An Absence of Noise

The absence of noise is different from silence.  It is something that is particular to visual material, it is present in painting and in the silent films of the early 20th century.  Perhaps the most suitable example in moving image is the Eisenstein film which famously influenced Francis Bacon, The Battleship Potemkin, in which occurred the scream, significant in many of Bacon’s images.  The absence of noise is a powerful apparatus for purely visual imagery because when skillfully managed, it creates an imbalance that adds to the impact of a work.  Harmony is a strange word to use in the description of a painting and it is often misrepresented.  The greatest of compositions find their harmony in a series of carefully manipulated inbalances, creating tension as the eye (or, significantly, the eyes mind) is unable to rest and an energy is realised.  This imbalance does not only have to be developed through the direction of shapes and lines and the positioning of colours, it can also be found in the understanding of how an image can manipulate the psychology of a viewer.

Bacon was always a painter of psychological states, the scream is one example of how he accessed the mind of the post-war nation.  Its power lies in the expectancy of a noise to follow, which never does.  We see the scream and we tense up in the wait of some horrible primal yelp, when this doesn’t arrive an imbalance is provoked that is never resolved and so the eye’s mind attempts  to fill the space by taking closer account of this particular muscle spasm, by scanning the flesh/paint, the horror of the paint matter and the morbid fascination with the materiality of the flesh are both revealed.  It is almost like the viewer is put in place of the surgeon-painter, objectively prodding and peeling the matter, but we are not surgeons and the process is not objective for us, we see the horror of the moment in the result of the reaction (the scream). 

Jan Vermeers ouevre is in stark contrast to the volume of Bacons, however, the absence of noise plays a similarly important role.  Before we even take into account the role sound plays in his work, it is clear Vermeer was a master of light and the art of considered composition.  However, it is the role of sound (or lack of) which is where we find he rises above his contemporaries.  If I use one of his greatest works, The Milkmaid, as an example to best illustrate my point.  It has great power within the silence of the act and revels in the considered observation of watching a woman concentrating intently on pouring milk into a bowl.  Its success comes from drawing the viewer into the act, by painting the milkmaid within the isolation of her surroundings, the viewer is made aware of how silent the room must be, and by becoming aware of the silence in the image we notice the absence of the only sound that should be present, which is the sound of the milk pouring into the bowl.  This is how the necessary inbalance is created.  The only word one can use to describe the painting is that it is a meditation on a single act and everything within the painters arsenal is used to describe the act, this, added to the fact that the highlights on the pouring liquid seem to dance with the musicality of the sound, make the abscence of noise all the more pertinent.

I have started to build up a sereis of character types. My painting’s are increasingly moving towards multi figured narratives. I still think the single male figure will continue to be the main focus on my work. The shift, theatrically speaking, will be from a monologue to a central character with a supporting cast.

I want to approach the build up of this cast with as an openness. The first batch of drawings have been from images borrowed and sources from newspapers. Often they are of a figure (or two0 looking outwards) It shifs back towards the notion of the returned gaze and the protagonist. Ideally I would like to catch something of Manet’s single figures, that reverie and detachment, that introspective melancholy. It is the denial of the communication offered that seems to be the striking feature of his figures.

These two lads above disturb ne slightly. Those plastic smiles, smug grins pulled across mask likfe faces. I like the thought that perhaps they are saying, ‘We know something you don’t know’.

Jeff Walls photography often makes deliberate and open references to past imagery. Often the imagery is from the Canon of Western history painting. This is the case here, with the nod being towards Delacroix’s ‘The Death of Sardanapalus’.

Wall does not borrow the specfics of the subject matter. Instead he takes something at its core, and then also pulls on the formal advances of the images.

Delacroix’s sub ject is of a meglomanic king, determined to outlive all his possesions. Aware of his impending death he orders all his possesions, horses and wives included, to be destroyed. The manic and uncontrolled violence is told through the deep reds which pervade the whole image, the violence and pace of the brushwork and the web of curving lines which mount up the picture plane. The whole image seems to have been tiled up, as if collapsing and pouring down across the surface.

Wall tells a parallel story but set in a contemporary, real and domestic setting.  It seems to be a story of domestic tensions having exploded in a fit of rage. We are left with the aftermath, once the cast (presumably of two) have left the stage. It is like the scene of a crime.

The red stays, filling the image with that sense of violent passion and lose of control. There is a strnage balance between chaos and stillness. The nature of photography and the abscence of any action or figures gives a sesne of increadible stillness. yet the chaotic spread of colour and objects creates a pattern of energy, as if remembering the recent past.

