13: Experiment #8 part 2 - Monster Composition

Look out, it's Godzilla!

Bit of a joke there.

One commonly sees a monster from below, thus inspiring awe and fear at its sheer monstrous scale. This was the tactic employed by the Japanese makers of the early Godzilla films, which helped to disguise the fact that the monster was actually a man in an unconvincing suit. My next experiment concerned the role of perspective. What would certain perspectives and configurations contribute to how my image reads and what it communicates?

I drew my brand figures onto coloured paper and cut out some shapes to represent shop shelving and pillars. I then played around with composition, sticking them down and photocopying the various outcomes:

(N.B. These images look VERY DARK in Blogger due to the lame Picasa image hosting. The background in reality is white!)

1: The Godzilla perspective. We are almost at rooftop height here. The ceiling line is low, giving us a sense of the creatures' height.

2: Here, the perspective is shifted lower, but the creatures need to loom higher into the sky for fear to be further inspired. The creature on the left appears too small.

3: Here, we look directly across from a similar height at the creatures. The ceiling looms into the sky, giving a sense of an enormous hall. We can see the creatures in entirety. They are facing away from each other: not communicating, but consuming!

4: The ceiling line is lowered, and the creatures' size and proximity to us emphasised.

5: This arrangement contains the most number of objects within the store. There is a sense of distance but co-operation between the figures.

6: Here, the larger figure is almost about to step off-stage, like it is lumbering past.

7: Here, the figures' size within the space is emphasised, with the lower ceiling height.

12: Experiment #7 part 1 - Brand monstrosities

This was an experiment with a more overtly political overtone - coming at the shopping work from a different angle. I'd just started to read an interesting book called Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist book of Fashion and had a few ideas floating around in my head. I decided that instead of focussing on shoppers I'd flip the scenario and depict giant monstrosities representing luxury brands 'shopping' for human consumers. When we go shopping and purchase these items, bombarded by advertisements, are we freely choosing goods that we desire, or is the stronger force actually the brands' need for us to continue purchasing their goods in order that they can continue to exist? Are they, in reality, actually shopping for us? 

I cannot answer these questions. 

Nonetheless this seemed to be an appropriate avenue for exploration. My initial idea was for several robot-like figures, incorporating some of the elements of the various brand tropes and 'identities', such as they are. I did some brief and painful research and cobbled together some A3 printouts of advertising images and reference I could use back at my internet-less bunker. Like a 13-year-old girl's mood board: 

I was vaguely inspired by Gerald Scarfe during this experiment. Scarfe's distinctive approach is similar in intent to Steadman's but more commonly applied to specific political figures or, in the case of his Pink Floyd work, political abstracts. His work commonly takes on monsters with monstrous creations, employing a sinuous line to the nth degree of exaggeration. With the Nixon drawing below, he morphs a Watergate tape reel into the recognisable face of the disgraced US president: 

I had a sort of golden, Metropolis-like robot figure down as my Dior character, but initial drawings proved difficult. I imagined it grabbing multiple people at once in clawed hands, and depositing them in enormous shopping bags. 

I felt these looked a bit 1920s. My monster had to be representative of the modern fashion conglomerate. I tried to create a more organic monster, and after a page full of scribbles, arrived at something successful only after starting one drawing so close to the side of the page I had to make its head go backwards, like in the Exorcist. This suited the horrifying purpose, so I went for it. As if it's moving through the store, and just when you think it's gone by and you're safe, the head swings round and its arm comes backwards to grab you! 

This is also a lot closer to a caricature of the Charlize Theron featured in the Dior adverts. I tried to do a similar job on Chanel but, lacking much visual reference except for handbags, met with limited success. This is a bit lame:

The Gucci monster works quite well however I think, a squat, avian figure, ridiculous in black and white outfit and designer shades:

I tidied this image up. 

I wanted to give the monsters something to shop for, so thought I'd create some 'human' brand names with a bit of bad calligraphy. 'MENSCH' being German for people, and 'Ordinaire' French for, ah, ordinary.

