Subject, content and meaning z There is a difference between subject, content and meaning. z The painting might be a landscape but it could be about space; that is, the subject is a landscape whilst the content of the painting is pictorial depth. Or it might simply be that the painting depicts a landscape and its real subject is the illusion of space. Of course a landscape could be about many things: ownership and wealth or labour or majesty and […]

Optimistic or Pessimistic? z I used to ask students whether their painting was optimistic or pessimistic. They usually looked at me a bit bemused; nobody had ever asked them that question before and they had never considered that thought. z The best answer is both, that the work is both optimistic and pessimistic. The best paintings are ambivalent. z Art is ambivalent and can ‘hold’ contradictions; paradox is the dialectic of life. See Lesson 16. z This is a list of […]

Learn from your successes z Learn from your successes and not your mistakes. z I never understood what people mean when they say they learn by their mistakes. z What can you learn from a mistake? z Not to do it again? That seems to be a bit too easy. z However, what does not work in one situation might be the best strategy in another circumstance. So it would be a mistake never to repeat your ‘mistake’ again. z […]

Make a big mistake z Making a big mistake is much better than making little ones. A big mistake can more easily be recognised and is usually easier to fix. z If rectifying is necessary. z A really big mistake can be a shift of context and no longer a mistake. As Stuart Brisley has said “Just something else happening“. z Lesson 27: Make a horrendous mistake or botch something up you like and then look at it and consider […]

Cooking Lessons This chap went for a job as a chef. By way of an interview, the head chef told him to make an onion omelette. i So the guy throws two onions up in the air and chops them up mid air with the skins going into the bucket and the finely chopped onion into the hot pan on the hob. He then throws six eggs into the air, whisks them, again, in the air with the shells dropping into […]

How to do art research i Do some academic written research. i The more obscure the better; obscurantism will stand in for originality. i Put the text up on a gallery wall with some relevant (or otherwise) artefacts from a museum. i It will look like a conceptual exhibition. i It’s much easier to make research look like art than trying to make art look like research. i i i i i i

I don’t do projects i A friend once told me to write a project and apply for a grant, I said that I didn’t  do projects. My work is my life, it’s an ongoing enquiry. He said that my life was not a project. Quite true; and neither is my art. Doctors used to prescribe Valium to people who suffered from anxiety, and later the drug companies started to produce anti-depressants. These anxiety sufferers were then given these anti-depressant drugs, […]

It’s a curator’s world i It is said that the Queen thinks that Britain smells like wet paint, because when she ‘visits’ Britain everything is newly-painted ahead of her path. Somewhat similarly, towards the end of the war Hitler’s Generals dared not tell him the truth that Germany could not win and that it was all going terribly badly. This also happened during the First World War as well-meaning Officers tried to put a positive spin on events in reports to General Haig. […]

Music and Art I Whilst as a student at Hornsey College of Art in the late 60s, Jesse Dale Cast was a part-time lecturer. This renowned realist painter who had paintings in the Tate was the same age as I am today, but to a 19 year old he seemed much older. I thought it great to have this age range and broad spectrum of opinion on the teaching staff at Hornsey. I Jesse rhetorically asked me “why is Gainsborough […]

Form and content i As an art student in the late 60s, I was told ‘to look after the formal qualities of the work and the content will look after itself’. i Being perverse I decided to look after the content and let the form look after itself. Indeed, this was the advice I used to give to students when I first started teaching. i Look after the content and the art will look after itself. i As I got […]