My Best Impression

Impression Sunrise, 1872 via wikipaintings

In 1872 Claude Monet (unintentionally) created the Impressionist movement with his work, Impression Sunrise. Painted in the harbour of Le Havre, the artwork attempts to capture the fleeting 'impression' of a sunrise. It was painted quickly with the intention of translating the visual, physical 'effect' light has on a landscape, but more specifically on our individual perceptions of colour. It was criticised as unfinished. It was ridiculed as amateurish. Yet, it began a painting revolution, a reassessment of painting that claimed perception was more evocative of reality than was the precise mimicking of nature.

So, this morning it came to me that I would like to recreate my impression of light, landscape and perception. I was walking though a park in South West London just after sunrise. Although I instinctively reached in my pocket for my mobile, I had no camera to capture the moment (I had consciously left my phone at home). Without my camera I was able to actually experience the moment. I let go of the need to document and realised that whenever you take a photo of something you find yourself saying to the viewer 'oh, this photo doesn't do it justice.' That's because with the quick capture of a camera-phone we rarely capture our perception of the moment, our subjective experience, the impetus that drove us to take the photograph in the first place.

My thoughts turned to Monet. When he re-created his perception of these fleeting moments of light he did not do so to reproduce the presumed exactitude of vision, rather he intended to paint through the subjectivity of his temperament. Therefore, the precision is inherently flawed, but the finished work is far more emotive and revealing of his experience (he reveals his interest, himself as an artist, by what he chooses to focus on).

I am no painter, but I would like to try to re-create my impression of sunrise through what I can do as an art historian, write.

Impression, SW Park, London, 10 December, 2013, approx. 8:00

A dense layer of white fog clings to the frost-lined green grass. The cold damp gently embraces and encloses all life in its scope. As it rises from the ground it transitions to a smokey blue dew, fading as it reaches the tips of bare, needle-thin tree branches. Its heaviness returns to enhance the gray sheet of clouds and, together, they diffuse the early morning sun, making it glow and glisten like a soft, breakable, orange yolk. The whole of the light is what I have always imagined late autumn to be.

Not as good as Monet, but worth the experiment.

What I can remember about Picasso inspires me

Lights dimmed. Projector on. Dim glow. Expectant faces. I never let anyone into my lectures late, so the room was always full. I resigned my post to build a life in London.

I miss teaching. I miss lecturing about what I love. What I miss most though is art history.

Art history is a dark room illuminated by an artwork, literally and figuratively. We share in the dark and it is as if the art becomes more precious and more powerful.

I have not lectured on art history in over a year and a half. I began to study cultural studies (philosophy, economics, sociology. . .) and I disconnected myself from the topic that made my heart sing because I falsely came to believe it was irrelevant - that my work was not contemporary, informed on the conceptual, the technological. I believed this lie and it took me a year of studying contemporary subjectivity at Goldsmiths to realise history is never irrelevant. We live history in the contemporary - we are the result of our history.

I feel sometimes so disconnected from art history that I don't know where to begin to reconnect. I pray that it is like 'riding a bike' but I fear that the stories, the analysis, the passion I had have been simplified into the superficial things one might remember from any survey course: that what was my knowledge is no different than any other abstract memory I think I feel I experienced.

Picasso moved to Paris in 1900. He was a young artist (19) trying to prove himself in the avant garde capital of the world. He had come from his home in progressive Barcelona just after perfecting his study at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, graduating with the equivalent of a BA by the time he was 16. He had mastered the technical skill of the academy, now it was time to un-learn all of it so that he could push art forward.

Picasso, First Communion, 1896 via Pictify

Picasso's first years in Paris were marked by poverty, loss, fear, depression and the suicide of his best friend (Carlos Casagemas). He continually fled the city back to the comforts of Barcelona where he would gather courage and artistic capital (i.e. knowledge of Iberian sculpture) to come back and conquer The City of Art.

Picasso, Death of Casagemas, 1901

To move forward Picasso studied history. He imitated Monet, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin - the previous generation of modernists that had forged the path away from academia into individual expression. From the study of history he made style of his own; he found his voice.

Picasso, Desmoiselles d'Avignon, 1907 

I recall this all without consulting notes or other sources. This is from memory. Has my memory distorted the 'truth'? Has my memory made something seriously nuanced simple and superficial?

What I can remember about Picasso (here) inspires me. Persistence, study, work, regroup, belief that in time it will come. Pushing past doubt and building upon strength is what made Picasso. I am not Picasso, but I can gain from his history.

To regain what I have resigned I have to cast aside the fear and doubt - the distorted thought that I will never assimilate into my tough city, London. To make my memory present and factual I must regroup, re-study and re-immerse into the consciousness of art. I have to return to (mine and art) history to move forward.

So, who wants to hire me as an art history lecturer?