I tried to put these figures in context of a massive department store, populated by static, product-like human beings. I will experiment with the composition of the image in the next post. 

11: Experiment #6 - Christmas Shopping

I felt like I had to do a big piece after all those little drawings, so did this, which is more or less a picture of the Promenade in Cheltenham, using some of the techniques I was working on with the other drawings: 

It ended up being a Christmas picture, complete with snow! Which didn't actually happen. I had some fun making a collage of various bits and pieces I scavenged from the Christmas catalogues. I then cut this up again and re-arranged it, then photocopied it onto grey paper for the Cavendish House shop window displays. This was my one concession to breaking up correct perspective/representational drawing in this piece. The rest of the image is a conventional 'scene' albeit observed from a slightly higher viewpoint with grizzly looking shoppers shambling past with their shopping bags. 

This was quite a fun drawing to do and took me about an evening. I like the people and the shop displays, anyway, which combine a bit of collage, coloured paper and pen and ink with some painty bits. 

I stuck some text on this as if it were for a magazine article. It looks fairly horrible but I'm no layout expert. The title you'll agree is a masterpiece:

It could also be made into a really great Christmas card:

10: Experiment #5 - Retail Therapy

This experiment turned into an exercise in creating a drawing for editorial. It's not the most polished drawing but the idea is there - a crowded picture of shoppers employing some of the techniques - wonky angles, distorted scale, grisly characterisation and expressions and some bright garish colours:

I realised the empty space at the top - which I was struggling to fill - might allow me to put a magazine headline in!

The drawing is a bit grubby for editorial and needs cleaning up but there's the germ of an idea there:

9: Wednesday Workshop #4 - Adbusters Illustration

These were both generated in response to a series of quotes from Adbusters magazine collated by Fumio... ' teach my son how to use a gun' and 'time to be alone, space to move about, these are the great scarcities now'. These were supposed to lead to creating an image suitable for editorial in the Adbusters context. I mangled Goya: 

And did some shapeless bio-morphs:

This led to considering images designed to fit the editorial context.

8: Short Essay about Otto Dix

Here is a small essay about Otto Dix written by me: 

All the bad things - Otto Dix

Dix (1891-1969) is a giant of an artist whose work progressed through different genres during his life - dadism, realism, new objectivity (also Grosz) and German Expressionism (see here). Much of the power of his work stemmed from his dramatic portrayal of his experience in the Great War - Dix had been a machine gunner, and thus learned his anatomy in a direct and gruesome way. You can see this in his drawing, which is often twisted and torn. There is a good, short history of this violent period in Dix's art in a post by Elliot David in the Paris Review here.

There is scant sympathy in this vision of marauding German troopers: 

Some of Dix's later work took Weimar society as it's theme and was unflinchingly, often controversially, critical. He depicted sexual violence and prostitution, poverty and corruption; here we look down upon the beggar, presumably a war victim, in the street as would a shopper passing by. Like the shopper, the gallery visitor also inevitably walks past, ignoring the beggar for the next picture:

Compare Dix's card players, for example, to Cezanne:

 

Corruption of the mind and body; greed and evil intent - this is a jaded, jaundiced vision. 

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I enjoyed writing that essay. 

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One of the uncomfortable things this experiment has thrown up I think concerns the very concept of the artist as observer and commenter, and the conflict this entails with living life. How do you comment on a society that you must live in and to a great extent participate in? Was Otto Dix supremely miserable and horrible all the time, or did his work allow him to exorcise his demons, as it were? Many of the other artists I intend to consider during this project make similarly direct - often uncompromising and extreme - comments about society in their work. While I like this sort of thing, I also feel there is room for some ambiguity - in reality, though we complain about consumer capitalism, we mostly participate in it. Is there a more ambivalent reaction to it which one could express in illustration in some way? 

7: Experiment #4 - Shopping Collages

I had acquired a load of clothing and perfume catalogues in House of Fraser with an eye to using them as reference or collaging them into some drawings. 

