Talk to Me (with words?)

SMSlinghot, 2009

Graffiti Taxonomy

I recently paid a visit to MOMA’s current exhibition, Talk To Me: Design and Communication between People and Objects, which is a showing of new (and wacky) object design. This exhibit will prove to you that your personal possessions are not only boring, but also even more lifeless than you may have previously thought.

Several of the artists imbue life in their objects with words, where sometimes the objects speak for themselves (a talking chair, for instance) and where other times the objects give voice to us.

There were two pieces in particular where words were such a force that they themselves became the “objects.” SMSlingshot, a collaborative piece among four German artists, is a wooden slingshot that shoots giant laser beam messages onto buildings. The user types a message into its keypad and then slingshots his/her message into a neon splash on the wall.

The SMSlingshot piece harkens to Evan Roth’s Laser Beam project, where users used a giant laser pen and could draw and write directly onto buildings on an overwhelming scale. Roth, the co-founder of Graffiti Research Lab, is also exhibited at the MOMA. The piece, Graffiti Taxonomy New York/Paris, re-creates the variations on the letter “S” used in graffiti in New York and Paris. The variations are so vast and drastic that the letter itself becomes an object that has been appropriated and altered according to each personality.

Both pieces give voice to graffiti. SMSlingshot is a triumph in graffiti in that it allows people to get away with drawing on walls, because it isn’t permanent. Its main goal, however, is to empower people by giving them the chance to splatter a personal statement onto the public landscape. Graffiti Taxonomy looks at another aspect of graffiti – the art and personal trace of the human.

A lot of social-oriented graffiti (which is what these MOMA artists support) takes after the belief of the British graffiti king, Banksy, that graffiti isn’t about the author, but about the statement s/he makes. However, both SMSlingshot and Graffiti Taxonomy speak to the contradiction that though graffiti uses an authorless language, the presence of the author – and the constraints s/he had to break through – is what gives this language meaning.

In fact, Evan Roth and his team go to great measures to acknowledge and support the artists behind graffiti. In The EyeWriter project, software allows artists who are paralyzed to draw with their eyes. It no longer matters if the graffiti gets out there on the walls. Graffiti is important to them as artists, and they draw on screens from their homes.

The way we think of graffiti is a relatively modern concept, which came about with the birth of spray cans and largely started off as subway art. But graffiti, as an idea, and not necessarily a movement, has existed for millennia.

The artwork on the walls of the Chauvet caves comes to mind after having just recently watched Werner Herzdog’s documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. There we are revealed an astonishing series of drawings of mostly animals. But I would like to bring our attention to a wall covered in reddish handprints. According to one of the archaeologists on the case, one can tell by the prints that the artist’s hand had a crooked pinky. Because of this quirky detail, we can identify the artist throughout the caves, where one finds more of his handprints. Though it is impossible to know the intentions behind these prints, it is nonetheless evidence of the desire to leave the trace of the self in a landscape.

Another instance that comes to mind is in one of the chateaux in the Loire Valley, chateau Chenonceau, where I recently visited while studying abroad in France. On one of the walls of its chapel, one finds graffiti dating to around 1500 (which says something or other about God in old English). The graffiti is protected by a layer of glass, suggesting that it has now become a work of value to be preserved. Considering that graffiti is today illegal and is constantly sought out after to be erased, it is interesting that old graffiti is treated differently, almost reverently.

I would argue that the illegal branding on graffiti today has helped to inspire and define it as an art form. Its language is prohibited and restrained, and because of that it often carries a bold sense of purpose, an underlying sentiment of angst. Moreover, the way it interacts with its “canvas” – the environment – is the effect of a rupture: it has to invade the space and call unusual attention to itself in order to be seen (arguably more so than the way a sculpture or painting inhabits a gallery space or museum).

On the one hand, graffiti today isn’t so different from the past – we have displayed over a long stretch of time the desire to create art and express oneself into the environment, into public view. On the other hand, the language of graffiti has evolved with the language of our time. The words themselves have taken on new aesthetics – taking after technology (laser beams) and creating individualized alphabets in an effort to establish oneself in an anonymous artistic field. Graffiti today is a conscious art form, a counter-cultural movement, and in so doing it has created its own alphabet, dictionary and semiotic understanding of words.

