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“We painters have to speak with our brushes” – Annibale Carracci so chided his brother Agostino for conversing too much with his poet and artist friends, instead of just getting on with it.
Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, 1597 - 1602
I’ve been meaning to link to James Gillick ever since I first saw this video on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt6vSHMbkGM&feature=player_embedded
I have watched this many times, and never without that ache that comes with just knowing, with every nerve ending, every fibre of being, that the moment I come out of my hiatus I must apprentice myself to James Gillick and learn everything he knows. This is my kind of Fine Art, the sort that resonates in your bones and makes your soul scamper against the skin of things. The way he weilds a palette knife causes me to gaze at my paintbox in agony of restraint. But I can’t possibly paint like this. Not until I have a shed with a drop down roof in any case.
Yes it’s true, I confess: the shed, the leather jacket, the humanity and the love at the heart of this artist’s practice is what inspired hiatus art blog in the first place.
Gah.
Why can’t I be a suburban hyper-voyeur noir master…like Zachary Thornton?
Zachary’s paintings inspire my inner theorist…such that I find myself compelled to write about his work, even apart from how in awe I am of it and how much I wish I had painted these impervious twenty-first century darlings in their natural habitat.
Zachary Thornton, One AM, oil on canvas, 2007
Zachary Thornton works in an old-fashioned style of art making - a style that ‘rewards on many levels’. It’s the sort of work a person might actually ruminate on; consider both on its own terms as well as in its historical context. One might really enjoy it, even, draw pleasure from the act of looking at it, without having to glean most of that enjoyment from one’s own simultaneously smug and self-deprecating sense of humour or other demonstrations of general mental dexterity, as has been the case with much of the contemporary Art in my recent experience anyway.
Yet Thornton’s style isn’t retrospective, and it isn’t reactionary. It’s the sort of thing that might come out of post-modernism, might extract itself urbanely from that school of mirrors, brush itself down and step out into the real world again. It has the look of someone who’s checked their appearance in the glass and then turned to face the world armed and assured. What I mean is, that it addresses the post-modern theses, and then goes on, leaving the endless reflections and dimensionless relativisms behind, but not without pocketing a little subversive star-dust with a smarmy sniff.
Zachary Thornton, Pool, oil on canvas, 2008
Thornton’s work does this by speaking to the post modern method of incorporating the banal in the quest for High Art, thus flattening that particular spectrum into a classless middle ground. It waves remotely at parody and its poorer cousin: kitsch, whilst simultaneously avoiding the long-winded conversation they inevitably provide at close quarters. Thornton uses the framing techniques, voyeur’s prerogative, and various other recognisable traits of the realm of television, film and commercial art (think romantic thriller book covers), but he does this without stinting on technique, aesthetical enquiry, or – perhaps most importantly – earnest pursuit. Don’t laugh – you’ll only reveal how beholden you are to the soul sucking clankiness of the post-modern sensibility. What I mean is, it is not the sort of art perpetrated by a nihilistic, oblivion seeking, anti-artist.
Of course, impossible to ignore from the outset, is the gaze of the male artist – Thornton exclusively chooses women in the suburban environment for his subject matter. Its sort of irrelevant though, that his nubile femmes sometimes avert this gaze, sometimes submit, as they alternately eye the viewer with dispassion from the snugness of their evening gowns, and fret at their predicament… after all, what are they doing out alone at night? It’s irrelevant because pressed to the point of redundancy – it’s not as if Thornton has attempted this subject without self-awareness - the theme is duly noted in every mystery laden, hyper-voyeuristical tableau.
Thornton is by no means alone out there. The hyper-voyeur has been at play all along the late twentieth century way. Photographer Gregory Crewdson comes to mind, with his familiar suburban dioramas, counterpoised by shrewd borrowings from the film industry, the thriller genre in particular. His photographs speak directly to society via its favourite form of entertainment, about its favourite form of entertainment.
Gregory Crewdson, Untitled
Thornton demonstrates the same flexibility of approach. Its the sort of flexibility demanded of artists who aim at ‘relevance’ after the contortionist, reflexive somersaults required by the post-modern milieu. But what survives, what sets these artists and those like them apart from their post-modern contemporaries, is the earnest pursuit. What’s important here, is the maker’s mark. The signs of construction. The plastic signs: the brushstrokes and trademark lighting effects – but also the discursive intent – the marks of earnestness, signified in the instance of Thornton and Crewdson by the simple presence of narrative. The narrative in both is implied of course, not prescribed, but its existence is like a big, rambunctious uncle waving excitedly from the periphery. It’s a straightforward mode of making, that coupled with skillful manipulation of medium, gives so much more than the usual remote nod. It translates more to a friendly human ‘hoy.
