Seeing is Believing

Writing is a way of making sense of things.

 It is a way to collate, consider and consolidate thoughts.

Writing is my way of making sense of things I see and experience.

 There is a lot of repetition and revisiting of ideas in what I write from which the things that hold the most resonance are visited again and again in new ways as I attempt to find out more.

 

Painted bronze (1960) Bronze and oil paint

Therefore it is perhaps surprising that it has taken me almost two months to write about the Jasper Johns retrospective exhibition that I saw at the Royal Academy in London. It was the first time I had ever seen so many of Johns’ work in one place in the UK and I was even more excited to see so many of his paintings up close, the tones of his grey paintings and encaustic surfaces only previously imagined from what little information can be photographed of these works in books or art lecture slides. To see the ‘real’ (if that is the correct word for a representation cast in bronze of the real thing) Savarin Coffee can with paintbrushes (pictured left) was a personal artistic highlight of my year! For me that piece encapsulates the on-going dichotomy of the representational versus the real, truth versus illusion, written language against visual language and ways in which it is still so important to consider how we look, generally speaking, and how we perceive the everyday. It is also the reason why it has taken me so long to know how to write about it; I felt a little intimidated by its significance! In the past when I have written about other big retrospectives such as, Robert Rauschenberg or Kurt Schwitters I felt that no matter what I wrote it was unlikely to be anything new and had to some way hold up to the scrutiny of those who know far more about his work than me. What can I write about that hadn’t been echoed or articulated in some way by someone else throughout the thousands of reviews written about their work throughout history? There is so much known about Jasper Johns that the only way I can offer anything different is by writing about my own experience of seeing his work with maybe a few interjections of research along the way...

 

LEFT; Target (1961) Encaustic and collage on canvas RIGHT; White Target (1958) Encaustic and collage on canvas

The ‘havoc of sameness and difference’ as quoted from an article about the Jasper Johns exhibition, by Paul Keegan in the Times Literary Supplement is at play in both my own anxiety to offer something new or stick to what I know in the writing of this post, and in context here, to the repetition and use of familiar motifs throughout Jasper Johns’ career. From the 50s to the present day, the American artist now in his eighties has prolifically explored the visual and pictorial language of painting and mixed media through reoccurring imagery such as flags, numbers, letters, words, body parts, targets, shapes and colour. There is a progression of themes in the exhibition, aptly titled ‘Something Resembling Truth', each room explores a different obsession that Johns had in which the works are similar but different, a reference to the repetition within Johns’ own work and the play of the real against the representational, abstract and illusionary. An example of which is pictured here in two examples of Johns’ Target paintings. These are paintings as objects and as illusion both at once; the way the paint is applied to the surface is almost 3-dimensional (using wax added to paint), the large scale of some of these paintings only adding to their presence as 'painting as a physical object' in the room and not merely a representation of, in this instance, a target. Similarly, in his flag paintings the work occupies a duality between representation and object, i.e. it is a representation of the American flag but it is also a series of stripes and stars rendered in paint so as to become a new object in itself, “...between seeing and language, between what we see and what we know.” The language of visual art as a way of communicating and the literal nature of written language and symbolism is further layered in the number and alphabet pieces for example in ‘0 through 9’ [1961] the numbers, unsurprisingly from 0 to 9 are layered one on top of another so that they become almost unreadable and obscured into the abstract.

 

LEFT; Small Numbers in Color (1959) Encaustic on wood RIGHT; 0 through 9 (1961) Oil on canvas

Johns is quoted as once saying, “a picture ought to be looked at the same way you look at a radiator”. It may come as no surprise to some of you that I have actually spent some time looking at radiators, or heaters at this side of the pond, and never found them to be quite as interesting as many pictures but the implied sentiment from Johns is a good one, in that the act of looking should be inquisitive and exploratory, as though looking at something [a radiator] with consideration for its familiarity but for the first time due to its invisibleness for the fact it is so often overlooked. This should be the same treatment with which one sees a picture or painting (discuss). Conversely, it can also mean that a picture should be regarded with the same banality as that of a radiator which is amusing and neither a bad thing to remind us not to take the act of looking, too seriously. It is a provocative statement to make and reflects Johns’ philosophy to take what the ‘...mind already knows and make us look again’.

