The Painters Contract on Presence and Provocation in the Work of Mary Waters

The painters contract On presence and provocation in the work of Mary Waters

For an artist capable of transforming light into atmosphere it must have been a glorious subject: a portrait of a girl, swathed in sumptuous clothes and sporting a red hat, sitting by a window. The somewhat androgynous features of the elongated face contrast with the moist lips of the sensual slightly open mouth. The pearls in her ears glisten in the sunlight which floods in abundantly. The Girl with a Red Hat, 1665, by Johannes Vermeer sparkles and shines. As a basis for Mouth, 1993, a tiny painting measuring just 25 x 20 cm and painted early in her career as an artist, Mary Waters took a detail – the seductive, vivid-red mouth from Vermeer’s painting – enlarged this detail and subsequently added a wide black painted border to the image. While the light in the painting by the old master appears to radiate across the canvas from an external source, the blow-up by Waters resembles a photographic slide, only surrendering its image when a bright light is shone through its transparent surface. The curvaceous, full-bodied lips and the dramatic use of red and black in Mouth would not look out of place in one of the highly staged-managed commercials for a fashion label such as Chanel. Another example: in 1996, Waters painted her Girl with turban, again after a work by Vermeer, namely the Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted in 1665 and a favourite of the public at the Mauritshuis. This time, Waters took a detail from the old painting, which she not only stretched to a truly large format (125 x 90 cm) – nearly three times the size of Vermeer’s work – but which she furthermore painted entirely in shades of grey, whereby she used the grisaille technique in order to make the tonality more extreme as it were. This work does not produce the association with a colour slide, but with a black-and-white photograph that, thanks to the use of a single basic colour, has the depth of a duo-tone print. Top fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld once stated that people who are far ahead of their time are just as tedious as those who are behind the times. According to Lagerfeld, the art is to be of the present. In this light, the paintings by Waters mentioned above can be regarded as a statement, after all Waters’ paintings position her in a field in which the relationship between painting and newer media such as photography and film is made into an issue, a highly topical subject, which breathes new life into the modernist question regarding the essence of painting.

