REFLECTION: Tutor’s report – Part 5

REFLECTIONS : TUTOR REPORT – PART 5

In the post for April 3^rd, ‘REFLECTION: Assignment 5 and the course as a whole’, I wrote about my sense of achievement in the point that I feel to have reached at the conclusion of Drawing 2. This is not to be confused with any feelings of complacency! I know the personal struggle there has been to grapple with new ways of working and the level of thinking and determination which has been needed. I also know that this is only one more ‘rung of the ladder’ and that there are many, many more…endless, I’d imagine!

This tutor report for Part 5 feels to me to be an endorsement of the comments I made in that post. Perhaps the most important element of the report for me is the fact that quality time has been given by the tutor to examining the work and making the connections. In the distance learning setup, communication assumes a greater importance perhaps than in face to face tuition. So a lot relies on the student spending time carefully documenting every step of the creative process but also the tutor taking the time to make the links. I appreciate that this probably isn’t always easy but it is essential. However, just as important as all the words, is the ability of the images to reflect the thinking process – to say what the student wants it to say or thinks it says! This element seems to have been a continual struggle for me throughout the course and it has been continually said that the final work does not reflect the thinking process. So I’m very pleased to find that in this last section of the course that all of the parts have come together and that there is clarity and connections which are easily seen and acknowledged. The resolution of an idea can be a long time in coming and I wonder if in the past I have stopped before the completion of the idea. But not in this case!

I’m also pleased with the acknowledgement of the experimentation which I’ve shown in the work. Searching for a new language in the exploration of ‘abstraction’ has been the driving force behind that experimentation. In this search, you are not only learning a new language but you are also having to create that language for yourself. I understand that one’s personal language is ever evolving. It was interesting to observe in my recent visit to ‘Absent Friends’ at the NPG, that renowned abstract artists like Howard Hodgkin develop their own personal vocabulary of marks and one sees these marks repeated over and over in the images. Finding fresh marks has needed pushing through boundaries. Just as in writing one finds oneself using the same vocabulary, so I’ve found myself growing bored with my own marks and I’ve used many different mechanisms to break through this. It’s a fascinating quest.

I’m grateful that all the work I’ve done with ‘line’ as a new vocabulary has been noticed. This has been a major part of my work for this section.

The report highlights the difference between abstract artists and artists who abstract and this insight has given me such a fresh and exciting perspective on my work. I realise that much of my research has been on the formal elements of abstraction as recommended by my previous tutor. This report has shown me that my work shows a fluidity in contrast with ‘pure abstraction’ and I’m grateful to have had this pointed out. I hadn’t seen this myself. I am looking forward to exploring this idea in greater depth as I think it will give me a greater understanding of my own work. Even though the research has been along formal lines, I’m grateful to have been encouraged to do this work as it has given me the background I needed into the development of abstraction as a movement.

I guess perhaps the most important aspect of this report for me is the encouragement it has given me to continue to develop my voice. It has honestly acknowledged where I’ve got to, it has understood where I’m trying to get to and has given me the encouragement to keep going. Thank you for this….

 

 

 

 

 

TUTOR’S REPORT – PART 5

TUTOR’S REPORT – PART 5

Overall Comments

Patricia, thank you for an informative submission, which displays your methodology and journey of drawing in a developed way. This is a dynamic, bold and substantial submission which shows a sense of self-discovery and a boundless sense of exploration in your personal language of drawing. The shorter project works have allowed you to be fluid by fusing abstract ways of seeing with the concrete ways of looking. I like how you have abandoned yourself by reflecting and digesting the world around you without seeing an answer at the time. Very tricky to do sometimes. You have strength in leaving work alone and letting it be. You are getting there with your parallel project (PP) and you have moved away from the obvious of the typical notions of abstraction, having a subject of only flowers and the language of line. It is fine for your PP to reflect your practice as long as there is a line of enquiry, which is clearly developing, everyday.

Feedback on assignment

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity

Project 1- you dissect, reflect and digest the scene of the V&A in an interesting way where you study what time can mean conceptually. And because of this, the works are fluid; show movement but also a static notion of the standstill of time. Using ghostly marks and traces gives a sense of what has been but the dark palette depicts a continuous solid presence of an audience. What really works with the studies in your sketchbook is the layering of delicate and harsh media to build a tension of atmosphere- is it a dark place or is it crowded?

