A Measured Approach

In the context of the recently reactivated engagement with found flattened & suitably reformed aluminium can ‘roadkill’, here is presented another drawing to be processed from such subject/object matter as acquired, again employing the more active surface-‘ground’ mark-making development that characterized the previous example, inspired by the swiping brushmarks that were to be found featuring in the set of photographs of the occurrence of ‘double black lines’ road markings as painted & encountered amongst the back streets of Chester, & blogged here.


graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/20x30cm

Focussing on a specific detail of the drawing, there was something about the appearance of the visible strip of barcode printed upon the surface of the found object, as reformed, with a sequence of numerals & related short lines (printed above but appearing here, as viewed upside-down, below), that somehow brought to mind that of the measurements upon a ruler, which in turn recalled those examples of the work of Jasper Johns where he incorporates &/or represents just such a device-object into the composition, with but three examples of such, featuring drawing & painting, illustrated below.
As ever, only the slightest pretext is required to indulge in an appreciation of the sensuous surfaces of Johns’, with their explicit mark-making & wealth of visual incident, to which the drawing itself & the nature of its processing makes intentional reference.


Jasper Johns 'No' 1964
graphite, charcoal & tempera on paper/51.4x44.5cm


Jasper Johns 'Passage' 1962
encaustic & collage on canvas, with objects/137.2x101.6cm


Jasper Johns 'Wilderness II' 1963-70
charcoal, pastel & collage on paper, with objects/108.6x65.4cm

Of course, there's that particular aspect of such an instrument of measurement thus (re)presented in these & others of Johns' works that automatically & obviously communicates (its) 'actual size', & this also relates to the representations of the 'roadkill' cans, with all such objects habitually being represented on a 1:1 'life size' scale in the drawings.

Another of TOoT's favoured & much-referenced artists to have incorporated the representation of a measuring device into a painting was Euan Uglow, in such an example as that pictured below, where the inclusion of the strip at the bottom of the picture, with its regular divisions, gives an indication of the size & scale of the represented object.


Euan Uglow 'Nectarine' c.1998
oil on board/13.4x10cm

Further to the subject of Jasper Johns, the latest essential addition to the library was taken delivery of last week, being the sumptuous catalogue to the 2008 ‘Gray’ exhibition, obviously concentrating upon that specific monochromatic aspect of the artists’ extensive body of work across the variety of media associated with his practice.
In addition to the illustrations of the exhibited work, there are included a number of what appear to be intriguing essays, which will hopefully, over the near future, provide much interest & sufficient grist to the mill of thought.
For now, here is presented a photograph of the book as physical object, enveloped in its translucent tracing paper cover, a rather beautiful thing:


The use of such a material in the packaging process returned me to thoughts of the cover of New Order’s ‘low-life’ LP, originally issued in 1985, a copy invested-in then & carefully kept since, as an example of one of the few too-precious-to-part-with (because of this very manner in which it was so exquisitely presented, in common with most of the Peter Savile-designed Joy Division & New Order record sleeves for Factory Records) vinyl LPs & singles to survive the great cull of the collection of such objects. Glowing mention of this artefact, & its qualities, has already occurred on TOoT, back here, whilst the CD version of the ‘low-life’ album, presented with, mercifully, at least some relation to the original packaging (although being not the same thing at all, of course), has also featured in the past. Here then is pictured the LP’s cover, semi-transparently cloaked, along with the inner sleeve to properly illustrate the different material properties:


Such use of tracing paper of course refers one back to works of art & such examples of the paintings of Kees Goudzwaard, & the constructed models upon which they are based, such as the recently mentioned ‘Transit’.

Thought Into Practice...

Today brought something of a development in relation to yesterday’s thoughts (or musings upon the lack of), & a welcome return to a session of drawing practice - not the intended active contemplation of a particular collection of seasonal objects (as has become customary during this month of the year) but, rather, others that presented a more compelling distraction during the course of making the decision where to draw.

