It’s Art if I say so
By Bev Dalton
It’s Art if I say so
By Bev Dalton
Marcel Duchamp said this: it’s art if I say so. He’s the guy who stuck a urinal on the wall and called it ‘Fountain’. And ever since he did that, the art world swivelled on its axis and became a place where apparently anything goes. And usually for a gazillion quid. Which really gets the goat of your average person on the street.
How many times have you heard someone look at a pice of contemporary art and say, ‘my kid could paint that’ ? And, you know, it’s hard to argue with that kind of logic. Because I’m an artist and sometimes even I look at stuff and think, ‘seriously?’
But I’ve come to believe it’s not art that’s the problem but the language we use to describe it.
Take music. We have composers, performers, classical artists, opera singers, pop musicians, tribute bands, and me singing along to the radio in my flat when the neighbours are out. We differentiate, for instance, between the people who wrote the songs (one particular skill set) and those that performed the songs (an entirely different skill set).
We also have labels for different styles of music, and recognise distinct levels of complexity. We don’t compare Mozart to someone singing Abba on a karaoke night down the local pub. Nor do we think that our darling eight-year-old’s new-found skills on the recorder is on same level as a concert by Lady Gaga. Yet all of these things come under the banner of music.
So, we have a language that separates composer from performer, and Country and Western star from Rapper or DJ. When it comes to music we have all the words.
But when it comes to art we have, er, artist. Yeah. That’s about it. And I think it may be this lack of language that stops us appreciating what goes into the making of Contemporary or Modern Art.
The title we give someone who creates something never before seen (think Picasso, for instance) is artist. The person who draws a fairly decent horse that is coped from a photograph is called the same. Nothing separates the person who created a new way of looking at something from the person who competently copied a Disney character onto their child’s birthday card. They are both just artists.
Therefore, we have no title that specifically acknowledges someone whose mastery of the craft, and creative genius, has revolutionised how we see things for generations to come.
So, let me introduce the idea that photography changed that art world more than any other invention.
Before photography, a large part of the art world was about getting someone to recreate an accurate (and preferably flattering) image of something or someone that already existed. The people with money wanted to show off their beautiful houses, their trophy wives, their perfect children. And who can blame them?
But once photography really took hold, this act of accurate representation was more clearly accomplished by the new media.
And art was finally free to be something else entirely.
It had always sneaked in under the radar, of course. Art was always about how the artist perceived their subject, and what they chose to show or not show. Hence a Goya looks nothing like a Renoir.
But they’d still had to pay the rent, so they’d still had to paint what the rich people wanted to hang on their walls.
Now, suddenly, art could be about ideas, thoughts, feelings, protest, and significance. Art could be an expression of what the artist wanted to say. It finally got to catch up with how music had been all along.
I’ll give you an example of how this way of thinking about art works, from my own experience.
I’m old, so I was raised in the 1970’s, where the pinnacle of art was still seen as being able to represent something as finely as a photograph. Landscapes, still lives, portraiture – these were the pillars of my learning about art.
But I finally got to study art at university when I was in my late fifties, and oh boy had it changed. I pretty much had to un-learn everything I thought I knew and start over.
But I did the work and for my degree show I became fascinated by the subject of colour. I’m slightly obsessed with colour actually. I may even be a borderline tetrachromat, which is a person with extra senses of colour. Bluntly put, I’m the annoying person who will argue with you about whether that wall is a greeny-blue or a bluey-green. I’ve always had the motto, ‘why use five colours when fifty will do‘. And I wanted to explore that a bit more.
I thought about how colour works when it’s made with pigment on a canvas surface. Light lands on the painted surface, where some of the spectrum is absorbed. What is left was bounces back into our eyes. So, a pigment that absorbs everything but the yellow part of the spectrum will appear yellow to us. This is what’s known as a subtractive system: the surface subtracts everything but the colour we perceive.
But these days we spend a lot of time looking at screens. And they use an additive system, where different coloured light is projected directly into our eyes.
This explains why the colours on our digital photos looks lovely and bright on our screens (additive system) but look a bit dull and somewhat different in hue when we get them printed out (subtractive system).
For me, the interest was in how – after all these centuries of seeing images a certain way – we were handing over our control of colour to machines and their use of the additive system.
