” don’t kiss me”- The Art Of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
By- Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
Tate Publishing- Jersey Heritage Trust
Edited By- Louise Downie (2006)
“The entire collection is available online at www.jerseyheritagetrust.org”
Quotes from Book
From 1932, “Cahun and Moore were increasingly involved with political issues.
As an introductory for the Contents Page the quote below is used to introduce the two individuals. “Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were an extraordinary couple who worked and lived together for more than forty years.”
As the first part to the third section of the book Cahuns section is began with the quote following in order to show the development of her work “Cahun’s work gradually extended from written texts to objects and photographic illustration.”
We went to visit the ‘Invisible Hands’ exhibition in the Jersey Arts Center. It is a series of photographs about the potato farming industry produced from the perspective of the workers themselves; all of the photos in this exhibition have been taken by them. This exhibition has a high significance as seasonal farming work has been an important part of the Jersey economy for over 150 years, yet their presence is mostly undocumented, limited to staged photographs by local media or marketing photos.
Through this the exhibition urges farmers to provide better living and working conditions for Polish and other immigrants working in their farms. One worker says ‘We work very long hours, sometimes 12 hours and sometimes longer than 12 hours, regardless of the weather – whether there is rain or a cold wind, we are still working, and sometimes we work on Sunday, which is not great for everybody.’ They work in very poor conditions for long hours all for minimum salary
As a result of this the project includes a list of eight requests to improve working conditions for Polish migrants, as shown in the below photo. Those eight points (requests made by the workers presented in the art project and displayed in the exhibition) include reforms to the health and social security system that currently mean workers are not eligible for benefits until they have been in the Island for six months, and improvements in living conditions and wages for those undertaking the most difficult jobs.
To add an artistic element to the list; the eight points have been written by an automated arm as shown below.
My personal investigation looks at my grandparent’s lifestyle and how it has been influenced by the time period they grew up in, the 1940’s. I have explored the influence of religion and spirituality, gender roles within the family structure and social norms during this time period which are still present in their lifestyle to this day. Appropriately, I chose the art movement of realism to influence the stylistic features of my imagery to create the narrative of my grandparent’s life style. Realism photography looks at documentary photography and photojournalism to capture life how it is, whilst occasionally raising social and cultural issues. With my topic being based in my grandparent’s lifestyle, I felt that using documentary photography would be the most appropriate to showcase this, thus drawing connections with realism. Moreover, my work is aimes to look at social norms and family structure, such as the wife being a housewife whilst the husband provides for the family, which illuminates social issues which still subtly influence today’s society.
Image from: Walker Evans – “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’
The art movement of realism and straight photography looks at creating imagery which showcase life how it is. The movement emerged in the 1840’s, which retaliated against pictorialism which suggests photographs have to look like a drawing or painting. Artists who work within this area look at raising social and cultural issues relevant within society at that time, in order to make the audience aware of this issue in hope something can be done to make a change, which presents the convention of social reform. This area looks at documentary photography and photojournalism to document the events which are occurring. Within this art movement artists stick to the original techniques of photography, the use of photography for science, to create detailed, sharp images showcasing real life.
Image from: Walker Evans – “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’
Walker Evans is a key photographer who has influenced my investigation through his ‘Let Us Now Praise Famous Men’ photographic series. In this he aims to document the lives of sharecropping families, those who are forced into labour which involves them having to look after the land and in return they gain a share of the crops produced on their portion of land. His work falls into the movement of realism, as the series produces imagery which showcase the families’ lives as well as drawing cultural issues at the time, with strong political views being produced from Evan. In addition, his work looks at capturing lifestyle, which is similar to my project, which enhances my understanding and approach to capturing the lifestyle of my family, which has allowed me to consider the conceptual and contextual elements in a new way.
Within my personal investigation I want to explore my families lifestyle and the interventions within this, with specific focus on my grandparents. I decided to capture my grandparents’ as they were raised during the 1940’s where the ideology of a traditional family existed, this will allow me to see if their lifestyle now reflects their lifestyle back in the 1940’s. A traditional family during this time was considered a structure which consists on a man and women, who are usually husband and wife, who have one or more biological or adopted children after they have been wedded. It also looks at the role of religion and spirituality within the family structure, and how it influences a families life style. In addition, within a traditional family during the 1940’s it was considered a social norm for the wife of a family to be a house wife and the husband to provide within the family, outlining gender stereotype’s within the family structure. Within this project I intended to capture imagery in the style of documentary photography, following the art movement of photo realism, in order to accuratly capture the life style of my grandparents.
