Clarity Of Vision - Isabel Quintanilla

An appreciation of the importance of the ordinary, the everyday in our lives has a long history in art.  It dates back at least as far as the early 18th Century in France with artist Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin and his painting “A Lady Taking Tea” from 1735.  The setting is unpretentious, modest even and there is an air of calm self-absorption in the scene.  The skill of the artist is in transforming an ordinary occasion with simple furnishings into something almost seductive.

Chardin, A Lady Taking Tea, 1735, oil on canvas, 81 x 99 cm

Author Alain De Botton argues that given the way the world is going, we need all the reliable, unassuming and inexpensive satisfactions we can get.  He believes that it lies in the power of art to honour the elusive but real value of ordinary life.

This may have been the motivation behind the art of Isabel Quintanilla (1938 – 2017).  In Spain, the practice of granting a special reverence to ordinary everyday objects dates back even further to the Baroque masters such as Velazquez and his ‘bodegones’; that is, art depicting pantry items, game, food and drink.  Quintanilla was a member of the Madrid School of realists who graduated from the Academia de San Fernando, where rigorous training in the traditional academic manner had been upheld since the 18th Century.

Quintanilla, Cabracho (Scorpionfish), 1992, oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm

Like other pupils of the time, including Antonio Lopez Garcia who is arguably the most famous of the Madrid realists, she had to develop her skills against the backdrop of the intellectual and artistic repression of the middle years of Franco’s dictatorship.

While some may regard the art of the Madrid realists as minimalism, what makes them unique is their ability to “de-nude, de-code and explicate the essence of our collective consciousness”.   What we are viewing is the object itself, free of any socio/political contexts.  The subject matter of Quintanilla’s work ranges from simple still life to panoramic landscapes.

Quintanilla, Glass On Top Of A Fridge, 1972, pencil on paper,  48 x 36 cm

Viewing work like this is very instructive to me.  Occasionally I get sucked into producing grandiose scenes forgetting that some of the simplest compositions can make the best paintings - if the artist has the skill.   Perhaps it’s a matter of being in the moment, focusing on the object itself free of any distractions.

In his review of a 1996 exhibition of Spanish Contemporary Realists held in London, Edward J Sullivan writes of the absolute immediacy and intensity of their vision.  But he also argues that it’s important not to draw to close a link between their work and that of the Baroque masters of the past.  Artists such as Velazquez were operating largely under the strict guidelines laid down by the Catholic Church and the counter reformation.

Quintanilla, El Telefono, 1996, oil on board, 110 x 100 cm

Unfortunately, whether I scanned this image from a catalogue, or downloaded it off the net, I am unable to convey the absolute clarity of the vision in this work.  This is beyond photorealism and I think it’s because of the use of light.  There is an intimacy in this scene that would seem to run contrary to the cold, clinical hard-edged nature of much photo-realist art.  You get the sense that you are entering someone’s private world.

Quintanilla, Vendana (Window), 1970, oil on board, 131 x 100 cm

Views through windows have been a popular topic for artists for centuries.  What fascinates me is the suggestion of furniture in the bottom left of the composition.  There is also the cool, clear light and a sense of imprisonment in the scene.  

Quintanilla had exhibited either individually or in group shows at the Prado in Madrid, the Marlborough Gallery in London and at many other venues.  Her work forms part of the collections at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC and in various galleries throughout Europe.

References;

Books;

“Contemporary Spanish Realists”, 1996, Marlborough Fine Art, London

“Art As Therapy”, 2014, Alain De Botton & John Armstrong

The Net;

Leandro Navarro Gallery

The Sculpture of Jane Cavanough

In an interview she gave with Arts Health Network New South Wales, sculptor Jane Cavanough was asked “As an artist, how do you use art for your personal health and well-being?”  She gave a very telling response,  “Art is very low on the spectrum of cultural appreciation in Australia – very different for instance in Europe.  It is difficult to make your living being an artist and I sometimes think I should describe myself as a gambler rather than an artist, because now, with every project I apply for, the client mostly asks for a concept, which not only takes ages to think about, but also requires 3d illustration, for which I pay someone….and this is expensive – I’m not sure how many professions require the answer to the question before contracting them – and this really gets me down.

