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Minimalism

2 Post Modern Architects

Spheres of Influence

Mother

Memory

Thanks....for the influence

Influences and letting them go

Do you control your influences?   How do you Òdo what you do?Ó   Art School education is a good example of self-directed learning. Does it leave its mark long after you have left? Three women art teachers at my school were (Jan Hunt, Paula Sherrif and Gillian Norman) trained at the then art-teacher training college of Bath Academy of Art.   Encouraged by them I applied for and was accepted to study at Bath Academy of Art, where I did Foundation and BA.  

"The pious and contradictory act of giving up illusionism and approaching the object" Robert Morris

EMBRACING PROCESS-BASED ART
At that time, 1976-1980, the Fine Art Fellow was Maria Midgely, now Lalic, and was the only woman painting tutor I came into contact with at my Art School.   All the rest, bar an English Literature and an Art History tutor and the office staff, were male.

Colin Crumplin the Head of Fine Art, opened my eyes to the saying Òart could have the effect of a good arm chair on a tired businessmanÓ (Matisse), and alerted me to the question of whether creating beautiful objects (with an intrinsic value) was a sufficient purpose, his focus was to allow process to form the basis of the work.   "The writer-intellectual tries to become a conscience for everyone; he opposes the abuse of power and wealth with universal justice and equality. One instance is the "faded" Marxist ideal of a writer articulating the universal class consciousness of the workers. Technical intellectuals like Oppenheimer..are replacing literary ones like Zola. The writer-intellectual is disappearing. In (his/her) place there is the university and the "specific" intellectual - specific to the particular political struggles which involve (his/her) knowledge and expertise." John Rajchman : The Swansong of Literary Theory, Foucault or the Ends of Modernism, 'October24'/Spring 1983

Of course Matisse must have had a process when making his work, but what I came to understand at Bath Academy is what process does when it is the subject of the work. Lalic, at that time the Fine Art Fellow, with her salt-pan-like distillations of paint pools Ð drying horizontally and Crumplin with his arm and hand gestures frozen in plaster Ð both made non-picturing work, drawing upon Process. Colin's work developed into spreading oil paint on one half of the canvas's area and then folding the other side over creating chance marks without a brush. These marks would then be replicated by hand and brush on the other side of the painting, combining process with representation.   (As opposed to Michael Craig-Martin a former BAA lecturer who made Ôpicturing work' concerned with representation of recognisable everyday forms). They were a direct influence on me, together with the American Robert Morris.

My work was made flat on the studio floor, which was protected by a polythene sheet. I painted the canvas after folding it into origami shapes. Blue flags.

Robert Morris began to make felt works in 1967 and continues to this day. He first showed them at Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1968; at the same time he published his influential and movement-defining essay "Anti Form" in Artforum magazine. In that article he wrote of the rising trend in contemporary sculptural practice to follow an inquiry driven by process rather than predetermined form: "Random piling, loose stacking, hanging, give passing form to the material. Chance is accepted and indeterminacy is implied since replacing will result in another configuration. Disengagement with preconceived enduring forms and orders for things is a positive assertion. It is part of the work's refusal to continue aestheticizing form by dealing with it as a prescribed end." eg. "Box with the sound of its own making". This refusal to "aestheticise form" by which I think he means 'intervene in order to make it look nice'

Process, when made the subject of the work, foregrounds a quiet contemplation of the object , its materials, how it is made and where it is situated.
Illusionism invites us to forget for a moment where we are and to see another space, which may or may not contain representations of precognative familiar or recognisable forms. But where do you draw the line between slavishly following a process where you aren't allowed to have any aethetic judgment, and reinstating the power of the artist, and allowing them to make judgments based on what looks nice? Does the work become soul-less without the artist's judgment?

Crumplin invited the visiting lecturers Ð Alan Green Ð and his seeminly blank monochromatic canvases executed in meticulous detail, - attending to every nuance of surface texture and manual direction, brimming with content if you look carefully; Joel Fisher with his paper-making process leading to imaginative extrapolations from a single horse hair left on the paper by the drying blanket Ð a vast bank of potential, like his own cosmos in microcosm PICTURE.   If painting had no preconcieved image to show then what was it going to show? Joel was inspirational, and his work opened the doors onto an art whose strict strategies permitted leaps of the imagination. Less definitely was more.

"In 1913 Kasimir Malevich placed a black square on a white ground and called it Òthe voidÓ.

In 1914 Marcel Duchamp exhibited the metal bottle-rack, and for half a century these marked the limits of visual art; they were renunciations of former limits.

Malevich renounced the notion that art had to be complex, and Duchamp showed that he could make an Ôart-work' just by choosing one ready made object from a host of others, so making it unique, like any other art object. 

Barbara Rose said that, Òthese works were a formal reaction to the excesses of painterliness.  The simple denial of content can in itself constitute the content.Ó Were they negating all feelings, were they in denial, or by this act did they not show their true feelings about the world? Withdrawing all imagery offers up other possibilities. A reaction to the florid over sentimentalised versions of life, see the Victorians. See Dr Zhivago. The Russian Revolution.

Now painting's role was non-illusionistic there was nothing to keep it hanging on a wall, to be a window onto another world.
American painter Frank Stella had always been a hero of mine and again was at the forefront making work which came out from the wall and consisted of cut out shapes jostling out from a supportive mesh. eg. Guadalupe Island, Caracara 1979
Robert Morris's 1968 essay "Anti Form" was still echoing by bringing painting and sculpture together;
German sculptors like Thomas Bang (who made casts of the negative space between objects).
In the work of British sculptors like David Mach, Bill Woodrow, Barry Flanagan and Tony Cragg
you could see the far off echoes of the Surrealists, Schwitters and his Merzbilt, the Absurdists, (Alfred Jarry and his play, Ubu Roi. Ubu Roi (King Ubu) which was premiered in 1896, and is widely acknowledged as a theatrical precursor to the Absurdist, Dada and Surrealist art movements. It is the first of three plays written throughout Jarry's life that satirize European philosophies). To quote from an essay I wrote at the time:

Minimal art was just another stage in art history, with its roots in Non-Art and Dada.  Robert Morris' work displays Duchampian characteristics – SLIDE 5 ÒCARD FILEÓ, SLIDE 8 ÒMETERED BULBÓ.

His works and ideas have helped to delineate a variety of problems inherent in Minimal Sculpture: these are viewer participation, size, scale, surface and gestalt.  The word Gestalt means, Òa perceived organized whole that is more than the sum of its partsÓ; and it is this that has to be defined in minimalist work.

Robert Morris' case against painting is merely this, Òthe primary problematic concerns with which advanced painting have been occupied for about half a century have been structural.  The structural element has gradually been revealed to lie within the literal qualities of the support.  It has been a long dialogue with a limit.  Sculpture, never having been concerned with illusionism, could not possibly have based the efforts of 50 years on the pious and contradictory act of giving up illusionism and approaching the object.Ó"

So to recap, Art Historically, I was studying Modernism from Henri Rousseau, Kandinsky (Point and Line to Plane) , Gaugin, to Frank Stella and Henri Micheau and the Tachists. (with a dash of Dada and Surrealism verging on the Absurdist).   I had a very clear idea of the painting as an object, with a flat surface, a non-illusionary space, but was looking very hard for an emotional hook into the matter of finding my own way of working. I was trying to see how to make paintings which did not go all the way to being sculptures and found some help in the French "Support/Surface" group who focused on deconstructing the stretcher. Richard Smith had been doing this since the 1970's. I also made painting tools, to try to automate the painting prcess. This attempt to strip out the personal from the work was to try to make it more accessible to the general viewer. There was a feeling that you should think about the viewer.

Working out a strategy

In the third year of my degree, I started to recycle the work I had made before, materials could be reused, but also it had a more desperate meaning.

