I want to own a colour

Posted on 5 March 2016 by beckybendylegs

Yesterday, this article was brought to my attention.

This article is about a particular colour that is causing some controversy at the moment: vantablack. I hadn’t heard of vantablack before I read this article. Vantablack is the black of a substance that was developed by British company NanoSystems for use on stealth satellites. Vantablack actually describes a solid rather than a colour. It is made of carbon nanotubes which absorbs 99% of light rays. It’s colour is a particularly deep shade of black that cannot be seen naturally on earth. It is arguably the purest black we have. It is gold in the artworld. The controversy has arisen because sculptor Anish Kapoor has claimed exclusive rights to the artistic use of vantablack. No other artist can use it. He’s found something amazing and he’s keeping it.

Vantablack creates the illusion of flatness or concaveness

Vantablack creates the illusion of flatness or concaveness

I am intrigued by the notion of owning a colour and also incensed by it. In theory, this sounds bizarre. How can you own a colour? Colour is everywhere. It is like air. You cannot own air. I love colour. I see letters and numbers in colour. People have a colour. My life is filled with colour. But how can someone claim to own a colour? Of course in this case he is claiming to own the rights to use the colour in the form of the pigment of vantablack.

I think this is wrong. To be able to experiment with this colour would be a dream. It is so ‘deep’ that it transforms the surface of any object. It is beyond our known reality. It is an abstraction of natural colour. It creates an illusion. It gives depth to solid. Many artists have experimented with black because it is such a fascinating colour. It is an anti-colour. The purist painter shuns the use of black (I don’t have a black oil paint, darkness is created with dark blue and brown). Their argument is based on the fact that ‘black’ is not a colour seen in the real world. But the idea of having the sort of black only found in deep space to play with and experiment with is tantalizing to me. I want some vantablack. I don’t think I will get it though (they certainly don’t sell it in Hobbycraft). Please Mr Kapoor, give me some vantablack.

An interesting related question is whether it is possible to replicate the full effect of vantablack digitally. Googling ‘vantablack’ throws up a number of interesting images that appear oddly flat rather than concave or even three-dimensional. I wonder if this is because it is impossible to fully realise the sublime response of vantablack digitally. I suspect I need to seek out a vantablack artwork in order to ‘get’ it. Art is so readily available online now that I think we sometimes lose sight of the fact that we can never  truly see the original colours or textures, and feel the sense of the reality of art via the Internet. Vantablack is the extreme example of this but by its mere existence, it proves that this is the case for all artwork.

The sublime? I think not.

The sublime? I think not.

As Kapoor has stated: “Something happens to your emotional self and in disorientation one has to reach in for other resources.”

This is the sublime and I don’t get that from the screen. But I want it.

References

BBC News 23 September 2014 ‘How black can black be?’ Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29326916 [last accessed 5 March 2016]

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Why everyone should be an art student

Posted on 28 February 2016 by beckybendylegs

I’m now nearly six months into my ‘top up’ time of my Fine Art degree at Wolverhampton. I’ve started to feel like I properly belong there. I know who to ask to stretch a canvas. I know where the print room is and how to go about printing something on posh paper. I have found the art shop, a few times. And I know that the coffee that they sell in the art building tastes disgusting (for a real coffee, it is worth walking all the way to Starbucks on campus, which I do twice a week).

My little corner

My little corner

I get a real buzz going up the lift of the art building on a Tuesday and Wednesday morning, all the way up to the seventh floor. I love being on the top floor, having the most amazing view of Wolverhampton and surrounding area from my little corner of the studio. The seventh-floor studios are light and airy. They are full of paint-splattered chairs, broken easels, random bits of tat, old cloth, dried-up paint tubes and unwashed coffee cups. All the necessary ingredients for a good, working art studio. They are also full of evidence of people’s creativity: paintings, sculptures, photographs, models, experiments, materials, successes and failures, words and images. There is nothing not to like about the place.

