Stumbled across a great article in the latest issue of Garageland, got me thinking again about my last post and familiarity of the self in a painting (and other mediums). The L’eye of the amateur painter by Eleanor Moreton discusses Patricia Highsmith’s Mr Ripley books in reference to authenticity in painting and Jacques Lacan’s theory of the Mirror stage:
‘Ripley is a man whose greatest asset is his blandness and whose greatest talent is for illusion. He describes himself as having a dull face, thoroughly forgettable and oddly docile. It is his very uniqueness, his flatness, that makes it possible for him to assume anyone’s identity. Similarly, I suspect the central conceit of painting, its flatness, is part of its attraction for Highsmith. The most primitive lie of illusion: the flat surface that can mimic our three-dimensional world.’ [1]
The white space of a gallery has the same foundations as a blank canvas, a place where any subject or taboo can be held and tolerated. It feels that all sorts of subjects can be tolerated in a white space that aren’t in ‘reality’. Yet the experience of what is experienced inside an exhibition space is a ‘reality’.
1. MORTON, E. 2011. The L’eye of the amateur painter. Garageland. Fake, (12), p.28.
