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:
