JD Holden: Art Practice Blog

Day 13

I woke up this morning wondering if the word "passage" in Spanish (pasage) has the same double meaning it does in English. It does. So there will now be a "guestbook" for people to write or draw their thoughts about the event. This will be made from the same paper I am using for the feuilleton.

I've also just sewn the corners of a folded towel together for use in the embossing stage of the feuilleton creation process.

Eleanor and James have both made comments about a "poster" that I made (with some help from Amelia) for the event. Eleanor said "Jonathan I would say to cut out alot of the writing - the background information is really for extra reading for those who turn up in my view.
I would just have one of the extra passages of information or quotes - something to whet the appetite and intrigue.

So what it is, where, and so on - but above all - an image.

I think each project needs a signature image associated with it - something that somehow sums up what it is about - the same image you would send to a paper if they wanted one picture, or almost like a brand or logo. People remember an image.

In the poster there is no indication as yet as to what it is - it doesn't say art or scultpture exhibition or event - it could be a reading or theatrical performance or anything.

Something like "sculpture event" would make people turn up to see more.

Wish I could come and see." To which I replied: "Eleanor.... thanks for all of that.... and you are absolutely right about the image... normally.... I actually wanted the words of Walter Benjamin to conjure an image.... and so I'm going to leave it be.

However, on the facebook page, there is more....."

James said "I agree with you on this Eleanor, definitely less quotes and a good strong image.

In theory I may not to turn up to the event either because i don't know what it is!"

I suppose I want to question whether I WANT people to fully know what is going to happen, what they will see. This is an ART intervention, not theatre or a magic show. Through the publicity I am trying to get people who know something of Walter Benjamin, or who might be intrigued by the philosophical angle. There will of course be the feuilleton to give to passers-by, which should at least intrigue and direct a little. And I am planning a "breadcrumb" appoach to the publicity by putting teasers on the facebook event page.

I've also just got back froma very tiring day embossing 100 sheets of paper for the feuilleton. It has been a hot old day, but I only had one problem - when my water spray broke. Fortunately I had the moto, so I just packed up, went to by another one, and then got straight back to work. Surprisingly few people even took notice of me. I got a few strange glances, but only one person actually asked me what I was doing. It was a little bizarre, as I had just been concentrating on spraying water on the paper, and when I stood up there was a group of about 30 Germans, all standing round looking at me! So I tried to explain what I was doing, but she kind of lost interest when she realised that it was for an event in a couple of weeks' time.

Here are a few pics of me working on the embossing:

From Breaking Boundaries

Day 12

Today I have made the invitation for Facebook, and put it on my webpage. https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=173292449413708 www.lonetour.co.uk I've also been to the studio to complete chiselling the final AH WB for the Feuilleton and had a good clean and tidy up ready to start printing them. There are so many pages that I will be able to cover the floor several times over... so I'm not really sure how I am going to manage this task!

Day 11

Today I put a pdf poster together for the intervention. It's quite simple, just the details of where and when and some quotes from WB. Amelia helped with the design, making it "breathe". Tomorrow I'll have to put up the Facebook invite. The poster is here

Day 10

Today I have started to make the box to fix to my motorbike so that I can fetch and carry 100 sheets of paper. It's going to take some fixing, but it'll work, be finished tomorrow, and then I can buy the paper, and get it embossed on the streets of Barcelona. I've also been thinking about some publicity (which fits in well with the latest unit in the MFA) and will entirely be using social networking to get volunteers to work on the project, and for an audience to come and see the project.

Days 7, 8 and 9

So, I went away for the weekend. We happened to go to Port Bou, where Walter Benjamin died and where the Danny Caravan memorial to him is. But it was miserable and raining, so we went to France instead.

Day 6

Nothing done today. Absolutely nothing.

Day 5

Today I started to chisel out the final large (40x40cm) AH Walter Benjamin line woodcut for the feuilleton. This is the most intricate piece, but I have more experience now, and it's going quite well. I still need to find a way of "pressing" in the printing process; I really need a large and heavy roller of some kind. If only I had my Dad's old garden roller....

Day 4

Today I was able to try out the paper I am hoping to use for the Feuilleton. I embossed a couple of manhole covers, and tried printing a "woodblock line print" and some rubble. It turned out pretty well. The paper is thick enough to not tear when embossed, and holds the shape well, but also accepts the printing ink too. I also realised that I can do a "roller print" of the "blue" shapes from the AH WB on the outline shape. It's not very clear on the photos, but looks quite good in real life.

