Teaching and Learning Events

Catrin Webster

Reading Group: Gerhard Richter and Catherine Anyango Grünewald

Geraint intended to bring up the works of Gerhard Richter and Catherine Anyango Grünewald for discussion in the reading group. Both artists have created pieces in response to tragic and violent events of historical significance using and reinterpreting discovered media pictures and footage. For Richter, a critical analysis of photography as a form of representation was made possible by his essential blurring technique. Painting approaches have been rendered with the advent of digital photography since the 1960s, when artists like Gerhard Richter and Sigmar Polke began to blend their brushwork with the technical qualities of digital reproductions. For Polke, it was his well-known "Rasterbilder" paintings, which merged the raster-dot method of mechanical reproductions with paint, that dissolved the illusion of digital representation and revealed the real subject. Although the two painters' methods were somewhat dissimilar, they worked toward the same goal: to demonstrate that the image represents aesthetic subjectivity, is a reproductive entity like any other, and is not viable like the real world. In Painting Beyond Pollock, author Morgan Falconer affirms the purpose of painterly adaptations of photography, writing: “By using painting to examine photography, as he does, he (Richter) believes that it might be possible to restore semblance to photographic images that have been voided of it.” (Falconer, 2015, pg. 235) These artists produced history paintings that demonstrated the challenges of communicating the historical, which were insurmountable with the use of photography alone. But how do artists today approach painting in ways that go beyond the rationale afforded by Gerhard Richter and his associates, who addressed historical representation by blending photographic features with painterly methods? How do artists use the medium while still being transparently informed and perceptive?

It is crucial to appoint the analogy of Catherine Anyango Grünewald in this regard because, while on one level she is clearly following a set of principles in recording the history, on another level she also goes beyond the traditional means of depiction. Catherine derives her depictions from historical sources, yet still her drawings deny a palpability as passive iconography. Her illustrations explore the systemic oppression of marginalised and underrepresented characters throughout history and today. Her drawings often reproduce photographic effects as she uses the materiality of drawing tools to explore meaning, exploiting the physical properties of pencil and eraser to render events with realism. Undoubtedly, Catherine's drawings connected with specific historical and photographic forms of highly charged political motifs, much like Gerhard Richter and his colleagues. The pieces, however, undoubtedly had a more immersive and tenacious purpose, asking us to explore invisible dimensions rather than serving as a way to examine painting or even photography. They compel us to revisit and find meaning outside the boundaries of the visual plane, someplace in the here and now.

Daniel Sturgis

In Daniel Sturgis’ talk, what most fascinated me was his scepticism towards abstract painting as a resourceful and stimulating mode of painting and whether it is still possible to make abstract painting today that relates to the history of modernist art if you no longer believe in its guiding principles. As a result, I realise there is an implicit concern with the temporal nature of art as well as its irreducible historical and social context. Recognizing that the idea and practise of art are parts of a shifting constellation of tenets with no permanent or ultimate form means facing the prospect that a form of art as historically significant as painting may lose its claim to serious critical attention. The form and content of artworks can and must vary throughout time because the meaning of art is influenced by the circumstances surrounding its creation and reception: artworks are fundamentally historical in nature.

What brings into question is why I predominantly choose to use oil as my preferred method and means to representation, and whether it just results in a pastiche of previous forms of painting: do any formal modes of painting or isms cease to be authentic? I believe the methods that the artist employs in their means of artistic practise and conceptual expression are what must now be justified under the new pictorial framework, respective of its history. Today, there is no need to question the decisive materiality as a workable medium, in contrast to the modernist era. Any remaining scepticism against painting should be completely eliminated by adopting the idea of painting as a semiotic practice, elevating subjectivity to the front of artistis practices.

