The Spill by Subodh Gupta
An artist
friend of mine, after reading the answers regarding the questions on
Installation Art and Style raised by Vineesh Vijayan, asked another interesting
question. Though she does not want to be named here she has a special request
for me that I should answer her question. So I quote her question first and
then try to answer it. It goes like this: There are some artists who repeat
themselves; they become so addicted to their own works and do not look elsewhere
for inspiration or influence. Is that a problem?
An artist
copying another artist formally, technically or conceptually is an act
plagiarism. There is a difference between plagiarism and reference. When you
acknowledge the source of your image or statement, it becomes a reference,
while you hide the source and present it as your own, it becomes plagiarism.
Remember, even if you feel that an image that you have lifted from obscure part
of the world and think that none will come to know about it, you will be proven
wrong, if not today, tomorrow because we are living in an image saturated world.
This innocent ‘lifting’ of image was quite a rampant practice during the hay
days of mediatic realism aka photorealism. There used to be embarrassing moments
during the art openings as people get to see some image used in the same way by
two different artists who also differ in their stature and reach. Artists used to
have special folders in their computers and their sophisticated cell phones
that contained the ‘original’ images that their close friends were working on
at that time. This used to be a cruel time pass amongst artists.
(The Kiss by Rodin)
I will tell
you a story. An artist did a sculpture that showed a mule being hurled up in the
air thanks to the weight of the load that it was pulling. Some sort of
steadiness and stiffness was infused in the modelling of the mule in its
posture of being suspended in the air. Soon his friends worked an extra shift
to find out the original image of reference and it was from some Middle East
artist. Slowly, our artist also came to know that his friends too were having
the image of his reference. So while exhibiting the work, for a change he laid
the mule down on the floor rather than hurling it up in the air. It worked well
but after a few seconds of viewing one thought why the mule was so stiff while
lying on the floor; it looked like a frozen corpse straight from a cold
storage. There were hush-hush talks everywhere. But as you know the modelling of
the mule was done on a different context and the way it got displayed was
different.
I know I
have digressed a bit here. Let me come to the point. To answer my friend’s
question, I would consider the material and spiritual circumstances that
facilitate the act of copying oneself. An artist copies his or her own works in
the following circumstances. First of all sculptures, graphic prints, digital
works, photographs, videos and so on could be done on limited editions. In
these genres the artists deliberately allow making multiples of the same work.
However, the question of originality does not arise here. Though technically
speaking we could say that A or B was the ‘original’ and the rest are the
editions, we cannot say for sure that which one copies the other. There is an
aspect of simulacrum involved in it- a situation that facilitates copies
without original. Technically, again we could say that the original is the
mother mould/etching plate/raw file and so on. Here though artist ‘copies’ his
works within the ethics of ‘copying’, it is not ‘copying’ him/herself.
(Narcissus by Caravaggio)
Secondly,
artists copy their own works or works that look very similar to the other
because of some sort of narcissism. Artists, irrespective of their mediums, are
narcissists. They like to see certain aspects of their works repeated in most
of their works. At times, they repeat the same image, at times they repeat the
same concept and at other times they repeat certain ‘signs’ which could signify
the presence of the author. Here the artist makes a replication of his or her
own self through these acts. We could say that artists are intensely in love
with each other at times verging into pathological modes, and they tend to
repeat themselves, which obviously is a trap if not handled carefully.
The third
situation is a sort of desperation and dissatisfaction. Artists are great
perfectionists. They could be shabby in appearance but like Hamlet’s madness,
their shabbiness too is methodical. They want their works to be perfect. And
each time they do a work, a sort of repletion happens. They want it to be
pushed more and more towards this abstract notion of perfection. It stems from
the feeling that their works are not expressive enough to say what they have
been trying to say through it. This dissatisfaction could lead to self
repetition.
(A scene from Nostalgia by Tarkovsky)
The fourth
aspect of copying oneself without heeding to the movements elsewhere is sheer
nostalgia. When someone feels a lot about the past works and keep revisiting
those works and bring back the elements and motifs from the past works, we
could say that the artist is a prisoner of his own past. It is not a wrong
thing to be attached to one’s own past. But there should be occasions of
detaching oneself away from the clutches of the past and intensely live in the
present. This artistic present does not mean living in the temporality of
present, instead I would say that an artist living in the contemporary times
and intensely understanding its nuances developed through historical
evolutions. This is a positive nostalgia. That means, one artist could think
about a 17th century painter and get inspired and could avoid
looking at the contemporary artists for inspiration. Such nostalgia comes as a
part of the research that an artist does on his personal level.
The fifth
context of self repetition is sheer felicity. For example, I have understood
artists like Ramkinkar Baij, Nandlal Bose, Benod Behair Mukherjee, Picasso and
many other modernists used to be very passionate sketchers. They kept on
sketching things. They go to some places or perhaps to the same place every day
and sketch that place or people. It is neither nostalgia nor passion for
perfection. It is the artist’s perennial interest in showing his inborn skills
in a very natural way. Fish swim in water and birds fly in the air. Swimming
and flying are quite natural to them. Birds fly not just for preying. They fly
like Jonathan Livingston, the seagull, who fly for sheer joy. The artists who
sketch the same place in the same way or with a different passion are like
Jonathan Livingston, the seagull. They cannot do without it. Look at the
innumerable landscape sketches by Baij or the artist and model series by
Picasso. They could not have done without that. This is a kind of self
repetition but it is not copying. They open themselves up to a different world
by doing it.
(Artist and Model by Picasso)
An artist
becoming complacent by copying his own images and shutting himself out of the world
of other creativity and influences is a tragedy and farce at the same time.
Often artists do repeat themselves because the market wants it to be like that
(I have discussed it in my previous blog). If you ask me which kind of self
repetition I prefer, I would say I am Jonathan Livingston the Seagull.
2 comments:
Good one..
http://www.banksy.co.uk/indoors/images%202/artists2.gif
:)
Thank you...very enlightening. again.
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