Some of my immediate reflections on the Gutai manifesto, scribbled down in my sketchbook on Friday 15 September 2011 (see the post entitled 'Gutai - A Coming-Home' dated 21 August last for the full Gutai manifesto):
- Enjoy the materials you're using.
- Transcience of materials and artwork: use the material, photograph the outcome, destroy or let deteriorate.
- Gutai principle: intergrity of the material is all-important. Use materials so their properties are revealed/made the most of.
- Always, constantly, question what the material is about, and how can I demonstrate/reveal/show that?
- Make art to make art, not to exhibit and sell. Exhibiting/selling totally subsequent and main aim of exhibiting is to work with/alongside other, like-minded sculptors/artists.
- What about the fundamental principle inherent in my work in the past - giving the viewer a moment of respite from hectic modern-day life? How can I keep to that whilst adopting/intergrating Gutai principles? cf. Theo van Doesburg: 'Art is a spiritual function of man, whith the purpose of delivering him from the chaos of life (tragedy).'
- How does marble carving fit into this?
- Direct responses to manifesto:
- !!'The human spirit and the material reach out their hands to each other'!! Beautiful!
- Materials loaded with false significance, not simply presenting their own material self but taking on the appearance of something else. Intellectual aim murders materials and they can no longer speak to us.
- Gutai art does not change the material; it brings it to life. Does not falsify the material. If you 'leave the material as it is', i.e. retain and reveal its integrity, it starts to speak/tell us something and does so with a mighty voice. Keeping the material alive also means bringing its spirit to life --> leads the material up to the height of the spirit.
- Disagree with art of the past not able to call up deep emotion in us: still contains and reveals the magnificent life and the spirit, albeit shrouded in a thick mist of subsequent intellectualism and affectation; can still evoke deep emotion, the problem is that these artworks can no longer be seen/viewed in a serene/peaceful way, away from the tourist hoards. Their age - decay in some - adds to that deep emotion. Important also to consider these artworks within their art-hsitorical context, not as art of today.
- Beauty of decay. I don't see it as the material 'taking revenge', simply the beauty of the process, i.e. the material continues to live after the artist has done his work, completed his stage in the process.
- Pollock et al. grapple with the material in a way that is completely appropriate to it. They serve the material. SERVE YOUR MATERIAL
to produce something living.
- Abstract Art - one of its merits: it has opened up the possibility to create a new subjective shape of space, one that truly deserves the name 'creation'.
- Combining human creative ability with the characteristics of the material.
- Kazuo Shiraga - spreading paint with his feet - had merely found a method that enabled him to confront and unite the material he had chosen with his own spiritual dynamics; no other motive.
- Constant message about the materials through characteristics, colours and form.
- ART - THE RESULT OF INVESTIGATING THE POSSIBILITIES OF CALLING THE MATERIAL TO LIFE.
Sunday, 26 August 2012
Friday, 24 August 2012
Lee Ufan and Mono-ha
Another source of inspiration back in October last was the Mono-ha group.
Taken from the NMOA website - personal highlights in underscore as before:
http://www.nmao.go.jp
'Mono-ha was an important trend that should be viewed as a benchmark in Japanese postwar art history, and a movement that continues to raise a variety of questions.
"Mono-ha" was not a group assembled on the basis of a single doctrine or framework. Between 1968 and the early 1970s, the collection of artists who used "mono"(things), such as stone and wood, paper and cotton, and steel sheets and paraffin in their natural form, as either single substances or in combination with each other, came to be known as "Mono-ha." By presenting ordinary "things" just as they were in extraordinary circumstances, the artists were able to strip away preexisting concepts related to their materials and access a new world within them.
The huge conceptual shift that led to the emergence of this type of art is often traced to the 1st Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Sculpture held at Kobe Suma Rikyu Park in October 1968, and the crucial role played by Sekine Nobuo's "Phase-Mother Earth," a work that contrasted a deep cylindrical hole in the earth with a cylindrical pile of dirt. Lee U fan, who had studied philosophy in Japan, suggested that "Phase-Mother Earth" contained a universal aspect which made an "encounter" with a "new world" possible, and thus provided a theoretical foundation for Mono-ha.
In light of increasingly accepted notions about what triggered the group's emergence, this exhibition attempts to reconsider "Mono-ha" in the context of the era by examining the many works and actions that were created by departing from conventional forms of expression in the search for a "new world." Among these are the artistic trend that originated with Takamatsu Jiro and others who dealt with the disparity between real and imaginary spaces, and contemporaneous attempts to explore the tense relationship between materials and human being.'
And some further insights into some of the Mono-ha artists:
http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2007/09/an-introduction-to-mono-ha.html
Taken from the NMOA website - personal highlights in underscore as before:
http://www.nmao.go.jp
'Mono-ha was an important trend that should be viewed as a benchmark in Japanese postwar art history, and a movement that continues to raise a variety of questions.
"Mono-ha" was not a group assembled on the basis of a single doctrine or framework. Between 1968 and the early 1970s, the collection of artists who used "mono"(things), such as stone and wood, paper and cotton, and steel sheets and paraffin in their natural form, as either single substances or in combination with each other, came to be known as "Mono-ha." By presenting ordinary "things" just as they were in extraordinary circumstances, the artists were able to strip away preexisting concepts related to their materials and access a new world within them.
The huge conceptual shift that led to the emergence of this type of art is often traced to the 1st Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Sculpture held at Kobe Suma Rikyu Park in October 1968, and the crucial role played by Sekine Nobuo's "Phase-Mother Earth," a work that contrasted a deep cylindrical hole in the earth with a cylindrical pile of dirt. Lee U fan, who had studied philosophy in Japan, suggested that "Phase-Mother Earth" contained a universal aspect which made an "encounter" with a "new world" possible, and thus provided a theoretical foundation for Mono-ha.
In light of increasingly accepted notions about what triggered the group's emergence, this exhibition attempts to reconsider "Mono-ha" in the context of the era by examining the many works and actions that were created by departing from conventional forms of expression in the search for a "new world." Among these are the artistic trend that originated with Takamatsu Jiro and others who dealt with the disparity between real and imaginary spaces, and contemporaneous attempts to explore the tense relationship between materials and human being.'
And some further insights into some of the Mono-ha artists:
http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2007/09/an-introduction-to-mono-ha.html
Remember Lee Ufan?
In my post of 10 February this year I highlighted the work of Lee Ufan in order to raise - and aid understanding of - the question of chance playing an integral part in the making of an artwork (and to illustrate my own view on the issue).
This is him now:
And an explanation:
http://www.artcritical.com/2011/09/13/lee-ufan/
For Phenomena and Perception B, the artist recreated an iconic Mono-ha sculpture, dropping a boulder on a sheet of glass fitted to a steel plate. Originally Phenomena and Perception B read as a vigorous critique of Modernism’s query of personal identity, but, fifty years later, the work is a shattering indictment of virtuality. The physical world, Lee’s art suggests, reifies invisible forces and energies that exist in a constant negotiation of alliances—self and world, art and self, body and consciousness, ad infinitum. No wonder the sculptures derive their power from a fanatical obsession with equilibrium, in which various components—material, spatial and proportional—toggle between harmony and chaos. From the cosmic collision in Phenomena and Perception B to allusions to particle physics in his series From Point and From Line, discourse on the phenomena that give rise to empirical reality resonates throughout the show. In Relatum, (1978) in which a curved steel plate covers a perky stone in the way a heavy blanket covers a child, humanity seems to peek out from under (or through) existence, as if to playfully say, “here I am!”
