PAINT CHIPS (2009)
TO QUOTE THE INFAMOUS JOHN CONSTABLE
“I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may – light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful”
Despite my lack of any tangible form of memory function, especially when it comes to what people have said, this quote has always stuck in my mind from when I first happened across it.
I was doing a short photographic project on overlooked things of beauty in everyday life (to build up my portfolio to get into University as it happens). The finished piece consisted of some mediocre photographs each with an accompanying quote. Not much of it stays with me, but 6 or so years on from completing the project – this quote often jumps back into my mind.
John Constable 'Stonehenge' 1836 (watercolour)
I DON’T LIKE CONSTABLE
I know I am deviating from the main image relating to this post and what I was going to write about – so please forgive me of a short interlude.
I don’t really like Constable. There, I have said it! I like his quote, that’s good and I agree wholeheartedly with its sentiments, however, I do not see it applied to Constable’s images in practice.
To me – his paintings symbolise many things that are bad about the sublime and picturesque portrayal of British countryside and rural life. Overly sentimental, inaccurately portrayed and at times dismissive of the true nature of our landscape.
For me, he does not show the beauty in all things, he shows a stereotypical portrayal of a landcsape. No doubt, his imagery has been a large factor in creating this stereotype – but for me, the fact remains. I find his subject matter a bit obvious and over stated and his colour choice too drab and romantic.
Compare his paintings to that of Turner and to me there is no question that Turner’s images where far more imaginative, evocative and representative of British landscapes.
I could go on, I wrote my dissertation about such things…but thats a whole other post!
PAINT CHIPS (2009)
THE LOVE OF SMALL THINGS
Going back to this image and the quote – I guess much of the photographic work I like and indeed make is based around finding almost all things beautiful in their own right. When you really try and apply Constable’s quote, it is quite accurate – beauty really can be found in all things and representing it in any creative way, for me, is very rewarding.
These paint chippings caught my eye because of the immense range of colours in them. There I was at the college I work at, picking bits of dried paint of bottles (more because I cannot stop fidgiting and fiddling than an OCD way) and as they came off, I noticed what amazing patterns they made.
This chance, random creation of something aesthetically pleasing really interests me. The lack of intention, thought or method in their creation and the randomness of their beauty being found is something I find fascinating.
I have still never managed to represent this side of random aesthetic chance in any meaningful way, or in any body of work I am satisfied with. Perhaps its not possible because the very act of taking a photograph of such things takes away the joy of finding them, in situe, for oneself. But the search continues…
Can you empirically define beauty? Isn’t beauty a subjective and emotional reaction? Same as revulsion? Surely having a negative reaction to a visual stimulus is a valid response, and surely it’s needed as the yin to beauties yang, otherwise the term ‘beauty’ would lose weight if everything was beautiful. If this was the case then why label it, and why are there such huge variations in peoples idea of the beautiful?
I think everything is inherently fascinating and emotive if you look hard enough, but for me certain things are just plain ugly. That doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t think they should be there, just that visually they lack whatever criteria my brain has decided is beautiful. I never saw an un-aesthetic thing in my life, but I’ve seen many un-beautiful things.
Ugly things hold amazing properties and decontextualised perhaps they take on a sort of beauty for me – this is what photography is good at as it decontextualises the visual from the observers world view, challenging their ideas of aesthetics. If it’s a good and clever shot, a normally ugly thing might be beautiful. A dead body, for instance (thinking about that autposy program). If you saw a dead body, freshly murdered, it would be hard to deem it beautiful on all but the most detached and sterile level. If, however, that body is displayed to you in such a way as to make you consider the wonder of it, then it takes on a sense of beauty.
If the photographer can leave the viewer with as sense of that beauty when they next view the subject in the real world then yeah, maybe there are no ugly things, we just need to see things in a different way to bring out their beauty. But isn’t this a construct in itself? Are you not then finding someone elses idea of a scene beautiful rather than having a personal emotive response? Does that invalidate your original response and mean that thing was never ugly? And are subjects actually different depending on context (eg, the murdered body / the informative autopsy – these two dead bodies, although the same by definition, are utterly different subject matter and open to different aesthetic reactions).
[...] kind of follows on from a previous train of thought, in my post I NEVER SAW AN UGLY THING IN MY LIFE. In that I banged on about how all things are visually attractive when seen in the right [...]