College 9th January: Art History

This morning we were looking at Order, and Collections, and in particular, some of the work of American  artist Mark Dion (b 1961) who organised a dig of the Thames river bank outside Tate Britain and Tate Modern in 1999 (the year Tate Modern opened), and exhibited a collection of the material he found in a purpose-made display cabinet in Tate Modern.

More information about the exhibition is on the Tate website here, from where this image was copied.  Dion did something smilier in Venice, and while he attracted the ire of the venetian authorities, he also uncovered valuable and previously unknown evidence about the earliest human settlement in Venice.

He has collaborated with various universities and museums on similar works, such as this one at the  Natural History Museum, which he saw as a tribute to Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who invented the way scientists still categorise plant and animal species.

There is more information about the exhibition here, from where this image is copied, and which includes the following extract about Dion's intention.

Dion appropriates the methods, tactics and traits of science, to explore serious questions in a playful and subjective manner that scientists cannot adopt. In his own words, he is able to act as a "lightning rod" for ideas about science. "I'm not conducting an experiment in strict scientific terms, but for some people it's enough to look the part," he comments in an interview published in the catalogue to a concurrent, touring exhibition, The Natural History of the Museum. 

Personally, I am not rally sure if this is 'art' or not - it is certainly a means to make previously hidden things more visible and possibly more accessible to the viewer.  If it helps people get interested in museums and archaeology, then it's fine by me.  But a similar approach, by a rained archaeologist or naturalist, but with the vision to present things in non-traditional ways, might do an even better job of this.    Of course, it's interesting that archaeologists hadn't thought about trawling through the thames mud themselves....

We then looked at work by Christian Boltanski, born in Paris in 1944.  He has done a lot of big installations around the themes of loss, many of them about war and the Holocaust in particular.  

This one is about the lost children of Dijon, made in 1986.

Image copied from here.

He did a huge and impressive installation t the Grand Palais in Paris in 2010

Image was copied from the Guardian article here, which also has a helpful discussion about the piece.

This installation, called Personne or "Nobody" is a massive statement about the Holocasut.  It is on a huge scale (the Grand Palais is vast, much bigger than Tate Modern's Turbine Hall) and as well as the mounds of clothes, and the mechanical grabber which constantly lifts an drops clothes on the heap, there was a constant and loud soundtrack of heartbeat, so the overall effect must have been almost overwhelming.  In terms of making an unforgettable impact on the viewer, this succeeded big time.  

Boltanski has made a lot of work on this theme of death and remembrance, and often of ordinary and unnamed people, like this installation at the Guggenheim Gallery in Bilbao.

Humans, 1994. Photographs and lights, overall dimensions variable. Guggenheim Bilbao Museoa  GBM1998.1. Photo: Erika Barahona-Ede

Image copied from the Guggenheim website here, which also has more information about the work.

Other artists we looked at briefly included Tracey Emin (Everyone I have ever slept with, and My Bed, among other works based on collections of her belongings or her past lives); Cornelia Parker's feathers, and German artist Kirsten Bott who has been collecting and cataloguing everyday objects for over 20 years. One is tempted to ask "why?" and "why should we want to look at his collections?" but they do have a strangely compelling attraction, perhaps because we all hoard 'stuff' and it is challenging to have to confront, visually, the scale and banality of a lifetimes' wroth of every-day 'stuff', most of it pretty worthless and useless.  So perhaps there is a point to it... jut about.  This is an image from one of his exhibited collections.

Karsten Bott,One of Each, 1993, detail,
Installation at the Offenes
Kulturhaus, Linz, 1993,
10 x 30 m.

The antithesis of collections, however, is Michael land, who famously destroyed every single one of his possessions

More images and information abut the breakdown project is here.

Overall, I am still not quite convinced about the relevance of some (or all) of these collections as 'art' although they can be witty and intriguing, and perhaps they are a statement on consumerism, or whatever.  

If they create order out of chaos, or make us look at ordinary objects in a new way, or pose questions about the consumption and waste of everyday life, then perhaps they have value.  I am not sure...

Yet more Pathway thoughts and art I like: 9th January

Today we had a day in college working towards our second pathway project, and of course, I made lots of progress and lot of changes.  In fact, my thinking has been going round and round over the past couple of days.