The consistency of the fluid figure is carried into the motionless figure and I think that this has given you some freedom to be really loose in your application but also build up and see abstraction in your work for your parallel project. And how useful that your thinking methodology is an abstraction of thinking as well the physical work itself.

Artists Book- this is an insightful and self-actualising way for you to develop previous concepts especially with space and your grand-daughters’ relationship with bamboo. As you say it’s not the bamboo that’s changed but her opinion of it. These drawings add to the commonality of your practice with dramatic marks, atmosphere and ghostly suggestion of what once was. Your ability to layer creates depth to the drawings but there could be more play with the artists book itself. This is a small project but be more dynamic with the way the existing formats of the book as you have done with an alternative drawing tool.

Project 3- I like the fact that you see a ‘finer focus’ as deeper listening so go back to some of your darker layered works and could you incorporate this finer focus in them more? This layering and intricacies could enhance some of the areas in your work so there is more intrigue. However, you work much better when you work with a darker palette than a colourful one, although still subdued it does not quite communicate the fluidity and movement of your work.

Project 4- this is an engaging piece of work which holds sophistication in the way you handle the chosen drawing media. There is an investigation into the charcoal, pastel, eraser, chalk and each have been used in relation with the other. This is either to create tension between the qualities of line or intertwining the threads of marks together. Without seeing the lines of time as sporadic and separate pieces, the unity is told in the tonal qualities used. It reminds me of cartography or GPS lines (art work has been done using GPS lines which you could look into.) I did spend time looking at the layered elements of this piece.

Assignment- you have continued to explore the meaningful way in which you work which is tapping into the thought of thinking as a visual language. This is a very interesting concept, which echoes throughout your practice.

There has been perseverance in your conclusion to the assignment. You have battled with the obvious and I am glad you did not go for work that is accessible and moved away from the figures and portraits. You have documented your journey well and this comes through the most in ‘Thought Lines’ (yellow and blue) because it describes your notions of your entire subject through not only lines but also colours and textures. The lilies seem too held back for you and although the other ‘Thought Lines’ piece (pink and blue) is a natural development for you, it seems a little repetitive to project 4. The Blue and Yellow piece, adds a different dimension to your work where a further exploration of atmosphere is created. The linear qualities show the exploration of a space with semi-geometrical and fluid lines incorporated.

Parallel project– this is an interesting way to start “Is the subject of your drawing important enough?” And I am glad you have played with the idea of exploration through drawing rather than giving answers. However, the subject of flowers is too concrete and limiting, as it is a subject that has been done many times. You then go onto think about the sense of spirituality and this is a useful move as you have identified it will not involve just flowers. However, be careful not to be too twee with this subject matter as it can become quite mystical. Your current practice involves, atmospheric, ghostly, traces and almost an elemental quality and this is engaging.

‘A Diary Without Words’- although you have done a substantial amount of research so far related to abstraction in your own work. Are the artists relevant? The movements that you list can be quite formal and ordered and compare this to the fluidity of your own work. A lead is perhaps looking at the untouched elements of your visual collection. This will disallow you to overwork and make yourself to make things look good. These images are dynamic and explosive but they are confined in frames and edges of a book. Does this reflect the formal qualities of abstraction? Something for you to think about.

Your search for a new language is interesting because you explore line as a vocabulary. Line is not only explored ion your mark making but the way you move the camera lens in a straight line, the lines of the edges of the concertina book and pages and even the lines of the grains on your table. Maybe your work can incorporate lines, which we dismiss subconsciously?

Sketchbooks

Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity

Your sketchbook is explosive and full of investigations with a common theme of investigating lines, marks and abstraction in your works. These studies have helped you plan and test for more refined work in larger pieces. There are good connections between your primary sources and inspirations, which show a clear response in the practical work you, do.

Research

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

You have an array of artists, which have fed, into your work moving forward. You are inquisitive with the questions their work surround. Good comparisons and fine not to like everything as this builds up you critical thinking and having a stance by reading lots of different sources. Looking at the contextualisation of the exhibitions you have seen has enlivened your appreciation of art and by looking at wider issues, I hope this has helped you think about what the audience might see in your work. There is certainly a personal voice coming through in your research and with connections to your own work.

