A2 Art Exam 2016: Truth, Fantasy or Fiction

“Inspiration does exist, but it
has to find you working”.
Picasso

Picasso
This is important
that’s why we’re
starting with it
twice.

Is it time to BRAIN STORM the title? Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is? Should you wait until
you’ve done the set tasks and begin to take ownership of ideas and your work more? Is
there a better, more interesting way to present your initial thoughts? Be brave and give it
ago.
Guidelines to ensure that your brainstorming team works effectively together:
A) Draw or write out your ideas fast. Get the ideas out of your head as quickly as
possible.
B) Don't judge your ideas or the ideas of others. This part will come later when you
narrow down your ideas to your best ones. Phrases like "this will never work" aren't
allowed in brainstorming.
C) Piggyback off the ideas of your teammates. Two brains are better than one and
can have totally different perspectives on a concept. The more perspectives the
better!
E) Encourage wild ideas. The wilder the better! Stretch your thinking in your
brainstorm to go way outside of the box.
Look here! It’s
Nicholas Serota sitting
next to a Donald Judd
sculpture. He’s thinking
outside the box.

Truth is...
Read the exam
paper you’ve been
given.Annotate it and begin to
demonstrate your thinking about the title. Maybe
this could be the starting point of your brainstorm.
Don’t expect your storm to be complete in an
instant. Return to it when you’ve given yourself
time to time to think about things. See how you
feel. Document your changing ideas.

'Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,' -
that is all ye
know on earth,
and all ye need
to know.
John Keats
English
1795 – 1821
Look this is showing you
that as well as looking at
different kinds of artists
work you should also look
at the ideas of the title in
other places. If you do this
you’ll be broadening the
context of your work and
understanding.

Truth. This is what some people said about it.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all
the way and not starting.” Buddha
“The only truth is music.” Jack Kerouac
“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to
discover them.” Galileo Galilei
“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
Virginia Woolfe
“When in doubt tell the truth” Mark Twain
“Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in
large ones either.” Albert Einstein
“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.” Pablo Picasso
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” Henry David Thoreau
“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.”
Maya Angelou
“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.” Walt Whitman

Pablo Picasso, Guernica, Oil on canvas, 3.49 m x 7.76 m. Prado Madrid
Guernica’s here because it does a similar thing to
what Goya does in his Disasters of War. We’ll look
at Goya soon but it’s also here because I don’t
think you should discount not looking at art from
earlier in the 20th Century. Spread your wings and
explore art of the recent past. Grab an Art book
and have a look. Leave the internet behind and do
your research in a way that is more serendipitous.
Surprise yourself, let something unexpected into
your work.

Rene Magritte, La Trahison des Images (Ceci n'est pas une pipe)
(The Treachery of Images [This is Not a Pipe]). 1929. Oil on canvas

In this painting Rene Magritte tells the audience, via the paintings title, that his
depiction of a pipe is not an actual pipe. He questions and highlights the
expectations and truth of a made image. If his painting of a pipe is not a pipe then
we are asked to question what is it that Magritte is presenting us with in his painting.
Think about these questions and discuss
them.
1) What is the subject of this painting?
2) How important is the understanding of language
to understanding this painting?
This is for talking
and thinking
about. There’s a
task coming. Don’t
rush ahead. Use
your time to think
and consider
intentions.

When we look at and experience a painting, sculpture or an installation, regardless of the subject
matter, what we are looking at is a representation of something, not the actual thing that is being
represented.
Picasso has already told us in the second slide that “We all know that
art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes
us realise truth”.
(in regards to making pictures Picasso is your man for the 20th Century. Take the opportunity to find
our more about him and his ideas, because Cubism is all about the pursuit of looking and seeing in
a more truthful way. Cubism was an investigation into how to better represent the experience of
seeing the world in a flat 2 dimensional painting. Sound familiar. Picasso followed by Magritte
followed by others...

Joseph Kosuth
Three in One
1965

In One and Three Chairs, Joseph Kosuth represents one chair three ways: as a
manufactured chair, as a photograph, and as a copy of a dictionary entry for the
word “chair.” The installation is thus composed of an object, an image, and words.
Kosuth didn’t make the chair, take the photograph, or write the definition; he
selected and assembled them together. But is this art? And which representation
of the chair is most “accurate”? These open-ended questions are exactly what
Kosuth wanted us to think about when he said that “art is making meaning.” By
assembling these three alternative representations, Kosuth turns a simple wooden
chair into an object of debate and even consternation, a platform for exploring
new meanings.
Remember Picasso when he said “We all know that art
is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us
realise truth”.Well, Kosuth is presenting a question of
truth/fiction of the objects he’s presenting. What is a truthful representation of
the objects?

Task 1
Choose an object that you feel tells a truth or represents a fiction
i) About some other subject
ii) Give it some thought. What’s your initial choice of
object. Think of a different object. Straight away try to
refine your work by truly exercising your thinking and
make a better choice. Let your work develop and unfold
through your thinking about it as well as your making.
Task 1a
Think about Kosuth’s Three in One and make an observational drawing of your object.
The point here is, once you have made a drawing that is a truthful representation you
then need to make representations of your objects via a good quality photograph and a
dictionary explanation.
(The way in which you present this work is going to be important. Think about it and then
make a good presentation of it. Should you photograph it in a similar way to Kosuth or are
you going to make a different kind of presentation. Think about it. Take responsibility for
your work).

Do Task 1a x2
(At least x2)
• Everyone should do a take on this idea by starting with a chair and then
choosing another object. Pick at least two different objects.
• Make tonal drawings. [Blacks and greys and whites, not an all over grey.]
If your drawing isn’t so confident then consider using a project to aid you.
It’ll be like Carravaggio, Canaletto or Vermeer using the camera lucida to get
down the major parts of a painting.
The Camera Lucida is another layer of truth and fiction. It’s lenses being used to
create images. Here’s David Hockney talking about the camera lucida and what
it was used for in the 17th century. Hockney gives a really good explanaition
here. Watch it and document your findings in your sketchbook.
David Hockney, The Lost Secrets of the Old Masters: camera lucida obscura 1/3
This is the programme The Secret Knowledge 1/2 The Secret Knowledge 2/2

Sit and think about your
work.
(Task 2a)
[Don’t change object but use the same
object to do the next step or another step
later.]
Look at Goya’s The Disasters of War.
What do you think is going on here?
Discuss it as a class before you move onto
the next slide.
[Your going to need juice cartons to make
print with later. Start collecting them.
As many as possible please.]

Goya Spanish 1746 - 1828
(Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes)
The Disasters of War 1810-20
The etchings were not published until 1863, some 35 years after Goya’s death.
By then, the passions of the Napoleonic era had subsided and the satirical
implications in Goya’s work were less likely to offend. Goya’s model for his
visual indictment of war and its horrors was the Spanish insurrection of 1808
and the resulting Peninsular War with Napoleonic France. The bloody conflict
and the horrible famine of Madrid were witnessed by Goya himself, or were
revealed by him from the accounts of friends and contemporaries.
Goya's Distaters of War: The Truth About War Laid Bare
GOYA, Crazy Like A Genius by Robert Hughes
Watch this
There’s also a film of Jake Chapman talking
about Goya but that comes a little later.

PLATE 3:
'The same'
(Lo mismo),
Etching, wash,
drypoint, burin and
burnisher
16 × 21.7 cm
A Spanish civilian in a furious state, whose contorted face resembles a cadaver’s,
uses all his strength to raise an axe above his head to strike the soldier below, who
raises his hand in a gesture of useless defence. A soldier directly beneath him has
already fallen, while another at the left is about to be stabbed by a man riding on
his back. The image powerfully expresses the desperation of Spanish civilians who
committed themselves fully to the resistance even though they were ill equipped
for such combat.

