MICHAEL TAYLOR Selected Works
All rights reserved, no part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, photocopying, or other means without the prior permission of the copyright holders. © The Artist and Whatiftheworld 2013 Michael Taylor Whatiftheworld / Gallery #1 ARGYLE street Woodstock Cape Town South Africa 7925 info@whatiftheworld.com www.whatiftheworld.com
Printed in South Africa Cover: Detail of No easy way in, 2012, Gouache on paper, 20 × 20 cm, from Mumbo Jumbo, at Whatiftheworld / Gallery
CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5
FOREWORD CHAPTER I
SINGLES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
CHAPTER II
STORIES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
CHAPTER III
SKETCHES .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
CHAPTER IV
SCENES .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
CHAPTER V
SELFS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
CHAPTER VI
SPOOKS .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
CHAPTER VII
SPACES .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
ARTIST'S STATEMENT CURRICULUM VITAE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
FOREWORD
Text by Michael Smith
Taylor is one of a new breed of South African painters who embrace the medium’s built-in anachronism to make work that moves through time with aplomb. Taylor subverts the expectations of traditional painting as received from the country’s previous generation: that painting is necessarily about politics and the struggle, and that the artist must paint for the revolution. With sharp-as-a-tack titles like Real Men do Lunch and Shit Stirrer, Taylor’s works form a stream of vignettes from the precipice of hysteria, documenting moments when ones control over life, circumstances and even oneself is thwarted. Working in a style that references (but is crucially not) Illustration, Taylor pieces together snap shots of a self in dissolution, one for whom humour is a wryly-deployed mechanism for coping with daily catharsis. Like the chaotic yet pioneering American comedian Lenny Bruce, Taylor’s self-depreciation is inclusive, giving his audience no choice but to identify with his compelling narrative. “Part of the process is not always having control over what you are doing. So the paintings are based on sketches but, very soon in the process of re-interpreting the ideas, they turn into altogether different images – and so new narratives emerge.” Underpinning, even anchoring, Taylor’s intentionally sketchy and allusive brush work is an impeccable sense of colour; ice blues dancing with mustard yellows and cool greys to create a fantastical world of swish interiors, muddy outdoor locals, and sometimes spaces which the layered brushstrokes obscure into anonymity. Archly satirical, these small- and- medium scale paintings detail the ludicrous pageantry and little failures of modern life. “I feel that my process is one of drawing over painting. In certain areas of paintings it’s about masking out with a muddy white, often with what people have called ‘nonsensical’ marks. At first glance they look totally out of place; my method is increasingly about ‘drawing out side of the lines’ literally and figuratively. The works start off as linear drawings in paint, pre-sketches for the painting, and then at a certain stage the lines become too much, and for my own sanity I need to map the work out with bigger areas of colour, Figuring out certain levels. It’s often as though I don’t want to make a painting; the marks are far closer to drawing than traditional brush strokes.