I knew that if I stayed being a landscape architect I would end up depressed and unsatisfied. The fact remains, I love what I do, and it never feels like work.”

Like many people, I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with public sculpture and I’m not sure if the blame should be leveled at the artists or those who commissioned these works, or both.  The “cheese stick” looming menacingly over Melbourne’s City Link comes to mind.  Many sculptors seem to be motivated by a desire to confront or challenge the public and they forget that many of us are confronted EVERY DAY with their creations.  But at its best, public sculpture can be memorable because it engages with the public.

Touchstones, Bankstown Arts Centre, Sydney, 2011.  These copper and glass pebbles refer to the lapidary workshops located in the arts complex.

This brings me to Jane Cavanough who is based in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.  Her interest in sculpture dates back to the early 1990’s when she was working as a landscape architect in Sydney.  After studying at the Sydney College of the Arts, she instigated a couple of environmentally based sculpture events in Centennial Park and has continued to make site specific landscape based sculpture.

Endemic, Bungarribee NSW, Designed by Jane Cavanough and indigenous artist Enda Watson, a family group of corten steel kangaroos gather on the common at Bungarribee, developed by Urban Growth NSW.  Apparently, the locals dress up these sculptures every Christmas which gives Cavanough “a real buzz.”

Through her business Artlandish Art and Design, Cavanough works either solely or in collaboration with design teams for local and state governments, developers, statutory bodies and architecture firms to develop projects from concept through to completion.  The works are fabricated by artisans adept at working with glass, LED lighting, forged, stainless and mild steel, copper, bronze, brass, cast concrete, stone, timber, mist and water.

Boer War Memorial, Anzac Parade Canberra designed by Jane Cavanough and Group GSA, winner of a national design competition in 2012.

The aim is to create artworks that have a strong relationship to the site in urban, architectural and landscape settings. The relationship between people, sculpture and landscape lies at the heart of  Cavanough’s artwork. Rather than producing art that is willfully alienating or inaccessible to the public, she seeks to engage the environmental and cultural aspects of each site in her work.  She has won a number of scholarships and awards throughout her career.

You can read more of my blogs or check out my own art on www.geoffharrisonarts.com.

References;

Arts Health Network NSW

www.janecavanough.com.au

Jozef Israels - Painter Of Hardship

It’s sometimes difficult to avoid indulging in ‘accolade overdrive’ when discussing the significance of certain artists from the past.  Artist Jozef Israels (1824 - 1911) has been described as the ‘Dutch Millet’ who, is his depiction of the depths of human feeling, is regarded as a worthy successor to Rembrandt and an inspiration to Vincent Van Gogh.   He is also regarded as the most significant Dutch artist of the 19th Century. 

Israels had an extensive and academic arts education which included studying in Paris, and in his early career was a history painter depicting scenes of national heroes that were poorly received due to their stiffness and theatricality.  But he began to take an interest in the work of social realists such as Jean Francois Millet of the Barbazon School and Gustave Dore.

Children Of The Sea, oil on canvas 1872

Jenny Reynaerts, senior curator of 18th and 19th century painting at the Rijksmuseum  has some interesting commentary on one of Israels’ most famous paintings “Children Of The Sea” from 1872.  She tells us that at an early stage of his career, Israels fell ill with rheumatism  and was advised by his doctors in 1855 to move to the coastal town of Zandvoort to improve his health.   

He immediately began taking an interest in his surroundings and, in particular, the lives of the local fishing community.  He decided this would become one of the main subjects of his future work.  The poor clothing suggests that these children are probably members of a fishing family and the composition is thought to be a portent of the lives that lay ahead of them.  The boy has a little girl on his shoulders whilst another girl hangs on to his clothing.  This suggests that one day the boy will become a fisherman, carrying the weight of the family, and the girls will be waiting on the coast for his return.

Awaiting The Fishermen's Return After A Storm,  51 x 64 cm

Israels often painted scenes of women waiting on the shore for the return of the fishermen after a storm, hoping they have survived and have a sufficient catch to take to market.  Thus, there is a level of anxiety in these scenes.  Reynaerts argues that “Children Of The Sea” can provide an incentive to look around our local area to find inspiration for art. 

