Artists' Christmas Cards

Herbert Bayer

Good luck and best wishes to all those who have been following my various posts during this last year. It has been a hard year to process, what with the continuing war in Ukraine, Gaza, the crisis in Syria, the escalating violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a worsening crisis in Sudan, the tragedy of Afghanistan, famine in Ethiopia and civil war in Yemen. Elections have been held on both sides of the Atlantic and with any change of government comes an associated uncertainty as to what the future will bring. Let us find hope that things will pan out for the best next year. 

Christmas is a festival that celebrates birth. A birth is always uplifting as it offers the expectations associated with new life. It suggests a new beginning, a chance for a new human to become something wonderful. 

Herbert Bayer: 1941

This image of hands by Bayer, is perhaps due a revisit in these troubled times. The fingers are stained with blood and yet also tipped in virginal snow. We are seen by hands that have had a busy year, human kindness has been in short supply, but the point about a mid-winter festival is that spring is coming and under the snow new growth is ready to emerge. Let's hope the white tipped fingers are a sign of coming peace. 

I have chosen another motley bunch of artists this year, each of whom was either persuaded or decided to make an effort and come up with a Christmas card, which shows how the festive season impacts on artists of all sorts, whether they are abstractionists, conceptualists or realists, all wanting to celebrate the yearly ritual of the winter solstice in one way or other. I particularly like the way that Jacques Lipchitz makes a meal of the word 'FROM', the 'MERRY CHRISTMAS' part seems as if it is a bit of an afterthought, as if he started by being asked to write out a label for a present, and then perhaps his wife Berthe Lipchitz, (the Russian poet Berthe Kitrosse) said it wasn't Christmassy enough, so he added an attempt at a tree, which failed, so he just added a jaunty on its side 'Merry'.

Jacques Lipchitz: 1947

Alfonso Assorio is the only artist in this small collection who you feel was actually a practicing Christian, who needed to find an image that carried his feelings about his faith. He had this to say about religion; “Religion must aim to inspire awe, to awe man with the splendour of his existence. By a set of unexpected juxtapositions, it must put you in a state of realisation of how splendid things can be, even if they are horrible.” His card does seem still appropriate for a time of war and strife. 

Alfonso Assorio

Max Weber was Polish Jewish and his 'Best Christmas and a Happy New Year' signing of his woodcut, suggests that he has by now fully assimilated himself into American culture. His image that is designed to channel the visual power of old European folk traditions, softened by a statement that could be found on countless millions of Christmas cards sent out every year. 

Max Weber: 1950

Nathan Gluck was Andy Warhol’s principle studio assistant from the early 1950s through to the mid-1960s, initially working in Warhol’s pre-Pop commercial art studio, he was with him as he evolved into the man who ran the Factory; so he was involved in Warhol's emergence from the world of graphics, into the world of fine art. For myself Gluck is a reminder that the differences between design and fine art are far less important than the similarities. In designing this Christmas card, Gluck is operating like a good graphic designer and a good fine artist. He brings together colour, texture and text in a neat idea. Every snow flake is supposed to be different, changing constantly as it encounters different conditions of humidity and vapour levels as it falls through the atmosphere, no one flake, ever experiencing exactly the same journey. Finger prints are also seen to be symbols of uniqueness.  By printing his finger prints off in white they become in effect falling snow. But putting these white blobs on a red background is the clever moment, as we are visually reminded of the white pom-poms that sit on the apex of a Santa hat. Year 62 opening with a snow fall that suggests a coming year of unique individual creativity, a year that will see Warhol produce both Campbell's Soup and Marilyn images. 

Nathan Gluck: 1962

Saturnalia was the Roman festival that took place around the same time as our current Christmas. The god Saturn taught humans how to sow seeds and harvest crops, and he emphasised the importance of peace to a society founded upon war; an idea that I'm sure the people of Syria would love to see taken up again. Saturn is an old God, in Greek myth he is Kronos, a Titan and father of Zeus. He is also a son of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky). Like Christmas, Saturnalia was celebrated by good eating, drinking, gift-giving, and having a good time. The small gifts that were exchanged were done to bring good luck and a bountiful harvest in the coming year, something that depended on the unfolding of the seasons, a process Kronos, as the God of time, was in control of. 
Gaia is of course still with us, central to the idea that the Earth is a self-regulating system of living organisms and the environments that host them; life on Earth being maintained by a complex system of interactions that both create and regulate the conditions that support it. Think of this post as a small gift that I offer to anyone who reads it, and as you hopefully accept this gift, I make a wish for the coming year:

I wish for a growing awareness of our world's fragility 

Of a dawning realisation that peace is a possibility, even in the hearts of those that hate

And that the Earth and all its creatures will survive to face a wonderful future

See also:

2014: Christmas cards

2018: Christmas cards

2019: Christmas cards

2020: Christmas cards

2021: Christmas cards

Life lines

Ostraca

A satirical scene

In ancient Egypt, when the artists who drew out the formal designs for tomb walls or sculptures had to try out ideas or just draw for fun, the most available surfaces to work on were the fragments of stone sliced off the reliefs and statues that were being carved all around them. We can forget sometimes that before carving could commence, drawings were made on the surfaces of the stone as guides for the carvers, but of course as soon as the carving work was underway, the drawings were lost. The people who made those drawings were artists and they would have wanted to make ideas visible far more interesting than the formal figures that they were having to draw for their day job, so I suspect that the satirical scene above, is just the tip of the iceberg of a body of images that have yet to be really explored.
These small, often insignificant drawings were called ostraca, and they were used for a variety of purposes at different times and by different cultures, all of which practiced stone carving as their main means of creating official forms of visual art.
As well as being used like small sketchbooks, sometimes these shards were used in the same way as note pads, places to jot down private thoughts, shopping lists or 'to do' notes.

Ostrakon scratched into a terracotta shard inscribed with 'Kimon [son] of Miltiades'

Shards of broken pottery were also used for the same purpose, (a single shard of pottery is called an ostrakon) and because these shards were so ubiquitous, sometimes they developed a more formal use, for instance in Greece, they were used like voting papers and there was a ceremony that took its name from their use, 'the ostrakismos', during which people could scratch into a shard of pottery, the name of anyone who deserved to be banished. If enough people voted for a particular person, they could be banished for ten years, thus giving rise to the concept we now call ostracism. I'm afraid as this blog is also concerned with embodied meaning, I ought to bring up the fact that broken pottery shards were also used for anal hygiene, whereby a curse was placed on the to be exiled individual by literally soiling their name. This is another example of what I have termed an 'externalised idea', a bringing out of the body, what was an embodied thought and creating an object to contain it. In doing this humans could communicate with other humans thoughts that originated invisibly inside them.

From the time of the Roman Empire, ostraka have been found that were used to document the activities of the Roman army, so they were also used as a recording device. 

I was fascinated by these things because I have always found notebooks and sketchbooks to be a vital part of my own practice, whether they are for working out ideas, documenting what I have seen, recording a thought or just jotting down a 'to do' list.

Limestone ostracon depicting a cat, a boy, and a mouse magistrate

Egyptian ostracon: Walters Art Museum

I think the stubble beard is a sign of mourning, and the hands are obviously try outs. There is something wonderful to be taken from the idea of a pharaoh needing a shave, it brings the god like figure right down to earth. These drawn on shards reminding us that all those marvellous structures of ancient times, were the product of people, who had everyday lives like us all. 

They enjoyed sex.

And the children the sex created were also allowed to draw on the same fragments of stone.

Children's ostracon drawings: Athribis, Egypt

Once you have children you need to tell them stories and it looks as if the ostracon below might have been an early attempt to illustrate one of those stories.

A cat herding geese

I was reminded that in my own sketchbooks I used to illustrate stories and songs for the children, such as the 'Frog he would a wooing go'.

Next to come in was Mrs. Cow, uh-huh

Next to come in was Mrs. Cow, uh-huh

Next to come in was Mrs. Cow

She tried to dance but she didn't know how, uh-huh

He took Miss Mousey on his knee, uh-huh

He took Miss Mousey on his knee, uh-huh

He took Miss Mousey on his knee

Said, "Please Miss Mousey, will you marry me ?" uh-huh

Things change but they stay the same.

See also:

Sketchbooks

Frances Alys uses a sketchbook: More on an artist and play

Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis is the verbal or written representation of a visual representation. It is often used as a way to stage an encounter between mediums, a sort of test bed whereby you can gage either the effectiveness of one or the other in terms of its communicative ability, or to judge the poetry of the experience. Therefore in terms of writing, ekphrasis is often thought of as a poetic form, but it doesn't have to be and there was much, I think I remember, written about the difference in approach to ekphasis between Greek and Roman writers. The Greeks insisting that recited poetry was the pure form and that prose was a more debased form of writing. True ekphrasis therefore being a verbal representation of a visual representation.

