Or... what goes around, comes around.As I was looking for something in my filing cabinet, I came across an old paint chart, produced by none other than the Tate corporation (in conjunction with B&Q in 2003), which features four series of interior paint colours inspired by the four Tates: Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. Some interesting colours include Skylon (a mossy yellow-green), Fruit (a burgundy-brown), Crustacean and Shamrock. (read my previous posts on painting by numbers and colour values).
[Tate - paint colour chart]The canvas rolls and stretchers which I acquired a while back have an interesting and connected back story. The canvas rolls and stretchers were from a friend of a friend who had, strangely enough, previously supplied the Tate Modern with none other than a paint by numbers canvas art - but were called 'self-assembly painting kits' (perhaps paint by numbers is trademarked).The venture sadly folded, thus a great quantity of canvas, stretchers and acrylic paint were going free to needy artists. I was very glad of the canvas and stretchers, but with one problem, the acrylic colours were not good... including a lurid turquoise (which Pantone is championing as the colour for 2010), fuschia pink and an acidic skittles orange - so I promptly donated all the 10 litre paint tubs to the art department.
[Tate - DIY canvas]Some, but not all, of the rolls of primed canvas had been pre-printed with two linear designs, Bouquet (seen right), which has more than a passing resemblance to Andy Warhol's flowers, and Wave (left), owing something in style to the work of Bridget Riley - two artists, who, quite differently, took a very systematic approach to painting.
Andy Warhol, flowers 1970In flowers, Warhol continued to embrace the art of the mundane in the repeated image, with deliberate mis-registrations of silkscreened colour - the image is made more saccharine and artificial (in its subject) and yet it is visually tantalising in the infinite number of variables - no two paintings are the same from this art factory. Apparently, Warhol was sued for using this appropriated photograph in his work.
Bridget Riley, Intake 1964(deliberately muted here, for easier visual analysis)Riley approached her paintings with a mathematical accuracy, many planned on graph paper beforehand - watch this film clip on youtube of a young Bridget Riley talking about her work.I love and loathe Riley. I love the craft, the process, the precision, the perfection of colour (or tonal monochrome); I loathe the unsettling optics, pulsating rhythms that seductively draw you in only to mess with your mind - there can be no love with a Riley, it's a battle of minds - the painting always wins....So, to round off painting by numbers - I can still recall the slightly exotic, oily aroma of tiny paint vials (was it enamel or real oil paint) and the cheap plastic brushes (the original kits, if unused and unopened, are highly collectable by the way)...And a quick browse of any Tate gift shop quickly tells you that Tate as a brand is all consuming and all consumed - even I have a Tate t-shirt (the miniature one), a Tate sketchbook, a Tate pencil and a Tate sharpener. In fact, Tate now have an art on demand service - select an image from their digital archive and have it printed in a range of sizes on paper or canvas... now, a framed Monet (prounounced Mon-nay) is just perfect for the bedroom... but first you will need to re paint the walls...
on drawing, light-heartedly
[three pebbles, ink pen on watercolour paper, 29.5cm x 15cm]
my pebbles display cabinet - it used to be a coffee table, that i made myself - it's a picture frame on legs.
i will draw every single one of these pebbles eventually, in different permutations, but i'm not counting, just yet...
painting by numbers
Another hand-coloured, intaglio collagraph print on paper, mounted on canvas... titled according to my colour value rules (read about that here..).. and this one is called... Nepal
Nepal 2010, intaglio and painting on canvaswhich called for a quick visit to the encyclopedia for the casually-minded, wikipedia... shown below, is a topographical map of the country, bordered by India to the south, and China to the north.
There is a rich and diverse geography to Nepal, with tropical low-lying plains in the south, rising up through verdant foothills up to the mountainous peaks of the Himalayas. Curiously, the country has five distinct seasons - spring, summer, the monsoon season, then autumn and winter. When I think of Nepal, I think immediately of tea, and of the very abstract agricultural patterns of the steep hillside plantations. So, it seems not so far-fetched to see similar striations echoed in my own work - however unintentional.
...Thinking more about painting by numbers (after Gerhard Richter and his colour chart paintings) leads one to the master of appropriation, Andy Warhol..
Andy Warhol, Do It Yourself (Landscape) 1962...and then, Damien Hirst (all three artists were featured in the recent Colour Chart exhibition)..
Damien Hirst, 2-Methylbenzimidazole 2008/09Hirst inherits the concept of art as a mass-produced brand from Warhol, using assistants for his chemical spot paintings, and then later manufacturing 'spot painting kits' with strict instructions as to the completion of the artwork for the new owners. Rules for these spotted works included the spacing beween the dots and that a single colour appears only once in the final composition. Many of the titles (and the ideas) for Hirst's work are appropriated from medical textbooks and technical manuals - inspired by his idol Francis Bacon, who found inspiration in many a documentary or medical image.Artistic appropriation is good; it's about finding something interesting and then applying it to something else, for a different purpose - whether it's conceptually based or process-related.Thinking back to the paint colour charts and the assignment of names to certain colours (and my reuse of them), these branded (sometimes trademarked) names are yet another type of appropriation, taking words out of their original context (or putting them in a new context) - their minimal poetry promises a piece of paradise, a taste of the exotic, in harmony with the natural world - less about colour meanings or symbology, but more about instilling ideas and aspirations in the potential buyer.