Oh hi Mark

It's bigger than hip-hop.
Apparently.
I have done a lot more work on the mouth.
I say a lot.
It's not.
But I'm very concerned with pushing Hitler back and Fra Angelico forward in the painting.

I've made the right cheek of his face less definite.
I think it will make more areas of the painting more of an interest. Like making the star more of an impacting issue. As much as it can be, that subtly.

I really think that the Hebrew at the bottom, as my signature so to speak, will make the image fit more and become less offensive. As such.
Perhaps.
I really think that titling will change peoples preconception of the work.

"Selling liberty for a quiet life."

Nah.

The Rape Over

There was a dilemma, but it was resolved by purchasing more paint.

Hitler is the archetypal evil person. The bad guy.

The complete anti-saint.

Perhaps I could have used somebody less evil. But what's the point of doing things by halves?

Perhaps this could be my 'unfinished history'?

Perhaps.

I don't want the Magen David to be obvious - I want the viewer upon first impression to be not offended but more confused.

I believe that including the star - especially underneath Hitler, will give the image an unsettle.

But not offensive, no.

That's too easy.

People in my group critique still see Hitler too easily.

He's too obvious.

On the other hand, the star is perfect; nobody even noticed it.

Which is exactly what I want.

Sometimes you can say more by saying less.

I guess.

I need to either bring forward Fra Angelico or push back Hitler.

My tutor Jesse said that the painting "makes me think of children being gassed"

I'm not sure how that makes me feel.

What is it that makes a painting successful? 

Pimp Violet

GOLD!

The gold leaf is almost all on now and was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be to apply.

So all is well on the painting front, aside from the fact that I haven't actually done any work on it since last Thursday because of work and band, but I have a group critique today, so I had better 'get on it like a car bonnet'.

Apparently.

I had a few problems with the ear. 

But they have been resolved with more oil paint and I am quite happy with how it has resolved itself.

As you can see.

Waiting for the moon to rise

Progress was slow in the morning but I picked up the pace from around two o'clock and painted until about half five, so got a fair bit done.
Iconic images like this invoke things in people, just like advertisement.
Like Warhol.
It's just that he was telling America about the state it was in then.
What am I saying with this?
Is it enough to have a magen david in the image?
Do I need to ruin Hitler more?
I'm not about creating 'offensive' work.
Title matters.

I need to think about the title.
Titling can change peoples expectations.

Floods

Crowds exhibit a docile respect for force, and are but slightly impressed by kindness, which for them is scarcely other than a form of weakness.

This is going well.

After this first layer is complete I'm going to have to start thinking about the impression this picture gives.

That is so to speak, what Hitler is to me and then how I translate that and how it changes into what the viewer sees.

This isn't just a painting to cause offence.

Quite the opposite.

It's meant to appear as a 'canonised' Hitler, but in actual fact (through the use of dismantlement and the inclusion of the magen david) it becomes my view on him.

I suppose.

I still have a long way to go yet.

The bar staff cannot be held responsible for bad service

I made pasta today.
I got flour and egg everywhere but it tastes good.

I've been reading The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind by Gustave Le Bon
Apparently Hitler read this.
It's about the mentality of crowds and how individuals' characters change into a mass 'body'.
People lose all sense of logic and reason when in a crowd and if you can direct them, which isn't too hard, you can make the mass do what you want.
Whether that be for good or bad.
The crowd can become a murderer or a martyr.

"An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will."
Wonderful.

He's a complete dick though, a real sexist pig, but was a doctor.
He has the impression that children and women are more impressionable than men and that if a child has to give evidence to a case (say in court) you might as well toss a coin rather than take their word.
But interesting non the less.

It's strange looking at how the educated mind and the ignorant one become the same person and all sense of logic is overridden when the individuals form a group.
There is a unity in a crowd which transcends race, sex, age and class and forms a characteristic of being very suggestible and easily led.
The crowd will pursue an ideal, whether that be morally right or not after the crowd it seems it becomes something subjective to each member, each individual, as to how they then feel. Resentment, guilt, happiness, etc.

Good stuff.
Time for a cup of tea.

