Part
3, Assignment 3 – A Copy of a Painting
Notes
on Making a Copy of 9x9x9: My Private Greens/Leaving
I
am so glad I live in the centre of London, as if gives me lots of
opportunity to see works of art first-hand, and my aim after this
course is finished is to study a Painting course. So I was very keen
to choose the “copy” option for this assignment. I spend a lot of
time in galleries, and had been looking forward to his part of the
course as I was quietly confident that could easily make an attempt
at a faithful copy of one of my favourite works of art. But when I
read the assignment carefully – always a good idea! - I realised
that I wouldn't necessarily learn as much as if I tried to
concentrate on certain aspects of a painting by making a more
creative variation. So here goes.......
Just
to make sure I stretched myself as much as possible, I decided to go
to a gallery I had never visited previously, to see abstract works of
art (which I find difficult to “read” or understand fully), in the
hope that I would learn something in the process. Hence my choice of
the White Cube Gallery in Bermondsey, London, where I could spend a few hours
working from an original painting.
The
first thing that struck me when I entered the White Cube for the
first time was how light and spacious and calm it felt. That is,
until I entered the 9m x 9m x 9m cubic room that was showing an
installation by German artist Franz Ackermann. This room exuded
energy and was anything but calm. Personal travel and the cult of
tourism is the subject of Ackermann's installation, which takes the
same name as the dimensions of the room for which it was specially
made.
I
can't say I liked it at first sight – garish colours, almost
cartoon-like compositions with abstract collages on a giant scale
hung in a room where the walls themselves have been covered in murals
of simplified tree outlines and panels of dark flat colour – but I
was interested enough in the subject to sit down and try to
understand what Ackermann was saying in this installation. There was
little information at the gallery about the work being shown, apart
from a paragraph of biographical detail and a short description of
his process of making postcard-sized coloured drawings or “mental
maps” to capture his visual memories as he travels and
incorporating these images into paintings when he was back in his
studio. (Sounds like a really good idea – I think I'll try this
myself!) What is clear is that it would be impossible to work from
photographs or reproductions of this installation, as the room itself
is part of the work, and the high ceiling and wall murals are part of
the experience.
My
attention was drawn to one piece of work in particular, “My Private
Greens/Leaving” - an enormous 10' long oil painting with a large
aeroplane dominating the composition on the left side. (see below)
There are no people at all in any of the works in 9x9x9 although
there is lots of evidence of human activity. 
My
Private Greens/Leaving 266 x 540cm oil on canvas
The
painting is hung in the middle of a 9x9m wall, which itself has been
covered with a dark blue background mural with a 3-dimensional
box-like painting above. The mural gives the impression that the
painting is somehow coming forwards towards the viewer, and the
trompe l'oeil effect of the mural above seems to suggest the infinity
of space – the great blue yonder.
The
first thing I noticed about the painting was loud COLOUR. There are
some immediately obvious differences in the colours used between the
top half and the bottom half. In the photographs I took below, the
top half is mainly cool colours, blues and lilacs and purples, with
some flashes of bright yellow highlights on each side. There is more
detail in this top half, fewer areas of solid colour, and more “mini
landscapes/cityscapes” than in the lower half. The pale blue of the
large plane on the left of the painting is repeated across this half
in small areas, leading the eye across from left to right. There are
few of the darkest tones in this half of the painting, apart from the
door-like rectangles on the right.
Top half of My Private Greens/Leaving
The
picture below of the bottom half of the painting, shows a
doughnut-shaped circle of warm colours surrounding a central area of
very cool colours, mostly in a mid-tone. There are very few light
colours in this half of the painting, apart from the bright yellow
highlights and the light blues, This half also contains most of the
darkest tones in the painting, creating much energy from the contrast
of the primary reds against the cool blues, and secondary oranges
against the purples. These two halves work independently too – no
golden ratio here.
Bottom half of My Private Greens/Leaving
So
the first thing I did, long before I started my sketches of this
painting, was to sit and look at it for a good 10-15 minutes, to get
used to the bright colours and the energy that I felt in the room.
This was time well spent, as the more I looked, the more I saw. I
also looked at the scant information given at the gallery entrance,
on the installation. The paintings were obviously done over a period
of some years, between 2007 and 2014, although most were completed in
2013 and 2014, specially for this room.
The
gallery information stated that Franz Ackermann began his artistic
career by making "Mental Maps." No bigger than postcards,
these coloured-pencil drawings captured his memories of walks around
Hong Kong. The German artist had moved there when he finished
graduate school because he wanted to get the feel for an unfamiliar
city without the benefit of knowing its language. Ultimately, his
goal was to convey the rhythm of his trips around town abstractly, by
means of colour, line, and shape.