I also made a couple of small (10cm squared) woodcut blocks of AH Self-Portrait, which I felt would be a nice motif to use on the feuilleton.

Day 3

Another day of not much happening. I couldn't go to the studio as I had a puncture on my motobike, and an interview. I did go and see my friends Jess and Xavi at UntitledBCN, a local "vanity-gallery", to talk about their thoughts on trying to get permissions from the local council for this project, but they are on holiday! I've sent them a message on FB.

Day 2

Does anticipation count as an activity towards breaking the boundaries? Because apart from showing Susannah the sample piece of paper I have bought, I didn't do anything today apart from looking forward to getting the WB Arcades Project book. And it's not even going to be sent from Amazon until the 9th September.

Breaking the Boundaries: 4 weeks to go. Day 1

So far I have done quite a lot of planning, thinking and making for my BTB project, and I decided that it would be useful to work on it a bit more systematically. So every day from now until Sunday September 25th I'm going to blog a little about what I have achieved that day.

So far I have written a background for my project:

docs.google.com

This was mainly written in conjunction with James Kowzac (well.. I used a lot of the notes he wrote for me during our first online discussion.) and it needs academic referencing and some further explanation.

At the hairdresser's this afternoon I wrote a few notes:

It's amazing how a project can swing from brilliant to hopeless and back again. Deciding to carve the lines of the Walter Benjamin (WB) Abstract Heads (AH) was brilliant - but the result that I printed on 40cm x 40cm paper was really poor - and the strange shape of the work really off-putting. I wanted a newspaper shape, but thought that 40x40 would be more arty, but realise now that there is something fundamental about a "portrait" shape for a newspaper. I've been looking for a source of newsprint to make the feuilleton but getting nowhere fast. The language barrier is definitely one of the boundaries that need breaking here! Still it was suggested that I check out a couple of shops that sell paper, and I duly went along to Raiman. Here is discovered that they have all sorts of paper, including a very nice recycled sheet of 90cm x 64cm. Folded this gives me 64x45cm which is a very nice shape and size for an arty newspaper, though somewhat larger than the old Broadsheet papers. I'm hoping the photos of the audience opening the feuilleton will look fabulous with this size, and it gives me plenty of room to do an outline AH and then to put something at the bottom. So this might not be the 40x40 design I was thinking about after the Torres-Garcia exhibition (I'll need to get you up to speed on that later) but we'll see how it goes.

Along with the Feuilleton I am going to have a small (A4) piece of paper wrapped around the rolled up newspaper. This will serve two functions; it will recall the similar piece of paper wrapped around newspapers at the time WB was writing notes for his Arcades Project (and which he used to scribble notes on!), and it will enable me to print some "instructions" for the audience in different languages. (I like the idea of using Google Translate to do the Japanese and Chinese translations to provide a really bad translation, in the way that instruction manuals used to be).

In terms of reference material for this project so far I have:
Groundworks - my first attempt at embossing street ironmongery and printing with pieces of found paving and bricks.

From Groundworks

AH WB (Canvas) This is a series 2 AH the three blue shapes of which informed the sclupture and feuilleton.

From Abstract Head Experiments June 2011

AH WB (Sculpture)

From Abstract Head Experiments June 2011

Feuilleton

From Abstract Head Experiments June 2011

Outline Print

From Abstract Heads Experiments August 2011

Frames
I also have a pile of old picture frames which I have painted black and blue. I need some to be orange, to keep the colour scheme in tact too. These are to be placed around the area of the WB Memorial Gardens to highlight some of the mundane but interesting sites, giving them the same importance as any other work of art.

Remains ( see film) [and I have just ordered a copy of "Arcades Project" by WB.
WB talked about playing in the rubble of a building site.... need to expand on this.

Finally, I feel that I might like to put some WB quotes on the Feuilleton, but this might detract from the "artwork" nature of it, and in any case, I'm not sure how I would physically print it on.

Jordà Vitó

Jordà Vitó:

'via Blog this'

Anthony Caro - An Early Morning - YouTube

Ecole internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq, théâtre de création Paris - L'École - Ecole Jacques Lecoq

lem 2004 intro - YouTube

lem 2004 intro - YouTube:

A film about WB

One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin from dhurjati bhattacharyya on Vimeo.

