Monday 28 July 2014

Assignment 5: Face as an Object

I asked Luigi to use the Macro lens to take close up shots of individual features of my face. I really like some of these images and he has made some great compositions here. I especially like the ones in which I am screwing up my eyes against the bright sunlight. Please see the introduction to assignment five for an explanation of the thinking behind this.







I made some drawings on A4 black card in coloured pencil based on the photographs of me squinting into the sunlight. The coloured pencil on the dark ground was really quite effective and gave the impression of drawing with light. I was quite pleased with these studies and enjoyed making them.



I particularly likes the image of the disembodied face below. I thonk there is some ambiguity about it. It is unclear whether I'm squinting in the sunlight, smiling or grimacing in pain. There is also something of the quality of a death mask about it - I saw these macabre items on a trip to the National Portrait gallery. They were used to make portraits of people after their death.


I decided to make a larger drawing of this (between A2 and A1) on a sheet of sandpaper. Unfortunately I didn't have any dark coloured paper that was large enough so I started on a sandy coloured ground and filled in the background with a thick layer of black oil bar. The result wasn't as satisfying as the drawing on the black ground. 

During the process of making this drawing I realised that I was just going through the motions herein reiterating the smaller drawing on a larger scale. I was very relaxed about making this drawing because it was falling back on old abilities and not really challenging myself. All I was doing was copying a photograph - there wasn't anything very creative in the process of drawing here. The result might be a nice picture but I wouldn't really have pushed myself forward. I was rapidly running out of time to complete the assignment so I decided to abandon this uncompleted drawing and move on


Saturday 26 July 2014

Assignment 5: Experimenting with monotypes

Further to my previous experiments with monotypes and oil transfer I had another play with this technique. I tried using water soluble drawing ink. The results was quite interesting as this is not a suitable medium for this technique. I tried applying the ink directly to perspex with a pipette - this resulted in small beads of colour as the perspex is water resitant - the beads spread out when the paper is placed on the perspex giving an abstract image which I quite like.


I then used a combination of colourless oil bar smeared on he perspex and scraped areas away with a cotton bud. I filled these voids with india ink. The results were pretty much uncontrollable but I really like some of the marks that the ink and oil make in combination.


Some of the results are just completely abstract blobs of these beautiful marks. I liked the marks so mich, however, I decided to include them in my sketchbook. On the one below, I have laid a contour drawing self portrait on a sheet of acetate over the marks.


I then drew the basic tonal planes of my face onto the perspex using oil bar and printed from that. The results differed depending on how many times I had printed from the plate. On the third pass there was a ghost of an image which I preferred to the first two passes and I worked into this one using india ink squirted from an insulin syringe.


The image below is of the perspex plate covered in a mixture of oil bar and india ink. This is what I was left with on the plate after several unsuccessful attempts to print from it. I really like this image - it is a portrait but very simplistic reduced to basic shapes and has quite a haunting quality about it.




Friday 25 July 2014

Assignment 5: Further Sketches



As suggested in the book by Robert Kaupelis, I took one of the very simple drawings I had made and made some very tiny changes to it in a serial way. I did these drawings on tracing paper and laid each new drawing on top of the one preceding it. I was interested in how subtle alterations of lines and marks could alter the expression of the self portrait. The result is like a child's flicker book and a similar technique of serial drawing could be used to develop and animation.










The drawings below are sketches I made towards the end of the assignment process after an intensive couple of weeks of drawing. They are loosely based on photographs of my face squashed up against some glass (an homage - although I'm not sure that's the correct term- to Ana Mendieta and Jenny Saville - both of whom have photographed themselves distorted by glass.). I think these sketches are more confident (and less literal) than my initial exercise sketches and I have included them here for contrast.


Thursday 24 July 2014

Assignment 5: Initial Exercises

To warm up for the assignment I decided to do the exercise '50 drawings in 4 hours' from the book 'Experimental Drawing' by Robert Kaupelis (Watson-Guptill Publications 1992). This was a great exercise as the short time limit available for each drawing forces selectivity and the number of drawings required encourages use of different media to avoid monotony. Some are blind contour drawings others are selective line drawings. There are tonal drawings. Some are a good likeness. Some are way out and others are more abstract. Most of the drawings are A5 size in my A2 sketchbook. I particularly like some of the pan and wash drawings (I like the work of Marlene Dumas and her simple ink portraits). The very selective charcoal line drawings are quite expressive. I also like the one with the deep red shadow in which I have used a smear of red oil bar and then worked into it in graphite.






