A Dismissal Of My Dismal Dissertation

The following essay (below) was written as part my Fine Art coursework and, on a recent re-reading, has prompted reflections on my studentship and dissatisfaction and alienation from the "Art degree" process.
For me, the most striking feature of this essay is it's attention to visual artists with whom I have no affinity and little real interest. This sources from the academic "art school" demand that one positions one's work within the parameters of contemporary culture or, at the very least, exhibit an engagement with the current art scene, and that one's field of interests must somehow "relate" to the practices and ideology of one's age.
At art school, one was constantly reminded of  being "where we are", unable to "turn back the clock" and operate in denial of some ever- onward path of progress. I found this problematic for many reasons, not least because most of my lecturers delighted in denigrating the canon (often referred to snidely as "the canon" with inverted commas supplied by raised fingers) and displaying contempt for those dead European males encumbered by talent and technique, sorely lacking the wisdom and identity-awareness of the soixante huit- ers (who knew far better than to waste their time crafting and quietly getting on with the dull, necessary work of creating durable artworks), a tendency that suggested that the true path of progress was a mere 50 odd academic years old, and thus not so much a path as a maze or series of decreasing circles.
Even if the canon was included and one was to regard "Art" as a chronological process that, as with Stalin's famous post Nazi- invasion order 227, proclaimed "not one step back", disallowed one from threading backwards, one might still be inclined to question the road one is on and where it is leading. To stretch the analogy somewhat; if one was to set off on a walking tour from, say, Leeds to Lands End, and eventually found oneself approaching Aberdeen, at what point might one question  the path followed, or recognise that one is lost and may need to, if not turn back, at least revise one's route? So, are we to accept as "a done deal" the progression/regression (tick as applicable) of Art, and tailor our work and interpretation accordingly? Or is it permissible to strike out alone, as it were, following the Romantic, if cliched, model of the Artist as outsider, alone and indifferent to the mores of one's age? 
No one is free of influences, and each of us possess a personal series of references, keys and associations. Had I been at liberty to write, in regards to my own personal references and influences, about the art I love, I would no doubt have written some florid and decidedly non- academic love letter to the work of Claude Lorraine, Georgio De Chirico or Austin Osman Spare. As it was I was required to write about "contemporary" artists and their work, so found myself seeking merit in the work of artists to whom I'm largely indifferent, such as Lucien Freud and Jenny Saville (I admire the latter's technique and visual richness but, as with so much contemporary art, find the didacticism tedious), and holding my tongue regarding art I dislike intensely (Francis Bacon and Jackson Pollock). This choice of subject was undertaken in the interests of "relevance" and, indeed, one may reasonably argue that the writer/artist is obliged to provide a comprehensible point of entry for the reader/spectator. The wild- eyed, Romantic Artist- as- seer may feel themselves to be imparting some great and profound truth but this is not  necessarily how it will be perceived/received. No one is entitled to an audience; regardless of it's depth, passion and commitment, an artist's work (the subjective)  has to connect with others (the objective) in order to exist independently and stake a claim on the attention of anyone other than the artist's immediate associates, friends and family. How it may do this is anyone's guess, and damnation on any surefire formula; it is the unpredictable  factor that makes art (and life) interesting and worthy of pursuance. 
My problem with the "relevance"- factor of my course work came from it being based almost entirely upon connection to the contemporary and/or the supposed progression of art for the last 50 or so years, neither of which I can, well, "relate" to. In "The Picture Of Dorian Gray" Oscar Wilde has Lord Henry proclaim that “Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.” Wit, as so often with Wilde, masks a profound truth, especially when we consider epochs that profited from slavery or denied female suffrage and, whilst art and aesthetics cannot claim the same import as the aforementioned barbarisms, one might nonetheless take a step back from one's own age and take a look. Does one fit in? Does one want to fit in? 
(2011)

                    Representational Painting in the 21st Century; Why? (2004)


