The Art of the Diary

Diaries have been kept for centuries by people from all walks of life and this means that there is a rich history of diarists who have written about themselves, their times, their work and their art which can now be seen as historical documents that give personal narratives and stories that otherwise we would never have otherwise known.  Joan Bakewell writes; 'Most diarists write primarily for themselves of course. But few of them are unmindful that others might be interested, not only for gossipy reasons but as a record of what life was like as lived at one particular moment. History depends on diaries for the real smell of the times.' (Bakewell: 31.12.2010)

Solicitor George Coopers Diaries 1871

Diaries are generally written as a personal document and not intended, at least originally, for publication and this is why often they are so fascinating as they have thoughts that are just meant for the writer themself.  Of course, now in this age of oversharing people publish blogs and online diaries and journals and so they are instantly available.  This perhaps is not necessarily the best idea as diaries need to be looked back on as a form of memory and consideration and without that hindsight there perhaps is an element of unnecessary oversharing and a conscious act that includes understanding you already have an audience.  That is why in my own diary I will only publish a curated version that has the benefit of not considering the audience as I write. The diary above wrote extensively about his hunting exploits and beautifully illustrated and sketched throughout, here an example of his entries; 'In November 1871, he noted they had "one woodcock, 133 rabbits and two pheasants in the bag." Mr Cooper, who was born in 1846 and was 25 at the time he wrote the 1871 diary, also meticulously recorded the weather every day, with quirky comments of his own: 'Bright and beautiful morning. Such as day as we wanted yesterday!' (Mail Online: 12.01.2012).

Diaries can include so many things sketches, collected items ephemera - for instance a restaurant napkin, a postcard, a feather, a flower, a photograph - all of these things bring the diary to life and enhance the personal nature of the journey the author is describing, as the diary is experience.

The Morgan Libray and Museum states; 'Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) relied on her diary to escape stifling work as a schoolteacher; Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) confided his loneliness and self-doubt; John Steinbeck (1902–1968) struggled to compose The Grapes of Wrath, and Bob Dylan (b. 1941) sketched his way through a concert tour.' (Morgan Library & Museum: 21.01.2011-22.05.2011)  People write diaries for many, many reasons - it could be just to reflect on the day, to record for their own memory, to quell loneliness and isolation or to explore ideas before they are fully formed. Nick Cave used his diary as a handwritten dictionary 'One hallmark of Cave’s writing style is a diverse vocabulary. A Nick Cave song never suffers for a lack of vividness and we’ve found the secret to his success: He keeps a handwritten dictionary of all his favourite words. ' (Endpaper: The Paperblanks Blog: 24.01.2013)

Nick Cave: Handwritten Dictionary

Diaries are beautiful things and there is so much more to explore here on a personal level with my own diary.  I will continue to write and dedicate myself to this in the hope that in the end I may have something that is worth sharing.



References 

Bakewell J (31.12.2010) BBC Magazine, A Point of View: The Art of the Diary [Online] Available from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12092962 (Accessed 26.01.2020)

Endpaper: The Paperblanks Blog (24.09.2013) Famous Diaries: Nick Cave's Handwritten Dictionary [Online] Available from: http://blog.paperblanks.com/2013/09/famous-diaries-nick-caves-handwritten-dictionary/ (Accessed 26.01.2020)

Mail Online (12.01.2012) The watercolour diaries of a 19th century country gentleman (who preferred keeping a diary of his hunting exploits to work) [Online] Available from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085661/Solicitor-George-Coopers-diaries-insight-Victorian-life-watercolour-paintings.html (Accessed 26.01.2020)

Morgan Library & Museum (21.01.2011-22.05.2011) The Diary Three Centuries of Private Lives [Online Exhibition] Available from: https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/the-diary (Accessed 26.01.2020)

Finalising Project Ideas & Sign Off

After much thought, I have decided that my project should be a journal for 30 days.  This journal will include images and text each day and I will use online software so I can write this easily (also my handwriting is unreadable!) I will upload any writing or drawings I complete by hand.  There is a long tradition of artists keeping journals Check out this link here: Artist Diaries Since 1865.  One of my favourite examples of this is Olidon Redon's To Myself.  

Goodreads - Olidon Redon: To Myself

Redon's thoughts on other artists, his own work and his reflections on life are a joy to read - here is an example: 'Leisure is not a privilege; it is not a favour, it is not a social injustice, it is the beneficial necessity by which the spirit is fashioned as well as a taste and the discovery of oneself' (Redon O. 1986: P88) 

And he continues: ' I prefer the spirit of Degas to the spirit of his works' (Redon O. 1986: P88) I am definitely inclined to agree with this!

I would like to try something similar and I have checked out a few sites so that I can do this digitally - Diaryt.com was having issues so I decided it was too unreliable.  So I checked out Penzu.com: 

Penzu was okay except that most features that would make it interesting such as the customisation you needed to go Pro and pay for.  I decided that this was not an option and I wanted to keep this fairly straightforward.  

I looked at Monkkee.com this was much better completely free and simple with a user-friendly interface that seems to work well.  I thought I would give this one a try and if I really disliked it I can move to another site 

So after this consideration about how I would do this, I completed my sign off form.

Zoe's Project Sign Off: January 2020

References

Mallonee L (6th October 2014) Hyperallergic: Artists Diaries Since 1865 [Online] Available From: https://hyperallergic.com/152832/artists-diaries-since-1865/ (Accessed 19/01/20)

Redon O. (1986) To Myself: Notes on Life, Art & Artists, Translated from the French by Mira Jacob and Jeanne L. Wassermann.  George Brazillier, Inc. New York

Research from Specialist Session: Judy Dater

Judy Dater

Judy Dater: Self Portraits

Judy Dater (born 1941) began taking photographs in the 1960s.  Her work explored portraits, self-portraits, the narrative that shows the women and how they are seen and perhaps trying to capture women's inner self through the images.  The Smith Anderson North Gallery states:  'Dater's early work, which was created as the Feminist Movement was gaining momentum, focused on the liberation of (and the perception of) the female form. At this time, when female frontal nudity was still considered risqué in American fine art photography' (Smith Anderson North: 2020)

The image is one of a series of self-portraits of Dater in the landscape this combination of the female form in nature exposes the force of women as nature.  These images are beautifully photographed to frame Dater in the landscape - her body becoming part of the earth, the stone, the soil.  Below in Maggie Smoking this portrait of a woman directly looking out challenges traditional images of women nudes in art as the women directly stares out at the viewer.  The viewer is now looked at and to look upon her the viewer has to meet her gaze.  John Berger in Ways of Seeing wrote extensively about this so I won't expand on this as Berger obviously expresses this far better! Berger states; 'In the art-form of the European nude the painters and spectator-owners were usually men and the persons treated as objects, usually women.  This unequal relationship is so deeply embedded in our culture that it still structures the consciousness of many women.  They do to themselves what men do to them.  They survey, like men, their own feminity.' (Berger J 1972) 

Judy Dater (1971) Maggie Smoking

In my own self portraits from this session I incoporated all the things that please me within an image very simply to express myself - I look out at the viewer but perhaps not with enough defiance, perhaps a little too passively - this has always been as Berger states a problem in taking my own image.  The camera essentially takes on the role of man and I the passive sitter.

References

Berger J (1972) Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation & Penguin Books. London

Judy Dater (2020) Judy Dater Website [Online] Available from: http://judydater.com/ (Accessed 12/01/20)

Smith Anderson North Gallery (2020) Judy Dater Biography [Online] Available From: http://www.smithandersennorth.com/artists/dater/bio.html (Accessed 19/01/20)

Specialist Session: Photography

In the specialist session, we were looking at Portraits/Self Portraits and although I am making a sketchbook for this as well I will write up here the work so that I can share this. I will not do this each week as I am using the sketchbook but as an example this is my first session on the blog.

In the session I was explaining ISO (light sensitivity), exposure compensation, Aperture priority and the aperture (F-Stops) - here is a great article from Cambridge in Colour which Photography students will find useful:

Cambridge in Colour: Camera Exposure

I concentrated on making self-portraits using the camera timer/remote and I wanted to just express who I was through the image and things that I love - since I enjoy the fact you can be anything you want in the image I used a wig and sat in my favourite place - the bath!.  I bought a set of Photography books to the bath with me and set up the camera.  I was using my old Olympus E-3.

Here are the contact sheets from the shoot - I made around 170 images in total.

I then chose my test prints and printed these to check quality.  

EXIF Details: 

ISO: 500

F/5.1

+0.3

1/5

24mm

ISO: 500

F/5

1/6

+0.3

24mm

The images I shot were slightly overexposed which is how I wanted then to look to emphasise the whiteness of the bath and skin.  These two above have a very slow shutter but as I was shooting using tripod/remote this reduced the chance of blur however they are perhaps slightly soft but I personally like the outcome as a set of prints they work well and express conceptually what I was after. 

ISO 500

F5

1/5

+0.3

24mm

I like the joke in the shot of aking more of colour and shooting in Black and White.  however, I did shoot in Raw and jpeg so that I would have the RAW print if I wanted to make editing decisions later.  All these shots are straight from the camera and no Photoshop, no cropping or editing of any kind.

20 Ideas in 20 Minutes: The Beginning of a New Project

In class we completed 20 ideas in 20 minutes - I think I now have a record time as I completed this in 11 minutes!

As you can see completely unreadable however the best ideas here that I would like to explore further are:

• Photographing objects/the body underwater - I have never actually done this before and thought this could be quite interesting
• Photographs and materiality/post-photography looking at putting photographs on materials and 3D objects on a theme perhaps just exploring my personal relationship with the camera.
• Photographing the future- my own future visions in photographs 

As I already discussed Helen Chadwick and using 3D objects with the image in my previous post so I thought as my last project concentrated on the past that this project could be more about the future and transformation.

I have been looking at feminist photography such as this By Karin Mack:

  Karin Mack, Bügeltraum (Iron Dream), 1975

Here the woman is trapped in domestic tasks even in her dreams and this kind of photography and feminist thought was the kind of work that was made in the second/third wave of feminism with Martha Rosler and her performance and posters.  Hannah Wilke another feminist artist used their body - below Lynn Hersham Leeson constructs the woman's face through makeup in an extreme fashion to explore the politics of a woman's face and body in society.   

Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Constructing Roberta Breitmore (1975)

In terms of transformation and commentary, I want to explore these ideas of woman, the feminine and how this translates in the fourth wave of feminism as I do think we may have lost our way....

References

Fortman J. (2018) Vocal Media: A Timeline of the Feminist Movement Available from: https://vocal.media/viva/a-timeline-of-the-feminist-movement (Accessed 16/01/20)

Welcome to a New Term!

Another new term so to begin I talk about my therapy as this seems to be all the rage!  Over the Christmas period I began a Monkey making marathon!

The Sock Monkey Kit

I made many monkeys which I will add photographs here.... I found the sewing very relaxing and stress relieving and while making them I smoked less and generally was more relaxed. How you ask is this at all relevant to this coming term!?  I wanted to share this as I do enjoy making things whether physical or digital and this term I would like to incorporate this idea of 3D and I go back to looking at Helen Chadwick

Helen Chadwick, The Labours I and II.

Helen Chadwick (1953-1996) used performance, photography, 3D Object and mixed media to express her materiality, corporeality and questioned notions of societal norms within her work.  The Tate states that: 'Chadwick was known for "challenging stereotypical perceptions of the body in elegant yet unconventional forms. Her work draws from a range of sources, from myths to science, grappling with a plethora of unconventional, visceral materials that included chocolate, lambs tongues and rotting vegetable matter.' (Tate 2020)

I particularly am inspired by The Labours where Chadwick becomes part of the object embedded into its very essence with the silver gelatin of the photograph. Here below her body is ingrained into the material.  This physicality of the image is something I am really interested in creating with my own work.

The obituary that appeared in The Independent stated: 'Chadwick made her art splice the sensuous with the cerebral in a quest to bend, stretch and dissolve age-old certainties of who and what we are.' (Buck, Monday 18 March 1996)

This exploration of the physical combined with considered thinking is what I most enjoy about this work and hope that my own work has these aspects. 

Helen Chadwick The Labours V 1986

References 

Tate Modern Online (2020) Helen Chadwick [Online] Available from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/helen-chadwick-2253 (Accessed 13th January 2020)

Buck L. (1996) Obituary: Helen Chadwick [Online] Available from; https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituaryhelen-chadwick-1342742.html (Accessed 13th January 2020)

Game Art Portfolio: Final Book

Here is the final book that I have created for Game Art - I created this on Flipsnack

The Dream Investigation Unit

This was a short project just to demonstrate how to create a Game Art Portfolio - I am hoping you enjoy and see that to create something like this you need a mixture of digital skills and a great concept and narrative to design you story.