Jordan Belson, Brain Drawing, 1952. Ink on paper
The Drawing Centre in New York has just held an exhibition entitled 'Mythic Worlds: Works from the distant past through to the present'. I wish I had been there to see it, however they have put together an on-line catalogue, so we can get a good idea of the exhibition's content and this review is therefore based on what I could find available on line, rather than what was actually on exhibition, but we must all cut our cloth accordingly.
Jordan Belson, Brain Drawing, 1952. Ink on paper
After reading through the catalogue and looking at the images of work on display, there were certain artists that for me, stood out as having practices that in one way or another, were helpful in understanding what I have been doing recently myself. Selfish perhaps, but when you visit exhibitions it is always useful to have a focus, or you can find yourself wondering what you are doing there and become overloaded with too much information to process. This doesn't mean you avoid new things, it's simply that you need a way into the new. I'm always keen to find artists that I have never encountered before, especially if they have been making work that seems to overlap with my own interests and Jordan Belson in particular interested me because of his attempts to fuse both scientific and mystical understandings of the universe. He developed what some people have labeled “cosmic cinema”, his animated films exploring the dynamic relationships between form, movement, colour and sound. Using basic animation techniques, mirrors, kaleidoscopes, and a variety of low-tech equipment he creates films that operate very like early types of microbial life. I'm making a new animation at the moment and by looking at Belson's work, I was reassured that the low technology approach I have been making is still viable.
Making an old school animation
Jordan Belson: Samadhi (1967)
The animated film Samadhi explores the relationship between spiritual perception and scientific theory, drawing from Oriental philosophy and religion as well as Johannes Kepler’s astronomical theories and is accompanied by Belson’s ambient score.
Jordan Belson, Brain Drawing, 1952. Ink on paper
His images reminded me that human beings are over 50 percent bacterial life and they helped me to visualise an idea that if God was of any species, it would be that of a higher form of bacterial entity. These images could therefore be seen as aspects of the religious art of microbial life forms, and now that I think about it, I would be quite happy to have people consider my own recent work in a similar way.
Mel Chin: Tantric Dream diagram: 1991
Displayed in the adjacent gallery, (see gallery layout drawing above) through a “sky” of video monitors was 'the State of Heaven', a multidimensional fractal program developed by McGill University physicists S. Lovejoy and F. Begin. Their interpretation of meteorological dynamics had advanced understanding in the fields of climatology and plate tectonics, Chin acknowledging that connectivity and collaboration with other disciplines are vital if deep communication is to be achieved. The resulting final images generated were to be given to weavers to be reinterpreted in wool, but I'm not sure whether or not this final aspect of the piece was ever completed.
Ilka Gedő is another artist that I somehow had not looked at before. Her self-portraits are very powerful, and her image in the exhibition of a table immediately communicated the fact that she was able to draw objects and turn them into events, a rare skill, but one I'm beginning to think is essential in a time when Capitalism is beginning to loosen its grip, and if we are to collectively get it to remove its dead hands from our tiller, we will need more and more examples of how to experience the world as interconnected events and not as a collection of atomised or itemised things. I was particularly interested in her drawings and pastels of the Ganz Factory. She was able to take a momentary experience and bring to it an intense spiritual concentration and expressive power. These are drawings of industrial work, drawings that reminded myself of my time working at Round Oak Steel Works in the West Midlands. Her drawings are both realistic and at the same time, more importantly, expressive and moving. The objects that appear in these industrial spaces, just as they did for myself in the 1960s, seem to devour the human beings that are brought in to service them.
Ilka Gedő
I have been thinking about drawings as types of batteries recently and Gedő's in particular seem to be full of that energetic potential that marks can create, especially as their collective energies flow across the surface of the paper. Her work taps into that 'uncertain certainty' that so many artists exhibit when they come to terms with both the fragility of life and its underlying dynamism.
Ilka Gedő
Ilka Gedő: Table 1949
Hu Zhengyan was the first artist to develop colour woodblock printing and he worked in 17th century China, however it was his images devoted to the depiction of strange distorted wooden forms that had been selected for this exhibition and they intrigued me. They reminded me of traditional Japanese suiseki stones, small naturally occurring rocks which are appreciated for their aesthetic value because they look like full sized landscape forms.
Hu Zhengyan: Woodblock prints
A suiseki stone
The idea of seeing vastness in small things is a wonderful one and is something all of us can understand, as we have had to pass through childhood to get where we are. It has always seemed to me that if you can keep that childlike wonder that you had when as a child you made models, you would have far more chance of being a good artist. I now believe that this is a type of animism, a way of sending your thoughts out to inhabit other things, but also a way for objects to hold thoughts within themselves, so that they in turn can go on to inhabit the people that then encounter them.
This is how the drawing centre introduces the exhibition:
Tracing commonalities, both formal and conceptual, Of Mythic Worlds draws surprising connections between artists that might otherwise go unnoticed. Rarely exhibited drawings by Morris Graves, Jack Whitten, Georgia O'Keeffe, and theorist and writer Roland Barthes are presented alongside nineteenth-century Shaker Gift Drawings, as well as major works from artists such as Mel Chin and Jordan Belson. Historical block prints from the Qing dynasty are juxtaposed with works made by contemporary artists including Cici Wu, Bernadette Van-Huy, Julia Phillips, Steffani Jemison, and Robert Bittenbender. Of Mythic Worlds also includes new work made on the occasion of the exhibition by Duane Linklater, an Omaskêko Ininiwak artist based in North Bay, Ontario.
Together, the works of these artists investigate personal belief systems, spirituality, and consciousness; explore the metaphysical and the sublime; recall myths passed down from ancient cultures; and expand our understanding of mysticism and immateriality.
Together, the works of these artists investigate personal belief systems, spirituality, and consciousness; explore the metaphysical and the sublime; recall myths passed down from ancient cultures; and expand our understanding of mysticism and immateriality.
The exhibition it is argued in the introduction covers a lot of ground and I suppose it is the job of the marketing people to find a comprehensive net within to present it. I wonder how if given the money and access to various collections myself or someone else might have put an exhibition together. As students you can organise exhibitions of old postcards (heck you can tell my age in thinking people may still collect these) or cut out images printed off from your computer and organise them on a wall, it's always an interesting thing to do, as you begin to see connections that you had never noticed before. I also realise that with the 3D software we have access to you could design and put up a whole exhibition on line, see.
You can find an on-line catalogue of the exhibition here
See also:
Drawing together science and myth
The diagram as art and spirit guide
Animism and drawing lines: a reflection on another exhibition
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