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays

Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis

You reflect very well on each project and go beyond the obvious so you are thinking deeper about how you work, think and make as an artist. Your logbook is substantial and it has been insightful to read behind your thinking which has an air of self-discovery and realisation.

Your critical essay on Auerbach reads well with an object but subjective journey of the exhibition. You dissect and connect concepts with his techniques but at the same time continue to be your inquisitive self. This is a good stance for your critical essay.

Suggested reading/viewing

Context

• Marlene Dumas- fluidity of the media, atmosphere, semi-figurative

 

• Leon Kossoff- Movement and introduction of colour in your works.

 

• William Kentrdige- videos – this artists works with animating his charcoal drawings. There are many YouTube videos.

 

• Not sure of you’ve come across this book but tere are great articles in there about the language of draing whch will aid you with your PP.

 

Jack Southern, The Drawing Projects: An Exploration of the Language of Drawing Black Dog Publishing; 1 edition (August 2, 2011)

Pointers for the next assignment

• Reflect on this feedback in your learning log.

Please inform me of how you would like your feedback for the next assignment. Written or video/audio

Critical essay (plan)-

 

• Be careful with the word abstraction- are you seeing as a process, a technique or an art movement? Define this right at the beginning.

 

• To focus on two conflicting statements will give a line of enquiry and a claim to the essay once you define what you mean by abstraction. Make sure the arguments and your analysis of them fits in with your definition.

 

• Good to focus on two of your works rather than everything.

 

• Be careful not to assume the conclusion- it can be seen as flippant to say that work can be seen as objective so make this thinking more concrete.

Well done, I look forward to your final assignment.

Tutor name	Diana Ali
Date	22/04/17
Next assignment due	14/05/17

 

REFLECTION: Assignment 5 and the course as a whole

REFLECTION: ASSIGNMENT 5 AND THE COURSE AS A WHOLE

I am pleased with this assignment in that I feel to have worked to a point of resolution and that is satisfying. The first project in Part 5 stimulated a new way of thinking about movement and time and this became the starting point for the final assignment images.

Here is what a friend wrote after reading my blog and looking at the images for the final assignment work:

“I just loved working my way through your ideas on how to draw ‘thought’.  The stationary aspect really got to me and your concept of silent listening.  As I worked through your ideas I really felt strongly about the ‘stationary figure’. It seemed so important to me that ‘thought’ had an identity no matter how vague or nebulous. It was important to me in experiencing this journey of yours that I had some sense of, as you put it, ‘submergence’. Therefore I loved the sightless facial images as I thought about my walks and the thinking I do and at times I am completely unaware of surroundings. They just do not penetrate thought. Therefore in answer to your question ‘was the figure essential to the image of expanding thought’ I have to say yes.”

 The reader picked up on the idea that ‘thought needed an identity’ and she explained to me that, when looking at all of the images, she would spend time trying to find the figure. This has given me more to think about. She also explained that when she got to the part of the blog where I’d digressed to draw the opening bud, she felt an impatience to get back to the abstract images because she was so interested in trying to understand the drawings. During the course of this work I had seen that the figure indicated a narrative but for me, her insight has taken the idea even further – the link between identity and thought. I want to explore these ideas further in my work.

It has been quite a journey working through the ideas for this assignment and I have learnt a lot about perseverance and determination. The times when there were blocks were dealt with by going off on a completely different tangent and finding that even though the new tangent didn’t lead to anything, it served to free thought to find new ideas.

It was also hugely enriching to have the parallel project topic on Abstraction so closely linked to the work in the course projects. One kept feeding the other and finally I find that the course requirements and the parallel project have come together. I think that what I’ve learnt from this part 5 will lead me into the next step for the parallel project.

Drawing 2 has been a demanding and stimulating course and I feel it has projected me into just the right mental space for beginning Level 3. It has certainly fulfilled its stated purpose of requiring us to ‘explore drawing in its widest sense’. Each part of the course has required deep exploration, far beyond what appears in the course notes. In particular I have found the suggestions for research extraordinarily stimulating and it has opened so many new ways of thinking about drawing. I’ve been introduced to a number of completely new artists and several of these have changed my way of thinking about drawing.

This course has been the most creative course I’ve experienced since studying with the OCA. It has a light touch but has gently guided me to think for myself and to follow my own path. It provides space for the student to think and explore and this isn’t true of all the courses. Perhaps it’s because I’ve reached a certain time in my own development which happily coincides with the thinking behind the construction of the course but I feel it has nurtured my own voice and provided the conditions for this to develop.

