The Division in Art Practice and Application to Methodological Approach

Bourdieu’s 1990 The Logic of Practice. (Chapter 5 The Logic of Practice Page 80-98 Stanford University Press) is used as a point of discussion for this short blog post.

This is written with the look towards a paper I’m writing on The Methodology of Art Practice. It’s a complex text about practice as a whole but I have tried to apply some aspect to my understanding of practice led research in the visual arts, through some of the key enlightening elements of Bourdieu’s logical extrapolation.

From the beginning he lays out that practice is problematic and can be viewed 'negatively'. Bourdieu stipulates that the connection between practice and the translation of practice creates a separation from the moment of practice that causes a discontinuity between its appearance and it's supposed meaning. He calls this 'the language of consciousness and the language of mechanical model'.

He links practice to time, saying that it is in time that 'practice unfolds' and to then place this in a theoretical context would suggest its destruction through synchronisation. He explains practice as a heightened moment in which there is a detachment from the past and the practitioner projects into the future giving an urgency, and essential property or product of what he calls ‘the game’ and 'the presence in the future that it implies' p82. It is this sense of the future, this forward direction that makes the game what it is. But if you are to look on, or watch the game and contemplate the proceedings you are disconnected from that experiential moment, a severance from the practice. Therefore, the reflective theorising has a discontinuity with the actual practice.

Can the artist develop a position of what Bourdieu calls 'pre-condition of adequate decoding.'? That is can the artist properly identify the references to different situations that have informed the works discourse, can they recognise a culmination, a complete view of the social and logical conditions of change within the product?

It's this separation of practice and theorising which interests me the most. Being submerged in the practical moment is a phase that is separate from the reflection that can override the experiential quality of the practice, that is the physical essential moment of doing which culminates in a product. Does this create a theorisation effect?

I believe that this is an important part of the theory behind a methodological approach but how should it be used?

I believe that potentially there should be a deep focus, intense almost microscopic analysis, where possible, of the building blocks that make up your practical endeavour. This is the methodological approach to research and should remain within that context and therefore could potentially be different for an artist who is purely engaged with their practice and outside the research field, although this situation may be key to how some artists work no matter their situation.

This poses the question of what is your practice? Is it just the moment at which a series of mental elements, decisions, influences culminate in a product or is it the process by which you experience these constructs? Are there any barriers and do there have to be? Is the artist’s practice all in compassing because the resulting product is a culmination of the influences upon the mind of that person? How can we separate the art practice from life when life, and everything we experience in it, influences the theoretical background of the resulting work? If an artist creates, recognises method, records and analyses the method, produces work as a result of the method, engages with this essential in the moment practice and then ultimately repeats how can we separate practice from a theorising affect when potentially they are one and the same.

How much does the subconscious play in hiding methodology from the artist? Viewing the human consciousness as a metaphorical net that unavoidably catches a high percentage of influential experiences, that shape who we and must surely include unexpected or unrealised peaks of activity that contribute to our decision-making, it must then on some level empower the practical essence of the moment when an artwork is created. The choice of colour, subject, object, meaning as a result should originate from a range of experiences that may hide meaning from us. To empower methodology the artist must look beyond the strictly practical nature of what they do and seek to capture as much of the true nature of their practice as possible.

It is only something that the artist can truly embrace and will involve honesty, self-examination and hopefully revelation. It is only natural to impose systems upon what we do, even supposed random processes. The attempts at randomness can be recorded as part of a method, of this there is no doubt, but the level of randomness will vary and external systems may be used and will appear to be separate from the persons being, as we are restricted by a physicality.

So, to truly understand our Methodology we must interrogate what it is that drives our artistic action. What is it that makes you do the things you do in the way that you do? A process of recording will have the division that Bourdieu’s The Logic of Practice highlights; moment of creation and looking to the future then to recording that looks backwards, involving a degree of separation from the essential practical moment but in the sense as I've explained this division is part of the wider picture that becomes your practical basis. Acknowledgement of this step between the two may well enlighten the methodology.

I end with Bourdieu’s definition of what he calls a Theorisation Effect (p86): ‘Forced synchronisation of the successive, fictitious totalisation, neutralisation of functions, substitution of the system of products for the system of principles of production.’ Do we as artist researcher employ a Theorisation Effect in our Methodology?

Bibliography

Bourdieu, P. 1990 The Logic of Practice. Chapter 5 The Logic of Practice Page 80-98 Stanford University Press.

