PAUL
REENACTMENT PAINTING CLASS
RESEARCH PROMPT:
How do you implement pop music / pop culture into your practice?
INITIAL BRAINSTORMING
What is the relevance of Christian iconography in modern culture? Ø
What is the role of Christ the Saviour / of the Virgin Mary / of an Ø omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God?
To what extent is Catholicism considered camp / kitsch? Ø
Can Catholicism still provide adequate salvation in the modern age? Ø
PRIMARY
VISUAL
RESEARCH:
Although initially the connection / dynamic may not be apparent between pop culture and Catholicism, during my research trip I realised that all the things so widely used in pop culture, which effectively makes it so post-modern, are also an inherent part of Christian iconography. Intertextuality, appropriation, re-appropriation and
re-enactment are key utensils when dissecting and constructing symbols and motifs dealing with the notion of an ultimate truth. The fragmented reality which this creates is essential in Catholicism and in post-modern though, although the outcome of the thought processes could not be further apart.
I began my investigation with a research trip to Italy where I photographed the altars of around 30 churches, ranging from the Medieval period, Renaissance and Baroque. I also photographed the individual statues of Christ the Saviour, the Virgin Mary with the Child and souvenir shops in Assisi (a massive religious and tourist destination for the Catholic world).
I was raised in a Catholic household. I am baptised and I have had my First Communion. The Church, its traditions and its rituals are familiar to me on a subconscious level. However, ever since my First Communion I only attended Mass twice a year– once during Christmas day and once during Easter Sunday. And ever since last year I do not attend at all.
I function in a weird style of post-modern Christianity. I believe everything should be questioned, rigourously inspected, and almost nothing is holy enough that it can't and shouldn't be satirized. Yet, I still flinch at blasphemous comments made towards any religion, find secular and non-secular laws policing women and queer bodies abhorrent and ultimately hold a romantic notion that somehow the divine lives in nature which will always be grander than I.
I think post-modernism and religion have a lot in common. In their respective logical structures nor Truth nor God can be defined and any attempt to do so falls short as they are supposed to encompass a limitless infinite.
This makes it really hard for me.
On one hand to lead a seemingly moral life which I am conditioned to do so, while also being aware of said conditionings shortcomings, but also because it fails to answer my questions as to how I believe and at who's altar I have been praying at.
SECONDARY
RESEARCH:
HANNAH ARENDT ON METAPHYSICAL LONELINESS:
Stripped of these meaningful institutions of transcendence, mass men turn to racism or consumerism to give their lives meaning. Ø
How are we to make life meaningful, how are we to inure individuals from the seduction of ideological movements that lend weight to their meaningless lives? Ø
Connection is to be found in the cultivation of quintessentially modern relationships. Ø
Being lonely, the individual is no longer part of the public space and becomes extremely vulnerable. This happens because loneliness stands in contrast with the Ø plurality of the public sphere, and thus with reality and politics.
Arendt’s account of loneliness is very much concerned with the interdependence of being and Ø
doing, of existence and action. She writes, ‘freedom as an inner capacity of man is identical with
the capacity to begin, just as freedom as a political reality is identical with a space of movement
between men’
Ø Loneliness as the non-appearance before others.
Ø Loneliness of the self towards the other // Loneliness of God towards the self
Loneliness of the self towards the other // Loneliness of God towards the self Ø
Self --> <-- Other Ø
God --> <-- Self Ø
There is a dynamic of loneliness caused, to a degree, by a lack of dialogue Ø
Dialogue in this sense would be the representation of this dynamic. No dialogue --> no dynamic and vice versa.
"Talking to a wall - Talking to an Altar BUT with nothing to worship / Not being able to see anything to worship.
I AM BETTER AT ASKING QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERING THEM. Ø
the statement is applicable both ways<--
ANDY WARHOL AND DIPTYCH OF B&W ADS:
Andy Warhol is the quintessential artist who has integrated pop culture into his practice. Although most know him for his reflections on consumer and celebrity culture his work before his untimely death seems to portray a more personal review related to his Catholicism and possibly the ongoing AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
However, the biblical phrases such as 'Repent and Sin No More,' 'Mark of the Beast,' and 'Heaven and Hell are Just One Breath Away' written with the font most commonly used in the 60s ads seem to subvert their biblical meaning, making religion and its morals appear as mass communicated slogans. The black and white typography with the fonts communicates a sense of fatalism, while the rounded lettering makes the posters appear kitsch, marketable, purchasable and hence contrastingly devalued.
My interest is not in portraying the same message but rather in how to use large-scale texts in conjunction with religious imagery. I want a sense of mass communication to be present, especially with text art being such an integral part of contemporary art. Nevertheless, I do not wish it to look like an ad, but rather like one of those obscure posters that can be found in public
(see for example the works by Robert Montgomery).
This is how I wish the sentence of
"I AM BETTER AT ASKING QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERING THEM"
to appear.
Ed Ruscha - The End #8 Ø
This is also another reference by Ed Ruscha where through a series of monochrome paintings he re-created the final titles of old films when variations of the phrase "The End" appears.
This is equally a reference to the pop-cultural sphere that dominates us and the gothic letters carry the same religious/ fatalistic meaning but without it being cheapened by turning it into commercial branding.
The question brought up by one of my teachers is if I intend to use the gothic lettering would it not be too direct of a reference to the letterings used by the Third Reich?
(1)
"The Antiqua–Fraktur dispute was a typographical dispute in 19th- and early 20th-century Germany.
In most European countries, blackletter typefaces like the German Fraktur were displaced with the creation of the Antiqua typefaces in the 15th and 16th centuries. However, in Germany and Austria, both fonts coexisted until the first half of the 20th century.
During that time, both typefaces gained ideological connotations in Germany, which led to long and heated disputes on what was the "correct" typeface to use. The eventual outcome was that the Antiqua-type fonts won when the Nazi Party chose to phase out the more ornate-looking Fraktur."
-via Wikipedia
(2)
"Ultimately a rigid, retrograde Nazi-style developed that inveigled its way into society through the concept of Gleichschaltung (literally, ‘synchronisation’), the integration and consolidation of National Socialist cultural dominance over everything from architecture to typeface design.
...
In the years 1933-35, rejection of non-German Roman alphabets was a recurring theme in Rosenberg’s cultural propaganda, which included stickers admonishing citizens to exclusively embrace Gothic letters.
...
One reason given for this was that Josef Goebbels was afraid that Gothic type – a reading challenge for anyone who didn’t understand the German language – would compromise his foreign propaganda, which had been given high priority. Also, Hermann Göring complained that his pilots found blackletter difficult to read when used as markings on aeroplanes. Then there was the need for a more universal type of solution for signs in occupied lands. Whatever the reason, a directive issued by Deputy Führer Martin Bormann in January 1941 stated: ‘The Führer has decided that Roman type . . . shall be designated as the normal type.’ As Lehmann-Haupt pointed out in his Art Under a Dictatorship, ‘the harmless name “Schwabacher” furnished the necessary scapegoat."
-via Wikipedia
Paintings by George Rouy