Friday, November 5, 2010

woodman, magritte and existentialism save my practise???

hello hello!
Update- the thesis seems to be going grand although I somehow didnt realise Im still way behind on the reading, but Im sure Ill manage...going to try and get a draft of chapter 2 ready for wednesday (would LOVE to get it out of the way this weekend!), but it will need a lot of editing once I get more reading in!
Studio- not looking so good! Made a shoddy attempt to get my thinking back on track before my progress review, but all it proved was how unsettled I actually am. REALLY need tutorials, but completely avoiding them as I have very little to say! Also, quite worried they'd end up more like therapy time than art tutorials! Basically in my reviews they were somewhat aware of how little work I had to show, and it was mentioned that Ive been in this position of feeling like I cant make work before, more than once, and that proves I can in fact overcome it. I have before. I just need to start. The usual really. There was more, but my memory of it is very on/off.
So Ive decided to focus my research really narrowly to avoid my usual scatteredness. I am looking only at Francesca Woodman, Rene Magritte and Existentialism (not forgetting my thesis research- Roland Barthes, Theodor Adorno, and Charlie Kaufman). Today was a good day, if very late coming. Im scared to write down my thoughts in case I begin to hate them again, as that seems to be a recurring series of events with me, but here goes. Im thinking about representation and reality in a more accessible way. Literally replacing or covering 'things' in their representation. Photographic representation probably. but not necessarily realist photography. Im not really sure yet, but I really want to be able to start it very soon. I should really start tomorrow. It should be easy enough to start by photographing photographs as they cover the thing they represent, and see where that takes me. One of the starting points for this idea is the cover type thing 'they' have started placing on buildings during renovations, the ones that 'represent' or pictorialise the building in a slightly animated way. Perhaps I can start to play with these representations and start to use 'absurd' representations! fun! I will also think about using representations that arent photographic, realistic or maybe even pictorial. Uh, I could pixelate the images!!! exciting. I have obviously also started thinking about doing this with the human body. Actually paintings by magritte such as 'Philosophy in the Boudoir' also helped create the original ideas. It reminded me of what I was trying to do with the skin clothes last year, and I really liked it. last year I also tried life drawing straight onto body casts, which is also somewhat similar! Ive a lot of thinking to do yet about this in particular in relation to the body/identity ones, but hopefully Ill soon start! Whoop Whoop!
Note: The reason for existentialism is that it keeps comingup as one of my main interests, in the thesis, in Woodmans and in Magrittes, and just inlife. At its most basic I am interested in the fact that we exist at all and that is what I want to look at, and now I am! (If its not clear the reason for Magritte is because I have always been fascinated by paintings like 'The Human Condition', 'This is not a Pipe', and 'The Key of Dreams'. Also, as a surrealist he brings insights to Woodmans work, and sure did I need to say more after 'the human condition'!

No comments:

Post a Comment