What kind of art would a computer make, I wondered? Not just art that I tell it to make, by feeding stuff into AI and seeing what it produces. But how would a computer ‘see’ art?
Computers run by numbers. Numbers are God. And what is the most important number of all? Pi. The never-ending number. They say that every combination of numbers possible appears in Pi at some point.
And this is where I show you why I am an artist and your kid could not do this (although they could probably draw a far better unicorn than I could, you’ll get no arguments from me there).
The art piece I wanted to create had to show that transition from subtractive to additive. It had to propose the idea of us relinquishing control of colour to computers. It had to stimulate people to think about how they felt about that. It needed to make them question if this was a good thing or not.
As an artist, it was now my job to translate all this as successfully as possible.
This is where it gets complicated, so bear with me here.
Computers can’t work in decimal (base 10) cos it just doesn’t cut it, apparently. So computers use base 16, or hexadecimal. You don’t have to know any hexadecimal (which includes numbers and letters) so don’t worry about that. Suffice it to say that there are websites that work out that stuff for you. And so it was that I got the first few pages of Pi changed into hexadecimal.
Right, so now I had the God number, and I had it in a language that computers understood. Now I had to turn it into Art.
So, the first six digits of hexadecimal Pi would correspond to the code for a colour in photoshop. It’s a dark greeny-blue. The next six digits make a mauvey-grey. And so on.
For this piece to deliver its message I had to give total control to the machines. And yes, that did feel very much like I was letting the Terminator loose, but what can you do – this is art.
So, the finished design was made of squares (to mimic pixels) that were arranged in rows of 16 (to echo the hexadecimal theme).
I made each square out of clear perspex, in which the 6-digit code of its colour was engraved onto the surface with a CNC router. This meant I had little to do with the construction (computers were the boss again) and it had a tactile quality that referenced touch-screens.
A computer was used to colour nearly 900 squares with the correct colours, which were then printed out by another machine.
And then I spent nearly two weeks just sticking the right box of colour to the right piece of routed perspex, and tried not to go wrong too many times.
Then (and this was the hard bit) I had to stick them in rows according to how Pi dictated. And I can’t tell you how often I wanted to swap the colours around to make it ‘nice’. But I didn’t. This, after all, was part of the deal. Relinquishing control. Giving it to computers. And seeing how I felt about it.
This was exactly what I was trying to represent.
Anyway, the whole thing came out several metres high, and I had it disappearing into the ground by making the bottom row half-sized squares.
Is it art? Too bloody right it is.
Did you need to know all about it in order to appreciate it? No, of course not. If you don’t get a response to it then I haven’t done my job properly as an artist.
But I’d suggest that investing some time into looking deeper at art – stuff that seems a bit obscure perhaps, or that you think is too simplistic to really count – could yield more than you expect.
We don’t have the language that differentiates me and what I did, from your mate who did a really nice picture of your dog. And that’s ok. Both have a place in this world.
But keep what I’ve said in mind next time you’re in a gallery and something catches your eye. Take some time to respond to it. See if you can work out what the artist was trying to say and gauge if you think they’ve been successful. Consider the artist’s personal history and how this is influencing the piece.
And then just enjoy the experience.