Yesterday I was engrossed in the work of people like Jenny Holzer and Fiona Banner, and was thinking about making something, screen printed probably, which was entirely text-based.  But I wasn't quite sure why the text should be, and got a bit lost trying to find a reason, a personal theme.

Then I had a conversation with Charlie, who immediately latched onto "writing" as an active verb, rather than a noun - and that set me thinking entirely differently.  I began to plan in term of making some big A2 or A3 paintings based on the swirl of script, done as large as I could manage.

But this morning, in college, I was less sure, and spent an hour or so in the library looking at books and images of roman and other, earlier, forms of script.  And then, in talking ideas through with fellow-students and also with tutor Mark, I found myself planning to work on the business of writing, and the nature of script and letters as individual 'objects' - i.e. divorcing the idea of letters and script from any worries about meaning or content of a piece of writing.

This of course ties in well with my intention of making something bigger than before, and something celebrating the flow, the physical action, of writing.

So I spent a bit of the afternoon beginning to copy ancient scripts , and to experience some of the 'flow' of the process of boring these unfamiliar letter shapes.  I plan to continue with this, concentrating on the nature and design of the letters, and getting my drawings/painting progressively bigger.

Mark encouraged me, also, to look around at letters, individual letters, rather than whole words, in shops, adverts, street signs, etc, etc.   I will try to make a photographic collection of such images, which might contribute to the project,  perhaps to an alphabet book of some kind.  i have a small alphabet book I printed at UWE during the Letterpress Course last summer, and that might come in to the project in some way.

I plan to spend time tomorrow and during the rest of this week on practicing script and experimenting with different kinds of inks, brushes, etc.  I will try to keep things (a) simple and (b) as big as I can.

Another idea, to be enveloped if I have time, is to use digital images and computer manipulation to stretch and distort some letter shapes.  I might layer some overlapping images.  This could relate to some of the images I have seen in the last couple of days by Idris Khan and Jan Owen.

Mark suggested I also look up work by Jasper Johns.  So I looked him up tonight.  Some of his images were immediately familiar, iconic images of the emerging Pop Art of the 1950s and early 1960s, like this one of the American Flag.  Is this a painting of the flags, or is it  a painted object which looks like three flags?

 Three Flags,  1958


Johns did a lot of paintings based on repeated images of alphabet or numbers. sometimes set out in a grid, sometimes overlaid one on top of the other.  He concentrated on the mark-making, the painting and texture and colour, so that the idea of letters or numbers got a bit lost and the finished piece was about colour or texture, rather than about text or meaning.

While he repeated this idea endlessly, to the point of over-saturation and exploitation of ta willing art market, the basic idea is compelling, and chimes well with my intention of producing something which focuses on the action of writing, the essence of individual letters (or numbers, although i hadn't thought to include numerals as well as letters - if numbers, then what about punctuation marks?).

I like oct of these images, and I like the way Johns used paint with such gusto, so thickly and richly.  I wonder if I can embrace the paint as eagerly in my own efforts?

Coloured Alphabet

Gray Alphabets " 1960 graphite wash on paper by Jasper Johns.
Size: 38 3/8" X 27 7/8"

Numerals 
[Numerals [R.T.P.]] 1970
Print, Multiple, lead relief
Technique: lead relief
Frame 76.6 h x 60.0 w cm 
© Jasper Johns

Oil on canvas
support: 1372 x 1048 mm frame: 1401 x 1078 x 48 mm
painting

Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1961

In the 1950s, Johns began using flags, targets and numbers as the basis of his paintings. These were ordinary familiar things, but also had an iconic, emblematic quality. This work is one of a series that he undertook in the summer of 1960, using the superimposed numbers 0 to 9. Johns let the process of painting the number sequence dictate the structure of the painting. This allowed him to concentrate on the qualities of the paint itself, exploring colour and thickness. The result is a highlyabstract structure, but one rooted firmly in the real world.

 (From the display caption September 2004)

Copied from the tate website here

Here is another from the same series......

Jasper Johns 
From 0 through 9. 1961 
Christie's. 10/11/2010. Lot № 40 
Estimate: 12.9 million 
Source: christies.com 

Grey Alphabet, 1956

More thoughts on Pathway II

I often look at the blog (the link is here) of London-based quilter Margaret Cooter, who manages to find, and share, a rich seam of work by other artists, in textiles, and in books and paper, in particular.  My own interests in quilting and bookmaking often overall with hers.  Today she has flagged up an American artist Jan Owen,  based in Belfast, Maine, whose work includes hand-written text on translucent fabrics as well as handmade and specialist papers, which, when laid together in layers, builds up into a rich and slightly different set of images, such as this one

This one I particularly like as it is also a book, which can be folded up or hung as a wall hanging.

This image came from the Abecedarian Gallery blog here.


Another of her accordion books is this one, First Brush Strokes

First Brush Stroke, 2001, 43.75 x 42 inches; 3 hanging, accordion fold books. Acrylic and sumi ink on paper with woven Tyvek. 

Collection of National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC.

Jan Owen's website here has more of her work, including this image of a series called Book of Names which includes names of war dead and was inspired by a performance of Britten's War Requiem.  This piece is entitled WHO

WHO   2006, 72 x 36 x 24 inches, four hanging panels of Reemay with ink


All images © Jan Owen 2011.

Pathway Project Writing: Jenny Holzer

My research into writing has taken me to Jenny Holzer,  b 1950,  who specialises in creating large and visually imposing installations using neon and lcd lighting to spell out bald messages about contemporary living. morality, sexuality, etc, etc.

The following comes from the Art 21 website here.

Jenny Holzer was born in Gallipolis, Ohio, in 1950. She received a BA from Ohio University in Athens (1972); an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (1977); and honorary doctorates from the University of Ohio (1993), the Rhode Island School of Design (2003), and New School University, New York (2005). Whether questioning consumerist impulses, describing torture, or lamenting death and disease, Jenny Holzer’s use of language provokes a response in the viewer. While her subversive work often blends in among advertisements in public space, its arresting content violates expectations. Holzer’s texts—such as the aphorisms “Abuse of power comes as no surprise” and “Protect me from what I want”—have appeared on posters and condoms, and as electronic LED signs and projections of xenon light. Holzer’s recent use of text ranges from silk-screened paintings of declassified government memoranda detailing prisoner abuse to poetry and prose in a sixty-five-foot-wide wall of light in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center, New York. She has received many awards, including the Golden Lion from the Venice Biennale (1990); the Skowhegan Medal (1994); and the Diploma of Chevalier (2000) from the French government. Major exhibitions include Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2001); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1997); Dia Art Foundation, New York (1989); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1989). Since 1996, Holzer has organized public light projections in cities worldwide. She was the first woman to represent the United States in the Venice Biennale (1990). Jenny Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York.




Many of her images are projected onto public buildings, are on a huge scale, cannot be overlooked by passing people.

Some messages are blatantly anti-consumerist, and their placement in prominent city locations (ilk ethos one in time Square, New York) is deliberately provocative and ironic.

Holzer also makes installations using neon lights such as this one 

In the 1970s and early 1908s, Jenny Holzer made a large number of works on paper recording aphorisms and statements about social and political issues.  The series, Inflammatory Essays, is thought provoking and challenging, such as this one

I am not sure where this lies on the map of different types of art.  Is this literary text?or is it conceptual art?  Does it matter?  

She did a series of embossed metal signs, rather like old British rail sings, which struck a particular chord with em, especially this one (which I found here).

because of the link with my own work on the signs t bristol Zoo for a college project last year.  I wish i had found this reference then...


I really like Holzer's work.  It makes big and bold and unmissable statement, with a strongly feminist, anti-consutmerist, anti-militarist perspective, which are unashamedly political and challenging.  She makes a big presence with her art, and requires that people notice, even if they don;t agree with, or like, what she si saying.  


Whereas Fiona Banner's written work is either very personal, or else relies on some pervious, and other persons's work, as the basis for her own writing, Holzer makes her statements on her own terms.  The use of aphorisms and cliches si an effective and arresting way to get the viewer/public punter, to stop and listen and think about the meaning of phrases which they use or hear casually every day.


I am not t all sure how you define "art" but something which makes people stop and reflect seems to me to be a big part of art's purpose. 

