Michael Collins: Model Paintings

Michael Collins received an MFA in Painting from the Universityof Michiganin 1992 where, subsequently, he taught Advanced Life Drawing. Since 1999, Collins has taught at the Design and Arts College of New Zealand. Collins has worked, studied and exhibited in the United States, Germany, Italy and Thailand, and has exhibited at COCA on several occasions, notably in the group shows The Middle Way (2003) and GPS (2005).

With the Model Paintings, Collins engages head-on with a subject that, traditionally, exemplifies what ‘artists’ and ‘painting’ are (or should be): the relationship between the (male) artist and the (female) artist’s model. In so doing, Collins is challenged to breathe new life into a well-worn trope, and to deliver a visual riposte to viewers concerned about the politics of the gaze. At the same time, however, viewed in the wider context of his work, it is clear that Collins’ Model Paintings constitute the latest chapter in a perennial investigation of the nature of ‘looking,’ and the status of subjects and objects in painting.

These concerns are evident, for example, in a 1990s series of paintings of television sets. Regarded as prostheses, enabling voyeuristic takes on the external world, the TV set is a ready symbol for looking. Yet, insofar as the TV set conditions social reality, its screen is an eye that ‘commands’ the viewer. Collins’ paintings foreground this multivalent gaze, undermining the distinction between subject and object (that which looks, that which is looked at). To paraphrase Collins, the TV screen is, potentially, a Lazy Eye (1999) by which we lose our Vertical Hold (1991) on reality.

Fionna Scott-Milligan proposed ‘Locating ourselves’ as a central problematic of the GPS show [1] – and, indeed, Collins’ contribution, First Alert (2005), thoroughly destabilises the artist-subject as the primary point of reference in the creation of art objects. Collins’ series of expressionistic ‘volcano paintings’ were created in accordance with Claude Heath’s ‘blind contour’ technique (the work is painted unseen, often from a highly oblique angle, relying on instinct and the artist’s tactile, spatial memory). [2] Intuitively channelling, rather than originating, creativity, in First Alert, Collins’ evades the objectifying artist’s ‘look,’ inviting his own creation by the work, rather than vice versa.

With the Model Paintings, Collins further explores the dynamics of looking to interrogate, and perhaps even invalidate, the categories of subject and object. Alluding to the totalitarian omnipresence of the internet and advertising, Collins describes the Model Paintings as ‘an antidote to looking at pre-existing imagery and screens.’ His stress on ‘generalised’ forms and ‘saturated’ colour declares the primary impetus of these works – analysis rather than gratification. [3] However, first and foremost, Collins acknowledges the collaborative dimension of the paintings, paying tribute to the dedication and generosity of the person depicted: Margaux Hlavac. Thus, in contrast to the ‘emptying out’ of subjectivity enacted in the TV paintings or First Alert, the Model Paintings explore the possibility that art might emerge from a positive reciprocity in which conventional relations between ‘subject’ (artist) and ‘object’ (artist’s model) no longer obtain.

-David Kahn

[1] Fionna Scott-Milligan, ‘Preface’ in Centre of Contemporary Art and Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design, GPS, 2 Institutions/6 Artists (Christchurch: Victoria Edwards/Henry Symonds Publications, 2005), 5.
[2] See Margaret Duncan, ‘Michael Collins,’ in GPS, 8-9, and Tom Lubbock, ‘Don’t Look Now,’ The Independent, 8 October, 2002, http://www.claudeheath.com/texts/article7.php <22.01.11>.
[3]Michael Collins, Unpublished Artist Statement.

Event listed by COCA

View their other events or contact promoter