RESEARCH POINT 1

Paula Rego

I was struck by her connection between, real, pretended (imagined), and how storytelling forms a big part of this process. She views it as the same thing. I believe this is the reason she has always used props in a mostly domesticated setting in her work. I feel I always with my understanding of her work are between if the work is a form of mythification to obscure the more challenging ambiguities in her life and weird fantasies. The following was taken from a Guardian1 article and gave insight into her use of props and animals:

Marina Warner refers to your “bestiary” in her catalog essay. Why are animals so important?
Animals, like the dollies I make or collect, a stand-in for people. You can do things with them that would be mawkish if I used a person. Or illegal. ”

The fact is these stand-in props signify presence in her work, which relates to or explore the narrative in the work, as well as her imagination. She relates to them as much a thing as the pictures (her work) is. I do like her improvisations – the Pillow man, made with a duvet in two pairs of stockings. It motivated me to take some the of forms I made earlier into a prop. (see figure in Project 1 of this part of the work)

Fig 1 Paula Rego in her studio, 2018. Photograph: Phil Fisk/The Observer

Below is an image of Lisa with props.

Fig. 2

The work below is very sad for me. I see the artist feeling rejected by her husband (possible infidelity) and her being a lonely/sad/rejected onlooker from the outside onto this circle of dancers, as couples or connected groups.

Fig. 3 The Dance, 1988, Paula Rego
Fig. 4 Studio props: figures and artifacts that have appeared as details in Rego’s paintings. Photograph: Phil Fisk/The Observer

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1

BIBLIOGRPAHY

Kellaway, Kate, 2021, Paula Rego: ‘Making a painting can reveal things you keep secret from yourself [online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jul/04/paula-rego-tate-britain-exhibition-interview) [accessed on 26 September 2021].

Long, Louise, 2018. Artist Paul Rego on her landmark new exhibition (Paula Rego: From Mind to hand, Drawings from 1980 to 2001, 12 September – 27 October, Marlborough Fine Art, London) [online] at: https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/paula-rego-interview. [accessed on 26 September 2021].

Pawel Althamer

Below is the work called Self-Portrait as a Businessman. It is such a compelling way of telling the story of a businessman after a day in the office, without the human being there. The absence of the human really is telling the story.

Fig. 5 Self-Portrait as a Businessman 2002, with additions 2004 Pawel Althamer born 1967 Purchased using funds provided by the 2004 Outset / Frieze Art Fair Fund to benefit the Tate Collection 2005 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T11913

Lisa Milroy

Fig. 6 Pauline Bunny 1997 Sarah Lucas born 1962 Presented by the Patrons of New Art (Special Purchase Fund) through the Tate Gallery Foundation 1998 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T07437

Mary Sibande

She is a South African sculptor, photographer, and visual artist. Her interest is primarily in questions of the body and how to reclaim the black female body in post-colonial and post-apartheid South Africa. I got to know her work as a black artist/woman who draws her inspiration from her experience growing up in Apartheid South Africa; she was born in 1982. The artist’s focus on “the maid” is often cited as an homage to her own family, of which four generations of women served as domestic workers, even after Apartheid. The faces of the mannequins are a cast of her own face and the figures are clothed in an elaborate hybrid of a ‘maids’ uniform and Victorian dresses. (maid and madam) According to the artist’s statement, ‘the body… and particularly the skin, and clothing is the site where history is contested and fantasies are played out’. The histories being played out here are the ‘stereotypical depictions of women, particularly black women in our society.” One cannot deny that the figure of `the maid’ is one of South Africa’s most common stereotypes. (MOMO Gallery Johannesburg) Sibande also uses the space of the gallery very well – overpowers the space

Fig. 7

She often works through an alter-ego, Sophie. Sophie is symbolic, as a figure, she stands to speak for femininity, blackness, labor, post-coloniality, and communities on the margin as a whole. She moves in between history and contemporary life. Sophie bears the weight of centuries-old colonial narratives attempting to Other the African woman. At the same time, Sophie’s dress, the familiar bright blue of contemporary domestic uniforms, reminds us of the kinds of subjugation that linger in our society, between the domestic worker and her ‘ madam’ .

Fig. 8

Jordan Sokol, Model, 1925, 2017

Below is work done in charcoal and white chalk on hand-toned paper. I fell in love with the tone of nostalgia in the work as well as the prop this artist used. He placed this coat/jacket on an old-fashioned dressmaker model.

