Introduction

In this essay I will be using Marxist theories to discuss the Modern Art Market in deciphering the part of a painting that makes it so impressive as a commodity of exchange. To me, the fundamentally flawed quality of a painting is its utility as an asset, and how wealthy capitalists are able to exploit this quality as a medium of investment to circulate and grow their own capital, perpetuating a system of class elitism. To make sure my argument retains modernity, I will be using two essays, ‘The Coming Exception: Art and the Crisis of Value’ by Sven Lutticken and ‘Artistic Labour and the Production of Value: An Attempt at a Marxist Interpretation’ by Jose Maria Duran, to reweave Marxist economic theory into modern issues. I also wish to convey the fetishization of the painting commodity and the artist as intellectual proprietor. I will extract examples of the topics discussed in various paintings, such as Andy Warhol’s ‘Soup Cans’ and the Rembrandt painting created by a computer. To start, we first must understand the dual nature of a painting, from there we will discuss the over fetishization of the painting and its producer to finally help us understand how the Modern Art Market has become the institution it is today.

The Painting as a Commodity and Asset

Commodity

In Marx’s Capital in the chapter ‘Commodities and Money’ he states that, ‘The commodity, is first of all, an external object, a thing which through its qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind.’ (underline mine)[1] This is a commodities ‘use-value’ and Marx says, ‘The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value’[2]. Art, the industry of creativity and imagination, is not as grounded to physical use-values like science. This does not mean it is unnecessary. As said by Braque, ‘art is made to disturb, science to reassure.’[3] The ways in which a painting is useful is a matter of opinion. For example, Russian author Leo Tolstoy calls painting, ‘a means of union among people, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress towards well-being of individuals and of humanity.’[4] Marcus Du Sautoy states, ‘Art does many things, but for me where art is at its best is in providing a window into the way another mind works.’[5]

To me, paintings are decoration and an assertion of one’s intellect and existence. The raw canvas is a playground for the artist to throw their heart and soul into any form of colour and shape they desire[6]. The viewer then recognises this aesthetic value created by the artist and manifests an emotional connection with the piece, allowing for introspection and the creation of new ideas and concepts, like an idea generator.

Whether the artist wants it to or not, the piece always correlates to the context in which it was created, providing an anecdote for the times. This brings to mind a quote by James Mark Baldwin, ‘All along we find that social life – religion, politics, art – reflects the stages reached in the development of the knowledge of self; it shows the social uses made of this knowledge.’[7] It is in this sense that art acts as a historical catalogue, and the way in which this lineage is propagated and  recorded is through the financial supervision of rich benefactors that utilise paintings for their exchange-value, a term I will discuss later on, rather than its historical significance[8]. As said by Marx, ‘Commodities… have a dual nature, because they are at the same time objects of utility and bearers of value.’[9] Paintings behold a dual nature in many respects. They are both decoration and vessel for new ideas, and an assertion and a reflection. In this essay I am analysing them as both commodity and asset. It is this latter quality that I will discuss presently.

Asset

As an asset, paintings are valuable for their ability to have an extremely high exchange-value compared to their physical use-value. On exchange-value, Marx says, ‘Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitative relation, the proportion, in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind.’[10] Paintings are therefore characterised by their seemingly abstract use-value and extremely lucrative exchange-value, allowing the capitalist to accumulate large amounts of profit from their redistribution in the marketplace. The circulation of the commodity is what generates its value[11]. As said by Jose Maria Duran in their essay[12], ‘Value is established in the market and it has no existence prior to it.’[13] It is when assessing this that we understand Marx saying, ‘Commodities are merely particular equivalents for money.’[14]

Painting’s, when understood as an asset, are merely residue of exchange, becoming an expression of the spending powers of the richest, and not as a testament to the creative conquests of humanity. They become a stock in the stock market, with variables such as the artist, their use-value, and their context coming into consideration rather than numbers on graphs. Andy Warhol’s ‘Soup Cans’ shown below, is a portrait of the painting as a marketable product, to be sold and distributed much like a can of soup in a supermarket. The only difference between the painting as an object and the object depicted within the painting is the smoke screen of the high-end art market, which congeals to form an institution, disguising exuberant spending under the sentiment of the collective fetishization of the painting.

