1) The situation:
You’ve been drawing these flowers you picked up half-price from Tesco’s, but after about half an hour into your sketch you feel all your efforts are meaningless – what is this saying about the human condition? You cry out in anguish.
The solution:
Add an endless gulf of meaning to your beautiful drawing by slyly sketching in some subtle vaginas. Yes, make like Georgia O’Keeffe and sneak a snatch in between the stems of those chrysanthemums. Not only will you have an aesthetically pleasing picture of some flowers, but also an astounding piece of conceptual art which plays with our notions of fertility and the female form!
Want to inch one step further towards the artistic history books, in which the names of Titian, Da Vinci and Tracey Emin are consecrated?
Draw vaginas inside the vaginas inside the flowers. Indeed there is nothing more thought-provoking than a meta-vagina! The questions you have raised about femininity and the taboos you have broken about human sexuality uphold your status as un vrai révolutionnaire.
2) The situation:
You’ve spent ages painting a portrait of your mum for her birthday but somehow just cannot seem to get that nose right. The three-quarter-view pose probably wasn’t the best idea, and now all the features seem askew – but alas! you’re too far in to go back now!
The solution:
Do not worry, my artistic friend! Make like Picasso… and skew those features even more! I mean who cares if the nose is in profile but the eyes are square on – wasn’t this your intention after all…? This cubist mish-mash is of course a dramatic visualisation of your mum’s psychological landscape. In fact the fragmentary portrait you have created naturally demonstrates the artist’s important sacrifice of verisimilitude in favour of the deeper truth – you are now a post-Freud prophet of the modern age!
Want to affirm your place in the artists’ most sacred hall of fame?
Cut your picture up. Yes, break down the walls between the image on the page and the physical nature of the paper. Rearrange the shreds in a random order and glue them down. Now not only will everyone be unable to tell that your depiction of your mother’s nose was somewhat awry; they won’t be able to tell it’s your mother at all! What a profound statement about the interrelationship between human beings you have just made!
3) The situation:
Your friend has kindly offered to sit for a painting for you. You begin the piece with energy and excitement, but as you edge closer towards adding detail to your image, you realise your friend has the most hideous outbreak of spots. Your artistic soul is tortured by the conflict between friendship and a duty to the truth – how do you ensure one whilst conveying the other?!
The solution:
Pointillism. Yes, imitate Seurat and apply all the paint in dots. This way your friend, and indeed all onlookers, will be unable to tell which parts of the portrait are down to your artistic style, and which to your friend’s acne. By blurring the lines between artistic impression and the objective appearance of the sitter, you delve into the psychology of how we interpret the world and indeed challenge the very meaning of what it is to create.
Want to assure a legacy that overreaches even the likes of Van Gogh?
Magnify the size of your dots, perhaps even substituting your friend’s face for one big abstract blob. Here you are not just playing with the boundaries between subjectivism and reality; you are making a bold statement about the loss of absolute truth in the twenty-first century. Camus and Nietzsche bow down to your philosophical insight!
4) The situation:
So you are in a really artsy mood but have run out of things to draw. You stare down at your blank page in despair – how am I ever going to prove myself as an artist if I have no ideas?
The solution:
Leave your page blank. What a marvellous piece of art you have created. Never before has a human being proffered a more thought-provoking piece of work to the centuries’ long argument about the nature of art. Your blank piece of paper indeed challenges received notions of the imaginative process and daringly questions the fundamental principles of how we perceive creativity.
Want to solidify your status as not just an artist; but indeed the prescient of a new age?
Frame your piece of paper. Not only does this add a touch of finesse to your piece, but also affirms it as a work that is simultaneously both ornately exuberant and yet essentially minimalist. Here you have deconstructed the binary relationships upon which artistic judgements are formed, and indeed negated universal dichotomies which constitute the fundamental mechanisms of human conflict. What a great leap forward for mankind this represents! …The Turner Prize is yours for the taking…!
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