What I'm doing here
I’ve been redoing my website recently (some of you have been kind enough to beta test it and provide me with helpful feedback - thanks for that - a new version taking a lot of your criticisms into account is on the way) and since a large part of that has been writing my ‘blurb’ that all these websites seem to have, I’ve had to have a long think about what it is I’m actually doing with my art and where I want it to go in future. I was asked about this way back by an artist friend and I didn’t really understand the question, never mind have an answer, leaving me feeling a bit stupid and embarrassed by my assertion that I was creating art. Now I do have an answer, and I think it was a worthwhile thing to ask myself.
There’s little arguing that my work is falling into ‘abstract’ and ‘contemporary’ headings. Which is a bit of a shock, because as has been quite accurately pointed out, just a few years ago I’d have been right up the front pointing and laughing at the sort of thing I now find quite fascinating and inspiring. I’m getting quite a lot of stick from a couple of directions from which I’d expect a bit of a ribbing, I’d also expect maybe a bit of understanding and support, but hey that’s bound to happen. I have to ask myself though, if only so I can answer honestly, how has this transformation come about?
Well, the obvious answer is learning. I’ve learned more about art, what abstract or expressionistic work is all about and I’ve been and looked at contemporary exhibitions with slightly more open eyes and mind than I would have done before. I’ve seen a lot of rubbish, but also seen some genuinely beautiful things, even if it’s not always where the artist intended the beauty to be. And where I’ve seen rubbish I’m able to say why I feel it’s so, even if all it is is a failure to put any sort of point across, rather than just dismiss it as I would have done before. The main thing is that it’s not about the same things as traditional landscapes or portraits therefore to judge it on the same criteria is pointless. It’s like judging poetry as prose; on the face of it it’s very similar, in that it’s expression through the written word, but it lives by very different (and often fluid) grammatical rules and generally has a different purpose. Personally, I’ve never ‘got’ poetry, but I can’t deny its power, the talent required to do it well, or the apparent opportunity for the unscrupulous to simply pass off any old incoherent rubbish as art to a section of the audience who will marvel at the Emperor’s new clothes simply to avoid appearing ignorant. Sound familiar?
But I’ve also been ribbing myself about all this. There is still an awful lot of contemporary work that I don’t like, don’t believe in and don’t want to be associated with. So it’s not just what I am doing that matters, it’s also what am I *not* doing? What is it about the work I don’t like that makes it not what I want to do? How do I ensure I don’t stray into that territory? I do that by defining it, and after some thought, there appears to be two main things about contemporary art I don’t like, and want to avoid.
Firstly much of contemporary art appears to be about asking questions. How many times do artists talk about their work in terms like “this is to ask about…” or “make the viewer think about…”? It’s all about asking things, almost never about actually saying something. I don’t think art should lecture the viewer, but inform and potentially enrich; not just make them do all the work. Sure if it makes them go and formulate a response, then that’s great, that’s exactly what you want, but consider a really exciting and stimulating conversation with a good friend - it’s an exchange of viewpoints, not an interview. When I paint something it’s “here is how I see or experience this”, not “how do you see it?” sometimes with an implied “Despite my status as an artist, I have nothing interesting to say. You think it all over for me whilst I relax in a bar in the South of France drinking absinthe and smoking gauloises. Oh, and that’ll be several hundred thousand dollars please.”
The second main failing of contemporary art for me is putting the object before the subject. Many modern pieces I’ve seen of late, especially those of the sort of hipper Turner Prizey end of the spectrum - the installations, ‘sculptures’ and the videos and stuff that people imagine when they talk about conceptual or contemporary art - seem to be talking about very specific or obscure things (the subject) in quite blatant terms or media (the object). For example, they might be talking about over-commercialisation and gender issues in Afghanistan or something (who isn’t?), but they’re doing it by showing graphic violent or sexual images; or with things that have a very specific image or shape in and of themselves and are therefore less open to interpretation, question or debate. They might be talking about protest by simply recreating an arrangement of protest banners. The work itself seems aggressive, blatant and crass - almost Warhol-esque in its presentation - but unlike Warhol that’s not the actual point and the materials just come across as much more powerful than anything the artist is trying to say. In extreme circumstances it appears that they’ve just recreated something that was powerful to begin with, or put something with inherent power before us, rather than add anything of themselves.
I’d rather flip that - I want to talk about very simple, traditional and elemental things; a landscape, an atmosphere, a feeling, a piece of music; but do so in subtle ways. Rothko’s a great example of this, and I’ve come to realise that’s why I admire his work so much - he talks about emotion and feeling without actually depicting anything other than blocks of colour, and somehow manages to do so far more articulately than any detailed collection and analysis of emotion eliciting objects specific to the artist. By contrast one of the current crop of Turner prize nominees is talking about power and destruction using a ground up jet engine, complete with a tag telling us that it’s a ground up jet engine just in case we couldn’t tell. I feel patronised and alienated simultaneously, and neither of those feelings are the basis of a good exchange of views. The best I can hope to take away from the exchange is amusement, such as you would get from someone down the pub spouting their subjective views as indisputable fact, and I don’t really want that from art.
