COP2 Studytask 1: Illustration and Authorship (Paul Davis)

Paul Davis

Paul Davis appears to be a keen observer of modern life and culture. He has described himself  as a "misanthropist" and says that his work is a "reflection" of what he sees, and is keen not to describe what he does as satire. Illustrations drawn haphazardly on sheets of ruled paper appear to be first hand observations, and distance the artist from his subjects. The humour within suggests his presence, and arises questions as to whether these are truly reportage or a little joke from inside his mind, but all the same feel real, or at least a little believable.

Knowing that Davis describes his work as "reflections" distances the artist from the formula of drawing and humour and the following illustrative result. Theorist Roland Barthes suggests that when any author has written, or created a piece that "the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death", but with Davis this removal feels intentional. The pieces are simple but seem designed to provoke thought in the viewer, whether it be a chuckle or something more profound, rather than just play on and puport the artist's feelings. He may knowingly place the viewer on a higher pedestal but, as Barthes also writes, "we shall never know, for the good reason that writing is the destruction of every voice". 

However, I'm also interested in how, as a working practitioner, Davis distances himself from a lot of design culture. In an interview with The Drum he says “Clients are thinking too lazy. They’re being too safe – it’s damaging the industry and everything is becoming the same”. His aesthetic style and bold jokes are the initial suggestion of a fight against the typical, a physical fight against this.

But whilst the work may be a little wacky in comparison to a large portion of the illustration community, but I don't think it's completely void of trend, and really it is impossible to do so in a working, client lead practice, or even otherwise. His work is not wholly dissimilar to other creative practitioners, aesthetically and thematically, such as Mr Bingo and David Shrigley. Steven Miles writes that "The pivotal role of designers as a focus for social change is undermined by the fact that they are equally vulnerable to commercial reward as the rest of us". Davis may be trying to break against the wall of 'boring clients', but at the end of the day the assumption that he needs to make money from his creative practice is not an unlikely one. 

Clients are customers. And at the end of the day, true originality is nigh on impossible. Barthes contends, "the writer [and in this case the artist] can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with others, in such a way as to never rest on any of them". But maybe true originality is not what Davis is scoping for. If making brazen, brave and entertaining yet thoughtful work is good enough for Davis' fight against the boring then he may well be where he wants to be- and where he wants others to be. He is not part of the mainstream that he fears to be.

COP2 lecture 2: the flipped classroom

The flipped classroom is the idea of student centred education. The hierarchy is flipped, or rather, completely destroyed. Students peer-assess each other's work, work as a collective and create their own answers in the hope that the learning will be more deeply embedded. In its most radical form there is no need for a teacher at all, as written about by philosopher Jacques Ranciere.

In May 1968 in France there was a student-lead revolution in revolt of the current education system. They fought against elitist education that discriminated against people according to their class, race or gender bias. They rebelled against specialist courses that they thought left them feeling limited and disempowered, and felt that because of this education was just a cog in the machine to just give you a job, with no 'enlightened' learning. They did this all be seizing control of the universities, and it lasted a while.

The art schools were taken over to produce the posters and pamphlets for their cause. It seems that these anti-capitalist posters are now for sale at a profit.

Louis Althusser taught Ranciere, and had two theories about how capitalist society keeps its citizens at bay. 

Repressive State Apparatus: the police, prisons, the army, structures that can physically stop you

Ideological State Apparatus: institutions that reproduce the modes of thinking. Church, media and particularly in this case, schools and education systems.

Ranciere wondered if we needed professors at universities at all, in his theories one has the assumption that all are equally intelligent.

He also wrote a book called Proletarian Nights, about French industry workers from the nineteenth century who were artists and poets and writers when not working their jobs. He brought up important questions such as why are they dismissed and forgotten from the art world? Why can't a worker be a poet? And studied why and how they refused their social order, like the students did in the revolution.

The Distribution of the Sensible

The idea that there are layers to the world, and why certain people are only allowed access to experience certain things. It's similar to how the art/design world is divided into different disciplines. The idea that we should work as a community, and the "police" are anybody who enforces these structures. Still, a lot of people "self-police" and it's almost impossible to get away from in education.

