Painting is always concerned with space, that constant interplay between flatness adn depth which runs like blood through the disciplines history. It is the key note in any ontological deconstruction.

In figurative painting the function is shifted. Space becomes a stage. Space becomes a symbolic, a psychological and a dramtic vehicle for the figure to be positioned within. Space is what activates this figure.

My paintings are to flat and thus so are my figures, thus so is my subject, thus so is my message. The concentration and focus on ‘real’ architectural space will open up a dialogue.l It is not enough for them just to talk across the two dimensional spaces of the surface.

my focus has been on two dimensional space. On top and bottom, side to side, on splits, on symmetry, on balance. They are walls when they need to be windows. They are currently blind.  

The hero is dead

The hero is the figure of idealism

The tragic hero is the romantics hero and ICarus its king

The fall was the tragic hero’s motif

Tragedy is about inevitability

The fall is the inevitable conclusion of the rise

The desire to fall comes from the unfulfilled desire to rise

Tragic heroism is measured in the total distance travelled

Tragic heroism always ends where it started

Tragic heroism befitsliterautre

it has a linear narrative

upwards and then downwards through space and time

All we have left is the desire for the hero

The desire for heroism has no narrative

The desire for heroism is static

It desire movement through space and time

It desires the rise that necessitates the fall

It remains attached to the base level

Twitching and squirming at best

The hero is dead

Tragedy is dead

only unfulfilled desire is left

An image of group exercise is a powerful one.  It unsettles.  Why is this?

Perhaps it reveals something about ourselves that we don’t necessarily want to accept, and when we look upon this fact from the outside it appears stupid to us.

Is there a clue within this image as to how we can best utilize painting as an artform?  The same effect would not be achieved through writing because writing forces us to see through anothers eyes.  It is the homeland of opinion.  Painting, whilst not being as democratic as photography, is certainly more democratic than writing.  Because it doesn’t have this voice dictating opinion onto us, painting is perfectly placed to make this kind of comment.  Essentially painting has a limited area in which it can function to its fullest potential, but it is best when it is like a mirror held up to humankind.  Photography in turn cannot have this ability because at heart the photographers eye is a naive eye.  A painting gains power through its deliberateness in the choices made.

This is a terrible post, i’ve just read it back.

But in there is something that almost makes sense, so i’ll leave it.  What the hell.

Form as a pathway to tension.

Colour as an expression of tensions.

Too much conflict within the work, too much tension.

Light as a unifier.

Caravaggio, the puppet master.

The scene setter

Believable light, believable scene.

Form can be distorted further.

Rembrandt, ‘A Woman bathing in a Stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?)‘, 1654.

 ONe of the most stunning virtuoso displays of paintings I have ever seen. By all accounts an elaborate ode to a love one. What amazes me about Rembrandt is his ability to transform paint into a wide range of mimetic ends without ever loosing the autonomous suculence of the paint itself. It always reads as stick, sexy oil paint as well as its representational counterpart.

 That counterpart is never subordinate though. It is not like Rembrnadt sees a hierachy in the role of the medium. He sees the process of representation as a way to celebrate different properties of his medium, the two are always symbiotic, never at war.

 Look at the thumb on the dress. The dress itself. The light which flickers across wat, through skin and on the dress. The manner in which the leg breaks thorugh the water and the reflection of the legs across the riplling surface. Always with such loosness, with such seeming ease.

 When put into words we reduce the acheivement down to something simplisitc. It is in essence. It is nothing more than what many a painter has aspired to before and after Rembrandt. The difference is that only the smallest of handfuls of painters can acheive it with such sophisitication.

This eulogy is necessary. I wish to assert a believe in a hierachy. Some painters are better than others. It is without doubt true that the rules we judge painting by have been radically altered and are constantly evolving. Yet there are eternal truths and certain goals to aspire to. Within this framework there is certainly remit to gauge one painters success over another.

History may lie. Canons might be artifical constructions. But the deconstruction of such idealistic tower building should not mean we dismiss all aspects of the vantage point. When we sift back through the shattered lense which nows looks back, certain gems still emerge as strong as ever, even if the structure in which they were raised is crumbling.

 Rembrandt’s , ‘A Woman bathing in a Stream (Hendrickje Stoffels?)‘, 1654 is one of these gems.
 

A spine cut like a blade through his back

Broken flesh opened the way for a song of redThe floor hungrily awaited its arrival   Old shoes and rotting booze  His cracked lips stuck to each other in a kissA salty narcissism filled the empty mouthThe throat coughed and clogged 

Tailgates and china plates

And all of this was just an echo unfoulding

Of a thing which actually meant something

Deleuze on Bacon- chapter eight, painting forces.

 We are told paintings task is not to ‘render the visable but to render visable’. Thus we upon up the timeless apology to the attack on painting as a form of representation. It provides a neat repost to critics from Plato to Greenberg.  We are denying painting as merely a mirror to the world or a narricistic reflection of itself. Instead we are arguing that it is a doorway beaneath the surface appearance of things, so giving us a glimpse of known but unseen aspects of reality.

