Imants Tillers III – a review & three works in more depth.

Tillers, Inherited absolute, 1992, oil and oil stick on 115 canvas boards, nos. 33885 – 33999, 231 x 228cm

We may recall Tillers is a contemporaryAustralian artist, b. 1950 of Latvian heritage. There are several distinctive features about his work. One is his use of appropriation of a wide spectrum of artists, poets and philosophers. He refers to this as ‘quoting.’ We cannot hope to recognise all the images and text he appropriates (and we don’t need to) but we can know some points about some particular works, to use as examples. In this image, he appropriates the work of Giorgio De Chirico.

http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/TILLERS/Detail.cfm?IRN=152805&BioArtistIRN=17247&MnuID=1

Giorgio De Chirico, 1888-1978, The painter’s family 1926. (Old stuff.)

We may remember Giorgio De Chirico (Italian, 1888-1978) from our sessions on Surrealism. He was an important influence on the Surrealists, painting images that were odd, disturbing and atmospheric. They often featured a ‘theatrical’ looking space, which could be interpreted as the unconscious or a dream state.

De Chirico, Nostalgia of the infinite, 1912/13?, oil on canvas, 135 x 64 cm. (Old stuff.)

Tillers was fascinated by De Chirico and has created 60 works featuring his imagery. Interestingly, De Chirico actually forged his own work. People loved his old stuff better than his new stuff. He wasn’t happy about this, so re-painted old stuff later in his life and passed it off as stuff from the earlier period. He ‘quoted’ himself, you could perhaps say…? This must have presented art historians etc with big problems. Like Duchamp, it raised questions about originality, but his motivation was different.

Another aspect of De Chirico was his appropriation of classical Greek imagery in his own work, as with Mysterious animal, below.

Imants Tillers, The hyperborean & the speluncar, 1986, oilstick, oil, acrylic painting on 130 canvasboards, 279 x 462 cm What the…? This weird looking,

and weirdly named image by Tillers appropriates both De Chirico’s image on one half, and the work of 19th century British artist Frederick Leighton on the other. He also uses dots that are reminiscent of both benday dots from Pop Art, and Aboriginal ‘dot paintings.’

De Chirico, Mysterious animal, 1975, oil on canvas (new stuff.)>>

Benday dots are best known from their use by Pop Artist Roy Lichtenstein. They were originally part of the printing process of comic books in the 1940s and 50s.

Lichtenstein, Crying Girl, enamel paint on steel, 1963.

Leighton was a painter from the Academy workingin the 19th century. In the approved Academy style,he looked to classical Greek imagery. Tillers took the figure on the far left to use in his work.

Frederick Leighton (British, 1830-1896 , Greek girls picking up pebbles, oil on canvas, 1871

So both De Chirico and Leighton looked to ancient Greece for some inspiration. The effect of the dots reminds us of mechanical printing, which historically has beenthe only way someone in Australia could see European art – that is, in books.

This mashing up of various imagery in the one artwork is something we have seen before. With Dada we saw photomontages that combined images from various sources. The motivation, or intention was different however.

Max Ernst & Louise Straus-Ernst, Augustine Thomas and Otto Flake, collage, 1920

We have seen appropriation before…we have discussed Manet’s appropriation of Giorgioni’s 16th century composition for Luncheon on the Grass, and of Titian’s Venus of Urbino (also 16th century) for Olympia. Picasso did a lot of appropriating also. It has been a tradition in Western art to look to what has gone before.

Picasso, Luncheon on the Grass after Manet, 1963.

Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538

Manet, Olympia, 1865

Manet, Luncheon on the Grass, 1863

Another characteristic of Tillers’ work is his use of canvasboards: small, identically sized boards that he paints on and then butts them up together to create entire works. Originally this was done because of a lack of room to put up large canvases. However this became a sort of signature style of his.

Imants Tillers (Aust. B. 1950) Mt Analogue, 1985, oil paint, oil stick and acrylic paint on 165 canvas boards, overall 279 x 571cm.

Eugene von Guerard (Austrian, 1811-1901) Mt Kosciusko, 1863, 66 x 116cm

<< Sol LeWitt, Cubic modular wall structure 1966

These boards became a sort of independent concept or artform in themselves. Tillers started using the boards, and numbering them, in the early 80s and has called them The Book of Power and regards them as one work, continuing on ‘towards infinity.’The numbers are sometimes painted on the front of the board, as part of the painting. He now has over 80,000 boards. The boards are secured to the wall with Velcro dots according to a diagram. He sometimes paints over the boards, or mixes them up to use in different works. He stores them in stacks, and has actually used the stacks as sculptural elements in works.

The Book of PowerThere is a deliberate confusion or blurring of the boundaries between sculpture and painting. He says the art object ‘dematerialises’. Where have we seen this questioning of the art object before?

Canvasboard stack installation, 1984.

Eugene von Guerard, a European who came to Australia in Colonial times, is another favourite of Tillers. He used von Guerard’s work along with that of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon in several works of the 1980s. Von Guerard had visited NZ in the 1870s.

Hiatus, 1987, oilstick, gouache, acrylic paint on 190 canvasboards.

Colin McCahon (NZ 1919-1987) Victory over death, 1970, acrylic paint over canvas

In the 1980s Tillers believed that McCahon was an artist who was overlooked, perhaps because he came from New Zealand which has been regarded as a ‘backwater’ of the art world: a long way from Europe.

Eugene von Guerard, Milford Sound, 1877-79, oil on canvas, 99 x 176cm

Tillers felt that McCahon’s text was not only interesting in itself, putting the words of God into an artwork, again and again, but also the scale and shape of the letters read like a landscape painting in itself at times. What can we make of Bible quotations in an artwork?

Tillers, Counting one two three, 1988, 251.0 x 639.0cm, acrylic paint, gouache, oilstick on 162 canvas boards Nos. 17188-17349

This work uses all three artists –McCahon’s numerals; Von Guerard,And De Chirico’s signature at the bottom.This multiple use of imagery from others makes them read as signs of some sort.

Q: How do contemporary artworks dissolve separations between artist, work and audience? Refer to Nho Nho Nave, Celula Nave and the text. (Allow 14 mins. 8 marks.)

Plate 3: Ernesto Neto, b. 1964 Brazil. View of Nho Nho Nave, 1999. Multi-sensoryInstallation, stockings, sand, aromatic spices. Exhibited Dec 1999- Jan 2000 at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston.

Plate 4: Ernesto Neto, b. 1964 Brazil. View of Celula Nave, 2004. Multi-sensoryInstallation, stockings, sand, aromatic spices, styrofoam pellets. Exhibited at MusuemBoijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.

TEXT: refer to handout notes.