 

Passage (1962) Encaustic, charcoal and collage on canvas with objects

My personal favourite Johns works are his paintings that combine objects on or into their surfaces. Made during the same time when artists like Rauschenberg were doing a similar thing, these paintings such as ‘Passage’ [1962] combine abstract expressionistic use of gesture and formal qualities with the placing of physical objects such as a fork, a ruler and a letter. For Johns however an extra dimension is added with the inclusion of words such as ‘iron’ and ‘red, yellow, blue’ as signifiers for colour and an object but without really being present creating layers by which the literal, metaphorical and representational are operating all at once in different parts of the painting. Stencilling the word ‘yellow’ in green and partially obscured by grey paint confuses what we read and know yellow to be and makes one think again. It’s playful but as full of intent or meaning as you as the viewer want to bring to it. Chronologically these works Johns explains came as a progression of the flag and target paintings being considered as an object,

 “My use of objects comes out of, originally, thinking of the painting as an object and considering the materialistic aspect of painting......”

 

Fool’s House (1961-2) Oil on canvas with objects attached

The broom in ‘Fools House’ [1961-62] is both structural protagonist of the painting as well as the means by which the sweep of paint was manipulated across the canvas. The objects in these paintings take on new purpose as formal components of the paintings they reside in; a broom becomes a straight line, a can becomes a cylinder, a neon light becomes a colour to work with that isn’t physically present like paint, a fork becomes a ledge from which a chain can hang from, a ruler is a line of yellow that implies a sense of order and precision that never comes to fruition. I am a huge fan of these works and find their unexpectedness and visual variables a pick and mix-like indulgence or a welcomed disruption to the eyes that jazz music is to the ears. Both make seeing these works now still relevant and exciting!

 

Going back to the bronze paintbrushes in the Savarin coffee tin, I hope I have explained some of the context as to why I think it is a significant work. In being cast in bronze the brushes and tin are less real because they have been made with the purpose of looking in mind and not use, they have been made to be looked at; the point in time in which they came to be inside that tin captured forever. Whilst they are convincingly painted (right up to their stains of use and wear) and realistically proportioned, they don’t sit in the way that real paintbrushes do when residing inside a pot or can, their bronze-cast rigidity makes them almost too static and they lack the differences in texture of metal versus wood that the eye can distinguish. It is like exposing an imposter and my eyes enjoy the visual conundrum and illusionary trickery it plays. It summarises why I enjoy much of Johns’ work, seesaw of real and unreal, truth and deception; the double-take, counterbalancing visual language with that of written language. It makes you think without being convoluted or too pretentious. The bronze in the exhibition sits alongside two drawings; one in ink and one in graphite of the same display; they are all different versions of the same thing but operate in different ways. The drawings place the paint brushes in full centre becoming the artistic equivalent of a vase of flowers whereas the bronze becomes a fake prop and a new surface on which to apply paint.

 

From the Exhibition, ‘Something Resembling Truth’ at the RA 2017

For me personally, these works symbolise the moments of inactivity within art, when the contemplation happens and the tools reside their work carried out until such time when they are used again. There are two specific lasting memories I have of paintbrushes in cans and they are; a photo of brushes in two used dog-food cans in the window of my grandfather’s tool-barn on his farm and of the paintbrushes of a painter who taught me during my degree who had his brushes in a pot placed on his coffin at his funeral. In both instances it struck me how deeply poignant the reverence I place upon objects has with their association to the people who used them. I remember the way the light was hitting the weather-beaten and algae-coloured corrugated Perspex window of my grandfather’s tool-barn against the silhouette of these two paintbrush cans being something celestial, almost like stained-glass within a church such was its importance to me and how I remember my grandfather. It tied into my research into tools during my degree, but nonetheless is an image, like Johns, I have reproduced and come back to more than once but never fully realised yet. It also brings me back to the discipline of writing and how it offers a way into processing exhibitions that I see. I cannot be sure if I looked at every piece in the Jasper Johns retrospective in the same way that I would look at a radiator but much has made me want to look and look again. 

