Cécile B Evans: The Gallery of Modern Art Glasgow

I’m travelling back from Glasgow after a few days visiting family, and as always if possible I went to see some artwork while I was up there. One piece on exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art struck me as being of particular interest, especially because it brought into play several of the issues I have looked at over the course of the existence of this blog. A question I have asked several times is, “What is the relationship between an artwork and the world?” In relation to this overarching question are several others such as, does an artwork ‘model’ the world? If so how does it do so? But when we model the world are there models within models? How do moving image works relate to an expanded idea of drawing? What is the status of the storyboard within film-making, should it be regarded as being rather like a script for a play or as stage directions? Can computer generated art be looked at as a special type of drawing? When building a model, are the plans for the models an example of ‘disegno’ in operation? The movement from 2D to 3D that is proposed by making flat plans for 3D objects and working from them, can suggest a movement between dimensions, but can it also suggest a movement through time? How do we present work in such a way that the presentation itself fully realises the ideas behind the work and anchors the work into the world? If an artwork needs to be wired into the mains, what do we do with the cables and is this similar to plugging a work into reality? If an exhibition space is going to be a difficult one or one unsympathetic to the work, how do you as an artist reconcile this without compromising the work?   The work of Cécile B Evans, ‘Something tactical is coming’ 2017, has allowed me to think about all of these issues and more. So perhaps I need to begin with what the work’s title had to say on the gallery wall. 

The description of materials goes like so: Scale production model with chroma key paint, makibes screens, raspberry pi players, Real Game FX miniature fog machine, 3D prints, paper, wood, 3D printed mask dummy. 271cm x 138cm x 122cm. I am already asking myself a few questions just from this description, so a little research is needed. Chroma key paint is usually an acrylic based paint formulated to provide high luminance values and colour saturation for keying effects. Usually green but also blue, as it is in this case, it is a matte paint that does not reflect light, so it is much easier to ‘key’ out. If you want to make objects invisible when filming you can paint them all in the same chroma key paint, (this is often called green screen technology), so I’m already aware that this artwork has been used to create a background that was probably ‘keyed’ out in order to allow for some sort of substitution. Green screen filming is often used in fantasy or science fiction films, so I’m ready for some ‘special effects’. Makibes screens are touch screen interfaces often used for Raspberry Pis, the average size is 7in so we are talking small scale screen technology. A Raspberry Pi player is a video player specifically made to work with Raspberry Pi devices, which are manufactured as easy to access processing devices that support non Microsoft software such as Linux. Raspberry Pi devices were initially designed to help children and the everyday non tech computer user get into coding. A Real Game FX miniature fog machine is often used by gamers to add special effects to their model landscapes, such as mist to heighten atmosphere, as in the image below. Therefore I'm again presuming that at some point this fog machine was used to give a sense of enigma or mystery to any filming that was done using the set.  

From Real Game FX website advertising the miniature fog machine

3D prints and the 3D printed mask dummy are both using a 3D printing technology that has seen a whole raft of start-up businesses involved in creating models, replicas, and miniatures. An aspect of current society I find very interesting and one that I have been thinking about now that I have begun my own investigation into 3D printing. Several items that are office furniture look as if have been made this way. 

Detail of the office model

Most of the wood I recognise as 2 x 1 pine timber and sheets of plywood, which have been used to build what is partly a miniature stage set and partly a surface to which has been attached several small scale computer screens that are running a variety of shorts/animations both as real time footage and computer generated imagery. 

Details of the wooden supports with embedded technology

This surface is also heavily annotated in order to make the viewer aware that each screen is hosting part of a complex narrative. Like scenes from a play, or episodes in a serial, the small screens are operating from the top left to the bottom right of the plywood and pine supported surface, the wires that connect all the devices are clear to see and the wooden surface facilitates their easy attachment. Nothing is hidden on this side of the object, which is the reverse of what we see on the other side. 

Overall view of the back of the miniature stage set

The reverse side or front, depending on which side you approach this object, is a miniature stage set, partly a highly detailed model of an office and partly a blue chroma key painted area. 

