In the John Moores painting prize 2010 catalogue, Alison Watt, one of the judges, has an essay where she uses an extract to speak about the difficulty of painting.  I love it, so thought I would write it down to try and remember it.

“There’s an essay by Thomas Hess on Barnett Newman which I was given years ago.  This extract sums up for me the ‘problem’ with painting.  I’ve always loved it.

Franz Kline and Elaine De Kooning were sitting at the Cedar Bar when a collector Franz knew came up to them in a state of fury.  He had just come from [Barnett] Newman’s first one-man show. ‘How simple can an artist be and get away with it?’ he spluttered.  ‘There was nothing, absolutely nothing there!’

‘Nothing?’ asked Franz, beaming.  ‘How many canvases were in the show?’

‘Oh maybe ten or twelve - but all exactly the same - just one stripe down the centre, that’s all!’

All the same size?’  Franz asked.

‘Well no; there were different sizes; you know, from about 3 to 7 feet.’

‘Oh, 3 to 7 feet, I see; and all the same colour?’  Franz went on.

‘No, different colours, you know; red and yellow and green… but each picture painted one flat colour - you know, like a house painter would do it, and then this stripe down the centre.’

‘All the stripes the same colour?’

‘No’

‘Were they all the same width?’

The man began to think a little.  ‘Let’s see.  No. I guess not.  Some were maybe an inch wide and some maybe four inches, and some in between.’

‘And all upright pictures?’

‘Oh, no, there were some horizontals.’

‘With vertical stripes?’

‘Oh, no, I think there were some horizontal stripes, maybe.’

‘And were the stripes darker or lighter than the background?

‘Well I guess they were darker, but there was one white stripe, or maybe more…’

Was the stripe painted on top of the background colour or was the background colour painted around the stripe?’

The man began to get a bit uneasy.  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said, ‘I think it may have been done either way, or both ways, maybe…’

‘Well I don’t know,’ said Franz. ‘It all sounds damned complicated to me.’

(Thomas Hess in ‘Barnett Newman’, 1972, Tate)”

(Larger extract taken from Alison Watt in ‘John Moores Painting Prize 2010′, 2010, National Museums Liverpool)

I have recently spent a short time-out in the Trossachs - Scotlands National Park, situated just above Glasgow - where I hit upon a mini-revelation regarding what I have been photographing and why I have been taking photographs.

You see, I have been quite happy to snap away with my low-quality digital camera, without concerning myself with why I am taking the photographs.  Previously this act has always been related to my painting, I have concentrated on taking shots of scenes or objects that I intended to use in my painting.  With hindsight I can see that I made a significant change during a recent trip to Amsterdam, here it was where I actively begun to take photographs on a whim, snap snap snap, and what a freedom it gave me! Not always thinking what could be used in my ‘real’ work, and instead taking a shot because of the merits of the photograph alone.  Pre-thought has been overtaken by instinct and other mini-revelations have occurred to me because of this, such as taking photographs of water, because I like the abstract qualities you are given when there is no other material to reference against, the play of light upon and within a surface that at one instance reflects the light and at the next, allows the lens to view deep under its surface.  The particular limitations of the camera seem to add to this contradictory outcome; firstly a camera is never able to process enough of the experience to relate it to what minds-eye has remembered of the event, such as the sounds and smells that bombard your senses and affect the memory, secondly, the camera captures an instant in stasis, not the constantly shifting play of light across the surface that is the reality of the experience.

Only when I visited Scotland did I realise the reasoning behind this change in direction.  And it related to something I read a long time ago, so long ago I can’t remember who wrote it, but it goes something along the lines of “photography is the great democratising medium, because it allows untrained amateurs and people without the talent required to compose an image, to capture a beautiful picture, a perfect scene.  The most beautiful elements of amateur photography are the chance happenings, the accidents, that are captured in its instantaneous gaze and cannot be captured in the laborious and time-consuming practise of painting without an act-of-will of the artist.”