As I look back over the work, I can see how far I’ve come in terms of experimentation and confidence. There has been a lot of struggling and I have not often been successful in the work I’ve produced, according to tutor reports, and this has only served to emphasise to me the need to align clear defined thinking with technical skill and to persevere until you get resolution. In this last assignment the long process of struggling for resolution of the idea alongside the continual refining of composition and media decisions have shown what I’ve learnt throughout the course. I do believe the final results are successful as images but also are convincing examples of what I’ve learnt and how far I’ve come as an artist.

CONTEXTUAL FOCUS POINT: Frank Auerbach’s portraiture

RESEARCH: Frank Auerbach’s portraiture

 Several years ago I was fortunate to be able to see a small exhibition of Frank Auerbach’s work at the V&A in London. It is an experience I will not forget and his drawings had a strong effect on me. Here is my response to that visit…

 “The exhibition displayed the paintings and drawings of Auerbach from the early 1950s to 2007, drawn from Lucian Freud’s private collection, which has been acquired for the nation by Arts Council England.

This was the first time I’d experienced Auerbach’s work first hand and it was truly memorable. My present course of study in Mixed Media has introduced me to this artist because of the very physical texture of his painting and actually seeing these works up close was extraordinary. In several images the paint was applied straight from the tube and left in that state. The thickness of the impasto was such that the image resembled low relief. But it was the extraordinary combinations of colours which was the most absorbing.  These, up-close, appeared random because of the strength and ruggedness of the marks and it was only when seen from a distance that the tonal variations and subtlety could be seen.

However, for me it was the collection of drawings which I found the most exciting. You could tell immediately that it was the same hand which had held the pencil or charcoal that had also struck the canvas with layer upon layer of paint marks. The energy, immediacy, power and expressive mark making were simply wonderful to study. On several of the drawings, Auerbach had obviously begun by covering the surface of the paper with energetic pencil lines and it seemed to me that it was his way of bringing the drawing out from the surface. Lines were struck every which way over the paper, almost as though he was reaching a climax for the final image. The surface pencil marks were then rubbed back into a soft grey tone over which the final image in pen or graphite was drawn. Each line of the drawing was powerful and fast with no detail but simply a summation of what he wanted to express.”

It is interesting now to take up this research again after seeing another much more extensive exhibition of Auerbach’s work at Tate Britain last year. The most overpowering element of the work when you are confronted with rooms full of his paintings is the sheer physicality, energy and ‘aliveness’ of the images. They demand you to look at them beyond a passing glance. The intensity and abundance of the paint draws you in to explore a surface which in the first instance looks like a total mess. ‘Indigestible’ is probably the best word for it! In his conversation with Catherine Lampert in 1978, he makes this interesting comment: : You know, when Leo Stein bought the Matisse ‘Woman in the Hat’, the picture of Madame Matisse, he said he bought it because he thought it was the most horrible mess he had ever seen. Well, that seems to me to be a perfect justification for admiring a painting. Good paintings do attack fact from an unfamiliar point of view. They’re bound to look genuine, and in some way rawly and actively repellent, disturbing and itchy and not right. I would not reject anything that seemed shocking or extreme, but on the contrary, I would value it, but I wouldn’t do it for its own sake. I mean to do it for its own sake then becomes part of the world of advertisement and fashion.”

This comment for me summed up the central point of Auerbach’s work and in particular his portraits. In the conversation with Christine Lampert he uses the word ‘fact’ a lot. Fact, truth, authenticity, honesty, however you express it, is central to the images. At first glance they may look a mess, the viewer may be fascinated with the application of paint, but it is the integrity of the work which dominates. His portraits are a search for ‘fact’. Layer on layer of mark making, paint application and brush strokes are simply the means for extracting the face from the canvas. He is ‘seeing in paint’. The surface is covered in smears and heavy impasto – do they make the identity of the face or threaten to dissolve or hide it? This question continually intrigued me as I studied the paintings. They set up so many questions. Why the impasto? Is it, as T.J. Clark writes in his article ‘On Frank Auerbach’, a way of ‘seeing’? Or not seeing or not being sure what you are seeing? This process of going through the elements of seeing is what makes Auerbach’s portraits so compelling.

