[untitled]

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Incorporating a couple of loose-ish threads taken up recently, this drawing was processed, re-mediated, from an original advertisement for what we might term high-end designer merchandise, found in a recent edition of ‘Art Review’.
Again, a certain narrative element might be read, or at least suggested, via something of the 'suspenseful' atmosphere of the image & the action taking place (or inferred to be about to take place, post- the moment of surprised pause)...

Soundtrack:


My Bloody Valentine 'Loveless'
Miracle Legion 'Surprise Surprise Surprise'
Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
Eels 'Meet the Eels'

It's an Ad World #5

graphite & erasers/30x20cm

Back to the Sixties again to mine the source of this drawing, re-mediated from another print media advertisement of the period - again, stylistically, an irresistible image, so 'fashionably' redolent of its time, & not least socio-culturally too.
As with the previous example, the process of (re)making in graphite involves the draining of the original image of its 'Mad Men'esque colour - where a particularly vivid burst offsets otherwise mostly a harmony of cool greys - into a distanced tonal study.

Soundtrack:


Cocteau Twins 'Heaven or Las Vegas'
Bjork 'Homogenic'
Laura Marling 'I Speak Because I Can'

& also the 3 volumes of Pontone's compelling selection of tracks comprising their 'Tones of the Year 2010', their opinion of the best 50 albums of the year. Any place where the Moon Wiring Club's 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding' - a favourite listen & much admired work of art here at TOoT, of course - ranks second can't be a bad one at all.

It's an Ad World #4

graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Continuing the current sequence of drawings processed from the source material of archive print media advertisements, taking a step away from the subject matter-so-far of shoes here but, of course, featuring very much another object of consumer desire within the stylistic idiom of the Sixties (all very much the glamour of 'Mad Men' & Betty Draper, one might (re)contextualize, 'retro-contemporarily' if such a designation might exist).

Part of the re-mediation process on this particular occasion involved the draining of the image of its colour, not last the vivid red of the original's background, cooling things down to the monochrome of graphite & creating a more 'tactile, mark-made space'.

Consideration was given to combining another image into the composition, specifically as 'showing' on the TV screen, which is blank in the original, as some form of comment perhaps, but then it seemed most appropriate somehow that 'the medium is the message' - the medium in this instance being embodied by the (desirable) object, of course.

Soundtrack:


Jesus and Mary Chain 'Psychocandy'
She & Him 'Volume Two'
The Delgados 'The Great Eastern'

It's an Ad World #3

graphite & erasers/30x20cm

A third drawing in the sequence as processed from the source material of 1960s' print media advertisements, again featuring the subject/object matter-of-desire of women's shoes, although on this occasion not manufactured by 'Palizzio' but, rather, 'Gamins'.

Whatever, the de-/re-contextualization of the re-mediating drawing process, erasing the textual content that 'explains' the composition, renders the image perhaps more surreal yet (the disembodied shod foot 'floating' in the black spatial 'void' recalling, possibly, the stocking-clad lower leg suspended within Joan Miro's 'Poetic Object' assemblage of 1936), a reciprocal comment, as by-product, on the tendency of advertising, historically, to appropriate or invent its own form of surreal imagery for its own ends of manufacturing desire in the potential consumer, in this instance suggested by the playful eroticism of the feather lightly coming into contact with, brushing, teasing, the area of sensitive, ticklish flesh (which response the original ad's 'copy' unsubtly, unimaginatively makes explicit), that erogenous zone, bared by the shoe's particular 'cut-out' design: such desire was very much an essential element of much Surrealist art, of course, making manifest those aspects of sexual desire, object-centred, hidden within the human subconscious, or unconscious.

By way of what might be a little 'seasonally-affected' departure, TOoT would like to dedicate this particular drawing to the transcendent 'Dotty', whose unfortunate footwear-related predicament, so entertainingly relayed over the course of a sequence of text messages, suffused the afternoon's subsequent drawing process with recurring thoughts of both the situation (which, happily &, one imagines, with considerable relief, resolved itself satisfactorily) &, more generally, the victim.