To a kiss

There is this large tree outside my window.

Fat, with leaves, it breathes compulsively

Like a beating lung.

The leaves they flap from light to dark,

In the folds in my stomach and the ball of my eye.

The moon is tipped tonight,

A little drunk, a shade too yellow. It appears especially

Distant. My head knocked back, like a fallen thing to the ground,

Too far thrown that I couldn’t possible make it back up.

A petal perhaps, no smaller or thinner or less perfumed.

It seems this tree comes closer; it’ll lean into the window,

Using its leafy hands against the white-chipped-frame

To pull itself in for a small shuffle of leaves,

For a soft blow of wind just close enough to my face

For a kiss.

david hockney: inside his reality

Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures) (1972)

Pearblossom Highway (1986)

Mulholland Drive: the Road to the Studio (1980)

A Lawn Being Sprinkled (1967)

A Bigger Splash (1967)

California Art Collector (1964)

Flight into Italy – Swiss Landscape (1962)

David Hockney has always been a hyperactive artist, exploring the potentials of painting, drawing, and photography. However, within his seemingly ever-changing body of work, persists a desire to capture reality, and not in a necessarily naturalistic manner. Geldzahler has said that “he [Hockney] has become increasingly fascinated by exactly how things look.”[1] Hockney has also claimed, “People who look hardest in the end will be good artists.”[2] I will discuss a few of the many ways in which Hockey has manifested this desire, with a particular emphasis on his paintings. Firstly, in a significant portion of his work, there is a tendency to extract and dissect as much visual information as he can from an image or scene. As has been noted by Clothier and acknowledged by Hockney himself, there is in his work a prevalent cubist approach to break up single images into multi-faceted ones. It is also important to observe that much of his work centers on human experiences. Hockney, in his frequent multi-perspective approach, presents challenging interpretations of reality; at the same time, the approachable subject matter and his clever use of space are user-friendly, inviting the viewer into the picture plane, inspiring them to look at reality from a fresh outlook.

Hockney has frequently criticized photography, claiming that “it’s a view that’s too mechanical, too devoid of life.”[3] Indeed, Hockney’s intention is to convey a sense of life in movement. He wants us to be in the picture, to feel around and inside the space of his work. In order to do so, there can be no firm edges or single perspectives. We do not live in narrow, boxed-up planes; we always have space to move in and are constantly observing the world from various angles. This is why Hockney claims to “break” or “alter” the edges of the picture plane and tends to employ multiple perspectives within a single image.[4]

These qualities are prevalent in one of his earlier paintings, from 1962, Flight into Italy – Swiss Landscape. It conveys a strong sense of movement that prevents the scene from becoming contained or restrained by edges. Streaks of pale blue brush past the bodies, suggesting speed while stretching off their skin in the process. Our eye imagines a continuation to this journey, a destination beyond the edges of the plane. The colorful waves that make up the mountains are cut off mid-wave, lending the illusion of a continuous flow. The word ‘Paris’ with an arrow pointing outside to the left of the picture plane likewise signals that there is a path and a place that has already been left. The unusual use of perspective also expands the spectator’s viewpoint. The people depicted are at once outside and inside the car: their bodies are not fully covered by the car’s exterior. However, one of the figures handles a wheel that by contrast is clearly inside the car. The figure in the back also desperately grabs the figure in front of him, as if he was about to fly off - but are they not inside the car? This ambiguity of location in space continues with the rendering of the house and trees. Though both are placed in close proximity to the human figures on the picture plane, their scales are completely nonsensical: the house is practically the same size as the human figures. Perhaps Hockney wants to indicate that the house is far from the figures; but, at the same time, the shadows that wrap around the house in a ghostly manner are the same transparent blacks and reds that cover the car. The foreground and background at once separate and merge. Finally, we observe the house from a bird’s eye perspective, while we see the human figures and the car from the side. We are not confined to one view. Indeed, our perception expands the harder we look. The process of looking at this painting is like looking at something in real life: what we see changes from one moment to the next.