PLATE 7:
‘What courage!’
(Que valor!)
Etching, drypoint and
burin
15.5 × 20.5 cm
This is the only print in the Disasters that might refer to a known individual,
Agustina of Aragón. On 4 July 1808, the French soldiers stormed the Portillo, a
gateway to the city of Zaragoza that was defended by cannons manned mainly by
volunteer Spaniards. The twenty-two-year-old Agustina arrived carrying food for
those defending the gate. She saw her comrades being slaughtered, whereupon
she clambered on their corpses, loaded a cannon and lit the fuse that blasted the
invaders at close range. Inspired by her actions, comrades who had fled the gate
returned to fight the enemy, who shortly after gave up the assault

PLATE 50:
‘Unhappy mother!’
(Madre infeliz!)
Etching, burnished
aquatint and drypoint;
15.5 × 20.5 cm
Three men carry off a young woman. One of them looks back to the distraught
child, emphasising her isolation as she runs after her mother. There is nothing to
be done, and her future is bleak with no one to help her. In the background,
another woman has collapsed on the ground. Leaning on her arm, she is probably
in the final moments of life. The burnished aquatint on the horizon creates a sense
of an endless and desolate landscape. It is one of the most moving images in the
series.

Goya
Plate 34:
On Account of A Knife

The Chapman Brothers English
YBAs Dino b. 1962 - Jake b. 1966

All these variations on a theme were a rehearsal for Insult to Injury 2004, for
which the brothers bought a series of The Disasters of War for £25,000 –
printed in 1937 from original plates – and systematically defaced it, adding
the heads of Mickey Mouse and grinning clowns to the figures, covering Goya
with a graffiti of gas masks, bug eyes, insect antennae and the ubiquitous
swastika

Goya Exposed with Jake Chapman
“There is something inherently paradoxical
about a work of art that tells us that violence is
bad while simultaneously showing us that
violence drawn like this is attractive. It’s method
is beautiful and meaningful.”
Jake Chapman speaking about Goya’s Disasters
of War.
Watch this

Jake and Dinos Chapman
Great Deeds Against the
Dead 1994
Mixed media
277 x 244 x 152.5 cm

At this point I tried to think about what is the nature of truth. But the
question ‘what is truth’ is a really big question, REALLY BIG, so I thought
more about it and decided that people who might be able to answer this
question might be philosophers. So I listened to this lecture on Ludwig
Wittgenstein. O my, it was amazing. Wittgenstein was a really intense
person. You should listen to it.
It’s right here. Sit in a comfy chair and listen hard because your going to
learn loads of stuff. Who knows, you might get inspiration from it.
Listen to thisWittgenstein His Life and Philosophy
“One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.”
Journal entry (11 October 1914), p. 10e
“Genius is talent exercised with courage.”
[I really like this. Try to be courageous. See what might happen].

Task 2a Make prints
i) You are to look at Goya’s Disasters of War and pick a few of the images that you
are drawn to. Include and discuss these images in your sketchbook.
ii) Select one of the images and use it to produce a print.
iii) Using the Goya images you are to reproduce it as a print.
In this process you are to alter the image as per The Chapman Brothers.
[Think about the current global crisis and try to include references that bring
your version of the Goya images up to date. Make your print relevant.
Use Goya as a stepping stone. Use this opportunity to say something about your
understanding about the conditions of conflict and how a picture of it is not the
thing it’s describing.]
The kind of carton you use will determine the size of your
outcome. However, you can try attaching several cartons
together.
Strive to achieve a refined line when drawing your image.
The use of cross hatching with help describe and model
your image.

Here is Guernica again.
The subject of this painting is the actual bombing of the Spanish town Guernica.
Picasso’s painting is a reaction and protest to the event.
The painting was sent on a world tour that included The Whitechapel , here in London, as
well as the UN building in New York. Picasso requested the painting not be shown in Spain
until the after the death of its facist leader Franco. So, in 1981, 43 years after it’s creation
and also after Picasso’s own death Guernica was sent to Spain and installed in The Prado
in Madrid were it remains on show.