For my first photoshoot; I believe it is necessary to explore my grandparents past and try and gain an understanding of their lifestyle when they were younger. In order to achieve this I intended to explore their photo archives of old photographs and documents they have stored at their house, whilst interviewing them asking about stories and meanings behind their archival material. This will give me an in-depth understanding of their lifestyle and will enrich my investigation with valuable detail about my grandparents which can influence the way in which I explore their current lifestyle.
One major aspect of their lifestyle is holiday seasons; every Christmas my grandparents will come down to my house as we celebrate Christmas, exposing me to their lifestyle. As a family we sit around the table and eat a traditional Christmas meal, dress smart and part take in activities such as watching the Queen’s speech every year. I intended to capture this to explore my grandparents lifestyle within big family events, as well as showing how their lifestyle has influenced their descendants.
My third photoshoot will capture my grandparents lifestyle in a naturalistic way through producing candid photographs. I intended to follow my grandparents around for a day capturing specific tasks that they do within the day, such as house chores, hobbies etc. This will give me an understanding of what their day to day life is like and how their upbringing has influenced this. In addition, I will also look at producing a video which captures this which work alongside this set on imagery, I intended to overlap this with audio of each grandparent explaining what their upbringing was like in terms of lifestyle.
For my final photoshoot I do not have a set idea on what I want to capture. I plan to capture a significant area of their lifestyle which I have not yet explored, in order to showcase a holistic view of their lifestyle. Ideally, I am wanting to capture more naturalistic imagery but may turn to artificial staged family photographs to showcase this. I believe after looking through my family archives I will have more of an understanding of what I am wanting to capture for this photoshoot.
Modernism is a broad term that covers all the avant-garde art movements, and unites them under one name. These movements were; Fauvism, Primitivism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism and a lot of other different movements. Modernism was popularized in the very late 1800s and early 20th century and went on til later in the 20th century.
Modernism was taken on by a lot of artists during the early 19th century. Modernist imagery normally rejected the older art movements such as classicism and naturalism. It also normally rejected or ignored the idea of religion that was often used within older art movements. Instead of this a lot of the art is about social factors within the world and different things that were happening at the time, showing things such as peoples social classes.
Photography was a huge part of the popularization of modernism. Photography pre-modernism was often disregarded as not being a form of art. Though after modernism was introduced it was quickly became popular.
Markosian is a Russian American artist of Armenian descent. She war born in Moscow and in 1996 she left to go live in California with her mother and her brother. Until the age of 23 she had no contact with her father. After 15 years of not seeing him she travelled to Armenia to see her father.
Markosian’s body of work called “inventing my father” is what I will be analysing and exploring in this post.
Throughout this project Diana explores her father’s absence throughout her life through the use of archival imagery, landscape images of important locations and also through photographing objects, letters and newspaper articles. This particular project is very personal, and the artist projects very raw emotion onto her audience through the use of black and white images and through portraits of her father.
“For most of my life, my father was nothing more than a cut out in our family album” – Diana Markosian
I have decided to use Diana as my case study, as one aspect of my family history I feel is important to incorporate into my project is my parents’ divorce. I wanted to see how the artist approached photographing and portraying the absence of a parent through images, as I will need to portray the same.
“I often wondered what it would have been like to have a father. I still do.”-Diana Markosian
Diana also has a project “mornings (with you)” which is almost a part 2 to the above photo series, where she meets her father, gets to know him, and documents it through images of them together in the mornings.
Analysis:
In this image we can see a printed photograph of Diana, her mother and we can also see that her father has been cut out of what would otherwise be a family photograph.
We then learn that Diana’s mother had cut out her father. This image is captioned “This was the closest thing I had to an image of my father: a cut out in our family album.”
Conceptually, It is clear that the absence of her father in the photo reflects his absence in her life. The lack of her father also further emphasises her mother. Which reflects the importance of her mum in her life after loosing her father figure.
Post Modernism was first discovered through ‘Pop Art’ in the 1960s which was then developed into the aspect we know now which was made in the 1970s.
Cindy sherman
Pablo Picasso
Barbera Kruger
Edgar Degas
Key Characteristics/ Conventions- Postmodernism is known to be a reaction against ideas as well as values of modernism. Modernism’s dominance in cultural theory is associated with irony and philosophical concepts of universal truths. There is a known distinction between high and low art which incorporate popular elements making the overall postmodernism. Key themes of postmodernism makes references towards outside art work which adds to the contextual work.
