The Drawing Research group hosts a two
day conference every year and there are always interesting papers delivered and
workshops to attend. It reminded me of how many different ways of thinking
about drawing as a practice there are and the experience of listening to others
talk about their practice made me ask questions of my own approach to drawing.
This year the theme was ‘Phenomenology’, and was centred on ‘the lived
experience’, a phrase I must admit I do find questionable because it suggests
that there are some experiences that we can have outside of those we have when
alive.
Last year I was asked to give the
after-dinner address, a somewhat difficult task as I had to entertain a group
of people who had been eating and drinking and who had had a long day listening
to papers being delivered. I was reminded of this because the notebook I took
to make conference notes was the same one I used last year and I found the
roughed out draft of my ‘off the cuff speech’. I’d forgotten about that and
might type up those old notes, as several people did ask me if there was a
transcript of what I had to say back then.
My notes on the conference
presentations are very much translations, ruminations and selections from what
people said. These notes reflect my own interests and in no way should they be
taken as transcriptions of what was delivered. So if anyone who was there does
happen to read this, please forgive my very personal interpretations and
idiosyncratic take on the proceedings. I also get tired and at times irritated.
I could of course edit out comments that consist of my more subjective
interjections, but I have decided not to, as I suspect these are more revealing
as to the actual nature of these events.
Day one
The opening paper was delivered by
Deborah Harty, and was titled “Drawing is Phenomenology”.
One of the first issues about
conferences is that people mention a lot of sources for their ideas. These I
always find interesting, but what you can often find yourself doing is trying
to figure out the name that was mentioned and trying to put down enough
information so that you can find the cited text later and then as you are doing
that the speaker is moving on so you can miss the next point. Younger members
of the audience with more fluid minds can perhaps keep up, but I’m afraid I
must admit to lapses in concentration.
I simply mention this because at the
beginning of her presentation Deborah mentioned a Geoffrey Bailey reference
from his PhD thesis, which after research I now presume is; ‘Drawing and the drawing activity: a phenomenological
investigation’, but at the time because I was writing ‘check out Geoff Bailey’s
PhD thesis’, I might have missed something. However back to what I did record…
There are two essential issues when
thinking of drawing as a phenomenological experience.
A drawing as a record of its own
making and a drawing as a record of the thoughts of its maker.
Several of the ideas in this
presentation had come from Deborah’s experience of an AHRC cultural exchange
project, ‘Drawing Through Touch’. She had worked with people who had lost their
sight and they were asked to draw fruit, such as a pineapple, by touching it. Their experiences were recorded by them drawing onto paper
designed to raise the black lines of the drawing when heat-treated. This
interested me as I had sometime ago looked at ‘swell paper’ as a way of recording information and I had as long ago as
1969 been involved in a collaborative drawing project in Wolverhampton
investigating a very similar idea. But we had no ‘swell paper’ or associated
technology back then. What I did remember was that most people involved did not
really draw what they felt, because they were sighted people who were
blindfolded, they drew what they remembered things looked like. Only a few
people were able to concentrate totally on the sensations of touch and those
that did made much more interesting drawings that re-conceptualised their
relationship with the objects being touched. In this case although all the
people had lost their sight, some had always been blind and others had in the
past been able to see, once again the memory of sight distorted or shaped the
invention of drawings made in response to touch.
The drawings were very interesting,
especially as they were projected on a screen so they had no actual physical
presence, we couldn’t go up to them and touch them, their presence now totally
virtual and visual, a paradox I found fascinating and one I thought an interesting
analogy about researchers and their subjects.
The central issue for me was
communication, what is it to explain to someone who can’t see what something
looks like? Do these drawings explain anything? Are they rather indications of
reactions to the world, traces of movements made in reaction to sensations
received, echoes of actions, re-played; finger contacts of flesh to fruit,
re-played as fingers through a drawing marker. From these indications we then
read or interpret things, rather like Sherlock Holmes we apply inductive
reasoning and move from specific instances of experience to form some sort of
generalised conclusion. However all inductive reasoning is questionable and
science tends to rely on deductive processes. But here goes some inductive reasoning.