Andy Warhol’s ‘Soup Cans’, painted in April 1962.

The price-form of the painting and the cost of production are totally incongruous to each other within the Modern Art Market. The cost of labour-power of a painting is a fraction of the price of what it can be sold, the rest is surplus-value under the pseudonym of intellectual labour as distinguished from profit margins. As said by Jose Maria Duran in their essay[15], ‘Artistic proprietorship is based on the assumption that what is fabricated or simply chosen – that is, the artistic object – is the material realization of the subjective and thus unique and singular intellect.’ Therefore, the fetishization of the painting must revolve around two distinct entities, the painting as object and the artist as its creator and intellectual designer. I will now discuss these subjects and their relative effect on the worth of a painting.

The Fetishization of the Painting and the Artist

The Painting

Stewart Martin said, ‘The autonomous artwork is an emphatically fetishized commodity, which is to say that it is a sensuous fixation of abstraction, of the value-form, and not immediately abstract.’[16] It is with this in mind that I begin my discussion. In reference to the aesthetic value of painting, Marcus Du Sautoy said[17],

This is captured in something called the Wundt curve. If we are too habituated to the artwork around us, it leads to indifference and boredom. This is why artists never really stabilise in their work: what arouses the artist (and eventually the viewer) is something distinct. The challenge is that the push to arousal or dissonance must not be so great that we hit the downslope of the Wundt curve. There is a maximum hedonic value that the artist is after.

The Wundt curve, shown below, is a pictorial expression of an abstract human relationship with a painting that occurs purely within the mind of the viewer. This manifestation of emotion and provocation is singularly human.

They are thus an expression of the human condition, and the human will to create beauty. Beauty is purely abstract, i.e., within the mind of the beholder, and its translation into imagery is the signature of the artist. How original and tantalizing it is to the established doctrines of painting is the achievement of their intellectual capacity and craftmanship. Adorno said in his essay on Wagner, ‘The autonomous appearance of the artwork is dependent on the concealment of labour.’[18] As discussed, labour takes many forms, however the most valuable form of labour is that of intellectual implementation.

Sven Lutticken says[19], ‘It is the ‘archaic’ dependence on the aura of singularized and financialized objects that has made contemporary visual art a real political-economic vanguard.’ It is in this sense that painting’s epitomise value. As said by Karl Marx, ‘Human labour-power in its fluid state, or human labour, creates value, but is not itself value. It becomes value in its coagulated state, in objective form.’[20] Paintings, once finished, can be hung on a wall and observed in their unchanging state and appreciated forever, portraying value unceasingly. Marx continues, ‘Value, therefore, does not have its description branded on its forehead; it rather transforms every product of labour into a social hieroglyphic.’[21] Value is forged into the painting and then emancipated by its exchange relation as an object within a social process. I will now discuss how the artist and their presented image and identity within the social circle is involved in this impression upon the viewer.

The Artist

The artist is the nucleus of a painting’s organism. They are its producer and merchant, and the composition of various layers of paint is inextricably linked with the hand that made them. Once the painting becomes fetishized, so does the artist. The artist is an expression of the individual[22]. As said by Jose Maria Duran, ‘While wageworkers sell their labour power, artists sell the products of their labour… that is, they don’t work for someone else.’[23] The artist is therefore the productive worker at the head of their ship in which they use to navigate the marketplace of supply and demand. Once they have amassed enough demand they need only supply, and this can be done in ways much akin to a factory process of production. Artist’s such as Damien Hurst, Jeff Koons, and Andy Warhol have exploited this principle of artistic proprietorship, using their assistants as producers of the pieces, to then sell them under their name.

