Art and Science

Artists have always used the latest technologies to create their work: think of Albrecht Dürer and the printing press in the 16th century, which the Northern Renaissance master used to create astonishing works of art. Today, artists are still as new-media literate as Dürer was, not only because there is a plethora of new technological tools to work with, but also because our contemporary culture requires that all of us understand our world as it is presented on computer or television screens. This is not to say that today’s artists are choosing newer tools, such as digital scanners or software programs that alter images, just because they are new. Many have decided to work with computer-based forms because their aesthetic visions and thematic concepts can only be communicated effectively via digital equipment. The art of R.W. Firestone is a clear example of this phenomenon. In works such as Woman in Ice (2000), Firestone bends the boundaries of painting and photography in a seamless manner that would not be achievable using traditional techniques.

Firestone’s art historical precedents are clear. Yet the artist uses new media to create images that are utterly fresh in terms of their color schemes and compositions. One looks at works such as Cityscape with Lady (2001) and sees the influence of the Surrealists: a female body morphs into various abstract or other forms suggestive of non-human beings, and are thus reminiscent of Man Ray’s photographs. The elegant feminine physiques Firestone chooses as his subjects, the curves of their bodies depicted with a glossy sheen, recall the classic and ground-breaking photography Battle of the Amazons by the Belgian artist Raoul Ubac. Yet, while these references are evident, Firestone is able to present his viewers with something much more of-the-moment: Firestone’s wild color patterns and swirls have a distinctively energetic, technological feel, rather than the black and white somberness of the Surrealist works. There is a contemporary vitality to Firestone’s electric palette and fluid juxtaposition of elements in his compositions.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to compare his digital works with Surrealist paintings. Just as Rene Magritte or Salvador Dali merged improbably disparate elements into disturbing scenes (a sky raining men, a clock melting in a desert), Firestone melds together strange conglomerations of visual references that result in dreamlike tableaux. However, Magritte and Dali did not have the technologically advanced tools that Firestone has today; the earlier paintings were believable thanks to the exquisite handling of paint by these two legendary artists, but they could never be as completely photographic as the works by Firestone. At the same time, the photographs of Man Ray could never be as painterly as Firestone’s images. Only because of the dawn of sophisticated digital imaging software and hardware could an artist such as Firestone create the blend of painting and photography necessary to convey his imaginative vision, one that parallels what we previously have only seen in our dreams.

How else could Firestone so strongly communicate his themes in such a believably theatrical manner, if he were not able to manipulate photographic material by digital means? For example, to communicate a sense of intense, ongoing suffering, both physical and psychological, he digitally replicates his subject over and over in Old Lady in Pain (1999). In a work such a Mother and Child (2001), he is able to present his subjects as if suspended in a field of deeply saturated, unnatural colors. The palette that Firestone chooses could have only been calibrated using a computer to reach such a dramatic level of intensity, which in turn suggests the extremely charged and intense bond—and inevitable conflicts—between a woman and her offspring.

Psychology is a subject that Firestone knows well, of course. He is a well-known psychologist whose research has been published widely in the United States. As a scientist whose life’s work is to observe and analyze emotions and the human experience in general, Firestone’s dual identity fits his choice of artistic medium. For the digital world, of course, marries the scientific with the artistic. Perhaps the artist’s deep understanding of these two disciplines—Firestone’s parallel careers—is what has propelled him to succeed in creating such profoundly moving imagery. Only a scientist with a deep appreciation for recent advancements in technology could fully be open to utilizing new tools devised in computer laboratories. Only an artist with a knowledge of art history could use such tools to create visual effects that serve as both homages to and successors of classic works of Surrealism by Man Ray, Ubac. Magritte, and Dali. Only a psychologist with years of formal training and practice could so accurately communicate the drama of the mental landscape. R. W. Firestone is all of these: scientist, artist, psychologist. And his art, so multifaceted visually, thematically, and technically, is a complex, engaging hybrid of media, styles, and concepts that is both timely and timeless in its originality.

