Grayson's What is Art

Grayson’s What is Art

I remember having to think about this questionas part of a research project I undertook while I was studying at Exeter. As it was about video art I decided to undertake a series of video interviews asking the question “what is art?” It happened to be good fun, and I even managed to interview Godfrey Warsdale, who was then the Curator of Southampton City Art Gallery.  But thinking back no one came up with the range of boundaries our recent Reith Lecturer Grayson Perry identified.

I don't remember much about the outcome of the interviews except that all pretty much agreed that art is communication. Grayson briefly referenced this in his repeat of a quote that art had to be about something, that it should encourage a call and response reflex, reference a historical context and generally have something to say. So, lots of different types of communication, but the rest of the lecture seemed to brush this piece of academic theory aside.

Instead, Grayson moved on to discuss the more visual aspects of identifying what is art, ie size, the familiar, endorsement and the price tag!

Interestingly, on reflection my pursuit of what is art left me with a positive feeling about who I was and what we were all doing.  However, I think Grayson’s was far nearer the truth. Again we laughed, but it was uncomfortable.

In this age of instantness we no longer want to think. Instead we need a quick way to identify/label something. Passing through the gift shop on the way out and picking something up as we do - our own personal response to what we've seen.

This ironic critic of art was explored in the film titled Exit Through the Gift Shop. In the film we meet Thierry Guetta a French immigrant in Los Angelas and learn about his obsession with street art. It’s a documentary about someone obsessed with documenting what he sees – sounds familiar. It’s pretty harmless and he eventually meets his hero Banksy.

This is the turning point in the story. Banksy suggests that Thierry should make his own art and the result is a breath taking twist in the plot, which is both devastating and very funny. Because here the film plays with the idea that everyone can be an artist.  That everyone can hit the big time and make their fortune, in this case on the back of art.  But it is the final comment by Banksy that leaves you not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Thierry’s success as a result of his hero’s advice leaves the hero to despair and the conclusion that he will never tell anyone to make art again.

I suppose like Banksy I believed that art is about communication and therefore enjoyed others ability to express their ideas, themselves and their creativity visually. It doesn’t make them an artist, but it does help them to appreciate art and understand something about being an artist through the process of doing. However, that’s the theory; the reality is a little different.

Some thought on Weymouth’s Big Draw Exhibition

The Big Draw is the flagship programme by the national campaign for drawing. Its aim is to encourage everyone to draw during this October festival. Going since 2001, I was aware of it whilst working in Southampton. So I was keen to take part once Weymouth Life Drawing Group had become established. Mostly publicly funded organisations take part, such as museums and galleries, but there are plenty of art groups that also get involved. It's a good opportunity to let everyone know what you've been doing, in order to trying and avoid the all too tempting apathetic  -can't be bothered inclination -  and just let the sketches pile up under the bed or in a cupboard.

Therefore, the group have used the Big Draw campaign to dig out some of their hard work and put it up on display for others to view, and maybe thereby encourage them to give it a go as well.

The Mulburry gallery, in Weymouth library, is an excellent space for putting up lots of stuff; mixing a variety of approaches to the classic nude problem, and hopefully encouraging those that are interested to spend time really looking - and hopefully thinking.

So Weymouth’s Big Draw has two objectives. Firstly, to get those who already draw reflecting on their own practice; looking at it again, through the process of preparing it for display and by placing their work next to someone else’s. Secondly, by putting the work in a public place, to encourage others to stop and consider having a go. It might not happen today. It might not happen tomorrow, but hopefully something will grow.

Is drawing important? Yes, drawing helps you relax, think and is a useful tool for communication.  And for all of those reasons and much more its well worth doing - and not enough people do. Including many artists! The all too easy temptation is to say you can’t, when you could if you tried. This isn't surprising when schools employ art teachers who insist that only the gifted can draw. This just isn't true. The myth about drawing has to end so that everyone can realise what they're missing. Example - included in the exhibition is work by Edith Cory King who died this year at the age of 89. Edith wasn't a great artist and she wasn’t that great at drawing, but she enjoyed it.  Loved the challenge it presented her.  Only at the very end did physical ill health get in her way. And her mind, from all the drawing problem solving she was doing, was more agile than most. Proof, I think, that drawing has at least one benefit. It keeps you mentally young. And Edith always felt it motivated her day - quite remarkable at such an advanced age. And even more thought provoking is that the final images she produced have a magical quality that go way beyond her artistic limitations.

