Tuesday 31 December 2013

Sir Antony

So, Antony Gormley is to become a knight - and I get an excuse to write about him.

I really like most of the stuff he does.  In fact, "like" is an understatement - I think a lot of it is really great and some of it has influenced my current project,  notably his "Field" installations of tens of thousands of clay figures and the many examples of his groups of identical figures.

My current project - "Faces" - will comprise 45 figures, all identical apart from their height and their facial expressions.  Actually, I should say 44 ceramic figures and one glass figure, which has no facial expression on it.  For current progress please go to:

http://www.peter-heywood.co.uk/work_details.php?id=40&s=0

My son Tom and his wife, Kim,  gave me a book on Antony Gormley a couple of years ago and up until now I've focused on the pictures of his work rather than the words between the pictures.

When I first got the book I was a bit put off by the first lot of words - a conversation between Antony Gormley and E.H. Gombrich (1909-2001) described on the cover as "one of the world's most celebrated art historians".

As a former journalist and editor I approach conversations such as these with caution.  To my mind, they are often a lazy way of dealing with a topic.  Two people are allowed to ramble on and, perhaps  because they're supposed to be famous,  little or no effort is made to edit things so some clear messages are delivered.

I thought this was particularly true of the recorded audio conversation between Monika Kinley and Jon Thompson in my previous blog (but I was too polite to say so at the time).

Anyhow, Gormley getting knighted has prompted me to take another look at his book and see whether I'm still irked by its arty-farty text.

Conclusion:  This Context of Practice course must be influencing me!  The first few pages are really interesting:

It turns out that Gormley read Gombrich's book, The Story of Art, while he was at school, and that's what inspired him!   He says it "made the whole possibility of not only studying art but also of becoming an artist a reality for me."

Gombrich starts the conversation by talking about Field, where the clay figures are just roughly human in shape with two finger holes for the eyes in the head.

By pure coincidence, the figures in my Faces project bear some similarity in that they're just a representation of a head and body although I've gone the opposite way in one respect - I'm trying to make the shape of my figures identical and so smooth they look machine-made.

Anyhow, Gombrich says he's interested in the "psychology of perception; if a face emerges from a shape you are bound to see an expression".   He goes on to cite a Swiss inventor of a comic strip, Rodolfe Toepffer, who observed that virtually any scribbled face, regardless of how badly it's drawn, is expressive - it conveys meaning.

This is EXACTLY my starting point for my Faces project; I scribbled some faces on a coffee jar, was intrigued by the emotions they conveyed and decided to try and develop the concept in 3D.

So the bottom line is that I'm warming to the thought processes behind Antony Gormley's art in a similar way to me warming to Grayson Perry, following his Reith Lectures and his penetrating observations of taste and class in his previous TV programmes - see my previous blog: http://peter-heywood.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/taste-and-class.html

As a result, I will make a sustained effort to read the words in Gormley's book - although I wish the book covered the way he made some of his sculptures, in the way that Perry included his sketch books in his "Vanity of Small Differences" book, covering taste/class and the production of his amazing tapestries.

I'll also buy E.H. Gombrich's "The Story of Art" so that I can see what Gormley found so inspirational about it.  Maybe it will also help me sound more intelligent on this Context of Practice course.

I wonder whether Grayson Perry will ever be given a knighthood?  The thought amuses me because of his female alter-ego.

UPDATE: I managed to buy a second-hand version of "The Story of Art" for 1 penny (plus postage) on Amazon and it arrived today (10th Jan).  At first glance I think I'm going to like it.




Wednesday 18 December 2013

Faces

I tend to get bored during Christmas so I’ve organised things so I can continue with my main college project at home.  It focuses on facial expressions and how they convey (and sometimes mask) emotions.

Here’s a link explaining how my “Faces” project is evolving:


I didn’t realise when I started this project that a highly relevant exhibition was taking place a few hundred metres from me.  It was called  “Artists Make Faces”, in Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery.  

Luckily, the penny dropped before the exhibition closed (on December 7th) so I went along and took a look at the paintings and sculptures picked by Monika Kinley, a famous curator and collector who lives in Plymouth.


Actually, I’ve now asked the museum whether they can put me in touch with Kinley because it sounds as though we might have something in common – namely, an interest in the way the face conveys such a wide range of thoughts and feelings.

Here’s a recorded conversation about the exhibition between Kinley and Jon Thompson, an artist, curator and former head of art at Goldsmiths:


In it,  Thompson says:

‘Two eyes, a nose and a mouth; always indestructible as a sign.  You only need to have these four components and it is a face.’

As it happens, I’ve just drawn a bunch of faces based only on these four components:



I may have to wait a while to meet Kinley.  I’ve been told she’s in hospital at the moment and is rather frail.  Here’s wishing her well.

In the mean time, I’ve been doing a bit of research.  Kinley grew up in Berlin and Vienna and moved with her family to the UK in 1939, to escape Nazi persecution of the Jews.

She came from an arty family and worked at the Tate Gallery and other art galleries in 1950s and 60s developing her knowledge, contacts etc.  She ended up putting on shows in her own flat and taking some artists under her wing, some of whom became famous, including  Frank Auerbach (see later).  . 



She worked with her partner,  Victor Musgrave, to launch the Outsider exhibition (artists with no formal training, motivated by their own visions) and has remained a patron of Outsider artists.

I was going to review some of the exhibits at "Artists Make Faces" but I've now discovered a really good "teacher pack" that does it all for me!  Here's a link to it:

http://www.plymouth.gov.uk/amf_teachers_notes.pdf

Sunday 8 December 2013

Theorists

I've just read a reassuring review of "Art Since 1990", a self-styled "landmark study in the history of modern art" by a bunch of what are probably the word's foremost theorists on the subject, namely:
I've linked the names to their Wikipedia entries for anyone interested in art theorists.

Frankly, I'm not.

But here's a link to a review of their book by Jonathan Jones, Guardian art critic:

Lost in a labyrinth of theory


A couple of excerpts I particularly like:
This book is the final ludicrous monument to an intellectual corruption that has filled contemporary museums and the culture they sustain with a hollow and boring, impersonal chatter. Art has been lost in a labyrinth of theory. 
There is no good work of art that cannot be described in intelligible English, however long it might take, however much patience is required. And yet this book begins with four theoretical essays explaining the post-structuralist concepts the authors believe we need before we can meaningfully discuss a single work of art. It is the supreme expression of an art culture that sneers at "empiricism" as a dirty word.
The point about plain English strikes a chord.  It's how I sorted the wheat from the chaff as a technology journalist when people were trying to blind me with science.

I find Jonathan Jones' words reassuring because they match my reaction to a lot of the philosophical stuff we're covering in the Context of Practice course.    In my view,  theories belong to science where they can be tested against facts.  The theorists that concoct them to analyse art are being too clever for their own good.

Having said that, I'm becoming a bit of convert when it comes to studying other artists - which I guess is what "empiricism" means in the above quote.

At one stage I would have said that studying other artists ran the risk of stifling my own creativity.  Rather than dreaming up my own ideas from scratch I might end up adopting ideas from other people's work and simply "extrapolating" them.

 Credit to Grayson Perry for my change of attitude on this one. His Reith Lectures and his "Vanity of Small Differences"are full of references to other works of art.  As a result, I end up feeling that there's a lot of depth there.

The same thing could be said about John Grayson's lecture.  I felt as though I was tapping into a mine of knowledge about other artists - which is why I ended up researching a lot of them afterwards and listing them on this blog.

I guess these are examples of other people's "intellectual scaffold" - something I need to develop to underpin my work.  I'd better make a point of drilling down on artists I like in the future - an empirical rather than a theoretical approach.


Thursday 5 December 2013

My thoughts on John Grayson's Lecture on "The Future of Craft"

John Grayson, head of contemporary craft at Plymouth College of Art, gave a lecture on the future of craft on Tuesday (3rd Dec).

There was some agonising over the definition of craft but I'm going to skip over it because it's just semantics and I've figured out why I'm doing a craft as opposed to an art course, which is all that matters to me.

For me, the most important point John made was about creating an "intellectual scaffold" for your work.  In John's case, I think this means "keeping old industrial craft processes alive by finding new ways to use them sustainably in a contemporary context".  This comes from a college blog "introducing John Grayson". 

It's got me thinking:  What's  my "intellectual scaffold"?  I'll come back to that some time.  For the moment, here's a run-down of the artists and organisations John referenced in his lecture:

Maggie Hollingworth
Makes everyday objects such as cutlery out of recycled paper (i.e. papier mache)
http://www.magiehollingworth.co.uk/index.html

Simone Ten Hompel
Metal utensils, jars etc that are more works of art than functional
http://www.tenhompel.com

Jack Cunningham
Treating your body as a showcase for jewellery that "tells a story".
http://www.jackcunningham.co.uk
Eg: Memory Kit (scroll down on the link below)
http://www.jackcunningham.co.uk/jack_phd/chapter06(c).html

Hothouse
Not an artist but a Crafts Council "Collective"
http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/professional-development/maker-development/crafts-council-collective/hothouse

Droog Design
Design company in Amsterdam
http://www.droog.com
One of its products is  "do hit chair" by Marijn van der Pol - a sheet metal cube that you bash with a hammer to make "whatever you choose it to be":
http://www.droog.com/webshop/furniture/do-hit-chair---hit-by-van-der-poll

Gijs Bakker
Jewellery designer.  Founded Droog
http://www.gijsbakker.com/home.html

Timothy Information Ltd.
Tim Carson.  Jewellery meets rebellion/political demos
http://www.velvetdavinci.com/artist.php?aid=147
http://www.dialoguecollective.co.uk/made13

David Clarke
"Mashups" of  old silverware - pots, cutlery etc
http://misterclarke.wordpress.com
John gives Clarke a plug in the college blog I referenced above.   In that blog, he also plugs Gareth Neal, a furniture maker that exhibited recently at college.  I can see why.  Neal's "Hue Line Form" is fantastic - and has got me thinking laterally about the stuff I'm doing at present.

