Tag Archives: vanitas

Assignment 5 Reflections

  By Dawn Langley | July 7, 2016 - 6:34 am |
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Title: Making it up – ‘Impermanence and Mortality’

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

The whole process of developing ‘Impermanence and Mortality’ has served to develop my technical skills. It has pushed my still life skills in terms of taking each of the shots (at least ten individual shoots make up each image) and having to consider angle, lighting and depth of field to ensure they would fit within the overall composite. In creating the final images I had to focus on composition and balance, thinking carefully about where I placed each object, colour combinations and so on. It has also developed my Photoshop skills much further than I could have imagined – using the pen tool for cutting out (instead of quick selection), blurring borders slightly so the overlay is more effective, creating shadows with the burn tool and brush and so on. Having a clear sense of what I wanted to achieve as a result of the development process really helped ensure my technical skills were used appropriately. It definitely feels like a case of practice, practice and more practice!

Quality of outcome

I think the research process really helped me achieve the best outcome I could. Looking at some of the Vanitas paintings and becoming more familiar with the original symbolism helped me in relating that to a contemporary context. I am particularly pleased with the development from the early sketches that were little more than copying the genre to something that feels much more like my own distinctive approach. Feedback from other OCA students through Facebook seems to suggest that the conceptualisation of the ideas worked for them – they mentioned being drawn in by the images and wanting to know more, feeling I had met my intention, that the images were strong and that the Vanitas symbolism worked well. They also offered advice on areas for improvement.

Demonstration of creativity

I feel that of all my Context and Narrative assignments this is the most creative. In my view it has built on the previous submissions but then takes the approach to a new level. I was concerned that I didn’t have the skills to achieve what I had in my mind’s eye but I think by building on each stage in the development process I was able to grow my confidence and move towards the images I wanted. This was helped by feedback from the Thames Valley Photography Group who asked some very helpful questions after I had completed the earlier sketches. It was this feedback that led me to think of the series of three. Each stage in the process helped push my imagination and I had not come across a concept like this anywhere else, although it is sometimes hard when you are working on your own because I wasn’t sure if I was straying too far from the brief. This is partly why I sought out other feedback to see what meaning others might take from the series.

Context

This assignment is the result of dedicated reflection and research. It involved a lot of thinking about my own mortality and was personally quite challenging particularly as I have lost many close relatives in recent years and in the week I was finalising the images I got the news that a friend who is two years younger than me had died of Leukemia. It was actually Mother Earth I found hardest because it was difficult not to feel a sense of hopelessness, it was partly why I wanted to create something that I hoped looked quite beautiful but when you look closely there is an inherent ugliness.

In terms of critical thinking a number of themes and emotions surfaced during this assignment, all of which could lead me to further research and development:

  • Humankind’s relationship to materiality, consumption and possessions
  • The potential for objects to instill a sense of melancholy
  • Interest in the proposition that still life as a genre is under theorised
  • Anger about the gender gap that appears steadfast in the arts
  • Anger and sadness about our arrogance as a species

As shown in my learning log my research took me from Roman mosaics to the work of Olivia Parker and many in between. I spent some time researching the Vanitas still life tradition, which is what led me to the women artists of the period. As usual I continued to use my Pinterest Boards (Still Life, Still Life Photography, Impermanence) to collect examples and really expanded the use of my sketchbook during this period.

Decoding the Vanitas

  By Dawn Langley | July 5, 2016 - 8:41 am |
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Different objects on a black background - a bone, tulip, music score, cherries & lemon

Decoding the Vanitas

In creating the Vanitas series I took some time thinking about the denotations and connotations I wanted to use. While I want the viewer to draw their own conclusions from the images the following gives some background to why I have included the elements and objects I have.

Contemplating Mortality

Stems from my own mortality and answering the question –  ‘what are your vanities?’