Hyper-realists or super-realists like Gerhard Richter and Chuck Close fall short of the earnestness implicit in the hyper-voyeur’s position. For all their finely wrought faces and evocative borrowings, they choose not to step down from their respective meta perspectives, and own their own subjectivity. They might touch this sort of purity of purpose, but from the other side of the mirror – ultimately they fall backwards into the post-modern event horizon, arms flailing, grins lingering. What I like about Thornton’s work that sets him apart from those realists and hyper-realists who seem to be stuck saying something cute about viewer expectations and systems of deconstruction – is that it’s innate narrative is not subsumed by the meta narratives it references. Thornton et al are revisiting the world of the earnest, albeit with tainted eyes – and I for one am cheering.
Those silent sentinels skirting the gallery walls, compelling good behaviour by the sheer force of their upright bearing, are not guards, I learned today, but ‘attendants’. A minor character in my current novel (shameless plug) is a krump-loving gallery guard/attendant… I may have to revisit those chapters to make sure I’ve got the terminology right. Anyway, after seeing this vimeo over at Juxtapoz, I’m thinking it would be the perfect job for me, actually.
“The seminal lie of radicalism is that all change is automatically for the better, even though much of our experience of life teaches us otherwise.” – Giles Auty, Postmodernism’s Assault on Western Culture.
When I was at Art School groundless assumptions and one-sided affirmations whirled about me persistently, held me up at classroom doors, and smirked at me conspiratorially from set exercises and scheduled excursions. Sounds like paranoia pure and simple, I know, but in fact it describes the effect of institutionalised radicalism on an oversensitive (or as I sometimes prefer to think of myself: a sensorially astute) conservative (unbeknownst to myself…so yes, that would imply less than politically astute). At the time, I kept quiet. I was too overawed by the sheer scope of my intended career to begin charting a way through the mists according to any particular set of beliefs. Well, that’s not entirely true. I arrived at the base of the mountain with a history of belief at least, after exploring the possibility of a vocation in the convent (okay, go right ahead and think of Julie Andrews swinging a trunk against a backdrop of edelweiss) and so had the benefit of religious experience, with its clouds and nights and contemplations. But contrary perhaps to what is often assumed of such excursions, my mind was therefore honed to doubt, and to hesitate at assent, especially to anything that was broadly believed to be true.
I had a deep respect for my teachers at Art School, I relished the opportunities to absorb the wisdom they’d accrued in their various pursuits of the summit (and I’m not just saying that to sound humble – to this day I cannot think of their ways without intuiting some lesson or other). But as far as ideologies were concerned, I was fairly sure our paths weren’t intersecting, except in so far as our purposes crossed.
I’m a shy soul, and it’s just not in my skill set to speak dispassionately in public forums, especially on topics that are important to me, instead I keep my cards to myself, and hope someone else less likely to stuff things up will set things to right. Case in point: the much maligned art critic Giles Auty, who in my opinion has made some pretty insightful observations on certain aspects of Modern Art criticism and theory in recent years. The article from which the above quote has been taken, for example, published in Quadrant, June 2000, is worth weighing in, when considering matters of ideology as they pertain to Art, and a quick peruse could be quite illuminating if you’re in the process of rethinking your approach to the practice of and discussion of Art and Art theory. Of course, you could always disclude it from your deliberations because it lacks popular support. Actually, I would recommend that you opt out in order to preserve a contemplative reclusion from worldly disputes (a valid, meaningful position I have complete respect for, as would be self evident from the nature of this weblog), but if you happen to be amongst the fray already…well, then.
“In visual art, the rhetoric of radicalism holds total sway and we have been persuaded somehow to make novelty almost the sole effective index of quality.” - ibid
I’m picturing in my head the vast white walls of my local national gallery, patterned as they are with those works that best demonstrate the ‘boundary pushing’ that has indeed become the defining criterion of worthiness, and I’m almost certain that as I gaze upon the bold, monumental, controversial friends of my youth, there are actual scales falling from my eyes. They were loosely attached, I’d like to believe I’ve been looking around them for years, but sometimes the voice of another gives the necessary jolt to shake them off.
“the true vision and the true knowledge of what we seek consists precisely in not seeing, in an awareness that our goal transcends all knowledge and is everywhere cut off from us by the darkness of incomprehensibility.” Gregory of Nyssa – Life of Moses (2:163)
Hold the hiatus. It’s finally happened. The Art World has made it to Sitcomville. This is, to my knowledge, unprecedented - I must watch every episode in quick succession beginning now – to heck with the housewifery, the French philosphers, and the manuscript on the verge of completion. This is far, far more important. I’ll be posting again when I’m done. I hope I’ve got some popcorn…
Anyone who hasn’t spent the best part of the last decade on hiatus will probably already be familiar with the Stuckists. As for me, well, I’ve only come upon them lately:
That’s right. The stuckists are the concept art haters, called ‘Stuckists’ because Tracey Emin, the notable British conceptual artist famous for exhibiting her unmade bed in the Tate Gallery, accused one of the leading proponents of the movement, Billy Childish, of being “stuck, stuck, stuck”. I have a soft spot in my heart for these honorable people. Really I do, even though I suppose my own practice – thriving as it does on the concept of hiatus – might be considered on the threshold at least of the concept art movement, which they despise, it’s their reason d’etre, you can read their manifesto here.
