Leave Sleeping Paintings Lie
Both Cath and I are avid movie fans. We’ve got a personal collection that we could probably start renting out that is, if people were still interested in watching VHS. We don’t mind it. Our VCR’s still work and I can get old tapes from Eddie at his used book shop Dencan Books and Magazines for less than $2 a pop. Why buy it on DVD for ten times the amount?
On many of those VHS tapes are movies that were made several decades ago, classics of yesteryear as far as I’m concerned. Lately, in the movie industry, Cath and I have noticed a terrible trend of remakes being released, remakes based on these classic films. It seems that the movie industry is at a loss for new ideas and remoulding old films is the only way to produce anything ‘new’.
We’ve seen the release of My Bloody Valentine in 3D, a Friday the 13th remake, Nightmare on Elm Street, Child’s Play, a remake of Children of the Corn which will be truer to the book, truer than the 1984 version was at any rate, etc. The list goes on. Every time we turn around there seems to be another movie revisiting the past.
Well, why not Art too?
I’ve often thought about going back to some of my old paintings and revamping them. Now that I’ve matured for several years and my skills have grown, the old paintings that I’ve got kicking around the apartment might benefit from a fresh coat of paint. Maybe I can give them a new lease on life? Maybe they could be my next masterpieces?
I could clean up the wayward brushstrokes that I didn’t notice when I first painted them. I could add some new elements, characters or objects that I wasn’t able to paint when I first approached the subject. I could be the George Lucas of Surrealism! I could stuff a dance number right into the middle of one of my old paintings just like George did in Return of the Jedi! That’ll make it better! (Someday I’ll meet George Lucas. I’ll shake his hand for making Star Wars then I’ll gut-punch him for ruining it.)
Every time I think like this I have to stop myself. Artists invariably produce more artwork than they’re ever going to sell. One of my teachers at York told me he had a storage unit full of old artwork — a storage unit! Most of us have old artworks hanging around and it would be very easy to go back into them and give them a little something that might make them relevant again. But I say — don’t do it!
The recent rash of movie remakes is a plague on the industry as far as I’m concerned. It’s ‘Night of the Living Remakes’ and the remakes can’t be stopped by anything! They’ve been reanimated and the only thing that can even slow them down is feasting on the celluloid of other movies! The horror! Can you imagine if that happened in the Art industry?
I look back at a lot of the old movies that populate our collection and see them as time capsules. They were reflections of the society and the movie makers at the time that they were made. That’s what gives them their charm. They’re a snapshot of the ethics, morals, thoughts and actions of a specific generation. Why mess with that?
I see my artwork in a very similar light. What I painted five years ago may not be as technically proficient as what I paint today but that’s okay. The technique was how I used to be. It’s a snapshot of my skills as a younger artist. The concepts are also five years old. They’re a snapshot of how I used to think. If I go back into those pieces and start re-painting them, won’t I be painting over a piece of my history? It’d be like revisiting all those places I was photographed in when I was a kid and taking new pictures to replace the old ones now that I’m a grown man. Can you imagine anyone doing that?
I say, let sleeping paintings lie. Leave your old artwork alone. Relish it for its naivete, simplicity or vagueness. Your old artwork tells as much about you as your new artwork will. Enjoy it for what it is, not what it could be. Now get back to creating something new please.
For now, that is all. Goodnight.
