Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 14:03:41 -0500
From: mbarrett-AT-uncc.campus.mci.net (Michael Barrett)
Subject: Re: just a thought



faux finished car?, like making a Yugo look like a '39 Packard?
If art objects of antiquity were allowed to deteriorate, it would mean that
we didn't love them any more, or didn't consider them to be part of our
present lineage, an evolutionary dead end so to speak.
we maintain these things, either as museum relics, or as traditional
practices because we belive them to have some relevence as the root of some
contemporary mode of thinking/ doing things, wether or not that is good/
bad/ true/ false is another thingy all together


>I thought: what it might mean if the art objects of antiquity were allowed
>to age instead of being continually restored. (I liked the 'interior
>desecrator' term.) I wondered if 'faux finishing' might be applied to
>automobiles.
>
>/:b
>
>__
>
>On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Michael Barrett wrote:
>
>> I'm a painter who has just left undergraduate school and I'm in the process
>> of getting into graduate school, (just a little background), my work tends
>> to revolve around representation, and the concepts therein, so naturally I
>> paint in a "realist" fashion.  Now since I am mostly waiting to hear
>> results from the appllications I have sent out, I am working, using my
>> nostalgic rendering skills to make a little money.  I work for a small
>> mural painting and feaux finishing outfit which employs me in making the
>> homes of the upper/middle middle class "beautiful."  Beautiful involves
>> antiqued finishes on walls or furniture, or lush landscapes seen through
>> phony windows on a living room wall.
>>         Almost everything I have done in this line of work falls into two
>> categories.
>> 1. making things look really old
>> and/or
>> 2. referencing vaguely some european tradition.
>>
>> An interesting example:
>>         recently me and my bossman finished work on a newly built home in a
>> nouveau rich neighborhood just southeast of Charlotte, NC.  The homeowner
>> is a business man who immigrated from India some years ago with his wife,
>> and now is a successful home builder.  He oversaw the building of his own
>> home, which holds his office, his family, and could easily hold thirty
>> reletives.  Now what is strange to me, is that his home is the same
>> stucco-ed, greek revival, antebellum architecture that you could find
>> anywhere else in the neighborhood, no trace of Indian heritage,( and I
>> suppose one might want to fit in with their neighbors ) the interior of the
>> house features columns, and tray ceilings, and foot deep crown moulding,
>> and is decorated by my feaux finishing and the work of a wonderfully
>> stereotypical interior desecrator.
>> There is nothing in the house that even suggests the man is from India,
>> apart from a few books and trinkets.  The mass produced couch art is an
>> amalgam of old world images collaged together, antiqued, and framed in a
>> big dumb guilded frame.
>> One of the things I worked on was a brand spanking new brass and iron
>> railing for the stairs, which has been lovingly painted to look about a
>> hundred years old.
>>
>> It occured to me what I do for a living.
>>
>> I sell people a sensation of history, permanence, and tradition that they
>> can't experience truthfully, and can only afford as a well crafted
>> simulation.
>>
>> thoughts?
>>
>> -Michael
>>
>> -O^O-
>>   -
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
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-Michael

-O^O-
  -




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