It might be considered anachronistic for a 21st century artist to choose to paint in an evidently representational style. Whilst it appears to be a perennially popular, “accessible” art form it is, nonetheless, generally held to be outmoded by the contemporary "art world", and its’ practitioners regarded as purveyors of the commonplace, the nostalgic and aesthetically exhausted.
For the practitioner of this idiom, one of the more uncomfortable aspects of the legacy of the European tradition is a daunting awareness of the vast body of work that exists and (perhaps more pertinently) ostensibly excels within this particular paradigm. By working within what is already a familiar (some would say perfected and thus closed field (1.)), one cannot help but make (and expect to receive) unfavourable comparisons, not to mention feel intimidated to the point of impotence by the lofted standards of the canon.
A painting, being a static object in an increasingly fast- paced visual world, has a hard time both in harnessing the spectators’ attention and in attesting itself as a valid, "relevant" work of art, rather than just a well- executed trifle. It is probably in this regard that the contemporary representational painter meets their greatest challenge, namely in contesting the notion that their work offers little that has not been done much better, and many times before.

For an artist like Paul Cezanne, working in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century, painting was arguably the most versatile means of exploring visual perception. Cezanne was concerned with imparting a three dimensional perspective (accounting for central focus and peripheral vision), and was keenly aware of the problems this posed pictorial representation. In “Mont Sainte Victoire” (1904- 06), Cezanne sought to move beyond a literal mode of pictorial representation, enhancing the flatness of his pictures and, in precipitation of Cubism, probing for geometrical forms in organic appearances (Cezanne had exhorted the young Emile Bernard to “treat nature by the sphere, the cylinder, the cone”). In this work, Cezanne reached a point of integrating the distinct components of picture- making; drawing, tone, model making and composition have all been condensed into a coloured brushstroke, and the artist can be seen to have arrived at one of his main objectives, that of rendering “perspective solely by means of colour”.
The manner and purpose by which Cezanne treated painting finds its’ literary echo in the writings of his contemporary Stephane Mallarme who, through suggestion, hermeticism and synthesis, sought to shed poetry of it’s “meaning” in order to liberate it’s language. Both men found it imperative to reconstitute their crafts in order to attain freedom from the “tyranny of subject matter”, which was, for the former, a literal representation of nature, and for the latter, a poem’s subordination to its’ theme or topic. Cezanne, who never tired of visiting the Louvre in order to examine the works of past masters, and was to comment that “one does not put oneself in place of the past, one only adds a link”, clearly felt that the art of his age had to move beyond recording the surface appearance of things, and it was this conviction that prompted Cezannes’ infamous dismissal of Monet as being merely “an eye”.


Perhaps many artists would be inclined to share Andre Breton’s opinion of painting as being a “lamentable expedient”, feeling it to be an inadequate means of conveying concepts and experiences. Encountering an unfinished section of the New Jersey turnpike during a late night drive, Tony Smith speculated on the possibilities of an "artificial landscape without cultural precedent”. Believing that he had witnessed “a reality that had not had any expression in art”, Smith claimed that “most painting looks pretty pictorial after that…. there is no way you can frame it, you have to experience it”.
One might argue that Smith’s “aesthetic revelation” was a direct result of being in a fast- moving car (an experience that was not available to Cezanne), and was aided by the knowledge that he could call on a broader variety of media in order to communicate his intentions than was available to artists operating a century earlier. However, the need to examine fresh phenomena doesn't’, in itself, preclude the use of “old” or conventional materials. Writing in 1913, Claude Debussy was to ask “Is it not our duty to find a symphonic means to express our time, one that evokes the progress, the daring and the victories of modern days? The century of the aeroplane deserves its’ music”. Whilst one can chart evident progression in Debussy’s music, from the Russian influenced Romanticism of his ‘Petite suite” (1888- 89) to the ascetic modernism of his 12th Etude “Pour Les Accords” (1915), it is improbable that he would have contemplated his music existing outside of the instrumental, structural and formal modes of the western art idiom, and his “tone palette” remained firmly fixed in the traditional orchestra and its’ associated instruments. Contemporaneously, Luigi Russolo was devising an “art of noises” and inventing new instruments (or “noise intoners”, as he called them), whilst many of his fellow futurists were striving to conceive a visual means of expressing the speed and impermanence of the machine age with the time-honoured media of oil, pigment and canvas.

