A recent edition of the newish publication Art World was browsed-with-interest in a local WH Smiths & subsequently invested in primarily for the features contained within on the subjects of the new work of Luc Tuymans and a more general survey of George Shaw’s paintings, the latter being especially necessary given the otherwise scarcity of substantial literature on the artist & his compelling work, which, topical to this year’s overarching atmosphere at TOoT, has often seemed to communicate something of a ‘post-punk’ aesthetic, its intensely-concentrated appearance frequently redolent of the socio-economo-political grimy grimness of the late 70s – early 80s, of hope stilled & dreams thwarted, life quietly suffocated “amid concrete and clay, and general decay” (indeed of ‘nature finding a way’, as it must, of reclaiming derelict buildings, abandoned garages and now-depopulated public spaces – specifically the Tile Hill estate in Coventry, where Shaw grew up).
George Shaw feature in Art World no. 10, April/May 2009
Also, there is undeniably something more expansively Smithsian & broadly English in Shaw’s affectionate aesthetic, in its Romantic tendency to find poetry, something to celebrate, to memorialize, in such unpromising, overlooked subject matter: the particular use of an ever-so-slightly artificial, heightened colour lends some of the paintings an intensity of an hallucinatory nature, the depicted spaces become charged with a dreamlike nostalgia for a past time, vividly remembered with a clarity as from youth. Furthermore, Shaw’s habitual technique using the medium of Humbrol enamel modelling paints reminds one palpably of the personal journey from childhood - &, specifically, one of its consuming hobbies of the construction of Airfix model kits - to adolescence & the discovery of the music (& associated culture) of that contemporaneous post-punk period. Last night, I experienced a particularly sharp pang of recognition whilst reading, in his own interview that closes ‘Totally Wired’, Simon Reynolds’ poignant description of the provincial life (such as that, also, of George Shaw’s Coventry) of such times, isolated in a much-reduced media landscape (when compared with the ubiquitous, remotely-accessible, distance-no-object-or-barrier sources of today), & the vital, essential nature, the sheer nervous urgency, of the vibrant new music scene & its associated conduits of the John Peel radio programme & the ‘inky’ music press (NME, Melody Maker & Sounds), the importance of which could never be overestimated, precious oases in the cultural desert, the scarcity of which created a constant cycle of delay & anticipation in the sating of the desire for access to & reception of such life-saving forces. George Shaw’s work similarly displays a yearning for the memories of times past.
Kees Goudzwaard in Art World no.10, April/May 2009
Having digressed, the real discovery in the aforementioned issue of Art World proved to be the work of painter Kees Goudzwaard. The magazine features a short article & question-&-answer session with the artist, illustrated with a few examples of recent work, enough to intrigue & encourage a more in-depth engagement available via the artist’s website, which features a chronological survey of numerous years’-worth of paintings & 4 substantial essays on the subject of this work, exploring various theoretical issues arising from.
Goudzwaard’s painting practice is particularly fascinating for the position it occupies between absolutely faithful realism-illusionism, & the tradition of modernist abstraction, being primarily the former whilst appearing very much like the latter. Beginning with very basic raw materials of the artist’s stock - coloured & translucent tracing-type papers, & masking tape in the form of either strips or smaller pieces - Goudzwaard constructs maquettes - on various scales from ‘easel-painting’ size to the much larger ones associated with abstract expressionism - composed & built up of various square & rectilinear forms, sometimes tilted on their axes, with subsequent layers creating tonal variations in addition to colour combinations either boldly-saturated or more subdued or near-monochrome. The application of masking tape to fix these shapes & layers results in the explicit statement of grid-like forms, &/or otherwise pieces of tape are used to create surface pattern & detail that, within the general abstract framework of the resulting paintings, might or might not suggest natural phenomena such as flurries of snow or blossom.
From these models – over which he might spend some considerable time (years, even) in the making & reassessing the compositions of – Goudzwaard then produces equivalents in oil on canvas, on a scale of direct 1:1. As the models are objects in themselves – even if their 3D nature is shallow – the subsequent paintings, in their faithfulness to appearances, their transfer of low-relief three dimensions into the two of the flat picture plane, exhibit a trompe l’oeil quality in the tradition of such works as the illusory depictions of pin-boards (from those by 17th century Dutch artists to, for example, John Frederick Peto in the US in the 19th century) or Vija Celmins’ drawings of envelopes & postcards, & also have a relational dialogue with the broader history of Dutch still life painting, with its attention to detail & exactitude, effecting a transfer of material qualities, surfaces & textures, into that of paint. The entire process, from the collaged models constructed of a variety of papers to the subsequent paintings composed of overlapping planar layers – often of great tonal richness & subtlety - & frameworks of explicit linear structures that relate to the horizontals & verticals of the picture edges, also references various stages of Cubism as it developed from the influence of Cezanne to the point from which an artist such as Mondrian was able to absorb its lessons & take them on in order to refine his own rigidly geometrical formal language into complete abstraction (one might say that Goudzwaard’s tonally pale lines of tape are the inverse of the ‘signature’ black scaffolding of Mondrian’s mature style & practice).
The creation & depiction of the grid-like structure – either as emphasised or disrupted to greater or lesser effect by the particular use of the tape – relates to the use of the grid in modernist art to create an ‘all-over’ field that makes explicit reference to the shape of the picture support in the traditional manner & enables the paintings to be read alternately as belonging within the idiom of hard-edge abstraction. The paintings thus enjoy a constant, intriguing state of flux – for all their rigidly structural appearance – between realist illusionism, painstakingly realised, & abstraction, a liberating post-modernist dialogue that gives them a profound complexity & continually enriches their reception.
There’s an interesting relation, too, between Goudzwaard’s work and the compelling paintings of William Daniels (blogged here, some time ago) - again highly realistic renderings of self-constructed cardboard maquettes of famous paintings from the history of art, sharing the practice of producing a contemporary take on the genre of still life, working from objects (already works of art?) created by themselves from simple, cheap, ubiquitous materials. Perhaps, too, my own current body of work & area of interest, the drawings of flattened, low-relief ‘roadkill’ aluminium cans depicted against the ground of the strict linear forms of the (slightly raised) double black lines road markings, with their relation to both still life & certain formal devices of modernist abstraction (albeit monochrome), might share characteristics & concerns with Kees Goudzward’s paintings.
Also, an interesting feature on/with Sonic Youth in today's Guardian's 'Film & Music' section, & even a good review of the new album 'The Eternal', too, with special mention for the fabulous 'Antenna'.
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