The miniature stage set and blue chroma key painted area are adjacent to each other

As you walk around the art work you get to see both sides 

(a classical column blocks the full view)

On a small model chair in front of a desk rests a grey 3D printed head. Tiny books are on bookshelves and miniature files some of which are labelled RIBA, are part of what appears to be a miniature architect’s office. 

Model chair on which sits a 3D printed head

This text accompanies the work and is attached to the gallery wall, and it is quite complicated. “The question of the creation of new worlds, and specifically worlds created for networked living, is at the centre of Cécile B Evans’s work, ‘Something tactical is coming’; a sculptural installation developed from a scale model used in the filming of Episode two in her series called ‘Amos’ World’. The series, a fictional television show about a socially progressive housing estate, features Amos – an architect who has designed what he believes is a perfect individual–communal living structure. Throughout the three episodes and their installations (which will be shown in a major exhibition at Tramway, Glasgow in November 2018) the tenants of Amos’ “building” question their relationship to the structure that has been created for them. The architect’s office becomes a working site as his carefully constructed world, its nature and culture, begins to shift.”

We now know that the object we are looking at was developed from a scale model used for the filming of one part of an episode of a fictional television show. So what we are looking at is a model, which has then been added to and the model represents a fictional idea of an architect’s office. In the Gallery of Modern Art the model film set is raised up onto a 'plinth' for display as an object in the gallery. The plinth effectively 'makes it art' by removing it from the floor and raising the what was a working model up into a new status as metaphoric object. 

The set in use

The additions would appear to be the area designed to carry the various screens and raspberry pi technology as well as a base or plinth. The blue chroma painted area is to facilitate the editing out of puppet manipulation.

The set in operation, the architect doll is being manipulated

We can see from the snippets of information on the small screens fixed to the back of the miniature stage set that special effects have been used and that the hands and arms manipulating the architect are used as part of the idea. 

We also know that a major exhibition of the work being done by the artist will be held at Tramway, Glasgow in November 2018. This is therefore a spin-off from this work, perhaps a way of raising awareness that it is being constructed. Could it be that this work is being made to operate as a model for the forthcoming exhibition? Synecdoche is a rhetorical term, whereby a part can represent the whole, and I’m beginning to think that this is what is happening here. If you have ever seen the film ‘Synecdoche New York’ you will know what I mean. 

Fictional ‘episodes’ are a way to hold a viewer’s attention over a long span of time. An epic adventure is usually broken down into episodes so that it can be told as a series of stories that the narrator can link together gradually over time. When my children were small I used to tell them a long on-going story, each evening you could remind them of where we had got to and then add on a next bit, it keeps attention and builds complexity because you can always be referring to things that have happened in past episodes; thus the success of soap operas. 

Architects are real-life professionals; they are often concerned with creating buildings that will enhance the living conditions of ordinary people. Le Corbusier’s idea that a house is a machine for living in, suggests an idea of the architect as impersonal control freak, Ayn Rand’s architect hero of her novel the Fountainhead, foregrounds the idea of the architect as visionary, and I suspect that Cécile B Evans has these models at the back of her mind. The models (stereotypes) this time are of the way people behave, rather than imagined stories, but perhaps we are all imagined stories and that is the point. 

A model stage set is very like a doll’s house. When taken out of the context of the film studio its tiny scale becomes almost fetish like. We as observers are now on a God-like scale, able to imagine ourselves moving things and people about. (Hence the blue arms manipulating the model of the architect) But this work is also real size, a support structure for a range of technologically sophisticated devices that have to be wired up and plugged in. We can however slip from one level of reality into another very quickly. We turn our TVs on, push a few buttons on our remote control devices, with an awareness that these things are part of the furniture of our room, but within moments of a film starting or a soap opera beginning, we are lost in a fictional reality and are happily suspending our disbelief.  As a creature we seem to have developed a very powerful ability to respond to fiction as well as reality, something probably honed in play when we were very young. The miniature battlefields I remember building as a child were ‘real’ to myself and my friends, the stone throwing ‘explosions’ that knocked out our soldiers, created bursts of real palpable exhilaration in ourselves as we jumped with excitement if our stone throwing had resulted in a direct hit and the knocking over of a rival’s men. These muddy model battlefields were part of my learning curve and as an artist perhaps I have never outgrown them, which is perhaps why I have taken Cécile B Evans’ work so seriously. 