On the page above I the larger drawing (A4) is a subtractive drawing. I covered a sheet of acetate in india ink and then removed the ink with baby wipes and cotton buds. As the ink progressively dries the removal process produces different marks. I then reversed the acetate and stuck it in my sketchbook.




I enjoyed this exercise and it gave me more ideas on which to work for the process of completing the assignment. 

Wednesday 23 July 2014

Assignment 5: Preliminary Research and Ideas


It was going to be necessary for me to use myself as a model for my final assignment because I wanted to do a lot of drawing and my two household models' patience was wearing thin. I am not yet confident enough to start drawing subjects who are less personally known to me and where flattery might be required.  I noted down a few ideas about how to handle the self portratiture. 


I wasn't dismayed at having to do a self portrait. I had noticed that on my gallery visits I had been interested in images of women. I had also found the research point on self portratits quite stimulating. I was, however, concerned that working on self portraits might be considered narcissistic. I though that the way to avoid this might be to look in great detail at parts of my face and body like I did in the 'using colour' exercise concentrating on the textures and colours. I would be treating myself like an object- a still life or landscape and hoestly depicting features that might be considered unattractive.  This was in part stimulated by seeing Michael Landy's drawing of his father's foot with peripheral vascular disease in his 'Welcome to my World' series. He describes the details of the foot in coloured pencil and treats it as an object with no particular emotional resonance even though clearly his father is someone very important to him. Click Here for a reproduction of this image from the book 'Vitamin D' New Perspectives in Contemporary Drawing.

I thought that by using the philosophy of Cartesian Dualism (separation of mind and matter) or viewing the body like a machine like the now largely outdated philosophy often used in medicine I could avoid accusations of narcissism. 

I worked on some drawings from this angle which are posted Here. During this process, it became apparent to me that to draw a completely objective drawing of myself is actually an impossibility. I can never actually step outside my own subjective experience and the very act of drawing goes through the process object-subject-object. Also the fact that I am worried that people might think I'm narcissistic is a vanity in itself so self-regard is not being avoided - it becomes a circular argument.  I decided that I needed to look more deeply into the depiction of women and also into the concept of narcissism as it relates to self portraiture. My tutor had asked me to read and comment on two chapters of the books from the reading lists in this section so I decided to include that research here. 

I started by reading the chapter "Fashion, Likeness and Allegory" in 'Drawing Now: Eight Propositions' Laura Hoptman MOMA 2002. 

This chapter compares the work of the Pre-Raphaelites of the mid 19th Century with the work of artists working today with an aesthetic which could be considered similar. Th Pre-Raphaelites used allegory and skill in decorative form - they integrated a decorative aesthetic with highly illustrative styles of portraiture - they used allegory to give their paintings a narrative based on myths, folklore or the bible. Because of their decorative aesthetic, their work was sometimes criticised as being shallow which as also a criticism which could be levelled at some of the contemporary artists included in the chapter. The artists selected combine to a certain extent the visual languages of fine art with that of commercial art. Elzabeth PeytonGraham Little and John Currin are the cotemporary artists included in this chapter. I also reviewed their work which is included in the other set book 'Vitamin D - New Perspectives in Contemporary Drawing'
Elisabeth Peyton makes portraits of her won friends and of celebrities. She has her own aesthetic and her portraits all have a  similar air about them. The people in them tend to be lean with high cheekbones. They ooze 'cool' and have an insouciant and androgynous quality about them. She makes them look even more attractive than they are in real life. She portrays them as a fan would. Her 'aestheticising' of her subjects could certainly be compared to the decorative quality of the Pre Raphaelites.  Her subjects always have delicate features and pale faces. She works in washes of watercolours or in coloured pencil. The images also recall images of fashion illustration. To me they remind me of Kate Moss's 'waif' and 'heroin chic' look. 

In contrast to Peyton there are a number of artists who commment negtively on celebrity culture. Dawn Mellor makes her celebrities much less aesthetically pleasing. Her portraits are more like caricatures and in some cases quite grotesque for example Christia Aguiliera in "Christina Wieners" in which she is portrayed as Saint Sebastian in a hail of arrows or "Madonna Molotov" who is grotesque and has a white cane signifying blind belief in the media. This artist is included in "Painting People-The state of the art (Thames and Hudson - 2008).

Graham Little in the other hand does not portray celebrities. The women he paints are nameless and anonymous. They have a cool distance about their demeanour and poses just like fashion models and they model recognisable high end fashion. He uses great technical skill in his handling of coloured pencil and uses decorative surfaces and pattern. One particuar painting of his of a women in an orange D&G hoodie refers back to Lord Leighton's "Flaming June". It is difficult to say whether Little's work is a daring mix of high fashion and fine art or is it is just drawing aimed at fashionistas. His drawings are certainly technically skilled and his rendering of light is quite beautiful but the remoteness and coldness of his models mean that they don't appeal to me. I suppose he is only reflecting back images from today's media so his references are contemporary but the drawings themselves don't do anything for me.

