Correspond catalogue by the artworks

Correspond

Iain Andrews Una dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Aragona Gilly Beal Miranda Boulton Kate Brinkworth Graham Carrick Charles Clapshaw John Clarke Jules Clarke Alison Critchlow Alexandra Darbyshire Ros Faram Anne Kristin Hagesaether Caroline Hall Suzanne Holtom Lauren Iredale Ana Karkar Gareth Kemp Rebeka Lord Paula MacArthur Julie Moss Suzanne Patterson Susan Preston Jane PryorÂ Rachael Rebus Angela Rumble Diane Rush Adia Wahid

Beyond Correspondence Derek Horton C orrespond, as the title of this exhibition, might be seen to imply several layers of multiple meanings and readings of the idea of ‘correspondence’ in relation to painting. To indicate the complexity of some of these layers I suggest the following incomplete list: • All the artists have corresponded through the dialogue essential to a correspondence course in which they have all been participants. • The philosophical investigation involved in such a course will have led them to question how practice corresponds to theory. • They are engaged in a visual art practice that tests the extent to which images correspond to reality. • Such practice is often increasingly concerned with the potential correspondence between materially manufactured surfaces and digitally generated ones. • The place of painting in contemporary culture depends on its continuing assertion of the potential for sensations expressed through material, tactile, visual and haptic means to correspond with ideas expressed by linguistic and virtual means. • The whole idea of a ‘visual language’, often proposed by painters and other visual artists, rests on the proposition of correspondences between the visual and the verbal. • Any artistic practice concerns itself, explicitly and knowingly, or by default, with the extent to which the perceptions of the viewer might correspond with the intentions of the artist, and with how the sensations of each correspond with those of the other through the intermediary of the artwork. To reflect this complexity I will look in this text at the meanings of correspondence for painting through the lens of theories that have their origins respectively in linguistics and in photographic theory, rather than in art criticism. First, the concepts of ‘dynamic’ and ‘formal’ equivalence in approaches to translation; and then the specific theory of ‘equivalence’ as applied to photography by Alfred Stieglitz, Minor White and others. Both of these theoretical perspectives, I suggest, can offer insights into thinking about painting’s concern with the various nuances of the verb ‘to correspond’.

‘Dynamic equivalence’ and ‘formal equivalence’ are terms used in translation and linguistics to describe two distinct techniques for achieving differing kinds of correspondence between the original and the translated text. Formal equivalence involves attempting an exact correspondence between the lexical details and grammatical structure of the original and the translation, whereas dynamic equivalence aims for a more natural rendering in terms of meaning but with less literal accuracy. This approach might be transposed into thinking about painting in terms of the relationship between its representation of the real and its evocation of sensations generated by the real. Realism and ‘realisation’ in painting are not a function of corresponding precisely with the real but depend on maintaining an enigmatic separation between the real world referent and the constructed image. Even the apparently representational painting must, to succeed, go beyond mere visual correspondence and achieve a union of sensory perception (the form perceived by the artist) and aesthetic form (the idealised image generated from the artist’s perception). The best painters working within representation always generate their own worlds, populating topographies with a poetic logic rather than seeking a direct correspondence between the painted image and the depicted object. The connection in this sense between the ‘real’ and the painted world is based not on visual equivalence but on a correlation or correspondence that is observable in a phenomenological sense. The correspondence between objective material reality and the subjective inner state of perception manifest through an artwork can never be a direct one—in fact arguably the value of art is precisely that it functions in the gap between the two, not as a bridge but rather as an ambiguous and shifting space. One of the reasons painting remains a viable and vital practice for 21st century artists is its capacity to remind us of the materiality of our world and the physicality of our engagement with it. A painting as a created, made thing, involves the conscious interaction of mind and body in manipulating a physical surface, so

that what is embodied in a painting’s material surface is the artists’ decisions, some more or less conscious than others, but all having the capacity for success or failure and truth or illusion. A painting does not directly correspond to, and cannot compete on equal terms with, the complexity of rich sensations in the world around us. But it is precisely this lack of correspondence that enables the rewarding imaginative leap that connects the thing we perceive with our direct sensual experience of the physical world. To quote T.S. Eliot: “Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or lifeless, joined with the artist’s eye, spring new life, new form, new colour.” The gap created by inadequate equivalence, non-correspondence, is the slippery ground on which meaningful perceptions and insights can be built.

viewer is another matter, but Stieglitz’s specific concept of equivalence depends on the idea that the photographer identifies something that, when photographed, will yield an image with specific suggestive powers to direct the viewer into a particular feeling, state or place. White suggests that, “with constantly metamorphosing material such as water, or clouds or ice, or light on cellophane and similar materials, the infinity of forms and shapes, reflections and colors suggest all sorts and manners of emotions and tactile encounters and intellectual speculations that are supported by and formed by the material but which maintain an independent identity”—a sentence that resonates with what many artists and critics would claim for the expressive potential of abstract painting.

