Robert Cottingham mostly does boring photo realist prints of various american signage--real obvious ones, he is in the middle of an alphabet (but then so am i), and i dont know, he doesnt have the ennui of bechtel or the ocd strangeness of estes, and is basically forgotten for a reason--he isnt playing in the same way other people are--but the two of the rolling stock seires ive seen, both below, move me, maybe because i love trains, maybe because of the size, and spacing, reminds of earlier american masters like scheler (sp), but there is something tender and intimate here:











Linocuts, Woodcuts, Collographs, All handcoloured in places, with pencil or watercolour, all of them based on the thesis of placement of a central element, a purity of forms, and mechanics, they of course remind me of warhol (or ruscha, or any of the desperate working over and over again of one formal element, this masturbatory desire to understand what liz taylor or naked women or the standard gas station or found photography had to do with the price of tea in china, and while warhol is a god, and ruscha is a saint, and mel ramos has a sexy cult, and balderssessi is every conceptetual's prophet, cottingham is too precise and not difficult enough to be popular, not that i dont love these works as much as i like the strongest work of the above (except rushca, who never made a weak peice) the images above make me realise how on purpose the chaos/messiness of warhols peices were, for commerical and personal reasons. these are too clean for real trains, lack the grease, the muck, the dirt, and the human interaction (trains as moving canvas for graffitti, these are trains that work--and thats the power/problem of the photo realists, and the eugenic quaility of course is not popular right now, but these, they move me intesenly, i find myself excited seeing them, maybe because they are so butch w/o being camp, or maybe because of certain mythological prarie shit, or maybe because they remind me of when dave berhman of the silver jews sings "sin and gravity/drag me down to sleep/to dream of trains across the sea..."

(his paintings of signs still suck)

Rolling Stock 56 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Arymn, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Mark, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Jesse, 1992, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock, for Trish, 1993, colour etching and aquatint
Rolling Stock 27, 1992, colour woodcut
Rolling Stock 13, 1997, colour woodcut

(33 others in the seires)