Israels became a leading member of The Hague School, named after a coastal city in the Netherlands where a group of Dutch artists lived and worked roughly between 1860 and 1890.  The school reacted against traditional academic painting, preferring to present realistic images of rural everyday life and poignant scenes of the simple, often lonely lives of peasants.  The artists generally used a sombre, muted palette that saw them dubbed The Gray School.

When One Grows Old, 143 x 89 cm

In his discussion of Israels’ painting “When One Grows Old”, critic Robert Rosenblum refers to the woman’s gnarled hands, the crude wooden chair that evokes a life of hardship and the chill of winter invoking her imminent passing. And yet Rosenblum also refers to the “softened haze of sentimentality” that exists in Israels’ work that obscures the harsh truths of his themes.  He is drawing a comparison with the tough crudity of Van Gogh’s early depictions of peasant life. I’m not sure I agree with this assessment.  

Alone In The World, 38 x 55 cm, c.1878

His depictions of village life earned Israels international fame and he exhibited in Paris and London as well as Holland.  He taught numerous pupils including his son Isaac.  The Venice Biennale honoured Israels with a retrospective exhibition following his death in 1911.

References, the web;

The Art Story

The Rijksmuseum

                      Books;

Art of the Nineteenth Century: Painting and Sculpture by Robert Rosenblum & H. W. Janson

Toilet Humour Or Art?

We could have just ignored it, or laughed it off. But no, the contemporary art world had to tie itself in knots over Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain”, which was submitted to the Society of Independent Artists first exhibition in New York in 1917. Fountain is one of a series of “readymades” produced by Duchamp at the time.  

Duchamp later recalled that the idea for Fountain arose from a discussion with the collector Walter Arensberg and the artist Joseph Stella. He purchased a urinal from a sanitary ware supplier and submitted it – or arranged for it to be submitted to the exhibition. The Society was bound by its constitution to accept all submissions, but it made an exception to Fountain. It was excluded from the exhibition and Arensberg and Duchamp resigned from the Society in protest.

‘Fountain’, 1917

The decision of the Society seemed to run contrary to its advertised ethos of “no jury – no prizes”. Duchamp had moved from Paris to New York in 1915, and with his friends Henri-Pierre Roche and Beatrice Wood wanted to assert the independence of art in America.  

In its article, The Tate makes reference to Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending A Staircase No.2” being withdrawn from the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1912. Duchamp apparently saw this as an extraordinary betrayal and described it as a turning point in his life. Thus, the submission of Fountain could be seen as an experiment by Duchamp in testing the commitment of the new American Society to the principals of freedom of expression and its tolerance of new conceptions of art.

‘Nude Descending A Staircase No.2’, 1912

So, what are we to make of Fountain? Was it part of Duchamp’s stated objective that anything can be a work of art if the artist says so? According to the Tate, the original is lost which begs the question why bother producing replicas of it and why is it considered one of the icons of twentieth century art? Artist Matthew Collings ask the question is Duchamp’s readymades all part of a ‘no skill is needed joke’? 

“It was really trying to kill the artist as a God by himself” - Duchamp, commenting on Fountain. He was keen to remove the artist from the pedestal that he created for himself. Collings describes Fountain as the measure of all irony, now preserved at the Pompidou Centre in Paris – although copies can be found everywhere including any hardware store, come to think if it. Yet when I visit the sanitary section, I never think of Duchamp. Why? 

“My idea was to choose an object that wouldn’t attract me either by its beauty or its ugliness, to find a point of indifference in my looking at it” - Duchamp commenting on his readymades. Collings sees Duchamp’s art as the first stirrings of avant-gardism in the 20th century, an avant-gardism that was not concerned with pursuing quality in art, but instead of quality. Collings believes Duchamp is responsible for the fact that no one really knows what quality is in modern art.

‘Bicycle Wheel’ - one of Duchamp’s Readymades

Duchamp’s first criteria for the art he produced was that it should amuse him, but then he thought it shouldn’t be what everyone else thinks art should be about – that is; the skill of the artist’s hand. He thought there should be something more – the artist’s mind was just as important as the artist’s hand. 

In the 1960’s, just before he died, he was asked why when he wanted to destroy art, his readymades now seem so aesthetic and so part of art, he replied “well no one is perfect”. It’s argued that Duchamp opened the door to freedom in modern art, to feel free to do your own thing. Yet, Collings argues that Duchamp’s readymades are a devastating one-liner that has us questioning if we’ve reached the end of art. “Where can you go after that?” he asks. Duchamp’s answer was to play chess for many years. 