Talks

Simeon Barclay and Morgan Quaintance in conversation at the SLG

Artist Influences

Dr Onya McCausland: Colour from the Mines

This image is an arial view of Six Bells mine water treatment site built beside the old mine pump shaft that diverts the pollution in the mines away from the river. The orange sludge built up in these two distinct lakes are an accumulation of iron minerals dislodged by the cutting out of the carboniferous fields below the ground. Many of the redundant coal mines across the nation fill with water that was pumped from the mine shaft and tunnels when the mine works were operational. When the mines closed, the pumps were switched off and the water returned to its natural levels. If untreated, the water pollutes and stains the riverbeds in bright orange which is caused by the red ochre residue, known as ferric oxy hydroxide. The Coal Authority run and manage the Mine Water Treatment Scheme, handling and treating mine water to protect the local environment and surrounding ecology. Artist and Research student, Onya McCausland from UCL Slade School of Fine Art led a project to develop a sustainable paint by recycling the coal mine ‘waste’ product and burning it in a kiln before grounding it into a raw red ochre pigment. This pigment, ‘Six Bells Red’ led to the launch of the first ever mineral based wall emulsion paint made by a local manufacturer and oil paint manufactured by world renowned, Michael Harding. McCausland's artists’ practice of making paint integrates its site of formation, drawing on the cultural heritage as an original and innovative approach to the role of the art object, distributed to the public and community shaped by the mining landscape.

On seeing the arial view photograph of the water treatment site, I couldn’t help but think of Catrin Webster’s use of the landscape with the ways in which she deconstructs the notion of landscape within art into an embodied experience. The blocks of colour in the mine water treatment site as shown in the arial view (above), mirrors a painting in the landscape, symbiotic of the rich cultural heritage and a legacy of the coal mining industry. As an artist from Abertillery, with a family history closely routed to the cultural heritage of the mining industry of Six Bells, I am excited at the prospects of using this Six Bells Red Ochre pigment to create works, whilst acknowledging the art as an embodied experience; the symbiotic relationship with materials and objects exemplified by their use in ritual and cultural practises; and the powerful social and cultural effects of colour.

Helen Marten

The first time I saw Helen Marten’s work was at the Turner prize in Tate Britain in 2016. As a whole, the exhibition felt a bit thin with even the works of Anthea Hamilton slightly ushering connotation of shock value that fell a bit flat. Even with her giant buttocks and hanging chastity belts, the most exciting of the exhibition was the intricate installations of Helen Marten. Her works are certainly difficult to describe, and most would probably consider them convoluted aenigmas, but the best way I can think to explain her practice is through intricate and poetic modes of object-making. Marten strips away the totemic qualities of objects and renders them into archaeological puzzles for us to map out the human experience. What I like about her work is that these installations offer up idiosyncratic perceptions to the everyday; there is something familiar to her carefully curated objects, yet the playful collage-like arrangements render them uncanny, forcing you to question the human experience and our relationship with the material world.

Simeon Barclay

Elad Lassry

Vivianne Sassen

Michelangelo Pistoletto

Sonia Boyce

Oliver Osbourne

Oliver Osborne's paintings examine the issue of visual communication through pulling out images from their original context and utilising them into appropriated paintings that seem once removed from history. Works by Osborne include cartoon-like illustrations, employing them to large scale canvases in stark contrast to his smaller scale works of realistic plastic rubber plants, alluding to impenetrable and manufactured visual information. By fusing together seemingly incongruous elements, such as abstract forms and figurative elements, discovered objects, and other sources, Osborne is able to probe the ambiguities between them and uncover new ways of looking at the contemporary image.

Louise Lawler

Louise Lawler is an American artist born in 1947. She is known for her conceptual art that explores the ways in which art is presented, viewed, and valued. Lawler's work often takes the form of photographs, videos, and installations that document and comment on the display of art in museums, galleries, and private collections. One of Lawler's most iconic works is her series of photographs titled "Why Pictures Now" which was started in the late 1970s. This series features photographs of artworks by other artists in various contexts, such as hanging on the walls of museums and galleries, leaning against walls or stacked in storage areas. These photographs challenge the viewer to consider the artworks in a different way, highlighting the various contexts in which art is presented, and the influence of those contexts on the art's meaning.

