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In reading Clifford Faust’s biography, one could become nostalgic of the 60s—the beat, the jazz, the wanderlust. Clifford Faust was born in Oklahoma, raised in Oregon. After graduation, he zoomed from hippie San Francisco to groovy New York in a Volkswagen Beetle, water-to-water, Jack Kerouac style. Arriving in New York City in the late 60s, Faust studied under Jack Potter in the School of Visual Art. The artist here began using mixed media to make collage prints in cut paper style. |
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Chic Decadence – Alpher Xian
In reading Clifford Faust’s biography, one could become nostalgic of the 60s—the beat, the jazz, the wanderlust. Clifford Faust was born in Oklahoma, raised in Oregon. After graduation, he zoomed from hippie San Francisco to groovy New York in a Volkswagen Beetle, water-to-water, Jack Kerouac style.
Arriving in New York City in the late 60s, Faust studied under Jack Potter in the School of Visual Art. The artist here began using mixed media to make collage prints in cut paper style.
Clifford Faust’s works today are colorful narratives of the lives lived by those in both high and low society. He uses bold colors and shapes to tell his characters’ stories and the story of what it means to live in America. He pans from a fisherman cutting fish, to a dark, heavily curtained loft where an overweight prostitute entertains her guest, to a sunny southern beach. Through his art, Faust explores human nature within the contemporary world. He is that sort of omnipresent satirist—voyeuristic yet comical.
At Contemporary Istanbul, in particular, Faust’s cut paper style truly stood out with his work Belly Dancer in which an “exotic” female figure dances before droves of men who throw their money at her feet and can do nothing but gaze at her body in awe of its Otherness and its physical beauty. Faust comments here not only on the complex gaze of the male viewer upon the body of the female, but also on the gaze of the Westerner upon the culturally Other. Faust asks us here to consider the relationship between this performer and her audience in the context of East and West, and on a global scale.
In general, a quick glance of Faust’s work reminds one of the chic decadence of the 60s zeitgeist. At times, it has the sentimental tone of time past; at times, it feels outright timeless.
