Discussing Peter Doig’s Source Material for his Early Painting

(Source: Scott, K 2007, ‘In conversation with Peter Doig’, in Doig, P., 1959, Searle, A., Scott, K. & Grenier, C. 2007, Peter Doig, Phaidon Press, London; New York, N.Y.

Peter Doig in his interview with Kitty Scott talk about some of the sources of his of the paintings.

He mentions that one of his paintings was based on a postcard of the crown Jules they got in London. Demonstrating that his source material could be varied and often from printed secondary sources. He also talked about the subject matter for his early painting Friday the 13^th, 1987. Doig says that "The source for this painting is a dream sequence in the original Friday the 13th." A couple of things struck him about that moment in the classic horror film, he says he saw a relationship to Munch and "the plain beauty of this still moment amidst all the carnage" and he explains that it was more of a gut reaction and the process that he'd never done before, that is painting from a film. It also emphasises the importance of the feeling that the movement created, even if it was in a film.

Doig talks about the influence of Canada so the subject matter of his paintings during the early 90s. "Going back to Canada when I was a little bit older, I realised how much I had absorbed there. It now felt important." Later in the same paragraph, "…a lot of the imagery I used for these paintings were things that reminded me of my experience rather than things that were directly from my experience." He emphasises also he never used family photographs the implication being he found his visual material from secondary sources such as travel books.

Doig also explains that some of his paintings which look like Canada are in fact not. He says, "Ski Jacket (1994) was based upon a photograph from a Toronto newspaper of a Japanese ski resort. It reminded me of a black and white oriental scroll painting."

Scott asks him about the treatment of source photographs and Doig explains that sometimes paint spilled or was sprayed on adding an unexpected layer. For him it takes the reality away from the photograph and turns it into a more abstract image. In a way what he is saying is he's added an effect to the photograph so that he can move one step away from what it originally looked like. This is something I am recognising in my own source material for when I upscale and print out some of the photographs I take they often become distorted through the printing process, largely because they are printed on substandard inkjet printers.

What could be his implication through using this process and did happen by accident?

Doig talks about his painting Cabin Essence 1993-94, "I had no desire to paint it on its own, but seeing it through the trees, that is when I found it striking." This statement also demonstrates that Doig is willing to open himself to experiences that were real, things that he lived through, rather than just based on source material such as magazines or photographs. At that moment he was struck by experience and captured it through film. He then later effected some of these photographs by splashing paint on them as can be seen in his archive. He was obviously interested in enhancing the mystical feeling within the painting.

Peter Doig, Cabin Essence 1993-94, Oil on Canavs

When talking about his paintings as he did in the early 90s Doig explains that much of the work around the time was clean, contemporary, slick looking and that, "I didn't want to become part of that world I purposely made works that were handmade and homely looking, and this is often the subject of the work as well." He is saying here that he didn't want to produce work that is typical of the time, that he didn't want to copy, but his work is a direct response to the time because reflects a conscious decision to do something different. Without one he wouldn't be the other, his style was becoming a reaction and that way he could have isolated himself, and in fact did, but it also allowed him to develop his own style.

A response to: Haseman, Brad (2006) A Manifesto for Performative Research. Media International Australia ncorporating Culture and Policy, theme issue "Practice-led Research"(no. 118) pp. 98-106. Copyright 2006 Brad C. Haseman

Haseman states that we are at a pivotal moment in the development of research and shows that qualitative and quantitative research methodologies frame the excepted agendas of research generally carried out. He outlines the fact that quantitative research embraces a scientific approach, it's aim to eliminate the individual perspective of the researcher. This area of research more often deals with numerical data.

When looking at qualitative research Haseman says that it operates quite differently seeking to understand the meaning of human action, behaviours and responses as constructed by quantitative texts. The implication here potentially being that a qualitative text allows the researcher to look on subjectively and that text allows for the ‘nuances of behavioural response’. A focus for this form of research may well be seen as an ‘object of study’ and not a method of research.

Qualitative research therefore has a focus on understanding context, because the research is a practice based enterprise and therefore a uniqueness or an original contribution rather than an ‘architectural discipline’. The researchers approach maybe to identify agenda, this being a goal in the first instance, may not be defined and therefore its identity could be shifting.

Haseman states in his paper that the traditional way of writing your qualitative research may potentially be a restrictive outcome. He argues that there should be a push to present research through a practical outcome, something not screened by the use of text. He says the strategies are known as performance as research, research through practice and practice led research. The outcome for this practice led research seems broad and by its nature be undefined in the first instance, it's specificity might find in its final form. He says that practice led research is 'intrinsically experimental'.

