Drawing & Photography

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
original source: 'Daily Mirror' 08/08/08

The appeal of this particular source image resides mostly in it featuring drawings as photographed, representations reproduced, in relation to the portrait itself, thus enabling the Project to again engage in the process of various levels of representation (&, on this occasion, styles too), the musing-upon of which has occurred in the past, & notably here.


Jasper Johns 'untitled'
charcoal & pastel on paper/1986

Such a work as this untitled one by Jasper Johns features the notion of drawings within the drawing itself, the individual 'sheets' pinned to the 'ground' with illusionistic nails that reference certain Cubist & trompe l'oeil paintings. The central drawing of the three is of an image appropriated by Johns from Picasso's painting 'Woman With a Straw Hat' of 1936 which, if one wishes to play postmodernist games, raises questions of authorship & the nature of, as does, I suppose, my own drawing, in which another artist's style is 'appropriated'. In relation to the theme of the previous post, Johns' work presents particularly fertile ground for semiotic exploration - as in, for example, Fred Orton's book 'Figuring Jasper Johns' - being symbolically allusive in addition to playing with various codes & methods of representation.

The painting-within-a-painting or film-within-a-film are quite familiar aspects of the history of those particular visual arts, &, indeed, I was struck by such a coincidence whilst processing this drawing after having recently enjoyed, once again, Almodovar's 'Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down', which features films-within-the-film both in the production of a fictional movie as an element of the narrative & the appearance of an existing one - Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' - as viewed on TV, in addition to other cinematic references such as the inclusion in a director's cutting room of a poster advertising the film 'Invasion of the Bodysnatchers'.

Interesting to note that such 'police artist' representations as those featured in the drawing(s-within-the-drawing) follow what appear to be strict stylistic conventions, almost to the extent that each example of the genre could be the work of the very same artist.

Soundtrack:

'Test Match Special' Eng v SA 4th Test, 5th day


White Stripes 'Elephant' & 'De Stijl'
Charlotte Gainsbourg '5:55'