Peter Doig Talks about Sigmar Polke's use of Popular Imagery

In an article in the Tate Etc, in 2014, Peter Doig talks to Mark Godfrey about Sigmar Polke and mentions how the German Artist has influenced his approach to source material for his work. Doig refers to an exhibition, A New Spirit in Painting from 1981, that was held at the Royal Academy, a show that was very influential in forming Doig's methodology:

"I felt much more connected to Polke because of his use of popular imagery in a kind of witty irreverent way, and that he was prepared to use all types of visual language in his own work, unlike Richter who would be painting paintings that looked like photographs." (page 59)

Still from one of Polke's 16mm Films

Doig talks about his first experiences of seeing Polke's 16mm films first shown in Hamburg, some of which were appearing in the exhibition at the Tate:

"I was surprised by the way the camera operated like an eye examining everything in an almost uncomfortable voyeuristic fashion, details of faces, watching people."

Doig is acknowledging the use of film as a tool to examine and gather material and how it surprised him. Potential this may have been in an unsettling way based upon the content of the film, that showed bear-baiting in Afghanistan. But he goes on to say in the interview that he doesn't feel Polke used this, or such, footage in his work rather that the source material for Polke's later work was from contemporary newspapers, magazines and the internet.

Doig doesn't talk of this range of eclectic source material disparagingly. In fact he seems engaged by this use of media and his exposure to this at an important stage of his development, as a painter, will have shored up his own ideas of where he gathered his own inspirations.

Bibliography

FISCHIL, P. & DOIG, P. & GODFREY, M. A Contemporary Visionary, Tate Etc. Issue 32 Autumn 2014,  Tate Media, UK

George Shaw's Memory Photographs Transformed into Paintings

Tom Morton in issue 67 of Freeze Magazine in 2002 calls George Shaw's paintings as "remembered landscapes". Morton describes a gritty environment in which Shaw grew up and how the artist had returned to the haunts of his youth to take photographs during his MA, at the Royal College of Art, in London. These shots became the solid foundation for a series of paintings that were stark in their photorealism, the landscapes grim suburban visas. Morton explains that Shaw describes his paintings like a "headstone marking a memory".

'The Fall' (1999): George Shaw's

What's apparent with this chosen subject matter is that the photographs Shaw takes, in the first instance, are designed to be used for his paintings. They are images which you wouldn't ordinarily photograph. These locations are off the beaten track places that are functional, or areas of the town in which you might not linger. Some of the buildings he paints are derelict or tagged with graffiti, and they may just be ordinary streets shots from spots you just wouldn't standstill in. They are framed in preparation for the further translation into paint.
 
Let's not forget these photographs that Shaw prints from are locations from his childhood. Areas that for him already have a visual repertoire and a series of memories attached to them. He is stimulated largely by memory but yet also his informed awareness of a kind of social deprivation that is current is also present in the photographs. For Shaw the relationship between his existence in these locations in the past and what they now mean to him in the future is a powerful one.

 
There is an absence of people insures paintings, and an air of anticipation or loss. The ceilings are generally run down and you can't help wonder how the subject of the painting manage to get to that situation. Morton in his summary of George Shaw paintings states that he can't help thinking "something terrible is about to happen" when he looks at the paintings and there is a definite sense of foreboding about the work. It doesn't help many of them have grey skies, the palette submerged in grey,  and it appears that it may have just rained, that it's cold and damp and these deliberate subject matters are designed to show the depression of the deprived English suburbs. 

MORTON, T. (2002) If...  Frieze Magazine Issue 67, [Online] http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/if/

Reflecting on Mark Making in My Painting

 

The very focus of my mark making, in my paintings, has literally been blurred. The images I'm now working from are stills taken from short films that I shot on a digital video camera.  I'm working on board and I'm able to create a smooth brush stroke on the surface and I emphasising the direction of the movement in the picture as I focus on a directional grouping of marks to try and replicate a motion in the image.

The process of working from a printout of the still is also affecting how I interpret the colours and shapes of the landscape. They are removed from the true natural pallette, having been produced by the printer, and are another level through which I am translating reality.

I have purposely worked from a small A6 print and I am finding that this narrows the colours, although these have been manipulated by the printing process, into set areas. It's an abstraction of information into something simpler.

This absence of detail especially in the foreground is as if this is a quick glance at an environment, potentially as the viewer is moving through it. The interpretation seems like a second when the colours are not truly realised, a moment when the lens is adjusting.

Does this take the viewer to the spot or the moment? As yet I'm unsure. It does create action though.