The concept of equivalence in the context of photography was claimed and named by Alfred Stieglitz in the 1920s (Equivalents is the title of a series of photographs of clouds by Stieglitz, made between 1925 and 1934, widely recognised as the first photographs intended to free their subject matter from literal interpretation) and continued by others, notably Aaron Siskind and Minor White. Minor White described equivalence as “a function, an experience, not a thing,” in which any photograph “might function as an Equivalent to someone, sometime, someplace.” If individual viewers realise that what they see in a picture corresponds to something within themselves—that is, the photograph mirrors something in them—then their experience is, in the terms of this theory, one of ‘equivalence’. White suggests that equivalence relates to what goes on in viewers’ minds as they look at a photograph that arouses for them a particular sense of correspondence to something that they know about themselves.

The power of the equivalent for the expressivecreative photographer—or the painter—from here on I will suggest that, for the purposes of my argument, the painter can usefully be seen as interchangeable with the photographer, and the painting with the photograph. So, the power of the equivalent for the expressive-creative photographer or the painter lies in the possibility of conveying and evoking feelings about things and situations and events which for some reason are not or cannot be photographed (or painted as a representation). This involves using the forms and shapes of objects in front of the camera (or constructed in the painting) for their expressive or evocative qualities rather than the extent to which they reference a subject in the real world. The analogy with painting holds not least because, for Stieglitz, the whole point of asserting the concept of equivalence was its claim on the photographer’s ability to use the visual world as a plastic material for expressive purposes, and thus to claim for photography as much freedom of expression as any other art form, painting for example.

This is not about appearance, but function. When any photograph functions for a given person as an equivalent, at that moment and for that person the photograph acts as a symbol or plays the role of a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject photographed. The photograph is thus a record both of the thing in front of the camera and simultaneously a symbol. So the equivalent is a metaphor of a feeling, not about the subject photographed but one that expressively corresponds to it. Whether this feeling can be aroused in the

Equivalence, as specifically identified in this theory, while it depends entirely on the image itself as the source of stimulation, functions exclusively in the mind of the viewer of the image. It rests, as White described it, on the assumption of an equation such that: Image + Viewer = Mental Image. There is a correspondence here with Roland Barthes’ notion of the ‘death’ of the author. Only in the mental image held in the mind of the viewer is there any possibility of a metaphorical function occurring. In literature this would be a function

of poetry. Whilst the visual arts might not correspond directly with the literary, this is why many critics or theorists of the visual will still claim and use in their own field the term ‘poetics’. The use of this term suggests that when both subject matter and the means of rendering it are transcended, they are no longer rooted solely in materiality. What a person experiences when they contemplate an artwork, or remember what they have seen afterwards, is always uniquely their own, determined by their individual sensory perceptions and the experiences that inform them or, in remembering, the distortions inevitable in recalling an image in the absence of the original stimulation. In this sense the experience of equivalence is located entirely within the individual. It is a personal, untranslatable, private experience, one that cannot directly correspond with the perceptions or memories of anyone else. Minor White, in his essay on equivalence, suggested that projection and empathy, as natural human attributes, lead us to see something of ourselves almost automatically in anything that we look at long enough to be aware of it. So we can say that the photograph (or painting) invariably functions as a mirror of at least some part of the viewer. White suggests that a degree of mirroring happens with any photograph but is especially strong with photographs rendered in a stylised or non-literal (abstract) way, and in photographs where formal design or compositional qualities supersede any sense of the presence of the subject in front of the camera. Clearly this idea can easily be transposed to non-representational or purely formally constructed paintings. When ‘subject matter’ is rendered in a photograph in a way that is obscure or ambiguous, White maintains that the response to the image corresponds to responses to abstract or non-representational painting, looking for formal qualities or value relationships that might be more familiar in painting and forgetting that the photographic image necessarily actually documents some part of the real world. Despite their indexical relationship to the ‘real’, such photographs are regarded and often named as ‘abstractions’ precisely because they remind us of similar paintings. As ‘extractions’ or ‘isolations’ from the world of appearances, the ambiguous

or unidentifiable subject of a photograph presents us with a different encounter with the world of appearances than that we confront in abstract painting. But a frequent tendency in engaging with either is often, rather than to merely accept the ambiguous rendering of a subject, to invent or imagine a ‘real world’ reference point for it. In doing so we we turn either the ‘abstract’ photograph or the painting into a mirror of some part of ourselves, perceiving it through the lens of our own experience and sensations. Our individual psychology finds a way to see what it wants to see in the world of appearances. To think of either photography or painting as this kind of ‘mirror’ is not detrimental to either medium. Images act as a catalyst, and so are part of a process, not an end product, and if viewers engage with them seriously they will inevitably see reflected back something of themselves. In the rare event that they are struck with terror, perhaps they have met something worthy of their fear, and if they find something full of beauty, it is because something beautiful in them has been magnified. Through the theory of equivalence, Minor White claimed that photographers (and I add artists) have “a way of learning to use the camera” (and I add painting) that corresponds to “in relation to the mind, heart, viscera and spirit of human beings”.

