Francis Bacon - liminal realization

'The following is an extract from a conversation Between Francis Bacon and David Sylvester.

It is, if one may say so, Bacon's profound realization of his own liminal style of Painting, the characteristics of  both abstract and figurative painting, and the nature of paint itself'.

7 head 1 1961

"For instance, the other day i painted the head of somebody, and what made the sockets of the eyes, the nose, the mouth where, when you analysed them just form which had nothing to do with the eyes,nose or mouth; but the paint moving from one contour to another made a likeness of this person i was trying to paint. i stopped; i thought for a moment i'd got something much nearer to what i want. then the next day i tried to make it further and to make it more poignant, more near, and i lost the image completely. Because this image is a kind of tightrope walk between what is called figurative painting and abstraction. it will go right out from abstraction but will really have nothing to do with it. It's an attempt to bring the figurative thing up to the nervous system more violently and more poignantly".

'The Self' - Finitude's Despair

The following is an extract from Soren Kirekegaard's  - 'Sickness unto Death', it is Kierkegaard's attempt to show us the self as a synthesis, constructed from many polarities, and how each polarity has a dialectic opposite. Here he describes finitude's Despair of Lacking its opposite infinitude, and how this can lead to a false makeup of  'the self '.   


To lack infinitude is despairing confinement, narrowness.Despairing narrow-mindedness is to lack primitiveness, or to have stripped oneself of one's primitiveness, from a spiritual point of view to have emasculated oneself. for every human being is primitively organized as a self, characteristically determined to become himself

While infinite's despair is ones which leads oneself into the infinite and loses itself in not being ground by the finite, here we have another kind of despair which allows itself to be, so to speak, cheated on its self by 'the others'. by seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, dares not to believe in himself, finds being himself to risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd.

Now this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the world. Precisely by losing himself in this way, such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yes, for making a great success out of life. Far from anyone thinking he is in despair, he is just what a human ought to be. Naturally the world has generally no understanding of what is truely horrifying. The despair that not only dose not cause any inconvenience in life, but in fact makes life convenient and comfortable, is naturally enough in no way regarded as despair. That this is the worldly view is evident, among other things, from early all the proverbs, which are nothing but rules of prudence.

For example, it is said that one rues then times having spoken, for the one time one rues in silence, and why? because the external fact of having spoken can involve one in disagreeable consequences, since it is something actual. But to have kept silent! yet this is the most dangerous of all. for in staying silent a person is thrown wholly upon his own devices, here actuality dose not come to his aid by punishing him, by heaping on him the consequences of his words. but for that very reason the person who knows the true object of dread fears more than anything, any fault, that leaves an inward turn and leaves no trace on the outside world. the world thinks if is dangerous to venture in this way, and why? because one might lose; The prudent thing is not to venture. and yet by not venturing it is so dreadfully easy to lose what would be hard to lose by venturing and which, whatever you lost, you will in any case never lose in this way, so easily, so completely, as thought it where nothing - oneself!
For if i have ventured wrongly, very well, life then helps me with its penalty, but if i haven't ventured at all, who helps me then? and when, in the bargain, by venturing in the highest sense i cravenly gain all earthly advantages - and lose myself!..

And finitude's despair is just so. A man in this kind of despair can very well live on in temporality; indeed he can do so all the more easily, be to all appearances a human being, praised by others, honored and esteemed, occupied with all the goals of temporal life. Yes, what we call worldliness simply consists of such people who pawn themselves to the world. They use the abilities, amass wealth, carry out worldly enterprise, make prudent calculations, etc., and perhaps are mentioned in history, but the are not themselves.

-Soren kierkegaard

The self- existing

Man is born ethically neutral, hes is then corrupted at youth by false teachings that are forced upon him which he cannot yet have the means to evaluate or reflect on . therefor man is not yet himself, for he is conforming to teachings which he himself has not chose, therefor all of man is in despair. despair of not being oneself and not being able to rid himself of himself. in order for man to ascertain his true sense of self he must now rid himself of himself, question and re-evaluate everything he has ever learned and choose for himself what it is he is to be, for everything is mans own choice. By doing this man may now define his own essence in accordance to his true self, and in doing so may now truly feel what it means to exist.

- self reflection   

Existing

" Heidegger knows. as did kierkegaard, the intensity of man's anxiety to feel and know that he exists, and that is the root of all his anxieties". - John-Paul Sartre

The Ambiguity of what Self?

