What is an artist?

The honest authorship of an artist

I’ve been reading a lot about authorship for university recently and something has been bugging me. How can some artists put their name on pieces of art and get all the glory? What actually constitutes ‘being an artist? Is it having dibs on an idea or is it the physically making of the piece?

When I went to the Wallace collection they had two pieces by Rembrandt facing each other on either sides of the room – one is of his son, which looks a lot more like a typical Rembrandt than the portrait of himself, which seems very much like plainer. It was bought to my attention that one of them was done by his studio (so, other people) and the portrait of his son was done by himself. What I don’t understand is why the painting made in his studio is under his name. It wasn’t done by his hand, it was simply made by people who mimic and have learnt from his stylings, does that mean we should put everything that was created in the renaissance under the umbrella of Greek and Roman artists who inspired them? For the Renaissance is heavily based on this era, they coined the idea of the perfect male form and the use of marble sculptures, didn’t they?

And THEN I found out that it wasn’t just Rembrandt, loads of artists have done this in the past. Works that were commissioned during the Renaissance and up to the nineteenth century were often made in studios under the hands of others, and it’s not even an out dated practice. Almost everyone know that the work created by Damien Hirst is actually made by eager art students who are happy to help, the majority of his colourful dot paintings pretty much untouched by his own hand. Even his larger, more experimental ideas, like say cutting a cow perfectly in half, required the skill of someone who actually knows how to do that – not him.

A conservation talk I went to recently also spoke about how Allen Jones’ furniture pieces were made mainly by a variety of fabricators, ranging from mannequin specialists to clothes shops. He simply had the idea, the inspiration being a piece of work that is as far from the artists touch as possible. So therefore, because it was his idea it is therefore his piece of art, despite not creating it at all. It’s crazy to think that I could come up with an idea, pay someone to make it for me, display it in an art gallery, and then have it be sold to an art collector in years to come for thousands.

Obviously though, these artists have to have some repertoire with the art world in order to be able to mass produce these pieces under other peoples hands and have them taken seriously. Hirst basically dragged together the YBA’s and staged shows of his works in warehouses at a young age, catching the eye of Saatchi. Rambrandt was a highly commissioned and sought after Dutch painter, his demand necessitating other hands. But is there a point when an artist loses his title of being an artist? Surely the involvement and creation of a piece is what constitutes the term artist in the first place.

Another confusion of authorship and ownership of a work is when it comes down to photo based pieces. Ana Mendieta’s work is the best example of this I have seen recently. Normally she is the subject of her work, and by being the subject she needs help creating the piece, someone to take a photo or a video. Does this still give her the right to claim to be the author of the piece? She hasn’t taken the photo herself and she is the subject, certainly that makes her the subject of someone else’s photo? It’s all very confusing.

I find authorship a really confusing and grey area and I’m probably not going to write my next essay on it.

                                                          

Art of Repair - Lindsay Morgan Conservationist Talk @ Tate Britain

Lindsay Morgan has worked as a conservationist at the Tate for eleven years, and during her first week she was given the important and skilful job of working on Allen Jones' 'Chair', which depicts a woman with her legs in the air, dressed in fetish wear, and being a chair. In 1986, during Women's Week and an array of feminist protests, an unidentified woman threw two bottles of paint stripper onto the piece, leaving 30% of the body of the piece damaged, mainly on the face, in protest against the objectification of women. The damage was frightfully realistic in terms of looking like an acid attack on an actual woman instead of a glass fiber mannequin, and it required conserving massively.

Before conservationists start their work, they have to speak to the artist (if they're around). For example, when Tracey Emin's 'My Bed' was destroyed by two performance artists from China in 1999 by them jumping and having a pillow fight on it (creatively naming their piece ' Two Naked Men Jumping into Tracey's Bed'), Emin herself was bought in and interviewed about the best way to go about reconstructing her piece, in which she actively took part too. When Morgan interviewed Allen Jones about the best way to start the conservation, he was genuinely startled that someone would even attack his piece.

Jones had taken inspiration from Duchamp in the way that he wanted his art to avoid the 'fine artists touch' by removing the distance between art and people and turning it into something that the public can engage with. All of Jones' furniture pieces (which also include a hatstand and a table) were manufactured using fabricators, mannequin painters, leather manufacturers and wig specialists - Jones had very limited physical impact on the pieces at all apart from the original sketches. His work wasn't made with the intention to subject woman and portray them as objects - the use of fetish wear was simply a way of bringing art onto an erotic, accessible level, one that Jones thinks everyone can relate to.

Due to 'Chair' being away from the fine art touch of an artists and more towards manufacturing, Jones wanted to re do the whole thing from scratch as he worried retouching would make it artistic. As a conservationist, it was Morgan's job to try her best to salvage what was lost (when you see the sculpture you wouldn't even think twice that it had been re-done, the finish is flawless and symmetrical), however Jones things that the work has been redefined by the attack.