I can see now, photography for the medium that it is designed to be. A documentation to show the immediate results of a mind in action, to capture instantaneously those things that interest you.  By then being captured, they are dislocated from the activity of the mind somewhat, and distorted by the mechanics of the camera and photographic medium.  The resultant alteration from the original intent doesn’t interest me so much in trying to find a happy communion between the two, but I am satisfied that once it is placed in photographic form it becomes something else.  I am more interested in maintaining the aesthetic of amateurism and helping to navigate myself through the documentary process.

Roland Barthes’ ‘Mythologies’ is a seminal text on Semiology. It is a lucid, profound and insightful deconstruction of the manner in which Western society prostitutes itself through veils and constructions of signs, signals and symbols. Seemingly disparate subjects are discussed, from ‘Toys’, through ‘Striptease’ and ‘The Writer on Holiday’ to ‘The Great family of man.’

I have recently been working on a series of drawings, photographs and performances all of which take wrestling as their subject. Barthes discussion of this subject has articulated elements which drew me to wrestling, opened up realisations of its further potential and ultimately revealed its capability to be the ideal painterly subject.

“The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess. Here we find a grandiloquence which must have been that of ancient theatres.”

The debauched theatrics, ‘the spectacle of excess’, are the crux of wrestling’s initial appeal to the painter. The pomposity and bombastic nature of wrestling’s linguistics place it firmly under the stylistic, rather than historical, umbrella of the Baroque. It’s the timelessness of Wrestling which makes it such an a[appropriate symbol, Read the rest of this entry »

Everything she references, whether consciously or not, appears to be contained in quotation marks but the citational act is almost inconspicuous, happily lacking the pomp or pious irony so prevalent in much contemporary art. It’s as though the artist is telling us “here’s a shipwreck in the manner shipwrecks apparently demand”, or “let’s pretend that painting this way is still possible and we’ll see what the result is”. And the result is somewhere between playful questioning and genuine emotional investment, the ghosts of past pictorial conventions making themselves present in and through a practice that is “absolutely modern”, receptive enough to entertain – but also transform – selected moments from the art historical archive, reactivating these borrowed or stolen signs of painting so as to recharge and regenerate painting itself. (Letting the Ghosts In: Nadia Hebson, Peter Suchin)

The proposition of the title to this blog, taken from Peter Suchins essay on the artist Nadia Hebson has a massive pull for me at the moment. So much of my research has taken me towards this fundamental question about the problems of knowledge in contemporary society. The notion that we now “know” so much, conversely leaves us with not very much to say other than cynical put downs and ironic quips. The interesting artists around at the moment are the one’s who arrive at their subject with geniune fondness.

For me this problem has resulted in an interest in religious iconography, childhood play and the practice of Shamanism in indigenous communities. I will put some of my works up when I feel they start to succeed in capturing some of the honesty that belief bestows, at the moment they appear to be commenting on the problem without engaging with it. When you look at work by the old masters, or anything up to the modernist period, there is a conviction in the production, the belief that their work means something and can fundamentally change someones perception of the world, the work of today is struck in its majority by a crisis in confidence and often it appears to be the case that the artist avoids opening themselves up to the criticism that they are naive, by finding ways to avoid commiting themselves utterly to their art.

The problem is manifest in 2 ways however, not just is it the artists unwillingness to commit fully to their craft, it is also the audience and their knowingness of the same issues as the artist. There is a certain fear in the audience to be visibly moved by art, although it is ok to be cerebrally moved. I find this strange when the original conception of art was all fire and brimstone, to tell in pictures the stories of religions, to have an immediate emotional impact upon the viewer. Artists have thus attempted to escape from the habituation of cerebral lethargy by the audience by breaking the traditional boundaries of active and passive participation, shocking the viewer into a response.

As an artist I think this space should be explored more thoroughly. Perhaps a healing needs to be performed, the boundary of belief needs to be reinstated between viewer and the artist.

Foucault- Heterotopias, Tom de Freston

Foucault postulates that the 19th Century’s great obsession was with History. By default, therefore, he confirms his belief that history is an artificial construct. Such a construct is part of a broad obsession with categorization and the desire for knowledge and truth. This is all the inevitable by product of a society which had raised doubts over previous certainties such as religion. With the central belief system damaged they sought more scientific and empirically measurable forms of truth. History was just one of many disciplines which needed to be invented, ordered housed and institutionalized. This gave rise to the birth of the museum.