The final room in the retrospective features an installation from the recent Dialogue series in which the ontological concerns of the paintings find their latest, and perhaps most powerful, iteration. On three of the gallery walls, Lee has placed a single square brush stroke from a six-inch brush loaded with oil paint and mineral pigment in a spectrum of luminescent grays, slates, and pearls. While for many years his palette favored a nearly Yves Klein blue, the artist now communicates in the elegant ambiguities of gray. The culminating work posits windows on reality that hover on the surface of the walls and simultaneously recede into the ground, so that the eye is drawn through and beyond the energized patches of paint into the “infinity” of the retrospective’s title. But losing oneself in the experience of these works is not an end in itself: viewers should leave the show convinced of their own existential worth.
This is him now:
And an explanation:
http://www.artcritical.com/2011/09/13/lee-ufan/
Encounters Between Seer and Seen: Lee Ufan at the Guggenheim
by Dawn-Michelle Baude
Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
June 24–September 28, 2011
1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street)
New York City 212-423-3500
Sensual the boulder upon the floor, sensual the metal plate against the wall. Sensual the water-glossed curves of stones, the muscular thickness of steel. The two components in Lee Ufan’s sculpture Relatum – silence B (2008)—the boulder sloping seductively toward the plate, the plate coyly leaning on the wall—flirt with each other and the viewer, who is drawn haplessly into a coquettish ménage-à-trois in the opening gallery of the artist’s first major exhibition on U.S. soil. Here, as elsewhere, the brute fact of materials– the industrial plate on the one hand and the geologic ready-made on the other– succumbs to a latent, often humorous, anthropomorphism or “encounter,” a term favored by the artist for the interface between seer and seen. To label the sculpture as Minimalist misses the point: it ignores the artist’s five decades of research into the notion of Art as a vehicle of altered consciousness in which the relationship between the audience and the artwork, between subject and object, is presented as a fragile, phenomenological nexus revelatory of Being.
Marking Infinity, Lee Ufan’s Guggenheim retrospective, is heady stuff. Perhaps the philosophical content of the work explains why it’s taken so long for the artist to be presented to America, whereas in the late 1960s, he was catapulted to fame in Asia as a founding member and critical proponent of the Japanese group Mono-ha (“School of Things”), committed to creating artworks from everyday materials—paper, rope, steel. In both his art and in his writing, the Korean-born Lee grew in stature in Asia over the decades, to the point that last year Japan celebrated the opening of the Lee Ufan Museum– a 32,000-square foot monument designed by none other than Japanese architect Tadao Ando. Lee’s delay in recognition from the West is particularly compelling, and perhaps even poignant, when contextualized within the artist’s lifelong commitment to the universality of art over, and against, Orientalism. For an artist whose work exalts the “encounter” (The Art of Encounter is the key collection of Lee’s translated writings) and the “relationship” (nearly all his sculptures are entitled Relatum), the fragmenting tendencies of identity politics and otherness run counter to the inclusive purview of Being.1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street)
New York City 212-423-3500
Installation view of Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, June 24–September 28, 2011 Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, showing (left) Relatum—silence b, 2008, courtesy The Pace Gallery, New York, and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, and (right) Dialogue, 2007, Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles
Lee Ufan breaking the glass for Relatum (formerly Phenomena and Perception B), 1968/2011, during installation of Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, June 2011 Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
For Phenomena and Perception B, the artist recreated an iconic Mono-ha sculpture, dropping a boulder on a sheet of glass fitted to a steel plate. Originally Phenomena and Perception B read as a vigorous critique of Modernism’s query of personal identity, but, fifty years later, the work is a shattering indictment of virtuality. The physical world, Lee’s art suggests, reifies invisible forces and energies that exist in a constant negotiation of alliances—self and world, art and self, body and consciousness, ad infinitum. No wonder the sculptures derive their power from a fanatical obsession with equilibrium, in which various components—material, spatial and proportional—toggle between harmony and chaos. From the cosmic collision in Phenomena and Perception B to allusions to particle physics in his series From Point and From Line, discourse on the phenomena that give rise to empirical reality resonates throughout the show. In Relatum, (1978) in which a curved steel plate covers a perky stone in the way a heavy blanket covers a child, humanity seems to peek out from under (or through) existence, as if to playfully say, “here I am!”
The final room in the retrospective features an installation from the recent Dialogue series in which the ontological concerns of the paintings find their latest, and perhaps most powerful, iteration. On three of the gallery walls, Lee has placed a single square brush stroke from a six-inch brush loaded with oil paint and mineral pigment in a spectrum of luminescent grays, slates, and pearls. While for many years his palette favored a nearly Yves Klein blue, the artist now communicates in the elegant ambiguities of gray. The culminating work posits windows on reality that hover on the surface of the walls and simultaneously recede into the ground, so that the eye is drawn through and beyond the energized patches of paint into the “infinity” of the retrospective’s title. But losing oneself in the experience of these works is not an end in itself: viewers should leave the show convinced of their own existential worth.
Tuesday, 21 August 2012
Gutai - Continued
A further, concise insight into the Gutai movement; truly ground-breaking artists, considering the group formed in 1954:
http://www.nipponlugano.ch/en/gutai-multimedia/narrazione/project/narrazione_page-1_nav-short.html
This website emphasizes the group's interest in what they called 'painting actions' - as opposed to the 'action paintings' of the likes of Pollock (the painting functioning as a record of his movements and gestures) and others.
http://www.nipponlugano.ch/en/gutai-multimedia/narrazione/project/narrazione_page-1_nav-short.html
This website emphasizes the group's interest in what they called 'painting actions' - as opposed to the 'action paintings' of the likes of Pollock (the painting functioning as a record of his movements and gestures) and others.
Gutai - A Coming-Home
I first came across the Gutai manifesto back in September last year. It was like a coming-home; one of those life changing moments, following a spring and summer of repeated and ever-deepening disenchantment with the art world - the state of the 'exhibition' or 'art show' as an institution; the phenomenon of the 'Private View' (which epitomizes the predicament in which the art world currently finds itself); the raison d'être of the gallerist, curator, and collector; buyers' and the public's expectations, etc. (my glum outlook has lifted somewhat since then) - and with some of my choices and uses of materials. This manifesto put into words the things I had been feeling and thinking for some time - highlighted in underscore:
'With our present-day awareness, the arts as we have known them up to now appear to us in general to be fakes fitted out with a tremendous affectation. Let us take leave of these piles of counterfeit objects on the altars, in the palaces, in the salons and the antique shops.
They are an illusion with which, by human hand and by way of fraud, materials such as paint, pieces of cloth, metals, clay or marble are loaded with false significance, so that, instead of just presenting their own material, they take on the appearance of something else. Under the cloak of an intellectual aim, the materials have been completely murdered and can no longer speak to us.