Fig. 9

Paul Emmanuel

This South African artist works mostly on photographic and carbon paper – he works with identity and memory and views his works as 3d objects, which need light to permeate the material. Below are images of his recent work which is currently on show at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery. These jackets are all scratched by hand out of carbon paper. He left the carbon residue on the floor below the works of the gallery and will collect it after the show as a lost memory or as discarded information.

Fig. 10

Here is a short ‘clip’ from his artist’s statement, I read on his website. I have followed this artist for the last few years on social media.

I would like to say that I try to portray the body as a site of metaphorical and literal struggle;
and that I explore the way mental and physical landscapes interact in their construction of
memories and identity. I would like to say that I am committed to deconstructing limiting
cultural assumptions concerning masculinity. But the truth is there is no such cleverness. My explanations are all retrospective.

Kathleen McDermatt

The Personal Space Dress, Kathleen McDermatt, 2014

The dress is fitted with two proximity sensors and a plastic armature that allows the dress to expand when a person comes too close to the wearer. The dress is the second piece in Urban Armor, a series of absurd wearable technology pieces investigating the relationship between nonsense and machines in search of a liminal space between the functional and the symbolic, a space in which the boundaries between reality and fiction begin to slip. The works are available on the website of the artist:

On her website the pieces are documented in partially-staged, partially-spontaneous performance scenarios. .

These Urban Armour series are really interacting with the physical space the wearer of the suit/dress enters. I enjoy the humor as well as the use of technology in wearables. One is also looking at augmenting bodily functions whilst wearing these clothes.

file:///Users/cwstander/Library/Mobile%20Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Documents/OCA/Studio%20Practice/substance%20of%20shadows%20Paul%20Emmanuel.pdf

I did short research into the use of mannequins by artists which I think I will reflect on in doing some work around clothing and substitutes on could use. A three-month exhibition at Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, called Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish. The main aim was to demonstrate how mannequins have gone from being an “inconspicuous studio tool, a piece of equipment as necessary as easel, pigments and brushes” to being “the fetishized subject of the artist’s painting” and – in the 20th Century – “a work of art in its own right”. For me, they look like an ideal replacement when working and need to depict how clothing drapes around a body, plan a composition, find anatomical proportion, and have a fix pose at will. Here I read that that even even ‘realist’ painters like Gustave Courbet and the Pre-Raphaelites used these artificial figures to make their paintings ‘truer’ to nature.” See the image below.

On the website of the Museum I read the following :Between the winter of 1865 and the summer of 1866, the Pre-Raphaelite British painter John Everette Millais rented this mannequin from leading art supply store Charles Roberson & Co. The Parisian figure — known simply as Child no. 98 — had a horse-hair stuffed torso and a papier mache head. It was too pricy to buy, but it proved an apt model for two portraits (“Sleeping” and “Waking”) the artist made of his own daughters. He worked from such dolls up until his death in 1895.” See an image of the model below.

Child no 98 courtesy of Roberson Archive, Hamilton Kerr Institute © Hamilton Kerr Institute, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Photograph by Chris Titmus

Bibliography

Cawley Laurence, 2014, Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum explores the artist-mannequin relationship, BBC.com 10 August 2014

RESEARCH POINT 2

Researching the kinds of questions the works of the artists discussed below raise, as well as how they speak about portraiture, as well as in what ways does the paint act as a mask. I should also consider the relationship between the paint, the sitter, and the viewer.

BOO RITSON

It seems this artist is best known for the works which depict characters and still-lives drawn from her own imagined narratives. For each work, she literally paints her subject in a thick emulsion and then photographs the sitter or object whilst the paint is wet. The work emphasizes the sensuality of paint, the process of painting and challenges the medium and our perception of it. Does the type of paint matter? She uses household emulsion paint in these works and the effect on the ‘subject/object’ is very tactile, from feeling the wetness, to when the paint becomes dry. Interesting is that she is trained as a sculptor but did not want to choose ‘against’ painting. This is her way of dealing with both and the materiality of paint. The work is short-lived, cannot be archived, only the photograph of it, which she does not even take. She is the maker of the ‘painting’. The main difficulty with this process was that she only has roughly 20 minutes to create her masterpieces before the paint dries, only she and her photographer ever see the work in its raw form.

