Wednesday 6 July 2016

Drawing with unusual materials



Bride stripped bare by her Bachelors, Even

Perhaps the most important individual piece of work in relation to drawing with non-traditional art materials is Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass (Bride stripped bare by her Bachelors, Even).

The materials used are chosen very carefully as part of a complex set of meanings pre-thought through by Duchamp and detailed in his comprehensive notes which were themselves published as 94 separate documents in what was called ‘The Green Box’.

Richard Hamilton made a full sized replica working directly from the notes in ‘the Green Box’, this is how the Tate Gallery describes how it was done:


‘The first step was to make a full-size perspective drawing from the given dimensions in the plan and elevation and other Green Box notes for the lower part of the Glass, in the hope of producing a drawing similar to the one which once existed on the plaster wall of Duchamp's studio in Paris, but which has since been destroyed. To produce this he found it necessary to do dozens of other perspective studies and to work with threads, using the vanishing points to establish the perspective construction. References were made to the original Glass more to gain knowledge of the construction of subject matter than to copy delineations on the surface of the original. Slight differences in perspective were accepted to maintain an integrity in the reconstruction equalling that of the original. Tracings were made, from the new perspective, of each of the elements with key lines added to relate them to each other. These tracings, reversed, were attached to the front of the glass to give the positioning of lead wire, formed to the drawing, then cemented to the back of the glass with mastic varnish.
Duchamp had made two studies on glass for parts of the composition, 'Water Mill within Glider (in neighbouring metals)' and 'Nine Malic Moulds', and gave permission for these studies to be repeated for the reconstruction and as a means of gaining experience in handling the medium. In addition, Hamilton made two further studies not found necessary by Duchamp: a small glass of the 'Sieves', trying out a specified dust raising process, and another of the 'Oculist Witnesses'. The 'Oculist Witnesses', unlike the rest of the Glass, demanded a technique not used by Duchamp. The right-hand area of the lower glass had been silvered on the back and a drawing transferred to the silver by Duchamp through a piece of carbon paper. The silvering was then scraped away up to the drawn lines leaving the brilliantly reflective image. The long process was shortened in the remake by means of a silk-screen made from a blocked-in redrawing of the carbon paper. Pigment screened on to the mirror formed a resist which allowed the redundant silver to be etched away. Duchamp felt that the two studies for the 'Sieves' and the 'Oculist Witnesses' were new and, at his suggestion, they were published by the Petersburg Press in editions of 50, signed jointly by Hamilton and himself. The upper half of the Glass is less precise in its drawing; 'Bride' and 'Blossoming' are free organic constructions. The outlines in these cases were taken from photographs. The 'Shots', nine holes drilled at spots located by projecting a paint-dipped match from a toy cannon, were plotted from the Philadelphia Glass in accordance with notes and measurements taken by a research graduate who went to the USA to check these and other measurements, to examine Duchamp's handling of the wire, and to make certain colour notes. In carrying out this reconstruction Hamilton deliberately avoided making a copy of the present appearance of the Glass and reproducing the severe deterioration which has occurred, partly as a result of the fragmentation of the glass itself. Instead he set out to make the glass as it was conceived, accepting that it would likewise change to some extent with the passage of time. Unlike the original, however, it will never crack, as it is made of Armour-plated glass.’

The issue here is how complex the interrelationship is between both methods of construction, (using thread to make perspective constructions, silvering the glass, firing paint dipped sticks etc.) and the actual ‘meaning’ of materials chosen, (dust, lead wire, oil paint or glass). Duchamp is playing a humorous game with his audience at the same time as testing out how allegorical meanings can be played out using imagery, composition, point of view, illusion, strategy, materials choice etc. His particular investigation into the allegorical potential of material properties probably stemming from his interest in alchemic understandings of the transformative nature of materials.

Some of Duchamp’s materials carry with them an almost ‘mythic’ story, such as the dust used as a means of filling in between the lines of his lead lined shapes.


Dust Breeding: Man Ray

This photograph by Man Ray of what looks like a landscape is in fact a layer of dust that had gathered on the surface of the Large Glass when it had been left for a while in Duchamp’s studio. Duchamp eventually wiped the dust from the surface of the work except for certain areas where it was fixed with glue, thus preserving it as an embodiment of the passage of time. While the dust was left to settle Duchamp had to hang a sign nearby to prevent cleaning attempts by well-meaning visitors: “Dust breeding: To be respected” It took several months for a thick film of dust to settle on the surface. Dust, a sign of neglect, becomes the product of purposeful inactivity.