Lock these corpses into their tombs. Gutai art does not change the material but brings it to life. Gutai art does not falsify the material. In Gutai art the human spirit and the material reach out their hands to each other, even though they are otherwise opposed to each other. The material is not absorbed by the spirit. The spirit does not force the material into submission. If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice. Keeping the life of the material alive also means bringing the spirit alive. And lifting up the spirit means leading the material up to the height of the spirit.
Art is the home of the creative spirit, but never until now has the spirit created matter. The spirit has only ever created the spiritual. Certainly the spirit has always filled art with life, but this life will finally die as the times change. For all the magnificent life which existed in the art of the Renaissance, little more than its archaeological existence can be seen today.
What is still left of that vitality, even if passive, may in fact be found in Primitive Art or in art since Impressionism. These are either such things in which, due to skillful application of the paint, the deception of the material had not quite succeeded, or else those like Pointillist or Fauvist pictures in which the materials, although used to reproduce nature, could not be murdered after all. Today, however, they are no longer able to call up deep emotion in us. They already belong to a world of the past.
Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty which is to be found in works of art and architecture of the past even if, in the course of the centuries, they have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed of artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life? In this sense I pay respect to [Jackson] Pollock's and [Georges] Mathieu's works in contemporary art. These works are the loud outcry of the material, of the very oil or enamel paints themselves. These two artists grapple with the material in a way which is completely appropriate to it and which they have discovered due to their talent. This even gives the impression that they serve the material. Differentiation and integration create mysterious effects.
Recently, Tominaga So'ichi and Domoto Hisao presented the activities of Mathieu and [Michel]Tapié in informal art, which I found most interesting. I do not know all the details, but in the content presented, there were many points I could agree with. To my surprise, I also discovered that they demanded the immediate revelation of anything arising spontaneously and that they are not bound by the previously predominant forms. Despite the differences in expression as compared to our own, we still find a peculiar agreement with our claim to produce something living. If one follows this possiblity, I am not sure as to the relationship in which the conceptually defined pictorial elements like colours, lines, shapes, in abstract art are seen with regard to the true properties of the material. As far as the denial of abstraction is concerned, the essence of their declaration was not clear to me. In any case, it is obvious to us that purely formalistic abstract art has lost its charm and it is a fact that the foundation of the Gutai Art Society three years ago was accompanied by the slogan that they would go beyond the borders of Abstract Art and that the name Gutaiism (Concretism) was chosen. Above all we were not able to avoid the idea that, in contrast to the centripetal origin of abstraction, we of necessity had to search for a centrifugal approach.
In those days we thought, and indeed still do think today, that the most important merits of Abstract Art lie in the fact that it has opened up the possibility to create a new, subjective shape of space, one which really deserves the name creation.
We have decided to pursue the possibilities of pure and creative activity with great energy. We thought at that time, with regard to the actual application of the abstract spatial arts, of combining human creative ability with the characteristics of the material. When in the melting-pot of psychic automatism the abilities of the individual united with the chosen material , we were overwhelmed by the shape of space still unknown to us, never before seen or experienced. Automatism, of necessity, reaches beyond the artist's self. We have struggled to find our own method of creating a space rather than relying on our own self. The work of one of our members will serve as an example. Yoshiko Kinoshita is actually a teacher of chemistry at a girls' school. She created a peculiar space by allowing chemicals to react on filter paper. Although it is possible to imagine the results beforehand to a certain extent, the final results of handling the chemicals cannot be established until the following day. The particular results and the shape of the material are in any case her own work. After Pollock many Pollock-imitators appeared, but Pollock's splendour will never be extinguished. The talent of invention deserves respect.
Kazuo Shiraga placed a lump of paint on a huge piece of paper, and started to spread it around violently with his feet. For about the last two years art journalists have called this unprecedented method "the Art of committing the whole self with the body." Kazuo Shiraga had no intention at all of making this strange method of creating a work of art public. He had merely found a method which enabled him to confront and unite the material he had chosen with his own spiritual dynamics. In doing so he achieved an extremely convincing result.
In contrast to Shiraga, who works with an organic method, Shōzō Shimamoto has been working with mechanical manipulations for the past few years. The pictures of flying spray created by smashing a bottle full of paint, or the large surface he creates in a single moment by firing a small, hand-made cannon filled with paint by means of an acetylene gas explosion, etc., display a breathtaking freshness.
Other works which deserve mention are those of Yasuo Sumi produced with a concrete mixer, or Toshio Yoshida, who uses only one single lump of paint. All their actions are full of a new intellectual energy which demands our respect and recognition.
The search for an original, undiscovered world also resulted in numerous works in the so-called object form. In my opinion, conditions at the annual open-air exhibitions in the city of Ashiya have contributed to this. The way in which these works, created by artists who are confronted with many different materials, differ from the objects of Surrealism can be seen simply from the fact that the artists tend not to give them titles or to provide interpretations. The objects in Gutai art were, for example, a painted, bent iron plate (Atsuko Tanaka) or a work in hard red vinyl in the form of a mosquito net (Tsuruko Yamazaki), etc. With their characteristics, colours and forms, they were constant messages about the materials.
Our group does not impose restrictions on the art of its members, providing they remain in the field of free artistic creativity. For instance, many different experiments were carried out with extraordinary activity. This ranged from an art to be felt with the entire body to an art which could only be touched, right through to Gutai music (in which Shōzō Shimamoto has been doing interesting experiments for several years). There is also work by Shōzō Shimamoto like a horizontal ladder with bars which you can feel as you walk over them. Then a work by Saburo Murakami which is like a telescope you can walk into and look up at the heavens, or an installation made of plastic bags with organic elasticity, etc. Atsuko Tanaka started with a work of flashing light bulbs which she called "Clothing." Sadamasa Motonaga worked with water, smoke, etc. Gutai art attaches the greatest importance to all daring steps which lead to an as yet undiscovered world. Sometimes, at first glance, we are compared with and mistaken for Dadaism, and we ourselves fully recognize the achievements of Dadaism, but we do believe that, in contrast to Dadaism, our work is the result of investigating the possibilities of calling the material to life.
We shall hope that a fresh spirit will always blow at our Gutai exhibitions and that the discovery of new life will call forth a tremendous scream in the material itself.
(Proclaimed in October 1956)
Jirō YOSHIHARA
'With our present-day awareness, the arts as we have known them up to now appear to us in general to be fakes fitted out with a tremendous affectation. Let us take leave of these piles of counterfeit objects on the altars, in the palaces, in the salons and the antique shops.
They are an illusion with which, by human hand and by way of fraud, materials such as paint, pieces of cloth, metals, clay or marble are loaded with false significance, so that, instead of just presenting their own material, they take on the appearance of something else. Under the cloak of an intellectual aim, the materials have been completely murdered and can no longer speak to us.
Lock these corpses into their tombs. Gutai art does not change the material but brings it to life. Gutai art does not falsify the material. In Gutai art the human spirit and the material reach out their hands to each other, even though they are otherwise opposed to each other. The material is not absorbed by the spirit. The spirit does not force the material into submission. If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice. Keeping the life of the material alive also means bringing the spirit alive. And lifting up the spirit means leading the material up to the height of the spirit.
