I like what I have been doing in a technical sense but I feel that I certainly be more adventurous with the imagery itself. A few years ago whilst I was studying I did these little experiments, I really enjoyed trying to make coherent pictures out rather disparate subject matter. I photocopied some ukiyo-e prints from Edo era artists such as Isoda Koryusai, Hashiguchi Goyo, Kitagawa Utamaro, some images of Michelangelo's 'David' and scientific illustrations of local wildflowers of my home town of Stanthorpe and put them to together in the pictures below.
It is an enjoyable and helpful creative process but I wouldn't present the results as my own art. Personally I have never really enjoyed seeing the work of skilled artists cut and pasted by generally less skilled artists to subvert the original conceptional intention. Often these things are done for comic effect which I must say I don't all together mind as I have, one hopes, a sense of humour. However there seems to be many serious artists today who make a career reformulating the works of real genius to who then present terribly clever artist statements which invariably at some point use phases like; 'shake the audience out of their complacent....' or 'to bring in to question the notion...' or any of the hundred variations there are on the theme.
I remember what Robert Hughes once beautifully articulated about Hans Holbein. 'Holbein was a completely international man: he worked in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy and, especially England. His work, despite its integrity of style, was open to all kinds of influence: portrait prototypes ranging from Leonardo to Titian, the work of Fontainebleau mannerists, Quentin Massys, English court miniaturists, Durer and Matthias Grunewald. 'It seems to range backward and forward in time, a web of allusions that seldom rise to open quotation.'
And in spite of the fact I find myself often find my views at odds with Mr. Hughes's many assertions this statement strikes me as a brilliant aspiration. The history of painting is full of excellent examples of intelligent, subtle quotations artists made in respond to the works of other masters. Rapheal of Michelangelo, Manet of Rapheal, Kokoschka of Klimt and so on. With these contemporary cut and paste painting I sometimes wonder if the artist does it not only for the shock value but all so because they don't expect much from the audience. Of course I love nuance in artistic affairs and prefer understatement to brash declarations.
It is an enjoyable and helpful creative process but I wouldn't present the results as my own art. Personally I have never really enjoyed seeing the work of skilled artists cut and pasted by generally less skilled artists to subvert the original conceptional intention. Often these things are done for comic effect which I must say I don't all together mind as I have, one hopes, a sense of humour. However there seems to be many serious artists today who make a career reformulating the works of real genius to who then present terribly clever artist statements which invariably at some point use phases like; 'shake the audience out of their complacent....' or 'to bring in to question the notion...' or any of the hundred variations there are on the theme.
I remember what Robert Hughes once beautifully articulated about Hans Holbein. 'Holbein was a completely international man: he worked in Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy and, especially England. His work, despite its integrity of style, was open to all kinds of influence: portrait prototypes ranging from Leonardo to Titian, the work of Fontainebleau mannerists, Quentin Massys, English court miniaturists, Durer and Matthias Grunewald. 'It seems to range backward and forward in time, a web of allusions that seldom rise to open quotation.'
And in spite of the fact I find myself often find my views at odds with Mr. Hughes's many assertions this statement strikes me as a brilliant aspiration. The history of painting is full of excellent examples of intelligent, subtle quotations artists made in respond to the works of other masters. Rapheal of Michelangelo, Manet of Rapheal, Kokoschka of Klimt and so on. With these contemporary cut and paste painting I sometimes wonder if the artist does it not only for the shock value but all so because they don't expect much from the audience. Of course I love nuance in artistic affairs and prefer understatement to brash declarations.
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