6. Scientific Landscape
9.3 From Abstraction to the Strip Paintings
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Paintings described in the title chosen by the artist as being abstract, actually on closer inspection demonstrate the superimposition over photo-realistically painted foliage such as figure 30 titled as an Abstract painting and dated 1984.
Therefore, the source material for the so-called abstract painting is definitely a photograph of a landscape and therefore firmly has its roots in the depiction of nature. The roots in Landscape of these so-called ´abstract´ paintings is important to the interpretation of his later ´Strip Paintings´.
Figure 30 - Richter, Strip 923.2 (2012)!
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Richter began his series of Strip Paintings in 2010 although despite their name they have no actual paint on their surface. The paintings, such as that shown in figure 30, are actually digital prints are laminated onto aluminium behind a thin layer of Perspex. It is significant, however, that Richter refers to the Strip works as paintings, since this indicates a widening idea of what a painting might be in a digital age. To create the horizontal strips in this work, Richter took one of his favourite pieces, Abstract Painting, 724-4 1990, as a prompt. Abstract Painting, 724-4 is a ‘squeegee painting’, unusual in intensity and colour. It was made by applying several layers of paint onto a small canvas with a brush. Richter then
passed a squeegee over the surface, removing layers and exposing hidden colours, repeating the process of applying and removing paint.
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The British art critic Searle (2014) describes a Richter show that I had the good fortune to visit in London 2014:
´In 60 years you can do a lot, Richter tells me, ´And our times are so… unquiet,´ he says… an enormous variety of works moving between abstraction and portraiture, landscape and history painting… globalisation makes things fragment, but also brings them closer. Printed, digital works, the largest 10 meters across, consisting entirely of eye-rocking coloured stripes. Mathematically constructed works as a created from a single abstract painting from the 1990´s in which he ´halved a fragment of the image vertically on a computer, He mirrored the image and repeated the process again and again.
After a while patterns emerge from the mirrored, incidental skids of paint. ´Rows of faces appeared, monsters, flowers, mandalas´s he tells me. As the image gets halved and squeezed again and again, ever smaller repetitive patterns are produced, reminiscent of Islamic decoration, until at a certain point these horizontal bands take over.
Were he to continue, he explains, the bands themselves would disappear into a kind of optical white noise, and eventually visual silence. Richter chose sections from the these bands and recombined them for these larger works. They come at you like complex visual chords. Richter had no idea what would happen when he began this process. He touches one of the panels with his
knuckles. ´The memory of all the images that came and went is still here.´ 243
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The last line is poignant, that the memory of images created and lost as part of the creative process are captured within the final artwork. Every artwork is a time capsule of memories of the artist, but the strip paintings are created out of a process of mathematical division applied to an earlier work by the artist. A process that has the result of creating a technologically contemporary painting which entirely lacks physical texture and paint, yet holds the immortality of the artist as if within its structure and the act of its creation.
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The mathematic process utilised by the artist to create the Strip Paintings was to vertically bisected a digital photograph of the The Abstract Painting (724-4) from 1990 and join each half with its mirror image. Continuing this process innumerable times resulted in the vertical fissures becoming imperceptible, and the stripes of colour merging into strips until the images were distilled into their chromatic essence. When I saw the Strip paintings I was struck by the intense striations of contrasting vibrant colours interacting and at times seeming to tease each other with their intensity. The vast display of strips of colours on such a large and overpowering format had the result that the individuality of the colours were lost and essentially blurred in the proceed. As a metaphor for the individuality of humans on a global scale becoming blurred in the sameness of the collective community. Yet as I contemplated the paintings they took over a life of their own, with an energy created between advancing and retreating colours that delved beyond two dimensions and seemed to move before me.
Searle, A. (2014) Gerhard Richter: Our times are so unquiet, Guardian Newspaper
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12.10.14, online access.