This piece push's the notion of minimalism, it is an Eradication of all sense of object or life and plays with the notion of one’s interaction with the work  becoming an essential. Using multiple layers of all type of varnish’s and mediums  it exudes a highly reflective surface in selected places within the work, that when one looked upon one may see one’s self and therefore be within the space of the piece (within nothing) and in other spots would lose the reflection so one may glimpse themselves in the reflection but as the viewer analysis’s the piece they lose themselves and begin looking again.

The work is  much more physical, material based and literal  as opposed to the psychological thought of space and being that can evoke one's imagination and thought. 

'Meaning' - (Existential)

"What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die. (...) I certainly do not deny that I still accept an imperative of knowledge and that through it men may be influenced, but then it must come alive in me, and this is what I now recognize as the most important of all".
—Søren Kierkegaard

Breaking the Ice - The Saatchi Gallery

BREAKING THE ICE: MOSCOW ART 1960-80s - THE SAATCHI GALLERY

Exhibition: Gaiety Is The Most Outstanding Feature Of The Soviet Union., 12th November 2012 - 9th June 2013.

'Janis Avotins' is one of many artist's who are all part of a current group exhibition in The Saatchi. this exhibition mainy concists of artists who work illustrate's the authentic effects on post-soviet survivors.

Avotins thinly  painted canvases draw us into a fragile world haunted by collective memory. often using a minimlistic, monochromatic aesthetic reminiscent of fellow latvian artist Vija Celmins, Avotins' washes and technique blur and erase the specificity of his subjects, imbuing them with an air of mystery  the figures are phantom-like, in a state of tension somewhere between sketchily existing and melting into the background. A 'lininal' state of 'being'

A thin, imprimatura wash of dark oil paint stains the canvas's weave and lint-flecks to create a gauzy, grainy, speckled effect – like looking into fog or falling ash. Isolated forms and figures emerge – ghostly, luminous, sometimes oddly solarised: the result of leaving areas of canvas wispish and unshaded.

 These images  playfully engage with the relationships between analogue photography, the way history can edit and turn individuals anonymous, and with our own collective memory-making – impressions fading in and out of existence.

In one work here work, a ghostly, isolated right hand is placed exactly in the middle of a canvas, becoming the mysterious central focus within an overwhelming nothingness. In the other works, singled out yet unrecognizable figures appear framed by a similar vacuum, soaked in washes accompanied by the symbolic material presence of the canvas’s grain. Recent compositions include architectural elements, but figures remain phantom-like, in a state of tension somewhere betweensketchily existing and melting into the background.

Despair

"The torment of despair is precisely the inability to die'. 'Thus to be sick unto death is t be unable to die, yet not as though there were hope of life. no, the hopelessness is that even the last hope, death is gone. when death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life. But when one learns to know the even more horrifying danger, one hopes for death. when the danger is so great that death has become the hope, then despair is the hopelessness of not even being able to die"- Soren Kierkegaard- 'the sickness unto death'

Alfredo Jaar - Tate Modern:

Jaar exhibits at Tate Modern a dark space 

where one comes across two tables. They both have light boxes embedded in their surfaces and they are placed on top of one other in reverse positions. The tables are the same size but one is suspended and movable while the other one is grounded on the floor. When the two tables are on top of each other, the room becomes completely dark. As the suspended table is pulled upwards by strings tied on its legs, a rim of light starts to appear until the space becomes dominated by the bright lights that irradiate from the surfaces of the two tables. The viewer, thus, experiences the effect of becoming blind by the light, but this time it occurs gradually. After being suspended all the way, the upper table slowly goes back to its initial position and the room is filled with darkness again. By providing the public with the glare of light instead of visual images, Jaar invites people to reflect upon the questions raised on the texts presented. He gives us a sensorial experience which affects our stereotypical vision. 

Additionally, he reinforces the absence of the images by giving viewers a glimpse of emptiness 

through the bright screen and lit tables.Similarly to Jaar’s way of thinking, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave points out to the question of how society has its eyes closed to reality – or to the Truth - and how people are condemned to ignorance if they are not able to liberate themselves from their current human 

condition. 

'Liminality' and 'Nothingness' :

The following body of work is an attempt to eradicate everything that should give the viewer any sense of place or identity, it takes the minimalist approach in trying to tap into the idea of the liminal 'nothingness'

These works are removed  from almost all sense of representation  in order to offer more uncertainty to the viewer, and to eradicate any sense of belonging and eliminate any feeling of comfort the viewer may find in correlation to an object within the composition.