The model film set is raised up onto a 'plinth' for display as an object in the gallery. The plinth effectively 'makes it art' by removing it from the floor and raising the what was a working model up into a new status as metaphoric object. 

Evans' s work has been reviewed in several major media outlets such as the Guardian 

and Amos' world has been reviewed extensively; this from 'Art Viewer' on her exhibition at mumok. 

"AMOS’ WORLD is a three-part television series that takes place in a socially progressive housing estate inspired by famous Brutalist housing complexes such as Le Corbusier’s Unités d’Habitation in Marseille, Berlin, and Nantes-Rezé (1952—57), Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens in London (1972), and Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Montreal (1967). The aim was to encourage perfect individual-communal living communes for the capitalist age—yet they nearly always failed, as people did not conform to the behaviors envisioned by the architects.

The first episode of AMOS’ WORLD introduces the title character Amos, who represents the stereotype of the frustrated, angry white man. He exudes an arrogance that belies his true, slightly pathetic nature, and he almost enjoys wallowing in the grotesqueness of his own actions. He additionally resembles a cross between Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s fallen-to-earth Little Prince, and architects Le Corbusier and Peter Smithson, who co-designed the famous London social housing estate Robin Hood Gardens, only to later describe the tenants disparagingly as contributors to the building’s decline.

Amos is played by a three-dimensional puppet with a digitally rendered face, and the other characters—inhabitants of the estate, and the Weather, a narrative voice as well as a kind of benevolent foil to Amos—are a mixture of real and animated performers. As in all good television, the subject of the title, Amos, is never the actual subject. As the drama unfolds, what was presented as a utopian living situation becomes ever more psychologically challenging—the characters’ emotional and physical needs are revealed to be in conflict with what those who constructed this society believe to be “good.” Fissures in this carefully constructed network reveal a breakdown of person-to-person and person-to-infrastructure power dynamics, as the audience themselves look on from units nested within an architectural construction built to echo that on screen."

The architect puppet, with 3D printed face 

Evans opens her work out by using all the formats available to her. The clips from Amos' world below could be seen as a trailer for the series or as another stand alone work. 

A trailer for Amos' world

Media conventions overlap with artists techniques such as montage and collage in Evans' work. She mixes conventions in very interesting ways and has a lot to say about current issues of technology and the way that human feelings and emotions are changed or moulded by contact with it. 

She cites 'collage' as being the technique that underlies her current approach to making art. Collage can be used to create storyboards and is an excellent medium with which to create ideas, especially ideas that reflect on our media soaked world. (See)  

Collage occupies a fascinating position between reality and mimesis. Collage materials are taken from the world but can then used to create commentary on that world. Models are made with different degrees of reality in relation to the world and are then used to create ideas whereby we can play out thoughts about real world situations. The office in Amos' World is a constructed environment, certain elements of which are made and others simply collected and reused in a different situation. The small screens playing out various episodes of Amos' World are so small they appear a models themselves, models of TV screens that it is imagined on which the soap, Amos' World is screened. 

Evans's work has helped me to think about how very different aspects of my own work could be brought together, as well as this particular piece helping me to think about recycling work and creating ways of presenting work so that a difficult environment can be dealt with. The classical columns of the Gallery of Modern Art are hard to work with but by having a totally contained world with its own plinth and space for video monitors, Evans has been able to still engage and intrigue her audience. 

Evans talking about her work

See also:

Making models to work from

Models of reality

Computer animation

Drawing from photographs

Drawing from photographs is something I find very difficult. The problem for me is that I end up copying rather than selecting, and therefore I always draw directly from the world, something I find far easier as the process is very selective and it's me doing the selection. However the relationship between the camera and art is a long one, starting with the invention of the camera obscura and continuing into the present as artists seek to explore how a world of instant imagery and mobile phone selfies can be reflected upon by the slower processes of painting and drawing. Check out the book, 'A Brush with the Real: Figurative Painting Today' by Valli and Dessanay, which unpicks a lot of these issues. 