  • Frame: References how we frame our lives and the frames of references we use, also consideration of whether we are reframing mortality with the digital afterlife
  • Satin cloth: the flow of life with all its ups and downs, folds and wrinkles
  • Dutch doll (an obvious link to the origins of the genre) and the book: Both given to me by relatives (my Dad and my Nanny Langley) who have been dead for some years. The book refers to early Vanitas in that knowledge was regarded as temporary and a vanity
  • Cut Flowers: Both flowers represent the frailty of life, as cut flowers they will soon fade. The Tulip references historical Vanitas and the Sunflower is my favourite flower, a personal vanity
  • Boxing gloves: My amateur boxing award, the vanity of ‘success.’ Also about corporeal frailty and the mixed attitudes around women boxing
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland charm bracelet: jewellery as one of my vanities, but also a metaphor for my research work (the vanity of knowledge), Alice has featured symbolically in a number of my papers and is part of my business website
  • Music score: Music is ephemeral once played, and I play the flute badly
  • Hex Bug mouse (a cat toy): Recognition of my aging being measured in cat ownership – I will be in my seventies if my two Maine Coons live as long as some of my moggies did.
  • Pixelated shell: Speaks of the growing industry around digital afterlife (there are over 30 million Facebook accounts belonging to dead people). It also represents death and refers back to Vanitas when exotic shells were included as a symbol of wealth.
  • Egg timer: the passage of time

Feminist and Feminine

  • Frame: It is a formal and slightly ornate frame as an historical reference. The breaking of the frame is acknowledgement of the early women artists challenging the art system in their own ways
  • Cherries and Lemon: references to Clara Peeters (1580/1590 – in or around 1621), Fede Galizia (1578 – 1630), Giovanna Garzoni (1600-1670), and Rachel Ruysch (1664 – 1750)
  • Satin cloth: A reference to bridal wear or maybe virginity
  • Peony: a ‘blousy’ flower speaking of the softly feminine and acknowledging earlier Vanitas. As a flower it also has a lifecycle
  • Butterflies: Also an earlier reference but they are left blank in recognition of these women often being ignored and side-lined in historical accounts
  • My signature: Added, because I can do so without recourse to another authority. Something early women painters could not do unless they were allowed to join a Guild or were accepted into the Academy
  • Compact mirror: A reference to Vanitas symbolism (the mirror directly representing vanity) and the complex relationship between femininity, feminism and gender stereotyping

Mother Earth

  • Frame: Frames of reference with regard to the climate change debate and the challenge of changing behaviours
  • Earth: an inflatable globe showing the decline of the planet
  • Tulip: The influence of capitalism, the Tulip being a symbol of the first big economic crash
  • Plastic bottles and the tin: mass production and mass consumption
  • Flat peaches in a packet: Our increasingly distanced relationship to food , nature and our environment in the West
  • Shell: The impact we are having on the sea. Shells were once included as a demonstration of wealth and vanity they are now part of mass consumption and can be bought cheaply online for fish tanks. This is having an impact on our seas
  • Plastic cloth: In this image the backdrop is a deliberately more chaotic plastic cloth. The cloth will most likely outlive me and is also about the impact of mass production of plastics
  • Bones: Symbols of death. They are chicken bones so they also relate to mass production and humankind attitudes to other animals

 

Assignment 5: Making it up – Impermanence and Mortality

  By Dawn Langley | July 3, 2016 - 6:40 pm |
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“The Vanitas still life painting is designed to remind the viewer that death frames our possession of the object world; indeed that our possessions are capable of outliving us, thus rendering the ownership of things illusory.” (Wynne, 2016)

Inspired by a visit to Bow Arts to see Neudecker’s Plastic Vanitas this series draws on the tradition of Vanitas still life to explore notions of impermanence and mortality.

Contemplating Impermanence is a personal journey through mortality. It echoes some of the original Vanitas symbolism combined with personal objects (detailed connotations are included in my learning log). This image includes items that were given to me by family members who have been dead for some time and now have a potency for me that sits at the intersection of life and death. The pixelated shell questions how we might be re-framing our lives and mortality given the growing industry around digital afterlife (there are now over 30 million Facebook accounts belonging to dead people).

Feminist and Feminine is a statement about the role of women in art and the relationship of women artists to still life. It contains references to some of the major female still life painters from the 16th – 18th Centuries. It also raises issues of feminism and femininity. The breaking of the frame in this image, is about flow through time, and acknowledges how these women challenged the system in their own ways. My signature is added, because I can do so without recourse to another authority. Something early women painters could not do unless they were allowed to join a Guild or were accepted into the Academy.

Mother Earth takes me to the ultimate issue of impermanence, and references the actions and impact of humankind on our planet. The influence of capitalism (the Tulip), mass production (plastics) and mass consumption (rubbish). Our increasingly distanced relationship in the West to food (flat peaches in plastic). The impact we are having on land and sea (the shell and plastics). In this image the backdrop is a deliberately more chaotic plastic cloth.

