Original masters: covers by Chris Foss, Bruce Pennington, Peter Elson, Peter Goodfellow and Bruce Pennington again (I think).
Rearranging my book shelves the other day, I became happily distracted by the covers of my science fiction collection. I have always loved the genre’s cover art and from the age of about nine, it wholly succeeded in drawing me into the literature; as well as enchanting me in its own right. Quite often these images turned out to bear little or no relation to the narrative within and in fact drew me into entirely different worlds of the imagination, than those they were commissioned to sell. This will be the first in an ongoing series of posts about my favourite visual art form. Some of these posts will be about specific artists while others will be about the different aspects of this kind of work and my enjoyment of it.
I could make a long and spirited argument that one day science fiction will be seen as the most important kind of literature, of the 20th Century and maybe beyond. In short, while it is often wanting in style or finesse; it is – by its very nature – strong on narrative and strong on the big issues that face us, in the near and the not so near future. While the literati delight in the filigree of contemporary mainstream fiction, science fiction has long anticipated and wrestled with the moral issues and dilemmas that advances in science and the subsequent emerging technology bring. Mainstream literature is the “this is”: science fiction is the “what if?”
In my opinion, there is a similar tension between the contemporary art world and science fiction and fantasy art. Of course to a large extent this echoes the wider conversation between fine art and mass culture. Although both pop art and post-modern art were happy to consume and recycle the kind of pulp imagery typical of the science fiction and fantasy art of the 1950s and early 1960s, throughout the latter part of the 20th Century; the “art world” did not seem to engage with the genre’s more technically accomplished work from the later 1960s, 1970s and beyond. This changed more recently, amid some controversy.
For some time it would appear that the British art establishment has been addressing an audience of ever decreasing numbers but of ever increasing wealth. For the vast majority of people, what often passes as fine art is just as beyond our comprehension as it is beyond our pockets. Having moved on from concept art, where the concept was that there was no concept (yes, that was actually done), you might have thought that the fine art world have nowhere to go. You would be wrong.
Left: “Nemo’s Castle”
by Chris Foss (the original) Right: “Ornamental Despair
(Painting for Ian Curtis)”
by Glenn Brown
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Recently a painting, from 2002, called Ornamental Despair (Painting for Ian Curtis) by Glenn Brown was sold for £3,554,500. This was little more than a well-executed copy of Nemo’s Castle, painted by Chris Foss many years previously. These are Glenn Browns words, about this picture:
“Foss paintings never look like my versions of them. Mine are always played around with. The colors are altered, the cities were redrawn and I was always inventing things to increase their intensity right from the start. Even 16 years ago I was playing with the images to increase that sense of the Gothic. It was partially there in Chris Foss’s work, but not in quite the same way. All the while I was sort of learning what you can do, learning different techniques from other people. But I never want to lose that notion of appropriation—people say to me, sooner or later you’ll stop copying other artists and you’ll make work of your own, but it’s never been my point to try to do that, because I never thought you ever could. The work is always going to be based on something, and I wanted to make the relationship with art history as obvious as possible. Again, I think it increases the intensity of the way that people look at things.”
Maybe Glenn Brown would have been better to begin by saying “Foss paintings never look exactly like my versions of them”. Most viewers, I imagine, would find the differences between the two paintings very small indeed. That said, if he is claiming that the difference between the two – however narrow – is the space where his art exists; we should give some thought to the significance of that “played around with” aspect of the work. Glen Brown is also stating clearly that the idea of appropriation is central to his work, that he is not passing the painting off as entirely original. Indeed he has always acknowledged the authorship of the original painting and its relationship with his copy. I understand he also got some kind of permission to reference or “sample” the work. It must also be said that it was not Glenn Brown who made more than three an a half million pounds from the sale of Ornamental Despair but a subsequent owner. It is also known that Chris Foss received an undisclosed amount of money, in recognition of his joint authorship of the copy. More significantly – “I wanted to make the relationship with art history as obvious as possible” – Glenn Brown is acknowledging Nemo’s Castle by Chris Foss as part of art history.
Now would usually be the point to talk about post-modernism in some depth but I am not going to. Others have covered this very well, elsewhere: if you are interested please check out the links below. Here, I am going to take another angle.
In the Chinese art tradition an aspiring artist must spend years and years painstakingly reproducing the works of masters, before being allowed to introduce the first smallest stylistic elements of theirs own into the work. Only when one has become adept at copying and then making subtle variations, on existing and recognised themes, is one seen to have acquired the necessary gravitas to become an innovator. Therefore in one sense Glenn Brown’s work represents a transposition of this tradition; a tradition where Chris Foss would be a Master and he would be a novice – even if a talented one. Of course in this cultural paradigm, there is no sense of the copy being any kind of appropriation of the master’s work: it is a tribute. While one may well find virtue in Glenn Brown’s small variations, the vast part of the image’s virtues are those imparted by its original creator.
And there is the rub: these small variations and the very act of appropriation are imbued, by the art establishment and the fine art market, with a value that is grotesquely out of proportion to the value ascribed to the original work. This is something that is not only upsetting to Chris Foss and the other artists who had their work similarly copied by Glenn Brown but to all of us to love science fiction art. I know that post-modernists would say that I am missing the point but I simply do not care. In the fullness of time, I believe that their opinions will prove to be quite unimportant. It would be tempting to argue that this affair demonstrates that the art establishment has reached the end of a blind alley but somehow I suspect it will roll on to further absurdities.
“Dayworld Rebel – LA Towers” – my favourite Chris Foss painting (prints available from the website chrisfossart.com – see below)
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I would argue that in the long run Chris Foss is a more important artist than Glenn Brown. Quite apart from anything else, as illustrator of “The Joy of Sex”, Chris Foss contributed to one of the most culturally significant artefacts of the 1970s. However dated some of its attitudes might now seem to be, translated into more than 20 languages and selling more than 10m copies, this book had a substantial and lasting impact on society. He has also had a real influence on contemporary popular culture, both as a science fiction book cover artist and film set designer. I will go into this work in more detail another time. The point is that many, many more people will have encountered his book covers than will have come across Glenn Brown’s work. Not only that, I believe his work will prove to be more influential, in the long run. Science fiction, both books and film, is the genre most beloved by geeks; the very people who invent the artefacts that make up our contemporary, manufactured environment.
BTW – I love the music of Ian Curtis and Joy Division: I do not think naming a copied image for him is much of a tribute.
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