Viewed from the position of hindsight, the Futurist movement may be regarded as both a product and a signifier of its’ age; a work like Giacomo Balla’s ‘Abstract Speed” (1913), with its’ mechanical forms suggesting an automobile in motion, expresses not only one of the movements’ primary leitmotifs, but evokes an increasingly industrialized Europe heading for calamitous world war. The “Manifesto of Futurist Painters” (1910) addressed the "young artists of Italy”, and demanded the destruction of all that was old, venerated, academic and plagiarized. In the subsequent “Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting” (1910) the futurists were to claim  “painting cannot exist today without Divisionism”, a curiously “passeist” (to use the futurist terminology) stance to adopt, being in that it fails to take account of Cubism, an evidently bolder, more formally advanced model of the “miracles of contemporary life”.
The latter instance provides a lucid example of the potential pratfalls inherent in declaring oneself a paragon of innovation, and in associating oneself solely with what is up to date(2.). Existing orders, as well as aesthetic sensibilities, probably need to be challenged, if only to maintain their vigour and purpose, and much of the Futurist polemic remains potent in its’ irreverence, iconoclasm and humour. There is, however, always a risk of getting caught in the undertow of a rising tide, and the Futurists’ exuberant allegiance to fascism (as well as a general attraction to all things mechanized and martial) tends to overshadow even purely aesthetic reappraisals of this movement (3.).

Considering the central role painting played in a movement ostensibly dedicated to the destruction of all things antiquated and traditional, one is invited to speculate as to what roles, if any, this practice might play in our age. It is tempting, nowadays, to forsake painting in favour of newer, fresher mediums, particularly those that blur the distinctions between visual, aural and text – based art (4.). However, to choose to paint is to position oneself within a tradition, one that is, perhaps, endowed with some of the cachet afforded “art” music, expressly because it involves the use of time- honoured materials. However, as Norbert Lynton has argued, this in itself offers no assurance as to “what is likely to yield lasting quality from what may turn out to be expendable” . “The 20th century”, he claims, “has produced some of the worst art ever”, implying that the loss of a formal, academic criterion by which one can evaluate a work of art, has invited a deluge of sub- standard endeavour, and a preponderance of the notion that personal expression above all else is authentic. He concludes that we, as spectators, are forced “to accept extremism of an overreaching sort” 

It is unlikely that many of the practitioners of Abstract Expressionism (for whom Jackson Pollock’s statement that “every good artists paints what he is” might have served as a motto) would have subscribed to this view. The American critic Harold Rosenberg wrote that this was “essentially a religious movement” and voiced belief in an almost mystical relationship between the artist and the canvas, stating that “what matters is the revelation in the act”, suggesting that the speed and attack of the brushstroke contained a profound spiritual truth. When Glenn Brown employs the work of Frank Auerbach as a model, as in “The Marquess Of Breadalbane” (2000)) his use of ultra- fine brushes and thinned oil invites one to engage solely with the imagery of the work, as the formerly expressive brushwork (a means by which Auerbach can impart “the object raw and newly perceived”) is flattened. Brown claims that his subjects are largely selected from catalogues; a photographic reproduction of a painting will invariably provide inaccurate information. We are given no indication of the paint handling, hues are often distorted and, being removed from the physical presence of the work, we are denied the kind of intimate scrutiny celebrated by Rosenberg (whereby the painting becomes a sort of holy relic or shrine). Brown’s pieces pose interesting questions about our relationship to and with a painting. Firstly, there is it’s existence as a physical object that one can buy/sell and contemplate in a three- dimensional setting, and secondly, it’s function as an image (consider the “poster –friendly” quality of the work of Salvador Dali (another of Brown’s main sources), which seems to lend itself to reproduction). Perhaps, in Brown’s case, the most crucial question concerning an art image is that of ownership/authorship. Whilst anyone can possess a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, presenting a re- worked version of it as an original work of art (as an art object upon which one can place aesthetic and commercial value), would undoubtedly raise questions pertaining to the work’s authenticity; the commercial aspect alone ensures that the "forger" is criminalized, with the money- factor demanding that the object/investment is indeed the "genuine article". In art, however, the nature of “authenticity” is open to debate.

