A Dog's Guide to ART RESEARCH

WOOFISM and beyond

Page 6 of 9

M.A.Choice: It was always Fine Art

November 3, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Guston4

I have decided that the area I wish to continue my M.A.in is FINE ART.

I would like to rename my M.A. as a Fine Art M.A. instead of Multimedia for the reasons detailed below.

I currently have two separate ‘reflective journals’ documenting my ideas and thoughts and research over the last two years.

The first could be described as the ‘DIGITAL’ blog and the second as the ‘NON-DIGITAL’. (Using Digital as a descriptor preferred by
Lev Manovitch in his recent article ‘After Software’as opposed to the less well used ‘new media’, ‘interactive’ or ‘multimedia’.)
http://lab.softwarestudies.com/2012/11/new-article-by-lev-manovich-media-after.html

The DIGITAL enquiry focussed to start with on GPS and locative notions of landscape (originally called TRACK) and tied in with the original intent of the M.A. to link directly via CPLD to my Trent teaching. With the closing of the Multimedia Course in 2013 and my own frustration and lack of interest in the ‘web and mobile apps’ field I would like to take this opportunity to move back to my preferred original nomenclature of the degree as ‘Fine Art’. As a title this far more appropriate to the actual content which I exploring which is fine art painting and film/photography. I have realised that a significant part of the ‘DIGITAL’ that did interest me and still does is the representation of landscape in digital photography and cinema. So this blog will continue to investigate this area. I am hoping that instead of an either/or situation that the Digital and Non-Digital representation of landscape and the tension between these areas will become the focus of my M.A. enquiry from now on.
Reflective Journal ‘TRACK’: https://shaunbelcher.com/fineart

The NON-DIGITAL enquiry is explicitly concerned with what one could describe as ‘hands-on’ practice – drawing, painting and writing. In this area I have created artworks for over 30 years much of it related directly to a specific location (one of the reasons for the GPS/Mobile focus of the original proposal). I have been operating in a new studio in Nottingham since May 2011 and I will be creating large paintings and a series of drawings over the next year. Material created and thoughts on this process are being assembled in the BLANK CANVAS BLOG.

https://shaunbelcher.com/canvas

 

ART HISTORY RESEARCH

FINALLY the third area I have been exploring through papers, cartoons and conferences is more theoretical and is really PhD rather than M.A. material in my opinion: This is contained in this blog.

https://shaunbelcher.com/rpt
(Theoretical research as a precursor of PhD)

 

This is where I think the work displayed in this blog is leading…..

The analysis of Frayling and cartoons which constituted this summer’s ‘research’ and the subject of this blog belong to a critical practice which really situated within a FINE ART PEDAGOGY and FINE ART THEORY field. As such they are relevant to the PRACTICE as supporting material but do not directly engage with my fine art practice. Rather it acts as a frame and exploration of that practice’s political and theoretical situation in the modern university. I can see it developing into further research and possibly a PhD related entirely to the theoretical problems of attempting a fine art PhD. In this I draw heavily on James Elkins’ recent publications and have been involved in many recent threads which James has started on facebook and online.
http://jimandmargaret.wordpress.com/

Studio Diary Day 2: Drawing or painting?

October 30, 2012 / / 0 Comments

Spent the afternoon in a not too cold studio (it has basic radiators thankfully) as starting to come out of over two weeks of severe chest infection. After looking at the neo-primitives below I thought I’d try black acrylic paint straight to canvas and compare it with other methods. Pencil and chalk, paint this was because I forgot to take some Sharpie pens to the studio. So I could theoretically call this an experimental artefact led methodology although I can only gain ‘qualitative data’. I have posted on facebook so be interesting to see what reaction I get.

I was vaguely thnking of the kind of memory painting Arshile Gorky did (most of his major works refer however subliminally back to his Armenian childhood) but after I’d finished the last piece I realised that today’s news about Hurricane Sandy and the associated imagery had leaked into my sub-conscious. I therefore named the drawing ‘Sandy’.

The smaller image in the gallery of two ‘badges’ is from 1987 and were a couple of examples of laminated drawings that I sold in aid of Greenpeace at my show that year in Hornsey Library. Proving that nothing changes and I was doing Burgerman before he was knee high 🙂

Looking closer other influences which I can see in the drawings include Leger, Mariscal, and Miro all major influences on my late eighties work so it feels like I have somehow carried on from a point then of semi-abstraction before I went more figurative and lost some of my spontaneity. I picked up a book from my library at studio called ‘Arshille Gorky: The Breakthrough Years. Which I will examine along with my present reading. I was heavily influenced by a book I subsequently lost by Harry Rand called Arshile Gorky: the implications of symbols ( I have now found it as paperback on amazon although out of print). The Gorky fascination is not so much in his application of paint but far more the way he created ‘memory symbols’ analogous to Miro. These repetitive symbols came from his childhood. I repeat similar motifs from my past almost like an alphabet and maybe analysing where this came from would be productive. In fact at one point I did try to make a pictorial alphabet of simple symbols. I will try and find the examples I drew. We then stray into both semiotic and literary territory. I will leave the deeper examination of this to the research pages.

 

 

Freddie Brice

October 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I cut and paste the press release information here as I came across this man’s work by chance. Immediately reminded me of Guston, Matisse and Alfred Wallis in use of foreshortening. It also reminded me of one of the main influences on the Suit of Nettles which people didn’t pick up on i.e. Southern States Folk and Outsider Art especially Bill Traylor
http://www.billtraylorchasingghosts.com/

FREDDIE BRICE
March 27 – May 1, 2010

KS Art is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Freddie Brice (1920-1998). This is the first solo exhibition in ten years of this recognized outsider artist who lived and worked in New York City. Freddie Brice’s plywood panels are painted in mainly black and white with an urban minimalism and immediacy. Depicting animals, interiors, clocks, watches and jewelry, they reduce complex forms and groupings to their graphic essence, interchanging black and white and positive and negative. As contemporary artists continue to look at outsider art for inspiration Brice’s raw painting style finds a renewed relevance in the work of painters such as Joe Bradley, Chris Martin and Donald Baechler.

Also included in the exhibition is a newly restored video of the artist at work, “Freddie Brice Paints Two Paintings”, made in 1990 by Les LeVeque & Kerry Schuss. In this video, Brice completes two paintings. While demonstrating his rhythmic painting style, he sings and speaks in a poetic verse about painting, hobbies and life.

“It’s in my way of drawin’. It’s in my conscious of drawin’. It’s in my mind. It became to be lovely to me. It became to be likely to me. Why, I like it more than I like anything else. I think it’s a hobby. You know, speaking about a hobby. A hobby is a true thing … When you begin to love something; when you begin to do something, a constructive, something that you like and love, it becomes a hobby. It becomes regular. It becomes continuously. It becomes outrageous. It becomes magnificent. It becomes to be something that you like to do for a hobby. And I like to do drawing for a hobby. I like to do drawing because I get understanding of what I’m doing. It gives me understanding of talking. It gives me understanding of books. It gives me understanding of drawing and hearing what I listen to. It gives me time, it gives me patience and it also gives me ability. Ability is when you gain what you’re doing, and when you get enough of it you begin to have rehability rehabiliteality of what you’re doing. It becomes a whole lot to you. Drawing is rehabiliteality to me. I began to do it often and I began to do it much. And it’s ability. It’s rehabiliteality of what I love. And it’s a hobby. –excerpt from video

Freddie Brice was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1920, and at age 9 moved to Harlem, where later he spent much of his time at the Apollo Theater, a fan of acts such as: Diana Washington, Chuck Webb and the Inkspots to name a few. Brice held numerous jobs including an elevator operator, a laundry worker and most importantly at the Brooklyn Navy Shipyard, where he painted ships. After a long history of incarceration and institutionalization he started making paintings in 1983 at an art workshop on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. In 1991 Brice’s work was featured in the exhibition “Art’s Mouth” at Artists Space curated by Connie Butler. Freddie Brice’s work is in the collections of: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Milwaukee Museum of Art and The Old Dominion University, Gordon Collection, Norfolk, Virginia. Additionally Brice’s work has been exhibited at The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, VA and Milwaukee Museum of Art, Milwaukee WI. He died in New York in 1998

Abstract Comics?

October 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

I have started looking in more depth at the idea of ‘abstract comics’. There is an anthology assembled by Andrei Molotiu called ‘Abstract Comics’. He also has a very interesting blog at : http://abstractcomics.blogspot.co.uk/

This anthology includes work by Mark Staff Brandl.

It made me look again at the ‘Suit of Nettles’ work I produced for the Connect Course and exhibited at Lincoln. Although ostensibly a series of illustrations for a suite of songs the interesting thing was that as a non-linear series of unrelated images they could be hung together in any order.This leads in a strange way to some experimental work I have been doing in the studio with ‘abstract narratives’. This is why I was so interested in the series of drawings displayed on Guston’s studio wall…almost in a comic strip fashion.(see post below). I have played with a comic approach before as can be seen in these paintings (all sold or destroyed) from 2005. It is not a big stretch from these works to the paintings from September 2011 when I first had a painting studio again. https://shaunbelcher.com/canvas/?p=28

Visual Writing?

October 29, 2012 / / 0 Comments

maplan2

I have been asked to look into the possibility (nothing more at this stage) of developing a VISUAL WRITING M.A.

This interesting especially as I not sure if it actually exists!!!!! (I can find no trace of such an animal in the wilds of academia). It also interesting as I not sure where such an animal if found would be caged…..Fine Art or Graphics?