Travel: Culture Stops, Thursday, May 8, 2003

By Michael Kilian
Tribune staff reporter

In conjunction with Venice Biennale international art exhibition, that fabled Italian city’s Museo di Santa’Appolonia will open this Wednesday a show devoted to the work of American digital artist R.W. Firestone, one of the world’s leading and most original practitioners in that field.

Combining electronic imagery with the traditional canvas, the Brooklyn-born California artist is famous for such works as “Self Portrait With Children” (1999), a mosaic in which tiny pictures of his children overlay a large portrait of himself. “Woman in Ice” (2000) and “Woman in the Garden” (2000) are nudes. “Old Lady in Pain” (1999) presents four depictions of the same suffering face.

Firestone, 73, is also a much-published psychologist, and his creations reflect his calling, dealing with marital and family relationships, as well as suicide, child abuse, schizophrenia and other afflictions.

There are 44 works in all in the show, “Adventure of Images, 2003,” which will remain on view through Nov. 2. The Museo is an adjunct of Venice’s Galleria Ravagnan, located right on the Piazza San Marco (No. 50A).

Book Cover: International Contemporary Masters, World Wide Art Books, Vol III, 2010

Art book reflecting current work of contemporary artists worldwide. Curated by Despina Tunberg.

Carnival, front cover of International Contemporary Masters 2008, January, 2008

Published by OMMA Center of Contemporary Art and curated by Despina Tunberg, this annual collection of contemporary art includes six works by R.W. Firestone.

Robert W. Firestone: Feelings, by Dominick Lombardi, May/June, 2007

“Firestone is at his best when he pushes his abstractions to a simpler, more primal place.  For instance, in his Community, the artist creates a rhythmic feel that yields fiery colors and haunting black forms.  The result is a hypnotic, even dramatic, composition that blends jazzy organics with bold passages.”

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ARTnews: “Feelings” Exhibition at Wickiser, March 2007 issue

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Digital Transformations, Friday, March 3, 2006

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American Artist Exhibited at Omma, Wednesday, March 16, 2005

“Transformations” at Omma Center of Contemporary Art in Chania, Crete, Greece.

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Ten American Artists, Monday, October 6, 2003

The selected works in this show suggest numerous contradictions and references when hung in the land of Mozart and Freud, of high culture and revelatory psychoanalysis.  These artists represent the best contemporary efforts to derive organic emotion from either a machine (camera, computer, and printer) used for production, or the aspects of nature that have survived machines, both highlighting our tenuous human relationship with our planet.  This is organic work which has emerged from an increasingly dehumanized world.

Robert W. Firestone

Of artists who use machines, R.W. Firestone successfully digitally restructures his own photographs of figures and cities after scanning them into his computer.  By reworking the colors and contrasts of a face or building, Firestone alters the images to create a new canvas for mood, or an eerily emotional world from pure urban infrastructure.

R.W. Firestone is an artist who uses the latest technology to create his astonishing digital images printed with pigmented inks onto textured fine-art archival paper or canvas.  Firestone scans photographic images then alters them.  He uses classic figurative subject matter such as female nudes, portraits, self-portraits, and landscapes as his backdrop.  He then superimposes translucent planes of color over the recognizable image creating a fractured picture plane.  This surface treatment owes a debt to Cubism, though Firestone uses the edges created by the superimposition as places to change and heighten the hue, rather than places to bisect the figure.

Firestone is a colorist and his lurid greens, glowing blues, and ravishing reds clash, fight, and claw for attention in these vivid pictures, creating a visual hide-and-seek as the initial image is obscured and then suddenly revealed.  His use of colors of equal light intensity, fast shifts of direction, and fractured images suggest a strobe light flashing as mirrored Disco ball sparkles and music throbs.  These audacious images are unrelentingly contemporary and nostalgic – a savvy synthesis of modern and post-modern art strategies.