Art is the home of the creative spirit, but never until now has the spirit created matter. The spirit has only ever created the spiritual. Certainly the spirit has always filled art with life, but this life will finally die as the times change. For all the magnificent life which existed in the art of the Renaissance, little more than its archaeological existence can be seen today.
What is still left of that vitality, even if passive, may in fact be found in Primitive Art or in art since Impressionism. These are either such things in which, due to skillful application of the paint, the deception of the material had not quite succeeded, or else those like Pointillist or Fauvist pictures in which the materials, although used to reproduce nature, could not be murdered after all. Today, however, they are no longer able to call up deep emotion in us. They already belong to a world of the past.
Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty which is to be found in works of art and architecture of the past even if, in the course of the centuries, they have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed of artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life? In this sense I pay respect to [Jackson] Pollock's and [Georges] Mathieu's works in contemporary art. These works are the loud outcry of the material, of the very oil or enamel paints themselves. These two artists grapple with the material in a way which is completely appropriate to it and which they have discovered due to their talent. This even gives the impression that they serve the material. Differentiation and integration create mysterious effects.
Recently, Tominaga So'ichi and Domoto Hisao presented the activities of Mathieu and [Michel]Tapié in informal art, which I found most interesting. I do not know all the details, but in the content presented, there were many points I could agree with. To my surprise, I also discovered that they demanded the immediate revelation of anything arising spontaneously and that they are not bound by the previously predominant forms. Despite the differences in expression as compared to our own, we still find a peculiar agreement with our claim to produce something living. If one follows this possiblity, I am not sure as to the relationship in which the conceptually defined pictorial elements like colours, lines, shapes, in abstract art are seen with regard to the true properties of the material. As far as the denial of abstraction is concerned, the essence of their declaration was not clear to me. In any case, it is obvious to us that purely formalistic abstract art has lost its charm and it is a fact that the foundation of the Gutai Art Society three years ago was accompanied by the slogan that they would go beyond the borders of Abstract Art and that the name Gutaiism (Concretism) was chosen. Above all we were not able to avoid the idea that, in contrast to the centripetal origin of abstraction, we of necessity had to search for a centrifugal approach.
In those days we thought, and indeed still do think today, that the most important merits of Abstract Art lie in the fact that it has opened up the possibility to create a new, subjective shape of space, one which really deserves the name creation.
We have decided to pursue the possibilities of pure and creative activity with great energy. We thought at that time, with regard to the actual application of the abstract spatial arts, of combining human creative ability with the characteristics of the material. When in the melting-pot of psychic automatism the abilities of the individual united with the chosen material , we were overwhelmed by the shape of space still unknown to us, never before seen or experienced. Automatism, of necessity, reaches beyond the artist's self. We have struggled to find our own method of creating a space rather than relying on our own self. The work of one of our members will serve as an example. Yoshiko Kinoshita is actually a teacher of chemistry at a girls' school. She created a peculiar space by allowing chemicals to react on filter paper. Although it is possible to imagine the results beforehand to a certain extent, the final results of handling the chemicals cannot be established until the following day. The particular results and the shape of the material are in any case her own work. After Pollock many Pollock-imitators appeared, but Pollock's splendour will never be extinguished. The talent of invention deserves respect.
Kazuo Shiraga placed a lump of paint on a huge piece of paper, and started to spread it around violently with his feet. For about the last two years art journalists have called this unprecedented method "the Art of committing the whole self with the body." Kazuo Shiraga had no intention at all of making this strange method of creating a work of art public. He had merely found a method which enabled him to confront and unite the material he had chosen with his own spiritual dynamics. In doing so he achieved an extremely convincing result.
In contrast to Shiraga, who works with an organic method, Shōzō Shimamoto has been working with mechanical manipulations for the past few years. The pictures of flying spray created by smashing a bottle full of paint, or the large surface he creates in a single moment by firing a small, hand-made cannon filled with paint by means of an acetylene gas explosion, etc., display a breathtaking freshness.
Other works which deserve mention are those of Yasuo Sumi produced with a concrete mixer, or Toshio Yoshida, who uses only one single lump of paint. All their actions are full of a new intellectual energy which demands our respect and recognition.
The search for an original, undiscovered world also resulted in numerous works in the so-called object form. In my opinion, conditions at the annual open-air exhibitions in the city of Ashiya have contributed to this. The way in which these works, created by artists who are confronted with many different materials, differ from the objects of Surrealism can be seen simply from the fact that the artists tend not to give them titles or to provide interpretations. The objects in Gutai art were, for example, a painted, bent iron plate (Atsuko Tanaka) or a work in hard red vinyl in the form of a mosquito net (Tsuruko Yamazaki), etc. With their characteristics, colours and forms, they were constant messages about the materials.
Our group does not impose restrictions on the art of its members, providing they remain in the field of free artistic creativity. For instance, many different experiments were carried out with extraordinary activity. This ranged from an art to be felt with the entire body to an art which could only be touched, right through to Gutai music (in which Shōzō Shimamoto has been doing interesting experiments for several years). There is also work by Shōzō Shimamoto like a horizontal ladder with bars which you can feel as you walk over them. Then a work by Saburo Murakami which is like a telescope you can walk into and look up at the heavens, or an installation made of plastic bags with organic elasticity, etc. Atsuko Tanaka started with a work of flashing light bulbs which she called "Clothing." Sadamasa Motonaga worked with water, smoke, etc. Gutai art attaches the greatest importance to all daring steps which lead to an as yet undiscovered world. Sometimes, at first glance, we are compared with and mistaken for Dadaism, and we ourselves fully recognize the achievements of Dadaism, but we do believe that, in contrast to Dadaism, our work is the result of investigating the possibilities of calling the material to life.
We shall hope that a fresh spirit will always blow at our Gutai exhibitions and that the discovery of new life will call forth a tremendous scream in the material itself.
(Proclaimed in October 1956)
Jirō YOSHIHARA
Monday, 20 August 2012
Advancement
Taken from
http://arthistoryresources.net/
I came across this text recently on the Art History Resources website. Highly informative, it illustrates some of the thoughts I have formed over the past months (since November last year) regarding the direction of my own work and the state of affairs in (predicament of) today's art world - highlighted with underscore.
' Art for Art's Sake
By the early 20th century, progressive modernism came to dominate the art scene in Europe to the extent that conservative modernism fell into disrepute and was derided as an art form. ...
Conservative modernists, though, the so-called academic painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries, believed they were doing their part to improve the world. In contrast to the progressive modernists, conservative modernists presented images that contained or reflected good conservative moral values, or served as examples of virtuous behaviour, or offered inspiring Christian sentiment. Generally, conservative modernists selected subject matter that showed examples of righteous conduct and noble sacrifice that was intended to serve as a model which all good citizens should aspire to emulate.
Jean-Paul Laurens’s painting, Last Moments of Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico (1882; Hermitage, St. Petersburg), for example, shows the puppet emperor before his execution by firing squad in Querétaro, Mexico, on 19 June 1867. In contrast to Manet’s broadly painted, ‘unfinished’ picture, which depicts the event in unheroic terms and in a way that was construed by conservatives as critical of Napoleon III’s foreign policy (the painting drew official censorship as well as the disdain of conservative critics), Laurens presents the emperor as a noble hero, calmly consoling his distraught confessor while a faithful servant on his knees clings to his left hand. His Mexican executioners stand waiting at the door in awe of the emperor’s dignity and composure.