Inspiration for writing project

While I've been looking up all kinds of artists' work, I need to record also that some of the work which my two daughters have done in their own art work has also influenced my choice of this project.

The first one is by Lizzie Thomas, down for her GCSE Art in about 2000, and is made of broken bits of old vinyl records, and the words are a transcription of  Bob Dylan's The times they are a changing'.

The next two were done by Charlie Thomas as part of her BA Contemporary Textile Practice at Cardiff School of Art in 2006.  I remember going with Charlie to an exhibition at the former Saatchi Gallery in the old County Hall building on the South Bank, in about 2005, where one of Fiona Banner's pieces was installed.

I have all these piece on my walls at home.  More about Charlie's art works  on her website here.

Art I like: Fiona Banner

Fiona Banner uses words, often hand written, which describe bodies or films or scenes, rather than depicting them in line or drawn or painted image, such as this...

Leaning Nude, 2006,  graphite on paper,  67" x 89"photo copied from ArtNet website

Fiona Banner
You gota lot of nerve 1998
© the artist. Photo: copied from the Tate website here.

Break Point, 1998

This is one of a series Banner made in which she writes a vivid and detail description in words of the action of a film (or films).  This one is based on the chase scene in Kathryn Bigelow's cult film Point Break (1991).

She has just been chosen in a public vote for display in a new exhibition in the    Gallery in ....

There is a piece on tho in today's Sunday Telegraph, the link is here.  This includes the following explanation of her work: 

Banner transforms and contains the nail-biting and seemingly endless chase into an arresting landscape of words. As the distance between pursuer and pursued closes, the space between the letters and lines of text stencilled on to the canvas in hazard red correspondingly collapses, until the climax of the chase ends in a crash of words at the bottom of the canvas. But significantly, the chase does not reach completion - when the pursuer finally catches his human quarry, he lets him get away.

I rather like some of her work, which is playful but also thoughtful, and makes you read the words carefully (hard to do when they are written by hand, in wobbly capital letters, high up on a wall in a gallery installation).   

Art I like: Idris Khan

Still thinking about my pathway project, I looked up Idris Khan, photographer, who produces work which overlays lots of images on top of each other, such as the full score of a piece of classical chamber music, so that the finished image is almost indecipherable, while representing the totality of the sound s inherent in the piece of music.  He does the same with images of buildings, or pages of text.  The effect is to produce interestingly complex but strangely familiar images, which seem to shave the depth and gravitas of the original, through the continuous build-up of lines as layer upon layer is put together.

Like this.....

Thus Spake Zarathustra... after Friedrich Nietzche(2007)
Digital C type print mounted on aluminum 
85 x 70 inches 
© Idris Khan ... After Ludwig van Bee

Image copied from Yvon Lambert Gallery here.

Idris Khan
Title		Struggling to hear... after Ludwig van Beethoven sonatas
Medium		lambda digital color coupler print
Size		102 x 70 in. / 259.1 x 177.8 cm.
Year		2005 -
Edition		5/6 Copied image and text from ArtNet website here.

More about Idris Khan in a  Guardian article here and here.

I like the way he crease something almost skid from these repeated images - and they are on a huge scale., so why was perhaps previously a duty volume of sheet music, is now a massive piece of photographic image, perhaps 2 or 3 metres long, demanding attention and reflection.  

Pathway Project 2: Writing/Word

In theory our second pathway project began in December, as soon as the first one was done.  But in practice things never go quite as smoothly as planned and since then life, builders, kitchen re-fitting, Christmas, a bout of mild flu and a long-overdue commitment to produce an article for Llafur all got in the way.

So although over the holiday period I have done a fair bit of research into artists using words and text in their work, some of it recorded on this blog, and a bit of thinking both conceptual art, post-modernism, and the meaning of life, I haven't actually focussed on why my project is going to be about.  The deadline is Monday 29th January, so I have almost a month, well, three whole Mondays in terms of college facilities.  But joy of joys, yesterday we were told that we have access to the Life-drawing room on Tuesday mornings too.   So there should be plenty of time and space to do whatever...

The missing bit, therefore, is to decide what to do.  

