The Beauty of The Banal Objects In Keith Arnatt’s 1980 – 1995 Photographs
- Valerie Lee Tong
- Feb 21, 2023
- 54 min read
INTRODUCTION
"Making a distinction between, or opposing, artists and photographers is, it strikes me, like making a distinction between, or opposing, food and sausages – surely odd. In the way that sausages may be given as an example of food, photography may be given as an example of artists' practice. The notions of distinction and opposition simply do not and cannot apply to these differing category terms"[1]
Keith Arnatt (February 1982)
These are the words that Keith Arnatt (1930-2008) used to criticise the Tate Gallery's photographic collection and policies at the time when he transitioned from a conceptual artist to a photographer. He was regarded as one of the most recognized artists in the British conceptual art community, especially during his late 1960s and early 1970s when he used installations and acts that changes according to his surrounding or immediate environment. Writers often commented that his works were something unusual and the theme of paradox was crucial to his conceptual work. In fact, Keith himself stated in a 1997 interview that "I am really fond of paradox - though equally attracted to perversity."[2] Bate commented his works contained “serious humour”[3] and Harrison recalled that “there was something about the oddness” of Keith’s work.[4]
Keith Arnatt’s photography journey began when he started using it as a tool for documenting his conceptual installation works. His photograph of Earth Plug (1967) and Liverpool Beach Burial (1968) clearly shows that they hold the meaning to document the scene of the installation, there were no composition or planning considered when taking the photograph of the scene. Though he directed the photographs, they were not taken by him but by other photographers[5]. There were also other British conceptual artists who used photography as documentation for example Richard Long’s documentation of A Line Made By Walking, 1967. Debates on whether early documentation of conceptual art can stand alone as a work of art are still ongoing. Skrebowski argued that the image serves as the supporting evidence for artworks that are less physically extensive or constrained, claiming that a concept or object in the photograph may qualify as a work of art[6]. On the other hand, Wall argues that photography is incapable of “auto-critique”, or the ability to develop alternatives to depiction[7].
I believe that this question on the status of photo documentation was always on the mind of Arnatt. He mentioned in an interview with Roberts: “Originally I thought of the work as being the ‘objects’ photograph – not the photographs themselves – their function I simply regarded as ‘evidence’[8], basically the photographs were simply just evidence of his absent artworks. He wanted to record his work since he had learned from the mistakes of his predecessor. The work of Claes Oldenburg, whose piece Hole (1967) perplexed him and left him wondering if had it actually taken place since at the time there was no reproduction, no film, no visual evidence, just a report of an act being conducted, was a major influence on Arnatt.[9] However, at the same time, he realized that a photograph may not be able to convey messages to its viewers, “the viewer would need to investigate the object in order to comprehend it”[10].
Soon, Arnatt began to experiment with the “unreliability of photography evidence”[11]. He used photography with the purpose to convey his philosophical ideas, and the photographs were able to stand alone as a work of art instead of documentation. His works are related to the idea of the "dematerialization" of the artwork, which holds that if the artwork vanished, the artist would also vanish.[12] Self-Burial (1969) and Art as an Act of Retraction, 1971, showed himself in a kind of stop motion shot of ongoing performance. Photographs were used by artists, such as Bruce McLean’s Pose Works for Plinths (1971), to capture a variety of actions, frequently sarcastic or playful, and intended to serve as temporary (anti-)sculptures[13]. At that time, artists used photography to appropriate and reuse pre-existing pictures, as well as for documentary purposes, deadpan anti-aesthetic characteristics, and unadorned armature snapshot effects.[14]
“I’m Keith Arnatt. Would you help me become a photographer?” Arnatt’s transition into art photography occurred when Magnum photographer David Hurn came to Newport Art College, where Arnatt was teaching, in 1973. He later left sculpture and fine art to working in Hurn's department after the two of them became friends.[15] It was through Hurn that Arnatt "became aware of the history and practice of photography" and "need to question the status of photography".[16] Arnatt began to constantly refer to himself as a ‘photographer’ and focused his artistic career on photography entirely, especially after Alan Bowness’s declaration that Tate will only accept photography taken by an artist, not a photographer. This is Keith Arnatt, who is frequently characterized as someone who would go a different route if something gained popularity, as Parr mentioned that “he enjoyed the unpredictable and the act of provocation”.[17] As he became deeply interested in the history of photography, he began to create work that was uniquely his own: strange, subtly hilarious, and provocative reflections on the ordinary that were both sharply perceptive and ludicrous.[18]
However, the transmission led him to become an unpopular photographer. His dislike of self-promoting was probably one of the reasons as Hurn mentioned that "Keith has no ability to network or promote himself"[19] while Grafik said he "was incapable of negotiating his way around the circuit"[20]. Arnatt only had two solo exhibitions between 1979 and 1986, and the Tate discontinued collecting his work[21]. The galleries appeared to have run out of patience with the unpredictable artist after the show in 1972 at Tate and when he switched to photography.[22] During his photography journey he produced works such as The Visitors (1974–1966), Walking the Dog (1976–1979), and Gardeners (1978–1989), that captured his subjects' immediate surroundings as well as a collection of background information. After that, he took landscape pictures like The Forest in 1986 and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 1982-5.
From the year 1990-95, it was clear that his photography skills had improved, and his photographs have a certain kind of aesthetic quality to them. However, Arnatt was photographing a number of odd everyday objects, or what many writers would define as “banal” objects, such as used toilet rolls, socks, cans, notes from his wife, and even dog turds. Based on the dictionary, the meaning of “banal” could be boring, ordinary, and not original, it seems as though he was taking photographs of abandoned ready-made objects. Though the subject in his 1990-95 photographs seems banal, the way he photographed these objects somehow attracts you into looking at them, staring at them, and sometimes, feeling a sense of life from them. Finding information about these photographs was quite difficult. Even if there are writings that examine and give some insight into his photographic work through a number of exhibition catalogues and journals, the majority of the writings were on his images of rubbishes, particularly his photographic series of the Rubbish Tip (1988-89). Despite the fact that Arnatt's photographs are well-known in the art world, according to Ikanovi and Hatibovi, his initial audience consisted primarily of "photographic buffs, people who are knowledgeable in photography and the history of photography,"[23] with only a small number of both art critics and artists feeling comfortable enough to discuss and interpret his work.[24]
This brings me to a question: Why did Keith Arnatt photograph all these abandoned banal objects? What influenced him to take pictures of these objects from 1990 – 1995? How did he manage to turn banality into something worth taking and turning it into a beautiful object? This dissertation will examine how Keith Arnatt represented banal objects, connecting them to the influence of photography art movements that were going on at that time. I also believe that the aesthetic influence of the photographs was from his knowledge of painting, sculpture, and art history as David Hurn mentioned that Arnatt’s work “always linked to the history of something. His knowledge of the history of art, for example. I’ve never known anyone absorb the history of photography as quickly as Keith”[25]. I will also relate these photographs to his previous conceptual work as I argue that these photographs not only contained aesthetic value, but also the essence of paradox and humour that came from his philosophical background when he was a conceptual artist. The fact that Arnatt worked in series was a crucial aspect of his work, "Keith said and he has put a real emphasis on the importance of series"[26]. With that, his photograph will be studied in a series rather than individually.
I will be splitting this dissertation into three chapters. In the first chapter “Isolation and Displacement of the Banal Object”, I will be analysing the shift that can be seen in a few series of his photography work before 1990, mostly landscape photographs, when he isolated his subject in the photograph causing a displacement. The displacement of the object removes them from the original context of time and space and is represented in a new context on the plane of the photograph, which challenges our ways of seeing and dissecting the content of the image, creating what I argue, two oppositional ideas that contradict each other. This chapter will also introduce the photography art movements that may influence his choice of subject/object, to take photographs of landscape, industrial sites, and man-made objects, and was able to relate banal with the theme of desolation and abandonment. In my second chapter “The Aesthetic of His Banal Object”, Keith Arnatt was able to use his knowledge of painting, sculpture, and art history to turn banal objects into beautiful things in a humorous way, further removing the object from the original context and reconstructing them in a new order. The photographs that will be examined are his photographic series of rubbish and close up of unwanted ready-made objects. The last chapter, “His Play of Words and Titles”, examines the way he used words or titles that instructed us to read his banal object from a different point of view. Again, reconstructing the context of the object leads us to see them as something different instead of what they originally are.