Francis Bacon, observing what he took to be an emotional detachment in the work of Lucien Freud, once described the latter’s paintings as being “realistic without being real”. Bacon sought a convulsive sort of beauty and, as an artist, was less concerned with reproducing a likeness of his models than with setting a trap in order to catch the “living thing alive”. In “Three Studies Of Isabel Rawsthorne” (1967) the painter and stage designer (who had also modelled for Giacommetti and Picasso) is depicted sequentially as a screaming face in a picture frame, a spectral profile in a darkened doorway, and an abstractly gesturing figure with one arm raised, her faced turned both from the viewer and the door– knob to which she appears to be reaching. The blotched and smudged faces are rendered all the more disturbing for being positioned in a subtle, ordered interior, with strong vertical lines bisecting the painting into sections. A stark, artificial light is suggested by bold black/white contrasts, as well as the exaggeratedly defined shadow from the door- knob. The placing of mutilated, viscera- like faces/figures within a sanitized, ordered environment (suggestive of an operating theatre), is something of a recurring motif in Bacon’s oeuvre. The subjects often appear, as in the case of “Study For Portrait” (1971) to be physical assemblages, where flesh components are combined with recognisable human gestures (in this instance, the right leg being semi- casually crossed at the knee). The latter work, set in what appears to be a television studio, conveys a sense of the artist working “at one step removed” from the sitter, via an intermediate medium. Photography, which usually provided Bacon with his initial/main source, allowed him to avoid the discomfort posed by being in the company of sitters. He preferred to use photographic characteristics as a "point of departure” from which he could utilize a personal perception of the subject in conjunction to his own memories, associations and obsessions. Bacon’s portraits are, many respects, self- portraits; Freud has commented on how Bacon “always gave me his legs when he painted me”, and one may feel, as with the more "emotive" abstract expressionists, that one is being asked to regard the artist's neurosis and solipsism as much as their talent and "vision". Indeed, Bacon's reliance on photographs, (eschewing the need for the flesh and blood person to be present), lends his work an almost masturbatory quality, with the fleshy, ravaged anatomy suggesting the privately pornographic made public.

Unlike Bacon, Freud is “never inhibited from working from life”, finding the immediate presence a crucial ingredient to his processes. His paintings are, in effect, the "love- child” of a conspiratorial, intimate relationship between artist and model. Freud is acutely aware of the complexities inherent in this association, which is business- like and somewhat exploitative, and has commented on "a chivalry” that is invoked within him when in the company of a naked person. “Leigh Bowery (seated)” (1990) depicts the sixteen- stone Australian- born performance artist, barely contained within a faded red velvet chair, one leg sprawling across an arm- rest, his stark nakedness enhanced by his body being shorn of all hair. We are presented with a near- monstrous spectacle (Freud had to continually expand the canvas in order to sufficiently convey Bowery’s enormous bulk), reminiscent of an unbottled genie, with every fold of flaccid flesh presented in a frank, confrontational manner, the casual aggressiveness of the pose complemented by an unflinching, discomforting stare. Freud’s commitment to providing “factual not literal” portrayals of his sitters is evident in this work, which serves as something of a testament to Bowery’s exhibitionism (the artist has commented on the Australian’s “amazingly aware and amazingly abandoned” way of presenting his body) and conveys the performer’s desire to ferment scandal, outrage and abhorrence.

