Andy Warhol

I saw the film Empire at the Hayward - I've just looked it up, it must have been in 2009, although in my memory it coincides nearer with when Catherine Yass's piece Descent was at Tate Britain for the turner Prize - that was 2002.

http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/catherine-yass.html

The film critic Mark Kermode talks very eloquently and frankly about misremembering films, and internally transplanting entire sequences from one film to another, and becoming convinced of that internal version, even when confronted by contradicting facts.

Kermode, M. (2010) It's Only a Movie: Reel Life Adventures of a Film Obsessive. London. Arrow.

In addition to the obvious parallels between Warhol's Empire and Yass's Descent, both durational pieces tracing time and the incremental changes of light and weather using iconic buildings, to me those works are internally intermingled. At the time, in my own work, I was thinking very much about pace, and considering how much the eye will tolerate of an image before it alters. Each artist will come up with their own conclusion for that one - there is no universal formula for seconds per look.

Andy Warhol, Empire, black and white film stills, 8 hours 5 minutes, 1964

I didn't stay and watch the whole thing. They played it in a big stairwell, so every time you passed it was at a different state. As a moving image artist, I totally get that and agree with it, I love the play with time and the sense that time is somehow working differently.

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A while ago in 2012 I saw an exhibition of Andy Warhol screen prints:

http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/museums/graves-gallery/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/andy-warhol-late-self-portraits

http://www.a-n.co.uk/p/2633091

Graves Gallery is also hosting a collection of Andy Warhol self-portraits. Now, there is an artist who may be historical, but whose ideas and practice continue to resonate into current debate and contemporary artistic concerns. The image, the image, it is all about the image. However, less often discussed about Warhol is the texture and painterly qualities of the works, reminding that these are handmade, or factory produced artefacts. Seeing the squidge of the printing processes, the splash of colours from one frame to the next, and the hand at work, makes the message of manufacture and multiple more eloquent and poignant.

I was very struck by the evidence of the making process, the print marks and ink textures left from the printing process. We are so used to seeing the reproduced image of Warhol's work which seems to try to completely omit the evidence of their materiality. It actually made me lose my resistance to Warhol to see this, as I felt they were true and authentic pieces made by an artist, rather than somehow mere images.

In our age and society we are so used to highly manufactured and processed items, including artworks. I like to see the mark of the hand, the presence of the artist. In my own work, I self-produce work as well as I can, and improve as I develop techniques, but always hope to retain the sense of the artist's hand.

11th November 2014