Execution of the Emperor Maximilian
1867, oil on canvas (Kunsthalle, Mannheim)
Jean-Paul Laurens
Last Moments of Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico
1882, oil on canvas (Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg)
Such treatment was seen by the progressives as uncritical and as merely supportive of the status quo; it offered a future that was little more than a perpetuation of the present. Conservatives generally wished to maintain existing institutions; any change would be brought about gradually. Progressives, on the other hand, were critical of institutions, both political and religious, because they were restrictive of individual liberty; they wanted radical change. Progressives placed their faith in the goodness of humankind, a goodness which they believed, starting with Rousseau in the 18th century, had become corrupted by such things as the growth of cities.
Others would argue that the rapid rise of industrial capitalism in the 18th century had turned man into a selfish, competitive animal whose inhumanity was increasingly apparent in the blighted landscape of the industrial revolution. Rousseau had glorified Nature, and a number of modernists idealized the country life. Thomas Jefferson lived in the country close to nature and desired that the United States be entirely a farming economy; he characterized cities as ‘ulcers on the body politic.’
In contrast to conservative modernism, which remained fettered to old ideas and which tended to support the status quo, progressive modernism adopted an antagonistic position towards society and its established institutions. In one way or another it challenged all authority in the name of freedom and, intentionally or not, affronted conservative middle-class values.
Generally speaking, progressive modernism tended to concern itself with political and social issues, drawing attention to troubling aspects of contemporary society, such as the plight of the poor and prostitution, which they felt needed to be addressed and corrected. Through their art, the progressives repeatedly pointed out political and social ills which an increasingly complacent and comfortable middle class preferred to ignore.
Fundamentally, the intention was to educate the public, to keep alive in the face of conservative forces the Enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality through which the world would be made a better place.
The position taken by progressive modernism came to be referred to as the avant-garde (a military term meaning ‘advance-guard’). In contrast to the conservative modernists who looked to the past and tradition, the avant-garde artist consciously rejected tradition. Rather than existing as the most recent manifestation of a tradition stretching back into the past, the avant-garde artist saw him- or herself as standing at the beginning of a new tradition stretching, hopefully, into the future. The progressive modernist looked to the future while the conservative modernist looked to the past.
Today, we would characterize progressive modernism, the avant-garde, as politically liberal in its support of freedom of expression and demands of equality. Since the 18th century, the modernist belief in the freedom of expression has manifested itself in art through claims to freedom of choice in subject matter and to freedom of choice in style in terms of choice of brushstroke and colour. It was in the exercise of these rights that the artist constantly drew attention to the goals of progressive modernism.
As the 19th century progressed, the practice of artistic freedom became fundamental to progressive modernism. Artists began to seek freedom not just from the rules of the Academy, but from the expectations of the public. It was claimed that art possessed its own intrinsic value and should not have to be made to satisfy any edifying, utilitarian, or moral function. In editorials in the influential review L’Artiste, the progressive French novelist and critic Théophile Gautier believed the idea that art should be independent, and promoted the slogan ‘l’art pour l’art.’ It was claimed that art should be produced not for the public’s sake, but for art’s sake.
Art for Art’s Sake was a rallying cry, a call for art’s freedom from the demands that it possess meaning and purpose. From a progressive modernist’s point of view, it was a further exercise of freedom. It was also a ploy, another deliberate affront to bourgeois sensibility. In his book, The Gentle Art Of Making Enemies, published in 1890, the progressive modernist painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler, proposed that ‘Art should be independent of all claptrap – should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye and ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it.’
In his essay ‘The Soul of Man Under Socialism,’ published in 1891 in the Pall Mall Gazette, Oscar Wilde wrote:
- A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want. Indeed, the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.
However, Art for Art’s Sake was a stratagem that backfired. The same middle class whose tastes and ideas Whistler was confronting through his art, quickly turned the call of ‘Art for Art's Sake’ into a tool to further neutralize the content and noxious effects of progressive modernist art. From now on, art was to be discussed in formal terms — colour, line, shape, space, composition — which effectively removed the question of meaning and purpose from consideration and permitted whatever social, political, or progressive statements the artist had hoped to make in his or her work to be conveniently ignored or played down.
This approach became pervasive to the extent that artists, too, certainly the weaker ones, and even some of the strong ones as they got older or more comfortable, lost sight of their modernist purpose and became willy–nilly absorbed into this formalist way of thinking about art. In defense of this attitude, it was argued that, because the function of art is to preserve and enhance the values and sensibilities of civilized human beings, art should attempt to remain aloof from the malignant influences of contemporary culture which was becoming increasingly coarse and dehumanized.
...
...
For art to be an effective instrument of social betterment, it needed to be understood by as many people as possible. But it was not a matter of simply manipulating images, it was the ‘true’ art behind the image that was deemed important. Art can be many things and one example may look quite different from the next. But something called ‘art’ is common to all. Whatever this ‘true’ art was, it was universal; like the scientific ‘truth’ of the Enlightenment. All art obviously possessed it.
Some artists went in search of ‘art.’ From an Enlightenment point of view, this was a search for the ‘truth’ or essence of art, and was carried out using a sort of pictorial reasoning. The first step was to strip away distracting elements such as recognizable objects which tended to conceal or hide the common ‘art’ thing.
An example of this approach would be the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky who, in his Composition VII, for example, painted in 1913 and now in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, reduced his compositions to arrangements of colours, lines, and shapes. He believed colours, lines, and shapes could exist autonomously in a painting without any connection to recognizable objects.
 Wassily Kandinsky, Composition VII 1913, oil on canvas (Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow) |
A more radical approach was to reduce the non-recognizable to the most basic colours, lines, and shapes. This was the approach of the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian in his Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red, for example, painted in 1921 and now in the Tate Gallery, London, in which three colours plus black and white are arranged as rectangular shapes in a grid.
 Piet Mondrian, Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red 1921, oil on canvas (Tate Gallery, London) |
However, it is sometimes overlooked that for the artists who undertook this search, there was more at stake than the discovery of the ‘truth’ of art. For some, abstraction was a path to another goal. Both Mondrian and Kandinsky were keenly interested in the spiritual and believed that art should serve as a guide to, or an inspiration for, or perhaps help to rekindle in, the spectator the spiritual dimension which they and others felt was being lost in the increasingly materialist contemporary world. Abstraction involved a sort of stripping away of the material world and had the potential of revealing, or describing, or merely alluding to the world of the spirit.
New approaches to form and content were also being explored in music and literature. The French composer Claude Debussy explored unconventional harmonies in short compositions such as Prélude à l'après–midi d'un faune (influenced by Stéphane Mallarmé’s Symbolist poem), first performed in 1894, in which emphasis is placed on musical sound and tonal quality. In 1912, Debussy’s piece was made the basis for a ballet choreographed and performed by the Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky for the Ballets Russes in Paris. The following year, Nijinsky choreographed and danced in the ballet Le Sacre du Printemps by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, which, in its complex rhythmic structures and use of dissonance, together with Nijinsky’s radically unconventional choreography, shocked and scandalized both conservative critics and the public. The event, though, established the basis for developments of modernism in music.