Shema My Train A Comin'

So now that I have sorted my composition and made, stretched and primed my canvas I can begin painting.

Day one.

Day two.

I'm like fucking Billy Whizz with a brush.

I am pleased with the progress though, it feels as though this painting will be worth the effort.

I should have finished my first layer by the time my safflower oil arrives. 

Well, I will have definitely done that because the oil is here next week and I've only done this much painting.

Saint Janice

I have used this image of Fra Angelico (Saint Angelico) in my composition so that when I paint this picture I have a Saint inside the image already.

Angelico was not necessarily a saint but he was a painter who was known in his time as "the blessed painter."

Breaking the entire composition up doesn't work as well as taking a portrait of Hitler and breaking that up and then putting things like the star in.

I was watching 'Downfall' the other night and watching Hitler got me really pissed off.

I can't leave him so unscathed in a painting. It feels like if I paint him, by doing so I have to 'destroy' him to an extent.

Which is partly what the star stands for in this. But also why this idea of tiles is so good.

I can shift his face. Deconstruct him.

Good. Now to start painting.

Ask passion for mercy and he'll throw you a rope

So I have decided I'm going to paint Hitler 'canonised' like a saint. Just with more symbolism in the image.

I hope.

To just have the image as a classical styled saint painting is too easy - too obvious. I need to change the painting method - make it my own.

Deconstruct the image and reconstruct it.

I could use a 'tile' puzzle to literally slide apart and break up my image.

I can use these moveable squares to scramble my image.

There is software that can be downloaded and then used for this but as far as I can see this is only for Windows. 

Bastards.

So far I've been using a fantastic website which you can access here to 'shuffle' my images.

Now when I decide on a composition with drawings and photoshop I can then dismantle it with this tool until I find a suitable (re)composition.

This can then be worked and reworked, etc.

You get the idea.

The end does not justify the means

J. Bronowski
"It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers.

That is false, tragically false.

Look for yourself."

I think I know who my icon will be now.

Perspective

Creating a notion of movement in space.

Alhazen - a mathematician Arab, around 1000AD first understood perspective properly. Previously the Greeks thought light went from the eyes to an object. Alhazen realised they were fucking wrong. That we see an object because each point of it directs and reflects a ray of light into the eye.

The Greek view could not explain how an object, like my hand, seems to change size when it moves. In Alhazen's account it's clear that the cone of rays that comes from the outline and shape of my hand grows narrower as I move my hand away from you. As I move it towards you, the cone of rays that enters your eye becomes larger and subtends a larger angle.

The Music of the Spheres;

In a fresco of the city of Florence (around AD1350) the painter has shown the view of the city, around buildings, over a wall, etc as if the city were arranged in tiers.

"But this is not a matter of skill; it is a matter of intention. There is no attempt at perspective because the painter thought of himself as recording things, not as they look, but as they are: 

A God's eye view, a map of eternal truth."

The perspective painter has a different intention. The picture and it's inhabitants are mobile. He deliberately makes us step away from any absolute and abstract view. A point of view in time, more than in space.

Icon painting

If I'm attracted to Francis Bacon's paintings I could paint something "ugly" in a "beautiful" way.
Jade Goody's last supper is my most "successful" painting, I feel.
Tramps are ugly. People don't give a shit though - I need icons for my icon.
Katie Price is ugly.
I need icons/subjects people know.
Celebrities.
I don't want to recreate my Last Supper again.
Disfigurement. No, too obvious.
Erasing/whitewashing.
Obliviscor.
Removing recognition.
Women/men.
Children.
Self portrait.
Should I make it Jewish?
Is that important?
The eternal Jew.
Paint what you don't dare to say.

Processes

The use of erasing/whitewashing art has always interested me; it can make images more calming and less immediate. Agnes Martin - very washed out acrylic. Like the paintings have faded in the wash. People seem to be more chilled around her work - not necessarily contemplative but calm and quiet.

Delicacy seems to warrant respect.

Quiet respect.

It's too east to offend people with art.

Why do people love Warhol so fucking much?

Everything is about money. People live to spend. The homeless man has no say on politics, no say on economy.