Jasper Johns ‘Something resembling truth’ ran at the Royal Academy of Arts from September 23^rd – December 10^th 2017

Includes quotes from ‘The only one seeing things’ by Paul Keegan published in the Times Literary Suppliment 24^th November 2017.
Images of Jasper Johns work sourced from https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/jasper-johns; http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/johns-0-through-9-t00454  

Anything but Ordinary

In anticipation of the Robert Rauschenberg [1925-2008] Retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern I thought it would be a good opportunity to familiarise myself with the late American artist’s work.

 

[NOTE: This post isn’t for preaching to the converted but to those who may be in need of reminding  or those yet to discover the work by this brilliant artist.]

 

Compiled here are my top five Rauschenberg’s; a list that is completely biased and my own but will hopefully offer an insight into my own practice and more significantly why I think the forthcoming exhibition is going to be an incredibly exciting and worthwhile event. Whilst I am aware he explored broad number of disciplines throughout his career, from performance, silkscreen printmaking to photography (to name a few) this list features his combine paintings as they are the works of which I feel have had the most influence on my practice. Listed in no particular order!

 

Charlene [1935]

 

Charlene. 1935. Oil, charcoal, printed reproductions, newspaper, wood, plastic mirror, men’s undershirt, umbrella, lace, ribbons and other fabrics and metal on Homasote, mounted on wood with electric light. 226.1 x 284.5 x 8.9cm.  It would be easier to type if Rauschenberg had simply said, ‘mixed media’! But then there was debatably no such thing as ‘mixed media’ when Rauschenberg was making his combination paintings in the 50s-60s. The term would also not have done the significance of the objects in the work justice and by listing them it is emphasising the point that these paintings included street signs, flyers, leaflets, shirts, ties, wheels, clocks, umbrellas and other everyday objects from the street, yet crucially were still ‘paintings’. This was part of a larger movement happening in America at the time reaching from Abstract Expressionism to the beginnings of Pop Art revolving around artists such as, John Cage, Alan Kaprow, Jasper Johns and Claes Oldenburg that sought for the ‘everyday’ in all its forms to be considered as catalysts for creativity and making art.

It is worth listing individually the components that make up ‘Charlene’ and the many ‘combine paintings’ that took their name from the combining of everyday objects, found fragments and things that are collaged onto (initially) flat 2Dimmensional surface(s) covered in paint and/or other substances ranging from mould to toothpaste. This was a relatively new concept, challenging both what ‘painting could be’ and the perceptions and limitations of aesthetics and formalism; preceded by the likes of Duchamp whose urinal opened the debate of whether mundane objects can be considered as art objects and Picasso in 1912 with ‘Still-life with Chair Caning’ believed one of the first uses of real 3D objects integrated or collaged into the picture-plane. Whereas Picasso’s use of an actual chair was illusionary, in the sense it became a surface within the picture that made part of the illusionary sense of an abstract still-life; Rauschenberg’s use of everyday objects is much more formalistic broken-down into shapes, tones, textures within the composition of the painting “An object such as a clock might be used equally for its circular shape, its ticking sound, and its suggestion of the shared framework of time within which our experience of it would necessarily be located.”

 

‘Charlene’ historically is an important landmark in Rauschenberg’s career as it is seen as the first work combining painting, collage and found objects in equal emphasis. The objects within it become formal components in the bigger composition of the work; the umbrella becomes a colour wheel, the plastic mirror a shiny rectangle next to another rectangle with stains and stitching that we recognise to be a folded shirt. It is all deconstructed into shape, texture and colour but as a result creates something that I feel is visually unexpected and often less contrived than human or artistic attempts to recreate these objects or their ‘found surfaces’ that appear worn, eroded or weathered. I find this approach to ‘looking’ timelessly refreshing and that the legacy of these paintings is an open-mindedness to the possibilities of ‘stuff’ that can elevate from its mundane perception into something remarkable or of great potential. In writing it sounds a little corny but probably matched some of the inflated sense of heroism and confidence that came out of American Abstract Expressionism. There is possibly also something appealing in from the idea of the ‘under-dog’ or rebelliousness first felt in using man-made everyday detritus. Jim Dine, as an artist making work at the same time best describes it as a kind of alchemy, “...turning shit into gold,” or “giving life to the lifeless”.

