Research: Gerhard RIchter

How did you come up with the idea to paint these blurred photos?


I was a student, and as such you generally rely on prior models of how to make art, but these were not satisfying. Then I discovered in photos what had been missing in paintings; namely that they make a terrific variety of statements and have great substance. That is what I wanted to convey to paintings and apply to it.

SOURCE

Interview with Christiane Vielhaber, 1986

For me Richter blurred paintings are awe-inspiring. The fact that he is as happy to paint something that is an (improved) version of an existing photo as well as extremely colourful paintings.

I was interested to read he's been criticised for the variety in his works and techniques. He originally worked from colour charts. He proficiency of paint knowledge means he has can layer up his 'squeegee' paintings with different colours, avoiding cracking dependent on the drying rates of the different pigments. He also peels off layers of paint

I found his website with a huge number of quotes and book to be a fascinating insight into an artist not shy about talking about his work.

The  overpainting works I only came across more recently. I like the idea of changing the impact and interpretation of a piece with spontaneous abstracted bold marks. I particularly like the surreal quality of the photo above with the alpine landscape. It's a picture postcard view that has been given a vivid makeover that makes you look twice

Sometimes your abstract paintings give the impression of a landscape. Are you looking for realism again in abstraction? 
I believe I am looking for rightness. My work has so much to do with reality that I wanted to have a corresponding rightness. That excludes painting in imitation. In nature everything is always right: the structure is right, the proportions are good, the colours fit the forms. If you imitate that in painting, it becomes false.

SOURCE

Interview with Anna Tilroe, 1987

Chance as a theme and as method. A method of allowing something objective to come into being; a theme for creating a simile (picture) of our survival strategy:
(1) The living method, which not only processes conditions, qualities and events as they chance to happen, but exists solely as that non-static 'process', and in no other way.
(2) Ideological: denial of the planning, the opinion and the world-view whereby social projects, and subsequently 'big pictures', are created. So what I have often seen as a deficiency on my part – the fact that I've never been in a position to 'form a picture' of something – is not incapacity at all but an instinctive effort to get at a more modern truth: one that we are already living out in our lives (life is not what is said but the saying of it, not the picture but the picturing).

SOURCE

Notes, 1989

Source:

https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/techniques-5

ideas

http://www.studentartguide.com/articles/creative-photography-ideas

Chen Po-i

this taiwanese due follows me on flickr. get in.

dazed

http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/24513/1/how-to-survive-art-school

most of the journal browsing I do regularly is posts coming from different sites:
juxtapoz
Flak photography
Art News
 and Dazed
Colossal

lots of of punchy short articles with links to new artists, movements exhibitions and copy.

This one stood out.
Can't say I feel that coming into college is something to survive. BUt taking risks to try new things isn't so much of an issue either it's the dissecting and discussing them after.
it's the confusing combination of 'don't worry' er I"m not but I'm paying for this course so I am going to take it seriously/intensely to the conflicting opinions we get on our work. THe latter is much more interesting, motivating and revealing.
Hearing the repetition of some that for some reason I've wanted to blank out rather than go, ok that's good. Fragile, subtle, repetitive, abstract, monochrome.
Getting to the stage where I need to do the brain-freezing part of the course which is evaluation, analytical (but not necessarily critical..) overview of what my themes and work has been about. 
Finding it easier to get realise I'm not about done pieces, that if something doesn't look right it's because it hasn't got enough layers and needs coming back to. But also wary of creating a visual almighty mess of a piece in an attempt to create some energy and spontaneity with some marks.
Looking forward to the summer break when I can try and work on stuff out the way of a sometimes gaze filled room and see if I can maitain some momentum and motivation and support of my own practice.
I seem to plan first, then do in a rush, that's where I feel I'm making the most spontaneous and creatively satisfying decisions.
i never thought I would go back to doing a second video but the light and movement and speed of the shots was too hypnotic to not do. With an objective hat on I think the stuff is mundane, run of the mill stuff, but I need to park that and hope that something more sparky and original starts appearing if I start following the themes until I've worn them out.
And the themes are:
subtle repetitive marks
pared back palette but strong contrast
patterns, movement, nature based textures or marks.
a quiet hopefully unobstrusive (personal symbolism) that makes things feel slightly less Hallmark card like and more satisfying to me at least.

research: Louise Hopkins

80Louse

Louise Hopkins does not work on blank canvases

Using pre-printed material whether it be music sheets, maps, comic books, she plays with representation by painting over and obscuring the original material and thereby changing it. "looking for a way to disrupt or re-work what's already there".