The drawing which moved me the most out of the work of all the artists in this chapter was 'The Moved Over Lady' by John Currin. (I wrote about the work of John Currin in section 4 and will not go into detail again here) This is an unassuming little drawing of an unassuming and ordinary woman. She is clearly middle aged with a fairly shapeless body and a very ordinary short hairstyle and she is rendered in shades of grey. Everything about her is average and unexciting. She is essentially bland and unglamorous so why would he choose to draw her and why should this drawing excite me more than most? This picture resonated with me as it is about the anonymity of middle age - something which I am coming to understand at the moment. This drawing has strongly influenced my preparation for assignment 5. 

I next went on to read John Berger's 'Ways of Seeing' (BBC and Penguin Books 1972) and I also watched the BBC series which is available on 'You Tube' online. I have only chosen one chapter to mention here. I chose Chapter 3 (Episode 2 of the Series) which is about images of women - in particular paintings of the female nude because it is the chapter to which I had the strongest reaction.  The first few lines of Berger's narration of the episode immediately set my teeth on edge and made me bristle with indignation:
"Men dream of women, women dream of themselves being dreamt of. Men look at women, women watch themselves being looked at"
"Behind every glance is a judgement"
" A Woman is always accompanied by her own image of herself" " She is taught to survey her own femininity"
A woman's "Appearance to men is though of as the success of her life". "A woman is first and foremost a sight to be looked at"
He also states that the internal observer inside each woman has a masculine viewpoint. 
All the above statements are intercut with images of women from an old and fat lady struggling along the street to beautiful young models.
I would like to think that we've made some progress since the 1970's in particular on the assertion that the success of a woman's life is dependent on her apppearance to men. However, a bit like fish when asked to describe water which replied "what's water", when something is so prevalent and all encompassing in society it can be difficult to identify it from within. I'd like to think as a professional woman that I would be judged on my abilities rather than my attractiveness. However, I do agree that women are taught to survey their own femininity, and if I am were immune to this why wuld it be difficult to accept the changes to my body and face that occur with middle age and menopause? However, I would take issue with Berger saying that my intenal observer is masculine - I don't think this is true. I think that when women are fearful of judgement they are more swayed by the opinions of other women than those of men. 
All the controversial statements that Berger makes, precede a discussion of the nude in European painting. 
Berger talks about the distinction between being a nude and being naked. Nude paintings generally depict women and are about objectification. The woman is seen as an object and not recognised for herself. She is on display for the enjoyment of a male observer. There are a few exceptions to this in which the painter has rendered a sensitive depiction of the particularities and the character of the model who is someone personally known to them. These womed are naked - without disguise ad as themselves.
Durer's attempt to create the ideal female nude using parts from various models takes this objectivication and disinterest in the individual personhood of a woman to a whole new level. Given that humanism was on the rise at the time and this was when 'individualism' first became important there is a major double standard here. Durer saw the artist as an erudite individual. A thinking man. He wanted to raise the status of artists. However, he is content to disregard completely the individuality of the woman he is painting. 
Berger then goes on to talk about Renaissance images of Adam and Eve whic depict the moment when they start to feel shame. The woman is blamed and becomes subservient to the man as punishment. 
Another popular Renassance theme was "Susannah and the Elders" in which we as the viewers join in as voyeurs along with the elders. Berger alsi outlines the hypocrisy of images purporting to represent female vanity ( women looking at themselves in the mirror) when the women have been stripped and put on display for the enjoyment of men. 
The women in nude paintings know they are being observed. They Look out from the paintings wearing expressions which suggest sexua availability. These expressions are repeated in photographs of women made to appeal to men for advertisements in glossy magazines. (See Below- there are also female archtypes here such as the mother and child suggesting the purity of the Madonna) 





The woman is made to appear that she is passive with no will of her own. This is illustrated by Charles II's painting of Nell Gwynne by Peter Lely - she is submissive - Charles wanted to display her as a possession. In European paintings, even when there is a male lover with the woman, the woman looks out at the observer rather than at the lover. (See the image of the man and woman together above) The main player/protagonist is the observer who is assumed to be male. This contrasts with other types of art (Eastern, Pre-Columbian and African art for example) in which sexual activity is depicted with the male and female both being active participants.