Mondrian's at a Glance

Introducing Walter Benjamin

Introducing Walter Benjamin
Howard Caygill, Andrzej Klimowski (Contributor)
Publisher: Totem Books
ISBN: 1874166870 DDC: 838.91209 Edition: Paperback; 1994-03-16

"All future is the past. The past of things is the future of the "I" time. But past things have futurity." p23

"A philosophy that does not include the possibility of soothsaying from coffee grounds...cannot be a true philosophy." p.40

Kant = pure reason. Hamann = "not only the entire capacity to think rests on langauge, but language is also the centre of the misunderstanding of reason itself."

BUT what about art!! reason without language!!

Angelus Novus - Klee

Haptic art = egyptian art and hollow relief this makes me think of Braille
Optic art = Greek are with foreshortening, shadows - but "depth" is still restricted
3D art - late roman art - "the space between bodies appears measurable, and although still organised in relation to a plane, the objects have no tactile connection to it. This is achieved by deep shadowing and the objects tend to blur into their environment."

so my question here is the position of the white cube. if art is in a white cube, it cannot blur into it´s environment. Caro puts his work into a field of green (grass, for example). see also the female artist talking about her little people sculptures in an opulent room, rather than a white cube.

p.75 "Graphic art is the art of the applied line. Painting is the art of the emergent line."

so series 2 of Abstract heads creates "emergent lines" between the individual forms on the individual canvasses

"The collector is the saviour of objects that might otherwise be lost." p.77

"The place where the word is most debased - the newspaper - becomes the very place where a rescue operation is mounted." p.131

"a halo of uniqueness and authenticity" p.135
"The unique phenomenon of distance no matter how close an object may be"
"To substitute a plurality of mechanically reproduced copies for the unique original must destroy the very basis for the reproduction of auratic works of art - that singularity in time and space on which they depend for their claim to authority and authenticity." p.137

do I believe that my works of art have authority? do they have an aura? should i give up now?????

The past witnesses of the present (the arcades of Paris)

"Photography which renders traditional painting obsolete will liberate the colour elements of cubism" p.155

"In the ruins of great buildings, the idea of the plan speaks more impressively than in lesser buildings, however well-preserved they are." p.165

ABC Museum

The Eerie, Spaceship-Like Ghosts of Communism - Maria Popova - Life - The Atlantic

II. Line and Space « McCheng 3D

Mark Quinn

Bringing real life back into art is what was needed.

Video

ArtAsiaPacific: Social Sculpture

A Fruitful Incoherence: Dialogues with Artists on Internationalism

A Fruitful Incoherence: Dialogues with Artists on Internationalism (Paperback) (ISBN: 9781899846139)
Jantjes, Gavin
ISBN 10: 1899846131
ISBN 13: 9781899846139

Glossary complied by Rohini Mark and Gavin Jantjes

Boundary 1. Something that indicates a farthest limit, as of an area; border 2. cricket

"A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognised, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing" Heidegger

Working definition: An ambivalent space from which ideas emerge and practices begin. A position marking the extremities of the given from which one steps off into the beyond.

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
Edmund Burke

They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
Charlie Parker

I think you always have to find where the boundary is in relation to the context in order to be able to kind of articulate how you want the space to interact with the viewer.
Richard Serra

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.
Charlie Parker

“Self-image sets the boundaries of individual accomplishment”
Maxwell Maltz quotes (US plastic surgeon, motivational author, and creator of the Psycho-Cybernetics, 1927-2003)

“Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization.”
Rabindranath Tagore quotes (Indian Poet, Playwright and Essayist, Won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, 1861-1941)

Other Voices 1.1 (March 1997), Walter Benjamin's, The Arcades Project

Making a Memorial - Editions and Production

I have an affinity with Walter Benjamin, for no particular, but several interesting reason. So I am working on a series of works as a "memorial". An Abstract Head, of course, though based on three photos; an AH sculpture, but only with three pieces, the blue forms taken from the triptych. And then a feuilleton, using embossing and printing techniques that I have been developing through Groundworks.

