Completed Painting: 'Map 4'

'Map 4', Acrylics & Paper Collage On Panel, 60 cm X 60 cm, 2015

I beat my small, self-imposed deadline and got four of these ‘Map’ paintings finished during January, (just).  This one, predictably enough, is ‘Map 4’.  At first glance, this relatively bread-and-butter approach to titling might seem like a bit of a cop-out, (could be worse; - it could just be ‘Untitled 4’), but many artists will report that titling paintings is often one of the most perplexing parts of the whole process.  I notice that it’s something my friend and fellow painter/blogger has been thinking about recently too.  In the case of these ‘Map’ pieces, I decided that my use of fragments of found text provided enough clues towards possible interpretation, without the need for me to over-emphasise things further.  My tendencies toward tightening every last nut and bolt, or leading the viewer too forcefully by the hand, are things I always need to be cautious about.

Parker Drive, North West Leicester, December 2014

Clearly, this one could easily be called ‘Point’ or ‘Anywhere Else’, or indeed, ‘Point Anywhere Else’, but to be honest, it might just as relevantly be entitled ‘Asda/Co-op Painting’.  Salvaged, and observed poster materials advertising both supermarkets provided the most of the collage elements of the piece and, indeed, their respective corporate identities were the trigger for the analogous green palette that prevailed throughout its evolution.  For what it’s worth, ‘Anywhere Else’ is lifted from Asda’s poster, and various areas of greenish half-tone pattern originate with the Co-op.  ‘Point’ comes from a completely separate text fragment, also found in the field, and also, very much about the power of green.  I’ll leave it up to any audience the painting may have to decide what, if anything, those phrases might imply, or whether they belong together or are a mere random conjunction.

Parker Drive, North West Leicester, December 2014

As in all of these ‘Maps’, the cartographical element relates to a specific location where advertising poster raw materials were collected or documented, and here we’re back on the junction of Leicester’s Blackbird Road and Parker Drive, which also featured in ‘Map 3’.  In the post on that piece, I mentioned that my regular car journeys through this location are often part of an actual routine supermarket run.  The self-reflexivity of all this is something I really enjoy about these current paintings, although it’s slightly compromised by the fact that I’m more likely to be on my way to Sainsbury’s than Asda or ‘The Co’.  I’m equally ambivalent about the merits, or otherwise, of all these big concerns, although Sainsbury’s have better underwear and a wider selection of magazines; plus - their aisles are wider and less congested.   I could argue that  it also signifies that I’m using the advertising for my own ends, rather than being led by it. I’ve effectively just done an advert for Sainsbury’s though, so I'm sure I’m just as lost in the retail maze as everyone else [1.].

Anyway, I digress.  One thing this painting does signify, along with the other ‘Maps’ so far, is the gradual reintroduction of more heightened colour into my current work.  There had been a tendency for things to become increasingly muted, or even monochrome, over the last year, but my current tendency is definitely to up the chromatic saturation a bit more again.  Ironically, the more muted quality of recent work may have been, in part, due to my heavy reliance on the found printed material of late.  We tell ourselves that the world of all pervasive advertising is a technicolour one, and yet, I consistently find that the printed colours I repurpose are actually much duller than my own acrylic pigments.  Add to this the effects of degrading, low-grade paper stock,  of weathering and street grime [2.], and the overall effect can become surprisingly muddy or greyish.  Maybe this is just one reason why advertising companies seem intent on gradually replacing paper posters with illuminated screens.  The constant imperative  to capture our attention must make the unrivalled visual impact of coloured light, and perceived technological advance, irresistible [3].

Of course, all that urban grit and entropic evidence is all something I normally relish, and finding ways to handle it can be highly enjoyable.  However, it just feels like time for the paintings to start singing a little more as synthetic concoctions in their own right again.  In reality, I think there’s still a strong element of grunge in these pieces generally.  This recourse to colour does mean that a greater proportion of paint is actually creeping back in, and that I’ve also returned to my old habit of augmenting my palette with fluorescent pigments, (as in the street map element here).  The use of self-consciously non-organic colour in the urban environment is always of particular interest to me.  For all the grime and Midland-grey [4.] skies which may accompany my repeated visits to these locations, I’m equally struck by the vivid plastics and industrial surfaces coatings that adorn many of the commercial buildings I pass amongst.  At this point, it’s worth noting that the block of green occupying the lower right section of this painting is a reference to the corporate identity of a Fitness Centre, whose location is also included in this section of street map.

Blackbird Road, North West Leicester, December 2014

Yet again, I’m uncertain just how successful this painting really is, but there’s no time to worry about all that right now.  Of the four ‘Maps’ produced so far, this one was the trickiest to resolve, and felt slightly in danger of dragging on a little.  I think it’s as good as it can be for now, so it’s definitely time to move on.  I’ve plans to get on with a couple of larger ones now, and need to get motoring if they’re to make meaningful progress during February.  All this self-imposed urgency and setting of little deadlines feels quite strange for me, but it seems to be working so far.

[1.]:  Don’t do as I do folks, - bin off these big companies and buy your pants and groceries from the market, or local independent outlets, (if you still have any).  There, - I’ve redressed the balance a little.  (Actually, shop wherever you can be bothered, - it’s none of my business).

[2.]:  Much of the poster material I salvage is picked up from the ground after it’s detached itself and fallen during heavy wind and/or rain.  The sheer weight of accumulated paper applied with soluble adhesive, means there is a tipping point from which the posters can no longer resist gravity and inclement weather.  They’ve normally already been through the wars by the time I get hold of them.

[3.]:  I’m reminded here of both Walter Benjamin’s meditations on the resonance of illuminated advertising, and of David Batchelor’s writing on the same subject.  I’ve blogged about this more than once:

Walter Benjamin, 'One Way Street & Other Writings', London, Penguin Modern Classics, 2009

David Batchelor, 'The Luminous And The Grey', London, Reaktion Books, 2014.

I’m also forced to concede that I may soon need to take more account in my work, of the fact that the world of analogue materiality and associated physical entropy, in which I am so invested, is increasingly being replaced by a more virtual/digital version of ‘reality’.

[4.]:  I’m reminded that there was once even a bus company called Midland Grey.  Talk about rubbing our noses in it!

Walter's Fiery Pools

Melton Road, Leicester, May 2014

As I noted in my recent post, David Batchelor’s book, ‘The Luminous And The Grey’ [1.], makes reference to Walter Benjamin’s own writing in its discussion of luminous colour.  That sent me back to my own copy of the latter’s ‘One-Way Street And Other Writings’ [2.], having put down and bookmarked it some months earlier.  Spookily, I found the passage that Batchelor quotes from lay on the very next page.  Here then, is a longer excerpt from the piece in question,

‘Fools, who bewail the decline of criticism.  The fact is, its time expired long ago.  Criticism is a question of correct distance.  Criticism is at home in a world where perspectives and prospects matter, where it was still possible to adopt a stance.  Things have now begun to chivvy human society much too urgently.  ‘Impartiality’ and the ‘open outlook’ have become lies if not the wholly naïve expression of straight non-competence.  The name of the most intrinsic quality today, the mercantile look penetrating to the heart of things, is advertising…

‘What is it, ultimately, that makes advertising so superior to criticism?  Not what the red electric text up on the moving screen says – the pool of fire that mirrors it on the asphalt.’ [3.].

Melton Road, Leicester, May 2014

In another example of things connecting up, I found myself driving back into Leicester late the other night on wet roads.  Certain brightly illuminated businesses on the city’s Melton Road, (and the resulting reflections on wet pavements), immediately chimed with Benjamin’s text - causing me to park up and grab the camera.  Whilst not necessarily advertising in the classic sense, these illuminated texts do represent the way we’re all urgently, (and routinely), chivvied by our environment.  In fact, so immersed are we in the whole spectacle, that it’s useful to note just how much of a new phenomenon, and worthy of comment, it all once was to him.

Melton Road, Leicester, May, 2014

The general aesthetic espoused here, both stylistic and culinary, has little to do with critical discernment, leaving us to just drink in (and munch on) the gorgeous kitsch beauty of it all.  More simplistically, it’s also a great illustration of Batchelor’s comments on the reliance of coloured illumination on darkness, (or ‘not-colour’), as necessary context.