An example illustrating the division between our attraction to the intellectual origins of a work of art rather than its physical use-value is given by Marcus Du Sautoy[24], in the section on ‘Resurrecting Rembrandt’. Here, Sautoy tells us of when data scientists at Microsoft and Delft University of Technology were of the view that there was enough data for a computer algorithm to learn how to paint like Rembrandt. Sautoy says, ‘The team studied 346 paintings in total, creating 150 gigabytes of digitally rendered graphics to analyse.’ They even went so far as to imitate the surface texture of a Rembrandt painting. The final 3D printed painting consists of more than 148 million pixels, made from thirteen layers of paint-based UV ink. When the painting was exhibited in April 2016 in Amsterdam, British art critic Jonathan Jones said,

The ‘New’ Rembrandt painting created by a computer.

What a horrible, tasteless, insensitive, and soulless travesty of all that is creative in human nature. What a vile product of our strange time when the best brains dedicate themselves to the stupidest “challenges”, when technology is used for things it should never be used for and everybody feels obliged to applaud the heartless results because we so revere everything digital.

What Jones expresses in his criticism is an attachment to something that exists outside the painting but not of the painting. Although the painting and artist are inextricably linked, they are also separate entities in themselves. What Jones’ sees when looking at the computer-generated Rembrandt is not a painting that beholds quality, but a parade of the computer scientist’s abilities to stamp on the burial grounds of the dead masters and extract an abomination from its soil. He sees it as an insult, rather than a scientific breakthrough. This is not because the painting’s quality is so far from that of an original Rembrandt that it seems comical even comparing them, but because of its producer. Is this not shallow? Paradoxically, this seems to be where all of a painting’s worth resides. Not in the piece and not the artist, but the link between the two. Although this may well be true, it does not correlate to the fundamentally flawed quality of painting, the painting as asset. What is important is the context to which these two entities find their medium of exchange, the Modern Art Market.

The Modern Art Market

Beech says in regard to the price of a painting, ‘The difference in price is not extracted from labour but, as Marx puts it when talking about trade as a zero-sum game, is “coaxed” out of the pockets of another capitalist.’[25] Marx defines a capitalist as follows,

 …, the possessor of money becomes a capitalist. His person, or rather his pocket, is the point from which the money starts, and to which it returns. The objective content of the circulation we have been discussing – the valorisation of value – is his subjective purpose, and it is only in so far as the appropriation of evermore wealth in the abstract is the sole driving force behind his operations that he functions as a capitalist, i.e. as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will. Use-values must therefore never be treated as the immediate aim of the capitalist; nor must the profit on any single transaction. His aim is rather the unceasing movement of profit-making.[26]

The Modern Art Market is the playground for capitalists to move and grow disposable wealth. Jackson Pollock’s No. 5 (1948) was sold for $140 million in 2006 by Mexican financier David Martinez. Francis Bacon’s Three studies of Lucien Freud were sold for $142.4 million at Christie’s in New York in 2013. These are only two examples of how the Modern Art Market prospers and continues to enable investors to circulate and redistribute their wealth through times of bad economic versatility, there are many more paintings that have been sold for much greater prices.

A quote from Sven Lutticken’s essay[27] is appropriate here:

As the New York collective WAGE (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) has uncovered, remuneration varies most among institutions that host performances (with The Kitchen being the best, and Performa the worst). In 2011 Andrea Fraser, a board member of WAGE, published the graph Index, which shows a correlation between the rise in the Mei Moses All Art Index and increases in US income inequality and the S&P 500 Total Return Index during the same decades. Correlation may not be causation, but it seems clear that form ‘deregulation’ has been good for the 1 per cent or the 0.1 per cent and, as a consequence, for the art market. In other words, ‘what has been good for art has been disastrous for the rest of the world.’