With a number of interviews transcript, past catalogues, journals, and art-critic reviews that will be studied throughout these chapters, I will be able to see the progress of his photography journey, to understand his work can not only be seen as a paradox or humour that he was famous for, but also his ability to observe objects in every possible way when being photographed. I argue that his photographs at the end were able to create oppositional thoughts or ideas that contradict each other when spectators are looking at and interpreting his images.
Chapter One: Isolation and Displacement of the Banal Object
“I was teaching a sculpture course at Manchester College of Art and I discussed with my students the possibility of sculpture’s being what I called “situational”. By this I meant that the focus of attention could be upon what one did with an “object” rather that the object itself. Context itself became the determining factor in what we did. In other words, revealing an aspect of a particular (physical) context became the point of our activity… The focus of attention was on behavior patterns themselves.”[27]
Keith Arnatt (1973)
In the 1980s, photographic-based works became more expansive and ambitious in acknowledgment of the medium's close linkages to popular culture in entertainment and advertising. British photographers documented difficult social issues because they no longer believed in the obvious fixes and dogmatic political positions of conventional documentarians. The social, political, and cultural milieu of the 1970s and 1980s was significantly impacted by the laws and policies of Thatcher's government.[28] David Gwinnutt was a part of the London club scene of the 1980s, his photographs depicted the social unrest and economic misery in 1980s Britain. He saw a young, independent group of artists who, although having limited finances were able to dominate the London club scene's creative spark. The personal photographs, which were taken in their homes, are far different from the glitz of the after-work gatherings.[29] This was a direct critique of how different artist would live instead of the high life of the city that were usually advertised. Photographers such as the most iconic images of the British shoreline by Martin Parr were capturing the working class for his series The Last Resort, between 1983 and 1985, while he was visiting the New Brighton beach resort near Liverpool[30].
In a writing about Arnatt, Parr stated that "He was a great believer in routine: his arrival and departure times were set in stone."[31] Unlike popular photographers at that time who focused to take photographs of figures and buildings in other locations, Keith Arnatt was known to take photographs from his local area and focus on the objects that he observed around him. He would see every possibility in every object and turn them into the subject of his photograph. There’s a discussion about Arnatt’s favour for “localism” during an interview, Fraser commented that: “there’s something deeply resonant about living and working in a very localized area and having a deep and profound respect for your immediate environment… something very moving about an artist who hasn’t travelled further than eight miles to make their work over many decades.[32]” Hurn also further suggested that he has “a kind of ecology of the self and the area, an attention to your zone, your parish”[33]. Fox ended with her comment by saying: “Keith gives you this feeling that you could photograph anything and that is incredibly liberating…It’s incredible that out of that small space that he worked in, these eight miles, he realised this huge potential that other people who travel around the world don’t have.[34]” This continuous search of possible subjects in his local area led him to find interest in banal, ordinary objects that are common subjects in his 1990 – 1995’s photographs. However, before that, I will study the process of how Keith Arnatt isolated his object through his series of photographs from the 1980s.
Figure 1: Keith Arnatt, Untitled, 1980-82, black & white photographs, (Keith Arnatt Estate)
Figure 2: Keith Arnatt, Abandoned Sites, 1980, black & white photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
The theme of banality objects can be first seen in the landscape photography of an Untitled series (1980-82) and Abandoned Sites (1980). In these two series, the banality theme can also be associated with the theme of desolation or abandonment. In Untitled (Fig. 1) the concept of the sublime, an idea related to aesthetics that became popular in 18th-century British Landscape painting, can be felt in the image which I believe came from Arnatt’s knowledge of art history and painting. On the field of what it seems like dried grass, the wilted tree is standing alone against the landscape which brings out a sense of desolation. The other series that the title had already suggested Abandoned Sites (Fig. 2), literally shows a place that was abandoned by man and overgrown by the force of nature. These photographs can be seen as a kind of photojournalism or documentation, a “photographic truth” where the landscape was “automatically and faithfully duplicates nature”[35]. Black and white images capture the allure of the conceptual realm and the mystique of theoretical ideas. They also plainly demonstrate their theoretical foundation since the mechanism of it is more direct, accurate, and correct.[36] However, Godfrey noted that "art photography" was nearly always done in black and white since the detachment from reality it provided enhanced a purely "aesthetic" character,[37] that distance is what made the landscape look picturesque.
Arnatt’s works reminded me of another British photographer, John Davies, who was actively taking pictures of what he called “The British Landscape”. The photos that were taken by both Arnatt and Davies give out the feeling of banality and abandonment, which were faithfully captured and adopted as the unbreakable law of an analytical style using clean black and white photographs. Davies was taking pictures of landscapes and industrial sites of different places such as Cheshire, Sheffield, Salford, and so on. In the enormous area shared by the powerful forces of nature and the conflicting forces of civilization, he made the decision to work in two directions. Based on Valtorta, one direction was the photographic depiction of a living, almost mystical space-light that reminds of Turner's symbolization of the natural forces and arouses strong emotions in the viewer. The other direction was a keen eye that notices the components of the contemporary environment that are linked to the expansion of productive activities and the physical structure of the world through the influence of property and the economy.[38] Similar to Keith’s approach to the landscape and industrial landscape, it was more on documenting as Davies mentioned “…I have drawn inspiration from issues relating to my surroundings and conditioning. Initially I develop an interest in documenting aspects of my immediate social political landscape.”[39]
Figure 3: Keith Arnatt, Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (A.O.N.B.), 1982-85, black & white photographs, (Keith Arnatt Estate)
Continuing in a black and white setting, the theme of banality with desolation and abandonment was continued in his next series of works Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (Fig. 3). However, this time, he really wanted viewers to focus on the banal objects that were purposefully isolated in the photograph. Keith traveled to places that have been erroneously labeled as "areas of outstanding natural beauty" and directed his efforts at their filthy peripheries. Herbert commented that these visuals serve as a marker that Arnatt is a virtuoso at creating straightforward images that bind the brainstem in category knots. These locations are regarded as being magnificent, however, Arnatt has discovered a location that claims they are not. Nevertheless, as photos, these locations are stunning because of the smoky, monochromatic look the artist uses.[40] The landscape was taken in the idea of a “picturesque” style of aesthetic thought that was popular in Britain in the late 18th and early 19th century about reality and painted landscape, where the composition of the landscape was taken into consideration to make a picture beautiful. Based on Schwabsky, Arnatt had acknowledged drawing inspiration from Eugene Atget for these pieces, and like Atget's photographs, his work may, in the words of Walter Benjamin, " begin to be evidence in the historical trial."[41] Frenchman and pioneer of documentary photography, Eugène Atget was renowned for his tenacity in capturing every aspect of Paris's architectural and urban landscape before it is lost to modernity. Keith Arnatt’s picturesque elements and his way of blurring the landscape may also come from Atget’s series Petits Métiers, where Atget recorded the little trades while taking on a series of picturesque Parisian sites.[42]
Other than that, the inspiration of his subject and object for his photograph may be inspired by the art photography movement. Stathatos mentioned that this series of works was influenced by the American New Topographic school[43]. Adding to that, Paley stated Arnatt's understanding of the typological interests of painters and photographers as various as Bernd and Hilla Becher and Robert Adams had an impact on the observant manner of this series.[44] William Jenkins first used the term "new topographic" in 1975 to refer to a group of American photographers (including Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz) whose works shared a banal aesthetic and were basic, primarily black-and-white prints of urban landscapes. Many of the photographers who were involved with the new topographic were influenced by man-made objects and chose realistic subject matter. In a way that is almost reminiscent of how early photographers captured the natural landscape, parking lots, suburban homes, and warehouses were all captured with a beautiful raw simplicity.[45] Since this movement started before the 1980s, it was possible that Arnatt knew and was influenced by them as he too was photographing man-made banal objects and representing them as something that can be categorised as something beautiful which I will further explain later.
