an art experience

just a boy who likes art

[anartexperience]

Artists on Artists #6: Edouard Manet / Claude Monet

Edouard Manet, ‘Monet dans son bateau atelier’ (Monet in His Studio Boat), 1874. 

Manet depicts his fellow Impressionist doing some plein air portraiture at Gennevilliers during the Summer of 1874. 

[anartexperience]

One of the most popular dances in the early 20th century dance halls of Paris, such as the Moulin de la Galette, was the Farandole. The ring of dancers features as simplified motif in Matisse’s ‘La Danse’ and ‘La Musique’, inspired by his sketching at the Moulin de la Galette. 

[anartexperience]

[anartexperience]

[anartexperience]

Georg Baselitz, Winter sleep (Winterschlaf), 2014. - @ White Cube, Bermondsey 

(photo: http://anartexperience.tumblr.com)

[anartexperience]

Wei-Wu-Ying Centre for the Arts, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Designed by Dutch architects Mecanoo. 

[anartexperience]

an egyptian legacy on cubist art

In most of Ancient Egyptian art a consistent style pervades which gives it a definite uniformity. The Egyptian convention was to depict a subject from memory and therefore artists would draw figuratively from the most “characteristic angle” (to borrow E.H. Gombrich’s words). As a result, the art that they produced synthesises multiple viewpoints, which may seem unfamiliar, however the reasoning was logical. In this depiction of Hesire (or Hesy-Ra), an Ancient Egyptian official during the early Third Dynasty, we see the almost jigsaw like construction: the torso has a disjointed relationship with the legs, just as the head in profile contradicts the front facing eye. This disjuncture was commonplace within the Ancient Egyptian ‘style’. These strange inaccuracies were to answer the basic questions of how we imagine the human body to look: the way we might imagine a head is in profile, just as we might visualise an eye from the front because visualising an eye from the side would seem odd.

This technique allowed the artist to, through representing multiple views of one thing - in multiple planes, contrive a complete, comprehensive representation. This too was the central aesthetic of Cubism: the formulation of a picture based upon all possible views of the subject simultaneously. In Picasso’s ‘La Dormeuse’ (1947) a duality with the Egyptian artists’ methods is clear. In both there is an impetus to create a visual accuracy that transcends an anatomical one; a conceptual aspect of Cubism was the desire to incorporate the viewer’s mental envisioning of subject, and recreate it through exaggerating memorable features. And there is almost a direct mirroring between the profile head-frontal torso composition.

It is curious to see how works of modern art are implicitly indebted to the art of the past, not just of preceding centuries, but of works which are millennia apart.

[anartexperience]

Subodh Gupta, ‘Invisible Reality’, 2015.

Thunderstorms can be frightening. For the most part though we are in relative safety; it is a rarity that a storm will occur with such a severity that it will directly cause personal harm. However despite this, there is a sense of trepidation and uncertainty when skies darken and the distant murmurs of thunderclouds begin to vocalise. Despite being sheltered within a secure brick house, anxiety permeates the walls, instilling in oneself a notion of fear. What causes this, perhaps, is an innate understanding of the potential for danger. The same sensation that you may experience when a train passes you on a station platform: the exhilarating rush and the realisation that were you placed three feet forward, your fragile frame would have been certainly annihilated.

Much like the train, the sound of a thunderstorm significantly contributes to its presence. Sound in art is transformative: it can enhance a work, or distort it entirely. Hearing is a sense that is difficult to turn off. You can close your eyes; you can block your nose; shut your mouth; but cover your ears and even the absence of sound becomes a sensual experience in itself. Silence is disturbing. Cacophonous sound is disturbing.  

In Subodh Gupta’s ‘Invisible Reality’ (2015) all the security from the storm is removed. You are not sheltered by a house, you are excluded; left to bear the brunt of disorientating ambient noise. But this noise oscillates - like the pause between two claps of thunder - coercing us into security before double-crossing us and reminding us of our ineffectual position.

You are suspended in time. The darkness of the room juxtaposed with the almost unbearable white light removes you from a recognisable reality. It is not a house before you. A house connotes warmth and stability. This is an illusion. The building will not shelter you from the storm; it will not comfort you, keep you warm. It will reveal nothing of its interior - any whispers of revelation are drowned by raw noise. And so you are left alone. Left alone to brace the inevitable resonance of sound, blinding by light. To anyone who could be in the house, looking outward as you vainly attempt to look inwards, you are conspiring with the storm.

[anartexperience]

Rituals and Revelry: Masks and Puppets from Around The World, at the Russell-Cotes Museum, Bournemouth. 

[anartexperience]

Artists on Artists #5: Pablo Picasso / Diego Velázquez

Three-hundred years after Veláquez painted ‘Las Meninas’, Picasso reinterpreted it in a series of fifty-eight paintings. 

“I'll try to do it my way, forgetting about Velázquez. The test would surely bring me to modify or change the light because of having changed the position of a character. So, little by little, that would be a detestable Meninas for a traditional painter, but would be my Meninas.” - Pablo Picasso

[anartexperience]

continuing to watch words move

The future of printed books is potentially a bleak one. In a time of e-readers and e-books traditional ink on paper books seem like an anachronism. E-books are cheaper, more immediate and more space efficient; whole libraries can be condensed into a super-thin piece of technology. Given this, is the printed word - or image - still necessary to produce, and can their artistic applications justify the continuity of their once indispensable position in our lives?

