Manchester Art Gallery’s ‘Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism’ (2009) was a fascinating show. I’ve just been looking again at the catalogue this morning. I’d seen very few of the pieces before, except in books, so it was really worth going to.
The paintings in the show were certainly interesting, but for me, more on a conceptual and historical level rather than as paintings. The ‘stuff’ of the paint, and the formal qualities of the surrealist paintings I saw didn’t speak to me in the way I seem to need at the moment.
I was most struck by some stunning photographic work, particularly by Lee Miller, Francesca Woodman and my favourite, Claude Cahun (1894 – 1954).
Rain drumming on the studio roof, and music playing as I work; I’ve had a better day today, after a run of disasters. I’ve been working hard every day on paintings and drawings, all of which (except today’s) have ended up with ink or paint flung over them in desperation, or turned to the wall.
I cling to the notion that time spent painting is never wasted as long as one is honestly challenging one’s preconceptions and trying to be authentically experimental and open in a hunt for something true. I tell my students this all the time in the Life class, trying to get them to see that an afternoon spent crafting a slick, ‘nice’ (as they may see it) finished drawing might be of far less value than one in which a frustrating, messy time ends up with a crumpled, thrown-away piece of paper, if in the latter session they have really felt themselves stretched and challenged to look and see and work differently. Many, many sessions in my own studio – especially this week – end with no useful result in terms of paint on canvas that ‘works’. More often than I would like, a good passage in a painting is obliterated, to be replaced with something mediocre that I know cannot remain for long. It can feel dispiriting, but I can’t let it be. It’s only paint, it’s only canvas, it’s only time… don’t think about waste!
‘Poetry gets its energy from tension between the human imperfections, untidiness and limits it starts from, and its own struggle for formal perfection, for music and cadence’. (Ruth Padel, “52 Ways of Looking at a Poem”, Vintage, 2004).
This chimes with something I’m very aware of in painting at the moment: the energy inherent in the tension between the mess and almost-chaos of ‘stuff’, and the desire in the viewer (and the artist) for the soothing consolations of order and beauty.
Off to the studio!
Wouldn’t it be amazing to paint like Titian? I recently saw in the Louvre his portrait of a young boy, ‘Ranuccio Farnese’ (normally in the National Gallery of Art, Washington). The way Titian can use paint to be skin, to be fabric, to be metal… To say it’s clever imitation misses the point, for me. It’s more than that. My reaction to paint is a bodily thing, a felt thing, I can’t quite explain it. Although I love looking at really good photographs, I don’t get that kinaesthetic reaction to them that I get when I look at this painting.
I am surprised how disappointed I am. I submitted work for an open submission exhibition and it was rejected. They should teach this module at art college: Toughness of Skin, And How to Keep on Not Being Bitter.
It’s expensive to enter these things, and time-consuming. My friend Robert says I’m crazy to even bother: “If you want to throw your money away, why don’t you do the lottery? Think how many tickets you could have bought…” Robert’s away this week in New York, where the first of his two solo shows there opens in Lower Manhattan. He tells me that once, when he needed some money, he saw that the local big town was holding an open competition for paintings of the town centre. The winning painting would be purchased for a significant sum. Robert worked hard on his painting, did it really well, and submitted it. The person to whom he handed it over was bowled over by the painting, and said they thought it was bound to win. So Robert was really surprised when it was rejected straight away, and not even hung. He went along to see the show, thinking that the standard must have been impressively high: but it was full of amateur paintings. The winning piece was nondescript and poorly executed. Presumably, if Robert’s painting had been shown, it would have been an obvious choice for winner, and the judges already had someone else earmarked to win.
Now, I’m not saying this applies in the case of the competition I entered – I’m sure the standard must be genuinely high, and it’s curated by people who know a lot about art. But – I think the paintings I submitted are strong. Ah well. I did at least get a painting into a different national competition this week. And I kind of even feel a bit silly about that, since the total cost of entering 3 works, plus taking them to London and back, plus carrier’s fees between London and Bristol, comes to around £100. What was I thinking? If the painting sells, or wins something, or leads to a show somewhere, all well and good, but if not, I’m a bit of a mug…