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Taylor’s path to fine art was via design. He studied illustration continuing after undergrad level with an extended honours degree in picture book art. “Then suddenly one day I just decided I would rather do this. I wanted to keep doing what I really love doing, which is drawing. I wanted to find a way to keep telling stories.” ‘‘That’s always been a focus, trying to find a way of creating a narrative. It’s also as a result of my background in illustration and storytelling through a visual medium. And in illustration, humour plays a very big role –as does titling. The title is separate from the work, in a way, almost an additional story, as if it stands by itself. And obviously the title points to the picture, but also beyond it.” “I think they point to certain ideas and narratives that people viewing the work can access, probably quicker than trying to find a narrative in the painting. There is often a bit too much of me in the painting, and the title points to things the viewer brings to the work, associations that they have with the words used. That’s also where the humour lies – the images are not inherently funny, but it’s as if the titles become this little voice beside the paintings making sarcastic remarks.” Like Lenny Bruce, Taylor’s humour is typical of observational comedy: bittersweet, with just enough sugar to make the hard medicine of human folly go down. But wait: this is painting isn’t it? Aren’t painters supposed to have a greater affinity with psychoanalysts and sociologists than with stand up comedians? A brief history of contemporary painting may be in order at this juncture. In the late 20th century a cool-eyed German Gerard Richter retooled painting from being the site of emotional exorcism into an arena in which the concepts as lofty as those taken on by the conceptual artists of the late 60‘s could be further explored. Richter’s primary achievement was to tackle photography as a subject: he explored how we experience the world visually in the wake of the photographs ubiquity. His legacy was picked up by a range of European painters, notably Luc Tuymans in the first wave, whose work as a filmmaker brought to his paintings a cinematic, über contemporary detachment. Tuymans, in turn, influenced Eberhard Havekost and Wilhelm Sasnal to create fresh swaths
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of cool-eyed canvases, many boarding on abstraction in their paucity of detail and emotion. But, as was inevitable the pendulum swung the other way. For every tragically hip postgrad daubing achingly fashionable, post-human pictures drenched in ennui, there was an artist who believed his or her inner world, no matter how unfashionably romantic, to be a worthy subject. This strain of contemporary painting is traceable back to Peter Doig, a pathologically out of step painter. Doig revived an approach to painting that was less world-wary, less paralysed by technology’s authoritative hum, and more imaginative. Into the space opened up by Doig fitted myriad painters more interested in the medium’s open-ended possibilities. Locally this coincided with a greater sense of freedom held by younger artists who didn’t carry the responsibilities of making struggle art. Rather than monastically poring over politics or photography’s existential implications, their work explores inner realms, often using aspects of picture book art for their associative power. In Europe the results were far from cutesy as is visible in the threatening worlds created by Kai Altoff, and Daniel Richter. In these contemporary nightmares, the flotsam and jetsam of consciousness collide with millennial anxiety and a wry surrealist humour. In a South African context Taylor uses this new found freedom to create images that often seem like a synthesis of the observed world with an inner monologue of acerbic observations. A parade of characters enacts our ambitions, phobias and follies and he constructs a sense of self as a collection of fragments of sensation emotion and memory. “I’m influenced by Edward Gorey who in the 1950s created very macabre, very Victorian melodramas. He poked fun at serious issues like death and suicide.” Like Gorey, Taylor seems to revel in a rebellion against the notion that life is grandiose, glorious and filled with titanic moral struggles. Instead, the minutiae of daily life provides grist for his mill: the gender divide evident in separate clothing accessories floating across the surface of His and Hers, or the
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momentarily threatening shears of a suburban gardener in To Whom it May Concern. Appropriate for a digital-age artist, Michael Taylor’s online presence is solid, and leads to some unexpected interactions: his Book of Immediate Nonsense, a series of sketches done as he observes life, has garnered interest from as far a field as Russia. Would the prolific Taylor, whose 2011 show at Whatiftheworld, titled the Tenacious Tree Huggers, was a commercial and critical success consider the ubiquitous move into sculpture that has lured so many, hungry for corporate and government commissions? “No I’m interested in the two-dimensional work on flat surfaces.” Flat the surfaces may be, but from them Taylor conjures situations and spectacles – a mirror held up to a febrile imagination.