To investigate this idea, typography is where we shall focus our attention. In some regards it is difficult to discuss typography as an art form: it has a much more functional and commercial purpose than fine art. Nonetheless, there is an equal avant-garde sensibility present in typography and design, as there is in fine art. One of my favourite typographers of the twentieth-century is Robert Brownjohn, an American graphics designer, instantly recognisable by his uses of negative space and minimalist designs, as well as his work in film - designing motion picture titles for ‘Goldfinger’ and ‘From Russia With Love’. Brownjohn’s experimental publication ‘Watching Words Move’ (1962) showcases his masterful placement of text and subtle humour. (http://dz182.aisites.com/Typography/WatchingWords_sm.pdf)

This experimental verve remains strong today, specifically in ‘Visual Poetry’. The late avant-garde poet Henri Chopin, as evident in ‘Bush’ (2001), employs text and typeface as formal elements to construct images, translating them from their typographic and symbolic denotations to something more akin to graphic mark-making. Similarly, in ‘Hackney Declares War on the City’ (2005) Sean Bonney subverts the conventions of typefaces - letter spacing, and stringent formatting - to create cacophonies of letter forms through which words muscle their way to the fore.

The literature-art border is a flexible one, and the way that narratives are conveyed is inextricable from the graphic design used to record them. Authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Mark Z. Danielewski write books in which physical presentation is as important as literary content. Danielewski’s novel ‘House of Leaves’ (2000) features passages wrapped around shapes, the recurrent highlighting of the word “house” in blue and Leonardo Da Vinci-style mirrored text. Of course, these features are still present on e-readers - though the colour may be troublesome for some - but reading on a screen would diminish the experimental nature of the work. Text which meanders across the surface of a screen is not so unusual as text which does the same in printed form. This is due to convention. For hundreds of years, since the advent of the printing press, there has been a uniformity to book printing - parallel lines of text, margins, etc. When this is tampered with, as Bonney and Chopin do with their typewritten works, words acquire a formal quality: they are no longer simply the written articulation of thoughts, they are now elements of a composition.

The hybridisation of typography, art and literature, makes the case for the importance of the printed text. Our desires for the tactility of books is reflected in the popularity of artefacts like the Fanzine. These often independent publications counter the anodyne regularity of the e-book, with its standard typeface and insipid covers, with a more imperfect and unique aesthetic. For me, the printed book will never become a redundancy; the sensation of viewing printed text or images is irreplaceable and the persistence of visual poets and experimental publishers will keep the tradition going into the future.

[anartexperience]

a comment on elitism and snobbery 

Both of these collages lampoon the “Art Critic” and the art “Elitist”. Mystification and pretence within the art world have been widely written about by a number of 20th and 21st century writers - especially John Berger - and a number of efforts have been made to dispel these endemic issues. 

The badge of ‘Elitist’ reads “IT’S A BIT MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT” and yes, often artworks represent more than what their surface level suggests, but by no means should this lead to snobbery. There are arguably a limited number of academic readings of art however equally there are potentially innumerable numbers of personal, visceral readings: each viewer creates their own interpretation. Of course, from an academic viewpoint, there is a hierarchy of ideas but this should not be used to stifle or eschew  personal interpretations. Subjectivity is one of the wonderful and powerful aspects of art, if a work can not provoke myriad responses, then what is it for?

[anartexperience]

[anartexperience]

12.02.16

[anartexperience]

copies of copies of copies

*This post was inspired by Robert Hughes and Walter Benjamin, two writers who have explored mechanical reproduction and its impact on artworks.*

When an image is reproduced en masse, it is no longer singular. With each iteration of that image more and more it is spread: like a stream of photocopies. Take, for example, the Mona Lisa. Arguably it is Leonardo’s most famous painting, and one which is concomitant with prestige and skill, but what dictates its cultural value?

Paradoxically, as an image is cloned and copied, to use the language of Hughes, the original becomes more unique: that is to say, the more low quality Mona Lisa mugs or postcards there are, the more we appreciate the singularity of the original. By being bombarded with these copies we are constantly aware of their bootleg nature as they are extracted from “the here and now”, Benjamin describes an artwork as being a “unique incidence”; a fact which forces appreciation of the original work. The replicas become signs, they signify quality, a quality which is assumed. Your Mona Lisa t-shirt is not the Mona Lisa, but because of the fact that it was worthy of a t-shirt, you have been told that it the apex of the art canon.

Hughes’ argument hinges on the idea that paintings educate whilst signs dictate. The reiterations of an image do not simulate the enchanting experience of viewing the original, they simply serve as reminders. Reminders that even in the digital (or mechanical) age, the experience of viewing a work of art first hand, and extracting a value personal to us, cannot be mass produced.

[anartexperience]

A diagram constructed by Alfred H. Barr Jr., the first director of MoMA. 

Part of a series of diagrams representing the development of Modern Art, Barr depicts the interconnections of a non-linear visual history. 

[anartexperience]

Curation Series #1: Live in Your Head When Attitudes Become Forms (1969) 

Harald Szeemann, the self styled Ausstellungsmacher (exhibition-maker), would turn the curator into “a kind of artist,  himself…a meta-artist, utopian thinker, or even a shaman” (Daniel Birnbaum). 

His experimental exhibition Live in Your Head When Attitudes Become Forms (1969), Allowed artists to respond to the exhibition space, which led for a mode of curation that was more conceptual and less objective than before. Inextricably linked to the proliferation of conceptual art that occurred in the 1960s, Attitudes sought to explore both the materiality of art and its quixotic nature.

Taking the form of a pseudo-scientific laboratory the exhibition enabled artists, such as Joseph Beuys, Richard Long, Richard Serra, to produce works which existed as a collective, rather than discretely; all of which was an attempt to demystify the conditions of the art museum.

The influence of Szeemann’s provocative curation is evident in institutions today. London’s Tate Modern for example organises its collection thematically rather than chronologically. By exhibiting in this way museums can create dialogues between artworks across the boundaries of movements or periods, highlighting the universal concepts which drive artists and underly art history.