deborah poynton: arcadia
DESCRIPTION
Stevenson catalogue 55, 2011TRANSCRIPT
Deborah PoyntonArcadia
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Arcadia
2010
Oil on canvas
11 panels
300 x 200cm each
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9
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13
14
15
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Diorama 1
2010
Oil on canvas
75 x 250cm
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Diorama 2
2010
Oil on canvas
75 x 250cm
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20
Diorama 3
2010
Oil on canvas
75 x 250cm
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Diorama 4
2010
Oil on canvas
75 x 250cm
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Diorama 5
2011
Oil on canvas
75 x 250cm
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Diorama 6
2011
Oil on canvas
75 x 250cm
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Small Diorama 1
2011
Oil on canvas
30 x 50cm
Small Diorama 2
2011
Oil on canvas
30 x 50cm
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Small Diorama 3
2011
Oil on canvas
30 x 50cm
Small Diorama 4
2011
Oil on canvas
30 x 50cm
Small Diorama 5
2011
Oil on canvas
30 x 50cm
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Still Life 1
2010
Oil on canvas
50 x 30cm
Still Life 2
2011
Oil on canvas
50 x 30cm
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Still Life 4
2011
Oil on canvas
50 x 30cm
Still Life 5
2011
Oil on canvas
50 x 30cm
Still Life 3
2011
Oil on canvas
50 x 30cm
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Arcadia
Transcript of a talk by Deborah Poynton at Stevenson, Cape Town, on 4 March 2011
I would like to talk first about northern European paintings of
Arcadia, and 17th-century landscape in general, because I am
drawn to the philosophy and practice of that time in terms of my
own work. Later on I’ll talk a bit about how I came to construct this
particular Arcadia.
The late 16th and early 17th centuries marked the end of the High
Renaissance, and in Rome a new sensibility emerged as ancient
Roman art was rediscovered, and painters came from northern
Europe to learn from the new masters. Initially influenced by
Caravaggio’s naturalism, artists like Claude Lorrain and Nicolas
Poussin turned to the myths and architecture of antiquity to evoke
a seemingly more noble time. The compositions became simpler,
less flamboyant, focusing more on expression in the human
figure, and the light and entirety of composition in landscape.
The new century was still very religious but the church’s waning
control of patronage and art-making allowed a space to open up
for new kinds of philosophical expression. Landscape became
a subject in its own right, no longer merely the background of
religious painting. Landscape depicts the world outside the self,
and inevitably places us in relation to that world in some way or
another. Landscape is essentially metaphysical.
I recently saw a wonderful exhibition called Tivoli in Paris, just
after I had finished painting this series. It consisted of many
painters’ responses to the ruined temple of Sibyl which stands
on some cliffs above Tivoli, near Rome. The exhibition clearly
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charted the development of landscape in the 17th and 18th
centuries, using just this one subject, one of the most popular
subjects of the day. The earliest paintings were purely imagined.
The artists probably hadn’t been there, but had made something
up from hearsay and other people’s drawings. These paintings
are exotic and inaccurate, saying perhaps more about the place
the artist came from than the subject, rather like early colonial
representations of Africa. They are entirely constructed. Towards
the end of the period, along with scientific advancement, there
was a move towards literal representations worked up from
sketches on site and aspiring towards an accurate depiction of
the actual place.
But it is the middle period of this evolution that interests me
most. A combination of constructed and literal, these paintings
demonstrate a particular 17th-century concept called ‘invention’.
Artists would study nature, plants, anatomy, the play of light,
particular buildings, even geometry and optics. They would then
arrange these things in an entirely constructed way. They invented
landscapes that were not real, but that felt more profound than
a simple depiction of an existing place. Towards the end of his
life Lorrain was so masterful at this that he could paint perfect
landscapes out of his imagination.
This is what drives me in my own painting. I feel that ‘invention’
of this kind, which is an abstraction of reality long before the
modernists dreamed of it, is a way in which we can see the world
as if for real. We cannot just grasp reality – it remains outside of
ourselves. But ‘invention’ is an internalised reality, a safe place for
the imagination.