So what is an Abstract Head for? It's a formal piece of enquiry, based on a human head. It's about abstracting from, a rather old-fashioned idea, that quickly went out of fashion as abstract came to mean something quite different. But I rather like the idea that my work comes from the same evolutionary line as Picasso, Braque and Mondrian, though following its own direction now. There are some rules, but they change and evolve over time, rather like a face itself. It's the same face, only different. Some unchangeable rules are:

1. Triptych. The purpose of the triptych is two fold - to give the form of the head space to breath, to adapt within its own space; and to make the spectator move. Not very much, but certainly their eyes have to move, from canvas to canvas. I didn't realise this at the time, but now that I know I have peculiar eyes, I realise this may be because I have difficulty looking at one thing at a time, and prefer to keep my eyes moving all the time.

2. Size and shape. Each canvas is 40x40 cm. The point of the square is that I didn't want to use a rectangle that would be either landscape or portrait. Whilst the human head is not, usually, square, I wanted to ensure that there was no sense of a landscape, nor of a complete human body in the work.

The first series of Abstract Heads was full of colour, the whole canvas being covered with paint. But then I looked at one "unfinished" triptych and realised that it was, in fact, "finished".

This has led to series two, where only some of the forms are used to create the triptych. This, I feel, increases the formal quality of the work, as its basis in a human face is very much less present.

This formality has led me on in my exploration, using devices such as moulding plaster, constructing mobiles, use of wire, curving the flat form into a cylinder, embossing and printing.

My current exploration of Walter Benjamin is guiding me towards the ideas of the flâneur, the feuilleton and fashion; with further forays into Black Swan Theory. And so, I am going to take my sculptures for a walk, create radical and seditious editions of "newspaper" styled artworks, and be thoroughly unfashionable. How much this will work remains to be seen.

Taking Up Space

I love this phrase. It seems to sum up what sculpture is all about. There may be more thoughts on the subject later.

Jawlensky

9069181355

Alexej von Jawlensky
Museum Boymans - vanBeuningen Rotterdam 1994

On Abstract Heads p. 220

It was only logical that he could only represent the harmony he had ben seeking for years, by dint of constant practice, in the human face, for only there do inside and outside, man and world, nature and soul meet, where "religion", in the truest sense of the word, takes place.

"And then I found it necessary to find a form for the face, because I had come to understand that great art can only be painted with religious feeling. And that I could only bring to the human face. I understood that the artist must express through his art, in forms and colours, the divine inside him. Therefore a work of art is god made visible, and art is "a longing for god"".

On Meditations p.249

In 1934 the seventy-year-old painter addressed the theme once more. In his series of "Meditations" the human face is reduced to the barest essentials.
The picture plane and the face are identical. Eyes, nose and mouth are little more than a few lines of paint, joined into a cross. This - Russian Orthodox - cruciform stands out against the ground, which is built up with elongated, parallel brushstrokes. The expression is largely determined by the painterly action. Ill-health had forced Jawlensky to devise a new technique...Out of sheer necessity he painted with outstretched arms, clutching the brush with both hands.

At a time when [some American artists] were exploring the artistic possibilities of repetition, Jawlensky´s series came as an absolute revelation.

The young Cage, who was so impressed by the meditations that he bought one, addressed Jawlensky as "mein Lehrer" in a letter.

01. maj 2007: Thomas Hirschhorn - Arndt & Partner

I saw this book lying on my normal desk at Tapies Foundation Library, and read this apology for his work. Interesting reading for the "Mapping the Territory" task.

01. maj 2007: Thomas Hirschhorn - Arndt & Partner

The Affordable Art Fair - Art media and techniques

Joshua Enck

http://www.joshuaenck.com

Nostalgia; or not everything you see is old.

I'm interested in how processes might make a work timeless. Nostalgia is one possibility, I suppose.

Frames and Immortality

I was chatting to Kirstie in my studio about framing my AH series. I said that I wanted to use old wood, from drawers etc. so that they would like like the pictures could have come from any part of the 20th century. Hmmm... she said, but these are people, in the present, from an actual time. Ah yes, I said, but these paintings make them immortal, and that immortality can make them be from anytime.

Graffiti Sculpture 2.1

Graffiti Sculpture 2

From Graffiti Sculpture 2011

Possibly the most important five minute of my life!

Here's a very bad picture taken from Sketch Up of a mock up of a Mies Pavillion Series Sculpture.

Bill Viola Masterclass

Nothing like setting the bar high!

Why? A question of justification.

The other day I was chatting with Miguel (one on the collaborators on my "Prometheus" project) about the use of scaffolding in a dance/performace. He suggested that it should be gold. Later he got some dental floss to talk about the idea of making a "web" in the shape of an Abstract Head, that would connect the audience, or for them to break as they left the theatre.