I like that the process of making is what intrigues her – as this is her work and about making the work and the choice of materiality in the work. The viewer only sees a portrait in photographic view and links it to an idea of the maker. It is totally dependent on the photographic archive if the artist wants to show or share her work. In terms of using the body, it becomes the object and subject in the work, but it also questions traditional painting by showing possibilities of the materiality of paint which can manipulate and transform. One also wonders about the role of photography and how it can be used instead of painting to create ideas, or even push them to new limits of showing absence and presence, real and fiction. I wonder about the work as a reaction to Pop Art – I looked at recent work, and found screenprints on plexiglass, and think she incorporates the American lifestyle in these works.

Fig. 11 Sandwich, Boo Ritson

Interesting comparison when I later view the work of Trish Morrissey who uses herself in this interesting work below, called The Failed Realist, 2011. Both artists use photography to show paint on subjects of portraiture.
On her website I read a statement about this work, which is face paintings her daughter made on her, the artist’s face, her daughter made this choice, rather than to be face painted. Her subject choice was ideas which came from immediate experiences like a movie she watched, a vivid dream, or a social event. The artist suggest ideas around the innocence of a child’s painting, the purity of seeing.

Then a view years later she followed the session up, her daughter was now 11 years old, The Successful Realist, 201Now a clown-face, influence of Emoji’s and online experiences are also visible, her daughter is viewed as an artist with a canvas with more wit and obscurity visible in the paintings, and her fine motor skills are more developed.

RACHEL RUSSELL enacted Philip Guston’s painting, The Studio, by transforming it into a video piece during 2012.

On her own website the artist writes the following:

“The Studio no. 6 is an enactment of Philip Guston’s 1969 painting The Studio which represents Guston’s familiar hooded character as the Artist protagonist painting his self-portrait. 

I was intrigued by the work of Guston and used the opportunity to do research on his use of a hooded character and consider the use of the comic, grotesqueness, the sublime, and signals around identity, ideology, and critique. I also became aware that this work is about an artist at work – doing the work of making. His choice of colour came to the front as a question – his palette is dominated by red and black, which can be mixed with white. I see it as two colours laden with emotion, but which could also be almost erased by the use of white. It became clear that The Studio by Guston is mostly viewed as a self-portrait, but with a message about self-reflection around the power of racist attitudes in society and the part, one plays. The hood became the covered artist – one just feels this instinctively when looking at his work and then comparing it with the video work by Rachel Russell.

Fig. 12 The Studio, Philip Guston, 1969

I first look at the work of Guston, which marked the period/beginning of his move away from abstraction and back to figuration. The painting is widely recognized as an early meta-self portrait, in which Guston presents himself, in a rather cartoonish way, with a very large hand, labouring at his easel, covered under the hood. He continued to employ it as a motif in future works. It seemed these works shocked the art world at that time and he was basically ‘ousted’ for a while. His freedom to choose a process of appropriation was seen as ‘too politically challenging’ at that time. In an article in the Guardian (O’Hagan, 21/02/2021) this topic is discussed again when Tate decided not to continue with a long-planned exhibition. I have since learned that his daughter, Musa Meyer set up a Foundation where she attempted to put together a Catalogue Resume; there is a website, philipguston.org, to view. On this website, I found a video where Me Meyer discusses some of the works and then her father’s recorded voice is heard when he talks about pursuing his painting career away from Abstract Impressionism. He refers to making work about the tangibility of the world we lived in, and about something that he felt strongly about. He then describes the hooded figures, as “dumb human beings, who were always covered, committing these senseless acts ( referring to the Ku Klux Klan violent movement) https://youtu.be/CPNaZsnyedI

In an online review, I read today (30 September 2021)on Hyperallergic.com. website, the writer, John Yau writes about a current exhibition of Guston’s work: “…. At the time of the show, the conservative critic Hilton Kramer ridiculed Guston with a review in The New York Times (October 25, 1970) titled “A Mandarin Pretending To Be a Stumblebum.” One of Guston’s closest friends, the composer Morton Feldman, stopped talking to him and they never reconciled.” Here he confirms how society and the art world sometimes undervalue an artist as a protagonist of reality.

