Back of the Net...

Today the opposite of tomato is 'a man who's nostalgically prone'


graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/30x20cm

Another return to previously-featured subject matter over this last week, but on this occasion with rather more of a purpose than would have incidentally been the case with any past instances as occurring during 2008’s Project of drawing from media image sources.
At that time, I mused upon the general paucity of football featuring as suitable subject matter for representation within the context of fine art &, indeed, despite a long-standing interest in the game, constant with certain fluctuations of intensity, it’s not something that’s particularly inspired me in creative terms, at least since after childhood & the serious study & continuing practice of art.

However, a certain correspondence of recent circumstances seems to have ignited a little flicker of possibility for the production, for now, of some drawing based upon archive photographs of professional football match action as found in a small (but perfectly formed) selection of late 1960s – early 1970s annuals that have come into my possession of late: rather serendipitously, this covers the latter half of the period about which I always seem to have been most nostalgic, both in general socio-cultural terms & specifically in relation to football, despite it immediately pre-dating the time at which I began following the game in earnest.
The annuals themselves are full of the black & white photography of the time that lends a particular glamour to the action & the portraits of the players featured within, & it is these images that will provide the source material for the drawings, a series of, as imagined & intended.


As always, aside from this especial ‘period’ aesthetic quality, another aspect of the appeal of such images is their capture of movement, of human bodies & objects, frozen in time, emphasizing the instantaneous nature of the ‘photographic moment’, with the drawing process from any such source then in turn emphasizing its difference from via the medium of the explicit, discrete marks made, each of which has its own temporality embedded within, the accumulation of marks in any given drawing communicating a sense of the passage of time involved in its construction - quite literally ‘marking time’, it might be said.
Again, the still-nascent concept of ‘de-photography’ comes to mind, & how the (slowness of the) drawing process embodies this, particularly, perhaps, from such sources as images depicting action in the manner of the football matches.
Further to the practice of ‘de-photography’, the drawing is the product of details appropriated from two source images, thus depicting an incident that never actually took place, revising (photographic) history along the way.

The design of the back cover of the 'All Stars' annual, featuring an ink-drawn representation of a pair of footballers in action only served to provide more inspiration, as might be appreciated...


By way of further explication of the overall appearance of the drawing, the acquisition of the football annuals happened to coincide with the decision to invest in the rather wonderful ‘Own Brand’, a visual history of the work of Sainsbury’s in-house design studio, the results of which, obviously, went on to grace the packaging of their own brand range of goods & products, not least those as appeared on the stores’ shelves during the halcyon days of the 1960s & 1970s, many a delightful example of which is represented within the pages of this handsome volume: the keen viewer might appreciate how the cover design itself, visually quoting as it does a classic Sainsbury’s ‘cornflakes’ packet design of the author’s fond recollection, influenced the design aspect of the football drawing, the arrangement of circles suggesting the faces of the crowd as seen, en masse & homogenized out of focus, as the background to the on-pitch action in the archetypal football match photograph.
By one of those serendipitous quirks, this particular aspect was in fact that upon which I must have concentrated, recalling the drawing I made based on the very first televised football match I ever showed an interest in, the 1974 FA Cup Final, obsessively recording a multitude of pink felt-pen circles representing what appeared the vast crowd at the expense of drawing the Newcastle United team’s shirts with horizontal rather than their correct vertical black & white stripes, as my father critically observed later!


On the subject of aesthetic influence as it pertains to the current drawing, another recent addition to the library shelves happens to be ‘Match Day’, an illustrated survey, ‘from Post-war to Premiership’ (i.e. 1992) as it’s subtitled, & celebration of football programme cover design, featuring all 92 Football League clubs & some additional examples from ‘non-league’, coincidentally also published, as the Sainsbury’s book, by Fuel. Again, such a volume presents a veritable cornucopia of delights of graphic design, some of a higher standard than others, very often incorporating photographic images of football action, as one might imagine, both something of a nostalgia-fest & grist to the creative mill under the present circumstances.



Soundtrack:


Belle & Sebastian 'Write About Love'
Galaxie 500 'The Peel Sessions'
Dome '1 & 2'
Moon Wiring Club 'Shoes Off and Chairs Away'

Handy Find

Almost mid-way through February seems rather late to be posting the first fruits of the drawing practice of the month, so, without further ado:


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Harking back to 2008’s Project here at TOoT, essentially engaged with the graphite representation of media photographs (preferably suggesting some form of art-historical contextual affiliation) as they occurred in the press over the course of the year, the source image from which the drawing was processed was found one day recently whilst browsing the G2 section of The Guardian, & proved irresistibly attractive as a suitable case for further study & such treatment.

