""Bleeding Black Noise"
presentation to Southeastern College Arts Conference "Collisions""

withing context of panel The Gang's All Here: Downtown New York, Then and Now

Presentation October 2012 in Durham, North Carolina

Abstract:

When art critics respond to sculptural installations by the New York-based artist Banks Violette, the artist’s integration of Black Metal as an integral language evoked is frequently unexplored. This divorcing of the influence of music on contemporary artists is not a new problem in art history or criticism; it is a symptom of a form of collective amnesia that has engulfed many of the interdisciplinary practices of artists and musicians practicing since the 1960s.

Indeed, Violette is not alone in these dark pales of art history. He is in the company of an international movement of Black Metal artists, artists whose careers are confronted with similarly misguided critical reception.

It is crucial for us to recall the artistic and cultural contexts that these works have emerged from—to reunite the artworks’ sonic and visual elements—in order to satisfy the complexity of meanings they demonstrate.

This paper reexamines key artworks by Violette in the context of the cross-disciplinary innovations of the Velvet Underground, Robert Smithson, Dan Graham, and the artist/musicians of No Wave. Significant concentration will be placed on the influence of the painter/musician Steven Parrino, who instigated new methodologies gleaned from Noise Rock within his own studio practice.

Perhaps one of the most important influences on Violette’s recent work since 2004 is the painter and musician Steven Parrino. In the 1970s Parrino successfully built upon to integrate the languages of Rock and Noise into his art studio as well as his performances with the music project Electrophilia. He declared, “My relationship between Rock and visual art: I will bleed for you.”

Parrino, with references to the American art of the late 20th century to initiate a significant framework for considering contemporary artworks which bridge disciplinary divisions between art and music.

Black Metal is not only a reference point for the New York based artist Banks Violette but a methodology. Frequently collaborating with experimental musicians, his sculptural installations, is not only influenced by Black Metal, engage Metal has gained international attention for his sculptural installations which merge references from Minimalism with Black Metal iconography.

When Violette uses Black Metal, it is not a subject matter, but rather an ideological mode that he works within. It is productive to argue that one of the strongest influences on Violette includes the artist Steven Parrino. Approaching painting with the type of distorted feedback that defined his performances with the Noise music project Electrophilia, Parrino stated, “My relationship between Rock and visual art: I will bleed for you.”