Subjectivity and Authorship Surface and Materiality in Painting and Drawing

subjectivity and authorship Surface and Materiality in Painting and Drawing Damian Moss Master of Fine Art 2010 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Peter Sharp, for his unwavering support and encouragement throughout this research. I would also like to thank my colleagues, in particular Andrew Christofides, for their advice and interest they displayed in my research. Lastly I would like to acknowledge the support of my family, Val and Peter, Finbar and Sylvie, and most of all Kate. contents Abstract 1 Introduction 2 Changes in Authorship – Classicism to Modernism 3 Critical Distance – Locating the Viewer 4 From Field to Image – the Birth of the Monochrome 5 Locating the Warmth in Formalism 6 Navigating the Line Through Space 7 Creating Structure for Spontaneity 8 The Mark in Question 9 Point of View 10 Conclusion Abstract This research will trace changes in approaches to pictorial space, image surface and materiality from the seventeenth century to the present. It focuses on the rise of modernism in the twentieth century, which saw the gradual flattening of pictorial space and an increased importance placed on an artist’s individual sense of touch. This research questions how these changes impact on the viewer’s experience of an image. How is an artist’s intention to communicate emotions and ideas reflected through their handling of surface, the materials they choose and the processes they employ? What influence does an artist’s interaction with materials and image surface have onlocating the viewer and how do these choices made by the artist affect subjectivity and authorship of an image? In researching the work of other artists and when making my images, I focus on the importance of what is unique to the nature of each medium, and question how this uniqueness becomes part of the content of the work. While acknowledging there are a number of places this story could commence, I have chosen to begin with Claude Lorrain, before discussing Cézanne, Giorgio Morandi, Tony Tuckson and Luc Tuymans. The practical component of the research will encompass painting, works on paper and sculpture. 3 1. Introduction Like most practitioners, much of my time is engaged in studying images. What I am conscious of is how instantly recognisable a particular artist’s work appears. An image’s subject matter is usually the first aspect the viewer notices. Is the viewer looking at a still life, portrait, landscape or abstract? This reading on the part of the viewer is instantaneous. The reading of the work I am interested in usually occurs some time after this, that is, the viewer’s reading of the physical making of the image, and how the viewer relates this reading to the image’s content. In regards to images from the twentieth century onwards, I believe it is the physical making of a work the observer is largely responding to, albeit not entirely consciously. In front of most artworks the viewer surmises the image they are looking at is handmade. Many artists are aware of the potential of this reading, some acutely so. The degree they decide to enhance or subvert this aspect of image making and image reading is the focus of the research. Why might an artist choose to expose the process of making a work, and when did this become aesthetically desirable, rather than something judged as crude or an indication of a lack of technical skill? Why might an artist choose to elevate this aspect to become the content of the work? How might a viewer respond when confronted with an image which, rather than appear to have effortlessly materialized on the canvas through the hand of the ‘talented and gifted artist’, is shown to have been laboured over, an image not embarrassed to reveal its re-workings, hesitations, doubts and mistakes. Furthermore, it may be apparent the artist has intended these aspects of emotional and intellectual process to remain as permanently embedded evidence in the surface of the image. By consciously leaving evidence of process, the distance between artwork and viewer has been altered. The research focuses on this critical distance between the artwork and viewer, and questions why and how an artist alters this distance. In the context of this paper, distance does not refer to the physical distance between the image and the viewer, rather, to the conceptual and emotional distance the viewer perceives between themselves, the image, and the artist. 4 2. Changes in Authorship – Classicism to Modernism “Like a fragment of handwriting under the graphologist’s eye, each gestural mark simply refers the viewer back to the originating artist as an independent actor with an identifiable character.” (Shiff, 1991: 134) About twenty years ago I read an article that first sparked my interest in this area. The source of the article I have long forgotten, but the content of the article remains with me and continues to inform my approach to studying and making art. The question the article posed was this: how much of a painting does one need to be shown to accurately determine which artist made a particular work? The article concluded that given 1 square inch (2.5 square centimetres) of a Rembrandt, Velasquez, Corot or Monet, the educated viewer can determine authorship of an image. It is not necessary to be shown the whole painting. It is not necessary to be shown the subject matter. All the viewer needs to do is to give their attention to a tiny sample of the surface of the painting, to read the artist’s ‘handwriting’, to determine authorship of the work. What differentiated one work from another were not the most obvious aspects of an image: the form, colour, composition or subject matter. Rather, it was the manner in which the artist touched the surface. Touch and its physical trace made it possible to identify one artist from the next. Authorship was determined not by what they painted but by how they painted. This appealed to me as a conceptionally and emotionally valid position to approach researching and making images. Concentrating on the how, the materials and processes used by the artist, rather than the what, the overt subject matter depicted in the image, allows for analysing images beyond the superficial and gives the viewer insight into the decision making process. Our ability to read images is determined by cultural, social and educational experiences. Whereas the ability to respond to marks is arguably more universally possible. It could be argued that subject matter depicted by artists reflects more about the era they lived in and the interests of their patrons than it does about them. Historically, the image an artist depicted has been largely determined by external sources: the church, the market place and contemporary fashion. As Richard Shiff states: “An interpreter in the classical tradition is more likely to locate the meaning of a work in its represented scene, allegory, or narrative than in the psychology or genius of the particular maker.” (Shiff, 1991: 131) Whereas by comparison, the way in which the artist touches the canvas or paper, the way they make marks and manipulate surface is largely (but not entirely, because surface treatment is also susceptible to changes in fashion), determined by internal sources and reflect a modernist sensibility. Shiff concurs, “a work of modernist art will seem to be authored, personalized, its image so closely identified with the mind and body of its maker.” (1991:129) 5 This shift from a classicist to a modernist reading of an image began in the nineteenth century, where pictorial touch was complicated by increasing cultural investment in the artist’s physical trace, and its link to authorial identity. To make a painting was to assert oneself as an independent author, and purchasing a painting was to participate in a social system of fashionability. (Shiff, 1991:135) The manner in which an individual makes marks is as personal and idiosyncratic as an individual’s gait, sense of humour or handwriting. Treatment of surface and mark making, while being innate, can be reflected upon, studied, analysed and refined. This is what the practical component of the research focuses on. 6 3. Critical Distance – Locating the Viewer “Cézanne had loosened up a lot of things about how to structure. The subject matter really became irrelevant. …What he was really doing was making the painting. The painting was much more important that the picture of the mountain.” (Marden cited in Garrels, 2006: 13) The research concentrates on two aspects of painting that occurred during the twentieth century and the rise of modernism: firstly, the gradual flattening of pictorial space, and secondly, the increased importance of an artist’s individual sense of touch. A landscape painter who pre-dates Cézanne by two hundred years is Claude Lorrain (1600-82). (Figure.1). One of Lorrain’s primary concerns was to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. He achieved spatial depth in his landscapes by incorporating wide views with an open foreground, presenting the viewer with a ‘window to the world’. Lorrain wanted the viewer to look through, or past, the surface of the picture, and experience the view beyond. The surface was regarded a part of the image the viewer should not notice, and should not hinder the viewer’s enjoyment of the subject. Lorrain located the viewer as an observer to the landscape, not part of it, not within it. As Wollhiem states, “for Claude the whole landscape is distant. Even the foreground is remote.” (1987: 210) Figure 1: Claude Lorrain, Landscape with the Father of Psyche sacrificing to Apollo, 1660-70 (175x223cm) In the twentieth century, changes in attitude towards pictorial space and image surface meant distant and remote as pictorial attributes were rarely associated with painting.

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