The use of ekphrasis as a rhetorical device is usually traced back to Homer's description of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad. Homer uses a long description of the shield and its making as a sort of interlude in the poem, a space in a fast paced narrative, whereby the everyday scenes that make up the decoration of the shield, give us a vision of the ordinary lives of non-heroic Greeks. (Ordinary in those days still including lots of gore and fighting) This interlude gives us the necessary mental space to contemplate the coming horror of superhuman action and emotions. Achilles has heard that Patrocolus his old friend from boyhood is dead, not just that but he died pretending to be Achilles, as he thought by doing this he could galvanise the troops to follow him in a Greek victory; as Achilles had at the time refused to fight. The armour Achilles had lent him now stripped from the body by Hector, and because of this Achilles now falls into an intense rage striding out in front of the battlefield with flames burning from his head, terrifying the Trojans as he screams both for vengeance and the stupidity of his own actions.

Perhaps time to set up that encounter between mediums. Achilles' mother the sea goddess Thetis, goes to the God Hephaestus and pleads for him to make new armour to replace that taken from the body of Patrocolus by Hector. Hephaestus agrees to make the armour and as he does Homer develops a vivid description of the shield as it emerges from his workshop forging. This is the passage in full:

First fashioned he a shield, great and sturdy, adorning it cunningly in every part, and round about it set a bright rim, threefold and glittering, and therefrom made fast a silver baldric. Five were the layers of the shield itself; and on it he wrought many curious devices with cunning skill. Therein he wrought the earth, therein the heavens therein the sea, and the unwearied sun, and the moon at the full, and therein all the constellations wherewith heaven is crowned—the Pleiades, and the Hyades and the mighty Orion, and the Bear, that men call also the Wain, that circleth ever in her place, and watcheth Orion, and alone hath no part in the baths of Ocean. Therein fashioned he also two cities of mortal men exceeding fair. In the one there were marriages and feastings, and by the light of the blazing torches they were leading the brides from their bowers through the city, and loud rose the bridal song. And young men were whirling in the dance, and in their midst flutes and lyres sounded continually; and there the women stood each before her door and marvelled. But the folk were gathered in the place of assembly; for there a strife had arisen, and two men were striving about the blood-price of a man slain; the one avowed that he had paid all, declaring his cause to the people, but the other refused to accept aught; and each was fain to win the issue on the word of a daysman. Moreover, the folk were cheering both, shewing favour to this side and to that. And heralds held back the folk, and the elders were sitting upon polished stones in the sacred circle, holding in their hands the staves of the loud-voiced heralds. Therewith then would they spring up and give judgment, each in turn. And in the midst lay two talents of gold, to be given to him whoso among them should utter the most righteous judgment. But around the other city lay in leaguer two hosts of warriors gleaming in armour. And twofold plans found favour with them, either to lay waste the town or to divide in portions twain all the substance that the lovely city contained within. Howbeit the besieged would nowise hearken thereto, but were arming to meet the foe in an ambush. The wall were their dear wives and little children guarding,  as they stood thereon, and therewithal the men that were holden of old age; but the rest were faring forth, led of Ares and Pallas Athene, both fashioned in gold, and of gold was the raiment wherewith they were clad. Goodly were they and tall in their harness, as beseemeth gods, clear to view amid the rest, and the folk at their feet were smaller. But when they were come to the place where it seemed good unto them to set their ambush, in a river-bed where was a watering-place for all herds alike, there they sate them down, clothed about with flaming bronze. Thereafter were two scouts set by them apart from the host, waiting till they should have sight of the sheep and sleek cattle. And these came presently, and two herdsmen followed with them playing upon pipes; and of the guile wist they not at all. But the liers-in-wait, when they saw these coming on, rushed forth against them and speedily cut off the herds of cattle and fair flocks of white-fleeced sheep, and slew the herdsmen withal. But the besiegers, as they sat before the places of gathering and heard much tumult among the kine, mounted forthwith behind their high-stepping horses, and set out thitherward, and speedily came upon them. Then set they their battle in array and fought beside the river banks, and were ever smiting one another with bronze-tipped spears. And amid them Strife and Tumult joined in the fray, and deadly Fate, grasping one man alive, fresh-wounded, another without a wound, and another she dragged dead through the mellay by the feet; and the raiment that she had about her shoulders was red with the blood of men. Even as living mortals joined they in the fray and fought; and they were haling away each the bodies of the others' slain. Therein he set also soft fallow-land, rich tilth and wide, that was three times ploughed; and ploughers full many therein were wheeling their yokes and driving them this way and that. And whensoever after turning they came to the headland of the field, then would a man come forth to each and give into his hands a cup of honey-sweet wine; and the ploughmen would turn them in the furrows, eager to reach the headland of the deep tilth. And the field grew black behind and seemed verily as it had been ploughed, for all that it was of gold; herein was the great marvel of the work. Therein he set also a king's demesne-land, wherein labourers were reaping, bearing sharp sickles in their hands. Some handfuls were falling in rows to the ground along the swathe, while others the binders of sheaves were binding with twisted ropes of straw. Three binders stood hard by them, while behind them boys would gather the handfuls, and bearing them in their arms would busily give them to the binders; and among them the king, staff in hand, was standing in silence at the swathe, joying in his heart. And heralds apart beneath an oak were making ready a feast, and were dressing a great ox they had slain for sacrifice; and the women sprinkled the flesh with white barley in abundance, for the workers' mid-day meal. Therein he set also a vineyard heavily laden with clusters, a vineyard fair and wrought of gold; black were the grapes, and the vines were set up throughout on silver poles. And around it he drave a trench of cyanus, and about that a fence of tin; and one single path led thereto, whereby the vintagers went and came, whensoever they gathered the vintage. And maidens and youths in childish glee were bearing the honey-sweet fruit in wicker baskets. And in their midst a boy made pleasant music with a clear-toned lyre, and thereto sang sweetly the Linos-song with his delicate voice; and his fellows beating the earth in unison therewith followed on with bounding feet mid dance and shoutings. And therein he wrought a herd of straight-horned kine: the kine were fashioned of gold and tin, and with lowing hasted they forth from byre to pasture beside the sounding river, beside the waving reed. And golden were the herdsmen that walked beside the kine, four in number, and nine dogs swift of foot followed after them. But two dread lions amid the foremost kine were holding a loud-lowing bull, and he, bellowing mightily, was haled of them, while after him pursued the dogs and young men. The lions twain had rent the hide of the great bull, and were devouring the inward parts and the black blood, while the herdsmen vainly sought to fright them, tarring on the swift hounds. Howbeit these shrank from fastening on the lions, but stood hard by and barked and sprang aside. Therein also the famed god of the two strong arms wrought a pasture in a fair dell, a great pasture of white-fleeced sheep, and folds, and roofed huts, and pens. Therein furthermore the famed god of the two strong arms cunningly wrought a dancing-floor like unto that which in wide Cnosus Daedalus fashioned of old for fair-tressed Ariadne. There were youths dancing and maidens of the price of many cattle, holding their hands upon the wrists one of the other. Of these the maidens were clad in fine linen, while the youths wore well-woven tunics faintly glistening with oil; and the maidens had fair chaplets, and the youths had daggers of gold hanging from silver baldrics. Now would they run round with cunning feet exceeding lightly, as when a potter sitteth by his wheel that is fitted between his hands and maketh trial of it whether it will run; and now again would they run in rows toward each other. And a great company stood around the lovely dance, taking joy therein; and two tumblers whirled up and down through the midst of them as leaders in the dance. Therein he set also the great might of the river Oceanus, around the uttermost rim of the strongly-wrought shield. 