To understand and analyse this quote further I will use the Marxist Immiseration Thesis. The Immiseration Thesis states that the nature of capitalist production stabilizes real wages, reducing wage growth relative to total value creation in the economy, leading to the increasing power of capital in society. When comparing this thesis to the Modern Art Market it is clear the extent to which the gap has grown between retail and high-end art, analogous of wage gaps. Although the stabilisation of real wages is important to regulate inflation rates, it is only useful to a certain degree before it becomes debilitating, and juxtaposing the rate of growth of the minimum wage to the rate of price increase of painting’s being sold in today’s Modern Art Market we see the blatant misdistribution of wealth clearly and realistically. As rich capitalist’s use disposable income to buy paintings as assets, those below the poverty line struggle to afford food.

The irony of the fetishization of paintings and the Modern Art Market is most elegantly displayed in the documentary Made You Look directed by Barry Avrich. In this, we are told the tale of when $80 Million worth of fake paintings were sold by the oldest gallery in New York, the Knoedler Gallery, in the span of 14 years between 2000 and 2014. The fake paintings were made by Chinese artist Pei-Shen Qian, who had mastered the techniques of several world-famous artists, such as Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, etc. to then give them to Glafira Rosales. Glafira’s husband had acquired canvas made from the same period as paintings made by the copied artists, along with nails, to improve the fake painting’s authenticity. Glafira had designed an elaborate story as to the origins of these mysterious paintings to then sell them to the Knoedler Gallery who would then go on to resell them for up to $8.3 Million. Scholars of Rothko believed the paintings were real, testament to their quality, however, when put under the scrutiny of scientist’s they were easily recognised as fake. This shows how transparent the Modern Art Market can be, revealing its inner organs of avarice, cheating, and lying, surviving on the fetishized painting and the will for the accumulation of capital. As said by Marx, ‘Circulation sweats money from every pore.’[28]

Fake Mark Rothko painting painted by Pei-Shen Qian which eventually sold for $8.3 Million.

Conclusion

When researching the Modern Art Market and understanding it as another institution for the circulation of wealth, I found it to have many problems. There is a lack of responsibility inherent at its core, allowing no pang of moral conscience throughout the distribution of paintings due to their fetishized nature and the scandal of its buoyancy due to its perpetual survival through economic recession by the constant flow of money into its system. One can only shudder at the prices of some of the more well-known artists painting’s, wondering how a bit of canvas can be worth more than a house. The Modern Art Market is only one example of a much larger problem, the elitism of the upper class and their dominance over society. It is this that was at the core of my essay, and it is a shame that the painting as asset allows them to use it to redistribute and enlarge their capital, condescending the beauty of their nature. I feel purged of the idea that price equates to worth. Rather, price only means avarice, and avarice means someone is being cheated for another’s gain.

Bibliography

• Avrich, Barry, Director of Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art (2020)
• Baldwin, James Mark, History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation, Vol. 1  Classics in the History of Psychology — Baldwin (1913) Volume I, Chapter 1 (yorku.ca)
• Duran, Jose Maria, Artistic Labor and the Production of Value: An Attempt at a Marxist Interpretation: Full article: Artistic Labor and the Production of Value: An Attempt at a Marxist Interpretation (brighton.ac.uk)
• Kahn, Nathaniel, Director of The Price of Everything (2018)
• Lutticken, Sven, The Coming Exception: Art and the Crisis of Value: Sven Lütticken, The Coming Exception, NLR 99, May–June 2016 (brighton.ac.uk)
• Marx, Karl, Capital Volume 1, edition first printed in Pelican Books 1976 and reprinted in Penguin Classis 1990.
• Sautoy, Marcus Du, The Creativity Code, How AI is Learning to Write, Painting and Think, first published in Great Britain by 4^th Estate in 2019.
• Tolstoy, Leo, What is Art?, translation by Alymer Maude (1899): Euthyphro, by PlatoTranslated by Benjamin Jowett (mnstate.edu)
• Wilken, Karen, Braque (Modern Masters), published in 1992.