T. S. Eliot, The Rock, 1934. London: Faber & Faber

This and all subsequent quotations from Minor White are from his article, Equivalence: The Perennial Trend, published in the Journal of the Photography Society of America in 1963. (Vol. 29, No. 7, pp. 17-21) 2

Derek Horton is an artist-writer and curator. He writes about art and as art. After working on adventure playgrounds and community arts projects in the 1970’s, he spent many years teaching undergraduate and postgraduate art students. He co-founded the online magazines ‘/seconds’ with Peter Lewis in 2005 and ‘Soanyway’ with Lisa Stansbie in 2009. He is now co-director of &Model, an international contemporary art gallery in Leeds, and Visiting Professor of Contemporary Art at the School of Art, Birmingham City University.

1830 gallery

Iain Andrews Una dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Aragona Gilly Beal Miranda Boulton Kate Brinkworth Graham Carrick Charles Clapshaw John Clark Jules Clarke Alison Critchlow Alexandra Darbyshire Ros Faram Anne Kristin Hagesaether Caroline Hall Suzanne Holtom Lauren Iredale Anna Karkar Gareth Kemp Helen Latham Rebeka Lord Paula Macarthur Julie Moss Suzanne Patterson Susan Preston Jane Pryor Rachael Rebus Angela Rumble Diane Rush Adia Wahid

Iain Andrews Waltâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Exorcism Oil on Linen 40 x 50 cm 2015

Una dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Aragona Bubblegum Thoughts Oil on Canvas 40 x 40 cm 2012

Gilly Beal Untitled 2 Ink on Paper 55 x 75 cm 2015

Miranda Boulton Before Midday Oil and Graphite on Board 100 x 80 cm 2015

Iain Andrews Una d’Aragona Gilly Beal Miranda Boulton Kate Brinkworth Graham Carrick Charles Clapshaw John Clark Jules Clarke Alison Critchlow Alexandra Darbyshire Ros Faram Anne Kristin Hagesaether Caroline Hall Suzanne Holtom Lauren Iredale Anna Karkar Gareth Kemp Helen Latham Rebeka Lord Paula Macarthur Julie Moss Suzanne Patterson Susan Preston Jane Pryor Rachael Rebus Angela Rumble Diane Rush Adia Wahid

Kate Brinkworth I Like To Be in The Studio, It’s As If You Build a Den Out of The Inside of Your Mind & Get to Play in There All Day Mixed Media, Oil on Polaroid, Photographs and Drawing 60 x 100 cm 2015 - 2016

Graham Carrick DVT Acrylic on Canvas 61 x 61 cm 2015

Charles Clapshaw Sacca Acrylic on Canvas 100 x 100 cm 2015

John Clark A System Oil on Canvas 122 x 76 cm 2014

Jules Clarke Brink Oil on Canvas 50 x 40 cm 2015

Alison Critchlow Lagandorian Oil and Acrylic on Canvas 90 x 90 cm 2015

Alexandra Darbyshire Dipper Oil Acrylic Wax and Marble Dust on Linen 20 cm x 20 cm 2016

Ros Faram The Quiet Joys Oil on Canvas 50 x 50 cm 2014

Anne Kristin Hagesaether The Leaves Are Nearly Gone Now Acrylic on Canvas 70 x 100 cm 2015

Caroline Hall Rollercoaster Oil on Aluminum 116 x 86cm 2015

Suzanne Holtom The Fates Oil and Thread on Canvas 180 x 150 cm 2015

Lauren Iredale Untitled Oil on Canvas 52 x 60 cm 2015

Ana Karkar B2 Oil on Canvas 60 x 72 cm 2015

Gareth Kemp As I Sat Sadly By Her Side Acrylic on Canvas 180 x 180 cm 2015

Helen Latham Orionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Belt Oil on Canvas 120 x 80 cm 2015

Rebeka Lord You Tried to Pull The Wool. I Wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Feeling Too Clever Mixed Media: Oil, Conte Pastel & Graphite on Archival Photographic Print 20 x 29 cm 2014

Paula MacArthur The Amicable Meeting of Two Cultures Oil on Board 198 x 122 cm 2015

Julie Moss I Was Here First Oil on Canvas 153 x 153 cm 2015

Suzanne Patterson Witness 1 Encaustic on Board 86 x 111 cm 2014

Susan Preston Dark Thought Oil on Canvas 66 x 66 cm 2015

Jane Pryor New Territory 2:15 Oil on Canvas 46 x 61 cm 2015

Rachael Rebus Born Into This Oil on Canvas 61 x 46 cm 2015

Angela Rumble Woodland Oil on Canvas 56 x 44 inches 2015

Diane Rush Mother and Child Oil, Acrylic and Charcoal on Canvas 130 x 100cm 2016

Adia Wahid Convergence Oil and Acrylic on Canvas 150 x 130 cm 2016

http://www.correspond.org.uk correspondpainters@gmail.com @Correspond_