Alienation Essay

In this project I have been exploring the feeling of alienation. In order to understand this topic more fully I researched philosophers and psychologists. In doing this, I learnt more in depth about current schools of thought relating to the concept of alienation. This was important because it informed the meaning and intentions behind all my physical work completed in this project. It allowed me to collect my thoughts and ideas and link them to pre existing philosophies. Albert Camus is an existentialist philosopher who wrote about the absurd, human mortality and suicide. In his book, The Outsider, the protagonist, Meursault, becomes so alienated from reality that he does not mourn his mother's death, does not care about getting married and eventually does not care about killing a man or being executed for this. Camus believed that humans had no purpose or meaning and that we must create these for ourselves. It can be hard to do this and failure to do this can lead to alienation in all forms. This school of thought came into popularity after World War 2 due to a questioning of religion, something that gives people purpose. This questioning resulted from the atrocities that were committed in the war. The ‘existential attitude’ is a feeling of dread or disorientation felt when faced with a meaningless and absurd world. This feeling also affected the art world, with movements like abstract expressionism emerging. Inspired by surrealist ideas, abstract expressionism is a movement which emphasises the self, anxiety and grief being expressed through vigourous, active brush strokes and expressive mark making.

 

Another existentialist philosopher I researched was Sartre. One of his key ideas was bad faith. This is when a person submits to societal forces and does not utilise their personal freedom. Sartre’s common example was a waiter who is too ‘waiter-esque’, too eager to please, too absorbed in his waiter identity that he has forgotten he is a free entity. He is acting inauthentically and therefore is suppressing his freedom. In this modern interconnected world I believe people are acting in bad faith more and more as there is not often a time when one is truly alone. We are always communicating via social media. We act as our perceived ‘best’ form of ourselves where we are not actually being free. We are merely pretending to be ‘cooler’ than we actually are, pretending that we fit into societies boxes, when, more often than not, we don’t. This is possibly a reason for increased mental health issues in today’s society (although I do not believe this is the only or even the main reason).

 

A psychologist I researched was Carl Jung. He was a psychodynamic psychologist who worked with Freud and the Vienna Society. He wrote about the shadow self. This is an unconscious part of the self which one does not identify with oneself. Contrary to Freud’s definition of the shadow, Jung believed it not only contains very negative parts of oneself but also can contain positive parts; it is comprised of anything hidden from our consciousness. Positive parts of the self are more commonly held in the shadow in people suffering from mental health disorders like low self esteem and anxiety. Jung wrote that the shadow is the animalistic and instinctive part of the self which the ego suppresses when you develop out of childhood. It is linked with the Id, the part of the self which operates on the pleasure principle. Jung also wrote that the shadow is prone to psychological projection, a phenomenon where a persons insecurities and perceived deficiencies are projected onto another person. For example, someone who is very intolerant may call someone else intolerant when they are called out on their intolerance. They do not want to believe they are intolerant and have not accepted that part of themselves so they use projection as a defence mechanism. Furthermore, Jung wrote that the shadow self is a window to creativity and expressing one’s true self, “in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness, or perhaps because of this, the shadow is the seat of creativity”. I feel that all of these philosophical and psychological ideas will be very interesting to express through visual art.

 

After this research I went on to research artists whose ideas linked to existentialist philosophy and psychodynamic psychology. One artist I researched was Francis Bacon. He was a painter from the 1900s who painted grotesque, raw and bold images. Usually portraits, his paintings are distorted and mangled into emotional expressions of the artists own troubles. He had a troubled life, one example being kicked out of his home at 15 because of his homosexuality. A lot of these troubles shine through in his paintings. His paintings often have an element of aggressive expressionism, using obvious brush strokes and mark-making to accentuate the raw emotion he is expressing in his paintings. The distortion of the face could link to Sartre’s idea of bad faith, the figures changing and distorting themselves to fit into societies prescribed boxes, creating ugly versions of oneself. Also, it could link to the shadow self as it is an ugly representation of the figure which seems surreal or disconnected to reality.

 

Another artist who links to these ideas is Giacometti. Although his most famous works are his sculptures, I think his paintings are also very interesting. They often depict a figure sitting, staring straight at the viewer. The colours he uses are very muted, creating a negative, depressing mood. His brush strokes are again expressive, attacking the canvas with colour. This creates a sense of anxiety and conflict. This may be felt by the subject, the artist and the viewer. The proportions of the subject are often distorted, stretched to make them more slender, almost ghost-like.

 

A third artist I researched who greatly influenced my work was Emilio Villalba. His paintings are a mismatch of facial features. He greatly distorts the face of his subjects, creating a strange, eerie mood. The dark background contrasts the often over saturated face, creating interesting depth in his works. He often combines elements of realism with very expressive areas, adding to the surreal, psychological mood. From these artists I created responses, meaning I learnt more fully about the techniques they use. They also informed my first photoshoot which I presented in my source book. This photoshoot contained simple portraits that I intended to distort and change through my drawings and paintings. They helped to link my ideas into ideas for my own pieces. For example, throughout my project I experimented with lighting to create a dark almost ghostlike atmosphere.

