"Scarecrow and the Pig" (2005)Paula Rego
Paula, can we begin by talking about when your work first came to broad public attention in Britain, at the beginning of the 1980s? That must’ve a very interesting time to be a figurative painter.
Yes, nowadays you can do a lot of different things, but then it was a question of what was in fashion, really. The studios in London were full of people doing huge abstract paintings. Earlier, when I was a student, it was alright to paint the figure, and then I did a lot of collages. They’re all figurative and they all tell stories. They’re quite political some of them. And none of that was at all popular until the fashion changed. And then it was again OK to do it.
Extract from The AI Interview: Paula Rego
by
Robert Ayers
For the interview in full, please visit:
http://www.artinfo.com/News/Article.aspx?a=26065
I just had to post this in our blog! It’s that time at ArtSEEN when a lot of research is done, a lot of artists looked at, a lot or articles read, and a lot of websites visited…
I receive the ArtInfo newsletter via e-mail, and rarely have the time to sit down and read it. So this time it’s worked: I have time, and Paula Rego happens to be one of my own very admired artists (she does lovely, lovely prints!!!)
But I had to smirk when reading her reply to the first question asked her. Fashion! “Back then”? Well, it is just the same now, at least in the UK!
When I stepped into Wimbledon School of Art (now part of the conglomerate faceless University of the Arts London) to start my Master of Art studies, I was looking forward to touching, feeling, upturning every little pebble, studio, method that was on offer at the institution. After all, one doesn’t have the opportunity to make prints, lithography, video work, photography, and use of the spaces these studios provided at home. I even went to the introductory lecture for the BA first years on “how to stretch a canvas” – well, you know, one often takes ones skills for granted, so it’s always a good idea to go listen to somebody else talk about how to stretch a canvas. Yes, the guy knew his stuff!
Anyway, I took the whole year as one big opportunity to explore. Unfortunately, this atmosphere was hardly shared by my MA course companions, at least, not in the painting department. There was, and there is a Fashion to Painting, that most of my colleagues were determined to follow to a T. The look of the finished work had to be of a certain standard, and the subject matter, whether cityscapes, or landscapes, or portraits, had to be still. Still, as in stagnant, as in there is no space for an unexpected entry. Painting by Numbers, I called it. The whole palette was premeditated, and no deviation from such was acceptable to the artist-executor. Not only this, but my mouth dropped when I saw that a drawing up technique was implemented, and that nobody but me was having a trauma at this! Drawing was used only as a means of producing a sketch that would then be projected on the canvas, where the old pencil came back in into sad use, to trace the subject on the canvas, in order to follow it / fill it in colour by colour. And nobody seemed to even want to question this robotic, dry approach to one of the most luscious, alive mediums on the earth: oil painting!
This was the fashion, this was the “way to paint” and you could be “better” at it, or “worse” at it, but not deviate from it. Whereupon I am certain I wasn’t seen as a “painter” by some of my co-students during this year.
Actually, I didn’t paint: not in the classical sense at all. Fresh from my first experience in Performance, guided by Geoff Hendricks, I was seeing space in its own dimension, that is to say, in 3D. So, I started “painting” in space, or as it is, making installations.
It was at a pub that I received an “impartial” pep talk from one of the painters. It was said, in casual conversation, that Performance art and Installation art are fast slipping out of Fashion, and the Future is Painting. I nodded my head in agreement, refusing to accept this talk as personally aimed against my activities. After all, I haven’t followed fashion since the good old Grunge days back in the late 1980’s. I just have to accept that I am “out of fashion” – in the days I was painting, oil on canvas, no pencil, Installation, Video and Performance art were in fashion. Now that my creative process has taken me to this point, Painting is in fashion. I never get my timing right it seems. Shame. Dry crust of bread for me. (Anyone feel like buying a Performance out there? Going cheap, there’s a drop in the market!)
Thus the London Art World is still generated by the fashion machine. If you follow it, you’re in, if you don’t, at best you’re weird. At worst, you’re a failure. Either you see the world through standardised eyes, and if you dare to question, experiment, enhance, or even make a mistake, you are punished by being ignored by the art world. Forever and ever, amen.
Unless, of course, your particular process happens to come again into Fashion, for a few years.
So what is real? Everything is, and nothing is. To an artist, the process of making something “real,” the choice of what that will be, and whether it’s attached to the fashion of the moment or not, is our daily bread, or work.
I don’t know if bananas are fashionable, but here’s an artist who caught my eye, and made me smile (and that is saying a lot!) I love this project: Argentine-born artist Cesar Saez with a team of people is planning to launch a giant Banana to float over the Texan sky this year. It’s a playful idea, yet as the artist says, the Banana will be constructed by people who in the USA are frowned upon as “immigrants” usually with the word “illegal” attached to them as well. And a banana is a tropical fruit that reminds me of the lands where it grows: a stranger in some lands, and at home in others, and imported to some countries, whether as fruit, or as palm tree. A Foreigner that will be even more foreign while floating above Texas. One of the aspects of this project is that it is a totally legal one. One Legal Banana Immigrant in the USA.
