The Role Of Autobiography In Artists’ Works
T. S Elliott believes that “the progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality”. A successful piece of work must have the artist's touch in order for others to relate to it. It is human nature, to seek out connections with others. Art represents the self, time and history; as humans evolve, so does art. As technology advances, so does its presence in art. From a painting, one can often decipher the time period, the region and, in some cases, even the most intimate details about the artist. A successful piece of work must be autobiographical. Autobiography in our time is increasingly understood as both an art of memory and an art of the imagination; indeed, memory and imagination become so intimately complementary in the autobiographical act that it is usually impossible for autobiographers and their consumers to distinguish between them in practice. This essay examines the nuances between artworks of three autobiographical artists and how they inform their practices.
The proposition that fictions and the fiction-making process are central constituent of the truth of any life as it is lived and of any art devoted to the presentation of that life. I don't believe that autobiography can offer a faithful and unmediated reconstruction of a historically verifiable past; instead, it expresses the play of the autobiographical act itself, in which the materials of the past are shaped by memory and imagination to serve the needs of present consciousness (John Eakin 05).
Tracey Emin is an living English artist known for her autobiographical works. Her works often deal with personal traumatic events such as unreported rape, public humiliation, sexism, botched abortions, alcoholism and promiscuity. The works being intensely personal, reveals intimate details of the artist’s life with brutal honesty and poetic humour. Tracey Emin said, “the narcissism behind what I do, the self, self and how difficult it is for me to really share things, even though I think I am sharing all the time. ”
My Bed, 1999(fig,1), Box frame, mattress, linens, pillows and various objects - Tate, London. This piece of work supposedly records the traces of several days spent in the artwork, being the bed while being in the grip of depression. The bed is unmade, messy and the sheets are stained. All around are things like condoms, contraceptive pills, underwear stained with menstrual blood, money, and cigarette ends. The bed is her actual bed resulting from being bedridden after a break up of a personal relationship.
Tracey Emin explores the self through her current state of being and her use of the “readymade” and everyday objects gives her works a brutal and raw honesty. In My Bed, almost nothing is arranged or curated to perpetuate or visceral a common emotion or state. The drive of the self is almost placing traces of a few days in her life into the exhibition. This artwork draws and important distinction between representation and presentation. This piece is not a representation of an object such as conventional painting or sculpture. The art object doesn’t refer to another object; it is the object itself. As Emin inevitable play with body as politics, some have argued this was the key work in elevating women’s experiences to the level of artistic expression. It is almost impossible to not talk about the artist when talking about the artwork because of how they are so inextricably linked. Despite the context of our selfie age, where face and body of people are splashed all over social media, Emin’s self portraits stand out for their honesty. Rather than adding heavy filters alteration, or immaculate new narratives, she is constantly looking inwards to capture something more human.
Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his emotionally charged, raw paintings. Most of his paintings depict the human figure in situations that suggest alienation violence and suffering. Bacon has destroyed countless of his paintings on different occasions of his life. In the 1970s, publications helped establish the popular image of his works as reflection of the anxiety of the modern condition. He gets inspired by people around him, the pope and places he explored like Egypt and they all drive the disposition of his signature deformed forms. To think about Bacon’s painting is also almost inevitable to think of the artist’s image that creates the intrinsic values that attribute to the brand of Francis Bacon. Despite his inspirations and muses being mostly seemingly external sources, his paintings arguably reflect on the emotional state he is in.
Bacon was obsessed with the image of the Pope (fig. 2), the painting was titled ‘study after’ which suggests deconstructing the Velazquez painting of the Pope Innocent X (fig. 3) and reappropriating it for his own amusement or purpose. In a span of twenty years Bacon painted more than forty-five paintings of the Pope. According to Rina Arya, Bacon critiques the institutions of the Church yet ironically he is dependent upon the wealth of theological sources for his imagery as well as the position of theism, which alone gives credence to his practice. Throughout his oeuvre he was relentlessly drawn towards the symbols of the Christian tradition, especially the motif of the Crucifixion and the Pope (33-34). Rina Arya demystifies the screaming popes, “The symbol of the scream is multilayered with it denotes not only the death of the papal symbol, but the death of an art historical tradition, the ‘death of God’ and the death of the self(35). Bacon’s peculiar obsession amazes me how he started with the reproduction of the reference and when he had the opportunity to see the Velazquez original, he declined it.