Venice Magazine
Adventure of Images 2003
Friday, June 20, 2003

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A Traveler in Images, Friday, June 20, 2003

I once wrote that the work of the American artist Robert Firestone is a sort of “adventure of images”. Though he avails himself of the great formal lessons of twentieth-century art, the path of his research is entirely personal and characteristic.

The process through which he arrives at painting employs unusual tools and languages. His works are conceived and created through the use of photography and the computer, brought together with a particularly perceptive sensitivity toward color. His expressive strategy uses references that speak primarily of his inner world and his milieu, of the people that are somehow close to him, of what he has known and the places he has visited or where he lives, of—in short—the emotions his surroundings prompt.

The viewer is inevitably led to perceive the work of two distinct planes. On one hand the images are disorienting, at least at first glance; on the other, one tries to step through them, to go beyond appearances to discover something inexplicit, even secret, that they might conceal. Calling upon the mythical legend of the shattered mirror and the discovery of the unexpected, they lead one toward the unknown and mysterious world on the other side. One should not exclude the idea that Robert Firestone’s own particular way of ‘seeing’ people and plights derives from a mixture of experience in the two ‘fields’ of allusion and illusion, that of psychoanalysis and that of art. It is evident however that his ‘creative references’ take on meaning as simple ‘visual pretexts’ which are useful in expressing his complex vision of art and of the world. As I wrote time back, these ‘pretexts’ are never purely ‘descriptive’. Even when they are completely recognizable, they present complex and crowded ‘psychological spaces and emotional drifts.

His artistic operation seems to re-define things, figures and circumstances, along an expressive route that runs from reality to symbolism. It is a sort of ‘staging’ that only apparently has to do with description and narration, and reveals yet ‘another’ dimension until then invisible. This is how Robert Firestone constructs a grand fresco of his own history and memory, a fresco in which – in all its emotional tension – he recognizes himself and with which he identifies.

Robert Firestone’s most recent works once again confirm his role as a sort of extraordinary Argonaut in the world of images. Clearly rejecting the ‘surface’, they declare their intention of the penetrating ‘depth’ and going beyond appearance. Meaning crosses recognizable semblance and has to be sought beyond the visible, ‘behind the image’. Here it is especially important to note the version the artist presents of the electronic procedure he has used in conceiving and making his images. It becomes evident that his approach is anything but passive. He does not simply rely on what his means can give, but uses them like a shaman in search of magic and the unknown, seeking what is not evident or – in a word – the invisible.

Works like ‘Brothers’ or ‘Community’, both from 2002, are exemplary of this because they null every possibility of recognition, declaring a greater sense of mystery and more evident formal concern. Firestone’s imaginative proposal appears truly gifted with a strong, anti-mimetic and anti-narrative visual autonomy, which seems to make reference to secret inspirational sources the artist does not overtly declare.

Other paintings such as ‘Garden Primeval’ or ‘Nightmare’ from the same year provide evidence of still another path the American artist has followed, entrusted primarily to strong emotional pulsation and an exaltation of the autonomous, evocative and recollective quality intrinsic to color. The latter takes on strongly expressionist values within a feverish, excited and restless vision, unequivocally revealing – perhaps for the first time in Firestone’s work – a harsh and unexpected ‘battle for the image’ which cannot be resolved with simple electronic manipulation and requires strong participation and total emotional involvement.

Legibility and ambiguity thus come to steadily and harmoniously co-inhabit Firestone’s works. Within them daily reality intertwines with symbolic myth, history with memory, the credible with the unbelievable, explicative statement with metaphor – touching upon all the terms with which one of the most original and suggestive imaginative propositions of contemporary American art is nourished and manifested.

It becomes possible to define Robert Firestone’s expressive route as a path ‘from representation to painting’. Though he uses the computer, it is through the art of painting that he actually brings his imagination to the fore, almost as if no other via could make his fantastic visions appear.