I also argue that these photographs may also be influenced by photographers that dealt with the topic of Thatcherism, which I addressed at the beginning of this chapter because it was almost the same period when Arnatt was photographing these pictures. This is a characteristic of rural scenes that many artists have tried to disguise or eradicate throughout the years by adding whimsical elements. His photographs of landscape are either littered with human garbage or completely enhanced by human activity in order to satisfy a certain banal desire. Landscapes seen as pure or untouched are unintelligible in 1982 when Arnatt captures the environmental repercussions of a civilization brutalizing itself. This is even more disturbing when you think about Thatcher's own environmental policies, which were highly green at the time while sometimes being ludicrous. According to Allen, the 1980s photograph causes the spectator to consider how man affects the environment. She concluded that the viewer may feel that men had carelessly destroyed natural areas with rubbish and other things.[46] However, I want to add further that though the subject may be influenced by the photographs associated with Thatcherism, the idea that the photographs of Arnatt appear to suggest was that rubbish may be beautiful if you look at it in the right way. When viewing the photographs, the thought of “simply throwing rubbish is wrong and shouldn't be done” does not pop in the spectator’s mind, instead, was amazed by the surprising beauty hidden in the seemingly banal objects.
In all its picturesque, there is something in the photographs that somehow, irritate our eyes, the abandoned banal objects that took our attention away from the beautiful landscape. These photographs were purely not documentation anymore as he was conscious in deciding on what to photograph and serve a purpose. He was a great observer and took pictures in huge amounts, in fact, “a staggering amount of material”[47], and worked his way through by focusing on a specific subject when he found something amusing. There, he began to isolate the object to enable viewers to draw attention to it. Keith Arnatt managed to isolate what we could see in a landscape (Fig. 3), a well (top left) and the trash (top right), a mountain of garbage (bottom left), and materials that were possibly used for the construction site (bottom right) by blurring the background, making them looking sharp, clear and honestly, really gave that “hit your face” effect when looking at them.
The object somehow seemed isolated and displaced in a world where they do not belong. In reality, the rubbish or man-made object simply do not belong together with the picturesque landscape. This was his play with conceptualism - the definitions of the work using a variety of approaches and strategies that were influenced by both the content and the context.[48] The isolation and displacement of the object “breaks apart and forms another kind of order”[49]. This displacement of the object removes them from the original context of reality, space, and time. They were then represented in a new context in the frame of the photograph that was taken. The photographed object that was depicted in the plane of the photograph may be seen from all angles from the centre of time and space. This caused a mixed and confusing oppositional thought, we came to question and believe that the man-made well and the trash doesn’t belong together yet in the photograph, they do and they became the centre of attention instead of the romantic blur landscape.
Butler argues that Arnatt is successful in "indexing of the unintelligible"; what the camera captures so precisely, the eye may detect but does not always comprehend. The photographer acknowledges purposefully making these photographs challenging to decipher. As shapes and objects lose their individuality, perceiving surpasses knowing. In the unreadable "chaos of disintegration", "phantasmagoric" materials appear as "ghostly simulacra", frequently face-like forms, that arise and disappear. In an effort to counteract the collapse of logical thought, the mind replaces metaphors of the familiar, yet these pictures are impossible to precisely articulate. In this wasteland, entire categories of human functioning collide with one another as the objects that sustained them are destroyed. "Identification fails, and with it, identification."[50] This situation is where the viewers were doubting. They are doubts in the sense of a brand-new kind of doubt in deciding. Every time a challenge presents itself, photographers learn that the viewpoint they have chosen is focused on the "object" and the camera gives a variety of other viewpoints.[51] Displacing the object from the original context and reintroducing it in new possibilities of other contexts made one wonder maybe Arnatt’s photograph of the banal man-made well, garbage, and materials of a construction site, something so unimportant, can too be seen as beautiful as the landscape. This influence can also be seen in Landscape Manual, 1969, a series by Jeff Wall that may be seen as being concerned with the banal. The works, which are remorselessly anti-romantic and self-consciously untidy like much 1960s conceptual art, observe the world via a windscreen and a reflection and make references to both road films and what Godfrey mentioned as "the sense of being but not belonging in the landscape,"[52] a sense of displacement.
Figure 4: Keith Arnatt, Miss Grace’s Lane, 1986–7, colour photographs (Tate, London)
Moving on to his coloured photograph series of Miss Grace’s Lane (Fig. 4), Arnatt moved away from the theme of desolation, he focused on the abandoned banal objects. Arnatt did a similar move by isolating and displacing the man-made object in a scenery. Isolating them by using contrasting vivid colours that displace them from the natural world. The warm red box against the cold green and blue background (top left), the highly saturated plastic bags against the earthy tones of the leaves, trees, and hills (top right and bottom left), and the oval-shaped tyre against a smooth lake (bottom right). Here it was shown that he really made use of colours and textures as his advantage of isolating the objects from the background.
Again, we were forced to look at them even though they are an everyday object that can be found in our ordinary life, especially at home. Apart from when such an object starts to infringe on the other occupants of that ecosystem, Arnatt appears to imply that such proof of a landscape being lived in should not always be considered a bad thing. I believe Keith was not talking about pollution or the “saving the world” agenda in these pictures, but playing with the composition and colours of photography, which made us think the rubbish was the ‘star’ of the photographs. The act of removing the banal object from the original context of time and space and representing them in a photographed landscape made them being part of what people perceive as a beautiful landscape.
Figure 5: Keith Arnatt, Defecation Piece, 1969 (Keith Arnatt Estate)
This act of isolation was also shown in his previous conceptual work such as Self-burial, 1969, and the Art as an Act of Retraction, 1971. Arnatt isolated himself in the frame of the camera and became the centre of attention in the performance. Through all the snapshots, the only objects that remained different and moving will be Arnatt himself. Our eyes were locked on the artist, watching him slowly sinking into the ground or attempting to “eat his own words” as he is the only moving object in the pictures. Foote mentioned that by "isolating" a particular instant or by providing a linear sequence, a photograph can help artists capture movements and processes without having to worry about the potential boredom of watching a film or videotape of the real occurrence.[53]
The camera is a device that duplicates images and makes no decision in terms of what to take, it was the photographer. The act of controlling the camera was also played by John Hillard, the artist famous for his Camera Recording its Own Condition (7 Apertures, 10 Speeds, 2 Mirrors), 1971. However, in his Cause of Deah? (3), 1974, Hillard effectively made the obvious transition to focus only on photography and started a thorough investigation of how the camera produced meaning. He looked at every camera feature, including cropping, focusing, exposing, and processing. This particular piece looks into how an image's cropping might change its meaning.[54] The act of isolation can also be seen most obviously in his Defecation Piece, 1969 (Fig. 5) where the first picture seems to look like an ordinary road, yet he slowly ‘zooms in’ to a certain spot in the following sequence of the photos, like the snapshot of his performance behind the camera. Towards the end of the sequence, it was the faeces that he thought it was important for viewers to notice. To make the spectator think how ridiculous was it for him to “zoom in” or “crop” on something so unimportant and also disgusting, was humorous.
Figure 6: Keith Arnatt, Dog Turd, 1990, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
The image of the feaces must have been in his mind as he began to photograph Dog Turds in 1990 (Fig. 6). These “zoom-in” dog poop became so attractive to our eyes because the turds were isolated against a concrete background. Here the ordinary poop that we ignore completely on the road became the subject of the image. It reflects the parodic character of Keith Arnatt that he always had, challenging that anything can be photographed and taken into as art. The dog turds were taken out of the ordinary context of reality and represented in a new context within a frame, as an object worth looking at. It must be joking when these were placed in a gallery, hanging on the wall, with a visitor looking into the photographs, questioning whether this dog poop was considered “art”.