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“So, what is the worst thing about being a writer?” my neighbor asks me at the Spring Social. “Ummmm,” I say, looking past him to the office. I had forgotten that there was a Spring Social going on today. I see the notices clipped next to my door for them a few times a year:…
Remember lockdown? Remember how we all got a bit excited in the first one and felt we had to make it count? And some of us, you know, wrote a book? Yeah. Turns out quite a lot of us were wrong there. 80,000 words of relatively competent sentences don’t always add up to a book.…
Rules and Commonalities I’m not a musician but even I know that songs have a structure, verses and a chorus, that they often have a beginning, middle and end, that they can build to a crescendo, explore a narrative, evoke deep emotion and stay in our hearts forever. But just what is the magic ingredient…
I’ve been doing the daily Wordle puzzle since it started. In case you missed it, Wordle is an online game that gives you six chances to guess a five-letter word. It was invented by Josh Wardle, a software developer, for his girlfriend who loved word games. Just for fun, so the story goes. Until he…
Last time, I spoke about stories that stay with you – or more accurately, the ones that don’t. This month, I want to take some time to unpick what makes a good story. One that lives in your psyche days, even years, after the final page has been turned. I think it’s fair to say…
You Are Not Alone Most people experience rejection when querying. Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, got so many rejections she ended up self-publishing. Now, over 45 million copies have been sold world-wide. Rudyard Kipling was told that he didn’t know how to use the English language. F. Scott Fitzgerald was told…
Time and Head Space When I was teaching full-time, I found it difficult to fit in any writing. It’s definitely not a nine-to-three job! My evenings and weekends were taken up by planning, preparing and assessing, as well as various administrative tasks. Not to mention the demands of family and general life. However, switching to…
“He’s gonna stuff me.” “Don’t talk like that!” Collo grabbed my arms. “He’s just a twinkling fairy!” “Yeah, but look at the size of him!” “Don’t think like that! You can beat him… you’re representing ‘B’ troop. Remember your training! Don’t let him catch you… keep moving… you’re faster than he is.” “Yeah, but he…
In that heady, comforting, all-encompassing safety-net that is the deep love forged by a long life together, my soul-mate and I tried to find ‘our song’. Amongst all the haunting melodies and time-tested lyrics, surely we could find a single song that expressed the depths of our feelings for each other? He suggested some, I…
Who the hell do you think you are? I once heard that authors alternate between two perceptions of their work-in-progress. One is: ‘This is amazing! I’m a bloody genius!’ The other is: ‘This is the worst thing ever written! Ever! In the whole history of story!’ The truth, of course, is that it’s usually somewhere…
The International Children Books Illustration Exhibition opens its doors for six weeks every year at Sarmede, my home town, gathering the usual crowd of fans and supporters from various parts of the country. The Exhibition used to be held in the Town Hall of the village which has permanent mural illustrations done by the artists…
“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. That opening line is indelibly inked in my memory. Other fictional characters captured my childhood imagination before the March sisters: Anne of Green Gables, Black Beauty, Big Red. All great stories for children. But ‘Little Women’, Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age story set…
The Brother has a view on modern verbiage ++ Now, c’mere ’til I tell you this. I’m all ears. What is it? The brother has barred himself from watching television above in the digs. Excuse me? Barred himself for the foreseeable future on account of him having been roaring at the TV in the residents’…
We All Have Our Own Opinions Of course we do! Life would be very boring if we didn’t. But there are elements to story that seem to be essential and universal. I’ve listed some below but it’s not exhaustive and I’m interested to hear other ideas. Character I often hear authors talk about the…
Say What? Writing a novel with more than one point-of-view can be tricky. How can you juggle different personalities and motivations – and somehow use them to tell a balanced, coherent and compelling story? How can you ensure that each character has their own ‘voice’ (something that I find extremely difficult to achieve!)? But does…
There’s something about cats. Yes, in January I burst my eardrum trying to cure the ear mite infection I caught from our two. They wont be sleeping on the bed pillows after that. But I mean more. The truth encapsulated in this post from Jennifer Adcock, writer. “You know who doesn’t get impostor…
Sorry! I’ve been a tad disingenuous with this title because I’m not referring to the act of writing on behalf of others, but rather the literal act of writing about ghosts! Trick, or treat? Of course, there are many ghost stories, especially in the horror genre, but I’ve selected a few from other genres to…
The last few weeks, I have been replaying a video game from my distant past. An old favourite by the name of Final Fantasy VII. I used to play this game almost once a year; I kept going back to it again and again throughout my childhood and often used to inform my imaginative play…
“Do you still see the Bulgarian?” The question tumbled out. “Yes.” Her reply was instant, instinctive, intuitive. “His name is Krasimir.” “Sorry.” He stuttered his response. “I didn’t mean to pry… just a silly question. None of my business. Sorry.” “It’s OK.” She attempted to heal. “I have no problem with your question. It’s not…