“When I think of Freud”, wrote Auerbach, “I think of his attention to his subject”. In language that could serve as descriptive prose for the meat– like rendering of Bowery’s flesh, Auerbach writes that Freud’s “subject is raw, not cooked to be more digestible as art, not covered in a gravy of ostentatious colour, not arranged on the plate as a composition”. Whilst this account provides a rather literal description of the above work, it is equally applicable, albeit in a more subtle manner, to Freud’s “Portrait Of John Minton” (1952). We can still discern that the artist has been, in Auerbach’s words, “passionately attentive to (his) theme”, sentiment that appears to be corroborated by sitter’s biography. John Minton, high profile in the London art scene and a leading proponent of the neo- Romantic school, was, by most accounts, a cheerful, playful and amusing character. However, his jovial persona concealed a deeply troubled and unhappy man. Commissioned by Minton after having seen Freud’s “Small Head Of Francis Bacon” (1952), this portrait of a handsome, yet anguished, face lead Bruce Bernard to write that he saw “no subtler sense of an individual’s approaching death in modern painting than that expressed by a faint hint of the teeth’s increasing separateness from the flesh”. Unable to come to terms with his homosexuality and haunted by feelings of inadequacy as an artist, Minton committed suicide in 1957. This painting is quietly troubling, particularly when compared to Bacon’s “Pope II” (1951), which appals by its vicious, hysterically emotional imagery. Whereas Bacon’s Pope screams (silently, though nonetheless, brutally) at the spectator, who is forced into assuming a defensive position, Freud’s portrait disturbs by its restrained, ominous distress. The overly large, candid eyes seem to verge on tears and the long face and neck tilt in a slight, awkward incline. Freud’s affectionate treatment of Minton’s dark brown hair suggests a tenderness that belies the formers’ reputed temperamental coolness; the slightly tossed, fluffy locks give an impression of youthful boyishness. The face too, is boyish, however, the haunted expression renders the overall countenance as that of a troubled child aged beyond his years. This portrait manages to be remarkably moving without being sensational (a thing Freud apparently dreads), and appears to reveal something more universal than the “results of (the artist’s) concentration”.     

One imagines that Jenny Saville wouldn't be troubled by accusations of courting sensationalism, as a desire to provoke deep, if not disconcerting, reactions appears to be an essential component of her work. Her monumentally obese female nudes raise manifold questions concerning femininity, beauty and self- perception. Saville’s signature- style consists of a fore fronted chest/stomach/pubic area, usually seen as if from below, whilst the face (generally the primary point of engagement in the portrait medium), recedes into the upper distance of the canvas, often wearing a detached, inscrutable expression. Her work teems with ambiguity; are these grossly- enlarged women meant to provoke shock, sympathy or disgust? Is the artist deriding women’s adherence to conventional notions of beauty (as depicted in fashion/cosmetic spreads and the media at large), or does the exaggerated fleshiness of the subjects, many of whom clearly resemble the artist, reflect the anorexic’s warped self- image? Saville’s “Propped” (1992) features, in reversed mirror- writing, a quotation from the French feminist Luce Irigaray; “If we continue to speak in this sameness, speak as men have spoken for centuries, we will fail each other again”. Male perspectives, Irigaray contends, have conditioned women’s vision and self- regard, and must therefore be reconfigured from the point of the female’s “inner”, experiential perspective, as opposed to conforming to the “outer” observations of the male. In choosing to operate in the painting idiom (which, owing to it’s historically being dominated by men, is often disregarded by contemporary female artists), Saville quite deliberately challenges the long- established tradition of the female nude as rendered by, and for the delectation of, men. “Branded”  (1992), presents us with a women who may be the artist, her head tilting back and away from the viewer, though not, one imagines, in avoidance or discomfort; The model (artist?), wearing an expression that might be confrontational, vacant or bemused, stares “down her nose” at the spectator, who is positioned as if kneeling before her vast breasts and belly. In a gesture that appears both defiant and self- loathing (ambiguity, as so often with Saville, is entertained), the model pinches a sizable portion of the flesh that rings her stomach. We are, perhaps, being invited to meditate on the model’s obesity. It is equally possible (and is implied by the distance/disproportionateness between the head and body) that the model is joining us in being confounded by the spectacle of her bulk.
Whereas, for Peter Paul Rubens, corpulence signified lavishness, it is nowadays conversely regarded as an indication of malnourishment, poverty and ill- health. Saville, who studied in Glasgow (a city with one of the highest rates of heart disease in Britain), has spoken of shopping malls in Ohio where “you saw lots of big women. Big white flesh in shorts and t- shirts”.
 Saville’s paintings bear close relations to those of Bacon (who she cites as an influence). These similarities are both methodological (in their working from photographs and amalgamating personal features/characteristics with those of their models’), and aesthetic (the use of the portrait medium as an arena in which to enact personal fixations). Both artists’ employ an expressive usage of flesh; In Bacon’s work, inner and outer tissue appear as if churned together, and at various stages of mortification. Whilst living in New York, Saville spent hours observing a plastic surgeon at work, an experience that fed her interest in extreme and distorted body- shape, as well as aiding her understanding of anatomy. However, where Bacon uses the sitter as a kind of jigsaw puzzle to be arranged in accordance with his own obsessions, Saville places herself at the forefront of her work. We are left with little doubt that the artist is identifying herself with her subjects, and we feel that we are contemplating a personal as well as universal anguish. These bulky titans communicate a tremendous vulnerability, inviting rejection simply by being their unadorned selves, and embodying the curious, but probably not uncommon, phenomena of the conscious self feeling alienated from the flesh in which it is encased.