So, I’ve been reading what art critics and art journalists have to say about this hot topic, and it makes me curious, what do everyday, knock about artists have to say about this particular can of worms? Are you tempted to sign up? Or do you agree with Jonathan Jones, that “Stuckists are the enemies of art”?
If you ask me, it’s rather a shame that the people to pit themselves against the concept artists, and against the establishment that rewards and encourages the concept art movement, should be so darn bad at the type of art they supposedly champion. I mean, really:
A Man That Thinks He Can Fly
Aren’t there any good artists out there who can help these guys out? To be fair, I do quite like some of the art coming out of this movement. It has that quirky, naive sort of directness that bypasses the grey matter if you know what I mean. It seems to me the cartoonesque style they exhibit draws self-consciously on a more or less creditable tradition of primitivism and outsider art, but this does smack suspiciously of irony to me, so I’m not sure if they’re contradicting themselves or not. It also raises the question, if they’re not appealing to beauty or brains, what exactly are they appealing to? Heart? Angry hearts? Really starved angry hearts?
As for their theoretical position, I think they have some stand up arguments - anyone can see their passionate, punkesque plea for a new definition of art has reason in it, even if it’s not quite enough reason to satisfy the highbrow white cube elite. But they’re not so silly that the Art world can dismiss them out of hand, which is probably how they’ve gained momentum with the public, quality of art notwithstanding. You can see a really, really horribly grainy reproduction of an Oxford Union debate featuring Matthew Collings on the subject here. I’ll be reviewing their manifesto shortly, as part of my Cumulo Manifesto project.
It’s too much toast for one post – I’ll be sticking with the Stuckists for a little while, I think, so stay tuned for future posts.
So, dear flailing artists – what’s your honest opinion? Do you have some constructive criticism to offer?
I just can’t believe how serendipity has played out here, in providing me with such a fitting subject for my first manifesto review - the Manifesto of the Cloud Appreciation Society. I do love clouds myself, so I suppose my review cannot hope to be even vaguely impartial, but neither vaguery nor impartiality has a place in the unique mode of rhetorical expression that is the manifesto, so I hardly think their lack can be felt much in the review (allowing of course for the ultimate irony: a manifesto declaring in favour of impartiality). Taking a vaguely parodical tone, the Cloud Appreciation Society’s manifesto manages to be both vague and partial, without being blatant about either. But then, we would hardly expect the cloud loving folk of the Cloud Appreciation Society to be blatant about anything, would we.
So here goes.
The manifesto is a tight one, in point form – six points to be exact, or six plumes if you like, since clouds aren’t often pointy creatures. These are separated by cute, whimsical cloud dingbats – making an important visual statement I think – and range from pledges to defend clouds, to phrases in recognition of their beauty, to deliberations on the advantages they offer in practical terms to those who watch them (saving on psychoanalysis bills). It is a rather poetic manifesto, without being weighted down with too much high falutin’ language, while its organisation of content is random enough to evoke the sensation of cloud watching itself. Its tone builds beautifully, starting with tongue in cheek solemnity, and ending with a rousing exhortation, to “look up” and live with one’s “head in the clouds”.
It does a nice job of identifying the enemy – specifically, the tendency to exhibit “blue-sky thinking”, but overall it has a tone of reparation, and is predominantly peaceful in approach – one might, if one happened to be having a ‘blue sky’ sort of moment, expect to be gently encouraged to reflect rather on the benefits of clouds, not mocked or harassed loudly into line. So, I would say, a highly successful, multi layered manifesto. Light, contemplative, far reaching without over reaching, and clearly defined, like a cumulo nimbus.
Here is where the blog begins. The hiatus, however, began a long time ago. I was once a practicing artist - I painted, I sketched, I went to art school. I exhibited - tentatively. Then I opted out. Like so many artists before me, I took indefinite hiatus from my practice. This doesn’t mean I’ve pursued something else, because I haven’t. I’m an artist to the core, and when I come out of hiatus, it will be with renewed determination, and hopefully, purpose.
There’s something of an art to this hiatus business, as it turns out, and the aim of this blog is to document mine, whilst exploring the theme of hiatus in a general, more universal sense.
Why? Well, first of all, because making hiatus doesn’t mean giving up, it just means doing something else for a while - and for me, incurable recluse that I am, it’s writing. I’ve always written, nearly as much as I’ve drawn. When art became impossible, writing was my fall back. Both artforms transport, both construct pictures, both allow for bizarre eccentricities of character (like cash register phobia, and the compulsion to edit). If I were really smart, I would have played chess of course. Indefinitely.
The other reason is, I love art. I love thinking about art, writing about art, and just coexisting with it. I also love making it, but for me that one’s on the backburner, for now. I’m confident I’m not alone, if not in my hiatus, at least in my doubt. I’m also confident there’s something to this hiatus business, and I intend to find out what it is. I’ll be looking back at the history of art, the lives of artists living and dead, the theories that define art now and those that seek to define the future. Who knows? It might turn up something interesting. It might even, arguably, be art.
Okay, probably not.