One could actually refer to his work with the daring neologism of ‘electronic expressionism’, even if the nomadic nature of his research and his disinhibition in formal references seem to indicate an evident indifference to any sort of critical classification. The operation he puts into act serves to make his imagination visibly concrete and, at the same time, to connote daily vision as outdated and metaphoric.

Robert Firestone seems to want to stage a visual event that does not require decoding or logical interpretation, but merely reclaims the right to apparition and contemplation. As such, his images are always surprising, bringing together in one and the same moment that which prompts his imagination and the recollections of his own life in an amazing and miraculous contemporaneity.

The absence of temporal references in his works – as I once wrote – “allows appearances to penetrate depth while inner memory rises and is revealed on the surface”. This is why his images possess a sort of inexplicable ‘ambiguity’ that is not easy to understand and draws one toward unexpected emotional reflections. Perhaps this is where the ‘truth’ in Robert Firestone’s oeuvre lies, in this undecipherable and mysterious rapport that induces us to search inward, to attempt to see and understand the anxieties that inhabit each and every one of us.

R.W. Firestone’s Cityscape Pink is a bold image capturing the essence of a city. In this Longer View essay, Bruce McClendon argues that the profession of planning needs a similarly bold vision and compelling brand identity in order to claim its proper place among many competitors offering similar services. He aims to distinguish the planning profession in the eyes of the public and the minds of planners themselves. Three commentators respond with different perspectives on the status of the profession and how best to improve it.

Firestone is a practicing psychotherapist, with a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Denver, and the author of nine books. He grew up in the New York City area and opened his private practice in Los Angeles, initially treating patients suffering from schizophrenia but then accepting patients with all forms of psychopathologies. With a group of friends he has sailed to many parts of the world, and both his practice and his travels have figured into the subjects of his artwork.

The color of imagination, Saturday, May 3, 2003

The Foundation Rodriguez Acosta welcomes the first exhibition in Spain of the American artist Robert W. Firestone.
Written by: Poli Servián

An outbreak of color invades the Carmen White Gallery of the Foundation Rodriguez Acosta. The person in charge: Robert W. Firestone, an American, and a psychotherapist loving of modern painting, whose work will remain shown until 17 May.

The Italian art critic Enzo Di Martino is in charge of exhibiting the works of this artist in Europe. He wrote the book ‘The Adventure of Images, which has essays and pictures of the works shown, but also emphasizes the language used by Firestone to shape his work and “his imaginative world”. The creator digitally transfers to his paintings a series of images manipulated in the computer by means of a system of color injection. The result is an impressive work, loaded with great expressive force that cannot help but stimulate the spectator.

The works of Firestone illustrate, in addition, the secrets of his complex and intriguing personality. Each one of the exhibited works speaks, clarifies Martino, of the universality of this artist’s works.  All his inspiration comes from his own human and professional experiences. In fact, many of the models that he uses come from a large circle of friends with whom, for years, he has been sharing reflections and long oceanic voyages in a large sailing vessel.

The curator perceives in Firestone’s paintings the influence of artists like Chuck Close, and that Firestone approaches Close’s constructions by means of mosaics of some of his pictures and self-portraits; Barnett Newman’s geometric compositions remind one of Firestone’s structural qualities and color; and to Andy Warhol, whose comparison is appraised in certain pictures formed by the repetition of images.

Diffusion
For Firestone this is his second exhibition in Europe and first in Spain. The work that now can be seen at the Foundation was first shown last summer at the Museum d’Arte Sacred Diocesano of Venice. As a result of its opening there, Miguel Rodriguez-Acosta, who, years ago, also exhibited in the Italian city and was also curated by his old friend Enzo di Martino, made contact with Enzo and the North American artist, to arrange showing of his Adventure of Images exhibition in Spain.