William Hazlitt wrote about Poussin’s paintings in 1824:
To give us nature, such as we see it, is well and deserving of praise; to give us nature, such as we have never seen, but have often wished to see it, is better, and deserving of higher praise. He who can show the world in its first naked glory, with the hues of fancy spread over it, or in its high and palmy state, with the gravity of history stamped on the proud monuments of vanished empire, – who, by his ‘so potent art,’ can recall time past, transport us to distant places, and join the regions of imagination (a new conquest) to those of reality, – who shows us not only what nature is, but what she has been, and is capable of, – he who does this, and does it with simplicity, with truth, and grandeur, is lord of nature and her powers; and his mind is universal, and his art the master-art!
Artists such as Poussin and Lorrain, even Brueghel, reflected
the philosophy of stoicism in their work. Once again taken from
antiquity, Hellenic Greece in this case, the stoics believed in a
determined world, and said that acting virtuously, which meant
in accordance with nature, was the correct, moral way to live. In
order to act virtuously it was necessary to follow the dictates of
reason, or Logos, which is contained in everything in the world, a
kind of animating fire that penetrates matter to give it life. They
thought that all evil and suffering came from ignorance of our
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true place in the order of things. In the paintings of Poussin,
Logos seems to be shown through the light of the sun, sometimes
no longer visible but pervading every part of the scene with
heavenly beauty. We need to strive towards a better understanding
and practice of Logos in every moment of our waking lives, but
if we get too close to it we will be assimilated into a universal
oneness. My own interpretation of this is that although we must
always seek it, a true perception of Logos, the nature of the world,
will lead to the annihilation of the self, because it is only our
constructed view of the world that gives us our sense of self. We
are by nature mythmakers.
These 17th-century landscapes invite contemplation. If there are
figures, they are humble and small in scale. Nature predominates.
Light enfolds the scenes, plants push through cracks in the
masonry, sometimes wild storms whip the trees as the shepherd
struggles to bring his flock home. Poussin’s painting Et in Arcadia Ego depicts three shepherds and a shepherdess, also thought to be
the figure of Reason. They are reading the inscription on a grave,
in an Arcadian setting of trees, hills and sky. It is a memento mori,
a reminder that Arcadia contains the annihilation of all living
things. Poussin’s landscapes were beautiful, like the Dutch 17th-
century still lifes which suggest that life is transitory and that it is
in vain to hold tightly to something which will simply rot away in
your hands.
The exquisite beauty of Arcadian landscapes and Dutch still lifes
only serves to emphasise the intangibility of existence.
•
In the next part of my talk I want to tell you about how I constructed
this work, but first a word about my relationship to photography.
Somehow there’s a myth out there that photography is reality. For
me photography is a tool at the beginning of a long process. I
take photographs with a particular feeling in mind or heart. The
photo or photos of a plant, or person, have to contain enough
information for my purposes. I take several exposures to ferret
out this information. I used hundreds of photos from scores of
locations for this work. I will change the light, the colours, the
very structure of the plant to make it fit the place I am creating for
it, but here I have tried to retain the order, the Logos within the
natural scene I have created.
I need photography but I don’t like my photographs. It’s more
like I am going out and snipping off little bits of the world with
my scissors. Then I take them home and make imaginary theatres
with them.
This Arcadia is composed somewhat differently from the
conventional structure of the 17th-century Arcadia. Instead
of seeing the temple or folly from the perspective of a pastoral
foreground, we are standing inside it. The only way out of the gallery
space is through the mind’s eye. Poussin once painted himself with a
third eye in the middle of his forehead – the eye of the imagination.
An art gallery is a contemporary temple to the mysterious, the
unknowable; but also to aspiration and the desire to possess.