Julia Wachtel

Julia Wachtel is an American artist born in 1956. She is best known for her paintings and collages that often incorporate found images and texts from popular culture, such as advertisements, magazines and comic books. Wachtel's work is heavily influenced by the Postmodern art movement and is characterized by its playful and irreverent approach to the use of imagery and language. Wachtel's early work in the 1980s consisted of large-scale paintings that incorporated cartoon characters, such as Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop, as well as text and symbols borrowed from advertising and pop culture. Although I use strikingly different found imagery as source material, I am interested in the way that these works reflect her interest in exploring the ways in which popular imagery and culture shape our understanding of reality and influence our perceptions of the world.

Annette Kelm

Jamian Juliano-Villani

Born in Newark, New Jersey in 1987, Jamian Juliano-Villani currently resides and works in New York. Juliano-Villani has amassed a collection of magazines, comics, and other print media that serve as visual influences for her paintings. Jamian Juliano-paintings Villani's are expansive, brilliant, wild, and obscene. She frequently casts pictures of cartoons onto her paintings, allowing her to create narratives with several layers of meaning and an entanglement between the seduction of cartoonish humour and the melancholy of everyday life. Unlike other artists that appropriate found imagery, her process is intuitive and does not conform to the strategies of negation that typically runs through the saturation of media imagery.

John Stezaker

Selected Exhibitions

Helen Marten, Third Moment Profile, The Almost Horse, Sadie Cole Gallery

Oliver Osborne, Mantegna’s Dead Christ, Union Pacific Gallery

Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery

Texts, Essays, Books, and Theoretical Discourses

The Pictures Generation:

Pictures Exhibition 1977 at Artists Space, New York and accompanying extended ‘Pictures’ essay by Douglas Crimp

The "Pictures" exhibition was notable for its focus on the use of appropriated images and media in the artworks on display. The artists included in the show used a wide range of images and materials in their work, including photographs, film stills, and images from advertising and the mass media. The show was seen as a significant moment in the development of postmodernism in art, and it helped to pave the way for the wider acceptance of appropriated images and media as a legitimate artistic medium. He argues that these artists were reacting against the "possibility of a meaningful visual art" in a society that was saturated with images and that they were using these images to comment on the role of media in society and the ways in which it shapes our perceptions and experiences. Crimp also discusses the broader cultural and historical context in which these artists were working, including the development of new technologies, such as the photocopier, that made it easier for them to incorporate appropriated images into their work.

In the text, Crimp refers to Walter Benjamin’s The Short History of Photography 1931, “The caption will become the most important component of the shot.” (Crimp, 1977, pg. 5) In reading about the nuances of the exhibition, I note the ways in which imagery appears ubiquitous, uncanny, or even falls flat until the title gives the images elevated meaning and context. Here, I recall Troy Brauntuch’s reproductive prints entitled, 1 2 3, depicting drawings of tanks by Adolf Hitler. In Levine’s series, Sons and Lovers (1976-77), there are familiar depictions of silhouettes of presidents found on coins, but not all silhouettes are familiar, further highlighting the importance of context for the readability of pictures. By isolating and manipulating images, artists direct our attention toward their subtexts and determine how the pictures acquire meaning, not through our actual experience with the subject(s), but through our associations with other pictures like them. In my own works, Similarly, I aim to subvert the way we look at pictures by experimenting with small manipulations and playing with the cultural and social significance of titles, text, and language.

Arte Povera: Movements in Modern Art, Book by Robert Lumley

References:

Falconer, M., 2015. Painting Beyond Pollock. London: Phaidon Press Limited.

Crimp, D., 1979. Pictures. October, 8, pp.75-88. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/778227. [Accessed 10 Jan. 2023.]

Committee for the Visual Arts, Incorporated, 1977. Pictures: an exhibition of the work of Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Philip Smith: Artists Space. [press release] September 24 - October 29, 1977. Available at: https://texts.artistsspace.org/6wdhi1kq [Accessed 22 January 2023].