A web search of VISUAL THINKING came up with only one related PhD studentship at Duncan and Jordanstone:

Visualisation & the Application of Visual Thinking
Visualisation & Simulation, Mediating technology, information design, Applying design thinking, Public engagement, Identity cultural & sense of place, Design in Public, Policy, Society, Business-Service Design, Design in new contexts (health etc) Exploring the economic / social impact of new practices

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/programmes/postgraduate/phdmphil/

VISUAL THINKING is a generic term which covers any method of displaying information graphically from business seminars to infographics made for the web. I cannot see how it strong enough to form an M.A. unless situated firmly within GRAPHIC DESIGN. It could however be a cross-disciplinary role helping from a pedagogic point of view which how it employed at the RCA where the post recently advertised ‘taught into animation and graphics’.
Wikipedia defines thus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_thinking

VISUAL WRITING is a much narrower term that basically refers to art books which contain a lot of visual information but are not GRAPHIC NOVELS or COMIC STRIPS.
http://www.visual-editions.com/visual-writing

GRAPHIC RESEARCH (my term) is using convention of Graphic Novel/Comic Book to reinterperate/re-present academic research.

My subject matter for my M.A. is FINE ART and practice-led. The blog related to it is called Graphic Research and stands outside of that M.A. and could lead to PhD level enquiry. I am interpreting FINE ART THEORY and PEDAGOGY in traditional research documents and comic book format. In this I am imitating a traditional PhD ‘practice-led’ approach but with both written (verbalised) and drawn analysis. I see the ‘graphic’ elements as being outside the traditional text/practice split and to some degree challenging Frayling’s notion of Research FOR art and design not being embedded in the art object (if you accept the drawings as art objects and not text).

Finally, and to address the new M.A. possibilities discussed above. I could happily posit the following options instead which we do not at present cover.

(I have not included ‘Interactive Arts’ or ‘Digital Arts’ because I think all Fine Art/ Graphic Design is digital/non-digital these days and it a false nomenclature  anyway and we would have to have a culture change and move towards the Glasgow model of ‘Digital Culture’ and ‘Communication Media’ to allow this to happen.)

1. GRAPHIC NOVEL AND COMIC. (Presently none exist in UK could be a USP?)

2. ART WRITING (CRITICISM)
similar to Goldsmiths course
http://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/mfa-art-writing/

3. DRAWING
Wimbledon College of Art have just re-launched their Drawing M.A. and there are also similar courses at Falmouth and Oxford Brookes (just validated)

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/studying/courses/postgraduate/2013/fine-art-drawing-practice

This a very strong possibility and something I would like to work with Terry and Deborah Harty on developing.

4.REGISTERED PROJECT
This the area I currently studying in and when I finish I believe I would be best suited to run this as course leader. A post that has not been treated as a separate entity since Carry Welling left and one that I think requires a stand alone course leader to promote and run effectively due to the nature of the provision which more akin to blended or open university curricula. I think it also one of the most exciting parts of our provision at Trent and should be made more of.

 

CODA

If these M.A. ideas do not develop I can see myself moving wholly into research / PhD as the Multimedia Course closes as my only option as I will have no teaching into Fine Art at B.A. (rejected by Fine Art representatives at consultation phase) or M.A. level as things presently constituted. Equally I am not considered worthy of teaching practice into Graphic Design….too graphic for fine art too fine art for graphics…marvellous…

 

Cartoon map of output to date: The Road Not Taken?

October 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

As part of re-planning my M.A. by registered project I was asked to ‘draw’ out my ideas. By chance I had already done it a few weeks ago as part of process of seeking ‘re-alignment’.

The image is complex but for me the most interesting outcome was the realisation that the ‘four-leaf clover’ actually boiled down to two distinct and separate ‘pathways’ going in different directions but both could equally be followed and examined as an M.A.

 

PRACTICE AS RESEARCH?

The first pathway is practice-led and focusses on drawing and painting as both studio-based and like most fine art PhD’s one that can interrogate itself during ‘process’. i.e. self-reflection on practice within M.A. and an analytical tool to examine the process of submitting for M.A from an institutional point of view. This amalgamates the ‘graphic research’ and ‘painting’ threads of my work in one. I will attempt to analyse the studio practice through cartoon diagrams and reflective analysis.

Possible output: Paintings and drawings and conference presentations/research papers.

 

‘MULTIMEDIA’

The word that has no meaning again applied to a very diverse range of ‘praxis’ that includes poetry, film, photography, oral history, social intervention, music and sound.

The mopping up of ‘everything else that I do’.

Possible output: Book, Cd, exhibition, graphic design, ‘deep mapping’, live performance.

 

What will win …..or maybe do both and make this the most disjointed M.A. ever?