It's a criminal offence to trespass on the house of commons.

I thought parliament was created for the (good of the) people?

But I'm not petty.

Pray for safe passage through the night

Art inspires me. It doesn't seem to try to, or even need to I suppose.
Is art created to fulfil that purpose?

We build up an idea of beauty by what we're told is beautiful, by what we're told to like.
People congregate around the Monet and Pollock.
Jackson Pollock isn't particularly good but he's famous.
There's a beautiful Joan Mitchell painting next to the Pollock but nobody knows who she is.

I'm being far too satirical now.

People want to see that you've spent time on their three and a half minutes of attention.
Colour and scale and the reassurance of something recognisable.
People draw but prefer to write.

At least people are looking at the Twombly - but blood red on a 20ft canvas is pretty pretty. Yeah?

Exposure to the son may prevent burning

Art seems to inspire children - they see what they can create, they seem to se it as limitless creativity. Why must I use A4? Why must I use poster paint? why not the wall? Why not dirt?
This isn't described very well.

There's too much pretence.
Take off that stupid fucking hat. This whole "quirkiness" of the art student distances us further from reality. How can you expect people to relate to your work when you look (act) like such a dick?
It's not clever.
Neither is this.
But what would your mother say?

Babysteps

Do people still want to see religious paintings? What about them do people want to see nowadays?
From a non-religious point of view at least.

What is attractive now? Not necessarily to the 'masses' but to everyone?

Clothes. Everyone has clothes.
Not everyone gives a shit though.
What do people want to see in a gallery?
Do they want to see something serious?
Something fun?
Something beautiful?
Something disgusting?
Something nobody has said before.

Kids sit in the Tate and are told to draw. Sure, but they should be asked to discuss the meaning of art, what they see and how it makes them feel.

Is art work?
What art is taken "seriously"?
Should it?

Kids don't give a shit about the meaning of art. Meaning is given to art by adults. Children's art has no reason.
Is reason something it lacks or something it doesn't need?

Au

Do aesthetics change like fashion or is it an eternal idea?
Does it run in cycles?

People have always had an attraction to gold.
It's virtually useless, but has enthralled human societies

Gold for greed, gold for splendour, gold for adornment, gold for reverence, gold for power, sacrificial gold, life-giving gold, gold for tenderness, barbaric gold, voluptuous gold.

Gold doesn't rust. Gold is eternal.
Which is why I'm using it in my painting.

Sea to Sea

I am always initially attracted to a painting I'm unfamiliar with purely on an aesthetic basis.

Anything which has a need/can fulfil a purpose is ugly.
The most useful room in the house is the toilet.

Do other people care about aesthetics?
Are aesthetics purely subjective or is there something that humans are attracted to?

I love Francis Bacon's work purely because it's so unsettling - like looking at a car crash, but my mum hates them.
Bad example.

What is aesthetic attraction at it's most basic level?
the colour red?
glass?
gold.
sexual desire?

Anish Kapoor's sculpture is the supreme example of aesthetic isn't it?
Gloss, sheen, polished metal. "Finished."
But isn't this just subjective too?

Raul Models

People mainly appreciate work with effort.
Most people tend to congregate around famous paintings; either that or work that has obviously involved some kind of labour.
People want work that has consumed your time.
The common man and the child on the school trip don't give a fuck about Franz Kline. They want to see a Monet or a Dali.
If the abstract impressionists and painters like Rauchenberg used war painters and impressionists as their muses should we also use them?
Maybe there is a lack of "decent" art nowadays because we have no role models.
We're a talentless generation with nobody to look to.
I'm not going to use Tracey Emin as my fucking muse.
Cy Twombly's new paintings are magnificent. Bacchus and all that, and what has he done? He has drawn on the past for inspiration.
He didn't look to Warhol.

People immediately go toward paintings which they recognise/know something about/have been told to like (the Mona Lisa). People seem not to want to know about new artists - they'll take photos of Giaccometti's (which, don't get me wrong, are beautiful) but will walk past Duchamp's (not Marcel) horse sculpture.

How do I attract people to my work?