Lots of these on the seventh floor

Lots of these on the seventh floor

This is a list of what I like about being an art student:

  • Being messy is positively encouraged.
  • Even though the lecturers would cringe if they were to read this, art is therapy. I feel better about the rest of the world after a day at Wolverhampton.
  • Coffee drinking doesn’t feel like a treat, it’s essential.
  • There is no dress code.
  • Everyone talks visually so I am surrounded by like-minded individuals and there are no misunderstandings.
  • The age mix of my fellow students is broad. I don’t feel like a sad, mature student past their best.
  • I can do almost anything I want, within reason, including  bronze casting, which is something I can’t do at home.
  • I can sit and think for hours and call it work.
  • I get to write about art and get marked for it. I like writing and I like art so a win-win situation.
  • People watching doesn’t feel rude, it is as essential as coffee drinking.

If I were Prime Minister, I’d encourage more people to be art students. It would be a bit like national service: one year’s forced creativity. It is a good life. I don’t want it to end. Luckily, it won’t for at least another year.

Creativity rocks!

Creativity rocks!

 

 

 

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And the question is?

Posted on 9 February 2016 by beckybendylegs

Tuesday is one of my Wolverhampton days. I often feel that I don’t do much actual ‘creating’ when I am there. I sit in my corner of the studio on the 7th floor of the art building and think. I think a lot. My brain is busy when I am there. My hands perhaps less so.

This is me, most of the time

This is me, most of the time

Today is Tuesday, and as I write this, I am sat in my corner thinking about questions. I’ve been wondering why there are so many questions around my head at the moment. When I started thinking about this topic (it’s been a busy day), one of my fellow students was wondering around thinking out loud and sounding out her ideas to anyone around (a lot of this goes on in an art school – it’s all part of the process). She is at that stage in her art when she has an idea, but no concrete plan yet. She was full of questions about what she could do next, what she should do next, how she could do what she should do next, where she should do it, what it might look like, where she might get the right equipment, how she might gain the right knowledge and on and on. She was full of questions. This is just a snippet of them.

Being of an arty disposition is exhausting. Not only are you being constantly bombarded with visual stimuli (in my case at the moment, from chance meetings with discarded balloons) but your head is full of questions all the time. This is the conclusion I have come to today. It is not the idea gathering that is exhausting, it is the questioning that follows.

Balloon bits

Balloon bits

The idea usually comes first. Getting the idea is the easy bit (and 95% of them get lost, forgotten or discarded). The exhausting part is listening to and dealing with the questions that follow the idea. These are the questions that lead to further questions and even more questions. It is like having an inner child who just won’t shut up.

Last week I decided to make a fragment of balloon out of velvet and this is how my thoughts went:

Idea: Make a velvet balloon fragment.

What I decided to make

What I decided to make

Questions: How can I make a velvet balloon fragment? What colour should it be? What type of velvet should I make it out of? I’d like to make it out of good-quality velvet but is that too expensive? Where can I get the velvet from? Where is my sewing machine? How much should I spend? What should I stuff it with? How big should it be? Will it look awful? Is this a good idea? What if it all goes terribly wrong? What if I end up wasting all the money I spend on it? Where can I get the right coloured cotton? Should I be doing this? What will this lead to?

These questions followed me around for the next few days biting at my ankles. They gradually got more detailed.

How big should it be? How do I calculate the radius of the middle? How do I know how long the cloth should be? How much cloth should I buy? How do I get it to Wolverhampton? What should I actually do with it? What if it looks like a giant condom? What if it just looks terrible?

It turned out that it did look like a giant condom, in certain lights

It turned out that it did look like a giant condom, in certain lights

This is just an example of a specific instance of an idea leading to my very noisy inner child pestering me all day. Questions aren’t just generated by specific ideas, they nag me all the time. The sort of more general questions that follow me include: what am I going to do next? How can I come up with an original idea? What if I don’t get any more ideas? What if my ideas are crap? What if it all goes horribly wrong? What if it all ends in complete disaster? What if, what if, what if?

But the advantage of questions, is that they often lead to the answers. Or at least, something resembling an answer. This questioning process is called the Socratic method. Socrates was an advocate of the value of questions (so much so the method was named after him). Questions, he argued, are useful tools for critical thinking and upending assumptions about what is. It is good to question rather than take the world for granted. We should observe the world like an alien who has just landed. As Socrates famously said ‘All I know is that I know nothing.’

The great thinker and his cat

The great thinker and his cat

That is certainly how I feel most of the time when I am trying to work out where to go from here, wherever here is at that particular moment in time. While in the middle of writing this blog I had a tutorial with my new tutor and I told him what I was writing about. His advice on the whole question thing: sometimes you need to just ignore the questions and do what you want to do. Perhaps he is right.