Good luck Cesar & Team!
http://www.geostationarybananaovertexas.com/
I just had to post this in our blog! It’s that time at ArtSEEN when a lot of research is done, a lot of artists looked at, a lot or articles read, and a lot of websites visited…
I receive the ArtInfo newsletter via e-mail, and rarely have the time to sit down and read it. So this time it’s worked: I have time, and Paula Rego happens to be one of my own very admired artists (she does lovely, lovely prints!!!)
But I had to smirk when reading her reply to the first question asked her. Fashion! “Back then”? Well, it is just the same now, at least in the UK!
When I stepped into Wimbledon School of Art (now part of the conglomerate faceless University of the Arts London) to start my Master of Art studies, I was looking forward to touching, feeling, upturning every little pebble, studio, method that was on offer at the institution. After all, one doesn’t have the opportunity to make prints, lithography, video work, photography, and use of the spaces these studios provided at home. I even went to the introductory lecture for the BA first years on “how to stretch a canvas” – well, you know, one often takes ones skills for granted, so it’s always a good idea to go listen to somebody else talk about how to stretch a canvas. Yes, the guy knew his stuff!
Anyway, I took the whole year as one big opportunity to explore. Unfortunately, this atmosphere was hardly shared by my MA course companions, at least, not in the painting department. There was, and there is a Fashion to Painting, that most of my colleagues were determined to follow to a T. The look of the finished work had to be of a certain standard, and the subject matter, whether cityscapes, or landscapes, or portraits, had to be still. Still, as in stagnant, as in there is no space for an unexpected entry. Painting by Numbers, I called it. The whole palette was premeditated, and no deviation from such was acceptable to the artist-executor. Not only this, but my mouth dropped when I saw that a drawing up technique was implemented, and that nobody but me was having a trauma at this! Drawing was used only as a means of producing a sketch that would then be projected on the canvas, where the old pencil came back in into sad use, to trace the subject on the canvas, in order to follow it / fill it in colour by colour. And nobody seemed to even want to question this robotic, dry approach to one of the most luscious, alive mediums on the earth: oil painting!
This was the fashion, this was the “way to paint” and you could be “better” at it, or “worse” at it, but not deviate from it. Whereupon I am certain I wasn’t seen as a “painter” by some of my co-students during this year.
Actually, I didn’t paint: not in the classical sense at all. Fresh from my first experience in Performance, guided by Geoff Hendricks, I was seeing space in its own dimension, that is to say, in 3D. So, I started “painting” in space, or as it is, making installations.
It was at a pub that I received an “impartial” pep talk from one of the painters. It was said, in casual conversation, that Performance art and Installation art are fast slipping out of Fashion, and the Future is Painting. I nodded my head in agreement, refusing to accept this talk as personally aimed against my activities. After all, I haven’t followed fashion since the good old Grunge days back in the late 1980’s. I just have to accept that I am “out of fashion” – in the days I was painting, oil on canvas, no pencil, Installation, Video and Performance art were in fashion. Now that my creative process has taken me to this point, Painting is in fashion. I never get my timing right it seems. Shame. Dry crust of bread for me. (Anyone feel like buying a Performance out there? Going cheap, there’s a drop in the market!)
Thus the London Art World is still generated by the fashion machine. If you follow it, you’re in, if you don’t, at best you’re weird. At worst, you’re a failure. Either you see the world through standardised eyes, and if you dare to question, experiment, enhance, or even make a mistake, you are punished by being ignored by the art world. Forever and ever, amen.
Unless, of course, your particular process happens to come again into Fashion, for a few years.
So what is real? Everything is, and nothing is. To an artist, the process of making something “real,” the choice of what that will be, and whether it’s attached to the fashion of the moment or not, is our daily bread, or work.
I don’t know if bananas are fashionable, but here’s an artist who caught my eye, and made me smile (and that is saying a lot!) I love this project: Argentine-born artist Cesar Saez with a team of people is planning to launch a giant Banana to float over the Texan sky this year. It’s a playful idea, yet as the artist says, the Banana will be constructed by people who in the USA are frowned upon as “immigrants” usually with the word “illegal” attached to them as well. And a banana is a tropical fruit that reminds me of the lands where it grows: a stranger in some lands, and at home in others, and imported to some countries, whether as fruit, or as palm tree. A Foreigner that will be even more foreign while floating above Texas. One of the aspects of this project is that it is a totally legal one. One Legal Banana Immigrant in the USA.
Good luck Cesar & Team!
http://www.geostationarybananaovertexas.com/
Note: the English language part of this website has trouble opening, I clicked on the Spanish language to get the details.
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