Mood Change One

Having been quite detached from the contemporary British art scene for a while, I found out today that a certain piece of information had escaped my attention until now. On May 24th 2004 there was a fire in a London warehouse packed with famous paintings, including alot of 'Britart'. Of this I'd been vaguely aware, but I only just discovered that one of my favourite works of art was one of the paintings destroyed in the fire...God, how sad....It's 'Mood Change One', one of the earlier works by Irish pop artist Michael Craig Martin.

When I look at early classical paintings by artists like Reynolds, all drenched in bitumen, they're utterly dead to me. Why you'd want to weigh down your painting with such oppressive colours as muddy browns and swamp greens is beyond me. Was it an attempt to capture some kind of austerity, or sobriety? Or realism, dare I say? What a bleak perception of reality. What tragic misuse of such technical skill to use it on comissioned portraits and historical paintings.

'Mood Change One' inspires in me a reaction of the polar opposite kind. The first time I saw it, I didn't know if I'd ever seen any work of art that looked more alive and human and ecstatic and angry - and everything I need from art. It seems to hold your head in a vice and demand that you stare into the face of humanity. 'Look at my coat, look at my mirror, look at my shoes, look at this list of all the tiny, pathetic things that make up who I am - see how endlessly beautiful they are?' That's what it says to me. To me, out of all the attempts made throughout the ages, the most accurate depiction of a life, on a page, is a painting of a collection of household items. Does that say I think we're shallow, feeble and materialistic? Maybe, but Martin succeeds where so many others try and fail - he succeeds in instilling all this with intense joie de vivre, in communicating the glory of this materialistic everyday life and the worth of daily, mundane objects. No mastery of tone and colour could result in celebration of a subject like the flat, blinding red of that jacket.

How can I have such confidence in my own personal interpretation of this piece? This piece that isn't well known at all? All art is subjective, therefore, I believe all I need to know is, if I was going to try and create a masterpiece that expressed a few essential truths, this is what I'd create. Sad Martin got there first really...

I don't know whether this piece means the same to him, and the irony is it probably doesn't, but that's the beauty of the whole shebang...

I read in an interview with Martin that he said he could never try to recreate this piece, which is completely fair. He says the 'psychological act of recreation is a 100% different act than the act of creation' and that it was the act of creation that counted for this particular painting -there'd be no point recreating it. I totally get that, so I suppose all that's left to do is get over this, and eagerly anticipate whatever this guy does next...   :)