If you look at the drawing of the
pineapple below the person that did it has an idea of up and down, the fruit
itself forms the base and the leaves of the crown are where you would expect
them to be. It might even have been drawn by tracing round the edge of the
object. But when you touch there is no up or down, simply a continuous surface.
The next drawing however seems to me to be
more to do with touch than remembered sight. There is a continuous surface and
a sense that this is what you feel when you grasp the pineapple to pick it up.
Both drawings
attempt a direct response to a physical stimulus and when made the drawings
themselves become things that can be experienced. This is what I would call the
phenomenology of the image. As a perceiver I’m very aware of how in this case
I’m limited to the sense of sight, but my conceptual awareness is such that I
can try and ‘experience’ in the mind/body what it might be like to touch.
Deborah went on
to show her own work. She is very interested in rhythm and how it is created by
the interaction of edges and overlaps between structures. Repeated actions and
their resultant forms are seen as allowing for a more phenomenological
interpretation because these types of structures allow you to see difference
easily, (such as one bent line amongst a hundred straight ones) and by
presenting their structure as an open framework, you can see both how things
were done and work out how long its making would have taken. You can deduce
from careful observation what was done first and then second and so forth. These
are aspects that I associate with Modernism, issues about truth to materials
and ‘what you see is what you get’ which was one of the mantras of Minimalism.
It was stated
that in order to access phenomelogical experience you need to cut down on the stimulus.
Simple structures allow you to experience changes.
This is
something I understand and know how it works, but I would also argue that
someone who is very aware of the situation would notice small changes even
within a very complex field of experience. A tracker will notice an animal
caused broken leaf amongst a forest of leaves and trees and insects and other
stuff.
We were finally
directed towards the work of Jordan Mckenzie, in particular his exhibition ‘Drawing
Breath’. As the public enter the exhibition space,
their hands are taken and placed over his heart. They feel his breath go in and
out. He then fills a small plastic bag with his breath, coats it in charcoal
and explodes it in order to leave a trace of this breath on the wall for the duration
of the exhibition.
Jordan Mckenzie: Drawing Breath
Mckenzie is
probably most well known in the media for his exhibition ‘Spent’ which included
a visualisation of his cum by sprinkling charcoal dust onto it. I only mention
the media coverage because it points out how culturally loaded our body and its
functions are. We breathe and no one’s interested unless we have ‘bad breath’
or look as if we might be passing on an infectious disease, we spit, sneeze,
sweat and pass urine, defecate every morning and cry when upset, our body is
constantly ejecting and injecting in order to stabilise its relationship with
the world and because it is so important to us we culturally build on our
relationship with it. It is both a site for phenomenological experience and a
site of cultural construction. Hartley is attempting to remind us of the
elemental physical nature of the situation, but as an image maker and someone
who looks for analogical relationships between things, I’m afraid I could not
help but make the situation more complex. Her point was though, that breath itself
could be a mark maker. If you have never reduced a few sticks of charcoal to
dust and then tried drawing with the dust by blowing it around on a sheet of
white paper you should. It’s both exhausting and exasperating and is an
experience very closely related to what happens every time you try and fix a
charcoal drawing. See.
Jane Cook’s presentation
‘Drawing the Domestic’ introduced us to her PhD thesis, which is a practice led
investigation of the home through a phenomenological drawing process. She
covers her kitchen work surfaces in paper, careful to sandwich carbon transfer paper
between different layers. Once set up this paper surface collects all the
traces and marks of kitchen life.
Jane was asked
the question, ‘How do your drawings start?’ and the answer was the catalyst for
the work shown. John Berger’s three categories of drawing, ‘observation, ideas and
memory’, were cited as influential, as well as Merleau Ponty’s search for, “a
philosophy that accounts for space, time and the world we live in”. Phenomenology of
Perception, 1962 p.7
Jane also cited Rawson’s use of a Bachelard
phrase, pointing to the idea that a drawing is a kinaesthetic sign, and that
drawing is the union of seeing and making, a term she had taken from Hill. (I
presume Jonathan Hill but I would have to research this)
Using charcoal made from over cooked chips
and bread as an eraser (an old use for bread), as well as cleaning products she
has developed a body of work that references the site of its making and the
codes of domesticity. This has included what was called ‘kitchen lithography’,
a form a printmaking that echoes traditional processes, by using butter and
coke on tin foil. Other ‘kitchen’ processes are also used to make drawings,
burning, freezing etc.
