Unit 2
- Continuing research on City corners
As I finished Unit 1, I narrowed my upcoming research motif to abstract portraits and screen-printed paintings. I decided to explore different materials that could be used to stimulate the connection between psychological portraits and entities in real life and tried to discover different tones to enrich the core concept of the paintings.
Are we not ourselves distinct entities, just like other objects such as buildings? There were some ideas that I wanted to put forward based on the outcomes from Unit 1, specifically in how to combine Modernism from second industrial revolution with contemporary society, how to utilize specific materials and processes such as the laser cut and expanding foam to present the sense of alienation felt under a society with an increasingly short attention span, and how to the connect the human with non-human, the animate with the inanimate object. What authentically interested me was the labor community that I noticed when I was engaging in my life in Beijing. They were usually finishing work at midnight and the disappointment and desperation could be clearly seen in their sweat covered faces. Therefore, I started to use the figural portrait to describe the social phenomenon of oppression and alienation and the psychological impact of life in the city for many of its residents
Before starting the Unit 2, I hadn’t completely considered the main materials that I would use nor the form of presenting the work, whether the structure of the work could be integrated with the feelings I was trying to describe and the integration of the body and emotions into the urban needed further discussion. Fortunately, I have glanced over the idea that I mentioned above and it is a worldwide phenomenon, and it gave me the inspiration to utilize my practice to explore this subject further.
By determining the central concept and form of the pattern of manifestation, I explored work by other artists that concentrate on the psychological portrait, such as Francis Bacon, Otto Dix and Maria Lassnig, using the head as a motif to display multiple personalities and depressed emotions. I also looked at Frank Stella and Mateo Lopez’s use of more abstract forms and their use of wooden bars and curved shapes, made with the help of laser cutters. Speaking of objects like buildings, George Shaw, Jock McFadyen and Richard Diebenkorn have also brought inspiration for my later work. The utilization of the charcoal and brush stroke drove me to aim for the depiction of a detailed and idealized urban landscape.
The artwork below of Unit 1 were mainly made with acrylics on paper and the specific content and material echo the ideas that I mentioned before. Also this is the initial idea for Unit 2.
The images above present the outcomes of my initial Unit 2 practice, acrylic paintings under the idea of naturalistic face to reflect the Urban depression
The original ideas came up to mind when I started to utilize the human head as an ever-present motif and decided that the face would be the best way to reflect human emotions. When it comes to the psychological problems caused by social pressures and uncontrollable adversity, people will express their complicated emotions, such as feelings of desperation or cheerfullness, and the peculiarity of multiple personalities will naturally be revealed. However, as for me, this pattern of manifestation merely expressed emotions without any underlying analysis of feeling and more detailed environmental reflection. Therefore, I thought I need to explore deeply and figure out an advanced pattern that could preferably connect the character’s feelings and social entities or objects. Based on that, I decided to bravely adopt a more abstract form, particularly by adding elements and content using oil and acrylic on canvas.
Francis Bacon has a profound effect of my researches, I started to appreciate his painting style and major techniques, including procedure and the use of colors, especially in his portraits. I went to visit his art exhibition “Man and Beast ”earlier this year in Royal Academy of Arts, what have impressed me was his integration of the philosophy and twisty images. The fragment of human face and twisty expression could be seen as the reflection of the alienation in human life, Bacon used powerful and brutal painting to make emotion visualized.
Francis Bacon, TRIPTYCH: THREE STUDIES FOR SELF-PORTRAIT, oil on canvas, 1976
As for Bacon's painting technique, work Triptich: Three Studies For Self-portrait, his brushstrokes https://francis-bacon.com/life/biography/1970s/triptych-three-studies-self-portrait-76-07 fascinated me, and the large, jagged brushstrokes made the whole painting much more readable. It's hard for the audience to take their eyes off him. Also, he used frenetic brushstrokes contrasting with the more sedately executed background areas, which are added and adapted as the image as a whole progresses (Ades and Forge, 1985). The working process seems not fast and furious, but his work with rapid completion has always been the praised.