The picture is so rich, in terms of its 1960s period appeal, the wonderful, ineffably sad face of Tony Hancock, pictured in conference with the writers Alan Simpson & Ray Galton, the tonal chiaroscuro so redolent of the history of European painting from the Renaissance to the 19th century (consider Caravaggio, Velasquez & Rembrandt as but three examples) &, particularly, the ‘Caraveggiesque’ gesture of Hancock’s extended hand, observed in perspective, which recalls a number of instances as occur in the paintings of Caravaggio & his ‘Supper at Emmaus’ most specifically, perhaps (indeed, the whole subject of the photograph implies such a gathering, it seems to be very much in the tradition of, with the composition of figures seated around a table top arrangement of receptacles, cutlery, food & drink. The bearded profile of Galton, too, to the right, seems familiar from any number of painted historical precedents).


Caravaggio 'Supper at Emmaus' 1601-02
oil on canvas/195x139cm

The immediate source from which the drawing was processed was in fact a photocopy (as had become the development in practice when the media photograph project continued for a while into 2009), a further layer of representation & distance from source, the image thus degraded slightly from its appearance in the printed newspaper, with certain losses of tonal subtlety &, accordingly, detail: the G2 ‘original’ was subsequently referred to if occasional particular issues for the requirement of clarification occurred.

The nature of the specific print of the photograph in the newspaper, across a two-page spread, creating a definite split of the image into two (unequally sized) halves, & the photocopy of this physical manifestation, significantly informed the transcription into drawing, with the space of this fissure incorporated into the picture plane as an active element: it’s particularly notable how this space divides the extended hand. Given the nature of this particular formal quality, &, subsequently, that of the drawing as informed by, &, of course, considerations of the relative slowness of the drawing process in relation to the photographic one (even allowing for the time involved in the developing of the original print from the negative of the image as photographed instantaneously), thoughts have returned to the concept of ‘de-photography’ (first mooted & mused-upon during November 2008), whereby the representation from source(s) becomes a significantly different, separate entity.

Tiffin Time

A veritable treat indeed today, especially for anyone with inclinations towards & familiarity with the work of the Moon Wiring Club: slab cake to accompany the tea at 'wirk'...

Mist Again

Despite previous implications of not wanting to devote visual operations exclusively to the photographic recording of the view beyond the back garden fence, still we find ourselves aesthetically seduced by the scene of the playing field as wreathed in mist, in the encroaching gloom of the late afternoon, captured on this occasion in appropriately grainy fashion, with overall pictorial detail being lost to general atmosphere. From the vantage point of the camera, the distant glow of orange light, the one sign of brightness & life to be observed in the romantic desolation of the scene, finds itself neatly perched at the junction of goalpost & crossbar, a neat pictorial highlight.

Foggy Notion

Without wishing proceedings here at TOoT to become fixated upon the prevailing atmospheric conditions outdoors, yet we (re)present here the latest prospect of the field beyond the back garden fence as pictured soon after daybreak this morning, in its fog-shrouded state still exerting a romantically melancholy attraction. On this particular occasion, note the almost-disappearance of the more distant set of goalposts into the enveloping fog, lending the scene, with merely the near posts remaining effectively visible, a more desolate, abandoned air again.

Another Mist Opportunity...

A familiar scene by now, of the view over the back garden fence, mossily patinated, of the field with goalposts beyond, this evening wreathed in a light mist through which can be seen palely shining the moon, which turns thoughts to the 'Wiring Club' of that ilk, accompanying those of similarities to the aesthetic of George Shaw that inform such a picture, of a certain banality, melancholy & yet also perversely romantic as it seems.

...Plus One

Today the opposite of tomato is the meaning of life, the universe & everything...

Despite the previous reservations expressed about the potential & purpose of pursuing the drawing of blanks again, a recent find of a small sheet of paper, retrieved last Friday evening from a restaurant floor, proved too enticing not to consider as suitable subject-object matter &, consequently, for active contemplation through the drawing process over the course of the weekend.


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Again, the folding & crumpling to which the paper has been subjected transform it into more of a three-dimensional object than it presents in its ‘pure’, unadulterated state, its creased, undulating surface catching the play of the natural daylight passing across it, creating highlights & falling into shadow.
The printed number 43 - which compromises the integrity of the page’s ‘blankness’, of course - suggests the sheet formerly formed part of a pad, from which is has been torn, & might also provide something of a correspondence with examples of visual art employing numerals as nothing more significant than a formal device, not least those of our old friend Jasper Johns, particularly in the unassuming, impersonal nature of the font used.

Soundtrack:


Belle & Sebastian 'Write About Love'
Moon Wiring Club 'Somewhere a Fox is Getting Married'
K-Punk 'The Metaphysics of Crackle'

A return too for another of TOoT’s old favourite features & a corking little soundtrack to boot – finally catching up, belatedly in the (mostly) habitual fashion (although there’s late & there’s absurdly so), with ‘Write About Love’, which proved most entertaining &, on first listen at least, provided the usual Belle & Sebastian tingle during ‘The Ghost of Rockschool’; being drawn ever more deeply into the dark & brooding recesses of the Moon Wiring Club’s commemorative ‘celebrations’, & experiencing some more metaphysical interference via K-Punk’s mixtape.