The Iliad Book 18, lines 478–608

Ekphrasis allows Homer two layers of communication, the first and most important via the scenes as they are laid out around the shield, which are set out rather like the script for a graphic novel and secondly those references to the metalwork that has been worked on in the forge of Hephaestus, whereby Homer points to the selective use of tin, gold, silver etc. thus materially reenforcing the narrative. 

I have thought myself that the structure of the shield might have been based on one of the forms of memory recall devices that were used before the development of writing as an everyday recording device. Memory palaces or theatres as they have been called, all of which are basically structures you can mentally walk through and as you did you could retrieve parts of a long complicated narrative that you needed to remember. (All described in detail in Frances Yates: The Art of Memory). 

One way of visually organising the shield

The text feels quite long, but it was originally meant to be spoken, or recited, a particular 'poetic' voice would have intoned this epic poem and as it is such a long piece, I suspect specialists would have developed all sorts of 'tricks of the trade' to ensure they both remembered what they had to declaim and that they had the necessary voice control to ensure a proper emphasis was placed on the different emotional encounters we are taken into.

The translation of this passage into a visual object is another fascinating aspect of the ekphrasis encounter.

Alexander Pope
Diagram for Achilles’ Shield 

The poet Alexander Pope decided to rewrite the Iliad for an 18th century audience and as part of his research he decided to make a diagram of the shield, one not unlike the diagram already used. What is interesting here is that a visual methodology, the diagram, is being used by a wordsmith, the poet in order to come to a better understanding of another poet's words.