I am very aware of when a process of enactment or appropriation is staged, political, social, and personal issues will be opened for much critique and questions about embodiment, self, identity, memories, history, etc. I consider how Rachel Russell thought about Philip Guston as a painter, his moves in his career from figuration to Abstract Impressionism and then back to figuration. I feel I am trying to get to truths, which we can hide, and layer in our work, but still, refer to realities as to how we perceive them. History is full of confusion and distortions. In art, I also believe not everything has to be visible. Guston’s use of comedy and comics could point to more complexity and a struggle of a white male artist in the then America of pres Nixon. It talks to me about an artist who sees his own complicity and needs to overcome this in a society which should be fair and free. In the Guardian, I read: “The work was variously dismissed as “crude”, “simplistic”,” embarrassing” and, in a blistering New York Times review, headlined “A Mandarin Pretending To Be a Stumblebum”, Guston was even accused of being a fake indulging in radical.” (Guardian, 21/02/21). Artist friends like de Kooning supported his move and believed they found the real meaning, namely that Guston is finding freedom is in work, and that this became the subject of his work. For me, there is in this hiddenness of the mask, the reality which stays ugly and unjust, till now – time is still relevant. Putting his hooded figures in perspective, these figures are always engaged in everyday actions, not violence, but the viewer should consider Americans grappling with racism and one’s own complicity. At this point, I feel there is a connection with the work done over many years, by South African-born artist, William Kentridge.

I am thinking about William Kentridge, being a South African artist, and how he uses film, animation, drawing, and painting to comment on social, political, and daily life. Kentridge replied the following when discussing that his inspiration is found in and around his home, the city of Johannesburg, in South Africa. “I have never tried to make illustrations of apartheid, but the drawings and films are certainly spawned by and feed off the brutalized society left in its wake”, he said in an interview. “I am interested in a political art, that is to say, an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and certain endings; an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay.” (Brand South Africa, 2003)

Philip Guston: Studio Landscape, 1975

Kentridge, not only studied art, but from 1981 – 82 he studied mime and theatre at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He was a founder member of the Free Filmmakers Cooperative and served as a member of the Junction Avenue Theatre Company from 1975 – 1991. He explores diverse media – from etchings, lithographs, and silkscreens to animated film, and theatre with puppetry, opera, and video.

My questions made me ask how Rachel Russell’s enactment as a video piece was received in 2012. Thinking about the research so far, I have to ask myself, how much freedom the artist has when approaching difficult subjects and one’s own freedom of interpretation. Does it talk about the appropriation of the other, or should one just focus on enactment? It reminds me of S Sontag’s work around Interpretation and the arts’ power to change and transform. It asks me if I am just a witness to the world or do I want to comment. Am I brave and wise enough to do this, notwithstanding others’ opinions? I think about my walking practice, my rhino project, work done during this course, and how I consider including the history of my community – I do not think I want to be an ethnographer and or researcher only. Do I want to make things visible, bring things hidden to the open – thinking about art as a form of therapy to get closure on things of the past or change views or just critique? Is this too idealistic? I will discuss this in my Parallel Project.

The use of the mask in art intrigues me – could it give me the answer to how paint act as a mask? The word mask is most closely derived from the Medieval Latin word ‘masca’ , which means ‘spectre or nightmare’.

mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protectiondisguiseperformance, or entertainment. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes, as well as in the performing arts and for entertainment. They are usually worn on the face, although they may also be positioned for effect elsewhere on the wearer’s body. More generally in art history, especially sculpture, “mask” is the term for a face without a body that is not modelled in the round (which would make it a “head”), but for example, appears in low relief. (Wikipedia)

In English, the word dates back to the 1530s when it was anglicized from the Middle French word ‘masque’ meaning ‘a cover or guard for the face’. The Latin word for a mask is “persona” which was shaped from “personare,” meaning “to sound through,” and relates to the use of masks in ritual and theatre when mouthpieces in the masks were enlarged in order to help the actor’s voice to reach the large audiences attending these religious events. ( Think about how W Kentridge used these mouthpieces in his works, see image below)

It takes me to Guston’s use of a mask – did the Venetian painters and or symbolic commentary on painting itself influence him? Did he reflect on his perception of the ambiguities in his existence? I also see something grotesque in his work, apart from the comical, his character reminds me of a caricature, and wonder if he started to use it to link the narrative which was beginning to unfold in his work. (The Coat we looked at earlier, has the same essence to it for me, almost monumental for a piece of clothing)

Screengrab of the video piece, The Studio, No 6, 2012, Rachel Russell. I later found another video, called Rachel Russel 1 on the Vimeo site of the artist, this is a 5min excerpt video and she describes it as a project based on Philip Guston’s painting of the same name. “In this work, I attempt to reproduce the painting as a series of videos in which I perform as the hooded protagonist-artist painting his self-portrait.”

