LIGHTNESS PRESS Mateus Domingos

11/3/11
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Certain Manifestations *again

The following was originally published in Art School Vol. 2 (2010). The oblique/italic text
comments on the original text with the perspective of several further months of ʻart schoolʼ
and aging.

Art in the context of fine art.

*Fine art seems relevant only as a tag for my university education. It tells you nothing
about my practice, although it assumes there is one.

Whatever trends win out in the methods of teaching fine art, be it a more theory based
practice or whatever is left when theory is removed, the inescapable fact is that we are
working in a time after theory was discovered, after it mutated.
*I assume there has always been theory, but I donʼt believe it has always been like this.
Maybe itʼs just because the purpose of art is necessarily changing throughout time,
separate from the artists and consumers, in accordance with the certain gaps in society.

Fine art is a battle ground.

*Maybe in reference to Kruger. Fine art as body. The artist becoming work. A modernist
notion yet entirely persistent in contemporary art. Once again accepted in this
metamodernist flux.

Practicing artists today work in a canon of artists on a scale and level of connectivity
scaled up immeasurably by the rise of the internet. Researching movements and groups,
waves of ideas, it seems hard to imagine such moves existing today.
*We move as the zeitgeist. Pockets of reference appear and fade again within wider
context. I guess these are the...

Sure, trends will happen, and in a big way. But these remain merely trends, rooted in
farcical nod to times before, printed in ʻjournalsʼ, hyped in ʻseminarʼsʼ... And this need not
be a bad thing. Itʼs just a feeling.

But what of the artist. Seeking to locate oneself in a global context, rather than peerʼs, a
scattering of exhibitions or the finite histories of library text books. This is where the
emphasis is.
*In fact, it seems to be equally about the closer, tangible context as well as the global
context, in our studies. Outside of the institution I imagine this context is often driven more
by financial opportunities than an attempt for complete contextualisation. We watch an
artistʼs film and the tutor contextualises it for them. The work itself tells us nothing of this.
Itʼs the strange tension between practice and research (which are only performative words
anyway, with little bearing on reality.)
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Practice is research, context and then the production of the art object.
*I still see this as a possibility although it is no longer my reality. I am now visualising my
practice as driven by several persistent themes, made physical through the longer-form
works, such as novels and films. Into this core, continually feeds research and influences,
reflection on the core work itself, shorter-form work such as paintings and essays.

This longer-form and shorter-form idea is not particularly practical in creating work, but
upon analysis seems to hold well to the actual work created.

The aforementioned research>context>production seems to sequential. The distinction

between form attempts to identify key works. This ʻcoreʼ could also be seen simply as time.

This is a choice. The amount of knowledge that exists and the accessibility of much of it
means that it would never be possible to fully understand the context of anything, therefore
one could disregard it all to begin with.
*The work after all is itself subject to endless interpretations by whomever encounters it. I
think I was concerned about the ethics of creating a work. The responsibility of the artist!

Research. By this I mean the acquiring of a knowledge of as much of the history of art as
possible, with specific reference to the work of artists/theorists/etc. that provide the most
clarity on where exactly it is that you are. And also more broadly, the development of the
artist themselves, their history, their prism, their experience.
*artists/theorists/etc. is obviously trying to avoid the role of the consumer/audience/
executive producer/funding body/etc. This is obviously a very important area to
understand, not only to provide a real contextualisation of the art history in question but
also the role of artists in a contemporary setting.

*this also fails to define research outside of a history of art, and I think that was due to a
concern with the idea of contextualisation.

(for it will always result in a work that accesses itʼs subject through the prism of itʼs
creator.)
*Thatʼs why this notion of the artist/author/auteur persists. The birth of the reader did not
mean the death of the author. It probably just meant a more competitive arena.

To create art a structure must be created from the research.

*Bah! This is nice and illustrative. But almost irrelevant. The research, whatever you
choose this to be, and probably a great deal of what you donʼt(!) will form itʼs constellations
just fine without any conscious act of creation. However, through evaluation it is possible to
create some semblance of this structure and trace meanings.

A great pile of connections, thoughts, past.

As an artist this structure is inevitably formed and the art object will present itself. By this I
mean an idea about a physical object.
*Without this itʼs hardly fair to be called an artist. Physical object could probably be
changed to Derridaʼs ʻtextʼ for clearer understanding.

The art object is the resulting thing that an artist will present as such.

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*Some authorial voice seems necessary at some point. Whether that is attributed to
Duchamp, God or Chance! To present, one also needs a platform. These platforms are
where art happens.

This is a tool.

With art, I canʼt presume I understand everyone else's belief on a subject, and I will rarely
understand my own, but i can aim to present a framework that encourages a viewers
questioning of their own beliefs and reassessment of their understanding. This is my
responsibility as an artist.
*ʼIf this is all about questions, where are all the answers?ʼ (painting, 2011). Is a successful
piece that which succeeds in providing or leading to answers? Itʼs an experience. Itʼs
transient. It is what it is. It is what sells or can be bought. Therefore I would redefine the
responsibility of the artist, which I also extend to students and teachers of art as: an active
critical awareness of the choices they make, lucidity, clarity and definition where possible.

One tutor decried the claim that with the internet the amount of artists whose work must be
traced to understand the artistʼs own position was just the same as before; a tutor would
always come along and inform the student of relevant artists, from which the student would
be complicit with this tangent and responsible for tracing itʼs roots. Maybe so.
*Both claim and retort were posed here with no evidence. Merely feelings. Like everything
else.

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