IMPROVEMENT
She likes to change things. She had
a different idea of what she wanted to do with the rocks there.
Oh yeah.
So her point was that she enjoyed inventing.
Of all five pictures this one has the most changes in the positions
of things.
She spent quite awhile here looking
at them.
Ohh.
She had been unaware that all these
other copies existed. Her comment was that she changes things
to suit herself when she paints something. She pointed out how
she'd changed the water and the rocks and a few other things.
If we look at each of them we'll see differences in the lighting.
Even the two done by Alice Pedersen have a little bit of a different
mood.
Did you notice that in the context
of the other five how each of them took on a new look when it
was with.......
They all look completely different.
If you look at them together.
So this is what interests me. To recontextualized
work. I will apply for a space to show these in. I'm organizing
the show so that visitors will have input.
Yes, Yes. So it was to make a point
about that actually. But, yeah, we're so used to the idea of
"copy" aren't we? That if we want a copy we can have
a copy. But it's interesting that there's not very much value
placed on an exact copy such as photographs might give you or
some other means of reproduction. Ahm, ....
Except for what is said in a couple
of the comments I collected.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah. A lot of them liked Rosie Feist's
because it's the nearest
The nearest to the original.
But one painter spoke about how she
felt like changing things. She enjoyed changing the rocks and
she changed some the background stuff. Her mother is going to
make another copy and asked, "Can I do what I want with
it? I'd like to change some things. That's what I'd enjoy."
I said, "Oh, yes, do."
She made that one but it's not as much
like the original. Later I talked to her about it. She spoke
of wanting to put something of herself into it. Her copy has
life.
The reason that kind of comment appeals
to me is that.....I mean you're dealing with landscape, and that
whole thing in terms of the 18th Century and picturesque gardens
when a lot of those landscape architects and painters worked
together. And they were always aiming to improve the landscape,
improve nature.
Through artifacts?
Through painting or you know through
landscape architecture. And the different notions.
Yes.
During that time of different creators
and different artists.
Yes.
And their differences in terms of improvement.
They're very, very subtle but they're also backed up by certain
ideologies--political and economic ideologies. And her short
statement about how she wanted to basically improve that painting
is a very sort of casual comment but the meaning is like, what
is improvement?
Yes right.
It's a really, really sort of central
powerful notion. I mean especially when you're dealing with notions
of originality or authenticity as well. But it just sort of drew
me back to a lot of the readings of you know.
It's very interesting, yes.
Price and Ruskin and all those crazy
guys who had a notion of improvement. So.
Yeah, yeah. And then of course following
that there's the modernist notion of the expression of the individual.
I guess I'm subverting that in one sense really by levelling
some things while at the same time giving them status or some
importance. So it's a kind of a play back and forth between two
things.
So you think the painter was dyslexic.
No. She informed me that she deliberately
likes to change things.
Right. It's stylized. More so than
the rest of them. The waves. Because it's the opposite way. It's
not flowing that way. But the rest of it isn't a mirror image.
But she informed me that she deliberately
likes to change things.
Right. It's styliized. More so than
the rest of them. The waves.
So if you were to take that picture...
If I was to take that picture home.
The original.
The original.
The cracked and broken one.
And I want to make my version of it--if
I don't like those three spruce trees, say, standing there the
way they are--and f I want to change that does that spoil the
value of that picture for your sake?
No.
For what you wanted to do?
It makes it more interesting. You go
home and copy the way you'd like to do.
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