Alasdair Macintyre web page

The art of Alasdair Macintyre

Exhibition Review: Alasdair Macintyre – July 1-5, 2003 @ 60 Merivale Street

by Kris Carlon

In Alasdair Macintyre’s self-titled show, the viewer is presented with a series of small-scale sculptural tableaux that fuse together elements of art history, philosophy, pop culture and religion. They take the form of hand sculpted dioramic assemblages that explore the experiences, influences and imagination of this very intriguing artist. An almost obsessive interest in the fields mentioned above has invested this artist with a unique and spiritual vision of the world around him, allowing him to see in the everyday objects of mass culture an artistic viability that borders on metaphysics. This transformative vision allows the artist to refer not so much to popular culture but to neoclassicism in conversation about the basis of much of his work. Rather than discussing the particular episode of Dr. Who that influenced him or the significance of Stormtroopers pondering Picasso’s Guernica, he comments on the work of Delacroix and David, semiotics and philosophy, and firmly posits his own work at a distance from simple representations of mass cultural icons, although he clearly has a soft spot for them.

Not only is the artist influenced by pop-cultural iconography, the assemblages of Joseph Cornell and the practices of Jake and Dinos Chapman, but he also draws much inspiration from the lives of these artists, treating individual existences as equally valid source material as the works of art they create. This focus on the artist as guide is evidenced in the anecdote he tells of Max Ernst who once said you should have one eye open, focused on the external reality and the other closed, focused inside yourself and that what you create is a synthesis of these two worlds. The synthesis between thoughts and ideas and modern reality is clearly on show in the mysterious juxtapositions within his boxed worlds, with one depicting the artist defending his easel against an encroaching army of art historical imagery, deftly given three-dimensional form by the artist against whom they advance. Perhaps they view him as an iconoclast of art historical imagery, or perhaps as a threat to their supremacy as objects of focus above and beyond the artists who created them. In this nightmarish dreamscape, the artist himself exists in the realm of the artists’ imagination and is confronted by the very icons he destroys, indeed becoming one of those icons himself.

On the artists’ website a media release announces the opening of this new show and reveals more about the work than the artist-in-interview does, cleverly avoiding questions and twisting responses into art historical anecdotes that disclose nothing of the personal aspect of his work. “I am never comfortable discussing the "meaning" behind my work, or any work for that matter. The meaning lies within the realm of the viewer, with their own references and experience. There is no one "right" interpretation.” In discussion with the artist, one becomes aware of the respect he has for classical art, emphasising the classical tableau quality of his 3-dimensional miniatures, and his use of the terms renaissance and neoclassicism take on a new light. Just as Giotto and Piero della Francesca created frescoes for the illiterate to appreciate biblical messages, so too does Alasdair Macintyre create messages for modern audiences in a language they can understand. This modernisation of the vocabulary of art has its roots in the very origins of art history itself, but like Art continually evolves, revises and revolutionises itself, assuming the form of the day.

By combining the vocabulary of mass consumption and aesthetics, Macintyre presents an enigmatic communiqué from his experience to ours, in a medium that we can all readily relate to. The fact that anybody can posit an interpretation on the significance of Daleks and Stormtroopers in light of their own experience simply reinforces Macintyres’ avoidance of directly discussing the meaning of his work, as this would contaminate the pleasure to be found in personally exploring the meaning for oneself. This idea does however introduce an element of elitism into the work: not only must one have a grasp of art history to fully appreciate the pieces, one must also be familiar with the cultural icons Macintyre employs. Although many of the works in this show can be read as having a distinctly self-reflexive element to them, when asked if the works are intentionally self-referential, the artist suddenly hears something which he must disappear to investigate, the question forgotten upon his return. In relation to the work mentioned above (Transfiguration on the Post-Modern Wasteland), the artists’ inclusion within some of the works adds a dimension of self-destructive iconoclasm. The question, in retrospect, is rightfully avoided, as this comment reveals: “I would prefer the viewer of my work to draw their own conclusions as to what is going on in those boxes. Have I the right to tell them what the art is about? Each will draw from their own experiences, as I have done”.

This is not to say that all the works take place within the limited confines of modern consumer culture. More esoteric references can be found to the Andrei Tarkovsky film Stalker in Abide With Me that depicts the artist isolated on an “island”—taking its composition from the film—surrounded by a submerged reproduction of an Ian Fairweather painting; and to Ridley Scott’s Alien in The Sacrifice (Inside the White Cube), where the astronaut/artist descends a rope into the chamber of glowing alien pods containing the images of Western art history. Schopenhauer’s philosophy that life is essentially evil and cannot be made good appears in Schopenhauer’s Sepulchre where a gathering of enigmatically robed figures surround a plinth upon which an internally lit sphere radiates a surreal luminosity. This work could almost be read (personally that is) as a ritualistic rebirth for a new era of contemporary art with the glowing sphere interchangeable with Tony Smith’s 6’ black cube entitled Die. The views afforded the spectator take on the quality of cinema, with the artist placing emphasis on the fact that “you don’t want to give the viewer too much information; only show them what they need to see”. This revealing comment plus the intriguing nature of Alasdair Macintyre’s work that virtually demands subjective interpretation is more than enough for this reviewer to want to see more, but only as much as the artist is willing to allow.

All quotes taken from either www.alasdairmacintyre.com or from an interview

conducted on the 03/07/03 between Kris Carlon and Alasdair Macintyre. This essay originally appeared in The Farm's LOCAL ART publication, July 2003.

Kris Carlon is a Brisbane based arts writer, currently undertaking an art history degree at The University of Queensland.