PRUNELLA CLOUGH

Contextual focus point: Prunella Clough “Wire Tangle”

I got acquainted with the image of “Wire Tangle”. This picture was painted with oil on canvas.Is a very typical picture of this artist, a picture where the background is presented in a neutral color.One could conclude that the color palette is taken straight from the facade of an old building of rock or concrete.However, it is not flat, banal has its structure and soil.

Unfortunately, I cannot see this image live, so I cannot say anything about its structure, how it was created.  I only see one-dimensional reproductions on paper.

I know that Prunnella used a thick impasto, she daubed, scraped and scratched her paintings, and she used textured material like a sand, wire wool or wire mesh in her paint.

Wire Tangle for me is a picture with a perfectly painted background imitating marble, which even without the foreground element is painted with extraordinary care, there is a bit of energy and life by adding and lighting it with a bit of a yellow color. The palette of this color clearly shows it in a strengthened form, in the form of several of the graphic elements.In my opinion this element is such a metaphorical sun that draws children in the upper corner of the picture and then illuminate it with its rays from that point.

It is obviously a metaphor and the picture is not primitivistic but more industrial, it shows us the foreground object, which was added, painted or drawn in the final stage of image creation, I mean wire of course. We know from what the foreground object is from the title, but it is definitely a wire? For me it could be an unwanted drawing made by a child on the wall, or any random graffiti, but let’s pay attention to the compositions, it’s not accidental, it’s not central as it usually is, it would be too banal. The center of the line and its constraint is on one part of the image, only a few lines stretch into the rest of the image, the whole composition is balanced, so that the image does not lean in on one side, the image is balanced because the wire does not really move in relation to the background, there is no contrast between them, the color is perfectly combined and we have the impression of being there in this stone slab from the very beginning. I think that the whole composition is based on the exchange of how the first and second plan interact with each other, they must or are forced to coexist. It makes this picture and the whole composition unique.

I also saw many elements in common with Elizabeth’s Blackadder creativity in studying her paintings and the way of composition, the same way of presenting space, placing or adding flat elements in the image structure. In Prunnella we can see more industrial elements, while in Elizabeth we can find trivial items found in every home for me it is a very original and quite a new form of creating compositions. New to me because I just discovered it. Prunella in her paintings is more linear and we have the impression of not only paintings on canvas but also works created with the use of other drawing tools. Her works are perfectly balanced, although they often show very aggressive sharp forms, or very geometrical forms, but in a sense, we read them very softly, you can see in it a clear relationship where each element is integrated into the background in a very unique way. Even a person who does not like this kind of art, should get acquainted with its creativity, because you can extract a lot from it.

Prunella Clough “Wire Tangle”

https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/wire-tangle-ii-207091

 

 

Max Ernst

 

I had a look at the work of Max Ernst who was a provocateur and creator of unusual art which questioned natural form as well combining different forms together that are usually not seen in the same picture. I had a look trying to find landscapes in his work and even though his work is meant to portray landscapes I don’t fully see this and find it hard to view it as one. He uses objects put together to create a landscape like effect but without it being clear or defined. It isn’t a literal landscape more a representation of one possibly also due to him interpreting Freud’s dream theory in his work to show his creativity. His landscape is like one out of a dream where everything is abstract and recycled from his imagination put together in a sort of landscape form. I myself could not find much usefulness in his work for my own work. I am writing about him to show that there are many different way of showing landscapes but my own ideas lie with the impressionists.

Max Ernst, L’oeil du silence (The Eye of Silence), 1943–44.

http://kemperartmuseum.wustl.edu/collection/explore/artwork/541

 

Gustav Klimt

I looked at Gustav Klimts work and was very surprised to find landscapes as I always associated his work with the female body. His work always has some decoration and erotic character. Looking further into his work I have realised that he had many talents and created a wide variety of work such as paintings, murals, sketches and more. The more exciting thing for me was seeing the series of Beech Forest painting he did, they contain something mysterious in them, we see unusual patterns of colour which create a certain type of composition but at the same time we can see only the colours and how they play with each other making us question what we actually see. If we were to cut out a fragment of the painting we would still be able to admire it without ever knowing that the original was meant to be trees. He uses the same techniques in his other paintings in the background or in the detail of the clothing. I can find similarities with other artist like Seurat or Monet only the difference the other pointillist artists, in my opinion, used warmer and lighter colours and lighting while he played with more contrast and that is why his patter had a different character. All of his compositions are more closed and don’t show open space but a more secluded and closed area. It is definitely worth looking through and analysing his work, I characterise him as one of the decorative painters.

