7/14/2006

Clare Woods

48 comments:

Painter said...

Lives and works in London

dubz said...

cute, nonthreatening, endless possibilities for different compositions by pilfering the photo supply. ick ick ick.

zipthwung said...

scab,
Im the tansey booster. Tansey and HR Giger are two great artists, I'm sure you agree.
They both use source material - I think they both use photographs. I know from experience that there is more "resolution" or "detail" in a life subject than in a reproduction, even if its just some chemically induced state of awareness or some good music or something. Thats why I like Frazetta, who painted his wife from life with a butter knife.

zipthwung said...

What if everybody painted a compost heap.

This painting is a nice sly nod to Tim Buton, via superflat, I'm sure you will agree.

dubz said...

at least have the talent to fake discovery. there were a bunch of girlie YBA's who did this stuff in the late 90s... goldsmith's girls... then it caught on in LA (still going)... just feels like a means to an end and never had any emotional chops... plotted and planned and executed and pictorial and going off the edges. just like this, over and over until you have nightmares about clicking and filling your whole world with a little paint bucket.

dubz said...

i thought it was ingrid calame attacking a particularly complex sidewalk stain, assisted by matthew ritchie while wearing an urban outfitters urban renewal trompe l'oeil printed tee.

zipthwung said...

someone can trace the web of influences for this but its not going to be me. It is more complex in composition than Elizabeth cooper (6/20/2006) for example but I dont get much more out of it. I like thi s more than Lisa Reuter, but I get more out of Benjamin Edwards.

Actually I think the web of influence is the most interesting thing to me - how did this artist arrive at this point - and Im pretty sure it had something to do with Autotrace and fill (as stated above), web (Flashh) design and so on and so forth.

this is cool vector art.

It points towards the idea that even though, or because something is easy, it has resonance.

Is it better to make an easy good painting or a hard bad painting? Does it depend on context?

I dont know if Clare thinks this was hard to make or not, it just looks easy, in a way that Marylyn Minter's do, too.

Except Minter is more "conceptual" right? Where Claire is more "air conditioning"

Is that true?

Well do you care?

dubz said...

i care.
graham parks is pretty good.

zipthwung said...

this is bullshit

you see it everywhere on the web or did, and I dont know the first person to do it, but I hope to know the last.

zipthwung said...

You could argue that these sorts of works are all of the diagramatic school - julie Mehretu

being an example.

You could include "paint by numbers"

or any of the nearly ubiquitous 3d rendered photoshop jobbers:
this is easy to do

poppy said...

those that can think for themselves will
those that can't won't and will do what ever is trendy.. cest la vie
use photos
don't use photos

cha said...

Yes! whatever gets you through the night..........

cha said...

Using photos is like using a better brush, new brand of paint etc......just a means to an end. You're still left with the "end" result!

cha said...

EA...as a tool, the camera just slots into the "materials" list! Why is there an issue around using those images? It just save time.. and time is money!

cha said...

EA...can you elaborate for me... Do you mean how much the photo is the starting point, not the end point?

poppy said...

+i think he means an artist can rely too heavily on photos when doing image based work,.. esp if new to academic type work,
work can suffer... naive perhaps without intention.

cha said...

Poppy I understand in that the photo image can be so powerful that you don't want to lose that original energy.... but just to recreate it would be so unsatisfying...

cha said...

Yes that is a problem..... but some photos are so seductive!

cha said...

I'm using photos of e.g a face that's hard to paint [with fair realism] but changing the context. So a white face becomes brown... Also mixing features of a few people...different environment, etc etc....I'm not totally comfortable with it but I see it as a step on a path.....

Sven said...

just for the record Tansey is one of the worst, tired, moronic jansen 's art history book friendly version of a contemporary pomo painter that I can think of. Zip I keep thinking youre joking with the constant tansey references, you for real?

and Giger is cool in Heavy Metal but on a wall he lacks a whoooole lot

Sven said...

alright Im being bitchy here but cmon with the frazetta shit...how much of a stretch from him to Norman Rockwell?
a lot of those dudes only got 1 trick in the bag..

like, I adore Herge and Winsor Mckay but I dont really think they're great artists.

no-where-man said...

paint bi numbers is more important than people go over.

Sven said...

obviously I see that there are technical differences between frazetta and rockwell, but in the end are they not both simply illustrators? I can have fun looking at frank's work, while looking at norman's makes me suicidal...but after all is said and done I still find frazetta completely unfufilling as art.

Sorry for this argument, its completely tired, but I dont really see anything wrong with someone differentiating between illustration and other art; I see nothing wrong with someone taking pride in simply being an illustrator, and getting their accolades for it. I also feel Zip's comment on the illustration argument previously to be quite intelligent, about it answering questions as opposed to asking them--I see very litlle questions asked within Frazetta's work.

On another topic I thought the Rosa Loy show interesting, with one of the paintings being quite compelling. Interesting in comparison with her husband(?) Neo Rauch..

The Veronese show at the Frick was good as well.

Sven said...

its a shame the final tintin was never finished as it was gonna be a caper involving conceptual art!

poppy said...

cha
what i meant earlier
was learning to draw academically from a photo, without good understanding of drawing from life etc... the tech skills(academic) you will pick up learning from life, would help big time when you move to a photo source..

that was said in circles:)

poppy said...

elipti -the fact that you read so many stupid artist statements by grads - proffesionals..
is this a refelction of the art world or do you think there are just a lot more dummy's kicking around?

cha said...

Poppy..I feel, take from wherever whatever and run with it... but move through it, to your own space. {which is constantly changing?!]
Gerhard Richter...many aspects of expression.

cha said...