Tony Rosenberg’s ‘ New Beginnings and Monstrous Births: Notes towards an appreciation of ideational drawing’ was sited as being useful in the construction of concepts regarding how drawing can carry ideas.
This
reminded me of Bill Buxton a design theorist, who stated that these 5 issues
are important to think about when sketching out ideas.
1 Transitions (the in-betweens)
are more important than the states of a design because they are experiences
either in sequence or with variation when there is interaction. This should
accommodate time and dynamic.
2 Sketches should leave big enough holes for the imagination.
3 A sketch should communicate the feel rather than look.
4 Sketches should be about ideas, not solutions. Sketches come early, solutions come later.
5 Sketch and prototype is two ends of the design process where different principles work:
2 Sketches should leave big enough holes for the imagination.
3 A sketch should communicate the feel rather than look.
4 Sketches should be about ideas, not solutions. Sketches come early, solutions come later.
5 Sketch and prototype is two ends of the design process where different principles work:
Bill Buxton is an interesting speaker and is an example of those people who are working across disciplines and in doing so illuminate each discipline by seeing it from a new perspective.
Sometimes it’s useful
to look at design theorists when thinking about how drawing is effective,
because designers all use drawing and they have to be very clear as to how they
use it to communicate, Fine Art students, should not worry about dipping into a
designer’s territory every now and again.
At this point I began
to reflect on the importance of documentation when looking at this type of
practice. The stains and one to one rubbings or round the edge drawings,
together with the carbon paper copies, are all documents of traces. These are
then further documented by the videos and photographs taken to record the
process. These documents are essential and without them there would be no PhD,
no presentations to conferences etc.
Drawing therefore
becomes performative, its processes becoming actors on a stage, choreographed
by the artist, who becomes a ringmaster, agent for the materials of making and
promoter of the show.
Cornelia Parker: Hot Poker
Cook's work did remind me of Cornelia Parker's 'Hot Poker', again using a domestic utensil as a drawing device, but one with a long history of associated domestic violence, the poker. But Parker is a much more sophisticated artist and always combines a focused conceptual concept with a materials choice. Hot Poker is a print made as a laser-cut archival inkjet print, cushion-mounted on archival mount. The original was of course a folded piece of paper burnt through with a poker, but these prints rely on the way a laser cut will slightly burn the edges of what it cuts through. So in this case it is a trompe-l'œil play on appearance. Parker nearly always adds another layer of meaning.
Martin Lewis presented
‘Does Sisyphus ever get bored’, a presentation given whilst he played a video
of his latest work, that consisted of him tapping on a wall mounted roll of
paper for over an hour.
I had seen Martin
present before and knew what to expect as he had over a year ago moved from
paper based image production into a more performative practice. This reinforced
my growing awareness of how vital documentation was now becoming. I used to
teach film theory and one of my classes was devoted to how the selection and
use of lenses, together with camera angles, lighting etc. were used to
establish certain types of ideas and that these issues were just as important to
a documentary film maker as a constructor of fictions. However non of the
people presenting seemed to consider this. I must admit here to a personal
issue, because I did submit a paper to this conference which was rejected on
this very issue, which was about the phenomenological impact of using different
lens based recording mechanisms to photograph or film drawings for screen or
projected presentations. Oh well perhaps another time.
Martin reminded
us of the term ‘disegno’, a word I have drawn attention to
several times in this blog, it is taken from the Italian word for both drawing
and designing or planning, which carries a complex meaning, involving both the
ability to make a drawing and the intellectual capacity to invent a design or
concept. Drawing being both a visualisation of a possibility and a rendering of
what can be seen. However Martin was using the term to get us to see the
link between planning and instruction, as in Sol Lewitt’s work. I posted
recently on how ‘disegno’ could be used as a guide to an understanding of Sarah
Sze’s work as drawing, it is I see now a problematic word that could be used by
anyone to argue that drawing is in effect everything that an artist does that
is about making intellectual decisions. If a term gets too widely used it can
become meaningless.
