Saturday 12 October 2013

My thoughts on "visual culture"


Our second Context of Practice session on “Visual Culture” was all about looking as opposed to seeing, in other words reading the “signs”, intentional or otherwise, of any visual creation – not just works of art but road signs, adverts or whatever.

The tricky stuff comes with signs that suggest things indirectly through references.  I suspect I often miss them, which raises some questions.

Am I not looking hard enough?

I don’t “get” some works of art, particularly modern art.  Stuff like a canvas painted in one single colour or an old door that’s been charred with a blow-lamp or Tracey Emin’s famous bed.

I look at it wondering whether the artist is having a laugh at my expense.  Is it the king’s new clothes?

I recall having a laugh like this at university.  I found half an old bike handlebar, mounted it on a wire base,  tied a label on it upon which I wrote ‘urge’ in ink with my finger, and fitted an un-inflated balloon on the end.  It sat on my coffee table, wobbling, and everybody reacted to it very strongly, saying it looked obscene.

I submitted it for the university’s annual art exhibition, calling it “Obscenity Number One”.   Eventually, I got a letter from the professor saying the committee had selected it but it wasn’t going to be shown on grounds of its obscenity.

I suppose I should have tried to analyse why it looked so obscene.   Would the exercise have led me down a path of understanding and appreciating art more generally?   Or would it have resulted in hypocrisy - me being able to “talk the talk” in the hope of impressing others?
 
Should I set out to engineer references in the work I produce? 

My concern here is the corollary of not seeing references in other people’s work.  Maybe the references I put in my own work will look clumsy and heavy-handed to observers used to seeking out subtleties that would pass me by?

 As it happens, I’ve recently decided to “plant” a reference in this project:
  

I want to demonstrate how facial expressions convey a myriad of emotions.  I plan to do this by slip-casting around 20 identical ceramic figures in a banked arrangement.  The figures will be very simple and smooth so observers will focus on the only difference between them - the facial expressions.

I started making a very smooth positive of a figure in wood, on a lathe, but then I talked to Min Jeong Song, one of the glass lecturers.   She remarked that facial expressions sometimes mask the real emotions going on inside people’s heads, which got me thinking.

The bottom line is that I’ve now decided to make the first figure in hot glass and then use that in two ways – as the positive for making the mould for slip-casting the ceramic figures and as an integral part of the final installation. 

Observers will be able to see inside the glass figure’s head and I’m hoping it will be sufficient for them to pick up on facial expressions sometimes masking true emotions.

My wife thinks the reference might be too subtle.  As I’m not very subtle myself I have a hard time judging this.  What do you think?

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