It is like flicking through an encyclopedia, each page there for a moment, then gone. Which to dwell on. Which to pull out. It feels really heavy handed to reference one particular artist or even several drawings or other works. The influence may be there, but that isn't exactly the point I am making.
I understand that the drawings project can't be without context, or that the context can't be presumed. However, I still feel at this stage a disinclination to being pulled in one direction or another.
Anish Kapoor
(http://www.moma.org/collection_images/resized/783/w500h420/CRI_115783.jpg. accessed 17/07/2012)
(http://www.artspace.com/media/anish_kapoor/untitled_4/anish_kapoor_untitled_4_320x320_c.jpg. accessed 17/07/2012)
I greatly admire some of the work of Anish Kapoor. His large work is awesome as project management alone, but his smaller more intimate works also deliver impact. He often accesses a pure and direct visual language which triggers an understanding beyond words. I saw an exhibition of his drawings some years ago, before I studied art, and loved it. I think personally I took from it the idea that sparse boldness was possible in art, and I also took to the theatricality.
17th July 2012
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Turner / Monet
I recently was able to visit the Turner / Monet / Twombly exhibition at Tate Liverpool.
Amongst the many aspects that could be discussed, considered and enjoyed about these paintings, something that really struck me, about Turner and Monet, was that these painters' vision was at the very brink of the leap into abstract. Some paintings could have been painted yesterday, or tomorrow, with everything that has happened in art in the 20th century informing them - a type of abstract expressionism expressed through colour. It's only with a final suggestion of form, a slight focus of colour suggesting place or landscape, which make them a picture of something. A denseness indicating the sun.
Sunrise with Sea Monsters. Turner. c.1845
(http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/N/N01/N01990_10.jpg accessed 23/07/2012)
Water-Lilies. Monet. after 1916.
(http://www.tate.org.uk/art/images/work/L/L01/L01903_10.jpg. accessed 23/07/2012)
I'm interested in that territory in between rendering the actual and the imagined. Interpretation shimmers and oscillates between something real and something suggested. The eye fills in and reads, it puts together clues. James Elkins talks of this in The Object Stares Back.
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/booklist.html
It a human trait and instinct to piece together the merest visual clues and create a picture, a face.
Although as yet in my drawing x 60 project I have not drawn figuratively, I expect that I will incorporate that. I am not really imagining or anticipating as yet what format the moving image piece will be, I suspect that at that stage I will suggest more glimpses of reality, and that the drawings will be an imagined abstract territory.
It's such an intriguing thought to wonder if Turner or Monet ever truly thought of missing out the signifyer of reality, or if that thought, that a painting was not a painting if it did not have some connection with landscape, however tenuous, simply did not yet exist in the shared mind. There must have been points while painting, or or in mixing their paints, when the colours and form already seemed complete, that it already delivered the emotional and imagined world they were creating. Today we would read their palettes as works of art rather than byproducts.
23rd July 2012
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Thomas Heatherwick
Bleigiessen, Thomas Heatherwick, 2005
(http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/stellent/groups/corporatesite/@msh_publishing_group/documents/image/wtd015343.jpg accessed 23/07/2012)
Thomas Heatherwick Studio was commissioned to create this major work for a spectacular 30-metre-high vertical void in the NW corner of our international headquarters.
Consisting of 150 000 specially processed glass spheres, suspended on almost one million metres of fine stainless steel wire, the sculpture glows with a constantly shifting rainbow of colours. This effect was created through a unique process of sandwiching reflective 'dichroic' film within the glass.
Bleigiessen - 'lead-guessing' - is a New Year's Eve activity in central Europe. Lead is poured into water, producing extraordinary shapes from which your fortune can be predicted for the coming year.
Hive, Anish Kapoor, 2009
(http://www4.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Anish+Kapoor+Uses+Wax+Canon+Create+LAtest+fWyLivQw8rGl.jpg accessed 23/07/2012)
Although I don't envisage ever making such vast sculptures, I relate to the processes and images of such forms as Bleigiessen and Hive, and how they manifest ideas in a solid form. Phenomena from nature, from science and the imagination, are given new elements to exist in. It's not just a question of scale, as a Class Oldenburg sculpture, making us reconsider relative size.
Class Oldenburg, Clothespin, 1976.