I decided to make contact with the artist, Rachel Russell, and ask if she would mind having a conversation with me about the video work I researched. The conversation was done via email – her email address is available on her website. She was kind to react immediately. I have her permission to share our conversation for the benefit of my research on this topic. My questions were twofold: In what way did she consider the mask as her own enactment and how was the piece received in 2012.

I learn from the artist that she made 35 films, which are unedited documents of each painting from start to finish, each one lasting from 10 – 15 minutes. The viewer could watch the creation of each work. I came to think of it as a video I watched of a painter painting a painting of a painter painting how he sees his studio and his life as a painter. The props also became the appropriation tools of the painting of Philip Guston, where he used ‘hooded clothing and hand gloves the painter’s painting and a painter, Rachel Russell, who is in costume enacting the painting and performing the making of Guston’s painting. I also consider the viewer who can only see the work by viewing a recording – this time a video/film. It seems the viewer sees the work of two artists at work, both using props and a form of animation or the grotesque to create meaning.

In her follow-up email, she alluded to her own use of the mask as being performative (like her clown videos) where working with it is both to ‘conceal and to express or speak.. as with all masks.” (email conversation, 30 Sep 2021) Here she also referred to the performance itself as an expression. She saw the hood, referring to KKK, which Guston used, as more blank, something to cover, but not really to express. She did not see it to have duality, expression, or creativity, but more as a symbol of power. Her opinion is that in the end, the “mask is radical and the hood is orthodoxy.” (email conversation, 30 Sep 2021) It reminds me of my looking at the use of hoods for penitence.

R Rachel is wearing a costume, not just a hood, it reminds more of the penitants ( – the hood covers her whole body, and the hand painting is always in the same position, like a puppet hand? I think this becomes comical, as the hand battles to hold the brush and do the work., the only moving element in this enactment, one also hears background sounds and some movement when the hand dips the brush in water solution and as the brush moves over the canvas. ( I made a clay hand in this position of holding the brush very awkwardly)

I am thinking that the ‘hooded’ idea, in terms of meaning in Guston’s work, makes the head, enigmatic, as Kentridge refers to in the below video. I also think it alters its wearer, who becomes more ‘anonymous’ when wearing this attire: being disguised or without identity/faceless, or in hiding and being in doubt? If the KKK wears this hood they ‘become’ free to do things in a secretive manner. Could Guston be almost at play with hypocrisy in the art world (the rest of the world in the rest of these series where the hoods feature)? I cannot but think about the political implications of these hooded figures, is it because I am more sensitized, coming from a background of Apartheid and still aware and dealing with White complacency and my own complicity?

On Instagram, I looked at the work of Bryan Eccleston (a tutor at OCA) and learned that the ambiguity and ambivalence of the hooded figures in art history and the work of Guston intrigue him. He sees the sinister and comical, political/religious fundamentalism in these hoods to also remind of the Spanish Catholic penitents (refers to his work, Digital Rain Collages, and his use of Abu Ghraib, a hooded figure in a penitential robe.

Digital Rain, 2016-2018

The following was taken from a website (Greenrooms.London) where the work was exhibited and explains the layers and complexity of this work, which is an ongoing process: Making Digital Rain is a messy and speculative process in which images are deliberately forced together challenging the audience to make sense of something that is, at heart, incomprehensible.

In the same way that each image is a collage the images, too, are forced together to draw out links and similarities across the collection. This, too, can be disorienting as iconography can be used in different ways in different pictures, subverted with humour, or taken seriously.”

Reading around the use of the head robe, called a ‘capirote’ penitents refer to the history of the Spanish Inquisition, and till today participants in Holy Week processions traditionally keep their faces hidden so that they can publicly show penance for their sins while keeping their identity secret. I compared Guston’s use of the hooded figures in his earlier work and see a connection with these ‘capirote’ robes – the eyes are round, not like the ‘slits’ he uses in his work later in the 60s.

I see a theatrical drama unfolding, as produced by Rachel Russel in her enactment of the work – as if there is a parallel between making a painting and producing a theatrical drama, and also the personal drama around own existence as an artist – who is he (she), how should he (she) present himself (herself) – at first, Guston was ‘fighting against the realists, and here he left Abstract Impressionism. Guston uses exaggeration, his hand, larger than life, and paraphrases the image of the working artist arranging the spectacle or drama in this work. In the video piece, this is cleverly done by Russel. She refers to it as almost being comical..” ..morphed into a children’s entertainer, he has comically big useless hands..” (email conversation, 30 September 2021) Does one read irony into this comic, a play with identity as an artist, hidden and not so hidden? In the video below, Kentridge also responds in a performative way.

