Well, fate is once again indulging at our expense. We have hugs and slaps, comings and goings, ups and downs, strikes and gutters, in off with the white, state of grace slap in the face....take your pick of mixed fortunes metaphors but today, a doozie. Wait till you hear. I gets the keys to the new studio at 9am sharp and was all set up by 10.30. By 11 I had arranged a little still life of oranges and as I was squeezing out the last bit of colour I recieved a dark message regards the portrait.1 (When is the colour coming!)2 If I was not so taken aback by its fearful content I would have been indignant that the message had not been given directly to myself instead of being guilelessly filtered through Helen: The portrait has been rejected! How dare they! And on what grounds? The worst, and I should have seen it coming: "It does not look enough like the photograph." Well look here, just because the thing is based on a reproduction does not mean an attempt to copy and if that is the expectation then I will have no part in it. I know enough to run from reproductions! On the contrary one must strive to make the paint speak, fast and loose3, to symaltaeneously indicate the thing and show the means by which one does so. 4
Now I dont know what to do. Ill have to end relations with Anna and Micheal that much is clear but I must have the portrait back first. And if they are expecting a redraft they will not get it! What are these punters thinking? I say 'portraits from your reproductions' does that suggest a mere copy? An enlargement? Have I brought this on myself? I think not - a painting is not a photograph! (Enless you are indulging in Richter like games to amuse the 1%5 which we certainly are not.)
I have not yet retained my composure regards this new blow but I'm affraid that I have to float the possibility of retreat in our fledgling attack on the portrait business. A dissapointment to be sure but tonight I shall find solace in our wider mission.6 Enough of this fantasy of siustainability through sales, its time to get to the politics, focus on it and when its burns out move on! Thats the way to do it - charge through the thing and dont stop. Let the works become remainders, relics of this charge all tied to the back of the wagon like so many tin cans on a 'just married' car. And look here, it need not be paintings it could just as well be carved wooden spoons!7
I scratched off a view from the new studio just so the day not be entirely written off and as you can see my agnst is betrayed in the handling.
With resolve,
John
1. John has advertised his services has a portrait artist widely around Torpoint and Millbrook.
2. The colour will arrive in 2-3 working days.
3. A term entering the popular lexicon via Paul Newman's caracter, Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961). Describes a consciously relaxed, direct and carefree approach to an action.
4. An idea that echoes Cezanne: "art must shock nature into permanence, together with all the components and manifestations of change." This sentiment can be seen as part of the the 'eternal in the transient' trope that provides a theoretical framework for much modernist work. For example Charles Baudelire defines modernity thus: "Modernity is the transient, the fleeting, the contingent; it is one half of art, the other being the eternal and the immovable." The Painter of Modern Life 1863.
5. A refference to the Gherhard Richter's hyper realistic paintings based on photographs and commercisal success of this work on the contemporary art market.
6. The Torpoint Art Service rational of breakage. see Introduction.
7. The same reference to carved wooden spoons was made in an earlier entry. The significance of wooden spoons is not known. See work 10), 2nd paragraph, final line.
________________________________________________________________________________