I've had two tutorial discussions about this so far, with Abi and Harriet, both useful in forcing me to think out loud about the topic and what I might do with it.    I found myself thinking about how much of my working life has been concerned with the written word, reports, papers, research, etc, etc.  I've left that world behind me now, and perhaps I might make something to represent the end of that chapter, the transition from my old office life to the new world of creativity.

Another thing I've been grappling with is to identify my preferred pathway.  I am still not sure about this.  I have enjoyed printmaking although I haven't been very adventurous with that so far.  I've also enjoyed making things from paper and card, books, and small paper sculptures.  Is that a pathway?

One recurrent idea so far has been about making something (i.e. a construction, not a print or a painting); and making something quite large, in contrast to my practice so far, which (apart from huge quilts) has all been fairly small pieces, nothing much bigger than A4.

I quite like the idea of physically re-cycling some of the products of my old working life,.  My first thought was to create something using papier mache, perhaps some large-scale letters or text built out of this.  Another possibility is making some hand-made a paper, using old Welsh Government report as the base material, and then using the paper as the foundation for print or text.

I have in the past made things from textiles, mainly quilts and a little embroidery.  I am trying hard not to turn to this at present - I see Foundation as an opportunity to try different media, and to extend my horizons beyond the familiar.  However, one idea which emerged talking to Abi was the notion of making some kind of quilt-based text.  But as time goes on, I'm not sure about this.

Then there is the question of finding or creating a text.  Do I need specific words and should they be deeply meaningful?  Or could I just use letters and random words...and if so, what would that "mean"?

But the really important question is: why was I drawn to this theme in the first place?

My affection for book arts is the main draw, I think, and that has two strands - firstly the sheer ingenuity of manipulating old books to create new objects - in which case the content of the books doesn't hugely matter.  Add to that a happy fascination for the process of making little books such as these

and a growing interest in print, enhanced by a week at Cardiff School of Art this summer making prints like these

and the experience I gained at UWE summer schools last year in book binding like this

and letterpress printing like this

and there is a strong thread emerging of my interest in books and the written and printed word and in print more generally.

But the other attraction is the idea of text in art as a way of drawing attention to a concept, an idea, a perspective - where the words are absolutely central and crucial to the overall work.  But you can't get meaningful words out of thin air: they have to relate to something that matters to me.  ell, lots of things matter to me, but right now I'm not itching t spend hours stitching phrase about conservation or the ozone layer.  So perhaps I'll not try too hard to be deep and meaningful, but will make something with words which are reasonably accessible and perhaps a bit playful.

I also like the idea of making words which are more than 2D on a paper and for reading only.  Word which ask to be touched or felt or held.  Words which require some engagement by the viewer more than simply reading and decoding their meaning.  Words and writing play a massive role in our lives: why not touch and feel them, as well as see and read and hear and understand them.

In fact, thinking about re-cycling my old life, constructing playful words which reflect on change, retirement, leaving things behind, etc, etc, would be best.

I will let this simmer for a day or two, but I think I have enough ideas here to work from:

• re-cycling and change
• re-using old words for new purpose
• making new paper or things from old words
• words which reflect my personal change
• words which encapsulate the concept of life-changes
• something constructed, rather than sewn or printed or painted
• something not too small
• something tactile, to be handled not just looked at

Art in the news: David Hockney

Two days, two stories about David Hockney.  Firstly, he's been awarded the Order of Merit by the Queen, highly prestigious, and he seems to have agreed in spite of refusing previous honours and turn down an invitation to paint the Queen's portrait.

Image copied from The Guardian today.  The link to the Guardian article on this is here.

Then yesterday he's in the news again, with an implied swipe at Damien Hirst in particular, against artists who get assistants to do the tedious job of painting for them.   The Guardian article on this is here.

Hockney has a big exhibition going up at the royal academy in the spring (the RA link is here) and the publicity flyers make an unusual statement that the works are all painted by the artist, himself, personally.  The implication being that many others don't bother.  Cue ruffled feathers from several quarters.