Influenced by cubism.

I like the quirky, simple quality to the work. It can be enjoyed just for the visual patterns and shapes but there's an added intrigue from her choice of materials that she's choosing and how covering up rather than revealing works. Her titles are relevant at times. Named freedom of information one of her exhibitions was full of beautifully 'censored' images.
I first saw her work in the amazing book of (mainly) contemporary drawings collected in themes by Tania Kovatz.
Soemthing intriguing about how she's chosen what to leave visible and what to obscure.
Layers and monochrome and repetition are what seems to be most obvious in the drawing work I've done over the last few months.

Black Sea 2003 acrylic on ink 80x126.5x2.5cm

Bio from website
Since the early 1990s, Louise Hopkins has used furnishing fabrics, maps, song sheets, comics and pages of magazines to create works that address the process and problems of representation. Her project is to transform existing surfaces into paintings or drawings, taking them from the everyday world and giving them a new status. With an experimental approach, she starts with her own physical gesture to explore colour, form and mark-making, using pencil, ink or paint, and often produces several versions before fixing on the final composition. The relationship between the original and new surface is ambiguous. The printed materials she chooses often have social or political associations. The certainty that maps, shopping magazines or manufactured textiles might offer seems to be questioned when they are transformed into a painting or drawing.

Work

"The artist has spoken of her interest in working on supports which contain information, often an image, and in turning that image into a painting by repainting and hence remaking it."^[3]

"Louise Hopkins’s world is in an endless state of flux, becoming and adjustment. Meaning for her is never something to be merely established-through research, for example, or contemplation-but rather galvanised, sparked into a state of pulsing iteration and reiteration…In an indicative work, Untitled (011), 1998, she once crumpled a piece of white paper, the kind generally used to write or type or scribble or photocopy on. She acted not in anger or frustration but to make the paper more interesting, yet not less itself. To the same end, she then used a fine pencil to draw thin parallel marks delineating the faint shadows cast by the creases. The paper’s once latent complexity was unleashed. Its pristine (artless) past remained a presence beneath the surface. Through a set of effects, both accidental and intended the blank sheet had become defined, articulated through hard-edged incident; it also continued to carry the dynamic tension of its violent collapse."

Louise Hopkins: Freedom of Information, paintings and drawings, 1996-2005, published by The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2005

Bio
Born Hertfordshire

1965 Born in England Lives and works in Glasgow
Education
1992-94 1985-88 1984-85	M.A. Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow B.A. (Hons) Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic, Newcastle Brighton Polytechnic, Brighton

Gallery representation:

mummery and schnelle

references

1. http://generationartscotland.org/artists/louise-hopkins/
2. Freedom of Information, paintings and drawings, 1996-2005, published by The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 20053. The Drawing Book Tania Kovatz

4.http://www.mummeryschnelle.com/pages/artists.htm

installation: Bill Viola

second attempt to see the Bill Viola installation 'martyrs' in St Pauls was more successful.

At the back of the cathedral above Christopher Wrens tomb are 4 videos on a 7 minute long loop showing 4 martyrs succumbing to 4 elements earth wind fire and water.Different ages, genders all passive and beatific in their trials. The figures are lit in manner consistent in Violas work: spotlight, black background adding contrast and concentrating the gaze.

Viola himself does not adhere to a particular faith and has produced a mesmerising yet uncomfortable piece that will resonate with visitors from any background.

