Having a Re-think/Re-draw Again: World Cup '74 #1 v3

Today the opposite of tomato is Double Negative

For the third time, the nascent project of drawings based upon the primary image content of the collectable stamp/sticker collections published by FKS, ‘Wonderful World of Soccer Stars World Cup 1974’, & Panini, ‘Munchen 1974’, has undergone a formal reappraisal, with the first physical result of such a decision & process represented here, returning to square one, with pun duly acknowledged, with what comes, eventually, to form a crudely-pixellated portrait of Norberto Alonso, the first featured member of the Argentina squad for the 1974 football World Cup tournament.

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

From the original stamp, scanned & then reduced in size, by experimental degrees, to 30% of its dimensions, a black & white A4 print was made, enlarging & consequently breaking up the image into a collection of modular units, & this served as the immediate visual reference from which the drawing was processed, more than anything an exercise in looking & tonal control, given the subtle differences apparent (barely, at times) between many of the individual squares within the overall grid of the image: the ensuing ‘portrait’ is a by-product, although significant in the context of the project as (if) it develops.

Although the original sticker & its portrait image was/is printed in colour, the decision was taken to work from a black & white reproduction for two significant reasons: firstly, in the context of memory, I have no recollection of a footballer such as, in this instance, Norberto Alonso, & thus a monochrome representation seems appropriate (those players I do remember are intended to be represented in colour, to suggest something more vivid); secondly, I experienced the 1974 World Cup - &, indeed, the 1978 tournament – via the medium of black & white television, & this thus constitutes a distinct ‘hauntological’ dimension to the project.

Such an approach to the representation of the human face from a photographic source most obviously references the practice of Chuck Close, as might be appreciated from the following images, a drawing & watercolour, taken from Martin Friedman’s ‘Close Reading: Chuck Close and the Artist Portrait’, a much-revisited source of fascination & inspiration.

Soundtrack:

Vic Godard & Subway Sect ‘What’s the Matter, Boy?’
Broadcast ‘Ha Ha Sound’
Bat For Lashes ‘Fur and Gold’
Cornershop ‘When I Was Born for the 7th Time’