Can photography enhance an artist’s work in other mediums? Vija Celmins made a successful career of taking a photograph, cropping everything out of the picture except a selected section, and transforming that image using graphite pencil or charcoal on paper. When you take charcoal and blacken an entire piece of paper and then use an eraser to remove the pigment off the surface to create an image, it’s almost magical as the image forms before your eyes. I am very drawn to this technique and, being a photographer, I used her method to create some art of my own.
Artist and photographer Vija Celmins was born in Latvia in 1938 and was just a little girl when the Soviet Army invaded her country. Celmins and her family left Latvia and lived in a number of refugee camps until they were able to come to the United States, settling in Indianapolis, Indiana. She had problems with the English language so started collecting comic books to learn to read and liked the pictures. In time she started collecting pictures she found in magazines and books. She began painting the images of the pictures which, at the time, had a lot to do with childhood memories of World War II and the images of war like guns, explosions and airplanes.
When Celmins started taking camera pictures, she was drawn to photographing found images in nature. She’s not trying to make a political statement or reveal some heavy inner feeling in her work. Her favorite subjects for her paintings, drawings and photographs are oceans, spider webs, night skies, and deserts. All subjects that bring miraculous imaginary to the viewer and the beauty that surrounds all mankind. These photographs were used as images for her art. Dave Hickey, art critic, suggested that “Celmins’s shift from using imagery of war and violence, to the ocean, desert and sky, paralleled a shift in her personal life… her status changed from the status of a refugee to a nomad – a nomad who could find her bearings from the infinitesimal reference points that nature offers” (Tate).
She began making sculptures of everyday objects. “Although Celmins’s work from this period is often discussed in relation to pop art, her ideas had more in common with the object paintings of artists such as René Magritte and Giorgio Morandi. She was inspired by their experimentation with object size and scale, and their depiction of objects detached from their original function” (Tate).
Her interest in object painting led her to drawing and prints of the nature around her. I particularly like her spider web work (Fig. 1, 2). Although I am deathly afraid of spiders, I am drawn to the beauty of the webs they weave. It prompted me to go find out more about spiders and how they create their webs. I learned a spider can weave something so intricate and beautiful yet is used to capture their food so they don’t have go find it. Also, I learned that there is a liquid in their body that can weave something that is five times stronger than steel. “If human-size, it would be tough enough to snag a jetliner” (Miceli). Celmins artwork on spider webs was based on photographs she took. She used the same angle and scale as in nature and “The web – like the night sky and desert floor – acts as a kind of map, as it describes the picture surface. (Tate).
Fig. 1 Celmins, Web #2, Charcoal, 2000
Fig. 2 Celmins, Spider Web, Screen Print, 44.5 x 48.3, 2009
The lines of the web are not crisply defined, appearing softly diffuse as they rise from the background, with charcoal dust clinging in places. There are brighter white areas of the web structure where there has been a more intensive use of the eraser to highlight the radiating strands of the web. The web stretches taut across the image surface, touching all four edges and creating strong diagonals across the picture plane. It is a drawing that is both produced mechanically (the electric eraser and photographic source) and laboriously, physically created by hand. Numerous fine threads are visible to the eye, but the charcoal atmosphere suffuses every line with a muted, cloaked character” (Tate).
Mills, Spider Web, Charcoal, 2020
The drawing I did of a spider web was done in the same style as Celmins by using charcoal and an eraser. Her lines are much more delicate than mine with a sense of realism that mine doesn’t have. However, she is an artist and I’m a photographer. I did the best I could. A critique in the New York Times stated about her spiderweb work, “And a different buzz descends when you take a closer look — which the smallness invites. Depicted reality dissolves. Prolonged scrutiny brings awareness of the artist’s hand, the careful textures of her marks, and above all the discipline and concentration that produced them. They invite and reward reciprocal patience and concentration, slowing down perception so thoroughly that the show almost exists in its own time zone” (Smith).
Celmins work includes photographs, drawings, screen prints, paintings, and sculpture. All her work focuses on just a few subjects in nature using a palette of white, black, and grey. She cares very much about the materials and paper she uses and what scale to use. If you look at her work, you can see she takes only an area of the photograph to draw or paint so she can get a good range of shading. There are no horizons or land showing, just all water or all spider web from edge to edge. When ask about having no horizons she said, “I don’t have a horizon line because I want you to, I want to place the work in a wall, you see. I don’t want to make a pictorial picture where you might imagine a horizon and what’s over the horizon. I want to keep you in that rectangle, you know. I don’t want to make a pictorial painting that describes the sunlight and various things. I just want to keep you there, keep you in that rectangle” (Sussler, 37).
I was very happy to read that at 81 years old Celmins is feeling well and continues doing art. She gave up her graphite and charcoal work and went back to mostly painting. Her half century of work hangs permanently in museums all over the world. Celmins said of her work, “There aren't really rules for painting, but there’s certain facts and fictions about painting. Part of what I do is document another surface and sort of translate it. They’re like translations, and then part of it is fiction, which is invention” (Artnet).