The Granadian museum assures that one of it’s main missions is in bringing to Granada as much of good and beautiful things that are offered to the general culture of Europe and the world. And both qualities are seen in the works of Firestone. The museum considers his paintings interesting and marked for the new generations, because in his work there is very much a tie to today’s contemporary art. After its stay in Granada, the exhibition will travel again to Venice.

Scientist and artist Robert Firestone (1930) is a peculiar person. He arrived very late at painting, after receiving his degree in Psychology by the University of California. Whilst studying in psychology, he began painting works of schizophrenics and of created landscapes, experienced through numerous trips, and pictures of friends, patients and colleagues.

In 1957 he obtained his doctorate in Psychology, after which he transferred to Los Angeles. There he began his clinical practice and to research and publish the results of his scientific investigations that today are reported in nine books, thirty-six documentaries and a good number of articles in specialized magazines.

At the beginning of the Seventies, Firestone and a group of friends bought an ’80 schooner with which they embarked upon long sailing trips. Today, three decades later, they still continue furrowing the seas worldwide. With time, the circle of friends has been extended until forming a great family in whom Firestone and his eleven children are included. The friendship circle has grown in a communal atmosphere of love and understanding. And it is that aesthetic with which the North American artist has assembled his vital search of values like integrity, honesty and generosity, that he shares with that similarly nourished group of colleagues.

Robert W. Firestone has occupied the current stage of his creative life in the investigation of the new electronic languages, the production of digital canvases, and for the last three years he has been intensely showing his works in America and Europe.

On the cover: Schizophrenia

Monday, April 15, 2002

by Sandra Mumford, Art Consultant

Robert W. Firestone, PhD, born in Brooklyn in 1930, credits his experiences as a psychologist as well as his global travel for the perceptions, ideas, and emotions that he expresses in his art. His work reflects his psychoanalytic insights, his awareness of the human condition, and his belief in the relevance of psychology to everyday life. He has described his art as born from a need for a creative outlet, while his career in psychology comes from his desire to understand himself and others. Obtaining a PhD degree in clinical psychology from the University of Denver in 1957, his postgraduate work focused on schizophrenia and patients who were at the extremes in emotional suffering. His interest in psychoanalysis and existential psychology ultimately led him to employing depth psychotherapy in his practice. Writing has provided a professional outlet (most notably Fantasy Bond 1995 and Fear of Intimacy 1999). Slated for publication in November 2002, is his tenth book The Good Life: Sustaining feeling, passion, and meaning in a high-tech age.

One sees in his body of artistic work, the subjects that have interested him throughout his life. For example, although Firestone grew up in a huge metropolis, he was close enough to the ocean to hear the foghorns. He developed himself into a world-class sailor and the sea is often in his art. Having lived in three of the world’s largest cities: New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, cityscapes are another of his themes. People are, of course, at the core of his artistic interest. His art includes himself, his family, and many colleagues, friends, and acquaintances from over the years. A particularly striking example is his The Many Faces of Mother for which he juxtaposed many variations of a woman’s picture creating a montage of both positive and negative imagery in which the “mother” appears anything but warm. One can imagine the love, fear, and fascination that a child would have while watching such a mother.

An artist’s style can be seen to develop over time and almost all artists who live long enough experiment with different techniques as they mature. Firestone’s art has undergone such an evolution. His earliest works were oils rendered in an expressionistic style, largely colorful and evocative. The painting, Schizophrenic, on the cover comes from that prolific period. After moving to Los Angeles to begin private practice in the early 1960’s, Firestone completed a series of tempera paintings done in an almost graphic style capturing the dynamic architecture of a city and the turbulence of the sea. Artists of the expressionist period in the early 20th century would have had to stop there since computers were yet to be invented. Firestone has applied advanced technology to his more traditional techniques to create highly original works such as his photo mosaic portraits and digital collages. An example is his award-winning Self Portrait with Artist’s 10 Children, a photo mosaic in which Firestone overlaid tiny images of ten of his children on a photo portrait of himself. He uses computers, scanners and specialized software, prints his work on glossy artist’s canvas, or a thick textured acid-free rag paper, or a thick glossy photo stock using the highest quality giclee printer with pigmented archival inks to produce works that will last 200 years. The results are remarkable, crisp, brilliant, detailed, and capture the essence of Firestone’s artwork. The picture on the cover captures the physical awkwardness often seen in schizophrenics.