References

[1] Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1, Commodities and Money, pg.125

[2] Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1, Commodities and Money, pg.126

[3] Karen Wilkin and Georges Braque, Braque (Modern Masters), in section on his diaries

[4] Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?

[5] Marcus Du Sautoy, The Creativity Code, pg.142

[6] “Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the band which plays, touching one key or another to cause vibration in the soul.” – Wassily Kandinsky

[7] James Mark Baldwin, History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation

Volume I, Chapter 1, Introduction: Racial and Individual Thought

[8] “Art and money have always gone hand in hand. It is very important for good art to be expensive. You only protect things that are valuable. If something has no financial value people don’t care. They would not give it the necessary protection. The only way for cultural artifacts to survive is for them to have a commercial value.” – Simon de Pury, Auctioneer, from documentary The Price of Everything.

[9] Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Commodities and Money, pg. 138

[10] Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Commodities and Money, pg.126

[11] “There’s a lot more money selling a painting the second or third time rather than the first.” – Mary Boone, Art Gallerist, The Price of Everything.

[12] Jose Maria Duran, Artistic Labor and the Production of Value: An attempt at a Marxist Interpretation

[13] “We have seen that when Commodities are in relation of exchange, their exchange-value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use-value.” – Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1, Commodities and Money, pg. 128

[14] Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, The Process of Exchange, pg. 184

[15] Jose Maria Duran, Artistic Labor and the Production of Value: An attempt at a Marxist Interpretation

[16] Sven Lutticken, The Coming Exception: Art and the Crisis of Value

[17] Marcus Du Sautoy, The Creativity Code, Learning From the Masters, pg.139

[18] Sven Lutticken, The Coming Exception: Art and the Crisis of Value

[19] Sven Lutticken, The Coming Exception: Art and the Crisis of Value

[20] Karl Marx Capital Vol. 1, Commodities and Money, pg. 142

[21] Karl Marx Capital Vol. 1, Commodities and Money, pg. 167

[22] “I will try to explain the term “individuation” as simply as possible. By it I mean the psychological process that makes of a human being an “individual”-a unique, indivisible unit or “whole man.” – Carl Jung on individuation from a lecture at the Eranos Meeting at Ascona

[23] Jose Maria Duran, Artist Labour and the Production of Value: An Attempt at a Marxist Interpretation

[24] Marcus Du Sautoy, The Creativity Code, Resurrecting Rembrandt, pg. 126

[25] Sven Lutticken, The Coming Exception, Art and the Crisis of Value

[26] Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, The General Formula for Capital, pg. 254

[27] Sven Lutticken, The Coming Exception, Art and the Crisis of Value

[28] Karl Marx Capital Vol. 1, Money or the Circulation of Commodities, pg. 208

I felt a strong desire to understand the fundamental utility of art in the modern context we live in today when starting my most recent series of work. This, I felt, would influence the nature of themes I would address and, in some unconscious way, affect my process. In reading Alain de Botton and John Armstrong’s Art as Therapy and Charlotte Mullins’ A Little History of Art I was inspired by the unrealised potential of art and its unwavering presence in culture throughout time. I am now of the impression that our current conception of art does not do justice to its ability to affect change and expand the collective conscious. Using references from talks from artists such as Michael Krishanu and Jasmina Cibic I will hitherto clarify this opinion.

“One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is teach us how to suffer more successfully.”[1] One of the many facets of depression is the sense that we are alone in our suffering. This loneliness is tantalizing, as it makes our suffering feel less justified. Art, however, denies this emotion and provides a platform to share these feelings. Matthew Krishanu does this when painting images of his wife in hospital while she suffers from terminal cancer. The figure he paints has soft, non-descript features, meaning the piece is not anchored by specificity, rather it is a general expression of pain and illness for all to relate to.

Hospital Bed (Barts), 2021, acrylic on canvas, 55x70cm

In making these themes of trouble and pain into pieces of art they can become tangible and digestible, rather than foreign and elusive, they become accessible and easier to process. This realisation provoked me to not be afraid of addressing the troubling side of existence, as it is there that art has the potential to effect positive growth in both its creator and those who view it and digest the shared experience.

