Part Two Research Tasks

Research Task: Visual Dynamics

Notes on the Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips’ essay ‘Point, Line, Plane’

The point, the line and the plane are the three building blocks of making two dimensional images. A point is a single mark made by either manual or mechanical means (printing). A line is a series of points, especially so in the case of halftone printing or digital media where all images are composed of dots or pixels respectively. A series of closely related points and lines can create a plane. A plane formed by precise lines is a shape. A plane formed by seemingly random dots is a texture.

Planes grouped together can create the illusion of form. The way points, lines and planes are arranged can also create the illusion of points, lines and planes by employing negative space. The most obvious example is with text. A “line” of text has no real line, but the arrangement of the points/letters creates the illusion of one.  A “plane” of text is formed by the letter-points and lines. The way said lines and points are arranged can give different impressions. For example, a precisely justified plane of text creates an orderly geometrical form, whilst a unjustified plane of text creates a less orderly, soft shape. The first is hard and precise and the second is more open and casual.

Lines and planes can also create the illusion of space and volume, especially with the aid of perspective principles. Linear perspective creates three-dimensional depth on a two-dimensional surface and axonometric projections (mostly used in architecture) depict scale and volume without the sense of depth given by linear perspective.

Research Task: Process Artists

Not everyone opts to be creative in the way they use their materials, but a unique working process can create unique results. Here are three artists with unique processes:

Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) was a Canadian-born artist whose delicate works are meant to express “pure emotion”. She aimed to create purely abstract art. Her work is mathematical, meticulous and extremely curated. She painted for many years and reveled in experimentation, which she treated as an almost scientific process as well as a creative one, painting iteration after iteration of the same painting until she was satisfied with the outcome. She would start out by making small thumbnails (postage stamp sized), then she would scale the image as accurately as possible using mathematics until the original sketch could fit in her favored six by six foot canvases. Her work is often gridded and precise, different from the more energetic work of abstract artists of her time. The mathematical precision in the paintings is meditative and minimalist rather than geometrical in the way of the Neoplasticists. She worked with a variety of materials in her long artistic career from watercolors to oils to ink, but her signature style remained.

Not everyone opts to be creative in the way they use their materials, but a unique working process can create unique results. Here are three artists with unique processes:

Mario Merz

Mario Merz (1925–2003) was one of the leading artists of the Italian Arte Povera movement started at the end of the 1960s. Arte Povera means literally “poor art” and is characterized by the use of found materials and ephemera. Merz’s started out during WWII when he was still imprisoned for participating in the anti-fascist movement. He developed on his ideas later, first using traditional materials like canvas and paint create abstract organic forms, then using unorthodox materials such as bottles, umbrellas, and neon tubes and creating installations. He is most well-known for his igloo works, some also created with found materials such as newspapers and twigs. The igloo is something of a symbol for the whole world, a dome in which humanity find itself incased, literally or not. He would often weave in neon lettering with messages pertaining to the meaning of the work. He also had a fondness for the Fibonacci formula an the spiral, both of which make frequent appearances in his pieces.

Merz’s process would obviously vary according to the materials he was using to create a work., They could vary wildly from twigs and metal, to wax and neon letters, to steel frames and burlap sacks. He would also often repurpose materials from older works and create something new or build on the initial concept of the original work.

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman (born 1941) works with a range of different materials and approaches, and defines himself as someone who has “never been able to stick to one thing”. Neon signs, wax casts, installations involving video are just a few of his materials. His installations are meant to challenge both the viewer and the concept of art itself. Nauman had dedicated his career to “investigating the possibilities of what art may be.”  When he first started out in his studio he resolved that anything that happened there could theoretically be art, so he would film himself doing repetitive tasks for the entire length of a video tape. In a latter work Days he invites the viewer to contemplate our perception of time. The “sound sculpture” is a set of audio equipment in a gallery which plays recordings of people reciting the days of the week out of order, creating a disorientating effect meant to make one think about time and the way we perceive it.

The seeming randomness of his thought process is put into action by assembling materials gathered in his “granny attic squared” studio. He works with what he has on hand. Peter Plagens, artist and art critic, describes him as a “true artist” because of the way he applies his creativity to almost anything he encounters and the way he questions the world by filtering it through and artistic perspective.

Research Task: Collage Approaches

● Where do they find the images that become part of their collages from?

● Which images do you find the most striking?

● Do their images relate to the politics or social issues of their time? If not, what are they concerned with? Are they related to psychology, or dreams, or are they purely visual experiments? Discuss their relevance to the period they were made in.

● Do the concerns of the images have a new relevance in today’s world, and if so, how?

Jean Arp

Jean (Hans) Arp (1886-1966) is primarily known as a sculptor. His work is defined by both chance and forms. The organic shapes that dominate all of his works across mediums are inspired by nature and experimentation with form itself. In his collage work, he would cut op shapes out of paper, then let them fall, using chance to dictate the compositions. Some of his sculptures would be made from fragments, letting the object itself dictate the final result. His sculptures are known for their completely original approach, for the way they become different from every angle, for the way they seemed to grow. They strike the perfect balance between abstract and figurative. He had a well-established organic visual language, inspired by idea fragmentation and the way nature itself creates beauty through the randomness of entropy and growth.

Linden Eller

Linden Eller’s (born in 1984) mixed media collage work is delicate and quiet. The playfulness of her process can be seen clearly in the work itself. She works with washes of paint, paper, found materials, sewing thread and pastels on paper and canvas. Her works are about memory: its fortitude, ability for renewal and for inaccuracy. Her work gives an impression of lightness and joy, the elements float on the page, even when incorporated with more figurative elements. They are romantic and dream-like, even when the blankness of a cut image represents an absence of memory, or the scribbling shows chaos, the lightness makes it feel non-judgmental. Like many mixed media artists, she keeps absolutely everything. When the time comes to create, she grabs materials from her stash and then intuitively chooses what most feels right for her current work. She doesn’t plan much, instead choosing to create in the moment and adjust as she goes.

Website

Tea Garden (TURKEY)

John Stezaker

John Stezaker (b. 1949) is a collage artist who uses primarily found images from other media such as films and magazines. He collects postcards and other printed media from flea markets, then carefully selects two images which perfectly combine to create a harmonious composition. He creates entirely new portraits with minimal splicing. He prioritizes what is already in the image, sometimes becoming fascinated by what is already there and contemplating it until he finds whatever it is that inspired him, then he modifies it to bring out or cover up the images’ original meaning. The use of film stills and famous people is in itself a sort of commentary on popular culture and the abundance of imagery in our modern world. The meaning of images can be so easily repurposed and reinterpreted. But his work is more psychological than political. In his works part of the “Marriage” series, where he combines portraits of famous men and women, the combinations can be both profound and comical. Stezaker found that the distance created by the original photographs of famous people suddenly disappeared when combined, becoming something more honest in their oneness. They became more than gilded impressions of a person, but a representation of humanity or soul.

Bibliography

Process Artists

Collage Approaches