Tag Expression

Keep Making Art!

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

In this week’s session, as preparation to discussing the impending research paper, we discussed the value of writing for artists. For me, it is a way of organising my thoughts and recording my decision-making so that I can look back and remember why I did what I did, also allowing me to identify any patterns in my way of working or thinking. It also allows a breathing space to step back, to reflect and evaluate. The process of writing often triggers the development of existing thoughts as well as generating new ones. It is also another means of expression; sometimes writing about something provides inspiration as to how I might convey an idea; I often find inspiration from other people’s writing (Parental Loss I Motherhood I); and sometimes writing is the only way to express something, Three Conversations With My Mother. It is an invaluable process.

Jonathan then asked us to spend some time thinking about what is intriguing us.

I have been thinking a lot lately about a conversation I had with Lyberis on the last day of the Low Res. We were in the bar discussing the talk with Jeremy Deller we had just been to, and also the Whitechapel Library audio walk by Janet Cardiff we had experienced in the morning. We had both been blown away by it. I’m trying to understand why it excited me so much; possibly because there was an element of immersiveness, but at the same time I was aware of what was going on around me both visually and audibly; being both removed from and in my surroundings simultaneously was a really interesting experience, particularly when what I was hearing synced with what was actually going on in the real world, like the sound of a moped, just as one went past. The section at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate was fascinating as she describes two men, one in blue, sitting on a bench, and there actually were two men sitting on a bench chatting. If I had been them, I would have felt unnerved by 20 odd people all sitting down in silence and then getting up and leaving at the same time. It was difficult to work out what was going on. It seemed to be part detective drama, that we were with her looking for someone, as well as a collection of memories, and then, when we reached Liverpool Street Station, she theoretically abandoned us to find our own way back to Whitechapel to return the discman to the library, presumably relying on our memory. It’s just as well they were downloadable files!

But this got Lyberis and me on to talking about memory; how we are made up of our memories; but what if the memories are incorrect or false? I started thinking about how what I am doing is based solely on my memory. My memory is fallible, even photographs are open to interpretation, as we discovered in one of our previous weekly sessions. What if I am my own unreliable narrator? Even if my memories are factually incorrect, if I have a strong emotional response associated with something, surely that can’t be wrong? Is emotion the only true memory? Even if my memories aren’t correct, does that make them any less true to me? And then I was listening to the news on Radio 4 the other day and they mentioned that the writer, Mario Vargas Llosa, had died – he believed that novels should present lies as truths. This gives rise to the possibility that I could even invent my own history.

After taking us through the ins and outs of the research paper, Jonathan raised the issue of AI. He said he uses it to have a dialogue, to challenge his thinking. I’ve used it to critique a piece of work. I came across this article in the Guardian yesterday morning about the artist, David Salle, who has turned to AI to breathe new life into old paintings which hadn’t been rapturously received ‘I sent AI to Art School’.

Doing Lines

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

Following my tutorial with Jonathan, I decided to test the theory that if you say something to yourself enough times, you’ll start to believe it. So, I’ve been doing lines. To be honest I didn’t have to do lines as a punishment at school: I was a conformist.

We make marks everyday in one way or another. An obvious one is our handwriting. I learnt handwriting at school in the same way as every other child, in the book with the lines which indicated where the top and bottom of your letters should go, and the line in the middle indicating the height of the small letters. Once we had mastered the basics, we were allowed to go free range, first with a pencil, and then with a pen, as a reward for continued neatness, and perfection. Those were the days when everyone was taught to write with their right hand; left-handedness was not tolerated. But the need to express ourselves in how we write the words, not just with the words we choose, will always out.

Our handwriting reveals things about us, from the tilt, the size, the pressure, the failure to close our loops. I’ve never had consistent handwriting. It changes depending on my mood. I wonder what that says about me. Maybe I’ve never found a style which says to me: yes, this is you. And maybe that’s the point – I’m forever changing. Or maybe I just haven’t found my mark-making processes. It doesn’t really bother me, but at times I do feel jealous of the beautifully formed letters of others. I think – yes, you’ve got it together; you know who you are.

Doing Lines I

I like that the redaction is scruffy and that there are jagged edges. When I was doing it I wasn’t aware how scruffy it was because I was doing it against a white background, and so it just looked like the redacted words were disappearing. Surprisingly, I didn’t even have the urge to tidy it up once it revealed itself to me. As I was going through the words trying to make different phrases each time, there was a section in the middle which became a bit negative. It’s quite difficult to find different phrases from the same words in the same order. Phrases like ‘I worry about not making’, ‘Is it enough that I enjoy the process’ and ‘I worry about not making the mark’ started to pop up.

Doing Lines II

Well, I’ve written the words that many times, that if they haven’t sunk in by now, they never will.

It seems to have all been about words recently. What are words worth? That’s what the Tom Tom Club asked in their rather bizarre new wave hit from the early eighties, Wordy Rappinghood. You have to be of a certain age to remember this one. I rather like the artwork.

Vienna Calling

Kate McCalmont-Woods Leave a comment

I have just returned from an amazing 4 nights in magically festive Vienna, having had my fill of glühwein, Sachertorte and boiled beef broth (it loses something in translation!).