To quote Arya, “From a Freudian perspective Bacon’s perpetual obsession with the papal image alludes to an inverted Oedipal Complex, where it is not the mother but the father who is revered in all the fear that he evokes. Bacon’s homoerotic turn to the figure of the Pope might here represent a therapeutic means for him to reverse the roles within the sadomasochistic paternal relationship, so that instead of his father inflicting pain, Bacon reclaims his autonomy. This autonomy had been suppressed in Bacon’s youth when his father frustrated Bacon’s artistic and homosexual leanings Bacon exercised his new found power by representing his father as a figure that is positively haunted, trapped and confined within the claustrophobic and airless pictorial space” (Rina Arya, 37). This analysis suggests how the drive for ‘art’ or at least Bacon’s paintings are innately subconscious thus the artist does not need to have a conscious decision on looking inwards to be making art that reflect on the notion of self.
Andy Warhol was an american artist most known for the concept of “pop art”, it's almost synonymous. His works greatly reflected life at his time, with industrialisation and celebrity culture and mass- produced commercial goods. Warhol’s life and work simultaneously satirised and celebrated materiality and celebrity. As a trained commercial illustrator, Warhol brought those sensibilities into his art-making process and inevitably his work were largely influenced by his life as an illustrator.
Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962 (fig. 4), consists of 32 paintings of appropriated images of Campbell Soup Cans. It is a widely consumed canned soup that the heart of America will be able to identify and relate to. The paintings resemble advertisements which Warhol was inspired by and the canvases are hand-painted. The only difference was the label on the front of each can soup. At that point of time there were 32 kinds of Campbell’s Soup that was available in the supermarket. In this work, Warhol was interested in the idea of painting instead of the retinal pleasure therefore the repetition suggests the idea and dismisses idea of a retinal painting. Warhol’s choice of subject changed the perception that in a rich art collector’s home, what would be on the wall would not be some elitist subject, but a subject so average and banal.
When people talk about Andy Warhol usually the artist comes to mind not the art. Some might argue that his enigmatic personal life has been more central than his art. His works are so detached to himself. Most of the books about Warhol describe his life than his art. He has always been the contradiction between criticising of what he viewed as a culture obsessed with money and celebrity in his works but Warhol’s focus on consumer goods and pop-culture icons suggests a celebration of the American culture that his work criticised. Warhol said “making money is art and working is art, and good business is the best art. ” The sentence blurs the binaries of what should be art and it's process. Sometimes I feel like his life is more of the art than his “art”. To Warhol, being the artist is a 24/7 role-play. That performance role-play is what creates the perception of Warhol compared to the conception of his works.
Drawing the comparisons between three provocative but vastly different flavoured artists, it seems not all of them explore the notion of self, consciously. But reflecting on the bigger picture or the oeuvre of the artist, the expression all goes back to the self no matter how disparate the inspirations are. The artist’s obsessions always go back to the artist self, thus the nature of art is innately autobiographical. The interest in anything external immediately reflects on the nature of the artist. Tracey Emin’s works are so directly autobiographical. The art object itself screams autobiographical. Francis Bacon’s paintings are so informed by his immediate psychological emotions rationalised into representation with peculiar sensibilities. Though the painting’s visual language have a lot of baggage surrounding them it all goes back to the Artist, the self. Andy Warhol’s work almost seems like it’s estranged from the artist, as if there is no artist touch. The fact that it seems like that is a touch. With a practice like Warhol, practically his life is the art. And the work an sub disposition to the pure self.
One cannot create something new void of the self because it is inherently all we know. Our personal tastes, desires, preferences are a product of our surroundings and upbringings. To say that art is detached from its maker is to say that the body is removed from the mind and spirit. They all work together as one, to be fully alive. The artist is always present, even in the most unsuspecting of manners. In responding to his own work, film director Federico Fellini states, "all art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography. ” All that one truly knows is the self, art is an expression of that. Many claim that the meaning of life is to find truth. The greatest feat an artist can achieve is to show the self in its purest form through an act of creation.