[untitled]

A rather splendid find at the conclusion of a pleasant Sunday afternoon, with this intact pear, atmospherically illuminated by the surrounding streetlighting, laying at rest in the roadside before the kerb, thus succinctly conflating a pair of the abiding formal & environmental visual interests here at TOoT, & forming a most aesthetic scene (not unlike the Spanish still life tradition of fruit/objects observed against black background voids), with the ground in this instance exhibiting strong formal structure & subtle modulations of both tone & texture…

Drawing a Blank Again

Something of a ‘return to yesterday’ over the last couple of weeks, at least in terms of the production of the drawing presented here & the subject-object matter it represents: such revisitations, of varying degrees of fleetingness, seem of course to have constituted a significant part of the norm over the last year or so here at TOoT, in the ongoing search for a project of suitable definition & rigour with which to become productively engaged.


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

This object as actively contemplated & represented through the drawing process, then, harks back to October-November 2010 & the drawings of ‘blanks’, those folded & lightly crumpled sheets of paper devoid of any added surface content in the way of imagery or written or printed text, white monochrome low relief 3D objects subject to the play of natural light in the manner of any other.

This particular small piece of paper (which is serving as a bookmark as the reading of the Jasper Johns ‘Gray’ volume proceeds, with great interest & not without a certain relevance to this particular object & the drawing of), represented at a life-size scale, displays the traditional grid pattern as a consequence of the folding, creasing & unfolding to which it has been subjected, & a range of subtly-modulated tones across its surface, but also has a significance other than its object-quality, having a handwritten personal dedication on its verso, hints of which are visible through the surface as light passes fugitively through as well as across it, these being recorded accordingly as subtle-ish marks upon the surface.

Although this drawing was processed in nothing like as laborious a technique as the late-2010 examples (which also involved many a subtle wash of watercolour over the initial graphite foundations), still the difficulty of producing much work in the available daylight at this dark, gloomy, compromised time of year presented itself - progress was frustratingly slow & fragmentary, providing a reminder as to why the original series-as-potential-project was abandoned as being temporally untenable, however much one might be inclined towards & wish to subscribe to the concept & practice of the ‘slow life’: a caution, perhaps, against considerations of continuing such an endeavour now, when the imperative should be to draw as often & long as possible.

On Affairs of Style & Sound

A fashionable digression today, in response to an article in yesterday’s Guardian on the subject of an admiration for & inspiration by the sartorial style of David Hockney, otherwise in the news for his current exhibition of landscapes, ‘A Bigger Picture’, at the Royal Academy.
As regards what he might be wearing rather than painting, however, in a related incident late last year Hockney appeared pictured in the November issue of ‘Artists & Illustrators’, resplendent in a knitted tie, thus following the style lead of TOoT as premiered earlier in the year & sported rather fetchingly since, in the contexts of both business & pleasure/leisure: something that perhaps, should be the preferred choice of artists & aesthetes, debonair yet with a certain bohemian air. The estimable Lord Whimsy too has been known to affect ‘the look’, or at least his own idiosyncratic take on it.


Hockney, indeed, has obviously had a thing for horizontally-striped ties (although not necessarily of the knitted variety, for all that the straight end of this illustrated example suggests it might be) since way back, if the drawing 'My Suit and Tie' from 1971 & which image graces the cover of the hardback edition of his 'Drawing Retrospective' volume is any sort of guide.


By one of those serendipitous coincidences that have occurred in these parts on previous occasions, I had only yesterday morning taken delivery of a fresh consignment of knitted ties, thus:


Also pictured is one of the ties as worn, without further ado, with shirt, at ‘wirk’ (note also the Duchampian object in the background – one has to find art where one can!): in such an affronting environment, one has to try & rise above the circumstances & the hoi polloi, not least through one’s apparel & devotion to one’s style…


Finally on the general subject of ties & art, some examples of Fabian Peake's painting from the early-to-mid 1980s featuring just such iconography can be found here, here & here.

Further to yesterday’s cultural matters, A & I were later privileged to attend a performance of Sounds Affairs’ musical accompaniment to 'Salomé' (a fabulously-designed treasure of early arthouse silent cinematic history), a compelling combination of live percussion (with four black-attired musicians arranged within a pair of two-tiered metal-framed open tower structures flanking either side of the screen) & recorded voices, the sonic & visual elements of the event mutually enhancing each other, an exhilarating experience indeed.



We also had the opportunity to peruse an extensive exhibition of the paintings, mostly large scale with some of smaller format also included, of Emrys Williams, of, one might say, imaginative spaces, interior & exterior, the imagery familiar in its details yet strange in their conjunctions & juxtapositions - indeed, depicting forms of both exterior & interior reality, 'topographies of the mind', to paraphrase the intriguing artist's own words, with a pleasing aesthetic dialogue between the structure of the drawing & looseness of painterly technique.

Also on view was an exhibition of photographic work by the members of North Wales-based collective Photernative: particularly enjoyable was a grid-format multiple-image piece by Ewart Hulse entitled 'Urban Forest', which can be seen in the photograph below (in the lower left corner), illustrating another exhibition context, featuring various examples of telegraph poles & pylons & the cables strung between, observed against the sky, very much up TOoT's formal & aesthetic street.