And then I realised what "justification" means. It means asking "Why?" about everything that we do. I don't want my audience to break things as they leave. Why? Because "Prometheus" is a work of creation. I want to create, to create, to create.

Everything I hate about Contemporary Art.

Here's some Altermodernism:

I hate video as art.
I hate conceptualism as art.
I hate needing to explain process as art.
I hate performace as art.
I hate interaction as art.
I hate politics as art.
I hate sound as art.

That's a fairly good list for Breaking the Boundaries.

Here's some brilliant art that ticks all my hates. Well done Marcus Coates.

Here's a fabulous review of Marcus Coates.

And you can see an installation view of "Birdsong" here.

Graham Foundation > Exhibitions > Anne Tyng: Inhabiting Geometry

80 Kilos of Earth

http://www.jordimasdansa.blogspot.com/

Ross Neher : Art And Delusion

Emancipation

At an exhibition... even when inert forms are involved, there is the possibility of an immediate discussion, in both senses of the term. I see and perceive, I comment, and I evolve in a unique space and time. Art is the place that produces a specific sociability. It remains to be seen what the status of this is in the set of "states of encounter" proposed by the City. How is an art focused on the production of such forms of conviviality capable of relaunching the modern emancipation plan, by complementing it? How does it permit the development of new political and cultural designs?

http://www.creativityandcognition.com/blogs/legart/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/Borriaud.pdf

Art is a state of encounter.

What is the encounter with my art? Well, most of it is un-encountered for. The immediate discussions available at an art exhibition are:

1. the viewer with the work

2. the viewer with another, known, viewer

3. the viewer with another, unknown, viewer

4. the viewer with the gallerist

5. the gallerist with the viewer

6. the viewer with the artist

7. the artist with the viewer

How does art emancipate?

Graffiti Sculpture 1

At last I have put a graffiti sculpture out there. It was spotted by one of the people from my studio... so other people must have seen it too. It's gone now (within four days), probably the parks people when they came to do some tidying up.

Success

Success from Lonetour on Vimeo.

JD Holden - Abstract Head [Series2] (Ripley)

Strange things going on with the light in this picture, just getting to grips with photo editing... but enjoy, nonetheless.

YouTube - Les Sept Planches de la ruse

Although based on a Tangram, this shows one direction my Abstract Heads work could take.

cerámica utilitaria

video art ideas

http://old.gold.ac.uk/art/exhibitions/archive/mfa2009/pages/nh/03.html

I rather liked the idea in this video.... playing it backwards gives a weird feel to the movement of the material. It would be interesting to explore the idea of filming a dancer, and playing it backwards as the dancer performs in front of the video.

LS Lowry

"...the art of the painter.....that richest vein of creative vision in which essence is distilled from subject and married to idea. It is a visionary genius peculiar to the English masters. The French call it symbolism. The English see it as a strain of native eccentricity." (p.12 Levy, The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, 1975)

"...Lowry ventures no answer. Like other great artists, he only poses questions." (p.18 Levy, The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, 1975)

It is the measure of great, architectural composition - composition in the classic mould - that the eye always finds a point of ultimate reference: a core of stillness, or of simulation, which exists at the heart of the construction, and beyond all the impedimentia of incidental detail. (p.12 Levy, The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, 1975)

"Albert Camus has written: 'I know from my own experience, that a man's life-work is nothing but a long journey to find again, by all the detours of art, the two or three powerful images upon which his whole being is opened for the first time.'"(p.12 Levy, The Paintings of L.S. Lowry, 1975)

Haber's Art Reviews: Yoko Ono and Charles Ray's Hypothetical Art

I'm Clean

My mum and I went to an "Open Doors" at Galeria Nomada and had fun doing this....

What we didn't realise was that we were supposed to be "rethinking our misdeeds"... someone had already made the "Ignor Old people" sign, which my mum decided to counter... I just put up one of my art slogans...

http://www.estudio-nomada.com/exposities/im-clean

So, yes, labels are important!! without the "Label" or instructions, we didn't know what we were supposed to be doing. Not that I'd have bothered if I'd known it was meant to be therapy, not art!

Walking Gallery

The Participatory Museum

https://www.createspace.com/3431037

Signatura 069:30 SIM
Autor Simon , Nina
Títol The participatory museum / by Nina Simon.
Publicació Santa Cruz, Calif. : Museum, c2010.
Descripció v, 352, [19] p. : il. ; 23 cm.