(http://parisparfait.typepad.com/.a/6a00d8341c8d9f53ef010536c55cc2970c-800wi accessed 23/07/2012)
In a way Oldenburg has a Duchamp approach, showing us ways to look at what we already see, clearing our vision and reframing an object outside of its usual references.
Fountain, Duchamp, 1917.
(http://techbiotic.com/kwknoxartblog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/fountain.jpg accessed 23/07/2012)
Bleigiessen and Hive give us new forms, things we don't normally see unaided, or without manipulating materials. Because the forms they take are so striking, and yet recognisable as a natural form, they are strongly imaginative objects, or objects of the imagination, and which make us imagine. We read them, but in an abstract language.
Drawing can map out these notions.
23rd July 2012
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Gavin Bryars
Jesus' Blood never failed me yet, 1971
Looped tape of tramp singing with orchestral accompaniment.
When I was a teenager I had the chance to play viola in alot of orchestras. One of the most memorable concert experiences I ever had was playing with the University of Glasgow orchestra - it must have been about 1981. We didn't know this piece, had relatively little experience of playing contemporary music, and how we laughed at the tape recording and the very idea of playing along to it. However, the orchestra comes in very gradually, and all of us were immensely moved by the voice, and contributing to the build up of sound. I remember we had to play in a very restrained manner - the tempo is not strict - you have to follow the soloist, the tape of the tramp singing.
There have probably been very few days in all those years since when I have not had a little of that music play in my head.
Gavin Bryars, b 1943 is known as a post-minimalist. He initially studied philosophy and studied briefly under John Cage.
Steve Reich
Violin Phase. 1967
Violin and tape
How funny that this Youtube Violin Phase is accompanied with a video very similar to one of mine, Ever, 2008, with endless ascending stairs. I much prefer my moving image - I find theirs jarring and using effects which distract. However, I do think my entire approach to moving image could be said to be minimalist.
Playing Music for a Large Ensemble, 1978, was a new orchestral experience, a different structure of score.
If minimalism in visual art is usually getting to the essential of elemental aspects of a thing through paring away of all inessential features, then I relate more to the definition usually given to minimalist music such as that by Steve Reich, Gavin Bryars and John Adams, using repetition and iteration.
Nixon in China, John Adams, 1987
25th July 2012
25th July 2012
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Carol Shields
The Stone Diaries, a novel written by Carol Shields in 1993, is the story of a woman's life, a fictional autobiography, which is moving and a great read for many reasons - the woman, Daisy, never really understands her life.
Carol Shields manages something in art which I greatly admire in this book, and I found memorable and striking. There is a character, who, with one subtle suggestion, changes everything we know about him, and completely alters the version of the past we have seen in the novel up to that point. There is something in the skill in structure to implant the merest word or phrase which retrospectively alters the work. To be successful, it must be done with a light touch, and a trust in the reader. Other writers who have this skill are:
Joanne Harris
Chocolat. 1999. The Lollipop Shoes. 2007.
In these novels are a great heart of horror, which is rarely mentioned or alluded to, but the motivations become clear although the threat is rarely mentioned. It's as if it is a thought to unbearable to speak or write.
Gentlemen and Players. 2005.
This novel has more of a twist in the end, but when the truth is revealed, it makes you want to immediately reread it in order to understand everything in the new light of knowledge.
In these novels are a great heart of horror, which is rarely mentioned or alluded to, but the motivations become clear although the threat is rarely mentioned. It's as if it is a thought to unbearable to speak or write.
Gentlemen and Players. 2005.
This novel has more of a twist in the end, but when the truth is revealed, it makes you want to immediately reread it in order to understand everything in the new light of knowledge.
Margaret Atwood
Cat's Eye. 1998.
In this novel a child's life had been made hellish by a bully. In later life they meet up, and with few words, it is revealed that it had been the bully's life which was really hellish, a worse victim of abuse.
These masterful novels all contain that elusive shift of context and understanding I admire. I don't know if I directly relate these principals to my visual work, but the ideas certainly strongly inform my thinking and how I imagine the structure of work.