Over achievers rarely herald from untroubled upbringings. Being born to a mother with low confidence in her own abilities wouldn’t have been so bad, had she managed an ounce of confidence in her own children. Such is life. The poor woman was bullied by her father. He, in turn, had been emotionally wrecked by the…
Ciao. Getting ready for our two-week trip to Northern Italy. Northern Italy you say. What about the rest of Italy? Well, in due course. A friend of mine recently went to Italy and did the typical, American 9 day, 10 night tour of Italy on a bus. “Bring down your luggage and be on the…
“Aren’t you supposed to be writing?” I shove the nagging question away. The computer will still be there when I return to it, cursor blinking patiently at the top of a blank page. It is Thursday, one of my two weekdays designated for writing. I am cradling a cup of coffee and standing in the…
An Issue of Trust I’ll admit, novels with an unreliable narrator are not everyone’s cup of tea, but I love them. You start off thinking the character is taking us on a believable journey and that we can trust their telling of the events, then unease creeps in. We start asking questions. We wonder where…
Mention the word Trope to us writers and we’ll recoil. Add the word Cliche and you’ll see us running for the hills. These two five-letter words are not what any of us want in our wonderful, new, original, works, right? But consider this: things only become tropes when they are overused, and they only become…
Save the Cat? My three psychological novels have unlikeable point-of-view characters. Without balance, they can appear two-dimensional – and I’ve discovered that achieving that balance is rather tricky! What do I mean by balance? I suppose I’m talking in terms of the reader’s perception. Is the character’s dark side countered by a bit of light,…
I am made of regret, but not of sadness. During my brief and somewhat misguided youth, I spent my money and spoke my mind. I moved countries and continents. I learned languages, had adventures, and spent my life coloring outside the lines. I don’t recommend it unless you want to come back to where you…
A writer friend of mine and I have exchanged writerly encouragement to each other for many years. The most frequent reminder we bounce back and forth is that writing is really hard. We take baffling things in our life, in society, in the world, often stuff that strike us as chaotic, and we try to…
Dear Grandpoppypops Wish you were here? Look at the size of the stamps now! So much larger than the penny black you showed me from your visit. Not much has changed so far as I can see in human structure, society is still set on exploiting other sections of itself. Your industrial revolution really set…
Flann O’Brien’s much-loved character – The Brother – transported to the 21st century. What would he make of contemporary trends and fads? This episode imagines his reaction to Molecular Gastronomy, Nouvelle Cuisine, and the tampering of a subject very close to his heart. ****************** Now the brother has a thing or two to say on…
This is my first post on this forum, so I wanted to do something short and light. What types of distractions interrupt you when you’re hammering away at your keyboard? The phone rings? Your significant other shouts at you from the other side of the house? Your cat comes in and plops down onto your…
Go beyond the usual guide book notes of the Trevi Fountain and savour its unexpected pleasures.
PART ONE Walk through the heart of Rome and you will be lured in one direction and then another as instantaneously as a magnet does with a piece of iron… The Pantheon will attract you with its metaphysical force of the gods, the Foro Imperiale with its magnitude of power… while the Fountain of Trevi…
My first day as a professional writer, I lifted a police report from the pile at the Coffeyville station and read “Murder.” Now, this was a small town, and I was pretty sure this sort of thing was a rarity. I wasn’t sure there had been much in the way of this most heinous of…
First Things First I’ve never understood people who have a favourite song, book or film. Surely your choice depends on your mood. It’s the same with genre. Maybe today I fancy reading something light-hearted and fun. Tomorrow I might want to feel a shiver run down my spine. The next day I might be enticed…
Lucky seven they say, but the morning I had to load that many strong-minded mustangs onto a lorry at the top of the Swiss Alps with a 4am deadline, it seemed a doomed number. Especially when lorry drivers with ferry schedules and EU regulations have famously short fuses. They have been known to…
Hands up anyone who’s had a bit of writer’s block? Looking around I can see that’s pretty much all of us, right? Even you at the back, hiding behind your laptop screen, pretending you’re doing research into character types, whilst actually playing Royal Match and posting videos of your cat. Why do we have such…
I’m delighted to give you an early peek into this year’s Litopia Book Club selections, together with relevant purchase links. It’s a particularly strong and carefully-selected list, and as you’ll know if you’ve attended one of Jason’s riotous Zoom sessions, a good time can be guaranteed for all! For further information and exact dates, please…
Selling highly-priced, poor-value seminars and writing courses to aspiring authors isn’t just unethical – it’s also damaging to the publishing industry, says Litopia’s Peter Cox in this article for “The Bookseller” That old scoundrel Sam Brannan would have felt completely at home in today’s publishing business. Sam, you may recall, was the original promoter of…
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