blank page—down into the book—and in that very movement we are asked to consider the book’s contents. Why is the book seeking our attention; or, more accurately, why is Patiniott stressing this relationship between the gazer and the book? We understand, somehow, that the book, absorbing our attention, understands us better than we could ever understand what the book offers up to us; and in that tension, anxiety—the particular anxiety of creation—springs.
Different facets of this anxiety are portrayed in Dialogue and Bic Smile. In Dialogue we see two hands; text—not on the page, but adorning the hands—and a notebook. One hand seems to be writing; but the activity is hidden by the other hand, which covers it. The covering arm is darker—one could say, more substantial—than the other, writing hand. We must ask ourselves, since the activity of writing is suggested rather than made explicit: are these two real, physical hands? Do the hands belong to the same person? Or is only one hand imaginary? And if so, which one? Which one strives to tell? Which one seeks to obscure? And, if so, obscure from whom? Itself? The reader/gazer? This is the only piece in the series where we see direct engagement in writing (writing is depicted in Bic Smile, too, but differently). Here we witness the anxiety of writing, of inscription: the vulnerability and clumsiness suggested by the attempt to hide one hand from another, one intention from another. In the frenetic energy of the act, the text has somehow displaced itself, spreading from the book onto the arms. Or does the text originate from the arms, and make its way down onto the page? This is not clear, nor is it meant to be.
Finally, in Bic Smile, we see a writer herself. Patiniott’s writer stares somnolently at us, one half of her face deadened as if from a coma; she holds a pen up to her mouth, which is faintly smiling; there is ink staining the corners of her mouth. With her eyes and her subtle beckoning hand gesture, she invites us to witness what has happened—or what is in the process of happening. There is a certain shamelessness about her gaze, which is blatantly sexual—and at the same time there is bashfulness, timidity, bewilderment. The hand to her mouth, the biting of the pen in general could be a sign of shyness. It is both: a drawing in, and a deflection. As in Dialogue, we are watching a creation in progress: and, as in Dialogue, there is a longing to be hidden and revealed simultaneously.
There is the mystery of the blank page, and there is the attempt of human beings to wrest knowledge from it. These are portraits of that experience.
Amanda Coplin, 2008
Micha Patiniott dedicated his 2007 collection Broken Stereo to “[the] ability and failure of the human voice.” In his new collection, a series of paintings composed at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, he continues to consider this idea of human ability and failure, particularly as it applies to art. This new series focuses on the imagery of the book: the book as object, and the act of writing. The pieces are ultimately meditations on the unknown, as well as the special vulnerability, and the ensuing anxiety, involved in the creation process.
The pieces The Full Story and Paper Cut each illustrate Patiniott’s attitude towards the mystery with which artists must engage in order to create successful work. In The Full Story, we see a book in motion. (Has it been dropped? Is it on its way somewhere?) The simultaneous openness and fullness of the book, the sheer texture of pages (though we cannot see its text), suggests vitality. Patiniott as always is interested in objects and how they relate and move in a realm accessible to human mind and experience, and also how they move in a realm unknown to and inaccessible by us. What supernatural identity are we to grasp from the physicality of objects, their visual cues? The book in The Full Story offers no clue—that is, no text—apart from its motion. And—it is difficult to explain why this is so—such motion, to the eye, expresses particular joyfulness. The unknown is credited with a joyfulness we cannot explain but only sense in the instant before the book falls.
In Paper Cut, the object depicted is a stationary, open book. The texture wrought by the image of the cut paper draws our eye down into the blank page—down into the book—and in that very movement we are asked to consider the book’s contents. Why is the book seeking our attention; or, more accurately, why is Patiniott stressing this relationship between the gazer and the book? We understand, somehow, that the book, absorbing our attention, understands us better than we could ever understand what the book offers up to us; and in that tension, anxiety—the particular anxiety of creation—springs.
Different facets of this anxiety are portrayed in Dialogue and Bic Smile. In Dialogue we see two hands; text—not on the page, but adorning the hands—and a notebook. One hand seems to be writing; but the activity is hidden by the other hand, which covers it. The covering arm is darker—one could say, more substantial—than the other, writing hand. We must ask ourselves, since the activity of writing is suggested rather than made explicit: are these two real, physical hands? Do the hands belong to the same person? Or is only one hand imaginary? And if so, which one? Which one strives to tell? Which one seeks to obscure? And, if so, obscure from whom? Itself? The reader/gazer? This is the only piece in the series where we see direct engagement in writing (writing is depicted in Bic Smile, too, but differently). Here we witness the anxiety of writing, of inscription: the vulnerability and clumsiness suggested by the attempt to hide one hand from another, one intention from another. In the frenetic energy of the act, the text has somehow displaced itself, spreading from the book onto the arms. Or does the text originate from the arms, and make its way down onto the page? This is not clear, nor is it meant to be.
Finally, in Bic Smile, we see a writer herself. Patiniott’s writer stares somnolently at us, one half of her face deadened as if from a coma; she holds a pen up to her mouth, which is faintly smiling; there is ink staining the corners of her mouth. With her eyes and her subtle beckoning hand gesture, she invites us to witness what has happened—or what is in the process of happening. There is a certain shamelessness about her gaze, which is blatantly sexual—and at the same time there is bashfulness, timidity, bewilderment. The hand to her mouth, the biting of the pen in general could be a sign of shyness. It is both: a drawing in, and a deflection. As in Dialogue, we are watching a creation in progress: and, as in Dialogue, there is a longing to be hidden and revealed simultaneously.
There is the mystery of the blank page, and there is the attempt of human beings to wrest knowledge from it. These are portraits of that experience.
Amanda Coplin, 2008
