Dave AlsobrooksOnce a concept is real, every choice in front of you has something to answer to. The question stops being “what do I like, or worse, what do others like?” and becomes “does this serve the big idea?” That sounds small, but it’s the whole difference between a pile of good decisions and a single direction that holds it all together.
Without that question, choices get made on taste, trend, or habit. Each one can be defended. Each one can look good. Together, they don’t add up to anything.
Back in 2006, it was a different time. I made a series of large-scale paintings of Bush Administration officials titled “Culture of Corruption.” One idea ran the entire show. The proof of each figure’s behavior would become the medium of their portrait. Their medium was the message. Nothing was a style decision. One panel was built from motor oil and matchbooks. One from American flag lapel pins. One from white correction fluid. I set one on fire and stood another up in a pond for a specific length of time. The material, the evidence, was specified by the idea, not by reaching for something that looked good. Eleven of them, six feet tall, titled by their role in the administration, not a name.
Stand all eleven up, and the room changes. It gets a little suffocating. That’s not the smell of paint or white-out. That’s the concept owning every piece, until eleven portraits stop reading as eleven of anything and read as a single condition you’re trapped inside.
Call it coherence. A concept doesn’t swoop in just in time to set you straight or to save your project. If an idea is driving all along, the work comes out true to its form, often in ways you might not have seen coming. That is the real power of a concept. It carries you somewhere you could never reach when you were jocking somebody else’s style.