Collings asks if Duchamp’s readymades are the sickly green light of cultures’ last meltdown. I like Collings’ description of Fountain being the asteroid of irony hurtling through artspace, a symbol of culture nowadays being empty and frivolous in the eyes of many. But he acknowledges the seriousness in Duchamp’s art too. 

But Duchamp never gave up entirely on art, he just produced it secretively. An earlier blog of mine “The Woman Who Conquered Marcel Duchamp” discusses this.  

References; 

Tate.org.au 

‘This is Modern Art’, BBC Channel 4, 1999 presented by Matthew Collings 

Can Art Be A Business?

In writing this I am aware that it’s possible for 2 people to call themselves artists and have nothing in common with one another.  So this is a personal perspective.  Some time back I did a rather expensive arts business training course, and I was introduced to the concept of the “customer avatar”.  

I prefer to use the term customer profile, that is, the archetypal person who buys my work.  The first thing that occurred to me is that one needs a few sales in order to determine the archetypal buyer, right?  Leaving that issue aside, I’ve always had my doubts about this concept.  My doubts were confirmed when I raised the concept with the director of an inner Melbourne gallery with over 20 years experience in the business.  His response didn’t surprise me at all - “it’s bollocks”. 

Let’s just imagine that I was able to determine my customer profile.  What am I supposed to do then?  Keep churning out the same work to appeal to the same type of buyer?  Where does that leave the creative process? I think the answer is to follow your heart.  My most successful exhibition to date is my most autobiographical which was very gratifying.  If you are authentic, that is, true to yourself, you are bound to touch a nerve with the buying public sooner or later. 

These courses seem to be predicated on the notion that we can all be successful business people and creatives.  Some of us are and I envy them, but most of us aren’t so we have to either engage a ‘business brain’ to help with that aspect of our art practice, or muddle along as best we can. 

Social media has definitely helped some of us reach a wider audience than otherwise might have been possible, but it requires constant vigilance which, quite frankly, gets on my nerves at times (algorithms constantly changing etc.)  It distracts from the creative process. 

Time management is something else we were taught.  It was argued that we should be able to switch off our creative brain from time to time and devote ourselves to the business side of things, then magically switch our creativity back on at will.  Hmmm...  Goal setting was another topic; six month plan, one year plan, five year plan etc. I can see the point of having a plan, it’s one of the things that get us out of bed each morning but you have to be flexible and adapt to changing circumstances. 

It appeared to me that the participants in the course who gained the greatest benefits were those who had several projects on the go and needed to learn how to prioritize. 

There were some useful hints in the course, such as how to approach a commercial gallery and I now have a website that works – as opposed to one that didn’t.   I guess it’s a matter of sorting the wheat from the chaff with these courses. 

The Photography of Andreas Gursky

Hyper reality is the thought that comes to mind when viewing the photography of Andreas Gursky.  I became aware of his large scale somewhat documentary work in the powerful exhibition “Civilization: The Way We Live Now” at the National Gallery of Victoria in 2019.  Sadly, I missed a major survey of his work at the same venue 10 years earlier. 

Born in Leipzig in 1955, Gursky was a student of the famous German conceptual photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher.  He is considered one of the finest photographers at work today and presents an almost overwhelming vision of contemporary life in images crammed with information, the individual reduced to an atom in a vast universe of order, or in some cases, chaos.     

He began to digitally alter his images as soon as the technology became available.  A prime example is 99 Cent, one of his most iconic works.  He altered the position of some of the store’s aisles and created a mirror image in the ceiling to flatten the image.  There is a formalist structure in his work but at the same time there is a sense of reality playing with unreality.  He pioneered the practice of face mounting photographs onto Plexiglas.

99 Cent (1999) 207 x 325 cm

Gursky also presents images of excess and waste, of consumerism having lost its bearings. There is a questioning of one’s place in this world, of man being overwhelmed by a capitalist system that has become a Frankenstein monster. In “Amazon” from 2016, he presents an image of the Amazon warehouse in Pheonix Arizona. This is a composite image designed to present each object in correct size relative to the others. Thus he achieves what has been described as a supernatural clarity to the image.