David Hockney has explored the history of pre-film camera art in his book ‘Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters’, it’s a really good read and his viewpoint is from that of the artist rather than the art historian which is always refreshing.

A Hockney drawing from ‘Secret Knowledge’

So how are artists dealing with the camera? There are vast amounts of ‘copyists’ out there and if you Google Photorealism you will find a raft of not just past practitioners, (apparently you have to have had exhibitions before 1970 to be a real Photorealist) but a host of artists still painstakingly copying from photographs. It’s skillful and hard work, but where does the art come in?

I shall try and unpick a few issues around this and at the same time introduce a few artists that I think are well worth looking at in relation to contemporary drawing.

Kevin Cosgrove is an artist that I think uses photographs in a very personal way. His interest in a particular subject matter is very powerful. He draws and paints places of work. Old fashioned work, places of oil and metal and grind. Those small workshops that used to at one time be everywhere but are now becoming few and far between, as manufacturing is outsourced and people start to forget that things can always be repaired. Perhaps the car mechanic is the most familiar figure in this world; I get glimpses of their dark workshops when I have to leave the car for its annual MOT. Cosgrave obviously loves the feel and texture of those workshops and he takes photographs of these places to work from. However when he selects from the photographs he selects aspects that he will heighten through a touch soaked in a metaphorical dark oil. Read this review of his work.

The drawing below is charcoal on paper 108 x 150 cm, large enough to get stuck in with a big soft lump of charcoal, the dark patches below the workbench creating those mysterious dark spaces we all remember from childhood. Those dark spaces where the bogyman lives. He feels for the surfaces and textures of old paint cans and tools, their worked surfaces further worked in his drawing. Although the drawing is done from a photograph, he re-shapes what is there, gives additional emphasis and thus transcends the image and makes it his own.

Kevin Cosgrove

Paul Chiappes works in a very different way, but his is also in his own way re-creating rather than just copying photographs. This time the scale issue is reversed, he works on images that are even smaller that the original photographs. His subject matter of old school photographs, images from long ago parties etc. is suffused with nostalgia and it is only when you realise the scale that we get the hook into the work. Scale makes us move around. We have to stand back from some images, their large size forcing us back until we are in a position to see them as totalities rather than as a surface of marks. On the other hand tiny images force us to examine them very closely, like those paintings reproduced on postage stamps. Chiappes’s marks can only be seen when you look at his images from about 4 inches away. They suggest an obsession and intense involvement with the images, but one totally different in quality to Cosgrave’s.

Paul Chiappes

Clive Head makes paintings and drawings from places that he visits over and over again. He takes photographs and makes small drawings on the spot. This is how he describes his working process, “Before taking photographs I make lots of little drawings and sketches as well. The initial construction of the painting is drawing and I always draw on tracing paper, which is very resilient if you keep rubbing it out. Although I make a tiny drawing at the beginning that drawing has probably gone through 30-40 different stages before the final version of the painting. The small drawing will give me an idea of the format for the painting.”

He then goes on to draw out his images large scale ready for painting. Personally I like his drawings more than his paintings, the final finished images being perhaps too finished for me, all the hard won processes and thoughts are eventually hidden beneath the paint, the final finish of which I’m not sure about. Even so his working methods are interesting and hard won, so I cant really criticise the man.

Clive Head

Head is particularly good at drawing curved space, which is something I've been interested in for a long time and as I also make large drawings I am very aware of how much physical effort they take. The lesson that all of these artists teach is that you need to have a clear idea about what makes an image if you are going to move beyond the photographic copy. 

Of course our very own Richard Baker makes images from photographic sources and you can find a book on his drawings in the college library. The print below, an etching, was printed at Workshop Press. 