How did constructivists paint???

I think I may need to borrow some processes here....

Ai Weiwei: Works 2004-2007

Ai Weiwei: Works 2004-2007
Philip Tinari, Charles Merewether, Ai Weiwei (Editor), Urs Meile (Editor), Peter Pakesch (Editor)
Publisher: JRP|RINGier
ISBN: 3905829274 DDC: 709 Edition: Paperback; 2008-08-01

p. 180 "Ironically, TEMPLATE as a structure collapsed under heavy weather conditions some days after its inauguration. Perhaps it was a fitting end, symbolising the fragility of the proposed template and the fate of a form that, made of fragments, is little more than a void. This is the "condition of time", a condition of temporality that governs everything and therefore offers no guarantee as to what will come after. One can only create the conditions of possibility through the actualisations that reveal the material force of its being. These actualisations are what is given at the time but they contain, nonetheless, a potentiality or virtuality which is then to be determined. This the is the freedom of the work itself, and in turn the freedom of its audience." Charles Merewether

One thing has nothing to do with the other...

An occasional series of sculptures looking at ideas, forms and symbols. And a good thing to do while waiting for paint to dry. Or to use up spare paint.

A Haiku

Juxtaposition
Heterogeneity
Serendipity

http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record%3Bid=75845%3Btype=101
Barnett Newman "Here 1" 1950

Louise Bourgeois "The Listening One" 1947 Bronze, painted white

Max Ernst Moon Asparagus 1953

Greenberg and Empty Nothingness

Clement Greenberg
Clement Greenberg: the collected essays and criticism
Clement Greenberg, John O'Brian (Editor)
Publisher: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986-
ISBN: 0226306208 DDC: 700 LCC: N7445.2

http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/erasuregenteel.htm

"Photograph of Robert Rauschenberg seated on Untitled (Elemental Sculpture) with White Painting (seven panel) behind him at the basement of Stable Gallery, New York (1953).
© Photograph: Allan Grant, Life Magazine © Time Warner Inc/Robert Rauschenberg/VAGA, New York and DACS, London 2006

Rauschenberg's moves in white are part of the grand gesture that his early work strove for and often achieved. His colleague John Cage recognised this when he wrote: "The white paintings were airports for the lights, shadows and particles." Rauschenberg was able to make nothing the subject of a painting in a way that Cage would, after him, make nothing the subject of a piece of music. Then everything could enter in. "Having made the empty canvases (a canvas is never empty), Rauschenberg became the giver of gifts." The timing of these acts was crucial; it was a different response to the Second World War and the atom bomb. Unlike the existentialism of Giacometti, which depicted man alone in the universe, Rauschenberg's emptiness has a positive tonality, and although he in part rejected the serious themes of his Abstract Expressionist predecessors, his White Paintings have nothing of the humour of the Surrealists." accessed 6/5/11

p.254 "Aesthetic surprise comes from inspiration and sensibility as well as being abreast of the artistic times."

p.255 "The best of Monet´s lily pad paintings... are not made any less challenging and arduous ...by their nominally sweet colour. Equations like these cannot be thought out in advance, they can only be felt and discovered."

http://annetruitt.org/work/sculpture/

p.256 "That presence as achieved through size was aesthetically extraneous, I already knew. That presence as achieved through the look of non-art was likewise aesthetically extraneous, I did not yet know. Truitt´s sculpture had this kind of presence but did not hide behind it."

Thoughts on a graffiti sculpture project.

My plan is to put four or five small scale concrete or plaster sculptures on "plinths" a number of locations in Barcelona. They will have to be small enough and light enough to carry on my motorbike from the studio. Each one will have a label with a QR code giving information about the work, the location of the next work and asking for photos of the work to be uploaded. I will document the sculptures on site through video and photos, and possibly interact with the audience.

So why am I doing this?
To make some more work public, for free. To clear some space in my studio. To create and document some public art. To talk to people about my art. To try out QR code technology. To make myself feel like an artist. To finally get done an idea I had several months ago.

Update: 4/5/11
So why have I been avoiding this?
Well, partly because it´s a bit scary. But also because I´m not completely comfortable with my concrete sculptures. And I´d like to involve some other people. But now I have a new plan... to work with GAP (Gracia Arts Project) and spend a day together making some AH sculptures, and then the next day to take them out into the streets of the Gotico and leave them around. Depending on the number of people I can get involved, I hope to make 5 or 6 sculptures for this project. And we´ll see how long they last. Hopefully we´ll have a couple of people for each sculpture, or a rotating shift system, so I can have a record of the public looking at them, photographing them etc.