Watching in a troubled time of beheadings, deliberate immolations and migrants drowning, it's impossible to view this piece without these references coming to mind. From an artistic viewpoint, the speed, portrait presentation and silence of the piece all add to it's contemplative qualities. Using reversed footage, lighting and special effects to his advantage Viola has tinkered with reality in a subtle non-showy fashion. On the downside trying to work out how the footage was filmed was a distraction to the piece. It's an illusion thank goodness, there's too much of real life martyring going on, which is maybe what makes the viewing more unsettling, recreating a reality that for others doesn't end when someone shouts "cut" is a gruesome and sobering thought.

moving on, eclipses and timelinesindian

Indian ink, fixative spray marks on ECG paper

after the solar eclipse, thinking about cycles and spring and shrinking windows and biological clocks, wanted to do something with repetitive circles/cycles and using the photographic like burnt-on appearance of the black marks from the fiaxtive.

Stencil represents 1 year.

wanted to make more random circular marks,less precise and more spontaneous so used left-over hole punches and fixative

random marks highligted with drawingink, sepia tones working better and less harsh than black drawing ink used before

Research: Anna Barriball

"her process formulates as poetic meditation, finding a delicate fascination in the mundane and overlooked."

British Artist, b. 1972 Plymouth
MA Chelsea
represented since leaving art school

suggested artist to research after tutorial, as my work continues to have repetitive elements and am still interested in representing these with video

Themes:
traces and impressions of real objects
obsessional meditative approach
subtle
quiet
detailed but not always obvious on first looking
sculptural dimension to work although 1-D

uses drawing materials graphite ink pencil

works 1:1 scale 'based in reality', something between drawing and sculpture

Media:
graphite on paper
duct tape
found photographs
100% cotton paper (normally used for archival photographs)-pliable


thoughts:
unfortunately not able to view the video of Drawn.
Love such a simple idea working and the number of associations it has
was mesmerised by the blinds video i did but doesn't have the depth of this
the play on words is clever and apt

Gallery representation:
Frith Street

References:
http://www.frithstreetgallery.com/artists/bio/anna_barriball


http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/anna_barriball.htm?section_name=new_britannia


http://www.inglebygallery.com/exhibitions/anna-barriball/

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/in-the-studio-anna-barriball-artist-8954829.html

research: Sam Taylor-Johnson

STW "I want you, the viewer, to be following a natural progression, a natural course of events. By having the camera as a witness—I’m not tampering. Most of my work isn’t edited. I always think that by editing I’m giving it a lot of narrative, making decisions about how things should then be, or how things should then transpire. Whereas if the camera’s just sitting there, running, it becomes a more natural process."

Sam Taylor-Wood described herself trying to avoid being an artist for as long as possible.

Constance of ideas meant that if she didn't do it she felt like she would go mad.

b.1967 London UK

Graduating from Goldsmiths 1997, now labelled as part of the infamous YBA clan, she works primarily in visual art: film and photography after initially starting out studying sculpture. She describes finding her voice in images and film and her work has a spiritual element although the subject matter is often more full of people with a juxtaposition of silence/music and visible emotion.

She uses multiple screens to engage the viewer, who is likely to want to see a piece more than once to get a fuller feeling what is happening in the work.

She describes work such as 'Wuthering heights' a series of atmosphere landscape stills as trying to find the soul of something.

Having survived 2 types of cancer, divorce and then finding a analysed happiness with someone a lot younger her themes of love loss and interest in things frozen in time has an authentic gravitas to it.

The video series still life confronts the viewer with a staged, old masters style still life which disintegrates unnaturally fast before our eyes. There's a lightness and beauty to the lighting and films despite it's deeper and more haunting metaphors.

Thoughts:

Love the lighting, human transient quality of her work, that is emotive. The videos are things of there time when fashion, props are identifiable. Perhaps why I prefer the subtle 'still life' works that ape old masters in their lighting and composition.

THe lightness and humour to the Bram Stoker series I like. An artist not afraid to put herself in front of the camera and engage with her images in a personal way.

Still Life
2001
Duration: 3 minutes 44 seconds
35mm film/DVD

Gallery representation:

White Cube London

references:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzuWjwcqTcs

http://whitecube.com/artists/sam_taylor-johnson/

http://bombmagazine.org/article/2170/sam-taylor-wood