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CHAPTER I
Singles Loneliness is a hairstyle
‘A mix of parody, humour, intrigue and innuendo, which conveys that it’s best to be unself-conscious, playful and exuberant about being self-conscious, serious and almost weirdly reticent.’ Miles Keylock, 2009
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Jesus is a Londoner, 2011 Acrylic on board, 120 Ă— 81 cm
Early morning spooky, 2010 Monotype, 107 Ă— 72 cm
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Above: Me and my big mussel, 2009 Monotype, 72 Ă— 53 cm 16
Opposite: Looking for trouble, 2012 Gouache and pencil on paper, 160 Ă— 122 cm
Opposite: A retired priestess, 2011 Acrylic on board, 120 Ă— 81 cm Above: What a devil, 2009 Gouache on board, 45 Ă— 43 cm 19
Above: Put-on soccer mom, 2010 Gouache on board, 50 × 45 cm 20
Opposite: Bruised fraternity, 2011 Acrylic on board, 120 × 81 cm
Above: Mid-morning rehearsal, 2011 Monotype, 107 Ă— 72 cm 22
Opposite: Holiday Champ, 2014 Charcoal on paper, 151 Ă— 117 cm
Above: The last day of camp, 2011 Acrylic on board, 95 × 81 cm 24
Opposite: The shape of things to come, 2011 Acrylic on board, 81 × 60 cm
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The destroyed animator, 2010 Gouache on board, 50 Ă— 43 cm
Save the drama for your mama, 2009 Gouache on board, 45 Ă— 43 cm
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Above: Shit stirrer, 2011 Acrylic on board, 120 × 81 cm 28
Opposite: The pleasure is all mine, 2011 Acrylic on board, 81 × 60 cm
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Unbecoming Hipster, 2014 Gouache and ink on paper, 150 Ă— 180 cm
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God is dashing. He’s French you know?, 2009 Gouache on board, 45 × 43 cm
Dirty thirties, 2009 Gouache on board, 45 Ă— 43 cm
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CHAPTER II
STORIes Meanwhile back at the ranch
‘Colour in Taylor’s images oscillates between good and bad taste, creating its own self-referential world in which emotional and satirical components of the work are advanced by the pastel, often-saccharine colouration. A work such as Jesus Was an Excellent Dancer merges the religious invocation of the title with the imagery of a swarthy, Latin-looking male figure in the throes of suggestive choreography. Taylor toys gently with notions of representational decorum: the stoic figure of Jesus is seldom imaged moving at all, let alone dancing licentiously. Though the image is obviously quickly rendered, it reveals Taylor’s masterful command of colour, a vibrant confection of icy blues, murky taupes and camouflage greens. Over the top, as he often does, Taylor has floated a visual disturbance of the base image, a flurry of brightly-coloured confetti, giving the satire a carnivalesque quality like the closing sequence of a TV dance competition show.’ Michael Smith, 2010
Gin & tonic, 2007 Gouache on card, 15 Ă— 15 cm
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Gift wrapped mountain, 2004 Gouache on card, 15 Ă— 15 cm
The be-all and end-all, 2010 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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The Hepburn hours, 2006 Pencil on paper, 12 Ă— 20 cm
Quietly interrupted by the cookie monster, 2008 Gouache on board, 45 Ă— 43 cm
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Baby Joey, 2014 Gouache and ink on paper, 180 Ă— 150 cm
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Two-timer, 2010 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Laundry Day Cowboy, 2014 Gouache, ink and acrylic on paper, 180 Ă— 150 cm
Stick to what you know, 2012 Charcoal on paper, 150 Ă— 175 cm
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Give me a break, 2011 Acrylic on board, 81 Ă— 60 cm
Installation of a shape, 2004 Gouache on card, 15 Ă— 15 cm
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Backyard reverie, 2009 Gouache on board, 45 Ă— 90 cm
Jesus was an excellent dancer, 2009 Gouache on board, 50 Ă— 50 cm
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Good old mumbo jumbo, 2012 Gouache and pencil on paper, 160 Ă— 122 cm
Ginger in the morning, ginger in the evening, ginger at suppertime, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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The agony. The ecstasy, 2009 Monotype, 107 Ă— 72 cm
Crocodile cheers, 2009 Monotype, 53 Ă— 72 cm
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Modern love, 2009 Gouache on board, 50 Ă— 50 cm
Enjoy your poodle, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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The spring cleaning you always dreamed of, 2006 Gouache on board, 30 Ă— 60 cm
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Flight of the golden boys, 2013 Acrylic on board, 120 Ă— 81 cm
CHAPTER III
SKETCHES Possibly. Maybe. Alright then.
