Still(ed) Life

This diptych was transcribed from a pair of related photographs gracing the front page of a local evening newspaper, with the ‘car crash – disaster’ works of Andy Warhol as the obvious art-historical referent (although these were invariably populated with & thus humanized by their victims, unlike the empty boxes presented here).

Two versions are presented: the first being what might be considered to be a still life, or a pair of stilled mechanical objects it may be assumed have recently been in motion; the second including the lurid tabloid headlines accompanying the images in their original presentation on the cover of the newspaper, adding an obvious narrative element, with its attendant sense of drama, to the overall composition & giving it now a distinctly Pop Art dimension, recalling Warhol specifically & his faithful transcriptions of newspaper stories of ‘disastrous’ events such as air crashes, for example.


graphite & putty eraser/57x20cm
original source: 'Flintshire Evening Leader' 15/04/08


graphite, putty eraser & photocopy (digital image)/57x20cm

Although the component sketches are identical, the mood of each drawing seems markedly different, the first being still, quiet & elegiac, the second more direct, dramatic & visceral through the human emotion conveyed by the added text, although the drawing process – of just another newspaper source image treated in exactly the same manner as all the previously transcribed photographs, regardless of ostensible ‘subject matter’ – might serve to lend both an equally dispassionate quality, being a means to an end, as indeed might be said to be their purpose in the context of their presence in the newspaper, advertising it, there to attract attention & sell the product.


Andy Warhol 'Pink Car Crash'


Andy Warhol '129 Die in Jet (Plane Crash)' 1962

During the course of the drawings’ transcription, there occurred another of those serendipitous coincidences with the television broadcast of David Cronenberg’s film ‘Crash’, adapted from JG Ballard’s novel, one I’ve always found fascinating upon viewing – the first occasion at the cinema, in Cheltenham, where a number of people got up & left during the course of the screening, their expectations obviously not met (!) – & rewarding of subsequent ones: cool, stylish, stylized, darkly erotic & an intriguing study of the relationship between humans & machines, & the sometimes specific complexities of this subject.


All sorts of aesthetic links occur, not least between Ballard & the music of Joy Division, specifically through the title ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ but also with the film ‘Crash’, through the sense of disquiet & cold-steely, mechanized, urban alienation that pervades the album ‘Unknown Pleasures’ in particular. Also amongst the soundtrack accompanying this drawing is to be found the song ‘Belle & Sebastian’ by the eponymous band, wherein “Sebastian went too far again & crashed his car in the rain”…

Soundtrack:


Bjork 'Homogenic'
Belle & Sebastian 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress' & 'Push Barman...'
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 'Best of'
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset 'The Bairns'
Scritti Politti 'White Bread Black Beer'