Critical Practice Paper 1Rosalind Barker Research Paper 1 Unit 1 Part time
Title ‘Objects of Desire: Drawing the threads together’ Contents List of Illustrations Definitions Introduction Contemporary Drawing The Distinguishing name: Titles Drawing as process How the Lines are made When a Line is more than a Line ‘Unreal Spaces’ Conclusion Bibliography Visits Internet Information
List of illustrations Illustration 1 Rosalind Barker ‘Objects of Desire 1’ 2013 Illustration 2 William Hogarth ‘Gin lane’ 1751 Illustration 3 Smart Phone Image found on the Internet 1 Illustration 4 Paula Rego ‘Untitled 8’ Etching 2000 Illustration 5 Paula Rego ‘Wendy sewing on Peter’s shadow’ 1992 Illustration 6 Paula Rego ‘Sewing on the shadow 1’ 1992 Illustration 7 Paula Rego ‘Sewing on the Shadow 11’ 1992 Illustration 8 Paula Rego ‘Sewing on the shadow 111’ 1992 Illustration 9 Smart phone image found on the Internet 2 Illustration 10 Rosalind Barker ‘Objects of desire 5’ 2013 Illustration 11 Smart phone image found on the Internet 3 Illustration 12 Rosalind Barker ‘Objects of Desire’ 3
Oxford Dictionary Definitions
Object Noun. Late Middle English: from Medieval Latin objectum ‘thing presented to the mind’ A material thing that can be seen and touched. A person or thing to which action or feeling is directed A thing sought or aimed at; a purpose. A thing external to the thinking mind or subject. A person or thing of a pathetic or ridiculous appearance.
Object challenges ‘sex object culture’ – the sexual objectification of women through lad’s mags, lap dancing clubs or sexist advertising. (http://www.object.org.uk)
Desire Noun and verb. Middle English via Old French desir from desirer An unsatisfied longing or craving An expression of this; a request. Sexual appetite, lust.
Drawing noun The art of representing by line. Delineation without colour. The art of representing with pencils, pens, crayons etc. rather than paint. A picture produced in this way.
(All Definitions THOMPSON Ed. The Concise Oxford Dictionary 9th Edition 1995)
‘Objects of Desire: Drawing the threads together’
Introduction
‘The real voyage of discovery consists in not seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes’. (Proust)
McNiff (1998 P146) discusses how when considering research direction students should consider and discover “the thesis you are living and can’t see”
When I drew the six pillows that are collectively titled ‘Objects of desire’ in 2013, I cited the etchings of William Hogarth (Gin Lane) and the body of works created by Paula Rego in response to William Hogarth as being of significant influence. My need to fully explore this intrigue forms the basis of this paper. We question what it is to be human and how artists portray it. This is the essence of both Hogarth and Rego’s work and potentially the connection that I made.
In this paper I will try to gain understanding of my working methodology by comparing, analyzing and critically evaluating my body of work entitled ‘Objects of Desire’ to the subject related etchings of William Hogarth’s ‘Gin Lane’ and Paula Rego’s ‘Sewing on the Shadow’ with reference to drawing methodology, the viewer, title, subject matter, drawing implement and support. I shall not seek a new landscape but embark on Proust’s real voyage of discovery ‘in having new eyes’
Contemporary Drawing Deaana Petherbridge has referred to ‘the primal nature of drawing’ in its ability to make us grasp an immediate reality. The closeness of the immediacy of the means of conveying the concept in drawing, unencumbered by sophisticated processes, can she states in ‘it’s simplicity convey a complexity of conceptual possibilities.’ (Ed. Garner 2012. p6) Historically drawing has been aligned to representing the figurative in a representational or realistic way, which is reflected in the Hogarth and Rego etchings that I have selected to discuss. While the Oxford dictionary has a tightly constructed view of ‘drawing’ (Thompson d. Ed. Clarendon Press Oxford 1995.) my interpretation of my thread work as ‘drawing’ informs this paper. Downs in the introduction to the book ‘Drawing now’ confines contemporary drawing ‘to a definition that confines it to paper and certain traditional materials’[1]. My piece while not using paper or ‘traditional’ media in its simplicity of drawing the line, does reflect his concerns that drawing should concern itself with ‘postmodern preoccupations of appropriation, fragmentation, indeterminacy; its capacity to express in contrasting ways through gesture and allegory; and it’s potential to challenge what may be considered aesthetic’ (Downs. Ed (et al) 2007 1X) I intend to class my hand drawn thread work titled ‘Objects of Desire’ as ‘Contemporary Drawing’. Illustration 1 ‘Objects of Desire 1’