The Victorians were fascinated by Classical Greek culture and as they prided themselves that their own culture had great craftsmen too, copies of what was an imaginary object were commissioned.

Rundell, Bridge and Rundell, the London-based royal goldsmiths and jewellers, used 24 drawings and 5 models drawn up and made by John Flaxman over a period of approximately seven years, to create a copy of the shield. He received a first payment of 100 guineas 'for the beautiful design of the shield of Achilles' and a further payment of £200 for the designs on 4 January 1817 and a payment of £525 for the models on 20 January 1818. (Approximately £80,000 in today's money) The final model probably made in wax or clay, was then cast in plaster, and the finer details carved into it. Three bronze casts were made, followed by five cast in silver, one of which was bought by George IV in early 1821 and which remains in the Royal Collection.

Rundell, Bridge and Rundell: The Shield of Achilles

John Flaxman: War: Design for the shield of Achilles

1832 illustration: Unknown artist

Angelo Monticelli (1778 – 1837)

As well as Flaxman's designs and Rundell, Bridge and Rundell's recreation, several artists were commissioned to make illustrations based on Homer's text. What is fascinating is that eventually the shield settles down into a visual idea, one fashioned by drawing, rather than making, which is interesting, especially that I haven't seen any references to recreations trying to make for example; "a vineyard fair and wrought of gold; black were the grapes, and the vines were set up throughout on silver poles"; a series of visual effects that were made, I presume, in Homer's imagination, by welding and / or embedding different materials together.

So what was made initially "out of a mouthful of air", as the poet Yates would put it, was eventually written down in Greek, translated into English via Latin and French versions and this one particular imaginary object, was then reverse engineered via its visualisation through drawing, to be eventually reconstructed as an actual metal shield.

As to the encounter between mediums, and being able to gage the effectiveness of one or the other in terms of communicative ability, I think the issue is that the idea was first and foremost poetic, and the natural medium for the description was a verbal one. As we read the text, we get a glimpse of what it would have been like to hear it recited, and when we see the reconstruction, we begin to realise no matter how well the words are used as a pattern from which to create an actual artefact, the complexity of Homer's original thinking is over simplified and what we are left with is a shallow version of a God's design, which could never be copied by mere mortals, because it was an idea and never a reality. 

See also:

Drawing with words

Drawing as writing

Drawing as translation

Translation: Drawing between languages

Barbara Walker at the Whitworth

I was over in Manchester on the weekend and went to see the Barbara Walker exhibition at the Whitworth. Seeing this exhibition so soon after looking at the Curtis Holder exhibition in Leeds was a fascinating experience and the differences are illuminating. 

Barbara Walker: Self portrait

Detail: Self portrait: Leda and the swan

Leonardo: Leda and the Swan

Perhaps best to start with Walker's self-portrait in the guise of Leda and the Swan. This large drawing dominates one end of the gallery space and it sets a tone for the rest of the exhibition. Walker is taking no prisoners, she stands her ground and grinds the feathers of the swan/Zeus into the ground. She is not going to be fooled by some Classical God masquerading as a swan. The charcoal that makes up this and many another of her images is a black, dusty hard working material, one that sits on the surface of a rough/tough paper, asserting its presence as a solid mass maker, rather than as a linear spatial indicator. The marks made work their way over a massive form, and in doing so they give solidity and weight to her figure. Her large wall drawings are also in charcoal, these are not people vibrating into existence, asking questions as to their state in the world; they all take their space, they weigh in, ready to fight their corner and they need to, as society has dealt many of them a poor hand. In comparison with Holder's images I was reminded of Doctor Johnson's "I refute it thus!" James Boswell had this to say about Johnson on Bishop Berkeley,“After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus.” I could I thought hear Walker saying the same about Holder's work.

In another part of the exhibition bits of paper are scanned and blown up to reveal to us their importance. These are the scraps of acknowledgement that people have to show to confirm they are worthy citizens or as proof of the harsh treatment dished out by the authorities, especially when you are seen to be black, young and male. Walker has scaled these papers up and integrated them into her drawing's surfaces, with graphite portraits. In doing this she subverts the texts, giving back a proper humanity to the people who's lives had been effected by the documents enlarged.  

Walker's drawings are confrontational and beautiful at the same time. As you look at them, you are drawn into their surfaces. Eyes sit deep into the charcoal of their making, the closer you get, the more these portraits feel as if they are growing out of the ground out of which they were made. The back of a head, Medusa like, activates the space as if it was a live creature. A painting of the back of a young man's head, reveals something vital about identity, it is part of how we hold ourselves and how we shape our profile, as much as it is due to facial features. There is a cultural tilt of the head, just as much as a hair style or choice of hat. 