The works emulate so much ambiguity that the style of painting itself is now also in the liminal phase between abstract and representational art.



These works offer the viewer a glimpse of what they may interpret as an everyday object and the uncertainty of it ‘being’ or ‘not being’ while capitulating themselves to the psychological  space around these objects and offering them a taste of the liminal nothingness that may lie
ahead of them, reminding them
of the 'fragility' and scarceness of
of ones life.

Rothko - Tate Modern:

Rothko was influenced in this body of work by Michelangelo's Laurenhian Libarary in Florence, with its blind windows and deliberately  oppressive atmosphere. Rothko commented that Michelangelo ' achieved  just the kind of feeling i'm after- he makes the viewer feel like they are trapped in a room where all the windows and doors are bricked up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the wall'

'Public Display - Tate Modern' 

              

In his mature work, Rothko abandoned specific reference to nature in order to paint images with universal association. by the late 1940s he had developed a style in which Hazy, luminous rectangles flout within a vertical format. Rothko wrote that the great artistic achievements of the past where picture f the human figure alone in a moment of utter immobility. he sought to create his own version of this solitary meditative experience, scaling his picture so that the viewer in enveloped in the subtly shifting, atmospheric surface.  

The Unilever Series: Miroslaw Balka:

'Black Box'- Miroslaw Balka

The latest commission in The Unilever Series How It Is by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka is a giant grey steel structure with a vast dark chamber, which in construction reflects the surrounding architecture – almost as if the interior space of the Turbine Hall has been turned inside out. Hovering somewhere between sculpture and architecture, on 2-metre stilts, it stands 13 metres high and 30 metres long. Visitors can walk underneath it, listening to the echoing sound of footsteps on steel, or enter via a ramp into a pitch black interior, creating a sense of unease.

Underlying this chamber is a number of allusions to recent Polish history – the ramp at the entrance to the Ghetto in Warsaw, or the trucks which took Jews away to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz, for example. By entering the dark space, visitors place considerable trust in the organisation, something that could also be seen in relation to the recent risks often taken by immigrants travelling. Balka intends to provide an experience for visitors which is both personal and collective, creating a range of sensory and emotional experiences through sound, contrasting light and shade, individual experience and awareness of others, perhaps provoking feelings of apprehension, excitement or intrigue.

'Miroslaw Balka’s black hole at Tate Modern is terrifying, awe-inspiring and throught-provoking. It embraces you with a velvet chill'.
'The Guardian'

Death- The ultimate uncertainty:

In correlation to the concept of 'uncertainty' and 'anxiety' the notion of death seems to hold a somewhat perpetual erudition.

blurred vision:

this is a combination of the notion of blurred vision with the dismissal of the figure. in order to try and further push the idea of uncertainty within the piece.

This piece was inspired by a piece called ‘black box’ created by the artist Miroslaw Malka. It portrays the idea of life and death. The light being life and the alley the journey which takes you to the darkness ‘death’. 

Eradicating the figure:

This is an attempt at eradicating all figures from the composition. It instantly feels to be the way forward. The dismissal of the figure now allows the viewer to engage with the piece and imagine themselves within the depiction, a fundamental characteristic when dealing with individual persons subjective fear. however still seeing the tunnel leaves the viewer with a sense of comfort in knowing where one is. I must begin to push this concept of 'nothing' and 'not knowing' further. 

Phenomenological experience;

'I was walking home late at night and  I put a pair of my house mate's glasses on and suddenly I entered another world. A world of blur, an experience far out of my comfort zone. i now lost any sense of 'knowing' and began to re-evaluate anything i thought may or may not have been an object or a shadow around me'. 

'I was instantaneously uncomfortable and anxious'        

The figure:

 I still feel this set of work are emitting a feeling of empathy and in this sense  block the viewer from really interacting with the piece. the figure seems to be somewhat of a distraction.

David lynch - Rabbits:

This is  a short video by David lynch called ‘Rabbit’ a very atmospheric and strangely  scary and off-putting feel to it. That is created by the stage set (composition) lighting and missing information; such as the faces of the characters. This correlates to the notion of 'uncertainty' and  what is not there, it s missing information that keeps the mind guessing and questioning, you keep looking for it and begin to imagine in your own head of what it could be, the possibility’s, ‘the not knowing’.