 

After completing my source book, I started to work on the main book. I completed in depth research on two artists, Kwang Ho Shin and Frank Auerbach. From Kwang Ho Shin I learnt about impasto, a technique used by both of these artists to create an interesting, distorted image. Another idea I learnt from Kwang Ho Shin was to use bold, unnatural colours. This creates the unnatural mood. It could be related to the modern, technological world where we are becoming more and more detached from nature, also linking to my idea of modern bad faith. Also, I learnt about contrast. In his paintings, Kwang Ho Shin uses a large amount of contrast with the often plain white canvas backgrounds and the textural, bold figure. He also accentuates this with the black areas of the figure. This leads to the creation of an interesting image and could symbolise our detachment from society. From Auerbach I learnt about choosing subject matter. He said, “I find myself simply more engaged when I know the people. They get older and change; there is something touching about that, about recording something that’s getting on.” I believe that using yourself and subjects you know well in real life can lead to the creation of more intimate and honest pieces because you aren’t creating the emotions, you are expressing existing emotions which you have insight into. This lead to me predominantly using myself and my girlfriend in my pieces as I felt that we are the people I know best, meaning I know more of what's going on inside our heads. Another technique I learnt from Auerbach and Kwang Ho Shin was the use of randomness. Although it is generally informed randomness, it often can lead to a very honest piece as you are allowing your subconscious to take over. This links to a surrealist idea of automatism (used by artists like André Masson and Joan Miro) and Jean Arp’s use of randomness in pieces like ‘Collage with Squares Arranged According to the Laws of Chance’. I also learnt about colour from Auerbach with his use of distorted colours. Unlike Kwang Ho Shin, Auerbach doesn’t use such vibrant colours, creating a more moody atmosphere.

 

Using ideas from this in depth research and previous research, I took the first large photoshoot. I placed objects over the lens, used long exposure techniques and used coloured LEDs to distort the image. I tried to capture an atmosphere of uneasiness and anxiety. These ideas come from existentialist ideas like bad faith. The images distortions could signify the distortions we make to ourselves in order to fit into society. The bright colours take the images further away from reality. This lead to the creation of a series of work from these photos. I took ideas of mixed media from Kwang Ho Shin. I used chalk, charcoal and pastel to create surreal, sometimes angry self portraits using ideas from Kwang Ho Shin and Auerbach. I also drew a skull, using the macabre idea from artists like Ensor and Bacon. I also created many continuous line drawings, using a range of different techniques. In some of the pieces I tied multiple pens of different colours together, using ideas of unnatural colour from Auerbach and Kwang Ho Shin. I also used extended arm techniques where I tied a pen to a 30cm ruler and drew with that. Some other continuous line drawings used a dark background with a white pen, again taking ideas of contrast and dark backgrounds from artist research. All of these continuous line drawings have an element of randomness, an idea from Auerbach and Kwang Ho Shin. They also strongly link to surrealist automatism.

 

A second photoshoot was then carried out. This photoshoot was just 2 photos which I then made many photoshopped versions of. This photoshoot was heavily influenced by Emilio Villalba and his tapestries of facial features. I tried to distort the images to create a mood of estrangement and alienation. Similarly to the first photo shoot, this one was influenced by bad faith, just expressed in a different way. The duplicated facial features and the disfigurement expresses the way one warps oneself into the boxes society forces us into. This lead to the creation of many more pieces using ideas of distortion and uneasiness. I tried to capture this through the use of pencil, pen, paint, pastel and more. In some of my pieces, I added colours to further emphasize the existentialist ideas from the first photoshoot. In others, I used impasto, a technique learned from Auerbach and Shin. The impasto further accentuates the ideas of bad faith and alienation. Another technique I used was expressive line. This was learnt from the line drawings of Giacometti and Auerbach. This allows me to express emotion through the gestures I make while drawing the piece. If I am angry, the lines will be more erratic and rough. For example, the black and red self portrait with felt tip pen was drawn when I was in a very angry mood. Another example was the mixed media self portrait where it started off as a pencil drawing. As I was carefully drawing it, the outcome was not what I wanted, making me quite angry. I then expressed this anger through the gestural paint and pen. The anger could link to the idea of bad faith and the shadow self through it being an expression of frustration of our true self (or our unconscious self) when we are forced to confine it to society's norms. This unconscious frustration and alienation from ourselves can often be the cause of irrational anger that seems to come from nowhere.

 

I then decided to work towards creating a final piece. I was aiming to experiment with different techniques and compositions which I felt would sum up my ideas the most fully. I experimented with cropping out most of the face and making the focal point the eye. I feel that the eyes are the most expressive part of the face and can reveal the most about a person's feelings. Another aspect I experimented with was colour. Using ideas from my first photoshoot I quickly chose to use unnatural colours. I didn’t wish to use colours as vibrant as Kwang Ho Shin because I felt that more muted colours create a darker mood. I wanted the colours to be similar to real life but still far enough away to create the surreal mood. This was the same in the proportions I distorted. This links to the idea of the ‘Uncanny valley’ which suggests that ‘humanoid objects which appear almost, but not exactly, like real human beings elicit uncanny, or strangely familiar, feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers’. In terms of composition, I created many quick drawings experimenting with composition. I decided to use a black background as it contrasts nicely with the colours and almost signifies that the figures are subconscious representations as they are not placed into reality. This was inspired by Emilio Villalba and some of Bacon’s work. I created two oil pastel pieces heavily inspired by Francis Bacon’s distorted portraits. I was aiming to capture the way we warp our self by warping the physical self. This led to more research into Francis Bacon’s process and I learned that he used unprimed canvas. This meant that in my development I experimented with different fabrics and found that I liked the unprimed canvas the most. It creates an interesting texture and I prefer the way it feels to paint on as it is rough and lends itself to a rough and expressive style of painting. He also painted a lot of triptychs. I decided on painting a triptych because they allow for time to be included in the piece. I decided to create a piece that gets more and more disoriented and warped, showing how over time we get more and more alienated from our true selves as we get more indoctrinated into societies norms. The composition of the triptych will have the least distorted piece in the center as it will be the most eye catching of the three and provide context for the more distorted ones.

Done