“I think all good painting looks as though the painting has escaped from the thicket of prepared positions and has entered some sort of freedom where it exists on its own, and by its own laws, and inexplicably has got free of all possible explanations. Possibly the explainers will catch up with it again, but never completely…” page 142 Frank Auerbach – catalogue 2015.

Auerbach’s portraits are done from life. He explains that with the model in the room it sets up a particular urgency and I feel that this urgency comes through the painting. The element of time is a constant presence and the urgency comes through in trying to capture an experience before it disappears. How he paints expresses this. It’s interesting to me that he doesn’t put his sitters in commonplace gestures. This comes back to his rejection of the false – false situations – and his concentration always on ‘fact’.

From what I have described, it is evident that Auerbach’s method of working reflects his purpose. Paintings are not planned or visualized before he starts working. I see it as an emerging process. His thick surfaces of paint in the early days came about because he would not scrape back but instead worked over the previous surface. From the 1960s he began to scrape away the whole surface until he reached the image he was satisfied with. The final image however was the result of 30, 50 or perhaps 200 separate versions before the final image emerges. This passage of time in the continual search for the ‘fact’ of his images is, for me what makes them great paintings.

It seems to me that the viewer is required to re-enter the same process as Auerbach has experienced in producing his paintings. We go through the same steps – at first the image is unclear, unresolved, indistinguishable, indigestible – in fact a mess. But even at first glance you can feel the energy and the power behind the image. What intrigues you most is that you can’t see what’s there and so many questions leap into your mind. I think that Auerbach, in his perhaps 200 paintings of the portrait,- painting then scraping back or drawing and then rubbing off – is on the same search as the viewer. The painter and viewer are together. With one proviso! Time! Unlimited time must have elapsed in the process of some of Auerbach’s images and the viewer needs to be prepared to invest the same time to truly see what’s there.

Frank Auerbach- Head of Catherine Lampert 11 1985

Frank Auerbach- Head of E.O.W 11-1961

Frank Auerbach – David Landau Seated 2010-11

Frank Auerbach – Self Portrait 2014

Frank Auerbach- Reclining Head of Julia 1994

RESEARCH: PART 5 : project 3 – A Finer Focus

RESEARCH: Part 5: project 3: a finer focus

Gwen Hardie

Born and educated in Scotland

-focuses on tiny parts of flesh and paints them wet on wet in no more than a day. For her they are ways of looking at mortality, a precarious and fragile existence. She doesn’t seek to dramatise the image but rather to celebrate the wonder of being and looking at the body.

Technique – subtlety of texture and blending of colour. Hardie uses the oil paint as a kind of membrane or a film – ‘skin of paint’. “Cool, warm, transparent and opaque hues are blended together quickly to create an illusion of depth…and can make the surface of the body resemble landscape…” website.

Gwen Hardie

Richard Wright

Born London, 1960, artist, musician. Wright decorates architectural spaces with intricately designed patterns in paint and gold leaf. His work is often short-lived, only kept for the length of an exhibition and then are painted over.

Grayson Perry

Doodles…Perry rediscovered drawing for fun with the birth of his daughter Flo. They began drawing together and he says he learnt to play on paper again. Carries sketchbooks all the time – “a place where I can discuss ideas with myself, a place I work through and refine an idea for a good while before I will let it run around the studio and then into the world.” (‘Sketchbooks’ by Grayson Perry)

Julie Mehretu

Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa in 1970 and lives and works in New York.

Makes large-scale gestural paintings – built up through layers of acrylic paint on canvas with mark-making using pencil, pen, ink and thick streams of paint. Uses abstracted images of cities, histories, wars and geographies with energetic mark making. She describes her canvases as ‘story maps of no location’.

“Her paintings present a tornado of visual incident where gridded cities become fluid and flattened, like many layers of urban graffiti… (White Cube.com)

Listening to her talk to the White Cube Gallery, I was struck by this continual struggle for newness…new language…new mark making. In her later works she has let go of the architectural underpinning.

Conversation with Tim Marlow at the White Cube about her collaboration with David Adjaye for the exhibition.