‘I’m very interested in finding out what the drawings want for themselves, and only through an immediate approach to drawing and visual storytelling do I find that it can happen.’ MT
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This is a monologue, 2012 Gouache and pencil on paper, 160 Ă— 122 cm
King of the jumble, 2010 Gouache on paper, 35 Ă— 27 cm
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Crash and burn, 2010 Ink on paper, 90 Ă— 61 cm 76
Opposite: Seven Kinds of Fun, 2014 Gouache and ink on paper, 180 Ă— 150 cm
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Here to stay, 2011 Acrylic on board, 81 Ă— 60 cm
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The lost boys, 2011 Acrylic on board, 120 Ă— 81 cm
An Attempt at Summer, 2013 Gouache and acrylic on paper, 180 Ă— 150 cm
The laptop-dancer-chancer, 2009 Pencil on paper, 25 × 18.5 cm 84
Opposite: An Uneasy Discovery, 2014 Gouache, ink and acrylic on paper, 180 × 150 cm
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Enters, God, 2006 Collage on card, 12 Ă— 12 cm
Which end’s which? 2012 Acrylic on board, 120 × 81 cm
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The Rehearsal, 2013 Monotype, 170 Ă— 150 cm
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Ordinary birthday, 2010 Gouache on board, 45 Ă— 45 cm
My wife the lion, 2012 Gouache on card, 18 Ă— 15.5 cm
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CHAPTER IV
SCENES Experimentation starts at home
‘Recently I’ve started making ‘brown’ paintings; those colours that your art teacher at school warns you not to mix. I just like the idea that, like one would mask what’s being represented, you can also mask colour, and the communicative value of colours’ MT
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Stuck in the mud, 2011 Acrylic on board, 81 Ă— 60 cm
Above: Birds for bees, 2011 Acrylic on board, 81 × 60 cm
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Opposite: Baby Zeus, 2011 Acrylic on board, 120 × 81 cm
Above: Two birds in conversation, 2005 Ink and pencil on paper, 12.5 Ă— 12.5 cm 100
Opposite: But I love you, 2011 Acrylic on board, 120 Ă— 81 cm
Something from a movie, 2004 Gouache on card, 15 Ă— 15 cm
Messiah Complex, 2014 Charcoal on paper, 151 Ă— 117 cm
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A cute place for a nightmare, 2007 Gouache on card, 15 Ă— 15 cm
Possibly. Maybe. Alright then, 2007 Gouache on card, 15 Ă— 15 cm
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Some unscrupulous gift swapping, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Above: The secret swim, 2007 Pencil on paper, 15 × 15 cm 108
Opposite: Patch it up, 2006 Pencil on paper, 20 × 12 cm
The mayors of Cape Town, 2010 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Professional Apeshit, 2014 Gouache and ink on paper, 180 Ă— 150 cm
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Ride with the devil, 2006 Pencil on paper, 18.5 Ă— 25 cm
Mother’s little angels, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 × 60 cm
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The Good for Nothings, 2014 Gouache and ink on paper, 180 Ă— 150 cm
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The dawdling thespian, 2010 Gouache on board, 50 Ă— 43 cm
Nothing can come between us, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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The Memes, 2013 Gouache on paper, 180 Ă— 150 cm
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CHAPTER V
Selfs Just because I want to
‘I am someone who draws, I’m a draughtsperson… I trust drawing.’ MT
2009th Self portrait, 2009 Gouache on board, 43 Ă— 45 cm
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Surprise surprise, 2012 Charcoal on paper, 150 Ă— 150 cm
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Sans seraph angel, 2009 Gouache on board, 45 Ă— 43 cm
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Above:Stellenbosch, 2004 Charcoal on paper, 65 Ă— 85 cm 132
Opposite: First time barfly, 2010 Ink on paper, 37 Ă— 27 cm
Above: Forgive and forget, 2010 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm 134
Opposite: Two timer, 2012 Gouache and pencil on paper, 94 Ă— 67 cm
CHAPTER VI
Spooks In deep with creepy
‘I’m starting to see my work more and more as selfreflexive. … Yes, it is humorous but perhaps that is a guise for the seriousness of the subject, much like nonsense is for sense. The notions of recognition through ambiguity, confronting by covering up and defacement through disguise are things I intentionally inject into my work.’ MT
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Fighting fit, 2013 Gouache and pencil on paper, 25 Ă— 17 cm
A marvellous gesture, 2010 Gouache on board, 50 Ă— 45 cm
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Undulated shades of grey, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Real men do lunch, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