My process was like this:   Choose a 2 dimensional space, say 4 ft by 4ft , and then place everything you have at hand into that space.   Making decisions was easy when a process was stipulated.   Working on the floor the work could grow to huge proportions, or become very long. PICTURE

Nihilism, Samuel Beckett and Waiting for Godot?   According to Wikipedia Ò Nihilists generally assert some or all of the following: there is no reasonable proof of the existence of a higher ruler or creator, a "true morality" is unknown, and secular ethics are impossible; therefore, life has no truth, and no action is known to be preferable to any other.[1]Ó   PICTURE OF IF YOU'RE NOT COMMITTED TO ANYTHING YOU'RE JUST TAKING UP SPACE.

Another process was the "Mark and Cut Book" idea. It came about soon after the unfortunate event of my mother succumbing to what may one day be a curable desease, but then was not, cancer. I was striving to present the other side of this life, however impossible that may be.

GETTING BACK ON MY FEET - using representation/ depiction/ illusion

I left college and started a list of objects connected by 'Mystery and Ambiguity'. I started to use images, I photographed things that fulfilled the criteria of having an ambiguous form, or semi-form, or made me look twice because they were hard to classify. I had no studio as such to work in. I went to Japan to visit a brother, I went to the US, and did a bit of video at Syracuse University. It was a period of searching for something and trying new media.

Documentary Evidence: The lists turned into a gathering of evidence. Narrative strings emerged from the mass of collected stuff. I paid typsetters to set it all in long galleys of text and b&w images. Extracting summary phrases from the texts I made slide projection pieces which were an end in themselves, using pure colour, light and brief narrative sequences. They used aphorisms, short pithy statements which I had extracted from my semi-fictional autobiographical alphabeticised text list, and had the potential to rival advertising hordings in their scale.

I worked part-time hanging exhibitions at the Architectural Association and then at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. The most memorable shows I helped hang were Howard Hodgkin, sculptures made by painters (incl. Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly), then painters Julian Schnabel and Per Kirkby. At Goldsmiths the conflict between the old ideas of painting for pleasure and beauty and the philosophies of the French Structuralists (pious in their own way) really took over. The Left and the Right were at loggerheads and I ran out of time to reconcile them.

This is why I ask whether you can have too many influences.
I became aware of how little I knew about this area of theory. Society and the Spectacle (Politics), Semiotics and political control (Linguistics). The slippage of the sign. Saussaur. At the nub of the problem was what I took to be the inherent criticism of a system which had put me where I was. (Logical Positivism of Bertrand Russell). What I was doing was visiting a zone of conflicting thought at the edges of two different ideologies or ways of living. And as Gerard Hemsworth said at the time "If you want to save the world then don't study Art" or words to that effect.

Art and Aphorisms - the search for a format
I found these extremely helpful.   Jenny Holzer and her truisms were an influence.   They were a way of externalising in a non-specific non-personal way painful truths or facts, which could provide the content for my work.

I made slide pieces for projection, which had words on, and a simple yet ambiguous narrative string/thread open to interpretation.  

Our society is still full of contradictions and unfairness. It was at Goldsmiths that I witnessed this first hand.

I rented a tiny SPACE studio in Hackney and tried to paint again, the outcome was confusion and despair. I found Goldsmiths a challenging battleground, all of us were seeking to reach some plateau of solid ground but in the interim we were swimming about in a dialectical soup of ideologies. At least I was, I took it all too earnestly. I was trying too hard. I felt the goal posts had been moved, I may have moved them myself or it could have been the overly theoretical way I went: and I was at a loss as to how to make a living at being an artist. I moved from the Whitechapel to a part time secretarial post at the Serpentine Gallery.

