Keith Tyson. Ikebana - Waterfall Stage (Boss Level), 2018. Oil on aluminium, 247.7 x 171.5 cm
VS: How did this Ikebana-inspired painting come about?
KT: It was probably 18 different paintings before it was this one. It was at a time when I wasn’t really sure what I was doing anyway. I started doing this gestural thing, this reading in it. And then I started seeing a form and that’s when I thought Ikebana, which is a complex form of Japanese flower-arranging, and got some maths for Ikebana, and put it in and got it to grow organically from the root. This one’s called Ikebana Waterfall Stage Boss Level. Waterfall stage is obviously the background. Then it reminded me a lot of the kind of Chinese ancient allegorical paintings about enlightenment. I went and found some of those.
VS: Who is this tiny figure that crops up at various points?
KT: It is taken from something called, I think, the Hunting of the Bull, it’s a set of Chinese plates from the sixth century. This guy is travelling along, he goes past a waterfall, sees a bull, chases the bull, then he transcends the bull. The bull would represent enlightenment. As an analogy with the painting, it’s about when you get to a point where you’re not trying any more and the painting is painting itself. But it was also a bit like a video game, with Super Mario and this (the top of the painting) is the boss level. What I’m trying to do is collide a series of different worldviews on to one canvas. I’m using the language of abstract expressionism, Ikebana, Chinese enlightenment to see if something comes out of that.
KT: It was probably 18 different paintings before it was this one. It was at a time when I wasn’t really sure what I was doing anyway. I started doing this gestural thing, this reading in it. And then I started seeing a form and that’s when I thought Ikebana, which is a complex form of Japanese flower-arranging, and got some maths for Ikebana, and put it in and got it to grow organically from the root. This one’s called Ikebana Waterfall Stage Boss Level. Waterfall stage is obviously the background. Then it reminded me a lot of the kind of Chinese ancient allegorical paintings about enlightenment. I went and found some of those.
VS: Who is this tiny figure that crops up at various points?
KT: It is taken from something called, I think, the Hunting of the Bull, it’s a set of Chinese plates from the sixth century. This guy is travelling along, he goes past a waterfall, sees a bull, chases the bull, then he transcends the bull. The bull would represent enlightenment. As an analogy with the painting, it’s about when you get to a point where you’re not trying any more and the painting is painting itself. But it was also a bit like a video game, with Super Mario and this (the top of the painting) is the boss level. What I’m trying to do is collide a series of different worldviews on to one canvas. I’m using the language of abstract expressionism, Ikebana, Chinese enlightenment to see if something comes out of that.
I got curious about Ikebana - flower arrangement is something that falls again under the manipulation of nature (for our own pleasure) and reminded me a bit also of piet odoulf's gardens. but flower arranging like this you usually see in the home - and it takes a great deal of cutting, snipping off, adjusting the plant's limbs until you achieve a balance with the other parts. it's like a collage, or live sculpture... mixing and matching until it suits your taste.. obviously, I don't know much about the art of ikebana and I'm sure I'm missing a lot of meaning here, but I searched for some videos on it, and one of the first videos that popped up was this one. this woman was describing her relationship with ikebana and it was evident that she and the people around her gain a great deal from this art. and I do see the beauty and serenity of it - I just can't help thinking of the contradictories so prominent in my eyes now that I'm seeing everything in a nature/culture dilemma lens.
I see plants cut up, unwanted parts discarded, spliced together, sharpened, forced upon an altar, yet it is beautiful and balanced and true. and this beauty can be said as profound - yet it feels so temporary, they're living things after all - in a way, you are almost splicing bits of a living organism and mashing it together (elegantly) - not unlike taxidermy artists such as Polly morgan or Thomas grunfeld.
Thomas Grünfeld - misfits
maybe I'm thinking too much - animals are entirely different to this type of nature after all, but I don't think it really is about the 'life' per say, but more of the feeling of humans always overpowering other beings to gain temporary pleasure. again, I feel very conflicted because of course I feel serenity from looking at beautiful taxidermy or ikebana if I get a chance to see it, but it just makes me feel a funny feeling that I feel I must investigate even though I don't think it really is an answer I'm wanting at the end of the tunnel. I just want to look at it from different angles. I guess I was starting to do that with my MCP. and I didn't reach real answers in the end of that either. I feel it will be a life-long dilemma. maybe it's just a human thing. I don't know how I feel about it. I want to criticize, but I also participate in it. it is strange.
anyway, the video and some screenshots from it:
Ikebana: Japanese art of flower arrangement
'the way of life' this overwhelming feeling makes me think of the sublime again. I wonder if it plays a part in the art of ikebana. like a small snippet of the sublime. is that possible? again, is the sublime a possible thing to feel if that nature is arranged or manipulated by the human hand? it is a biased view of the nature available to us. it has been edited to be seen or felt in the best light. is that real nature? can I easily rest my eyes on it and enjoy it in this form? I feel the same about taxidermy, of course.
'showing love to nature is showing love to yourself' I think this is the sentiment piet odoulf was expressing in the videos I've seen.. it's an interesting thing to think about.. almost romanticising nature.. it's kind of inevitable.. let me see if I can find the bit I'm thinking about..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Q_AfRtXb4&feature=emb_title
anyway, I also found this random video of someone demonstrating ikebana, I just liked how strangely it was filmed, like I am a plant in the same room looking closely at the hands of whoever's arranging (destroying?) the other plant... the very physical cutting, snipping...
How to make an authentic Ikebana 2 いけばな華道遠州
what struck me especially here was the shifting between very violent 'making' - the cutting, snipping, and half cut-then bending (which is really interesting - like bending the limbs to a certain degree) and other times very gentle welding of a leaf or smaller parts - creating something that is both strong and fragile at the same time. through the non-harmony of all these scattered materials, this man was able to craft a man-made harmony - (to what extent is this harmony man-made?)
and of course I find the discarded parts of the plants very interesting - them lying there, still so full of life - on the tatami floor. so easily discarded and leftover. through the physicality you can feel that this person has a great appreciation and love for this art, yet such a force is used - but very controlled - not the average person can do this. it felt like tough love. you have to act a certain way to be 'perfect'. it is like poetry, like crafting a poem. words are cut open, discarded, cast away, put back in, stepped back and looked at again, arranging and rearranging - again like a collage. which you can say is like a drawing. (thinking of the Charles Avery interview where LG said that avery's description of his way of drawing is like a poem):
But just to describe the act of sitting you just don’t need to draw the chair, that’s what I mean about diagrammatic. With the island it's about creating a sort of structure, a way in for the viewer to make their own voyage, their own trajectory, through a territory that is elsewhere. The artwork is simply that sort of vessel which is this structure for this ghost to adhere in. LG: That sounds exactly to me like a description of a poem, it is a vessel, it is a place in which you hope the reader will have something activated for them rather than enacted for them that they will enact them themselves and be their version of whatever it is, so there is that feeling of a place already being there and you’re there to wander.
both the screenshots above and viewed as video was really intriguing - it makes me want to paint studies from it or, use for a video collage (I have an idea just now of splicing together close shots of 'hands' like the footage I saw of some craft videos, making artificial 'food' you see so much in japan. or in nausicaa, where she handles her gun/sprinkles gunpowder) (might be a bit cliché - like the idea of the 'human hand' - but I want to focus on scenarios that speaks to the 'artificial' especially close to nature.)
