The last but one Fine Art
module, Context of Practice 3 is now upon us. The third year are once again
embroiled upon the writing of a text that is meant to create a deeper
understanding of an individual’s art work and lead to a synthesis between
theory and practice.
I believe that it is a
useful process to go through but there are so many ghosts in the educational
machine that it is a very hard thing to do. The biggest and most potent ghost
is of course the educational system itself. It rewards the obtaining of
learning outcomes, but these are often written in such a way that they remove
the poetry from the practice. They for instance ask you to demonstrate
research, however some art practices needs lots of research and other practices
can be made as Yates said, “Out of a mouthful of air”.
If anyone was to ask me,
(and it’s unlikely that they will) to write the key learning outcome for the
written element of this module I would say it should be: “The student can write
in such a way that it communicates what they are trying to get at”.
If I was to have a model for
how to do this I would recommend Ted Hughes’
‘Poetry in the Making’, which was a book he wrote for 10 year olds.
This brings me to another
‘ghost in the art education machine’, that of referencing other artists. A
ghost that persists in the structure of what in COP3 is now called ‘the case
study’.
In my mind the last thing
you need is a close model to follow when developing your own work. I don’t think you can justify your work by pointing to another artist that does something similar.
This way of thinking is a left over from the art academies and has found its
way into how art is taught in schools. At one time within the art academies
only certain artists were deemed worthy of study, ‘Raphael, Murillo, the
Carracci’s’ etc. That time has gone. Yes look at art, look at it in depth,
explore its vast history and immerse yourself in its possibilities, but not to
provide justification for your own practice. Try to look at other art as a
symptom for the human condition. Try to work out how and why artists might have
done the things they have done, why different cultures may have come up with
the images they have, and why materials available might have shaped making in
the ways that they have. Use your looking to sharpen your eyes and visual
appreciation of possibilities, but don’t go searching for models, avoid the “I
make art like…” trap.
This however is not a plea
for anything goes. There are things you can learn from other art. What makes
for a successful resolution? What types of working processes are used that seem
to be able to reconcile research with visual concept? How has truth to material been reconciled
with craft invention? These are however questions of purpose not questions of
style.
When writing COP3 you are
asked to first of all write a positioning statement. This is about
self-knowledge. Hopefully it helps solve the question, “how can I make art
without becoming false to myself? There
is no best way or answer to this. But Hughes’ ‘Poetry in the Making’ does
suggest possible directions to take. He asks us to re-discover our passionate
interests. He points to survival, being fed and warm as central, then posits
relationships with others as our initial concerns. However as we get older he
suggests that our interests spread out and become too easily superficial, an
artist though, he further suggests, has to learn to differentiate between what
is just of interest and what has the possibility of being an obsession. This
fascination with something does though take time to develop and it can be as
much a fascination with art, as with the world itself. (Art cannot of course
detach itself from the world)
When you are thinking about
the case study and are looking to search for ‘art friends’, make sure that
these are not people who make things that look just like the work that you
make, but people that have resolved issues in their work that you empathise
with. Because I’m trying to deal with narrative and politics in my work at the
moment, I look at how other artists might have resolved these two issues.
Perhaps one artist might help me to think through one particular part of the
problem and a very different artist another aspect. Often it’s to do with
approach. I might look at Duchamp, but not for his ready-mades, in my case it
would be for the narrative complexity behind the ‘Large Glass’ and the fact
that he had in some ways created a contemporary allegory of sex in the city. I’m not however going to make something that
looks like the ‘Large Glass’. I might
look at the work of Chris Ware in order to think about how time can be
expressed in a visual narrative and compare that with 13th century
Chinese landscape painting. I might use a David Hockney video as a guide to how
to think about how complex visual narratives were constructed in Chinese scrolls. See which is a short clip from ‘A day on the grand canal with the emperor of china’
by Hockney.
At the end of the day my own work does not look like Duchamp’s or
Hockney’s but may well have taken on board issues that both artists have at one
time or another dealt with. It’s not a case of not looking at other art, it’s
about learning from looking and thinking about what you are looking at.
Ted Hughes says that there
is no one way to write, only to make what you write interesting. It’s the same
with fine art. Hughes goes on to say that you write interestingly only about
the things that genuinely interest you. This he says is an infallible rule.
Again I would say this applies to fine art as well.
How to try to say what you
mean is part of a search for self-knowledge, Ted Hughes goes further and
suggests that as you refine that voice, as you develop and hone the languages
you use, eventually you might in your work develop something that he calls,
“grace”.
Although a poet, Hughes has some wonderful advice for
the young artist.
“See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously,
as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell
it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after
themselves, like magic.”
“What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to
take fuller possession of the reality of your life.”
You can learn a lot from this small book written for
children, in particular Hughes points to how we struggle to possess our own
experiences and express something about them. “Something of the almighty
importance of it and something of the utter meaninglessness”.
I realise that you should not change the original
words of a text, but with a slight change, ‘Poetry in the Making’ could easily
become ‘Art in the Making’, and would thus end so:
…And when a visual language can manage something of
this, and manage it in a moment of time, and in that same moment make out of it
the vital signature of a human being – not of an atom, or of a geometrical
diagram, or of a heap of lenses – but a human being, we call it art.
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