You're the One for Me, 'Flatty'...

graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/30x20cm

The latest 'Pop Art roadkill' diptych drawing to be processed featuring an example of found 'Readymade Cubism', this particular subject/object having been compressed, reformed, into a state of low relief, the nature of such evoking, once again, the ghost of Clement Greenberg & his once-influential interpretation of the progress of the practice of Modernist painting, via a compelling, persuasive (but rather exclusive) linear narrative from Cezanne to Cubist painting & collage to Mondrian - the godfather of grids! - to Abstract Expressionism & ultimately the 'colour field' stains of 'post-painterly' abstraction. Greenberg proposed the theory of painting defining itself through its medium-specific quality of 'flatness', referring to the limiting conditions of the physical support upon which the activity is performed (i.e. the area of canvas defined by its horizontal & vertical edges, which of course the formal device of the grid in particular reiterates), a self-critical condition (adapted from Kant's philosophy) through which painting could assert its autonomy, 'competence' & purpose as a visual, aesthetic experience, whilst acknowledging that the first mark upon the canvas subverts its absolute flatness, that, even if no attempt is made at pictorial tonal 'modelling' with light & shade, some form of optical illusion occurs at this point.

However flat the subject/object of the drawings might have been accidentally compressed, though, still they retain a certain three-dimensional object quality, even in such 'reduced circumstances', & one of the (perverse?!) endeavours of the mark-making process (which includes erasure as an equally positive activity to the stroking of graphite) is to represent the variety of surface incident as experienced empirically, those ridges & depressions of highlights & shadows into which the (unflat) object forms itself (& continually reforms, with the play of natural light & one's subtly ever-changing position in relation to that of the object).
As most recently previously mentioned & photographically illustrated, the mark-making process itself destroys the purity of the flatness of the surface of the paper upon which the drawing is performed, creating a graphite-covered 'object' that seeks to establish some form of dialogue with the object represented within the picture plane.

Soundtrack:


Gomez 'Bring It On'
Talking Heads 'Best of'
Morrissey 'Vauxhall & I'
Lambchop 'Is a Woman'

A first-time-in-x-years listen to Gomez, 'Bring It On' proving to be something of a Proustian vehicle, transporting one back to pleasant recollections of the graduation summer (during which the sun still seemed to shine), relaxing with a sense of having achieved something worthwhile (at last, for once).
Good to have a reminder too of just how wonderful Talking Heads were capable of being, most particularly during the period of their creative zenith, in collaboration with Brian Eno, the man & whose work provided the subject matter of a pair of excellent BBC4 TV programmes over last weekend, the first a fascinating documentary portrait, the second a compilation of musical 'greatest hits', encompassing the timeline from Roxy Music to the present, which would have been worth watching just for (but by no meeans only) the inclusion of Devo's still astonishing sonic & visual aesthetic as condensed into a video performance of their 'introductory' classic 'Jocko Homo', fabulously lo-fi & minimalist, nothing quite of the like seen or heard before or since, amusing, entertaining & unsettling in equal measure, true art-rock in the very best challenging sense. And familiarity does nothing to blunt the charge of Bowie's exhilarating 'Heroes'.

A Pasted Paper (r)Evolution

Today the opposite of tomato is ‘American Splendor’


graphite & pasted paper photocopy/20x30cm
original source: 'The Guardian' G2 09/04/08


Ralph Goings 'Breakfast Menu'
watercolour/1979

Having previously cited the photorealist paintings of Ralph Goings, when contextualizing an earlier drawing, the original photographic source of this latest drawing in The Project - illustrating an advertisement (again) for a forthcoming Guardian ‘good breakfasts’ guide publication, & featuring a diner table top still life of condiment containers the like of which Goings has regularly used as prosaic subject matter - presented itself as an obvious & welcome candidate for transcription.

Furthermore, the source image enabled a re-engagement with the still life genre which has occupied my creative endeavour for many years - indeed up until this last new year & the birth of the current Project transcribing print media images - but with an interesting twist: having always previously worked directly from three-dimensional objects themselves, existing & arranged in real space, doing so on this occasion from a pre-existing image & flat, 2-D, ‘model’ presented a new challenge.
The background of the photographic image also provided a particular point of interest, with the horizontal-vertical pattern of the textured, ‘Anaglypta’-type wallpaper suggesting a variation on the old faithful Modernist grid, relating particularly at this point to the recent drawing of crosses & its contextual relationship to examples of Mondrian’s intermediate paintings & drawings (see this post).
At some point, rather than represent this wholly by drawing, it occurred that it might be of interest to so by other means in conjunction with drawing &, having previously & frequently used actual textured wallpaper as the physical grounds, or sections of, for still life paintings (back in the day…), the notion of pasted paper sections suggested itself as appropriate in this particular instance, especially considering the original precedent of such in the development of Cubism by Braque & Picasso (a ‘Revolution’ as termed by the critic Clement Greenberg, their presence on the picture plane declaring its flatness & fatally disrupting the project of pictorial illusionism), also of course within the realm of the still life & oft featuring café table top settings, thus returning the drawing neatly to its original photographic source & establishing a link between these artists & Goings of a later generation of (Post)Modernists: it is wonderful & a privilege indeed to have the opportunity to engage with the abundant history of visual art in such a manner, to indulge in such playfulness-with-a-purpose.


Georges Braque 'Fruit Dish & Glass'
charcoal & pasted paper/1912


Pablo Picasso 'Violin'
charcoal & pasted newspaper/1912

Of course, in this instance, the textured wallpaper of the source image was in fact as flat in nature as the depicted objects (rather like Glenn Brown’s meticulously painted, insistently two-dimensional representations, like reproductions in a book & as though referenced from such a source, of Frank Auerbach paintings, the originals of course thickly textured to the point of sculptural objecthood). Rather than compromise the integrity of the source image by cutting out sections to use in the transcribed drawing, I decided to take photocopies & use these as the pasted paper elements within the composition, linked by drawing, thus adding a further level of reproduction & representation to the whole…
Of course, the addition of the pasted papers to the drawing - itself, of course, transcribed from a two-dimensional source - actually create a building-up of the surface of the page, & thus a three-dimensional object, albeit of a subtle nature & almost imperceptibly so, which returns us to the (original) subject (matter) of still life..!

I should also mention at this point, whilst very much on the subject, the fascinating artist's blog Papiers Collés, regularly updated with examples of handmade collages & well worth a visit.


Coincidental to relate, but, upon completing the drawing, I subsequently watched the film ‘American Splendor’ which features all manner of play of various levels of representation collaged together into a whole. Essentially, the narrative is that of aspects of the life of the anti-hero Harvey Pekar, the mundanities of which were aestheticized in the form of comic strips &, subsequently, books, & is composed of numerous means including: cinematic, dramatized recreations-representations played by actors; appearances by Harvey Pekar himself, his wife, workmates, etc, in both linking, contextualizing interviews-to-camera & recreations of events such as his retirement party featuring this real cast of characters; footage of televised appearances by the real Pekar on the real David Letterman show - & acted dramatizations of such - & also those of a workmate who achieved cult, self-declared ‘nerd’ status on MTV; & graphic, comic strip elements appropriate to the subject matter of the narrative. It’s all quite a combination, unusual & inventive, again playful with the conventions of representation & its various means, & a most enjoyable experience as a film, one with a profoundly human quality at its heart, glad to have been seen, certainly, & especially on such an occasion.

Soundtrack:


Lambchop ‘How I Quit Smoking’
Belle & Sebastian ‘Tigermilk’
The Delgados ‘The Great Eastern’