Martin asked the question, “is boredom
necessary to the making of art?”. I could see the relevance in relation to his
practice, but personally, drawing is what I do to get away from boredom, I
don’t think I’ve ever been bored when drawing. This reminded me of when I was a
boy and lived in Dudley. My friend Tony Roberts was the son of a zoo keeper and
this meant that I could use a backdoor into the zoo when I went to see him. We
spent hours roaming the grounds of Dudley Zoo and we knew when animals were in
a bad mental state because of how they moved. In particular the polar bear
would stand and rock from side to side, the lion would sway its body to some
sort of inner rhythm and other animals would when in distress, especially the
monkeys and apes, rock themselves into some sort of oblivion. You see the same
thing on the streets now, homeless people huddled from the cold, rocking with
that same inner metronome that takes it all away. In the book Homo Aestheticus:
Where Art Comes From and Why by Ellen Dissanayake, she takes us back to our
childhood, to the time when we are rocked to sleep by our mothers and how
important the early exposure to rhythmic singing and comforting rocking is to
us. I looked at Martin’s work and wondered if it was not so much about
researching boredom, but about seeking comfort in distress. This of course is
not how he would see his work, which he would argue is about intentional
judgements made for new expressions, boredom being, “the dark star of
creativity”. See examples of him working here.
Marion Arnold’s presentation ‘Sensing the knowing hand: a
phenomenological drawing tool’ began with a powerful reminder of how important
our hands are by showing photographs of Father Michael Lapsley who has
prosthetic hands after losing his in a bomb explosion, Marion was pointing out
how we become much more aware of things through their loss.
The core of the presentation was however around printmaking
and how it effects the thinking of the maker. Printmaking extends the
sensibility of the artist, the tools of printmaking being further extensions of
the hands. The trained hand also reflects the intelligence of the maker.
I worked teaching printmaking for many years and my first
job at the art college was to set up the print area. Arnold pointed to the
issue of reversal, something I remember well, at one time being able to write
fluently backwards because of the fact I was making a long series of etchings
that had text on them. Your mind does adapt to the situation, rather like that
film made by Ivo Kohler and Theodor Erismann
about how we quickly adopt to new ways of seeing. We made a rough version of
their goggles on the foundation course some years ago and tried the experiment
out, it worked.
Marion Arnold’s presentation focused on the artist’s
control, the way that every hand has its own unique signature, and sited Fry’s
copying of a Klee drawing with a ruler as an example of how ‘la patte’ or the
artist’s touch is important.
Printmaking was looked at as a means of developing an
autographic signature, rather than using print as a reproductive process. An
area that I believe becomes blurred when working with computers and associated
digital printers. After many years of making etchings and lithographs including
using traditional stone, I have been making digital prints this last two years.
I have decided that the technology is good enough to allow for a personal
intervention and in the same way that an etching is always first and foremost
an etching, I allow the specificity of the digital print process to flow with
my ideas, and because of my background in print, can adjust paper type, ink
quality, colour, shape size etc. in such a way that when the prints are
produced everyone knows they are mine. Perhaps my feeling about this stems from
my time working in a drawing office. Even though we were all using technical
drawing pens and associated implements such as French curves and the older
ruling pens that used the space between two
flexible metal jaws to hold the ink for drawing thicker or coloured
lines; everyone in the office recognised everyone else’s drawings. We could
tell from such tell-tale signs as the ratio of thick to thin lines, whether or
not lines stopped on or went over edges, the attention to details, such as
whether or not to include isometric inserts or whether to use Letraset or
stencil lettering.
I was particularly interested in the idea of printer’s
proofs as a type of checking process. This does relate very closely to how
drawings evolve. Putting the drawing away so that you can come back to it with
fresh eyes is very similar to taking an impression to see what you have got. I
wasn’t that sure that drawing for print involves a different working
consciousness, I just work with each material as it comes. A pencil is a tool
that works in a particular way and an etching although involving a much wider
variety of things, (drawing through hard ground, biting metal etc.), is again simply
a tool to get to know, likewise a computer with all its attendant software and
outputs. I think there is a certain mystique about the handmade, we ought to
remember that all the reproduction processes were just that, ways of
reproducing things. In etching aquatint was a way to reproduce the qualities of
watercolour, soft ground techniques were invented to try and reproduce the
effect of chalk drawing.