Richard Baker

See also:

Drawing and photography 

Resemblance, mimesis and communication

Resemblance is a powerful communication tool. We have experiences and these are coming into our bodies via sense perceptions. Therefore our initial building blocks of sense making are ‘embodied’. The writers Johnson and Lakoff have written extensively on how this works see:

Johnson, M. & Lakoff, G (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought London: Basic Books

Lakoff, G (2003) Metaphors We Live By London: University of Chicago Press

Johnson, M (1990) The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis Of Meaning, Imagination, And Reason London: University of Chicago Press

 The core idea that Johnson and Lakoff develop is that we make meaning by linking things to what we know and the thing we know most about is our own body. They argue that the mind is 'embodied', i.e. that if we were a different shape or size, or if our sense organs were different, like a bat's for example, we would think very differently, therefore the old mind/body divide, as illustrated by Descartes' maxim, 'I think therefore I am', needs rethinking. Taking a concept such as ‘justice’ Johnson and Lakoff trace this back through what they call body schemas. We are very aware of balance because of the fact that we stand on two legs, therefore we spend a lot of time being balanced in order to stand, walk etc. If something goes wrong we are off balance; for instance if we are injured or ill. Of course in extreme cases such as very old age or bad injury, we can’t rise into a balanced position. Gradually an awareness of balance and off balance becomes transferred to an awareness of things being right or wrong. This gradually evolves into a sense of justice and this is why we have a statue of justice with a pair of scales over the Old Bailey law courts. It is this type of connection through resemblance that allows us to develop sophisticated concepts via what can be seen as quite basic similarities.

Statue of Justice Old Bailey law courts

Our first attempts at communication would probably have used likeness and so would therefore the earliest art forms. A stone that perhaps looked like a body or a rockface that looked like an animal. The Grey Man of Merrick is a typical example.

The Grey Man of Merrick

But we have other connections to things that are much more interesting.

Look at this picture of deer tracks. The marks look nothing like a deer, but the experience of watching a deer walk past on muddy ground tells us that these are the marks made by their cloven hooves, therefore a more complicated link is made. These tracks become signs that can stand for a deer. By building on these different types of resemblances we gradually start to build sophisticated languages. A resemblance doesnt have to look the same as something, it simply has to have some form of connection to something.

Analogy is another concept that is central to how ideas associated with mimesis work. An analogy is usually defined as a comparison between one thing and another, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification. Think about those ideas that are ‘more like’ and ‘less like’ something. As humans this is a game we can all participate in, but it is also a game that relies on common experiences. If you have never seen a river you won’t understand an analogy such as ‘time flows like a river’.

Melancholia by Albrecht Durer is an allegory; allegory is often defined as an image that can be interpreted to reveal a secondary meaning, typically a moral or political one. However allegories are constructed by building upon analogies.

Melancholia by Albrecht Durer

So much has been written about this image that I don’t really want to add any more, but it would be interesting to trace the layers of history that lie behind Durer’s imagery, to explore how geometric figures are slowly transformed over time into forms that stand for concepts, how children are used to stand for various concepts from innocence, to the idea of the tabula rasa, or in this case the concept of the accompanying spirit or ‘genius’. Why does the central figure ‘Melancholy’ have wings and how did the keys and money bag hanging from her belt become symbols for power and wealth? What is interesting is perhaps the journey that these things have taken on the road towards becoming symbols. It is a journey that starts with ‘resemblance’ and this is why mimesis is such a rich area within which to explore ideas.  

Keith Coventry: East Street Estate 1994

Going back to Keith Coventry, (see the post before last), the Tate Gallery has this to say about his work:

"Coventry’s painting and sculpture from the 1990s use modernist conventions to reflect abstractly on the social realities of urban life – his ‘Estate Paintings’ mark the rupture between the aspirational aesthetic forms of postwar planning and the failure to realise utopia on a social scale. At the same time the series signifies an optimistic, all-encompassing value system; while falling short of grand expectations for a new order, the ‘Estate Paintings’ commemorate a certain moral and political conviction gradually abandoned by the dismantling of the United Kingdom’s welfare state".

This is a contemporary allegory. Artists are still trying to make allegories and in doing so rely on mimesis in order to build ideas through resemblance. It is for me a key and enduring concept that links contemorary practice back to thousands of years of art history.