Methods/ Techniques/ Processes- Photographs are usually blown hip, edited, cropped etc to be used used in newspapers and billboards. Others use repetition to create emphasis on the image.
MODERNISM
Modernism is a style or movement in arts that aim to depart significantly from classical and traditional forms. It often characterises a quality of thought, expression and lots of technique.
Artists associated:
Walker Evans
Alfred Stieglitz
Alexander Rodchenko
Definition: a movement towards modifying traditional beliefs in accordance with modern ideas, especially in the Roman Catholic Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A style or movement in the arts that aims to depart significantly from classical and traditional forms
Time period: 20th century
Key Characteristics: Common characteristics of modernist images include clean lines, sharp focus and repetition of form.
Artists associated:
Paul Strand
Alfred Steiglitz
Olive Cotton
Cecil Bostock
KEY WORKS:
Methods/ Techniques/ Processes- Black and white edits are used for emphasis, sharp focus images in order for them to be seen clearly, as well as a large frame size.
Key characteristics/ conventions : Pictorialism strived to be art by trying to make pictures that resembled paintings ie. manipulating images in the darkroom, scratching and marking their prints to imitate the texture of canvas, using soft focus, blurred and fuzzy imagery based on allegoric and spiritual subject matter, including religious scenes.
A number of different photographic groups and associations emerged that promoted pictorialism such as: The Vienna Camera Club (Austria).
Artist Associated:
Henrich Kuhn
Hugo Hunneberg
Hans Watcek
Julia Margaret Cameron
George Davidson
Peter Henry Emerson
Key works:
Methods/ techniques/ processes: Experimenting with chemicals in the dark room and they also placed Vaseline on the lens to create this sinister blur in the images.
REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
Time period: 1920’s
Key characteristics/ conventions : Went back on photography origins because photographers believed in the intrinsic qualities of the photographic medium and its ability to provide accurate images. They wanted to produce images that were more photographic than painterly. REALISM
Artists associated:
Paul Strand
Jacob Riis
Dorathea Lange
Walker Evans
Alfred Stieglitz
Key works:
Methods/ techniques/ processes: Straight photography uses a sharp focus allowing key details to shine through and draw our attention. Realism photography is used to show and capture what the world is really like. Each image reflects the life and a story for each individual .
For one of our photography trips we visited the Jersey Arts Center to take a look at the exhibition taking place showing the lives of migrant farmers in Jersey.
Invisible hands is an art exhibition which is a project between Alicja Rogalska and the Morning Boat to portray the lives of migrant workers in Jersey. This exhibition was created to bring light to these workers and the poor conditions they are forced to deal with despite all the hard work they put into their daily lives. These people and their work have been a huge part of the Island’s agriculture for over 150 years, yet this is still failed to be mentioned as much as it should.
Winning clay potato cast in bronze :: Jersey art center :: Invisible Hands
As part of the exhibition, artists were asked to create the most average potato out of clay, with the winning one being cast in bronze and displayed at the exhibition. There were also some runner ups displayed on a shelf near by.
Postmodernism is more of a reaction against the values and ideas of modernism. Described broadly, modernism is a search for the truth and answers, whereas postmodernism presents the idea that there is no set truth and is much more philosophical. Both these movements came as a result of the thinking patterns of the society during those times. Post modernism first emerged in the early 1960’s, but it wasn’t till the 1970’s till the term postmodernism started being used.
A key element of postmodernism was breaking the divide between high and low art, especially through including pop culture elements. A good example would be cubism, where Picasso, an artist who was part of the movement, often included the lyrics of popular songs in his paintings.
Above is an example of one of the most famous paintings of the postmodernist movement. More specifically it is part of the visual art movement, also known as pop art. It was painted by Andy Warhol, who i will take a lot of inspiration from in my personal study. His works incorporate large blocks of colour and are always vibrant. This is a very expressive way of showing one’s visions and ideas to the world, but it works as it attracts a large amount of attention due to the visually appealing colours, which in turn helps spread the message the artist is putting out.
Focusing back on postmodernism as a whole, its all about referencing things outside of the work (E.g. Social, political, or cultural issues) which is exactly what my project will be about. The works are always aware of and make reference to previously hidden agendas of art markets, relations to museums, dealers and critics.
Unlike modernism, postmodernism did not pay any kind of attention whatsoever to original works. They would dub them as pieces that gained popularity due to propagation. Also, due to scientific and technological advancements and other related fields,postmodernism saw no absolute truth in original works. It believed more in creating applied art. Digital media was used extensively to copy original work of the modernism period.
This is a mood board I have created of the most influential and well-known works of the pop art movement.
