Another Great Come-Down

Today the opposite of tomato is 'Lecturing on navigation while the ship is going down'


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

It occurred whilst studying this particular example of 'roadkill' during the process of drawing-from-life, that, as it displayed such an ubiquitous commercial brand identity & one particularly associated with Pop & the brash, celebratory, pioneering aspect of (& all those suntanned, white-toothed American teens of the TV ads of one's youth, promoting the great taste & associated to-aspire-to lifestyle of Coke), just how far this series of drawings in some way records something of the dream turning rotten...as it was inevitably doomed to do, one supposes.

It seems a strange endeavour to attempt to give life to something so essentially abject as such a used, discarded object, in the rendering of, for example, highlights to communicate a sense of form, etc: the glittering, faceted surface is undeniably a compelling spectacle, in some ways afforded a new glamour in the crushed creases & folds of the de-formed, re-formed can. There's something almost perverse, too, in the act of - constantly referring to the object itself - striving to give a sense of palpable three-dimensionality to something that appears to have been determinedly compressed, reduced, to two. And yet the fascination continues...

Soundtrack:


The Chasms 'Advance Paranoia, Advance'
Morrissey 'Vauxhall and I'
Sonic Youth 'Daydream Nation'

All suitable accompaniment to the process of drawing the current subject matter, sonically & lyrically in their various ways...

Catty...

Today the opposite of tomato is 'part clair de lune, part sacred cow'


graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm
original source: 'The Times' 02/12/08

Despite this year's Project being derived from newspaper image sources, this drawing is still unusually topical in that its image content features part of the multimedia exhibit of 2008 Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey, entitled 'Felix Gets Broadcasted'. The newspaper photograph of the installation itself has something of an attractive painterly quality to it, already slightly 'de-photographized' one might say, thus lending itself to the process of transcription by drawing. Again, the subject allows all manner of levels of representation & reproduction, &, being part of this process, once more the flatness of the scan alas loses all sense of the physicality of the drawing's surface, the rich sheen of, particularly, the dark tonal areas which largely dominate the composition & bestow a certain 'object-quality' to the finished piece.

Interestingly, the 'by-product subject' featured within Leckey's work & referred to in its title, Felix the cartoon cat, is something of a familiar model, having inspired artists previously, including two such examples to be found within Marco Livingstone's fine volume 'Pop Art: a Continuing History', in the work of latter-day, second-generation, 1980s postmodern 'authorship-questioning' painters such as Kenny Scharf & Ronnie Cutrone, more combinations of so-called 'high' & 'low'/popular art & culture, as might be found in Mark Leckey's practice.


Kenny Scharf 'Felix on a Pedestal'
acrylic & spraypaint on canvas/1982


Ronnie Cutrone 'Sunday Painter'
acrylic on oil paintings/1985

Soundtrack:


Magnetic Fields '69 Love Songs'
PJ Harvey 'Rid of Me'
Lambchop 'OH(Ohio)'
Laura Veirs 'Year of Meteors'

Oh, the fabulous array of songwriting contained within the '69' varieties of, the sheer number of magnificent tunes within the whole, itself a wonderful, dizzying experience upon each reacquaintance: such a treasure trove of postmodern referencing too, whilst on the subject.

Reflective Process...

Today the opposite of tomato is the ‘work’ of art.

A certain sense of achievement today in that, for the first time, The Project managed to do what it set out ideally intending to - complete in the day & on the day itself a drawing transcribed from an image culled from that day’s print media. Just goes to show what might be achieved when it’s possible to devote the day to the work of art uncompromised by other ‘work’ commitments & the necessary evil of paid employment. The fact that the image represented through the drawing process dates from 8th January is neither here nor there, chronology having long since been abandoned in favour of being ‘spoken to’ by an image - either serendipitously or whimsically - from the growing backlog archive.


graphite/30x21cm
original source: 'The Guardian' 08/01/08

The process of this drawing incorporated more working-back-into than has been the case thus far over the course of The Project, another form of mark-making, the eraser adding as it subtracts, &/or vice versa.

This particular image - of a reflection of a familiar high street store front & logo as photographed reflected in a rain-slicked pavement - references the work of such original 60s photorealists as, for example, Ralph Goings & Richard Estes & their penchant for utilising reflective surfaces such as glass & chrome in their compositions. A nod to Pop too in the form of the branded logo & one might also include Cubism, in the conundrum of the compressed space, ambiguous depths brought to the surface &, again, the use of the lettering of the logo: I wouldn’t ever wish there to be an escape from art history.


Ralph Goings 'Golden Dodge' oil on canvas 1971


Richard Estes 'Central Savings' oil on canvas

The original image recalled to mind reading a copy of Anthony Burgess’s novel ‘Beard’s Roman Women’, illustrated throughout with photographs of Rome seen in reflection, in glass, in chrome, in water, an interesting experience as I remember.
The Guardian’s online Books blog recently featured a welcome article on Burgess & the neglect his work seems to have suffered, a source of regret to someone such as myself to whom he’s long been a favourite author: good to read such an appraisal & the comments in response.

Currently reading Jeffrey Eugenides’s ‘Middlesex’, most enjoyable, compelling storytelling, fine & witty characterisation, warm & human, energetic use of language & a fascinating portrait of 20th century American socio-history from the viewpoint of an extended Greek immigrant family in Detroit. The hero/ine is, at this juncture, still a young girl, it should be interesting to see how s/he develops…


Soundtrack:

Given the nature & course of the working day, it’s been possible to properly measure out the drawing process in terms of its musical accompaniment, whimsically chosen. In chronological order:


Charlotte Gainsbourg ‘5.55’
Sol Seppy ‘The Bells of 1 2’
The Delgados ‘The Great Eastern’
Low ‘The Great Destroyer’
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset ‘The Bairns’
Lambchop ‘How I Quit Smoking’

Pop Goes the Would-be President

Whilst currently studying Mark Francis & Hal Foster's 'Pop' from Phaidon's 'Themes & Movements' series, containing as it does Ed Ruscha's 'Standard Station' & numerous of his & others' photos of gas station signs & other such advertising signage, I coincidentally noticed this photograph, featuring as a major element of its composition a Texaco sign, accompanying a Times article on the US presidential candidates' race: thus it proved too enticing not to use as source material. Spread across two pages in the newspaper, divided down the centre, it also seemed to demand being drawn in similar fashion, as a diptych.


graphite/40x30cm
original source: 'The Times' 29/01/08

Pop Art Roadkill

A constant factor in 'the life aesthetic' as lived is the coincidence between art & life - almost everything one encounters can be referred & analogised to art of some form or another, most often that of a visual nature.
A case in point occurred a couple of days ago, after having posted the Jasper Johns-inspired/influenced drawings made from the earlier photos of local 'double black line' road markings. It seems obvious that I should then notice, at the kerbside & adjacent to said double black lines, a crushed cider can which of course relates (when living aesthetically) to Jasper's 'Painted Bronze' (1960) sculpture of a pair of Ballantine ale cans. And then, chronologically, both art-historically & along the course of my journey, from Johns on to Pop art in the form of 2 'roadkill' Coca-Cola cans...