Foucault’s essay concerns itself, predominantly, with a discussion with the historical shifts in space. He discusses that there has been a shift from a space of binary oppositions, of the near and far, open and closed, private and public and sacred and profane. Without deviating too far it would be interesting to see what he made of the technological revolution, the internet and its many manifestations, has surely given rise to a whole new experience and existence in terms of our relation to space. Geographical barriers have dissolved our need to receive information, communicate and purchase no longer requires a journey to a specific, concrete and tangible space. Instead we can move between realms with the click of a mouse.

Space, Foucault argues, has a History in Western culture, and it’s always closely bound to our experience of time. The progression and evolution of this history has marched on to new venues in recent time.

Foucault argues that Heterotopias are a specific kind of space which exist today. The homogeneity of space, or at least the dialectical interrelation of spaces, has been eroded. In its place is a system of spaces which creates a heterogeneous landscape. The is a geographic of multiple layers, one which devours binary oppositions and gives birth to a more complex network of relationships, all mingling to create a kind of black hole, a cavernous void. There is no space between or no central venue; there is no definable point to measure against. It is the nightmare of structuralism. As Foucault states:

“We live inside a set of relations that delineates sites which are irreducible to one another and absolutely not superimposable on one another”

The train is the clichéd example given, a place in which we can sit, a form which takes us between two distant points, an object which passes us as we remain stationary within one place. The ground and existence within the geography of a train might be multiply layered, by its still a ground well worn; so perhaps not worth discussing weakly and further here.

Foucault labels a certain kind of space as ‘Heterotopias’. My instinct is to be cynical to the classification through labeling, thus allowing us to believe in a set of relations due to the umbrella terms which sits above the discussion and protects us from the truth of difference and ambiguity. The definition requires the appreciation of a Utopia as a platonic ideal, a place which cannot exist in tangible or real form. They are unreal spaces, merely a by product of our belief in what actual space would be if cleansed and purified through some kind of philosophical filter.

He defines Heterotopias as spaces equivalent to that which exists in a mirror. These are spaces which exist in relation to real spaces, and can only exist because of that real space. Yet there is a certain placelessness in the space within the mirror, for it does not actually exist, yet we know it is the product of the existence of a real space which we occupy at the time. It informs us of our occupation and the space in which we belong. It tells us that we are over there, over there being here. It is a place which does not exist itself, but informs us.

The shifts in space is described in the shift in cemeteries. They have moved from being a fulcrum of society, placed centrally within the city, next to the church. They were confirmation of the passing of our souls and crucial aspects of our existence and moral and spiritual well being. Not denying other aspects of the cemetery, with the type of burial still mirroring the deceased’s socio economic standing. Foucault describes this as a ‘hierarchy of tombs’.

Yet as the west has become increasingly doubtful ands skeptical about the existence in a god and an afterlife we have become increasingly obsessed with our mortal remains. We live in ‘the cult of the dead.’ Foucault argues that is natural for a society who believes in an afterlife to not put so much emphasis on our remains, the corpse is seen as an empty vessel, due to the spirits ascension to heaven. Yet the importance rises when we consider the process of decay, the fleshy corpse within a box, to be our final destination. Foucault describes an almost fetishistic, ritualistic obsession with our ‘own little box of personal decay’.

Thus the cemetery has moved to the outskirts; no longer the heart of the city, no longer the spiritual haven confirming transcendence, the passing of our souls to another destination. Rather it becomes the place on the outskirts of the city, becoming ‘the other city’, the eternal stagnant resting place of a rotting corpse. A new binary opposition, a dark mirror of life.

That Foucault choices to label Museums and Libraries under a similar umbrella term says as much about his approach as it does the spaces themselves. It should also be noted that gardens are discussed under this title of Heterotopias. It is a system which looks to cast its net wide in order to uncover certain elements of the zeitgeist, that elusive and fashionable spirit.