The object matter then is, primarily, a table lantern with a translucent, frosted glass surround & some LED candle lights of a similar type, arranged upon a windowsill & observed, in the familiar if not exclusively habitual manner, contre jour.
The subject matter, of course, is the representation of a tonal study of the composition & the dialogue between the process of marks made with graphite pencils & putty eraser, of addition, accumulation & subtraction, exploring the subtleties of the transitions of tone between objects & 'tactile' space, of attempting to record what is seen in conditions of natural light - & the fluctuations, fading of - over the course of time.


graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm

What was observed was, essentially, an arrangement of simple geometrical shapes that in places & along edges, with the light from without/behind passing through their translucent forms, glowed a bright white, the drawing process thus involving erasure of the graphite marks forming the mid-toned ground back as far as possible, where appropriate, to the original white of the page.

Closely observed, the material substance & surface finish of the objects brought to mind very much the tracing paper, & overlaid accumulations of, used by Kees Goudzwaard in constructing the paper & masking tape models for his 1:1 scale painted representations of, which can thus be read as highly-realised & faithful still lifes of low-relief three dimensional objects, almost in the manner of trompe l'oeil, &/or also geometrical abstract compositions in the best traditions of Modernism.

Kees Goudzwaard: paper model for 'Transit' 2009

Kees Goudzwaard 'Transit' 2009
oil on canvas/120x90cm

Also pictured is a photograph of the objects originally intended to be studied & drawn, upon the rather wonderful retro coffee table & its closely-toned patterned surface: nice.





Soundtrack:


The Lilac Time 'The Lilac Time'
PJ Harvey 'Let England Shake'

Drawing a Blank #5

graphite & watercolour/30x20cm

Being the latest in the sequence of watercolour drawings processed from the subject-object matter of folded, creased & lightly crumpled blank sheets of standard A4 paper, represented on exact 1:1 scale (laboriously plotted), the image, with its all-over surface of non-hierarchical incidental visual detail, thus coinciding with the physical limits of the picture plane.
Once again, there’s that play, the employment of the device, of the flat representation of what was originally a flat plane subsequently transformed into something of a low-relief three-dimensional object, the drawing being a record of the fugitive action of natural light upon the undulations of its surface, of the subtle tonal gradations of the marks made upon the once uninflected sheet by the folding & crumpling process.

Becoming more deeply involved in this particular body of work, as it seems to be in the process of becoming, however slowly-evolving (taking into account specific seasonal factors, pertaining to the limited availability of natural daylight in which to work) & thus far production-light, certain art-historical correspondences emerge in which context(s) the drawings might be situated, even if only coincidentally &, not unusually, superficially.
In the interests of a certain integrity, at least of overriding personal aesthetics, all such artists & their work have featured previously, either specifically ‘in relation’ or otherwise as being of interest.

Other than an aforementioned similarity, at least, particularly, at the outset of the project, to some of Vija Celmins' wonderful drawings, of enveloped letters, photographs & images torn from magazines, & the historical tradition of the realistic representation of fabrics folded & draped, the first such example with which to consider something of an affinity is that of Kees Goudzwaard, & the artist’s paintings based on the subject-object matter of various paper & masking tape constructions of a variety of dimensions, all of which are represented, in oil on canvas, on a 1:1 scale, & include numerous subtly modulated grey & ‘white’ examples of.
Many of Goudwaard’s images, which maintain a compelling tension between trompe l’oeil realism & abstract design, also feature something of a grid structure, to whatever fairly rigorous or looser degree, by virtue of the use of the linear element of the strips of tape, another compositional device which links them in some manner to the drawings of creased & crumpled paper, the original objects upon which such are based are initially folded into such a formal pattern, of course.

The horizontal & vertical structure provide by the purposeful creases, & other accidental incidental diagonals & ‘facets’ of the crumple-inflected surfaces, might be considered as being not-too distant from aspects of archetypal Cubist composition, of course, a feature which generally haunts proceeding here, whilst the use of paper as subject-object matter also bears a relation to collage.

