Still Going Flat-Out...

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Continuing the series of photographically-derived drawings of overpainted roadmarkings & discarded, traffic-flattened aluminium drink cans, which could be said to combine the traditional genres of landscape (albeit of a manmade nature) & still life, even if the objects represented have been reduced to two-dimensional form.

Referring once again to the essential ‘Jasper Johns: an Allegory of Painting, 1955-1965’, I discovered featured within an image of Robert Rauschenberg’s ‘Paint Cans’ of 1954, which incorporates into its formal structure two flattened examples of the type (nothing ‘original’ is possible any longer, of course!): it’s interesting how such a work can be read art-historically as, for instance, presenting paint itself as a ‘readymade’ & the drips & runs of the paint as referring to Abstract Expressionist painting. Obviously, the whole ‘Pop Art Roadkill’ project is intended to be read similarly, with a density of references (as previously mentioned over the course of previous posts on the subject) including, not least, various aspects of the work of Jasper Johns...& now Rauschenberg, too!


Such examples lead to thoughts of developing the body of work, realising it on a larger, life-size scale & perhaps incorporating the source objects themselves into the formal construction of the image-object.

Soundtrack:


Portishead ‘Third’
Black Box Recorder ‘England Made Me’
Cocteau Twins ‘Victorialand’
Cat Power ‘The Greatest’
Young Marble Giants ‘Colossal Youth’ & ‘Singles and Salad Days’
Mazzy Star ‘So Tonight That I Might See’

The fallout from the recent Rough Trade TV celebration continues, with the most recent investment being the collected works of the Young Marble Giants, echoes of whose deceptively simple yet compelling quiet, scratchy, spacey minimalism - so spare are the formal means employed that one is forced to listen intently - may be heard in the sonic aesthetic & similar atmosphere of, for instance, Black Box Recorder. It’s enlightening to hear now, for the first time, the ‘Salad Days’ demo versions, recorded in such technologically basic form, of many of the songs featured on ‘Colossal Youth’, offering a purer distillation yet of the YMG sound than the original official release of the album: essential stuff indeed.
The whole package is a beautiful production – courtesy of Domino, who also compiled the recently-purchased & similarly expertly-presented Triffids reissues amongst others – with the compilation of music supported by a fine historically-contextualizing & explicatory essay authored by Simon Reynolds & even, delightfully, the additional inclusion of a small packet of lapel badges: a perfect record & reminder of the immediate post-punk period - when such true originals as YMG & an attendant sense of exhilarating independence flourished - & schooldays when displaying one’s musical allegiances through the medium of badges was de rigeur.

Polaroid Process #8

graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm
original source: 'The Guardian' G2 06/10/08

Continuing the series of drawings processed from newspaper reproductions of Warhol’s Polaroid originals dating from the 1970s, &, although it isn’t the purpose of The Project as such (or even this ‘project within’), in this instance making specific reference to the subject of the portrait, the late artist Robert Rauschenberg, in terms of drawing.

Renowned for all manner of ground-breaking work in numerous media – painting, sculpture, collage, assemblage using found objects, printmaking, performance & various combinations of, operating in, as the artist himself claimed, “the space between art & life” – one particular, iconic piece is Rauschenberg’s ‘Erased de Kooning Drawing’, which is, essentially, as titled.


Robert Rauschenberg 'Erased de Kooning Drawing' 1953

With the consent of Willem de Kooning himself, Rauschenberg chose one of that artist’s drawings & proceeded to erase it, thus creating a new work of art in the process of doing so: in order that the ‘work of art’ involve significant effort, de Kooning specified that the original drawing chosen should not be made merely of more easily-erasable graphite but rather of mixed media – Rauschenberg’s finished work as labelled (by fellow artist & one-time cohort Jasper Johns) indeed makes reference to traces of ink & crayon on paper.
Given the date of this act of Rauschenberg’s – 1953 – the appearance of the erased drawing relates closely to his recently-preceding series of ‘White Paintings’, thus establishing aesthetic consistency. The erased drawing itself is therefore not negative in either conception or production, but a positive act: as one thing – a de Kooning drawing – disappears, another – an erased (being a performative process) drawing – appears, leaving a faint trace of the original, creation results from an apparent act of destruction.

Interesting to note a relation between such a process & that habitually employed in the making of my own drawings, where the utilisation of a putty eraser often removes part or all of some original marks in the process of resolving tonal areas to accord with those of the photographic source, & the act of drawing itself, the process, involves a formal dialogue & maintains a constant tension between the addition & subtraction of marks.

Also, acts of erasure in specific relation to newspaper images coincide in examples of the work of the artist Matt Bryans, again creating new works from existing sources, to which my attention was directed by a post on Kirsty Hall’s exemplary & always informative blog.

Soundtrack:


Stendec 'A Study of 'And''
Belle & Sebastian 'Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant'
Go-Betweens 'Tallulah'