The Distinguishing name: Titles
By selecting the titles ‘Gin Lane’ (William Hogarth) and ‘Sewing on the shadow’ (Paula Rego’) the artists have provided a literal description of the figurative events. Down’s explores a conceptual figuration between title and drawing, between what it is about, how it is made and the resulting marks. Drawings think around a subject they are discursive. As aggregates of experience, they can only suggest and refer to ‘reality ‘ or appearance. Similarly, when looking at a drawing, we search for possibilities that match our experience.’ (Downs. 2007 p xv) Is my title ‘Objects of Desire’ apposite? A title can be more than just a label, a name, or a way of identifying a painting. It can be, as Danto discusses, a direction for viewer interpretation. “Since the title is given by the painter, it presumably implies what he intends by way of a structure” (Danto 1981 p199). Interpretation is to offer a theory as to what the work is about, what its subject is and to provoke thought. Danto comments, “you can call a painting whatever you like but you cannot interpret it as you choose” (Danto 1981 p131). Reading Susan Stewart ‘On Longing’ I found a whole chapter entitled ‘Objects of Desire’ dedicated to discussion of ‘the souvenir’. Freud also references ‘Objects of Desire’ as a chapter title. Yet I felt connection when reading Stewart in her considerations of the souvenir. Stewart discusses the ‘bodily grotesque, the freak show as spectacle and how it permits a voyeurism which is at once transcendental and distanced. Thus a miniaturisation is effected through the viewers stance no matter what the object is’ (Stewart 2007. P134) While Rego and Hogarth have selected titles to describe the narrative that they portray, I have selected a more generic title that allows each viewer to contribute their own nuance and way into the work, dependant on individual perceptions of the vocabulary.
Drawing as process
Hogarth first created colour paintings on canvas as a feeding device for his linear etchings. Faithfully copied by his studio engravers or sometimes processed by him, only after the dissemination of the black and white engravings were the paintings sold. (Cruikshank, 1957.p)
Illustration 2 ‘Gin lane’ William Hogarth 1751
Rego’s methodology was to create pastel drawings from models but in her etching technique used in ‘Sewing on the shadow’ (learned as a process at the Slade) she found an ‘antidote’ to painting and felt it ‘allowed her images to fall thick and fast from her mind’ (Bradley. 2002 p47)
Reading Gansterer and Ingold led me to consider the nature of my use of the minimalist linear in my mark making and how Petherbridge comments that ‘Drawing is DRIVEN by conventions of converting light and mass into a line’ (Ed Garner 2012 p30) In relation to Hogarth, Rego and Objects of Desire, the light and mass being predominantly human and the line linear but both complex and fine.
My drawing process experiments with the premise of using a needle as a fine drawing tool and thread as media. “Our drawings remind me of the connection between paper and cloth. (The best paper being made from cloth) Working on paper we are drawing in imagination on cloth” (Berger .2005. p135). In reality I am working on a cotton cloth support for my delicately drawn thread marks.
Illustration 3 Smart Phone Image found on the Internet 1
My ‘drawings’ are sourced directly from contemporaneous found ‘smart’ phone photographs. Stephen Farthing discusses how the de-skilling of photography has made it a part of the artist’s toolkit as just like drawings they can be enhanced and improved after the event. Photography as ‘eyewitness’ is an ‘integral part of the entire developed worlds social life’ (Garner. 2012.p.148) The women captured in my drawings appear to be playing a role, acting in a fantasy world but they are all the amalgamation of souvenir ‘eyewitness’ images found on the Internet. The women are not traced or drawn with graphite pencil prior to the needle being used but are composed in a reflective response to the found imagery. Minimal pencil and acrylic marks are introduced at the end of the process on the cloth surface to introduce a nominal indication of ‘place’. (Cloth pillow as place will be discussed later in the paper.)