I’ve never been before, but will definitely be going back. Beautiful architecture, and so much to do, not least the seemingly endless supply of museums and galleries.

The Leopold and Belvedere were on my hit list as housing the greatest number of works by Klimt and Schiele. I had a nagging fear that the episode might end the same way as Michael Craig-Martin but, instead, I came away with a greater appreciation of all the details that can’t be gleaned from a photograph: the brushstrokes, the surprising thickness and coverage of the paint, sometimes leaving areas of the canvas exposed and the purity of colour. It was a revelation to get up really close and just look.

Death and Life 1910/15 , Klimt

Detail

I had always thought that Klimt applied paint quite uniformly and flat, so I was surprised to see the thickness of the paint and multi-directional brushstrokes. I like the way Klimt paints skin in all its imperfections and blotchiness, ranging from the pale and cold whiteness to the warmer, darker tones of the male figure.

Seeing ‘The Kiss’ was an interesting experience; it reminded me of when I saw the ‘Mona Lisa’ in the Louvre. Being one of Klimt’s most famous works, along with the ‘Mona Lisa’ and Van Gogh’s ‘Starry, Starry Night’, it is one of the most mass reproduced images of all time. I was underwhelmed, and I found it quite sad, as I was expecting to be bowled over by it. It was the most crowded room at the Belvedere, but what I found particularly interesting was that the crowd of people in front of it, holding up their phones and cameras, seemed totally uninterested in looking at it in any great detail – in fact they had left a sizeable gap in front of it so that they could get it in shot. This was handy as it allowed me to perform a flanking manoeuvre to get in front of it, to try and appreciate it as a work of art, as opposed to just a selfie opportunity with a celebrity. There was no point taking a photo – it was so strongly lit, and the lights reflected in the glass covering it. I grappled with my feeling of ‘numbness’ for the rest of the day, and as I was mulling it over in my mind, holding yet another mug of mulled wine in my hand, the answer came to me when I remembered John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’ in which he considers the effect of reproduction:

”When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings … Alternatively one can forget about the quality of the reproduction and simply be reminded, when one sees the original, that it is a famous painting of which somewhere one has already seen a reproduction. But in either case the uniqueness of the original now lies in it being the original of a reproduction. It is no longer what its image shows that strikes one as unique; its first meaning is no longer to be found in what it says, but in what it is.”

By contrast, in the next room was one of my favourites, ‘Judith and the Head of Holofernes’, a depiction of a strong femme fatale, the polar opposite to ‘The Kiss’.

Judith and the Head of Holofernes, Klimt, 1901

What can I say? I love gold leaf: I’m a magpie. Despite the abundance of gold in the painting, the eye is still drawn to the figure of Judith which is thrown forward by the decorative background. She is holding the head of Holofernes, somewhat gently, which is shown half in and half out of the frame, relegating him to a secondary role in the drama which has unfolded. There are intriguingly two decapitated heads in the painting; the treatment of the choker has effectively severed Judith’s head from her body. It is an image full of female power, sexual and otherwise.

It’s easy to forget that Klimt was a master draughtsman.

His drawings are exquisite. The simple monochrome of pencil or black chalk, a quiet antidote to the noise of gold and vibrant colour.

Self-Portrait with Raised bare Shoulder, Egon Schiele, 1912

I love this self-portrait; it is so expressive, and the fluidity of the brushstrokes creates a sense of movement and vitality. It is reminiscent of the Lucian Freud self-portrait in my earlier post, “I’m Sorry, Michael…”. It is quite small but he manages to pack a lot into such a confined space, including his shoulder, which by extension includes his body. The difference in treatment between the figure itself, which is quite thinly painted, and the more heavy impasto in the background is extremely effective. It is painted on wood, which might explain the wonderful textures on the face which would have been caused by the hog bristles in the brushes, although I have read, in a book on artists’ palettes, that Schiele would often use a brush to remove paint from a canvas in order to create texture. I particularly like the simple use of sgrafitto particularly above his left eye, and to delineate the edge of the chin against the neck.

The description next to this piece was interesting in that it described Schiele’s connection with his own body as both a fusion and a dissociation, in the context of the main theme of Viennese Modernism ie the individual becomes a dividual – something that can be divided.

The Embrace, 1917, Egon Schiele

This painting is so impactful. It’s approximately 1.5m by 1m. It shows Schiele with his wife, Edith Harms, in a loving and tender embrace. Unlike a lot of his work, this does not, to me at least, have any sexual or erotic overtones. There is a sense of completeness, in that Schiele depicts himself physically emaciated as he envelops and buries his head in the hair of his wife, almost blending into one, in an act of nourishing love. It’s even more poignant to think that this is one of his last works, as they both died within days of each other a few years later in the flu epidemic of 1918-20. He was only 28.

Both Schiele and Klimt were ahead of their time; they were disruptors. Schiele was akin to Sid Vicious and the punk movement, and Klimt founded the Viennese Secession, breaking away from the constraints of the Künstlerhaus. In today’s art world there is no prescribed way of doing things, no longer any art movements or – isms against which to rebel; artists have never been freer to express themselves in whatever way they wish, so I wonder how it is possible for an artist to stand out; how to make a difference in a world of differences.