Variations

During my recent visit to Tate Modern I have taken several photographs of artworks exhibited there and finally decided to proceed with the idea I had in mind for a long time.

Some of those photographs were of the whole artworks, some of only fragments of them. I did not feel I am in any way restrained and obliged to follow the originals and was at the liberty of photographing them the same way I would photograph landscape or architecture. My understanding was I was free to be selective and take only what I was interested in or intrigued by and not restricted by what the original authors wanted to present.

The idea in my mind was to take two or more very different pieces of art and meld them into one. The objective of this experiment was to challenge my own ability to work with what has already been creatively processed and defined as a noteworthy piece of art, along with challenging a few well-known concepts, all at once.

Below is the outcome of my ‘collaboration’ with two pieces of art: ‘In the studio 10’ by Joan Mitchel (a painting) and ‘Babel ‘ by Cildo Meireles (an installation). This ‘collaboration’ was restricted only by my own way of seeing and accepting what I like and dislike.

On the surface both works could not be more different. One is a painting; the other one is an installation. One relates to nature; the other one to man-made objects and their impact on human life. Joan Mitchel’s work seems to be of acceptance, while Cildo Meireles’ of protest.

Yet. in art nothing is black-and-white. The boundaries that seem obvious at the first sight are always blurred.

‘In the studio 10’ by Joan Mitchel could also be treated as an artistic protest against one’s inability to present the nature the way it really is. Or perhaps the artist’s unity with nature’s violent and wild side. Or something entirely different – only the viewer can be the judge of what he/she is looking at.

The same goes for Cildo Meireles’ “Babel’. It might be looked at not as an artistic protest but a work depicting submission and surrender to what has become our reality – irreversible presence of media and our inability to tell the truth from lies in what is fed to us. I can imagine a group of people sitting or standing around the tower being a part of the installation.

The ideas that this experiment aims at challenging have been present since the first pieces of art have been created. The first one that would come to mind here is perhaps authorship and the right to use other’s work to create one’s own. Is it inspiration or theft? Does the fact that I openly admit using someone else’s work here changes anything? Where is the boundary of viewer’s acceptance of this ‘collaboration’? How much must I alter the originals so the viewer would accept what I am doing here and not treat this experiment as a slithery attempt to grab attention. Does the point where the ownership of the piece of art is transferred to a new person exists at all?

The idea of artistic collaboration. Artists often collaborate but here we have a situation that is different. Nether Joan Mitchel nor Cildo Meireles know about my conducting this experiment. Do they have the right to protest against my conducting it and/or my publishing the results? And – if they knew – would they condemn it or congratulate me on exercising my artistic freedom while being quite pleased that it was their works I chose from many others I had available? Is such ‘collaboration’ even allowed? Or is it plainly wrong?

Fusion and independence of the piece of art. No one seems to get enraged by the fact that a painter paints a tiger without the tiger’s permission. Noone seems to mind, quite the contrary, when the painter alters tiger’s colours to match his/her artistic vision. In what wat the tiger, treated as an object, differs from the work of art that is photographed by a viewer? If two, three or more prices of art are fused into a new artistic entity and become independent of the originals, not only the ownership of the piece of art gets blurred – it is the very amalgamate, this blend and unification of their and my visions, a conflation independent and separate from its ingredients is born. Does it have the right to be created? Does it have the right exist? Am I working here like a sculptor, taking clay and water, two very different substances, textures and working them into a new piece of art? Am I working here like a painter, taking yellow and blue mixing them into green? Or am I just a pirate with a camera, defying holy rules?

Another thing that could also be considered is transition: is this a photograph? It was taken with a camera, so it most decisively is. How does the fact that it is a combination of images of a flat painting and a three-dimensional installation influences it character? Is this the proof that the forms of art are nothing more than sister ways of expression?

Are the results of this ‘collaboration’ a synthesis or what I have ended up with is merely an outcome of a disunion of two very different pieces of art that no one should never try putting together?

Working on this experiment I have created many variations of the fusion. Variations of those fusions – there could be a lot more of them. Combinations of the two original, variation of those, them combinations of those variations – this could go on for a very long time, perhaps until the two originals are so distorted so much that no one would be able to see they were there is the first place. Some of them are very different and some very similar. Some of them I found quite pleasing to the eye while some seemed to me quite ugly. Why working on so many? Why presenting here so many?

Art, when created, is free from the viewer. Viewer has no place while a work of art is created. However, once it is presented, the table turns – the artist’s role ends, and the viewer holds all the rains. It is the viewer who decides what is accepted and what gets forgotten. It is also where the ‘conversation’ between the artist and the viewer plays out. Art invites the viewer to make a choice between what he/she finds interesting and/or pleasing. Those choices do not have to be learned ones. They should be examined by the viewer though.

There is no logic to the way the images are presented here other than an attempt to try and not making them seem too repetitive by placing similarly-coloured pictures next to each other. The beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. It also has many faces. This is why I decided to include so many of those variations here.