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