All I know, like Socrates, is that I know nothing, and all I can hope for, is that something will happen. It usually does. Something will result from all this doubt and query.

Ideas are not enough. Questions lead to results, of some sort of result that is.

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Is it possible to overcome the fear of failure?

Posted on 4 February 2016 by beckybendylegs

Recently, I’ve been thinking about the fear of failure, which is something anyone who engages in creative activities has to some degree. I certainly have it. I’ve cried and ranted and raged over art projects going horribly wrong. My children have it. People who don’t engage in creative activities have it. Everyone fears failure because failure feels horrible and it loses you credibility. It is quite hard to get back from failure. With success comes confidence. With failure comes wallowing. This is something I think about a lot, especially when I’ve produced something I like. What can my creative genie do to top that?

For a little light reading on my train rides to and from Wolverhampton at the moment I’m reading Think Like An Artist by WIll Gompertz.

Is it too late for me to be reading this?

Is it too late for me to be reading this?

This book is good so far (I’m about half way through it). One valuable piece of advice which this book has given me is: do not fear failure. When I read that I thought: ‘Gosh, if only it were that easy, thanks, Will, for that one’.

That same day we had a visiting artist deliver a lecture at the art school in Wolverhampton:  Lise Autogena. Autogena, originally from Denmark, spoke for 90 minutes of so to an assemblage of fine art students about her life, career to date and some of her projects. She was a very interesting person. She has lead a very interesting life to date. She’s the sort of artist who deals with Big Crazy Ideas. The sort of Big Crazy Ideas that could easily fail, the sort that need bravery and the sort that take a lot of investment in time and energy.

Coincidentally, I had come across one of her projects just last week at an exhibition in London at Somerset House. The exhibition was called Big Bang Data and it looked at the blending of art and data in the 21st century. It consisted of a number of art works and projects that have examined the virtual world in some way. One of Autogena’s works, which she created with Josh Portway, was in this exhibition: Black Shoals; Dark Matter (2014). I came across it towards the end (when I was starting to get a bit tired and satiated by all the ideas in the exhibition). It consisted a large planetarium-like dome just near the exit of the exhibition.  The dome is connected to the financial markets of the world and shows in real time the activities of these markets. Companies are represented on the dome surface as stars and these flicker and glow as shares are traded. The brightness and duration of the glow is relative to the volume of trading activity. The piece is even more complicated than my description indicates in that feeding off the light is an ecology of artificial beings. What happens to these beings, is hard to determine. The result is really quite beautiful and mesmerizing, and calming. At the time, I slumped down with my heavy rucksack onto one of the beanbags below the dome and took the opportunity to pause for thought after 90 minutes of looking around at thought-provoking art. I lay and stared for ages and the lights moving around. It wasn’t until I was in Wolverhampton and heard Autogena speak about this project that I realised how immense the project had been and how complicated it was, and, most importantly, how much effort had gone into it.

Black Shoals; Dark Matter

Black Shoals; Dark Matter

What baffled me on hearing Autogena speaking about this project, was her utter tenacity to pursue it to the end. She had felt so passionate about it that she had spent many months, years even, doggedly trying to get it realised despite many obstacles and difficulties. This project,as it turned out, was a success.

However, she also talked about an earlier project that hadn’t worked (or not yet at least). This was a project that had aimed at constructing two new sound mirrors – one in England and one in France. The new mirrors were going to face each other across the English Channel, and the aim was to enable the French and the English to speak across the sea. The project had stalled for a number of reasons, so in that way it was a failure. She had spent many years trying to realise this project (it may yet come to fruition). Her determination was infectious. She talked of her hope at not yet to give up on it completely. I, too, felt that she should take it up again and try again.

From Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

From Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

Hearing her talk reminds me a little of the question I was trying to answer a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about the Wolverhampton Jehovah’s Witnesses: what makes a successful artist? The answer then came in one single word: tenacity. Autogena is a successful artist, despite any failures she has experienced and this is because she is incredibly tenacious. As well as seeing failure, she has prevented other projects from failure because of her determination where others might have given up. She is tenacious because she believes in the authenticity of her ideas.

Will Gompertz argues further in his book that failure should be embraced not feared because it is just an inevitable part of life. If you avoid failure, you won’t get to that point of success. Everyone fails at some point and even some of the greatest artists have seen great failure. He cites examples such as Bridget Riley who struggled for years to find her voice through her art. Some of the most successful artists ‘found their voice’ through failing first and not giving up hope. Another way to phrase this type of success that comes through failure: happy accidents.

I think that were I to become a curator, my first exhibition would have to be the exhibition of ideas which I have discussed here before, but my second one would definitely be the exhibition of happy accidents.

Hopefully, I will have a few more happy accidents before I put down my paint brush, pen, pencil, laptop, plasticine, iPad, balloon and anything else that makes a mark. And hopefully I will learn how to love failure.

 

 

 

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How many cats named Sam?

Posted on 19 January 2016 by beckybendylegs

A while ago I came across artist Lois Wain, also known as ‘the man who painted cats’. I was fortunate enough more recently to see some of his work first hand in a small exhibition at The Qube in Oswestery, Shropshire.

Wow Cat

Wow Cat

I’m an artist who loves cats. While working with Powis Castle on a project which culminated in an exhibition, I became fascinated with a statue of a cat in their collection. This was a statue that may or may not have been Roman. It was of a cat. The Romans didn’t generally make cat statues. This interested me greatly. My work over the next few months centered on this cat.

My friend the Roman Cat

My friend the Roman Cat

Last summer I found this book (below) in Aberystwyth. It contains photographs of a number of well-known artists and their feline companions. Included in the book is Andy Warhol, who was not only famous for being a cat person, but for being a multi-cat person. His love of cats was so great it can be said to rival Louis Wain’s.

Cats and their Artists

Cats and their Artists

Being interested in cats and in artists who loves cats I decided to do a bit of research on Andy Warhol and his cats. I found out that in 1952, while living in a state of abject poverty before fame overtook him, Andy Warhol’s mother Julia came to live with him in New York. One story tells that she brought her blue cat Hestor with her. Another, that Hester was a present to Warhol from actress Gloria Swanson. It is rumoured that fearing that her cat Hestor would feel lonely Warhol arrived home one day with a second cat, which he called Sam. Sam and Hestor got on very well, extremely well. They had kittens, which Warhol named after their father. Then they had more kittens, all of which were given the name Sam. This carried on until they couple had gradually amassed a total of 25 cats, all called Sam.

Just two years later, Warhol and his mother published a limited-edition book of watercolour cats called 25 Cats Name [sic] Sam and One Blue Pussy. This book featuring Warhol’s well-known style line watercolor drawings in brilliant pop-art colors and calligraphy by Julia. Oddly, only sixteen cat images appear in the book.

Featuring only 16 cats

Featuring only 16 cats

Originally, only 190 copies of the book were published, designed to be offered as signed-copies as gifts for friends and family.

A blue pussy

A blue pussy

There was a sequel: Holy Cats by Andy Warhol’s Mother in honour of Hester once Hester went to the great big cattery in the sky. In Warhol’s words, this book ‘…featured what she loved to draw most, angels and cats‘.

Both books were republished in 1987 after his death.

I NEED to find this book! I have found it. I could purchase a copy for the small sum of £50. I think I shall wait for a contemporary publisher to rediscover it and republish it. Warhol’s love of cats was legendary. His nephew later published a book about his uncle called Uncle Andy’s Cats.

A big pink cat

A big pink cat

However, discovering this book has given me an idea. Watch this space.

Another book about cats

Another book about cats

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Is this really so bad?

Posted on 10 January 2016 by beckybendylegs

Yesterday I came across this photograph on Facebook.

Are they more interested in their phones than the art?

Are they more interested in their phones than the art?

The photo was posted deliberately to provoke a reaction. The result was mostly, but not exclusively, negative comments such as:

‘So wrong…’

‘The LOST generation’.

‘Sad, so sad’.

‘Technology has stolen from us in more ways than one‘.

However, my reaction to this image was different to most (but by no means all) of the others who saw it. I find this picture oddly compelling. I don’t find it depressing at all. It is indeed a ‘sign of our times’ but not necessarily in a negative way. I think that in fact it is quite telling of how art is developing in the current century, in this so-called post-postmodern age.

