Gauguin Exhibition

On 14th November I went to the Gauguin exhibition at Tate Modern which I didn't expect to have any bearing on printmaking although he did do some primitive woodcuts. I was surprised that I found myself thinking "that would make a nice three coulour lino print".

The exhibition was laid out in rooms, each one relating to a different area his life or work, which I found very helpful in forming a picture of 'Gauguin'. The rooms were as follows:

Identity and Self Mythology - Guaguin used his self portraits to create the identity he wanted for himself. He was afterall, a bourgois banker and family man who turned himself into a bohemian martyr. I can't help wondering when he portrays himself wearing a fez who he is trying to convince that he's a bohemian intellectual. At the time he was a stockbroker painting for a hobby, I think he was trying to convince himself. I can relate to this as I have been a bank manager myself whilst painting as a hobby but I always thought of myself as more of an artist than a bank manager.


Making the familiar Strange - Some of Gauguin's still lifes are amongst his most decorative and surreal, for example the painting of one of his children sleeping with a bird on the wallpaper in the background. The bird looks so real that it could be the subject of the child's dream. Many of the domestic scenes depict normal family life which must have been fraught because he wanted to be a painter but had a family to support. This was a source of tension between him and his wife.

Life and Times 1848 to 1891 - This room included a selection of books and letters and revealed something of his background which was very much rooted in Paris. Even when he was on Tahiti he kept in touch with what was going on in Paris. He is said to have been disappointed that the Tahitian's were so westernised but it didn't stop him using their postal system to stay in touch with developments back home and of course to keep in touch with his dealer.

Guaguin's Drawings - Some of these drawings are 'technically' very good, the sort of drawings most people would think of as displaying exceptional skill. The more interesting ones are those where Gauguin is experimenting and trying to evolve a new raw essentialised form of drawing free from analytical detail.

Landscape and Rural Narrative - Gauguin went to Brittany many times and painted the locals with affection. He found the area wild and primitive. The people were the most important thing to Gauguin in capturing the essence of a landscape and portraying the way they interact with their landscape seems to be part of that. Folk traditions and locally produced items also seem to have inspired him greatly. His first trips to completely alien landscapes were to Panama and then to Martinique in 1887. Martinique in particular seems to have changed his painting from the sombre early paintings of Brittany to a vibrant palette. The paintings also have a flattened perspective which adds to their decorativeness but all this was completely counter to the culture of European art at the time. It made me think of the work by Matisse sometime later with it's leaning towards decoration rather than traditional perspective. Although Gauguin had romantecised preconceptions that led him to these foreign countries which often seem to have received a rude awakening when he got there (he left Panama with dysentry and malaria and found the Tahitians too westernised) he tries to convey in a subjective way how he feels about landscapes, cultures and peoples that are so very different to Paris. You get the message that his senses are screaming "wow!" at the lush vegetation and tropical sunlight but the finished paintings are also a work of his intellect, there is an intellectual process that say's "how can I show these dull Parisians what a tropical island paradise is like?" In the end, Gauguin for me, remains a romantic.

Rooms 6 and 7 - Sacred Themes and The Eternal Feminine - For someone who wasn't keen on the Christian Church Gauguin seems to have spent quite a lot of time exploring pre Christian and pagan themes. There were some primitive wood cuts which worked well for the subjects they portrayed ie. pagan deities. All his carvings and woodcuts could easily have been made by the local inhabitants. I liked the way he worked from a 3D wood carving made by himself back into a 2D painting of the same object. He doesn't draw exclusively on the locals mythology but mixes up Christian and Buddhist beliefs with Tahitian settings to almost create his own mythology.

Room 8 - Life and Times 1889 to 1903 - Not only did Gauguin become what he set out to become ie. a bohemian intellectual artist and traveller, but he went further and actually immersed himself in the culture and folklore of his landscapes in an almost scientific way. He wasn't just flirting with exoticism. However more superficially, he managed to construct a myth about himself that grew and continued growing after his death.

Rooms 9 and 10 - Gauguin's Titles, Teller of Tales - It's quite obvious that words and narrative were an integral part of his work and he even produced wood cut books. Just as he told a tale about himself in the role he wanted to play and then became that role so he wanted his paintings to tell tales or at least imply a narrative often by using enigmatic titles such as, "Are you jealous?", is this addressed to the viewer or is it a question posed by the people in the painting? Is it a drama being played out by the characters or is he saying to the viewer, "I bet you wish you could give up your bourgeois Parisian lifestyle for this tropical heaven". When I looked at some of his elongated landscapes which almost read like story books I am reminded of Stanley Spencer's idealised narrative painting 'The Resurrection, Cookham'

Room 11 - Earthly Paradise - The myth of Gauguin's final years is a carefree existence in a tropical Eden, a myth which he created himself, but the reality was ill health due to an ankle injury and the onset of syphilis. This and his uncertain financial situation don't seem to have dislodged the myth from his imagination one bit, if anything the nearer he gets to death the more fervently he imagines paradise, as if embracing it.

Final thoughtt - Stanley Spencer's earlier devotional paintings such as Zacharias and Elizabeth and Gauguin's 1889 painting 'Christ in the Garden of Olives' are stylistically and thematically very similar. Their portrayals of an earthly paradise and their use of narrative are very much akin to one another.

This exhibition made me realise how complexed a character Gauguin was but also how intriguing, his many facetted work still holding our interest today.

Reflections on Assigment Two

This is the final 3 block print I produced. I struggled with the registration but this was the best I could do. I like the colours and the basic design but it's not up to the quality to which I aspire.

