The rather obscure artist, Josh Smith, believes that he’s managed to strip down graffiti art to its most simplest expression in a modern rendition of a self-portrait entitled “Josh Smith.”
Forget Keith Haring’s hieroglyphic language which emerged from New York’s graffiti art during the 1970s, or Jean-Michel Basquiat’s enigmatic epigrams and urban symbolism. Smith believes he’s stripped away the superfluous, ornamental fluff to give way to a new form of art, the Name Painting, that straddles the midpoint between figurative and abstract art.
Move over, Michelangelo and Van Gogh, the traditional self-portrait is dead. It has been transformed by this clever artist whose intention is to eliminate the distance between the artist and his work. To, in fact, become one and the same. By twisting, shortening and manipulating the letters in his name, he can convey his emotional and psychological state. No colors, chiaroscuro, scumbling or impasto necessary. No need for painting skills.
However, this self-portrait is nothing of the sort. It’s a misnomer. As Hans Hoffman, the granddaddy of American Expressionism once said, “painters must speak through paint, not through words.” Sorry, Josh. Any way you spell it, it’s still not art.
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