The Media of Art
- Simon Maguire (guest writer)
- Nov 28, 2017
- 6 min read
Introduction- Jo Barrett (Artist and Co Founder of Urban Fraggle Art)
Throughout our lives we meet people. Those people serve us in some way. Some teach us, some hurt us and let us down, but there is always a lesson to be learned from the meeting, even if we do not understand that lesson at that given time. Simon has been a huge supporter of my work since we met and he first saw what I did.
What I did not know at the time of meeting him, was the depth of meaning he saw in my art. Even I didn't understand it.. I just created, wistfully drawing upon what suited the mood I was in. But a lot of what we create and who we are comes from our collective subconscious.. and I'm now starting to understand my own work better. They are not just pretty pictures, they have meaning. You will find non of my work depicts horses in pain or being ridden, all depict freedom, spirit, nature, and so the story tells of that.
I yearn for freedom myself, and being a deep thinker I am often trapped in my own thoughts of struggle, loneliness and the mix of being an introverted extrovert, and the internal fight to want to be happy and live in the now, opposed to sadness that becomes me because of the selfish restricted world we live in, which I see daily..
Simon's knowledge and understanding of both philosophy and art are two factors which are combined wonderfully towards his love of my work. What Simon has also helped with, and my internal battle of how my work is created, is to embrace digital and print media as a beautiful and accepted art form- here he explains his own thoughts on the matter.
The Media of Art
In my time I have been lucky enough to see and experience a lot of art, having walked galleries and exhibitions on four continents. I have also watched more documentaries on art than I could possibly count. What has struck me in that time is the variety of media that is used for art. The oldest known art is attributed to an early human from the Blombos Cave on the southern cape coast of South Africa. This art is a delicate geometric pattern marked on a piece of ochre, subsequently, art has been expressed on shells, cave walls, papyrus, wood, stone, glass, marble and virtually every conceivable material that can retain an indelible marking of any kind.
With this historical background to human art in mind, it seems surprising that there is some considerable snobbery in the art world concerning the materials used to support art and the means by which it is expressed. We almost seem to be in a position where oil or water colour on canvas or wood is the only acceptable expression of pictorial art. As Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ recently sold for $450,000,000, the highest value ever paid for a painting in history, it may be tempting to think that this trend of ‘traditionalism’ is set to continue. However, if we stay with Leonardo for a moment, it is probably true that his ‘Mona Lisa’ is the most famous painting in the world followed closely by his ‘Last Supper’. When it comes to media for art, the ‘Last Supper’ is a particularly interesting case in point. By convention, a painting on a wall of this type and size should have been a fresco [‘a painting done rapidly in watercolour on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling, so that the colours penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries’]. Leonardo chose to break all the rules and allowed his plastered wall to dry before working on it, thus allowing modifications and perfections to be incorporated as he went along. Using a methodology from panel painting, he added an undercoat of white lead to enhance the brightness of the oil and tempers that were applied on top. Critics may say that the mere ghostly remains of the image are reason enough not to venture away from traditional media when creating art, but I hardly think that Leonardo should take responsibility for the monks’ steaming kitchen and leaky roof! What was created at the time was the most striking visual art ever executed and its unconventional media was part and parcel of that.
Possibly one of the most archetypal images in the collective psyche is William Blake’s ‘Ancient of Days’ [generally, but erroneously, considered to be God with a long beard and compasses]. This image is far from conventional in either its execution or its medium being a relief etching. A relief etching is basically the process of placing work on a copper plate with pens and brushes using an acid-resistant medium. Copper engraving and relief etching were seen as ‘lowly’ art-forms at the time but surely the timeless nature of this illustration suggests that they were otherwise.
As I mentioned above, I have had the good fortune to visit galleries and experience art in many countries including Japan. The influence that Japanese art has had on the West can hardly be over-estimated, particularly in Impressionism. Perhaps the most famous image in the whole of Japanese art is the ‘Great Wave of Kanagawa’ by Katsushika Hokusai, a wood block print of exquisite beauty. The interesting thing about the wood block print of course is that the ‘art’ itself is the woodblock from which the images are created so the actual artistic expression is never displayed on the wall and in due course literally wears out after many images are created from it –the most crisp images, created immediately after the wood block has been produced, are the most sought after and expensive but there is no concept of an ‘original’. This movement in Japan never really died and in the twentieth century a new generation of artists re-established it in the guise of ‘Shin Hanga’, literally ‘new prints’ but essentially a new series of artworks following the traditional style and technique, perhaps the greatest artists of this genre are Yoshida Hiroshi and Nomura Yoshimitsu whose work hangs in national galleries throughout the world.
With this range of media in mind, it perhaps would seem entirely natural and acceptable that in a technological age artists would be ‘allowed’ and indeed encouraged to express their creativity via modern technology tools. But, there seems to be an amazing reluctance for this. Perhaps one of the key exceptions is David Hockney. Hockney worked with etching for a prolonged period of time and then his work in the print medium expanded to include lithography, photocopies, fax art, paper pulp pictures and most recently printed iPad drawings. Despite Hockney’s fame and acceptance in the highest echelons of the art world, his prints are still the least appreciated aspect of his work. Thankfully, there seems to be something of a change of attitude in this regard and interestingly it is the Japanese market where interest is keenest. As a point of fact, the most expensive prints to be sold have been the large colourful Los Angeles lithographs of the 1080s, one of which sold for $275,000. Although the Japanese economic boom that facilitated this went bust, recent interest has returned and levels of investment are recovering.
Perhaps the most promising artist in recent times, to adopt this heritage of ‘non-conventional media’, if we need to describe it as such, is Joanne Barrett of Urban Fraggle Art.
Barrett, like Hockney, has used computer based tools to create a series of absolutely exquisite images. Her influence has tended to be equine and she quite uniquely expresses a sense of spirituality in her work which shows an amazing range of mind. I have written previously about this artist and interested readers are advised to see my review ‘I am Gracious, we are Gracious, We are Horse and the Andalusian Family – An Exploration of Ultimacy’ that is available on the Urban Fraggle web-site. The point to be made for now is that for this artist to be fully appreciated, as she surely should be, there is a need for attitudes towards modern technology tools to be more enlightened. Thankfully, the more open-minded approach of print dealers such as Lyndsey Ingram in the UK and dealers more generally in the Japanese market show that there has been quite a thawing of ice-age attitudes in this regard and long may it continue.
SJM
Comments