Acknowledgements:

  • Mariele Neudecker for her permission to feature her images in my learning log
  • The women who broke new ground – Rachel Ruysch, Clara Peeters, Giovanna Garzoni and Fede Galizia
  • The Thames Valley Group and FB OCA Photography Level 1 Group

References and citations

Wynne, D. (2016). Women and personal property in the Victorian novel. London: Routledge.

 

Assignment 5: The ‘Impermanence and Mortality’ development process

  By Dawn Langley | July 3, 2016 - 5:17 pm |
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‘Plastic Vanitas’ was very thought provoking. Having done previous assignments on fertility (assignment two), and my life (assignment three) it seemed like a natural next step to be considering death in my final assignment.

I started by creating some personal Vanitas still lives, using contemporary connotations to recreate the original style. These never became more than quick ‘sketches’ because I knew very quickly this approach was not distinctive enough. I also wanted something that looked and felt more contemporary while still using the signification of the original genre. One of the issues for me was that that the first sketches felt too cluttered so the next step was to strip everything back and using fewer referents see if I could achieve a similar signification.

I worked with Tulips because of their links to the Dutch Vanitas tradition (1600 -1800) and also because they could show the signs of decay as the petals fall. The Shell and bone, also elements of life and death, were placed sparingly on a crumpled white cloth a connotation of the peaks and troughs of life. This felt more along the lines of what I was trying to achieve and while I was happier with these results it still felt as though I hadn’t pushed it far enough.

In looking again at some of the original Vanitas paintings I started to think more about the frame, and how in some of the earlier paintings the elements deliberately flow forward, off the table and to the edge of the frame. Framing in both physical and metaphorical terms became the key to the next transition. The ‘frame’ became important in terms of it being a mechanism for containing the image; referring to different frames of reference; considering how we frame our lives (from birth to death) and so on. I had recently done a Photoshop exercise on creating the illusion of breaking through the image plane and decided this was the next step.

I wanted to see if I could create an image that made direct reference to challenging the boundary of the frame, therein representing the passage of time from birth to death and whatever lies beyond. In this I was also drawing on Schaverien’s (1999) psychoanalytic notion of the photographic frame creating a safe container for our anxieties, I wanted to break that safety and see what happened when the elements flowed out.

 

Before even attempting it in Photoshop I then made some physical collages using some of the elements in my sketchbook. This was particularly helpful in deciding whether they should be portrait or landscape. It also reinforced the need for the black background rather than white. I showed my sketchbook and first digital attempts to the Thames Valley Photography group and got some very helpful feedback:

  • Consider if I was moving too far from the original Vanitas inspiration
  • Perhaps make it more personal – what are my vanities?
  • Think about drawing out the feminist issues further
  • Consider making a physical collage of the photographs rather than doing it in Photoshop

This led me to thinking about producing the series of three rather than a single image. The themes arose from our group discussion and I then worked on them in my sketchbook, creating a list of possible symbols under each theme. The idea of considering individual, group and global mortality really appealed to me and while I initially waivered because of the amount of work involved for each image I decided I wanted to give it a try. The props were a mix of those I had around my home and a few that I purchase specially, including the cut flowers. I found I had chosen to do this right at the end of the Tulip season so could not access the more exotic varieties I had wanted and had to work quickly with those I did manage to find! All the props were then shot individually in natural light on a table top infinity background.

While continuing to be still lives I have tried to introduce a sense of movement, a flow through time. I wasn’t sure if I could achieve it with my Photoshop skills but I have come pretty close to what I was hoping to achieve. I may still move on to create further physical collages. Looking back it feels like the development process has a natural flow to it and the combination of research, talking to other students and experimenting feels like it paid off.

Acknowledgements:

  • Mariele Neudecker for her permission to feature her images in my learning log
  • The women who broke new ground – Rachel Ruysch, Clara Peeters, Giovanna Garzoni and Fede Galizia
  • The Thames Valley Group and FB OCA Photography Level 1 Group

References and citations

Schaverien, J. (1999). The Revealing Image: Analytical Art Psychotherapy in Theory and in Practice. London: Routledge.

Wynne, D. (2016). Women and personal property in the Victorian novel. London: Routledge.

 

 

Plastic Vanitas – Mariele Neudecker

  By Dawn Langley | March 18, 2016 - 2:03 pm |
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Still life of plastic containers with dark backdrop

Mariele Neudecker, Still Life with Ketchup Bottle and Lemon [AIBDC, 92, CR, 31, Shelf 7 of 8, 0.8kg], 2015

I have always been an avid biker, for many years bikes were my only form of transport. This meant I had friends and family who were bikers too and we would all hang out together whenever the weather was vaguely accommodating. The trips we would head out on generally involved stopping for food at a roadside café, often the only places that were willing to let us stop however respectable the bikes or their riders.