Texts and web-sites associated with these last three posts

 Gombrich, E (2006) Art and Illusion

Kamdi, M. M. (2004) Art and Cognition: Mimesis vs. the Avant Garde London: Routledge

Available at: http://www.aristos.org/aris-03/art&cog.htm

 Donald, M (2002) A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness London: Norton

http://www.dah.ucsd.edu/dean/mimesis.shtml

http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/mimesis/

http://www.jstor.org/stable/488009

 Walton, K. L. (1993) Mimesis as Make-believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts New York: Harvard University Press

 Hagberg, G. (1984) Aristotle's "Mimesis" and Abstract Art

Philosophy Vol. 59, No. 229 (Jul., 1984), pp. 365-371: Cambridge University Press

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism

 Hanssen, B. (2000) Walter Benjamin's Other History: Of Stones, Animals, Human Beings, and Angels San Francisco: Uni of California Press

Halliwell, S (2002) The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems  New York: Princeton University Press

 Bolt, B (2007) Material Thinking and the Agency of Matter  Studies in Material Thinking,  Vol. 1, No. 1 (April 2007), ISSN 1177-6234, AUT University http://www.materialthinking.org/sites/default/files/papers/Barbara.pdf

 

Other approaches to thinking about mimesis

Mimicry and illusion

Usually when looking at this issue you would start with trompe l'oeil or optical illusions. These visual lies ask questions about the way we perceive the world. There are also different levels of representation skills. For instance when Vasari writes about Giotto, he states that Giotto was the very best artist of his time because he set new standards of making art that looked like the world, however he goes on to say that in his own time, artists such as Michelangelo have far surpassed Giotto’s ability. Vasari sees art as a sort of journey towards ever greater degrees of realism or ability to control verisimilitude. However it’s best to go to Gombrich’s ‘Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation’ and read that as a basic starter, it’s a classic text and no art student interested in how visual images work should be able to get to the end of their studies without reading it.

Material thinking, mimesis as association.

In his book The Order of Things, in the chapter The Prose of the World Michel Foucault describes how mimesis or ‘resemblance’ as he would put it used to work historically.

This is his full text:

“Up to the end of the sixteenth century, resemblance played a constructive role in the knowledge of Western culture. It was resemblance that largely guided exegesis and the interpretation of texts; it was resemblance that organised the play of symbols, made possible knowledge of things visible and invisible, and controlled the art of representing them. The universe was folded in upon itself: the earth echoing the sky, faces seeing themselves reflected in the stars, the plants holding within their stems the secrets that were of use to man. Painting imitated space. And representation whether in the service of pleasure or of knowledge was posited as a form of repetition: the theatre of life or the mirror of nature, that was the claim made by all language, its manner of declaring its existence and of formulating its right of speech.

How, at the end of the sixteenth century, and even in the early seventeenth century, was similitude conceived. How did it organise the figures of knowledge? And if the things that resembled one another were indeed infinite in number, can one, at least, establish the forms according to which they might resemble one another?

The semantic web of resemblances in the sixteenth century is extremely rich:

Amicitia, Aequalitas (contractus, consensus, matrimonium, societas, pax et similia),

Consonanti, Concertus, Continuum, Paritas, Proportio, Similitudo, Conjuncto,
Copula. (Foucault, 1970)

Foucault identifies four of these resemblances as essential:

“Convenienta (adjacency, resemblance), Aemulatio (emulation, a sort of convenience‟ freed from the law of place and so able to function, without motion, from a distance), Analogy (convenienta and aemulatio superimposed) and Sympathy, which draws things towards one another in an exterior and visible movement.)”

From

Glyn Thompson’ s ‘Erratum Musical. La Mariée mise à nu par ses Célibataires, même. Erratum Musical.’ 1913

Glynn is an ex tutor from the college and his writings on Duchamp are wonderful. What perhaps you can get from Glynn’s work is how seamless the move from antiquity to modernism can be. In the end all the great ideas are re-invented over and over again, each time to fit the climate and purposes of the age they reappear within.

Association, resemblance and mimesis

Materials carry concepts associated with their histories and where they come from. For instance charcoal is not only a particular sort of drawing material that operates in a particular way, it also comes with a heavy cultural baggage. It is seen as a type of ‘honorific’ material. You can’t use it without acknowledging its history and how as a medium it is culturally significant. The fact that it is burnt wood is also important, reminiscent of not just fires but the destruction we can create using fire. All of these issues are generated because charcoal can be seen as ‘like’ something else, or it might remind us of an association, therefore it is operating within the Aristotelian tradition of ‘mimesis’. However similar issues occur with other materials, if I draw something using chocolate, our past cultural associations with this material will effect how any drawing made from it is read. All drawing materials can be looked at in this way, paper, threads, inks, metals such a silverpoint, wax etc etc. It is important to fish for the actual issues already identified as well as other potential ‘readings’. For instance you may have identified a particular sort of earth to make a drawing with and because of its associations with the Biblical story of the creation of Adam, other readings may unfold. Adam was made from earth, hence the name "adamah". Adam is cursed by God therefore so is the earth. Adam of course like all of us, eventually returns to the earth from which he was made. Our particular curse is perhaps that we are earthly yet at the same time, because of self-awareness separated from nature. The read may of course be geographical, the earth used coming from a particular place and representing a particular soil. Some soils are red and sandy others grey with clay. Some are good growing soils others parched and lacking life sustaining elements. Not just the materials themselves carry concepts but the ‘finish’ applied to them does the same. High levels of ‘finish’ such as polishing suggest either long-term investment of human labour or machine ‘finish’; both of course carry different connotations. Crafting might be vital, or might be incidental, but again is important to the read. Some materials are gendered, for instance some textile crafts can be read as ‘feminine’, again these issues need to be unpicked. (Read the Subversive Stitch)

Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘Ur’ history can be useful when unpicking several of these issues.  He was very interested in history as a form of allegory. Hanssen (2000, p. 16) suggests that Benjamin’s use of the term ur-history, was to expose the fact that all human acts of signification have an ur-history of historical allegory embedded within them. Therefore any man-made object when examined carefully holds within it stories of its making and these stories are often, according to Benjamin, seen as processes of destruction and transience.  Benjamin once said, “history is a petrified, primordial landscape.” This reading of history as allegory reflects Benjamin’s interest in Marx’s idea of the fetish. Commodity fetishism is a key Marxist concept, this quote taken from Wikipedia is a pretty good summery of what it means, “in a capitalist society, social relations between people—who makes what, who works for whom, the production-time for a commodity, et cetera—are perceived as economic relations among objects, that is, how valuable a given commodity is when compared to another commodity. Therefore, the market exchange of commodities masks (obscures) the true economic character of the human relations of production, between the worker and the capitalist”. (wiki/Commodity_fetishism) Benjamin would point to the fact that any manufactured object would therefore have embedded within it the story of this market exchange, an allegory of how human relationships have been clouded and shaped by Capitalist constructions. When you use a pencil, look at where it is made, the more expensive ones usually have made in Germany on their sides, the cheap ones rarely tell you anything about their provenance.

More thoughts next post

Mimesis

A question has been posted in the comments box about mimesis. It's great to see the blog being used as a forum, so do remember if you want to get me to think about an issue use the comments boxes.

This is the actual question, "The main problem i'm pondering is..... where does mimesis sit when it comes to finding the balance between realism and abstraction. How much information do I give to the new copy ?"

Mimesis is a very complex subject and in the time I've got I will have to deal with it in a few different posts, some first thoughts:

Mimesis

One of the most important issues that anyone making a drawing that looks like something has to deal with is the concept of mimesis.

Mimesis operates in a variety of ways when making a drawing (or any other artwork) and these can be broken down into different approaches to thinking about how a dialogue is set up between the ‘real world’, the viewer or perceiver and the drawing itself.

Nature creates similarities. One need only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities, however, is man’s. His gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former times to become and behave like something else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role.
— Walter Benjamin, “On the Mimetic Faculty” 1933

Benjamin is thinking about verbal language here but it applies just as well to visual languages.