Foucault sees Museums as timeless places, venues outside of society, existing in relation and opposition to other spaces. A museum is a palimpsest, a continual accumulation of time. Foucault sees them as idealistic and evolving beasts, ‘heterotopias in which time never stops building up and topping its own summit.’

He describes the museum as embalmed venues, able to exist outside of the normal flow, destruction and passing. Places ordered and categoriesed, providing stationary points which build corridors of pauses. It is, he states, a notion formed directly from our notions of modernity, spaces which are a by product of the 19th Centuries most intrinsic beliefs.

It seems they are formed from the same system which forms modern cemeteries. With the belief in a higher state gone, it becomes of utter most importance to provide sanctuary to the life and existence of all earthly possessions. The fetish for the object and the religiosity of its celebration and display is a by product of this fear and doubt.

These spaces require the construction of rituals and codes. They become sanctified spaces, demanding a certain form and type of behavior from the visitor. It is this which creates the veneer of these institutions as elite establishments, as codified venues designs only for an elite section of society. The bourgeois and the rising and spreading middle class claim to find ways to make these spaces increasingly accessible. Yet in truth they desire a venue which celebrates there supposed intellectual, academic, economic and moral superiority. It is, after all, these values which the places are founded on and on which these individuals society is built. Such values are at the core of a humanity which is otherwise bankrupt and bereft of values. Thus we move towards Foucault’s other argument for museums, as being parallel to prisons. That is for another time.

‘A Lovers Discourse- a reply’

This is a reply to Roland Barthes ‘A Lover’s Discourse’. The original text sees Barthes writing about a single figure and the nature of their internal discourse caused by the ‘other’. The protagonist is sometimes present, sometimes absent, sometimes imagined.

The book is not organised in a linear narrative or in some form of philosophical hierarchy which moves clearly through varies levels of thought. Instead it is disjointed musings, displayed as fragments, on the condition in question. The fragments are organised alphabetically to provide a structure which does not turn the text into a singular doctrine.

The further I reached into the book the more I realised that numerous threads seem, to me anyway, to link into concerns in some of my paintings; these being predominantly desire and the single male figure and its relation to a female protagonist.

It feels important to try and make sense of the thoughts that emerged from the text. These vary from direct analyse of specific ideas to the development of an idea which derived as a tangent of reading the book but which has, perhaps, broken totally from the book as a source.

At this point I feel that the thoughts would be restricted if I either worked through them chronologically (as they came about within the book) or into some thematically (as this could limit the scope of them to what I think, in a preconceived manner, they are about.) So it seems logical to mirror Barthes. To take the fragments which have emerged as a deconstruction and reaction to the text and to reorder them alphabetically, under titles which loosely summarise the theme/content of the particular thought. Read the rest of this entry »

Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge University invited a series of contemporary painters to give lectures on the role of the human figure in their work. The following is my notes for my lecture.

Why I paint the human figure.NB The following is merely notes written in preparation for the talk, it therefore has a fairly loose and conversational feel in the writing.

Read the rest of this entry »

This piece of writting considers the notion of perceiving emotion in art. It is a response to the ideas discussed in an essay of the same name by Damien Freeman, whose essay considers, amoungst other things, Wollheim’s writting on the matter.

 The unique experience of perceiving emotion in a painting seems to come down to a discussion of four parts. Two of these parts are relevant to the production and the others more directly to consumption. Read the rest of this entry »

The relationship between the artist and theory is very different to the one the philosopher, critic or historian has. For the artist there can be a certain elasticity in the understanding of the source. They can manipulate and formulate ideas for it for their own, selfish, and painterly ends. The accuracy of understanding is secondary to the impact, influence and development within the artists own practise.

 In 2002 Jean Baudrillard first published a transcript of his lectures on ‘The Spirit of Terrorism.’ It is an ontological deconstruction of a sensitive and contentious subject; not least the chapter which deals explicitally with the collapse of the World Trade Centre on 9/11. The idealism inherant in the vision was what was attacked, the destruction of concrete and lose of life was a by product. Read the rest of this entry »