Soundtrack:

Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'

It's an Ad World Again

graphite & erasers/30x20cm

Following on from the previous example, this drawing was processed, re-mediated, from reference to the source of a second 1960s' print media advertisement for 'Palizzio' shoes...

Soundtrack:


Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
Laura Marling 'I Speak Because I Can'
Rachel Unthank & the Winterset 'The Bairns'
Pontone Autumn Mix

It's an Ad World (a Reprise)

graphite & erasers/30x20cm

It's quite possible that 'Mad Men' withdrawal symptoms (the fourth season of the uber-stylish & compelling period drama recently having ended on BBC TV, as fellow aficionados will be sadly aware) have provided the inspiration & motivation for an otherwise random-seeming search for vintage advertising material which in turn has resulted in the processing of this particular drawing, otherwise I'm at somewhat of a loss to explain its existence.

With precedents occuring during 2008's Project of drawing from existing media image sources, one reason for a return to such is, of course, a strategy of side-stepping the 'seasonally affected disorder' of a lack of natural daylight in which to draw the familiar objects-as-described-by-light, the representationally-challenging play of light across their surfaces & forms, whatever subject/object matter that might at any particular time happen to be, the excuse offered for the falling-off of recent drawing activities.

Thus the drawing represents the intriguingly-composed visual content of a 1960s' magazine advertisement for Palizzio shoes - obviously a desirable item then &, it seems, rather collectible now - divested of any accompanying text, decontextualized & recontextualized within a re-mediated manual mark-making endeavour.

Such mark-making in this specific instance includes the inaugural use of one of the recently invested-in Tombow 'Mono Zero' eraser pens, rather stylish, Japanese manufactured objects as they in themselves are, brought to my attention via Marie Harnett's enthusiastic recommendation of such as essential elements of her materials in the realization of her exquisite & compelling drawings (which practice, as sourced from film stills, would perhaps provide suitable subject for consideration within the scope of the re-mediation explorations).



Soundtrack:


Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding'
She & Him 'Volume Two'
Pontone Autumn Mix

It Seemed So Fitting In Its Way...

Today, the purposeful potterings brought a wonderfully serendipitous roadside find, along the course of the local double black lines markings, of the type that one simply couldn't make up or mock up.


Photographed exactly as found, the 'roakill' in this particular instance, deviating from the habitual aluminium drinks cans, is a representation of a knitted woollen puppet, recognized as being one of a group featured in a series of TV advertisements for the Vauxhall Corsa car, of the usual grimly-fascinating kind: a little light internet research has unearthed the fact that it is actually the character 'White' of the fictional pop band 'The C'mons/C.M.O.N.S', which itself might have been created purely for the purpose of the ads. Given also that these characters appear to indulge in a spot of car-jacking in at least one of the ads, it seems somehow rather appropriate that one of their number should be hoist by its own petard, as it were...

More Ploy of Sex...

Today the opposite of tomato is 'Soft Enough For You'

graphite, putty eraser & watercolour/30x20cm
original source: 'The Times' 29/09/08

The original newspaper photograph from which this drawing was processed provided the image content of the continuation of the pomegranate juice marketing campaign that inspired the recent previously-posted 'Venus' drawing, in this instance pushing the selling of sex(-iness & -uality) that little bit harder. Here, the coy, over-the-shoulder glance recalls a pose such as that of Ingres' 'Grande Odalisque'.


