2. ON JOHN BERGERS STUDIO TALK (for Miquel Barceló) 8
3. BREAD IS THE LAND, THE LAND IS BREAD 13
4. HAYRACKS 19
5. THE SOUND OF COLOUR 25
6. MAZE 31
7. LOCUS OF THE LAND 36
8. CONCLUSION 42
9. END NOTES 49
3 1. INTRODUCTION
“The person who can communicate his emotions to the soul of others is the artist.” A. M. Mucha
The week(s/end) long trips with my parents all over the Yugoslavian states were always about perceiving the habitat that surrounds us with its masses and colours, scents and climates, tastes and tangibility. The memories of digging in the dirt and wondering what those captivating circular shapes were (they were worm deposits) bring back the lines in my practice. It is earth, mother and life giver to all things living. All things are made of mass which is intertwined, and all colour is without definite shape, so they had to come together to make a dense statement in the form of an image.
Seeing a landscape does not necessarily mean that one is in it. Depictions of nature and landscapes are often the only link we have with them, as Gina Crandell stresses. She points out that we recognise and associate landscapes with the photographs and pictures that are shown to us on a daily basis, since they are the ones we are exposed to (Crandell 1993). Our mind grows accustomed to them and, with that, the rising comfort of those places drives us to visit them and bring them into our home in the form of pictures. Our urge to travel and discover is another factor that is being pointed out in connection with the understanding and perception of landscape. The “European tour” has been in fashion for 4
centuries and still appeals to the “foreign” spectator; the artist on the other hand has a closer connection to the landscape. Artists like Turner, van Gogh, Rubens and Monet have proven their sensitivity to their habitat and their depiction of it. Turner was known to indulge in the sublimity and picturesque qualities of his surroundings; he travelled constantly and has left a staggering number of landscapes. It is not only in fine art that the landscape has a profound space; in poetry and fiction the landscape possesses a life of its own.
The travelling artist has a modern life of their own. The world has changed and the still present “European tour” had developed into yet another contemporary moving of nations in search of life. The Slovenian saying “
physical sense but also a general condition called “virtual migrancy”(Alphen 2005) on the highway of globalizing information and data flow. Where does that leave the artist?
In a time when many artists choose to go “after the bread”, they differentiate themselves from those like Millais, Monet or Turner, who have depicted landscapes and habitats on travels. Instead, they
1977), which supports Crandell’s claims, that we recognise and choose the looks of landscapes because of the depictions we have seen. Her research goes further to define beautiful landscapes as “most pictorially satisfying” (Crandell 1993). She explains how the “European tours” were used for landscape discovery and purchase whereas now the culture of travelling has become an artistic practice in itself, as in the practice of Hamish Fulton or On Kawara. The modern man in his “virtual migrancy” recognises his surroundings by “virtual depictions” which are made of pictures, magazines, documentaries and cinemas, constructed to an imagined place, constructed in our heads. The domesticity has become an idealisation of our habitat and cultural identity.
But not all landscapes are “virtual” and idealised. The perception and understanding of landscape has an almost holy relation to the artists that articulate its picturesque qualities. Landscape has begun as a mere depiction of Eden that has now landed on Earth. We try to reproduce it in gardens and with that, make our own holy place of escape and bliss. Artists go beyond that common “copying”. Nolde has seen nature and the landscape as something worth “living”, with which I mean that he had to perceive it not only visually but with all his senses. His experience and relation of colour was of a romantic nature: “Are not dreams like tones, tones like colours and colour like music? I love the music of colours… Colours were a joy to me, and I felt as they loved my hands” (Stevenson 1970). Many writers have established that Turner was much the same when he was indulging in the 7
charms of light and colour. It is not only that perception of what is plainly seen; it also involves the heightened emotion evoked through our 10 senses that describe the whole perception. His interpreters find that his composition of colour existed for their own benefit. It is not only the colours he has seen but the density of the fog, or the softness of the rain and especially the power of the sun; he discovered the physicality of colour. The colours are constructed in masses that exceed the plain linear and flat characters. He manages to incorporate the whole atmosphere of his perceptions into a blend of colours and aggregates. They both were depicting the sublime (obscurity, wastes, infinity and power) and the essence of beauty (colourfulness, variation, purity), where they became part of the landscape and were able to transmute their perceptions of the landscape to the pictorial form.
It seems that the art of landscape has many faces; it includes the soul being of existence, connoting cultural, social, ecological, political and religious identities. Where does that position my practice? I am a migrating artist that depicts the current habitat and the one that is given to me by birth. The idealist fantasises about the beautiful and the picturesque, which are still integral to the logic of truism, which drives me to the “out of the car window snapshots” and sightings of “drive-by” masses, that have to be in colour that reflects the awe of nature and mans handling of it. The land cannot be flat or shapeless; it is not the deposits that have captivated me as a child or dough when making bread. Meanwhile, 8
colour is ever-present, much like space; it defines it and provides it with emotional identity. The positioning of anthropological artefacts turn into the act of domestication, and the abstract formation of land makes the physicality of a new home possible.
I have succumbed to “the lure of the Local” (Lippard 1997). It is the marriage of two different landscapes, two different identities melting into one but still knowing which is which. It is a fantasy land of Slovenia and Scotland,
This thesis is a compilation of essays that explain the journey, symbolism and meaning of the piece that has emerged as a result of my stay in Scotland. They convey the notion of difference, spontaneity, time, old and new influences, culture, locality and perception. 9 after bread with the belly” comes to explain the gorse mix of people, nations and ethnic identities. Growing up in Yugoslavia I have been exposed to the cultural blending of different ethno-cultural existences. The eight different countries were made up of more than 15 different ethnicities that have believed in the romantic notion of brotherhood, equality and freedom, and the elderly population still swear by Tito. The Croats moved to Slovenia, Slovenians to the Balkan states, and Serbs to Bosnia, Slovenia and Croatia and constructed a hybrid place that was “someplace”. This space, habitat and land has become an unknown and confused spectrum of home, comfort and identity. Van Alphen states that ongoing migrations have left no place in the world that is not hybrid in terms of culture and that it is not only a migration in the 5 live in their new environment. James Mayer names their practice artistic nomadism (Coles 2000). They move from space to space and interact with the habitat, incorporating it into their identity. But it is not only the temporary local that is in their practice. They are aware of their past and all ethnographical influences they have absorbed, and they incorporate them in their practice. What is their place? Dean and Millar think that place has no fixed identity and that Tuan is right when stating that when space feels familiar to us, it becomes a place. Familiarity and domesticity are therefore needed to produce a place, especially when that is a space where one lives. Irene Cieraad connotes domesticity with the ethnographic and anthropological artefacts that we put into our “places” (Cieraad 2006). They make them domestic and their own; one has to feel comfortable in a place. Since man has put their own distinctive architecture in the landscape, there truly is no place on earth not domesticated? Even in the zest of the rainforests or solitude of the deserts there is human intervention in one form or another. Psychological research has proven that we choose the places we live in because we recognise them and they make us feel comfortable Slotland, which wants to communicate its identity and perception.
SLOTLANDA instalation made of japanese papaer, linocut and oil paints, put up as a maze.
The concept is explaned in the One year diary textude through that is ment to function as a guide through the maze.
Slotland in Slovenia:
http://www.mkc.si/novicemedianox/160-2×12-razstava-december-2011