As Arnatt mentioned, "the viewer would need to investigate the object in order to comprehend it”.[55] This act was definitely humourous and was mocking the conceptual movement. It also reminded me of his other work, the Artist's Piss (1970) where Arnatt makes fun of the Conceptual Art movement and his own engagement in it by using the derogatory connotations of urine. He urinated on the wall, and when the urine spilled onto the pavement, he shot it. The artist is neither present in his work nor has he done any "work" at all; he slowly pulls himself away from the artwork as he does so. He “is approaching a kind of purity of idea as art”.[56]
Figure 7: Keith Arnatt, Howler’s Hill, 1987-88, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
The Howlers Hill, a huge dump site in the Forest of Dean close to Coleford, included plastic trash bags that covered several acres. Arnatt took it further by focusing on the object of rubbish by itself. Removing all other elements unrelated to rubbish such as the mountain, the sky, the trees, the grass, and the road of the landscape, focusing only on the rubbish. The photographs of rubbish in the series of Howler’s Hill, 1987-88 (Fig, 7) became an image of “abstraction”. We must consider these images to be "abstract" (as reductions of the four dimensions of space and time to the two surface dimensions). The unique ability to abstract objects out of space and time and to reflect them back into space and time is what is referred to as "imagination", providing a “space for interpretation”.[57]
According to Herbert, bits of rotting food waste is separated from the larger mass of trash and transformed into pitiful still life by crumpled polythene that is reminiscent of "classical draperies."[58] Arnatt completely isolated the rubbish that he chose to be in the frame of his camera. The idea is to “zoom in” the rubbish, removing them from that context of time and space and representing them in the frame of the photograph as a work of “art” for viewers to interpret. To represent the rubbish as a work of art was already simply a paradox and humor. As Arnatt was a lover of philosophy, Bate believed that Arnatt adopted the statement Walter Benjamin once said that photographers were “'incapable of photographing a tenement rubbish heap without making it look beautiful”. Arnatt, however, wasn't trying to disprove Benjamin's assertions; rather, he wanted to demonstrate to the audience how the organization of what is seen through photography relies on how it is taken.[59]
Viewers can look at these photographs as a work of art or from a number of different viewpoints because of Arnatt’s way of isolating and displacement of an object. When we were able to look at these photographs of rubbish as a work of art, we are able to see these banal objects as pure colours and compositions. According to Butler, the vast expanses of plastic trash bags glitter like gems in the landscape when the sun catches them. Butler also commented that the ornate drapes, splendid colours, and opulent plastic remind her of Venetian and Baroque paintings.[60] Viewers focus on the colours of the dirt, plastic bags, and all the unwanted objects. They began to admire the different textures contained in the images, the rough surface of the rubbish, the smooth shiny plastic bag, and the lines that were created by the contour of different objects. The aesthetic and beauty of the photograph may be influenced by his background as a painter and sculptor, and also his knowledge of art history. What other influences made his photograph of the banal object has a certain kind of aesthetic value? How did he make them beautiful? This will be examined in the next chapter of this essay.
Chapter Two: The Aesthetic of His Banal Object
“making pictures which are not chaotic out of chaos”[61]
Keith Arnatt
“In choosing their categories, photographers may think they are bringing their own aesthetic, epistemological or political criteria to bear...There is no such thing as naive, non-conceptual photography. A photograph is an image of concepts.”[62]
Vilem Flusser - 1983
Keith Arnatt was known to do things differently compared to others, he changed according to his surroundings and trends. Even in art photography, he continued to challenge the norms of art photography at that time, taking pictures of irrelevant everyday objects, and inaesthetic objects and turning them into artistic photographs, what he meant as non-chaotic pictures of chaos. This was because of his past as a conceptual artist because modernism was defined by its reliance on the medium's distinctiveness, especially in the form of painting or sculpture, whereas conceptual art rejected this and favoured banal objects rather than something exalted.[63] However, rather than abandoning aesthetic judgment, he embraces aesthetics and implied them in his photographs. The most known photograph of the banal object would be the Pictures from a Rubbish Tip series, 1988-89 (Fig. 8), as this series received quite a number of criticisms and reviews by many writers.
Figure 8: Keith Arnatt, Pictures from a Rubbish Tip, 1988-89 (Keith Arnatt Estate)
When Arnatt uses "colour enlargements" in this series, it becomes more obvious that photography is an irresistible seducer, especially "where it echoes painting."[64] A few food items that have been tossed, including bread and chicken bones that are positioned on top of transparent, light-colored plastic bags, are zoomed in on. The daylight coming from nearby is filtered and reflected by these bags, highlighting the many colours of the rubbish and giving the scene a vibrantly coloured, and almost abstract aspect. As I have described in my previous chapter, these photographs can be seen as a work of art because of the isolation and displacement of the object. The closest edge of each item is where Arnatt opted to concentrate this extremely small plane of focus, based on the critique by Mark Haworth-Booth. This, in Arnatt's opinion, places the observer in the same situation that he was in when he initially saw and picked up these partially buried things.[65] Hurn claimed that Arnatt intentionally disguised the image's backdrop by placing the rubbish up close and using bright but hazy lighting, making it difficult for viewers to identify the trash as the image's subject. Hurn continued to say that the series is about seeing and the distinction between knowing something and truly seeing it. Even if we are aware that this object is a slice of cake or orange, it may look to be a Turner when it is taken out of context or photographed in a distinctive manner.[66] The above photographs of close-up rubbish which one would think of as something disgusting was somehow giving an illusion of an abstract painting of colours and textures, they are creating oppositional thoughts, or contradicting ideas in the mind of spectators.
Ikanovi and Hatibovi suggested that Arnatt's works were influenced by one of the significant photographic movements. His images' tendency to seem like paintings might be connected to the principles of the Pictorialist photographic movement.[67] In the latter half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, pictorialism was the dominant aesthetic movement in photography. Pictorial photographers manipulated their images to obfuscate their photographic features and emphasise their artistic ones. The picture looks to be out of focus and may include surface manipulations, such as brush strokes, that may be seen. Pictorialists produced artistic works or one-of-a-kind prints by manipulating the visual of images adopting what some have described as "ennobling tactics,"[68] which manipulated prints can be able to transmit an emotional purpose into the viewer's realm of imagination. The purpose of this photography approach was to create lyrical, emotionally charged photographs that were connected to and, in some cases, descended from the traditional arts in terms of meaning and substance[69]. It was also said that photographers at that time depict paintings of ongoing movement, for example, the pre-Raphael movement where the photographer would stage models with costumes and props to copy the painting. Objects in the photograph were often staged to create an illusion of a painting or drawing for the viewers.
I would not 100 percent agree that he was inspired by Pictorialism photography as his goal was not trying to create or imitate certain paintings or drawings to create an illusion but to represent the rubbish as a beautiful object. However, I do agree to some extent that his act of staging his rubbish and creating an image to look like an illusion of a beautiful painting does seem to reflect the practice of a Pictorialist photographer, especially the way he blurred the background of the rubbish by using a transparent bag and created a very painterly, airy, brushstroke-like background for the selected food. The selected food was then isolated and represented in a new context within the illusion painting. Such an act was also able to be seen in his A.O.N.B series (Fig. 3) with the way he blurred the landscape that created this romantic illusion for the selected rubbish or man-made objects that I have discussed in the first chapter.
The other influence he had was Samuel Palmer. Friends around Arnatt knew he loved Palmer's works as Hurn mentioned he “suggested that what he was doing had a lot to do with people like Samuel Palmer…”[70] Also, according to Mellor, Keith Arnatt had been familiar with Palmer's paintings since he was a young lad, and he frequently refers to his Miss Grace's Lane and Howlers Hill pictures as "Polythene Palmers" due to the fact his own use of plastic paper and the vibrant colours of Fuji Films.[71] In the early 1950s, Keith first studied painting at Oxford School of Art, and later at the Royal Academy Schools. These suggested that he was influenced by his fine art background and knowledge of art history to create such an illusion in his later photography. He could have drawn inspiration from Samuel Palmer, a nineteenth-century English painter and pupil of William Blake, who created the Arcadian Landscapes. Palmer painted dreamy pastoral paintings and was a significant character in British Romanticism. He began painting churches about the age of twelve and, at the age of fourteen, debuted his first "Turner-inspired" pieces at the Royal Academy.[72] With that, the element of colour is greatly important for Arnatt in composing his photograph of the rubbish. The skies of Palmer’s A Dream in the Apennine, 1864, can be felt in the shades of pastel pink and purple in Arnatt’s top right and bottom left photograph (Fig. 8). The contrasting shades of dark and warm tone in A Cornfield by Moonlight with the Evening Star, 1830, can be felt in the top left photograph (Fig. 8), the way the sunlight hit the plastic bags create a sky of the dark night and the shiny elements represented the orange bright moonlight. Palmer was only one of several painters' analogies Butler proposed, she also included post-Impressionism for its’ colour scheme, contrasts of blue-black and rust that would represent the surface of hazily reflected waters, and possibly anything by Monet.[73]
Figure 9: Keith Arnatt, Dog Turds, 1990, coloured photograph (Keith Arnatt Estate)
Arnatt used the same techniques in the next series of works, another series of Dog Turds, 1990 (Fig. 9) this time in a flowery background instead of a concrete road. These photographs of dog turd were actually the photos that prompted me to understand more about Keith Arnatt as I found them amusing and they created contradicting thoughts in my mind. I remember telling my coursemates “They are incredible, and I can’t believe what I’m about to say but I find this dog poops so . . . aesthetically beautiful.” I thought it was hilarious hearing myself saying that, even my coursemates do agree with me that there’s a certain aesthetic value to these photographs.