Obviously there’s something about any work utilizing the grid & surface modulations of whites & greys that might recall, generally & a number of particular examples of, the work of the familiar figure of Jasper Johns & also Robert Ryman’s ‘white paintings’ (although both are more usually associated with the palpable physicality & sensuousness of their surfaces, even Ryman's smooth ones) but, it occurred, ‘riffingly’, that there also might be something of a distant echo of Vilhelm Hammershoi, whose contemplative compositions are characterized by an habitual, exquisitely-realised muted tonality & overall ‘greyness’, & frequently include the cell-like details of domestic interior architectural features such as windows, doors, etc.

As ever, there’s such a richness to & wealth of art history that the occurrence of contextualizing correspondences are inevitable & unavoidable, but such are always welcome & more often than not informative & instructive.


Soundtrack:


She & Him 'Volume Two'
Laura Marling 'I Speak Because I Can'
Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
Sparklehorse 'It's a Wonderful Life'
Jesca Hoop 'Hunting My Dress'

And so the new Moon Wiring Club release - the CD but one aspect of the 'Tabby bundle' that constitutes its whole - arrived, ahead of expectations, to be discovered sheltering, by something of a spooky coincidence although not, perhaps, particularly unusually for something of a feline nature, underneath the car...


More will surely follow upon the subject of the richness of the sonic & visual wonders to experienced within this cornucopia of delights, suffice for now to report that the first hearing of the CD during a misty, damp & darkening autumn afternoon provided much of the anticipated entertainment & more developments besides...

A New Painterly Pleasure

Today the opposite of tomato is the Netherlands' major-upset last-ball Twenty20 cricket victory over England: Brilliant Orange!

A recent edition of the newish publication Art World was browsed-with-interest in a local WH Smiths & subsequently invested in primarily for the features contained within on the subjects of the new work of Luc Tuymans and a more general survey of George Shaw’s paintings, the latter being especially necessary given the otherwise scarcity of substantial literature on the artist & his compelling work, which, topical to this year’s overarching atmosphere at TOoT, has often seemed to communicate something of a ‘post-punk’ aesthetic, its intensely-concentrated appearance frequently redolent of the socio-economo-political grimy grimness of the late 70s – early 80s, of hope stilled & dreams thwarted, life quietly suffocated “amid concrete and clay, and general decay” (indeed of ‘nature finding a way’, as it must, of reclaiming derelict buildings, abandoned garages and now-depopulated public spaces – specifically the Tile Hill estate in Coventry, where Shaw grew up).


George Shaw feature in Art World no. 10, April/May 2009

Also, there is undeniably something more expansively Smithsian & broadly English in Shaw’s affectionate aesthetic, in its Romantic tendency to find poetry, something to celebrate, to memorialize, in such unpromising, overlooked subject matter: the particular use of an ever-so-slightly artificial, heightened colour lends some of the paintings an intensity of an hallucinatory nature, the depicted spaces become charged with a dreamlike nostalgia for a past time, vividly remembered with a clarity as from youth. Furthermore, Shaw’s habitual technique using the medium of Humbrol enamel modelling paints reminds one palpably of the personal journey from childhood - &, specifically, one of its consuming hobbies of the construction of Airfix model kits - to adolescence & the discovery of the music (& associated culture) of that contemporaneous post-punk period. Last night, I experienced a particularly sharp pang of recognition whilst reading, in his own interview that closes ‘Totally Wired’, Simon Reynolds’ poignant description of the provincial life (such as that, also, of George Shaw’s Coventry) of such times, isolated in a much-reduced media landscape (when compared with the ubiquitous, remotely-accessible, distance-no-object-or-barrier sources of today), & the vital, essential nature, the sheer nervous urgency, of the vibrant new music scene & its associated conduits of the John Peel radio programme & the ‘inky’ music press (NME, Melody Maker & Sounds), the importance of which could never be overestimated, precious oases in the cultural desert, the scarcity of which created a constant cycle of delay & anticipation in the sating of the desire for access to & reception of such life-saving forces. George Shaw’s work similarly displays a yearning for the memories of times past.