As in the visual arts, music also became less ‘representational’ and evocative (that is, associated with real–world themes, events, places, people, objects, ideas, or emotions) and more abstract and expressive. The Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg pioneered atonality, in which music is composed without a tonal centre or key, and later, in the early 1920s, developed the dodecaphonic or twelve–tone technique of composition.
...'
Friday, 17 August 2012
But Art Isn't SOLELY About Questioning
Some thoughts following a visit to a sculpture show in London. I am omitting the artists' names because, in my view, what's important is the work, not the artist.
Works that spoke:
Floated Thought, and F4.S, and Vortex 2: exquisite in execution, choice and use of material, and expression, these pieces have enormous presence through their stillness: a deafening stillness that engulfed the entire gallery. True to their culture. A nice concept too.
It always rains on wet: beautiful as a physical and visual experience, aesthetically and conceptually pleasing with a wonderful choice and use of materials.
Handle: pleasing concept and beautiful execution; a nice visual/aesthetic experience, with surprising presence displayed on the wall as it was.
Purple Heart, and Crown and Sweet Spot 3: beautifully executed and aesthetically pleasing; interesting materials; based on personal experiences.
And those that didn't so much or at all:
Cuffs: viewer lives/shares the working experiences and life of the artist, therin lies the enjoyment. Personally, I find the concept and execution lacking; (Why did it with the show Prize? - a reflection on the environment?)
Rolling our combined body weight in clay from our studio to the gallery: would probably have appreciated this more if it had been shown in a different way.
The present is just a point: became more interesting when reading the artist statement.
Hung: seems to exist better in the mind of the artist than in physical reality;
Myth interrupted: the thinking behind it reads nicely, but the final product is lacking formally; the plastic membrane in particular was a problem to me with regard to texture and finish.
Oscillator R: I was entertained by this momentarily; I do appreciate the concept of 'a visually simple and minimal structure containing a concealed complexity' (as per the artist's statement) but this wasn't enough to hold my interest for long.
You'd do it if you loved me, and I told you this was a good spot: again there's a gulf between the ideas on which these pieces are based and what you see in front of you.
The two pieces that stand out, in mind, as key to the institution that is sculpture are (both by the same artist):
It's not you, it's me, and My sculptures, my rules: although I personally don't find these pieces aesthetically pleasing, or 'tactile and sumptuous' - as the artist puts it in her statement - I feel they address something I personally regard as hugely important: as well as encouraging 'the spectator to ascertain a sense of the broader potential of the everyday and to perceive objects with a new admiration and comprehension that surpasses their function', they address the broader potential and purpose of sculpture through the choice of materials. They challenge the viewer's conception of what sculpture should be; what materials are 'acceptable' for it to be 'proper art' - the title of a piece by this artist I saw elsewhere last year was 'This is a serious sculpture'. This relates to my interest in the ideas and ideals of the Gutai movement, which I have mentioned previously and which I will return to in a subsquent post.
The purpose of this exercise in post-exhibition analysis is not to praise or criticize, nor judge worth, but to analyse in order to crystallize my own views and subsequently verbalize (and define?) my own (current) artistic approach.
What emerges as paramount here are (not in any particular order):
- choice and use of material
- concept
- aesthetics (universal geometry [which I will expand upon later])
- questioning
- execution
- simplicity
- viewer's experience.
Works that spoke:
Floated Thought, and F4.S, and Vortex 2: exquisite in execution, choice and use of material, and expression, these pieces have enormous presence through their stillness: a deafening stillness that engulfed the entire gallery. True to their culture. A nice concept too.
It always rains on wet: beautiful as a physical and visual experience, aesthetically and conceptually pleasing with a wonderful choice and use of materials.
Handle: pleasing concept and beautiful execution; a nice visual/aesthetic experience, with surprising presence displayed on the wall as it was.
Purple Heart, and Crown and Sweet Spot 3: beautifully executed and aesthetically pleasing; interesting materials; based on personal experiences.
And those that didn't so much or at all:
Cuffs: viewer lives/shares the working experiences and life of the artist, therin lies the enjoyment. Personally, I find the concept and execution lacking; (Why did it with the show Prize? - a reflection on the environment?)
Rolling our combined body weight in clay from our studio to the gallery: would probably have appreciated this more if it had been shown in a different way.
The present is just a point: became more interesting when reading the artist statement.
Hung: seems to exist better in the mind of the artist than in physical reality;
Myth interrupted: the thinking behind it reads nicely, but the final product is lacking formally; the plastic membrane in particular was a problem to me with regard to texture and finish.
Oscillator R: I was entertained by this momentarily; I do appreciate the concept of 'a visually simple and minimal structure containing a concealed complexity' (as per the artist's statement) but this wasn't enough to hold my interest for long.
You'd do it if you loved me, and I told you this was a good spot: again there's a gulf between the ideas on which these pieces are based and what you see in front of you.
The two pieces that stand out, in mind, as key to the institution that is sculpture are (both by the same artist):
It's not you, it's me, and My sculptures, my rules: although I personally don't find these pieces aesthetically pleasing, or 'tactile and sumptuous' - as the artist puts it in her statement - I feel they address something I personally regard as hugely important: as well as encouraging 'the spectator to ascertain a sense of the broader potential of the everyday and to perceive objects with a new admiration and comprehension that surpasses their function', they address the broader potential and purpose of sculpture through the choice of materials. They challenge the viewer's conception of what sculpture should be; what materials are 'acceptable' for it to be 'proper art' - the title of a piece by this artist I saw elsewhere last year was 'This is a serious sculpture'. This relates to my interest in the ideas and ideals of the Gutai movement, which I have mentioned previously and which I will return to in a subsquent post.
The purpose of this exercise in post-exhibition analysis is not to praise or criticize, nor judge worth, but to analyse in order to crystallize my own views and subsequently verbalize (and define?) my own (current) artistic approach.
What emerges as paramount here are (not in any particular order):
- choice and use of material
- concept
- aesthetics (universal geometry [which I will expand upon later])
- questioning
- execution
- simplicity
- viewer's experience.
An Initial Glimpse ...
... into some of the things I've been working on these past few months:
straddling ceramics and sculpture, i.e. using the techniques used in ceramics to make sculpture
exploring Fragility:
straddling ceramics and sculpture, i.e. using the techniques used in ceramics to make sculpture
exploring Fragility:
 | ||
| Before firing, with the end of the top coil still intact
Working with very fragile spherical forms, which will - and do - incur some damage during the making and firing, to reflect my inquiry into the subject of the fragility of life. The plan at the moment is to make a large number of these of various sizes, to form an installation ultimately. Each sphere represents a life and is made up of one continuous coil (usually in ceramics the coils in hand-built forms are cut to size and the individual coils are then superimposed, forming a stack rather than a spiral). The coil spirals in repetitive circles/cycles - expansion and contraction - reflecting the cycle of life; and the breakages reflecting the fragility of life.
I really enjoy the meditative nature of this work and am beginning to perceive this as a key element in what I do.