On one hand I don’t want to dismiss a load of work by artists who are, at the end of the day, vastly more successful than I, but I also have to draw a line in the sand; put out a manifesto and say “this is what I am doing” so that people can decide if they’re interested or not and also to enable me to talk about my work to those who are: Something else I’ve only really been comfortable with for a very short time but am now seeing the value in. I’m also not going to knock anyone who says they enjoy interacting with art on these levels. There’s plenty out there for them, and I hope they enjoy their experience with whatever art they choose in engage with, but I’d be a hypocrite if I was making art in any way other than the one I’d like as a viewer.
There’s little arguing that my work is falling into ‘abstract’ and ‘contemporary’ headings. Which is a bit of a shock, because as has been quite accurately pointed out, just a few years ago I’d have been right up the front pointing and laughing at the sort of thing I now find quite fascinating and inspiring. I’m getting quite a lot of stick from a couple of directions from which I’d expect a bit of a ribbing, I’d also expect maybe a bit of understanding and support, but hey that’s bound to happen. I have to ask myself though, if only so I can answer honestly, how has this transformation come about?
Well, the obvious answer is learning. I’ve learned more about art, what abstract or expressionistic work is all about and I’ve been and looked at contemporary exhibitions with slightly more open eyes and mind than I would have done before. I’ve seen a lot of rubbish, but also seen some genuinely beautiful things, even if it’s not always where the artist intended the beauty to be. And where I’ve seen rubbish I’m able to say why I feel it’s so, even if all it is is a failure to put any sort of point across, rather than just dismiss it as I would have done before. The main thing is that it’s not about the same things as traditional landscapes or portraits therefore to judge it on the same criteria is pointless. It’s like judging poetry as prose; on the face of it it’s very similar, in that it’s expression through the written word, but it lives by very different (and often fluid) grammatical rules and generally has a different purpose. Personally, I’ve never ‘got’ poetry, but I can’t deny its power, the talent required to do it well, or the apparent opportunity for the unscrupulous to simply pass off any old incoherent rubbish as art to a section of the audience who will marvel at the Emperor’s new clothes simply to avoid appearing ignorant. Sound familiar?
But I’ve also been ribbing myself about all this. There is still an awful lot of contemporary work that I don’t like, don’t believe in and don’t want to be associated with. So it’s not just what I am doing that matters, it’s also what am I *not* doing? What is it about the work I don’t like that makes it not what I want to do? How do I ensure I don’t stray into that territory? I do that by defining it, and after some thought, there appears to be two main things about contemporary art I don’t like, and want to avoid.
Firstly much of contemporary art appears to be about asking questions. How many times do artists talk about their work in terms like “this is to ask about…” or “make the viewer think about…”? It’s all about asking things, almost never about actually saying something. I don’t think art should lecture the viewer, but inform and potentially enrich; not just make them do all the work. Sure if it makes them go and formulate a response, then that’s great, that’s exactly what you want, but consider a really exciting and stimulating conversation with a good friend - it’s an exchange of viewpoints, not an interview. When I paint something it’s “here is how I see or experience this”, not “how do you see it?” sometimes with an implied “Despite my status as an artist, I have nothing interesting to say. You think it all over for me whilst I relax in a bar in the South of France drinking absinthe and smoking gauloises. Oh, and that’ll be several hundred thousand dollars please.”
The second main failing of contemporary art for me is putting the object before the subject. Many modern pieces I’ve seen of late, especially those of the sort of hipper Turner Prizey end of the spectrum - the installations, ‘sculptures’ and the videos and stuff that people imagine when they talk about conceptual or contemporary art - seem to be talking about very specific or obscure things (the subject) in quite blatant terms or media (the object). For example, they might be talking about over-commercialisation and gender issues in Afghanistan or something (who isn’t?), but they’re doing it by showing graphic violent or sexual images; or with things that have a very specific image or shape in and of themselves and are therefore less open to interpretation, question or debate. They might be talking about protest by simply recreating an arrangement of protest banners. The work itself seems aggressive, blatant and crass - almost Warhol-esque in its presentation - but unlike Warhol that’s not the actual point and the materials just come across as much more powerful than anything the artist is trying to say. In extreme circumstances it appears that they’ve just recreated something that was powerful to begin with, or put something with inherent power before us, rather than add anything of themselves.
I’d rather flip that - I want to talk about very simple, traditional and elemental things; a landscape, an atmosphere, a feeling, a piece of music; but do so in subtle ways. Rothko’s a great example of this, and I’ve come to realise that’s why I admire his work so much - he talks about emotion and feeling without actually depicting anything other than blocks of colour, and somehow manages to do so far more articulately than any detailed collection and analysis of emotion eliciting objects specific to the artist. By contrast one of the current crop of Turner prize nominees is talking about power and destruction using a ground up jet engine, complete with a tag telling us that it’s a ground up jet engine just in case we couldn’t tell. I feel patronised and alienated simultaneously, and neither of those feelings are the basis of a good exchange of views. The best I can hope to take away from the exchange is amusement, such as you would get from someone down the pub spouting their subjective views as indisputable fact, and I don’t really want that from art.
On one hand I don’t want to dismiss a load of work by artists who are, at the end of the day, vastly more successful than I, but I also have to draw a line in the sand; put out a manifesto and say “this is what I am doing” so that people can decide if they’re interested or not and also to enable me to talk about my work to those who are: Something else I’ve only really been comfortable with for a very short time but am now seeing the value in. I’m also not going to knock anyone who says they enjoy interacting with art on these levels. There’s plenty out there for them, and I hope they enjoy their experience with whatever art they choose in engage with, but I’d be a hypocrite if I was making art in any way other than the one I’d like as a viewer.