Beech Forest Buchenwald I

 

Birch Forest

 

Hyeyoung Maeng

Hyeyoung Maeng is a South Korean artist who explores the boundaries between painting and film. Her work is a mixture of drawing and painting which she uses to create realistic portraits with a strong cultural influence.   Even though her portraits seem realistic she combines this with abstract backgrounds which use some nature and human form to create an interesting setting for the portrait. She creates series of paintings where the main subject is the same but the background become more obscure and blends into the figure more and more as the series goes along. This creates an interesting view and shows how one figure portrayed in different ways can have completely different emotional effects on someone. Looking at her other work which is not based around a portrait you can also clearly see that she uses mixed media, she is able to combine paint with lines of drawing to create something spectacular, unusual to look at and interesting. Overall her work is very contemporary with many different influences, some cultural and some taken from different techniques, she uses all this to create her own pieces that really speak and stand out, combining slightly abstract ideas with realistic ideas to create emotion and feeling. We can learn from her how to develop and continue one piece of work with different approaches and effects to create similar yet different pieces.

Hyeyoung Maengg http://www.hyeyoungmaeng.com/recent-painting.html

 Sandys  (Bunche on Korean paper, 24″ x 28,” 2015)

The Process of Painting Sandys

                                                     

 

 

                                                                         

 

 

David Eager Maher

The work of David Eager Maher is one of a curious nature. He takes elements from different areas and puts them all into one piece using pencil and watercolour. The combinations sometimes seem obscure with the pieces not naturally occurring together. He does not follow the rules of nature, gravity or normal composition but seems to take objects he finds interesting and fit them together. He takes different styles and adopts them in his work transforming them to fit with his ideas. Most of his pictures are on a small scale but packed with detail. In some the detail is seem more densely packed in one area of the picture which is sometimes where there is more colour added and makes that part stand out, in others the density of the detail is seen throughout. The most interesting thing about his work is that you can’t fully distinguish if it is a painting or drawing, the pencil part fully interacts with the colour and the same can be said the other way. If someone wants to use pencil and watercolour he is the best to follow.

David Eager Maher ‘The great spiral’

Watercolor, pencil and tape on sourced paper

19″ x 16.5″ x 1

2010

http://thisprojectforart.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/david-eager-maher.html

David Eager Maher

INHERITANCE

 

 http://www.3ringe.com/en/Ausstellungen/inheritance.html

Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani

One of my favousrite contemporary artist, who always inspired me and is always deep in my mind. An artist who was famous for portratis and in nudes of woman, only some of his work is landcapes. Modgiliani didnt paint interiors or still life in his work which definitley influences his painitings of the figures. Most of his work is taken out of context and dont have a link to what is happening behind them, similarly the nudes fill the whole canvas and in the composition we see only suggestions that she is lying on some fabric. Doing all this the artist focuses on the personality of the model and this ot him is the most important. The artist didnt limit himself to any one type of art, he created his own unrepeated style which deserves great recognition as we know the artist had links with Picaso and other artists. His portraits remind us of sculptures, with teyes that seem to follow you no matter what angle you are looking from and with defined facial features. The portraits have a deep psychological character. The facial features are show using strong linear markings, similar to the drawings of Toulouse Loutrec but sometimes remind us of the slim figures of Picasos Blue period but do not copy him. All this makes us that that his work is hanging between classical painting and drawing, some of his work remind us of sculptural projects where we can noctice a deep chizled relief on the canvas. In the nude figures we meet unaturally long arms and unatural shapes of thighs, we have a felling that the bodies of women are there just to show nakedness, where all academic rules, on anatomy, movement and proportions, are far from natural. I think this because especially the nudes of women are presented in very weird situations with unatural poses and it is hard to find an emotional contact with the model and we just focus on the figure and the body. I have a feeling that the artist is showing two types of models; ones that are showing us spiritail and erotical feelings, the others showing a spiritual relationship between the artist and the model, where the artist goes further adding his personal emotion onto the canvas, defining the woman as a mystic and unvailing her secrets. Modigliani is a great artist and during the course I felt very affected and infulenced by him which I did not alway like as I would like to remain independant and not be so easily lead astray.

The Jewess (1908)

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-modigliani-amedeo-artworks.htm#pnt_5

^{Modigliani’s drawing Standing Nude in Profile with Lighted Candle, c1911 (GETTY)}

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/11532201/Modigliani-and-the-Russian-beauty-the-affair-that-changed-him.html

Reclining Nude, 1917

 

(Nudo Dolente), 1908

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amedeo_Modigliani

 

Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin is the next artist who deserves attention. By some she is loved but my others hated because of her controversial art. Like I said earlier there is a difference between eroticism and pornography, nudity and nakedness. This artist is a 21^st artist who really crosses the border with her artwork, her work doesn’t show nudity in a classical way or for pleasure of viewer but shows human weakness and shows nudity in a raw way. This kind of creation draws attention because she shows dirty things that aren’t pretty or beautiful to look at yet still evoke emotion, she shows this in a real unfiltered way. To a normal viewer this might be hard to process because we are not used to seeing real life in art but in reality there are negative emotions and dirt and trying to turn this into art using photography or drawing the artist allows us to view life from a different angle. Here a question is born: is she creating art for the wider public or for a specific audience? Her work is very controversial but when I look at her work showing nudity or nakedness I do not feel any erotic emotions and I don’t feel like they are pornographic but they are just trying to show a certain reality which may be closed or unknown to some. I think these type of artist should exist and keep forming their type of art as they are filling a gap that much are scared to do.