I joined a ceramics studio for a few months this spring/summer (hence in the previous post, the images from the Ceramics Department at the V&A, which I visited on several occasions during that time) to explore the techniques used by ceramicists - and indulge my love of clay - with a view to use these in my sculpture work.
Very early on I began to want to leave the making process visible, not smoothing the coils out but showing how the object is made.
1) Seeking to create movement in what is inherently a settled/quiet form, and playing with dark and light - this white clay creates beautiful shadows:
 
2) Exploring movement through texture:
3) Exploring the larger scale:
1, 2, and 3: using fine, smooth white clay, and remaining in my usual style, more appropriate to the brick clay I had been using in my work previously.
Gradually I began to sense that this smooth, soft, tender white clay asked for a greater delicacy, which gave rise to the fragile spheres. The Fragility of Life theme emerged as I was working on the first of my 'fragility spheres'.
I also explored the possibility of using wax for the fragile spheres;
still playing with dark and light, although here it's the blue of the wax that varies in tone
gravity playing its part - like with all of us (I've toyed with the idea of exposing such wax spheres to strong sunrays, moving the sphere around to assist the shaping as the wax softens and sags)
taking delight in the behaviour and nature of the wax
 |
Other ceramic experiments, which I might explore further:
Working with the behaviour of the clay; letting the material and the process speak and play a vital role in the final outcome. Working with gravity, time, and the ambient atmosphere, and also, critically, chance. Cutting the edges in such a way as to accentuate the curve to a maximum and so create movement - these are flat slabs/sheets of clay of even thickness, which is characteristic of ceramics. If cut with flat edges, i.e. fully perpendicular to the main plane, they are inherently still, without movement, even when cut in dynamic shapes and/or folded; movement, sculpturally, is usually mainly created by varying thickness/volume.
I have also been experimenting with plaster, exploring its behaviour. Further explanation and illustrations in a subsequent post.
Thursday, 16 August 2012
Some Further Musings on Art
Art is about questioning what you're seeing; how you react to it, relate to it, experience it.
Art is a quest for a question that is interesting to myself - the artist - or someone else - the viewer.
In art (Art), the question can remain as a question. In (art,) design or craft on the other hand the question is already explained; it's about accepting what you're seeing and/or about utility. Art 'outcomes' exist in their own right; they're not about serving us.
However, design or craft can become Art if it is presented in such a way that it entails a question/questioning:
Both at the V&A in Room 141
Art can be all around you, if to you it's seeing something wonderful. If it has to come in a frame or live in a museum, then you won't acknowledge that 'wonderful' something you see elsewhere.
It's generally accepted that a sign of a prosperous and healthy society is to have a place for art; in my view, a sign of a vibrant society is to have a place for Art.
Art is a quest for a question that is interesting to myself - the artist - or someone else - the viewer.
In art (Art), the question can remain as a question. In (art,) design or craft on the other hand the question is already explained; it's about accepting what you're seeing and/or about utility. Art 'outcomes' exist in their own right; they're not about serving us.
However, design or craft can become Art if it is presented in such a way that it entails a question/questioning:
Both at the V&A in Room 141
Art can be all around you, if to you it's seeing something wonderful. If it has to come in a frame or live in a museum, then you won't acknowledge that 'wonderful' something you see elsewhere.
It's generally accepted that a sign of a prosperous and healthy society is to have a place for art; in my view, a sign of a vibrant society is to have a place for Art.
Sunday, 5 August 2012
Art is About Questioning
If, as I said in my previous post, art is about generating a reaction, it is also - and perhaps more importantly - about questioning. Seghal's work certainly addresses significant questions, as the previous post illustrated.
The work of Ai WeiWei and that of Belgian artist Wim Delvoye does the same, as the video below demonstrates (Ei Weiwei meets Wim Delvoye at documenta 12).
Ei Weiwei is a familiar 'big player' in the artworld; Wim Delvoye is perhaps less so in some circles. Their work sits very solidly within and responds to their respective native cultures. I've always connected with Ei Weiwei's work. My appreciation of Delvoye's work has taken somewhat longer to blossom. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to look into his work more closely as part of a translation project for the 'Sympathy for the Devil' show at the Vanhaerents Art Collection in Brussels. My initial encounters with his oeuvre had left me in a bit of a quandary; there seemed to be an incongruity, which disturbed me. This documentary has deepened my understanding of him as an artist (and an individual?).
The two artists raise what I feel are some very interesting and important questions in this documentary:
starting with the issue of critical distance and memory, min. 8.32 to 9.15;
22.00 to 23.16: leaving things to chance and working with them;
and subsquently Ei Weiwei's 1001 Chairs, using objects that already exist - so no 'adding to' - each chair with its own history, its own story, and continuing their stories (of greater interest than the 'recycled' things they look at nearby, in my view);
the function of purposely 'bad' art; and moralizing as an artist and an individual;
and other 'big questions' such as Darwinian evolution, God, vegetarianism.
Delvoye's initial confusion that a signpost at the exit of the Documenta hall was an artwork I thought was fascinating, as were the comments from Ai Weiwei's agent.
Delvoye's webiste is well worth a look:
http://www.wimdelvoye.be/
as is the website of the Vanhaerents Art Collection:
http://www.vanhaerentsartcollection.com/en/
The philosophy and principles upon which this collection and here more specifically the 'Sympathy for the Devil' exhibition are founded is inspiring. In my view an approach that justifies the presence of an intermedieary between the artist and the viewer; commercialism occupying a subordinate position. Very Belgian/continental? I personally haven't come across anything like that in the UK, as yet.
The work of Ai WeiWei and that of Belgian artist Wim Delvoye does the same, as the video below demonstrates (Ei Weiwei meets Wim Delvoye at documenta 12).
Ei Weiwei is a familiar 'big player' in the artworld; Wim Delvoye is perhaps less so in some circles. Their work sits very solidly within and responds to their respective native cultures. I've always connected with Ei Weiwei's work. My appreciation of Delvoye's work has taken somewhat longer to blossom. Earlier this year I had the opportunity to look into his work more closely as part of a translation project for the 'Sympathy for the Devil' show at the Vanhaerents Art Collection in Brussels. My initial encounters with his oeuvre had left me in a bit of a quandary; there seemed to be an incongruity, which disturbed me. This documentary has deepened my understanding of him as an artist (and an individual?).
The two artists raise what I feel are some very interesting and important questions in this documentary:
starting with the issue of critical distance and memory, min. 8.32 to 9.15;
22.00 to 23.16: leaving things to chance and working with them;
and subsquently Ei Weiwei's 1001 Chairs, using objects that already exist - so no 'adding to' - each chair with its own history, its own story, and continuing their stories (of greater interest than the 'recycled' things they look at nearby, in my view);
the function of purposely 'bad' art; and moralizing as an artist and an individual;
and other 'big questions' such as Darwinian evolution, God, vegetarianism.
Delvoye's initial confusion that a signpost at the exit of the Documenta hall was an artwork I thought was fascinating, as were the comments from Ai Weiwei's agent.