Interviewed for Frieze Magazine while exhibiting at the London Triennial in 2009, Ackermann was asked what pieces of art really mattered to him, and stated that Manfred Pernice's work (above left), particularly his unititled ashtray sculpture (1994), with its models of buildings which "investigate the interlacing of personal /
public, via neutral stripped back and extracted forms from the built
environment juxtaposed and overlayed with hints of narrative detail" was a favourite; along with the 1525 portrait drawing by Matthias Grunewald entitled "Trias Romana" (above right) which hangs in his workspace. But his "favourite piece of art" is Roger van der Weyden's "Portrait of a Lady" (below).
I found it unusual that two out of the three peices of art that Ackermann describes as really mattering to him are portraits, as I have not been able to find any portrait work of his that suggests this genre is one he is interested in. Pernice's work is easier to link to Ackermann's as they both like to use found materials and a mixture of collage in their works, and are heavily influenced by scenes of urban architecture.
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| Manfred Pernice sculpture |
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| Trias Romana 1525 Matthias Grunewald |
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| "Portrait of a Lady", Rogier van der Leyden (1460) |
I found it unusual that two out of the three peices of art that Ackermann describes as really mattering to him are portraits, as I have not been able to find any portrait work of his that suggests this genre is one he is interested in. Pernice's work is easier to link to Ackermann's as they both like to use found materials and a mixture of collage in their works, and are heavily influenced by scenes of urban architecture.
Over the last twenty years, Ackermann has picked up the pace of his travels and increased
the size of his works. His two gigantic murals, Coming
Home and (Meet Me) At the Waterfall
(both 2009) started off as recollections of his journey from his home
town, Berlin, to the North Texas area, where he did even more
sightseeing. Ackermann then made many drawings, watercolours, and
paintings, all based on what he had seen. To translate these studies
to the walls of the stadium he used projectors and a crew of eight
assistants, all artists in their own right.
His
pair of wrap-around landscapes lets viewers experience the excitement
of travel through the past and the present. Texas Stadium appears in
the distance, a fond memory amid pulsating shapes and jazzy
colour-combinations. To take in the magnificent murals is to take a
trip, in the imagination, to a place never before visited, as did
German painters Vasily Kandinsky and Franz Marc at the beginning of
the 20th century. Ackermann updates their Expressionist abstractions,
turning art into an urban adventure.
As
I sat for a few hours making my drawings of My private
Greens/Leaving, I really began to get used to to the bright colour
and found the painting more and more interesting. I was energised,
and felt that Ackermann really managed to convey the excitement of
travel and the overwhelming range of feelings when leaving on a
journey. I felt I was looking though a kaleidoscope at the beginning,
or remembering the Susan Collier & Sarah Campbell 1972 fabric
(right) which I bought once to make a blind, and still have it. This
in itself was like the silk tapestry called Reg-Green (below) by
Gunta Stolzl ( 1927) of the Bauhaus, which I found when doing by
research for Project 1 of Assignment 3! (below)
The
other feeling I was having as I did my work in the gallery on that
first day was that I was looking at very modern stained glass
windows, a feeling that was helped along by the height of the ceiling
– 9 metres – in this square room with walls behind alternating between dark blocks of colour and murals of enormous tree trunks.These
murals on the walls behind the paintings also helped to make me feel
quite small in comparison.
The
painting I chose to copy was definitely my favourite because it
appeared quite complex at first glance, yet I found myself “seeing”
a narrative. Perhaps it was because I had just returned from a
journey by plane the previous day, or perhaps it was because I have
spent so much of my life travelling on long-haul flights, but I was
drawn to dig deeper and try to analyse the design, the colour and
general technique behind it by looking it at it through the stated
goal of Ackermann of trying to “to convey the rhythm of his trips
around town abstractly, by means of colour, line, and shape. “ Some
parts look like perspective drawings of urban areas; others fragments
of landscape; others organic shapes. But definitely no
people........I wonder how Ackermann can travel without memories of
people.....
My
first attempt in the gallery was to sketch the general shapes of the
tonal areas, which I divided roughly into Light tones, Warm
Mid-tones and Cool Mid-tones, and Dark tones, using little tubes of
acrylic paint and very little water, to create the areas of flat
colour which Ackermann used so much in this painting. (This choice
was made purely on the basis of ease, as oils were not allowed in the
gallery, and would have been too messy. The advantage of these little
tubes is that paint can be used straight from the tube, with little
need for mixing and little need for much water, and they are very
quick drying.)
