Frances Ambler - Brief Lessons in Rule Breaking

How to use this Ebook

Select one of the chapters from the main contents list and you will be taken straight to that chapter.

Look out for linked text (which is blue) throughout the ebook that you can select to help you navigate between related sections.

You can double tap images to increase their size. To return to the original view, just tap the cross in the top left-hand corner of the screen.

INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Arts rule-breakers include some of the worlds most inspiring and inventive thinkers and some of its bravest, too.

Take a closer look at some of arts rebels. Youll discover that their refusal to conform can refresh your understanding and that their methods offer practical strategies for reinventing and reinvigorating your work.

* Learn to look afresh with Marcel Duchamp, and make other people look in the process.

* Steal ideas on the art of creative copying from Pablo Picasso.

* See how artists such as Yves Klein make, and then break, their own rules.

* Be inspired by the bravery of Tracey Emin share your life story.

* Ape the audacity of Sophie Calle insert yourself into other peoples experiences.

* Find out William Blakes strategies for surviving as an under- appreciated artist.

* Discover why you arent a creative genius and why Andy Warhol wasnt one either.

* Take to the streets with Jenny Holzer for some lessons in inventive intervention.

* Let Joseph Beuys and Cindy Sherman reveal how stretching the truth can take your art further than you ever imagined.

Think of this as an anti-rule book. Tuck it into your back pocket and pull it out should you feel the pressure to conform, or if you feel your work is on a dangerous path to mediocrity. Smart thinking from these inventive minds can be transformative itll inspire you to be bolder, braver and to forge your own creative path.

Heres a quote from Pablo Picasso, made famous in a Steve Jobs interview in 1995 and widely repeated ever since: good artists copy; great artists steal. Theres no evidence that Picasso said this, but lets adopt the sentiment. Before you can excel at something, youve got to become good at it. In art, a good place to start is by copying talented artists. This practice has, historically, been a crucial part of the artists education. By copying the work of others, you begin to understand how it was put together: its construction, the artists techniques, some of the decisions that she or he must have taken.

Tracey Emin got an insight into Picassos lesson when creating her 1996 work Naked Photos: Life Model Goes Mad . Over three weeks in a Swedish art gallery, she painted copies of works by artists such as Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch (both long-term influences) and Picasso. As I did the paintings it made me think about the artists and how they lived and worked, she said. As it turned out, Emin became more conflicted about Picasso himself, whom she admired creatively but whose attitude to women she rejected. By copying, you can achieve an insight into the philosophies and practices of an artist and better understand what theyre trying to do. You can then decide to incorporate their ideas into your own work or not, in the case of Emin and Picasso.

Picasso himself was immersed in the work of his predecessors. Like many artists, he started by copying, but then became more selective. What we know he really did say on the subject of stealing was: When theres anything to steal, I steal. He looked for the artworks and aspects of artworks that resonated with him so that he could drive forward his own work and start to create something original.

Take, for example, the evolution of Les Demoiselles dAvignon (1907), his monumental portrayal of five women in a brothel. His notebooks hint at the abundance of his inspiration. Some sketches echo Paul Gauguins primitivism; Gauguins 1906 Paris retrospective had proved influential for Picasso. Other sketches resemble reclining nudes by 18th-century Spanish painter Francisco de Goya or the French neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, while the use of fractured, flat planes, rather than conventional perspective, alludes to the work of French post- Impressionist Paul Cezanne. One pose has been compared to Munchs Ashes of 1894, a pessimistic depiction of a love affair. From his years of diligent copying, Picasso had amassed a dizzying visual vocabulary, ready to draw on when he had something particular to express.

Les Demoiselles has also been discussed in the context of Picassos interest in African, Iberian and Oceanic masks and statues. What Picasso took from those, however, was as much about purpose as style. A visit to the Musee dEthnographie du Trocadero in Paris earlier in 1907 had shifted his thinking entirely. He saw that men had made those masks and other objects for a sacred purpose, a magic purpose, as a kind of mediation between themselves and the unknown hostile forces that surround them. Then, he said, he understood what painting really meant. Its a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires. When I came to that realization, he said, I knew I had found my way. Picasso brought together an array of influences to create one unique masterpiece. At first, nobody knew what to make of it. The work infuriated some of Picassos contemporaries and excited others, and wasnt exhibited until 1916. Now, however, its recognised as a revolutionary moment in modem art. It forms its own link in the historical chain of copying a significant one, as some herald Les Demoiselles as the beginning of cubism. Its not just copying, its moving things on.