Rather than emphasising that drawing for print is a
different working consciousness, I would say that you never draw for something
else, you either make a mistake and try and use a technology in a way that you
have used something else, such as trying to make pencil lines like charcoal
lines, or you get to know the medium and work with it. There is a very good
book on Paula Rego’s prints and in it her printer talks eloquently about how
she needed to engage with each print process before she could settle on a
drawing style that would suit the process. Drawing with litho ink is so
different to drawing with a burin and different again to drawing with a
mezzotint rocker. A useful exercise is to take up something very different,
such as drawing in silverpoint. Because you have to prepare the ground, it
makes you aware that the surface you are going to make a mark on is part of the
decision making process, something easy to forget when drawing on untreated
paper. However, the paper chosen to make a pencil drawing on, is as vital to
the final expression as the type of acid used to etch your lines out in an
etching. Nitric etches very differently to ferric chloride, a non feathered
line looks totally different to a feathered one, a high concentrate of acid
etches very differently to a low concentrated solution. These are all simply
things to take into account when making an image and the more you work with the
materials the more sensitive you become to them.
Marion knows William Kentridge, something I’m very envious
of and quoted him as saying that, “It’s as if done by another hand”. I wonder
if he was thinking about the process of working with a printer when editioning.
I used to work as an editioner for other artists. Terry Frost for example used
to come to the studio and make his brush strokes over several plates and would
talk about what he wanted. We would etch these, often using sugar lift, so that
he could work directly, i.e. a black brush stroke would etch as a black mark.
Once etched we would print samples off and when he came back he would either
discard or ask us to adjust tonality or texture etc. each time he came in he
was surprised by what we were able to get out of the plates, this including of
course the differences made by selective hand wiping. Even if you think you
know a process well, a master printmaker will know the process in more depth
because he or she will be working not only every day on the process, but with a
wide variety of artists, each one demanding a new and different approach to the
task. Working with another person can be really rewarding, a symbiotic
relationship can build up between you and one person begins to instinctively
know what the other wants. This is for me the time when printmaking really does
become a space for invention and discovery.
Eleanor Morgan in her presentation ‘Fixing the ephemeral:
the materiality of sand drawings’ introduced the concept of drawings as a form
of communication that didn’t necessarily need any resultant record. This is
very like speaking it would seem to me, when I’ve said something, unless
someone has a voice recorder, it’s gone without trace.
Morgan was interested in salvage anthropology and notions of
preservation. The anthropologist ArthurBernard Deacon had during his visit to Malekula
and the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) recorded the famous sand drawing tradition for
which the islands are still renowned. The material he collected from the
individuals he interviewed is of great value to the people of the islands of
Vanuatu who are eager to retain knowledge of their heritage, and his recording
is detailed and unique. Deacon’s portrayal of a culture without an extensive
written history is of importance to all of us as it asks questions about humans
and their cultures and whether or not we value difference or accept constant
change.
We were asked to try and copy one of the drawings and it was
very difficult, but as you did it you were able to grasp its underlying
symmetry and I thought that given a few goes the patterns could be mastered.
The issue though was about performance and the importance of specialist
knowledge. As these drawings were made their maker would be responding to
secret knowledge and although this was a common language, the story would
include certain private thoughts. This was about the transmission of knowledge
and not the preservation of objects. In effect for me, it was about story
telling. Deacon’s diagrams of the sand drawings don’t include much information
as to what they tell. Snippets of information were available, such as the fact
that the direction of the making of the lines formed a ghost pass to the lambi.
(Not sure what this means, but it sounded fascinating).
I was interested in how many different things these drawings
are supposed to represent; they are “mnemonic devices to record and transmit rituals, mythological
lore and oral information about local histories, cosmologies, kinship
systems, song cycles, farming techniques, architectural and craft design, and
choreographic patterns. Most sand drawings possess several functions and layers
of meaning: they can be “read” as artistic works, repositories of information,
illustration for stories, signatures, messages or objects of
contemplation."
This seemed to me to be a rich
set of meanings and opened out much food for thought. How were stories embedded
in these patterns, how much was in the telling and how much in the pattern?