How the lines are made Paula Rego during an interview with Edward King discussed how her images in ‘The abortion’ series are more powerful because you don’t see anything specific. The body language and non-specificity, ‘sprawling postures of humiliation and indignity’ (Rosenthal ref: Catalogue Celestinas House. p149) in this series is reminiscent of the women depicted in ‘Objects of Desire’. Illustration 4 Paula Rego ‘Untitled 8’ Etching 2000 Ed 17 By utilizing a needle as drawing tool, I was drawn to the Rego etching ‘Sewing on the shadow’ that I found in ‘Paula Rego ‘The Complete Graphic Works’ ‘ showing her multiple interpretive etchings based on Peter Pan (The engravings were created to illustrate the text of Peter Pan as a limited addition for the Folio Society in 1992) Illustration 5 Paula Rego ‘Wendy sewing on Peter’s shadow’ 1992 Etching and aquatint. Ed of 25 Signed and numbered Paper size 61.6 x 50.5 cms Included in The Folio Society ‘Peter Pan’ Illustration 6 Paula Rego Illustration 7 Paula Rego ‘Sewing on the shadow 1’ 1992 ‘Sewing on the Shadow 11’ 1992 Etching and aquatint Coloured etching and aquatint Ed 25 Signed and numbered Ed 25 Signed and numbered
Illustration 8 Paula Rego Sewing on the shadow 111’ 1992 Coloured etching and aquatint Ed of 25 Signed and numbered All printed by Paul Coldwell at Culford Press, London on Somerset paper.
Rosenthal discusses how it is unusual that Rego in Peter Pan avoids depicting the actual needle entering the flesh; the violence or pain of the shadows reattachment is avoided, only intimated. (Rosenthal 2003 p78) Is this the connection that I construed in the linkage of my work to Rego’s, an implied threat of malign violence somewhere hovering in this clean stark space? Does my using a needle as drawing tool escalate this threat? Fiona Bradley Describes ‘the brooding quietness of ‘Wendy sewing on Peters shadow’ a moment of almost Jungian intensity; ‘ (Bradley .2002.p 48) My subject matter is aimed at an adult audience, Rego’s illustrations in Peter Pan also appear aimed at a sinister adult viewer, they allude to Jung and Freud but the Peter Pan text was written by JM Barrie in a time frame not cognizant with these theories of psychology and sexuality. Traditional children’s stories like ‘Peter Pan’ and fairy tales are full of hidden meanings, violence, mayhem and black magic. ‘Objects of Desire’ drawn with minute delicate thread marks on pillow cases [as support] link us to sleep, a dreamscape, or the stuff of nightmares, bedtime and fairy tales. Pillows can also reference comfort, safety, sexuality, caring, nursing and ‘feminine skills’ implying standards of housework. My drawn figures are very small and could be construed to depict disheveled childhood dolls or fairies. Psychologist Stanley Hall in his ‘Study of Dolls’ explains how miniaturization of dolls diminishes threat, distancing and making sexuality diminutive. “Even feared and hated objects excite pleasure when mimicked on a small scale” (Hall, Stanley G A study of Dolls E L Kellogg and Co 1897 p48) Illustration 9 Smart phone image found on the Internet 1
Illustration 10 ‘Objects of desire 5’
When a line is more than a line Hogarth, Rego and I all use energetic line to present humanity as grotesques in the displayed bodily position, occupation and appearance of dress/undress of the figures we view. Tim Ingold In his chapter ‘How the line became straight’ comments on how we see straight lines everywhere even when they do not really exist. How in Western societies gender is linked in opposition, Male as unambiguously ‘straight’ in posture denoting morality and social dignity verses women where curvature indexes femininity. He goes on to discuss how judgments are extended using these parameters to decide if people are ‘civilised’ and how English vocabulary links ‘twisted’ crooked’ and ‘wandering’ to metaphors of the mind to imply ‘errant ways’ while ‘the straight line is a connotation of a moral condition, with humanity, architecture and culture. (Ingold: 2007 p.153) Hogarth and Rego use their twisted and crooked lines to address errant ways and moral conditions. The figurative works of both artists are loaded with psychological tensions, dramas and complex narratives that hint at emotions lying just below the surface. In ‘Objects of Desire’ I am also creating far from ‘straight’ lines on my subliminal use of cloth. Berger suggests that cloth is usually made to cover things and ‘at the same time it draws attention to what it’s covering’ (Berger 2005. P135) There was no intention for my drawings to be ‘read’ as a morality tale but as a social recording focusing on ‘a raw aspect’ of reality in the streets of 21st Century Britain Ingold neatly sums up why my work is not embroidery in his analysis of embroidery, as transformation of linear trace to thread and the loss of surface as focus. ‘The embroiderer starts with traces on a surface, as on the page of her pattern book, but in her activity with the needle she translates those traces into threads. In doing so more ever she contrives to make the cloth disappear.’ (Ingold.2007.p 51) Whereas Ingold makes the point that the embroiderer strives to make the background cloth disappear, contrarily the placing of my images onto cotton pillows implies that the cloth is an essential part of my drawing.