Amazon (2016) 207 x 407 cm

In Gursky’s imagery the individual becomes a cog in a vast capitalist machine where all semblance of a unique identity is lost in a sterile, regimentally ordered environment. Rather than focus on the individual as such, Gursky is more concerned with the human species and the environments that it has created.

Hong Kong Stock Exchange II (2001) 207 x 323 cm

His images are beautiful and yet in some ways disturbing. There is a political angle to his presentation of reality, to the key issues of our time, but he leaves it to the viewer to decide how to think. His method of using composite imagery dates back to at least 1993 with his image of a huge block of flats in Paris. He positioned his camera at two locations some distance apart so that each window would appear the correct size, free from the distortion of optics in an image over 4 metres wide.

Paris – Montparnasse (1993)

There has always been an element of abstraction in Gursky’s work. In his image “Rhine II” from 1999, he digitally removed the buildings on the far side of the river to present an abstract image of the Rhine near Dusseldorf. It could be considered an image of man’s manipulation of the natural world to create order. Yet there is an emphasis on textures, the contrast between the shimmering light from the river, the softness of the clouds, the lush carpet of the grass and the hardness of the pavement.

Rhine II (1999) 156 x 308 cm

Like other photographs he has produced, there is a detached yet enticing quality to his image making.  He encourages the viewer to enter these scenes yet provides no guidance as to how one should feel. 

Hello, my name is Geoff. You may be interested to know that I am a fulltime artist these days and I regularly exhibit in galleries in Victoria, but particularly in Melbourne. You may wish to check out my work using the following link; https://geoffharrisonarts.com

References; 

Tate.org.au 

Davidcharlesfox.com 

thebroad.org

To Hell And Back With Tracey Emin

The bad girl of British art Tracey Emin was in the final stages of preparing her exhibition for the Royal Academy in 2020 alongside work of her hero Edvard Munch.  Then she was struck down with an aggressive form of cancer and had several organs removed.  She wasn’t expected to survive and just nine days after the opening, the exhibition was closed for six months due to Covid, an experience she found heartbreaking because it had meant so much to her.  The RA describes the exhibition as an exploration of grief, loss and longing. 

In laying down its policy on Covid restrictions, the British Government ranked galleries and museums alongside nightclubs – a strategy Emin found extraordinary and which she attributes to most politicians having never visited a gallery or museum.

A painter, drawer, sculptor, photographer who works in a variety of media, Tracey Emin became the best known and most controversial of the young British artists who emerged in the late 1990’s.  Her work is largely autobiographical and speaks broadly of the female experience.

Emin once claimed that she had been in love with Munch since she was 18.  Munch died in 1944.  His work which she chose for the exhibition is, she argues, more soulful and mournful than his better known work (such as The Scream) and about women and the emotions they go through, which made him a very unique artist in his time. 

In an interview to accompany the exhibition The Loneliness Of The Soul, it was suggested to her that Munch’s work portrays the tragedy of women whereas Emin’s work speaks of their resilience.  She responded by saying that she has experienced tragedy in her life which has featured in her work. One only has to think of works such as “My Bed” which she entered in the 1998 Turner Prize.  The bed is littered with condoms, cigarette butts, empty vodka bottles etc. and references disastrous sexual experiences and the aftermath.  She refers to the hostility and derision that her work received – one irate critic complained that anyone can submit a bed to an exhibition.  Emin’s response is a classic “well they didn’t, did they”.

My Bed, 1998

She believes that 30 years ago, Munch’s paintings weren’t taken seriously and that The Scream was regarded as a cartoon joke.  But now that there is a greater awareness of the issues many women have to face, there is a greater respect for his work.

Emin explained that what she went through with her cancer treatment was like surviving a plane crash, and she is so grateful to have survived and for every single moment. She now seems a happier and content person.

When I slept I longed ForYou

The issue of rape and sexual violence that appears so often in Emin’s work was raised during the interview.  She came up with an interesting expression.  When she was at school in the 1970’s  school girls would speak of being broken into last night, and they weren’t referring to burglary.  They were referring to their first (most likely unwanted) sexual encounter and this was taken for granted.  Emin claims to have been raped more than once back then and the real issue for her was the aftermath, which included wanting to sleep with just about every guy in her home town of Margate as a revenge and to empower herself sexually.  But she realised that this was diabolical for her self-esteem.

