Détournement

Can we poke the finger at something by turning it back on itself?

Détournement involves the reuse of some cultural item – be it text, picture, sculpture, film or sound – in the creation of a new cultural item.  Like plagiarism and quotation it involves the reworking of something already made by somebody else, but it is neither.  French tourner is cognate with English turn (meaning both turn and express). Unlike plagiarism and quotation, détournement reuses elements to turn them back upon themselves in order to undermine or critique the source or meaning of the original.   In the visual arts it is most closely associated with the  Situationists.  The irrational dream-based combinations of images of the Surrealistists may - to some degree - evoke similar associations.

In VSW100 we were required to produce detourned collages and novel combinations.  Below are two images of Margaret Thatcher and three works  assembled around pieces of my aunt's china duck ornament.

The Humble Cardboard Box

VSW100 Art and Creativity is a sort of foundation unit in the Fine Arts Degree.  

 It’s about process rather than product; it emphasises lateral thinking and surprising yourself.  The first section was called “The Creative Mix” and was all about the cardboard box.  Last year they did plastic buckets.  We had to draw, photograph, brainstorm, demolish, reconstruct … all with no particular goal in mind.  Boy, did I learn a lot!

Here are a few of the scores of things I was forced to think of:

 

 

Another Demon

Doesn't presenting the same image in a different medium change the atmosphere?

 I had my first experience of solar etching this weekend.  Here's the result:

Untitled.  2013.  Print on paper.

The process is like sunbaking.  You cover the parts on a photopolymer plate that you don't want to burn with absolutely anything at all.  Those parts become the raised surface of the plate, from which you can  print hundreds of copies. 

I drew my Balinese guardian onto a transparent plastic sheet with a greasy crayon, clamped that to the plate, then put them in the sun for 45 seconds.  After a couple of minutes of washing and drying I was able to print.  That simple! 

At Camp Creative

Bellingen, 2013

Our brief was to choose an artist and a subject of our own and to connect the two: not to make a slavish copy but to use the artist's style as a springboard and to see where it took us.  We had a lot of Impressionists in the class, especially Cezannes.  I was taken by Matisse's simplification and his pattern motifs, especially as I'd read that he used to work towards them on top of skilful representational paintings.  I took along a collage of photographs from my visit to Bali last year; I thought I could assemble them onto a patterned canvas.  My work is not finished so I'm only showing a detail.  I can see that Matisse encouraged me to simplify and to crowd my composition, but I'm not certain that his influence is obvious.

Balinese Guardian.  2013.  Oil on canvas, detail of unfinished work.

The best part of the camp was spending five continuous days with other people who enjoy painting as much as I do.  Here is the class of '13:

I am fourth from the right, standing, holding a very incomplete canvas.

Back to Camp Creative

Bellingen, NSW

Camp Creative is the mix of music, circus, literary and visual arts tuition which I attended for the first time last year (I wrote about it in my travel blog.)  Sydney artist Chris Wilson presented the course “Still Life and Portraiture in Oils” and this is our class of 2012:

(Chris is  third from the left holding a bunch of paintbrushes;

 I am beside her with my 'Orange Lady' painting.)

Six of the students in this picture have come back for Chris’s new theme, “Exploring Styles and Techniques in Oils.”  She told us to prepare by choosing a couple of artists whose styles we would like to explore, and to bring examples of their work, together with some photographs we can interpret in the style of our chosen artists.  Hopefully my attempts at following Matisse and Robert Hannaford will be worth presenting after the end of the camp.  If I get finished early I’m going to go all Picasso.

Is knowledge important in responding to art?

Yes … and There’s also Raw Emotion, Life Experience and World View.

According to our course tutor there’s no point in looking and just liking or not liking.  She often pushes us to see that our emotional response to a work depends on our personal worldview, and that knowledge about the artist and the context of his work can change that view.  My first essay was to interpret Painting (1946). by the British artist Francis Bacon.  After a while I saw what she meant.

Francis Bacon, Painting, 1946.

Oil and pastel on linen, 197.8cm x 132.1cm.

 Museum of Modern Art, New York.

When I first googled it up, my emotional response  was "What a horrible picture - hate it!"  But I decided to write about it anyway since I had the chance to go to the Bacon exhibition in Sydney.

I fell to thinking about the date of the picture and the way the essay question pointed us to war symbolism.  I remembered the aftermath of the war in London: bomb sites, bad food, men in suits (all our fathers dressed like the figure in the painting); I noticed the umbrella and remembered the furled umbrellas that were often carried by politicians in newspaper photographs of the time.  So I used this life experience and started googling stuff around politicians and umbrellas.  Within an hour I'd built up an amazing plot involving Winston Churchill, the British intelligence service and the severe bombing of Coventry)!!!!

That may all reflect my warped world view, but when I got to see the exhibition and to read material about Francis Bacon the new knowledge I picked up showed me how wrong I was.   I found out that when it was exhibited in 1946 the public took it to be a comment on the war that had ended the year before.  I also found out other stuff about Bacon that showed Painting could be interpreted in other ways (Freudian for example).  So I decided to write about how Painting can have different interpretations, how it's ambiguous.  

Doing that reflects another aspect of my world view:  I love puzzles and subtlety and I often find it hard to commit to a single interpretation of something.  And I should add that, while I still wouldn't put a print of Painting (1946) on my wall, my appreciation of the work, as well as my respect for Bacon, grew all the time I was working on the essay.

Has a Random Advertisement on Facebook Changed my Life?

… I hope so.

I always loved paintings (noun) and painting (verb), but somehow managed to sideline what could have been a life-long passion.  One evening my computer screen flashed up the question “Have you thought about studying online for a BA in Fine Arts and Visual Culture?”

No I hadn’t.  But I filled in my name and phone number anyway, and went away for a week.  I was still sleeping off my journey when the phone rang and an Open University councillor persuaded me to sign up.

I’ve started my first two units: Internet Communications and Issues in Contemporary Art.  They are taught out of Curtin University, on the other side of the continent, and I don’t even have to leave my living room.

This blog is going to focus on what I encounter in my Fine Arts courses.  I plan no agenda, no destination: just a journey of discovery as I meander among Old Masters and Modern Geniuses, creating some of my own art along the way.