Having last week begun a PhD in Fine Art Practice, I find myself in the position of considering not only what to research but also the nature of research itself.
The idea of art as a research method seems at first relatively novel compared to many other disciplines, but I guess that also depends on how limited a definition of an artwork one uses. I don’t really know anything about Leonardo da Vinci, but he seems to have done plenty of research. In any case, most of this is quite distinct from researching art, which often falls into history of art or more widely some kind of visual studies.
The idea of research being artistic can be both with reference to the means of the research (i.e. drawing rather than taking notes) and the end product (i.e. not simply having a written article). There is no doubt a difficulty here for such activity would not seem comparable with other types of academic research. Here we come up against the idea of research being measurable, either in a quantifiable way or simply compared to other examples. I think this is problematic across academia, particularly with regard to the ideas of ‘quality’ and ‘originality’.
On Saturday 7th July, I gave assessments of rocks brought in by the public to the Geology Centre on Fogo Island. This event was part of my involvement as a Visiting Artist at the Museum of the Flat Earth’s Tectonic Shift Programme.
So, over a three hour period, I looked at a variety of rocks and considered them as per my own Stone Classification System. While some stones fitted the classifications, others were not so clear and so I had to create some new categories. For example, VERNE describes a rock from the centre of the earth, while GULLIVER is a stone which should be bigger.
My approach was complemented by Jane Wynne, Geologist-in-Residence for the Shorefast Geology at the Edge programme. Jane also provided members of the public with a more scientific assessment of their stones, using formal geological classifications. She was able to draw on the specimens within the Geology Centre as well as her considerable experience as a practising geologist.
My own systems are not derived from scientific process, although Jane did give me a quick primer in that I should take quantitative data and conduct tests on stones. I was working from two different systems, outlined in my leaflet Some Ways to Identify Rocks and Stones in the North Atlantic – the Beuys Stone Classification System and the Thorne Rock Classification System.
I had developed the first of these as part of my ongoing research into Joseph Beuys, which considers how he might have classified stones in the West of Ireland. I noted this system mainly dealt with collections of stones or large boulders, which are quite different to the smaller pebbles one might casually pick up. Thus the second system is based on a selection of stones from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. I created a series of names (DEDGE, SHOALE, SPECKED) for these stones, all of which were around the size of a cherry.
I feel much historical and archaeological research can consist of finding and collecting fragments and then trying to put together a coherent account based on them. There is particularly in archaeology, a tendency to speculate, which I have found both entertaining, and also something which perhaps draws the subject away from any scientific basis.
The photograph above is a fragment, showing one of the towers of Askeaton Castle in County Limerick. It looks very flat, that is almost as if the outline of the tower has been cut out and superimposed onto the sky, be it in the style of Max Ernst or Photoshop. And I like this flatness, as well as the absence of any colour.
The Castle is undergoing significant repair work, which may last for the next ten years or so. It is open on an occasional basis, and peering across from the bridge next to its entrance, you can see bits of scaffolding, as well as the substantial remains of the Banqueting Hall and the more modern Hellfire Club. I didn’t go into the Castle, as I wanted to preserve (until my next trip perhaps!) the sense of not seeing everything at once, and forcing myself to see it just from the outside.
Through this denial, perhaps some form of mystery will grow. The idea of not visiting somewhere, of not finding out every detail, means that one’s own narrative and ideas can flourish, instead of being guided through an official version. This approach can also be used with fragments, so instead of hoping they might be reconstructed, they can form new physical or conceptual forms, or merely be kept in their broken state. To force things and ideas into hierarchies and classifications has some use, but what if these systems could be abandoned altogether?
As a regular visitor to the Soane Museum, I am sometimes a little underwhelmed by some of the contemporary art exhibitions which are installed there from time to time. The Museum is a difficult space to work with, and I wonder if it is an art installation in itself? The viewer enters what seems like a historic property, but moving towards the back of the house, enters into a bewildering labyrinth of objects.
Many are fragments rescued from the sites which Soane, as an architect, worked upon, while others are examples of more refined collecting, such as oil paintings by Canaletto. Perhaps the most striking thing about the Museum is the lack of labels or even wall texts, which allow the viewer to perform their role – looking at objects and the way they have been arranged.
I was therefore heartened to find the current exhibition “The Return of the Past: Postmodernism in British Architecture”, mainly due to an encounter with two BT phonebooks from the early 1990s, their covers being examples of post-modern architecture. In the same room was a large ball (I think) from the TV-am building in Camden.
Soane’s Museum is itself a 3D catalogue, both an archive and a showroom, and this is reflected in these two objects. The phonebook provoked nostalgia for a time without mobile phones, when one had to consult large volumes to find things out (one can apply to same principle for encyclopedias as well). The ball, from the top of the building, is perhaps as banal as the phonebook, but both are then transformed by their presence in the Museum.
I wonder though, whether this transformation is really only possible in the Soane Museum, which is really not much like any other Museum. Its cluttered interiors and lack of interpretation mean it is much closer to a private residence (which it once was) than any of the examples of institutional collecting (e.g. the British Museum) which we tend to think of as ‘museums’. The Soane is able to cultivate an atmosphere of intimacy which seems generally unpopular in museums and galleries, large and small.
I don’t often visit the National Gallery for a number of reasons. The sole focus on oil paintings seems particularly old-fashioned, and the way they are displayed in rigid chronology is also troubling. I feel the weight of art history rather than enjoying what should be an excellent collection of artworks.
Perhaps that’s why I get drawn into looking at the frames, the wallpaper and the marble skirting boards as much as the artworks. And in the room dedicated to van Dyck, I paused in front of a portrait of Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of King James I and grandmother of King George I. She is therefore, from one perspective, the link between the Stuart and Hanover dynasties, but this draws us into a history lesson.
She is also the focus of The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, a book by Frances Yates about the influence of this esoteric movement upon early modern Europe. Elizabeth was also the Winter Queen, as she and her husband briefly ruled Bohemia in 1618-19, before they were forced into exile as part of the opening shots of the Thirty Years War. Again, I am being drawn into another history lesson, and this painting is merely serving as an illustration.
But it serves also as a means of tangential thinking, in that art as research has a certain power to make connections between many different things. My interest in doing so is somewhat unresolved – simply connecting pieces of information in the aim of reaching something encyclopedic? Perhaps there is something educational which could come out of this process, a necessary palate-cleanser to the facts-and-dates approach to knowledge and learning.
