#93: Drawings of Objects
When is an object not an object?
For the past 15 years I have drawn on my bedroom walls. This is a fact which you need to know for today’s post, because the drawings above are on my bedroom wall. Or rather, they were, because I have now decided that it is time to turn over a new leaf. I am painting the walls white. ‘Timeless’ white, to be precise.
Before I began, however, I archived everything first. I took down all the posters and photos and random stickers and other miscellaneous items which I had cellotaped and blue-tacked to the walls (and ceiling). All the cranes that hung from the ceiling, the ballet shoes I had hung on the wall. I even had a branch (decorated with paper doves) hanging above my bed. It all came down, and I saved the pieces which still mean something to me. But I faced a problem. How to save the drawings which were done directly onto the wall?
There was no way to remove them, without taking out the wall, which obviously was not going to happen. So all that was left was to photograph them, which I did, and above are just a small selection of many drawings, quotations, and random notes and messages which were written on my walls.
Whilst I was taking the photos, I started considering them as objects. Not the photos, but the drawings themselves. First and foremost, are these drawings objects? They are certainly drawings of objects, representations of a hairspray can, a tree, a cat, an eye, a coke bottle, and a teddy bear. They are examples of René Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
“This is not a pipe”. This is not a tree or a cat or a teddy bear. These are drawings of objects, like the painting of the pipe. They are, like the pipe, representations of the thing, and not the thing itself.
But can they still be objects? I cannot hold them, I cannot pick them up or turn them over. I can touch them. Or, at least, I can touch the wall which they are on. I can touch the faint texture difference of the drawing material on the wall, the magic marker or the HB pencil. But I cannot hold them and save them. Instead, I have been forced to photograph them, before painting over them. They no longer exist, or at least they are not visible. These drawings have now become a new kind of object: photographs of drawings of objects. I have removed them from the original object twice-fold.
This situation reminds me of Plato’s theory on mimesis, where he argues that art is only representation. In fact, he argues that actual objects are only representations. He uses the example of a bed. According to Plato’s theory, there are three beds: the first bed exists as an idea (known as the ‘Platonic Ideal’). The second bed exists in the form it has been made by the carpenter, which is a physical representation of the idea. The third bed exists when an artist paints a representation of the bed, based on the second bed, made by the carpenter. Neither the carpenter nor the painter can reach the true ‘idea’ of the bed, and the painter is even further removed from this ‘true’ object than the carpenter. For Plato, there are three beds. Now, in my room, I have four trees, four cats, four teddy bears. There is the idea of the tree, the physical tree, the drawing of the tree, and the photograph of the drawing of the tree. I think my head might start to hurt soon.
So, are these objects, or have I cheated this week? If they are not objects, then what are they? I certainly have sentimental value attached to them, intangible memories of who drew them and when and why. And now, they exist in my memory, for I have painted over them. My room is gradually getting whiter and whiter, as each new coat is painted. Yet these objects, these drawings, are still there, lurking behind the layers of paint.
Intrigued by the crazy chaos that my room sounds like? I’ll be stretching the definition of an ‘object’ again next week, when I consider my room, before and after (as long as I finish it in time, of course), both as an object, and a holder of multitudes of objects. I guess I’d better get back to painting.