Landscape with a Man Washing his Feet at a Fountain, Poussin c.1648

Landscape with a Man Washing his Feet at a Fountain expresses, in an ambiguous manner, the continuing hardship of life. The juxtaposition of the two men shown either side of the work, one being a labourer in the midst of a job and the other being berated by his wife for not working hard enough, showsthat, “labour is the unavoidable and unexciting condition of life.”[2] This debilitating realisation often causes melancholy and despair; however, Poussin denies this and transforms it into the glory of life and nature, giving us new wind in this plight.

Audre Lorde writes, “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”[3] This quote emphasizes the ability of art in asserting one’s voice. Matilda Moors, a contemporary artist, uses cartoon-like imagery to express the inner-child which is quickly supressed when one is forced into becoming an adult. This inner child is what we all lose touch with once the brutality of life dwarfs our innocence. In getting in touch with this, we regain a part of our inner wholeness. Matilda encapsulates the expression of identity and the ways in which it can become convoluted by modern media.

Formatting Error, Digital print, wheat paste, 220 x 315 cm

As said by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong, “Art is one resource that can lead us back to a more accurate assessment of what is valuable by working against habit and inviting us to recalibrate what we admire or love.”[4] By making us question the world, art forces us to reinvent the way we look at things. This allows for fresh perspectives, and means we never get stuck in the ways of the past.

Jasmina Cibic is a Slovenian artist who threatens and exposes the political zeitgeist that inhabits the modern world. Her piece in the Slovenian Pavilion is a standout example of art which, with pictures of a bug named after Adolf Hitler, comments on the absurdity of dogmatic legislation. The rule states that once an animal has been named it cannot be changed, and she uses this as an expression of the ways in which political bodies can still be controlled by the past. Art can expose the stagnant ways of the past and provoke people to think differently about things they thought were unalterable truths, allowing us to heal from mistakes which were not beneficial to society.

Fruits of Our Land, Jasmina Cibic

Not only can a piece of art be a spiritually awakening object in-itself, but it also has the potential to elevate the environment in which it is placed within. The ancient Egyptians believed that by decorating the walls of a tomb with things such as food, crops, comfy furniture and so on then that would be given to the person buried in the tomb in the afterlife. This sort of art cannot be considered as healing, however, as this was only done for the very wealthiest of individuals at the time, and not for the collective. Unfortunately, this is a trend that is common throughout all of history, where the rich use art as a means of decoration, veiling corruption, and inequality. This is especially obvious in Italy[5] and Greece, where cities competed to make the most glorious temple. Similarly, today in the “successful” galleries the most expensive pieces of art are on display, rather than the more spiritually potent. Art has become a commodity of wealth rather than as a means of healing the collective.

Ancient Egyptian Tomb Art, unknown source

In basing my research around this topic, I uncovered a lot of false perceptions and fundamental truths about art which have given me a fresh view on its utility in today’s society. The use of it as decoration for the wealthy has undermined its ability in expanding and changing the perceptions of the collective. Art is capable of loosening our hold on stagnant ideas and paves the way for new ways of thinking, acting as a catalyst of sorts. Art can be considered healing in many ways, however the most essential way is its ability to purge us of the negative attributes of the past and prepare us for a new, brighter future.

[1] Alain de Botton and John Armstrong, Art as Therapy, Methodology, pg.24

[2] Alain de Botton and John Armstrong, Art as Therapy, Money, pg.186

[3] Audre Lorde, Your Silence Will Not Protect You, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, pg.1

[4] Alain de Botton and John Armstrong, Art as Therapy, The Seven Functions of Art, Appreciation, pg.53

[5] “Under Pope Julius II, and for the first time since antiquity, Rome was fast becoming the most important Italian city for art. Julius had come to power in 1503 and was determined to make Rome the greatest city in Europe. He realised art was key to achieving this. He commissioned the most ambitious projects and employed the best artists he could find.” – Charlotte Mullins, A Little History of Art, pg .103 – The Return of Rome – This quote expresses the importance of at as a status symbol and how leaders and governments utilise it to express the prestige of their country. This is often just a façade, however, as they are still unable to resolve the plights of poverty and other ailments which are left unseen.