Henri Rousseau France 1844 -1910
The Great Artists
- Post-Impressionism – Rousseau
Listen to this
This documentary discusses Rousseau’s life and
ideas. Make time to watch it. There’s loads of
info here. Food for thought. Paying attention to
this documentary might provide the spark you
need to set you off on your own journey of
exploration.
Henri Rousseau
Myself: Portrait Landscape
1890
Task:
Rousseau made up all his locations and his
connection to them. Most likely he never left Paris,
but he claimed to have travelled the world. The
construction of subject in his paintings is made up.
It’s a great big fantasy.
It’s fiction
& fantasy

Think back to Picasso. Well, during Rousseau’s life Picasso and a few of his
avant-garde friends thought Rousseau’s work was great. They loved it and Picasso
would buy his paintings and hang them in his own studio. Picasso organised a
banquet in Rousseau’s honour. The banquet was a kind of making fun of Rousseau
and an event to honour him. Portrait of a Woman 1895, was the centre piece of
the event. Picasso bought the painting in a junk shop for 5 francs.

Task 3a:
Take on board what you now
know about Rousseau.
Make a collage where you make
a fantasy setting, fantastic
setting.
Task 3b
Make another collage. This time
look at Rousseau’s “Myelf:
Portrait Landscape”, and make a
setting that visually coherent
image into which you will
include a self portrait.
(Maybe you can depict yourself
in the role of a profession…
Painter, police officer, teacher,
pilot, teacher…)
Henri Rousseau, Myself: Portrait Landscape, 1890

Sean Hillen b. 1961
Hillen is interesting because he takes his experiences of being Irish artist and
tackles ideas concerning Irish identity during the troubles, a time when the British
public where not being presented with a balanced perspective of what was going
on in Ireland. Similar to Rousseau, Hillen imagines two different places and mixes
them together. He re-addresses his concerns by relocating what was happening on
streets of Northern Ireland and relocating it to the streets of London.
No Photoshop is involved. The collages are all made by collection images from
magazines and cutting and gluing them down into compositions that express the
narrative Hillen is engaged with.
Hillen returns to Newry (2006)
Seán Hillen short film
Sean Hillen on Imeall (TG4 2010)
Watch these

Four Ideas for a New Town #1, 1982,
mixed media 30 x 32 cm
Hillen says:
“I photographed the figures in
this black and white scene in
the Bogside in 1981. The boy
on the right is wearing a Celtic
scarf with holes cut out for his
eyes. He's staring at me,
because he heard my accent, I
think, and was unhappy about
what I was doing there”.

Four Ideas For A New Town, #7
1987, mixed media, 44x28cm
Hillen says:
The building is the Royal Festival
Hall on the South Bank in London,
built as part of the Festival of
Britain in 1951.
It's a lovely building with concert
halls etc and until lately, anyway,
an excellent program of
exhibitions. I'm fond of it too
because I lived in the area for a
long time and used to mooch
around there a lot.
In fact, this montage has been
exhibited inside that very building
twice; in 1991 when I won a prize
in the South Bank Photo Show
and in 2000 in an interesting show
called Revealing Images.
I was playing, obviously, with the
flames and flowers.
Permanent Collection, Imperial
War Museum, London.

Task 4:
[Did you watch the films?
If you took the time to do so, well done. If not you need to do the research.
The research you do is always going to make a positive contribution to your
ideas and work. Broaden your horizon. However, your research needs to be
meaningful. Explore and understand an artists ideas. If you’re not
understanding the work you’re looking, think about it some more. Talk to your
peers and teacher about it. Be informed and give your opinion.
Task
i) Document Sean Hillen’s works content. Focus on his series The Troubles and
Irelantis.
ii) Produce a collage that explores/explains ideas concerning the truth of a
situation.
Your collage should be a work that is refined and you’ve taken time over. It
should be a double page spread.
PICASSO ALERT. Guess what? It’s Picasso time again. In the unfolding of Cubism
Picasso invented collage as we know it today. You’re about to use a process that
Picasso created in the early days of cubism.