Ingres 'La Grande Odalisque'
oil on canvas/1814

Whilst on the subject generally, it's worth mentioning Barry Hoffman's lavishly illustrated book 'The Fine Art of Advertising' (picked up a while back for a couple of quid, a small victory under the circumstances, perhaps), which, from an ad man's perspective, not uncritically & alive to the many inherent ambiguities of the subject, explores the relationship between art, artists & marketing, its often symbiotic nature & of course the playful, knowing irony with which advertising campaigns habitually appropriate &/or reference iconic images from the tradition of fine art & especially that of Western painting (although it's worth noting that some of the more sexually-inclined art of the East has also, inevitably, provided suitable fodder). All good, thought-provoking & instructive stuff, even if the novelty of the extent to which so-called 'creatives' routinely plunder art with the intention of inspiring desire in order to flog stuff & aspirations soon palls when surveyed in such a fashion, laid out in all its inglorious, mindless banality: but this of course is the very raison d'etre of marketing campaigns, they have a built-in obsolescence before it's quickly time to move on to advertising & selling the very latest 'essential', improved development in commercial, retail culture.
This is why pioneers such as Richard Hamilton & other of the 'Pop' artists & the heirs to their particular tradition, who turned the tables by appropriating images & the visual language of advertising into their art, assume admirable, heroic proportions, by reflecting back to the world for more considered contemplation - aesthetically distanced from the naked hard sell - the sheer dumbness & futility of the endless cycle of consumerism & insatiable desire, visually seductive as it so often is.


Note to self: beware the melancholic consequences of (half or slightly more than) watching reruns of the TV series of 'Brideshead Revisited' (excellent, seductive & absorbing though it remains) whilst also trying to get some art done (at the same time mentally composing drafts of blog posts!) in the all-too-short mere 2-day window of the weekend on a cold, gloomy, grey-turning-to-rain autumnal Saturday...

Soundtrack:


Boards of Canada 'Music Has the Right to Children'
The Sundays 'Reading, Writing & Arithmetic'
Van Morrison 'Moondance'
White Stripes 'White Blood Cells'

The Art of Advertising (Again)

Today the opposite of tomato is 'shaking that ass'


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm
oroginal source: 'Daily Telegraph' 19/09/08

The original newspaper photograph from which this drawing was processed references the popular tradition of the 'Venus' of art history: the female nude in opulent, sensual surroundings, recumbent upon a sumptuously upholstered bed, plump silk pillows & cushions, the chiaroscuro lighting. As the image in its original context serves to illustrate a product advertisement, this quotation confers upon the marketing campaign a sense of this tradition & thus a patina of 'high cultural' authority & respectibility: otherwise, the whole, its combination of visual symbolism (including the pomegranates - split open, the glistening seeds of their interiors available & offered - signifying fertility & abundance as might the model's form) & text, is a frankly sexual 'hard sell', an advertisement of & appeal to sexuality & sexual desire, a naked invitation to buy a product & thus into the improved, idealized, desirable lifestyle it suggests (none-too-subtly) it promotes.

Coincidentally, the newspaper ad appeared & thus the drawing was subsequently inspired & made just prior to the BBC4 rebroadcasting of John Berger's 1970s TV series 'Ways of Seeing' (the book of the same title being an art college staple text), during the course of which the relationship between the tradition of the fine art of European oil painting & contemporary advertising is subjected to rigorous critical scrutiny: the situation remains the same, albeit we live in more explicit times now, 35 years on, & the veneer of sophistication with which advertising coats & attempts to mask its fundamental, naked aim has worn thinner still. However, for all the banal crassness of the original context, the image proved most seductive in terms of processing as a tonal study of form - a tribute, perhaps to its art historical source.

The focus of the image (&, incidentally, the accompanying text) brought vividly to mind such nudes from art history as Velasquez's so-called 'Rokeby' Venus & another of Boucher's. I recall fondly how the Rokeby Venus was a particular favourite & object of desire of a college art history professor & also, during the course of another TV programme, was referred to as "the most smackable arse in the history of art"...


Velasquez 'The Toilet of Venus'
oil on canvas/1647 - 51


Boucher 'Girl Reclining (Marie-Louise O'Murphy)'
oil on canvas/1752

A particular signifier of just how compelling the 'Rokeby' Venus remains can be found at the Velasquez Venus Project, a fascinating attempt by the painter Joseph Dawson to create his own personal take on the theme of the Venus With a Mirror, which blog charts his progress from conception to completion of his transcription & the resulting image.

