What interested me was the way that O'Hare really invested himself in his work. His self portraits were genuine and heartfelt. And while his mentors thought that the background might give his lightweight work more substance, O'Hare became uncomfortable when they trotted out his 'story' to a group of artsy types. Words made the story too explicit and personal, while the paintings expressed it better. More importantly, he felt that the work should stand for itself. He didn't mind if someone 'read' the painting differently - that alternative interpretation was cool. Hello, I thought, this guy sounds like a real artist.
On 'test day', his work was exhibited alongside several moderately successful painters, one of whom spoke so informally (along the lines of "Some days, you know, I just says to me wife, I got to go an paint, and so I do...") that one of the test critics picked him as a red herring. The odd thing was, that the work of two of the artists who wrapped their work in formal language was no more 'convincing' to me than O'Hare's. What defines an artist? The fact that they'd been to art school, and could 'talk the talk'? Or genuinely expressing your thoughts and feelings through your work?
A telling point was when Paul O'Hare said to a critic something like, 'My work is about myself, really.' The critic said 'no,say that it is about the self: his point being that describing the work as about 'the self and identity' marked it as an intellectual exercise, and so more valid (it would seem) than the more personal description of 'my self, my identity'.
The irony is that so often its work that is intensely personal that people can connect with. Those deep and fundamental human experiences are ones that we all share - not always in the same form, but we identify with it nonetheless. Art that comes from the heart, and that is a true expression of your own unique experience of life, seems to me to be more 'universal' in appeal than art which tries to be universal - that art is doomed to be cliched.
Now, I should mention that I'm not completely opposed to 'artspeak', though it usually seems that way. Every field of endeavor has its own jargon, words that more precisely and quickly express ideas than a round-about string of regular words might. What annoys me is when art jargon is used as a smokescreen for lack of talent, or even worse, a tool for self-inflation in a game of intellectual one-upmanship.
So anyway, back to Paul O'Hare. In an interview after the show, he said that the first time he actually processed the childhood trauma he had suffered was during the filming, making the images. And this process enabled him to come to terms with it and move forward.
I saw an update show a while back, that showed he was still making art, though Google didn't come up with anything recent. Whether he's showing or selling or just making art in the garage, I do hope that he's continuing to explore art.
My Brilliant Career - The Village Voice on 'Faking It'