Tracey Emin
I’ve Got It All

2000

 

Tracey Emin
Untitled

2000

Tracey Emin

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (detail)

http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/tracey_emin.htm

 

Graham Little and Elizabeth Peyton

I looked at the work of Graham Little and Elizabeth Peyton. Both artist are modern artists, showing mostly portraits and figures in their work. When I first looked at Graham Littles work I fell in love with it, he creates absolutely stunning work using colour pencil and has created his own style. In his work there is something amazing about pose where you can see calm and natural poses that evoke a weird feeling of peace in me. His work is like a stopped scene from a film, we see movement but the emotions are still and the same in each work. His work remind me of photographs from old magazines where the picture was softened during publishing. You can observe incredible detail and every detail is just as important as another just like a photograph. His art inspires my brain to think differently such that in one second I have millions of feelings and the next I feel calm and peaceful.

On the other hand the works of Elizabeth Peyton which are very strong and use bold lines and tones, her work is more lively and she doesn’t seem too worried about detail but in the composition she uses similar techniques as she crops the face and makes the pose look very natural, only a limited few have a static model posing in a studio. From her paintings we can not only see the human face but the thoughts and feelings of the subject in them. We can easily identify with what the subjects are doing in their lives. We can learn how to make portraits very personal from her.

Untitled (Sleeping), 2014 Graham Little

Gouache on paper

Untitled (Reflections), 2014 Graham Little

Gouache on paper

http://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/artists/26-graham-little/works/

Elizabeth Peyton

Lunch (Nick)

Elizabeth Peyton

Spencer

http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/8042?=undefined&page=1

 

 

 

The Nude: a study in ideal form

I started by watching a series called Ways of Seeing by John Berger which inspired me to look closer at how we look at nudes in art, how nude was presented in the past, how it influenced people in the modern era and I found a publication The Nude: a study in ideal form (1956) by Kenneth McKenzie Clark.

The author’s fascination with nudes is what started the publication, the way it influences painting, and sculpting in the history of art was also a major factor.

In the book there is a focus on the difference between nudes ‘act’ and nakedness, he writes that being naked is being denied clothes and this word has some connotations which everyone feels when naked. On the other hand the word nude does not have an embarrassing or shaming feeling. An act for Clark is like clothing the body with art. To turn something into an act requires, according to Clark, the techniques mastered by the Ancient Greeks which use aesthetic, proportions, harmony and light to create the human form. Clark also believes that every act should evoke at least a slight feeling of eroticism, even if it is just a shadow of the feeling, which in some sense is what John Berger said, that lots of the nude paintings of women are there for the pleasure of the viewer. But Clark links the erotic feeling with something deeper, in other words eroticism is easy to define but each of the paintings should have deeper meaning to them and only then you create a good piece of art.

I think that Clark was right; art should evoke feeling but not depend on it. The strength of art is that it’s supposed to waken our soul, esthetical feelings and feelings of beauty. Nudity works with our imagination and sometimes in a refined way shows human nature but should be far from the animalistic desires. The author of the painting shouldn’t fill everything in, he can leave a little eroticism but not so much that it awakens our dirty minds.

In this publication the author starts by discussing the difference between nudes and nakedness but also shows us point by point what eroticism is and what pornography is. Of course his idea is very classical as it was written in the 60s but it can shield us from crossing a certain border. Clark also mentions that the point of view of the receiver matters as if his attitude towards even the slightest nudeness is that of a sexual nature even the greatest act will be pornography to him. I think that this thought is very current to our day as in our times the artist for some crosses all the borders but to others he is creating very deep artwork.

 

 

John Piper

John Piper a British artist (13 December 1903 – 28 June 1992)

John Piper included in his work landscape, monuments, churches and sea side. He was the official world war two artist and his earlier work was more abstract but I was mostly interested in paintings of churches and monuments which in some sense came from abstraction but merge with classical British landscape painting. He has a very characteristic technique where you often find a church or monument in the foreground, he showed this in disfigured way and often the objects appeared to come from the ground unnaturally and gave a strong impression. These objects were often drawn and this can be seen in the painting, this drawing supported the structure of the building or monument and this allows us to easily analyse what kind of windows or arches the building has. The colours of the buildings try to be natural, so for example the colour of stone is grey or yellowish but the interesting thing is what happens in the background which is unnatural colour that grows around the buildings, the colour of the sky and clouds is also unnatural, this comes from abstract painting but at the same time we have the impression that all the buildings are British and classic. Similar things happen in his landscape paintings where apart from unusual colours the artist also used a lot of drawing which supported the detail, we do not only have pure watercolour but mixed media and collage. In spite of all this mixing we have the feeling that the artist painted very British landscape, for me this artist shows you can experiment and dare to mix different colours giving more dynamic work yet still achieve a very visual effect in landscape painting.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-piper-1774