Crisy Meschieri 5/13/11 AVT 472-001 She Looks Familiar… While

Crisy Meschieri
5/13/11
AVT 472-001
She Looks Familiar…
While you may not believe it, my piece is a copy six times removed.
Originally it was only going to be a print simply inspired by the original painting,
The Singing Butler, but once I learned more about the history of the piece I knew
I could not alter it in any major way. In order to be successful, my print had to be
an exact copy of the original. And since I chose to do this, my woodcut became a
study of what it means to be an artist and whether or not we should be allowed to
draw or paint from a photograph or other artworks. It is also mimicked the
original and became an escape from the harsh realities of life.
I have been in love with the original painting ever since the first time I
saw it. I can’t remember the exact context in which I saw the piece, but I have
always assumed that it was created during the late 1800s or early 1900s in either
England or France. It wasn’t until last semester when I was in Printmaking that I
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found out that this painting was actually
painted by a self-taught Scottish painter
in 1992. ‘Jack Vettriano’, a very artistic
sounding name, is actually the artist’s
self-adopted name. He was born Jack
Hoggan, but changed his name at the
beginning of his artistic career in 1988
to a variation of his mother’s maiden
name.
This struck me. Here the artist is already taking something that is not
necessarily his, modifying it slightly, and achieving fame with it. As I will discuss
later on in this essay, Vettriano did not stop “adopting” at his name. Most of his
work is actually a series of appropriations, but without the intention of being an
artistic appropriation in the way that some artists allude to other works in the past.
This made me ask myself then to what degree is he an artist if he is simply
collaging different images together in a new context for his work? This question
then led me to ask myself what that then means for me as a student artist. How
much can we copy before we are flat out stealing?
The more I investigated about this piece, the more I was surprised by what
I discovered. As art students, we are trained to never paint from photographs and
instead always paint from natural objects or photographs we have taken ourselves.
The reason for this is because images are copyrighted the second they are created
and if you make a work based off of someone else’s photo, you are actually
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breaking copyright laws. While researching this piece I found that Jack Vettriano
never had any formal art training, so either he did not know about copyright laws
or just didn’t care. When he began a painting he opened up his copy of The
Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual and created paintings based off of the
photographs he saw in it. Since he was just starting out as an artist and was low on
funds, he did not have enough money to hire models, and ended up opening this
book repeatedly in order to have something to work from. When you look up
Vettriano’s work online, you see the four figures in The Singing Butler repeated
several times in many of his other paintings. Attached to this essay you will find a
print out of all of the paintings and sketches that include the woman in red in them
(who became the focus point of my work once I started researching the painting).
So why did I make a copy of this piece as my own artwork? Our professor
had asked us to learn woodcutting by creating a print that had two figures and a
body of water in it. I instantly thought of alluding to this piece. Once I had
researched it and found its repetitive history I became fascinated with the idea that
these figures might be repeated in other artist’s work as well. Who knows how
many other artists got their start learning how to draw figures using this woman in
the dress as their model. I then became enthralled with knowing who this woman
was. Apparently, once the painting became well known others began asking the
same questions and it was soon discovered that the woman in the dress is an Irish
actress named Orla Brady, who was struggling to find work when she agreed to
model for this book. This discovery pushed this concept of repetition even further
for me. Brady has since then been in several films and tv shows, so her figure has
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been repeated even more times than if she had just been the photographer’s sister
or some random individual who had walked in to be photographed. She was also
featured multiple times within the Illustration Manual itself and was even used to
make the maid on the left in Vettriano’s painting.
Printmaking is an art form which is inherently meant to be repetitive and
multiplied. Printmakers create works in editions and will either make them in
limited or unlimited quantities. I saw this concept tying in well with what has
happened with the original painting. While Vettriano only made one official copy
of this painting in 1992, it has since then been turned into prints, and been sold on
umbrellas, mugs, tote bags, puzzles, t-shirts, and any other surface that can be
printed on. It has also been satirized, alluded to, and many other artists have made
their own version of it (see attached sheet). This piece has been copied and
repeated extensively, so to me it made perfect sense to create a woodcut which
completely exploited this idea of being copied and printed multiple times.
I mention at the beginning of this essay that my piece is a copy six times
removed. This is because it is a print(1) of a carving on a piece of wood(2), which
in turn is a copy of a painting(3), which is based off of a photograph(4) of a
woman(5) which is printed in a book(6). We could even argue that the version on
this piece of paper is even removed two more times because I took a picture of it
and then printed it out. However, none of these are perfect copies of the original.
But before we can say that we have to ask ourselves “What is the original?”