None of this was planned, but I suspect it was far from mere coincidence, and that reading those two books had subconsciously inclined me toward finding these images…

Postscript:

Is it just me, or do 'Choco Kebab' and 'Huge Candy Train' contain a certain resonant poetry all of their own?

[1.]:  David Batchelor, ‘The Luminous And The Grey’, London, Reaktion Books, 2014

[2.]:  Walter Benjamin, ‘One-Way Street And Other Writings’, London, Penguin Modern Classics, 2009

[3.]:  Walter Benjamin, ‘One-Way Street’, (Original Essay Published 1928).

David Batchelor: 'The Luminous And The Grey'

In a recent post, I mentioned I was planning to read David Batchelor’s Book, ‘The Luminous And The Grey’ [1.].  It’s a pretty slim volume, which, in the event, I polished off pretty quickly, (over a couple of long baths, in fact).

David Batchelor.  Photo: Croydon Advertiser.

The book is Batchelor’s meditation on the relationship between colour and grey, or ‘not colour’ as he initially designates it.  I generally enjoy this kind of thing, in which an artist engages with a theoretical or philosophical subject in the spirit of personal/artistic discovery, rather than as merely an academic exercise.  ‘The Luminous And The Grey’, is no exception, being both thought-provoking and clearly connected with Batchelor’s own art, and left me keen to read his earlier book, ‘Chromopohobia’ [2.].  The text is split into three thematic sections, so I’ll use this post to highlight certain passages from each that particularly caught my attention.

Nice Typo Design, - Shame About The Hard Sell.

In his first chapter, ‘The Beginning And The End Of Colour’, Batchelor discusses differing interpretations of how colour might have arrived in the world/human mind, before contemplating the appalling implications of a descent back into an achromatic state.  His most terrifying example of this is Cormac McCarthy’s deeply affecting post-apocalyptic novel ‘The Road’ [3.].  McCarthy’s all too plausible vision follows a father and son’s futile trudge through the hostile environment of a world sunk in a nuclear winter, or some other brand of societal/environmental collapse.  As the subsequent film adaptation [4.] emphasises, it is the denuding of the world of nearly all colour that proves one of the most persistent reminders of their hopeless state.

Both Images:  Stills From, John Hillcoat (Dir.), USA,  Dimension Films/2929 Productions/
Nick Weschler Productions, 2010

‘Very occasionally some colour does punctuate this all-enveloping grey-black darkness. For the most part, it comes in the form of a remnant of plasticized tarpaulin or another fragment of the petrochemical past. Or it is the muted orange of the fires that either erupt spontaneously in the dying landscape or are carefully cultivated out of scraps of wood and tiny amounts of leftover fuel.  In each case these moments of colour serve as brutal reminders of something almost beyond memory … The colour is an unbearable trace of a world that is shrinking and dying by the day: “The names of things following those things into oblivion. Colours. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the names of things one once believed to be true”[5.]’ [6.].

Birmingham, January 2014.  (Camera Operator: David Weight).

Batchelor’s second chapter is where much of the meat of the book, (with which it shares its title), really lies.  The author is informative on the chemistry, physics and perceptual psychology of colour, without becoming overly dry or theoretical.  The scientific breakthroughs of the global chemical industry, dating from the nineteenth century, have a very clear bearing on how we mostly experience colour today and indeed, could be seen as a watershed in the history of humanity’s chromatic relationship.  There is an obvious connection here with the materials he chooses to work with himself, as with the whole subject of coloured illumination which he goes on to discuss.

Birmingham, January 2014.  (Camera Operator: David Weight).

It’s hardly rocket science to point out how artificially illuminated colour only reaches its full potential after dark, but Batchelor is right to identify just how profoundly this shifts our perception and emotional responses to colour away from the original experience of natural pigments seen under daylight with which we evolved.  It also highlights just how interdependently connected are light, colour and darkness, (grey).  All of this lies at the very heart of our apprehension of urban environments, and is something that immediately chimed with my own city-dwelling fixations.