Task 5:
[The big one] HALF TERM WORK.
OK, this is the fun bit. The bit you’ve been looking forward to all along.
You now need to develop three strands of investigation on the theme of TRUTH,
FANTASY OR FICTION.
i) It’s probably time to do another mind map and explain were you’re at with
your current thinking.
ii) Each strand you begin should be more that a cursory glance.
iii) Choose one of your strands and develop a page that further explores your
initial thinking.
iv) Begin to collect visual and other materials that are going to establish the
bedrock of your brilliant investigation.
v) Pick your theme wisely. This is the last project you will ever do at Fortismere.
Pick a theme you feel interested in and can follow up your interest through a
furrow investigation.

BE SUPER INTERESTED IN
YOUR THEME. OWN IT!
As John Gorka sings… “Work brings more
good luck. Good luck”.
Also as our good friend Picasso said right at the beginning of this
journey:

A list of
artists[you might find useful and inspirational]
To make sense of why the following artists fit the theme of Truth, Fantasy or
Fiction you’ll have to do some work and explore the content of the works.

Bas Jan Ader
In Search of the Miraculous
Please Don’t Leave Me

Mamma Anderson
Backdrop, 2013
Hello, 2013
Snug, 2008
The Lonely Ones, 2008

Fiona Banner
1066
2010
Indian ink on wall
2150 x 400 cm
Apocalypse Now,
1997
The Nam, 2014

Morton Barlett

Louise Bourgeois
The Surreal House Femme Maison, 1994

Francis Alys c
Re-enactment by Francis Alys
In his Re-enactments Francis Alys performs an action

Dawn Clements
A lot of her pictures are based on old black and
white films she watches.

Yves Klein
Leap into The Void.
1960.
Photograph of Action

One of the best-known photographs in avant-garde
art is Yves Klein’s Leap into the Void (1960), an
image of the artist soaring over an empty street
with an expression of pure bliss on his face. Down
below, a bicyclist rides into the distance, unaware
of the miraculous occurrence overhead, while at
the end of the street a train passes by. Since Klein’s
unexpected death, in 1962 at the age of 34, a
mystery has remained: how did he make the
purported leap?

Bas Jan Alders
1975

In Search of the Miraculous, the last and most poignant work by the Dutch-
born artist Bas Jan Ader, was intended to be a performance in three parts. On
the afternoon of July 9, 1975, the 33-year-old artist said goodbye to his
American wife and set sail from Cape Cod on a solo voyage across the
Atlantic. His boat, the Ocean Wave, was only a little over 12ft in length, the
smallest craft in which such a feat had ever been attempted.
On the night before his departure, he arranged for a student choir to sing sea
shanties around a piano in the gallery of his Los Angeles dealer. The voyage
was to be the central element in the performance. To end it, Ader planned a
second sing-song when he reached Falmouth eight to 10 weeks later.
But, after three weeks, radio contact with his boat was lost. Although it was
spotted 60 miles out to sea and again near the Azores, he was never seen
again. To this day, no one knows whether Ader was swept to his death by a
freak wave, became disorientated and jumped overboard, or whether, from
the first, his intention in staging his last work had been to commit suicide.
The body of work Ader left behind is extraordinary, but it isn't extensive - only
a few short films (most of which were made in a single weekend) plus some
photographs and several performance pieces. In short, he is a classic cult
figure, an artist's artist. His work was enormously influential, but of limited
popular appeal.

Tracey Emin, Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With, 1995, mixed mediaTracey Emin, Everyone I’ve Ever Slept With, 1995, mixed media
Truth, Fantasy or Fiction.
The work of some artists blurs the lines between a narrative of truth and a
fictionalised version of events.

There are loads more artists who would fit the
bill perfectly. Discuss your ideas with your
teachers and peers and they’ll help steer you in
the right direction.
“Inspiration does exist, but it has to
find you working”. Picasso
One final thing… Look, Willliam Boyd’s book Nate Tate,
published in 1998
Nat Tate was an imaginary person, invented by Boyd and
created as "an abstract expressionist who destroyed '99%'
of his work and leapt to his death from the Staten Island
ferry. His body was never found.“
When this book rather than admit they’d never heard of
the guy art world people fell into the trap of pretending
they knew who this artist was. Silly because he never
existed.

A2 Art Exam 2016: Truth, Fantasy or Fiction

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A2 Art Exam 2016: Truth, Fantasy or Fiction