Despite the question concerning the specific meaning of photography for the painting that is connected to it, Mary Waters’ oeuvre attracts the criticism of being ‘old-fa- shioned’ and actually not of the present. The literal allusion to the works of old masters is responsible for this opinion. Moreover, the traditional aesthetic quality of her work (such as the attention paid to the expression of the material, the refined style of painting) brings with it the risk of attracting applause from the wrong side. Why then does Mary Waters, nonetheless, indulge herself in the old masters? Is she a painting kindred spirit of Peter Greenaway, the world renowned film director who, with boyish bravura, annexes images by artists from the Golden Age in order to reanimate them in the baroque, theatrical dé- cors of films such as The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, from 1989. Greenaway is opposed to the supremacy of text over image in contemporary cinema. Recent projects involving Rembrandt’s Night Watch or The Last Supper by Da Vinci aim to allow the au- dience to once again observe the images, to become submerged in them. Greenaway, who began his career as a painter, gained recognition for his medium-surpassing experiments and the lack of formal narrative structures in his films, in favour of the intensity of the images themselves and of shifting meanings. Mary Waters is also averse to the narrative, and is fascinated by formal elements such as abstraction, image intensity, symmetry, ornamentation, series’ and parallels. To find a possible answer regarding the motivation for the apparently literal use of sources from art history, it is, however, important to ask the question of how one can paint realistically in these times, and do so on the basis of paintings by famous predecessors, without becoming narrative. On the strength of the two previously mentioned works by Waters, one might contend that the illusionism of the world of classical images in her work corresponds precisely with the postmodern media reality, in all its glossiness. When seen as such, her (double) portraits and still lifes would be props, typical postmodern baroque, subject to the eclectic manipulations of the artist. And yet, this assessment falls short. The use of cinematic and photographic techniques such as the close-up, the detail, the mon- tage, and repetition are indeed consistent with postmodernist practice, but specifically the effect, and the way in which Waters appropriates her images, are equally reminiscent of the introspective aspects of postmodernist thinking, and of pop art in particular. In his book on painting, Della Pittura: De schilderkunst en andere media (Della Pit- tura: Painting and other media), Frank Reijnders describes how in the nineteen seventies painting was definitively ‘pronounced dead’, as an intrinsically played out, commercially exploited art form that had lost all contact with the real world. According to Reijnders we need to seriously consider whether the ‘unhurried, opaque fabric’ of the painting may indeed still have something to say about reality, which in recent decades has increasingly become a reality that is experienced through the media. Painting will never be able to match the possibilities that digital media offers for the manipulation of reality, but even in a time in which every painter knows that the art of painting ‘no longer depicts an image or a me- aningful composition, nor that it represents itself’, Reijnders believes that there is still a ray of light in the darkness. Now that contemporary painting is no longer self-referential it exists primarily in relation to other art forms, which it defies to generate meaning of their own, according to Reijnders. (Frank Reijnders, Della Pittura, de schilderkunst en andere media, p.114) The illusory capacity of painting to make appear that which does not exist may well be its salvation and from that perspective the work of Mary Waters can be described as a ‘neo-modernist’ attempt to scrutinize the medium of painting as such, but by utilizing the achievements and techniques of the 21st century and, therefore, without throwing realism overboard. Mary Waters finds her inspiration in art books. For her, the photograph of the painting, the reproduction, not the original, is her point of departure to create an image. This appropriation is nothing new. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, young American artists such as Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince shared a keen interest in the pop art of the sixties and its use of images from the world of mass communication, advertising and the consumer society. Andy Warhol’s work in particular served as an example. The Appropriation artists were not a group, but they did all use the strategy of appropriating and reproducing images. In contrast to these artists, for whom social criticism and a highly conceptual way of thinking was predominant, the work of Mary Waters revolves far more around abstract notions – such as image intensity, symmetry, ornamentation, series’ and parallels – and capacity of painting to suggest a presence and to provoke. Those abstract notions can be explained in part through the idea of identity in general, and Mary Waters’ Irish identity in particular.

Mary Waters was born in London, but raised in Ireland, in a small town 140 mi- les west of Dublin. She graduated from the Galway College of Art in 1981, after which she chose to take up a teaching position. She worked as an Art and Design teacher at a secon- dary school until 1990. Waters: “My first encounter with art history came in the form of reproductions in books, sometimes in colour, but usually in black-and-white. There was a museum in Dublin, it’s true, but that was so far away that I never actually visited. When I was teaching, I based my lessons on photographic slides without ever having seen the actual paintings themselves.” Though she struggled to rouse the interest of her adolescent pupils in art, the projected works of art caused her to fall ever deeper under the spell of the old Italian and Dutch masters herself. Waters:“I was never really interested in the idea of Art. I was a bad student and went on to study Art at third level because I had a natural facility to paint and draw, so study- ing both seemed a logical and easy option, I remained a bad student in College and found Art largely irrelevant to my life. However as I looked at the projected images of European paintings on the wall while teaching Art history lessons, it increasingly began to dawn on me the depth and integrity of these images. They had a powerful effect on me, it was an abstract visual experience, I wasn’t just looking at the images I was encountering them, being drawn into them in an almost physical way. These images were a vehicle, a way in, to where I didn’t and still do not know.”

In 1990 Waters decided to fulfil the growing desire she felt to paint herself. With little technical training and using only her cherished examples as a guiding principle, she began working: “I was interested in how these images were produced, The actual techniques: types of pigments, grounds, oils etc used by Vermeer or Titan did not and still does not preoccupy me at all, I find obsessive interest in technique even of the old masters regressive and uninteresting. As can be seen in many contemporary ‘fine painters’ it can become an end and a dead end in itself. It was the effect of the paintings that I wanted to investigate. I bought Art books with reasonably good reproductions and literally began to deconstruct the images, I would isolate an area of the image, then explore and reproduce it with paint. I found I was very comfortable with paint, I did not find it easy but it gave me the time and space to consider the image that no other medium could. I also began to get very interested in ‘ownership’ of the image and the tensions between original, copy and reproduction. Paradoxically it is photography, both Art photography (Beckner Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sher- man) photojournalism and advertising that are my longest and strongest aesthic influences .The photography of fashion and interior magazines were the only source of visual sumptu- ousness available in my youth. Film and television was also a huge influence, As a child I was not allowed to go to the cinema but watched old black and white film from the heyday of Hollywood on endless wet afternoons, their form, framing and tonality are firmly etched in my visual memory. When I did get to the cinema the scale of the image made an overwhelming impression that still plays a role in my work today.