Recuperating from this still life, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Vampire Picnic, 2014 Gouache and ink on paper, 180 Ă— 150 cm
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Blonde ambition, 2008 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Been there, done that, 2010 Gouache on board, 50 Ă— 45 cm
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Above: The embarrassing chum, 2008 Gouache on board, 50 × 50 cm 154
Opposite: To whom it may concern, 2011 Acrylic on board, 120 × 81 cm
Above: Scary you, scary me, 2009 Ink and pencil on paper, 25 × 18.5 cm 156
Opposite: In deep with creepy, 2011 Acrylic on board, 81 × 60 cm
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No easy way out, 2012 Gouache and pencil on paper, 94 Ă— 67 cm
Sleep for no reason, 2010 Gouache on board, 50 Ă— 45 cm
Proud Rondebosch Family, 2014 Charcoal on paper, 151 Ă— 151 cm
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CHAPTER VII
Spaces Recuperating from this still life
‘Viewer emotional engagement is triggered by offbeat wit, and the visual journey successfully concluded with sly painterly manoeuvre.’ Melvyn Minnaar, 2009
No easy way in, 2012 Gouache on card, 15 × 15 cm
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You’re such a girl, 2009 Gouache on board, 50× 50 cm
Centrefold, 2010 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Our new house by the lake, 2009 Gouache on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Easy-peasy paradise, 2012 Charcoal on paper, 150 Ă— 175 cm
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Inside, nowhere, 2008 Charcoal on paper, 150 Ă— 150 cm
To hell with the holidays, 2011 Acrylic on board, 60 Ă— 60 cm
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Atlantic manifest, 2008 Charcoal on paper, 150 Ă— 150 cm
Morning Glory, 2013 Gouache and pencil on paper, 170 Ă— 150 cm
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Artist’s Statement
My work can be described as ironic, illustrative, and selfreflexive pictures. I draw and paint; depicting, what I consider to be, a dialogue between personal and cultural knowledge – themes and narratives that inform our everyday thinking. These interpretations and imaginary events are fundamentally concerned with image-text paradigms – the subtleties between visual thoughts and language. I look at these relationships, particularly the interplay between an image and its adjoined title, as concepts for my work. I regard a picture’s title as the viewer’s accepted entry-point to significance – they are allegorical devices to make viewers believe more than is necessarily true about what is portrayed. Generally, I choose titles which evoke something entirely different from what the image represents, or, I employ titles to reveal characteristics that are not obvious about the subject. This deliberate juxtaposing of image and text is aimed to address the viewer’s understanding of the relationship between a representation and its accompanying title, as well as, signification as a result of multiple texts (because both the image and the title induce their own set of relative texts and contexts), and also, the viewer’s familiarity and employment of visual narrative codes in order to construe visual events. On the other hand, when looking at the image-making process, the picture’s presence and performance is still my main concern. I like to believe that an artist’s process, both the conceptual and active sides thereof, is as much a narrative as what the image’s subject would depict. What I try and find in the processes of drawing and painting is a parallel between abstraction and illustration – asking myself whether the performance of drawing is not a kind of narrative as well? My approach to drawing is not something overly-precious, and certainly not reserved. I’m very interested in finding out what the drawings want for themselves, and only through an immediate approach to drawing and visual storytelling do I find that this happens. I also think that it’s restrictive to work purely observational: intuition and imagination form a big part of my work. Being someone who is constantly exercising narrative, I find it rewarding to draw from memory. My work’s subject deals with the “burden of reading things the right way” and my images insinuate hidden agendas and peculiar truths about modern people and social stereotypes. The idea of “recognition through ambiguity” / “confronting by covering-up” / “defacement through disguise” is something I intentionally inject into my work. I am always interested in working with humour and ridicule, ways of communicating that are disarming, and those aspects pointing to being simply human – elements that will make the viewer become aware of themselves when looking at the image.