Diehl describes this reaction as the depiction of a ´vibrant colour that whizzes across the surface like the view from a Lamborghini at 200 miles per hour.´ 244
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Schjedahl (2012) describes how the Strip Paintings invite the viewer to face the faltering state of painting when faced with the arrogance of visual technology.
Describing how they invite us to contemplate the ´melancholy, long, withdrawing roar of perishing traditions´ such as painting. The Strip Paintings resulted 245 form the artist having insufficient time to paint in preparation for an exhibition, and he utilised a computer program to deconstruct an existing painting into a new body of work, rather than use actual paint. Yet the insistence of the artist that the resultant work is painting is an interesting acknowledgement of the importance of process and concept over actual paint. That the works are technological paintings, rather than actually painted, extending the limits of the painting genre and giving a new dimension to the domain of Contemporary Painting.
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9.4 Conclusion!
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Richter has pushed the boundaries of the depiction of Landscape to incorporate the advances of the technological age to transcend Landscape by creating Contemporary Paintings that are truly futuristic and devoid of paint. The absence of the actual painted surface is justified by the use of paint as part of the creative process, and therefore cleverly and playfully the artist refers to the
Diehl, C. (2012) Gerhard Richter, Art in America, 20.12.12, online access.
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Schjeldahl, P. (2012) All Stripes: New work by Gerhard Richter, New Yorker, 17.09.12.
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Online access.
resultant work as a painting. The essence of the artists process can be described as presence by absence and transcendence of Landscape!
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Chapter 10!
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The Changing Landscape of Robin Mason
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10.1 The human landscape!
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The work of Robin Mason can described as inspiring imaginary landscapes consisting of interrelated paintings, sculptures and installations. The collection is designed to be viewed together as an installation, so that conceptual interconnections can be made. It would therefore be illogical to discuss his Landscape paintings without references to the video art installations or sculptures, as they are designed by the artist to be seen as part of a collective whole, as illustrated in figure 31.
Figure 31: Mason, Overview of The Deeper Darkness exhibition (2013)
The complexity of the visual and conceptual interconnections, the bright colours in the works and the melodic sounds of pinball machines skilfully combine to create a seductively fun and entertaining space. The viewer could be described as initially seduced by the playtime ambiance of the energy radiating in the space. The landscapes are ´painted with a jouissance of ludicrous charm, it is hard not to be tickled by Mason´s comic and clever helter-skelter configurations, his cheeky winks towards the sacred and the profane. Eyes on stalks, lips pinned to the trunk of a tree, the spilled guts of dates, badges and signs, arrows, buds and blossoms, reminds us of the polymorphous perverse erotic possibilities of everything. There is excitability here, a clowning around in the paddling pool of life´s sweet disorder. ´ This encourages a sense of peace 246
Groves, T. (2013), p5.
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and contemplation, which is in itself a huge achievement in the enclosed underground space of the Block 336 Gallery, totally devoid of natural light, in which the exhibition entitled The Deepest Darkness (2013) was exhibited. Alex Gough describes how “Robin’s work is about a journey, so the creation of the exhibition started at the building stage,” 247 as depicted in figure 32. Expressing the artist as curator, creating walls and specifically modifying the lighting to emphasise the darkness of the space.
Figure 32: Section of: Mason, Search and Journey (2009-13)
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As the exhibition ´unfolds around us, it becomes glaringly obvious that these melodies of teenage pastimes are but the soundtrack for a visual and emotional experience of funfair proportions. Prints, etchings, and a vast mind-boggling
Review by Lizzie Kay,
http://www.brixtonblog.com/new-exhibition-the-deepest-247
darkness-at-block-336/12014
polyptych paintings jostle up against astroturf lawns, dazzling lights and curiously disorientating mini-museums.´ The viewer is transported from an 248 obviously industrial space, through the artworks which weave the viewers vision through and around the sculptures, incorporating the unusual and existing features of the exhibition space into a parallel, multiverse landscape.