I first saw ‘Charlene’ in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 2014, drawn to it as a result of my own dabbles with using umbrellas to make sculptures. I never quite embraced the full formalistic properties of the objects I used in my own practice (with a few exceptions) tending to remain more grounded in the connotations and psychological properties of the objects I was using. My work never became fully abstract, always grounded in some recognisable form or association to their original state. I think I found the boldness of Duchamp’s placing the object unaltered in the gallery too arrogant and lacking in creativity and Rauschenberg’s deconstruction of objects into painted surfaces is sometimes too disguising of that objects natural aesthetic qualities (though in later work this tends to become less).  

 

Bed [1954]

Bed. 1954 Oil, pencil, toothpaste and red fingernail polish on pillow, quilt and bed-sheet mounted on wood supports. 191.1 x 80 x 20.3cm.  Until I saw this piece in the MOMA, New York I did not think it possible to become quite as excited as I was by a paint and toothpaste smeared bed sheet hung vertically on a gallery wall! I still find it difficult to articulate exactly what it is about ‘Bed’ that causes such a reaction. For a painting it is almost sculptural, a landscape with mountains created in its rhythms and folds from the top to the patterned graphics of the bed sheet below. It is successful for its use of variations; busy areas against quiet ones, murky colours against bright contrasting ones; it is this that makes it all the richer for looking at. Rauschenberg was an incredibly visual artist and knew what it meant to have someone look at your work and how to make them want to look at it for longer. ‘Bed’ is unique as it hovers between being a ready-made and a painting to which Duchamp said of Rauschenberg’s paintings, “Since the tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and readymade products we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are ‘Readymades Aided’ –and also works of assemblage.” Yet here Rauschenberg, is still operating in the confines of the art gallery by mounting the work vertically on the wall (as opposed to flat on the floor as you would expect to see a bed) as it is more confrontational, more ‘bodily’ and obviously makes the viewer consider it as artwork by its mere being hung on the walls of the gallery like a painting, not a bed. Rauschenberg does however challenge this in later combine paintings which become free-standing in ‘Gold Standard’ and floor, ‘Monogram’.



Winter Pool [1959]

Winter Pool. 1959 Oil, paper, fabric, wood, metal, sandpaper, tape, printed paper, printed reproductions, fragments of a man’s shirt, handkerchief, handheld bellows and found painting on two canvases conjoined by wood ladder. 229.9 x 151.1 10.2cm. To write about Rauschenberg’s paintings is to have a thesaurus of synonyms close to hand as it becomes all too easy to run out of adjectives to describe the range of ways in which paint is applied or actions and gestures made in the creating of his combine paintings; dribbled, poured, smeared, scrapped, brushed, pushed, scratched, layered, spread, sponged, daubed and mixed –to name but a few! ‘Winter Pool’ is another Rauschenberg I have had the pleasure of seeing at the MET, New York and it has made my top five list because it shows a thought process by which elements of the studio have been used to influence the visual outcome of the work. In pure aesthetic terms whether you are an abstract or figurative painter sometimes in the process of making work there are almost instinctive visual elements to any work where you, as the artist, think you need ‘something red’ or a ‘curved shape’ in the bottom left corner for example in order to balance or 'finish' a piece of work. Almost like a chef adding seasoning to a dish, you're not sometimes quite sure why or what a dish [art work] needs but a good chef [artist] can often tell when it is missing something. What I like about ‘Winter Pool’ is that the ladder in the centre is both part of the painting visually but can also be a means of linking two paintings or a space in the middle together. This is what I referred to earlier in saying about the visual awareness of Rauschenberg as a painter and it is something, whether I am successful at it or not, I am at least conscious of in my own work.