Anton Alvarez
Example of making a machine to make art.  Thread wrapping machine makes (weird) furniture.
http://www.antonalvarez.com/The-Thread-Wrapping-Machine

Max Lamb
Casts pewter desk in the sand of Caerhays Beach in Cornwall
http://maxlamb.org/126-pewter-desk/

Studio Swine
Design, architecture, fashion
http://www.studioswine.com
Collects aluminium drinks cans, melts them down to make artwork, all in an eco friendly way
http://design-milk.com/can-city-studio-swine/

Josh Bitelli
Coating steel frames with road making material to make a seat.  Seemed totally daft to me.
http://www.joshbitelli.co.uk/project/roadworks-proj/

Paolo Scura 
Jewellery from bits of street matter.  Another whacky idea.
http://www.klimt02.net/jewellers/paolo-scura

Tony Cragg
Important UK sculptor, winner of Turner Prize in 1988.  Uses building materials.
http://www.tony-cragg.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Cragg
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/tony-cragg-953

Helen Carnac
 Renowned enameller who styles herself as a "maker and thinker"
http://helencarnac.wordpress.com/each-other/

Minsu Kim
"Living food" - just totally weird and rather revolting
http://minsukim.net/Living-Food-1

Sebastian Brajkovic
Designer that makes "sculptural furniture" using CNC type equipment
http://carpentersworkshopgallery.com/en/Artists/Sebastian-Brajkovic
http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/when-computers-and-classics-collide.html


Wednesday 4 December 2013

Les Coleman

Les Coleman was an artist.  He died earlier this year and he seemed like my sort of guy when I read his obituary.  The one in the Daily Telegraph starts:

Les Coleman, who has died aged 67, was an artist, sculptor, author, aphorist, latter-day Dada-ist and all-round rare bird who preferred his work to evoke subtle grins rather than highbrow critiques.

He made an installation called "crossfire" that appeals to me - it was just a lot of arrow heads  and arrow flights (feathers) stuck in a wall.

 I like his satirical commentary on the art world.  This includes a book I've bought called "Meet the Art Students" containing sketches of art college stereotypes.

It also includes the page below, entitled  "How to make it in the art business":

http://www.paulgravett.com/articles2/neal_fox/how_to_make_it_in_the_art_business_neal_fox.jpg

Les Coleman himself never made it big - and he clearly felt sore about other artists becoming celebrities because of their antics rather than their work.

 I must admit that I once thought Grayson Perry was an example of this - wearing a dress to accept the Turner prize certainly got him noticed.

But I've changed my mind about Grayson.  As I said in my previous post, I enjoyed his Reith Lectures and as a result, trawled the Internet looking for something to make it worth while writing a post about him.  I  ended up buying his book, The Vanity of Small Differences, covering his "safari of the taste tribes" of England.

I like it!  I think Les Coleman would have liked it too.  There's no arty farty talk in it.  There's some really thoughtful comments,  the sketchbooks he drew while on his safari,  real close-ups of his final tapestries and some techie stuff on how they were made.

It's just what I was hoping for.    I wanted to understand how Grayson developed his ideas and I wanted to look closely at some of his work.  Previously, photos of his pots hadn't done it for me.

Back to Les Coleman.   By incredible coincidence I've discovered his best friend was my cousin's husband, Jens Janssen, an art collector.

Jens is trying to find a home for Les Coleman's belongings, which includes a sack full of arrow tips and feathered flights.  It's all that remains of "crossfire", which was a temporary installation in different venues.


Sunday 1 December 2013

Taste and Class

 Last Thursday's Context of Practice lecture on "taste, value and judgement" brought up the issue of class, which always makes me squirm a bit.  

 Some of the squirming probably comes from being brought up by parents who thought of themselves as middle class, in quite a snobbish way.  We had a sitting room and a drawing room,  not a lounge.  And I recall being told that Jaguar cars were for shopkeepers who wanted to show off their wealth.

Some of their snobbishness rubbed off on me.  I can't help privately sneering at people showing off their wealth with macho cars,  designer labels,  expensive watches.   

But maybe the term "middle class" is a bit out of date nowadays.  "Professional" might be a better way of distinguishing between classes - not that I want to!  In fact, it really irks me that, for instance, you have to get a "professional" to witness applications for passports.  

Anyhow, the lecture finally gave me an excuse to write something about Grayson Perry.  

I say "finally" because I wanted to write something about his Reith Lectures, which I listened to and really enjoyed.  

Since then I've been trawling through Grayson stuff on the Internet trying to find a way of "adding value" to his lectures in a post on this blog. 

My trawl included watching "In the Best Possible Taste" -  three TV programmes where Grayson goes on a "safari of the taste tribes" of England and then produces 6 tapestries to record his experiences.

I really liked the programmes.  I also like the tapestries, which go under the collective title of "The Vanity of Small Differences" - so much so that I've just ordered the book of the same name so I can take a longer look at them.  I must go and see them in real life at some stage.

Here's a link to the Pinterest page on The Vanity of Small Differences:

http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=vanity%20of%20small%20differences&rs=rs