The Object of Study

I’m intermittently reading Art Practice as Research (2005) by Graeme Sullivan. It’s giving me a much-needed context for the thinking I’m doing at the moment, and is making me ask myself more coherent questions. During the Enlightenment art was seen as a research practice on a par with science:

[...] artistic practice mirrored the mindful activity of these times. For instance, the study of anatomy saw the artist-as-analyst at work in much the same way as the rational philosopher where “dissection interrogated the inert body by violently laying it bare – much like the deductive dismembering of a coherent thought by a syllogism” (Stafford 1996, pp. 36-7). So art was a visual tool for recording. (p.9)

In my last two abortive and confused posts I wondered about the relationship between (spurious) auto-psychoanalysis and the content of my work. I have had in mind that it is my own psychology that I’m researching through my artwork. This seems to tie me in bundles. I think it’s worthwhile keeping in mind that my artwork isn’t necessarily working that close to the bone. Inevitably my own brain comes into it, but that doesn’t mean it’s about my own brain.

In my imaginary future retrospective view of my work there’s no reason to assume I’ll be the star of the show. My work will be. So there’s no reason to assume my imaginary future viewers will be looking at the work to answer questions about me. Of course they won’t be! Of course artwork isn’t about biography! My artwork might be talking about art, about language, about silence, about repetition … about a hundred brilliant things, so why do I keep thinking it has to all be about me, a small and paltry and confused subject?

Or will this help?

I sat down to do just what I’d said in my last post, writing and drawing out all my past projects on little intentionally nerdy revision cards, and it seemed completely pointless and, worst, BORING. I’m a great believer in the power of brains to tell you what’s right, and when a brain is bored, it should be doing something more exciting, especially when I’m trying to use my brain to specifically creative ends.

I need to be focusing on the new things not the old things. There are a few things I have never documented together, things I say or do or think or make, which perhaps would be a new thing if I put them together. I’ll try that.

I’m calling these two posts ‘will this help?’ to refer to the way I try to collect things. A sentence or an idea might appear and I think, I’ll keep that, it might help. I have the feeling, and I’m sure it’s quite a standard feeling, that all the ideas I have add (more or less effectively or interestingly) to a single ongoing concern. And because I want to get closer to that concern and understand what it is, I want to collect up all the ideas I ever have and collate them and identify themes, drifts, patterns. When I’ve got all the patterns I’ll be able to see what my project is. I think that’s the rationale behind Major Retrospective Exhibitions too.

Joking aside though, that is what I hope for my artwork, I don’t expect any single piece to do all the work but rather for all the pieces together to make up some final, completed (by my death) suggestion. So in some respects all the pieces do all the work.

So the project of my artwork is to show. To show the things inside my mind, which is just another human mind, but human minds are great things, and if I can focus mine and receive it, it would be useful to show that.