Listening to Morgan describe the perils and considerations of working in conservation opened my eyes to the amount of work that conservation entails, for example with Emin's 'My Bed', plastic deteriorate at a much quicker rate to paper and cotton, and liquids evaporate, making this a very hard conservation piece - plastics had to be infused with high levels of oxygen to slow down the deterioration protest, and everything has to be heavily catalogued, recorded and photographed for future use. Things even have to be bought in advance and stored through fear of them being discontinued and then the work of art being lost forever.

Medium has changed drastically in the 20th century too - no longer are oil paintings, marble and bronze the staple diet of a conservationist - sculptures are made from multiple things such as chocolate, fat, dead animals or foliage, and these things are more than a struggle to maintain. For example, Damien Hirst's 'A Thousand Years' is quite clearly not made of the same flies and cows head as it was in 1990, and it is a conservationists job to make it as similar to the original as physically possible.

Moral questions of conservation are bought up too with this new found medium and the controversial themes addressed in art. When poised with the question why she repaired a piece that was degrading to women, Morgan answered by saying she hasn't not repaired a piece, thinking of them simply as exciting projects, however she knows of someone who walked away from a project when he found out that human skin was part of the piece. These issues of disturbing materials such as blood and flesh, as well as issues such as feminism, sexualisation, racism and religion are things that conservators are faced with everyday.

Contemporary art has bought new, exciting challenges into the field of art conservation, and has made the area more interesting and appealing to young people who are keen to get into the art world. Our ever changing opinion of art makes conservation a perfect field for those who want to be a part of the cataloguing of history and play a vital part in not letting us forget the past.

Art Under Attack

I finally got round to seeing the Art Under Attack exhibition that everyone has been going on about and I was genuinely really impressed! I love history a little bit more than I love art, and this exhibition was so heavily invested in the historical side of iconoclasm as opposed to the aesthetic side that every room was interesting and gave a new perspective to the idea of iconoclasm - even the way the exhibition was set out massively helped it, splitting the room into three colored sections of religion, politics and aesthetics.

The religious rooms came first (understandably as this is what you first thing of when you think of iconoclasm) and they gave a good insight into the reasons behind the English Iconoclasm (the reformation, Henry VIII and Edward VI) and had an large number of examples ranging from smashed stain glass windows to scratched out faces of saints in panel paintings. The really striking image you see by Girolamo de Treviso, 'A Protestant Allegory', upon entering the room, where four protestants are smashing rocks down on the pope who is using his body to protect holy items such as texts and relics, is particularly poignant in describing the generalised attitude of the British public, and the artifacts surrounding the picture of physical proof of this.

Despite the religious element in the exhibition being the biggest, this isn't what engaged me the most - the middle area of politics was, to me, the most interesting, showing the destruction of pillars, statues and commemorative architecture of certain leaders in large scale black and white photographs, alongside a remaining and damaged part of the statue and an explanatory wall writing of who the statue was of and his influence within Britain. This part of the exhibition was incredibly informative, in particular the huge photo of Nelsons Pillar in Dublin in 1966 after it had been attacked by the IRA, showing the whole bottom of the pillar covered in rubble. Having news reports playing next to clearly showed the impact it had, giving the original photo more depth and understanding.

Surprisingly, I particularly enjoyed the Suffragettes too. It's really interesting that art was used as a way of political uprising - the attack on art clearly showed how much people invested in art works, as attacking it if no one cared about it would have been a waste of time. I found it really interesting how violent these women would be too - one of the earliest attacks was in 1913, and these continued reoccurring until 1914, with violent attacks by people such as Mary Richardson on the Rokeby Venus at the National Gallery (resulting the a two week closure, followed by them closing for 3 months after another attack). Women were becoming suspects in the art world - they were asked to leave their things at the door to avoid attacks - some of them were with meat cleavers.

There was a particularly funny piece in this room too from Blast, a small magazine, in 1914 which spoke directly to the Suffragettes. You don't mind being called things?

Art is a powerful way to get your message across. Whether it's through destroying art to cause outrage or by making the art to be particularly potent itself, art is a great way to ensue political ideologies.

Art being powerful is also a main point of the last room in the exhibition - Aesthetics. This is a room of art that has been created through a means of destruction, my favourite piece being by the Chapman brothers with their ongoing series 'One day you will no longer be loved', where they purchase old paintings and then paint over them, showing the portraits in them to be decaying, old bodies, and explaining both the reason and the title by saying that they subjects aren't loved anymore because their portrait was sold on and discarded and reworked. These paintings for me are incredibly eerie, and knowing that they are original portraits that have been painted over made me feel a bit weird, clearly because it's ingrained in me that once a work of art is completed it should probably never be touched again.

The Blurred Artistic Line

A 19 year old art student at Central Saint Martins is planning on losing his virginity, on stage, to a man, on the 25^th of January next year. Don’t worry though guys, it’s not porn, it’s just art, it’s even called ‘Art School Stole My Virginity’.