I was particularly interested
because my own work involves stories and as my drawings evolve different
aspects of stories come into focus. I have been working with a 360 degree
specialist photographer to think about how I can control the way my images are seen
on screen and now realise I have to think more about the performative aspect of
my work.
Morgan mentioned Alfred Gell a
few times as an anthropologist who had picked up on these issues. I have
referred to Gell before because of his work on traps; his book, ‘Art and
Agency’ is a classic study and it really helped me to think about what it is
that artists do.
The golden orb weaver spider
exists on Vanuatu and their webs are collected to
make spiritual fabrics that can be made into costumes. As their webs are made they are stretched
between trees, large and strong enough to trap birds, but delicate enough to
suggest hard mist. As their wearers disappear under the layers of web fabric,
new meanings for their lives are discovered, their spiritual nature emerges as
their physical body is erased. The spider’s web and the sand drawings both
perform disappearing acts that are central to a story about cultural meaning.
In our society we tend to erect monuments to significant meaning, statues,
books or long running TV shows, but on Vanuatu significant meaning seems to
have been encoded in the ephemeral and perhaps because of that teaches us a
lesson about our own hubris and reminds us of the power of suggestion and old
stories and to not put our faith in making larger and more physical art
objects. An issue that I felt was personally very pertinent, as I had only the
month before been over to the Venice Biennale and had had to evaluate my
feelings after seeing a lot of grandiose and very expensive artist’s productions
Phil Sawdon then followed this by
presenting a very personal exposition of his own working process, ‘…feel my way…outline judgements…I made some
pictures’.
Sawdon talked about his ambiguous practice
that was concerned with the drawing together of aggregates within a conceptual
space. This was his way of intertwining theory and practice, the talk itself
being a pause which could enable both himself ad us to see the theory that was
driving the work. Because his work is serial in nature, this was his
methodology, one piece of work always leads to another. This was the central
issue for me, both as a practitioner and as an art educator. How does one thing
lead to another? Is it that we see a mistake in a piece of work and in the next
one try to rectify it? Is it to do with the fact that we become obsessed by
collecting together all the possible variations of a theme, those of us that
collected trade cards in their youth, now making new sets of images that
explore all the variations we can? Is it to do with making a series of
experiments, each one perhaps helping us to approach an idea of truth? Whatever
it is, one thing leads to another, or as Jasper Johns would say, “It's simple, you just take something and do something to
it, and then do something else to it. Keep doing this, and pretty soon you've
got something”.
Deanna Petherbridge’s “finding, refining reformulating and questioning” is cited as one way to think about drawing as a serial process. (If you want to dig deeper into this read Phil’s paper ‘What shall I draw?’ in Drawing the Process edited by Jo Davies and Leo Duff)
Sawdon had also been looking at Rhoda Kellogg’s work on children’s drawings, (search for her archive on children’s drawings, there are some wonderful ones to look at) he asks himself questions as to why and how he is making decisions and interestingly using creative writing techniques to interrogate his practice, rather than the widely accepted more academic writing conventions. Again this was useful to experience, because this more performative presentation was for me welded to the process of creation, closer to the poet Yates’ assertion that “I made it out of a mouthful of air.” Sawden wonders whether we have an inborn preference for balance and regularity and as his images evolve he revisits them and begins to ‘fill them in’, further evolving their forms into more ‘graphic’ poster like representations. He uses new technology to do this, Photoshop rather than Illustrator and states that, “These works are intended for private viewing.” An interesting assertion to make in front of an audience. So is it the performance in front of the projected images of the drawings that is intended for public consumption? Is this another example of sand drawings, their physical existence doesn’t matter, but the stories that they enable do?
Phil is someone that likes a joke, his fictional museum allows him to have his cake and crumble it; he lives in his own world, acts the clown and plays with words and his audience. Or at least it feels like that, the fact he has retired makes me realise I could retire too and would the consequences be that I would revisit myself as a man with his tongue stuck firmly in his own cheek?
Always an interesting speaker, Sawdon's presentation was a good one to end the first day on.
Phil mentioned the fukt magazine during his talk, its well worth a look at it.
2018 conference notes
Thanks for the great blog...
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