In my research on the internet, I came upon this very recent video, and shared it with the artist, Rachel Russel during our e mail conversations

I feel that the painting and video piece point to the grotesque: Kentridge reminds us that Guston used all his knowledge as a painter up to then, like how to apply paint, and use color (black, white, and red mostly) to create a composition – here he shows a ‘record of the dance of a painter, a trace of the gesture of the painter as each brush mark has been put down”. (quoted from the video below) I learned that although Guston mixed black with white, or red with white, he never mixed all three together, for there is no violet in these paintings. He did paint black on top of red, or red on top of black. His dark red comes from the red used from the tube, and not from the addition of black.

During artist, Rachel Russell’s discussion with me, she alluded to her own dream to be an action painter and her perception of failing at being a painter. She saw this work as “the ultimate way to enter a painting and a sphere I wasn’t really allowed entry to it.” (email, 30 September 2021) In a follow-up discussion on the video below, Russell suggests that “this idea of wanting to be a painter like ‘these men, not a ‘female’ artist’ remains a tension in her work, which is part hero worship and largely by default a critique. ” It made me think about how we as women artists view ourselves – how we are influenced by the ideas of social institutions and the ‘myth of the ‘great’ artist, on our ideas of our potential and as equal makers of art. Could it be that Russell is also dealing with a play between revealing or hiding? I agree that the art-historical canon has traditionally bypassed female artists almost entirely, and through our own self-discovery and empowerment within the culture and socio-economic politics, this notion is shifting. Was Rachel Russell in a way playfully exploring these ideas? I believe that Rachel Russell has a critique of the protected maleness in the art world and that she revealed the courage to take the risk of making this work. The ‘disadvantage’ she had, was timing, she challenged that by enacting the work of P Guston. With regards to the timing of this work and how it was accepted, she wrote to me that this was her most successful work to date – I see this as how she used her position as a female artist (or perceived predicament ?)as a vantage point. I like the idea to see her work now, after my research, as a leap of faith and a strong statement by a female artist. I consider the fact that this enactment of the work was done in a different medium, it did bring a particular ‘history’ to the front, but there was also a difference as it was a live performance being watched in the video footage, not a finished portrait. I find it also good that visitors watched the whole performance. Even though most were familiar with the original work, the real-time within the making seemed to be captivating.

I think the transformation in the work has to do with concealing and revealing and how the body with the video as a tool, was used to manipulate and make by a process called enactment, which became in my view a form of embodiment. During this research, it was again confirmed that the artistic process of making and researching the history of art leads to interesting new ideas, and can be an ongoing practice, such a great stream of stimulation of ideas, which I do think the artist Guston and Russell is showing. I believe my biggest impression from this research was touching on an understanding of art and artists – we are not living or working in vacuums, our personal circumstances, human experiences, our characters are embedded in a long/ongoing history of learning, living, reaction, and introspection: ambivalence, binaries, paradox, dualities …….are all parts in this dialogue with art.

:


A painting always meets us halfway. It presents a report of the world and we project onto this report associations and memories, including, of course, memories of other images—the painting always contains a fragment of the world and its history, and also a conversation with the history of image-making. William Kentridge

LIST OF ILLUSTRATION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashton, Dore. A Critical Study of Philip Guston. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1990. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft4x0nb2f0/

https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/people-culture/arts-culture/kentridgeart

RESEARCH POINT 3

Investigate the significance and symbolism of hands and/or feet across cultures and reflect on this in your learning log.

I lived in the UAE for three years and the significance and symbolism of hands, feet, eyes became more profound. Emirati men and women mostly wear their traditional clothing when in public (black abaya for the women and white kandura and headpiece/ghutra for the men) The women are covered with a veil /hijab – including a shayla, a light scarf that covers the hair, some woman also wears a gishwa, a thin veil that covers the face but the wearer can see through. A niqab is another option and covers the face entirely with an opening for the eyes. The burqa is a mask worn over the eyebrows, nose, and upper lip, and was believed to protect a woman’s face from heat and dust. Today, they are rarely worn by younger women, I saw older women in smaller towns in the country wear them. Henna body art is often used to decorate a woman’s hands and feet for other special occasions including religious holidays.