1. Fragmentised face with bright head and dark eyes shows people filled with shady social view has lack reliance of the reality
2. The face with gridlines reflects the life in the jail
I have also found similar problems in the creation of my works. More in-depth depiction often seems more powerful than the passionate, casual and sentimental works. Although the work with green background has only a few simple strokes, I think it has a higher degree of completion. In addition, the work with a broken mask does not seem to have been completed, and the more I depict it, the more I am at a loss. The same thing happened to several works in the first semester. What I am most satisfied with is that it often takes the least time.
After detailing the bond with Francis Bacon, One of the most impressive works that inspired my practice is the Wounded Veteran (1922) by Otto Dix. The image below was drawing on gory images of real human facial wounds, the painting distills a drawing of a man badly wounded in World War I. It depicts, the with delicacy and skill, the left-hand of a man's face in pencil, and a delicate use of watercolor to show the horrific wound on his right side of face. The shirt is painted with the same delicate watercolor that describes the wound Lady with brain by Maria Lassnig also provided me with painting forms and techniques that I could use for my improvement.
Otto Dix, Wounded Veteran, 1922
Maria Lassnig. Lady with Brain, c1990
The method that Otto Dix used improved my accomplishment of the advance art work, specifically the paintings that I would mention below. According to Miller (1987), the major painting skills of Otto Dix technique is “wet into wet” and the layering or glaze. The difference between these two methods was the thickness and thin of the oil painting on onefold and multiple layers, the former saves more time for me and the latter increase the color plumpness and brightness. I used them both on my later works. At the same time, Maria Lassnig helps me deal with the creation of my painting structure and the choice of my pattern of manifestation. Wages(2016) mentioned that the creation of fragment and magnified borderless grotesque view of body utterly provided both aesthetics pleasing and uncomfortable reality. Therefore, it inspired my original thoughts towards the structure of my work, I chose head as the motif to enrich the emotional expression. And this abstract painting form presented the complicated nature of body, and external and internal connotation of the gesture (Wages, 2016). On a deep level, this kind of abstract and gory pattern of manifestation, which we could see from the work of Otto Dix and Maria Lassnig, is the emotional release of the art (Sargent, 2012). It helps identifying the future of contemporary, which means that the brutal reality and the uncertain future could be reflected with the reveal of the emotional response (Barry, 2010). Accordingly, this kind of oil painting on canvas could be presented by our own fleshy body, we use our own experience and emotion to express the extensive social problems and relentless reality by using organic forms (Arya,2017).
In this regard, apart from the basic human head presentation, I also explored and practiced the advanced form of abstraction to connect the body’s feelings and emotions with external social problems.
Adrian Ghenie, Self Portrait in 1945, 2015, oil on canvas
Adrian Ghenie, Self-Portrait, 2017, Oil on canvas
The portraits of Adrian Ghenie is actually the representative artists of combination of fragment face and themselves, his techniques and artifice of representation indeed use the rotation of color and the complicated configuration to deliver the feelings of contradiction and the discomforting information, the loneliness and the painfulness could be clearly seen behind his energetic and expressive style. Taking Self Portrait in 1945 Self-Portrait in 1945 by Adrian Ghenie on artnet, the face of the subject was composed of luxuriant strokes, in which Adrian painted a thick impasto, and then scraped it off. Under the flat background of ochre and moss green, the Alabaster and pink layers are distorted and scraped into electrical harmony, forming the face in the composition foreground and illuminating the whole painting. In his later Self-Portrait in 2017 Self-Portrait by Adrian Ghenie at Galeria Plan B (ocula.com), he used the cool tone with a little gloss to form a sharp contrast with the warm tone representing light and heat, and abstractly and naturally expressed his complex and chaotic life. The combination of realism and abstract expression played a vital role in my research on face in self-portrait.
Justin Mortimer, Djinn I, 2015, Oil on canvas
The work of Justin Mortimer, Djinn I, also brought me inspiration to iconically express the feeling between human and object. His works take the landscape of the end of the world as the background, and use the fuzzy historical images made by digital collages to express the characters' emotions incisively and vividly. In my opinion, different from other painters, his works express emotions and characters' faces more directly with more single and detailed colors.