Delvoye's webiste is well worth a look:
http://www.wimdelvoye.be/
as is the website of the Vanhaerents Art Collection:
http://www.vanhaerentsartcollection.com/en/
The philosophy and principles upon which this collection and here more specifically the 'Sympathy for the Devil' exhibition are founded is inspiring. In my view an approach that justifies the presence of an intermedieary between the artist and the viewer; commercialism occupying a subordinate position. Very Belgian/continental? I personally haven't come across anything like that in the UK, as yet.
Friday, 3 August 2012
'These Associations' by Tino Seghal
As the Tate Etc. article on Tino Seghal's Turbine Hall commission suggests, 'if you think of art as a painting on a wall, a sculpture on the floor, or even a video projected on a screen', Tino Seghal's These Associations will come as a bit of shock. It certainly was to me, in so many different ways, the most flagrant and immediate being to have a total stranger come up to me and proceed, with great fervency, to tell me a story - true or imagined, I will never know (a lingering thought!).
The shock was probably greater because I stumbled into this 'constructed situation' (as Seghal apparently calls these) unknowingly: I had gone to the Tate for a workshop## held in The Tanks and became intrigued by the group of people running around (seemingly) randomly in the hall. My first fascination was to try and figure out the rules by which they were 'playing'.
And, what was this??
The whole experience has impacted hugely on my consciousness, both as an individual and as an artist. The story I was told lingers eerily in my mind - and I suspect will continue to do so for some time - the encounter with my story-teller continues to fascinate me. As an artist I'm inspired by Seghal's opposition to 'manufacturing more objects on a planet that is already overflowing with detritus' and he has found a way of addressing big questions - about society, art, life - without 'making' a material object or transforming a material.
And to me this was not a 'performance': it works like an artwork in that 'it evokes the reaction - insight, delight, passion, confusion - that one hopes for in an encounter with a work of art.' It works like sculpture in that it has volume and scale.
'My big question, which I think is the question of my generation' says Seghal, 'is that the way we produce nowadays, the social form of economic organization, is not going to be able to persist, and we are going to be measrued against the question of how we are able to adjust to that.'
This has become a pressing issue for me as an artist over the years: so much 'art' is produced nowadays, but with what degree of consciousness? Mostly as a disposable commodity.
What I love about Seghal's Art is that it 'vanishes as soon as it is over, except for the impression that lingers like a footprint on your mind.' Which touches on another issue of concern for me as an artist: the art world's obsession with its need for preserving art, which detracts from and destroys the artist's original impulse. This obsession is led by commercial concerns of course - I wonder how much shorter the queues of paying visitors for the Vatican Museum would be without the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes; would the Vatican have gone to such lengths to 'restore' (I personally think of it as vandalization) artworks of lesser mass-appeal?
I strongly believe that the ageing process is an inherent part of the artistic creative process.
A second aspect of Seghal's approach that inspires me is that he considers loss of control over the creative process and the artwork as something psychologically necessary to him. 'If it was all coming from me, it wouldn't be satisfactory.' And he refuses to give written explanations of his work.
This brings us back to the Buddhist approach of the invisible artist. Something I feel increasingly drawn to.
A third aspect I will probably expand upon in a subsequent post is that he has found a way to stay true to his principles, working within his own parameters and yet exist financially in the art world. That's an Art in itself.
I came away from the Tate that day totally uplifted by the energy that pulsated between the people there, the joy of human interaction. As an artist mostly working in isolation, I find the materials Seghal uses, i.e. people and time, hugely appealing. What better materials to use? Universal; archetypal.
Having said that, in relation to my own work, I haven't come from a dance background - Seghal studied both Dance and Political Economy - so my form of expression is very much grounded in the 'making'. I enjoy the physical making process, the building, the shaping ... (and the writing about). I just need to find a way to reconcile this desire to make with this other yearning, not to add to all that 'stuff' that's being produced nowadays.
## Ei Arakawa's Joy of Life workshop about the Jikken Kobo and Gutai movements.
The Gutai movement - and the Mono Ha - has been a great source of inspiration to me since November last year, when I first read their manifesto. It was that encounter that brought about the sea-change in my work.
More on that later ...
The shock was probably greater because I stumbled into this 'constructed situation' (as Seghal apparently calls these) unknowingly: I had gone to the Tate for a workshop## held in The Tanks and became intrigued by the group of people running around (seemingly) randomly in the hall. My first fascination was to try and figure out the rules by which they were 'playing'.
And, what was this??
The whole experience has impacted hugely on my consciousness, both as an individual and as an artist. The story I was told lingers eerily in my mind - and I suspect will continue to do so for some time - the encounter with my story-teller continues to fascinate me. As an artist I'm inspired by Seghal's opposition to 'manufacturing more objects on a planet that is already overflowing with detritus' and he has found a way of addressing big questions - about society, art, life - without 'making' a material object or transforming a material.
And to me this was not a 'performance': it works like an artwork in that 'it evokes the reaction - insight, delight, passion, confusion - that one hopes for in an encounter with a work of art.' It works like sculpture in that it has volume and scale.
'My big question, which I think is the question of my generation' says Seghal, 'is that the way we produce nowadays, the social form of economic organization, is not going to be able to persist, and we are going to be measrued against the question of how we are able to adjust to that.'
This has become a pressing issue for me as an artist over the years: so much 'art' is produced nowadays, but with what degree of consciousness? Mostly as a disposable commodity.
What I love about Seghal's Art is that it 'vanishes as soon as it is over, except for the impression that lingers like a footprint on your mind.' Which touches on another issue of concern for me as an artist: the art world's obsession with its need for preserving art, which detracts from and destroys the artist's original impulse. This obsession is led by commercial concerns of course - I wonder how much shorter the queues of paying visitors for the Vatican Museum would be without the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes; would the Vatican have gone to such lengths to 'restore' (I personally think of it as vandalization) artworks of lesser mass-appeal?
I strongly believe that the ageing process is an inherent part of the artistic creative process.
A second aspect of Seghal's approach that inspires me is that he considers loss of control over the creative process and the artwork as something psychologically necessary to him. 'If it was all coming from me, it wouldn't be satisfactory.' And he refuses to give written explanations of his work.
This brings us back to the Buddhist approach of the invisible artist. Something I feel increasingly drawn to.
A third aspect I will probably expand upon in a subsequent post is that he has found a way to stay true to his principles, working within his own parameters and yet exist financially in the art world. That's an Art in itself.
I came away from the Tate that day totally uplifted by the energy that pulsated between the people there, the joy of human interaction. As an artist mostly working in isolation, I find the materials Seghal uses, i.e. people and time, hugely appealing. What better materials to use? Universal; archetypal.
Having said that, in relation to my own work, I haven't come from a dance background - Seghal studied both Dance and Political Economy - so my form of expression is very much grounded in the 'making'. I enjoy the physical making process, the building, the shaping ... (and the writing about). I just need to find a way to reconcile this desire to make with this other yearning, not to add to all that 'stuff' that's being produced nowadays.
## Ei Arakawa's Joy of Life workshop about the Jikken Kobo and Gutai movements.
The Gutai movement - and the Mono Ha - has been a great source of inspiration to me since November last year, when I first read their manifesto. It was that encounter that brought about the sea-change in my work.
More on that later ...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)