A most interesting discussion focusing on the artist and the space exhibiting the paintings. I was particularly interested in the part of the discussion about time based experience for the viewer. The immense detail in Mehretu’s large paintings mean that the element of time is embedded in the work. The challenge was how to create stillness in an exhibition for the viewer. There is the need to be able to pause and for the re-orientation of the body. The durational aspect to appreciate both the intimacy and grandeur.

The conversation also picked up on the sense of movement in the way you think about the images and this resonated with the work I’d been doing on time and movement of thought.

Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu

 

REFLECTION: Part 5 – project 2…the artist’s book

REFLECTION: PART 5 – PROJECT 2 …THE ARTIST’S BOOK

This project has taken weeks of work!

I’m pleased that I followed the advice in the course notes to work from ideas already started in the sketchbook because that provided the basic thinking for the project. It also provided great motivation because I was already hugely stimulated by the concept of the ‘movement of thought’ as an aspect of time in which the human body can be stationary while the thoughts and mental world of the individual move. As I wrote in the post, these ideas started from sitting and watching the world go by at the V&A Museum. What also intrigued me as I sat there were the groups of people standing and talking. They also were stationary but within a dialogue or conversation, movement was happening. There was the back and forth of ideas, arguments, differing points of view. There were the conversations of friends coming together and sharing experiences. There were teaching groups and the interaction between instructors and pupils. So much movement was happening as time was passing without necessarily any movement of the figures. So with all this information I was pleased to be able to explore the ideas in this project of creating a book.

However, it wasn’t long before I realized that exploring an idea in a book format is not easy. In order to illustrate the time factor, there has to be a sequential process, a development of ideas, a following through of an underlying theme. That probably isn’t always the case in book art but for me it was. To show thought moving, it seemed necessary to sequence ideas. But I found there was a trap in this. It became all too easy to start a narrative. Nothing wrong with that! But I wasn’t telling a story, I was having a dialogue! A dialogue means more than one person. I was having a dialogue with the space. So I had to keep reminding myself that I was not talking about the space, but I was talking with the space. I would be working on an image and then stand back and realize that I was drawing the space and not responding to the space. So that meant going over the image and bringing it back from just illustration. Some of the pages I’ve managed to do that; some, I feel, still are too much about the space. Just the actual physical drawings took over a week to complete!

I enjoyed working in the medium of soft pastels. They are very immediate and allow me to work with my hands. In the rubbing process, you leave finger marks and I like that and I haven’t tried to obliterate them. Physical response seemed important in this work and I found that as the dialogue progressed with the space, so the marks on the page with the pastel would develop. It became just like a conversation.

I don’t feel that any words are necessary in the book. I have tried to bring out the following ideas in my dialogue with what has become a very precious and intimate friend!

• The mystery and fascination of a secret area
• The dark impenetrable barrier – threatening – sometimes fierce, almost like armor.
• The contrasting elements – light , fluffy movements of the leaves in the wind, the mighty swaying of the long poles in the wind – a gentleness
• Finding an entrance and the questions this raised – what was in there – did anything live in there – how would it react to being disturbed after so many years (I have to admit to being a bit nervous before I ventured in – in fact I sent my husband in first!!!)
• Then the awe of being in the centre – the cathedral-like interior – tall vertical lines reaching upwards – tiny shafts of light flickering through
• And the silence! This was amazing – complete stillness and private – totally alone
• Enclosure – embracing

The artist’s book is a fascinating subject. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to explore my subject in a new format. The element of time is significant in the creation of an artbook and it was a challenge. It means that focus has to be maintained over a period. Each of the pages in the book was like a separate piece of work – 11 drawings! But 11 drawings would not have been the challenge that this book was. I think the difference is that with a book you are conveying an idea and that single idea guides each individual piece and that is constantly in your mind. However like all artwork, the viewer will bring a different viewpoint so perhaps that carefully focused thread will not be accessible to them. But, of course, that doesn’t matter!

RESEARCH: project 2 – ARTIST’S BOOK

Research: Project 2: An artist’s book

An artist’s book is a “book of which the artist is the author.” Clive Phillpot – issue of Art Documentation

Notes:

Hans Peter Feldmann

Late 1960s, produced a series of small books titled Bild (Picture) or Bilder (Pictures), containing a number of black and white photographs on a particular subject. They were of ordinary subjects, 14 mountains, 12 views of aircraft in the sky, 11 sets of women’s knees, 6 pictures of football players. Unlike Ruscha and Gerhard Richter, these books do not form the basis for further art work. They are the work itself and their meaning is left to the viewer.