This close dialogue with reality is made further possible by the large scale of the works, which allows us to scan and relate to the images on a near-human scale, to enter and become part of it. The scale also requires us to spend time scanning the image and to sense the passage of time within the depicted moment. Hockney claims that the perception of time prevents a work from becoming static and lifeless. To him, time is always present in a painting “because a hand moving across it means time is involved.”[5] Thus the act of painting mimics a moment in real life: it is built in physical stages. There are various ways to feel time within his work: the appreciation that each image within one plane was born at a different moment in time; the presence of movement; and finally, the connection of the depicted moment to life itself. Hockney has claimed that his work is autobiographical, that all of his images were extracted from human experiences.[6] Thereby, the images themselves have once existed in a specific moment in time.

On the other hand, quite often in his paintings, as in his Los Angeles series, life is completely still. However, their very stillness makes us look at them even harder, as they create their own reality. Just as in Flight into Italy – Swiss Landscape, where Hockney aimed to value motion and perspective, in several of his still images he places every object with equal importance on a frozen plane. Hockney offers alternative ways of seeing, playing with perpetual and simultaneous motion and utter stillness.

In California Art Collector, one imagines that Hockney was at first looking at a larger scene, then selected certain elements from it and compressed them all into an apparently still new plane. The female figure seems to be under an awning outdoors; however, she sits on a living room chair that is placed on carpeting. Is she outside, or are we looking into an interior? A rainbow invades this space as a supportive architectural element. There is likewise a white form on the back wall that resembles a small cloud. This overlapping of scenes engenders a sense of displacement and simultaneity, and thus a degree of movement. Indeed, to Hockney, what lends the most movement and life to a picture is not necessarily what the subject is doing, but rather how the shapes and objects interact with the space. In his book The Way I See It, Hockney claims he does not like to excessively use horizontal shapes in his work for it engenders too much visual stillness (52). California Art Collector and other works from the same period (the early sixties) may appear entirely still at first glance, but they are not altogether static. They possess those essential elements previously discussed – large scale, a lack of confining edges, odd perspectives, and a profusion of shapes – all of which prevent the images from becoming entirely tight and frozen, giving them room to breathe.

The subject matter likewise grounds the work in reality since it consistently stresses the human experience. Even in those scenes with no human figures, the human presence is often implied through the setting or the work’s title. In A Bigger Splash, the solitary chair, the pool board, and the splash point to the event that a person has just jumped into the pool. In A Lawn Being Sprinkled, somebody obviously turned the sprinkler on; it is a domestic task, emphasized by the depiction of a house in the background. Even in some of his landscapes, such as Mulholland Drive: the Road to the Studio, not only does the title refer to a destination, Hockney’s own ‘studio,’ but also the mountains themselves are punctured with roads and structures. In some areas of the painting there even appears to be some ambiguity as to what is a structure and what is nature: in the bottom left there is a level plane that resembles a flattened house with windows. Thus, Hockney’s work is about interactions among people or about their interaction with the environment.

Importantly, the human perspective itself is a central theme. In Hockney’s photomontages, as spectators we are led to question and merge three ways of seeing: what we see through our own eyes, the photographic perspective, and Hockney’s unusual composition. In Pearblossom Highway, Hockney has expanded the perception of the highway by breaking the image up into squares that are in turn rotated, zoomed and overlapped. He thus breaks the flatness and one-point perspective of photography by creating a new reality that is much closer to the actual perception of the human eye – we are at once hovering from one place to another and absorbing the whole. As Clothier puts it, Hockney’s photomontages are “a truer layering of space and time.”

In Hockney’s works we are not merely spectators. We always interact with them, even when we feel, as Melia has stressed, like “voyeurs,” such as in his paintings of nude boys emerging from the pool, or in Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), where one of the figures is immersed under water while the other stares with downcast eyes in an absorbed manner. Thus the figures instigate reactions from us as if we were situated in a real scene. Hockney has said, “we do not look at the world from a distance, we are in it.”[7] By pushing the limits of perspective and including us in his multiple points of view, Hockney ensures that, as spectators, we are there, in his images.

