MA - Initial Proposal for MA Studies 21/09/2005

INTRODUCTION

"A carafe, that is a blind glass.
A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading. Gertrude Stein - Tender Buttons 1914

By de-constructing the perceived, one can change the significance or alter the mind-set. We exist in a universe of accepted realities which we unconsciously take for granted. I don't want to do a Gertrude Stein, at least, not to her extremes - but the words -"All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling"- have resonance. So does Vermeer. He takes the ordinary- a girl pours milk , reads a letter, makes lace - and sublimates it; transmutes the homely into something that can claim, without exaggeration, eternal and transcendental beauty. It is definitely 'not ordinary'. It is not my purpose to debate here how Vermeer 'does it', but light, placement and composition all play their part. One could say it is "not unordered" in no longer "resembling" the ordinary.

One strand that I want to develop for my study concerns the transmutation of an ordinary, household object into something not ordinary. The object I propose is the humble sewing button. I have had a life-long delight in buttons, on and off. I've bought them at jumbles and auctions; I am always collecting the contents of other people's sewing kits. They are, for me, imbued with the essences of years of loving care, touch, housewifeliness, family duty and, above all, memories. But, over and above that, they are beautiful. They have the beauty of a simple and functional domestic object. As with the potter's art, or craft in throwing bowl after matching bowl, buttons are produced for a purpose and they must be reproduced in replica, again and again, The holes must be placed so that the needle can go through, with enough space for several thicknesses of thread, yet with enough width in the button to keep it fastened in the buttonhole.

They are all the same, yet they are never exactly the same. This is particularly true of earlier buttons, but even after the advent of plastic, once buttons have been through the wash, minute differences start to appear. Buttons serve as miniature fashion features whose era is almost instantly recognisable. Therefore they can easily transcend their humble origins and emerge as 'objets d'art' in their own right; they accordingly acquire a mystique and financial value that has spawned all the paraphernalia of the collector's world. Allied to this is the romance of their origins, their provenance, their stories, whether real or imagined. Where else could that set of mini masterpieces; buxom beauties painted on porcelain, belong than on the corpulent waistcoat front of some cigar-smoking, 'fin-de-siècle' dandy - that dented, rusted, military button, than from a lancer at the Charge of the Light Brigade?

Tempting as is this view of the button as a mini-novella; this is not where I want to venture, at least not to start. There are two threads I want to follow:

THREAD ONE: I want to work with the plain button, the shirt button; the little two or four-holer, whose only pretension to splendour is the hint of mother of pearl.

POINTS TO PONDER - DIRECTIONS/STRANDS TO EXPLORE

• Sheer beauty of cards of buttons, mother of pearl.
• Old-slightly peeling, a sheen, a variation of tone and form
• The cards themselves, the attachment having textural qualities.
• Canvases of pearl buttons - creating forms and flows of light with the way they are turned and placed -
• Translucent boxes - lit from without and/or within where the buttons move from shadow shapes to shimmer
• Repetition is a theme and quality
• A button is always in movement on the human body - it is intended for movement - to open and shut the aperture concerned - by making it static, is it possible to achieve a monumental aspect?

THREAD TWO: While in THREAD ONE I want to create objects with a feeling of serenity; here I would seek deconstruction of reality with humour, satire and, I hope, more than a streak of viciousness. The button plays an essential part in regalia of every kind, most specifically and historically, in military regalia.

Here its identity, burnished and polished under the sergeant-major's eye, acquires a mystique and a glamour that gilds the messy business of war. While not at odds with this on every count, when it is used to lend allure to the codified practice of evil, then my stomach turns.

POINTS TO PONDER - DIRECTIONS/STRANDS TO EXPLORE

• The deconstruction of the glamorised image of, say, the black-clad Nazi SS officer
• How? - replace his buttons with little bunny-rabbit buttons or teddies for example
• The Commandant of Auschwitz found it a pleasant posting (countryside and days splashing in the lake for his children. Though, alas, the business of turning people into soap curtailed his family hours - a major regret recorded in his memoirs before execution)
• He could have soap buttons ? Maybe soap buttons engraved "with love from...
• Or "A souvenir of. . ." " Official picture of Stalin and Hitler(?), Mussolini(?) - admiring each other's nursery buttons
• I see these as silk screens, as actual altered uniforms in an installation, as paintings, as gift boxes, as objects in museum cases.
• It is the Charlie Chaplin, Mel Brooks form of debunking - but actually it is deadly serious - the mechanism of creating personae that inspire an admixture of dread, terror and fascination is deliberate. Both the perpetrators and the victims can be seduced by the product. Ridicule demystifies, punctures, perhaps releases from the spell???????

FINALLY These are my current avenues of investigation - the route-plan, if you will. I relish the concept of two linked areas of production that are completely dissimilar yet linked; in that one deals with themes of space, form, light, composition and the other with mankind's misuse of his gifts and talents.