Haseman also underlines that the traditional way of setting up a research program may not be compatible with how practice led researchers operate. As a matter of course applicants are expected to clearly define questions and the research problem so they can fit their proposal into an excepted framework. The practitioner of the practice led research could be viewed as very different and might be described as someone who has enthusiasm or individual tendencies that are specific to them and cannot be categorised or the evolution of their ideas predicted.

Also the way in which research is presented could be contradictory to its outcome based upon an interpretation through numbers or text. In a sense some of practice led research findings could be lost through these traditional presentation methods.

But much of what is practice led research is still classified under the qualitative research umbrella. There are fears that as the field of practice led research expands that the definition of qualitative research becomes blurred, that it jeopardises some of the foundations to this field and in a sense undermines the traditional approach to qualitative research. For this reason there is some resistance to how this field is evolving.

Haussmann presents performative research as a potential third classification of research. He describes it as a multidisciplinary method led by practice and 'expressed in non-numeric data but in forms of symbolic data other than words in discursive text these include two forms of practice of steel and moving images of music and sound of live action and digital code.'

He argues that the practice is an all-important representation of the research in its own right, the physical performance and interpretation of the researchers’ data. But Haseman also states that performative research cannot be entirely separate from quantitative research because they share many principal orientations. That recognising this third paradigm will help ease some of the tension among the concerned qualitative researchers.

Towards the end of his paper Haseman talks about the process of auditing practice based research as a way of capturing the whole context of the presented research. The indication being that when a research performance is presented the significance is fully realised. It's these types of approaches which could help give credibility to a performance based research or practice led research.

One thing that really stands out in the paper is that the definition or understanding of qualitative research is changing, but need not be distorted if performative research gains ground. That this opportunity to redefine a traditional form of research will reveal or expose exciting new work in practice led research, helping challenge narrow perceptions art and how valuable the practice of it is within our modern society.

Increasingly Process Driven

During the last six weeks I have been working hard on a series of paintings. I had expected to be working on stills taken from microscopic studies that I filmed at the Natural History Museum. But my focus has once again turned to the English landscape short films and the stills that I took from those. It's the foliage in these pictures that has prompted further developments in the process of my painting.

There has been a series of steps within this process that I have been following;

1. The initial experience of the walk, being in the founding environment. Actually being out in nature looking at the land around me is an important part of my decision-making and the first step.

2. I use a digital camera to record this experience. Other than the process it’s self this stage transfers the actual physical experience onto a digital, none physical, media and places it within a frame behind a lens. This is the first level of transition or interpretation of the given landscape.

3. The next stage is to watch and select stills from the short films. These stills are unlike normal photographs because they are at times blurred or part of an action that is different from composing a standard photographic shot. They feel and look more like the interpretation is moving through the landscape rather than standing still and simply taking the shot. They feel and look more like the viewer is moving through a landscape rather than standing still and simply taking the shot in a more contemplative state.

4. These selected stills are then printed. There is a conscious decision on my part not to print these out at Hi-Res and this is because I personally like the way a standard printout affects the visual image and colour. It's a reinterpretation of something living and another level through which I interpret the visual world. But there is something fake about it, fakery that comes about through a modern technology and one that we could use daily or allow ourselves to see as a true reality when actually this is another lens through which to interpret something, another level that can distort reality.

5. I then looked carefully at these printouts and sketch out some of the distorted forms that the plants have taken. These were forming abstract, yet recognisable landscapes. They look like twisted shapes that in a sense I've taken on a new identity. I draw these onto paper or directly onto the canvas and then interpret the colour in a loose, more minimal and palate restricted way. I'm subconsciously making decisions about formers as I allowed the sketching to draw out something that has more of an outline, is more solid than say the softened edge of the photograph. Shapes are becoming harder and existing more on one plane rather than the depth that the photos depict.

6. This solidifying of some of these fluxing shapes creates Totem like forms, that look primitive, basic, but there is something about them that is recognisable. I isolate these, increase scale and potentially placed them individually on a canvas or in groups or pairs. Strangely they seem to come alive and imply different types of movement or identity. The edge of these forms is important because the initial abstraction of the form was the result of the light behind the plants in the original film footage that was then manipulated by this series of lenses as described above. So I pay particular attention to the edge translating the light into a series of canals or outlines the frame the forms.

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This is my most recent stage and I gaze at these larger primitive bodies staring at me from brightly lit backgrounds. They speak to me of something primitive or tribal and in them I see people. This is the bizarre thing about these forms that I extracted through this process; the fact that I see a humanity staring back at me. Maybe this is more a reflection of me rather than of the work itself, potentially what this shows is when we look at something we try and see something human there? Or that we are so tuned to the shape and movement of the human body that we subconsciously or willingly translated it into every unidentifiable form, humanising and even giving it a character or motive.