So if that doesn't inspire you to have a go I really don't know what will.

http://www.susanrhughes.co.uk/section675723.html

A Farewell to Edith

My dear friend Edith - who was also one of my students - died nearly 2 weeks ago, and today I was invited to a celebration of her life.

 I'd happily agreed to go, but driving across the beach road to Portland I felt apprehensive. I'm always reminded now that I'm no longer driving to carry out our usual lessons - which were always a challenge, sometimes exasperating and often left me smiling - instead yet again,  I wonder if this would be the last time I would  be visiting her house, with its view over the amazing beach at Cheasel.

 Making the journey I also had to remind myself that she would no longer be there. Except, interestingly that didn't seem to be the case and Edith was very much there and present with use all. Of course she would be.

Her daughter Ananda had hung up reams of old photographs of Edith, and their family life, and at last I met the woman through these beautiful black and white photographs, which showed her as the typically feisty, strong and then glamorous individual. Meeting this younger version, instead of the white-haired 89-year-old, wasn't a surprise.  At last I had been introduced to the person I'd come to know. The experience of meeting a person through photographs that covered a long period of time reminded me of the artwork produced by John Bartholomew celebrating his 90 year old mother's life. A lady I had never met, but whose appearance in a series of carefully chosen photos spanning her life had a powerful effect on all who saw them.

In both cases I was struck by how long a life can be, and of course the change in appearance from childhood/ adolescence, young woman/ early motherhood to the elderly woman, who in Edith's case I recognised.  All were linked by the character that rested in each version of the person at each stage of their life.

As a young girl I'd been given an O level test paper and the question I was asked to write far too many words on was a comparison between the life of an individual and that of a river. At the time I had been unusually stumped by what now seems like a trite opportunity to easily over labour a metaphor. But looking back I was right to see little comparison between the two. Instead life today seems more like layers of tissue paper over lapping one another. Each layer partially affecting the appearance of the other, until in the end the transparency becomes opaque and all we can see is old age, which culturally hides the something that has always been there.

I'm glad I went today to visit Edith. Yet on this occasion it was me who learnt something, and I will now also remember the young Edith with her long life before her.

Do Open Studio events work for artists?

Open Studios are often a local or county wide trail to enable the public to visit artists in their place of work and thereby experience something of the making process. My first experience was way back in the early nineties when Dorset Art Weeks was becoming more than an initial idea and aimed to promote cultural tourism at a time of year that often had low visitor numbers. In retrospect this way of looking at things no longer sits comfortably with me and is possibly why I now struggle with the open studio concept. However, having yet again cleaned up my studio, ie got rid of all the dead wildlife that's been cluttering up the place since the last event, hung and propped up my work to hopefully be viewed by the thronging hoards coming through the door, borrowed a crate of wine glasses for the ever important private view - which frankly is never ever private -that done, I'm now here waiting for the culturally interested and the art buying public to arrive.

Luckily I've had a number of those my way, but unless you are near a desirable coffee establishment, and/or an idyllic idyll or a cultural hub that attracts constant footfall, you are never going to be inundated - unless of course there is a secondary attraction, but so far that isn’t me.  No I’m yet again stuck – mostly happily – pondering the why and where fourths, alongside the variables of competing with good and/or bad weather, town planning issues (ie I’m in Weymouth and one year they dug up all the roundabouts  the last weekend of DAW – great!), and now the economy. All this – and more - often drives artists away from repeating the experience.

Never-the-less open studios can be worth doing. Those attending my drawing classes get to see my work, I make sales without having to pay commission and I also meet and talk to those viewing my work – getting valuable feedback.  For these reasons and many more open studios are important and helpful in the difficult uphill task of progressing as an artist. But I still feel something is missing after all this time. Maybe a much needed injection of something new. The nineties have long gone – unfortunately – and as always times have changed, and so have our cultural activities.

However, the important brochure is being picked up – slowly - and certain demographics do trot around, but getting different/ new audiences in requires a bit more effort – she said wearily from all the effort already extended!!

