MICHEL WHITTLE
Artist Michael Whittle came to our college to do a talk about his artwork and what inspires him to create things that he does, he began talking about his background in science and how that shaped the artist he is today, he talked about diagrams in art, how they have been used throughout the ages by artists within their artwork.
He talked about how artists use diagrams in their work one particular scientist he exclaimed he found influential was Charles Sanders Peirce. Charles Sanders Peirce was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as “the father of pragmatism” he was educated as a chemist in an employed as a scientist with the years.
Charles Sanders Peirce’s philosophy includes is largely based on a pervasive three category system. He wrote papers on his theory is that most things come in threes, three is the magic number. Michael Whittle also based a lot of his artworks on his three evaluative concepts, which were type token and tone.
he compartmentalised the reasons and methods in which artists create their work into two categories romantic art and scientific objectivism, also wrote a paper on these two different methods and how they contradict each other.
Scientific objectivism explained the type of art form which is based purely on scientific and mathematical observations, whereas romantic art dealt much more with fluency of emotions and shapes and forms created to show the emotion, and atmosphere of the work.
He should have the number of flights of scientific objectivism, a lot of these are installations with simple forms based on diagrams, graphs, or charts. And the romantic art was more paintings of scenes in warm colours and more unrealistic colour tones and positioning.
He also exclaimed that there were two different codes that he judged his own work by, scientific cord and a static code. These codes relate directly to his idea of romantic and scientific objectivism.
Scientific code, relating to scientific objectivism was to reduce tones, e.g. colour, form, place. Whereas the aesthetic cord was to add tones as seen in romantic art.
He also should a diagram which showed what he chooses to base his work on, different type of diagrams used in different contexts, such as anatomy, adology, and cell biology.
Very interesting thing that he talked about with ideals forms that couldn’t exist in nature, I thought this is very interesting because I didn’t realise that some shapes are not found in nature, I would have thought that any shape could be made by nature or else how did we think of it in the first place? He also exclaimed that there were no perfect circles in nature.
Another thing I found interesting was when he started to talk about retinopathy scans, and how everyone’s individual retinopathy scan, is completely individual. No two people will have the same image. I actually have one of my retinopathy scans from when I had my eyes tested. I thought it looked interesting so I asked the optician if I could take a photograph of it and I’m pleased I could find it to use in this project.
He talked about the back patterns paintings the patterns artists create to visualise where the elements of the paintings will be, and then the pain on top of them. I remember going to the National Art Gallery in Edinburgh and seeing a painting that was unfinished on the wall. I thought it was interesting that he put the spinning on the wall you were not there was a part missing, when I thought about it more the fact that part was left missing was the most interesting thing about the painting. Because it meant you could see how the artist was creating his work, you could see the back pattern of the painting.
He talked a lot about back patterns from paintings and technical marks artists make when creating a painting, we also talked about her sometimes artists leave the technical marks and the back patterns in their work or base their work entirely on the back patterns which is interesting.
Remember when I did a painting of my grandma and grandad in the trolley bus on the Tyne Bridge, at the beginning stages when I was working out where to put the different elements of my painting I had back pattern. I think if I left the back pattern in the painting it would have been a much more interesting piece of artwork, it’s something to think about as i go on in this project.
He talked about how diagrams have been used even since caveman days, he showed a rock with a map on that was from the day of the cavemen in it was still relevant today, it could still be used to navigate their surroundings. He also talks about Stonehenge, one of the most famous prehistoric sculpture there is. I believe that nobody knew why Stonehenge was built, how or what it was for.
But Michael Whittle explained that Stonehenge was a way of telling the seasons and months of the year, it was like a giant watch or calendar, he also explained that some prehistoric diagrams are found on how they made Stonehenge, he was very enthusiastic about diagrams and you can see how he does so well using them in his work with the enthusiasm he shows in explaining them.
Remember when I was doing my level II in art and design and I was looking a pattern work, and that should at all this that someone I can’t remember which artist it was, but these the pattern found in meat and use that for their artwork. And it was so original that it always stuck in her mind.
What Michael Whittle has found with these diagrams is an original outlook on art, and that is help him create his own original artwork that other people may not think of.
All in all it was a very interesting talk and I’m pleased I went to it, I definitely be thinking now more about back patterns in art and diagrams in ways I can use these to influence my own artwork.