29th July 2012
Automatic Drawing - Surrealism
https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSRFhsDcnEMXLNdJ3HJfN53cx-Zkzz7O2wwnrm6IjuM8ClC7qxbhg
https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSI6roCDuIXECduQRBKVJoXXSGQuhnLPpCF1BRdpvOFeoQjn-0j
http://www.edruscha.com/assets/images/artwork/MEDIUM/654.jpg
These movie stills as paintings seems so exciting to me, such an insight. I have for the previous Exploratory Project in the MA collected and used such stills and titles for a Moving Image piece:
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/titles.html
As imagery, I have felt there is much more for me with that, and I feel really thrilled with Ruscha's paintings. They give an insight into time and the medium of film and how we experience the convention of created film time in the way that Gerhard Richter's paintings reflect to us, conversely, insight into the photographic image and how our sense of vision is reflexive with the photographic images we look at - we remember memories through photographs - they become our memories. Roland Barthes also talks about this in Camera Lucida.
https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJCdG-n9qDuSEnsew9FsZqFs9VTww-sUum35vJH8Bf8BXcFjYFSA
http://blog.theartcollectors.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/gerhard-richter-basel-2.jpg
http://artobserved.com/artimages/2008/12/gerhard-richter-confrontation-1.jpg
Richter's paintings are indebted to photography as Ruscha's are to cinema. Richter somehow shows us both the truth of what the camera sees, and the falsity of vision. Through painting, and the transformation of medium, the transposed medium is enlightened.
17th August 2012
..........
So much reading, thinking, writing. It's been a challenge to keep up notes and blogging while doing everything else, also while allowing thinking and processing, and the series of revelations and connections hopefully occur. Dyslexia support has allowed specific IT training and dyslexia tutorials, each of which have also provided revelation. While I think of wrapping it all up into something for the MA year, I feel I am perhaps, possibly maybe just about beginning to get the hang of how to approach and begin research.
14th November 2012
..........
In this novel a child's life had been made hellish by a bully. In later life they meet up, and with few words, it is revealed that it had been the bully's life which was really hellish, a worse victim of abuse.
These masterful novels all contain that elusive shift of context and understanding I admire. I don't know if I directly relate these principals to my visual work, but the ideas certainly strongly inform my thinking and how I imagine the structure of work.
29th July 2012
..........
Automatic Drawing - Surrealism
I must at least mention Surrealist automatic drawing. Moving the hand randomly across the paper, the subconscious is accessed and expressed. The technique was translated into painting, as evidenced in the work of surrealists such as Miro and Dali, and later Picasso. Initially pioneered by André Masson, automatic drawing has always come along with a debate about which is conscious, which unconscious, and when do artistic decisions take over.
Personally, I am not looking for purity in any particular approach to this in my own drawing project. There are certainly elements of automatic drawing, but I am perfectly prepared for conscious decisions to take over, and in fact, would be looking for quite a balance between conscious and unconscious drawing, between impulsive imagery and abstracted memories. There is always an element of chance withing drawing, with which I'm sure we all agree. It's like found elements, little marks and directions to go with.
André Masson. Automatic Drawing. 1924
https://encrypted-tbn3.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSq53ddG7-bWJBVH9bswqsBTLPbn3l6-J-0E5hD54tAm2D3F43nqg (accessed 9th August 2012)
It was quite a psychological leap for Masson to explore automatic writing in those early years. I read that he was extraordinarily committed to the technique, applying various rules and conditions for himself, before moving on from it in later years. I think my one hour discipline of drawing imposes conditions which helps part of the automatic process. No matter what, I keep drawing, while my inner editor either delights, despairs, rages or agrees with what happens.
9th August 2012
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Ed Ruscha
Gerhard Richter
https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRlgHTd1qlvO7OOgC3FNqoHKTCazwUW0RP4DTBkIt_m21qkXAuhAA
Klimt Trees
It cannot really be possible not to love Gustav Klimt and his rich imagery. I have a book somewhere of his trees paintings, which I used to pour over. They are so evocative, they affect how you see nature. When in a wooded place, my eye seeks out images which remind me of certain paintings or films, as if nature is imitating art.
