Process and its documentation

Dóra Maurer: Seven Foldings 1975 Drypoint 

My last post about paper reminded me of how important process and its documentation are as ways of developing practice. 

When writing the previous post about Sipho Mabona's origami folding, I was reminded of Dóra Maurer's 'Seven Foldings', a print that became, as she stated, "the object of actions in continuous change". 

Maurer began this series of works by dropping acid onto an etching plate and documenting the process with a series of photographs. She called these performances ‘vehement actions' and began to use systematic photographic documentation of what happened. 'Seven foldings' was an attempt to record the process of change that a plate could go through in a more ‘geometric way'. She cut into the plate, folded it and took ‘phase-prints' of each of the stages. The work becomes a record or documentation of the process and as such its meaning becomes less about issues such as composition or media specificity and more about how as a document it can reveal the processes that lay behind its making. 

Maurer then began to use 16mm film to document her work, for instance the film ‘Timing', shows a canvas being folded. 

Folding was something that fascinated several artists during the late 60s and early 70s, because it was an activity that both revealed the physical structure of what was being folded, and was an activity that could be easily recorded and presented. For instance in relation to her project, 'Drawing Which Makes Itself', Dorothea Rockburne stated, “I came to realise that a piece of paper is a metaphysical object. You write on it, you draw on it, you fold it.” She was interested in paper not just as the ground for a drawing but as an active material, its inherent qualities determining the form of the artwork. The folds when exhibited in series reveal the process of exploration, this type of presentation being very important when process becomes dominant. Work that presents process as an essential aspect of its reason d'etre, has to often be presented very systematically, so that an audience can follow the moves that were made. 

Dorothea Rockburne, Untitled from Locus, 1972

Without the example of artists such as Maurer and Rockburne, Sipho Mabona's practice, (see last post) that relies heavily on its documentation, would not have been possible. 

However, I suspect this older generation of artists associated with process would have criticised Mabona's practice as being not rigorous enough. The fact that he decided to make an elephant, they would have argued, took the audience's attention away from the process of folding itself. 

I think this debate is important because it highlights the post-modern divide. Modernism tended to valorise media specificity and abstraction was a way of getting audiences to focus on the process of making art, such as the quality of the paint marks or surface. The introduction of imagery was often thought of as bringing in a narrative that came from outside art. Artist were advised to stay away from illustrating stories. But theories have moved on and in a post-post-modern world of practice, we are now in a situation where all earlier approaches to and theories about art making are available as on-line resources. However with so much choice, it becomes much harder to make decisions, my advice is therefore to focus on researching whatever it is that is interesting to you and as the research develops hopefully it will reveal an approach and imagery that is unique to your personal vision; not by you trying to make work that is 'different or stylish' but by the force of the inner logic of your process, by the depth of your research and the sharpness of your perception. Whatever you do, you will eventually have to present it to an audience. 

Presentation is very important when systematic processes becomes dominant. Work that presents a timed process has to be presented very systematically, so that an audience can follow the moves that were made. 

Eleanor Antin, 'CARVING: A Traditional Sculpture' 1972

A typical example is Eleanor Antin's 'Carving', every day she reduced her food intake and then each morning, she was photographed naked in the same four stances. She was effectively 'carving' her own body into shape.

The grid of looking, which historically is located within the domain of drawing or geometry can also work as a grid of classification, its structure allowing the observer to clearly examine visual difference. This is a structure borrowed from science; for instance the image below allows various gradients to be compared. 

Slopegraphs for comparing gradients

Eadweard Muybridge

The gridded systematic approach used by scientists and analytic researchers such as Muybridge allows us to easily see the results of an investigation and this was to have a powerful influence on art. It is of course important to remind ourselves that drawing as a means to explain things is an essential tool for all disciplines. During the Renaissance when the disciplines of art and science were not so rigidly separated it was easier to see the grid as part of the process of looking and systematically checking relationships.

Durer: gridded perspective device

As a tool for measurement a grid could be both laid over a plot of land or established as a screen through which to look at the world. 

In the late twentieth century Rosalind Krauss wrote an important theoretical text on the relationship between the grid and modern art. The grid as a formal device to use when stabilising visual relationships was during the last century embedded as a central component of design thinking. In the last fifty years, any artist with even a small amount of training in graphics or visual design would therefore have been introduced to the importance of the modular grid as an organising structure. 

In the 13th century, the architect Villard de Honnecourt produced a diagram used for producing page layouts with margins of fixed ratios.

Use of fixed ratios to stabilise layout in design

Although gridded page layout had been used since the invention of printing, the profession of graphic designer did not get established until the early 20th century, but with the rise of industrialisation, print in particular became vital to the dissemination of information and although fixed ratios were still useful, geometry and in particular the grid, were organising systems that could be used much more flexibly. There was a move away from centered text to “asymmetric” design as in a newspaper page, and designers began to use a Modular grid, which was an especially flexible model for text and image arrangement.

Compare the modular grid above with typical gridded modular presentations used by artists who use systematic processes. 

Bernd & Hilla Becher

Andy Warhol

herman de vries

Sol Lewitt

The compositional logic of the grid as a template for aesthetic investigation was central to the development of the work of several artists interested in process. The serialised exploration of formal variation, was guided and limited by the geometric configuration of the grid and was an aspect of fine art I clearly remember being promoted from my time at college in the late 60s and early 70s. Perhaps the most sensitive of the artists working in this way was Agnus Martin. She often held a delicate balance between following the logic of the grid and allowing her own aesthetic sensibility to determine the final result. 

Agnus Martin

In the mid twentieth century the design grid was incorporated into the grid of the computer screen and early users of the computer to create art relied on this to generate their work. Frederick Hammersley was one of the first artists to use computer coding to generate imagery and the way numbers are used to identify the points on a screen relies on Cartesian coordinates which are themselves essential to the development of analytic geometry. 

Frederick Hammersley

Looking at the grid in relation to 'documentation', it also becomes clear how what was initially used as a device to stabilise design, is now becoming a format to emphasise rigor and authenticity. Tehching Hsieh's 'Doing Time' which was the Taiwan pavilion's presentation at this year's Venice Biennale, relied heavily on systematic documentation.

Tehching Hsieh's 'Doing Time'

The geometric grid that was used for the serialised exploration of formal variation is in this case being used to establish the authenticity of the action. Once more I'm reminded of how important 'disegno' is as a principle and or method that underlies fine art practice. Disegno constitutes the intellectual component of the visual arts, which in the Renaissance justified their elevation from craft to fine art. The use of a grid in this case is not simply about the clear visualisation of the process, it also asks questions about the human capacity to systematically organise the world. From the way we are clocked in, given a number and registered from the moment we are born, to the way that the collection of statistics becomes the driving force behind government decision making. Disegno, 'drawing' in this case being the way that an underlying concept shapes the final presentation. 

Geometry itself began as a way of developing a particular understanding of the world, when it was first used there would have been no separation between what we now call art and science, it was simply a useful way of drawing. Documentation has long been an essential tool for the understanding of scientific investigation and has now become central to contemporary art practice. Perhaps we are at last beginning to respond to C. P. Snow's problem of two cultures. He argued that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into two cultures; the sciences and the humanities, and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

Social media relies on documented imagery to function, many artists have extended their practices into filmmaking via the process of documenting their actions and processes. Technological advances now mean that we all have a mobile device in our pockets that we can use to make films that are of better quality than those made with movie cameras used to be. I began this post reflecting on the film that was done to document Sipho Mabona's origami folding. Why not consider making a series of short videos about your own practice? Which aspects would you focus on? Would these videos focus on the sound of your drawing's making? On the way marks change a surface? or on the more performative aspects of your work? Perhaps a video could be made of the processes 'off camera'. Is there a filmic story in the history of the elements that you are working with? I have posted several times about the stories that come with various papers or substances such as charcoal or graphite, is there a way of making these histories into videos? 

See also some other related posts on the grid and disegno:

The weaving of grids

The grid as a trap

Mathematical shapes

From perception to concept: why draw?

Sarah Sze (a further reflection on the concept of drawing as disegno)

Notations: Contemporary drawing as idea and process