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Curriculum Vitae
Michael Taylor born in South Africa, 1979
Education University of Stellenbosch, Master of Fine Arts, 2006 University of Stellenbosch, Bachelor of Arts – Visual Communication, 2001 Solo Exhibitions 2014 2012 2011 2010 2010 2009 2007 2006
Home Truths, M. Contemporary, Sydney Mumbo Jumbo, Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town The Tenacious Tree Huggers, Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town The Lion’s Den, Worldart Gallery, Cape Town Comeback Boys, CO-OP, Johannesburg The Plot Thickens, Worldart Gallery, Cape Town Nocturnes, Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town Title Sequence, US Gallery, Stellenbosch
Art Fairs – Solo Presentations 2012 London Art Fair, Whatiftheworld Gallery, London 2009 Art Amsterdam, Joao Ferreira Gallery, Amsterdam Selected Group Exhibitions 2012 Paint I: Contemporary Painting in South Africa 2002 – 2012, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town 2011 A Natural Selection: 1991 – 2011, AVA Gallery, Cape Town 2010 The Menippean Uprising, Blank Projects, Cape Town 2009 A Meeting, AVA Gallery, Cape Town 2009 Black, Blank Projects, Cape Town 2009 Pigment on Paper, UCA Gallery, Cape Town 2008 Candy I, AVA Gallery, Cape Town 2008 Print & Ediitions 08, Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town 2006 The Collage Show, Whatiftheworld Gallery, Cape Town 2004 ABSA L’Atelier, ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg
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PRESS Blackman, Matthew: ‘Taylor unpicks the jungle: a review of Mumbo Jumbo’, Artthrob (online) Smith, Michael: ‘In a sea of possibilities’, Art South Africa, vol. 9, issue 1, p 90 – 93 Jacobs, Katherine: ArtBio, Artthob (online) Haw, Penny: ‘Reading between the lines’, Business Day (Art), March 2009, p 12 Keylock, Miles: ‘Cool way to be cool’, Mail & Guardian, 7 August 2009, p 8 Khoury, Lorraine: ‘Reading things the right way’, Art South Africa, vol. 7, issue 4, p 44 – 45 Minnaar, Melvyn: ‘Allow Michael Taylor to open your mind’, Cape Times, 18 August 2009, p 10 Minnaar, Melvyn: ‘Proof that small can be smart’, Cape Times, 23 November 2006 Van Eeden, Adrienne: ‘Immediate (or not so immediate) nonsense’, Artthrob (online) Residencies and Collaborations 2012 – 2013 2008 – 2013
L’MAD Collection, collaboration with Stephens Tapestry Studio Various printmaking collaborations with Warren Editions, Cape Town
PUBLISHED WORKS Print: The Gifted, Warren Editions, 2011 Online: The Book of Immediate Nonsense, self-published, 2005 – 2013 AWARDS & RECOGNITION 2013 2012 2011 2009 2004
(Shortlisted) Thames & Hudson - 100 Painters of Tomorrow Modern Painters Magazine - 100 Artists to Watch Business Day WANTED Magazine, Young African Artist Art South Africa Magazine, Bright Young Thing ABSA L'atelier finalist
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