On the surface, one can discern parallels between Saville’s “Branded” and Freud’s “ Leigh Bowery (seated)”. Apart from similar physical characteristics (cropped/bald heads, obesity), both subjects  assume an immodest directness of stance, as well as an evident lack of discomfort with their nudity (indeed, this aspect is aggressively asserted in both paintings). However, a closer examination reveals these works to have less in common than might initially be assumed. There are distinct differences, for example, in the artists’ palettes; Freud’s employment of “realistic” colours within the predominantly ochre, beige and white spectrum imply that this is an accurate perceptual record of what the artist saw, as opposed to an imaginative or empathic meditation on shared physicality. Saville goes beyond the visually apparent, as her orange, pink and purple hues suggest what fleshy tissue feels like; her subject is lived in, as much as observed. More contrasting still are the temperamental imperatives behind  both paintings. The politicised, blatant emotionalism of “Branded” is compounded by the text that appears to be carved into the model’s flesh (implying self- mutilation, a common behavioural disorder amongst anorexics and bulimics), suggesting that women are “branded” with unattainable, and largely unrealistic, notions of femininity and beauty. Freud’s painting, however, eschews personal feeling, the artist’s concern being an intense scrutiny of his subject, “to catch”, what Bacon has termed “the fact at its most living point”. If “Leigh Bowery (seated)” elicits strong, discomfiting reactions, it is on account of Freud’s “attention to his subject”, and his ability to successfully impregnate the canvas with the late Bowery’s character, where, genie- like, it remains partially trapped but equally capable of imposing itself upon the spectator.

Saville, like Bacon, is not uncomfortable about exposing what Debussy described as “the naked flesh of emotion”, and her work wears its’ heart as well as its’ feminist credentials on its’ sleeve. Freud’s clinically analytical approach to his subject (which he describes as “a nature- study point of view”) is closer to the tenets of early Modernism, in that it demands that the artist’s personal feelings remain in check.  Freud has stated that “freshly felt emotions can’t be used in art without a filter”; This suggests that one’s working method serves as a sieve by which one can process course, unmitigated feeling, as well as a means by which one can translate personal and obscure phenomena into a comprehensible idiom.