 

Wolfgang Tillmans

Born in Germany but now lives in London. Won the Turner Prize in2000. Tillman considers the printed page to be an important venue for his work and is involved in the publication of artist’s books. He is a fine art photographer.

 

Sol Le Witt

“Books are the best medium for many artists working today,” Sol Lewitt remarked. He was a pioneer of artist’s books and co-founder of New York’s Printed Matter bookstore .

 

I went further with research into artists’ books at the V&A : ‘Artists’ books are books made or conceived by an artist. There are fine artists who make books and book artists who produce work exclusively in that medium. Artists’ books that maintain the traditional structure of a book are often known as book art or book works while those that reference the shape of a book are known as book objects. A fascinating subject!

Artists have been associated with the written word since illuminated manuscripts in the medieval period. Books as an artistic enterprise we have William Blake at the end of the 18^th century and William Morris at the Kelmscott Press in the 1890s.

Livre d’artiste, also known as livre de peintre sees the beginning of the contemporary artist’s book. This originated in France at the turn of the 20^th century. These books are distinguished by the fact that the pages are printed directly from a source created by the artist.

In the 1950s and 1960s Swiss-German artist Dieter Roth and American artist Ed Ruscha created conceptual works which were the foundation of the artist’s book genre…intended as art works in their own right.

In the 1980s and 1990s many more artists began to use the ‘book’ as a means of creative expression…

• From traditional to experimental
• Promote the art of letterpress printing and the handcrafted book
• Some use computer generated images
• Experimental with the content and the physical structure of the book

20^th and 21^st century artists who have been associated with bookart:

Balthus, Louise Bourgeous, Daniel Buren, Anthony Caro, Eduardo Chillida, Sol Lewitt, Richard Long, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg.

 

I spent some time during the research looking at ‘book art’ and ‘book objects’ and noted some examples. This is an amazing genre and the creativity is exceptional. It is yet another huge area of creativity to explore.

I also went into the mechanics of making a book. This is an extraordinary world and I was again amazed at the creativity.

I can see huge potential in the world of book art and I’m sure if I was doing this research earlier in my life, it is something which would have absorbed me. It is fascinating how many ‘worlds’ open up in which individuals express their creativity and inspiration, It’s like a never ending bubbling stream!

 

 

 

EXHIBITION: Paul Nash

EXHIBITIONS: PAUL NASH – Tate Britain London – February 2017

I wanted to visit this exhibition particularly because of the subject of my parallel project on abstraction. Paul Nash (1889 – 1946) lived and worked through the period when abstraction emerged as a movement. His contact with Ben Nicholson and his group and possibly knowledge of Victor Pasmore were no doubt an influence on him when he began to explore abstraction in his work. One of the rooms at the exhibition focused on ‘Unit One’ which was the name given to a group of British artists formed in 1933 to promote modern art, architecture and design. Modern art was seen at the time to embrace two trends, abstraction and surrealism. The artists in the group were John Armstrong, John Bigge, Edward Burra, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Edward Wadsworth and the architects Welles Coates and Colin Lucas.

Nash experimented with abstraction but it was interesting to see the paintings in which his love of the organic kept breaking through. This was obvious in the work, ‘Dead Spring’. His compositions of plant forms are set against mirrors, open doors and windows and architectural structures, exploring the relationship between organic and architectural forms. I found this interesting for my own work. I also have a strong interest in the organic and seeing how this can be used in abstraction is an ongoing exploration.

Nash, Paul; Dead Spring; Pallant House Gallery; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/dead-spring-70498

I found the exhibition very stimulating and thought provoking. He was obviously an artist who was constantly examining his work and experimenting with new ideas.

REFLECTION: project 1 – a changing scene

This was an exciting project. As my Part 5 – project 1 post relates, I started with a long session of sitting, watching, feeling, listening in the V&A museum. I’ve enjoyed drawing sessions there before but this time was different. Because of the research and thinking I’ve been doing on Abstraction, I found that I was thinking in abstraction. It wasn’t the detailed figures and shapes I was experiencing but the actual environment itself. It was an environment where there were all kinds of movement, not just bodies moving from one place to another. There was of course the wonderful contrast of the marble statues in movement poses but completely stationary. Time didn’t exist for them. Then there were the groups of visitors standing in conversation. But here the movement and time passing was happening between the individuals and I began to see that a conversation expressed movement of ideas and an exchange which was happening in time – back and forth, in and out, around and about as acceptance or rejection was happening.