Surprisingly, this is where I went when I saw Neudecker’s Still Life with Ketchup Bottle and Lemon [AIBDC, 92, CR, 31, Shelf 7 of 8, 0.8kg]. Those once ubiquitous squeezy ketchup bottles that resembled a large stylised tomato. I remember them as being made of quite a hard plastic that was often difficult to squeeze and filled with a distinctly vinegar tasting ketchup. It felt like a reminder of a different age and yet the symbols live on, the exhibition title of Plastic Vanitas seemed very appropriate.

Plastic Vanitas is the result of a residency Neudecker took part in at the Museum of Design in Plastic and the Arts University, Bournemouth. Born in Germany, she has lived and worked in Bristol since 2001. She completed a BA at Goldsmiths, an MA at Chelsea College of Art & design and took a course in digital image creation/ manipulation at Tower Hamlets College. She has been exhibited and published widely as well as lecturing and participating in conferences. I think all aspects of her training and experience are exposed in the images in this exhibition.

The exhibition of 49 images was curated by Prof. Susan Lambert (Head of MoDiP) and consists of photographic works in a range of frames, most of which look traditional and slightly ornate. The Vanitas still life tradition originated in Northern Europe in the late 1520s and was associated with a verse from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes (1:2; 12:8): ‘Vanitas vanitatum… et omnia vanitas’, translated ‘vanity of vanities, all is vanity’. Strongly symbolic in nature a Vanitas image contains a range of signs originally informed by early Christianity that highlight the perils of vanity, the transience of life and the inescapability of death.

A vanitas painting tries to convey the essential meaninglessness of earthly goods and pursuits, when compared with the eternal nature of true Christian values.  Visual Arts Cork

Still life with skull, books, shell and pot

Vanitas Still Life by Herman Steenwijck, 1640

 

At its height in the 17th Century in the Netherlands these paintings originally included symbols such as a skull signifying death; books or maps highlighting secular knowledge; fruit and flowers that will inevitably wilt; and jewellery showing wealth and power. Neudecker has taken a more contemporary set of symbols and applied them in such a way that challenges us to examine our individual lives but also to take a macro perspective and contemplate what these images mean in relation to the planet we inhabit.

…The vanitas paradigm shines a new light literally and metaphorically on these mundane objects. Individually they are redefined as contributors to life’s precarious mortality. Carmen curlers are no longer useful beauty aids but instead emblems of vanity; a protective hockey helmet becomes a spectre of what might happen were it not worn; clocks become the harbingers of life’s brevity; and so on. The compositions as a whole act as allegories of the challenges that face our world with its dwindling resources. Prof. Lambert

Pictures hanging on an end wall in a gallery

Neudecker, Plastic Vanitas at Bow Arts, 2016

 

The low lighting in the gallery meant initially I had to check my glasses as they were still dark from the outside sun. The subdued light, the beauty of the images and the hanging of the work ensured I spent time really observing. As I mentioned earlier my initial response was about spotting those items that were familiar or prompted a memory, ‘when we find a photograph meaningful, we are lending it a past and a future.’ Berger & Mohr, 1982: 89

There was also a slight sense of illusion contained within the images, for a while I was not sure I was really seeing what my brain was telling me I was seeing. I should have been looking at Dutch old masters, traditional still lives, but here were collections of plastic objects.

I was particularly struck by the contradictory notion of transience held within these images. The still lives clearly come from a symbolic tradition that highlight the issue of human vanity and our impermanence as human beings yet many of the objects used are now known to have an almost indefinite shelf life. These plastics will outlive me by generations. They are both meaningful and meaningless, many of them are now regarded as obsolete. Fashion and production techniques have moved on yet the physical presence of these objects highlights how humanity’s vanity and thoughtlessness has created an environmental crisis, the potential for transience on a global scale.

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Mariele for her permission to feature ‘Still Life with Ketchup Bottle and Lemon’ on my blog

References:

Berger, J., & Mohr, J. (1982). Another way of telling. London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative Society.
http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/definitions/vanitas-painting.htm
http://bowarts.org/sites/default/files/NUNNERY_PlasticVanitas_PR.pdf
http://aub.ac.uk/exhibition/plastic-vanitas/