Emirati dress code

I learned that it is important to keep your feet flat on the ground. Showing the soles of your shoes or feet implies that you think the other person is ‘dirt’. In the temples, entrants have to remove their shoes, but I soon learned that most people when visiting my home, would leave their shoes (seen as dirty) at the door before entering. (Indian, Pakistani, Philipino cultures) Gender issues became more complex when it comes to greeting and eye contact: When talking to people of the same age, gender or status, direct eye contact is expected. Strong eye contact indicates sincerity and trust, especially in business. But when a man talks to women, strong eye contact is seen as rude or disrespectful. I do feel my understanding is that of being respectful to differences and being aware of contextual differences.

I thought a look at a typical African handshake could be interesting. I am also aware that in African cultures one treats the elders with respect – when greeting a knee bow or even kneeling is considered culturally correct. I feel strongly that one should consider and be respectful of cultural manners and conduct.

Research the work of the following artists : Shirin Neshat. Douglas Gordon and Cindy Sherman

Shirin Neshat:

She is an Iranian born artist who moved to the USA in 1975 . She regards her subject as the country of Iran and herself. I read that she saw this as a perfect model for keeping the aesthetic and the personal part of the work in mind while also dealing with the reality of everyday life.

Her film and photographic work address stereotypes of Islamic femininity. In Islamic culture, the majority of the body is covered with the veil, when in public. She focuses on the parts of the body that are allowed to be revealed, like the face, the eyes, in particular, the hands, the feet. When hands are raised it is a symbol of protest. She symbolically places Farsi (language) calligraphy on hands and faces as a means of expression for women forced into submissive silence. Her writing onto the photos can be seen as the labor of the artist who is interested in literature and is not decorative or Qur’anic text. They are her favorite poems by favorite poets.

The written language becomes a voice for these women as most of the texts are transcriptions of poetry and other writings by women, which express multiple viewpoints and date both before and after the Revolution. Some of the texts are feminist in nature.

In her work,  Rebellious Silence, the script is from Tahereh Saffarzadeh’s poem “Allegiance with Wakefulness” which honors the conviction and bravery of martyrdom. Reflecting the paradoxical nature of each of these themes, histories, and discourses, the photograph is both melancholic and powerful—invoking the quiet and intense beauty for which Neshat’s work has become known.

Cindy Sherman:

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #228, from the History portraits series, 1990, chromogenic color print, 6′ 10 1/16″ x 48″ (208.4 x 122 cm) (The Museum of Modern Art)

Cindy Sherman is known for embodying and enacting images from popular media, in the above work, she has imagined a Renaissance interpretation of the Old Testament hero Judith, and photographed herself in the part.  It seems she has intentionally done this with enough illusionism to confuse the viewer, where she is dressed as a heroine. The images of the original work were taken as reproductions from books. In this way, she remained a consumer of print culture, utilizing only what images were available to any person, anywhere in the world. She performs unidentified or fictional roles, but these constructed scenarios are mostly almost familiar to the viewer. In terms of being a viewer, she gets over the feeling of being looked at, whilst the viewer is trying to look and make sense of the works. She is deconstructing popular cultural feminist images, using imagery of her photos and quite a lot of humor. She does not hide the making of her work, almost to affirm its ‘fakeness’, against the aspirations to beauty and perfection social media is trying to portrait, and many of us fall into.

in her photo stills I looked at one where she improvise the French actress, Brigit Bardot, but not as a sex symbol, but as an intellectual, having her surrounded by books as if she is a librarian. It does talk about how mass media inform our perceptions of the world, and even ourselves. In her work one sees she is inspired by fashion in culture. In her more recent work, she deals with her own aging. See the image of a screenshot I took from a video of The Foundation Luis Vuitton, who had a retrospective of her work from September 202 till January 2021.


I am so much more aware of how women stayed a political tool in most of the works I have looked at.

youtube. Who is Cindy Sherman? a Retrospective 1975-2020


RESEARCH POINT 4

Look at “Draft of a Voice-Over for Split-Screen Video Loop” by Amy Sillman and Lisa Robertson

Julia Koether talking about her work, Seasons and Sacraments

RESEARCH POINT 5

Find examples of the list of artists below’s work and reflect on the ways in which these works cut out and consume space within an environment. What is the viewer’s relationship to these works Compare this to the position of the viewer in relation to Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere.