These photographs were different from the series of Dog Turds (Fig. 6) on the concrete road. Previously, the background was plain and static and only served as a space to isolate the dog turds to attract the attention of the viewers. Here, the background was purposefully composed in the frame of the camera to serve meanings for the photograph. The dog turd was clear and contrasted by the blurred background that was what people usually perceived as beautiful flowers and fresh green grass. The blurred background instead consisted of shades of colours that created this fantasy illusion for the dog turds. The dog turds, like a model in a photoshoot magazine, were positioned in this illusion of fantasy. Although the dog turds seem displaced in a world they do not belong together, the photograph managed to blend them as viewers are able to see the dog turds in a new context on the plane of the photograph. To combine both a banal dog turd and a beautiful background, the dog turd was once again displaced into a context that was perceived as beautiful, this resulted that the dog turd being reinterpreted as something beautiful as well. These photographs were a perfect paradox for Arnatt, and they do create oppositional and contradicting thoughts. Arnatt's photos, according to Herbert, exceed typologies by presenting irrational combinations of "sweet and sour". This series took this strategy to its logical conclusion, offering turf-level images of startlingly fresh or hardened stools against a backdrop of vibrant green grass and pink flowers. These brown offerings are isolated and made comically magnificent by the shallow depth of field. A forensic perspective on what Arnatt's dog has been eating is also made possible by sharp focus.[74]
From the year 1990, the photographs of the banal object that was staged against a plain or purposefully composed background were a constant theme in Keith Arnatt’s photography until 1995. Not only do they contain a certain aesthetic value but may also serve as a kind of comedic act, with some element of desolation, evilness, and an eerie feel to them. The series of abandoned toys against a dark background, ordinary socks and used tissue rolls against a white background, and notes from his wife that were flattened and photographed are works that I will continue to analyse that contained oppositional and contradicting ideas.
Figure 10: Keith Arnatt, The Tears of Things (Objects from a Rubbish Tip), 1990-1991, coloured photograph (Keith Arnatt Estate)
“Bringing these objects home to his garden shed, Arnatt props them on a tin can pedestal and shoots them, feebly lit by daylight.”[75] For the next few series of works, Arnatt played a lot with single objects against a dark background that gave a “Chiaroscuro” effect, the use of dramatic contrasts between light and dark, frequently impacting the whole composition of the image. These series of photographs reminded me of a famous Baroque painter, Carravagio, and his use of chiaroscuro in his painting created an eerie feel and dramatic effects to his painting.
Up until 1992, Arnatt was still fascinated by the ability of photography to alter objects. Items are recovered and put on a basic constructed pedestal in The Tears of Things (Objects from a Rubbish Tip) 1990–1991 before being photographed in close focus with natural light. Spectators may have a mix of feelings about them, some may feel a sense of humour for Arnatt to take pictures of banal objects that were picked from the rubbish tip, but because of the use of dramatic light, the abandoned toys emerge into the light, revealing the “scars” on their surface. The toys and other items are given the sorrow of rejection and neglect in addition to the clear pleasure Arnatt derives from examining these objects' minute visual characteristics. The theme of desolation or abandonment in his 1980s series of photographs could be felt in these series. One could feel the sadness in these photographs and that’s Arnatt’s incredible ability to capture anything and represented them with new meaning in the plane of the photograph.
Figure 11: Keith Arnatt, The Sleep of Reason, 1990, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
The theme of desolation and abandonment can also be seen in the series The Sleep of Reason, 1990, (Fig. 11) containing portraits of unwanted dog toys. With the use of dull, almost monochromatic colours, this series is where Arnatt was able to isolate his subject in an empty space, positioning the toy dogs to look into the camera. Viewers were able to bond with the gaze of the toy, creating a space where the viewers and the dog in the pictures were able to share a connection, reminded of the cliché quote “eyes are the window to the soul”. Looking further down from the eyes, the detailed textures on the dog’s surface that were shown by the lights hid the burden that the toys went through before being abandoned. This kind of contradictory sense of humour and the feeling of sadness can be seen in his last few series such as I Wonder Whether Cows Wonder, 2002.
In later photographs of the toy, Arnatt focused on using saturated colours on his toys or object and left the background dark. It was said that in the 1980s, photographers were drawn to a contemporary Britishness, which they caricatured in their photographs using sharp, critical detail and vivid color. Sardonic humor took the place of the black-and-white melancholy that had so defined British documentary photography in the 1960s and 1970s.[76] According to Parr, British documentary photography adopted colour photography in the 1980s. Because colour photography was associated with the commercial or vernacular, it had previously been viewed as an outsider and subject to significant criticism.[77] Martin Parr's photographs during the 1980s were also filled with colours. He has been presenting the working classes with sarcasm and empathy since the 1980s because he is attracted to them. He captures the paradoxes of a culture where excessive materialism leads to disappointments, aberrations, and frustrations by capturing the commonplace. In addition to making people smile, his photos of crowded beach resorts, Sunday gatherings, and retail centres criticise. The excesses of mass tourism or family reunions take on a completely different aspect and significance when viewed from his perspective.[78] Despite working in colour and being recognised as a part of this new trend, Arnatt's motivation was conceptual rather than documentary.
Figure 12: Keith Arnatt, Gnomes, 1990, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
All these single-coloured gnomes (Fig. 12) were highly saturated, and the backgrounds were even darker, almost looking black as compared to the previous series I’ve discussed. Still keeping the chiaroscuro effect, viewers may think the lights were not natural light but coloured light that altered the original colours of the Gnomes. Although isolated and emerging from the light, the gnomes do not seem to have the theme of desolation and abandonment. The way Arnatt composed and positioned the gnomes made them seem less likely to care about the viewer. The gnomes seem happy, and also eerie, almost feeling sinister, giving an evil character that can be seen in comic books or films. In Keith Arnatt’s The Industrial Gloves (Fingers and Thumbs) series, 1990-91, although the subject of the images was just ‘used gloves’, Arnatt used a similar concept on them that focuses on the saturated colours of the gloves. According to Furse, one such discovery resulted from the series of "Industrial Glove" pictures, which may have been proof that we needed to defend ourselves against some deadly industrial activity. Not all the photos are visually appealing; others are harsh and very frightful. With the peculiar combination of "shock" and the beautiful sophistication of the process, to him, Bacon immediately comes to mind.[79] With that, Arnatt was trying to inflict humour on viewers to feel unsafe and afraid of banal objects, such as the gnomes, the gloves, and the close-up view of the toys.
Figure 13: Keith Arnatt, Dog Toys, 1992, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
Similar to the close-up shot of the Rubbish tip, here (Fig. 13), we can see Keith’s strong use of colours to beautify ordinary toys. Though the photographs looked very attractive, similarly, there is actually a sinister aura coming off the toys. As if friendly toys were asking you to get closer to them only to be tricked by them. Arnatt let his lens lean closer to the expression of the toys, especially the eyes and mouth that can tell the expression of one’s personality. When comparing his series from 1990, the saturation of the photographs was stronger as he emphasised a lot of the colours that gave that playful comedic feel to them. He captured a composition that focus on the expression of the toys that gave life to it and used colours that gave a playful comedic theme.
Figure 14: Keith Arnatt, Socks, 1990, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate, London)
As though toys were not banal enough, Arnatt decided to take pictures of socks that could be easily found at home. One would simply fold and tossed the socks back into the cupboard to be taken out and worn again. These Socks, 1990 (Fig. 14) were obviously staged as well against a blank white background. With his use of isolation, we were forced to look at the socks as the thing itself or a work of art, similar to the dog turds that he photographed on the concrete road. The socks became the subject of the photograph, as though they were modelling and doing different poses for the photograph with a blank background like what we would see in a magazine of fashion models, but only these were socks. We were directed to see these socks as aesthetic objects in these photos, observing the textures that were produced by the cloth of the socks, following the lines of the sock’s outline and the composition of negative and positive space between the colour of the socks and the plain white background.
