World Cup '74 Portrait #90 (Norberto Alonso: Argentina)

graphite & putty eraser/30x21cm

Today’s subject depicts Norberto Alonso, who was selected for inclusion in both the FKS & Panini ‘World Cup ‘74’ sticker albums but, alas, not in the official Argentina squad for the Finals themselves. He did go on to earn a place in the Argentinian squad for the 1978 World Cup, where he appeared as a substitute on three occasions, once only very briefly before the unusual circumstance of being replaced himself (for those especially inclined towards World Cup trivia).

As, alphabetically, the first player of the first qualifying nation, representations of the player have previously featured in earlier incarnations & revisions of the 1974 World Cup drawing project, here, here & here.

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’

Having a Re-think/Re-draw: World Cup '74 #1 v2

coloured pencil & putty eraser/30x20cm

Halfway through the third drawing of the new ‘project’, perhaps due to this being scattered frustratingly across unsatisfactorily short sessions & days, the critical thought occurred that to continue in such style would itself be unsatisfactory & that something thus needed to be done, to change.

That something was influenced, it must be credited, by Mr Ian Hodgson’s work concerning the Moon Wiring Club, during a ‘whimsical’ visit to the Blank Workshop & the ‘Discography’ section of the website in particular, opening as it does with an image of the cover art for the debut single ‘I’m More Than a Memory Now’, featuring in crudely pixelated form what is still recognizably a portrait of a female face, as might be appreciated:

By way of coincidence, one of the visual (re)sources being used for the basis of the drawings, for plotting form & features, has been A4 prints of digital versions of the original FKS & Panini album stickers/stamps, the images pixelating as they are enlarged to such scale.

The ‘memory’ in the title is highly significant too, as it relates to the nascent project, in that the 1974 World Cup tournament constitutes my earliest memories of (taking an interest in) football, as mentioned, that, however vividly ‘hauntological’ the sticker albums that form the initial, essential level of source material may be, are inevitably subject to & filtered through many layers of loss, over the course of the 38 years that have lapsed since the completion took place, was ‘live’ & ‘now’, & the pixelated image represents such haziness & ‘interference’ perfectly: certain names might remain, as do recollections of watching particular matches – the Final, West Germany versus Sweden on a Sunday evening before school again on the Monday, the latter part of the hosts, again, v Poland upon returning home from school one afternoon, Holland v Brazil – but much has inevitably passed into generality.

Thus the appearance of this drawing is informed primarily by that of its direct source, the A4 colour print taken of a digital image of the original stamp, in its album, enlarged substantially from such source & therefore pixelating rather significantly in the process.
The pixel being a modular unit, of course, implies the arrangement of multiples in the form of a grid, our old modernist-minimalist friend of yore, & this is indeed the case with the source: the drawing, less rigorously, is influenced by this rather than slavishly imitating, at least in this reworked instance, & thus takes the form of a network of horizontal, vertical & ‘square’ marks that acknowledge the source, as does the range of colours used, where a distinct yellowing/pinking into individual unmixed modules occurs in the transition from smooth printed original to pixelated image.

This process being the formal subject of the drawing, the portrait subject then comes to resemble, again but in a different style, the first member of the Argentina squad to be represented, alphabetically, in the FKS album, Norberto Alonso.

World Cup '74 #1 (Norberto Alonso)

Today the opposite of tomato is 'the jagged metal bad-life'

coloured pencil & putty eraser/30x20cm

Presenting today what is intended, ambitiously, to be but the first of a series of drawings processed from a combination of closely-related source material, being the sticker/stamp collections contained within two albums issued to celebrate the then-upcoming 1974 football World Cup, FKS’s ‘Wonderful World of Soccer Stars World Cup 1974’ in all its original glory & the reproduction of Panini’s ‘Munchen 1974’, as have previously featured, relatively recently, & been duly enthused about as iconic examples & objects of nostalgic delight.

To reiterate, the portraits of then-contemporary footballers depicted upon these (sets of) stickers are imbued with a ‘hauntological’ quality that exerts an irresistible attraction – essentially the 1974 World Cup, with all its international glamour & intriguing names, was the point at which I belatedly, at least compared to school peers, developed an interest in & passion for football - hence their suitability, their insistence, in providing the visual matter from which to proceed with the planned drawing project.

The format the drawings, individually & as a series(-to-be), (will) take, is based upon a combination of the source stickers & album designs, primarily utilizing the portraits in the FKS album, replacing these with their Panini counterparts or alternatives when & where the latter might prove more appropriate to purposes.
The FKS album features regular squads of 16 players for each of the 16 competing nations (plus the inclusion of a 17th country, Spain, who had yet to settle the outcome of their play-off with subsequently-victorious Yugoslavia at the time the album went to press, evidently some time before the Finals took place), whereas the Panini album adopted a more ‘hierarchical’ approach, featuring 20 players to represent the powerhouses of West Germany (the hosts & subsequently winners), Brazil (the reigning champions) & Italy, 14 for 10 other countries & but 6 for the newcomer-‘minnows’ Australia, Haiti & Zaire: the ‘project’ as envisaged will follow the FKS pattern of 16 x 16 portrait drawings, but then might possibly expand to take in a further selection based on the Panini album’s inclusion of ‘excluded teams’ (i.e nations who failed to qualify for the tournament, such as Spain, & on this occasion England).

The first subject therefore, alphabetically the first player representing the first featured nation, is Norberto Alonso of Argentina who actually, it transpired, failed to make his country’s World Cup squad as subsequently chosen: an interesting side issue of the project is to compare the players depicted by the albums’ publishers with the official list of the 1974 squad, to note the omissions & replacements – one notes that such Argentinians as Carlos Babington & Rene Houseman, whose surnames seem to imply something of an English heritage & became fixed in the memory, are absent from the albums’ squads yet went on to appear at the tournament.
Nonetheless, the project will endeavour to represent the portraits as featured on the stamps & stickers, irrespective of whether the subjects were included in the actual playing squads, as finalized, for the competition.

Technically, as coloured pencil has become the most oft-used drawing medium over recent months, & given the nature of the coloured reproductions upon the source albums’ stamps/stickers, the process will be carried out using such means, which somehow seems appropriate for a project so rooted in childhood memory, being tools associated with drawing during such times. The immediate visual source for the drawings is a photocopy of the image from the album, enlarged by about 50%, with recourse also to the actual stamps/stickers themselves – these reproductions of reproductions inevitably experience some degree of colour difference in the process, & the ‘re-mediated’ drawings’ appearance is obviously informed by this.

Soundtrack:

Moon Wiring Club ‘Clutch it Like a Gonk’ & ‘A Spare Tabby at the Cat’s Wedding’
PiL ‘Metal Box’

A PiL sandwich, with the autumnal sounds of the Moon Wiring Club either side: mmm...most nourishing & satisfying.