http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEmbjiaA3E0

I got sent an email by a good friend today asking mine, and a few other peeps, opinion of the latest Guiness advert. The response of one freind was that it was good but not worth the press hyperbole; especially as it is ‘just and advert.’

This led me to think a bit about the nature of adverts and the quality of this advert in particular.

The capatalisit society we live in places, by its nature, huge importance upon the mechanics of consumption. The polotics and sociological nuances of this fact are not important. What is important, in this particular context, is what that demands. One of the results of this situation is an increasing pressure on the marketting of products. Visual communication is the corner stone of ensuring that a particular brand gains and retains certain values in our minds. An advert, therefore, becomes the contemporary equivalent of an altarpiece in a church. The visual celebration and confirmation of that which is valued in society. In place of god is commerse. I am in danger of slipping into vain attempts to describe the ever elusive zeitgeist, so I shall move onto the advert itself.

It is a typical Guiness advert. As always they play on their slogan, ‘Good things come to those who wait.’ As ever they take a simple idea and translate it onto an epic scale. This time the idea is of a stack of dominos falling over. They have turned it into an epic narrative. From start to finish we move through a whole town witnessing a the dominos effect played out through a vast array of objects. For this broad discussion the details of these objects is not of huge importance.

The chian ends with a stack of books (I think…from first look) whose pages open upwards towards the top of the pile. We zoom out to see the ground of cheering people witness the pile turning into a sculptural represetnation of a pint of Guiness.

The quality of production is that of a film. The idea relates directly back to the guiness logo and ends with a symbol of the drink itself. Along the way the simplisitc idea has allowed the production team to go let loose creatively… from which objects are selected, how it is shot, how to get the whole thing to work, the relationship between the music and the action.

It is a perfect example of excellent visual communication, where the outcome perfectly fulfills the intention with invention, sophsiitication and originality.

The result of this is to embed certain specific ideas of the brand in our head. The quality of the advert means we assocaite the brand with creative endevour and thus its iconic value is reasserted.

The quality and impact of the advert means that in this instance an ad break has been turned into a gallery. No white walls or stuffy doormen at this establishment. Here the walls are less visable yet as with all institutions there are other less tangible sociological and philosophical ones, which we perhaps need to decode when considering such issues.

I have digressed and also in my rush failed to articulate myself with any sophisitication. Hopefully i have at least got across my opinion that being just an advert does not stop it from deserving the welcome hyperbole of the press.

Some pills are hard to swallow and others…well you don’t wanna swallow them. Yet how do we tell the difference between medicine and drugs?
The following post is rushed and poor as i am writting on my break between reviews at work. I needed to get this down asap but wish i could have spent more time as it is actually a crucially important notion to me; and this blog.

I had a long chat with James the other day (who I painted in a partnership with for the final year of my Fine Art Ba hons) about my new body of work. he made many observations. As someone who pirdes myself on being open to criticism I have been spending the past day or two decoding his points of view. There is no use blindly absorbing advise when it is always biased and full of truths and half truths. So I thought it interesting to discuss the process i went through adn the consequent revelations.

Firstly i had to realise that every person brings limited and biased eyes to your work. There bias comes from what they know of you, what they value in art (and dont value), what they know about art (and don’t know)and what you think the intention of their remarks is. no criticvism is a pure appraisal of another work, however much we try and be objective and honest. jealousies, paranoias, banter, limitations of knowledge and approach all effect how we view the work of a friend. if we can decode these elemetns we can find the seeds of accurate adn crucial criticism.

James commented on his disapointemnet with some fo the surfaces and the weakenss is certain other technical elements, such as the drawing. It goes without saying he is accurate. Firstly though I realsied it was important to appreciate that this was always going to be what he was focusing on. The subject, content and potential narrative are elements I feel he is not interested in; so the former would always be the arena of discussion. 9apologies if that seems unfair, it is not a compliment or a criticism, more an observation.) Secondally it is impossible to decode the complex web of feeling s two people have for the others work when they have been invovled in joint practise in the past. naturally they are always going to compare the work you did together against the new output.