It seems that the photo was not manipulated and presented the object in its original state. This highlight of camera’s technical capability to record photos with high focus, rich detail, strong contrast, and rich tonalities while also engaging with the camera's ability to accurately capture an image of reality. Another art photography movement that springs to mind is straight photography, also referred to as pure photography. This movement avoided the traditional fine art topics and subjects in favour of showcasing the beauty of tone, detail, and concepts that could only be expressed via photography. Arnatt seems to have had the clever ability to balance pictorialism (the act of staging) in his work and combine visual quality and the realistic one.
During the time when Arnatt attended the first lecture of David Hurns, he was introduced to photographs taken by Walker Evans and Diane Arbus, who were also photographers involved in the Straight photography movement. When Arnatt began working expressly with photography, it is evident that Diane Arbus' street documentary work and the Bechers' typologies approach was crucial to his own practise, as Bate noted in his articles. Bate thought Arnatt swiftly merged both techniques, even though he employed their methods for his own distinctly different goal.[80] German portrait and documentary photographer, August Sander, also influenced-on Arnatt, as Sander once said photography “can render things with magnificent beauty but also with terrifying truthfulness, and it can also be extraordinarily deceptive.”[81] Dillon said that a series like "The Visitors" (1974–1966), in which he captured tourists traveling to Tintern Abbey near his house, deviates from August Sander's straightforward typology to expose and affect viewers. [82] Other than that, Hurn noticed that Arnatt is moving toward a framework established by the reception of artists like August Sander and Diane Arbus around 1972 or 1973 when he looks at Keith's early photographs from "The Visitors." In a way, his attention shifts to an aspect of feeling and emotion that may not be there in the comic.[83]
Figure 15: Keith Arnatt, Untitled (toilet rolls), 1994-95, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
With the white background to see the used toilet roll (Fig. 15) itself, viewers were to focus on the close-up shot of the toilet paper. The shadows and folding of the toilet paper created different shades of colour, and the tearing of the soft toilet paper created uneven lines against the hard cardboard material. To appreciate the beauty of unwanted objects as a pure form of art on the plane of the photograph was definitely influenced by Straight Photography. Here, viewers were able to look at the banal object as “the thing itself”. A photograph is sometimes misinterpreted as a simple mimetic replication or copy of an actual reality because of its seeming simplicity, whether it be an object or a scene.[84] However, though the socks and toilet rolls were staged, the white plain background that isolated the banal objects made viewers view the socks as just socks, the toilet rolls as toilet rolls, and to take attention to something ordinary at home. The photograph that I have analysed so far were Arnatt’s way of challenging the status of photography, questioning what can be photographed and what not. Most of them do not hold any personal meaning or emotion by Arnatt except for the last series of works that I will be studying in this chapter.
Figure 16. Notes From Jo, Keith Arnatt, 1991–94, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
Not everyone would have kept their note, especially the ones written by others, but Arnatt photographed them. Eighteen huge, straightforward pictures of the notes that Arnatt's wife Jo left for him over those years make up the series Notes From Jo (Figure 16). It's likely that this was an extremely intimate and personal gesture but became sentimental after knowing the tragedy that Jo was diagnosed with a brain tumour not long after, and Arnatt cared for her until her passing in 1996. The concept of keeping something that last temporary, or written material that was not intended to be saved, raises a paradox. These notes seem banal to most but Arnatt’s ability to simply record something that represented his relationship with his wife. Like the practise of straight photography, Arnatt had told Hurn that the notes “were wonderful, he wanted a record, and that if he didn’t photograph them, they would disappear.”[85] In an interview with Susan Butler, Arnatt stated the same purpose, stating that he want to seize them before they were gone.[86]
Arnatt recorded his marriage, which it seems was not always easy, by photographing notes his wife left for him.[87] The text of the notes was simply humorous as the word “YOU BASTARD! YOU ATE THE LAST OF MY CRACKERS” echoed through the mind in capital letters, feeling the frustration of the wife yet simply could not help to laugh. Paley stated that Arnatt's notes series' instructions are the key, to establishing their respective duties as Jo serves as Arnatt's caretaker and housekeeper and Arnatt as the one who needs care. Here, the persistent gendered conflict in the home is well captured, and Arnatt's helpless self-mockery is unexpectedly appealing for viewers to look at.[88] Other than that, Herbert said that these are hilarious photos of the artist in absentia being sketched, in fact, Arnatt is so distracted by art that he even creates art from the results of his diversion.[89]
When photographing the isolated banal notes and representing the notes again on a photograph, one would look at them as notes that contained personal meanings by Keith Arnatt that reminded of little things of everyday life. Walker Evans' images are clearly echoed in this set of works, according to Finch. Arnatt lifts the notes out of context, time, and location by placing them flat and forensically on his copy stand in front of an empty ground.[90] According to Parr, the "notes become surreal" when they are taken out of context and magnified. He was aware of how the act of isolation may change even the tiniest detail or perception.[91]
Keith Arnatt was able to use his understanding of painting and art history to transform banal objects into beautiful objects that are worthy of being photographed. This further removed the object from its original context and reconstructed it as a beautiful object in the photographic plane when combined with his method of close-up to frame his object and alter the background. The possible influenced by Romanticism painter, Samuel Palmer, the colourful photographs of British documentation photography, and photographic movements such as Pictorialism and Straight photography, and his love for colours introduced different possibilities of viewpoints on how we can look at an object. Spectators were challenged to “know, believe, and see” an object, confused by doubts and two opposite ideas that contradict each other.
Chapter Three: His Play of Words and Titles
Based on Flusser's photographic philosophy, he developed the concept of "Textolatry," a condition in which texts are rendered meaningless because of the function that photographs and people's lives play in their writings. People who become "faithful to the text," like Christians and Marxists, the world is then perceived, understood, and assessed as a result of the texts that have been projected into it.[92] An individual's speech act is anything they say in which they not only give information but also carry out an activity.[93] The sentence "I accept this woman/man to be my lawfully wedded” stated during a wedding is a famous example given by Bate based on Austin's text. Expressing these lines is—it defines—the actual act of becoming married. This is referred to as the utterance performative, that is, it is a speech act that accomplishes something rather than merely making a claim or a report. This theory emphasises the role that word plays in shaping our perception of the outside world, and it pays particular attention to specific sorts of utterances that, by speaking to them out, characterise an occurrence as an event. Language is the event; by speaking, they produce a "fact." Flusser also argued that one will study the article in a newspaper that illustrated the photographs that were taken. He mentioned that “as the function of the text is subordinate to the image, the text directs our understanding of the image towards the program…”[94]. In a way, texts are instructions for us to see a picture like how texts on gallery walls guided us through an exhibition.
In this chapter, I will examine how Keith Arnatt, because of his conceptual and philosophical background, used words or titles to further give a new context to his photographs of the banal object. His words will instruct viewers on how we look at his work and transform our perception of them. According to Roland Barthes' article, photographic pictures are "polysemous," implying pictures lack a clear, definite meaning. Instead, the title, text, or caption attaches the image to a certain interpretation, which is oppressive since it excludes other meanings.[95] The involvement in playing with the title was well shown in Hilliard’s work where he used words such as CRUSHED, DROWNED, BURNED, and FELL which indicate their Cause of Death (3). For some artists, philosophy came to define conceptual art—art that established itself via language and employed words rather than images—as the dominating and defining characteristic.[96]
Coming back to his Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (A.O.N.B.) series (Fig. 3), by describing these locations as an “Outstanding Natural Beauty" even though it was littered with a man-made object, rubbish, and covered residence houses, Arnatt is implying that the connections between human presence and the aesthetic enjoyment of a landscape are irrationally rigid. Implying the words “natural beauty” among the man-made objects changed the context of it, we were instructed to take them in as part of the beauty of the natural order and viewers are able to see them as something beautiful. Using such a title that contradicts the image brings out elements of humor yet also changes our perspective to look at his subject, and most importantly, affects viewers to look and think. Godfrey presented an example of how narratives frequently have a perplexing or anecdotal tone, with text and visuals that don't always align 'naturally'. He said that John Baldessari's Pencil Story (1972 -3), provoked thought since its success lies in being unsatisfying rather than pleasing.[97] In another work, Painting/Sculpture, 1966-7 by Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin – founder of Art & Language, the immediate provocative nature of the text is not only limited to the gap between looking at something and reading what is written on it but may also be the major source of aesthetic judgement since it departs from the customary procedures of examining and evaluating a modernist painting before responding to it.[98]
“Thinking” inspired Keith Arnatt's practise as much as his teaching. Keith read linguistic philosophy quite a bit. The renowned American literary theorist Stanley Fish wrote an article on being "against theory," and Bate recalls him walking in and mentioning that he had been reading it and found it amusing that a theorist was arguing "against theory" when it was obvious who the argument was coming from, who is a theorist.[99] He was always fond of paradox and the use of art and language even during his time as a conceptual artist because of his love for philosophy. Work such as I Have Decided to Go to the Tate Gallery Next Friday 1971 is a work that raises issues regarding the distinction between intention and decision. There are a total of 4 panels, Texts from the philosophers, Jack W. Meiland, A. Kenny, and Brice Noel Fleming that discuss the relationship between decision and intention are included in the work's first three panels. The title of the piece is acted out in a black and white photograph of Keith Arnatt heading towards the Tate Gallery in London's Millbank. Based on Wilson, explained since "a statement of intention is false" and since "we do not suppose that a man is or even can be mistaken about his intentions" in this context, "another mark of the concept of intention is that a man can lie about them," Arnatt uses philosophical texts to explain what it might mean if a stated intention is not then carried out or acted upon.[100] Arnatt demonstrated his ideas of “knowing, believing, and seeing” through his use of text and photographs, even in his photography series, he continued to experiment with this notion in his photographic series, creating contradicting ideas on how much the viewers know, and how much they believe when seeing the banal objects.