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The panels are breaks in the exhibition space, windows onto
a cloistered walkway made of cracked, ageing concrete. Pillars
frame a wild park beyond, perhaps a metaphor for the limits we
impose on our perception in order to see anything at all. To see
completely would be annihilation of the self. We need to box in
and tame nature with an aesthetic.
And indeed, the park is not all wilderness but also shows signs
of the human hand. There is a sense of a past long gone, an
intention that has lost its purpose. There are a few distinctive
elements which invite questions but do not dictate a particular
story. Everyone who sees this work asks me what the car
represents. I don’t really know myself but people have suggested
all kind of things: it could be about a lack of connection in our
technological age, or form part of a crime scene. I’ve been asked
if it carries an environmental message, or refers to Victorian
ideas of progress. In 17th-century landscapes the power of
nature reminds us that death is ever present: lightning storms,
torrents, even accidents are portrayed. In the 21st century the
threat is sadly man-made: a chronic mistake, a severe lack of
comprehension of Logos. All I know is that I felt the car to be a
necessary intrusion into this Arcadia.
Facing the car is a round pool which invites both literal and
figurative reflection. Poussin often painted ponds and lakes which
are thought to be metaphors for the inner peace gained from
acceptance. So the scene is framed at one end by a sense of threat
and at the other by a nostalgic stillness.
The middle ground offers welcoming glades and soft patches of
grass, but unlike the endless vistas in Lorrain’s paintings, the
background is closed in by trees. It’s impossible to situate this
place in a greater topography, which limits its narrative potential.
The half-light is the compositional key to the ‘invention’. It could
be dawn, or dusk, or even moonlight in places; it allows a sense of
the infinite in spite of the enclosing trees.
The only figures are the two children. The younger one is
immersed in the landscape, while the older already seems to
be emerging into self-consciousness, as he walks through the
cloister and looks towards us. In childhood we all experienced a
magical reality, but as adults we have lost that playful freedom, that
immediate paradise. As adults we can sit and try to absorb what is
around us, but our tragedy is that we are always aware that we are
doing it. Self-consciousness is our shame: it is only after eating
the apple of knowledge and discovering that we are distinct from
the world around us, only when we suddenly see ourselves, that we
are expelled from Eden.
Arcadia is a beautiful place where the imagination can freely
wander. It is a place we can never be, and a metaphor for the place
we occupy at any given moment in our lives. I have really loved
painting it. It has been an exercise in obsession and restraint at the
same time. It is an ‘invention’, and probably even a folly – because
it took a long, long time to make it.
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STEVENSON
CAPE TOWN
Buchanan Building
160 Sir Lowry Road
Woodstock 7925
PO Box 616
Green Point 8051
T +27 (0)21 462 1500
F +27 (0)21 462 1501
JOHANNESBURG
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Braamfontein 2001
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Melville 2109
T +27 (0)11 326 0034/41
F +27 (0)86 275 1918
www.michaelstevenson.com
Catalogue no 55
March 2011
Cover image Arcadia, 2010 (detail)
Editor Sophie Perryer
Design Gabrielle Guy
Photography Mario Todeschini
Printing Hansa Print, Cape Town
Deborah Poynton was born in 1970 in Durban, and lives and
works in Cape Town. Her youth was spent between South Africa,
Britain, Swaziland and the United States. She studied at the
Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, USA, from 1987
to 1989. Solo exhibitions have taken place at the KZNSA Gallery,
Durban, in 2010; the Savannah College of Art and Design’s
galleries in Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in 2009
(with accompanying monograph); Michael Stevenson, Cape
Town, in 2009, 2006, 2004 and 2003; and Warren Siebrits,
Johannesburg, in 2007. Group exhibitions include Von Liebeslust und Lebenslast - der inszenierte Alltag at Corvey Castle, near Höxter,
Germany (2009); Family Relation at Warren Siebrits (2007); New Painting (KZNSA Gallery, Durban; Unisa Art Gallery, Pretoria;
Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg; 2006) and What Lies Beneath at Galerie Mikael Andersen, Copenhagen (2006).
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