Art and Today

Choosing a chapter from Eleanor Heartney's Art and Today through which to contextualise work makes me realise what chapters may be missing from the book - chapter titles which more exactly relate to my work. It's a little difficult to realise and limit direct influences - I remember the impact of seeing a painting by Baselitz many years ago - an upside down painting of Nazi heads. I know that made an enormous impression on me and somehow informed what I now do, and likewise with so many other different artists and approaches mentioned in this book, influences and concerns are multiple. I can think back at many artists and art that have had a profound effect and influence - Francis Bacon, Marina Abramovic, and yet I think I'd be hard pressed to show that within my work. Ideas come out in all sorts of ways.

So in the absence of a chapter about me that helps me to define myself, I choose what I relate to, and by a process of elimination, find the relevant chapter. Of course the Art & Time chapter is relevant, and I certainly relate to some of those concerns, completely in some cases. But the chapter Art and the Quotidian Object, and to some extent, Art & Abstraction also particularly speak to me. Of course, most artists would probably not rule out the relevance of some content of each chapter to their work, but this process of fitting in one's work to a particular chapter heightens main concerns in art.

Art & Time certainly iterates some of my concerns and fascinations in art, but I could not find an exact match to my aims in art. Perhaps because the book by necessity must sum up an artist in a couple of lines, and summarise their lifetime of question and practice in a clear point, I realised that I would be rather disappointed if I could be so summed up, or even if I could sum myself or my work up. This thought made me realise that I am not at all aiming for such clarity in my work. I feel this has led me to an important conclusion about what my aims are - that I do hope to confuse a little. I am not looking to define a specific aspect of time and the disparity of how it appears, I am aiming to somehow create some oblique corner of that.

I am looking to create the paradox, the moment of confusion when one does not really know what you are looking at, although it is perfectly clear. There is a moment when you are lost in the abstraction - when you are aware of the positive and the negative space at the same time, when you see through the illusion but are still caught up in it.

What I relate to in Art & The Quotidian Object is a reframing of objects and what meaning they bring which can be incorporated within art. So much of art and human activity is all about our relationship with objects, acquiring them, rearranging them, desiring them, using them, and so on. We spend so much time in this material world that of course objects of all sorts are rife for retelling as art.

The main stance that I don't relate to, however, is the idea that using readymades is somehow anti-art, and a cynical kind of democratization in a diluting way of objects deemed worthy of the status of art. The idea that fascinates me about objects is in remaking their meaning, changing them, and presenting them as vehicles for other art ideas. Using objects of glass, plastic, gold, stone, objects - it makes us more aware of the molecular nature of all things, and their equality in that way. It elevates matter to be used for art, rather than diminishing it.

I'm not interested in kitsch, or commenting on the consumerist nature of society - I'm only interested in adding more layers of meaning, context and references - more shades of interpretation and triggering memories by using and reusing ready made items in order to serve the philosophical or psychological ideas or insights I am seeking.

4th July 2012

Further reading and thoughts on Art & Today:

I find myself oscillating just as much in between relating to the Art and Time - Reel and Real time chapter, and the Quotidian Object chapter - crucially bearing in mind my initial misunderstanding of the word Quotidian. As related somewhere else in this blog which I can remember but not locate, I had read Quotidian as Quiddity, and so misunderstood the idea of the everyday and ordinary object, for the concept exploring the essence or whatness of a thing - a much more poetic and philosophical idea. I find myself unable to extricate the two meanings in my mind - they seem forever forged to me, and moreover, together they are a key to me in my use, understanding and meaning of everyday objects in my work. Objects, or parts of objects, are abstracted in artwork - they are considered in relation to aspects other than sheer function, whilst trailing along layers of association. It is those very association which I and artists can borrow to add to our artwork. For example, in my multiple piece Vessels, made using vintage, antique and contemporary bottles, my use and ideas lay in deliberate juxtaposition to the Quotidian object, the bottle, employing its ubiquity. Simultaneously, Vessels explores the Quiddity of bottles, wondering what they are, what they symbolise, and use their abstracted qualities to make them something other than their intended function or decorative nature.

Vessels. Eleanor MacFarlane 2012

Furthermore, upon photographing and videoing the drawings and making the moving image piece for the Studio Project, I find I am following the distraction of the drawing surface, the way light and shadows transform the graphite, and the physical properties of drawings as objects rather than images. So in the sixty drawings piece - just about to find a title, I truly vacillate between Reel and Real Time and the Quotidian Object of Quiddity.

22nd November 2012