A brave but honest comment from Hockney.  I suspect that quite a lot of non art-world people are also baffled as to how or why some famous names in art manage not to do their own work.  I thought this recently at the small show of Bridget Riley prints in Bristol, which were clearly the work of her assistants not herself.  Andy Warhol famously had a whole bevy of assistants in The Factory - and made no secret of the fact that his work was being mass-produced by others.  Lots of the 'great' classical painters had apprentices to do some at least of the work and certainly lots of the preparation and cleaning up.  Is it ok to have helpers when the process is a machine one, like screen printing?  Is it ok when the 'master' does the key bits, the drawing or whatever/?  Hirst rather huffily has been defending and been defended - but it does seem odd when some of his works, which have fetched huge prices at auction, were designed by him (e.g. the jewell encrusted skull) but executed entirely by others.

Hhmm.  Food for thought.  Not a problem I'll ever face in my own work, of course....

.

College again already! 3rd January 2012

Only ten of us managed to make it to college for the first day of the new term today - and we had a very god session on art history with Jo Kear looking at portraits, and what makes celebrity.

This one, of Michaelangelo painted in 1504-6 while he was painting the Cistine Chapel ceiling was made by one of his apprentices, Marcello Venusti and was commissioned by the Medici family.

We looked at how the use of light and shade (chiaroscuro)  concentrates the viewer's attention purely on the face, and even then only half the face is illuminated.  The sitter seems to be looking confidently out towards the viewer, but also seems distracted, as though he will turn back to his painting in a moment.  We are told nothing about him apart from his face, no information about dress, location, etc.  It is a very concentrated portrait.

Other images we considered included this deep and meaningful portrait of Princess Diana, by Mario Testino in March 1997, 5 months before the car accident in Paris.

We all thought this was a lovely portrait of Diana, but also that it was carefully managed to project her intended new image as a single woman, no wedding ring, no fancy background, just a very nice dress.
In looking up the image, I found that it was actually a cropped down version of a slightly bigger image,  shown here...

This shows Diana a lounging in a slightly more relaxed pose.  Does this change our assessment of the picture?  I think not really, although there is slightly less simplicity in the bigger picture.  

Another dramatic portrait was this one by Martin Schoeller of Barack Obama tank in 2004, well before Obama won the Democratic nomination for the US presidency election in 2008.

I found this image very negative,  but some of us thought it was strong and carefully presented to show Obama as a powerful potential presidential candidate.  There is something strange about the focus (the ears and the neck are out of focus) and the lighting (the lack of shadows, and the reflected light source in the eyes) and also the camera position seems to exaggerate the nose.

Later I looked up more of Martin Schoeller's portraits - The Google Image search results are available here.  Seeing so many, all rather odd, portraits, put the Obama one into a better context.  He seems to have come out relatively well.  Some of the images are really strange, like this one of Paris Hilton

Or this one of Jack Nicholson

Then, rummaging through other images of portraits by Schoeller, I came across these, done for an article in the January 2012 edition of National Geographic on identical twins.  A really interesting, and less distorted, set of images of pairs of twins, showing how his 'up close and personal' portraiture can help distinguish the fine detail of differences between otherwise very similar faces.

The National Geographic photo archive link is here.


We all liked the interesting and unusual 3D construction portrait of J K Rowling, made by Stuart Pearson Wright in 2005 for the National Portrait Gallery.   The only images I could find online showed only the painting/construction, and not the surroundings which show the 'box' like room in which the images are located.  So this doesn't show quite the 3D impact of the whole.  I'm not are where Jo found the bigger image she showed us today.

 There is something almost dolls-house like about the way the portrait is mounted within a "room" depicting the simple writing requirements of Rowling in her early, unpublished years in Edinburgh, , and her still very private life.

We looked at several other images, including Sam taylor-Wood's video portrait of David Beckham sleeping, which I have seen at the NPG, and a rather unpleasant (deliberately so?) newspaper portrait of Damien Hirst in 1997.    We also looked briefly at four ancient busts of Roman Emperors - two of which looked to me just like former senior civil servant colleagues of mine...who shall be nameless.  The point of all this was to make us see what we could perceive of character from an un-named portrait, and how we ascribe attributes and personality on the basis of presentation.  Also, a brief discussion about who commissions portraits, who controls the page, how much leverage the sitter has, or not, over the pose, tone, style, etc.   All very interesting, and food for thought at future exhibitions.