Modern’s Art

Last Monday, local artist and Fargo cultural magistrate, Modern Man, held the opening of his first show in more than a decade. The last one was in at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis in the mid-90’s, but this time the HoDo and its staff were kind enough to suspend dinner service and focus on the art of the mind rather than art for the stomach for a couple of hours. The show will last through the end of May and there is a special closing Wednesday the 28th from 5-7. Modern prefers to celebrate closings and ignore openings.

The show, titled “Modern Man’s Beer Man,” is made of four series of prints: one series is a set of enormous prints from the artist’s past and there are three more recent series. The new series are smaller in size but just as significant as the large prints from the past.

Walking into the dining room, the observer is met with an unmistakable sense of Warhol. Immediately on his/her left are hung 20 prints that appear to be the same but are quite different in scope. Above the entryway are four identical framed black prints and at the far end of the dining room hang several smaller sepia prints that, with their cropping of the image, appear to be in motion. And in the recess of the dining room, the original prints are hung, with Beer Man piteously and honestly asking the HoDo diners for beer money.

After looking through the variety prints, the show reveals much more than some obscure Warholian statement on pop culture. The newest prints, a series of twenty 23½ by 29 inch prints on canvas ($1000), are only one quarter the size of the original 48 X 60. The paper prints above the entry ($500) are of a similar size and come already framed and the dynamic 14 X 25 prints are available for $500.

The nexus for this show began in the early 1990’s when Modern Man found an AP image of a man panhandling. This was no shock, but what struck him was the honesty of the sign that the man held in his lap: “Why lie I need a beer!” From that picture Modern printed a number of large prints, some of which are still available at the current show ($4000).
But in a time when capitalism has become miserly and America both more isolationist and imperialistic and the world is miserable and democracy has failed to spread its war-borne wings, Modern Man reintroduces us to Drinking Man, making more than just art. Modern also brings together some significant aesthetic ideas including the comic and the tragic. And, at least for a moment, Modern offers his viewers a glimpse of this Brave New World.

Beginning with a photo negative of the original photograph, Modern developed a positive. It was this positive from which he derived his screen for printing, meticulously cutting and tracing and outlining the desired image. In the new show Modern resurrects the image, which, still indomitable and unchanging, finds itself imposed upon paper and canvases. But the canvases themselves come from a variety of methods.

One night Modern, carrying a large sheet of canvas, ran into several locals enjoying Fargo’s watering holes. Ever the social connoisseur, Modern successfully engaged them to express themselves with acrylic paint on the 8 by 10 foot canvas. It was from this canvas, replete with handprints, footprints, and other assorted means of applying paint while intoxicated, Modern cut six canvases for the new 23½ by 29 inch prints. This method of imposing the rigid structure of Beer Man onto chaotic backgrounds is emblematic of the nature of the show itself: the singularity of dualities.

The structure of the Beer Man screen imposes order and form onto the orgiastic canvas, and in doing so, Modern creates images that range in reminiscence from the Holy Mother to Syd Barrett (and this is only six of twenty prints). It is in that singular moment when the eye catches both the rigidity and stability of the image upon a canvas, these prints bring together the seemingly contrasting ideas that make us human: the creative and the reasoned, the passionate and the rational, the comic and the tragic, the Dionysian and the Apollonian. In this way, Modern captures just a snippet of what it means to be human. Not all of the canvases were created in such a random and ecstatic manner.

In one of the more clever artistic partnerships, Modern teamed up with his 6 year old niece, Camri. He asked her to finger paint eight canvases for which he would once more overlay the Beer Man print. Since there has never been a child that could resist finger paints (it’s like colorful mud), Camri acquiesced and helped her uncle Modern create. Her participation was, of course, contingent on her receiving dividends for her diligent work. Profits from the sale of the Camri/Modern collaborative prints (split 50/50) help her get into a tumbling/gymnastics class.
Beyond the pragmatic scope, these eight prints capture several paradoxical notions. The capricious youth (Camri) creating the lush, colorful backgrounds, and the elder, Modern Man (certainly young in spirit), finishing the canvases with the screened image of Beer Man making a singularity of youth and age, family and isolation, and color and black & white.

The last six prints in this series of twenty are all Modern Man (with some assistance from local stained glass artist Chris Bohn). These prints certainly bear a Warholian influence. Two are lacquer-finished but the other four exist in a resplendency of color. The greens, the blues, the pinks, and the other ostentatious colors draw the eye in and make for an interesting contrast to the dark and heavy feeling that one gets from Beer Man. This part of the series addresses a number comparisons too numerous to count. The day-glo and fluorescent colors contrasted with the dour and serious tone of a man looking for his next fix underscores the sense of duality and complexity that emanates from the whole show, and, let’s be honest, that the artist himself exudes.
The 23½ X 29 prints that are immediately above the entryway of the dining room ($500), were each printed on rough brown paper, reminiscent of the paper bags and newspapers that Beer Man might wrap around his beer during the day or his feet at night. Together the prints are a sight to behold. Four distinct repetitious images of the same man holding the same sign in the same moment presents the observer with the most open and honest statement of subversion that Beer Man and his sign have to offer.

The remaining series is a cropped image of Beer Man squeezed into and wrapped around the edges of a 14 X 25 canvas ($500). Modern’s intent was to capture what the person driving past Beer Man on the street would have seen-a brief glimpse of a person just trying to get by (or just trying to get beer). This series demonstrates another duality presented as a single statement, the patient and static Beer Man waits stoically, while the Jones family abruptly turn their heads so as not to offend their sensitivities. Though small in stature, these prints may present some of the boldest of statements at the show and can be purchased for a nominal $500.

Fiscally, the opening of Modern’s most recent solo show was a success, selling a number of prints the first night. Aesthetically, the show is more than a success; it is a return to the public eye for Modern Man’s art and it is a beautiful series of statements on, as Modern likes to call it, “the tragedy and comedy of civilization.”

Modern Man’s prints will be on display through the end of May, and he will hold a closing for the show in the bar area from 5 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 28th.

If You Go

What: Modern Man Exhibit
Where: HoDo Dining Room
When: Through May 31st (closing May 28th from 5-7 in the bar)
Info: (701) 478-1000

Comments

1

2 years, 3 months ago Lakota said

High Plains Bleeder, I have read most of your comments and while I am glad you have something to say your posts make you sound like a “gifted” teenager with a thesarus crammed up your ass.  Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing; it allows you to be bold and say cutting things all the while knowing that you are safe behind the screen of your computer in your mother’s basement.  Yes, yes; you will say that I am doing the same but really go back and read your posts and I think that will explain why you have to spend so much time alone.

Perhaps you could supply some of your art work and we could compare and contrast it with Modern’s and see who comes out on top.
Please feel free to put me in my place with your superior intellect but I’m quite sure you would never step out from behind your computer as you seem to be a cyber bully with nothing better to do than run others down and hope that by doing so you have elevated yourself.

2

2 years, 2 months ago Modern Man said

I’m truly grateful that someone thought enough about my so-called art to say anything at all.

3

2 years, 2 months ago Dr. Maven Wise said

I believe Mr. Man to possess great moral authority and that he is a model of ethical courage, righteousness, truthfulness, civic devotion, and intellectual prowess. This manifests into draconian sexual abstinence, modest dress, moderate living, and a dignified attitude toward you people. If only we were all Modern Men. In closing, the letters in MODERN MAN can magically rearrange themselves to spell: RANDOM MEN.

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