A Blind Man Would Have Great Difficulty Looking at Cezanne
Although a deceptively simple painting, it has a natural beauty with a real sense of place albeit quite surreal.
The background scene is a little town on the bank of the river Saone called Tournus, where we would stop over on route to holidays in Italy. In fact, the family still do, to this day. My grandson Nathan and I will be there this summer.
The journey would progress from Tournus to Aix en Provence, the home-town of Steven’s best-loved artist Cezanne and a pilgrimage to the Jas de Bouffan studio would always be undertaken.
The title of the painting is in relation to that trick of the eye practiced by Cezanne and probably most artists, Steven included of looking at the painting, closing one eye opening it and then quickly closing the other, a sort of winking technique or simply keep one eye closed while looking at an object, scene etc.
“Artists have long known there are two ways of seeing the world”, says University of Oslo Psychology Professor Stine Vogt, Ph.D. “Without learning to turn off the part of the brain that identifies objects, people can only draw icons of objects, rather than the objects themselves. When faced with a hat, for instance, most people sketch an archetypal side view of a hat, rather than the curves, colours and shadows that hit our retina.”
She found that artists eyes tended to scan the whole picture, including apparently empty expanses of ocean or sky while non-artists focused in on objects, especially people. Non-artists spent about 40 percent of the time looking at objects while artists focused on them 20 percent of the time”
So, as the title clearly states, a blind man would have great difficulty with Cezanne.
I knew in 2004, when I first started university that I wanted to create figurative paintings that were of an imaginative style. I’d studied art all through my education, buying numerous books on the Old Greats. It wasn’t until my foundation course tutor, Mick Maslen, introduced me to the artwork of a group of Scottish figurative painters that I really knew the type of artwork I wanted to create. One of those artists was Steven Campbell.
My tutor handed me the book, ‘The Paintings of Steven Campbell, The Story so Far.’ The paintings inside were totally fresh and new to me. They drew my curiosity as they were full of story, wonder and puzzles. I had always read art books but hadn’t really sat down and read a proper book since school. As I discovered Campbell’s love of the books of P.G Wodehouse I thought by reading them I would find more clues to his paintings. I was planning a trip to Edinburgh to drop a painting off at a gallery and thought this would be a great opportunity for a read so I bought ‘Carry On Jeeves’ by Wodehouse. The book was full of quirky characters and hilarious stories. I thought these characters could be, on some level, the figures in Campbell’s paintings. This was great, these books were almost a dialogue for the artworks and I began reading more and more of them.
I’ve decided to talk about a painting that was probably the first image of Campbell’s work that I saw. It’s the image used for the front of a book my tutor handed to me. The painting is called ‘Painting in Defence of Migrants.’ Although painted in 1993 the image and subject are actually very appropriate given current events in the world today. The work shows a group of migrants exhausted from their travels, sitting high up next to a waterfall. They are spot-lit; the sky is dark with heavy clouds hanging over them with subtle silhouettes of men with guns drifting among them. Hunters or Soldiers? Perhaps in hot pursuit of the weary travellers?
Painting In Defence of Migrants
The composition of the painting is circular, your eye moves around the painting, led by limbs, faces, and nature. Circular? Could this be on purpose to show that the travellers have been walking in circles themselves? Two trees sit either side of the painting, sheltering the group. The tall trunks lean towards each other forcing your eye down a valley filled with birds and fish; they too are migrants. The fish swim against the flowing waters of the river. They are most likely as tired as the people, fighting the current. A man with blonde hair is slightly more spot-lit than the others in the group, his hands placed together as though he is praying. The fish and water behind him are glowing. Has his prayer been answered as nature provides the fish that could be the food the travellers need to gain the energy to carry on? He is also the only one standing and is taking a step forward, a hopeful man not willing to give up. The birds swoop and glide over the landscape, littering the sky like the Hitchcock film, but these birds are not menacing. I feel they represent hope, a rescue party!
Since first seeing that book I’ve managed to collect a lot of exhibition catalogues of various Steven Campbell exhibitions from various online sellers. My favourite though, is one from a 1984 exhibition at The Fruitmarket Gallery. They say don’t judge a book by its cover but this one had a very special cover. The cover is cream covered with black brush marks crisscrossing and dotting out a horizontal figure in front of brickwork with the name STEVEN CAMPBELL spelled out boldly. As I picked it up I thought the rear of the cover was ripped, only to discover this was purposely done to reveal a pale blue sky with those same expressive black brush marks shaping out a mountain scene.
The great thing I’ve found in Campbell’s work is that every time I return to look at his paintings I’ll find something new. I feel like a traveller myself when I study them as I’m sure he was when he painted them. One of the things that really draws me to the work is how much you can tell he enjoyed painting these artworks; it’s his playground with endless possibilities.
With thanks to:
Richard Woods
Artist and Damien Hirst Painting Assistant
Member of Steven Campbell Appreciation Group:
The inspiration for this painting came from a family safari to Kenya. It was just around the time that Mike Tyson was in disgrace, having bit Evander Holyfield on the ear.
We were out one day on route to the game park, traveling through a township market when Steven spotted a black and white printed T shirt featuring Mike Tyson, he got the driver to stop and ran back to buy it.
The t shirt forms the landscape at the bottom of the painting, while Steven’s own holiday shirt (which still hangs in his wardrobe) forms a representation of self while adding another landscape element of sky and sun.
This painting is based on an experience Steven had one Sunday travelling out to his studio in Bed Sty or Bedford Stuyvesant, to give it its full name. He had one change to make on the journey from our loft in Little Italy.
On approaching the platform to continue his journey he found it crowded with people and soon discovered that there had been a suicide attempt (a jumper on the track). Apparently the man was still there with the emergency services so Steven, not wishing to see anything gruesome (unlike the majority of the crowd) went back in the other direction trying to cross to the other platform to return home.
Unfortunately at the same time as Steven was coming down, the paramedics were bringing the injured young black man, who was now screaming and waving two bloody stumps in the air while lying on the stretcher. His legs had been cut off below the knee. So Steven, by trying to avoid being part of the action ended with a ringside seat, which left a very harrowing memory.
So if you look again at the painting you will see the crowds, bottom right, the signal lights, the body with the 2 stumps above it and various bits of detritus floating about.
The donut bag to the right of the picture beside the signal lights has a body of a rat coming out of it and again this comes from an actual memory. This was a different day but Steven has chosen to merge them into the one painting. We were both standing waiting for our local train, the RR, when a donut bag with the back end of a rat sticking out from it came hurtling along the track, the rat had obviously got inside to retrieve a left over piece of donut and had gotten stuck.
This painting is a good example of how Steven would take personal experiences and merge them with imaginative elements to form a cohesive, if somewhat illusive whole.
A still from a movie, where you write the script with your own imagination.
We’re delighted to highlight today’s Observer feature on Rachel Jones, our 2013 Hunt Medal winner. This piece looks at seven decades of artists, interviewing an artist from each decade, featuring Paula Rego, Susan Hiller, Richard Deacon, Rachel Whiteread, Laure Prouvost and of course Rachel.
Continuing with our Painting of the Month series, Carol Campbell discusses, Untitled (Gaviscon Series).
This painting shows a kneeling figure with arms outstretched. I would on looking at it now, see it very clearly as a self portrait, and certainly the Gaviscon images are deeply personal and relate directly to the self diagnosed ulcer Steven believed himself to be suffering from, while in reality it was pain from his appendix.
Returning to the other details, most especially the Gaviscon, Steven viewed this as a symbol of self and actually took a bottle with him to Cezanne’s studio at Jas de Bouffan on the outskirts of Aix en Provence. Steven adored Cezanne, considering him the greatest of all painters and by positioning the bottle around the studio on chairs, tables, beside bowls of fruit etc and secretly taking photographs (as photography within the studio is forbidden) felt he had in some way a connection to the man and the place.
The books tumbling down represent years of study both of art and literature cut through with darker thoughts represented by the open razors. The floating figure could be read as either attempting suicide or as a survivor.
Painting of the Month, Special Feature, October 2015
This month we’re choosing to have an additional painting of the month to accompany our Annual Steven Campbell Lecture. It is with great pleasure that we include this short essay by Roger Hoare. Roger was Lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art from 1973 to 1981, where he taught on the short-lived Mixed Media programme between 1977 and 1981. Steven joined the course in his second year in 1979. It was where he made the now iconic Poised Murder performance with a group of fellow students.
Hunt’s Dilemma
Hunt’s Dilemma
In September 1981 I left Glasgow School of Art after running the Mixed Media Course in the new Fine Art department, to study Chinese art in the Far East. Steven Campbell had been in the final group of about twelve students from September 1980 to June 1981, working above the Victoria Café, opposite the Mackintosh building. Both he and Adrian Wiszniewski were then in their third year, so still had a final year to complete.
During his year in Mixed Media Steven had worked on installation and theatrical performances, culminating in ‘Poised Murder’…. in which I was beaten to death by a dame with a chair leg, whilst on the telephone. It was more disturbing having to wear Brylcreem, a black polo neck and medallion. It’s difficult to be a cool tutor when starring in a student performance.
On my return from Japan in February 1982 I visited Steven in his room in the annexe along Renfrew Street, where Mixed Media was originally based. The course had closed after my departure and the remaining students returned to their usual departments – painting, sculpture, printmaking etc. Steven could not work in the crowded Drawing and Painting studios, hence his retreat to the annexe. (Moral – never despise the importance of annexes in art colleges ….. see also Goldsmiths circa 1987.)
