Third research topic from Formative feedback from Part One. I note the connection with this suggestion and Part Two of the course which starts to look at the relationship between sculpture and painting. This development has close links with cubist ideas. The representation of many views and facets of an object seen from different viewpoints. The paintings that I selected for inclusion in this blog are ones that look at and depict the objects from different perspectives often flattening them and eliminating their tonal qualities. Their shapes being more important. The first painting, ‘Still Life with lemons, retains some tonal qualities particularly on the glass however the lemons are flattened. In the second painting the objects are all flattened. In the third painting it is the surroundings which are flattened and split into different viewpoints, the table, tablecloth, walls and door. The vase and flowers are conveyed in a far more traditional, European perspective manner.

This is the second short investigation blog following suggested research from Formative feedback from Part One.

Richard Tuttle has used fabric in many of his paintings. I investigated a series of works that are collectively entitled ‘The Critical Edge’. In these works Richard seems to be exploring both the internal and external edges of a painting. Where does a work start and end? Is it within the painting or at its edges? The fabric is used to create lines using both the fabric and its colour. The works are broken down into a number of regular squares on which fabric is attached. The edges between the squares are observed but are allowed to be slightly overlapped or revealed. Additionally the fabric often extends off the squares in an untidy manner. Two more examples below.

This is part of a series of short investigation blogs following suggested artist research from Formative feedback from Part One.

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The quote that I noted about Clare’s paintings was ‘Visceral oil paint set against more defined lines to create a tense discourse. Making reference to the body and to abstract expressionism.’

The paintings tend to be large work which I imagine would look far more impressive when viewed at an exhibition. The photograph below gives an example of this. Note the first painting highlighted in this blog is shown on the left of the photograph.

What I like about the paintings is the combination of chance and control. The defined lines suggest structure and rigidity as if we were viewing part of a man made object against a blurred or magnified background.

Two more examples below

I was surprised to find out that John cage was also an artist as previously I had only associated him with music. Specifically his famous piece ‘4.33’ pronounced four minutes and thirty three seconds. This piece requires the musicians singular or many to not play their instruments for this length of time and for the audience to listen to the ambient sounds of where ever they are.

The specific art works that it was suggested that I investigate was a series of prints of drawing of stones. Two of these prints are replicated below.

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The paintings were created by chance operations of randomly selecting and positioning small stones on a plate, determining their orientation and tracing them with a brush.

The resultant paintings are fragile and delicate. The colours tend towards pastels and are shown starkly against the washed out backgrounds. In some ways they have a similarity to some of the experimental paintings that I worked on during Part One. In particular the piece that made for Assignment One where the colours were washed out and translucent.

The short piece is Gabriel talking about his artwork entitled working tables. He explains the process whereby it is an accumulation of years of collecting using and discarding objects. The piece is the result of the left overs, the unused and he amusingly refers to the left overs of the left overs. This made me think that all workshops, work tables accumulate the detritus of the work being undertaken unless they are regularly tidied. I can remember making inspections of the engineering workshop when I used to work. The workshop contained evidence of what had been recently work on and what was currently being worked. Tools, nuts and bolts, debris and dirty work clothes would be laying in various states. It was a constant task to remind the engineers to clean up and tidy up. In hindsight it was evidence of work completed, a picture of their toil. As Gabriel put it “evidence of a process”.

There are parallels to the selection of objects that I made for Exercise 1. I chose to select musical instruments that I have accumulated over the years but that are not used. They are the leftovers.

The paintings shown above are part of the Sea Paintings by Jessica Warboys. The creation process involves soaking the large canvases in the sea at different locations around the UK. The resultant marks and textures provide a record of both place and time. Jessica manipulates the canvases, sometimes removing part of them to create an overall composition.

I can see a link from my explorations with dripping and splattering paint that I completed in Exercise 1. Jessica has moved past the limitations that I had to allow the movement of the sea to create the work.

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Rebecca Horn, a German visual artist born 24/3/1944 creates Installation art along with Film directing and body modification. I was interested by one of the pieces that is at Tate Modern. The work is called ‘Concert for Anarchy’ it is an upside-down piano which occasionally comes to life in a noisy outburst. An excerpt from the display caption states “The instrument was used as prop in Horn’s feature film ‘Buster’s Bedroom, 1990’ Horn has described how ‘having freed itself from the psychiatric clinic (the piano) is now composing its own music. The piano acts like a living thing: it gets upset and slowly regains its composure. this might mirror own experience of being startled by the sculpture.”

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I have not tried anything remotely similar and therefor any comparisons to my explorations are not valid.

Moving onto Akira Kanayama, 1924 – 2006, one of the Japanese Gutai group I can immediately see connections with some of my experimental drawing and paintings that I have completed as part of the exercises in Part One. The first example is the coloured line drawing that I made using the drawing contraption. Below is my work on the left and Kanayama’s on the right.

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There is a sense of random marks made in an undisciplined manner to both drawings.

