4.10.21 - Authorship

 Authorship is an ideological construct about the way things are attributed to certain individuals. As creatives we like our names to be recognised in conjunction to our work, and to ensure that we gain credit for what we do it is important to put our personal mark on things, a signature. However not all art has the same level of evident human touch.

Flood (1996) by Paula Rego
Paulo Rego is widely celebrated for her illustrative drawings, prints, paintings and collages, of dark and mysterious subjects surrounding folk-lore, fairy tales and literature. She has a certain stylistic approach that makes her work easily recognisable to those in the art world - the unique use of lines, techniques and imagery gives us all the information that we need to identify the artist. According to www.artsy.net/, 'Flood' is an 'Etching and aquatint on Somerset paper' piece, and I find it really evocative as a viewer. The strong highlights and shadows create a dramatic effect that echoes the chaotic storm, while the contrast between the flowing organic lines of the water and the sharp slashes of diagonally travelling rain creates a certain harshness that gives the scene an almost biblical end-of-the-world feeling that the central character seems to have surrendered to. With religion in mind, the animal imagery recalls the story of Noah's Ark, but maybe in an alternative world of Paula Rego's own creation, where the ark sunk, or was never even built, and all of the animals are being washed away in a great catastrophic flood. Like an author, Rego is telling a story, and her mark making is the artists equivalent of a writers way with words.  

Sambódromo da Marquês de Sapucaí [Rio] 2012 Sarah Morris

Sarah Morris makes geometric abstract paintings, taking inspiration from the urban landscape with interconnected grids and loops. Personally, I find this to be an image that lacks the sense of human touch that was so abundant in Rego's work, and I would not be able to attribute this to a certain artist if I didn't already know. The flat blocky shapes are painted with such precision that it looks like a digital work, or the creation of AI. Because I imagine the work being made by something like a computer algorithm, I find it easy to forget that a human made it with their own hands, from their own ideas - it makes me wonder where authorship comes in to this style of contemporary work. In 'What is an Author?', published in 1969, Michel Foucault writes 'I think that as our society changes, at the very moment when it is the process of changing, the author function will disappear', and as such, there isn't a visible signature on Morris's piece, which distances the artist from the art, whereas more traditional works commonly have a name scribbled in the corner creating a sense of authenticity and personal touch - a maker's mark. 


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