Clive Head: It’s not a mimetic kind of space, it’s not a trompe-l’oeil,
it’s not an attempt to fool the eye. So, it’s not about us physically wanting to
enter this painting; it is about us mentally wanting to enter the
painting … Colin Wiggins: And exploring it …
CH … And exploring that painting. So that what’s presented on the other side
of the canvas is a world, and an entire universe in fact, that we can
explore. But I think that is what Western painting has
been about. In essence, it’s about creating an alternative
reality on the other side of the picture plane, and if that’s going to work the space has
to be convincing; it has to be believable.
CW: The first connection you make is photography. You see this as almost like being a painted
photograph, but when you start to really analyse the spaces
you realise it’s actually an impossible viewpoint.
But you do use photography? CH: Yes, I think one of the problems is that
we don’t really have a way of discussing this kind of painting.
We do have a way of discussing previous forms of Realist painting and photography,
which is essentially about standing in one place and having a fixed vision,
and we see photographs as being very convincing, as being very believable.
So I think when viewers of these paintings see them as being convincing
they make that equation with photography – it’s a sort of shorthand.
The problem is of course that this really is completely the opposite to photography,
because photography enforces that idea of a very single, perspectival structure.
Now, what if we take on the problem of making paintings that
deal with the movement through time, the movement through space?
Now we know that there is a forerunner to that in Cubism, in Futurism,
but the problem that they had is they were not really concerned
with resolving that as a conceivable, coherent single entity.
There is a Realist resolution to that but we don’t really have a language to discuss
that yet. Because this is not to do with looking back
towards photography, it’s looking forward to a new way.
The camera is a way of me collecting information, things that I see along the way.
Through that journey the camera is a very useful tool,
as is the sketchbook. And I shouldn’t underestimate the importance
of drawing, even if the chaos in the city only allows you
to make a five-minute drawing, that drawing is crucial.
CW: Well, there’s a lot of the photographs here, aren't there –
of the ones that you took for this particular painting …
and the man in the yellow jacket. His friends have gone and a bus has arrived,
which I imagine might have been in another photograph.
You can see how each one of them connects with a particular part of your painting,
but there’s no way that you could photograph this view, is there?
CH: What the photographs demonstrate really is how limited photography truly is:
it can focus on one thing; it can only have an exposure for one area
of the scene; it can’t deal with movement in time.
So it really is quite a limited way of recording the world.
We’ve entrusted lens-based media to be the final word in Realism,
but in fact it is far from it. CW: Then there’s the actual facture, the
actual making of them, because close to the paintings are marks and
brushstrokes. You obviously really enjoy the medium,
the actual viscous quality of the paint as you lick it in to the canvas.
CH: The painter creates space through the physical mark.
I do things to reinforce that; I’m very particular about the quality of
the brushes. I’m using good quality sable brushes
and once the spring of the brush has gone, it no longer delivers the right kind of mark.
I deliberately use lead-based white which actually reinforces the thickness of the paint,
it slows the brush down, it makes sure that each brushstroke is delivered
properly. There’s no blending going on,
there’s no attempt to destroy the painted language.
This is nothing to do with trying to say this is like the surface of a photograph,
or it’s like the surface of a window. I think my paintings are very much rooted in
Western painting traditions and that includes Canaletto, and Canaletto
dealt with the city. What Canaletto shows us in terms of that mixing
of space is that an artist, even though they may use optical devices –
and we know that Canaletto certainly did use optical devices
to record things in quite a topographical way –
that when it came to constructing those paintings, at that point he became creative and began
to manipulate, change, alter things to create these idealised worlds.
If you do some of the similar things to an earlier artist, you actually stumble in,
you actually begin to understand what Canaletto is doing
if you confront those same kinds of problems. Canaletto is not a topographical painter and
we need to be very clear about that. He’s not interested in recording the city
for documentary purposes, that's an interesting and fascinating by-product.
He’s interested in making idealised worlds – these are Rococo paintings.
They have all the traits of other paintings around that time
that are talking about the aesthetics of light and space in a very particular way.
Canaletto is a master of economy, a master of fluidity –
a recognition that this isn’t about labour that makes painting,
this is about creativity, invention, intuition, a certain speed of delivery.
And we see that in abundance in Canaletto. CW: There might be people with a certain cast
of mind that read this as a social commentary,
with the road sweeper outside, the rundown condition of the public transport system …
CH: It is a fallacy to think of issue-based art.
Issue-based art is illustration, it returns us to this world and that clearly
is not art. I’m certainly not thinking about any of the
social implications of any of this stuff. It happens to be there; I happen to look at
it. Artists have no special insight into the world
at all. Their special insight is to create paintings, is
to create works of art. I think there are certain things that I do
to try and detract from iconic readings. Because I paint so much –
I include everything – no one object really stands out and takes
on iconic importance. So the meaning of the painting is not the
Union Jack, or the figure,
or the road sweeper, or any of this detritus in the window,
or the Underground, because everything becomes the subject matter.
So what is the subject matter? Well, the subject matter is my engagement
with space, my engagement with the world