I've not written a serious blog for a while or at least not an insincere pseudo serious blog for a while. Sort of held back on the brink of trying to be clever I have thought myself stupid. I have downloaded the Ruskin App onto my phone and I've read big chunks of Unto this last where Ruskin talks of the artists of a generation been like "gold"- worth a lot because there isn't much of it - or at least a finite amount of it. Gandi was inspired by this book and translated it into Gujarati.
I wanted to talk a bit about the idea of propositional drawing but find myself not really in the mood, it feels like the idea as an abstraction has more form than it actually has. I thought I'd just put two pictures in from our trip to Brantwood. As we walked away Kate asked me to take a photo of her Bowl with Brantwood in the background to "Ruskinise it". I wondered if this would turn it from plastic into pot - I didn't really wonder this but I am really interested in Alchemy so perhaps in some way I did wonder it and in some ways the first photo does make it look a bit "more potlike."
Anyway not to give a lesson in photography I made Kate stop and said - "Just hold it while I switch off automatic and open it up so we get a short depth of field." Two very similar but very different images. The point I suppose is it's ok talking about improvisation and fluidity within the way we work but the critical thing is the points of control. In photography people have control over very little - whats in the viewfinder - aperture and shutter speed. Photographers will argue forever about it and write books about it but really thats about it. Photographers are snotty about people who take pictures on automatic and say we should record them on RAW so we have more "control" post production. Setting a camera to automatic to a photogrpher is like not mixing your own paints or using cut out shapes - even if you want bright yellow or very small stick on dinosaurs in the end the lack of control or perhaps choice bothers people.
So where am I going with this. I suppose it's a question - if propositional drawing is our way of working what do we have "Control over" and is this control authorship. I probably think it is - perhaps the "Rebirth of the author" is something we could think about in terms of practice - perhaps the idea of authorship is a way to avoid the notion of appropriation of the social - it's not turning life into art so much as inscribing a small part of ourselves onto things - I think Ingolds talks about inscription in lines and maybe we should read it again. Something about one object making a mark on another by carving into it's surface.
( oh and the composition of the first picture is 10 times better - note the referencing of the blue in the distant sign - perhaps that's because we paused to take it - maybe that was improvised.)
Anyway not to give a lesson in photography I made Kate stop and said - "Just hold it while I switch off automatic and open it up so we get a short depth of field." Two very similar but very different images. The point I suppose is it's ok talking about improvisation and fluidity within the way we work but the critical thing is the points of control. In photography people have control over very little - whats in the viewfinder - aperture and shutter speed. Photographers will argue forever about it and write books about it but really thats about it. Photographers are snotty about people who take pictures on automatic and say we should record them on RAW so we have more "control" post production. Setting a camera to automatic to a photogrpher is like not mixing your own paints or using cut out shapes - even if you want bright yellow or very small stick on dinosaurs in the end the lack of control or perhaps choice bothers people.
So where am I going with this. I suppose it's a question - if propositional drawing is our way of working what do we have "Control over" and is this control authorship. I probably think it is - perhaps the "Rebirth of the author" is something we could think about in terms of practice - perhaps the idea of authorship is a way to avoid the notion of appropriation of the social - it's not turning life into art so much as inscribing a small part of ourselves onto things - I think Ingolds talks about inscription in lines and maybe we should read it again. Something about one object making a mark on another by carving into it's surface.
( oh and the composition of the first picture is 10 times better - note the referencing of the blue in the distant sign - perhaps that's because we paused to take it - maybe that was improvised.)
What control do you have if propositional drawing is what you do? is a great question. And authorship seems like a pretty good first answer. it would be interesting to test this theory out against some more obervations of what you and Kate actually get up to. The notion of propositional drawing is only as good as it is helpful in getting a handle on something in the world - and that might take a bit of collecting of examples and working them through the theory.
ReplyDeleteYes this is a good thing to do to switch things into the practical. It is easy to deny been the "Author" or the "Agent" within an action to say - "Well this would have happened anyway or we are part of a much bigger picture." Perhaps though it is the pieces which we claim which become the work and with the work it's value. The author of what? - an idea, an action, a craft, a practice. Perhaps all of them in some kind of giant mix up. Control is a good word to expand as the idea of a proposition and drawing and improvisation suggest that control is something in flux - something which we need to hold and let go of- something which we glimpse out of the corner of the eye and occasionally catch up with. Perhaps this is why artists inflict dogma on practices only to almost instantly reject them - in essence creating the myth of control and transgression. I will write a blog which says what has happened in Parson Cross because of our work and see if this looks like what I expect it to look like.
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