This morning I had a dream about going to sleep with some kind of rotten meat next to me. No idea why I didn’t just get rid of the meat before sleeping, but I didn’t and when I woke up the next morning there were all these flies and bugs on the walls, including some weird coloured ones but I couldn’t bear to look at them too closely, or my imagination didn’t want to stretch to thinking about insects as I really hate the look of them. Anyway, dream-me knew the meat must be really gross but I didn’t smell or see it [can you imagine smells in your sleep? I don’t think so..] but still knew it was there. So, my Mum happened to be upstairs [we were in some house I didn’t know that resembled a hotel, but my room was the same as here] and I asked her to get rid of it all. Kept saying I can’t do it, I can’t look at it etc and she didn’t really say anything but I knew she’d fix it for me anyway. So, when I woke up for real I did so unpleasantly, looking for something rotten.
So, fortunately I don’t have anything rotten here, apart from maybe the drain which needs a good bleaching, but I was thinking about the dream for a while. Maybe something to do with the massive guilt I had when I broke the hard drive my parents got me, and I knew they’d still pay for it to be fixed/buy a knew one even though it was my fault for always being clumsy and careless. But I think...It’s more to do with that feeling you have when you ignore something for a while, until the point where it’s unbearable and you go crying to someone else to fix it. I don’t think I’m too guilty of that, though everyone must experience that sort of thing to some extent...Usually I don’t think dreams have meanings or anything, but it’s been a while since I felt so emotional over a dream so it must be quite important. I guess the thing I’m guilty over...Is neglecting 3d. Its said that you can do anything if you try hard enough, and generally that’s applied to me, in everything but driving [cannot get my head around it, it’s like I’m mentally disabled or something], and I’m scared it’ll be the same thing with 3d, that I have no hope in hell of ever being good at it. But I doubt it. With some help, I really liked the tree I made, even if it’s just a small accomplishment. I suppose I’m the type of person that expects to be able to do everything art-related straight away, and it’s really not the case. What an irresponsible attitude...
A-Anyway, dreams are a silly topic, so I’ll put something relevant here before posting week 18! It was nice to see Chris’ work on Wednesday, I expected just figurative sculpture for some reason, but seeing the installation work and larger-scale things was very enjoyable...It’s been a while since I looked at fine art at all, last year I was really into it so it was really good to see work which had that emotional quality to it, a nice break from purely commercial stuff. I’ve always said I liked commercial/low-brow art more, but Chris’ stuff reminded me of what the fine art students last year were doing, well more like how they were thinking, basing an idea on something really small and developing it to the point where it’s only traceable back to that point if you’re able to see the whole process.
I think, that’s why a lot of fine art is hard to ‘understand’; either because people go in to a gallery expecting a visual treat or some kind of intellectual explanation, when more of it is based on quite a small idea or feeling, it’s the expression of it which gives it value, and at some point down the line the tools of traditional craftsmanship become unnecessary when it’s abstracted. The artist may still be a good craftsman, but their work might not need those skills to express the idea. For instance, in the fine art group at Leeds last year, for their first project they had to make a collection of every day objects that were interesting in some way, and draw, film, and record them. My friend in that group chose soap, and did things like drawing with them, looking at the textures, and making a kind of shell of the soap out of tracing paper and thread. Recording the sound of soap was pushing it. A lot of those people were pretty good painters and sculptors, but the ones who weren’t did things like video and performance. A lot of people in my graphics group thought it was a load of crap, but I liked all of it! The fine art exhibition was the one of the most interesting at the end of year show. Well, all the groups had good exhibitions, but that one had the most story to it. My first graphics project was making a hundred variations of a backwards letter ‘n’. God knows what Mike and Chris thought that was all about. I didn’t think my portfolio showed enough actual skill, so I stuck a few digital paintings in at the end while my Leeds tutors weren’t looking. But now I understand the projects that we did now, and even though I took Graphics and not Fine Art they share the same processes in the end. That’s why I think it’s good to look at galleries and contemporary art even if you think its crap, because there will be some things that you find interesting and impressive!
Also, I’ll post some of my character work here. Why not?
The descriptions/explanations are all on Facebook so I don’t re-iterate myself here.
Warning for male nudity, NSFW. Serious discussion of rude bits will follow.
Oh god, Mikel Marton is awesome. This article [not work-safe!] made me happy. I'm so glad his work is getting more gallery exposure, especially after all of his cameras and computers were stolen a year or so ago. It’s funny, after about 4 years of browsing the site DeviantArt, there were only a handful of people whose work made me think something else other than ‘that’s cool’ [but maybe I’m just a bit shit at appreciating art sometimes], especially in the photography section; which is mostly just macro pictures of flowers and underage tits. In Sixth Form, me and a friend of mine became pretty obsessed with Sarah Lucas’ work, in that period when I was only beginning to understand what fine art was, to realise that the things she makes are all about bawdy sex and vulgarity, and those things are cool. Or rather, challenging the idea of a woman [‘Eating a Banana’, 1990] and gender roles really got me into reading about feminism and a lot of the ideas struck a chord with me and made me really passionate [I won’t go into detail, some guys are following this blog and I wouldn’t want to bore them to tears].
While keeping this contemporary art journal for foundation course, I realised I actually liked photography quite a bit. I’ll have to dig out the journals to remember the names I was into [the sheer amount you had to talk about was intimidating, so you become forgetful], but I do remember feeling vaguely uncomfortable about the overwhelming number of female subjects in nude portraits/erotica. At first I put it down to immature, prudish heterosexualness, but I don’t think I’m all that prudish. It’s mainly the fact that pretty much all of this genre is pictures of tied-up women, and I don't see the irony to these kind of photos. Women are physically vulnerable compared to men, and have been/are oppressed, and I don't see any reason to celebrate those terrible things. This kind of imagery is never morally questioned and I was quite frustrated about that as I could never think of anything to say that didn’t sound like I had double standards, as you can easily reply with ‘you’re no better just because you’d rather look at cocks’.
But I so completely agree with what Mikel is saying. Male art is taboo because we are still scared of showing the strong white man as a sexual object, because that is something completely associated with femininity or homosexuality, and of course, neither of those are any good for what we demand a man to be.
I’ll be very happy to see change, really, so I was extremely happy to find Mikel's work as the photographs are beautiful and the ideas behind it I think are important things.
In before 'lol, that guy has a huge penis'
On the topic of naked people, life drawing yesterday was great fun! It was my first time doing it properly, as I’d only drawn clothed models before...Not entirely happy with what I produced, I was trying to get the drawings as accurate to the three dimensional person as possible, and I didn’t really put any boldness into it. I think it’s a matter of confidence. I now know I can draw the human body reasonably accurately, so that gives me more room to experiment technically. Sometimes I think my stuff has zero visual impact, so I’ll try harder.
Also on the subject of female bodies, I’ll link to one of my favourite painters, Jenny Saville. I love her work.
So that the next entry isn’t entirely worthless, I’ll post the drawings we did with Chris for the laugh.
