Contemporary Art
Brillo boxes, Marilyn Monroe prints and Campbell Soup Cans. Warhol’s canonical Pop Art from the sixties is universally renowned. Firmly fixed within twentieth century dialogues of commodity and consumerism, these iconic works speak of capitalisation and reproduction in an accessible, kitsch and now cliché manner. British contemporary painter, Stuart Semple, wilfully acknowledges his fascination with America’s Pop Art of the fifties and sixties. “They were dealing with art at the start of mass consumerism, and they more or less celebrated it and put it on a pedestal. I want to prove that what they did could actually be an important way to look at the world. They opened up permission for later artists to play with similar concepts and aesthetics,” explains Semple.
Semple’s work is directly influenced by popular culture or “the image world” as he describes it. It his obsession with mass culture and reproduction that posits his work alongside original Pop Art works. Revisiting these issues seems particularly pertinent in today’s hyperactive image market, fuelled by the internet. However, unlike Warhol’s sterile and deadpan works, angst permeates much of Semple’s art. “I am being more critical and less ‘Ready-Made’ about it. I want to turn it back into something quite personal and expressive. I tend to start with an emotional feeling, and then I start to look at products of popular culture through that sensation. My anxieties lead me to make work. I need to have something to push against, a problem to solve,” asserts Semple, inadvertently subscribing to the tortured artist trope.
The range of works exhibited at his latest show in New York, Everlasting Nothing Less, and his earlier ‘performative-installation’ work Happy Cloud (2000) appear strikingly divergent in tone. Everlasting primarily shows large-scale paintings, comprising beautifully composed, layered images and symbols, which are portrayed in a distinctly graphic and illustrative style. They combine the precision of line with painterly effect, and have a patently entropic, dystopian and fragile character. Conversely, Happy Cloud, which Semple describes as “the perfection of Pop”, consists of smiling faces (made from soap, helium and vegetable dye) being released into the air seems incredibly whimsical. Yet Semple insists that “both stem from a deep dissatisfaction and anxiety. Happy Cloud is trying to resolve it. This was the most straightforward way I could think of to literally contribute something happy to the atmosphere. The New York work reflects that feeling more directly. It is more analytical, looking at the world under the microscope.”
Semple’s oeuvre stretches the multiplicity of medium, venturing into fashion photography and design and music videos. He is insistent that these other projects are artworks, “I don’t change who I am for what I’m doing. If I’m designing clothes – I’m an artist designing clothes. So all of these things are still part of my art, even if they are not in a gallery.” They are also crucial to his paintings, “My work is about mass culture. I want to know what those things are like. I don’t want to sit in some ivory tower and look down on things.”
At just 28 Semple has received both critical acclaim and commercial viability. Publicity stunts, such as the anarchistic tactic of smuggling his work British Painting Still Rocks into the Saatchi Gallery, have gained him notoriety. Semple admits that such strategies and networking matters, “I don’t have a rich family or people giving me money, I have to sell my work to live. However, you can’t just make a load of noise. You can make people look once, but if there is nothing there they won’t come back. You are doing these things for the work and to allow you to make the work, always put the work first. But I don’t create art so some rich guy can buy it and impress his girl friend in his penthouse. Quite often I won’t sell work to people that I think are going to sell it again for profit – I try and hold out, but when times are hard you have to do what you have to do.”
As with many artists, the commercial aspect of creation and the art market troubles Semple. He explains that “Commercial value is 99% myth and hype – there is no getting around that. No one admits it, but that is what it is. But in a lot of the cases it’s less about trying to make a lot of money and more about trying to keep things moving. It’s easy for outsiders to look at the market and thinks it’s corrupt. The danger of course is when something sells for a ridiculous sum at auction the art market itself is so extravagant that it prices itself out of culture, it becomes more rarefied and locked down in private collections.” Semple’s opinion of Saatchi and his tactical promotion of the YBAs is equally ambivalent, “In one way he did a fantastic thing, he was very forward thinking and he bought some fantastic work. Now I’m not so sure of his relevance or the power he wields as a collector. I find him strange. Everything he does is to promote himself. He is not doing anyone any favours.”
More of Semple’s work can be found at www.stuartsemple.com.
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