Philip Akkerman, Self-portrait 2014 no.8,Oil
After creating a series of abstract self-portraits, I thought that the theme I was eager to express through images was the depression of the entire population living in the city, and whether a single head portrait can fully express the feelings of all urban people is questionable. I considered the series of paintings by Philip akkerman, a famous Dutch artists, was worth learning from. Each of his paintings represents life in casual days, and the whole series contains different feelings and expressions in different scenes, which may be of great help to me in the diversity of urban life. At the same time, his self-portraits, such as Self-Portrait 2014Philip Akkerman - Self-portrait 2014 no.8, are more vivid and not abstract, endowing people emotion. The corners and facial features of the head are more distinct, and the changes of human mood in a day are shown through the cool and warm colors of creatures.
The advanced and abstract painting techniques that I was exploring after denying the previous basic form.
The multiple personality in social life has been presented by using dark and light tones.
“The uniqueness of Mankind”, oil on canvas.
Surprisingly, I figured out the way that I could use abstract figural portraits to explore the depth of emotions and its content also endowed the character with an intriguing background that the audience could unpack with boundless imagination. At the same time, taking the second images above as an example, the distinct chromatic aberration gives the character more comparative perception, the brighter part of the head represents visceral happiness in spite of prevailing social stress, yet he dark round one displays the illusory face when people encounter greed and temptation.
Human emotions take very many forms. I decided to explore whether the human face has a connection with the biomorphic shapes and pursue a form of fragmentation, analysis and recombination so that the combined fragments could be presented through separated pictures. Reviewing the core concept of my artworks, “Urban Depression”, the combination of the biomorphic shapes and geometric figures indeed reveal the connection between people and the dark side of society with the help of cubist forms. It suggests that multiple human emotions constantly alter in the face of the cold and dark environment of the city and explores whether people living in the city are able to be represented by the built environment, whether the emotions of the people could be replaced by the buildings or other entities. Therefore, I started to explore the use of cubism in the work of other artists.
Mateo López, The waste of my time, Composition #14, 2020
Frank Stella, Kastura ,1979
Here are the two works from Frank Stalla and Mateo Lopez, which give me inspiration to utilize a broad range of materials such as wooden bars and aluminum and to perfectly match with the core object of my work. What I have obtained from Mateo Lopez was his initial thoughts of using waste materials in his office. The work in the series was made in the artist's New York studio before lockdown, using cardboard, acrylic paint and plastic grommets. This idea was really inspirational to me and I immediately went searching in the streets of Peckham to find waste materials that I could use for my studies.
I was extremely inspired by Alfred H. Barr when I read his book Cubism and Abstract art, and I started to figure out how to utilize the cubism in art to express the modernism phenomenon in our society. According to Barr (2019), we don't describe the appearance of objective objects, but introduce objective objects into painting, so as to integrate the performance of concrete objects themselves with the performance of abstract structural forms. Vargish & Mook (1999) mentioned that cubism supports us to define the value and status quo of Modernism by using fragments and different social elements, including cheerfulness and hatred. Along with the thoughts mentioned above, I considered this integration could enrich the description of the complicated social situation, the intricate line and scattered images represent the chaos and alienation under the rising of capitalism and economic development today. And Platt (1988) also noted that people could use particular organ to understand the world, using subjective understanding to influence the nature and painting should use its own language to control and guide the audience. After tangling for a while, I finally decided to use laser cut method to create complicated elements and use cubism to describe the sense of alienation and chaotic social order.
The painting that made by aluminum laser cut fulfill the pursuit of diversity and richness of content.
After exploring the art work of Mateo Lopez and Frank Stella, I started to make pure handmade wooden bars to intensely combine elements of buildings with human emotions. People from urban areas, living and working in modern and fancy tall buildings everyday with pressure from a complicated society, are unlikely to reveal their real emotions or hardly be happy when they have to encounter unexpected social situations. Therefore, the use of wood could create an opportunity for the geometric figure to integrate with the biomorphic shapes, which represent the desperation that some people feel living in urban areas. Apart from that, in order to have a better reflection upon urban life nowadays, I used aluminum instead of wood to suggest more advanced buildings, and instantly highlighted the opposite perception of people living in a high-class buildings. It is worth mentioning that I also discovered a new material - expanding foam - to present an abstract image of biomorphic shape and the social entities.