I think part of the reason why I decided to write about this piece was
because it ties in so well with what I wrote about originality when analyzing Andy
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Warhol’s piece Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Rauschenberg Family) for my
Gallery Project. There Andy Warhol touched on something that my piece touches
on too: which one of these prints and paintings shows the “real” girl in the red
dress? Where among all of the different levels of copies and the different
variations of prints and paintings that Vettriano and I have created lies the true
lady? Is it the woman in the photograph? Is it Orla Brady herself? Is it the woman
in the red dress in The Singing Butler? Why would she be more real than any of
the other variations of her in his other works? And yet, none of these are meant to
capture Orla herself, so she can’t be the “real” girl.
So if they are not meant to depict Orla, who is the woman in the dress?
This painting has been extremely popular, apparently outselling Monet and
Matisse prints in the UK (Mackenzie). I’ll be the first to admit that I believe that
this painting has been as successful as it is because it tugs at our inner most hopes
and desires for romance and an escape into the surreal. Who doesn’t want to
dance in the rain on the beach with a handsome or beautiful lover? The woman in
the red dress is meant to be the idealized mysterious beautiful woman. She is tall,
slender, and graceful, everything little girls dream to grow up to be. The man she
is dancing with is almost a carbon copy of Disney’s Prince Charming. The man
and woman appear to be well off economically because they have the time to be
dancing on the beach as its raining without any regard to their nice clothing. They
also have a butler and a maid at their disposal. So if these are idealized versions of
men and women, can there be a “real” or “true” figure? Can such a thing exist? I
believe that this piece is meant to be more of an allusion to these figures rather
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than a true representation of them and if this is the case there is no original so
Vettriano wasn’t actually copying anything.
This idea of an idealized situation and idealized individuals is reinforced
by the context within which the piece was created. This painting was created just
a year after the World Wide Web was launched to the public and the Gulf War
ended. If you think about the times, this painting seems completely out of context,
which I believe is exactly why it became so popular. It was a break. It was easy to
understand. It was sweet, innocent, and dream-like. What can be more innocent
than a couple dancing on the beach? There is no political intention and no
religious undertones; it’s just sweet and ideal, completely unreal, and exactly
what people need in order to be able to handle everything that goes on in the
world.
One of my philosophies in life is to make everyone I talk to smile at least
once when I am talking to them. This painting makes me smile and I thought that
it gave me the perfect opportunity to make others smile while also bringing out
questions it didn’t know it was asking. It allowed me to question why it is that we
are not allowed to draw from other’s paintings or photographs even if we are to
alter them. It is like the chair. The chair was invented by someone, but if someone
else hadn’t come along and thought “I can do that better” we would not have the
plethora of choices we have when it comes to purchasing chairs. Obviously
people don’t care where the picture comes from so long as it’s good. Sure, there
have been many articles about the fact that the woman in the dress comes from a
drawing manual, but what’s the big deal? He paid for the book and the writers of
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the book paid Orla for her time. He used the book for its original purpose as an
Illustrator’s reference, and has done a pretty good job of it. So what’s the harm?
When I set out to make my print I wanted to make a piece that asked these
questions only to those who either knew Vettriano’s piece or even knew the
whole back-story behind it. I wanted them to ask “Can she do that?” That is the
whole point. Can I? I did, and no art police has come down on me yet. What about
the people who sell hand painted replicas of the piece online? Is that the same
thing that I have done? I carved the painting in reverse onto a piece of wood,
inked it up, and ran it through the press several times. They mimicked the painting
and recreated it by hand using paints and a canvas. Which is a rip-off and which is
an homage? Are they both a forgery or are they representations of a work? I am
not planning on selling my prints, does that make a difference? My professor told
me I should email a picture of my print to Vettriano. I am very tempted to do so
and see what he thinks of it. Maybe I’ll send him this essay along with it.
To others who view my print and have no idea what I’ve done it is just a
pretty picture of a couple dancing on a beach. But isn’t that what all art is? Some
see it only for its superficial qualities while others read deep into it and find little
nuggets of questions that are meant to shake up everything you think you know
and understand. Either way, it is one of the few artworks I have done that I am
truly proud of. I think that is entirely due to the fact that it asks so many questions
and doesn’t answer a single one.
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Mackenzie, Anne. "I Paint What Moves Me - Sexiness." Scotland on Sunday. 16
Mar. 2008. Web. 5 May 2011. <http://www.jackvettriano.com/press-andmeida-archive/press-archive/i-paint-what-moves-me-sexiness/>.
The Illustrator's Figure Reference Manual
, published in 1987.
Dancer in Emerald
Jack Vettriano sketch "Singing Butler"
Dance Me to the End of Love
Waltzers
Jack Vettriano sketch "Singing Butler"
Banksy Crude Oils 'Crude Oil'
Beau Bo D'Or “Jolly Fisherman”
Linda Aggett
Bluelou “NornIrlan” after “The Singing Butler”
Unknown Artist (for sale)
Andy McGilvray (for sale)