I have commented on her wall drawings before, but this was the first chance I had had to see them in the flesh. They are massive and you get a sense of purposeful effort in their celebration of the individuals chosen to be portrayed. 

Wall drawing

Detail of a wall drawing

You know that at the end of the exhibition these wall drawings will be painted over, they will be wiped off the wall and in our knowing of this, the pathos of her work reveals itself. She is concerned to give value to often neglected lives. As a white, middle class man, it is hard for me to know or experience the reality of the lives Walker is representing but I get a taste of what it must be like every now and again, because of where I live. Chapeltown was an area of Leeds where up until a few years ago you couldn't get a taxi to drop you off. As a mainly Afro-Caribbean area it was stereotyped as a place of violent disorder. I remember being in a gallery in Leeds 30 years ago and after a conversation whereby it emerged that we lived in Chapeltown, the then curator said that she always told her children to close their eyes when as a family they drove through the area, in case they saw anything horrid. That statement was I thought horrid enough, but it was typical of attitudes at the time. 

Embossed paper with graphite drawing

That "don't look and you wont see the black people" attitude, must have been in the back, or maybe the front of Walker's mind when she made her drawings on embossed paper. She had been researching historical images whereby both black and white people appeared together. By taking out the white people, but leaving us with their embossed ghosts, we are able to re-see the images and to reassess the power relationships that are set up between people in the way these images are composed. 

Detail

Walker also had a wallpapered room in the exhibition. We forget that wallpapers have both a storytelling ability, as well as a way of signifying status. I remember first seeing Timorous Beasties wallpaper, which at the time was used as a medium to subvert our expectations of the decorative arts. Their wallpaper 'Glasgow Toile' had embedded within it a portrayal of their home city, whereby the Arcadian views of classical wallpaper rolls were replaced by Glaswegian everyday life. A similar thing happens when you see Walker's walls papered in a decorative blue repeating pattern. You are sucked initially into the haze of the repeat pattern, until you begin to look at who is being represented here. This classic pattern is now peopled with those no one wanted, the tables have been turned and that lovely wallpaper is now perhaps threatening for some people, but conversely heartwarming  to others, when it is seen who is now included.  

Barbara Walker: Detail wallpaper

Timorous Beasties: Detail: Glasgow Toile: 2004

I've used wallpaper myself to communicate similar issues, its intimations of 'domesticity' and expectations as a decorative medium, are powerful signifiers and are ripe for subversion.

Garry Barker: Wallpaper: Detail: Scenes of Hell: 2016

Barbara Walker: Being Here is at the Whitworth, Manchester, from 4 October to 26 January, and is well worth a visit if you can get there. 

See also:

Barbara Walker at Turner Contemporary 

Drawing and politics: part 2

Curtis Holder

Drawings in the Whitworth

AI and drawing

I have just found a new AI application for drawing. The promotion for this application begins by stating, 'around 10,000 hours of practice are needed to be able to become proficient with a pencil and paper and most of us don't have the time (or the patience).' The promotion goes on to say that, 'However we will all be pleased to know that Google has released a free web-app that allows for terrible digital drawings to be turned into recognisable objects, it is called Autodraw.'

It turns images such as the hand drawn one on the left into smoothed out Disneyesque versions such as the one on the right. I tried it and drew a lion, a not bad version, I thought it had spring in its step, but Autodraw then replaced it with a flat image of a Tiger drawn from the front. It works by having an image bank of 'recognisable' things, all drawn in a similar way. When you draw it assesses what type of thing your drawing is a representation of, it then decides it could be one of several things, then you click on a scroll of small images consisting of what might be what you think you are trying to achieve. It's 'clever' AI technology obviously brings up these images in a similar way to how Amazon brings up new books for you to read based on 'like', but it can only deal in stereotypes. How horrid. The anodyne rhino has nothing interesting about it at all, whilst the image it replaces has all sorts of ambiguities about it that make it an interesting read. Not least is the fact that it is a generic 'animal'; a beast on four legs that only has two, coupled with the issue that it might have an ear or a horn, which makes it far more intriguing. I find this all part and parcel of a syndrome that includes a standardisation of how fruit and vegetables should look, the ones you get in supermarkets are becoming more and more like the photographs of perfect versions of themselves, and the fact that people don't just want to look like the versions of human beings they find on magazine covers and in films, that they are now prepared to have themselves operated upon to become clones of these models. It is as if the whole world has been infected by Plato's idea that underneath everyday reality there is a perfect ideal version of everything and these versions are what everyone now aspires to. Aristotle would have been appalled to see the rise of such a culture and would argue that it needs a good dose of reality. 