Claude Debussy once wrote “The sound of the sea, the curve of a horizon, wind in leaves, the cry of a bird leave manifold impressions in us, And suddenly, without our wishing it at all, one of these memories spills from us and finds expression in (musical) language”. Debussy was less concerned with providing musical representations of nature than with exploring the correspondences between external phenomena and memory, and in this respect he has much in common with fellow “impressionist” (Claude Monet who, whilst ostensibly devoted to the recording of appearances (hence Cezanne’s jibe), was concerned with exploring perceptual sensations (5.). This propensity is reflected in the intractability of much of the subjects he chose to paint (such as mist on a river), and is corroborated by his own admission that he was “driven more and more frantic by the need to render what I experience”.

 Monet is often overlooked as an innovator, owing to the great popularity of his work. Later pieces, such as “Water Lilies- Green Reflection” (1916- 26) seem to anticipate abstract art, in that the paintwork often subsumes the subject, and one gets the impression that the artist is endeavouring to record the fleeting, indiscernible modulations of light and hue that occur in the passing of time, perhaps even striving to impose an awareness of duration on the non- temporal medium of painting. Monet’s afore- mentioned concern with recording perceptual experiences led him to expand the scale of his canvases (before finally dispensing with frames so that the spectator’s field of vision is dominated with the painting. The vast, curved canvases of “Nympheas” (1916- 1923) fill two rooms of the Orangerie in Paris, and place the spectator in the heart of Monet’s world, where the barrier between our dimension and that of the painting are perceptually eroded and appear to vanish. The sheer all- consuming quality of this work anticipates Jackson Pollock, who, like Monet, sought to place the spectator in the midst of his paintings. Pollock’s “Lavender Mist” (1950), constructed through flinging paint on a horizontal, flat canvas is, no doubt, less comprehensible than a Monet landscape. This is illustrative of one of the essential differences between the two men; for Pollock, a work’s subject was the act of painting itself (“a state of being”), which was a vigorously physical process of “self discovery”.
Nevertheless, Monet’s later works obscure the distinction between abstraction and figuration, and indicate a point of purely “painterly” engagement, not dissimilar to Rosenberg’s communion with the“revelation in the act”. A painting, regardless of it’s subject or style, usually comprises of the same substances (oil, pigment, smudged or sketched on stretched canvas), rather like how a poem, as contended by Mallarme, consists not of feelings, but of words.

Igor Stravinsky, in the true anti- Romantic fashion of the progenitor of Neo- Classicism, once commented on how music is “essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomena of nature etc” and is primarily a means by which one can establish ‘an order in things, including and particularly, the coordination between man and time”. Disdaining of the bombastic emotionalism of late Romanticism that, before the first world war, had reached it’s apex with monumental works such as Mahler’s “Eighth Symphony” (1906- 07) and Schoenberg’s “Gurrelieder” (1900- 11), many composers sought the formal lucidity and structural logic of the Baroque and Classical eras.
The Neo– classical composers operated in a manner similar to that of Glenn Brown; works from the past could be resuscitated, and resituated in a manner that disregarded chronological tradition, as well as lending the artist emotional distance from the subject. In the case of Stravinsky’s ‘Pulcinella”  (1920), a ballet based on pieces by (or at least attributed to) Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, there is often little regard for the proprieties of the period from which Stravinsky has “borrowed”; in “Pulcinella” the harmonic and rhythmic alterations upset the balance of the music, and the instrumentation (with prominent woodwind)) is perhaps “unsympathetic” to the original themes.
Like Brown, the practitioners of Neo- Classicism were accused of lacking authenticity and, in the case of Stravinsky, being contemptuous of a (musical) heritage that had been reduced to a storehouse from which artefacts could be plundered and discarded in equal measures. The latter claimed that his creative imperative was affection, asking “what force is more potent than love?”, but there is, as with Brown, a sense of art being conceived in inverted commas, and one may correspondingly find one’s  sympathies wilting at the touch of what Paul Griffiths calls “the dead hand of irony”.