Traditional nudes are hairless. Berger states that this is because hair is associated with sexual passion which was meant to be the preserve of the masculine sex. I was quite amazed to find an article in the Guardian recently which detailed the removal of a painting from the Mall Galleries in London from this year's exhibition of the Society of Female Artists.  The painting was removed because of an outcry. The painting " Portrait of Ruby May Standing" by Leena McCall shows a woman standing. She looks quite directly out of the canvas. She is smoking a pipe and wearing a waistcoat and breeches. Th ebreeches are undone at the front revealing her pubic area. Apparently this was deemed 'disgusting' and 'pornographic' and the gallery was forced to remove it after numerous complaints. There is nothing remotely pornographic about the painting. I find it quite bizzare that there should be such consternation over a small glimpse of pubic hair. Especially considering that the gallery replaced this painting with a more traditional passive nude.

Berger contrasts the nude again with the concept of nakedness. The naked body is banal. On stripping and seeing the partner naked there is a loss of mystery but there is the promise of sex. He talks of sex as a process  and as a shared mystery and therefore static images of sexual nakedness can become chilling and off-putting. 
In modern art the classic category of the nude has become less important. Manet came at the end of this cycle of the female nude and his Olympia was the beginning of the end for this genre of painting. If we compare Titian's Venus of Urison  1487 -1576 with Manet's Olympia 1832-1883 we can see that the Venus is a typical passive nude, she is there inviting male pleasure. Manet's Olympia depicts a prostitute. She gives us a direct gaze. She is offering herself for sale and almost seems to be goading the male onlooker to see if he is able to fantasise about her when she is offereing herslf in a very direct way.  In an essay my Mary Elisabeth Williams on Manet's Olympia, the Author states " To worship a godess is easy, but to love a human - especially when there is no hint of reciprocation is far more work and infinitely more thrilling. Manet brough the hidden world of the everyday to light and made it remarkable"

At the end of this chapter of the book, Berger urges the reader or spectator to replace the woman in one of the paintings or photographs with a man and 'observe the violence it does to the image'. Yasumasa Morimura is a male Japanese male artist who has done just that in his 'self portrait as art history' series he superimposed his own features onto among others the face of Frida Kahlo and Manet's Olympia thereby collpsing both gender and cultural boundaries. 

As well as loking at images of women and fashion, I also touched earlier on the subject-object dichotomy which is an area of interest in contemporary art at the moment. There are some quite complex philosophical arguments surruounding this which are to do with trying to avoid subjectivity and identify with objects. Discussion of this is beyond the scope of this research point. However I recently read an article in Art Monthly entitled 'I object' which talks about some of these issues and includes reference to Mark Leckey's "the universal addressability of dumb things" some of which I saw at the Venice Biennale last year. However, before I digress too far, the point of this is that the title of this article  " I Object" indirectly led me to the work of Hannah Wilke and full circle back to the concept of Narcissism". 

Hannah Wilke's work "I Object- Memoirs of a sugargiver" 1977-78 consists of two photographs of her lying naked on some rocks. It is a statement about reclaiming the female body from the control of male artists. Her body is strong and tanned and in one of the photographs she looks directly into the camera. This was a response to Wilke's objection to the pale and anonymous rape victim in Duchamp's "Etant donnes". The title is clearly wordplay on the objectification of women. 
Hannah Wilke was a young and attractive woman and therefore many feminists dismissed her as a narcissist.  I found an essay by Jennifer Linton (JenniferLinton.com) entitled "Feminist Narcissim and the Reclamation of the Erotic Body" which was prepared as part of a graduate programme in fine arts. In this essay, Linton talks about narcissism. The vernacular use of the word is taken to mean the pathological sort of self regard and vanity and it is often directed at women. Linton posits feminist narcissism as a positive sort of self love. When feminists dismissed Wilke as a narcissist they were using it in the vernacular context in an anti female context which seems quite odd behaviour. 

Having looked at Hannah Wilke, I also came accross the work of Rosy Martin and Jo Spence and was partularly disturbed by one of her "Photo therapy" works in which text is projected onto an ageing female body - "The vagina begins to shrivel.....  " from Everything you always wanted to know about sex but were afraid to ask" 1969 and also " After women have lost their genital function....." Sigmund Freud " the dispostion to obsessionsl neurosis 1913"

So I've come round in a big meandering loop back to issues of narcissism, objecthood and ageing. There's plenty to think about here and a starting point for some investigation.

