As stressed students hurry among the centenary walls of Christ’s College in Cambridge and the bell of the old chapel announces Evensong, a half-metre-long painting awaits completion by the hands of a young artist in his studio. Tom de Freston, the holder of the 08/09 Levy Plumb Visual Arts Residency, grasps a tin of bright pink acrylic and spreads the diluted paint onto the canvas, staining figures throughout his work in a way that is reminiscent of Jackson Pollock’s dynamic gestures.
From amongst the bright colours and energetic traces of paint, bold characters stare out at the observer. They are daringly dressed, or perhaps more accurately, undressed, since most of the figures wear only bright red underwear and socks, and sport immaculate white masks. Indeed, in Tom’s treatment of the image of man, he appears to make man the object of an absurd tragedy.
Apart from wanting to capture the viewer’s attention, Tom also attempts to create a recurrent character in his work that inspires feelings of solemnity, pity and absurdity, all at the same time. If one asks him; ‘Tom, is this supposed to be tragic? Or are you just mocking us? ’ he answers, ‘Both; they are tragic comic’.
In an interview with Professor Admiral Face, Tom defines tragedy in painting as ‘the play between the construction of an implied ideal and the realisation of its falseness’. When he admires art’s historical characters, such as David’s Napoleon, he says he is actually smiling at their potential to become ridiculous. He proceeds to paint them naked, sometimes in erotic positions, confronting their own solemnity and ridicule in a context where glory appears as the epitome of the grotesque. Clothing his characters in radioactive pink boxers and red socks is a very straight, bold and comical way to transform them into the antithesis of themselves. They become pathetic characters, more suited to making the viewer revel in their ludicrousness, than to impressing them.
‘That’s just what I want. I wanted the clothes, paradoxically, to strip the characters of their desire for heroism,’ he says.
From heroism Tom de Freston shifts to tragedy; a kind of tragedy that inspires laughter with its foolishness. Indeed, can his imagery actually be called tragedy? Does it not belong to the field of comedy? ‘Certainly not’ he asserts. ‘It’s more a search for a quiet caustic wit. Let’s call it Melancomic’.
The body of his work, much of which was shown at the exhibition at Christ’s College, Cambridge, Entitled ‘Reflections’ in September 2009 , is all about drama; how to materialize it, how to mock it, how to exaggerate it to the point where it loses its inner sense of sadness. As he explains, internalised sadness is an element at the centre of his work, THE heart from which every kind of bold image describing HIS vision of the human being finds its roots.
Hundreds of drawings and studies show Tom’s analysis of the expressionism of the human figure. In his earlier works, such drama was depicted using the image of the fall; romantic, fragile, floating, and hypnotizing figures such as depicted in his studies anticipating the paintings ‘Icarus’ and ‘Deposition II’. However, Tom’s figuration of man has since developed from this image towards the idea of de-dramatization, as represented in his narrative painting, ‘A Brief History of Heroism’. The latter resembles a theatrical scene, where each actor performs his own role in a composition of pre-conceived chaos.
Tom feels that his work is related to the forms and powers of theatrical drama. ‘The poetry of paint resides in its ability to be mimetic, expressive, self-referential and spiritual’. He reflects upon characters by situating them in the ‘theatre of their performance’. Thus, like comedians behind white masks on a theatre stage, they perform the everyday tragedy of a story characterized by nonsense and cynicism. It is, he declares, a way ‘to provide a fleeting escape from tangible reality’.
Having studied History of Art as an undergraduate at Cambridge University, the references to the great Masters’ pieces are constantly present in his paintings. It is possible to find many art historical references in Tom’s work, especially in his piece, ‘History Painting’. From Manet’s ‘Olympia’ to David’s ‘La Mort de Marat’, the background is full of these depictions mixed with characters coming straight from the artist’s everyday life and incongruously dressed in highly stylized red or electric pink underwear. He is, he states, ‘devouring these past images and excreting and regurgitating them back out onto the canvas’.
This is not cannibalism, he insists, but a way to make these historical images his own. His personal style comes from ‘the manner in which I deal with the source and the way in which I rip specific elements from their historical context and then piece them back together in new orders and systems’.
Aware of the impact on the public of such iconic images, he ‘dares’ to use them in order to manifest the absurdity of what is considered one of the most serious of fields - history. He hopes it offers a broader scope to the reading of human history in general. He cites, mocks, and plays not only with art historical images but also with the titles of the works. Indeed, at the time of thinking of a title for one of his painting, Tom smiles and starts making puns, enjoying some comical nonsense. Géricault’s ‘The Raft of the Medusa’ becomes ‘The Last of the Seducer’ and even ‘The Raft of the Reducer’.
Tom de Freston’s studies in art history also lead him to a second essential standpoint in his work: the treatment of space. From the Renaissance to contemporary Figuration, its place in art has changed. Aware of this, he plays with both the antagonism of the space and its sense of unsteadiness in works where there is a sense of perspective but it is nevertheless possible to perceive the flatness of the wall.
‘It is about creating a certain kind of tension which I don’t yet think that I have achieved. The structure and the figures are often laid over the surface in a manner which still allows large parts of the original layer to show through. The same skin of paint can be seen in areas of foreground, background or a section of a figure’.
The boldness of Tom’s images, the colours used, his relationship with the past as well as the dialogue between the different spaces is the result of a process of investigation and experimentation that has taken place over the year in his bright and wild studio at Cambridge. He not only analysed subjects through drawings and studies, but also through photographs and by experimenting with different supports and materials such as charcoal, acrylic, human hair, paint mediums and glue. There are hundreds of images in these sketches, with only few present on some of the finished paintings. Combined, they convey an unorthodox mix of feelings, including instability, pity and humour.
In a critique entitled, ‘engaging with Tom de Freston’s boxer shorts’ Published in the catalogue for the exhibition ‘REFLECTIONS’, Dr. Damien Freeman of Magdalene College Cambridge, states that the challenges of spirituality and aesthetics offer ‘a basis for moral growth’ and can be considered by the viewer as a guiding framework. The viewer can look at the artwork and then let himself be scandalized by the bold sexual aspect of its figures. He might also smile and think: ‘What if this was actually the common pathos of our human condition?’
