1981, Achilles/ Shield

1981, Achilles Shield

I have never left the ideas in these paintings behind. I lament the loss of much of the actual physicality these represented-- that formality though these were transgressing upon those rules of the time set by much Greenbergian rhetoric.

I constantly go back to bring these around again.

 John McCracken made the resin and fiberglass Shields. They came somewhat from a remark by John that artists wore their paintings on their arms like Shields. I was interested how they snapped the romantic surface of the Black and White to a present surface, reconciling the two opposites into a NOW! and we would clap our hands, NOW!

from Clouds, leaves, waves.

myth like in California. West

of all those other homes.

Tents set here, and whales sing

against that Christianity, 

as culture wastes, an older faith renews.

Ajax and Hector, silhouetted

on this urn, childlike Achilles, 

in profoundest disappointment.

I saw the Black and White as a continuing surface which the Shield brought to a fore, as cropping to the surface.