Just seen BBC program saying that the U.S art centre has shifted from N.Y to L.A.......

poppy said...

gerhard richters work was very photo conscious - it was all about being photo conscious...
photo derived work that isn't surface consious of its source is fine too- like doig, if it is an issue it is on the back burner.
there is obviously quite alot that can be done with paint that uses photography as a source and never addresses this as an issue.. because it doesn't need to be.


the thing about the dumb artist statements could end up a long discussion - but i'll say i don't think artists are any dumber.. we're just alive/around to witness.

cha said...

yes to that Poppy.

statements: so many would be better not written... the gap would say more.

cha said...

hard to market with no statement, no qualification..... then you just have the product!!! to play the game well.... you must be aware of the rules!

do you look at the image before reading the statement?

jeff said...

if you can't write a good statement, you should learn to. Now that's something they should teach in grad school or god forbid, undergrad, how to write a statement that makes some kind of sense.

I mean you can make your art but no one in the big bad art world will take you seriously, it sucks but you need to be able to write well. If you want to get granst you had better write well.

jeff said...

Well so many are kind of what does this have to do with the work, so I don't read them.

Its a shame but its become this fetish in the art world, the artist statement

cha said...

statements bother me somewhat because without them you have the freedom of a personal interpretation/ adventure .... but with the artists input, that becomes harder. But obviously it's always good to get the depth the statement may reveal. I find it really hard to write one because I love ambiguity!

cha said...

....and with figurative painting.....how much do you need to explain?!

jpegCritic said...

For the painter, photography is now an
ontological fact.

Statements are nothing more than
brand-differentiators in a market driven
surplus economy.

Personal adventure is a fantasy sold to
you by Mastercard, who uses your number
to track your spending potential.

cha said...

wade...being forced to articulate will clarify fuzzy thinking. I can see the validity there. Interviews....nice idea...much easier.

Jpg...like the statements comment!
Personal adventure.... I like the interpretations people come up with when they see work at a show...so very different from each other.
Mastercard....hmmmm! ..must book my trip!

poppy said...

artist statements seem like drivel to me too.. yes if you want free money, grants, figure out how to write some bs..it works

artists need to reclaim the title of artist genious....
Somebody(an artist) should take up the task of inventing a machine that will make artists and general population physically smarter.. this will get us back the title that is rightfully ours and we won't have to write artist statements for 10 or more years.
I actually have somebody working on this assignment for me right now but feel free to get behind the wheel too.

jeff said...

There is nothing wrong with learning to write. I agree with epilepticadam people should learn this in high school.

Funny I was reading an article today in the NY times about a diary that was found from the 1930's writen by a girl who was 14 when she started it.

What struck me and the journalist(Lily Koppel)who wrote the piece is how well she wrote. About art, sex, love, and music.

By the way she went to Hunter and then to Columbia for grad school, and is still alive, is 90 years old.

We just don't vaule writing any more, look at all the negitive feedback to the artist statement. I'm not advocating it, but we all should have enough of a command of language to be able write on of these in our sleep.

no-where-man said...

manifestos are key, "Artist Statements" are a creation of achedima and total bullshit...

what do you think it means that painternyc is posting Artists from out side of NYC and the Whitney Bi is also,

jeff said...

don't know, oh those wordy brits, they command the english language as if they invented it...

zipthwung said...

"alright Im being bitchy here but cmon with the frazetta shit...how much of a stretch from him to Norman Rockwell?"

Well I'm just wondering when Frazetta is going to get his museum show like rockwell...or at least one alongside Boris Valejo and HR Giger...

perhaps as a mirror to their respective classical influences. I think it would be interesting.

Or maybe opposite real world tribal artifacts and images.

zipthwung said...

"alright Im being bitchy here but cmon with the frazetta shit...how much of a stretch from him to Norman Rockwell?"

Well I'm just wondering when Frazetta is going to get his museum show like rockwell...or at least one alongside Boris Valejo and HR Giger...

perhaps as a mirror to their respective classical influences. I think it would be interesting.

Or maybe opposite real world tribal artifacts and images.

no-where-man said...

“The Monkey as Painter” (circa 1740) by Jean-Siméon Chardin.

jeff said...

I never said anything about those guys.
I don't like Frazetta that much, Rockwell at the end of his life wished he had been more of a painter like Picasso.

R. Crumb is great. He's one of the best american and original artist out there.

cha said...

kalm james...having the model to work from is perfect.... but not always possible. Combination of model and photo works okay ...and then to sculpt the figure you're painting [for even better understanding!]......
So it's back to the tools, money to pay models? time....

GmR said...

Rockwell is too complex to use for any illustration vs fine art argument a la photography. You can find much weaker and simpler illustrators to justify the difference between the two.

For me it's a question of content more than technique. If technical components matter most in the illustration vs. fine art argument, all conceptual art becomes mere illustration since it is simply the outcome of an idea. But, if it becomes a question of content than the discussion becomes more difficult and challenging.

Just look at his work. Don't you get a sense of the times in it (which can't be said of most of the art being made in our ahistorical period). Like conceptual art today, you have to have some information to get the meanings and they are not all cheerful and bland.

Many art historians have given him a false place, especially today. They identity him with all the things they hate about America....small towns, physical labor, family life, sense of life's purpose and a rooted belief in God (all this is supposedly kitsch). Plus throw in the progressive formalist art history that almost every museum and gallery of modern and contemporary art uses to frame art today and you have Rockwell adrift, with little positive critical value.

So, if technique is what determines whether something is illustration, than most art is illustration. But if history and content matter than the use of photos becomes another tool to create meaning.

cha said...

Dino....yes with the content being so important! aspects of technique add to the content, n'est pas?

I think so much of what I see around [and what makes the sales] is made to fit in with interior decor.