The Art of Advertising (Continued)

graphite & coloured pencil/20x30cm
original source: 'The Times' 08/04/08

Another transcription today of an image taken from a newspaper advertisement, re/de-contextualized by the removal of any accompanying text, logos, branding, etc, & stranger yet for that. I particularly liked, from an aesthetic perspective, the turquoise chair in the original image & decided to transcribe this as faithfully as possible, thus introducing an element of colour into the thus-far purely monochrome Project (some of the original photographs previously used as source material have been reproduced in the relevant newspaper in colour but represented as monochrome graphite drawings, this being The Project's habitual mode & one of its defining aesthetic characteristics &, indeed, criteria).

The original image has, of course, been subject to manipulation, thus already lending it the air of a piece of art with an element of invention &/or fantasy about it, infusing it with a dreamlike quality that advertising so often attempts to achieve & communicate in its effort to sell product & lifestyle, so it's quite interesting to reclaim something of this, the 'taking out of life' into a perceived higher realm, for art.

Soundtrack:


Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 'Abattoir Blues' & 'The Lyre of Orpheus'

It's a Mad, Ad World...

Today the opposite of tomato is 'Lost in Translation'


graphite/30x20cm
original source: ‘The Times’ 10/03/08

The appeal of this source photographic image, culled from a newspaper advertisement for men’s shaving foam, resided initially & most obviously in its incorporation of the old faithful modernist grid into its composition (see a selection of recent previous entries & drawings): in this instance the checkered background recalling something like Carl Andre’s floor piece ‘Steel-Magnesium Plain’ (once immersed in visual art, it’s impossible not to see it everywhere & thus be able to refer to it, to be living ‘the life aesthetic’).


Carl Andre ‘Steel-Magnesium Plain’

However, another pleasurable aspect presents itself: that of being able to appropriate into an art context an image from the world of advertising & commerce, & thus reverse the more familiar flow of traffic of this relationship. In such an instance, one might refer to the work of Richard Prince, who visually sampled newspaper advertisements as an act of ‘appropriation art’ & went on to rephotograph other particularly American consumer icons such as the Marlboro man , thus giving to them an ambiguous depth & unsettling, thought-provoking quality previously lacking.


Richard Prince ‘Cowboy’

Despite the acts of desecration advertising habitually, ritually visits upon images & ideas culled from art, I can’t help sometimes loving the dumbness & cheesiness of advertising images, the utter fatuous crassness of so much visual advertising, the fakery of the ideal world-to-be-aspired-to it strives, so hard in such a facile manner, to create, & this image provides a fine instance of such, not least in the sense of smug self-regard of the figure admiring his handiwork in the alluded-to mirror, etc. In the transcribed drawing, removed from the context of the product it is promoting & the lifestyle claims of the accompanying text, it seems even more absurd: this might be an aspect to be pursued…

All this seems to tie in nicely with the current TV broadcasting on BBC4 of the ‘Mad Men’ series, a thus-far (2 episodes in) interesting dramatic recreation of & peek into the murky depths (or perhaps ‘shallows’ is more appropriate in such a context) of the world of the 1960s Madison Avenue world of advertising, adding another note of topicality to this particular drawing.

And yes, I am aware of the irony of the ‘appeal’ (undeniable, sometimes) of images taken from advertising, given an innately critical attitude to the world of…
On a related matter, there’s an interesting article on the work of Richard Prince, particularly the comment upon how, acquired & displayed by wealthy collectors, thus commodified itself, such work becomes an advertisement for the brand-name of the artist himself.

Soundtrack:

Lambchop ‘Aw, C’mon’, ‘No, You C’mon’, ‘Damaged’
Belle & Sebastian ‘The Life Pursuit’
Sigur Ros ‘Takk’
‘Test Match Special’