Abstract Heads Experiments

Taking things out, putting them back in again.

Sleeping Snooze. Not a graveyard, but reclining.

Postproduction: culture as screenplay: how art reprograms the world

Postproduction
Postproduction: culture as screenplay: how art reprograms the world
Nicolas Bourriaud; [editor, Caroline Schneider; translation, Jeanine Herman]
Publisher: New York : Lukas & Sternberg, c2002.
ISBN: 0971119309 DDC: 709.049

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww9.georgetown.edu%2Ffaculty%2Firvinem%2Ftheory%2FBourriaud-Postproduction2.pdf

what if the platform, the plinth, becomes the work?

what if we take an AH and put it on a gaudy platform?

why does the plane of the ground have to be flat?

"Post-production refers to a zone of working" - what "PP" would I do to an AH?

" inventing protocols of use for all existing modes of representation and formal structures. It is a matter of seizing all the codes of a culture, all the forms of everyday life, the workds of the global patrimony, and making them function. To learn how to use forms is above all to know how to make them one´s own, to inhabit them." p.12

copy other people.... and learn from this what you need to learn

Sarah Morris, Household gloss on Canvas http://i1.exhibit-e.com/petzel/afc98954.jpg
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjXDUlE9OxjNiUG-d4Fnj8bm3lYhLSjfOBKvyh5MYx1r3x7qljspv2YFjUqt6Q3IKkAatjodStMqrtz1wvv5Zu-dz3p51ZgtNCgUzJqh8nvyx5sxIo63_5_iAYBcJVPp05VxunUpJYcUE/s320/Sarah+Morris+Petzel.jpg

p.17 "The supremacy of cultures of appropriation and the reprocessing of forms calls
for an ethics: to paraphrase Philippe Thomas, artworks belong to
everyone. Contemporary art tends to abolish the ownership of forms,
or in any case to shake up the old jurisprudence. Are we heading
toward a culture that would do away with copyright in favor of a
policy allowing free access to works, a sort of blueprint for a com-
mmunism of forms"

p. 18"The Situationists extolled la derive (or drift), a technique
of navigating through various urban settings as if they were film sets.
These situations, which had to be constructed, were experienced,
ephemeral, and immaterial works, an art of the passing of time resis-
tant to any fixed limitations. Their task was to eradicate, with tools
borrowed from the modern lexicon, the mediocrity of an alienated
everyday life in which the artwork served as a screen, or a consola-
tion, representing nothing other than the materialization of a lack."

p19."Using a remote
control is also production, the timid production of alienated leisure
time: with your finger on the button, you construct a program."

p.20"The quality of a work depends on the trajectory it describes in the cul-
tural landscape. It constructs a linkage between forms, signs, and
images."

p.24 "Citizens of international public space, they tra-
verse these spaces for a set amount of time before adopting new
identities; they are universally exotic. They make the acquaintance of
people of all sorts, the way one might hook up with strangers during
a long trip. That is why one of the formal models of Tiravanija's work
is the airport, a transitional place in which individuals go from boutique
to boutique and from information desk to information desk and join
the temporary micro-communities that gather while waiting to reach
a destination. Tiravanija's works are the accessories and decor of a
planetary scenario, a script in progress whose subject is how to in-
habit the world without residing anywhere."

that's all well and good, but people tend to isolate themselves at airports... forming queues NOT talking to each other...

p26 "Art is the product of a gap."

p.27 "Why not use art to look at the world, rather than stare sullenly at the
forms it presents?"

erm... because it's supposed to be reflecting the world as the artist sees it????

Maturity in Art

How do we become mature as artists?

Longevity?

Productivity?

Consistency?

Experimentalism?

Direction?

