Tracy Calder at Cupoty: Artist Amy Sillman knows how to ruin a painting. In fact, she takes great delight in it. Sillman is one of more than 40 creatives featured in Adam Moss’s brilliant book The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing – a collection of interviews that trace the evolution of an idea, whether it’s a piece of music, a meal, a play or a dance, from the initial spark to the final expression.
Over the course of 12 pages, we watch Sillman create and erase multiple versions of a painting that eventually becomes Miss Gleason, 2014. ‘I start with, I don’t know what, and then it looks terrible. And I ruin it,’ she explains. ‘And then it looks maybe good. And then I ruin that.’
Looking at these paintings we observe Sillman playing with shapes, colours and lines – simplifying and then complicating the composition. ‘I can’t help myself,’ she says. ‘I’m thinking, I’m gonna kill it, I’m gonna kill it – ah, there, I’ve killed it.’
Most of the paintings are wonderful. In fact, there are moments when you want to shout, ‘STOP! That’s THE ONE!’ but you get the feeling that Sillman wouldn’t care – she stops when she’s satisfied, which isn’t always when the work is at its most beautiful.
‘The final painting – the painting others see – is, in a sense, an arbitrary choice, like a game of musical chairs, where the music stops and that’s the work,’ says Moss.
Sillman could easily have carried on, but she knew when she arrived at Miss Gleason, 2014 that she had solved the puzzle and needed to get out. Knowing when to stop, when to put the brush down, hold back on the seasoning or leave the saturation slider well alone is hard, but maybe it’s hard because the work we make has more than one final expression.
Maybe on a different day, using different materials we would make a completely different piece. Maybe there is no such thing as THE ONE. When the music stops and we down tools, we have to accept that a million alternate versions will never be made.
‘[The] moment of completion is also, inevitably, a moment of loss,’ suggest David Bayles and Ted Orland in their book Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artwork. ‘The loss of all the other forms the imagined piece might have taken.’
According to Bayles and Orland, we arrive at the finished piece by gradually narrowing down our options. ‘A piece grows by becomingspecific,’ they write. ‘The moment Herman Melville penned the opening line, “Call me Ishmael”, one actual story – Moby Dick – began to separate itself from a multitude of imaginable others.’
Each line that Herman wrote had to relate to the one before it, propelling the story forwards, while also ruling out all of the different stories Moby Dick might have been.
Sillman approaches her paintings in a similar way. Having placed a blank canvas on the floor she adds ‘a wipe, a spill, a blob or a stroke’ and then responds to it. She then responds to the second mark, and so on. ‘It’s the same for all media: the first brushstrokes to the blank canvas satisfy the requirements of many possible paintings, while the last few fit only that painting – they could go nowhere else,’ suggest Bayles and Orland. ‘Each step in execution reduces future options by converting one – and only one – possibility into a reality.’
But even when the puzzle has been solved or the music stops, the work continues to evolve. In the 2003 documentary The Five Obstructions, Lars von Trier challenges his friend Jørgen Leth to ruin The Perfect Human, a 1967 film Leth made that follows a couple as they perform everyday rituals: walking, eating, getting dressed etc.
Taking this ‘finished’ piece as a starting point, Von Trier asks Leth to remake his film five times, each with a different set of obstructions. ‘[This is] a little gem that we are now going to ruin,’ he smirks. To give an example, the first new film has to be made in Cuba, with no set, no shot lasting longer than 12 frames, and all the questions Leth posed in the original film answered. To start with Leth struggles, but in time he finds the obstructions actually make him more creative. (Much to Von Trier’s disgust.)
Being asked to rework something that you consider finished can be painful. I’m often asked to interview artists and produce different write-ups for different magazines. My first reaction is usually to push back: ‘No!’ I protest. ‘The first version is THE ONE.’ But, of course, there’s always a new angle to be found. No matter how many versions I write, I can trace the bones and the heartbeat of the original in each one. It’s as though the first version is a wellspring of ideas, but in order to release them I have to be unsentimental and launch a wrecking ball at it.
Apparently, this is normal. Moss’s book is full of painters, filmmakers, cartoonists and chefs who have viciously (even physically) attacked their finished work in order to create something new. ‘Destruction leads to creation, eventually,’ promises the author.
Hand it over.
When I worked full-time at B+W Photography magazine we ran a series called The Printers’ Art. In short, the same negative was handed out to three different printers who were free to interpret it as they wished. The results were fascinating. In the past, I’ve heard pieces of music composed in response to a painting, fabric designed after looking at a photograph and, of course, I have seen films adapted from books. Could you lend a piece of work to an artist working in a different medium and ask them to respond to it using their tools/materials of choice?
Change the context.
Your original piece might have been designed with a specific audience in mind. Could you take the same piece of work and target it slightly differently? If you’re a wedding photographer, for example, could you take a picture and edit it in a dark, grungy style rather than the romantic approach you adopted to please the happy couple? If you’re a writer, could you take an article and slice it into chunks for social media? If you make work for paying clients, could you remake one of the paid-for pieces just for yourself?
Cut it up.
During the latter part of her career, Italian photojournalist Letizia Battaglia began repurposing her old images to create photocollages. ‘You need to destroy in order to know how to create,’ she suggested. In a similar vein, visual artist Maria de Los Angeles sliced up her old paintings and drawings and created mixed media dresses that were then displayed as new art. Could you physically destroy a copy of something you consider ‘done’, thus transforming it into something else?
Down your tools.
We often gravitate towards the same tools when we’re working, but is it possible to remake something using different tools or materials? ‘Your tools do more than just influence the appearance of the resulting art – they basically set limits upon what you can say with an art piece,’ suggest Bayles and Orland. Could you recreate your favourite painting using your fingers, or compose a piece of music using kitchen utensils rather than traditional instruments? Anything goes!
Alter your mood.
I often ask creatives if their state of mind impacts the final piece even if the agenda has been set by a client. Almost without exception, the answer is yes. Can you recall the mood you were in when you made your favourite piece? Can you try to remake it while in a different mood? Some artists I know use music, meditation or movement to alter their state of mind. If you’ve ever read Daily Rituals by Mason Currey, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the only way for creatives to alter their mood is to drink gallons of coffee and dine on stimulants.
Embrace obstruction.
If you have a friend as cruel as Lars von Trier perhaps you could ask them to select a piece of your work and force you to recreate it according to a set of rules (or obstructions) of their choosing. When you’re making the new version/s, focus on being playful rather than perfect. After all, you’re not trying to make THE ONE – you already did that. ‘I can’t imagine it will be anything but crap,’ declares Von Trier after asking his friend to remake The Perfect Human as a cartoon. ‘I would be thrilled if it was crap.’
Get it there.
When comedy writer David Mandel writes a joke for atelevision series, he asks himself, ‘Is it really the funniest it can be?’ Take a piece of your work and ask yourself, ‘Is it the simplest it can be? Is it the moodiest it can be? Is it the bravest it can be? etc. If the answer is no, what can you do to get it there? Can you invite some of your friends to compete and make your piece the simplest/moodiest/bravest?
Try reverse engineering.
Unlike Sillman, most of us don’t have a detailed record of all the decisions we make while creating a piece of work. However, if we look at the ‘final’ piece we might be able to identify key moments where we could have taken a different turn. Is there some way of rewinding the clock and exploring what might happen if you make different decisions at these moments? If not, could you start the work again and explore some of the possibilities?