So maybe a better idea or just a rethink, possibly even a make-over, but definitely something and not just for the visiting cultural tourist either.

Emma Gifford in Words and Pictures

Wessex Contemporary Arts have collaborated with Dorset County Museum on a reflective exhibition called Encounters. Artists from the group were asked to choose an artefact from the museum’s collection and react or re-encounter it in their own way. The portrait of Emma Gifford, Thomas Hardy's first wife, painted by an unknown artist hangs in the Hardy reading room and I have always been fascinated by it. This particular portrait seems to have something to say, and along with my school girl knowledge of Hardy’s poetry, and as a figure painter myself I immediately knew that my encounter would have to be with Emma

My work often explores subjects/individuals through repetition, and I feel that this process reveals the unintentional; something beyond myself. Therefore I decided to tackle Emma’s portrait in this way. I also visited the Tracy Emin and Louise Bourgeois collaboration and as I suspected found in this 21st-century confessional outpouring had links to the Hardy's 19th-century partnership.

With the help of the museum (and in particular Jasmine, Helen and Jennifer) I also set about collecting evidence of what remained of Emma.  Unfortunately there wasn't much, some old photos and drawings, but these were deeply touching. I was also pointed in the direction of a number of helpful books, including Emma’s later writing; Some Recollections. This small publication, written at the end of her life, looked back at her early years and time spent with Hardy, and had influenced some of his poetry. From all this I decided to focus on their early years together. This seemed to have been an important emotional time for them both, when Hardy was just about to become a writer.  

I wanted to bring the fragments of what remained of that time together, and overlay them on top of the studies from Emma’s portrait, and so I set about pulling together what I could find. There were Hardy’s love poems to Emma, written after her death, many of which looked back to this early time; I stripped away the emotional landscape language in an attempt to reveal her.

I also wanted to use the drawings of one another from that time, reference artefacts, things that seemed important because they revealed Emma’s identity. The daisies I felt were particularly significant. Emma had mentioned them in Recollections and Hardy had seen them on her grave, and written about them in a poem. And then there were the violets they collected together from Keats’ grave on a visit to Italy. There was also much more. My sketchbook tried to pull the strands together and I worked back and forth trying to cross-reference ideas – sometimes getting lost in it all - but always trying to reveal thought-provoking and emotional encounters. The sketchbook also allowed me space to then bring these strands together with the new Emma portraits.  I played with printing on the surface of the paintings, exploring the personal through handwriting, sometimes backwards as part of a discussion between the two. The process was often intuitive as well as rationally, considered and an on-going attempt to reveal something of Emma’s identity, their time together, as well as exploring the space left when someone has gone.

After nearly 18 months the project feels like only part of the first stage is complete and ideas linger and new ones are emerging -particularly ideas to explore the later Emma. Yet the intention to allow someone to surface from the past – particularly those all too forgotten secondary figures in the making of history - felt like a worthwhile task.

Encounters Exhibition runs until 7^th June 2013 at Dorset County Museum Dorchester with free entry. There is also an opportunity to practice your figure/portrait drawing on Saturday 11th May in the Museum hall at 10.30am for £7.50 booking can be made at shop@dorsetcountymuseum.org

Nude v Naked

Without running a life drawing class I don't suppose I’d have thought about this one, but certainly there is a dividing line between those who do draw….. and those who don’t….  those who are troubled, giggle or shocked and those who don't get the fuss.
I only start to feel uncomfortable when I’m presented with nakedness, as opposed to nudity. And I've just been sent a life drawing model website that sort of falls into this uncomfortably.  Even though well-intentioned it just didn’t seemed to get what life drawing is all about.
I'm not going to give a definition here and make it easy because I want you to think instead. Don't look for clues e.g. one is sexy and the other isn’t, because that doesn’t really help. But one certainly isn't about sex; instead it’s about enjoying the challenge of presenting the human form in all its shapes and sizes, all its energy, movement and stillness. Of course that can be sexy, or just emotionally touching. Like those recent series of ads that were trying to be very PC, but were also quite appealing.
What is clear to me is that nakedness does have the power to shock and/or make you feel uncomfortable, whereas nudity shouldn’t. One is natural, simple and straightforward the other is about a power and control.