Figure 17: Keith Arnatt, Trouser-Word Piece, 1972, 2 photographs, gelatin silver print on paper, 100.5 × 100.5 cm each (Tate, London)
The notion of "speech acts" greatly attracted Keith.[101] This theory emphasises the role that language plays in shaping our perception of the outside world, and it pays particular attention to specific sorts of utterances that, by speaking them out, characterise an occurrence as an event. Such usage of speech acts on title can be traced back to his conceptual work that used photography as his medium, one of them will be his Trouser-World Piece (Fig. 17). It consists of two parallel, individually framed photographs that are displayed side by side. A photo of the artist standing with the phrase "I'm a real artist" hanging around his neck can be seen on the right. To the left of the artist's name and the work's title is a quotation from British philosopher John Langshaw Austin (1911–1960), whose works were published in 1962 under the ironic title Sense and Sensibilia. The title of the piece of work, "Trouser-Word Piece," seems a little odd and confusing. But once you realise that the work couples a picture with an excerpt from British philosopher John Austin's book Sense and Sensibilia—who has a special interest in language and its use—it starts to make sense. The excerpt says:
“It is usually thought, and dare I say usually rightly thought, that what one might call the affirmative use of a term is basic—that, to understand ‘x,’ we need to know what it is to be x, or to be an x, and that knowing this apprises us of what it is not to be x, not to be an x. But with ‘real’ . . . it is the negative use that wears the trousers. That is, a definite sense attaches to the assertion that something is real, a real such-and-such, only in the light of a specific way in which it might be, or might have been, not real. ‘A real duck’ differs from the simple ‘a duck’ only in that is used to exclude various ways of being not a real duck—but a dummy, a toy, a picture, a decoy &c.; and moreover I don’t know just how to take the assertion that it’s a real duck unless I know just what, on that particular occasion, the speaker had in mind to exclude. . . .”
He employed the tools of philosophical investigation, making fun of the concept of artistic celebrity, and used Austin's linguistic analysis as a reflection on the nature of the real. The term "trouser" is not simply used in connection with the word "word" in the title. Instead, the word "word" is qualified by the term "trouser," and the trouser-word is "real."It's ironic to know Keith Arnatt was already a conceptual artist, yet he needed a photograph that showed himself claiming he is a REAL ARTIST. His desperate call somehow makes one suspect whether his claims are true or not. This could also be a question of what is meant to be a real artist, and what is a fake artist?
Figure 18: Keith Arnatt, Cat Portraits, 1990, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
Keith Arnatt took a few series of photographs that focus on cans, such as Painter’s Cans, 1990, and Damaged Cans, No Frills, 1990. However, what I would like to focus on was the influence of the Trouser-Word Piece that can be seen in this series of works, Cat Portraits (Fig. 18). One would immediately be thought of cat food when looking at these photographs of canned cat food, as each of them with a photograph of cat portraits printed on them. It was ironic that after looking at the title of this work, viewers came to understand that Arnatt had literally taken the photograph of already photographed cat portraits instead of presenting a portrait of a real cat that was usually thought of when one thought of “cat portraits”. If this were to relate to his philosophical thinking of Trouser-Word Piece (Fig. 17), Arnatt had claimed these photographs of cat portraits to be true ‘cat portraits’, so this raised a question what about a portrait of a real cat that was photographed? Are those considered to be true “cat portraits”? By doing so, Arnatt changes our perception of what could be seen as a cat portrait. Most people would see these cans as ordinary “cat food”, yet with the title, he established them as ‘cat portraits’ instead of cat food.
Figure 19: Keith Arnatt, Canned Sunsets, 1990-91, colour photographs (Keith Arnatt Estate)
The close-up images of objects he finds in landfills reveal Arnatt's background as a conceptual and sculpture artist. This vibrant photograph shows a sunset, a natural occurrence created from the waste products of human consumption and seen as romantic and beautiful. Looking at another series of cans is his Canned Sunsets (Fig. 19). This series combined all aspects of what I have discussed in the first and second chapters to create such a wonderful series of photographs. By adding the word ‘sunsets’ in the title of these photographs, we were immediately instructed to look at the cans as sunsets. If there were no titles for the work, one would guess and look at them as some kind of abstract painting. At first glance, it showed a can, and we are only able to appreciate the wonderful colours and composition of the photographs Viewers would take time to guess that these were actually cans among what was believed a rubbish pile based on the colours of the background. However, with the title given and stating them as a sunset, one would get confused at first by the contradicting title, yet later were able to relate the cans as a sun setting down into a pile of rubbish that could be seen as mountains and seas. The title cans and sunset were also a mismatch, which caused viewers to respond to them with doubts. We started to treat the can as the sunset of the painting. Based on the colours, reminds me of impressionist or post-impressionist painting.
With the idea of pictorialism in mind and his background as a painter and sculptor, Arnatt was able to stage and compose the images aesthetically. The background was blurred to not only isolate the cans but also to create this mixture of complementary colours, the pink with black, the blue with red, the yellow and blue, and sometimes, sparkly effects like stars. Arnatt also made use of the reflective elements of the cans that represent the sunlight and also position a horizontal object in front of the so call ‘sun’ to create an illusion of a lake. This proved that he had high observation skills and was able to use different materials to create a composition of a landscape painting by using objects that were banal and abandoned. Arnatt truly embraced the ordinary object and transformed them into something pleasant to look at even if it was not a real sunset. Without his title to indicate that he intended to look at them as sunset, viewers would not be able to appreciate these banal objects as how Arnatt did.
The title removed the original context of the cans from banality and reintroduced them as something aesthetically beautiful through words, creating oppositional or contradicting thoughts that challenge spectators. These proved that Arnatt was always a conceptual artist even when he was a ‘photographer’. The philosophical idea of text was used in his title that challenges the thoughts of knowing, believing, and seeing. We know that the cats on the cans were portraits of cats, we believe we are looking at portraits of cats and we are literally seeing portraits of cats. Whereas on the canned sunset, the title was made known to us to see them as a sunset, we slowly believe that they are sunset based on the colours and composition of the objects and we are looking at a beautiful sunset even though we knew it was just a can among a pile of rubbish.
