Then, Now and Tomorrow

It’s Finally Done!

I’ve never struggled with one of these photomontages for so long. However, Seventy Photoshop layers later I think I’ve accomplished my objectives. They are the following.

1. To appeal to a gay male audience through the use of the erotic male body.
2. To create the appearance that the viewer is looking through layers of time past, present and future, and through slight discrepancies in the divisions of space to indicate the possibility of chance and accident.
3. To reference American Precisionist painting, “a la” Charles Demuth through the superimposed transparent divisions in the picture plane.
4. To include references to gay and lesbian figures in history and American Literature, and finally the Constitution of the United States of America. I know the writers - if they could be placed in the 21st century and allowed to absorb the changes that have taken place since the 18th century - would agree that the USA is to be inclusive of all people regardless of race, color, religion or sexuality.
5. To include hidden references to my own family that place it firmly in the stream of American History.
6. To give direction to the viewer of the photograph to create his/her own narrative about the scenes, people, and animals presented – should he/she take the time to look closely enough – a Modern/Post-modern technique used early on by Marcel Duchamp and later by other Twentieth Century artists.

As I stated in the January 5, 2008 entry, once the artwork is complete and signed the artist gives it away, and the Art World, indeed, the world in general, will do with it as it will, and artistic intent… that remains to be reexamined in a post structural world.*

Be that as it may, the image’s crowded composition finally works. I just wish it didn’t have to be 8 x 10 inches. It really should be my usual 16 x 21 inch format, but the large format printer is in Delaware, and I’m in Florida. I do not have the funds to waste on having it printed larger, partially because the US economy is such that I am being cautious and frugal. So, I will print the image in 8 by 10 inch format as "proof #3,” since there have already been two small printed versions. At some point in the future I will print a run of ten, 16 x 21 inch prints as the actual first edition of the print.

*Derrida, Jacques. The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Ian McLeod (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 1987).