Robert Smithson (1938-1973)

Yucatan Mirror Displacements, 1969

While in Mexico, Smithson also created the Yucatan Mirror Displacements (1–9) by installing 12-inch (30cm) -square mirrors on dispersed sites on the Yucatan Peninsula. The resulting series of nine color photographs was published in Artforum to accompany his essay “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan” (1969). The mirrors reflected and refracted the surrounding environs, displacing the solidity of the landscape and shattering its forms. Part Earthwork and part image, the displacements contemplate temporality; while the mirror records the passage of time, its photograph suspends time.

The artist saw the mirrors as reflecting and refracting the surroundings, displacing the solidity of the landscape and breaking up its forms. While the mirrors record the passage of time, a photograph of them leaves it suspended, generating a contradiction in the temporality of the work.

Robert Morris (1931-2018)

Untitled 1965, reconstructed 1971 Robert Morris born 1931 Purchased 1972 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T01532

Dan Graham

Anish Kapoor

It seems that mirrors used to only refer to realism and that these artists played with ideas of perspective, but also with the idea that the mirror could become the art itself, as material and object.

The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty called a mirror “the instrument of a universal magic that changes things into spectacles, spectacles into things, me into others, and others into me”, seems to be what one can read into the painting by E Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. (Meyer, 2005) As I viewer I think one is firstly taken by the almost sad face of the woman behind the counter, one realize the mirror behind her when your eyes move to the right and see her reflection, as well as that of a man, whom she could be serving. In the background, the entertainment of many people is seen.

We, as the viewers, stand opposite the barmaid on the other side of the counter and, looking at the reflection in the mirror, we see exactly what she sees, even the man she is talking to/serving.

I think it is a way of challenging ordinary perception and indicating the hidden or not always seen within a space.

I looked at how Louise Bourgeois used mirrors:

When asked why mirrors are so important to her, Bourgeois said: “Mirror means the acceptance of the self. So, I have lived in a house without mirrors because I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t accept myself. The mirror was an enemy. Now, the mirror cannot be your enemy, the mirror has to be your friend, otherwise, you are badly off. So instead of seeing the mirror as a symbol of vanity—no danger there—I saw the mirror as a symbol of acceptance. So that when I hold the mirror to you when the critics and the interviewers and the film-makers come and they ask me inappropriate questions, I take my mirror and I hold it up to them and I say don’t project on me. You see this mirror here? It is not out of vanity—it is a deforming mirror. It doesn’t reflect me, it reflects somebody else. It reflects a kind of monstrous image of myself. So I can play with that.” (Excerpt from an edited transcript of interviews with the artist from the 1993 documentary film directed by Nigel Finch for Arena Films, London, and broadcast by BBC2. Quote cited in Bernadac, Marie-Laure and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Editors. “Destruction of the Father/Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997.” London: Violette, 1998, p. 260-261.)

While discussing “Cell (Eyes and Mirrors)” from 1989-1993, Bourgeois remarked how “reality changes with each new angle. Mirrors can be seen as a vanity, but that is not at all their meaning. The act of looking into a mirror is really about having the courage it takes to look at yourself and really face yourself.” (Quote cited in Kotik, Charlotta, Terrie Sultan, and Christian Leigh. “Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory Works 1982-1993.” New York: The Brooklyn Museum and Harry N. Abrams, Incorporated, 1994, p. 49.)

“The mirror means that you have to come to an agreement with your own reflection. You have to love what you see. Concave and convex mirrors make it possible to play with and accept deformations. On a less metaphorical level, when I began building the ‘Cells,’ I wanted to create my own architecture, and not depend on the museum space, not have to adapt my scale to it. I wanted to constitute a real space which you could enter and walk around in. I don’t like art to depend on handsome spaces, where works are merely placed. I didn’t want that closed world. When I showed the ‘Cells’ for the first time, they worked like a labyrinth, from one ‘Cell’ to the other. I also choose the scale of the works that are presented inside.” (Quote cited in Bernadac, Marie-Laure, Louise Neri, and Paulo Herkenhoff. “Louise Bourgeois: Recent Works.” Bordeaux: capcMusée d’art contemporain; London: Serpentine Gallery, 1998, p. 38.)Curatorial Remarks:

Zanele Muholi (

This South African artist is known for powerful self-portraiture that questions the politics of race and representation and I believe this work is a way of looking inward, and grappling with complex ideas of identity and the gaze.

Bibliography

Meyers, Jeffrey, 2005, Impressionist Quartet: The intimate genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt, E-book on SCRIBD 2016 ISBN 978-1-904915-51-5

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