After collecting theses images of the Tate’s Rothko Room I needed to decide what to do with them. I had been arranging the images in various patterns with various attributes. These included images with figures in, images with multiple paintings, images with single paintings and so on. These images had all been sourced form Instagram, taken on people mobile phones and if I'm honest they were not the best images. I had an option of reframing these images and taking them directly from the originals and present them as a typology but I didn't feel as if the images were doing enough.
After reading into the life and work of Rothko on a deeper level, I began to realised that the existence of these images where incredibly detrimental to the intentions of the originals. The originals were these exquisite paintings that hung in a dimly light room, they had these transcendental qualities that push the meanings of them far away from the paintings themselves and challenged humanity on a existential level. Yet the images themselves still have these amazing aesthetic qualities and this is what has become iconic. I think that Rothko would’ve loathed the fact that these images existed and at such a scale. The though of his audience walking around this room staring at the paintings through there lens would have ruined the work in his eyes. The low light level makes the room itself is an awful place to photograph, especially with a camera phone. But this doesn't really put anyone off wanting to photograph or be photographed in front of these paintings.
The problem is these images still exist. My first thought was to remove the painting from the images, I felt that this would hide any inhibitions from the lens but once id created an image it didn't really make sense and the image didn't really work either. But when I inverted this and removed everything but the painting it really transformed the image into something really interesting. This new image highlighted the painting in this sea of white. It took away every distracting or detrimental element. The way the paintings interacted with each other in this blank space was very intriguing, the lens flattened the image but with out any other points of reference the images floated together. Perspectively they formed edges and created this space inside the frame, the nature of the image on the wall reformed the room.
I went through every image I had collected and each time removed everything but the paintings. This process became quite cleansing, everything that wasn't associated with the paintings could simply be clean out of the image. When I started to come across images where the painting was obstructed by a figure I carried on removing everything that was not the painting. Once I had completed all the images I began to reorganise them. This time into two categories, images that had a figure obscuring the painting and images that were the painting remained solid. I then spend hours looking at the images in these two categories trying to decipher any meaning from them.
The images with out any obstruction became pure to the originals. The documented the room in this quite a novel way, the painting remained whole but it floated in blank space. The painting in this image was someones prize, a document of something that they found so intriguing that they had to take an image of it. The painting in this image remained as true as it could to the original as possible but its very existence as a copy forced it to fail. The constantly updating narrative of the Instagram format and its populist traits couldn't contain the beauty and geniality or the original painting.
This second set did something completely different. This images had eaten away into the painting, transforming the values of Rothko’s work. Without my intervention this image had been trying to document a persons existence in the ‘Rothko room’. They had been posed in front of the painting as if its iconic detriment had warranted it to be treated as a landmark. The image is trying to say this is me in front of a Rothko painting, for what ever reason the purveyor found necessary. Removing the everything but the painting from the image the figure becomes anonymous. Aspects of their identity can be seen in some images, for instance there are images where you can tell the figure is male or female. But for the most part these become shapes cut out of the painting.
I spoke before when introduced the idea of Instagram and the gallery about how the images that are taken of art, also take away a fraction of that work to be able to place it into a new context. It is documentation but it is added onto this need for personal expression. Here we can see an image where the figure has literally cut themselves out of the painting. By removing this figure they leave this incremental imprint, they shape that it left abstracts the painting even further. The are stealing this fraction of the image. Even in the original image the figure blocks the painting removing what existed behind them. Emphasising this appearance obscures the painting’s context and its fundamental attributes. The texture of the painting the colour of the pain all wrap around the figure to create this quasi halo. Transversely the inner edges of the painting now create the shape of the figure. The negative space becomes the image, in spite of showing the paintings as a the central focus painting it becomes almost a background.
Regardless of the veracity of one transcendence or another the pattern is unmistakable. The photograph becomes exclusively the testament to a loss or lack, a marker of absence, a presence defined in negative rather than positive terms, and this dead end is always the foregone conclusion of attempts to find solidity in signification. Each seem, in brief, to revolve around a similar divisive assumption that image and material are mutually exclusive and perpetually at war, and that at some point, one will triumph completely over the other, and that by most accounts, the image, or likeness is the more fearsome, and the more likely to destroy the other. Walead Beshty 2014
In consideration of this quote by Walead Beshty, can these images be understood as a destruction or deconstruction of Rothko’s work?. These are images of carefully considered paintings, taken and uploaded by amateur photographers and manipulated by myself. At what point does this original step of destruction or deconstruction occur. It is as soon as the image is taken? is it as soon as it crosses into my ownership, or is it when that first piece of the image is removed?. By taking apart these images and reframing changes the broader context. There is a genuine intriguing around the cut outs. They touch on areas between familiarity and unfamiliarity. Where does an vernacular image taken of a painting that is in the hands of institutions who intent on the protection and restoration of the art. The user uploaded image is an incurably poor document, as a singularity you could not image this image having any impact on Rothko’s originals, but when experienced collectively it becomes much more powerful. Now these digital copies become a force on their own. It has the potential to become the ‘image(s), or likeness(es) (that are) the more fearsome, and the more likely to destroy the other.’ Even within my cut out image we experience an immediate ‘marker of absence’, the figure who so desperately wanted to appear in front of the celestial painting has vanished and reduced to nothing but white pixels.
I think the witness becomes incredibly vital to the cut outs. The white is not transparent, it becomes a shape. I have an intention to re-upload these images back on to the Instagram format, an in this context the whiteness would appear to be transparent. But taking these images away from the screen I think these white silhouettes maybe become to impactful and actually cutting the painting from the print might be better. Despite this I would rather allow these cut outs to manifest within an Instagram profile.
The figures will become reattributed with anonymous identities. The existence of them on the Instagram platform will challenge the notions and expirations of the image sharing site. I am quite curious of its reception on Instagram. I feel that this idea of ripping this work straight from the site, tearing away everything other than the painting and then sending it back to Instagram does something quite bold. Its almost a rejection for anything that is not the art, but in doing so we tear away huge chunks of the painting. The truth of the Rothko painting becomes so detrimentally effected by the figure obstructing the lens, but once the image of the figure is removed it is the inner edges of the painting that is creating this image of the figure.