9780226306209

1965 Contemporary Sculpture: Anthony Caro

Words used by Greenberg:

integrally abstract contours profiles vectors lines of force direction satisfaction weight relations of its discrete parts syntax radical unlikeness to nature structural logic spinal nodal symmetry surreptitiously indirectly planar and liner shapes agglomerations enclosing silhouette internal pattern readily apparent axes centres of interest tangentially ex-centrically ground plan echo interlock superstructure elevation unity confusion radical rejection of monolithic structure pictorial many different, dramatically different points of view roundness paradoxical vocabulary of forms depth surfaces edges rectilinear changes of direction strictly rectangular calligraphic cursive curved forms necessarily angular sparingly rect-angular tilting tipping odd-angled cantilevering sprawling cursiveness separate frontal move fuse light heavy interwoven fugally open closed irregular regular lightness regularity relationships rectangular boxlike plain emphasised symmetry forthright symmetry startling effect syntactic massiveness literal massiveness smaller lighter thinner foursquare squatness rectangular symmetry less fragile inner and outer play intrinsically purely limpidly masterpieces low centre of gravity constant features originality perfect fulfilment ground-flung wide-open enclosures L T relieved vertical elements strike heroic grand-manner resonantly less expectedly historic connotations roots Perpendicular Gothic grand sublime peculiarly English aspiration achieved weightlessness belongs distinctively non-monolithic sprung Cubist collage originality of style denying weight lowering raising possibility opening extending ground-hugging laterally inflecting vertically accents lateral movement plane of the ground base foil challenge force of gravity applied colour high-keyed off shades deprive metal surfaces tactile connotations render optical essential importance art of colour satisfactory unsuccessful transcend specific combination detract quality impression aesthetically literally provisional changed decisively quality secondary unnecessary originality stylistic formal ingenuity novelty taste challenged changes expands make room product of necessity compelled vision

Barry Flanagan

Título Barry Flanagan Libros/Monografias
Autor(es) Flanagan, Barry (Escultor), 1941- (Autor)
Publicación España : Fundacion la Caixa, 1993
Descripción Física 145p. : il.
Idioma Español;
ISBN 847664423X

p.136 "Whilst interrupting a carver's work, I realised that a conductor reaching for the first violinist's bow isn't recognising his place.

In the workshop the purpose of drawings has changed, now included in the practice, rather than put on the gallery wall."

p.138 "In Japanese myth the Gods commanded all the animals to make presents to them, Whilst all the other animals brought gifts the hare is honoured because it made a barbecue of itself. Analogous to the role of talent...... His guardian deities are surely Thor and Hermes."

"the opportunity of a print to me, as a sculptor, somehow speaks of that commitment to be responsible and exposed - to have the presence of mind to draw."

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Walter Benjamin 1936

"Even the most perfect reproduction of a work is lacking one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes it may have suffered in physical condition over the years, as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analyses which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original.

The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity."

so there is pedigree, heritage in authentic art... the work become symbolic of the cult

"When the age of mechanical reproduction separated art from its basis in cult, the semblance of its autonomy disappeared forever."

Anyone can have a copy of a Picasso on their wall. But only one man can have the original that Picasso painted on his wall. But we have moved so far away from this now.... Bridget Riley, Damien Hirst lay not one finger on their work, but their cults exist nonetheless. Mechanical reproduction can help with the idea of "fashionability", but the original is still worth having.

My confusion about the art world is that I wouldn´t want to buy "an original signed print" by any artist. What´s the point in having a mechanical copy? I want an original on my wall, one that has specific meaning to me, if to no-one else. Do people have more money that sense? Or is my sense so very different to other people´s?

Critical terms for art history

Critical terms for art history
edited by Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff
Publisher: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c1996.
ISBN: 0226571653 DDC: 701.4 LCC: N34 Edition: (paper : acid-free paper)

Schiff "Originality"

p.107 Modernists have a certain hubris. Often arguing that they lack true precedent, they conceive of themselves (not their principles) as original and seek originality by realising their inner feelings, thoughts and character. Accordingly, romantics and modernists associate artistic authenticity with an expressive manner so autonomous that it must also appear innovative, in opposition to the value a classicist might locate in selective repetition. The lesson is this: classics repeat; moderns should not, except when re-iteraring what belongs to each one of them alone, their personal style.

p.108

To seek originality by stressing one´s deviation from others has consequences in the social realm, it encourages a certain personal competition which in turn has economic implications. Artists sell their unique difference, but not always easily. Modernists saw the irony of struggling for market recognition in a world ruled by fashion, which itself follows a principle of uniqueness of a peculiar kind: fashion is novelty produced in multiple and multiauthored edition.

So, do I need to copy others in my work? Somewhere along the line, the originality that I see in my work (Abstract Heads, clearly; and when I find a specific "language" the Mies series too) needs to be replicated, copied, fashioned, editioned.