The Labour of Painting

Willem Kalf Large Still Life with Armour

Over the past week I've been writing a research application based on my studio practice. Whilst initially confusing me, the process has ultimately helped me clarify my thoughts around what it is that lies at the very heart of my practice at an artist; that is, what are the 'live' issues in what I do (isn't that what all artists are trying to get at?). What I've realised is that it's not just about subject matter.

For a long time my studio practice, and thus my research interest, has stemmed from a fascination with Dutch still life, particularly the Ontbijtjes or 'Breakfast Scenes' of mid C17th painters such as Willem Kalf, Willem Claesz. Heda, Pieter Claesz and Jan Davisz., de Heem.
Elements from this genre such as the dark or sombre background, artificial light source and richly decorated objects have all become important constituents of my own paintings. I have found Norman Bryson's writing on these works particularly important, particularly his essay Abundance in the volume Looking at the Overlooked (Reaktion 1990).
In this essay, Bryson suggests that Willem Kalf's superlatively detailed rendering of ornate objects, themselves testament to the skills of the master metalworkers who wrought them, leads to a kind of symbolic emptying - like the effect of a double negative in mathematics:

The paintings are subject to the paradox of 'the supplement'....If these objects are already masterpieces, why should they be repeated in a second masterpiece? The duplication of elaborative work begins to point to a process that is as endless as it is without reason; the replica indicates a deficiency in the original object that will not be remedied by the supplement, but contaminates it and so to speak hollows it out. 

Bryson 1990 p. 126

The idea that a painting could potentially be so finely detailed that it actually surpasses (and so detracts from) its referent object is fascinating. Stories like that of Zeuxis and Parrhasius would suggest that painting's ultimate quest was always to be mistaken for life. But could it be that the masters of the Dutch still life (arguably one of the zeniths of representational painting) actually go one better?

This has led me to think about detailed painting in general. There seems to be a suspicion around it (particularly at the present time when looseness, gesture, the deitic mark or 'trace' of the artist seem to be championed once more from many corners) - that perhaps it is a self-indulgent quest, an ultimately pointless diversion from the quest for truly Great Art.

Johan Zoffany The Tribuna of the Uffizi

I was interested to see that the RA are shortly to host an exhibition of the work of Johan Zoffany, a German-born painter of the C18th who built a reputation as a society artist in England, and was known for his highly detailed catalogue-like works. It seems that even then there was a suspicion of such a high level of detail. According to Amanda Vickery in her piece A Roll in Gold Dust (Guardian Arts 03.03.2012) Zoffany was never accepted into the premier league of the contemporary artworld, and despite his clearly unnatural skill was dismissed by Joshua Reynolds (then president of the RA) as possessing mere 'mechanical dexterity', 'minuteness' and 'imitation'. 

This perhaps leads to the nub of the practiced-related side of my research interest; What lies at the heart of the desire of artists like myself to make highly detailed work? Can this quest lead to great painting, or merely to deluded self-gratification? Is it in some way an attempt to earn artistic merit through labour - a kind of Protestant work ethic of painting? 

The tension between control and gesture, between a high level of 'finish' and a looser, less contrived-feeling type of painterly language has always been something I've wrestled with, recently in more conscious ways than before. Perhaps it is time to turn the focus of my practice to this very issue.