 

Reservoir [1961]

Reservoir. 1961 Oil, pencil, fabric, wood, and metal on canvas with two electric clocks, rubber tread wheel, and spoked wheel rim. 217.2 x 158.8 x 39.4 cm. The only Rauschenberg on my list that I haven’t actually seen in person (I think its in Washington) but ironically it is the first image of his work I’d ever seen back in 2005 studying on my art Foundation year spotted in a peers sketchbook. There is nothing particularly more sentimental about it than that, but what ‘Reservoir’ does that is so different to the other paintings on this list is that it adds a performative element in the form of two clocks set at the time the painting was started, the lower when it was finished; that reflects some of the more conceptual/performance based work around the same time it was created. In some ways it is almost an absurd idea that there can even be a start or finish time to a painting that is  relatively abstract and so subjective that it can only really ever be ‘finished’ when the artist and only the artist decides it is. The use of empty space in Reservoir also reminds me of early Richard Hamilton paintings such as ‘Hommage a Chrysler Corp’ done in 1957 and I speculate it could have had an influence.

 

First Landing Jump [1961]

First Landing Jump. 1961 Oil, cloth, metal, leather, electric fixture, and cable on composition board with automobile tire and wood plank. 226.4 x 182.9 x 22.5 cm. The circular form of the tyre in ‘First Landing Jump’ does for this combine painting what the straight vertical and horizontal lines of the ladder did for ‘Winter Pool’ and becomes both a shape and a weight to the overall composition. Interestingly, Rauschenberg wanted others to be able to read into his use of everyday objects so that they could have this duality of being both a formal component in the work and an object with meaning; it was that during the process of creating the work he had to try ignore the connotations of the objects he was using, “So a found object such as a tyre was not simply a material for Raushenberg: it was a social object with possibilities and connotations, even if the connotations he was trying to forget or “unknow”. They [objects in his work] “...retain ghost impressions of context with utilitarian aesthetic...” In other words the tyre is still recognisable as a tyre due to its urban surrounding materials, such as the lights, whilst also being a ‘shape’. The materials in these combine paintings also say something about the appetite for cars in America, the rising emergence of consumerism in the postwar period and how easy they were to find literally discarded in the street. I first saw this piece at MOMA in New York and it is one I have written about in relation to my work more than any other and I think that is largely due to the reasons above in that this piece is more assembled than painted which related to several works I was making at the time.
To be interested in mundane objects is to also be interested in the people/lives those objects inhabit and I think in the Rauschenberg’s of the 60s there was less painting in the ‘combine’ works and more collage, placing of objects/materials so as to retain some of that integrity of the original things but also, I speculate, because of Rauschenberg's exploration into performance art alongside these works, they [the objects] become like actors on a stage, each object responding to another in relationship to where they are placed within the work, "We are all actors, but it's a 'we' that includes the teeming plethora of things with which we share the world's stage."  

 

That’s it for now. To conclude, I hope to visit the exhibition soon when it opens in London on December 1^st and to reiterate what I said at the beginning that this is merely one aspect of what was this artist’s overall very diverse career. I think it very inspiring to revisit his work as it continues to remind artists to be inventive and creative within their practice and not grow complacent with ways of depicting and perceiving. Ultimately, for me however it is his testament to the mundane that I find the most encouraging, ‘Asked in 2004 why he liked mundane imagery he replied, “It is overlooked. Most artists try to break your heart or they accidentally break their own hearts. I find the quietness in the ordinary more satisfying.”

 

On that quote it is not necessarily a literal ‘quietness’ of objects that Rauschenberg is referring to but a sort the ‘unassuming’ quietness; there is great expectation for a painting of the Grand Canyon to be as awe inspiring and rapturous as the real thing itself but there is little or no expectation that the coffee percolator or umbrella to do the same so when you see those objects transformed or put in view onto the metaphorical pedestal of ‘art’ it is all the more surprising and wonderful. This is certainly a significant factor of what has led my motivation over the years and whilst the art world and public are more accepting of objects/the mundane in art now than they would have been in Rauschenberg’s era, the shock or surprise factor is considerably less; I still think there is a place for the everyday in art that doesn’t have to fall into recycling or nostalgia but a sort of awareness that these things are still around and they can still be fascinating, pertinent and as unexpected as they ever have been.

 

Robert Rauschenberg is at Tate Modern from December 1^st 2016 - April  2^nd 2017 http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/robert-rauschenberg

 

*All images sourced from: http://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org

*Quotes sourced from 'Rauschenberg' [2016]. Tate Publishing. London.