Waters has no rules about what I can or cannot do with a ‘found’ image. “I can mix a detail of a Raphael portrait with the cinematic format and scale of a Sergio Leone’s once upon a time in the west’ and the tonality of Ernest Hallers Jezalbelle (the banker) That combina- tion does not jar with or frighten me. The resultant image is unmistakeably of the twenty first century, however I always honour the integrity of the original image, which is what at- tracted me to it in the first place. Ireland is a country on the periphery of Europe and Waters has always regarded European Art as imagery from an essentially different culture and a dominant one at that. As previously mentioned, an important conceptual point of departure for Waters is the idea pf appropriation, which acquires extra significance given the social and political context in which she was raised. Waters: “ The other area that interests me very much and that I address in my work is the relevance of western European visual imagery to many people currently living in Europe, the relationship between the cultural centre of Europe and its peripheries. Because I come from a country physically and culturally annexed, both by location and colonization, I can see the often confused relationship between ‘high’ culture imagery and the people who experience it. When these images were presen- ted to us in Ireland, despite the fact that we were white, Western European Christians they were not ours in any real sense. They carried a message of both the superiority and the bearer who almost always came from abroad. The ‘otherness’ of western art was something felt strongly, at the same time the beauty and integrity of the images in many ways trans- cended the message causing much ambivalence, I believe this uncertainty is something currently felt by many people particularly in the peripheries of post cold war Europe.

Regarding Ireland she says: “For many and complex reasons, after the golden age of the eight and ninth centuries, which produced some of the worlds great illuminated manuscripts, Ireland did not develop a visual culture of any serious impact. Access to visual art was very limited. Irish literature and poetry on the other hand desite the loss af the native language is of a distinctly high quality, coming from the Irish love affair with language and the story. There has always been a strong culture of storytelling in Ireland where Seanchai, professional travelling storytellers, along with poets and musicians were valued members of the society. Language has a special place with the Irish. Whereas conversation in the Netherlands is used purely to exchange information, in Ireland it is regarded as a highly developed form of entertainment, how you say something is as important, sometimes more important than what you say. Consequently fact and fictions are interchange- able also. So if unintentional narrative elements creep into my work, it makes me immedi- ately suspicious.”