+-+Copy.JPG)
What
became obvious when I was doing this sketch was that Ackermann had
had to put quite a lot of thought into which colours were next to
others; where to create contrast and where to create harmony; where
to create warmth and where to suggest sterility; where to suggest
order and where to suggest chaos; where to suggest movement and where
to suggest stability; where to use large blocks of colour and where
to use small highlights. I took lots of photos of small details of
the painting to work on at home, in a way trying to emulate
Ackermann's way of postcard-sized mind-maps to help me recall the
experience when at home. I can really see why this works for
Ackermann – it's a great way of prodding your memory, especially if
you record lots of detail without worrying about the subject. And of
course, looking for a long time really helped.
The
next attempt at a copy was on an A3 piece of paper – quite
difficult to manipulate in the gallery, but I really felt there was
so much going on in the painting that I wanted to work on a larger
scale. This time, I tried to concentrate on the CREATIVE VARIATION
that the exercise talked about on page 105. This meant really trying
to think about the narrative that Ackerman was trying to illustrate
in his painting. I started off with the obvious shape of the blue
aeroplane which takes up most of the top left quadrant. I decided to
use a mixture of felt tipped pens and Inktense pencils, which would
allow me to block in large areas of colour to be finished off at
home, I looked at the basic shaped he had used, and it became clear
when I kept looking that I could make out lots of circles and ovals
(which I hadn't noticed at the beginning), both in the windows of the
plane, the wheels, and in the brightly coloured yellow and orange
highlights that seen throughout the composition. He also used lots
of squares and rectangles, especially in the top right quadrant,
where they resemble buildings, the chequerboard areas above the
plane's tail and the landscape-like field areas in the foreground and
along the fuselage. The shapes in the lower half of the painting are
much more irregular, resembling jagged rocks in some areas, or
mountain ranges seen from a distance. The one basic shape that is
quite uncommon in the picture is the triangle, apart from one area in
the top right which resembles a very regularly patterned edging of
spikes and another area just underneath to the right which looks like
an abstract tree shape.
Below is my finished attempt at a CREATIVE VARIATION of a VISUAL THEME,
completed at home with some acrylic paint over the felt tipped pen in
some areas. I have simplified the original somewhat and
exaggerated what I thought were the visual memories Ackermann was
trying to illustrate in others For example, I have incorporated some
trees into my painting, and exaggerated the organic shapes of what I
think could be landscapes in the lower half, and making the area
above the plane in the top left full of many more obviously technical
and industrial looking shapes. But the slightly menacing feel of the
central blue area being swallowed up by the encroaching red and
orange creeping “menace” I have kept, as I understand from the
reading that Ackermann is not a huge fan of the travel and tourism
industry (although he appears to be one of its greatest customers!)
For
my last attempt at creating a copy of this work, I decided to do
something a little different from the paint and pens used before, and
instead went back to my original feeling that I was looking at a
stained glass window. This feeling had been quite strong when I sat
in the gallery on my own for quite long periods, contemplating the
work in silence. So this time, I used a collection of old magazines
and started to tear up bits of paper, some of colours and some of
specific photos. As I read more about Ackermann at home, and watched
an interview where he talked about what motivates him in art, I
realised that the painting I had chosen to copy was unusual compared
to the others that form 9x9x9 because it doesn't incorporate any
photography or phot0-montage. Ackermann often combines drawing,
photography and painting all in his works, in a way that does not
imply the classical hierarchy of painting being at the top and the
others being a lesser art form. So for this last attempt, I wanted to
combine images and shapes of torn paper and pure printed colour just
to see what I could come up with. It has inspired me to try this when
I do my next (painting) course! And here it is:-
Some
areas I have filled in with felt-tipped pen, but most is from paper
torn or cut to shape and size, and some pictures have been drawn
over. I have included several EYES and shapes of eyes because this,
in the end, is what I took most from the exercise in general and the
painting in particular. I found it enormously helpful to take a lot
more time than usual to take in more aspects of the work and let them
“sink in” before moving to the next work in the gallery. I
suppose what I'm saying is that my first response to a work is
usually an emotional one, and that I should get beyond that to an
intellectual response before really appreciating a work. (I wonder if
that is true of me in real life? Do I respond first in an emotional
way to new things? - probably, as the fear/flight response is the
first to kick in!) Ackermann is telling us about what he sees, and
inviting us all to LOOK, LOOK, LOOK at what we are doing and what is
out there,
References:
Video:
web-sites:
www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/franz_ackermann_9x9x9_2014/
http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/franz_ackermann/
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