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La manifestació final d'aquesta temàtica del paper de l'artista és el monumental tríptic The Gifted Amateur, Nov. 10th, 1962 (2007). En aquesta instal·lació, Graham representa el paper d'un aficionat somnàmbul que prova de crear una obra d'art abstracte de gran format, com les que probablement l'han fascinat en els llibres d'art.
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The third part of the exhibition deals with the role of the artist. In the film Lobbing Potatoes at a Gong, 1969 (2006), Graham re-enacts a scene from the history of rock music in which a musician throws potatoes at a gong in a sort of performance. In Graham's piece, vodka takes the place of the potatoes; a bottle of vodka is part of the installation. Rodney Graham is interested in these kinds of ‘processes of translation'. Something that originated in literature becomes physical as it is rendered in another medium. My Only Novel Translated from the French (After William Beckford, Mark Twain) (2000), in which the French translation of an English text is translated back into English, is a direct example of this. The theme of the role of the artist is also explored in the monumental triptych The Gifted Amateur, Nov. 10th, 1962 (2007). In this installation, Graham is a sleepwalking amateur painter who attempts to reproduce a large-format abstract painting that had obviously interested him when he was studying art. The scene in the light-box piece makes it look like a film still. Graham plays on the art historical discourse of Modernity in which diverse directions are represented. In 3 Musicians (Members of the Early Music Group ‘Renaissance Fare' Performing Matteo of Perugia's ‘Le Greygnour Bien' at the Unitarian Church of Vancouver, Late September, 1977) from 2006, and even more in the most recent work in this exhibition, entitled Artist's Model Posing for ‘The Old Bugler, Among the Fallen, Beaune-la-Rolande 1870' in the Studio of An Unknown Military Painter, Paris, 1885 (2009), Graham continues to re-enact historical paintings. Finally we present Rodney Graham as a painter who, unlike in The Gifted Amateur, turns to the painting of the so-called École de Paris to produce abstractions in the style of that period.
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