Thus, it’s not surprising that Batchelor should conclude his chapter with reference to Walter Benjamin – the archetypal philosopher of modern city life.  In ‘One Way Street’ [7.], Benjamin asks,

‘What, in the end, makes advertisements so superior to criticism? ... Not what the red neon sign says - but the fiery pool reflecting in the asphalt’ [8.].

Batchelor himself comments,

‘The fiery pool is not glimpsed in isolation: it is seen against the hard horizontal plane of the road. And this is the point. In the colour life of the city, vivid colour almost always coexists with a degree of darkness.  By day or at night colour is usually accompanied by the less than colourful. It is supported by the contingencies of the street: it is literally bolted onto the sides of buildings, propped up on ledges and secured to roofs, and its reflections form in the potholes and gutters on the ground. These less-to-be-looked-at elements are none the less essential to the experience of colour in the city. This colour needs resistance and thrives on opposition. In the city the luminous is always accompanied by the grey: they cohabit and sustain each other in an often unacknowledged relationship of interdependence’ [9.].

He concludes,

‘The city is at the intersection of the luminous and the grey, or is itself that intersection. And this is not just a fact of the colour space of the city, but one of its defining qualities’ [10.].

Sneinton Market, Nottingham, April 2014

The book closes with a chapter primarily focused on the idea of grey itself, and maintains the urban theme with an anecdote from Batchelor’s own experience.  He accounts the story of an elderly man (Robert), who regularly set up an easel outside Batchelor’s home, in order to make the same apparently abstract drawing without reference to the scene before him.  Only after observing the man for some time did he realise that Robert was actually drawing the manhole cover immediately beneath his easel, (redefining the drawing as not really ‘abstract’ at all, I note).  Delighting in his initial misunderstanding, of the situation, and that of other passers-by, Batchelor sets himself the task of carefully observing all those generally overlooked features of his immediate surroundings in which grey resides in all its surprising complexity.

Sneinton Market, Nottingham, April 2014

‘The dark grey tarmac on the road was flecked with at least three or four different hues and had a maroonish-grey cast, at least where it wasn’t interrupted by all the other asphalt greys where the road had been repaired over the years. A patch of original nineteenth-century cobbles had a worn, steely-blue-to violet-grey sheen, offset by some lazily mismatched pale yellowish-grey cement infilling. The old brown-grey paving stones on one side of the road were also mottled but in a different way to the tarmac, whilst their newer replacement slabs had a lighter, smoother and more consistent industrial cement-grey finish. The dark blue-grey granite kerbstones were also worn smooth and shiny, as was the tarnished brown-grey iron manhole cover. The small off-circles of flattened chewing gum on the pavements were for some reason either very white-grey or nearly black-grey, but nothing in between. I have no idea why. Looking up a little from the embedded horizontal forms to the rising vertical elements of the street, the grey of a weathered aluminium pole in the pavement is obviously quite different from the several greys that make up a weathered galvanized steel railing next to it, and lead grey flashing on the corner of a building has entirely its own weathered grey personality. This slightly elevated realm is also where the more durable colours that are intrinsic to materials begin to give way to applied and generally less durable surface colours.  Here the row of painted steel bollards are a consistent but again entirely different surface grey from the recently redecorated matt green-grey of the shop on the corner’ [11].

Sneinton Market, Nottingham, April 2014

I apologise for quoting at such length, but that last passage seems to me a perfect example of urban observation, and how the greatest visual poetry can be found in supposedly objective recording of the least regarded features of the city’s very fabric.  It justifies the impressions gained between the shoes of every flâneur down the years, and Indeed, over the handlebars of my own bike as I hop another kerb.

All Images:  Cornwall, February 2014

[1.][6.][9.][10.][11.]:  David Batchelor, 'The Luminous And The Grey', London, Reaktion Books, 2014.

[2.]:  David Batchelor, 'Chromophobia', London, Reaktion Books, 2000.

[3.][5.]:  Cormac McCarthy, 'The Road', New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.

[4.]:  John Hillcoat (Dir.), USA,  Dimension Films/2929 Productions/Nick Weschler Productions, 2010

[7.][8.]:  Walter Benjamin, 'One Way Street & Other Writings', London, Penguin Modern Classics, 2009