‘Unreal Spaces’ Alan Watts’s autobiography, (In My Own Way .1972), starts with the sentence: “Topophilia is a word invented by the British poet John Betjeman for a special love for peculiar places. ” Topophilia (From Greek topos “place” and -philia, ‘love of’ is a strong sense of place, which often becomes mixed with the sense of cultural identity among certain peoples and a love of certain aspects of such a place. Hogarth and the original photographs of my drawn ‘Ladys’ are all located in public places, roads, streets and gutters and have a strong cultural identity.
Illustration 11 Smart phone image found on the Internet 3
Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar Describe the urban city streets as ‘Familiar and yet sometimes sinister, the streets are at once the site of social interaction and something darker, something more violent’ (Dean 2005 .p27) This sentence made me think about having removed my ‘ladies’ from these public spaces where I found them and put them in a potential place of safety, but is it a peculiar place, a pillowed utopia or a heterotopia. Foucault discusses how we all accept as given that there are oppositions in space, private space and public space, family and social, leisure and work. Utopias are sites with no real place; they present a perfect society in a fundamentally unreal space. He introduces us to heterotopia ‘their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled. This latter type would be the heterotopia, not of illusion, but of compensation.’ (Foucault.1984.p46-49) The viewer finds my drawn women removed from our mutual fear of ‘urban space’ like Stewarts souvenir ‘Objects of Desire’, talking of travel scenes on cushions ‘What is being affected here is the transformation of exterior into interior’ (Stewart 2007 p 137) My selected women are on a domestic pillow and by drawing; women and pillow are transferred and transformed.
Illustration 12 ‘Objects of Desire’ 3
Conclusion
‘The distance between research and practice can seem in some domains, a wide gulf’ (Garner, 2012, p24)
I found it hard to focus during this first critical practice paper on the actuality of considerations of my experimental thread work as drawings. I came too late to the realisation that my whole research should have been dedicated to proving that ‘my stitched line is drawing’. By selecting to use contemporaneous found photographic imagery and linking it to Hogarth and Rego’s etchings, as complex depictions of humanity; I became embroiled in generating a mass of fascinating research on both artists, history, culture, psychology, morality, feminism, photography, and society as spectacle, revealed in the extensive bibliography. This reading was more relevant to a paper on interpretation of the subject matter of the work as a generator of emotion, an encoder of meaning and a consideration of moral seriousness and subversive context, rather than the methodologies employed in the actual drawing of line. Radical editing has arguably deformed some of my research but I hope I resolved some of these issues and presented a paper that fulfilled Deanna Petherbridge’s comment ‘Drawing properly taught, is the best way of developing intelligence and forming judgment, for one learns to see, and seeing is knowledge’ (Garner 2012. p31) Despite being ‘properly taught’ my first steps on this MA in forming judgment and learning to see have hopefully begun.
Bibliography
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BACHELARD, Gaston. Poetics of Space: translated from the French by Maria Jolas; foreword by Etienne Gilson. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.
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BERGER, John. Ways of seeing: Penguin 1977
BRADLEY Fiona Paula Rego.Tate Published 2002
BRAND Emily. The Georgian Bawdyhouse. Shire Publications 2012
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Visits
‘The Georgians Revealed; life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain’ British Library. November 2013
Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum. The British Museum. September 2013
‘Marriage a la Mode’ William Hogarth. The National Gallery January 2014
Internet information
Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias.” Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984): 46-49. foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heterotopia.en.html
Furstenau, Marc. The Ethics of Seeing: Susan Sontag and Visual Culture Studies. 2007 Hughes Felicity. Rego, Paula. Twists Tales At Brighton Museum & Art Gallery 02 December 2005 http://www.culture24.org.uk/science-and-nature/animals/art32180
McNiff Shaun Journal of Humanistic psychology June 2007: Vol 47, 3:pp392-399 http://voyager.arts.ac.uk
Topophilia and Topophobia: The Home as an Evocative Place of Contradictory Emotions Space and Culture May 2005 8: 193-213, http://sac.sagepub.com/search?author1=Beatriz+Muñoz+González&sortspec=date&submit=Submit
Magazine ‘Yet another one for the Road’. A.A. Gill The Sunday times Magazine December 29th 2013
[1] ‘Drawing Now: between the lines of contemporary art.’ was an exhibition of 150 artists in book form, the use of traditional materials associated with drawing was limited in order to convey drawing as a conceptual process. A second volume ‘Hyperdrawing, Beyond the lines of Contemporary Art’. TRACEY. Ed. Sawdon et.al 2012 has selected 33 International artists to explore beyond traditional views and practices. They have embraced the opportunities inherent in the essential ambiguity of drawing by employing sound, light, time, space and technology. |