His shirt is askew, he has a hand tucked underneath a raised knee, and he is holding his cigarette with a stiff arm. Many hospitalized mental patients smoke heavily, when it is permitted, to deal with boredom and the need for stimulation. The painting has a Roualt-like quality. The brooding eyes and dark outlines around the figure are typical of Roualt’s work. Jacques Maritain wrote of Roualt his art “lives on the internal universe of the soul, on the depths of inner vision and poetic intuition, obscurely grasping in emotion both the subjectivity of the painter and the mystery of the visible world.” (Barr, 56) The mentally ill remain a mystery to many people but in Firestone’s work with his patients he came to know the pain and alienation behind the façade. It is this inner vision that imbues this work with meaning.

In the Hands of Time, Thursday, July 19, 2001

Explorations, edited by Marie Maber.

Santa Barbara County, California, artist R.W. Firestone began painting 50 years ago but couldn’t get the colors he really wanted, so he did other things for awhile.  As a clinical psychologist he’s practiced for decades and written eight books, including Fear of Intimacy and The Fantasy Bond. “I got bogged down in creative work in my field. I’ve made a lot of documentary videos to explain my theories and ideas and written a number of articles,” he says.  Yet, picture making is as important to Firestone as his other endeavors. “It’s a very serious issue for me to try to develop myself to be able to communicate this way as well as other ways,” he says.

Recently Firestone discovered that with the help of digital software he could go back to painting and easily achieve the colors and the forms he needed to express his ideas. “Clockwork,” he says, “began with a crummy sort of snapshot of a figure in a photograph I took in Barcelona. I took a photo of a photo. It was a tiny little image. I liked the way the figure was shaped and the motion that it implied, so I took it. I played with it and moved it around. I transformed, changed, and twisted it in Photoshop. I had an impulse to create an image about the female form and time. The rest of the picture, like the clock face, I drew. I persued a series of blends and layers to develop the colors and composition. It just came together intuitively.

Opening Reception, OMMA Gallery for Contemporary Arts, Saturday, March 4, 2006

Bulgari Charity Event, Bulgari Store, Beverly Hills, Thursday, June 2, 2005

Art by R.W. Firestone, gowns by Tamsen using fabrics derived from Firestone art, and jewelry by Bulgari.  All proceeds to charity.

Opening Reception, Museo d’Arte Sant’Apollonia, Venice, Italy, June, 2003

A short walk from St. Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy, looking down the canal at the Bridge of Sighs, lies the beautiful 400 year-old Museo d’Arte Sant’Apollonia. 

It was at this ancient museum that R.W. Firestone’s exhibition “Adventure in Images” appeared simultaneous to the five months of the Venice Biennale International Art Festival in 2003.

Slideshow of images displayed April through October, 2003 at the Museo d’Arte Sant’Apollonia, Venice, Italy.

These are the pictures from the traveling exhibition that first showed in Granada, Spain and then went on to Venice, Italy.  Catalogs are available upon request in Spanish and English and also in Italian and English.

Opening Reception, Museo Fundacion Rodriguez Acosta, Granada, Spain, April, 2003

Amid the spacious gardens of this beautiful museum high up and adjacent to the Alhambra and overlooking the city of Granada, lies a Spanish castle converted to museum space.  It was here that R.W. Firestone’s show “Adventure of Images 2003” took place during the months of April and May, 2003.

This video is a slideshow of the Opening Reception at the beautiful Museo Fundacion Rodriguez Acosta in Granada, Spain — a lively event attended by more than a hundred Granadians.