Page 43 - Studio International - March 1969

a yellow cardigan and a light blue coat—un- It wasn't until the Gaitskell portrait that I the carrier of the image we become more
likely for Bing. The change is such that you used a photograph as an overall priming. aware of its characteristics as medium. The
begin to think of him as a much more racy type of emulsion, half-tone screens, the
figure. The exterior seen through a window is Still life intervention of a retoucher's hand, all
lurid too, the blue sky is orange, the green trees There was as little interference as possible with become more apparent and contribute more
red. This is disturbing but not exactly surreal- the photographic essence of the original. It is to the quality of an image which on a
istic. In many ways the scene becomes that a 'ready-made', or an 'assisted ready-made' different scale may be unquestionably
much more magical and mysterious and in the Duchamp sense. Whereas Duchamp's photographic. The source of the Trafalgar
beautiful and more rewarding when meditated ready-mades were chosen with a deliberate Square painting was a small detail from a
upon than the scene as we normally know it. avoidance of concern for the aesthetic merit postcard. By maintaining and exaggerating
I would like to think that what I am doing is of the object chosen, Still life takes a highly the 'impressionistic' qualities of the
questioning reality. Photography is just one stylized photograph of an example of high magnified fragment these inferences
way, the most direct we know, by which phy- style in consumer goods to pose the question were developed stylistically.
sical existence can modulate a two-dimensional `does the neutrality of Duchamp, or the
surface. Painting has long been concerned with studied banality of subject matter in most People
the paradox of informing about a multi- American Pop, significantly exclude those A postcard of the beach at Whitley Bay has
dimensional world on the limited dimension- products of mass culture classed as "good produced several variations. A medium-sized
ality of a canvas. Assimilating photography design" from our consideration?' painting, a print on a photo base, a postcard,
into the domain of paradox, incorporating it and also the cover of this issue of Studio
into the philosophical contradictions of art is My Marilyn International.
as much my concern as embracing its alluring The contrast between Still life and My
potential as media. It's necessary, at the Marilyn is confirmed in their compositional Bathers
moment, to pry out a whole new set of relation- treatment. Still life was, unlike all the work At about the time of the 'People' painting I
ships. After all, photography (perhaps we that preceded it (apart from Epiphany), became habituated to taking photographs
should establish a broader base and think of an entity. In the earlier paintings idioms of people on beaches. A holiday snap colour
what I am talking about as lens-formulated had been mixed in a self-conscious manner transparency of a bay on a Greek island
images whatever the chemistry or electronics to retain the individuality of elements. has been used extensively.
involved) is still fairly new compared with the Still life was not composite in that way. The
long tradition of painting and there are many Marilyn painting was unlike older pictures Bathers II
adjustments of thinking yet to be made. q in that there was avoidance of a unifying Is a photographic colour print on a canvas
perspective. The individual shots are spread base. Everything but the people is painted
NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS regularly across the panel, four photographs out with an impasto that imitates the
each repeated three times on different perspective gradation of the sea. The screen-
Just what is it that makes today's homes so scales—perspective is only respected within printed detail from the transparency is a
different, so appealing? each frame. The painting was also an excuse multi-stage enlargement of colour separations
`Instant' art from the magazines. The for a physical involvement with paint itself. which were printed in reverse as negative
collage (made for the catalogue of the 'This A screen print with the same title arrived at colour.
is Tomorrow' exhibition) is a representation similar plastic ends through the use of
of a list of items considered relevant to the process photography and received no Toaster
question of the title. The image should, hand-working by me, other than masking. In shallow relief, manufactured from
therefore, be thought of as tabular as well as aluminium and plastic, with a photographic
pictorial. Landscape background.
Comes directly out of the Marilyn idea
Towards a definitive statement on the coming about hand-made marks on photographs. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
trends in men's wear and accessories (c) Adonis It was painted from a postcard which was See text.
in Y fronts remarkable only for the fact that colour
I have often had recourse to photographic had been applied to each copy by hand (I The critic laughs
enlargement for collaged details in have two copies, each a little different). An updating of Jasper John's object called
paintings since 1957. The photographic There was no aggression, just a sheer `The critic smiles' which consists of a
aspects of these contributions to the work abandoned dabbing on of tints in arbitrary `sculpmetal' cast of a toothbrush with
was not, in itself, an objective. Sometimes haste. I was fortunate enough to find the molars for bristles. The electric toothbrush
it was necessary to make an enlargement of original negative in the library of the and vibrating sugar teeth were photographed
an element too small in its magazine source biggest aero survey company and ordered an with the help of Euan Duff, a Kodacolor
for direct use. Of course you lose the colour 8 ft long print of the area seen in the postcard. print followed and was heavily retouched.
and nine times out of ten you're stuck with `Painting' consisted of adding many From this came an offset litho print,
a magnified half-tone screen (which can be different types of marks to the print. lamitated to regain the photographic
a bore) but the enlarger has its value as a Starting with a loose filling-in of fields with character, to which additional handpainted
rudimentary painter's tool. tints and on to marks which bear no marks were applied. Thus there were three
relationship to the photograph at all. Trees possible points at which paint might
Portrait of Hugh Gaitskell as a famous Monster in one part are fabricated from paint-soaked intrude: on the object itself, on the photo-
of Filmland sponge, some tiny houses are made in false graphic print, and on the offset litho print.
Occasionally there were advantages to be perspective from balsa wood.
gained from making painted additions to Swingeing London 67
collaged blown-up prints (putting back the Trafalgar Square The subject was worked up from a press
colour?). A photograph is a somewhat The process of enlargement inevitably photograph of Robert Fraser and Mick
unsympathetic ground until sufficient paint introduces doubts about the veracity of what Jagger handcuffed together on their way to
has been built up to give the brush a grip. we call photographic. In taking us nearer court in a police van.