I went to a great study event the other weekend run by OCA tutor Gerald Deslandes, which was a series of lectures based around the theme of ‘Ten Ideas that Made Contemporary Art’. It was a fast paced review of art history from around the 18th Century to just about the current day. I have great notes, some provided handouts, and others scribbled down – so I don’t want to repeat them here. I did, however, find myself throughout the day reflecting on how many of the issues related, however remotely, to my Body of Work. I therefore just want to reflect on these while I can still recall them.
Lecture One: Progress, the City and the Machine
The interesting aspect of this lecture, which became a march through history from the Enlightenment of the 18th Century, right up to the mid 20th Century, was how art has not always responded to major historical events in a chronicle order. There is a sense of reflection and questioning of what was happening at the time, sometimes looking ahead in a progressive and forward thinking way, sometimes it appeared to be aggressively reactive against world events and political movements, but at other times artists seemed to want to be comforted by looking into history and recalling past ways.
Lecture Two: The Primitive and the Unconscious
This looked at how art in the late 19th Century started to look for inspiration from primitive art. I kept wondering about their motives for doing this. Was this an act of self-discovery – reflecting on their own ancestry as the cultural start of their own artistic style, or was it just an act of opportunism as travel to distant lands became a privileged possibility.
As the lecture moved on towards the unconscious and the surreal this is where / when my mind pricked up and started thinking about its relevance to my work. At the moment it doesn’t – my work is very much about the real, but I have been wondering about how to incorporate changing perceptions of reality in my own work. It would be a real challenge to incorporate the surreal into a project about memory and reality but it isn’t something I want to ignore either. I now know that I need to look into Surreal art and photography.
‘From spiritualism to abstraction’ – how reality becomes less certain: a note I wanted to record during the lecture.
Lecture 3: Consumerism & the Language of Art
This lecture linked very closely to topics I had recently been reading for Contextual Studies on Modernism and the language of photography so I sat and absorbed this. There was an interesting item on abstraction and how this moves from something representational towards the abstract based on the individual artist’s code. This, I thought, was similar to how some photographers approach the genre of psychogeography – setting out rules for how or when they might pause to take a photograph. This helped me to confirm my opposite approach whereby during a walk around the estate I grew up in I have responded to what catches my eye and my mind’s recollection through memory.
Lecture 4: Feminism & Multiculturalism
I found myself not making any notes for this lecture. I was more intrigued, somewhat appalled, and slightly embarrassed by man’s historical superior attitude as artists. It was interesting to see how women had been restricted in terms of the avenues they could explore but then how they responded against these constraints, often using self-portraiture with a strong confrontational emphasis against society and man’s attitude towards women as objects. In this case, it shows the importance of personal insight to be able to create the honest rawness of the outcome. This gives me encouragement for what I want to achieve with Lost.
Lecture 5: Post Modernism & Globalisation
This section surprised me a little in terms of its focus. I had been reading a lot recently about the philosophical distinctions between Modernism and Postmodernism, the language of photography, and the ‘death of the author’, yet when reviewing examples of artwork used for this lecture I became more aware of each artist’s response to the social context of our contemporary world as part of post-modernism and globalisation. It challenges, often using parody, our past understanding and rules of the world, whilst suggesting that we have lost our way in this complex world.
So what have I taken from this series of lectures? And how might this relate to my thinking about my Body of Work?:
- I wonder how much of a political response my work creates. The project Lost is about me and how I grew up in a particular society rather than being a statement about the society itself, therefore, it is not likely to be a contemporary response to current socio-political matters – not that I see this as a problem but I may think more about whether I can be more overt about my thoughts on this society.
- I was really interested in listening about how Surreal art, spiritualism, and abstraction has been used to reflect on unconscious thoughts about our world. I can see potential here on using this genre to portray a range of non-realities for Lost. I think that this is something I need to do more research on and play around with a little.
- In my project Found I am commenting on society but once again in a subtle way. This is purposeful as I want the project to focus on tangible, everyday environmental matters, rather than on global concerns that become too remote from our own perceptions. I do, however, still feel that this project needs to develop a more contemporary edge.
Finally, thank you Gerald for a fascinating series of lectures.
Major Project 