CONCLUSION
Although photography became Arnatt’s only artistic medium from the mid to the end of his career, I believe his love for philosophy language, his extensive knowledge of the history of art, and his past as a conceptual artist continued to play an important role throughout his years as a ‘photographer’ and continued to challenge the act of photographing itself. Of course, there’s no conclusion as to which art movement Arnatt should belong to because he was always ahead of time and did things differently when compared to others. As Parr commented, Arnatt was able to approach it with the experimental mindset of someone who had come out of the prior generation's creative practise. His pictures seem to be quite contemporary and hardly identifiable. He was essentially unaffected by conventional photography trends, which made it challenging to classify and explain his photos.[102]
A photographic image, according to Emerling, could be considered a crucial component in redefining what we understand by the term "aesthetics" as a variety of techniques, effects, and "image of thought."[103] Keith Arnatt's photography of the abandoned banal object truly challenges the aesthetic value of an image and created, what I identified as two oppositional thoughts or contradicting ideas for viewers to consider different possibilities when observing a photograph or even their surroundings, to take in every little detail even if they are ordinary. In this dissertation,based on the studies of his progress in his artistic career, a number of journals, reviews, art critics, and interviews, I argued that through his progress from 1980-1990, the act of isolation played an important role that caused a displacement of the object. The act of isolation through his use of contrasting texture, colours, blurring of the background, close-up, cropping, or framing, removes the object from the ordinary context in the reality of space and time and transforms the context of the object into something new on the plane of the photograph. This creates doubts and confusion among spectators as two very different elements in the photograph contradict each other, challenging them to rethink what can be perceived as the focus of attention in the photograph.
I have identified the few possible influences he had in terms of aesthetic value, the practice, and the act of photographing. Based on his knowledge of art history and photographic history, the influences of art photographic movements of the past such as Pictorialism and Straight Photography may play a part in changing his aesthetic value by blurring the background or using transparent plastic bags to create a painterly illusion. Other than that, ongoing photography movements such as the American New Topographic school, Thatcherism, and coloured British documentary photography may have influenced the subject of the photograph, to take picturesque landscapes, man-made buildings, and banal ready-made objects especially rubbish, and represented them as the main subject of his photographic series. His character to focus on ‘localism’, stick to a routine and strong observation challenged that any object could be photographed depending on the way you look at the subject. Butler remarked that one starts to get a sense of the "ironic and emotional filters" used in Arnatt's image-making through the confluence of painterly and technology allusions.[104] Arnatt was able to add emotions to his banal objects to create a mix of “sweet and soud” feel to them, two oppositional thoughts. Lastly, because of his past as a conceptual artist, his use of titles and words instructed us on the way we look at objects and further displaced the object from its original context. The unmatching contradicting titles and objects of the photographs challenge the viewers’ perception of looking at and interpreting the photograph. With that, viewers were able to see these objects in a new context.
Arnatt's work use seriality as a form of photographic "language" to speak, but then utilises this language to question photography itself.[105] Overall, he never left his conceptual background aside as the idea behind each series of photographs was most important instead of the banal object. This could be a reference to dematerialization from conceptual art that ideas of the work became the primary while the works became secondary. Even with the photograph of the installation, the work still exists with the ideas even though the original work does not exist anymore in reality, only existing through the plane of the photograph. The question of what beauty is becoming the primary subject of the photograph, it does not matter what the object was, be it a heap of rubbish, an abandoned object from a rubbish dump, socks, a toilet roll, or a can, they were all seen as something beautiful in these photographs and this idea challenge the status of photography. While we are enjoying looking at it, his photographs simultaneously provoke questions and contradicting thoughts in spectators’ minds about what photography does by the manner it shows us things. As Bate mentioned, to simultaneously have the spectator appreciate what they are viewing while also forcing them to consider what it is, specifically, is quite an achievement. This is precisely his talent—applying philosophical theory to the image itself.[106]
Fox commented, “Keith gives you this feeling that you could photograph anything and that is incredibly liberating.”[107] He was able to see beauty in banal objects, people, ordinary trash, abandoned stuff, and straightforward messages written by his wife. His photography works of abandoned banal objects continued to humour us and inspire us to observe our surroundings as anything so ordinary can always be seen as something interesting, depending on our way of looking, “how visual does visual art have to be”[108]. Adding to that, Par also mentioned, that Keith “found pleasure in everyday objects and making observations of his daily rituals.”[109] Photographers chose trash as their topic decades after Arnatt's Pictures from a Rubbish Tip, during the height of the environmental movement, maybe fully ignorant that Arnatt had done so earlier, even without popular movement serving as his inspiration.[110] He produced series that were unquestionably distinctive and, in some ways, ahead of their time. His concepts have elevated the practise from an oddity to a mainstream idea. It was not shocking to see odd-looking objects in today's art photography as viewers accepted that anything could be art as long the idea was there. He was constantly at the forefront of artistic activity, and now, audiences are more and more in awe of his creations.
I shall end this dissertation with a quote of what Keith Arnatt describes, or what he thinks, as the characteristics of a serious artist:
“A serious artist.
Some attributes of seriousness;
Thoughtfulness, earnestness, sobriety, sedateness, demanding consideration, being responsible, being sincere, being important, not given to trifling, not being reckless, not being slight or negligible and not being ironical or joking.”[111]
Keith Arnatt is a serious artist who attributes seriousness, and demands thoughtfulness, earnestness, sobriety, sedateness, demanding consideration, responsible, and sincerity. Yet, he does not take things importantly, even being slight, negligible, and ironic, and sometimes even joked through his conversation with his friends and artworks. I guess based on his own claim, Arnatt is somewhat a serious artist, and somewhat not at the same time, and this itself is a paradox, a paradox he truly enjoyed being.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Keith Arnatt responded to Alan Bowness’s declaration that “you have to be an artist and not only a photographer to have your work in the Tate” with his 1982 article, “Sausages & Food: The Tate’s Policy towards Photography”. John Stathatos, 1989. Keith Arnatt. Art Monthly (Archive: 1976-2005), (128), p. 13. [2] John Roberts, The Impossible document: photography and Conceptual Art in Britain, 1966-1976 (London: Camerawork, 1997), P.48 [3] David Bate, Keith Arnatt, 1930-2008 (London, Photoworks, 2007) P.4 [4] Charles Harrison, “Keith Arnatt An Informal Reminiscence”, Keithh Arnatt Works 1968-1990, (Karsten Schubert/Richard Saltoun, 2009) p. 6 [5] Richard Cock, New Spirit, New Sculpture, New Money: Art in the 1980s (London, Yale University Press, 2002) P.236. [6] Luke Skrebowski, “Candid Cameras? British Conceptual Art and Photography”, Conceptual Art in Britain 1964-1979 (London: Tate Publishing.2016) P. 124. [7] Jeff Wall, “Marks of Indifference": Aspects of Photography in, or as, Conceptual Art (1995)”, The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960-1982 (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2003) P. 32. [8] Keith Arnatt interview with John Roberts, The Impossible document: photography and Conceptual Art in Britain (London: Camerawork, 1997) P.47. [9] Keith Arnatt, “Oral History of British Photography” with Susan Butler, Audio Interview. (British Library,1993) [10] Arnatt, The Impossible document, P.47. [11] Arnatt, The Impossible document, P.47. [12] Arnatt, The Impossible document, P.50. [13] Skrebowski, “Candid Cameras”, P. 124 [14] Diarmuid Costello and Margaret Iversen, Critical Inquiry , Vol. 38, No. 4, Agency and Automatism: Photography as Art Since the Sixties (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2012), P. 686. [15] David Hurn, “Keith Arnatt, Photographer,” I’m a Real Photographer (Chris Boot, 2007) [16] Arnatt, The Impossible document, P.51. [17] Martin Parr, “Keith Arnatt”, Keith Arnatt Works 1968-1990, (Karsten Schubert/Richard Saltoun, 2009) p. 9. [18] Sean O'Hagan, Keith Arnatt is proof that the art world doesn’t consider photography ‘real’ art. (The Guardian, 2015) [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/27/keith-arnatt-photography-exhibition-spruth-magers-absence-of-the-artist. (Accessed on 6th of August 2022) [19] David Hurn “Forum: Keith Arnatt with A. Fox, C. Grafik, D. Hurn, D. Mellor and P. Fraser”, I’m a Real Photographer (2007) P.51. [20] Clare Grafik “Forum: Keith Arnatt with A. Fox, C. Grafik, D. Hurn, D. Mellor and P. Fraser”, I’m a Real Photographer (2007) P.51. [21] Stathatos, Keith Arnatt, p. 13. [22] Bisera Ikanović and Lamija Hatibović, From Prominence to Obscurity: Keith Arnatt's Transition from Conceptual Art to Photography (n.d), P.3. [23] Arnatt, “Oral History of British Photography” [24] Ikanović and Hatibović, From Prominence to Obscurity, P.1. 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