I found this assigment technically difficult and needed to develop new skills and invent techniques. I think this is part of the problem with doing a distance learning course, you can't watch a tutor and copy them you have to work out everything for yourself. To be honest I still haven't mastered consistently transferring a flat layer of ink from the block onto the paper. I feel like buying a simple press as I'm sure it would make it easier but I must be able to get acceptable results without, I'll just have to keep working at it.

I have included my tutors report of the work I sent on a separate page. It contains some useful comments and is very encouraging.

I knew very early on what the subject matter for the last assigment would be but for the next one I have no ideas. I think I need to go back to my sketch book and just draw and collate for a while. The weather is getting perishingly cold which will make printing in my shed a labour of love and Christmas is coming which is bound to disrupt printing so I'm planning to get the next assignment in before the middle of February.

Three Colour Lino prints

I've done some prints of the Rotunda at Bromptton Road Cemetary which I'm proud of. See the separate pages with my detailed notes. I just want to do some final prints and some experimental colour notes and I will send this work off to my tutor. I think I'm pretty much on track if I keep this progress up.

Assigment 2 (update)

I took a week off work to progress this assigment as I had slipped behind due to other committments.

I started off by designing the first single colour lino cut. I chose to base it on a drawing I had done of some gravestones in Brompton Cemetary which I liked because the light was good and created strong shadows which I felt I would be able to use to good effect. Also there was a recession in the image due to one gravestone being very close looking out across others into the middle distance. The sky in between the graves also created an interesting negative space.

I have created a separate page with my detailed learning points as I made the prints.

I then went on to develop ideas for another image based around a grave I found in a church yard in Essex with a cage over it. The body was that of a 15 year old girl called Sarah Wrench who died in the 1800's. The cage was apparently to stop grave robbers stealing her body and that of her unborn child and I found it very evocative.

It reminded me of the shelter drawings of Henry Moore so I did some exploratry drawings and colour notes. I noticed the way Moore used a cage like structure to define the bodies of the sleepers and I drecided to make a cage like mask of a sleepers head.

Once I had created this 3D object I photographed it in dramatic lighting and then used the printed A4 versions as the design for my block.

Tutor Report Forms

I have created a separate page with all my Tutor Report Forms on it. I have also included my comments and learning points.

Activities over summer

I sent my work off to my Tutor and eagerly await feedback! During my holiday and most of August/September I have been collecting photographs and sketches for the next project on relief printing using lino cuts.

I have collected images from churches and graveyards wherever I have been. There always seems to be a church or graveyard around and they are all different so this is a fruitful source of inspiration. The theme will be 'The Architecture of Death'!!

On Saturday I did my first test cuts on A4 sheets of lino divided up into squares. I systematically used different gouges and recorded the effects. I then did another A4 sheet divided up into squares and experimented in creating different textures, again recorded systematically in my note book.

I inked both of these up and printed from them and then took another print with the residual ink. I then took the first block and printed from it in one colour and then overprinted the second block in another colour.

I was surprised at the variety of effects I could get with the different sizes and shapes of gouge, some were smooth and curved and some were ragged edged. The difference inspired me to experiment with the next block of textures mentioned above.

If there's one thing I've learned so far it's that printing has a special dimension, which is the unpredictable effects you get from experimenting with techniques and processes.

Whilst a commercial printer might want to eradicate this unpredictability to achieve a perfect replication, as an artist I want to embrace the unpredicatability and use it to my advantage.

I am particularly drawn to textural effects using colour combinations. However I know that I need to complete the stages of the course so I need to produce some clear printed images first but it will enhance my portfolio if I then do additional work exploring the textural opportunities that present themselves.

Summer Exhibition RA - 30th July 2010

I always go to the Summer Exhibition, it's a bit like a circus and fire auction rolled into one. I particularly wanted to go this year because I know there are a lot of prints, mainly in the Large Weston Room. This year there were prints throughout the exhibition which I don't remember before.

I find it annoying that the prints with the most red dots on are either small, comic images, obviously reasonably priced, or the attempts by RA's to cash in on their name by producing a series of prints. That's me off the potential RA list then!

There is no doubt that a successful print at the Summer Exhibition can make you a lot of money.

On the whole I liked what I saw although I can't see the point of purely representative etchings, what do they add to printing other than showing how good the printer is at etching?

My favourites were:

Quarry Edge - very colourful screenprint by Barbara Rae

Red Sky - as above

Bikini Print - silkscreen by Gary Hume of a stylised naked torso with a big brown nipple slightly off centre. I like the design of this and the interesting shapes. the combination of pink, grey and the big brown nipple was interesting too.

Three prints by Stephen Chambers (one of which I've shown here) The Professor, A Problem Day and Medlar Meddler.

Wollman Rink by Bill Jacklin (shown here) I like the design of the skaters and their shadows which is interesting yet cohesive.

Late Night Stories - Hand finished lino cut by Claas Gutsche of a block of flats at night with different coloured light in windows. This was atmospheric and clever but simple at the same time.

My favourite print was White Horse, Sutton Bank - a lino cut by Catherine Sutcliffe-Fuller. This was an interesting representation of a chalk horse with some red dots and brown but mainly black. It combined a number of elements of a landscape, like street lights and roads leading to the hill with the white horse itself but all jumbled up to make a decorative and interesting image.

Apart from prints I liked the large sketchy oils of William Bowyer, with their peculiarly acidic colours, interesting mark making and chilly Sunday afternoon in February atmosphere.