For Mary Waters, the fact of her being an Irish artist who also partly lives and works in The Netherlands does not mean that she feels left behind, but sooner left out, not in the sense of being excluded, but rather slightly outside of it. Her involvement with and com- mitment to painting is romantic on the one hand, but at the same time also ‘hard’ as she herself says. For Waters there is no soft focus. She doesn’t consider herself to be behind the times, but she does feel outside of the world of isms per definition. The question of the extent to which one can truly penetrate into another culture has become increasingly important to her. This concerns not only her personal history, but also the history of another culture. Waters: “its actually rather terrifying, Dutch people are individually very Dutch, which implies that the Irish as individuals are truly Irish. The culture from which you originate determines who you are to a much greater degree than I would have thought.” The concept of appropriating images from art history has been a leitmotif since the start of her painting career: Waters: “When I began using reproductions it was purely for the pur- pose of experimentation and I thought it would be a phase, but I discovered that I am able to express everything I wish to through this. I want to possess those second-hand images, annex them in order to create a contemporary image.” Mary Waters’ preferences are not limited to 16th century Venetian painting or the Dutch masters of the Golden Age, she can equally be seduced by classicism and the Rococo. The basis of the technique she applies is indeed centuries old, but for Waters it goes without saying that she employs this technique efficiently, which means that she doesn’t avoid using modern aids, such as the computer and the projector. The many layers of paint that Waters uses are intended first and fore- most to create a certain intensity in the image that she herself describes as reminiscent of modern colour photographs. With the reproduction as her point of departure, Waters keeps starting all over again with an excruciatingly slow painting process. In the same way she chooses the 17th century portraits because to her they represent abstract, empty images – thus emphati- cally lacking any narrative meaning, in contrast to contemporary themes or portraits of family members and acquaintances, all of which bear their own meaning and emotional overtone – the technical process from which her work emerges can likewise be compared to a method by which to become absorbed by the image and reach another state of aware- ness. As mentioned, Waters uses contemporary image strategies, which she derives from photography and film. In addition to this, patterns and the associated aspect of repetition play an important visual role. Waters: “I love the symmetry and calm of patterns in Isla- mic art, but also the chaos, asymmetry and abstraction found in illuminated manuscripts such as the Books of Kells and Lindisfarne as well as the deceptive frivolity of Rococo. Patterns are employed in my work not only as a decorative principle but also as an abstract concept They can express the exuberance, brilliance and joy of life; they can be comple- tely abstract, full of energy, almost spiritual. By using pattern I can express something that artists are often afraid of, the present generation of Dutch designers I notice embrace it enthusiastically. At a deeper level there are the patterns that emerge in my work. The Twins series form a pattern, both as individual works and as a series. I could say this about all my work, when I am painting a face or a dress I am not conscious of the figure or the object. I am looking at an abstract series of interplaying colours, tone and the patterns they are making. I do not want to be an illustrator either of my ideas or of existing imagery. Its what happens in the imagination that interests me. The patterns that emerge with these images, they are entirely abstract, infinite, it’s not a question of variety but of an endless number of variations.” When asked to formulate what the essence of her painting is and what the area between concept and execution might include, Mary Waters talks about the feeling of tapping into a current that artists have associated with throughout the centuries, a way of seeing, intuition. Waters: “In the past the paintings artists made were often commissioned, but they always added something that they themselves saw and which also related to who they themselves were. This is what I in turn use to make my images.” Everything in Mary Waters’ painting seems to be geared towards an abstract, ‘word- less’ communication, which is extraordinary in itself for someone who feels explicitly linked to the history of the storytelling culture of her native country, but which is all the more pronounced because of the use of realistic motifs in her work. Dirk Lauwaert once wrote that realism today is given a highly visual interpretation. “Realism is a matter of seeing, making visible, visualization. Images thus pre-eminently fall under the issues addres- sed by realism. No wonder that such persistent agitation against the image is waged from other quarters: the image may well no longer seduce us into religious perversity, but into an epistemological delusion. The issues concerning the image define our entire mindset. Knowing is seeing an image (seeing alone is insufficient: the object of sight must be an image). A fact today is an image.” Continuing with Lauwaert, this means that we live in a radical new world since the arrival of the photographic image. According to Lauwaert this involves images that are not created through a process of imagination, but that are realized ‘objectively’. “The photographic image is essentially realistic. After all, photographic images are realized through non-human interface between the image carrier and the image with light as the sole intermediary. Every photograph carries the intimate code of that which it depicts, not the cultural code of depiction.” From this perspective Mary Waters’ painting might be interpreted as an attempt, via the reproduction – i.e. the photographic image –, to re-present a renewed link to the material, the paint itself, and not just the codes of the current age of mass media, but also to humanize the interface as it were. The artist, not the light, is the intermediary. After all her figures and still lifes are carriers, not only of the tradition, but also specifically of the cultural codes of this era, to which both maker and observer belong. Mary Waters’ art is about the emergence of images, about presence, about an ‘individual’ presence evoked through an endlessly long process of painting. It is about the power of the painted provocation, not in the sense of ‘giving offence’, but in the sense of ‘calling into being’. That is, freely translated from Greenaway., the painter’s contract.

Pietje Tegenbosch June 2008