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NOTES ON
NOTES ON is an a-chronological studio diary that artist Magalie Guérin’s re-transcribed twice by hand and now in print. Through that active facsimile Guérin documents her painting process, mapping at once her creative history and the way that history consistently transforms. Personal, professional, and creative spheres intersect like simultaneous layers in a painting as accumulated entries capture the shifting gray area between self-doubt, self-awareness, and creative breakthrough. A recurring and parallel “character” in this journal is a hat shape—an abstract form that Guérin paints over and over again. Whether anatomical or abstract, the hat shape becomes an anthropomorphic companion as witness/lover/nemesis to Guérin’s artistic endeavors. Guérin shows us not only that a room of one‘s own is useful, but what can happen when it is utilized.
240 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 9, 2016
My review for the Chicago Tribune:
Fragmentary, a-chronological and equally interested in being a "printed object" as a book, per se, "Notes On" is the fascinating and frustrating literary debut of visual artist Magalie Guérin, published by the similarly exhilarating and experimental Chicago-based Green Lantern Press.
In the book, Guérin takes a studio diary that she has already transcribed in handwriting twice and retranscribes it again, this time in print. If you're wondering Why would someone do something like that, so repetitive and arguably redundant? then you're getting at least part of the point of the project. For those questions are precisely the ones the endeavor poses for itself and wants the reader to pose.
In addition to being a publisher, Green Lantern also runs a gallery space called Sector 2337 in Logan Square and what's particularly intriguing about this book is that it's being done in conjunction with a solo exhibition by the author that will run through May 14. The show, "Copy Drawings," features more than 100 drawn reproductions of the artist's previous works and "examines the process by which one reconsiders and recreates the past," inviting the viewer — as the book invites the reader — to question what is and is not original and what it means to create something.
This book-and-show combo has the feel of a giant and aesthetically playful-yet-serious Throwback Thursday. This activity, in the social media universe, of course, is fun, but often interesting only to the poster and his or her immediate circle of "friends" or "followers." In "Notes On," Guérin does a version of this publicly performed self-archiving in a fashion that stands to interest anyone curious about the process of becoming an artist and making art.
In her "Intro," entitled "This Book is a Painting," Guérin discusses how initially, the material for this book came from her desire to "better understand the evolution of the work (and keep track of my studio time)" and then how, upon copying and recopying it for subsequent purposes, "transcribing my notes was a meditative activity."
Such aggressive self-documentation could come seem rote and flat, or could be, as is the case here, an act of thoughtful daring and vulnerability. Throughout, Guérin reveals her own preoccupations (e.g. the abstract hat shape to which she keeps returning in her work), exasperations, and ephemeral preferences. "I wish things would go faster" she writes, just below a fragment that says "Liking brown right now — or more precisely, to brown my colors," which in turn is not too far below a fragment that reads like a poem:
Total risk is a must! But how?
Try NAKED
Never decorate
The preface by editor Caroline Picard points out that this book certainly possesses the mundanity, intimacy and specificity one would expect of any journal, but that it avoids what could come across as excessive self-absorption or insularity because of the way it "highlights an intersection of multiple creative lives and their reciprocal artistic influence," thereby becoming "as much an account of Guérin's studio practice as it is a subjective historical document of a Chicago art community from 2009-2015."
Indeed, Guérin's mix of memoiristic observations about her personal life and more critical mapping of her artistic history, including her frequent casual mentions of other artists with whom she interacts — as when she writes, "I gave the Moleskine notebook to Amelia and asked her to hide it from me for a while. I need to get back to the paintings" — is invaluable for what it shows about the often unseen support systems necessary for an individual artist to function.
Thus, one of the book's many subtle but electrifying revelations is that even a solo show is never truly solo, but rather is the result of a place, a time and a population of friends, rivals and influences.
The book is a disjointed jumble by design, but it coheres into a strangely delightful whole, one which offers a necessary and profound demystification of an all too often mystified profession, revealing how concrete and layered such an artistic career can be: how utterly dull and exciting at the same time.
Fragmentary, a-chronological and equally interested in being a "printed object" as a book, per se, "Notes On" is the fascinating and frustrating literary debut of visual artist Magalie Guérin, published by the similarly exhilarating and experimental Chicago-based Green Lantern Press.
In the book, Guérin takes a studio diary that she has already transcribed in handwriting twice and retranscribes it again, this time in print. If you're wondering Why would someone do something like that, so repetitive and arguably redundant? then you're getting at least part of the point of the project. For those questions are precisely the ones the endeavor poses for itself and wants the reader to pose.
In addition to being a publisher, Green Lantern also runs a gallery space called Sector 2337 in Logan Square and what's particularly intriguing about this book is that it's being done in conjunction with a solo exhibition by the author that will run through May 14. The show, "Copy Drawings," features more than 100 drawn reproductions of the artist's previous works and "examines the process by which one reconsiders and recreates the past," inviting the viewer — as the book invites the reader — to question what is and is not original and what it means to create something.
This book-and-show combo has the feel of a giant and aesthetically playful-yet-serious Throwback Thursday. This activity, in the social media universe, of course, is fun, but often interesting only to the poster and his or her immediate circle of "friends" or "followers." In "Notes On," Guérin does a version of this publicly performed self-archiving in a fashion that stands to interest anyone curious about the process of becoming an artist and making art.
In her "Intro," entitled "This Book is a Painting," Guérin discusses how initially, the material for this book came from her desire to "better understand the evolution of the work (and keep track of my studio time)" and then how, upon copying and recopying it for subsequent purposes, "transcribing my notes was a meditative activity."