Wall sits comfortably and intellignetly on the boundary of painting and photography. He is a photographer in that he takes photographs, recording real visions. Yet he fits closely to a tradition of image making more traditiaonlly assocaited with painting. For the vision is constructed, it is composed, it is a synthetic ordering of parts. In this sense it has the theatricality and artificiality of painting.

Interview by Tom de Freston with Antonio Santin.Painter, born in Madrid, 1978, currently lives and works in Berlin. Exhibits broadly internationally.With many thanks to Antonio for the time and thought put into the following answers Read the rest of this entry »

I have recently been do a series of drawing of figures who seem to be holding there own head, which is detached from there body. They begun as the product of a monoprint mistake, where I forgot to insert a neck (very neckligent…could not help the pun).

 The mistake sparked an interest, the figure made me laugh, so I started consciously pursuing these figures who seem to have inacted some kind of self decapitation. I wanted them to be a bit comic and ridiculous and called them ‘the boy whose head fell off’.

Today I made an alteration on figure in a new work which is based on Michelangelo’s David. David now appears to be holding his own head, as if having pulled it out of its socket. I suddenly reminded me of other images of David, the victor holding Goliaths head in his hand. It seemed interesting that David could perhaps holdin, victoriously, his own head in his hand. As if he was both David and Goliath, hero and villian, victim and victor, beast and man. It seemed to both deconstruct the history of the heroic male figure and play on trgic, but more importnalty, witty and comic ideas.

I have attached a photoshop mock up of an altered version of Carravagio’s David and Goliath. 

 I am currently starting on a series of drawings which look to develop a cast of character types, almost figures from some particular, currenlty unknown, race. They all seem to have pig noses. I think i might start working on a sereis of illustrations of this David like figure holding his one head, as if victorious. i like the idea of him also pushing the sword between hislegs, as if the threat of castration is present.  

 This waffled blurb could actually become something far more coherent, I could like to spend some time later looking into this notion…

Throughout the History of painting light has played a central and crucial role. A painters ability to excavate light from the stuff of paint has been a continuous fascination. The nature of the search and the type of light found has shifted, as if in some dialectical discussion with the zeitgeist itself.

 It seems that before now the various incarnations of light have tended to be the product of a meaningful, often spiritual search.

 A discussion with a friend yesterday made me reconsider in more depth the changing role of light in paint. He commented how the invention of electriicty must have significantly changed our relationship with light. before this point its existence, from either than sun or flame (notably in the form of candlelight) seems to be rooted to various religious belief systems. The sun as a symbol of God’s creative power, the candle as a ritulisitc tool in a various guises.

 We need only look to the type of light seen in medieval manuscripts or renaissance nad post renaissanace paintings. The type shifts hugely from an illuminated manuscript to a late Titian alterpiece or late Rembrandt self protriat. In eahc case, however, the light seems to glow from an inner depth, it seems to be conujured the medium itself. It seems weighted with a deep and moving spirituality. The light itself seems to be a manifestation of a deep and profound set of beliefs, imbued with a spiritual energy.

The invention of the electrical light bulb is a facet of the enlightenments wider program. Technological and scientific developments led to the deconstruction of previous belief systems and the arrival of doubt. Man repositioned himself as the centre of his own universe.

 The late modernist program seems, to me anyway, to be an attempt to find a new set of absolute ideals by which to measure ourselves and lead our lives. If we look to the late painting’s of Rothko it seems that this is one of the purest examples of this search for a new spirituality, a humanisitc one in his case.  The result is a form of light no less powerful, no less imbued and rising from the paint itself, than that seen in any religious altarpiece. The transformation of paint into light runs parallel and the notion of light as a motif of a deep spirituality continues. The context and framework of such a belief system seems more fragile, having been searched for rather than being the proudct of a certainty.

The biggest shift, however, for me, seems to be in the light of paintings beyond this date. The attack on the ideals and monolithic structure of the modernist program, as a whole, has led to the fracture and doubting period of postmodernism.

Along with this more philosophical and wide ranging shift have been contiued developments in the existence of light itself. We now have light everywhere and in various false forms. Television screens, computer screens, cities which never sleep in dark, mobile phones flashing constantly. We are surroudnign by a constant hum and glow of artifiically created light. Running parallel to this is a seeming lack of any credible and singular belief system to hold onto. Everything has been attacked, deconstructed, doubted and exposed as bankrupt. It feels, to me at least, a fragile and fasle existence, empty of any sense of divine prescence.

It seems both false and impossible to have the kind of light in painting now which exists, with great power, in a Rmebrandt or Rothko. Rather our light is more superficial, more surface based, more artificial. it is the light in a Daniel Richter painting, figure glows as if radioactive, burning form inside but due to some nuclear disfigurment or x-ray malfunction rather than any divine prescence.

Or the figures of Neo Rausch, a sickly sweet green or yellow glow often emminates, as if form within. it seems powerful and moving, but consciously false and unreal.

I think it is this form of light, deep and movign, yet false and artificial, which i want to imbue my figures with.

The Whale is back in town!!  Yeehaa its been a while.  Hello fans, and hello strangers, lets acquaint ourselves and be friends.

Painters who strive to remain open in their practice, where the act of painting avoids finding a solution/meaning sometimes until the very last brushstroke.  What techniques and systems do artists develop in order to reach this aim?  Matthias Weischer, Neo Rauch, Phoebe Unwin etc.

A painter whose context appears to remain open right to the death is the type of artist I most want to emulate.  Those decisions which can totally alter the direction of a work, when the work seems to be heading down a set path are the bravest of decisions, and you hear the great artists of the past talk about these moments in interviews and books.  These are defining moments in a works trancendence because they move apparently from an area of received wisdom into area’s where they end up discovering their own wisdom and resolution.

Phoebe Unwin, whose show was recently on at Wilkinson gallery in London tries to solve this issue by coming to the painting with no preconceptions of what she is going to make, this sounds like it could be a bit of a short cut or fake out, although actually when you try to follow the same path, you realise how hard it is to successfully do.  In essence the whole journey becomes about trying to resolve a problem whilst simultaneously denying yourself any notion of what it is you are trying to resolve.  Any point at which you begin to find a comfort zone, you force yourself out of it, towards the unknown.

Matthias Weischer achieves something similar, taking on board Cezanne’s principle of the questioning eye to constantly reinterpret and alter the spaces which he is creating.  Objects resolve only to be lost in memory and time.  It is interesting for me to think whether this solution in the soluble is indeed found through the constant questioning and rejigging of the spaces and objects, or whether its all in fact a clever illusion, where Weischer paints in objects, fully aware that he will again paint them out, leaving only traces of their existence.  It is probably somewhere inbetween, much like the case of the happy accident, where a good painter is able to create an environment in which he/she knows certain effects can be created, without ever having full control over the outcome.  Neo Rauch exists again within a similar space, however, he seems to be reacting almost immediately as the painting is being produced, it becomes much more about the intuitive, autonomous reaction to what is going on at that very moment.  As such, it is completely plausible that a tree can pop up sticking horizontally out of the side of the painting in an instantaneous reaction to the composition that is being developed, and then will alter the rest of the composition from then on, as Rauch strives to weave a certain sense into his dream images.

I come to this problem, just as I start to take more of an interest in the sculptural scenes that I am producing to aid in my paintings reality.  And so, the painting and sculpture are forming a symbiotic relationship, neither directly copying the other, but being produced at the same time in order to constantly throw up interesting opportunities and opening which the other disipline can take advantage of.

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 »

 I have yet to see this work in any context other than a book. Even in that format it blows you away. Finding this image of it in situ it makes me realise how much I want to actually see it. I want the expereince of its scale, of its spiritual context, of its engagement with the architecture of the building.

It is a work of staggering power and inventiveness, often credited as being the paitner’s breakthrough, the synthesis of the two great geographic styles of High renaissance painting. The athletic power and dynamism of design associated with Central Italian combined with the absorbing sense of touch, emotive and narrative power of colour and spiritual evocation of paint as light more readily associated as having a Veneitan history.

The combination of these factors, regardless of geographic roots, is a synthesis of upwardly mobile dynamism. All os the formal attributes of a painting are harness to tell of and induce the experience of a rise from the profane lower realm to the spiritual higher realm.

Like listening to choral music, feeling the pulse and melody resonate through your entire frame, its enough to make you appreciate how the sensations can be read as the confirmation of a divine spirit. considering the nature of its subject this is the ultimate compliment of the power of Titian’s painting. If I was not already so cynical towards such beliefs i would be readily converted. As it is it is enoguh to except that it just moves me on a levle beyond mere intellectual deconstruction.

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 »