The four-leaf clover below now has two leaves….

maybe should listen to Robert Frost

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

Planning M.A documents

October 15, 2012 / / 0 Comments

 

As part of an interview for course leader of M.A. Fine Art at Nottingham Trent ( the proverbial snowball in hell chance as they say). I prepared the following course structure ‘plans’. The reaction was a little bemused but the thinking embedded within has already been corroborated by information on trends developing at other M.A. courses.

The traditional M.A. is now an expensive additional outlay on top of three years and approximately £100K of debt for a home student so unless there a viable and necessary reason for having one the market doomed to collapse. That reason could be academic progression (the traditional bridge between B.A. and PhD) or it could be cheapness (the international student who chooses a course because not as expensive as London based institutions).

Either way the outlook is for a radically different postgraduate landscape sometime soon.

The first  document explores viability for both an M.A. and M.F.A. which matched courses to expectations of consumers geared to ‘practice’ or ‘research’ outcomes. The others map ‘student expectations’ (a core mantra of the institution) and possible reorganisation of the whole structure from a new foundation through to PhD.

Needless to say I over-pitched the whole thing and should have kept this all back until the head of M.A. post becomes available…..and as usual I am too quick to spot trends…By the time thie institutional supertanker starts to change course I will probaby be long gone. I am posting so I can have the limited satisfaction of looking back in due course and saying ‘I told you so’….

It also interesting as a part of my investigations into course structures and could be seen as ‘action research’ even if as I expect I do not get the job ….

 

Studio Diary Day 1: Practice based research?

October 10, 2012 / / 1 Comment

Ok so here I am back in the studio at the beginning of the second year of my M.A. by registered project and after a summer of drawing related ‘research’ I am standing in front of a very old work on paper (c.1988) and two new canvases done over the summer in the time not spent researching Frayling’s Categories (which wasn’t much). So what do the canvases have to do with research if anything?

I am struggling already to codify or analyse the works from any kind of methodological perspective. The ideas ’embedded’ in the paintings are intuitive, visceral (acrylic paint applied to canvas) and come from a half-formed naive idea of ‘comic’ forms from looking at various comic and graphic novels and studying Philip Guston’s work in some depth especially his drawings. I did read the book ‘Night Studio’ by Musa Meyer which I remember was quite a harrowing account of how his depressions and rages affected his family ( Musa is his daughter). It did however convince in describing the sheer effort that went into his work.

I suppose if I mined back into other works on him I would find material relating to his genesis of the comic forms that replaced his earlier ‘abstract expressionist’ period. I also own the book ‘Sweeper up after artists’ by Irving Sandler which I was half way through and which is very telling in its depiction of the fraught nature of post Abstract Expressionist careerism in New York in the early 1960’s. But is this research…it is art historical research for sure but unless it impacts on my physical creation of an object could it be said to describe anything but ‘contextual knowledge’. To impact on the creation of an art object surely it has to be more profound than that?

I am just asking questions here as at the start of a difficult journey. Turning ‘intuitions, feelings and observations’ into theoretical research is a hard task. I am not convinced as I start this ‘Studio Diary’ that it at all possible but I may learn something else in the process.

I am standing looking at the works. Day One. I photograph them so as to show the similarity in pieces created nearly twenty years apart and in very different locations and circumstances. Maybe that affects how I create images. Maybe the context is more important than I thought.

I am also awed by the quotation from Dickens that I discover Guston had on his wall, which he held to, about complete devotion to the cause. I have never liked ‘Sunday painting’ but never had the means to devote my life to painting and this the reason I have stopped painting for long periods. I found an interesting article online by chance detailing Guston in the studio by Dore Ashton.

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4x0nb2f0;chunk.id=d0e2683;doc.view=print

This appears to be completely available online at:

http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft4x0nb2f0&brand=ucpress

Now here’s some art history to get my teeth into.

Quite a start…..but is it research?

Royal College Research Series

October 9, 2012 / / 0 Comments

In addition to Frayling’s first document the RCA published more in the series – here all the ones available online through http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/

Volume 1, Number 1 1993/4

Sir Christopher Frayling: Research in art and design

http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/384/3/frayling_research_in_art_and_design_1993.pdf

Volume 1, Number 2 1993/4

Roger Coleman: Design research for our future selves

http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/404/1/coleman_design_research_for_our_future_selves_1994.pdf

Volume 1, Number 3.

Alex Seago : Research methods for Mphil and PhD students

http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/403//seago_research_methods_for_MPhil_and_PhD_students_1995.pdf

Volume 2 Number 1 1996/7

Alex Seago and Anthony Dunne: New methodologies in art and design research: The object as discourse

http://researchonline.rca.ac.uk/401/1/seago_dunne_new_methodologies_object_as_discourse_1997.pdf

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2024 A Dog's Guide to ART RESEARCH

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