Tacita Dean, GAETA, 2015
from, Fifty Photographs plus one, 2015
My biggest disappointment with the Tacita Dean triptych at three London
galleries was that the first two installations weren’t on for long enough. I sadly
missed the Still Life chapter at the
National Gallery, and only saw Portrait at
the National Portrait Gallery in its final week. Even then, I was disappointed
not to see all the films, and only managed the rarely screened portraits of Cy
Twombly, Merce Cunningham, Claes Oldenberg and David Hockney.
 |
| Tacita Dean, Edwin Parker, 2011 Still from 16mm film |
Dean’s portrait films are installed in rooms off a central corridor the
walls of which are covered with fifty photographs taken of Twombly’s studio in
Gaeta, outside Rome. Dean’s photographs reminded me of Sally Mann’s
photographic documentation of Twombly’s Lexington studio in Remembered Light. Dean captures the same
spaces, surfaces and everyday objects that are the trace of the painter’s life.
However, while Mann is interested in the space and the creation of drama
through the fall of light in the studio space, Dean turns her camera to the
edges; the post-it notes, a plastic bear sitting between books on a shelf, the
roll of paper towel as the unused tool of the painter. Another cheap plastic
toy rests at the feet of an exquisite Twombly sculpture. Thus the “everydayness”
of the artist is emphasized through its juxtaposition with Twombly’s delicate
sculptures both in the image and in our minds.
 |
| Tacita Dean, GAETA, 2015 from, Fifty Photographs plus One, 2015 |
Dean continues her exploration of the scribbles of Twombly’s artistic
process in Edwin Parker, 2011. In
this film, we see the same cluttered Lexington studio that fascinated Sally
Mann. If Mann photographed the loss and created a memory of Twombly through the
reflections, refractions and rhythms of light shining into the storefront
studio, Dean’s film finds the same in the clutter and simultaneous ethereality
of the objects that define the painter.
 |
| Tacita Dean, Edwin Parker, 2011 Still from 16mm film |
At one point in the film, Twombly, his partner and another man all go to
the local diner. People familiar with the few writings on Twombly’s life, will
know the local diner as the place where Mann meets and builds her lifelong
friendship with the artist. In what might strain the limits of the film medium
in another filmmaker’s hands, in Edwin Parker,
Dean quietly watches Twombly and his friends through the same reflective camera
that sees the slow movement of daily life in the studio. And so, the visit to
the diner becomes as integral to the process of creativity as is Twombly sitting
in his studio with a book of Keats’s poetry resting on his knee. Edwin
Parker captures Twombly in his everyday life, thinking, touching objects,
reading, talking. Dean avoids the difficulty of representing art in a different
medium by showing mundane events as key
to the execution of the art. We never see Twombly paint or sculpt, but the small
movement of his hand on the cover of Keats’s poetry is as intimate and as
essential as the application of paint.
One reviewer writing for The
Guardian asks what attracts Dean to Twombly, an old man at the end of his
career. To me Edwin Parker leaves little
doubt that the two share a passion for collecting. In addition, both artists
are inspired by the objects in their collections, finding commonality in
objects that might otherwise be seen as worlds apart. Commonality comes in
colour, the place of an object on a shelf, their textures, or even their
oppositionality.
 |
| Tacita Dean, Merce Cunningham Performs STILLNESS, 2008 Still from 16mm Film |
Dean’s Merce Cunningham portrait is particularly fascinating, It is an
experimental installation in which six screens show Cunningham sitting
perfectly still in the centre of his New York dance studio. The multiple
images, each lasting 5 minutes, are arranged around the room, requiring the
visitor to walk between and around the installation, never able to see all in
one glance. The many uses of mirrors in portraits throughout the history of art
are of course referenced by the film. Dean takes the references further by
fragmenting the image and its reflection, removing all sense of an original,
and yet, leaving the body of the dancer whole, if static. Dean has always been
interested in the translation of images from one medium to another, and here in
Merce Cunningham Performs STILLNESS
(2008) she adds the layer of tension between the still image of the man whose
art is one of motion—albeit a choreographer who resisted the imperative to have
a dancer move—and the cinematic image as single frames put into motion through
its projection. For this reason, Dean’s love of and insistence on making and
projecting her films in 16mm seems to find its reasoning in the portrait and
subsequent installation of Merce
Cunningham Performs STILLNESS.
 |
| David Hockney filmed in his Los Angeles Studio, 2016 |
Various reviewers and commentators of this chapter of the exhibition
triptych claim that Dean challenges the classical definition of portraiture. I
am not convinced of this, particularly as none of these critics elaborate on
how she might be doing so. It’s true that the films don’t show each artist in
full frontal poses, thereby inviting us to study the physical features as
offering a window into the soul of the sitter. However, even the portrait in
painting has not done this for over a century. And anyway, there are elements
of the classical portrait in all of Dean’s films. The props and location in
which the artist is filmed shows us everything to do with his identity. In
addition, like so many artists, these aging men are not shown painting, but
rather, are reflecting, specifically on the objects that inspire them. Through
this reflection, there is a sense in which we do see inside the soul. In
addition, the movements, objects, locations and time spent with the artist
reveal the personality and intention of his work. Even though this is done in perhaps
more modern sense, we see painters and their relationship to their work, not
necessarily who they were.
All images courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London
No comments:
Post a Comment