Kees Goudzwaard in Art World no.10, April/May 2009

Having digressed, the real discovery in the aforementioned issue of Art World proved to be the work of painter Kees Goudzwaard. The magazine features a short article & question-&-answer session with the artist, illustrated with a few examples of recent work, enough to intrigue & encourage a more in-depth engagement available via the artist’s website, which features a chronological survey of numerous years’-worth of paintings & 4 substantial essays on the subject of this work, exploring various theoretical issues arising from.
Goudzwaard’s painting practice is particularly fascinating for the position it occupies between absolutely faithful realism-illusionism, & the tradition of modernist abstraction, being primarily the former whilst appearing very much like the latter. Beginning with very basic raw materials of the artist’s stock - coloured & translucent tracing-type papers, & masking tape in the form of either strips or smaller pieces - Goudzwaard constructs maquettes - on various scales from ‘easel-painting’ size to the much larger ones associated with abstract expressionism - composed & built up of various square & rectilinear forms, sometimes tilted on their axes, with subsequent layers creating tonal variations in addition to colour combinations either boldly-saturated or more subdued or near-monochrome. The application of masking tape to fix these shapes & layers results in the explicit statement of grid-like forms, &/or otherwise pieces of tape are used to create surface pattern & detail that, within the general abstract framework of the resulting paintings, might or might not suggest natural phenomena such as flurries of snow or blossom.

From these models – over which he might spend some considerable time (years, even) in the making & reassessing the compositions of – Goudzwaard then produces equivalents in oil on canvas, on a scale of direct 1:1. As the models are objects in themselves – even if their 3D nature is shallow – the subsequent paintings, in their faithfulness to appearances, their transfer of low-relief three dimensions into the two of the flat picture plane, exhibit a trompe l’oeil quality in the tradition of such works as the illusory depictions of pin-boards (from those by 17th century Dutch artists to, for example, John Frederick Peto in the US in the 19th century) or Vija Celmins’ drawings of envelopes & postcards, & also have a relational dialogue with the broader history of Dutch still life painting, with its attention to detail & exactitude, effecting a transfer of material qualities, surfaces & textures, into that of paint. The entire process, from the collaged models constructed of a variety of papers to the subsequent paintings composed of overlapping planar layers – often of great tonal richness & subtlety - & frameworks of explicit linear structures that relate to the horizontals & verticals of the picture edges, also references various stages of Cubism as it developed from the influence of Cezanne to the point from which an artist such as Mondrian was able to absorb its lessons & take them on in order to refine his own rigidly geometrical formal language into complete abstraction (one might say that Goudzwaard’s tonally pale lines of tape are the inverse of the ‘signature’ black scaffolding of Mondrian’s mature style & practice).
The creation & depiction of the grid-like structure – either as emphasised or disrupted to greater or lesser effect by the particular use of the tape – relates to the use of the grid in modernist art to create an ‘all-over’ field that makes explicit reference to the shape of the picture support in the traditional manner & enables the paintings to be read alternately as belonging within the idiom of hard-edge abstraction. The paintings thus enjoy a constant, intriguing state of flux – for all their rigidly structural appearance – between realist illusionism, painstakingly realised, & abstraction, a liberating post-modernist dialogue that gives them a profound complexity & continually enriches their reception.

There’s an interesting relation, too, between Goudzwaard’s work and the compelling paintings of William Daniels (blogged here, some time ago) - again highly realistic renderings of self-constructed cardboard maquettes of famous paintings from the history of art, sharing the practice of producing a contemporary take on the genre of still life, working from objects (already works of art?) created by themselves from simple, cheap, ubiquitous materials. Perhaps, too, my own current body of work & area of interest, the drawings of flattened, low-relief ‘roadkill’ aluminium cans depicted against the ground of the strict linear forms of the (slightly raised) double black lines road markings, with their relation to both still life & certain formal devices of modernist abstraction (albeit monochrome), might share characteristics & concerns with Kees Goudzward’s paintings.

Also, an interesting feature on/with Sonic Youth in today's Guardian's 'Film & Music' section, & even a good review of the new album 'The Eternal', too, with special mention for the fabulous 'Antenna'.