From my point of few this is not a problem. I agree that certain little areas of our joint work explored interesting techniques adn surfaces; yet I am now interested in having a content, a function and a purpose to my explorations. I feel this is actually essential and that there is no such thing as purely self reflexive work. the moment you don’t have sub ject matter your fucked.

I digress… after all this i realised there was some justification to james’ barrage of commentary on the new surfaces etc. i have expanded in what i want to do, but perhaps to far. I have always felt process, surface and formal qualities of the medium itself are the central building block tot he narratives and subjects i want to explore. With recent moves towards more faceted and complex narratives i have found this to be fading. some of the earleir and fresher works in the series were less explicit or clear in content but dealt with the inbetween states, time warn surface and musical use of the medium which are, ironically, inherent to all the content in my new work.

I think i need to find a more consistent and simple form of narration. From foundation through to now certain values have interested me, that now relate to particular stories. From Ode to a Nightgingale to icarus i am interesteed in notions of rising and falling, of floating, of moving between states 9literal and metaphorical) of tangible reality and an other spiritual realm. For a few years these got lost in my practise as i located my approach to firmly in painterly exploration. now i have goen ther other way.

i think i need to understand the things i want to acheive then find a visual basis to start from which will allow me to pursue these notions. I need to consider the subject matter, the approach, the content, the formal plays, the boundaries etc etc.

I shall tackle all of these later in a blog regarding the next body of work i plan to develop after this current selection of paintings is finished (hopefully should finish them by the start of December)

Sir (apologies in advanced for a post full of mistakes and rushed in content. I have just meant to reply for a few days now and have not had time. So I thought a fast and chaotic and poorly written response would be better than nothing at all. If you finish reading this blog and feel three minutes of your life have been gobbled up by utter junk, then I apologise… next time I shall realise that silence is better than noise…. too much coffee

In answer to your questions. Firstly, yes that picture is the Acteon one I referred to.

In terms of the humour. Its strange. Recently I have been thinking a lot about how I want the tragedy and drama and melancholy in my works to be underpinned by a humourous touch. I think it provides a more humane, rounded and less suffocating narrative. We only need to look to Ovid and Shakespeare to realise how well the two relate.

So I have been searching for ways to incorporate thjese kinds of touches, but I dont know if I was aware of it when I constructed this particular sketch. Although as I made it the humour did seem to emerge. I suppose this is a positive way to work, less forced… about decisions made during the process… not totally premeditated and therefore literal.

In terms of space I was thinking of two things. Firstly I liked the notion of having tiny figures at the bottom of a vertical painting. i felt like it would give then sxcene an epic and sublime feel.

Within this vertical, though, the figures play across a thin horiztonal strip. So hopefully that can generate the narrative movement from left to right; his flight, his past and future. Those who enter stage and those who leave.

I can’t want to start it and let loose on the upper half. I am still in search of an empty space as sublime, as moving as that in David’s ‘Death of Marat’. For me that is this one of the high points in a spiritual, poetic use of space in figure painting (from the works i know of course). It beats Freidrich (sp) hands down and looks forward to Rothko. I am keen to move back towards this kind of point, yet with the reinsertion of figures, whereby a dialgue is created between the empty space adn the figure… between something and nothing, between figuration and abstraction. And on and on… waffling now.

Loved the post of the figure in contemporary painting. i am stealing that as part of my lecture in a few week on representation in images today. I want to look at the difference between narrative adn allegory, between specific characters adn more generalised figures. I think this is something particularly relevant to figurative artists today… sitting on that boundary between specifics adn metaphysics seems to be what this postmodern malarky is all about.

To detach ourselves from that notion, however, it is interesting to go back to the ‘masters’ and realise how there has always been a play between specific narratives and more generalised philsophical embodiments. It is just perhaps the boundaries are less clear than ever now.