Adobe has released a new AI Feature in Photoshop. It can seem to do almost anything that an experienced Photoshop artist can do and "often do it better". Other types of AI generated image manipulation software are also coming onto the market and everyone now has the opportunity to produce a huge range of images to add to the millions already available on the web, which have now in turn all become AI collage fodder. Here are just a few image generation tools, alongside their various marketing blurbs.

Imagen: Analyzes your previous photo edits to create your Personal AI Profile. You can then apply the profile to your Lightroom Classic catalog at a less than 1/2 second per photo.
Photoleap: Transform your landscape and interior photos into works of art. A mobile app. DALL·E 2 for an easy-to-use AI image generator
Artiphoria: Create thousands of images with just one click
Midjourney for the best quality AI image results
DreamStudio (Stable Diffusion) for customisation and control of your AI images
AI Image Generator By Fotor - Fotor, an online photo editor with millions of users worldwide
NightCafe is one of the most popular AI text-to-image generators on the market
Dream by WOMBO was created by a Canadian artificial intelligence startup WOMBO
Craiyon was formerly called DALL-E mini. Simply type a text description and it will generate 9 different images
Deep Dream is a popular online AI art generator tool. It’s very easy to use and comes with a set of AI tools for creating visual content
StarryAI is an automatic AI image generator that turns images into NFT
Artbreeder creates creative and unique images by remixing images. You can use it to create landscapes, animated characters, portraits, and various other images
Photosonic is a web-based AI image generator tool that lets you create realistic or artistic images from any text
DeepAI This is an AI Text-to-image generator. Its AI model is based on Stable DIffusion

AAAAGH!!!

Reading the available literature it would seem that DALL·E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion are the top three to try. So I will and as I'm working on images that attempt to visualise interoception and have been generating these by having conversations with people, I shall try and build in the same process of holding a conversation, but this time with a software program. 

DALL·E 2: The way it works is if you type in a phrase—such as “a photo of an astronaut riding a horse”, it will generate an image based on its understanding of what “astronaut,” “riding,” and “horse” mean. It will  fill in details based on its ability to associate related concepts; astronauts, for instance, tend to appear against a backdrop of stars.

DALL-E 2’s interpretation of “A photo of an astronaut riding a horse.”

The results for myself were very poor. Because it deals in stereotypes it was a total failure when dealing with actual invention. 

Midjourney. It costs just to run a trial and you can suddenly find yourself paying a lot of money every month for this software, but it is very good at what it does, especially if you can find the right words. Nick St. Pierre has obviously spent a lot of time practicing how to get the right words together, and when you do the results are very convincing. However to get what you want, you need to be very articulate in AI speak in order to construct the right prompt. 

The image above is an AI-generated image created using the prompt: “Cinematic, off-centre, two-shot, 35mm film still of a 30-year-old french man, curly brown hair and a stained beige polo sweater, reading a book to his adorable 5-year-old daughter, wearing fuzzy pink pyjamas, sitting in a cozy corner nook, sunny natural lighting, sun shining through the glass of the window, warm morning glow, sharp focus, heavenly illumination, unconditional love,”

 A prompt written by Nick St. Pierre for Midjourney V5.

This is I suppose a type of collaged drawing, the software being designed to use photographic imagery rather than drawn imagery. Once again:

AAAAGH!!!

It's such a knowing lie. The soft warmth of Nick St. Pierre's Midjourney image ticks all our family buttons but has nothing to do with family dynamics, only a constructed idea of what we would all like to think a father/daughter relationship should be like. Oh dear, I dread to think about where this constructed reality will eventually lead us. We know what old fashioned photographic retouching methods led to when in the hands of totalitarian regimes. 

Leon Trotsky and Lev Borisovich Kamenev were airbrushed out of history

Although similar to all the others Stable Diffusion is open source and therefore you feel that at least the code is something that you can freely explore and add to. 

You can generate images with Stable Diffusion by using the Dreamstudio web app. To use Dreamstudio.ai: You need to navigate to the Dreamstudio site and create an account.
Once you are in, input your text into the textbox at the bottom, next to the Dream button.
Click on the Dream button once you have given your input to create the image.
Your image will be generated within 5 seconds.
You can download the image you created by clicking the download icon in the middle of the generated image.