Clayton Pettet thought up this idea when he was 16 - whilst all his friends were losing their virginity and having normal teenage lives, Pettet let his inner artist control his sex life and decided to make a piece that questions the emotional and valuable aspects of virginity. This piece of performance art is going to be watched by 100 very…open minded spectators, and it’s obviously going to be really edgy and controversial.

To what extent can this actually be classed as performance art? To me, this is just like a live porn show, its leading role played by a boy that is trying to push boundaries that shouldn’t be pushed. This is almost definitely pornography. I’m all for contemporary art but I refuse to acknowledge this on an artistic level, sorry Pettet. I’m pretty sure the law disallows public sexual activity and nudity.

Pettet uses his tumblr (yes he’s an art student with a tumblr, no biggie) to defend the performance by saying:

“The Idea of “Art School Stole My Virginity” came around when I was Sixteen, when all my peers at school were losing their Virginity it was incredibly hard for me to ask why I was still a Virgin and why it meant so much to the people all around me. My piece isnt a statement as much as it is a question. The whole aspect of Virginity was incredibly emotional for me and has been ever since. It became a thought process that turned into the performance piece that I wish to create for the public on January the 25th. The London Art Scene has slowed down recently and whilst London is in its prime and is constantly changing the contemporary artists are the same and they aren’t so contemporary anymore. I want my piece to inject some speed into the arts, a performance of the people if you will.  I feel like now is the time for the new scene.”

My main complaint about that is when he said that the contemporary artists aren’t so contemporary anymore – I’ve seen a lot of questionable art over the past 6 months that I feel is bordered on being TOO contemporary for the general public to grasp their over cultured brains around, so I don’t really understand the need for an even MORE vague link to art to be made.

What’s so wrong with a nice oil painting now a days? 

Francis Bacon aka My Hero aka The Auction Record Holder

Read this on Pi Media here

When I was in Sydney, the Art Gallery of New South Wales was doing a retrospective on Francis Bacon, and I worked in the café opposite the gallery. I got a lot of art-lovers coming in and talking about how excited they were about the Bacon exhibition, but this was about 20% of the people I spoke to. The rest had no idea who Francis Bacon was – as Bacon’s self proclaimed number one fan, this made me feel sick. He is undoubtedly one of the most passionate, influential, respected artists in terms of contemporary figurative painting, being influenced by Velázquez, Van Gogh, Picasso, Degas and Rembrandt. In my eyes he is the ultimate artist.

This is why it does not surprise me that Bacon achieved the record price paid for a piece of art bought at auction this week, selling for $142.4 million at the Christie’s postwar art auction in New York, beating Munch’s $120 million masterpiece. The triptych of Lucien Freud is one of his most notable works, not only because it portrays the relationship between Freud and Bacon, two pioneering figurative painters, but because the bright colourings are a stray away from Bacon’s usual brooding dark tones and violent imagery, and the large scale size of them make them a typical Bacon-esque piece that collectors were fighting over.

So WHY doesn’t everyone know Bacon? Ever since I was young I’ve known who Matisse and Picasso and Warhol are, but I don’t see them racking up the top selling price at auction. Maybe the basic, block colour shapes of their work entices young children and is easy to recreate in art classes – I vaguely remember copying a Matisse with some acrylic paint when I was 10 and genuinely thinking I was the next big thing in the art world. Bacon is dark and dangerous and the content is probably not suitable for children, but that doesn’t mean he should be tossed to the side.

In fact I think he brings to light to true meaning of art - he is passionate and he loved what he did, he used inspiration from other artists to create his work and shape his techniques. He uses colour in an interesting way. He plays with size. He explores the human form vividly in his art. He has an interesting personal life that made him so interesting and peculiar. 

He is my hero. 

Pi Magazine

SOOOO I got my first published article in the magazine. I am officially a published writer, kind of.

Student Night - The Wallace Collection

Last Friday I went to a private view of the Wallace Collection and it was amazing! I have never seen such spectacular rooms in my life, or been in such a building. I had a lovely guided tour and learnt a lot about Romantic art in France and the Netherlands, and also there was a really adorable lady dressed as Madame Pompadour and she was really interesting too.

The way the rooms were decorated and arranged was probably the best bit - they had bright, decorated wall paper with a mish-mash of art hanging from the walls, it felt grand and overbearing but in a good way.

There was even the chance to make venitian masks and have your face painted, which I missed out on by being too late, however the whole evening was a really good way to get student to go to the Wallace collection, because not many people know its there or what it is, even though it houses some famous works by Rembrant, Fragonard and Boucher, including 'The Swing', which is one of the most notable pieces from the French Romantic movement.

Our tour guide was so informative, she was telling us how you can tell the difference between an actual Rembrant and something from Rembrant's workshop (see two pictures below), and how the skill and darkness and shading used by Rembrant is above and beyond anything that his workshop could achieve.

It's definitely a place to go and visit, whether its just for the grandeur of the building itself, the beauty of the paintings or to see some of the famous works there, its a beautiful collection that more people need to know about.

(Piece by Rembrant himself)

(Piece by Rembrants workshop)