Beech forest, Gustav Klimt. 1902
(http://www.booksplendour.com.au/gallery/classics/Klimt/klimt_Trees.jpg accessed 13th August 2012)
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Art Nouveau
Charles Rennie MacIntosh
Margaret MacDonald
The Glasgow Style
Although Charles Rennie Macintosh has become more ubiquitous, there always has been an appreciation of him in Glasgow
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Ed Ruscha
Gerhard Richter
I have not particularly noticed before the painter Ed Ruscha, but browsing through Art And Today, his painting jumped out at me.
https://encrypted-tbn1.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6qPvRNDxT2i-Ptt0fm5iqNQZOSnXmzwPsjEhd7LiWWBDA753K
These movie stills as paintings seems so exciting to me, such an insight. I have for the previous Exploratory Project in the MA collected and used such stills and titles for a Moving Image piece:
http://eleanormacfarlane.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/titles.html
As imagery, I have felt there is much more for me with that, and I feel really thrilled with Ruscha's paintings. They give an insight into time and the medium of film and how we experience the convention of created film time in the way that Gerhard Richter's paintings reflect to us, conversely, insight into the photographic image and how our sense of vision is reflexive with the photographic images we look at - we remember memories through photographs - they become our memories. Roland Barthes also talks about this in Camera Lucida.
https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJCdG-n9qDuSEnsew9FsZqFs9VTww-sUum35vJH8Bf8BXcFjYFSA
http://blog.theartcollectors.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/gerhard-richter-basel-2.jpg
Richter's paintings are indebted to photography as Ruscha's are to cinema. Richter somehow shows us both the truth of what the camera sees, and the falsity of vision. Through painting, and the transformation of medium, the transposed medium is enlightened.
17th August 2012
..........
So much reading, thinking, writing. It's been a challenge to keep up notes and blogging while doing everything else, also while allowing thinking and processing, and the series of revelations and connections hopefully occur. Dyslexia support has allowed specific IT training and dyslexia tutorials, each of which have also provided revelation. While I think of wrapping it all up into something for the MA year, I feel I am perhaps, possibly maybe just about beginning to get the hang of how to approach and begin research.
14th November 2012
..........
Minimalism
My reading and thinking about Minimalism, and how the term is used in music and in visual art, has lead me down many pathways of thought, asking myself:
- What do I really mean when I borrow the word Minimalist to apply to my work.
- How can I differentiate simply and clearly that it is minimalism in music that I relate to more than how the term is usually applied to visual art.
Then, of course:
- What exactly is minimalism in music
- Minimalism in art
And how do these apply to my own thinking and my work.
Is this exactly what I mean, exactly how I think about and structure work.
- If I refer to minimalism, how can I be sure to convey how I define it, especially if that turns out to be an individual or personal definition.
-If Minimalism is not the complete explanation,what other words and terms are right.
-If Minimalism is not the complete explanation,what other words and terms are right.
This means getting to the bare bones of my work,deconstructing it to its constituent parts in order to observe how I go about putting it together, what rational I follow, what beliefs I reinforce about art when making or recognising it. The Studio practice drawing projects has been an exercise in such for me, and as it draws to a conclusion, I begin to make something of it and decide upon the lessons learned.
Reading has lead me to a major video artist I hadn't registered before. Married to the minimalist composer Steve Reich, whose music I relate to in my construction thinking about art, Beryl Korot is an artist who has worked in and developed minimalist ideas in partnership with Reich.
Beryl Korot on Steve Reich website:
Beryl Korot videos on Youtube:
I like the way she talks about video, information, and the development of humans.Then again, crucially, I do not subscribe to everything about this. Different artists will respond differently, from their own sense of visual language and aesthetics.
Minimalist Art/ Minimal Music
Abstract/ Abstracted
Quotidian/ Quiddity
These words and phrases, these definitions and shades of definitions, these meanings and implications. Somewhere between these are a very clear understanding I have of art and what I seek for in making art, and knowing it when I see it. I realise that grasping all these shades of definitions and matching them to my own meaning also enables those inner concepts to form and define themselves to me.
I refer myself to a previous blog here where I wrote about searching for the meaning of words within old and new sources, that old dictionaries with obsolete definitions sometimes give great insights into words, which are after all, not empirical equations, but a cluster of ideas towards a shared meaning.
Possible definitions of Abstract:
Departure from representation of reality.
In my work I am abstracting from something, I am choosing and paring away elements, allowing a visual distortion to occur.
18th November 2012
Departure from representation of reality.
In my work I am abstracting from something, I am choosing and paring away elements, allowing a visual distortion to occur.
18th November 2012
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