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So interesting to attend an event at the Courtauld Institute...... a conversation between Michael Craig-Martin and my friend Jonathan Watkins........ Jonathan is a mega Curator of Art events worldwide as well as Director of the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham ....... and Michael is a very influential artist and educator.......... I would love to spend more time at events like this......... sometimes it's great to stop and think ...... to try and analyze what it really is that motivates my own practice ...... mostly I am just rolling....... I am actually doing it not stepping back ....... not analyzing for myself even my own motivation ........ or the motivation of others in a similar field .......... or even analyzing the reaction of an audience to my work.
Michael Craig-Martin was in conversation about his influential art work called 'Oak Tree' a glass of water on a glass shelf with an accompanying text ..............
This was fascinating ........ many of the audience were very taken by the religious idea of transubstantiation.......... but he was not really keen to get into specifically Catholic religious concepts ....... his was a secular artistic concept......... that involves the idea of faith and metaphor in the work and even some mention of 'art work as placebo' .......... specifically about how a work of art captures your imagination and is then held in your imagination ....... Oak Tree is an attempt to create an 'invulnerable work'.
I found him to be completely on territory I am interested in myself when he spoke more generally ........ " Art is metaphor" ........ " Art is about observation" .......... "Art does not need the authority of an absolute answer " ........ "Art does not need special objects or subjects ..... its in the everyday "
Clearly I am very interested in observation ......... in relationship and representation through observation ....... where somehow the mundane can contain the magical or the sublime ...... where everyday life contains revelation if the observation has that lifted quality .......... but again as was discussed by Jonathan and Michael the resonance is all the more active in the viewer if the message is already known to that viewer ......... If the audience sees things or messages they know or recognize ........ perhaps things they know on a fundamental or possibly even a hidden level......... but messages they are already familiar with at some level.
When I think of an influential image on my life....... an image made by by W. Eugene Smith ........... an image contained in a chemistry book I was studying at school .......... an image burned into my minds eye .............. I know this photograph has truly 'captured my imagination'.
I already know that a mother loves her child ........ but when I see this beautiful image of the mother bathing her disabled child I am moved and my faith in this knowledge is profoundly enhanced ......... this ordinary scene from even a society on the other side of the world resonates with me and never leaves me ......... for me a very important piece of art work completely from observation ......... a work of art that changed my life.
I looked at it and knew that I was not that interested in the rest of the contents of that chemistry book........ but I was profoundly interested in that one photograph.......... I have lived my life almost from that day on ...... attempting to make photographs that have the same power to hold the imagination of any viewer.
Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
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.... The photography and slightly mad life of reportage artist Jez Coulson ....