To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye...


It’s interesting to examine the links between the last two posts on illusion and materials in relation to Duchamp’s work because it shows how they could be combined. He was fascinated by perspective and the idea of viewpoint, having already done work such as ‘To Be Looked at (from the Other Side of the Glass) with One Eye, Close to, for Almost an Hour’ and his final painting called Tu m’.



Tu m'

The cast shadows in Tu m’ refer to three existing ready-mades, the bicycle wheel, corkscrew, and hat rack. Rendered illusionistically is a pointing painted hand and rip and alongside these trompe l’oeil elements are real objects: a bottle brush, a bolt, and safety pins. He uses both perspective and axonometric representational systems to depict coloured rays extending out from lines that represent an earlier work ‘3 Standard Stoppages’ and the whole image is meant to be read as an anamorphic projection which ‘rights’ itself if you look at it from the right hand side. Also included are actual objects such as a brush which itself emerges from the tromp l’oeil painted rip in the canvas which is “repaired” with a real safety pin.  

Duchamp in putting all these various elements together is in effect pointing to the various ways art can engage with illusions of reality: as technical drawing, perspective projection, shadow, trompe l’oeil, or as a re-reading of real objects designed to destabilise the way we think of reality itself.
I suppose what I’m getting at is that as an artist you can move your attention between different approaches, at one time developing a specific approach to materials and their choice, and then perhaps refocusing on the private story behind these choices and developing strategies for how the various elements are composed or brought together. You need to decide how an approach to visualisation will affect the viewer. Is the work going to be illusionistic, image based, abstract or non-figurative? If illusionistic to what level will illusion be taken, is it going to ‘fool the eye’ or are you going to give the viewer a way into seeing the illusion for what it is? Point of view is essential here, be this a physical one, as in the case of perspectives that can only be seen accurately from one place, or whether it is in the choice of a material because of a very private association, or a material chosen to reflect a scientific notion in relation to its importance to the way the world works (perhaps how certain gases cause global warming), or a chosen alternative logic, such as alchemy or economic value. Decisions like this both establish the artist's point of view and become the visual entry points for an audience eager to establish their own point of view.


As soon as you begin the most humble drawing, perhaps a small pencil sketch, possibilities open out. You can take a point of view on the subject to be drawn, the way its drawn, the type of paper its drawn on, the nature of the pencil, the proclivities and interests of the drawer, all open out avenues for an artist's investigation.
I’ll leave you with one final thought about material. How do pencil marks ‘adhere’ to the paper?
The graphite itself adheres to paper fibres using what are called London forces (click to read the full scientific description) it's not a strong adhesion because as you know the marks can be erased easily with a rubber or smudged with a finger and of course some of the graphite is just mechanically stuck between the paper fibres. We tend to forget that at an atomic level everything is in flux, there is no such thing as a fixed entity, so all the time we are ourselves exchanging molecules atoms and electrons with our immediate environment and as we perform actions, such as making a drawing, we are simply taking part in a continuous exchange of energy/matter flow. There is enough graphite deposited in a line drawn by your pencil to conduct electricity and the only reason you are able to firmly hold that pencil is that at some point calcium-binding phosphoproteins came into being following the violent moves of tectonic plates about 1.5 billion years ago which saw huge amounts of minerals, including CaCO3 being washed into the oceans. Unicellular organisms had to find ways to cope with these excessive amounts of minerals and one way was to process this new influx by creating what we now know as bone, first of all by making protective outer shells and much later by developing the same process inside of organisms, thus making the first skeletons. Without this skeleton you would not be able to hold the pencil… “and so it goes”, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.


All materials are of course unusual and fascinating, it's the artist's job to communicate that to everyone else.  


The Kurdish-Iraqi artist Hiwa K in his video and sculpture installation 'The Bell Project' calls this process of re-thinking materials, 'possibilities of transformation'. In order to make this work he followed and filmed the activities of a Kurdish scrap yard owner, who collected military waste left over from the various conflicts that had taken place in the area. The scrap dealer then had the metals melted down into ingots which could then be sold to various manufacturing centres as raw material for new products. Hiwa K, aware of the old European tradition of having church bells melted down to make weapons in time of war, decided to reverse the process and had ingots from the Kurdish scrap yard sent to a bell boundary in Italy and made into a bell, decorated with designs taken from Assyrian relief sculptures. 
By developing a new narrative for these materials Hiwa K makes us aware of the economic complexities of conflict and the need to at times reverse the processes at work if we are ever to heal the wounds of continuous warfare. 

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