The beginning of 2022 was an existentially daunting time with doom and gloom becoming a commonality of everyone’s daily menu when reading the news or hearing the latest tragedy to occur around the world. This inspired a dystopic, neo-punk aesthetic in my work that was informed by some of the new sources I had been delving into at the time.

Books such as ‘Capitalist Realism’ by Mark Fischer and ‘Caliban and the Witch’ by Silvia Federici invigorated my anti-capitalist political theories, and others like ‘Crime and Punishment’ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, ‘Perfume’ by Patrick Suskind, and ‘The Colour Purple’ by Alice Walker influenced the darker, more psychological aspects of my work. Other interests such as punk rock and television show ‘Cowboy Bepop’, influenced my attitude, providing new waves of inspiration.

In search of imagery, I studied books, ‘Revolutionary Tides: Political Poster Art of 1917-1944’ by Jeffery Schnapp and ‘Pictograms, Icons & Signs’ by Ryan Abdullah and Roger Hubner. This first book mentioned expresses the way in which art can still be beautiful even when what it expresses is horrific, revealing a peculiar aspect I had not considered. The second gave me access to the iconography of the modern world, in which we are completely surrounded and I was keen on representing. Artist’s who inspired me were Ralph Steadman, Rene Magritte, Georgia O’keeffe, Georges Rouault, and artists from the Lenbachhaus.

In the books I studied I was especially drawn to simple images. Perhaps because they required less effort to replicate, or because I intended on practicing different skills instead of representation, such as illusion, typical in a Magritte painting. Although, when I did find the motivation to paint with more focus I mixed the complex with the simple to create balance. Ralph Steadman and Georges Rouault taught me that the effectiveness of expression is dependent on will rather than execution, a philosophy I employed fervently.

I maintained my strict regime of drawing before painting, using paper as a medium of capturing the basic form of an idea. Sticking them to the walls of my studio meant I was always surrounded by potential imagery, reducing the stress of coming up with something on the spot. I had started to use charcoal in this period, it being a material I primarily used for drawings, however it had now become constant in my repertoire, mainly because it captures the crooked, nightmarish essence that I was trying to project. I enjoyed the easy application and smoky, faded effect it produces.

Overall, this period of time was productive and taught me how to maintain a fruitful practice whilst also allowing myself time to recuperate and avoid burning out.

Recently I added a fair few new paintings to my page and wanted to post a supplementary text to give some context to the new ideas and changes that have bloomed. I have gone down many unexpected avenues in search of inspiration, and have found much to inform a new way of painting, hence the name ‘Revelations and Reformations Series’.

At the end of 2021 and into 2022 I experienced a new level of intensity back in the University setting which I did not last year couped up in my flat painting in my living room. Being surrounded by other talented artists and hearing the advice of my tutors has pushed me to refine my practice and methodology to new heights of expression. Being guided in this way has been great for my determination and has allowed for me to be constantly learning and innovating.

In terms of materials, I have taken everything I have learnt thus far and tried to utilise it as much as possible. In the past I have mainly used acrylic paint and oil stick, however recently I have also experimented with clay, collaging, and charcoal which has brought new qualities of depth and sustenance previously unrealised. My process still remains relatively unchanged; beginning with a drawing and then using this to inform the images I use; however, my pace has slowed and attention to detail and surface texture has now taken the fore.