The other ‘movement’ area which totally captured my thought was the movement which was happening in thought as the visitor absorbed new ideas and concepts from the items on display. This was a major change of scene happening without any visible sign of movement. This was the most exciting area for me. I would like to develop a body of work from this idea.

As I began to draw I realised that it was going to be almost impossible not to simply draw ‘frozen time’. However dynamic a moving figure might be, when drawn on paper it simply froze. So I knew that the key had to be in the kinds of lines I used in order to actually ‘feel’ time as I drew. In my project on abstraction I’d done a lot of work with line to try to understand what I could achieve through this simple shape. So I used this information as I began to draw. I think the materials I chose helped as well. These were pan pastels and a chiselled piece of foam. I also worked very quickly to try to capture a sense of movement through my own body. I think this gestural approach was important.

I was completely comfortable not focusing on any detail. For me, movement obliterated any feeling of detail.

In the first images, in which I was trying to portray the sense that bodies moving through a space leave an impression on time, I needed to do multiple surfaces. This meant continually drawing and then rubbing back and then drawing over the top. Sometimes I rubbed out, sometimes I used chalk. I found however that the paper could only take a certain amount of this treatment. It also required very careful tonal values with each layer. I was using charcoal and soft pastels and continually experimenting to see what was going to happen. In some cases it worked and in others I lost the tones and it was difficult to create the feeling of ‘impressions’. This area needs more experimenting.

My attempts with expressing the movement of thought from a standing contemplative figure were even more challenging and this can be seen from the photos on the post. Once again I played around with multiple layers. Each time the figure and the lines became more and more abstract and I reached the point of wondering if that was the only way of expressing this idea. I was trying very hard to keep away from the very clichéd image of a shaft of light from on high signifying enlightenment and inspiration…not sure if I’ve managed to do that. It also occurred to me that I may have greater flexibility to portray this idea of I was using colour. But this first attempt led me further into abstraction.

The final two images were pure abstraction and I did these as part of my parallel project. It was interesting to work on these drawings at the same time as doing the more representational images. It all came down to line and movement so that in one case the line and movement formed itself into images of figures, in the other the same line and movement of my drawing arm expressed itself in pure abstraction in the other image. It was interesting to me that there wasn’t very much difference.

I learnt a huge amount from this exercise and I felt the subsequent images were able to capture some sense of movement happening.

EXHIBITIONS: ‘REVOLUTION – Russian Art 1917 – 1932

EXHIBITION: Revolution – Russian Art 1917-1932

Royal Academy London – February 2017

This year marks 100 years since the Russian Revolution which swept Vladimir Lenin and the socialist Bolshevik Party to power and ended the centuries of rule by the Tsars. Shortly afterwards, civil war broke out as the Reds (Communists) and the Whites (tsarist Russians) fought for control. After Lenin’s death, Joseph Stalin came to power and freedom of the individual was crushed in favour of collective ideology.

This was a very informative exhibition and it gave me an understanding of the years following the extraordinary explosion in art during the period from 1863 to 1922 which I’d read about in ‘The Russian Experiment in Art” by Camilla Gray. It was interesting to me as well because I’d just finished reading Julian Barnes’ latest book, “The Noise of Time”, in which he describes so vividly the life which Shostakovich endured during this period of Stalin’s rule. In one of the exhibition rooms called Brave New World, one wall was filled with photographs of the avant-garde – remarkable people of talent in art, theatre, music, architecture and literature – who at first were filled with the euphoria of the revolution but as early, as 1921, began to feel the repression of the regime. Avant-garde art was suppressed and finally vanished.

I left the exhibition with an overwhelming sense of the importance of art! The final room focused on Stalin and his utopian vision for a politically unified Soviet Union. Such a vision could only be achieved by the complete and utter suppression of the individual and it was so interesting to hear that , with this goal in view, he feared ‘ART’ above all else. This period of unopposed tyranny was from 1932 until his death in 1953. It was fascinating to think that this period in Russia was followed in America with the Abstract Impressionists, a movement of intense personal freedom and creativity.