 It all sounds rather mystical, or conveniant at best. I think I am naturally cycnical to this apology. It seems to easy to give painting this magical power to give concrete form to otherwise elusive and unseen being. We are not dreamcatchers. Surely paintings always talk of surface appearances, be they those of paint itself or out shadow image of the tangible world.

Luckily Deleuze tackles the issue with the rigour of a scientist, leaving me slightly more convinced that painting can and does reach beyond the surface.

Deleuze talks of the visulisation Bacon gives to otherwise invisable forces. Bacon is not so much concerned with the figure, but the forces which underly and effect the figure. The figure is seemingly a vessel which allows him to articulate and excavate these forces.

These ellusive forces are identified. Chief among them seems to be the non audible force of time. Below this a list of elementary forces is listed: inertia, gravitation, attraction, weight and pressure. Physical identifable forces which speak of the cause or effect of a force upon a form. Thus the form needs to exist in order to articulate the force which acts upon it. Sound is also mentioned, with particular reference made to Bacon’s fascination with the scream.

An early opposition with Deleuze approach comes with his dismissal of subject matter. The specific nature of the form seems to be deemed unimportant to him. He argues that it is the force from, within or upon the form which matters. This seems blinkered. The complex web like map of a painting renders each part important. To often writters compartmentalise a painting in order to find a more complete and unified outcome from their deconstruction. Deleuze does not totally dismiss subject matter but in his discussion of Millet he certainly relegates it in his clear hierachy. I am not arguing that any one writter should try and take on every aspect of a work. Too much is at stake with any one aspect to render this possible. It is thus only natural that someone should take on style, another subject matter or iconography, another social context and another a search for metaphysical values. But it is the consistent pig headed nature of each writter to aggrandise their own search over another which drives me mad. I have digressed, but I think the criticism is necessary if not overly dogmatic.

Deleuze’s argument, therefore, is that a painter does not paint the object but is actually trying to capture the particular force of, on, from or within that object. That force is the root of a particular sensation, and sensation is the chief aim of painting.  

 We briefly touch upon the root to finding and then capturing such forces. This allows us to see that it is not through some magical alchemy, but the product of formal fasciantions. We arrive at the force through the ‘decomposition and recomposotion’ of certain binary opositions. Historical references are given to the play between flatness and depth through the renaissance, the discussion between movement in Cubism and the deconstruction and recontruction of colour in Impressionism.

Movement seems to be the chief concern of Bacon in this respect, and his debt to Cubism is certainly apparent if not clear. For Bacon the cause of the force and the multitude of effects related to the force is what he is after. The form, normally a figure, is merely a vehicle to allow us to find this force. The normal relationship between form and force is subverted. The form no longer is the chief actor, rather it is relagated to the stage itself, with the forces taking the lead role.

 Thus Bacon tends to take immboliel forms which seem to be subjected to unknown, unseen outside forces. We don’t normally see the cause of the force but the force itself, its effect or impact. The flattening, the stretching, the scrubbing, the disturbing. This patches are not about disturbing and destroying the vision of the form below but discovering and revealing the force itself.

Deleuze calls the area of impact and disruption ’the zone of indiscernability’. I love this phrase but think that in some ways he is actually talking about the zone of discernability. For whislt the form below has been deformed the force has been given form.

This area must remain a zone and not spread like a disease over the whole body, causing total deformation. If this happens than the dialogue between form and force is lost. Once the form is lost then then so is the force, for we are only aware of its particular nature due to its specific impact on the form. Localised deformation of the stage is essential but without the stage the performance cannot exist. (A can feel this analogy stretching to the point of breaking.)

More specifically Bacon search for forces like the scream. The arrognat painter trying to make visable the audible? REgardless, Deleuze eloquantly describes how Bacon searches for the scream not the horror. The mere physical mechanics which cause a scream are irrelevant, they are just the ’spectacle’. It is the forces which make us scream, the unseen convulsion that Bacon searches for. Having not fully got my little head around this it seems like a potential contradiction.

Far clearer is the way Bacon deals with forces such as isolation, deformation and dissipation. All of which are empirically listed by Deleuze. He states that, ‘Bacon likens himself to a pulveriser… he is more like a detective.’ This reminds me of Andy’s assesment of Rothko. What is clear is that often, when dealing with high sensation, the painter must actually be detached, a cool calm customer, not lost in some hedonisitc and self aggrandising lust.

Deleuze finally deals with the force which seems to be the chief ambition of not just Bacon but most painters; time. He talks of two types of time in Bacon. The chanigng time which is articulated at many points in the deforming passages of paint which articulate movement within or on a form. Then the search for eternal time.

This time is our chief and unreachable goal. It is an invisable and undescribable force which is never made concrete in any form. It is not just the pursuit of the visual arts. I would argue that we are infact kidding ourseleves. Painting deals with vision, with what can actually be seen. It cannot make visable this aspect of time. It can, however, attempt to get us to a slightly closer vantage point. From there we feel like we can reach out without touching. The frustration of our attempts is actually what is made visable.

Other entries:

Chapter Seven- hysteria

Chapter Six- painting and sensation

Chapter Four

Chapter Three

Chapter two- study of a dog 1952

Andy’s thoughts - and more thoughts