• Anyone can be an artist
• Anyone can be anything
• Start with the assumption everyone is intelligent
• Academics alienate the working classes by using obscure language

The School of the Damned is one of the closest models to Ranciere's. It's non-discriminatory, is free and the students organise how they want to be 'taught' and by 'who', although in these situations everyone is seen as an equal. The education model changes every year and is not dictated by history.

COP2 lecture 1: research and epistemology

Research is important in that it means you can take charge of your own practice, and create something unique. It's a cyclical process, and learning through doing research as a process is more important and integral to your learning than the end result.

! FAIL BETTER / FAIL QUICKER !

Making mistakes is part of the learning process, and thus researching. You might learn something from a mistake afterall. All research gained eventually becomes intuitive research, the process of making from your own thoughts. But intuitive research is limited and only goes as far as you do and needs to be supplemented with stimulative and systematic research.

Make sure your research is appropriate and analyse and evaluate the research itself to. Give knowledge and meaning to numbers, make your research sufficient and relevant.

How research is done:

1. Assimilation: get the information
2. General Study: investigate the information
3. Development
4. Communication: resolution

COP2: seminar 1, The Death of the Author

• In the text I think Barthes is trying to urge people to criticise work in a 'new' way, or at least new for the 1960s. Instead of focusing on the author, we should criticise work for its own sake unbiased. 
• I was interested in his idea that nothing could truly be original, but everything is made up of others' ideas. Still, it is not impossible to make something that feels fresh combining them in an (almost) unique way.

• For my COP2 project I am considering studying galleries and the accessibility of art (and maybe design) to the general public. I'd also like to look into how aesthetic changes peoples' perceptions of things, and why people like some things more than others. The idea that the reader / scriptor / viewer is more important than the author/artist is something that would tie into this nicely. I have observed that with art in galleries is that it's often not understandable to a 'general layman' without the context of a written accompaniment, and even then sometimes not. Would it be more accessible or better if artists abided by Barthes' logic?

• This idea of the viewer being more substantial than the artist ties really closely with Illustration, I think. Whilst fine art may be able to get away with being confusing and ultimately maybe even deriding the viewer, illustration is often a consumer lead practice and needs to be accepted by its audience, for the sake of illustrator and client. Still, the illustrator does not need to spoon feed the viewer. Urging the viewer to think more or even just allowing them to see something else makes for an all the more interesting piece of work.

COP preparatory task

Definitions:

Social

• relating to society, and its ranks and hierarchies

Cultural

• in relation to the arts, ideas, social behaviours and customs of a society

Historical

• something of the past, the concern of past events (and perhaps its effect on the present)
• study of  a subject developing over a period of time

Political

• (to be) in concern of the government or political affairs of a country

Technological

• the use or relation of technology. Technical advances, relating to science and industry. Medicine, energy sources, computer science etc.

CULTURE

Quotes:

"Art respects the masses, by confronting them as that which they could be, rather than conforming to them in their degraded state.” - Theodore Adorno

"Where is the content? Where is the comment?" Lawrence Zeegan (note: this article brings up some interesting points but is not one I wholly agree with!!)

"the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art.”  Chuck Palahniuk

Images:

David Shrigley, art culture but also generally

Art/ online culture

Zines have been used as a tool for subcultures and sending out political messages for years but seem to have become recently trendy too

Sara Andreasson: alt femme culture

Photographs:

British culture, thinking about youth culture but also Tories, Thatcherism, Middle England, the far right etc

Art culture: I think it's interesting to study how people react to art in public places, if they acknowledge it at all (and if they do it's probably to complain about it)

Riot Grrl fashion / Feminist DIY culture: I think it's interesting that there's been a big resurgence in this kind of thing recently, and whether it's influenced by the need for more aggressive feminism or because people feel like we are lacking in subcultures nowadays so we borrow from the past (but isn't fashion always cyclical?) Online social activism / feminism