Again I thought the images very clichéd, but I was beginning to realise that this was the point. Everyone wants to look the same, the lip pout in selfies is now universal and anything seemingly not about what everyone else 'likes' is useless. The paradox being that this is all sold as being about 'freedom' and 'creativity' but it is really about statistical averages and stereotyping. 

Stomach ache

The image above of stomach ache is typical of the AI generated products I was able to access when I began the process, but I did ask for a drawn image. Yes it does communicate a pain in the belly, but the image is more akin to a road sign and there is no complexity of feeling, which you get when someone is trying to communicate how pain feels or how the pain might be visualised as an experience. However as I began to get the hang of things, key words became more important and whether I wanted to use it or not, I realised that photo-realism was the style of preference for this technology. Backache is in particular in the field of describing pain, an area that is richly illustrated and which can lead to quite powerful results. 

Backache, back, pain, backbone, muscle, anatomy, spine, human, bone, science, health, injury, medicine, inflammation, ache, torso are all related words that help in a search and these words added to, 'show back body glow with dark background', can get you images such as the one below:

AI generated image of back pain

The image above is though for all its anatomical conviction, still a cliché, but I can see why people would use it, as it has gathered together several visual tropes, and in order to operate rhetorically it has put them together to offer an almost superhuman image. The man's face needs a tweak, perhaps to add 'painful expression', and the body structure is of someone in the best of health, this man is plainly an athlete and it could be more effective if the body language was that of an ageing body or if responses to a severely slipped disc were visualised.

Stomach pain

The image above is one of my own, generated from a mix of hand drawn images and their computer manipulation in Photoshop once they were scanned and was made over several weeks in response to a one to one conversation that at one point focused on an awareness of peristaltic waves and at another the feeling of compaction that you get with constipation. I'm not adverse to using computers and have been using them as part of a printmaking process since their introduction, so I ought to embrace the new possibilities offered. My image was an attempt to convey the complexity of body awareness and how a somatic feeling is a moveable, live thing and not an object, as well as it being not the only inner body sensation that you are aware of; in this case the compacted feeling of a need to relieve oneself when you cant, was not about a pain, it was more about a feeling of 'stuckness' and it had a visual nod towards more geological representations. I'm not very experienced in using AI image generating tools, so perhaps I need more training in how to use them. 

Now that the gates are open to AI use, these is no way they will be closed unless some catastrophic event is caused by it. As artists we will have to accept that it is available and either use it as best we can or carry on using what we already understand as our go to media. Personally I'm of an age where I had to respond to the introduction of the computer as an image generating tool because I was an art teacher and had to keep abreast of technical innovation. I began learning how to write code for a BBC computer, so that i could draw a circle on a screen, I learnt AutoCad in a PC, I made animations in Hypercard on a Mac and put together multimedia interactive art pieces using various types of software that is now all out of date and saved on floppy disks that are redundant and like the computers these things used to run on, now mostly buried in landfill sites. There became a time when I decided that I just couldn't keep up with the rate of change and I returned to hand made image making, with some occasional computer manipulation when I felt it was useful. Knowing one bit of software, (Photoshop) seemed to be enough to get me by, but I was very aware of younger artists, designers and illustrators around me using more and more complex software packages and even more aware that their technological learning curves were becoming never ending; they were constantly having to attend training on a new this or that. All of which is very expensive and there seems to me to be an ever widening digital divide between those who can afford the constant need for training, the rent of ever more expensive software, as well as computers with the memory and processing power to cope with new software and those who have no access to the required funds.

As the digital divide widens there will be more and more people who have no idea of how images are made. Media literacy is falling, and as it does the rhetoric used by those that own the media will become more and more unquestioned. How will someone unversed in the capabilities of AI to generate convincing images be able to choose between what are real and what are constructed images of events? As everything becomes a potential fiction I just have to hope that the stories that have most traction are those that take us all towards a future that embraces sustainability and respects this planet and all the life on it. As an artist who has also always been a teacher, even though I have now retired, my role has to embrace the fact that the story I would like us all to contribute to, is that one of sensitivity to the planet's needs and an accommodation of difference, so that a future harmony is aimed for, one that embraces the interconnectedness of everything. We need to remember that all images are fictions, they are narrated into being and the reality is that they always were. But some stories are more wholesome than others, some stories help us to heal the world and others will harm it, the most important issue being how we respond to them.

How many thousands of megawatt hours of electricity, it takes to run this type of machine thinking I don't know, but I suspect it costs the Earth in energy terms far more than we think. 

See also:

Authenticity and Blockchain

AI and disegno 

Creating a digital human body from surface measurements  

Artificial intelligence: Learning to see

Computer generated art