Recently, I have been looking at Rene Magritte, Rene Daniels, Frank Bowling, Henry Dreyfuss, and others for inspiration to enhance my practice. I have also been using a book on political war posters called ‘Revolutionary Tides’ which has taught me much about composition and the way in which art can be used for both positive and negative means. The Japanese anime show Cowboy Bepop has also been a source of imagery, using its still frames to appropriate a culture I am strongly influenced by into my work. Magritte’s surrealist imagery has developed my sense of composition and my understanding of illusion, adding complexity. Dreyfuss’s book ‘The Symbol Sourcebook’ has been transformative to my practice, due to its simplified representations.

I go between both simple and more detailed imagery regularly as a means of never becoming stagnant. Concentration to detail can make for more self-assurance in the piece’s expression, however reallocating time to layer development and simple imagery can often allow for more colours and a painting that seems joyful and dumb yet provocative and enticing. What I have noticed is that the more successful paintings always have an element of both.

Another tool I use to create a piece is distorting my ideas and thus muddying any apparent meaning. Using ambiguity, I try to evoke an individual voyage within the space created by the painting. I intend the recipe of colours and imagery to play with the mind in an unexpected manner eliciting moments of curiosity and engagement. I found that in the past I attached too much weight on the contextual significance of the imagery in a work, ignoring the objective qualities of its design. Attention is the most valuable form of currency, and by recreating my ideas through painting, but not making them apparent, I can utilise them as a means to an end of capturing the ideas of others, rather than the end in-itself. I find this can give the painting a new life, beyond my original concepts.

If I were to suggest how to look at my work, I would suggest looking at the objects and images displayed as mere symbols or representations, nameless, meaningless, void of reason, and mere conduits for the expression of things invisible to they eye.

Within my practice I explore numerous things, a select few being words, colour, and imagery which I will discuss in this order.

My interest in using words in paintings originated from reading poetry, psychology, and philosophy. Language has been very important in the evolution of humankind, originating from deciphering which foods and herbs were poisonous and good to eat, and what remedies different herbs could be used for. Therefore, language, at its roots, is a synthesis of nature into understandable data, expounding nature’s inherent meaning into comprehensible dialect. Art, to me, is a synthesis of the spirit into the material world, so a combination of words and art seemed fitting, as they are both catalysts of transmutation. This idea developed through my understanding of what words I should or shouldn’t use. Art should elevate the viewer from the weight of being, thus, the words I use should be weightless in caliber. This is difficult to do in order to keep them relevant to the context of the painting, however it is a challenge I am starting to overcome. I realized that my choice of words should arise spontaneously within the process of creation, and not worrying about it is best.

Colour is not colour without form, and different colours express different moods or emotions in different forms. The form has, whether it be translucent, opaque, matt, glossy, big, small, etc. a huge part to play in terms of the colours expression. The three things I bare in mind with colour now are its form, relationships, and essence. Relationships between different colours are key because they express things beyond your scope of expression. Essence is the mood, or personality of a colour. There is a lot of joy in colour. The infinite possibilities of colour are exactly where the spirit of painting lies, and it is exploiting, harnessing, and utilizing this infinity that is the key to my approach. Every stroke has an element of risk, therefore no stroke is a risk, due to the fact that it is a prerequisite to the entire process, it is more of an inherent factor than a moment to moment problem. Risk is simply just the nature of painting. I still have a lot of learning to do in terms of colour but my excitement is uncontainable.

Finally, imagery. To make a painting I use three things, a place where the thoughts get scrambled (scrambler), the message, and the sustenance. The scrambler effectively objectifies the viewer in that it is a point on the canvas of an intense conglomeration of colour and brushstroke. I don’t mean it totally scrambles all thought, but it should, if only for a millisecond, suspend the viewer in an arrested state, like when a fuse blows and you are suddenly surrounded in blackness. The message, or meaning, should be of minimal concern in that it is an inherent factor of the piece already therefore it needs minimal impartation from the artist. So long as one is aware of this it doesn’t matter, and you can use it to whatever degree you choose. The sustenance depends on the way in which the paint is applied, and, I have learnt, that imparting as much joy as possible works best. Also using a lot of paint is good, but that depends as well.