The Surface Subject
‘One tends to
see what’s in an Old Master before seeing it as a picture, (whereas) one
sees a Modernist painting as a picture first … the Modernist way of seeing is,
of course, the best way of seeing any kind of picture, Modernist or Old Master.’’[1]
No one could argue that a painting is not an object first,
a physical enactment of materials laid bare on a flat plane. Modernism brought
with it this awareness for both painters and viewers. Clement Greenberg fought
for painting as an act of purity and autonomy but many of today’s painters see these
rigid paradigms as too removed from the intricacy of the world around us. Just
as it is possible to see the abstract qualities of surface and line in Bassano
or Raphael, isn’t it just as valid to search for meaning or narrative within
abstraction? The painters in this exhibition wrestle with the dichotomy between
surface and subject. They find common ground in the acknowledgement of modernism,
whilst considering the ways to deconstruct, taint or expose its apparent
simplicity.
James Lumsden and Andrew Mackenzie
are both preoccupied with the monochrome surface. For Lumsden the flat surface
takes on a photographic theatricality, suffused with illusionist depth and
light. But wait: look closer and the perfect surface is disrupted; the layers
of paint can be tracked in explorative, translucent glazes built up in multiple layers, whilst edges or borders of canvas
are stripped bare or left unpainted. Lumsden hereby draws us closer to the
materiality of the surface, making his paintings more abstract than ever. But does
this materialism simply draw us to their process of making, or is he picking apart
modernism’s seamless vision, exposing it as a failed utopia?
Like Lumsden Mackenzie draws in the viewer with
seductive surfaces but his process is subtractive, laying on paint only to take
it away again. There is a tragic romance in his erasure, reminding us how much
gets lost in the passage of time. His ghostly surfaces seem worn as if by
nature, like walls gradually stained by the weather. Mackenzie uses historical
landscape paintings as a source for creating this romantic atmosphere. Trees
frequent many of his paintings, forming heavily networked layers which play
with the borders between realism and abstraction. They are counterbalanced in
recent paintings by contemporary sources in the man made environment, including
pedestrian footbridges, service stations and pylons.
Where these artists use the painted surface as
atmospheric field for Michael Craik, Sharon Quigley and Jo Milne the surface is
a site for decoration and pattern, emphasising the flat autonomy of the painted
object. Craik uses
architectural geometric pattern as a framework on which to build up layers of
paint into the subtlest form of relief. Painting onto aluminium further
enforces the objectivity of the work, their slimness bringing them close to
sculpture. His generic patterns are coolly detached from the specifics of
place, seeming instead to recall the anonymity of the urban experience. Recent
developments see Craik using Arabic patterns as inspiration, moving from the modern
urban ideal to the primitive roots of abstraction.
As complex as the minutiae of ordinary life can be, a
range of structures hold it together and these complex and varied patterns provide
a starting point for both Sharon Quigley and Jo Milne. Quigley’s sources are
richly varied, including kimono designs, arabesque and nineteenth century
engravings and cellular structures. The sources are united in a personal
vocabulary involving richly worked surfaces built up with wax and resin. This
personal language could be likened to what philosopher and curator Nicolas
Bourriaud has recently defined as the ‘altermodern’[2]
– an attempt to gather together multiple sources into a personal and unified
language, the preoccupation of many contemporary artists.
If Quigley starts broad and narrows down, Jo Milne’s practice
could be seen in reverse; her paintings start with specific areas of language or
coded symbols and expose a playful or complex spirit beneath. For example DNA
structures, jacquard loom cards, pianolo rolls and Braille are exploited as
starting points but broken apart into complex and layered patterns. In Paul
Auster’s New York Trilogy[3]
systems of language come into question too, where a word can lose its meaning
with the simple removal of one letter, bringing the tower of communication
tumbling down. Like Auster, Milne references elements of language as technological
constructions or ‘cyphers’, but they are grounded in the rich and human surface
of paint, a near symbol for the human body.
The artists here explore the variable ways in which tautological
paintings can be relevant and accessible to the contemporary viewer and find
themselves scattered across the spectrum between process and meaning. But it
seems they would all share art historian Meyer Schapiro’s stance:
‘…there is no
‘pure art’; all fantasy, and formal construction, even the random scribbling of
the hand, are shaped by experiences and concerns …’ [4]
Rosie Lesso is an artist and writer in
[1] Clement
Greenberg, Modernist Painting, The
Collected Essays and Criticism, Vol. 4: Modernism with a Vengeance, 1957-1969,
ed. John O’ Brian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)
[2] Nicholas
Bourriaud: Ideal Syllabus, Frieze
Magazine, Issue 115, May 2008
[3] Paul
Auster, The
[4] Meyer
Schapiro, Pollock and After: The Critical
Debate, ed. Francis Frascina (