I suppose it is a misnomer to call these 'studio writing' as they are stream of conscious thoughts I had upon waking, the stuff that accumulated from the previous day that in sleep floated to the front of the line forming inside my head, elbowing their way out through my fingers onto the notepad in my phone as I lay in bed. There is something about these thousand words that has made me want to capture them here.
How does the painter explain the 'deadening' that occurs to the painting through the act of copying?
If painting is performative and per Schechner's idea of the performative equivalent to "as" performance created or coming into existence via acts of restored behavior, THEN the copy itself is never a copy of an original but always a copy of a copy (of a copy, etc).
So, for instance, the drip that occurs when moving fluid paint around the surface while painting may be unique in its occurrence on that surface, with that particular material in that specific moment, but is not original in that each component from which the drip came into existence taken separately -fragments of the drip- has occurred elsewhere before. Time may seem to be the exception however, from the point of view of a person who has experienced regular states of deja vu and jamais vu this is questionable.
I, the painter, can copy the drip either by replicating the conditions - the components, the fragments - from which the copy I am copying came into existence. The copy of the copied drip may appear 'true' or a 'good' likeness. Yet there is something missing.
Reading Auslander on glam rock and the (negative) criticism originally thrown towards Bolan, Bowie, et. al. by the (anti-) establish(-ed, -ment) rock writers/musicians/critics that came just prior was the lack of authenticity. Authenticity being what gave rock its edge, its 'street cred'. Bowie attempted to shut this critique down by saying what he was doing was not music but theatre. However then, and still today almost two years since his final creative acts were thrust upon us shortly before the death of David Jones, we, the listeners, the spectators fail to acknowledge this truth spoken by the artist, even when we ourselves replicate it. We say 'Bowie' performed theater while calling him a musician, a rock musician - limiting the action to a single persona while acknowledging the multitude he played.
Auslander gives the example of the critic Lester Bangs who could not accept Bowie's Ziggy Stardust music as rock because he found it inauthentic. Yet when Bowie released Young Americans Bangs came on board - now Bowie was showing doing what Mr Bangs understood as performing authenticity.
[I see myself sitting on a blue carpet in my almost-teenage bedroom, listening to the cassette tape I've ripped from the LP of Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust I checked out from my local public library soon after getting the stereo from a Santa whose true identity was known to me,; my hair bleached and spikey blonde, wearing my unstructured, turquiois-dyed jean jacket covered in badges from bands of the late 1970s with a little 'Boy Howdy!' pin on the raised right corner-collar, reading Creem and the words of a soon-to-be-late Mr. Bangs, yet I see not the face of Lester Bangs speaking the words I am reading, but the face of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lester Bangs speaking platitudes of rock authenticity. Parts of this memory are authentic.]
Bringing me back to Wollheim's relationship of painter-object-spectator and the copied copy. Is this deadening I, the painter, am perceiving a result of my own limitations looking at the object -the copy- as the painter and not as the spectator? Is it a case of Lester Bangs - unable to open myself to another way of looking at the copy of the drip? Am I not assuming the persona of spectator when standing before the drip? Or is it the drip that through the process of copying has been deadened?
Thinking back to the exercise Franz, Petra and I did this winter in the studio of copying the black and white oil painting I had painted over the course of many months, acts of copying they each undertook from their own ways of painting and copies I then did of Petra's copy using her ways of working with my own variations, I think of how I, Robyn the painter, reacted to the works.
While Franz was very enthusiastic about his copy, I still view it as leaden, static, and heavily awkward in comparison to the painting I painted and Franz copied. Perhaps it is the variation in the materials rather than how Fran built the painting through their application?
I've responded much more positively to Petra's copy, even finding it more 'successful' than the copies I did of her copy later. Again I wonder if I am responding to the materials more than their application or the resulting work? The watercolor Petra used could be seen as being more different from the oil I used than the acrylic Franz used. When I look back at the documentation of Franz painting the copy I grow more enthusiastic about the painting he is doing at the stages of the process where the work appeared furthest from the original. Is this my own 'authenticity bias'?And is it mine as the painter or as the spectator?
Back to Bowie, in 1972 interviews both NME and Rolling Stone the artist said he envisioned his work as theater, assuming characters on a stage as if in a Broadway or West End musical. At some point he could just step out of the role he developed, step off the stage and another actor could step on and into the role. Yet when Ziggy Stardust 'died' some 18 months later no other actor stepped into the role. Instead Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars were frozen in the moment Bowie played them. Why? Did no other actor feel him or herself able to step into the role? Many who came after did (attempt) to assume the techniques Bowie applied to creating the character-persona; but never assumed the role of Ziggy.
I need to look this up, but recently on NPR I heard musicians speaking of covers of songs and how they only do one if they can add something to the original -I guess they implied make the cover 'authentic'. Most covers they find bad because they fail to do this, though every now and then their are exceptions. How many 'good' covers of Bowie in various guises have I heard?
Yesterday I saw that a popular rock (odd combination of words but their use together says much about the post-Ziggy age of music) musician will/has taken it upon him/herself ( I don't know now who this musician is - must inquire further, or not?) to perform Ziggy. Bring him back to life, I suppose. There were photos -recreations of Ziggy and a red shaggy mullet, mime-like layers of make up, sky blue polyester suit. Another actor in the role. But as I looked at the pictures I thought "that's not Ziggy!"
What was missing in the Ziggy-drip I was looking at?
There must have been something beyond theater or the role of a character that Bowie brought to the character-persona. Was it something that was scattered with the ashes of Mr Jones into the Pacific?
Or was it Lester Bangs standing before me, preventing me to see that drip as an authentic copy just like Ziggy was?