Such aggressive self-documentation could come seem rote and flat, or could be, as is the case here, an act of thoughtful daring and vulnerability. Throughout, Guérin reveals her own preoccupations (e.g. the abstract hat shape to which she keeps returning in her work), exasperations, and ephemeral preferences. "I wish things would go faster" she writes, just below a fragment that says "Liking brown right now — or more precisely, to brown my colors," which in turn is not too far below a fragment that reads like a poem:
Total risk is a must! But how?
Try NAKED
Never decorate
The preface by editor Caroline Picard points out that this book certainly possesses the mundanity, intimacy and specificity one would expect of any journal, but that it avoids what could come across as excessive self-absorption or insularity because of the way it "highlights an intersection of multiple creative lives and their reciprocal artistic influence," thereby becoming "as much an account of Guérin's studio practice as it is a subjective historical document of a Chicago art community from 2009-2015."
Indeed, Guérin's mix of memoiristic observations about her personal life and more critical mapping of her artistic history, including her frequent casual mentions of other artists with whom she interacts — as when she writes, "I gave the Moleskine notebook to Amelia and asked her to hide it from me for a while. I need to get back to the paintings" — is invaluable for what it shows about the often unseen support systems necessary for an individual artist to function.
Thus, one of the book's many subtle but electrifying revelations is that even a solo show is never truly solo, but rather is the result of a place, a time and a population of friends, rivals and influences.
The book is a disjointed jumble by design, but it coheres into a strangely delightful whole, one which offers a necessary and profound demystification of an all too often mystified profession, revealing how concrete and layered such an artistic career can be: how utterly dull and exciting at the same time.
March 11, 2016
“How does one become an artist? By turns earnest, exasperated, and exhilarated, Magalie Guérin’s NOTES ON provides a fascinating, behind-the-scenes account of one painter’s progress. Transcripts of grad school crits, studio visits, and Guérin’s own diaries and notebooks are combined to demonstrate how—between an individual’s defeats and triumphs—a language of visual art is devised.” — Chris Kraus
“The success of Guérin’s studio diary lies in her willingness to bare all. Rather than cleaning things up for posterity’s sake, she gives the reader an unexpurgated look at the chaotic mix of reflection, insecurity, gossip, exuberance, and doubt that constitute the inner life of the artist at work. A fun, rich book that feels absolutely true to its time and place.” — Roger White
“Magalie Guérin applies her artist’s receptors to the call and response between art object and the object of art; an ongoing subjective dialogue of creation. Her sense of balance, aspiration, and blurred boundary not only illuminates her own process, but the sensibility that we bring to our perceptions of what art can aspire to, its journey to our bared soul.” — Lenny Kaye
“NOTES ON knits together an intricate and impressive network of friends, acquaintances, mentors, and peers whose critical insights converge on painter Magalie Guérin’s studio practice. Expanding on the tradition of Richter’s The Daily Practice of Painting, its multitude of voices—including Guérin’s own—foregrounds discursiveness and its role in shaping contemporary art. But there is also magical thinking afoot. What Guérin disregards from her collection of studio generated language tells us as much about her creative process as the words and ideas she shares with us.” — Michelle Grabner
“What would it mean to be open and honest? To reveal the most vulnerable part of one’s identity? Artists poke at that activity, but to put a narrative—a shredded, recursive, nonlinear narrative—to the act of self-revelation means meditating on the things that make one uncomfortable, addressing the petty concerns and daily anxieties, weighing the relative value of friends and foe, comparing big, inspiring ideas and irksome minutia, boredom and terror, stupidity and insight, the major and minor triumphs, the leaps and bounds and incremental steps that make up an artist’s ecosystem. Magalie Guérin has found abundant material in the tender passage from school to world. She is a painter, but she is also an acute and sensitive observer and a skillful writer, and her book gives shape to the dialogues—both interior and exterior—of a creative person.” — John Corbett
“The success of Guérin’s studio diary lies in her willingness to bare all. Rather than cleaning things up for posterity’s sake, she gives the reader an unexpurgated look at the chaotic mix of reflection, insecurity, gossip, exuberance, and doubt that constitute the inner life of the artist at work. A fun, rich book that feels absolutely true to its time and place.” — Roger White
“Magalie Guérin applies her artist’s receptors to the call and response between art object and the object of art; an ongoing subjective dialogue of creation. Her sense of balance, aspiration, and blurred boundary not only illuminates her own process, but the sensibility that we bring to our perceptions of what art can aspire to, its journey to our bared soul.” — Lenny Kaye
“NOTES ON knits together an intricate and impressive network of friends, acquaintances, mentors, and peers whose critical insights converge on painter Magalie Guérin’s studio practice. Expanding on the tradition of Richter’s The Daily Practice of Painting, its multitude of voices—including Guérin’s own—foregrounds discursiveness and its role in shaping contemporary art. But there is also magical thinking afoot. What Guérin disregards from her collection of studio generated language tells us as much about her creative process as the words and ideas she shares with us.” — Michelle Grabner
“What would it mean to be open and honest? To reveal the most vulnerable part of one’s identity? Artists poke at that activity, but to put a narrative—a shredded, recursive, nonlinear narrative—to the act of self-revelation means meditating on the things that make one uncomfortable, addressing the petty concerns and daily anxieties, weighing the relative value of friends and foe, comparing big, inspiring ideas and irksome minutia, boredom and terror, stupidity and insight, the major and minor triumphs, the leaps and bounds and incremental steps that make up an artist’s ecosystem. Magalie Guérin has found abundant material in the tender passage from school to world. She is a painter, but she is also an acute and sensitive observer and a skillful writer, and her book gives shape to the dialogues—both interior and exterior—of a creative person.” — John Corbett
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews