Tacita Dean: Drawing and Film

Tacita Dean is showing at the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy. This is a rarity for an artist to be given so much exposure. A fact that is especially interesting I would have thought to followers of this drawing blog because Dean has often demonstrated how drawing is central to her thinking.

From: A Bag of Air

'A Bag of Air' is a poetic three minute black and white film. It opens with the shadow of a hot air balloon moving over a landscape to the sound of a gas burner and birdsong. As the film unfolds Tacita Dean's voice-over begins narrating instructions for collecting a bag of air ‘so intoxicated with the essence of spring that when it is distilled and prepared, it will produce an oil of gold, remedy enough to heal all ailments’. The film's closing shot is of a filled bag of air held up to the sky. This is visual poetry.

From: The Roaring 40s

Her earlier drawings of chalk on blackboard were of seascapes and ghost ships; she then moved into film, but in an age of digital technology she decided to use old 16mm and 35mm film stock. Like chalk drawings on blackboards, this very particular technique has because of its analogue nature, lots of possibilities for accident and discovery and it is often in the material of film itself that her ideas arise. The 'bag of air' film could be read as a comment on this, as Yates stated when asked about where his poetry came from, "I made it out of a mouthful of air".

Dean is interested in stories and time; in particular what could be called 'narrative time'. The blackboard drawings often develop as sequences, rather like the storyboarding for a film. They are also easy to wipe out, or erase, the rubbing out of a drawing suggesting a changing of mind, as well as another time, one that records events one on top of another, a layering that can be read as a type of uncovering. She also writes on these drawings and puts arrows into the images to suggest direction. I have referred to these drawings before in a post on drawing and film, and Dean has continued to use the blackboard format; however as she has developed her practice she has sometimes worked on these drawings on a monumental scale.

In her more recent blackboard drawings from 2012, 'Fatigues', she draws images of the mountain peaks of the Hindu Kush and the glacial sources that feed the Kabul River. Her original idea was to make a film but then the drawings emerged, their much larger scale suggesting the cinema screen but her notes perhaps still suggesting her fondness for film storyboards.

'Fatigues'

Storyboards are central to the the concept of narrative in film. They are still used extensively and good storyboard artists are getting harder to find as the skills are hard to come by. A good storyboard artist has to be able to draw, have excellent listening skills in order to interpret what a director wants, a clear knowledge of how cameras and lighting rigs work, so that their drawings reflect what a cinematographer can actually do, and above all a good sense of how narrative can unfold through sequential imagery, which is why I'm very interested in the new course we have starting at the university, in comic and concept art; one of the strands that students will be able to specialise in will be storyboarding for film. 

Saul Bass: Storyboard for 'Psycho'

Joe Alves: Storyboard for Jaws

It's interested to compare Robert Longo's large charcoal drawings of Jaws, to Joe Alves original storyboard images. 

Robert Longo: 'Jaws' 2008

In the art world we have all heard of Robert Longo, but very few people have heard of Joe Alves, but without Alves storyboard ideas the iconic images of the shark would not exist and therefore it could be argued that Longo ought to acknowledge this. The interesting issue for me is though how much creativity is something spread out amongst people. Ideas can spill out between people and grow as each person contributes something new to an idea. A little like the Chinese whispers principle. What of course Longo is doing is highlighting the sublime aspects of Jaws, his dense charcoal blacks, and huge scale of the drawings allowing an audience to visually sink into the depths of the paper surface, the shark's interior a void as much as the surrounding dark that the shark emerges from. 

Storyboard from 'Aliens'

The wind indicated in the mountain top storyboard above, echoes the 'rain' as indicated in Tacita Dean's image from her 'Fatigues' series of drawings. The way storyboards are annotated being something she has either consciously or intuitively responded to as she has constructed her blackboard drawings. 

Ideas are fascinating things and I am constantly surprised at how variants of similar thoughts keep cropping up. The 'Bag of Air' idea of Dean's was something I only found out about recently, and as an idea it is very close to the work that I did after having to have an asthma check up and also having to do some first aid training whereby we were advised that we should get someone to breath into a paper bag if they were hyper-ventilating. 

The form of the inflated paper bag was I thought something very special as it contained a lungful of air, so I began to solidify this by making ceramic versions with lips, so that these objects could be read as either models of inside or outside the body breathing events. 

This awareness of how other artists have treated similar ideas is important as it helps to re-affirm that an idea is significant. It also helps if you can let go the idea that all artists have to be dealing with unique ideas. As human beings we are all similar and that is what makes communication possible. If you came up with something truly original no-one else would be able to understand it. 

Dean's new film, is called 'Antigone', a response to a Greek myth that thousands of writers, musicians and artists have returned to over the last millennium, a story of family drama and the tragic consequences of making decisions as to who we are loyal to. Once more the idea moves along, often as much by serendipity as by design. Dean was to have made the work in the Greek city of Thebes, but after that didn't work, she found out that Thebes was also a place in Illinois, and so the film was made there. Old ideas returned to in new guises are wonderful because they carry with them all of the layers of meanings that have accrued around them over their passage through time, and this rich loam and be a wonderful fertile soil for a new seed to germinate, and like a seed that has come from nearby a tree, what might grow could be very similar to the tree the seed came from, but it will never be exactly the same, because the climate of its time as a seedling will have changed, its location will be different and the events of its young life will unfold in new ways. So it is with ideas. As Dean says herself, “Sometimes when you are working hard and open to things you start to see patterns".

From: 'Antigone'

• Tacita Dean: Still Life is at the National Gallery, London, and Portrait at the National Portrait Gallery, both from 15 March to 28 May. Landscape is at the Royal Academy, London, from 19 May to 12 August

See also:

Cinematic drawing in a digital age

Drawing with light

Storyboards and drawing (why draw when you want to make films?)