Aesthetics, sometimes defined as critical reflections on art, often reflects on perception. Perception is mainly concerned with ‘sensations’ or the sensuous elements, however when perceiving artworks sensation is only part of the picture. Other issues such as the role of memory, emotion or reasoning can play a part, this is why aesthetics has to take into account both psychological and cognitive processes when coming to an understanding of what has been called "sensuous cognition." Baumgarten together with Kant set out the terms by which we now understand aesthetics, one could say the ‘thinking senses’ or as Kant would say, the ‘perceptual embodiment of ideas.’ Kant states that the products of an artist's imagination are essentially mimetic, because they are based on the appearance of nature. He would term nature‘objective reality.’ Kant went further than this and explained that a work of art “does not merely copynature it embodies concepts more fully than any single instance in nature”. (Kamhi, 2004) Donald in his book, A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness goes further, he states “Whereas mimicry attempts to render an exact duplicate of an event or phenomenon, and imitation also seeks to copy an original, mimesis adds a new dimension: it re-enacts and re-presents an event or relationship in a nonliteral yet clearly intelligible way.”(Donald, 2002)

Mimesis is therefore a concept that is not just about copying. It is a concept that suggests that we model our understanding on perceptions or experiences of the real world and when we try and communicate these understandings we reflect back on the way we shape communications using these experiences. In the gap between the experience of reality and reflection upon it we create ‘mimesis’. In making a drawing that ‘looks like something else’ we are operating at a deep level of meaning making.

One of the first dialogues surrounding these issues was set out by Plato. He wasn’t too happy about mimesis, he was worried that it caused confusion between what was real and what wasn’t, he saw it as a type of lie. It could never be as good as the original; it was less than real and therefore removed from the Truth. However Aristotle argued that art adds something, it doesn’t just imitate, it is not like a mirror. He argues that artists select from nature and that this selection has purpose. (By using this argument you could start a debate as to whether or not Duchamp and his selection of the readymade, was simply illustrating the core implication of Aristotle’s concept). An artist, according to Aristotle develops an idea related to reality and this idea is perceived during the perception of the world and afterwards as the perception is thought about and this idea is then shaped into the art object. This definition of mimesis allows for a much wider argument to be developed in relation to the how we might think about art and its relationship with the world. Garry Hagberg opens out these arguments in his article, ‘Aristotle's Mimesis and Abstract Art, in this article he also gives a good account of the basic ideas and issues surrounding the original debate. (This would be a very useful text to read in relation to Stephen’s question)

This is where drawing as a discrete activity can perhaps be used to open this debate out. Because drawing tends towards abstraction, (it reduces the world down to line, tone, mark etc.) you could argue that in comparison to film, video, painting and sculpture it is not very good at imitating reality. Instead of being a tool that facilitates mimicry, it facilitates selection and concept development. For instance if you examine how a contour line works, it creates a concept of the world as much as it actually tells us something about the world. Contours (think of what happens when you draw from the figure using a single continuous line) are invented to help the moment of perception become realised, they don’t create a picture of reality, or mirror it. It has been said many times, but it is always worth repeating, “there is no such thing as a line in nature”.

Because the basic tools of drawing are clearly devices that allow us to abstract information from the world and because mimesis is a key concept in the development of theories about art, (aesthetics) we can start breaking down the various elements that make up a drawing and we can try and unpick how the mimetic facility helps us construct communication with others.

 Compare these two images.

Vija Celmins

Keith Coventry

Both these artists are making a point about art. Celmins work is always 'realistic' and relies on mimesis to give the viewer an entry point into her ideas. The eraser being a key tool of the abstract expressionists that were one of the most powerful art movements around when she started off as an artist. In particular Rauchenberg had made a deeply insightful comment on their work with his 'Erased De Kooning' drawing. Celmins' image is pink and suggests another issue, the lack of women in the Abstract Expressionist ranks. Coventry has copied the plans of an existing housing estate and painted an image that looks like early modernism, (it could almost be a Mondrian), he is using two different types of mimesis, looking like art and looking like life. He points to the fact that Modernism has influenced housing design as much as painting. Both these artists use mimesis to carry ideas, but quite different ones. In the next post I'll try to open out how this works.