Relinquish:

The Following are the first series in my body of work i have made in correlation to my proposal. The raw material for these pieces came from a photo shoot in an controversial underground tunnel in my local town, this very site had days before been the crime scene of a young woman's rape. I chose this site in the hope that local artists might recognize the tunnel and relate it to this fear   

 

After a number of composition studies i came to the conclusion that the lone female figure would offer more for the viewer to interact and more for the imagination to try and tap into the idea of 'fear'.

                         

The piece shows a young woman, well dressed wearing heels in a dark artificially lit tunnel in the pitch black of night. The woman nears the exit with is only half seen in order to push the idea of the unknown.

       

     The finished series do begin to generate the feeling of fear, but it is rather one particular fear, almost as though I am telling the viewer what to be afraid of rather than allowing ones to feel the fear of one’s ‘real’ fear.

As i experimented with the composition of this piece  The one key message this set of work offered me was that ‘it is not what is in the painting, but that which is not that is the more fearful’. 'Uncertainty' and 'not knowing' offered more anxiety for the viewer.

Project proposal:

  The Depths of Our Fears;

It is my intention to produce a series of paintings for a collection based upon the above title ‘The Depths of Our Fears’. I will to use this title as a starting point for my project in order to project people’s fears into visual form to try and get the subconscious conscious and portray what some people may be blind to or oblivious of. I will produce a full body of work including Sketchbook work, Illustrations, personal reflective journal writings, experimental paintings, colour studies, finished paintings and a Final Show Presentation will be provided.

My main subject matter will be about people’s darkest fears, things they may not realise they are frightened of simply because the subject has never been raised with them before. Things you see in films but would never associate with yourself in your real life because you think it all has a fairy tale happy ending for yourself, things I consider the majority of people not to see because they take all they have for granted and choose not to see because; consciously may be to horrid a thing to think about and that it in fact gives you a moment of panic or anxiety. It is this very feeling that I will pursue and depict it in my work, so as to give the viewer a very uneasy feeling when looking upon my work. This concept is merely the starting point for my project and as I progress through my project my research will inform knowledge and understanding of the concept of ‘fear’ will gradually become enlightened  and new doorways and direction for my concept will present themselves to me.

Ideas and inspiration for my depictions will come from a variety of sources, movies, novels, newspaper articles on current events and so on. first and foremost I will talk to people one on one about the thing they fear and try to tap into what it is that would make them feel this sense of anxiety when thinking about the subject at hand. Close friends will be the people who will be willing to open up to me about such disturbing thing they will understand what my reasons are for being intrigued by such things without judging. After these talks I will begin to gather an idea in my head of what type of ideas it is that would frighten them the most, I will then try to narrow these ideas down the a certain phase I.E pre scene, post-scene, or actual image. Through watching movies and documentaries I feel  will personify this feeling the best as it not something I can go out and experience myself and whether or not I can find someone who has experienced any of these thing is uncertain, let alone trying to get them to open up to somebody they may not know.

When watching a movie personally I find that the pre-scene, can be the most intense feeling between what is happening in the movie and the audience. The suspense build’s.  the guessing of and anticipation of what may or may not be about to happen can be nerve wracking as people in today’s society tend to think the worst and run away with the imagination; If we take for example Steven Spielberg’s film adaption of Jaws (1975), the entire first half of the film is spent building suspense for the audience; in order to try and focus the commitment of the viewer’s perception and imagination of the creature; the climax of this commitment takes place on the first glimpse of the creature I.E realization of the truth. I feel this is the way to take my scene caption forward.

Due to my inability to finance live models I will be using photography to supply me with my raw material. After identifying the scenes I wish to depict and how I wish to compose them I will carry out a number of on scene photography shoots with friends of mine, compose the photographs and bring them back to my studio to work from. I plan to depict full size paintings of each scene I find the most powerful and also do smaller narrative paintings alongside these.

 I will be bringing forward into this project  the powerful sense of drama and ugly realism that Caravaggio brought to his paintings that I have been looking at in my previous project and research more contemporary artists such as Frances bacon, Jean Michel Basquiat, Kathe Kollwitz, William Kentridge, E.T.C  to try and have the drama in my work but with a more contemporary modern art feel to it in order to try combine the powerfulness of the post-renaissance and the fresh and new art that is today. My primary medium will be oil paint but I will also be using a range of materials and mediums for experimentation such as, water paints, acrylic paints, tempera, household paints and varnishes, mixed media spectrum gel modelling past ETC in order to try and find the style that I think will capture the powerful emotions I wish to portray best.

Gerhard Richter - Tate Modern