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[1] Hockney, David. Hockney by Hockney (p.9)

[2] Hockney, David. Hockney by Hockney (p.130)

[3] Clothier, Peter. Hockney (p.130)

[4] Hockney, David. That’s the Way I see It (p.103)

[5] Hockney, David. That’s the Way I see It (p.104)

[6] Hockeny, David. Hockney by Hockney (p.9)

[7] Hockney, David That’s the Way I See It (p.102)

Hirst Pulls a Trigger

Damien Hirst’s diamond-covered skull, For the Love of God, is at once grotesque and beautiful, superficial and meaningful. However, before elaborating on these curious contradictions, it is paramount to stress Hirst’s ultimate goal with this piece; as he puts it, “I want people to see it and be astounded. I want them to gasp.” He relishes in the shock factor and aims to make a scene. Importantly, what astounds most of the viewers is the preposterous sum of money involved in the making and selling of the skull. The monetary aspect of the work becomes its main “raison d’être”. Thus, any meaningful interpretation of the piece is obscured amidst the commercial commotion, insinuating that the artwork itself is, lamentably, less impressive than its cost.

One could contend that the commercial aspect is significant and should rightly be the chief interest of the piece. It does, after all, explicitly illustrate the capitalist age we live in. Hirst spent an overwhelming sum on something seemingly trivial, as many others do in private. Only he did it boldly, shamelessly, and loudly. The audience’s response, in itself, reveals a consumerist society. We look at a skull, covered in 8,601 diamonds, and what primarily resonates is the cost. Although the skull functions primarily as a symbol and embracement of the capitalist art market, it possesses mocking- though not necessarily condemning- undertones towards consumerist society.

For the Love of God engages with superficial notions of beauty and their ironic relationship to death. To paraphrase a quote, before the making of the skull, in I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now, Hirst criticizes humans for excessively caring about their complexions since they are ultimately destined to decompose into skulls. This futile preoccupation with appearance can readily be applied to his piece. The symbol of our death stares straight at us, yet due to the striking diamonds that adorn it, the violent image of death is instantly appeased. The diamonds function as a mask, a farce that embodies the shallowness that Hirst cites earlier- we stride through life embellishing ourselves only to reach our doom. Indeed, as one observes the skull and its unsettling smile, the diamonds shine in all their glory; they deepen into the crevices of the skull’s sockets as if in two eternal chambers, mocking our death, for we will perish, those polished teeth will eventually rot, and the diamonds will live forever.

However, it is important to note that skulls have become an icon in the fashion world and that diamonds are prominent symbols of conspicuous consumerism. Although Hirst claims that he was inspired by Aztec skulls, he evidently borrowed two popular items from mass culture that in turn make the criticism detailed above uphold little effect upon the viewers. Considering that the skull image has been obsessively used in contemporary fashion, we have accordingly become indifferent to its inherent pathos.

For the Love of God manipulates the skull with diamonds like a fashion item, so that it appears more as a commodity and less as an actual human remnant. Ironically, for someone so invested in the theme of death, Hirst employs the one symbol that no longer strikes his audiences with the idea of death. In some of Hirst’s other works he conveys the subject of death more effectively. In the past he has explained, “you have to find that universal trigger. Everyone’s scared of glass, everyone’s scared of sharks. Everyone loves butterflies.”[1] If the skull is to function as a “universal trigger,” it triggers the face of consumerism. But maybe that was his intention, after all.

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[1] Hirst, Damien. I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone, One to One, Always, Forever, Now

watercolors

I've been doing watercolors based on photographs that I've taken of friends and of myself. This is one I did while still living in Paris.

In August

It's the not-seeing through hot eyes.
It's an August large cloud that dries bitter-white,
Heavily, in the cheeks.

If I look only to the sky
I can clear my sight along with it.

My dark woozy shadow scuttles beneath the skin

And splits, thick, from my sugary throat
(The warmth, the silk, and ice-cream)

And lays still, holding onto swollen ankles.

Off I say, off. I enjoy being unforgiving

Because I’m hungry for something

Other.

I'm all slippery skin, ballooning eyes,
Murmuring mmmm yellow.

I turn to blank to white. A skeleton

Presses up against me, bony and hard,

Questioning me for what I have done.

It’s the spatter of rain, the old sick

Man outside. It’s the heat

That snakes into me and murmurs