I saw painting as a well established method of the paternalistic society which had bourne me. Rejecting painting was rejecting Paternalism. I didn't really want to do this. Did Paternalism equal Capitalism? If so what was wrong with it? Had it not sold the mythical idea of Romantic Love to women in order to keep them content? Was it not riddled with hypocrisy? Was it not exploitative? Was it a repressive regime? What I think I was trying to regain was my position in relation to my father, who had remarried.
Add to this the 'Absent Mother' and my support system was in break down. I did a lot of drawings. Drawing did not seem to have the same connotations as painting.

Web links:

Maria Lalic

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=2639&page=1

Colin Crumplin

http://collection.britishcouncil.org/html/artist/artist.aspx?id=18592

http://www.sixchapelrow.com/thumbs.php?artistid=91

Alan Green
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1212

Joel Fisher
http://www.artfacts.net/index.php/pageType/artistInfo/artist/7702

Michael Kidner

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1405&page=1

Peter Kinley

Ida Applebroog

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1413

Yves Lomax

Michael Craig-Martin
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=955&page=1

Gerard McCarthy
http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt=%22Gerard+McCarthy%22

Mary Kelly

http://www.rosamundfelsen.com/kelly/index.html# http://renaissancesociety.org/site/Exhibitions/Images.95.0.0.0.0.html?RENSOC_SESSID=bc9928be62f576b4627273eab521ff29&image=3120

Susan Hiller

http://www.susanhiller.org/

Barbara Kruger

http://www.barbarakruger.com/art.shtml

http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/Literary_Criticism/feminism/kruger/kruger.htm

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

Jenny Holzer

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

http://adaweb.walkerart.org/project/holzer/cgi/pcb.cgi?change

Paula Rego

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1823

Mikey Cuddihy

Tony Bevan/Glynis Johnson

Imants Tillers http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/TILLERS/Default.cfm

http://www.peeruk.org/html/projects/cuddihy1.html

http://www.peeruk.org/html/projects/cuddihy2.html

Genesis P-orridge

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7kauOh15jg&mode=related&search =

David Maclagan

http://www.jkp.com/catalogue/book.php/isbn/9781853028342

Victor Willing

http://www.waterman.co.uk/pages/thumbnails/68.html

John Furnival

http://collection.britishcouncil.org/html/work/work.aspx?a=1&id=42751&section=/artist/

Graham Day

http://www.manningcamerata.com/gd-bio.htm

http://www.baacorsham.co.uk/whosartnow8.htm

Nicholas Gammon

http://www.nickgammon.com/index%20resources/grnroomcat.pdf

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Julian Schnabel

David Salle

Sigmar Polke

Sigmar Polke

http://www.artseensoho.com/Art/PACE/schnabel99/schnabel3.html

(Mark Wallinger)

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=2378&page=1&sole=y&collab=y&attr=y&sort=default&tabview=bio

Sophie Horton

http://www.chilternsculpturetrail.co.uk/2.html

Kate Love

http://courses.csm.arts.ac.uk/displaycourse.asp?CI=66&MA=2&CT=6&fc=10

Susan Trangmar

http://www.icfar.co.uk/artists/trangmarsusan

Patrick Heron

http://www.waddingtongalleries.com/artists/heron/works/1/B35418/

Picasso

Raoul Duffy

Cezanne

Vuillard

Piero della Francesca

Mantegna

Fra Angelico

Holbein

Dubuffet

Jasper Johns

Robert Rauchenberg

Andy Warhol
http://www.warholstore.com/

Robert Morris

Mark Rothko

Brice Marden

Howard Hodgkin
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/howardhodgkin/chronology2.htm

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DE7A.htm

http://videopool.typepad.com/articles_international_me/

Leave them with questions, not answers.

This essay was given as an illustrated talk by Jane Ostler in January 2007 at Colchester Institute, Colchester, Essex to BA Art and Design Students.

onto 'Mother'

Superfine casting plaster, plaster board, watercolour

Soft textured watercolour in green, yellow, indigo

Superfine casting plaster, silicone mould, small teddy, small child

Superfine casting plaster, silicone moulds