The work continues.

Photographic Error Manifestation

In her paper Facts and Photographs: Visualizing the Invisible with Spirit and Thought Photography Margarida Medeiros says:

“The photographic error, the nightmare of the pioneers (the flou, the blurred, the excessive grain, the lack of contrast) seems to have found, in the last decade and turn of the century, another purpose: that of an hyper-naturalist representation and an epistemic support for new types of knowledge. Just as X-Ray images are scientific and can be vague and blurred, so were fluidic images.”

When considering the photographic error, it is on some level viewed as a presence, because it takes on a physical form in the visual plain. It could be an unexpected light, natural or unnatural, a distorted chemical effect or, as in her paper, Medeiros talks about the potential of a spiritual presence.

This concept of a spiritual or materialised thought is interesting although far from the reality for me. But you can understand how this could have been perceived in the past. To actually have something manifest itself in the photograph triggers a curiosity that could be argued is deeply rooted in human nature. Identifying the unknown was once key to survival and now that many things have been explained this appearance of the effected photograph is engaging. We can suppose what happened and then might actually not know how it has. Why not project some meaning upon this?

It also reflects a growing interest in science. Many will assign the photographic error to process and how this went wrong. But yet the result may be aesthetically pleasing and trigger a desire to know how the science actually works.

Photographic error also allows us to categorise the resulting photograph. Whereas it once would be discarded people are now more willing to engage with the actual result as something to preserve, a one off, the result of an experiment or a work of art. The physically creation of this unexpected happenings will never be recreated and can lead to insight on the rare occasion.

It could be argued that because the visual world is now saturated with photographic image that these errors are more common but yet still vastly outnumbered, the ratio the same but the numbers far greater. The error has more context and potentially more of a role in the canon of photographic archiving and as humanity’s knowledge of photographic method increases potentially different types of error will be generated and increase this range of errors.

Bibliography

M. Medeiros. Facts and Photographs: Visualizing the Invisible with Spirit and Thought Photography, 2015, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Also inspired by the project 'In pursuit of Error' by Tracy Piper-Wright. The project has been running since 2014 and has already amassed an archive of error which can be viewed here:  https://inpursuitoferror.co.uk/

Artistic Research - Thoughts on its relationship to Scientific Research

“Our contention is that the very fact that artistic research becomes commonplace will save us from the crushing weight of external ideals that are often alien to artistic research. This will give us the opportunity for a perhaps troublesome and even sticky path towards an increasingly mature and tolerant scientific-artistic culture. This was of defining scientific quality itself from the everyday viewpoint of research is quite a different matter than a methodological ‘guarantee of quality’.”

HANNULA. M & SUORANTA. J & VADEN. T, Artistic Research – Theories, Methods and Practices, 2005, Finland Cosmoprint Oy, Espoo page 15

Reflecting on what ‘artist research’ is I came across this paragraph in the above mentioned book.
For me, here the keywords are ‘scientific-artistic culture’ and how this accentuates the relationship between the two fields of science and art. Primarily the outcome of art is a finished work, as perceived by society and the result is often disassociated with the research, or practice, that has resulted in its creation. For many the process of creating art is foreign and unexplained. Many perceive it as an instantaneous thing, that is the result of the what they might call the evident skill. This perception has created barriers for many conceptual artists for example, who’s work does not reflect this expectation of what art should be.

But for science the public perception of its revelations, the presentation of the resulting scientific research, is heralded as a great break through. No doubt the strength of this is apparent, science solves many of the great problems that face humanity and justifiably has the kudos of such achievement but aside from how the final result is receive there is also an acknowledgement of the effort that goes into the journey of research, the man hours, the connection of scientific break-through with great discovery. Often an individual is identified as the key which unlocks the problem.

An artist could be viewed as this specific individual. They have arrived at their conclusions through a process and it’s the credibility of this process which Artistic Research would hope to embody, drawing a relationship to scientific research and highlighting many of the same processes that both use to achieve their goals.

It begs the question of what art is hoping to achieve through its research? There is the sheen of the superficial when art is questioned, we won’t find the cure for diseases, but something that is often over looked is the relationship that art has with sociology and philosophy and how it reflects the human condition. We strive to understand what makes us human, we question our relationship to the bubble that is our world within a massive world. Art can help us find out more about these conditions and the pursuit of wellbeing, incorporating therapy, enlightenment and revelation, are potentially enriching for the whole of humanity.

The process of Artistic Research gaining credibility allows us to examine its elements and how it can be finely tuned, highlighting the great practices and ultimately rewarding more of what a progressive art practice is and even, in the end, what we should be celebrating in the artist field. Is the final work the ultimate achievement or is the preliminary work more deserving?