To recap and analyze in the year 2002 the Large Watercolors of 1981-1982
by "Source and Goal,"  "Medium, Method and Outcome"
and "Subject, Form and Content"...

The Source and Goal...
The source of this work was my desire for fame.  See the first entry about that source in the Studio Notes:

“March 2, 1981.  Start on the large watercolors.  … Why am I trying to make these big paintings?  Because I want to make things like my buddies, and the world expects it.  Is that a good enough reason?  Well, it all depends on how the paintings come out…

How the paintings came out was that I had a show, sold one painting, did not get a review and did not look at the paintings again for twenty years.  I did not get famous.

The goal was not attained.

But there was so soon another source—an “origin” that drove all others until the abrupt end of the series at the end of July 1982.  That source was the origin that came out when I made the painting about :"Source and Goal" twenty years later (#16, January 2002 Origin and Outcome), that source being “It was my body was all I ever drew.”  And as the studio notes reveal in case it does it not hit the viewer in the face anyway, the goal of drawing my body was achieved.  No, no fame; but yes, my body in all its passion and grandeur—and not only my body but the body of Everyman, his source in sexuality and its goal in procreation—out of the past, through the present and into the future.  As in the painting and notes for August 22-24, 1981.

“August 23, 1981.  “Either, I am not Priapus, no matter how much I like sex, because invariably when I go down inside myself to be him, I find something else, like this river (of generation, of life); or, Priapus is not in truth like he has come down to us, the rutting stud… twisted out of the sweet flowing stream of grain and sperm into that Victorian devil person, creation of the frustrations and repressions of the Christian era.  “I suppose those negatives were necessary at the end of the Roman Empire to eradicate the habit of insatiable lust that seemed to be the cultural norm…but in the process, they seemed to destroy all the sweetness of life in the flesh: this whole river of sweet, pure water.

“River, spring, waterfall and moon… “moon river” with setting sun.
                                   (Click here for the painting)

And, from October 1981:  And I will die, my body will be dispersed to the four quarters of the globe.  It will never return.  With Caesar, I will be a bit of clay to stop a hole to keep the wind away.  And I will be also in the blood, the memory and the sperm of generations yet unborn.  I am of the river of the fathers; I am of the womb of the mothers.

The Medium, Method, and Outcome…
The medium was transparent watercolor, ink and gouache, and I used those media because their response was immediate—they spoke to me and I to them in a conversation more like a dance than a method of painting.  The outcome of medium and method was these large watercolors which did not make me famous but which did objectify in the physical world the life energy pounding in my body and mind.

The Subject, Form and Content…
The apparent but only momentary subject of most of this work was mere splashes on the paper; but the subject which usually and quickly appeared was various symbols of the sexual organs.  The form was abstract expressionist—the form which had arisen naturally early in my work (1947) before I had any contact with any established form of the style, and before the style itself had been invented in the critical discourse of the avant garde New York art world.  The content of the work was the roaring power of the sexuality coursing through my body, the life force streaming in me and in the world.

*

The series of works ended with the end of June1982.  During the spring of 1982 I had the show which did not make me famous, and by May I felt I was beginning to repeat myself.  I made a series of squares about the “Cultural History of the Earth” for a graduate seminar—and then my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.  The thought of making things to make me famous disappeared in a day.  I made no paintings for several months, and when I began again the work was not so much the passion of life in its dance, but the war of life against death in the public silence but very intense private prayer of the heart.

  Click the thumbnail for 
  "A Cultural History of the Earth"   

 Links to all 1981-1982 Large Watercolors...  
 February-March, 1981   April-May, 1981   June, 1981
 July 1981   August 1981   September 1981
 October 1981   November 1981   December 1981
 January-March 1982   April-July 1982

Click here for Directory to all 1981-1991 paintings
Click here for directory to all paintings