Until now, I have spent most of the words on the works of the figural portraits and their “emotional descriptions”. And I realized that I need to focus more on the buildings from the urban areas that create negative feelings for people. So I decided to complete the image that I found when I saw the workers from Beijing few years ago. Like I mentioned above, looks of desperation and joylessness were clearly shown on their faces, and I started to think: “Are they part of the city?” or “are they not themselves but the buildings?”. Therefore, I considered to endow the buildings with life and to integrate these workers with the buildings, which matched the points that I mentioned earlier, the connection between the body, feelings and the buildings.
Richard Diebenkorn, Untitled, Unknown
Richard Diebenkorn, Interior with Doorway, Oil on canvas,1962
The artist that I really respect and learned loads of practical techniques from is Richard Diebenkorn, particularly his words at the beginning of this painting towards the uncertainty (Livingston&Liguori.2016). Looking at some of his works, such as Untitled and interior with Doorway (1962) (Richard Diebenkorn, "Interior with Doorway" (1962) | PAFA - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) I displayed above. Inside the doorway" shows the view of Diebenkorn's studio, where we can see the sunny streets of Berkeley mountain in the distance. Although many of his indoor scenes are a person sitting on a chair, we only see an empty chair here, which makes the sadness of this work more intense. After absorbing the method and style of Richard Diebenkorn, I started to use different materials to depict the buildings with a cold and dark atmosphere. I didn’t endow any of the emotion for my work that used to have in my work, instead the colors and the natural elements of the building spontaneously reflected the content that I want to share. In this regard, I found out that this painting form indeed gives people an intense visual difference, which means people will understand the content of the paintings according to their understanding of the color and the relevant materials that I used.
Jock McFadyen ,Tate Moss, 2010.
Another artist that I explored is Jock McFayden, especially his work “Tate Moss” (2010). (Jock McFadyen RA | Exhibition | Royal Academy of Arts). In this work, he paints a derelict, abandoned factory on the grounds of the future London 2012 Olympics, with broken steel-framed windows and a blue sky visible through the brick shell, and a plastic chair hanging from the upper floor. The spray-painted slogan "Tate Moss" could be a satirical commentary on the intersection of art museums and fashion. What I have noticed is the connotation of this building, which ironically commented on its use. As for my own practice, I used the building to establish a connection with the workers and their emotions, ironically attacking the unfairness in this society that is filled with greed and lust.
What I have explored from Diebenkorn and McFayden was completely different, Diebenkorn advocated that the interaction of heat, light and shadow gives natural memories emotionally. They seem to reconcile between abstraction and image, and the works reconcile between the alternating density and complexity of man-made environment (Burgard, T. A., Nash, S., Nash, Acker, 2013). In other words, the way Diebenkorn proposed much was using external and natural interaction to express the emotion behind the objects and avoid the utilization of pictorial language expression through certain methods and practices. And the way Jock McFayden used was direct and deterministic, his works are full of satire, which is a combination of realism and abstraction (Skipwith, 2012). He uses different graphics to describe different landscapes, which makes people pay more attention to pigments, textures and colors.
Louise Bourgeois. Femme Maison. 1946-1947
French American artist Louise Bourgeois replaces the head and body of a character with architectural form such as buildings and houses, which matches my research aims towards biomorphic shapes and architecture throughout this semester. The series of Femme Maison not only incorporate the issue of women's identity, but also express satire incisively and vividly. She satirizes women's sense of security and unfair treatment in their family and life. Some people also associate her works with feminism. In my opinion, the replacement of human face and body by architecture is more about the reflection of various social problems based on the experience of the characters. This is also inextricably linked with modernism. Whether it is the unfair treatment or the sense of alienation in the society, it is a hidden danger brought about by the rapid development of capitalism and society. This expression is more like a group or class emotion in the whole society than a single person.
The building that I painted to connected the feeling and the entities.
