A democracy of sources

I have said for a while that for me it does not matter where my figures, poses, structures, motifs are sources from. I am just as happy to draw from life, lift a pose from an old master, take a newspaper cutting as a starting point etc etc. I have suggested that I don't believe in a hierachy of sourcve material.

For me my sources are not intended to be intellectualised. I think I borrow a pose or subject for genuine interest, not to make some conceptualised comment on the original. Its not the kind of quotation Manet makes of Titian in Olympia. Its more the kind of borrowing of a signifier to place in a new context and to give new signification too. The sign can be destablised.

Having said all this, my sources have tended to be art historical. Quotes from Titian in particular have dominated. I believe this to be due to having been so immersed in his work that relevant poses or potential borrowings come to mind easily. Yet as the process has perpetuated I wondered if my practise if going agasint my theoretical claims.

Finally, today, I have broken the mould. I was flicking through the Time. (I do h ate giving that prick Murdoch money but it is easy to handle and does have very good sports coverage. I go on the logic of varying my paper as I feel a slight twinge of disgust at any one I buy. If I get the Guardian I am worried im on the slippery slope to left wing idealism. If I get the Telegraph I feel like im one corner away from Daily Mail bigotry, tory boy polotics and eventually Nazism. An exaggeration, obvioulsy, and a clear sign of my pathetic identity crisis. Being white, male and middle class really is a struggle these days.) :)

Anyway, whilst browsing the times... the depression of England pitiful perfomrance agaisnt Russia was relieved by an image of Wayne Rooney. It was him in mid air, diving, just after he gave away the penalty. It came attention with the tag line, fallen hero. How true. In an hour he went form being a demi god with his volley to a pantomine villian with his tackle. The media perpetuates the cruel rise and fallen, in exaggerated terms, of our new heroes. No longer Greek mortals engaged in epic battles bu minor celebriteios, sports stars and musicians. Just as the mortals found out, they could so quickly rise to heights and then fall to disaster. Consider Icarus and his rise to the sun, Adonis and his love for Venus... the tragedy was spawned the moment they arrived at this moment. As with Keat's Ode to a ngihtginale, the inevitbale rise is followed by a fall.

All of this goes off on a tangent. The point is that the pose of Rooney is perfect for a new work i have planned. I have wanted to do another ICarus work, with a new composition but needed a new falling figure. I knew I wanted a horizontal falling form, just to open up a new dynamic from that in Icarus II. So hear I have found it.

Now I can take the form of Rooney and remove him from the specifics of his context. Rooney can become Icarus with the slightest nod to irony. The shift is not improtant, the work in no way will be about Rooney. The sources and quotation will be hidden (although revealed here) ONce in a new spatial and aesthetic context its specific meaning will shift. The sense of a fall through air is all that will remain. The sense of a drop from one realm to another, from a height to the floor. All the oither paraphanalia surrounding our contemporary hero can disappear.

The quotation leads me onto a potential reading. As much as the work will not be about Rooney, neither will it be about Icarus. Icarus is not longer an individual, but an embodiment of a generalised ideal. A metaphor for mankinds tragic and desperate reach for perfection and its inevitbale failure. (as Andy pointed out to me, in far better terms) Suddenly it becomes about the human condition, about tendencies within us which bridge the gap from ICarus too Rooney. Relevant and in some ways timless; I think.

Specific narratives are great. They allow us into an intimate world. But I am searching, maybe not reaching, for a kind of narrative which is not constrinaed by the zeitgeist. Whilst my lanague has to be of my own time, we can't avoid that, the message conveyed should hopefully be non specific to location, geographic or historical.

Perhaps this is pretentious, perhaps this is aiming for the unreachable. Perhaps I am destined fall flat on my face in the search. My failure being the closest I get to conveying the essence of Icarus' plight.