Reference Material Used:

Drawing Now: Eight Propositions. Laura Hoptman (MOMA 1992)

Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing Emma Dexter (Phaidon 2005)

www.rosymartin.info/performative_body.html

Ways of Seeing John Berger (BBC and Penguin Books 1972)

I Object - art and the new objecthood Maria Walsh (Art Monthly Nov 13; 371, pp 9-12)

Painting People- The state of the Art Charlotte Mullins (Thames and Hudson 2008)

Feminist Narcissism and the Reclamation of the Erotic Body (Prepared for a graduate class in contemporary art theory York University Ontario May 2009) Jennifer Linton (Jenniferlinton.com)

"Pornographic and disgusting" painting removed from top London exhibition because it features a woman's pubic hair" Adam Withnall , The Independent, 8th July 2014








Tuesday 22 July 2014

Exercise: Tonal Study

I started this exercise with some rapid tonal portrait sketches in my A3 sketchbook. I used faces which I had seen in photographs in 'National Geographic'. My aim in these rapid sketches was  to use fairly simple means to capture the expressions of the subjects. It is amazing how the positioning of a small mark can make all the difference to the depiction of an expression. 


I am really happy with the second page (below) showing the two women as I have managed to be really quite selective in the number of marks I've used and still captured th egaze and expression.





I went on to try to do a large scale portrait of Luca who was posing gazing out of the window. I worked on a grey ground which would serve as a mid-tone and used charcoal and white conte. This drawing really isn't very successful at all. I struggled and struggled with this and kept erasing and restating. Luca finally ran out of patience. The resulting drawing has too jutting a chin and the position of the eyes and cheekbones are just not right. This person looks much older than Luca - it isn't a good likeness at all.

I went back to the simpler and more rapid work of using charcoal alone on cartridge paper and sketched Luca from a couple of different angles while he was distracted by the TV. These are better but still not perfect likenesses. I can also see that his arms and shoulders are poorly positioned.





Finally I drew a portrait of Luigi looking straight at me. He was illuminated strongly from the side. I tried to keep it simple and not overwork it. I was much happier with this - it is really quite recognisable as Luigi.




Monday 21 July 2014

Exercise: Using Colour

My models were not available on the day that I did this exercise so I used an online pose generator and myself as references. I started off by using colour just for its tonal value or to suggest movement rather than as a realistic illustration of the colours observed. I did some very rapid sketches in my A3 Sketchbook using coloured ink and then moved on to Inktense bars and watercolours. 

A3. Ink.
I like the sense of movement in these initial ink and brush Drawings. I have also continued to try out foreshortened view for extra practice.


A3 Ink
A3 Ink

A3 Watercolour
I drew a rapid sketch of Luigi leaning his teeth and used watercolour to establish the main tonal values. I think I've captured the pose quite well. The drawing was looking good until I decided to restate and darken the shadows with Payne's Grey. This completely killed the freshness of the colour I had used and I really wish I had left it at the very basic sketch I started with. 


A3 Inktense Bars
I moved on to use inktense bars. I am still struggling with this medium - not sure I'll ever get to grips with them. I think they have great potential as they produce some great vivid colours. However, in this sketch I have struggled so much to handle them the I've lost sight of the proportions of the figure.


Next I moved on to using my own face as subject. I decided initially to look in detail at the texture and colour of individual features. I used a magnifying mirror and described all the details including thread veins. I used coloured pencil. I'm not very good at leaving white highlights so I had to go back in with white gouache to place highlights at the end to give an idea of the reflections and moistness of the eye. I think these drawings are quite successful and could be built up into a piecemeal portrait. 




My final drawing for this section was a collage self portrait. I have posed myself for a 'selfie' holding my chin up to disguise my double chin and to emphasise my cheekbones. I've created the collage by 'painting' with pieces torn from a women's glossy magazine with adverts for cosmetics and skin creams which I think fits with the fact that in the selfie I am posing to try to make myself look younger and thinner.

A2 Self Portrait - Collage
I thoroughly enjoyed making this collage, searching through the pages of the magazine for scraps of the appropriate colours to build my face.It did feel a bit more like a craft project than a drawing at times though. The large amount of yellow here reflects the fact that I was illuminated by a yellowish toned electric light. This is the first time I have tried working in collage in this way. Overall I think the drawing is quite successful. Unfortunately, it is not entirely accurate in that one of my eyes has drifted somewhat down my face. I could have constructed another one over the top in a better position but having lovingly constructed the eye from tiny scraps of torn paper I couldn't bring myself to cover it up. This may be a mistake but it isn't always easy to be objective when you've spent a long time on a piece of work. 

This collage is really quite illustrative in nature. I have basically painted with torn paper. I would also like to try using collage in a more abstract way - something to look forward to.