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ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Inspired by Richter's notion of the 'photographic ready-made' this is a photorealist painting in black and white oil on canvas around 6ft by 4ft. I carefully select source imagery from non-art sources. In this case the whole page from an animal behaviour textbook, with the caption ‘Clever Hans, the Horse of Mr van Osten, 1912’. It was claimed Hans could perform arithmetic. He would answer maths problems by tapping his hoof the correct number of times. A formal investigation proved Hans was not actually performing these mental tasks but responding to clues in the body language of the owner - he would stop tapping when he saw the clue. The owner himself didn’t realise he was making these gestures. I was fascinated by Hans when studying psychology - experiments must now ensure neither the experimenter nor animal know the correct answer to avoid ‘The Clever Hans Effect’. I’m inspired to re-present in classical oil, photographic images drawn from two non-art sources. First the family album - biographical products of the Box Brownie and Instamatic cameras and second scientific textbooks, encyclopaedias, and instructional manuals - products for educational purpose. I started using source images that were not only obsolete because they were old and imperfect but because they’d never been created to be aesthetic in the first place. I love to expose the heavy-handedness of early photographic use and any technical shortcomings by magnifying them in oil onto huge canvases. I try to elevate their non-art status to the realm of the aesthetic and create a unique dialogue between painting and photography. Obsessed by the photorealists of the 1970’s (e.g. Chuck Close, Ron Kleeman and John Salt) I was also inspired by Gerhard Richter who had coined the term 'photographic ready-made', derived from Duchamp’s idea of the ready-made art object. I was in love with this idea that you avoided aesthetic decisions by replicating a pre-existing image with almost mechanical precision.
Original Created:
1995
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DETAILS AND DIMENSIONS
Print:
Giclee on Canvas
Size:
12 W x 16 H x 1.25 D in
Size with Frame:
13.75 W x 17.75 H x 1.25 D in
Frame:
White
Canvas Wrap:
Black Canvas
Ready to Hang:
Yes
Packaging:
Ships in a Box
SHIPPING AND RETURNS
Delivery Time:
Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.
Handling:
Ships in a box. Art prints are packaged and shipped by our printing partner.
Ships From:
Printing facility in California.
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Paul Foster
United Kingdom
"After completing an Art Foundation course at the West Surrey College of Art and Design, Paul Foster born 9.8.68, went on to Oxford University to read Philosophy and Psychology. Foster's paintings are stunning in scale and execution, typically six by four feet, they re-represent in classical oil, photographic images drawn from two non-art sources. First (and earlier to his work) the family album - biographical products of the Box Brownie and Instamatic and second (and more currently) scientific textbooks and instructional manuals from the biological and behavioural sciences - products for educational purpose. In both cases, he not only elevates their non-art status to the realm of the aesthetic, but he also creates a unique dialogue between painting and photography. Foster carefully selects his source photographs. All expose the heavy-handedness of photographic use and the optical limitations of the camera itself. Foster makes no effort to conceal the photograph's under/over exposure, movement blur, camera shake, flash white-out or red eye in his painting of them. Indeed, he delights in their technical shortcomings by magnifying them in oil onto his huge canvases. In doing so, he exposes the camera's fraudulent claims to objectivity and returns the photographs to the human realm, behind the camera, behind the eye. Foster is as fascinated by the historical evolution of photographic techniques, as he is about the use to which photography has been put over time. His subjects cover the informal snap-shot recording of family moments and the serial, didactic recording of developments within science. The source photographs are taken as complete entities, bound in time and frame, but Foster finds freedom as a painter in his rediscovery of them and celebrates their photo-temporal finitude by rendering them to the canvas in extravagant oils. Endemic to his work as a painter is his compassion for the contemporary viewer. His work attracts, rather than distracts, engages rather than alienates and inspires classical visual awe, without himself as painter, falling prey to the explosive artistic claims of originality or to the imploded non-claims of kitsch and postmodernism." Victoria Jaye
Artist Recognition
Artist featured by Saatchi Art in a collection
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