The J'adore Dior drawing came about through a brochure of Dior make-up which I cut up a bit and some patterns found in the print room. This is the frenzy of shopping for the 'perfect' luxury item. There's a hint of a bestial face from behind the woman's outstretched arm. There's even a 'J'adore Dior' which is the brand's official moniker. This was certainly another Steadman-influenced scene and the sort of thing he might focus on - mad shameless greed. 

Below: The Gleam of Diamonds in her eyes: 

This drawing was an attempt to recreate an actual scene I had seen in the store; an older lady wearing shapeless clothes looking with what I took to be wonder at a red dress hanging on the slim frame of a shop mannequin. I collaged in a photo from a catalogue, and was thinking roughly Steinberg-y about this with the off-white background. I put the 40% off sign in there (which was hanging everywhere in the store - sometimes it was 20%). Maybe she's thinking 'well if it's 40% off, I can squeeze into it."The joke is the contrast between dream and reality and how this is pushed in our faces in such places in order to sell us junk. I had looked a little at Steinberg, his use of collage with line drawing:

I also liked the way he drew these women's coats with patterned mark making: 

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Overall, in this experiment I think I was trying to do a few things. 

1: The use of collage makes a direct link with the actual products and store, hopefully circumventing my hole-ey drawing of clothes and bags and whatnot. 

2: The use of colour in the drawing can hope to play off the collaged elements - either the old lady with her shabby clothes or the use of the gold colour - the colour of money - in the Dior drawing. 

3: There is a poke at the shoppers themselves in the caricature of the features - this comes across perhaps more sneery than I intended. The joke ought to be perhaps on the place - although perhaps the joke is ultimately really on all of us. 

...

One might frame the drawings as comment on the awful way in which ordinary people behave when confronted with the frenzying effects of consumerism. I'd been reading a book called Consumed! about the deleterious, infantilising effects of consumer culture on children and adults. Which was a cheery read and might have planted seeds in my febrile brain. 

--------------------------

Here is a small essay about Otto Dix written by me: 

All the bad things - Otto Dix

Dix (1891-1969) is a giant of an artist whose work progressed through different genres during his life - dadism, realism, new objectivity (also Grosz) and German Expressionism (see here). Much of the power of his work stemmed from his dramatic portrayal of his experience in the Great War - Dix had been a machine gunner, and thus learned his anatomy in a direct and gruesome way. You can see this in his drawing, which is often twisted and torn. There is a good, short history of this violent period in Dix's art in a post by Elliot David in the Paris Review here.

There is scant sympathy in this vision of marauding German troopers: 

Some of Dix's later work took Weimar society as it's theme and was unflinchingly, often controversially, critical. He depicted sexual violence and prostitution, poverty and corruption; here we look down upon the beggar, presumably a war victim, in the street as would a shopper passing by. Like the shopper, the gallery visitor also inevitably walks past, ignoring the beggar for the next picture:

Compare Dix's card players, for example, to Cezanne:

 

Corruption of the mind and body; greed and evil intent - this is a jaded, jaundiced vision. 

-------------------

I enjoyed writing that essay. 

-------------------

One of the uncomfortable things this experiment has thrown up is I think the concept of the artist as observer and reporter, and the conflict this entails with living life. Was Otto Dix supremely miserable and horrible all the time, or did his work allow him to exorcise his demons, as it were? Perhaps there is in actuality a more ambivalent reaction to consumer capitalism which we all demonstrate - the fact that we all essentially co-operate with it - which one could express in some way perhaps. 

I imagine I was drawn to these artists in particular because their work carries a fairly direct comment on society. Also that much of their work tends to be quite dense - both in the subject matter, the viewpoint, the medium and graphic approach. It tends towards heaviness (less so Steinberg) and can be gruesomely captivating if sometimes claustrophobic. 

The sense of scale and place is hard to capture in a piece if there are holes in the artistic memory or toolkit, and if there is an unfamiliarity with tackling drawings from different viewpoints or subverting perspective entirely. This is something I shall attempt to tackle in my next experiment.