Barnett Newman, Cathedra 1951, installation view, 1958.
Gardner Rea, 'One nice thing about TV...' New Yorker cartoon, 1951.The above photograph and the wry comment on abstract expressionism from the New Yorker is interesting, because it connects with a way of seeing that is suggested by the digital montages presented below; a slowness of inspection. It is not as slow as looking at a Ming vase or a Braque, but slower than most cinema (apart from the majority of Wenders work or Tarkovsky, perhaps) or indeed television (except late night Big Brother). I also oddly began to think of Sergei Parajanov’s Colour of Pomegranates for the first time in years.
Deepest Autumn: The Irritated Gaze I 2010.
Deepest Autumn: The Irritated Gaze I 2010.
Deepest Autumn: The Irritated Gaze I 2010.As I watch the montage projected on the screen (via a very high end projector in a lecture theatre) I wonder of the effectiveness of the slowness of some of the dissolves. Are some too quick? Are the elements at the beginning of Deepest Autumn too mundane and slow in terms of there transitions? I consider the colour. The influence of Anselm Kiefer is startling, however I reminded of Robert Hughes criticism of his work. Hughes suggests that Kiefer’s “drawing lacks fluency and clarity, and his colour monotonous” (Hughes, 1991 p.409). Is that what is happening here in terms of its colour?
Deepest Autumn: The Irritated Gaze I 2010.
Deepest Autumn: The Irritated Gaze I 2010.
Deepest Autumn: The Irritated Gaze I 2010.The Deepest Autumn section seems to work. It is fluid it does not have any jarring moments. On the large screen in the main lecture theatre (the Co-op) all the subtleties of the modulations of deep lamp black and Prussian blue are revealed. The bright white orbs and flashes are very strong and solid. This does not quite play out on a large monitor, where every thing is a little pale, bleached out, exposed.
Intimations: The Irritated Gaze II 2010.
Intimations: The Irritated Gaze II 2010.
Intimations: The Irritated Gaze II 2010.
Intimations: The Irritated Gaze II 2010.
The Irritated Gaze: The Irritated Gaze III 2010.
The Irritated Gaze : The Irritated Gaze III 2010. Intimations and the Irritated Gaze lack this delicate handling. The final two parts do not have the same paint-like quality as the first section. Objects and imagery are overplayed. Is the all-overness of design maintained? Does it fall into surrealist cliché? I will have to see what the external has to say.
The Irritated Gaze: The Irritated Gaze III 2010.Outside of an exhibition space, in the street let us say, the projections would not, I don't think, have a hope in hell of competing with the outside world and the spectacle of neon and the street.
The documentation is a little crude, but it does show some of the transitions.
Hughes, R., (1991) The Shock of the New, London and New York: Thames and Hudson.
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