I don’t judge this photograph negatively. I don’t see the point in waxing nostalgic about the pre-smartphone generation, concluding that images such as this mean that people no longer appreciate fine art. How on earth can that be proved? If anything, the opposite is probably true. When I did my A level art the only access I had to artworks such as this were through books which I couldn’t afford or visits to museums which I wasn’t able to go to. The art student today can look at an image of paintings such as this on their phone. That fact I find quite mind-blowing and wonderful. Of course it isn’t the same as standing in front of the painting but not many people will get the opportunity to do that. Second best: look at it on a computer or phone screen. Since becoming a 21st-century art student I have come across a huge number of artists and works that I wouldn’t have come across without digital technology. In fact, seeing their certain artworks in google images and reading about them on my laptop has encouraged me to seek them out in art galleries.

Going back to the photograph, the context of the image is unknown. There is no way to know whether these young people have not appreciated the beauty of this famous painting or not. It is a still image so does not tell anything about the before or after. We can create a narrative about the photograph but this is a fictional narrative. It is entirely possible that these young people have spent the previous half an hour looking at the  famous painting behind them and are now accessing the museum’s information via their phones. They look like students on a school trip so there is a good chance they have been instructed to do some research around the art in the art gallery and this might be what they are now doing. Or perhaps they are sharing their thoughts about the painting with friends: ‘Wow, I have finally seen The Night Watch up close. Amazing!’ How wonderful to be able to do that? What would Rembrandt think of that? I picture him smiling.

Art is about evolution. The definition of ‘art’ has changed over time. As has the definition of artist. Now an artist can be much more than a skilled craftsman. A person can call themselves an artist without ever picking up a 2B pencil in their life. Art covers so many areas and rightly so. If art is to survive, and if it is to reach people in new and interesting ways, then it has to ride on the smartphone digital wave rather than fight against it. I don’t think we should ever forget the importance of the basics but equally we should embrace new possibilities and that includes new channels for reaching people and new media for creating art.

As an artist, one of my aims is to make people think about the overlooked. Digital media is the tool of choice. My first love is drawing and painting. But even when I am engaged in those activities I use social and digital media to help with my projects: to get feedback, to influence the minds of others, to get recognition and of course to get ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’. I feel very much naive about the potential of digital technology for art creation. I would like to learn more. Digital art is still very much in its infancy.

I also love to write about art. Hence, writing this blog. I could have written this in a note book to be kept by my bedside and for my eyes only, but instead I chose to write it on a laptop and tweet and post it for anyone to see. Perhaps someone will even read it on their phone in that Dutch museum above after googling ‘Rembrandt The Night Watch’. Perhaps that is what the students are doing in this photograph. It would be nice to think so and they recognise themselves in the photograph. Rembrandt would certainly smile about that.

 

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Tenacity equals authenticity

Posted on 6 January 2016 by beckybendylegs

Every day on my way to Wolverhampton University I pass a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses on the bridge between the train station and town. They are always there and they are always smiling. They are there in good weather and bad. There are usually three of them. They stand on the side of the bridge next to a pamphlet stand. In all the times I have passed them, they haven’t once approached me and tried to engage in theological debate with me.

On the streets of Wolves

On the streets of Wolves

This bothers me. Why aren’t they approaching me, or anyone else, who passes them daily? Perhaps they are waiting to be approached. Yet I haven’t yet seen someone stop and peruse their pamphlets. They don’t even try to catch my eye. Sometimes I almost will them to stop me just because it would prevent me from feeling uneasy about their passive presence. I’d find a more active presence reassuring. I could then at least say ‘I’m in a hurry, sorry’. That opportunity is not afforded to me.

Why then do they spend hours on the bridge in Wolverhampton standing by their pamphlet stand? I imagine that they have a rota and that rota lasts all year around (with perhaps the odd day off). There must be a lot of them as I’m not sure I’ve seen the same person twice yet. If they are there to be just a passive presence, then they must have a goal in mind beyond the obvious (converts to their beliefs).

What this illustrates is what I see as a very admirable quality in those people: tenacity. Tenacity in the face of apparent futility. To me, it appears futile for them to spend so many hours in the cold in Wolverhampton not trying to share their beliefs with the people of the city. However, they must be seeing a positive I can’t see (I am thinking and writing about them, after all).

Their passivity is deserving of more respect than if they were to be more active and engaging. Their beliefs in their religion must be so strong that standing on a bridge for hours without any new members gained is seen as a tangible benefit to them. I suspect that they believe that if they had one person approach them in a month, then that would be seen as rendering the hours waiting worth it. I wonder even if they would conclude that one person a year is worth it.

Today, I have been making my daily search for lost and abandoned balloons. I haven’t found any for a while. And many people I know think I am really rather odd to be trying.  To me, it is a similar (not so extreme) tenacity that drives me as that which drives the Jehovah’s Witnesses of Wolverhampton. My tenacity stems from the belief in the cause and aim of this art project: to find beauty in these discarded objects. If I find one balloon in a month, it is worth it. (However, I suspect that one a year might annoy me a little.)

One of my many finds

One of my many finds

So, what does the authentic artist and the Jehovah’s Witness have in common? It is obvious to me: tenacity in the face of futility as concluded by the minds of others. I would imagine that the tired, ‘what’s the point of it all’ Jehovah’s Witness would be regarded as not fully for the cause. Equally, the tired, ‘what’s the point of it all’ artist will not full realise their goals, not for lack of skill or ideas, but for lack of authenticity and self-belief.

So I will keep looking for balloons, keep missing trains, and keep on until I think my work is done. I hope that this at least makes me authentic.

Erich Fromm and his cat

Erich Fromm and his cat

I will end this thought with the words of Erich Fromm: ‘no great radical idea can survive unless it is embodied in individuals whose lives are the message.’

 

 

 

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Thoughts on chewing gum

Posted on 5 January 2016 by beckybendylegs

Just before Christmas, I began to notice chewing gum. It was if I had been blind and suddenly I could see. I’m talking about chewing gum splodges on the ground. If you haven’t ever noticed this, I implore you to go to your local train station now and just look at the ground. I am sure that you will find, wherever you are located, that it is splattered with white splodges. Not only is the ground outside dotted with white splodges. So are the platforms, the stairs, and the road outside. It is as if the world has some odd white spot disease.

These splodges are the mouthfuls of chewing gum that have been evacuated orally by train travellers. I am a regular train traveller. I like to chew gum (I feel it helps clean my teeth and soothes any anxiety I might have about being in the Big Wide World). However, I would never, ever dare to spit it out in the street. That seems not only bad manners but disrepectful to nature. But there must be people who do this and people who do this a lot. There is a bin just outside Wolverhampton train station and this bin is surrounded by a (oddly beautiful) intense pattern of white splodges.

A random pavement in the UK

A random pavement in the UK

You may also have seen men in high vis jackets steam cleaning the ground. They are doing this (very expensively) to get rid of the white splodges. This seems rather futile to me as I am sure the white splodges will return. It is like squeezing blackheads, they will return.

Being of artistic disposition as I am, these white splodges (if you ignore exactly what they are and where they have been – in people’s mouths) to me have a certain beauty to them.

Lots of blobs around the bins of Britain

Lots of blobs around the bins of Britain

When I started noticing the white splodges on my twice weekly commute to Wolverhampton, I saw them everywhere. As well as being disgusted by them, I started to admire them. I even thought that if I wasn’t currently engaged in a burst balloon seeking project, I might consider charting the patterns made by these white splodges.

Then I came across this article. Someone has already had my thought. Not only has she already had that thought, she’s also had another thought that has been bothering me recently: there is no such thing as an original idea. The article proves it in double. My ‘original’ thoughts on the white splodges are not original (the writer of this essay had already had that thought on her commute to work) and my ‘original’ thoughts on there being no original thoughts is not original (her study of the white splodges led her to think about the fact that most ‘original’ ideas are not in fact original and have been thought by some clever artist before).

So does it matter if my ideas are not original? I’m not sure. It does bother me a little bit. But I get so many ideas during the course of a month (more ideas at certain times of the month) and sometimes even during the course of the day that I cannot adopt all of them and I have to dismiss some. So for now, I will dismiss the white splodges and stick to my balloons. But please do take a look at these white splodges and tell me if you see any beauty in their vileness too.

Me in Wolverhampton

Me in Wolverhampton

 

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What do people see in abstract art?

Posted on 30 December 2015 by beckybendylegs

At the moment I’m reading this book:

Has modernism failed? The jury is out

Has modernism failed? The jury is out

It is very thought provoking. It is very well-written and not above my intellectual level, which is refreshing after all the art books I have read recently. The book talks about the self-centeredness of the art of the modernist era (the book was written in 1987 during the early years of postmodernism). It surmises that modernism failed because it was seduced by the attraction of the commodification of art. The modernist artist, it argues, became increasingly disconnected from the viewer and increasingly a capitalist. The art became purely about the artist and the buyer. To her, the modernist artist had moved too far from the traditional goal of the artist: to live for art’s sake, not for the end result. As Otto Rank, a Viennese psychoanalyst once wrote (in 1932) about the artist: ‘His calling is not a means of livelihood, but life itself…he does not practice his calling, but is it’. This book was written just before postmodernism exploded so was written during a time of doubt and crisis in the art world.

Reading this book has led me to question what the viewer gets out of purely non-representational, abstract forms of art (art from the pinnacle of the modernist movement). Art galleries, particularly the big few, are full of well-known abstract expressionist and other non-representational ‘ground-breaking’ works. We still flock to see them.

So, I asked a random person. The impression I got from that random person was that he (it was a he) values non-representational abstract art for the aesthetic properties of that artwork. He told me that he judges an abstract artwork based on whether he likes it or not. It doesn’t provoke an emotional response for him, he doesn’t seek a narrative in the artwork, he doesn’t consider the artist’s state of mind or motive, he simply judges the work based on whether he likes the image or not.

So, to him, then, modernism didn’t fail. It served a purpose: it created a bunch of artworks that are pleasing to his eye and that he enjoys looking at in an art gallery. Modernism enabled him to see beauty through a selection of shape, colour and composition. Of course, my survey of one person is not enough to make any great conclusions.

Recently, when I took my middle son to a Jackson Pollock exhibition, I asked him what he thought of the one of the pieces on display. He immediately constructed images in the paint splatters. He saw shapes, people and made stories. He didn’t appear to get an aesthetic reaction. At first I thought that was because of his age and naivety, so his childlike tendency to see stories in everything and imagine beyond the restrictions of vision. But then I realised that I also did the same thing. Aesthetically, I found the painting quite disturbing, but in terms of narrative potential, I loved it. (Neither of us considered the process of Jackson Pollock in creating these paintings, or his intention.)

A random Jackson Pollock painting - what do you see?

A random Jackson Pollock painting – what do you see?

So, what does non-representational abstract art do? I always assumed that the aim was to provoke an emotional reaction, such that Mark Rothko expected, as he said: ‘A painting is not about an experience. It is an experience.’

This painting is an experience

This painting is an experience

But now I am thinking that, perhaps obviously, the answer is that it does different things to different people. To some it looks nice or not so nice. To others it moves. And to a few (perhaps me and children) it creates potential for adventure.

I disagree with Suzi Gablik. Modernism didn’t fail. It lead to the next stage: postmodernism. And postemoderism, which is now on the wain, has led to the next stage: post-postmodernism. I don’t think we can say that any development in the art world is a failure. It is just part of the process.

 

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Am I a balloon magnet?

Posted on 14 December 2015 by beckybendylegs

Recently, I have been looking around for abandoned and burst balloons. It has now been just over a month since I started. On average, I find about three a week. I think many of my friends find this high rate-of-finding strange. Since I launched the blog asking for burst balloon fragments to be sent to me, people have commented that they simply don’t see any burst balloons.

One of my many finds

One of my many finds

I think that either they only think they don’t come across abandoned or burst balloons because they aren’t normally looking for them, or I am a balloon magnet. There have been days when I’ve found two or three within the space of ten minutes. It is true that I am actively seeking them. However, it can’t be just circumstance.

Another find

Another find

Perhaps rather than me seeking the balloons, they are seeking me. Or maybe I have developed a sixth sense about where they are going to be and my balloon antenna are able to guide my feet to take me to where the balloons lie. Or perhaps I only see one in every ten, and there are lots and lots of abandoned or burst balloons that are scooped up by the nation’s street cleaners.

My enemy

My enemy

I wonder if I am getting a little obsessed. Perhaps.

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