I began this essay by questioning the validity of a specific art practice, namely representational painting, in this age. I conclude with the reflection that this question is not new, and will probably remain unanswered, for at least as long as canvas, brushes and paints are available. Despite being “functionally” killed by photography, representational painting has persisted and will probably continue to do so, undergoing modulations of style and subject, reflecting it’s time and, occasionally, cannibalising its’ heritage. I have endeavoured to draw parallels between visual art and art music, as both have undergone corresponding transformations in the last 120 years. Both have also been subject to examination and reconfiguration, as material practices and as vehicles by which one can voice ideological, schematic or personal expression.
Whilst one might agree with Freud’s assertion that unmediated expression is akin to people “thinking that manure is just shit, so they shit in a field and they think (this) will feed the plant, (when) it half kills it”, one may equally be concerned as to the extent to which one can excise the personal without rendering the results sterile. Freud’s portrait of Minton appears to exude an essentially tragic emotional radiance; its’ creator could quite reasonably argue that this is a latent tendency on the part of the viewer, facilitated, no doubt, by an awareness of Minton’s misfortunes.

A work of art is, arguably, required to be more than the sum of its’ parts, and when it is presented in an emphatically plastic form (as in the cases of Brown/Neo- Classicism), one might feel perturbed, or even a little cheated. One may well baulk at the individualized (even histrionically vulgar) excesses of Pollock or Rosenberg, citing Roland Barthes assertion that “sincerity is merely a second- degree image- repertoire”, and yet feel viscerally stirred by the personal and universal issues with which Saville imbues her work. Stravinsky’s statement concerning music’s inability to “expressing anything”, was perhaps, like the Futurist imperative, a challenge, in the form of a dramatic gesture, to the still- dominant Romantic idiom, and thus necessitated by it’s time. However, it is interesting to compare this sentiment to Debussy’s desired musical expression of the “correspondences between nature and imagination”. The latter suggest an engagement founded on personal perspective and experiences that, in denying a definitive understanding, might be more "relevant" to our (supposedly) pluralistic age, than the formers’ aesthetic absolutism. However, adopting such a stance might simply supply a supine means of avoiding argument, an “eye of the beholder” type abdication of any responsibility to probe and query the arena in which one has chosen to operate.   
We are, at the point of writing, just four years into the 21st century and still many of the questions posed over a century ago remain open to debate, with no definite answers forthcoming.
This is, perhaps, just as well.








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(1.) Declarations concerning the death of painting have been legion since the advent of photography. Commenting on representational painting (particularly in the medium of portraiture) being “a dead duck”,  Robin Gibson has written of the generally held view that this idiom was “laid to rest at about the same time as Sargent in 1925”.
(2.) Having been exposed to Cubism, Gino Severini was apparently appalled to find his fellow Futurists working in what was now an outmoded method. With a major Parisian exhibition looming and fearful of the dismissive response such work should elicit from that city’s notoriously imperious audience, Tomaso Marinetti dispatched Umberto Boccioni, Carlo Carra and Luigi Russolo to see “where things stood in art”.     
(3.) I am, for my purpose, primarily concerned with Futurist painting, and one might argue that, despite Marinetti’s hyperbole and claim’s to the movements multi- disciplinary objective, the movement is mainly recalled for its’ contribution to the visual arts.    
(4.) This is perhaps an attractive option for the artist, especially when compared to the solely visual, static quality of painting, not to mention the space- consuming awkwardness and inherent problems of porterage in a stretcher- mounted canvas (as opposed to, say, visual, aural or textual data that can be stored on a disc and popped unobtrusively into one’s pocket.
(5.) The long established connection between the music of Debussy and Impressionist painting is perhaps not entirely accurate, as the composer was more concerned with dreams and spontaneous mental associations than creating sound pictures. However, many of his chosen subjects would have been similar to those of the Impressionist painters; for example “Reflets dans l’eau”, one of Debussy’s “Images”, could be the title of a Monet canvas.