I have to say I think Trocadero is one of the weirdest places I've ever been. It's a multi-floor kind of...entertainment centre I think. It's got a bowling alley, cinema, little shops, food places, amusement arcade. Which is all very well and normal. But it is the way they've been spliced together which is so unsettling. Big purple arched escalators bordering an indoor trampoline, dead areas of grey tiling that seem to have been forgotten about, pink Hello Kitty stalls in the walkways, and the cacophany of slot machines, toy grabbers, coin pushers. Why do people choose to spend their leisure time here rather than a park? Which brought me to thinking, on the train home, about shopping.
Why people shop?
Why do I go to a gallery shop before the gallery itself?
Are there different motivations between a country gentleman at Sotheby's and a teenager at Primark?
Why do people buy things they already have?
And where is the point at which shopping shifts from chore to enjoyment - is pushing the trolley from the vegetable aisle to George clothing?
These questions will form the basis of my self directed drawing project. Sort of a behavioural study. This week we watched part of The Dinosaur and the Baby, a dialogue between Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard. In it, Fritz Lang said that to be a director you have to be a psychoanalyst: you have to know why the character does what they do, and what he will do next. I think this applies very much to drawing, and what I am doing. Drawing is a way of understanding things.
Why people shop?
Why do I go to a gallery shop before the gallery itself?
Are there different motivations between a country gentleman at Sotheby's and a teenager at Primark?
Why do people buy things they already have?
And where is the point at which shopping shifts from chore to enjoyment - is pushing the trolley from the vegetable aisle to George clothing?
These questions will form the basis of my self directed drawing project. Sort of a behavioural study. This week we watched part of The Dinosaur and the Baby, a dialogue between Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard. In it, Fritz Lang said that to be a director you have to be a psychoanalyst: you have to know why the character does what they do, and what he will do next. I think this applies very much to drawing, and what I am doing. Drawing is a way of understanding things.
I'm really excited about this, and I'm going to keep posting about it as I go along.
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