He was working on ‘Hunt’s Dilemma’. We had a conversation about his paintings, which I thought were a confident development of narratives that he had begun in his last term in Mixed Media after the performances. I was impressed by the power of the image of ‘Hunt’s Dilemma’, its crude directness, the strange flag-like composition and the general oddity. The either/or aspect of the bright, hellish red and the other-worldly blue pattern, with the twisted figure suspended betwixt and between, reinforced the mental concept of ‘dilemma’. I remember talking about the hand gestures and referring to the ‘haloed hand’ in Duchamp’s Fauvist portrait of Doctor Dumouchel, 1910.
‘Hunt’s Dilemma’ is a crisis for a fictional character, between the devil and the deep blue sea, between the hell of Fascism (oh! those handsome uniforms and sharp haircuts) and the innocence of peace (the sunlit and seascape patterns of Matisse – no! Sandro Chia more like). But what is the blob … a reference to a mountain? …. and those outlines repeated on both the red and blue areas. Has Guston been here with his big boots?
Who next is going to hove into view? Courbet and Titian, Apollinaire and Duchamp, Hume and Nietzche , John Buchan and ‘Rogue Male’, de Chirico and Magritte, Beckett and Joyce, Gerstl and Bacon, Wodehouse and Chandler……..
This is not a far-fetched list …. Steven and I had discussions about all of them during this period ….. and about pictorial conventions, naming and depicting, word and image, happenstance and conundrums ……. Especially humour in art, accidents in painting.
Steven was very aware of contemporary ideas in Post-Modernism – Baselitz, Immendorf, Schnabel, Longo etc. We talked about an imagined, new history painting of contemporary politics, character and events … wonderful as an idea… but difficult … needing to be painted very fast and skillfully. Steven brought Picasso with him…. the heavy-limbed, post-primitive, post-Cubist Picasso. In our conversation he always had an interesting point of view, a generous mind and was unfailingly humorous and quick-witted.
Steven gave me ‘Hunt’s Dilemma’ from his degree show in 1982. That summer I took it to deepest Surrey, where it lived with me in a damp country cottage for over thirty years, mostly hidden from view in an attic and remaining intact, during two burglaries.
It was painted on rough cotton canvas, probably on top of something else, in thick oil paint, perhaps mixed with printing inks “borrowed” from the silk-screen department of GSA. Money for materials was short in 1982. The paint surface was always fragile, it suffered temperature extremes and was rolled up for two long journeys. It now needs considerable repair and has to be seen again in public.
I’ve given it back to Carol Campbell…. end of my dilemma!
I have never used it as a rug. (see Steven Campbell and Hitchcock).
Steven would appreciate the fact that in my dictionary “dilemma” is wedged between “dildo” and “dilettante”.
The idea behind the painting was based on Hitler’s Black Book – a list of some of the most influential British, who were to be arrested at the completion of a successful invasion of the country.
The figure is of Lytton Strachey, who has figured in several paintings by Steven, and often is painted as a quasi self portrait. On this occasion the figure of Strachey is morphing into Hitler. The black book itself had several notable mistakes, Strachey having died in 1932 for example.
The Steven Campbell Trust are delighted to be supporting the forthcoming exhibition ‘On Fun and Friction’.
Coordinated and curated by artist Rosie Roberts, On Fun and Friction is an exhibition celebrating 25 years since Steven Campbell’s seminal exhibition at the Third Eye Centre “On Form and Friction’ recently re-hung for Generation in 2014.
On Fun and Friction is an exhibition that celebrates and empowers those working in a painterly form or who feel a strong relationship to a painting/non painting contemporary art discourse. The show will bring together new painted works set against an audio and sculptural background, which embraces and questions a time when there are tangible struggles between different forms of contemporary practitioners, theoretically and practically and the importance or problems with empowering each individuals approach.
The title “On Fun and Friction” is a clear reference to Steven Campbell’s original exhibit. The exhibition is not intended as an attack but rather an invitation for discussion to highlight the literal sometimes-humorous friction that can often be felt between painters and other practitioners.
Artist’s featured: Caitlin Hynes, Owen Piper, Rachel Jones, Jacob Kerray, Fiona Beveridge, Alexander Millar, Rosie Roberts, Brian Cheeswright, Alexandra Leach.
The Steven Campbell Trust will also be loaning an original work by Steven Campbell.
Preview: Saturday 15th August 6-9pm
Open: 15.08.15 – 29.08.15 : 12noon – 6pm
SWG3 100 Eastvale Place Glasgow
Further viewings arranged by appointment.
Supported by The Steven Campbell Trust and The Hope Scott Trust.
This is from a series of paintings all based around the film Psycho. Steven actually did a painting called ‘There is no rug in Psycho’ or ‘physco’ (watch out for his misspelling on some of these paintings and drawings).
There was indeed no bathroom rug in the Hitchcock film but Steven imagined that if there had been they might have shown some kind of residual stain of the murders they had witnessed.
This particular rug is a reference to the James Elroy novel ‘The Black Dahlia’, the famous LA noire case in the 1940’s.
The Steven Campbell Trust 