For the creation of this painting, at the beginning I chose to simply spread the colors with different gray color blocks, and then use charcoal for a more simple process. However, due to the blank spaces in the picture, I always felt that this could not become a complete work, so I decided to continue to go deeper and make it more detailed and realistic. During this period, I also tried screen printing and produced a scene from downtown Montreal and focus these works around the "construction site". Black and white is more like the "shadow" of the city. The shadows thrown on to the wall by light through acetate sheets, upon which the prints were made, fascinates me even more. I integrated the abstract portrait into the city, because the color is not different, it seems a little messy. Later, I continued to depict the work in detail, but I became stuck in the middle of making my painting. I liked the previous charcoal and brush approach better and so I will apply these strokes to this painting later on.
The building in urban area
After I was in Beijing, I began to find out the urban depression by seeing loneliness white-colar walking home at late night and labors starting working at 6am in the morning. Therefore, I used the buildings in city centre as the objects to describe the pressure that these people have and tried to express the sadness and helpless behind the beautiful landscape. I utilized the acrylic on canvas and the cold color throughout the whole work, it has subtly connected magnificent and beautiful appearance of the buildings and the people under different sort of pressure working and living inside. In here, I also ironically criticized the impact of the modernism when I recognized the opposition perception regarding the urban life. Apart from that, I also used screen-printed painting (displayed below) to endow the city stereo perception, the scene that I used was the massive landscape of Montreal, the descriptive line and dimensional establishment stood out the prosperous and rapid development of the city. However, the presenting of the dark color integrally overturned the expected scene, and I tried to use color processing reflect the dark side of the urban life.
The urban area of my screen printed painting practice.
In unit 3, I will not only limit my research on depression to people living in cities, but also explore people who seek other lifestyles to replace their existing lives and connect them with their new lives through other objects.
Gustave Courbet. The Wheat Sifters, 1855
For instance, the counter-culture and communist communes that appeared in the United States and France in the middle and late 19th century, just like the people's communes pictured by Gustave Courbet in his paintings The Wheat Sifters. It enabled people to fight for freedom of speech and equality, and support people to exercise autonomy to end the long-term government interference.
Rook, Approaching storm, Oil on linen, 2013
At the same time, Greg Rook's visual feelings and ideology for people who live an alternative life also describe his exploration and desire for life. In Approaching storm, he depicted the commune life and explores the actual and political influence of a group of individuals who tried to survive and eventually rebuilt the society. These people are survivors of social unrest and chaos. Their desire for life and exploration of self-sufficiency may have an important impact on my future series of paintings under the theme of “depression”.
Therefore, by referring the work from Rook and Gustave, I considered to extend my exploration to the new phase when group of people figured out the way to escape from the brutal reality in the contemporary era. I will insist to use the rotated color to explain the emotion behind the scenario of the adaption of the new world, and utilize biomorphic shape and natural objects to portray the counter-culture life.
References：
Ades, D. and Forge, A.(1985). Francis Bacon. London: Thames and Hudson. P232
Akkerman,P. Self-portrait no.8 (2014),Oil
Arya, R. (2017). ‘Maria Lassnig’and ‘Francis Bacon’: Invisible Rooms at Tate Liverpool. Visual Culture in Britain, 18(1), 115-117.
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Barr, A. H. (2019). Cubism and Abstract Art: Painting, Sculpture, Constructions, Photography, Architecture, Industrial Art, Theatre Films, Posters, Typography. Routledge.
Bourgeois, L. Femme Maison (1946-1947)
Burgard, T. A., Nash, S., Nash, S. A., & Acker, E. (2013). Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966. Yale University Press.
Courbet, G. The Wheat Sifters(1855)
Dix, O. Wounded Veteran (1922)
Diebenkorn,R. Interior with Doorway(1962), Oil on canvas,
Diebenkorn,R. Untitled (Unknown)
Ghenie, A. Self-Portrait (2017), Oil on canvas
Ghenie, A. Self Portrait in 1945(2015), oil on canvas
Lassnig, M. Lady with Brain(1990)
Livingston and Liguori（2016）Richard Diebenkorn: The Catalogue Raisonné, Volume Three, Catalogue Entries 1535-3761, New Haven and London, 2016, p. 243, no. 2275 (illustrated in color).
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Mortimer, J. Djinn I(2015), Oil on canvas
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Rook, G. Approaching storm (2013), Oil on linen
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