Further examples, see below, show similar mark making. In both examples my explorative work is shown on the left. In both examples my work looks more primitive in its conception and outcome.

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My notes and thoughts on the research that I carried out on Performance Art and action painting.

The starting point was Jackson Pollock, reading the blog by Kirsty Beavan I noted the reference to Pollock moving around the canvas in a kind of dance and the painting acting as a record of his movement and gesture as much as the finished works themselves.

This can be observed in Hans Namuth’s film of Jackson Pollock which depicts Pollock at work using random but controlled actions and gesture, flicks of paint in lots of layers. I particularly noted a comment that Pollock made when working on a painting on glass, “I lost contact with the painting”. I can relate to this comment as I have found on numerous occasions that my enthusiasm for a painting that I have been working on wanes when the outcomes are less than expected. I find that I then become unengaged with the work and it becomes a chore to complete it. Perhaps I should adopt Pollock’s approach and abandon the work.

The term action was first used by Harold Rosenberg however he wasn’t the first to suggest the idea of painting as a site of spontaneous action. It was not only Western art that was looking at different ways of painting. In 1954 Japan the ‘Gutai Movement of Concrete Art’ took these ideas and explored some of the possibilities. An example of which is Shiraga’s ‘Challenge to the mud’ 1955 in which the artists rolled half naked in a pile of mud. In another painting he used his feet. The Gutai artists also created painting using actions removed from the body including smashing bottles of paint or firing paint at the canvas using small hand made canons.

Back in America Jim Dine in a piece called ‘ The Smiling workman’ he dressed himself in Joker like make up, drank from pots paint whilst painting the words, ‘I love what I am on a canvas’ Finally he poured the remaining paint over himself and jumped through the canvas.

Robert Rauschenberg took to appearing on stage with a band ironing a shirt and later towards the end of the tour he would produce a different painting each night. Yves Klein reduced painting down to a single monochromatic colour, his favourite being Blue and produced canvases of this single colour. In other works he used naked female bodies to paint with. The events were attended by an audience creating and accompanied by a single note composition.

Most, but not all, of this art was from a male perspective and therefore a female response was needed. Amongst those that did were Carolee Schneemanns who used naked female bodies as living paint brushes, she saw her body as an integral material. Niki de Saint-Phalle experimented with shooting paintings whereby she fired a shotgun at paint filled balloons which were attached to a large assemblage. The Japanese artist Shigeko Kubota took a more intimate approach whereby she pinned a paintbrush to het knickers and squatted on a large piece of paper to create gestural marks. Janine Antoni’s ‘Loving Care’ was created by the artist soaking her hair in dye and proceeding to mop the floor of the gallery.

A snippet of a commentary on performance art is replicated below.

“In considering the materiality of paint, the artist referenced previously, creatively explored its potential as a medium, beyond its capacity to visually render representative imagery. Simultaneously the very act of painting was explored as a means of creative expression in its own right. these artists and there artworks therefore speak to the complicated ways in which paint, and painting, serves not only as a visual medium, but as a performative one.”

In her piece “The Curse of the brush” Shozo Shimanoto points to the liberation of paint as an entity in its own right.

Considering this statement and the impacts of the artists and work mentioned above I would summarise in my own words.

“The brush is seen as a slave master forcing the paint to act and behave in strict conventional ways. Let the paint break free of these chains and reveal its own identity.”

Shen Wei is a combination of painter and choreographer. His paintings are often expressive abstracted pieces that seem, to me, to have a very human feel to them. Whether this comes from the creation of the work or from the subject matter it is apparent that his work flows with energy.

From the point of view of the choreography and dancing this is not an area where I feel that I can make a considered comment as it is not a subject that I have studied. However in the two examples of his work that I have replicated below there is an expression of the movement of dance or of the dancer.

Tony Orrico

Tony Orrico’s work use all of his body and physicality to make repeated marks on paper. He reminds me of a human spirograph in that he often rotates his body through 360 degrees on the floor. These are often performed live and captured on video. The resulting drawings whilst interesting and a document of the process are problematical to define.

I watched the video of the performance that created the above drawing and will perform my own version of this process.

This I have now done and my thoughts and the results can be seen under Coursework – Part One – Exercise One on my blog.

Julie Mehretu’s paintings are large works. They extend far beyond the reach of the human body and in so doing explore the possibilities of immersing the viewer within the paintings. They are not constrained with pictorial representation but do suggest cityscapes, landscapes and futuristic vistas. I feel that there is a link between the deliberate mark making and the experimental drawings of exercise 1. They also resonate with the work of Jackson Pollock which I note is part of the focus of exercise two.

Some examples of Julie Mehretu’s work and paintings are replicated below.

I also found the following extract from an article on a website called “It’s nice that” the URL is https://www.itsnicthat.com/articles/julie-mehretu

“Julie Mehretu’s surges of colour, line and geometric form are pretty awesome. her energetic combinations of painting, drawing and digital layering process reflect many aspects of our physical and virtual environments and yet consistently and engagingly retain their visual abstraction”