Handy Find

Almost mid-way through February seems rather late to be posting the first fruits of the drawing practice of the month, so, without further ado:


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Harking back to 2008’s Project here at TOoT, essentially engaged with the graphite representation of media photographs (preferably suggesting some form of art-historical contextual affiliation) as they occurred in the press over the course of the year, the source image from which the drawing was processed was found one day recently whilst browsing the G2 section of The Guardian, & proved irresistibly attractive as a suitable case for further study & such treatment.

The picture is so rich, in terms of its 1960s period appeal, the wonderful, ineffably sad face of Tony Hancock, pictured in conference with the writers Alan Simpson & Ray Galton, the tonal chiaroscuro so redolent of the history of European painting from the Renaissance to the 19th century (consider Caravaggio, Velasquez & Rembrandt as but three examples) &, particularly, the ‘Caraveggiesque’ gesture of Hancock’s extended hand, observed in perspective, which recalls a number of instances as occur in the paintings of Caravaggio & his ‘Supper at Emmaus’ most specifically, perhaps (indeed, the whole subject of the photograph implies such a gathering, it seems to be very much in the tradition of, with the composition of figures seated around a table top arrangement of receptacles, cutlery, food & drink. The bearded profile of Galton, too, to the right, seems familiar from any number of painted historical precedents).


Caravaggio 'Supper at Emmaus' 1601-02
oil on canvas/195x139cm

The immediate source from which the drawing was processed was in fact a photocopy (as had become the development in practice when the media photograph project continued for a while into 2009), a further layer of representation & distance from source, the image thus degraded slightly from its appearance in the printed newspaper, with certain losses of tonal subtlety &, accordingly, detail: the G2 ‘original’ was subsequently referred to if occasional particular issues for the requirement of clarification occurred.

The nature of the specific print of the photograph in the newspaper, across a two-page spread, creating a definite split of the image into two (unequally sized) halves, & the photocopy of this physical manifestation, significantly informed the transcription into drawing, with the space of this fissure incorporated into the picture plane as an active element: it’s particularly notable how this space divides the extended hand. Given the nature of this particular formal quality, &, subsequently, that of the drawing as informed by, &, of course, considerations of the relative slowness of the drawing process in relation to the photographic one (even allowing for the time involved in the developing of the original print from the negative of the image as photographed instantaneously), thoughts have returned to the concept of ‘de-photography’ (first mooted & mused-upon during November 2008), whereby the representation from source(s) becomes a significantly different, separate entity.