Tracey Emin at White Cube Gallery

After viewing her work, many girls and young women have written to Emin discussing their own disastrous sexual experiences which often resulted in abortions.  Now with the Me Too movement and with women being more open about discussing these issues, she believes that people are starting to pay attention.  But with her confronting work dating back decades Emin was, arguably, well ahead of the whole movement.

Now that she has recovered from her cancer, which included being bed ridden for 3 months, she is planning to open her own art school and residency in Margate where smoking and excessive noise will not be tolerated.  The new Tracey. 

References;

BBC Newsnight

The Royal Academy

ZCZ Films

Goya - A Journey Into Darkness

It all seemed to be going swimmingly for Francisco Goya – until his nervous breakdown in 1792.  After that, he is credited with tearing up the rule book and reinventing what art can and should do and what it means to be human. 

He had been court painter to the Spanish royal family, who admired the rococo tapestries he had designed for the royal court in Madrid.  So they invited Goya to paint their portraits, and in the great tradition of telling it like it is, he did just that.  The result was a display of royal mockery never seen before in the history of art.  And yet, somehow he got away with it.  Flattery was not to be found on Goya’s CV.

The Parasol, a tapestry design painted by Goya, c1777

But the evil and the stupidity he saw in the world around him soon came to the surface in his art.  The catalyst for this was the nervous breakdown and physical illness that he suffered in the early 1790’s.  The exact nature of Goya’s illness has never been properly diagnosed but it left him functionally deaf and in fear of his own sanity.  Suddenly the light has gone out in his art and darkness has crept in as he explored the depths of his own imagination.

An example is “St Francis Borgia Attending a Dying Impenitent” of 1795.  From the saint's crucifix spurt drops of blood that land on the sinner's torso.  This painting is thought to represent Goya’s growing disillusionment with Christianity and its inability to explain the inhumanity in the world.

St Francis Borgia Attending a Dying Penitent, 1795, oil on canvas

In 1794, Goya painted the “Casa De Locos (The Madhouse)”, a stone gaol where all manner of appalling acts are being witnessed.  It is thought that these works represented, at least in part, all of Goya’s disappointments with the world around him.

Casa De Locos (The Madhouse). 1794, oil on panel

Around 1794, Goya painted “Yard With Lunatics”.  “The work stands as a horrifying and imaginary vision of loneliness, fear and social alienation, a departure from the rather more superficial treatment of mental illness in the works of earlier artists such as Hogarth.” Wikipedia

From commissioned portraitist, Goya had made the remarkable transformation into an artist exploring his own bleak view of the world. He claimed the painting is based on something he witnessed in Zaragoza where a yard was filled with lunatics, and two of them were fighting completely naked while their warder beats them.

Yard With Lunatics, 1794, oil on tinplate

In his book “Goya”, written shortly after his near death experience on a highway near Broome, Western Australia, author Robert Hughes discusses the profound isolation that engulfed Goya as a result of his deafness.  “Any trauma makes you think of worse trauma.  It sets the mind worrying and fantasizing about what else might be in store, and whether you can bear it if it comes.”  And with Goya’s illness not being properly diagnosed, he had no idea if the illness was temporary or permanent and what impact it would have on his career.  And all this was exacerbated by his increasing deafness.

Self Portrait, c.1815, oil on canvas

Hughes tells us that the eighteenth century was the heyday of the prison as isolator, long before the concept of prison as a reformatory was to creep into minds of European governments.  Whilst madhouses were even worse because no one had any idea of how to treat the mad, so they were simply dumping grounds for the psychotic, the deranged and the wayward.  No doubt, this fed into Goya’s exploration of the dark side of human existence.

What was to follow of course, was his famous Caprichos, his disasters of war series (inspired by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain) and the black paintings of his final years.  Interestingly, Spain went into a coma (artistically speaking) for over 50 years following Goya’s death in 1828.  Perhaps his successors were intimidated by the sheer power and darkness of his vision.

References;

Rococo  -  BBC TV

Something Wicked This Way Comes -  The Independent

Wikipedia